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Hi Everybody! I've started running a version of Skull & Shackles for my group. I'm making a bunch of changes to it and figured it was worth posting about it on here. I'll be using the first book of Serpent's Skull, all of Skull & Shackles, Plunder & Peril, and a fair bit of Return to Freeport so there will be spoilers for each of those adventures. Stop reading if you don't want those adventures spoilied for you.
I'm not one to go into a lot of details and I'm not going to post after every session, but once or twice a book I'll likely talk about the general things that have happened, which will include the changes I've made. (I have two books worth of stuff to post about so this first post will be longer than future ones).
For the campaign we started with Souls for the Smuggler's Shiv (relocated to the northern edge of the Cannibal Isles). The castaways were the same but I added in Sandara Quinn as a wizard due to it being a 3 player group and one of them was already a healer. Sandara wasn't a GMPC, but was there if the group wanted to bring her along, the same with any of the other NPCs. (Thankfully the group left the NPCs at camp most of the time so I didn't have to worry about running another character during combats.)
To set things up for Skull & Shackles and Plunder & Peril I had the map on Inkskin's back lead to Jemma Redclaw's treasure, mostly because I think she's a great character and wanted to use her for more than just one book. Inkskin was captured and enslaved by one of the other two captains in the backstory of Plunder & Peril but had left the Shackles after the captain had died. She was on her way back to meet up with Varossa Lanteri to go and claim the treasure. Plugg & Scourge boarded the Jenivere in Ilizmagorti and noticed that Inkskin was trying to hide her tattoos and had assumed, because the ship would be near it, that it was for the temple on The Shiv that they were searching for.
The group went through the island about the way I expected them to (very carefully, thoroughly checking things. I had it set up as a hexploration thing as we've used exploration in most campaigns). Plugg and Scourge had traded Inskin to the cannibals for information about the hidden temple once they realized her map wasn't useful for them. Inkskin survived in the tunnels beneath the camp, where the group managed to rescue her. At the end of the book the group found Plugg and Scourge transcribing and taking rubbings of the carvings on the walls. Tjhe group didn't think anything of it and didn't take any of the parchment with them. If they had, they could have learned a little bit about Dark Freeport / Mazin (instead of having the Mazini from Return to Freeport be the bad guys I'm keeping it as Cheliax but changing the original name of Dark Freeport to Mazin as I have it so that it was originally used by the Serpentfolk so "Dark Freeport" as a name doesn't make sense. I also rewrote what it all would've translated to and changed some of the ancient past to suit what I need the history to be for future story points).
After breaking the curse on the island they group managed to flag down a passing ship that was on its way to the Rum Punch Festival in Lilywhite. From there I was able to run Plunder & Peril as written. The survivors from The Shiv went their separate ways, and I've added in some of the encounters from books 1 and 2 of Skull & Shackles as well as most of the NPCs. After thoroughly and quickly defeating the captain of another ship half of the officers from the Magpie Princess took the new ship. Throughout all of this the PCs have been quite popular amoung the crew and officers, which is setting Captain Lanteri a little on edge. One of the PCs made a terrible impression on Slippery Syl so she's been working against the group and has been whispering lies in Lanteri's ear. Caulky Taroon, who's still loyal to her previous captain, is making her own plans as well but is much more cautious than Syl.
After the group was left on Warvil's Folly, along with Inkskin who was bringing them some supplies that the captain said the group needed, the saved some hippocampi and a triton so they were able to make their way to Brightglass Isle after deciphering the map on Inkskin's back, which they finally had a chance to see now that she was willing to show it to them. After reaching the Magpie Princess, which was docked outside of Mancatcher Cove (moved up to Brightglass Isle) the group fought with Syl and a few allies that she had managed to turn against the group. After that was dealt with they explained that they were marooned to the rest of the crew, the crew shared their side of the story. Lanteri instructed the crew to leave the PCs on Warvil's Folly as the PCs were a huge threat to everyone on board and that they were going to steal all of Redclaw's treasure. (She partially believed this due to Syl's whispers).
I replaced the Fearsome Tide was the Eth Abaddon from Return to Freeport (but with a reduced speed; better than most sailing ships, not nearly as fast as it is in Freeport). Both Redclaw and Varossa Lanteri died in the battle against the PCs and it was a very close fight against the incutilis lord, but they pulled through in the end. Once they had a chance to inspect the Fearsome Tide they stood around pondering how to steer a ship that had no obvious way to mount a wheel. Once the entrance had been cleared and the blood and gore in the hidden cave had time to wash away they found an impressive, magical gem in the water which they quickly learned contained an air elemental that could help steer the ship (using what Jalhazar’s wheel grants instead of figuring something out. I'll remove Jalhazar’s wheel from the actual place in the AP as they would most likely sell it and they already have enough treasure as it is).
On their way to Freeport, the capital of the Shackles, they've encountered Whalebone Pilk and the Deathknell. They defeated him and his crew and have taken his treasured bell for their own. While worried about what it may do the captain PC didn't want to hang it on his ship so instead it is being kept in one of the extradimensional areas onboard.
Now they are on their way to pick up the scattered people that they survived with on the Shiv and then dock in Freeport to gain the letter of marque.
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I'm running Book 3 / Tempest Rising mostly as written, but changing things based on PCs as required.
After picking up crewmates that had survived the Shiv with them the captain of the Fearsome Tide opened the extradimensional cargo space that had Whalebone Pilk's bell in it so there was a surprise burst of skeletons for them to fight off. Whalebone not having his harpoon made the fight a little easier this time around and then the group realized that destroying the bell was the best option. After destroying it they also figured dropping a piece off the side of the ship into the water was the safest they could reasonably be.
In Freeport they were able to fairly easily pass all of Tsadok's tests, with the game of Bastard's Fool being the toughest. (I ran them all as written because I was lazy and didn't want to find a better alternative. Thankfully everyone enjoyed it, they each did a test, and they didn't mind waiting their turns). Tsadok was especially impressed with how well the drow was able to handle her Gutrut rum, but Neutralize Poison definately helped with that.
