Mike Shel said that he'd be interested in reading a journal of someone in his adventure. I like the adventure a great deal, and he seems like an excellent chap, so I'm obliging.
Apologies, I've never done one of these before. If there's something the reader want, or you're interested in specifically, let me know and I'll try to accomodate you.
The characters:
Drajik: a trapmaster Kobold. Hyperactive, inquisitive, and socially inept, Drajik is nevertheless the mouthpiece of the group.
Chenk: a Vrox barbarian. Six arms, twelve feet of stonefaced, undead-and magic-smashing irritation.
Atalaya: A former human witch who was transformed in a goblin last adventure, and seems to enjoy the benefits of her new size. Atalaya is mostly support, although she does lob the occasional fireball.
Marithius: a half-elf bard /ranger. Charismatic and good-looking, he tends to stand more in the background of the group and fire arrows. Unless the encounter is with something female and shapely, in which case he's first in line.
The campaign: Team Sutekh
Set entirely in Osirion, although it’s a little different from standard Osirion (although I see the coming Adventure Path includes the old gods. I’m pleased about this). The temples to the old gods sponsor teams, usually condemned criminals, to do their dirty work. This team works for the Temple of Sutekh (Set), more in his incarnation as the Lord of Storms and Pharaoh’s military might than as the Robert Howard style God of Evil and Snakes.
I also play without alignment. If anyone’s interested in why or how that works, I’ll discuss it and my reasons for doing so later.
The party has been tasked with finding the architect who created the tomb of the Dark Undying One, a monstrous long-dead pharaoh who has recently awoken and is luring the planet Aucturn closer to Golarion. If they do not stop him, well, the impact of Aucturn will destroy all of Golarion. The architect is Tzolo, and thus they have come to the Tomb of the Mud Sorcerer (from Dungeon #138).
This thread assumes that you know something about the Tomb of the Mud Sorcerer, and will contain spoilers.
At first, the party was a little stymied by the door puzzle. They took some interesting tactics, and ultimately, Marithius put his hand on the ELOMCWE, since he’s the character the party considers the most foolish. On realizing that the individual letters could be depressed, he figured out that the letters can spell out ‘welcome.’ And so, they got in.
They were confronted with the long hall with three pools. Being experienced tomb raiders, Atalaya immediately levitated the bones out of the pools, so that Chenk can smash them all into talcum powder without getting wet. I can’t say I blamed them. They’ve had some bad experiences with bones.
Now, everybody in the party knows that Trajik is, with good reason, very confident in his ability to discover traps, but also that he can’t resist fiddling with anything that doesn’t turn out to be a trap. Once Chenk was done mashing the bones, they party approached the large bell at the other end of the hall. Rather than wait for Trajik to do something stupid, Chenk smashed one of the wooden support beams. Luckily, the bell rang when it struck the ground (and bounced), and the water drained out of the pool. One Search check later, and the black key is levitated into the waiting hands of Atalaya.
From there, they walked into the chamber of the Crying Eyes. Trajik didn’t have any acid-resistant gloves, so he was forced to search the walls with an ever-shortening stick, thus a -5 to search checks. So it took him little time, but he did locate the secret door leading to the chamber of alcoves.
When I set up the party, they knew they were going to be raiding tombs. They have a lot of undead-bane gear, as well as golem-bane and adamantium equipment. And they've been in Osirion for some time, so they recognized the statues in the three corners of the room as Bastet, Anubis, and Ra. Chenk likes to do things to statues, so he turned the central statue with the protruding arm, and discovered that it allowed him to open the door the statue is pointing at.
In the dirt-floored room they found the coffin, and the note. Atalaya’s player tends to keep the various handouts from the campaign, and she’s got quite the portfolio at this point. Nobosy was really small enough to get up the western Wall Face’s nose, so they sent a magical mantis they got from a pyramid several adventures ago, and scried on it. I’d forgotten what spells do not work in Tzolo’s tomb. But I’ve got a week to figure out how to fix it. The scrying came to an abrupt halt as a mysterious something in the pillared hall smashed the jade mantis. Trajik is sad because he liked his jade scorpion.
With nowhere else left, they went North. Knowing what coffins contain, they were about ready to leave the mummies alone, but when I mentioned they the gems they mummies held looked like they were worth 10,000 gold, they took up fighting positions, and picked them up. Two rounds of combat later (I use the 13th Age Escalation Die to speed combat), they had smashed a pair of hill giant mummies. Chenk, as their largest target, was impressed with their hitting power.
And that’s where session one ended. More to come!
