Our Cast:
Calomyr - Half Elf Gunslinger... I do not like fire arms as a DM, however, I allowed this as we don't play enough so I didn't want to limit characters. This is however the only one I will allow, so in our campaign, fire arms are being systematically destroyed in a sort of faith/technology class. Religions (asmodesous and saranrae in particular) are actively destroying them. He stole his family's gun in Cheliax and ran aboard the Jenivere. He's being hunted and has to be careful when he uses his fire arm.
Muldoon - Human Ranger. Native of Sargava, from a minor noble house, wants to bring his house into power and perhaps one day rule the country. Plays a true colonial, racist towards the Mwangi
Virtus - Half Orc Oracle. Haunted aspect, worships Gorum... stoic, doesn't complain, takes everything in stride with his 'little haunts' and tends to be very strategic.
Seraphin - Azlanti (once he read +2 to all there was not turning back "it's not that big a deal")... wasn't sure how to put a true Azlanti in to the campaign. Decided, he was with General Avashi in the assault on the serpentfolk 10,000 years ago... stumbled upon the scene in which the cyclops was placed in stasis, this teleported our hero elsehwere so he was also in stasis. He was new to the party as they were entering the mines, so I had him wake up in the salt mines, something with the blue globe ended the stasis field.. all I could think of... he only speaks an old common, so I didn't allow him to take that, his communications with the party has been...interesting. I won't be allowing another one of these either.
Ton Tan - Human barbarian, another newcomer.... never worked up a background, we have him as part of the expedition and simply joined up with the party...
To paraphrase, they easily handled the Shiv, though Yarzoth managed to get away. While in Eleder, they began to trully hate Gelik as they believed he must have stolen some notes which is how word got out about Saventh Yhi.. our ranger rescued two leapord animal companions on the island, not knowing one was Yarzoth in disguise..
Each faction approached them, the Government first and our sargavan nobleman was all too willing to join with them right away. They ignored the Aspis and the Pathfinders entirely.. not sure why. The Red Mantis they met with and were afraid to tell the assassins no... especially with our gunslinger and Sasha 'hitting it off'. So the last meeting was with the Pirates, I wanted to make it a little more memerable... she had captured the ship captain that rescued them from the Shiv and 'interrogated' him, finding out about the gunslinger... she blackmailed the party, threatening the captains life and to warn the authorities about the firearm.... Our group decided to go to the government faction, tell them they were joining the pirates, but they wanted to double cross them out in the jungle, kill all the pirates and then continue on with the government faction...
The party easily went through the trials and have Nkechi joining them, Sasha wants nothing to do with the Red Mantis and left with the party as well.. falling for our gunslinger in the process after he saved her from the Cannibals earlier.
They had dispatched everything with relative ease, so I threw in my own encoutner at the mine entrance. Our gunslinger was being hunted by some hired bounty hunters (an advanced minotaur with a hired group of bugbears)... they ambushed the party at the mining camp. Also, Yarzoth decided this was a good time to come out of hiding...things went bad for the ambushers, and the minotaur and yarzoth attempted to escape together, but with Yarzoth's appearance, the party's blood lust took over and they pursued with extreme prejudice.... it was nearly a tpk, but in the end, the party won, losing a wizard who decided to engage the minotaur with the wand of vampiric touch... hence our new Azlanti mage Seraphin and why I had him start in the mines to easily join the party.... prior to this they enlisted Athyra and Jaji, promising to find her parents and meet her on the other side of the caves.
They went through the mines with no problem, most combats lasting less then a round... they completely ignored the cockfight (expected) and nearly went around the chemosit village, being very wary of the villagers despite their friendliness... luckily our Colonial Noble, looks down his nose on these 'savages' and strode into the village in all his arrogance. The Chemosits were also systematically destroyed.. two round fight.... I went to the drawing board to start making the encounters harder....
Eleder, I completely upped the Red Mantis ambush, to 16 assassins and a leader... this was a bit of a fight, but in the end our azlanti wizard and his scorching ray slaughtered too many, our ranger's favored enemy is humanoid, humans and our barbarian. Nkechi, Athyra, Jaji and Virtus did not enter the city and weren't involed and they still took down all 16 with little to no damage... how are 4 from the book going to do anything.. maybe my party is too high powered... back to the drawing board again... the leader did get away, unknown to the players he ran to the Eleder leaders, informed them of a gun that slaughtered his people... a group of Saranrae enthusiasts marched straight to the group, however, they avoided conflict with them (and our gunslinger fled the city)...
The Mzali ambush went off... horribly. Our Oracle put a fog cloud around the entire party as he got off his 1/day immediate action in time... I rolled terrible, so of the few human ban arrows that hit, 4 of them missed with the concealment roll... ugh. The half orc was then enlarged and next round charged out of the 'cloud' with a memorable "you better run" taunt to the nearest assailant. The Mzali fought bravely, but died quickly....
The hippos were a little harder, I actually had Gelik appear instead of the lizardfolk. A, this really pissed off my party, it seems Gellik is absolutely hated.. I had him use ventriloquism to draw the ire of the hippos in the parties direction before he fled into the jungle. B, this hopefully gives the sense that there are more expeditions out there and it trully is a race to Tazion. Our barbarian barely survived. I'm definitely going to have Gellik return soon... I may be able to lure them into doing something stupid knowing how much they hate that little gnome... ideas are forming....