The meeting with Kerdak was easy and the captain was just able to be impressive enough to earn his letter of marque. Earlier in the day the crew had heard about the Free Captains' Regatta so when the Master of Gales was at the feast the captain made his acquaintance. I also had Hyapatia (book 6) at Kerdak's side and the more observant crew ont he Fearsome Tide noticed that she was acting as a bodyguard as well as arm-candy.
Due to one player being a Drow I also had Pierce Jerrell be one of the captains that knows of the hidden drow colony. He was surprised to see one on the surface, not realizing that she isn't from the Shackles so approached her asking what she was doing out and off of her island which has lead to the PC wanting to know about the Shackles Drow. The local Drow are very secretive and concerned about being hated so they're taking their time to get to know about the PC, where she's from, why she left, and what her experiences are like with people in the Shackles. (By using Jerrell as a go-between.) This will be a slow-burn and hopefully, before the end of the campaign, there will be a drow ship in the fleet against Cheliax.
While meeting with Tessa Fairwind the PCs realized she has more forward-thinking, less piratey thoughts about the Shackles and that becoming more legitimate could help improve the life of the people in the archipelago. The group agreed and offered to help track down the spies that Tessa had hinted about.
They followed every lead they could, it all went about as expected. Return to Freeport has a chase scene in part 4 (page 107) as a lead-up to a scene I'm not planning on using so I used the chase mechanics / table provided for the group going after Giles Halmis that way it was easier for them to capture him rather than start a round-by-round combat in which case he likely would've died. I prefer to have the group get information out of someone instead of having the enemy keep a piece of paper with the information on it instead. Bad guys keeping meticulous notes on their person usually seems weird to me, although I'll probably be using a similar thing much later on with Harrigan/Warvil Lanteri. But yeah, they caught him, got the information they needed and then summarily executed him.
Going through the apothecary ended up to be a game of cat-and-mouse with Zarskia mostly running for her life, destroying everything she could, and getting away. She's leaving the Shackles likely to never return as she's smart enough to know it would be a death sentence.
(This is longer than I was expecting; maybe I should add a post after every chapter or so instead of waiting too long)
Next up, The Free Captains' Regatta!
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OH! Chalky Tarroon has been loyal to whoever the captain of the ship is so when the group first caught up to the Magpie Princess at Brightglass Isle a few crewmembers led by Syl fought the PCs. Chalky was one of them but when the PCs took over the ship she was a solid crewmember.
In Freeport, when the barroom brawl broke out, she snuck away after seeing that Warvil Lanteri (my replacement for Harrigan) had somehow survived being shot by his wife.
The group was never really sure of Chalky so they cast message just to make sure she was okay. She replied that she was fine but had to leave the ship but didn't know how to tell the captain so she just ran away instead.
(I'll be using her later as she'll be more loyal to the Shackles as a whole than to a captain.)
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Time for the Regatta!
So, partway through investigating the spy ring one of the players asked how much time was left until the Regatta so I said "1 1/2 months" and hoped it would be enough time for them to run around and get everything done.
Thankfully it worked out and they had 5 weeks in Freeport before the regatta started.
After selling most of their plunder the group realized just how ridiculous this AP is with gold and is was fantastic! (So, if you're running this, be prepared for your group to have way more money than WBL expects.)
For the regatta I used a few suggestions from the GM thread (I'll link to them) and the group just kinda went for it and had a bunch of fun without worrying too much about the rules / benefits that spells or abilities could give and they just trusted me to have it make sense and to make it fun for them.
Before the regatta started they overheard someone address "Captain Warvil Lanteri"... the look on a player's face when they realized who he was was pretty fun and the other two clued in after seeing her reaction.
Because Warvil is replacing Harigan I needed to make him disliked, if not hated, pretty quickly. The captain PC walked up to him, Warvil, recognizing the Fearsome Tide (Gemma Redclaw's old ship) was being big and threatening about wanting "his" ship back as he's the one that survived the other two captains that originally found Redclaw's treasure.
For the regatta itself, I decided the Restoration would reset a PCs energy as if they had slept (so they weren't pushing themselves after 8 hours), mostly so that we didn't have to track the logistics of that and sleeping during a hurricane ontop of everything else we were tracking.
I used Dragonriderje's advice (HERE) about handwaving the time and went with 3-4 hours between most of the landmarks (that way it took a little over 24 hours to complete / 3 scrolls of Restoration per PC) as well as the hour/level spells lasting two landmarks and spells with a lower duration would only helping for one landmark / event. My players also have ridiculous Profession Sailor checks but they didn't know the DCs and it's a hurricane so they were all expecting the DCs to be super high so even when they rolled 30+ they were only mostly sure it was high enough.
Tomos's hazard chart (HERE) is really good. The captain / pilot of the ship has a Zephyr's Wayfinder and the Hurricane Savvy trait to make winds not as bad but with it being the Eye and Master of the Gales negating things that are too beneficial to any one ship I reduced the percentile roll by 15 or 20 so that his abilities and gear weren't wasted.
The second half of Shade325's post HERE made the ending fantastically exciting! The group knew they were never first but couldn't get a good idea of their position until they were out of the hurricane. Seeing the other ships, especially with it being 3 other ships, really made them nervous. I had the pilot roll more than what Shade325 suggests as I knew he'd have no problem getting 30+ on the result but I wanted to make them sweat a little. So I had one roll for them to catch up to 3rd place, another to pass them. While thye were gaining on second warvil Lanteri had the Invisible Stalkers bring an Anchor Feather Token over to the PCs ship (as per mbauers's suggestion HERE) and had the Stalkers defend it in order to prevent a PC from getting there deactivating it. (Which didn't take long; the rogue ate AoOs in order to grab it and run over the course of two turns). While the rest of the PCs were fighting off the stalkers who were attacking people the pilot was making more checks to catch up to and then pass both second place as well as Warvil. The pilot made sure to give Warvil a double middle-finger salute as he passed the Magpie King so clearly making him a rival has worked!
Overall, the regatta worked great for us. I'm glad that no one got bored seeing as how it was mostly the captain making the checks (with the rest of the group assisting to increase their race score). It took about 4 hours to play through. I'm glad it wasn't much longer than that, but the amount of landmarks and challenges was pretty perfect.
