TPK at the sawmill...


Rise of the Runelords


That's right, a near TPK at Seven's Sawmill. It basically was a TPK as the two remaining players were fine re-rolling (one was an addition after Book1, the other wasn't meshing with the group at all).

The party(Ranger, Rogue, Cleric, Barbarian, Alchemist) debated how they wanted to investigate the sawmill, one plan was to have someone disguise themselves as Foxglove and try to talk their way in. Option 2, and what they went with, was to scale the building and go for the top down. They had the alchemist levitate to the rookery with a rope and let the others climb up. No one in the mill noticed them, until he creaked open the trapdoor and propped it open with a cross bow bolt.

Ironbriar made his perception, closed the trap door and tied it closed. Then left his office to alert the cultists. The PC's wasted a couple rounds getting up to the top of the building and deciding to swing out and break through the window in Ironbriar's office to gain entry. By this time the cultists had donned their robes and grabbed their razors and sent them off to warn each of the floors. The PC's dispatched the first wave easily. Then the buffed Ironbriar came up invisible along with the next wave. That's when things got thick. The alchemist had a bad night and only connected with 2 of his 12 bombs. The 3 from the undermill, alerted by a cultist running outside and down to that level, start climbing the PC's rope to get behind them as Ironbriar start firing with his crossbow. The Rogue and Barbarian head out the window to take out those four cultists and things get worse inside. The cultists were able to get into flank positions and start chewing away at the PC's hitpoints. By the time the Barbarian and Rogue get back into the mix Ironbriar is mostly dead, the Ranger is down and the Cleric is hurting. They manged to get Ironbriar down with just the Rogue and Alchemist standing. (by this point the discussion had turned to a group re-roll) The Rogue fled the city and the Alchemist list the mill on fire before running away.

Now I have the fun challenge of getting the new PC's on the trail of the cult. Which leads me here asking for any and all advice and ideas.

Spoiler:
I'm thinking of having them involved with the city's investigation of the murders and they were able to recover the journal from the remnants of the building. And enough clues to lead them back to Sandpoint were they'll learn all about the previous groups exploits.


Perhaps have the Rogue who fled, hearing that there was people looking into things, approach them and try and warn them off. Nothing whets a group's appetite for trouble more than someone saying "if you know what's good for you, you'll leave this alone..."


Due to his background he's going to get out of the big city quickly, but I do like you idea to use him as a tie to the past.

Spoiler:

He'll fee back to Sandpoint and be framed by a faceless stalker for continuing the murders. It was over a week of game time between Foxglove's death and the party heading to the Sawmill, plenty of time for X to send a replacement and mess with the party. I plan to have the rogue sitting in jail and he begs the party to clear his name.

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