So I finished the advenure path the other night, and it was a memorable event. One that was the highest I've ever run a campaign and the highest my players have played.
The night started and the players levelled their characters from the previous session and bought stuff with the loot they gathered. Some of them had a considerable amount because they hadn't gone shopping the previous couple of mods. Jim (one of my players) was browsing the DMG and joked about (well mayby not) about getting a mirror of life trapping for his foyer, but he didn't have that much. He considered about getting an Iron Flask. They had known they were going to get the Big bad, and he joked they should get an Iron Flask and imprison him. He wound up NOT buying the flask in favor of something else, I forget what exactly.
Anyway.
The begin the mod and make their way into Skullrot and into Dark Myrakul's Study. Where the Devourer is let out of an IRON FLASK. One Analyze Dweomer later, the party has an Iron flask with the means and the will to use it "Oh we gotta try it now".
You can see where this is going, don't you.
They continue with the adventure, clear the top level and all they have left is the cage with Archedemus. Milly (the character with the somking eye template) breaks the chain the cage falls and breaks below where the other party members wait with the flask.
Milly's cohort says "get in the bottle"
I roll the d20 for his will save.
Everyone leans in...sorta like in "The Gamers".
Yup. I rolled a 1. We have a demon prince in a bottle.
An interesting end, don't you think?
The begin the mod and make their way into Skullrot and into Dark Myrakul's Study. Where the Devourer is let out of an IRON FLASK. One Analyze Dweomer later, the party has an Iron flask with the means and the will to use it "Oh we gotta try it now".You can see where this is going, don't you.
They continue with the adventure, clear the top level and all they have left is the cage with Archedemus. Milly (the character with the somking eye template) breaks the chain the cage falls and breaks below where the other party members wait with the flask.
Milly's cohort says "get in the bottle"
I roll the d20 for his will save.
Everyone leans in...sorta like in "The Gamers".
Yup. I rolled a 1. We have a demon prince in a bottle.
An interesting end, don't you think?
Tell me you're going to have some more fun with this. Demon prince in a bottle? <evil grin> Everyone's going to want some of that. I can see the other demon lords queueing up allready.
Seriuosly, though, Big A just traded one prison for another. And one made by mortals at that.
"Well... I'm back."
We finished up the end of the adventure path last night, and it was definately a thriller. In the end, Adimarchus lay dead along with two PCs, Nidrama, and nearly the other three in the party. The dead party members were brought back via true ressurection, and they searched Occipitus for the body of Adimarchus, found him (two days before he would have come back!) and destroyed his body.
It was really a special occasion for the party. Several months ago, our party Paladin moved to Hawaii. He came back to spend Christmas with his wife (our party Druid)... just in time for the big finale.
They encountered the paladin, who had been captured by Alurad Sorizan (who escaped the PCs in their Strike on Shatterhorn), hoping to follow through with the plan to present one of the PCs to exchange for Adimarchus.
During their discussion with Byakala, at Harrowfell, the party learned a great deal of what the would face. One player (who is running a drow fighter/ranger with the Vow of Poverty) mildly said "Elistrae help us..." and, lo and behold, to the great astonishment of the entire party, the avatar of Elistrae appeared. What is it that you desire of Elistrae?" she asked.
Te player was totally taken by surprise, and after a bit of polite stalling, and amongst the clamor of all the players suddenly invoking the names of their gods (to no avail), asked if she would bless the party and send them directly to where Adimarchus was being held. So, she cast prayer and sent them to the top level of Skullrot.
The players were surprised to see Dark Kyrakul (and his demonflesh golem) already there... they were expecting a quick fight with Adimarchus, then off the plane as fast as possible.
The fight was going well, and the archmage (with the smoking eye) cast an empowered sonic chain-lightning to attack both Dark Myrakul, and tried to zap Adimarchus inside his cage. The blast from the spell was enough to finish off the lichfiend, but it also freed Adimarchus from his cage.
A quick new initiative order later, the archmage dropped Adimarchus by five negative levels, then Adimarchus flew to and attacked the archmage, who failed his Fort Save, and imploded. In the following rounds, Adimarchus failed to kill the Paladin, but killed Nidrama with his third Implosive Strike.
Eventually, the angelic Adimarchus died, then rose in his demonic form. He used maze on the Paladin, gave the fighter/ranger five negative levels (who then had to back up and use his sling... he was bummed), then advanced on the warmage, who finally started to do some damage with orb of force. The warmage died in a fiery blast in two rounds.
Finally, with only three party members left, the druid (now a gold dragon) managed to do back-to-back breath weapons against Adimarchus, who finally fell.
The battle took several hours to play out... by far the longest single encounter of the entire adventure path. The emotions ran high, and at the end of it all, we spent about an hour cleaning up, and discussing "where go we from here?"
Unfortunately, this was the last meeting for this group. I'll be out of town for six weeks, and one by one, each of the players will be leaving Korea. But we all have become good friends, and we all feel that our time in Cauldron will be among our great memories of Korea, and in our future gaming stories.
Thanks to Paizo, and all of the talented people involved with the Shackled City Adventure Path. You did an outstanding job.
And now that I don't have a game to prepare every week, I can spend more time to develop ideas reguarding the SCAP (I believe that makes me the first person to use the word SCAP!) to share with this community.