For the record, the group ended up with at least 36 race points. (I might've forgotten to track a couple at the end, and I wasn't awarding them for the final stretch against the other 3 ships). Going by the book, 11+ winning by a lot would've been INCREDIBLY boring.
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Of course, some of the things I meant to do, like having the group see Caulky on the deck of Warvil's ship, I completely forgot to mention. I'll have to be sure to mention her the next time they cross paths.
And I meant to use Dragonriderje's suggestion from HERE about showing Warvil stab Peppery Longfarthing for "failing" and dragging her below decks or into his cabin, but I forgot to do that bit too...
What can I say? I got caught up in the excitment and things slipped my mind.
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Started book 4, the enemy in the bay nearly resulted in a TPK, so what out for that!
The phase spiders in the Chelish fort were careful and would only very occasionally attack when the PCs started to let their guard down or when one would successuflly bluff them into thinking he had let his guard down. The animate dreams nearly killed the PCs so they left the fort for now and are exploring the rest of the island.
I didn't like the idea of cyclops having lived there for tens of thousands of years so I replaced them with various serpentfolk, which ties in with the temple from Smuggler's Shiv and with Dark Freeport better. The PCs are currently going through the ruins of Sumitha where the Great Mother nearly killed them. (It's slow, but, oh man! does it hit hard!)
Assuming they do the ruins before heading back to the fort I'll have them level up and then probably add in the night hag, Haetanga. (Or maybe have her show up after they think everything is all good and dealt with... I don't know yet.)
They've realized why the island isn't settled, which is nice because usually a group of PCs roll up to a "wild area that no one can tame" and make easy work of it.
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Ruins of Sumitha ended up going really well. I feel like having various Serpentfolk populating the ruins was the right call.
G3: Degenerate Serpentfolk
G10: Advanced Serpentfolk
G14: Young Serpentfolk Hunter
G15: Advanced Degenerate Serpentfolk (with bows that they aren't good with), Serpentfolk Guard to replace Shaija
G17: replaced Ishtoreth with a serpentfolk temple guard and added in Yarzoth from Smuggler's Shiv without levelling him up or adding anything
Area G20 didn't read well for me, especailly since I only have 3 players so I had the gholdakos outside the eye. My basic thought of the ruins is that the Serpentfolk arrived untold hears ago, have been slowly degenerating but still able to survive on the resources of the island, but left the caves on the right-hand side of the ruins alone due to the gholdakos and great mother. (I made sure to point out that the only tracks in the northern and eastern sides were that of insects and rodents.
While high and in the eye I narated drug trips that the PCs were going through and I was able to give hints of things to come. (EG: seeing souls in the gem, seeing a version of Freeport where the sun never rose, Warvil Lanteri / Harrigan attacking Peppery Longfarthing for allowing the PCs to win the regatta and Caulky Tarroon being uncomfortable with it. (Caulky has always been loyal to whoever is her captain, but she'll eventually give the PCs information about Warvil's plans)
After the ruins they fought some of the cyclops harpies (they first came into being before the cyclops died off and they've managed to eke out a living on the island by preying on passing ships and creatures on the island). Then they prepared for attacking the fort again and it was SIGNIFICANTLY better the second time around. When Paeta first appeared she failed both her saves and was polymorphed into a bat. With that, the sole surviving phase spider fled to find her night hag mistress.
Thinking that the hag was working with the harpies they tracked them down and took out as many as they could at the harpies aerie. Some fled south to the forest so the group followed on foot, so then the harpies flew back up the mountain just to be jerks. the group checked the jungle for signs of the hag but didn't find anything. Their current thought is that the hag has left the island and the group is considering a trip to Freeport in order to pick up supplies, sell their treasure, and spend time in the city.
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Quick notes:
-The sunken shrine has been searched
-The group knows what the malfunctioning teleportation circle does now (I had both have the same effect; they haven't found one of them yet and may not find it as I've replaced the last chapter of book 4 with the first chapter of Return to Freeport as they're trying to find the night hag that sent the phase spiders and animate dreams.)
-On the way back to Freeport they wanted to raid a ship so I used the ship smuggling rum. The group is now more sure that Arronax Endymion is a Chelish spy.
-Ederleigh Baines has been cured of his paranoia and schizophrenia through many uses of Restoration
-Captain Pierce Jerrell has let the drow PC know that the next time he brings supplies to the hidden drow settlement he has permission to bring her with him so that more of them can meet her.
-The plague from Return to Freeport is spreading throughout the city and the group has learned that something weird has happened at the asylum so they're going to check that out.
I think I'm going to have the Brine Witch be the night hag with an agash div as a sidekick as the mad ravings included the "biting eye" and I didn't think to change that as I didn't clue in that it likely refers to the agash having a giant eye as a head.
(If anyone is reading this and has an advice / thoughts, I'd love to hear it.)
I’m reading your story.
What disease are you using?
I had my players spread “Bloody End” unwillingly to Slipcove on Bag Island - a farewell “present” from Bedu Hanji who they hate now.
They had to help the lokal piratelord contain the quickly spreading disease.
It was quite memerable.
For the curse afflicting Freeport?
The Night Hag sister from book 4 will be a copy of Gathuspia from Shattered Star so she's casting Bestow Curse. I'm probably also going to use an Aghash Div as her minion because they have Bestow Curse at will.I ran Curse of the Crimson Throne not that long ago so I don't want to have an actual plague in the game again. And Bestow Curse let's me have a lot of different symptoms. (Night Hag is using it to weaken people and then steal their souls with Soul Bind and deflect blame from herself onto the "plague".)
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Makes sense.
I dont know Freeport and my players are in book 4 as well (but we are MUCH slower than your group).
Is it worth aquiring at this point do you think?
I love Freeport, the city book for it (HERE) is an amazing resource but you likely won't get much out of it at this point. The adventure, "Return to Freeport," is... okay. It's too short and is too similar to Skull & Shackles so it's not something I'd run separately for my group but I've been able to take a lot of scenes out of it, especially from the later 3 parts. EG: They PCs have to convince some captains to join their fleet so I'll be adding those into S&S, Freeport has another dimension that they go to (almost like the shadow plane) so I'll be merging it together for "Island on the Damned" and where Harrigan is hiding in book 5 of S&S, there's a nice poison plot that I'll likely use, things like that... nothing that is an "OMG! You HAVE to add this in!" but stuff that I'm putting in because I have the books and it's pretty easy to do.
