In case you're new to our projects or what Order of the Amber Die is all about, here's a quick rundown: We have been dedicated to pushing the envelope of tabletop role-playing since 1987. After more than five years on the Paizo blog, including three full Adventure Paths and the Pathfinder Playtest, we were looking for a new project, and our first one in Pathfinder 2nd Edition no less. We had never presented anything from Paizo's modules line, but just a few minutes after scanning the options, a new project was born: The Slithering Salve! Over the years, author Ron Lundeen has shown up as one of the more frequent names from the adventures we've played, and The Slithering will mark the fourth adventure of his that the Order has taken on.
Oozes have been a staple of adventurers' bad dreams for decades of this game now, and tales of the "the room with the ooze" from any given dungeon are fairly common on the messageboards. However, a module that features ooze as part of its central plot can be difficult to find--for good reason--which is why this adventure and the myriad oozes within it deserve the highest level of appreciation we can give them. Throughout this adventure, any player whose character is hit by an ooze during combat must stick their hand into a five-gallon bucket of disgusting slime, and retrieve a die at the bottom of the bucket for each hit they received. We told you we push the envelope!
- Module: The Slithering
- Marathon Length: 61 hours
- Session Hours: 29hrs, 40min
The Order has between ten and fifteen active members at any given time, and each roster is unique to each project. The team for The Slithering Salve is our most diverse and perhaps most challenging, in that we have ages ranging from forty-seven to fourteen, and experience varying from veterans with over thirty years to even a complete newcomer to the game. We also have a friend and patron along for this project: Karee Vogrin of Critical Hit Cookies, with hair dyed green to match Lini! Finally, with such a diverse array of locals across the city of Kibwe, our GM tapped two additional members of the Order for live-NPC roles throughout our journey.
Highlights From The Slithering:
- Are your veterans too familiar with the various kinds of oozes in Pathfinder? Perhaps you're worried about them metagaming which types of damage to apply? Enter the fuming sludge, a new ooze that put three of our characters on the ground and slithered over their precious hero points with its ability to prevent the curing of persistent bleed. Oh, you're going to do the run-away-and-shoot routine? Hope you can duck ejected globs of sludge!
- Oozes aren't the only thing we fought in The Slithering. Inside one of the oldest buildings in Kibwe, Jirelle opened a door and peered through the torchlight. Staring back at her--six times before help got there--were a pair of basilisks. Six successful saving throws made, never tell a swashbuckler the odds!
- We decided to employ the Critical Hit Deck and Critical Fumble Deck, with deadly variants applied to both, causing a card to be drawn on any crits/fumbles (not just natural 20s or 1s). In total, we saw twenty-seven critical hits and sixteen fumbles throughout the first half of the adventure. This resulted in some raucous combats, like the one where Zithembe the catfolk fighter threw his greataxe (not by choice), drew his greatclub, and proceeded to break it--in the same round!
- Playing iconic characters has moments when a player gets to add to the lore of the iconic. While lifting up a map inside a caravan house belonging to the Aspis Consortium, Korakai discovered a feather token (fan), just like the one his grandfather used to dance with.
- Kibwe was reason enough to play this adventure. The soundtrack to Tsotsi accompanied us as we explored nearly every block of the ten distinct districts of the city and met its inhabitants. As one of the adventure's more memorable encounters, we had to persevere in a heated debate in front of a large crowd (complete with module-specific debate system) about the contributions of non-humans and the value of diversity.
The Salve:
We weren't sure how we were going to feel playing an adventure about an out-of-control curse, spreading throughout the population of Kibwe with the backdrop of 2020 all around us. This being OAD though, we weren't going to shy away from any adventure that provides something new for us, and we were willing to make heavy sacrifices to have such a unique experience. We spent the weekend contact-tracing in Kibwe, discovering as much as we could about how the curse was spreading and even daring to visit the quarantined victims--eventually coming to the understanding that our own characters might now be vectors. The group agreed that as an out-of-game experience we found it cathartic, even a somewhat surprising outlet for expression during this challenging time. There was a great sense of hope that our characters could do what we at the table could not. By the end of the weekend, we came to feel as if the "Salve" in our project's title has several meanings, one of which applies to the players.
Character Deaths:
None! Our characters were built solid and in good hands with the expertise of OAD Player Captain, Matt Hardin
Best Quote From Marathon 1:
(with the party facing two large ochre jellies)
Lini: "Well, let's see what works!" (casts electric arc, two jellies become four jellies)
Droogami: "Grrrrrr..." (bites, and four jellies now become five)
Korakai: "Caw!" (wields electricity, five jellies become six)
Zithembe: "Rraaawwwrrr!" (attacks with greataxe, six jellies become seven)
Jirelle: "This sounds like a good time to get out of Kibwe, honestly."Current Situation:
We managed to discern the origin of the curse affecting Kibwe; unfortunately, the remedy appears to be one of the ancient pillar-watchers of the city, known as Cursebreaker. After chasing down clues, we must venture 140 miles deeper into Mwangi, to a place called Holy Xatramba. Little is known of the ruined city, both in-game and from Paizo's published material on it. There are demons within, we do know that...
More Content:
Our table was brought to life with the help of Vibrant Gaming Terrain for jungle setups, Blue Table Painting for the iconic miniatures, and Black Bard Studios for custom adventure-specific miniatures and terrain.
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Order of the Amber Die: The Slithering Salve Part 1
Monday, November 9, 2020
