GM Elberion's From Shore to Sea [PFS] (Inactive)

Game Master GeraintElberion

Mist didn't actually act but since her plan was to attack white belly thats okay.

As the paladin strikes down the Cloaker Mist moves over to the victim and kneels down to check on them.

"Its okay we're here to help. Are you badly hurt?"

She looks up at you with wide eyes and croaks for a second, then swallows and utters a few words, "Yes, it hurts."

She is clearly injured. The cloaker just spent two rounds munching on her. If you want to check if she is stable or taking ongoing damage, that will require a heal check. That can be part of your current turn.

The creature moans again.

Also, hovers
hover: 1d20 + 10 - 2 ⇒ (4) + 10 - 2 = 12
hover: 1d20 + 10 - 2 ⇒ (1) + 10 - 2 = 9

Hover fails so it flies after emitting its moan.

Nobody is affected by the awful moaning.

Aaftaab
Parvaaz (paralysed)
Castinus
Ischell
Mist
Robyyn

Cloaker (white belly) (-35)

Reginald

Cloaker (purple belly) (-68, dead)
Cloaker (red/purple belly) (-17)

Bold may act!

Robyyn rushes after the flying cloaker and fires off another blast from his wand.

"I am nothing without Parvaaz!!! Wake up my companion!" Aaftaab shouts with little effect on the bird that fell from the sky.

GM, I continue to ready the action above with the net.

Reginald steps closer to the remaining cloaker, pulling out a needle from his belt pouch with the same motion. "Ouch!" he yelps, almost dropping the tiny piece of metal as he pricks himself on accident. "Whew, didn't drop it. Alright, you croaky cloaker, time to stop your moaning!" He makes an exaggerated stitching motion in the air before bursting out laughing again.

Piercing damage: 1d6 ⇒ 6

5 ft step, cast lipstitch (Fortitude 18) on the cloaker, and Cackle to maintain both Misfortune and Evil Eye. If the creature is using wings to fly, don't forget that it needs to make a DC 10 Fly check to avoid losing 10 ft of altitude every time it is damaged. And for added fun, if the creature fails a Fly check by 5 or more, it plummets to the ground and takes falling damage as appropriate. Not sure if we should retcon that from last round where it got a 9 vs DC 15 to hover, but one can always hope for a similar level of skill in the future. XD

reflex: 1d20 + 5 - 2 ⇒ (19) + 5 - 2 = 22
reflex: 1d20 + 5 - 2 ⇒ (9) + 5 - 2 = 12

reflex: 1d20 + 5 - 2 ⇒ (5) + 5 - 2 = 8
reflex: 1d20 + 5 - 2 ⇒ (16) + 5 - 2 = 19

fort: 1d20 + 6 - 2 ⇒ (17) + 6 - 2 = 21
fort: 1d20 + 6 - 2 ⇒ (2) + 6 - 2 = 6

Good point about the fly, I was just thinking that I didn't need to bother because it has a fly of 10 but with the -2... I'm not retconning.

it falls on a 1: 1d20 ⇒ 10
it falls on a 1: 1d20 ⇒ 11

it falls on a 1: 1d20 ⇒ 1
it falls on a 1: 1d20 ⇒ 11

Boom!

The creature is damaged by Reginald's spell and falls!

damage: 2d6 ⇒ (3, 4) = 7

Robyyn, I missed your last burning hands so have sorted both this round.

Robyyn scorches the cloaker and then Reginald brings it down, mouth firmly shut.

Aaftaab
Parvaaz (paralysed)
Castinus
Ischell
Mist
Robyyn

Cloaker (white belly) (-lots)

Reginald

Cloaker (purple belly) (-68, dead)
Cloaker (red/purple belly) (-43)

Bold may act!

Aaftaab, technically Robyyn goes before you, so you can choose a different action now that the cloaker is down.

Aaftaab moves forward and then throws the net.

Mist retrieves a healing potion from her wrist sheath and drops it for the gillman before moving as quick as she can towards the remaining cloaker.

Seeing the others rush after the final breast, Ischell turns his attention to the wounded woman. He pulls out a well worn wand, smooth to the touch, and taps it against the woman.

