The party is standing on a dock in the Shackles' city of Drench Port staring northward into the century-old hurricane called the Eye of Abendengo, a storm that takes up most of the horizon.
Drench Port (apparently named for the current and prevailing weather) is a free city in the Shackles and a hub for pirates and free-captains. The party was collected together here in a rush, but now they stand waiting for a vessel to collect them and take them to the Arcadian Mariner's Lodge of the Pathfinder Society. Once there they are to be briefed by the dangerous and disreputable ex-Shackles pirate, Venture-Captain Calisro Benarry, for a mission of special interest to the secret cabal that sits atop the Society's hierarchy--the mysterious Decemvirate.
Time they have been told, is against them.
The rain beats down in wind-blown sheets.
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Tristan stands stalwart against the driving rain watching the swirling clouds of the off-shore hurricane impassively. While he gets soaked he doesn't seem to mind much, keeping his eyes open for their VC contact.
If the Decimvirate asked him to attend a mission in pirate infested waters, he was only too happy to answer the call and try his holy steel against those lawless brigands of the high seas. Like their land-bound brethern, they would submit to order soon enough, or face Iomedae's cleansing fury.
He breathed the sea air in deeply, not having been this far south since he was a lad sailing with his father. He turns and gives the rest of the group a once-over, trying to get a read on each of them in turn. "Are these men of honor, men of principle, or are they the loose riff-raff that has begun to trickle into the Society of late. Time and deeds would tell. Certainly weren't much to look at here in the rain." But he had seen enough Society missions that looks were often deceiving.
The impatient warrior let out a heavy sigh as he paced along the sodden groound. If time was truly against them, then the VC better hurry along.
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The black-skinned, spidery-limbed wayang sits on a massive lizard and looks at his companions. Each one gets a toothy grin as he introduces himself. "Alouicious Alkarion, at your service! Professor at the Arcanamirium and Pathfinder! How can I make your physical form more appropriate to your needs and desires?"
Using an appendage that appears to be a cross between a tentacle and a monkey tail, he gives everyone a small card as he looks them up and down.
"I keep a variety of chemicals and herbs on hand that I can mix together on short notice to make you larger, smaller, faster, stronger ... whatever you need! If you find you like the changes, we can schedule an appointment at my office for a permanent modification."
He looks out over the water. "Great weather for sailing today, isn't it?"
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"Water!" Borox snorts to himself. "Every adventure seems to involve water in some way. All this perfectly good dry land to walk on, and I still end up in a leaking wooden tub sailing across the seas to some gods forsaken wilderness where people or things do their best to kill me." At that thought the dwarf smiles. "But that's where the fun begins!" He laughs to himself.
Water runs down the dwarf's face and beads in his beard as he looks over the companions who fate has selected to accompany him on this mission. He knows his own appearance is that of an ordinary dwarf to them. An older dwarf wearing a breastplate, a greatsword slung over his left shoulder, and a backpack bulging with supplies. The only thing that might give away his status as a cleric would have been the silver holy symbol of Gorum that hung from his neck.
Upon hearing the wayang mention making people stronger, he turns to address him. "Do ye have anything like a Potion o' Bull's Strength? They be useful for battle, but ha' a wee short span o' viability. I've been saving up for a Belt o' Strength, but ye cannae use a potion wi' it."
"While we be at it, either o' ye lads know anything 'bout Harrow decks? I picked one o' the things up on me last mission, but dinnae know much about them."
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A most unhappy ratfolk huddles silently at the side, his efforts to shelter himself from the downpour increasingly futile. Nothing smells quite like wet rat, except maybe a wet ratfolk, and this ratfolk is most certainly wet.
Eddard G. Rodenton, at your service, he squeaks above the howling winds and sheeting rain. I solve problems.
Through the obscuring rain and churning bay a dinghy approaches the dock.
As it approaches the party can see that is being rowed by two hard-looking men. A woman swathed in rain-proof cloak lights their way with lantern.
They reach the dock, and as the men go about securing the boat against the crashing waves, the woman pulls down her hood and introduces herself.
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"I am Frau Blücher." There is a crack of lightning and a peel of thunder. Horses from a nearby stable whinny in fear. The woman's expression is quite possibly the most severe you have ever seen. "Is zhis everyone? By order of Captain Calisro Benarry, I am here to escort you to za lodge. If you would please." She gestures to the dinghy.
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Upon hearing the wayang mention making people stronger, he turns to address him. "Do ye have anything like a Potion o' Bull's Strength? They be useful for battle, but ha' a wee short span o' viability. I've been saving up for a Belt o' Strength, but ye cannae use a potion wi' it."
"Oh, I have even better than that! I can whip up a concoction with bull's blood that actually makes your muscles visibly bulk up! I'm still working on having it give you horns, so you'll have to do without for now."