That being said, have you looked up Fort Scurvy in the Pirate Campaign Compendium from Legendary Games?
I'm planning on replacing the final chapter of book 6 with Fort Scury. (Unless the players want to sneak in and go all stealth mode... we'll have to see.)
I'd highly recommend checking it out. It's a pirate fort that's more heavily guarded, more detailed, and feels like a more epic encounter to end the campaign with than what's written in the AP.
(And, for the record, my group gets together once a week, for 6+ hours, of fairly focused gaming so a book typically only lasts us 6-9 weeks, which is why we go through APs so quickly. Kingmaker and Skull & Shackles are the two I've added the most to, but the amount of effort is reminding me why it's been so long since I've added very much to a campaign... it's exhausting and, sadly, I don't really have the time for it.)
Always interesting to see how people add to, subtract from and alter APs. Bonus points for using Freeport stuff.
I love the setting of Freeport! To the point that I bought the most recent city book a couple of years ago for around $100 (worth it!) and again (for, like, $15 or something ridiculously cheap) about a year ago when Green Ronin was having a "clearing out some space in the warehouse" sale.
Plus Return to Freeport (both at regular price and again during the sale), Freeport Bestiary, and The Pirate's Guide To Freeport (even though it's all in the city book) purely because I wanted it.
I think I'm going to have the Brine Witch be the night hag with an agash div as a sidekick as the mad ravings included the "biting eye" and I didn't think to change that as I didn't clue in that it likely refers to the agash having a giant eye as a head.
(If anyone is reading this and has an advice / thoughts, I'd love to hear it.)
Change of plans!
I think I've settled on having a regular Night Hag (Haetanga, mentioned in Island of Empty Eyes), an Advanced Phase Spider (from Giantslayer), and a 3 or so Aghash Divs.Haetanga uses the advanced phase spider as a bodyguard, a cadre of regular phase spiders are spread throughout the city as spies to watch the best targets for her to kill and steal the souls from. She's using the aghash divs so that they weaken targets and, as I said earlier, the "plague" is used as the reason people are dying to deflect the fact that she's killing them. (Using 3+ aghash divs to explain how so many people can be targeted with bestow curse.)
Okay, so, I put up super abbreviated versions of what happened and I likely don't include nearly enough details... if anyone has any questions about what's going on in my game feel free to comment and I'll answer / clarify as best I can.
The group checked out the Chambers Asylum today. The diplomacied their way into the building and made friends with the first mate of The Scalded Man so they only had the cultists of the yellow sign to go up against.
The Obsidian Sand was a mystery that they weren't able to solve right away but they were quite concerned about it. The cultists went down easily (because I used them as statted out in return to Freeport and the area is for a level 2 group). They also made friends with Clement Moore, who oversees the operation of the asylum. But Zabreen the Once Magnificent wasn't as willing to talk. It was a great fight due to the steam acting as Fog Cloud and Zabreen blindly throwing out Fireballs to where he assumed the PCs were. (I used the stat block for a Blackscale Sorcerer from the NPC Codex and ignored that it said "half-orc" and left him as a human).
After reading through Zabreen's notes they headed over to Kafe Ilkin to see what was going on with Arzu and to try to figure out why Zabreen seemed obsessed with her.
Because I don't want to use Divs as a main enemy in this campaign I changed the notes so that Zabeen believes he has Azlanti blood in him, changed the visions to be a moon-shrouded Freeport, pointed out that the Biting Eye has a benefactor, Arzu is knowledgable about Valossa (the Serpentfolk kingdom) and Mazin (which is what I'm calling Dark Freeport).
Arzu knows that the area used to be part of Valossa, that Mazin is a lost Azlanti city (she doesn't realize it's in a different plane), that the Outcast Ones were Azlanti that were kicked out of Mazin, recently learned that there's an island in the western portion of the Shackles that is said to be an ancient Serpentfolk temmple that was later converted to an Azlanti temple (okay, so I realize I didn't say this earlier... the group never realized that the temple at the end of Smuggler's Shiv was Azlanti and Serpentfolk; while they were researching the spy-ring the Norgorberites required information as payment, the group told Slip about the temple on the Shiv and Slip has since sent people to go and see what it is. So Arzu bought that information, as has Warvil Lanteri as he's been searching for a way into Mazin). She was also able to tell them basic information about the Obsidian Sand and that the "Biting Eye" was likely an Aghash Div. (I decided to not keep that part a secret because it's fine with them knowing, but she doesn't know about the night hag at all).
The look on the groups faces as they started to realize that the temple from book 1 was what Arzu was talking about was AMAZING!
On the way to check if there was any Obsidian Sand on The Scalded Man the group came across a man being chased by two swarms of sand-blighted rats. While the group was taking care of them Pase Spiders started to attack the group as well, which confused them. No sand was found on The Scalded Man so the group returned to their own ship, let their crew know what was going on, and then sent them out to try to find any large deposits of the Obsidian Sand and to try to enjoy Freeport.
Ishirou (from Smuggler's Shiv, who is also a favoured NPC by the group) didn't return to the ship! So a Scrying spell later and the drow shaman PC saw him limply chained to a post with a Night Hag standing next to him with a (soul) jar. While watching an Aghash walked into view and kept going. She could also see the edge of a freshly dug grave that had a jar sticking out of it. (As I said in an earlier post, Night Hag sister is using Aghash Divs and collecting souls. She then buries the person, leaves a grave-marker, and the soul jar on the grave until she's ready to sell / trade them. Since graveyards aren't used in Freeport the group is hoping that Ishirou is still in Frerport (but they're assuming he is).
While trying to figure out what to do one of the players lamented that shamans don't get Locate Creature but then the shaman player asked if, since the Obsidian Sand weakens the barriers between planes, would Locate Portal work. I figure since she can see into the Etheral Plane and has a really good survival she'd be able to track the Phase Spiders back to the Brine Witch's lair so using Locate Portal do to the same thing is totally fine.