"You are totally lucky we were here, ya know? Don't worry about it, we'll get you all taken care of. Just, uh, hold on a bit."

CLW: 1d8 + 1 ⇒ (6) + 1 = 7

She drinks the potion.
clw: 1d8 + 1 ⇒ (6) + 1 = 7
Before answering Ischell, "This place is terrible! We are cursed."

She shudders.

Aaftaab entangles the creature, then Castinus charges it and kills the thing.

A breeze ruffles your hair, which crackles with the arcane energies permeating the island.

She looks at the dead creature, at the powerful people who helped her, and weeps, "Help me!"

After a few moments, she pulls herself together, "The wedding rock, the tradition, it's all a trick. A trick so that those creatures, those disgusting creatures, can breed in the bellies of our women. They..." She breaks down in tears again.

After a few moments of weeping, she stands up and wipes her face, "Who are you?"

Aaftaab hugs Parvaaz.

“Please come back to your senses! Please don’t leave me alone!“ Aaftaab says and it is clear that his desperation is very real.

Because of his grief it is hard to concentrate on anything else!

After a painful 18 seconds, Parvaaz is released from the cloaker’s magic and feeling returns to their bruised limbs.

"Who are you?"

"We are Pathfinders!" Reginald announces dramatically with a wave of his arms. "Brave adventurers and discoverers of lost wonders such as yourself." He clears his throat and tugs the hat from his head. "You may call me Reginald, though I am only a master of magic few other wizards can even comprehend. And this is my familiar, Casovir."

The crow gives the woman a look from his perch on Reginald's shoulder as if to ask her if she can believe what he has to put up with every day. "Pleasure," he adds at last. "Now what was this you were saying about the wedding rock and these creatures? Did you mean the flappy things on the ground here, or something else?"

The woman boggles for a minute, "No, not those things. The fish-people-things. I think some people call the skum."

Then she stops, turns her attention suddenly from Casovir to Reginald, "Wait. Pathfinders? Does that mean...?" her eyes dart about, suddenly cautious, "A particular half-elf?"

”Your name wouldn’t happen to be Sara would it?”

She puts a hand over her mouth, "By the gods, Jeggare!"

It's been a while so, a reminder, Count Varian Jeggare is the VC who sent you out here.

A flicker of a smile plays across her lips, "Yes, I am Sara, Sara Vanderholt." Then doubt creeps in a steals it away, "You are... you said you were pathfinders. Why are you here?"

"Why, yes. Jeggere. Exactly! That's why we're here."

He turns to the other Pathfinders. "Who has the comb; show her the comb!" When nobody produces it, he pats his own belt pouch. "Oh," he says, retrieving the comb.

He holds it up for Sara to see. "You send Jeggere a comb like this, right? You used to communicate through some plants, but then it died, which concerned Jeggere. So, he sent us to find out if you were okay!"

She takes two more, very similar combs from a pocket inside her jacket and holds them up next to the comb you carry. "Yes, yes, I did."

She looks then at her hand, holding those combs, "And I am far from okay."

"It has begun to warp you as well." She looks sadly through her enlarged eyes at the party, "Gerlach. He realised somehow. He came here to reverse the change but... I have seen him. He is here. He is more fish than man now."

"If you want to stop the change. Reverse it, perhaps, then find Gerlach."

"Before things got worse, I spoke to some of the villagers. They tried to escape, tried to break free. Not now though." She stares into the distance, "After Gerlach began his experiments," She points, "Up there, in the big domed building above the excavation, they all stopped thinking. Just became... I don't know. Fogged. Numb. Strange."

"Not everyone is down there digging either. Some were led away, I don't know where. Maybe to the silver man I saw them talking to?"

She shakes her head and draws her attention back to you, "Gerlach, he must know something."

