There has been a rash of abductions in the city of Karcau in Ustalav. When it was only the common folk who were being kidnapped, nobody cared. BUT! When a diva from the opera was kidnapped, Venture Captain Basia Kalistoff calls in the Pathfinders.
The mission briefing is pretty boilerplate: Everyone hates Pathfinders here, be good and find the diva.
We start our investigation in the opera house after the performance. We find some clues - but they aren't conclusive and don't give any kind of clue on what to do next. Never fear! The crazy hair cutting lady knows what to do! Go to the swamp, find a shrine and incant an evil ritual to summon shady voodoo people who will help you.
This sounds like a super-bad idea. This woman is obviously nuts. We must have missed a clue or two from our earlier investigation. After investigating a second time we find ... nothing. (Later we learned that one of the clues we did find was actually a red herring.)
We go to the swamp. It's not really clear why we're here so we look for more clues ... and find nothing. Reluctantly we incant the ritual and summon the voodoo people. We barter with them for a bit and eventually we buy some information from them. They say that the popular, rich and famous dude who runs a mortuary business in Karcau kidnapped the diva or knows something about it.
Never one to turn down larceny we break into the dude's building and search it for clues ... and find nothing. We do find out however that this dude is into every kink, fetish, drug, etc... imaginable. Behind closed doors he's one bad dude. Eventually he finds us and more or less says, "I didn't do it. The answers you seek are at your own lodge."
So far the investigation has made no sense at all. None of our skill checks to find clues have mattered. We've gone from high society at the opera to low society at the swamp, back to high society again with the mortuary business. (The side implication that our lodge is low society wasn't lost on me.) At each stage an NPC told us where to go next - crazy scissors lady, shady voodoo men and way out there fetish dude. We are completely incapable of advancing the plot on our own.
Choo-choo! The rail-road express pulls into its final stop at the Pathfinder lodge. Please watch your step as you exit the train. Somewhere around this time the DM apologizes for all of the railroading in the adventure. "It's just written that way." he said.
Searching through our own lodge we're told things like, "You can tell how long the alcohol has been out by observing the rate of evaporation" and "Glancing into a dish cabinet (That we've never glanced into before) you can tell that dishes are missing." Our keen powers of observation appear to be limited to irrelevant details. The dishes were the final straw. At this point we all burst out laughing at the absurdities of this scenario.
We reached a door with 3 costumes hanging beside it. If this was suppose to be an opera related clue, it drew another round of laughter. We did notice the missing costumes when we were in the opera house. We didn't think much of it though because there are many plausible reasons why - Fans tore the costumes from the actors bodies mid-performance, aliens swooped down from the depths of space and took them away for their own depraved reasons, a larger advanced fiendish costume ate the smaller ones or they could have been out for a wash and a mend.
These costumes hanging in such an obvious place was the source of much laughter and exasperation because our bard had returned to the lodge at-least 3 times to give Venture Captain Kalistoff updates on our progress. Each time he had to GO THROUGH THE DOOR that the COSTUMES WERE HUNG BESIDE. Each time he didn't notice anything amiss. Perhaps he was too distracted by evaporating alcohol to notice the COSTUMES HANGING RIGHT BESIDE THE DOOR HE WENT THROUGH.
As we were making our way through the lodge we kept finding notes with messages on them like, "You've done bad things Pathfinders", "Look in a mirror before accusing others", "You're bad people" and so-on.
Personally, I've been at peace for a long time with the truth that the Pathfinder Society is more or less run like a crime family. The Dons (Decemverate) pass orders to the lieutenants (Venture Captains) who in turn pass them on to the enforcers (Us Pathfinders). We go to exotic locations, steal their stuff and bring it back to the lodge. That's what it means to be a Pathfinder.
If there was some kind of moral message, it didn't connect. The notes were only memorable because of the disappearing ink that somehow knew to disappear after being read.
Finally we reach the end. We open the door to the final room to see a bound and gagged dark stalker-type creature tied to a piano seat with a sword in its hand. There is an unconscious, tied up and gagged dark stalker-type slumped on the floor. Finally there is a tied up and gagged guy with a scarab tattoo who is looking at us and subtly shaking his head. We had the GM read the room description twice to make sure we heard everything right.
(Master's illusion can't be used to change the pose a person takes or make them look like they are attacking. It changes appearances only. The villain believed the power could be used this way and wanted it to look like the person tied to the chair was about to jump off it and attack. Also, chair-tied person was charmed. Charm person specifically says, "never obeys obviously harmful orders" - like jumping off a chair to stab someone! Lets not forget that the villain "regularly scars them - physically and emotionally" and has promised her Kyton allies "free reign to inflict whatever pain they desire on her hostages once her mission is done." Somehow charm person still works??????)
Gagged chair-person starts to shout! "Bla bla bla evil plan bla bla" and then chair-person is suppose to attack - but doesn't. Totally bizarre! According to the module we can make some DC 25 or 35 checks to get some clues that something isn't right. Lets see... a tied up person with a sword who is gagged but can shout very clearly at us. Can I take 10?
At this point I thought Venture Captain Kalistoff was the villain. Nope. The villain has disguised herself as the open door to the room. Yes - the door to the room. The PCs happen to be standing at that door. To make the situation even more surreal, the shouting isn't even coming from the chair-tied person - but the door disguised villain. Somehow its a DC 25 check to figure out that the shouting isn't coming from 25 feet away and almost in front of us - but is instead coming from the immediate left or right side of the door. Did the people of Golarion never learned how to localize the sources of sounds?
The villain's opening gambit of deeper darkness is thwarted by a spell level 3 ioun torch. One dispel magic later the gig is up. Our peace-loving bard had turned into a frustrated killing machine a few hours earlier, so we let him off the villain. He cast a spell and launched a bunch of two-handed swords and polearms at her. Both Kytons received the express train back to their home planes in short order. For his encore the bard cast the same spell on mortuary dude. We applauded mightily as the curtain closed on this scenario.
We received two custom boons on our chronicle. You should get them too:
Alcohol timing: After looking through the extensive and vast ale collection of Basia Kalistoff, you can now determine how long alcohol has been sitting by watching it evaporate.
Deadly persuasion: After accidentally or intentionally killing an opera diva and then having to deal with her, you now take only a -20 on diplomacy and bluff checks with people you have killed. Do I really have to add that trying to persusade a corpse still doesn't work?
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