So that's where we left it this week.
Next week they'll likely confront the Brine Witch, relax in Freeport, and have the council meeting from the beginning of book 5 of S&S. (And maybe head back to the Shiv to see what clues about Mazin they can find).
a regular Night Hag (Haetanga, mentioned in Island of Empty Eyes), an Advanced Phase Spider (from Giantslayer), and a 3 or so Aghash Divs
This was DEFINITELY the right move!
Thankfully the PCs consistently saved against the save or suck spells and the aghash's kept missing with the spectral hand / bestow curse attacks, but it was a great fight!Meeting with the pirate council went well, statues will be built to honour the Hurricane King, everything else went in favour of the PCs (with only spending a couple of points of Disrepute). As a note, I should've created a list of which captains were voting in which direction on each of the issues.
They're all excited about finding Scags Rotgram and retreiving Aiger's Kiss from the Black Tower.
Also, worth noting, only the captain PC is on the council as having all of the PCs on it just doesn't make sense. The meeting was fast enough (and the other PCs were spectators) so the players didn't get bored and feel left out.
I had created a modified letter from Tessa due to changing Harrigan's name to Lanteri but it worked out really well and it looked legit to the players. (They have no idea what I'm taking from Skull & Shackles versus Return to Freeport).
Rotgram, instead of being on Dagon's Jaws is, well, in a mix of Hangnail from Return to Freeport and Dagon's Jaws. The way to Hangnail is slightly replaced by needing to round a small island on the southern portion of the close-up map of Dagon's Jaws three times and then sailing down the "gullet" making the checks in Return to Freeport as they go. After that they'll end up on in the plane between the Material Plane and the Shadow Plane and I'll run the island as described.
But in order to do all that they had to track down an ally of Rotgram, Captain Flynx!
So they've done that, paid his bar tab, paid his overdue docking fees, went to leave Freeport but then was asked by Arronax Endymion to help with some people spreading vicious rumours about it.
After looking at which one would take more time, and considering that Endymion can offer them 5 warships, they're going to Hell's Harbour first and then will head down to what Flynx calls "Midnight's Ichor"
Oh, and Captain Pierce Jirrell brought the drow PC to the hidden drow city, she spoke with the leader there (I have the drow being not nearly as evil as they're 'supposed' to be) and has agreed that she'll take some to the surface so they can learn what it's like up there and start working on the PCs ship.
After exposing the counter-intelligence spies in Hell Harbour, dealing with Midnight's Ichor (getting to the demiplane between the material and shadow planes in the way the challenge is described in Return to frerport) they explored Dagon's Jaw like I suspected, helped the castaways, returned to the material plane, found the wrecked ships, found Scrags Rotgram's journal that detailed working for Lanteri, sailing to the Shiv, exploring the underwater temple, Lanteri then going to the seers on the Smoker, and Lanteri then becoming obsessed with searching for a copy of the poem "Into Dark Freeport" by Opal Shelby* the group has filed that information away for now. (My plan is to keep them so busy that they won't have time to get to Dark Freeport / Mazin until they're supposed to, what with Lanteri's fleeting attacking and then a poison plot in Freeport...)
This week the worshipper of Pharasma convinced the captain that they shouldn't allow Black Jules to stay on the ship, especially once they realized he was an undead being of Black Jules's anger rather than Black Jules himself. (Jules didn't realize he wasn't actually himself, so that was a fun conversation), they picked up supplies from Lilywhite to repair the ships at Dagon's Jaw, spoke with Delemona Burie while there to talk to her about possibly helping defend the Shackles from a Chelish invasion, returned to Freeport and started recruiting captains to their fleet (from book 4 of Return to Freeport) because I figure it's a good way to introduce the squadron that Sandara would've brought to the Battle of Empty Eyes but since she's been with the group the whole time I had to find a new squadron to use instead. (But I removed Edward Cooper because I've already done the 'tattoo on someone's back' bit with Inkskin, and I changed Sabiha's and Sarinda's names due to Sasha and Sandara already having similar enough names as each other).
While they were searching for Sarinda's cursed amulet they encounted 7 agressive merfolk slavers first (see book 2 of Return to Freeport) and added in a Litanu (reskinned to not be undead) as the leader of the group.
Next week they'll start off with finding where the amulet is then they're planning on going to the Shiv to see what the ancient writings said, and then taking on the Black Tower.
Should be fun!
*See Return to Freeport, chapter 6. I'm moving Harrigan's fortress to Dark Freeport and running all of book 6 of Return to Freeport while also running all of book 5 of S&S.
I think it's pretty straight-forward, but I'll detail all that in the coming weeks.
So, one of my concerns with replacing book 1 of Skull & Shackles was that Harrigan / Warvil Lanteri wouldn't be hated enough during book 5.
Boy, was I ever wrong!
One of the PCs has a pub in Freeport so I let him know that the main distributor of cheap rum has to limit sales in order to stockpile for the upcoming "Merrymead Festival" (it's about a month away and will be important due to me adding in the "Plots and Poison" from book 6 of Return to Freeport after the naval battle)
Today's session started with them going to the Coral Dungeon from Return to Freeport and finding the cursed amulet. One of the PCs was turned to coral by the mermedusa; in turn the mermedusa was turned to stone herself (flesh to stone spell).
Then they headed to the Shiv to revisit the carvings they couldn't decipher back in book 1 because they had learned that Lanteri had gone there. First, they stopped to check in with Pezock, who they named governor of the Shiv. Well, Lanteri saw him first so he had been casually killed when Pezock first came out to greet people to his thriving town (which had a population of only himself). The anger from the players towards Lanteri was palpable, so that worked out really well!
After that, they went to the ancient temple, found out the history of the temple and references to Mazin.
Several prayers seem to indicate that the ancients made use of undead slaves created from both "humans culled from the unbelievers and slaves of the Beheaded One."
As much hatred as the Zura cultists had for the "slaves of the Beheaded One," they also seemed to despise their own kind—especially those they called the "misbegotten of Mazin." A DC 25 Knowledge (geography or history) check recognizes the name "Mazin" as a legendary but still undiscovered lost city said to lie hidden somewhere within the area of The Shackles. Knowledge of Mazin is rare, and these mentions would be of a great value to a scholar interested in the topic.