"Whoa. Thats a lucky coincidence, if I have ever seen one. The dudette we are looking for coming right to us- just in time for us to be saving her! So this Gerlach is part of the problem now? Or was he just unlucky. I guess that means we should be moving faster- before these changes settle on us. It would be pretty terrible if we couldn't get back to ourselves, ya know"

Castinus runs his free hand over the unfamiliar contours of his evolving (devolving?) face. "I'm all for moving fast. Let's solve this puzzle and begone. I want no longer on this cursed isle than necessary to return to me my familiar form."

He ponders Sara's words. Turning to the others in the group, he asks, "So, do we head first to this... silver man? See what additional intelligence we can gather there before taking on Gerlach and persuading to release this curse? "

Aaftaab hugs Parvaaz when he comes back.

Happy he scratches his neck and walks to the woman they saved.

”Lady, I am so glad that we found you! This was our mission: finding you! What you are now describing is I think really interesting but I am not sure if it is really part of our mission!? And I have still lots of questions about what is going on here! So who is this man you are speaking about? And what happened to you in all these months? Please give us a summary because I really have no clue what is going on here!“ the seemingly barbaric grippli says with a honeyed tongue that seems to not be his own.

Int 7 grippli speaking. But as a player some background would also be good again.

The villagers have always had a connection to the sea.
Some of them in each generation would become gillmen and go to live int he sea.
They would help with missing sailors and finding plentiful supplies of fish. The community accepted this situation.
They also had a taboo about the strange island they could see from the beach. The only time to break that taboo was on one's wedding night. They would go and have their first married tryst on the 'wedding rock'.
Actually, what happened is the magic of the rock messed with their heads and then skum took the women away and impregnated them, before returning them, none the wiser, to the rock. This is the source of the gillmen strain in the village.
The timeline on the next bit is unclear:
- a magic-use called Gerlach went to the island.
- lots of people started disappearing into the sea and being attacked by sea creatures.
You are not sure which of these events came first.

Sara's kidnapping from wedding rock was a lot less furtive and subtle than is traditional. The skum just kidnapped her and tried to kill her husband.

People stuck on this island seem to turn into gillmen.

Most of the gillmen/villagers are now mindless drones.

Sara blinks in surprise at Aaftaab, "Oh, right, sure, why would you know Gerlach. Gerlach is an alchemist, I think. He said he was going to break the taboo and go to the island. And he did. He said there was something dangerous about it. Something he could change."

Aaftaab looks clearly shaken.

“This is so incredibly horrible! All these people are suffering! We definitely have to help and this guy that you are looking for might be the solution so let’s go and find this alchemist! And, just one question about where this guy is?“ he says and scratches his head.

"This whole scenario just isn't right, ya know. Can't be letting the evils of these gillmen get away with it. I say we head to the dude Gerlach, like, right away. If he still has any of his memories- we don't want him to... ummm... lose them or something. But like, if he is bad and all, we'll need to deal with him one way or another."

Paladin mode, activated

"I agree that this Gerlach will have to be dealt with, but I would prefer to keep exploring first; anything we can learn will only help us in the end."

How many locations remain unexplored?

I have marked the map, slide 7, with ticks where you have visited.

B7 is where she said Gerlach had been and B4 is where she saw the silver figure.

"Hmm, well, perhaps I spoke too fast. The next place we were planning to visit--assuming we keep to our anti-clockwise pattern--is the very domed building that Gerlach seems to be holed-up in. We should probably continue that way."

He pauses, "Unless you think we should speak with this silver man first? Actually, you've barely said a word about him. Can you tell us more about this silver man?"

Quick post

Sara explains that she only saw the silver man briefly, talking, it seemed, to two skum.

[ooc]This island is pretty sandbox-y, choose wherever you want to go.[/oooc]

”Let us go to Gerlach!!“

"Jolly good," Reginald agrees, wiping his brow distractedly. "Can't wait to leave this place - I am sweating up a storm over here!"

Sara looks at you all nervously, "And, um, should I come with you?"

---

Once you have decided what to do with Sara...

A cracked crystalline dome surrounded by overgrown, walled courtyards rests here in ruined splendor, precariously supported by intricately curved columns. Smashed doors of coral open into the pervasive gloom within. Inside, the crystal dome reveals a remarkably clear night sky. Dozens of glowing metallic globes, spheres, glyphs, and crystal lenses circle in swirling orbits around the room, some held together in corroded metal mounts. Periodically, a lens pauses, briefly concentrating the light of some distant star upon one of the glowing glyphs circling the perimeter of the massive orrery.