"While we be at it, either o' ye lads know anything 'bout Harrow decks? I picked one o' the things up on me last mission, but dinnae know much about them."
The wayang shrugs. "Pretty pictures on cards? I don't put much stock in divination, but to each their own."
As the woman arrives and motions the group into the small boat, Alkarion tips his hat. "A fine afternoon to you, dear lady. I must ask, would the captain object to my fine steed accompanying us? I assure you he is well trained, and takes up no more space than most humans."
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A small anthropomorphic amphibian stands on the docks. He wears a loose flowing coat, a nicely crafted backpack is slung on his shoulder. A fly buzzes around the air, but not for long as a toy he darts from his mouth and snatches it.
My name, is Kaillum. I came from Tian Xia, and survived those that oppressed my kind. I took up training with pistols, to better protect myself, as he pats his hip. [b]I wonder how long before we are given our orders.
Just as he mentions it, a dingy comes into faint view off the shore and he is ushered into the dingy.
"A fine afternoon to you, dear lady. I must ask, would the captain object to my fine steed accompanying us? I assure you he is well trained, and takes up no more space than most humans."
She regards the Wayang as a strict teacher might a young wayward student. "Your dog may come vith us."
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Sniffing the air with an unpleasant look on his face, Tristan stands next to Eddard, as the ratfolk boards. Seeing the diverse group of Pathfinders, Tristan aids them in boarding the small craft if needed, then when all seem safe in the boat, including the reluctant dwarf, he joins them, nodding to Frau Blucher that they are ready to proceed.
"Is it far to the Lodge, ma'am? The weather is a bit foul, I must admit." queries the paladin, trying to make conversation.
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A small anthropomorphic amphibian stands on the docks. He wears a loose flowing coat, a nicely crafted backpack is slung on his shoulder. A fly buzzes around the air, but not for long as a tongue darts from his mouth and snatches it.
My name, is Kaillum. I came from Tian Xia, and survived those that oppressed my kind. I took up training with pistols, to better protect myself,as he pats his hip. I wonder how long before we are given our orders.
Just as he mentions it, a dingy comes into faint view off the shore and he is ushered into the dingy.
The strange companions board the dinghy with not a few of them pressed into rowing against the waves. Soon land and the lights of the waterfront are lost and only the Frau's lantern light remains.
Then seemingly out of nowhere, a black shape looms out of the sea it's upper reaches dotted with light. A ship! A huge merchant carrack.
From high above lines are dropped as the rowers maneuver to the ship's flank past the suddenly lightning-illuminated, diabolically grinning figurehead.
Soon the dinghy is raised with the two rowers climbing ahead on the rigging. Blücher stands at the bow like a grim ferryman as the party ascends through the rain and sudden sprinkling of stinging hail. When the bow of the dinghy comes even with the deck rail she steps off, and disappears among the linemen.
Though the air temperature is stifling hot and muggy the deck is slick with ice pellets and bustling with sailors in rain gear tying and untying ropes, battening hatches and securing the ship against the storm, even as waves buffet the carrack.
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"-With me!" shouts one of the crew guiding the party to a doorway in the aftercastle. "Leave your lizard to the deck hands!" The man bellows point-blank at Alkarion to be heard over the storm. The man is a huge brute covered in tattoos and smelly damp leathers. The professor can practically taste the fish stew the man had for breakfast.
After pressing the party through the door and then securing against the stinging rain he squeezes past and down a narrow corridor and from there through a door and down a cramped, brass-fitted, spiraling stairwell that opens up at the bottom into a moderately-sized sitting room with carpet and windows awash in the weather outside. The room is surprisingly quiet. There are people already here.
The party's guide grunts, and exits back up the stair. You hear him secure the door at the top.
"Sausage in a bun?" Offers a weaselly-looking fellow holding a tray full of them.
"Come in. Shake off. Have a seat until they're all full." offers a big half-orc in a red captain's hat and livery. She could only be the infamous former(?) Shackles pirate captain turned Society Venture-Captain Calisro Benarry. "Welcome aboard the Grinning Pixie. Drink?"
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"A drink ye say? I be not one to turn down an offer to imbibe o' one o' the best reasons for living, lad!" Borox turns to the fellow with a tray of sausages in a bun.
"Aye, those look mighty tasty. Far better'n fish stew! I'll take a few o' those, laddie."
He then settles himself into one of the seats and bites into a sausage in a bun, followed by a hearty pull of ale (or whatever booze he was offered).
"All righty then, I s'pose ye be the one who's gonna tell us how the fate o' the world rests on us or how the Society desperately needs us ta save its bum yet again. What gods forsaken desolate wasteland do we ha' ta go to this time?"
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"Don't mind if I do, why thank you, Captain!" Alkarion accepts the offer and finds a spot to sit or stand near a table.
