My GM burnout has lasted longer than I expected, so Otheriel’s penultimate stage on her quest for Immortality is put on hold some more. After the better part of a year of WanG the GM of that story wanted a break and my wife has stepped up to run Ruins of Azlant for the group, adapted to Mystara. The new group has nothing to do with the old one, and no one is allowed to worship the two who have become Immortal since RoA takes place before they have ascended.
The starting island is in the Thanegioth archipelago in the Sea of Dread, not far from the infamous Isle of Dread. Thyatis, expansionist as it is, has started encroaching on the Sea of Dread from its colonies on Davania and one of the newest is a small island called Thincol’s Jewel.
Dramatis Personae
Tibor
Tortle monk from Zul (the ‘civilized’ tortles). A young, quiet farmer bit by wanderlust who signed up with a Thyatian expedition to the settlement of Thincol’s Jewel for free travel to an area he wanted to explore. He has an interest in tortle history, especially the idea that there was an ancient advanced civilization of tortles. He has an old artefact he is convinced is from this supposed civilization, and he thinks the Sea of Dread might hold more signs of this civilization. As he is from the Savage Coast he suffers from the Red Curse, mutating him and giving his shell and hide a scarlet tinge and spiky growths that need regular trimming. I made this character simply so I could play a teenage mutant ninja tortle.
April Mai, called Vår (“spring”)
Gnome unicorn sorcerer with no Spellcraft or Knowledges because the player is physically incapable of making characters who don’t max Charisma, Diplomacy and Bluff, and heard we were going to need Swim in this AP and so went out of his way to get Swim as a class skill. Bit of an airhead. A good friend of hers came on the first wave of settlers to Thincol’s Jewel and she wanted to follow, planning on selling her magical knowledge to the other settlers.
Bo-bi Nuar and Aidu
Human Cavalier. Bo-bi is from the Pearl Islands, a fairly recent Thyatian conquest and the type of person that adapts to the new regime almost entirely, ignoring many ancestral traditions. When he was young he found a water drake egg which he took home and cared for until it hatched. Aidu is a dumb, vain, cowardly lizard who at present is more trouble than he’s worth.
Sylvia
Human druid (herbalist). Came to explore new lands and plants, and offer her services as an apothecary to the colony. Fairly happy-go-lucky.
Session 1
The trip to Thincol’s Jewel was uneventful, though stories of the rough storms in the Sea of Dread and aquatic monsters were constant worries among the passengers and crew.
Tibor spent most of the time on deck out of the way of the crew, meditating and watching the waves. Bo-bi spent most of his time entertaining his warhorse and his drake, neither of whom liked being stuck on a boat for weeks, while Sylvia and Vår socialized.
Upon arriving at Thincol’s Jewel the PCs were annoyed at being called upon to investigate the apparently deserted settlement while the ship took everyone else to the back-up port. The players did not make too much of a stink about this because it was obvious where the rails of the adventure went and we wanted to get on with it. Tibor put his belongings in the ship’s boat and jumped into the water as he outmasses everyone else put together (tortles are chonky). He easily solos the grindylow who show up to attack the PCs.
On shore Aidu is attacked by the fuath and fails his Reflex save against the clingy water, but AIdu can breath water so isn’t in any danger. He screams like a scared chicken anyway. Bo-bi dispatches it easily with his sword and the PCs successfully make their required skill rolls to notice the sabotaged canoe. They make their way into the seemingly abandoned settlement. They look around and notice how everything seems to have been devoid of the inhabitants for weeks. All the fields are overgrown with weeds and one of them seems to be infested with dire moles. They first enter the smithy and handle the monkey goblins with ease, making note of things to loot recover for later use by the new colonists. They then enter the chapel. The signs of death and the smell of decay are unnerving but Bo-bi’s eyes are immediately drawn to a fancy longbow hanging on the wall and he resolves to ‘recover’ it. Tibor thinks that stealing stuff from the house of the Immortals is probably a bad idea and says so. The others say nothing but try to figure out what happened here. It seems obvious that someone was wounded or killed and then dragged from one end of the chapel to the other. I wonder how there is any sign left of the blood, considering the tropical environment and the time that has elapsed from the killing til now, but am told not to think too much about it. The PCs find the priesthole pretty quickly and the poltergeist emerges and frightens everyone away. This has the happy benefit of stopping Bo-bi from stealing the pretty longbow on the wall. Outside the gang recover their wits and wonder what they should do. Tibor says he wants to try something and goes back inside.