I have placed you outside of the structure (slide 12). Let me know how you wish to enter.

Aaftaab looks at Sara and nods.

”Of course! Come with us!“

He starts to look for traps at the entrance to the dome.

perception : 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (12) + 11 = 23
Parvaaz aid another dc 10 : 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (8) + 7 = 15

25 perception for traps.

As he examines the structure, Aaftaab realises that the whole place is deteriorating, making the magical and mechanicals elements unpredictable and dangerous.
It's not a traditional 'trap' that somebody has set but it is still dangerous.

Spellcraft to figure out what is going on here. Knowledge (arcana) and (history) can also help.

It sounds like you'd want the Knowledge check before the Spellcraft then?

Knowledge (arcana): 1d20 + 14 ⇒ (11) + 14 = 25
Spellcraft: 1d20 + 14 ⇒ (15) + 14 = 29

Reginald is enthralled at the sight, and his jaw hangs open as his eyes dart back and forth rapidly.

"Woah... there is like, moving things up there. They don't look magical to me, but like... what else could that be, ya know?"

Castinus looks on with caution in his expression...

"Hmmm. Looks dangerous, but we know that Gerlach is in there... so I think we have to go inside. We should consider the magical implications of all this damage, though, before we enter. I think it could be..."

Knowledge (arcana): 1d20 + 14 ⇒ (2) + 14 = 16
Knowledge (history): 1d20 + 12 ⇒ (2) + 12 = 14 +2 if regarding Osirion and/or its gods (not likely, but hey)
Spellcraft: 1d20 + 14 ⇒ (20) + 14 = 34

Those observing realise that the orrery can be suspended, at least temporarily, although it will be challenging.
DC30 disable device check after entering the orrery.

As you take the time to observe, you see that some of the floating objects are stele, covered in writing.

If you enter the orrery, make two perception checks and place your pawn on the map. The orrery itself is floating in the air, so you can move relatively freely in those spaces (unless you are large, sorry Parvaaz) but the fractured, fine walls around the outside are solid and the crystal dome is intact, if cracked.

You can only learn more by entering. If you want to go somewhere else first, or try another approach entirely, go for it. Otherwise, step inside, if you dare!

Aaftaab leaves Parvaaz begins and moves into the structure.

perception : 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (16) + 10 = 26 +1 vs traps
perception : 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (10) + 10 = 20 +1 vs traps

“Wow, what a confusing structure! Let me try to get this stabilized!“ he says and starts working with his tools.

disable device Rank +7, Class +3, Dex +6, MW Tool +2, Rogue +1, Vest of Escape +4: 1d20 + 23 ⇒ (5) + 23 = 28

Not more than 5 below DC so I’ll retry.

“Ahh, more difficult than anticipated!“

disable device: 1d20 + 23 ⇒ (8) + 23 = 31

Robyyn enters cautiously, and watches Aaftaab work.

Perception: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (3) + 8 = 11
Perception: 1d20 + 8 ⇒ (3) + 8 = 11

Mist carefully follows, trusting her light feet and quick reflexes to keep her safe.

Ischell hangs back, staying near Sara. He watches the others enter the building.

Stay with the helpless woman, or follow my dudes into the teeth of this building...

The moment presses on, and he turns back to Sara.

"I'll be back just as soon as I can. Stay here and hide. I'll be back as soon as I can." before he turns and strides off toward the others.

Ischell hangs back, staying near Sara. He watches the others enter the building.

Stay with the helpless woman, or follow my dudes into the teeth of this building...

The moment presses on, and he turns back to Sara.

"I'll be back just as soon as I can. Stay here and hide. I'll be back as soon as I can." before he turns and strides off toward the others.

She's got Parvaaz for company, so that should help set the paladin's mind at ease.

As the party enters the orrery and Aaftaab gets out his tools, two creatures appear and bite at Robyyn and Reginald, before disappearing again!