As everyone gets situated, he takes a few flasks and mixes things together, ending with a blood-red tincture that he mixes further with something the consistency of bread dough. Eventually he hands it to Borox, saying "There! When you need it, chew on this! It won't give you horns, but otherwise you'll feel just like a Bull!"
"Careful of Dibbler's sausages. He has trouble making ends meat." the captain says with a wink.
As the Grinning Pixie lurches and sways in the storm, Venture-Captain Calisro Benarry of the Arcadian Mariner’s Lodge grins widely as she slides a clay jug of strong Sargavan rum across her table toward a cluster of glass tumblers. "This is as close to a civilized drink as we come here."
Though broad-shouldered and half a head taller than most humans, the intimidating half-orc speaks with an almost childlike sense of excitement in her husky voice. “My apologies for all the secrecy,” she says. “I had to make sure some pirate rascal didn’t catch wind of our mission. Now that Drenchport’s behind us and we’re hugging the Eye of Abendego, it’s time to give you lubbers the full run-down.”
Benarry waits for the jug to make its way back to her, then takes a long swig straight from it. “My missive mentioned that the Society wants you to explore a recently discovered ruin somewhere north of the Shackles. Well, that was partly true, but it wasn’t exactly the whole story.”
Benarry’s eyes narrow and her grin becomes unsettlingly sharklike. “We’re actually sending you to the Gloomspires, to Old Sevenfingers’s tomb.” Chuckling softly, she slides the jug back across the table. “Here, have another nip. Looks like you need it.”
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After a very long and successful career full of killing, looting, and assorted depravity, he entombed himself alive in one of the Gloomspires. His legendary tomb has lured pirates, explorers, and treasure-hunters to their doom ever since.
"Oh? Why's that?"
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Eddard's eyes go wide (well, for a ratfolk) at the mention of the Gloomspires. The Gloomspires are an ancient field of massive stone columns that rise from the Arcadian Ocean, he squeaks. Most sages say they were already old when the Ghol-Gan Empire was young. The Gloomspires are hollow and contain many chambers and passages, all of which are believed to be cursed, monster-infested, or both.
Since the time of Ghol-Gan, many of the Gloomspires have been explored, and some have even been claimed and repurposed by other beings. Of these, Sevenfingers’s tomb is the most well known. TThe Gloomspires are inundated with strange, reality-warping effects. The columns occasionally shift their positions, and many explorers report feeling a sense of wrongness and foreboding just from being in the area. This bizarre magic also makes teleportation and plane-traveling magic very difficult, though summoning spells tend to function normally.
The Gloomspires were constructed during the Age of Serpents by a humanoid race of powerful sorcerers called the Makers, who are believed to have escaped enslavement from some nightmarish realm and fled to Golarion.
Sempet Sevenfingers was a legendary pirate who was active in the region 300 years ago, as I recall.
[dice=Kn (arcana) re: Sevenfingers]1d20+11
[dice=Kn (local) re: Sevenfingers]1d20+11
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The Gloomspires don't appear to mean anything to the wayang, but at the mention of Sevenfingers, he pipes up. "Wait, the pirate from three centuries ago? Are we going underwater to find his sunken ship or something?"
Thinking of long dead pirates and their possible servants, Alkarion begins mixing more herbs and liquids together.
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Tristan turns is nose up both at the offered sausages and the jug of rum as its passed around the captain's cabin.
Not knowing much about the subjects mentioned, Tristan is comfortable listening to the we rat tell some lore about the place they were headed.
"What is the Society planning to recover from the tomb of an old pirate raider, pray tell? It seems letting rascals like this Sevenfingers lie is probably for the best."
Captain Bearry nods to Dibbler who excuses himself and closes the door behind him.
“I’ve been researching the Gloomspires for a very long time. Before I sailed to Absalom and joined the Society, I was a Free Captain here in the Shackles. Those were the days, heh. Back then I learned about the Gloomspires, Old Sevenfingers, and all the treasure and secrets the old devil took with him when he sealed himself in his tomb.”
A long, rumbling growl of thunder makes Benarry pause, and she takes the opportunity to wet her lips with another swig of rum before she continues. “Since joining the Society, I’ve been able to learn even more about the Gloomspires. Most importantly, I’ve discovered that they’re tied to certain alignments of the stars, and that twice each year—beginning on the nights of the summer and winter solstices—the columns cease moving for exactly three days.”
“So, the summer solstice is next week. Now that you know the ‘where’ and the ‘when’ of this little caper, you need to know why the Society’s sending you.” Benarry pauses before continuing in a more conspiratorial voice.