Room Z8: The southern alcove tells of the cult's genesis in the city of Mazin which depicts a moon in the sky but, frustratingly, if the location was described what appears to be new damage to the wall has destroyed the details. [it wasn't originally destroyed when the group was first here but Lanteri since hid that Mazin was where Freeport is] It does seem to confirm that the legendary city was built by Azlanti within the area currently known as The Shackles—this section ends with the cult's exile from Mazin and how they made a dangerous journey that ended on the shores of an island.
The northwestern alcove takes up the story at this point, detailing the cult's exploration of this island (identifiable as Smuggler's Shiv), their discovery and defeat of a large group of serpentfolk who had gone into hiding after the defeat of their kind many years before at Mazin, and converting this temple into a temple of Zura.
The northeastern alcove plots the cult's future plans, focusing on how they had hoped to earn the gift of vampirism from Zura by undertaking extensive and vile rituals, and once this gift was theirs, how they planned on making the journey back to Mazin to awaken (infect) that city with Zura’s blessing (vampirism).
The timeline I have is:
Valossa is the ancient Serpentfolk empire.
Serpentfolk and Azlanti fought, Azlanti won.
Mazin is where Ydersius/Yig was beheaded and killed.
Zura cultists are Azlanti that were kicked out of Mazin; they found the ancient serpentfolk temple and converted it to a temple to Zura.
Azlanti would go back and forth between The Shackles and Mazin (Dark Freeport).
Earthfall happened.
The ways into / out of Mazin changed so the population slowly died out.
So, now they know that Lanteri came to the Shiv, likely learned where Mazin was, went to the Smoker to see the prophets, and wanted to find a poem called "Into Dark Freeport." With that all learned they continued on to the Black Tower, fought their way through that, and headed to home (after some argument because one PC figured "we don't know when Lanteri is attacking so we obviously have time to head to Freeeport and deal with this poem"... thankfully the other two talked him out of that plan.) While on their way to the Island of Empty Eyes the group sent a Sending to Tessa Fairwind asking if she knew the poem "Into Dark Freeport" to which she later responded with a message reciting it (three sendings). (But I only said it outloud so they don't realize the spelling error yet, more on that in the next couple of weeks). Caulky Tarroon, who's on Lanteri's ship, sent the captain a Sending (via wand) that Lanteri's fleet is underway to attack and that Lanteri is bringing her and some others to a "secret base possibly near Freeport".
A PC later followed up with Caulky asking if Lanteri had tracked down a copy of "Into Dark Freeport" which Caulky responded that he had and then lead them down some alleys in Freeport and they ended up in a nighttime, twisted version of Freeport.
Next week will be the Battle of Empty Eyes and then possibly, hopefully, the start of the Poison Plot. (The story is really starting to put the pressure on!)
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...I'm not going to post after every session, but once or twice a book I'll likely talk about the general things that have happened, which will include the changes I've made...
It turns out I was wrong about that one, wasn't I?
Once the campaign is finished I'll likely put up a breakdown of the events level by level with page numbers for each of the books.
We're currently halfway through book 5 of Skull & Shackles as well as about to start book 6 of Return to Freeport. Book 5 of Return to Freeport is too similar to Skull & Shackles but uses a simplified version of ship-to-ship combat to decide where ships are compared to one another*, which I prefer, but makes it so that most of that book doesn't really work with where we're at in the story. The most tempting parts to use are some of the advanced scouts in order to run small fleet battles to get the players used to them but they're heading back to the island of empty eyes where Lanteri's fleet will arrive en masse as oppossed to the two fleets trying to find each other on the open waters. If the PCs were sailing around with a small group of other ships I'd fully add in a small fleet battle, but that's okay. And the rest of my posts in here will get into really heavy spoilers for both adventures so I'll say it again:
I did forget to mention a rather fun encounter from Return to Freeport that I added in last session though!
While the group was approaching the Shiv a storm suddenly surrounded them (event F, Return to Freeport, book 5 but moved to directly over them). During the storm Cormoryxial, the cetus, appeared and, because the group wasn't flying the flag of Warvil Lanteri, demanded tribute. The group immediately as expected, realized they were in danger after getting hit a couple of times, shaman tried, unsuccessfully, to baleful polymorph it (because it's funnier that way) and then, on the next round, took advantage of the cetus's weakness to petrification and turned it to stone where it then sunk to the bottom of the ocean and (likely) broke apart into many pieces.
*ship-to-ship combat very nearly always ends in one ship boarding the other and I find the rules of getting to that point boring for most of the group and kind of needless as it's not the type of thing my group enjoys. If your group really likes that stuff, and more advanced ship building rules, I highly suggest looking into Fire as She Bears by Frog God Games.
Rather than using the PF rules for determining ship direction and distance the captain makes a Profession Sailor check (or, at a -5 penalty, other skills that are appropriate) with a maximum of one other character aiding them. The enemy also rolls and whoever wins can increase or decrease the range between ships.
Ranges are:
Extreme (1,000 feet or more, out of range of all weapons and effects)
Long (400-999 feet, and assumed to be within the range of any long range
spell)
Medium (100-399 feet, and assumed to be within the range of any medium range spell)
Close (25-99 feet, and assumed to be within range of any close range spell)
Boarding (ships are closer than 25 feet, and crew can swing or jump from one deck to another)
Between each check to see which ship determines range there are 5 rounds of combat. If the ships have gotten to the "boarding" distance a ship trying to get away has a -5 penalty on the Profession Sailor check. There's also modifiers if you're using multiple ships but fleet battles with the regular ship-to-ship combat rules would take FOREVER due to the amount of hit points involved so I'm sticking with the PF fleet battles rules.
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Fleet battle went great! Everyone really enjoyed it, they thoroughly trounced Lanteri's fleet in the span of 3 of 4 rounds. (I get the impression it was easy for them due to having more squadrons than Lanteri... which makes me a little more worried about the upcoming Chelish invasion. I may have to increase how many squadrons they have in that fight.)