Inside he sits down in the middle of the room and places a piece of chalk in front of him and waits. When the poltergeist starts acting up again, Tibor masks his fear and says “O restless spirit of the unjustly slain [Tibor made some assumptions], I wish to talk. If you cannot speak, please write,” and gestures to the chalk. The poltergeist takes him up on this offer thanks to Tibor being able to use his Constitution modifier in place of his Charisma modifier once per day, and a brief conversation follows where Tibor politely asks the name of the haunt, who killed him, which Immortal’s he paid homage to, and if he will allow Tibor to bury him. The haunt, Silas, answers and Tibor moves to the corpse. Trying not to think about the smell and the liquids pouring down his arms, Tibor wraps Silas’ remains in his blanket, takes him outside and buries him with the fancy bow. Not knowing much of anything of Silas’ patron Zirchev aside from name and basic interests, Tibor prays to Zirchev and asks Him to grant His follower the peace of death currently denied. After this he performs the traditional tortle death dance since he has no idea what sort of rituals Zirchev’s clerics practice and figures something is better than nothing. Once this is done the dirt of the grave starts moving as something pushes its way out. A brief moment of panic at the thought that Silas’ body may have become undead as well as his spirit passes through the PCs, but what emerges is actually the bow. Tibor assumes this means Zirchev accepts the death rites, and he takes the bow and promises to pass the bow on to another worshipper of Zirchev. Then he goes down to the beach to wash off the rotten corpse juices all over him. The PCs then investigate a couple more places until they find some fairly fresh tracks of something heavy being rolled from one house to a farmhouse on the outskirts of ‘town’. Sylvia easily follows the trail, puzzling at the strange footprints left by the being rolling the presumed barrel. The PCs enter the house at the end of the trail and force their way through the warped entry door, causing it to creak loudly. Inside they find hints that something has been here fairly recently and Sylvia spots something hiding in a corner outside and calls to the other PCs. Tibor gets there first and is attacked by a drunk choker, who quickly chokes out the hapless tortle. The other PCs fell it quickly and Sylvia and Vår set about healing the poor reptile. During their investigation they find a plum tree, which had me wondering how they grew in a tropical environment. I was told not to worry my pretty little head about that. Near the base of the tree the PCs found a Clue - a brief missive hinting at power struggles in the little colony. We dutifully note down all names.
Once this is done Sylvia sits down to make some more potions while Vår and Bo-bi want to explore some more. Careful comments about splitting the party from the DM fall on deaf ears. Tibor elects to stay with Sylvia in case something comes upon her. Sylvia protests that such caution is unnecessary but Tibor does not pay any attention to her. Vår and Bo-bi check out the strange-looking fields. By lucky dice rolls the bloody maize does nothing to them and they handle it fairly easily. Then they go to the dire molehills and find out they were actually ankheg hills. Being a veteran of Baldur’s Gate that’s what I feared but hoped it was dire moles. The good news was they were tiny ankehgs and Vår, Aidu and Bo-bi manage to survive and run away and we end the session there.
Hello, I am the GM. I will pop in to provide some background info to the readers on how some things have been adapted to Mystara and location near the Sea of Dread/Isle of Dread (nothing bad can happen on an island near this, right? RIGHT?!), in case anyone is curious.
Players, stay out.
Book 1, part 1:
After traveling often past the Sea of Dread and its surrounding waters, the Thyatian Empire found a series of islands that didn't seem to suffer from the large beasts that the Isle of Dread and its ilk does. What the investors and the Thyatian government don't realize is that their designated site for a colony was once a pair of Azcan settlements tied together with magic, now completely submerged. With the colonization efforts, dangerous and powerful secrets once lost are now being loosed upon the world!
Little is known about the Azcan empire today, and hardly anyone knows about their relationship to the algolthus (the assembled races of aboleths, veiled masters, and similar creatures). Even the empire's best and brightest minds were completely unaware of the algholthus until a relatively short time prior to their downfall, let alone the millenia in which the creatures manipulated the course of destiny. And yet, it was the chance discovery of the algholthus and their subtle manipulations that lead to their downfall.
The term "veiled master" originates in Azcan folklore and conspiracy theory. It was attributed to an anonymous council (which some tales claim was composed of powerful mages) that was thought to manipulate sociopolitical events as a means to secret control the world. For example, if a bank loan was denied without cause, a satirical playwright murdered, or an architectural project collapsed, it was said "the veiled masters were against it". Only in the final days of the empire was the term associated with aquatic spymasters, and even then only between high-ranking elites in the empire.
