Okie dokie, here it is! Random thoughts to follow in the second post.
Please forgive my vague descriptions, there was a lot of drinking involved so my memory is spotty. We were at a festival, held in honor of Cayden Cailean’s drunken ascension (of course). We had twenty minutes to recruit our first batch of compatriots, which goes by a lot quicker than you’d think. It took us two extra minutes to find some volunteers. The four of us were Feiya (Rob), Balazar (Matthew), Skizza (me), and some odd Warpriest guy with a d8+3 Divine (Iceman). The goal was to close all ten (!) locations, so when there was a Chad turn in the first round (in which someone closed a location on their first turn at a location), there was much celebrating! Closing locations gave us trivia questions, which we had one round to answer (and got bonus points for). I was most proud of knowing how to spell Hirgenzosk correctly (spelling wasn’t important but I was still proud) and knowing which characters were on the Swabbing the Decks barrier (why do I know that?), and was utterly embarrassed that we couldn’t remember the name of Adventure B from Runelords. The beginning was very very rough with lots of 1s and 2s on the dice, hence our team name (Team One!). Our goal was to close as many locations as possible, so we decided early on to push the (three!) villains around and let them close locations for us. When we ran out of time, we had two or three locations left, and some very tipsy characters.
After recruiting our second batch of compatriots (a lady warpriest, lady summoner (with a phantom-like eidolon), Angban (Rob), and Raheli (me) walk into a bar...), we headed out! This one was one location after another, like a siege of sorts. Like a siege (of sorts), there was an army at the end of each location. Before we encountered the army, we had to play a round of Codeword. We had to match the word exactly, plurals didn’t count. When we matched, we got to add 2 to our result on the check against the army (2 if you matched, 2 per person if you were the one who gave out the clue). The lowest result on each army check was added to our total at the end. Our first check resulted in 11 points (our summoner barely made her arcane check with a 1, 1, and 2 on 3d10) but our later ones were in the mid to upper 40s (without mythic paths, remember). Our group somehow smashed our way through five (!) armies (including the Abyssal one!) with thirty minutes to spare, and four characters eagerly volunteered to be in our final group. We used those thirty minutes to fine tune their abilities and feats, just in case we made it through to round 3.
Our sacrifices volunteers for round three were a summoner (with a wolf-like eidolon), Lirianne, Oloch, and Kasmir. We decided to start at the Shrine of Norgorber to get it over with, and it still took a few turns to close that. We ran into a Death of Righteousness, and I don’t think Rob or Iceman noticed my gasp of horror (RIP Raz). Kasmir was there, so it was no problem (recharge a spell to add my Survival skill to a character (at my location)’s check to defeat a barrier? I knew there was a reason I chose the Compy! Have a d8+5, everyone!). We were way too wasted to keep track of our stuff or ourselves so if we failed to acquire a boon or tried to move somewhere, we had to recharge and draw a bunch of cards and then make a con/fort check, or move to a random location. Until our summoner and Kasmir got Shape Change out and displayed, they were just stumbling all over the place. Oloch had no problem holding his liquor, and Lirianne mostly ended up where she wanted to go anyway. The villain made you summon and encounter the “Most Horrifying Monster Ever” BYA. Each character’s highest result against the monster would be added to our final result and there was a penalty for open locations, so we spent a bunch of time shuffling the villain around. We actually let him run away undefeated a few times so that everyone would run into the “Most Horrifying Monster Ever.” Oloch ran into him first, and we each had to choose a number higher than 30. If Oloch’s result against the MHME was within 10 of our guess, we could shuffle any number of cards from our discard pile into our deck (needless to say, we didn’t need Kasmir’s healing ability). I think Kasmir ran into the villain next, but was unprepared for two combat checks, so he completely smashed the "Most Horrifying Monster Ever" and then discarded a card to give the villain to Oloch, who was then able to beat him and send him somewhere else for someone else to handle. Kasmir ran into the Hurricane Crown, said “Yes please!” and ACTUALLY GOT TO USE IT (this is a big deal for me)! Our lady summoner ran into the MHME early in the scenario but she had a low result that we knew we needed to replace if we wanted to win, so we managed to make it so that the final person to handle the MHME was our summoner, who ended up with a static +30 and rolled a 39, for a total of 69 points added to our final score! Our final result ended up being ~210 points, with more than half of that being our "Most Horrifying Monster Ever" check results.
No, I will not tell you what the Most Horrifying Monster Ever was. Use your imagination. I will tell you it was not a custom printed card. :)