While they were celebrating for the night they received a Sending from Caulky again that said "Lanteri said he's going to bring Freeport to its knees; his co-conspirators are a Mr Pinfeather at Black Gull and Captain Cecelia Mawkins in Freepo--AHHHHHHHHH" so, ya know, for some reason they figured they had to get to Freeport right away and teleported there in the morning.
I had decided that the Merrymead Festival (replacing Drac's Fall) would beginn 8 days after the Battle for Empty Eyes as that would give them just enough time to sail to Freeport and put a stop to Lanteri's plans.
Now they have an extra week to do it!
After looking into Pinfeather and Captain Mawkins they knew to check out Drusilla's Draughts. Getting past Drusilla was more complicated than they expected but managed to do it. Now they're in the back area and are about to face off against Zarskia Galembar (from book 3 of Skull and Shackles). I decided that after fleeing from the PCs back then Lanteri started using her for this plan instead. If she had initially been killed I may not be puttinng this part in so I'm really glad she managed to evade the PCs.
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I forgot to mention:
If anyone does run Plots and Poison from the 6th book of Return to Freeport (which I highly suggest; it looks to be a great quest), change the skill checks involved in chasing Mr Pinfeather.
I've done at least a half dozen chases / races in various Pathfinder APs and they've always been really good.
This one isn't.
Most of the cards seemed to have two skills that felt too similar and there was a least one card per PC that would be impossible for them to succeed on based on the Pathfinder chase rules.
EG: The first card is either a DC 25 Diplomacy or 28 Intimidate. Two characters had no chance at succeeding at either of those skills meanwhile the face of the party couldn't possibly fail. (I think the 4th character had an okay chance at making the Diplomacy check). But both being Charisma based automatically means some people will be stuck. Another one is Climb or Escape Artist, both of which aren't skills that people invest much into so it's too easy to fail on that one... it's kind of like that. If I had noticed it earlier I would've found either a different chase from another adventure or created my own.
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"Plots and Poison" has been dealt with with minimal changes (Zesshessn was replaced with Zarskia Galembar as she survived book 3, but statted as a medium sized The Eel from book 4 because I left out the party on the Island of Empty Eyes, and was exposed as a Serpentfolk when the rogue PC got her with a Dispelling Attack rogue talent.)
Getting to Dark Freeport was also run by the book, which is where the session ended. Next week (possibly the week after) should be a blend of the ending of Return to Freeport and the ending of The Price of Infamy.
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Today began with the group getting adjusted to being in Dark Freeport. The dim light, as if from a full moon even though there was no moon (nor stars, for that matter) in the sky threw them off a little.
I have it so that there's a decent amount of devils throughout the place and since there's no wildlife, people, waves... no sound of life, everything echoes weirdly and is amplified.
There were some (essentially) random encounters with various devils while the group headed towards the tower that was hundreds of feet tall and had a giant beam of light coming out of it (see book 6 of Return to Freeport; I would've had more devils if the group hadn't teleported back to Freeport as soon as they heard that Lanteri was planning to "bring Freeport to it's knees" (extra week they gained tha tI mentioned 3 posts up)) as that was OBVIOUSLY where Lanteri was doing is evil machinations (spoiler: No, it wasn't :D). I replaced all of the creatures with devils that were statistically similar. (Or, in the case of the Ghawwas Divs, called them "Eukrenos Devils," gave them DR and immunities that devils have instead of the ones they normally have).
Oh, and I placed the tower in Bloodsalt for no apparent reason because I didn't want it on the island that Fort Hazard / Fort Scurvy is on because... I dunno, I just didn't.
At the top they found a sized-large serpentfolk (giant-sized Asaam from Serpent's Skull), and the pit was water instead of sand. I didn't have him step into it and transform; he was using the pit / beam of light as a Gate type of thing that he could call devils through. (Plan is to bring a bunch of devils into Dark Freeport and when the Chelish navy attacks The Shackles Lanteri and his devils walk out into Freeport to assist the navy / bring Freeport under his reign.
Afterwards the group was rather lost as to where to go as they hadn't seen any other lights / signs of life so they tried, assuming she was dead, to send a Sending to Caulky. But she's still alive! She had overheard some of the Norgorberites mention a secret tunnel down near the docks so she told the group to search there and that she was in where the Sea Lord's Palace was supposed to be (that way the group could realize that Lanteri was still in Dark Freeport as they were getting concerned that he was somewhere on the Material Plane and that they had no clue as to where he would be.)
So into the tunnel they went, which they didn't have to fight past the sea serpent nor the deep tiger anemone because I want there to be as little life in Dark Freeport as possible. Mister Clack, the eurypterid, was a great throwback to the eurypterids that woke them up at the very beginning of the campaign especially since, really, getting Lanteri feels like the climax and book 6 is an epilogue. I like the zenness of eurypterids being there at the beginning and right before the end.
They've taken out the Norgorber cultists and next week they'll start searching the place.
But we've finished Return to Freeport! Now we have a bit of book 5 of Skull & Shackles left, followed by the first part of book 6, then Fort Scurvy from Legendary Games to finish it all off!
Warvil Lanteri / Barnabas Harrigan has been defeated!
For the prisoners, replaced Peppery Longfarthing with Caulky (because Caulky was caught sending Sendings but the Norgorberites hadn't had a chance to work on her yet as it's only been a couple of days), Habbly "Stitchman" Quarne stayed as himself, and Cut-Throat Grok was replaced with Peppery Longfarthing due to Lanteri blaming Peppery for him losing the Regatta because her spells weren't good enough to stop the PCs.
Everything else was run aw written, with the exception of the notes in the bag of holding in the glove of storing included how to get out of Dark Freeport / Mazin (which was simply to start where you came into the city and follow the directions backwards that you used to get in) and I removed the secret entrance to Fort Hazard because I'm going to use Fort Scurvy from Legendary Games instead.
Book 6 will start as written, followed by Fort Scurvy so there won't be many changes to report in the coming weeks!