Azcan was mired in a culture of espionage conducated by other nations and races both known and unknown, each jockeying to steal new discoveries and innovations (such as Azcan took from the Olmecs they enslaved). It became the practice of highly placed arcane scholars and scientists to alternate absolutely secrecy with clever misdicreciton and thus the Spindle Solution was founded. The Spindle Solution was publicly understood to be an Azcan humanitarian project concerned with the improvement of the human condition through the creation of ioun stones. This perception was further reinforced as the Spindle Solution did in fact perform such research and development, and came up with wondrous uses for these magical gemstones that benefited the empire greatly, especially at its height.
Secretly, the ioun stones were created through the craft of the Olmecs and their arcane talents, and it was only one branch of the Ioun Imperative; an organization that served the Azcan empire's intelligence agency. The Ioun Imperative had a mandate from the highest ranking in the empire to create potent weapons to defend and advance Azcan's interests throughout the world - particularly to the long war between the Azcans and their serpentfolk rivals. A cunning and powerful wizard named Jazradan was appointed as the group's director, and a secret facility known as the Compass was established for the purposes of research and development, and as a secure location for coordinating Azcan's magical response to threats against the Empire in this part of the world. The epitome of Azcan hubris, Grand Arcanist Jazradan saw it as his responsibility to ensure that Azcan had no equal in arcane military might, and thus steered the organization toward the creation of what could only be described as doomsday weapons.
Although the majority of Azcan society was unaware of the Spindle Solution's activities at the behest of the Ioun Imperative, the group attracted the attention of a veiled master named Ochymua. Ochymua was the head of the algholthus' ongoin monitoring of the Ioun Imperative, and it recognized the threat that the Spindle Solution's clandestine work posed to the algholthus should their connection to the Azcan people ever be uncovered. Cautious of the group's true activites, Ochymua took human form and set about infiltrating the group.
Ochymua successfully penetrated one of the Spindle Solution's research facilities, and quickly grew alarmed by the weapons under development. Furthermore, it miscalculated how advanced and thorough the facility's security protocols were - particularly that the Spindle Solution members in this facility all benefited from the resonant power of a clear spindle ioun stone that provided protection against mental control. Ochymua was caught off guard by its inability to dominate the Spindle Solution scientists, and its surprise allowed it to be discovered and captured alive.
Grand Arcanist Jazradan had no idea who or what he had caught, initially thinking it was a disguised serpentfolk come to spy on the empire, or some other race. The algholthu spymaster remained in human form and resisted all attempts at interrogation so as to not expose itself and potentially the truth of the algholthu's influence on one of the great empires of humanity. Frustrated by his inability to break the spy or glean even the slightest bit of information, Jazradan placed Ochymua in a temporal statis, safely cutting off the spy from the rest of the world while Jazradan sought another approach, possibly transferring his prisoner to a great city of the Azcan empire. While Ochymua never betrayed its kind, the damage had already been done - the Azcan leadership now knew of powerful spies in their midst, and in short order, the empire's tom minds learned that this secret conspiracy of powerful entities ran through their civilization. Though the Azcan didn't know the algholthu's true forms, they now knew of their existence, and soon after began to realize they were victims of millenia of social and genetic manipulation. The algholthu's grand experiment was contaminated.
Eons later, Azcan is gone. Some ruins still exist, scattered, and time has worn away obvious traces of civilization and created new ecologies. Hundreds of years ago settled an island once a part of the Azcan empire, establishing the Sun Temple Colony. Contact with that colony mysteriously ended just over 200 years after its founding. Centuries later, Thyatis seeks to establishing a thriving colony in the Adakkian Ocean. Three years ago, Thyatis dispatched dozens of ships (through trade companies backing the project) to survey islands in the area where the Sun Temple Colony once sat, looking to determine their suitability for building a new colony. The survey was successful, and last year the Thyatian government, in conjunction with a group of wealthy private investors, started outfitting a new colony to be named after Emperor Thincol on the island of Ancorato (named after the ship captain who discovered it). The first group of colonists sailed about the Zendrolion's Herald and arrived on Ancorato 10 weeks later. These settlers began their work, constructing homes and community buildings and planting crops. Meanwhile, the Zendrolion's Herald sailed back to Thyatis, and another ship was scheduled to arrive 6 months later with supplies and additional colonists.