The Shadow Demon... oh Intombu how I wish they didn't have the fetish... this was our first big encounter.... and the party got lucky.... they busted him out of the dire ape in one round, no big surprise... however, he summoned a crocodile to get some of the party to surround it, they did, which put most of them in range of an incoming fireball... however our barbarian decided to roll a massive critical, doing 96 points of damage... which after DR and incorporeal was only 36, but still, OUCH. So Intombu changed up, and decided it was Magic Jar time one round early... barbarian saved. That's when our ranger remembered the spirit fetish... good bye shadow demon and a lot of prep work from the DM... this was going to be one hell of a fight and for a moment, I thought they had forgotten the fetish.... dang it Muldoon....
So far our party is having a good time with this AP, the gunslinger being hunted, the Azlanti wizard not being able to communicate, a half orc being haunted, but it's really been too easy... now however... I"m starting to advance all the encounters, so it may start getting more interesting... i'm new to Pathfinder, so I've been finding my way so to speak on how to make the encounters more difficult.... without going overboard...we'll see... more to come... after our next session...
Jikembe gets slaughtered... I actually had the party arrive at a ransacked Mwangi village, having just been attacked by some colonials with most of the villagers taken as slaves.... this served to set up the encounter better, give the pc's some interaction with the natives as well as set the scene better for some of the conflict between colonials and the Mwangi.... there was a dying tribal elder, who believed the colonials came because they were cursed by Jikembe entering the tomb. She gave them all a feather token and told them to go throw it off the edge of the tomb of their hero to remove the curse... off went the party to do just that and they of course ran into the Necromancer and his troll. I had the troll guard the entrance while the necromancer cast his spectral hand and sent it out to reak havoc. Our gunslinger was permanently blinded in round one, he was out of the fight. The half orc battle oracle saved the ray of exhaustion but still took the -2 to STR... the troll was acting as a meat shield when the players struck... a critical with the great axe from our barbarian with help from Athyra and Jaji and the troll was down in one round, the oracle put up a stonewall so he couldn't see the party to use spectral hand. Call lightning from Nkechi, scorching ray from our wizard and it was over as quick as it started... man, this party is laying waste to this adventure... so far. Zakiyya was next though...
Another alteration to the AP, I figured there is no way my party will even interact with 3 gorgeous women and a 4th bathing in the sun, and if they did, there was no way they were going into the hut... so it was time to pray on man's need to rescue women.... I rolled to see if Zakkiya spotted the party.. she did, seeing how cautious they were, she summoned a crocodile to attack one of the spirit dancers in the water... hearing the shouts for help sent the party running. They quickly rescued the poor maid and were offered a reward for their help of invoking their spirit animals. Everyone but the wizard in the group drank the blue winnis poison... everyone except our barbarian made their save though... so he was going to sleep in 2 rounds.... meanwhile impatient Zakkiya only needed one more person to drink the poison, so she put suggestion on the wizard... he rolled high - damn Azlanti and their massive ability scores, so he saved and instantly shot out a mirror image. This put everyone into panic mode inside a way too small hut. Zakkiya dominated the half orc who subsequently started going after our gunslinger. Said gunslinger took one shot at the succubus before retreating from his attacking friend by jumping through a window. The half orc being to large to fit through simply started bashing his way through the wall. Meanwhile, the hypnotisms and charms from the spirit dancers had great effect, Zakkiya didn't like the close quarters, so she teleported out. Nkechi heard the commotion and came running inside just in time to delay poison on the barbarian, keeping him in the fight. Zakkiya summoned her babau, who came from behind to impale Nkechi and in a stroke of Gozreh induced luck, the druid was only hit once by the demon, then put up sanctuary and got out of the way.... our barbarian went to town on the babau with Athyra and the buccaneers. The wizard couldn't get his scorchign ray to do anything or bypass its SR with magic missile, so he was wasting turns.... outside, the gunslinger took a huge shot at Zakkiya, who attempted to charm him, but he barely made his save... which is too bad, she really wanted to get a kiss on someone... they didn't have time to ponder it though as the half orc came through the wall... the gunslinger happened to have a hat of disguise, so he ran around the corner and changed his appearance so the Half orc wouldn't attack him... however half orc made perception check and saw through the disguise... and kept chasing him. Gunslinger kept it up though, running around the corner and trying again.. this worked after nearly being chased around the entire house... the party got fairly lucky again as the babau attempted to summon one of his buddies, but failed... he went down shortly after, and seeing this was a lost cause, Zakkiya went ethereal and got outta dodge... good encounter, everyone enjoyed this one....
I had the Eloko as the last encounter before Tazion... I wasn't sure just how the party actually finds the city, so I had them interrupt an attack on a hobgoblin tribe. This tribe had actually taken up residence in Tazion, but were forced out when Roagru and the Charu Ka arrived... they found 4 sleeping hobgoblins.. they woke them up and were just getting the story out of them when they heard a bell... half the party missed saving throws and began wandering through the woods.... when the spriggans suddenly grew (I actually had 20 in the encounter to make this difficult) out of the jungle and had the party scattered and surrounded... this was dire straights for everyone... however our oracle was a masterful tactician and put up a minor image of a blade barrier around most of the party, forcing them to run around and funnel through near the barbarian, who really enjoyed getting to use Greater Cleave for the first time... it was devastating. The mage was trapped outside, but put enough hold persons up and had help from a fighter NPC to survive... this was touch and go for about 2 rounds, but in the end, everyone survived, including a hobgoblin who agreed to guide them to the ruins if they help free his leader (I have a character taking leadership feat at 7th level, so I put his cohort- the hobgoblin leader - in the flensing room in temple of Snake)... so there we sit right now, the party having just gotten a glimpse of the crumbling walls that mark the end of their journey to Tazion.....