I would now like to regale the Paizo community with the tale of my gaming group's latest adventure, and humbly ask whether anyone else has had such strange games or are we just insane: (slight Spoilers for 'Souls for Smuggler's Shiv' ahead, matey)
So the past few weeks I've been running 'Souls for Smuggler's Shiv' for my two friends. They're kind of an odd bunch (hey, aren't we all), and you can tell from their character selection. In a hasty decision I soon came to regret, I allowed them to go nuts with the ARG. So we have a lawful evil Drider Inquisitor of the Mantis God (who I'm worried might have schizophrenia) and a sentient tulip-like plant creature the size of a house cat (which also happens to be infused with the magic of elemental air).
Almost right out of the gate Sasha gets mortally offended by Spiderman's mentally-unbalanced cousin and stalks off into the jungle, alone. Said mentally-unbalanced arachnid has since developed an extremely unhealthy obsession with her, believing EVERY calamity that befalls the party and/or the castaways is her doing, and that she sucks the blood out of small primates at night and leaves them in his sleeping cocoon. Players, huh? Once they encounter Captain Kinkarian's ghost, the PCs have the 'brilliant' idea of extorting aid from him in exchange for the locket. After some bad role-playing on my part and an explanation of a certain undead pirate's deadly fixation with water, they learn of the cannibals' presence on the island. Foreshadowing FTW!!!!!!
Later on, their old friend Pezock gets bitten by a lacedon during the treasure pit fiasco. Not realizing his condition, they leave him back at camp with Ishirou, thinking he'd be safer there. Now while the poor birdman goes through the grip of Ghoul Fever (aka Electro-gonnoria, the noisy killer), the PCs start to run into to that loveable bunch of cannibals, the Trunefangs.
*Que scene of nearly being beaten by a single cannibal throwing javelins from the bushes.*
Now, after doing some recon of the thrunefang camp, the party decides to wait near the path and ambush the returning patrols. In a peculiar stroke of good luck, they're left with a prisoner, who after not being phased in the slightest by giant spider-guy, nearly sh*ts his loincloth when confronted by an oddly charismatic talking tulip. Through him they learn of Klorak and Malikidna, and the latter's hatred of the former. Now, here is where the whole adventure got completely derailed.....in a good way. They decide, instead of killing them, they'll conquer them, becoming the new chiefs. They convince they're erstwhile prisoner (with the odd moniker of 'Bill') to arrange an audience with Malikidna, who, after some cajoling from aforementioned strangely personable tulip-man, decides to back their leadership coup.
*Que awesome duel to the death with Klorak during a feast where Gelik the Gnome almost gets eaten and is the closest I've ever had to a TPK*
Now with a half-strength tribe of cannibals at their beck and call, the PCs go about fixing the light house. But they need an engineer or the repair will take almost a week. Remembering they have one currently on his death bed back at camp, they return to a strange sight indeed. Now I like Pezock, and I didn't want him to become a violent flesh-eating ghoul, so I crack open my old 3.5 PDFs and bring up the Grave-touched ghoul template. Here is where my weird sense of coolness comes into play. The PCs return to find Ishirou with his hands bound next to an oddly serene yet sickly looking Pezock who inexplicably acquired a tea set. It turns out that returning from the dead had cured Pezock of his madness, and was now of (mostly) sane mind, although a bit 'silence of the lambs'-ish. He even had a good reason for tying up poor Ishirou, him having wanted to run off into the jungle alone to get help.
"Oh, but I don't need help, Ishirou my friend.....I'm just.....fine" Pezock says sounding suspiciously like Anthony Hopkins.
Anyway, Pezock was not hostile to the PCs, and after me and the other player convinced drider-man he wasn't a threat and that they needed him (odd that he would be the most prejudiced seeing as he's A GIGANTIC SPIDER MONSTER), they were off on their merry way. The last game left off with them descending into the Caves of the Mother and we'll have to put it on hold for a few weeks (my friends having a big hullabaloo to do out west in B.C.)
I hope my little tale has entertained a few jaded gamers, and hey, it could be worse. You could have me as GM *insert evil laugh here*.
Erm... :)
I see I have left at least one person speechless.....I'd call that a success.....
That's... impressive.
Pleasantly enough, however, IF you don't like the freakish creatures, having them have tribe of cannibles to "look out" for would be quite a reason to switch up to new characters for the rest of the AP.
EDIT: I'm not saying that you should, by the way! It sounds like you're having a blast! Which is great! I was just offering that, if you do, in fact, regret allowing them such things, there are now built-in story reasons to abandon and alter their character concepts.
Well, I've already had a bit of a.....disagreement....with them over it, but I've been worn down to acceptance, or as I say 'I've learned to stop worrying and love the spider'.