“I recently came into the possession of a logbook once owned by the pirate captain, Mazzer Thrennt. Before Thrennt ended up as lusca-bait seven years back, he was a moderately successful pirate who shared my obsession with the Gloomspires. It turns out his log contains an inventory of the plunder he liberated over the years, including the loot he found in Sevenfingers’s tomb. One item on Thrennt’s list immediately got my attention: His log described with perfect accuracy a relic from lost Lirgen called the Orb of Stars. I’m certain that this device can manipulate the alignments of the stars—or at least how we perceive them— and historical accounts suggest we could also use it to trick the Gloomspires into thinking that the solstice lasts more than just a day. The Society and I both want that orb, and it’s going to look really good to the folks back home if you’re able to secure it. Here,” she says, passing a sheet of parchment across the table, “I’ve written down some of the particulars.”
"Any questions?"
A week later, and a hundred miles west of that perpetual hurricane, the Eye of Abendego, the Grinning Pixie weighs anchor before a region of thick fog. Deep in the mist the Pixie's crew can make out tall, blocky, black, stone columns rising hundreds of feet out of the sea. Their tops crowned with thick foliage. The mists, they are informed, are perpetual, and combined with the strange spatial distortions in the area make navigating a ship the size of the Grinning Pixie hazardous in the extreme, so the party will be taking Captain Benarry's incredible folding boat into the fog bank to find the one particular spire encircled by a shipwreck that marks the site of Sempet Sevenfinger's Tomb--one spire amid the twenty, or (by some accounts) fifty spires hidden in the fog. They only have three days starting from now to get in, find the spire, climb to its peak, find the entrance to the top-most dungeon level, and retrieve the Orb of Stars before the Gloomspires shift again, possibly leaving them lost in the fog for all time.
"Piece of cake." Captain Benarry says. "I've shown your mute friend El Garrapata all he needs to know about the folding boat so you should be fine. Mind, I expect to have her back in proper order when this is all done. Otherwise you'll be paying for the repairs. You hear?" She gives the man a good-natured slap on the back that drives nearly all the air from his lungs. "Any last-minute questions?"
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Prior to the departure from the boat, Borox ventures to visit Agirran the Fury to peruse his selection of equipment. He purchased the following scrolls.
(2) Lesser Restoration
(2) Burst of Radiance
Borox also inquires about an Amulet of Natural Armor +1 or a Ring of Protection +1. Either would be acceptable if available.
The scrolls are 600 gp total and the amulet/ring would be 2000 gp for a total of 2600 if the items are available.
He also would see if a hammer and 10 pitons would be available from the rental equipment.
"I be having rope, a grappling hook, anna crowbar already, lads. Some o' ye might be a wantin' to get some shovels and maybe a pick. If'n ye be a wantin' some restorations on the off chance we run into some o' the nastier dead things, ye might be a wantin' to buy a scroll or two o' Lesser Restoration just in case."
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, 2011 Top 32
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El Garrapata is ready to roll.
Prior to the departure from the boat, Borox ventures to visit Agirran the Fury to peruse his selection of equipment. He purchased the following scrolls.
(2) Lesser Restoration
(2) Burst of RadianceBorox also inquires about an Amulet of Natural Armor +1 or a Ring of Protection +1. Either would be acceptable if available.
The scrolls are 600 gp total and the amulet/ring would be 2000 gp for a total of 2600 if the items are available.
The crew make their into the mist amid the titanic square black pillars of stone with their oddly smooth seeming surfaces a hundred twenty feet to a side and tall enough that their tops cannot be seen from the deck of the folding-boat. The spires stand as solemn as gravestones.
At times the crew is forced to check their speed and bearings, as when they came about along side a spire that they had thought they has passed before and found that according to their calculations the perfectly square, 120' foot to side, column had one side that was 180' long.
At one point in a particularly foggy region the crew had had to make a hard turn to port to avoid crashing into a spire that had previously seemed much further ahead of them. The fact that the damned spires all look alike further complicates the hunt for Sevenfinger's tomb.
After hours of searching for a shipwreck-encrusted spire with no luck, the feeble mist-deadened light begins to fade as night draws near.
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Alkarion peers out into the night, trying to see anything that might be helpful. He also takes out his Wayfinder to see if the compass provides any guidance that the crew's other gear does not.
"The note says to wait for the spires to stop moving at dusk ... that is about now ... everyone keep your eyes peeled."
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You see a knight wearing an eye-patch riding, for the lack of a better word, a giant sea turtle. The knight sports a well-balanced lance and an assortment of daggers strapped in a bandoleer, which rests next to a shiny amulet atop a gleaming fullplate adorned with golden seagulls. A beautifully sculpted darkwood shield is also adorned with a painted large golden seagull shown in full flight. He approaches the group before they get closer to the spires.
"Raynor Cordite at your service! and this is Phranklin, my loyal seagoing steed. We heard one of your agents had an emergency, dear Venture-Captain, and we're here to give you any help I can give, if you'll have us."
Phranklin nods, and squeals excitedly.
You see a knight wearing an eye-patch riding, for the lack of a better word, a giant sea turtle.