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The meeting of the Pirate Council really helped to drive home how popular the PCs have become. All of the Pirate Lords arrived, most having to use teleporation to get there. Seeing the players' faces when I said that all 28 Pirate Lords arrived was quite fun, so I'd suggest that to other GMs. A lot of the other captains were swayed into believing that the threat was real but either couldn't get ships to the battle quickly enough, were worried that it was a ruse by Cheliax so sent the fleets to the western end of the Shackles, or were holding back near Drenchport in case the map was wrong and the Chelish armada was going to take a slightly different path. (The last one will help for attacking Bonefist next week, see at the end of this post for what I have planned).
I'll say it again because I've seen some comments on this board about not liking the Fleet Battle rules: We had a lot of fun with them!
They're (mostly) very straight forward, the only confusion for us really stems from Morale and Morale Check being two different things so we've renamed the latter "Loyalty Check" to add some clarity.
We also reduced how often the Loyalty Check has to be made so that it's only done by a squadron on any turn that it has taken half or more of it's maximum hits, or when a ship in that squadron is sunk. (But I think we kept forgetting that second one, which I'm okay with because, really, battles being decided because most people ran away is rather disappointing.)
The Battle of Abendego was MUCH closer than the Battle of Empty Eyes. I upped Tessa's Porfession Sailor from 15 to 21 because if she's to be the next likely candidate for the Hurricane Crown I feel her skill should be a little higher. I also allowed the group to recruit a squadron from Lilywhite because they had impressed Delemona well enough. For it's stats I copied Mephistopheles’ Squadron. Cheliax didn't have the best of tactics, but they weren't holding back much. Mostly, I kept forgetting to use the boons that the NPCs granted and they frequently targetted Tessa's squadron even though, I think, it was the hardest one to hit. Tessa's squadron was also doing the most damage so targetting them didn't feel out of place to anyone.
At the end, 4 of the Chelish squadrons had fled but most of the ships in each squadron had already been sunk and each of the routed squadrons could only take another 1 or 2 hits before being neutralized. The rest of the Chelish squadrons were sunk. (Looking at the map, 3 ships were able to flee the battle, 5 Chelish ships were disabled instead of sunk at the end. The PCs completely lost 5 of 8 of their squadrons, with only Madshank’s Marauders, Fairwind’s Luck, and The Freeport Five (which is a reskinned "Queen Bes’s Own Squadron" because Sandara has been a constant crew member so the 5 captains they recruited in Freeport formed the squadron).
Next week will start with fighting the Chelish Admiral, followed by, presumably, the PCs attacking Fort Scurvy. (Because Bonefist was enough of a jerk the PCs want to take him out of power). Thankfully, even though most of the fleet was wiped out, there's enough Pirate Lords on the PCs side in the waters around Drenchport and on the path to Freeport. The ships they can pick up along the way will be swayed into joining the fight against Bonefist's fleet, which will allow the PCs to take their crew, along with a lot of other pirates from the ships that were lost in the Battle of Abendego, to directly attack Fort Scurvy. With Bonefist being at least a bit of a coward he's hiding in the sea caves beneath his fort instead of taking his ship out to lead his fleet.
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And we're done!
Last week they fairly quickly took out the admiral and her crew. Afterwards Tessa Fairwind called a meeting of the captains in the fleet and convinced the group of them to pick up as many pirate lords on the way back to Freeport in order to overthrow Kerdak Bonefist due to it, well, being his time to go.
Because the PCs ship was faster than the rest of the fleet the plan was for them load up with as many pirates as they could and to go around wide to Fort Scurvy while the rest of the fleet faced off with whatever ships Bonefist was sure to have in the water.
From there, I ran Fort Scurvy with the small army of pirates breaking down the gates and storming the place. The PCs mowed through the troops, we didn't worry about looting due to the chaos of the fighting, and they weren't focused on killing everyone in the fort. (And, due to them having so many pirates with them, the PCs weren't the target of every single enemy).
They took out some of the siege engine crews to give Tessa's fleet a better chance and happened to find Tsadok Goldtooth. The tracker in the group was able to find tracks leading to the dungeon, fights were had, due to ridiculously high diplomacy rolls and some bribes being paid (and because it was obvious how the fight would go, AND because he had almost never used diplomacy to overcome a fight so I wanted to allow it the chance to work) Horrus Riptooth allowed the PCs to pass.
All of the enemies were as statted in Fort Scurvy (including Goldtooth, Bonefist, and Hyapatia/Typhoon Tess) and the only enemy I kept in from Skull & Shackles was using Brinebones instead of Seagrave 'cause undead bronze dragon seemed more impressive.
As a note, "Ismail Queeg, the Pirate King" from Fort Scurvy probably could've taken the group out in three rounds by focusing fire on a single PC per round. Thankfully the group had tactics that made it better for him to move around even though they couldn't see him so that he was typically only getting one shot off a round, but, oh man, him against 4 level 14 PCs could turn into a TPK really freaking fast! For GMs that decide to use him in the future, maybe take away some of his AC bonuses. (Once the players got off a strong Greater Dispel Magic they were finally able to start to wear him down.
Out of 6 APs this was the fastest we've gone through a book. It was only 3 sessions, 6 hours long each, but was also one of the closest fights we've had, both with the fleet battle and then against the Hurricane King.
The entire campaign was 42 sessions, 6 hours long each, and out of the 6 APs I've run this is the one I'm most proud of due to how much fun we had and how seamlessly I was able to intertwine all of the different books / modules / adventures together. After the session was finished we sat around chatting and the players started asking what parts were from which books. The looks on their faces when they realized two things they thought were connected were actually from two different adventures was great! It was a lot of work, but it was all definitely worth it.
Is there anything I would've changed?
No, absolutely nothing.
It was beautiful.
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Thanks, guys! I appreciate the comments.
Thank you for sharing your adventure here. Much appreciated ᕙ(⦿‿⦿)ノ☠️
I've seen a few different people over the years try to work Smuggler's Shiv and Plunder & Peril into Skull & Shackles without people really finding a solid way to do it, which is what prompted me to lay my thoughts out.
(Also, fantastic ASCII!)*round of applause and an extra rum ration for your crew!*
Seeing your changes, and the help you gave me all those years ago, while I was running Kingmaker is what inspired me and gave me the confidence that I could merge all of these campaigns together and make the changes required.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, thank you for all of the work your shared for changing Kingmaker and making it better.