Horror struck in the interim. While exploring the island, one colonist discovered the ruins of a partially buried complex where Ochymua somehow still remained in stasis. This would-be adventurer failed to comprehend the significance of her find and inadvertantly released the veiled master, who found that thousands of years had passed by it in the blink of an eye. Ochymua seized control of its liberator and began to scour her mind to understand what had transpired since its imprisonment.
After its release, Ochymua established telepathic contact with an omnipath who had kept the veiled master in its telepathic mesh for all this time. Ochymua reached out through the mental network to assess the state of algholthu society. Although alien by human standards, algholthu culture is neither static nor immutable, and Ochymua discovered it had little in common, either socially or politically, with its modern day peers. Seething at its perceived sense of loss, Ochymua elected to pursue its own agenda rather than attempting to acclimate itself. The veiled master surmised that if its own prison site survived the Rain of Fire, the Ioun Imperative's military bunker might have as well, along with its weapons of mass destruction.
Ochymua made contact with an aboleth nearby named Onthooth who had taken up lair in a ruined temple of Atruaghin. Ochymua agreed to trade the colonists in Thincol's Jewel to Onthooth in exchange for information. Approximately a month ago, faceless stalkers under the leadership of the treacherous ugothol Thanaldhu slowly replaced the colony's leader and other key community members in order to abduct the settlers for transport to Onthooth's lair. While the faceless stalkers took pains to hide every trace of their deeds, lest they forewarn future arrivals, they nevertheless left some clues behind. Meanwhile, Ochymua reserved a pair of dominated and slimed colonists to guard its former prison and alert it when new colonists arrive, before departing in search of the lost military base.
Today, the player characters arrive on the shores of Ancorato on the Peregrine, only to discover empty homes and abandoned possessions with virtually no sign of violence. Here, they must establish a new home, while not so far away from Ochymua and Jazradan are on course for a second confrontation: Their first confrontation precipitated the fall of the world, and it is up to the PCs to prevent the devastation a second confrontation could unleash.
With most of the front-liners low on HP the party decides to spend the night in what they consider the most defensible part of town they have explored so far. Nothing attacks the party during the night and the next day they explore the rest of the town after some healing.
The rest of the looti-, er, exploration goes smoothly with me shaking his old school head at the amount of magic items we get right off the bat. This day Sylvia has prepared Detect Magic and has a rank in Spellcraft so we can actually identify the items we find. A few things we find strike us as odd. Well, odder than the Roanoke-ing of the colony. The colony's charter was found hidden away in the house of the governor pro tem, and a bunch of names were stricken from the list. The logs found in the council house were stuffed in a bag for later perusal. Aidu notices a strange metal spider thingy and utterly fails to catch it, and is full of sour grapes about it and does not bother to properly inform the party about it. Fortunately we heard his little attempt and managed to get some information of him.
The food storehouse is full of cockroaches and Tibor leads the retreat since no one has anything that can handle them. Outside Sylvia casts a bunch of Light spells on the PCs and their equipment, and this prevents the roaches from being too bothersome on the second attempt. The party recovers fair amount of food and packs it up. The colony full explored, we collate our findings and set out to meet up with the ship at the secondary anchorage. We take with us such things as we can carry and would find useful, primarily food. Sylvia is weirdly fixated on the blacksmith's anvil and wants to bring it along. The rest of us think that if it was undisturbed for a month or more, it will likely remain undisturbed for a few more days and no one wants to lug a freaking anvil cross country. We level up and leave the abandoned village.
During the trip the party comes across an ankheg, which resulted in a surprisingly long fight since both sides spend most of the time missing. In fact, the PC that hit most often was Vår, who ignored poor Dexterity bonus and melee penalties and hit every round. Tibor, on the other hand, missed every attack for three rounds straight and did minimum damage on the one attack he did hit with. Still, the ankheg rolled equally poorly so it wasn't a difficult fight.
The trip to the secondary landing site was mostly smooth, if slow and unpleasant. We encountered a couple of wild pigs, of which we killed one and got some fresh meat. On the coast we met a strange thing - a dead man piloted by an oversized nautilus. The fight was mostly fairly easy except that Bo-bi got grabbed by the thing and it attempted to stick its tentacles into his brain. The GM was very nice and allowed a save against the poison. The player complained about SoD poison at second level and asked me to get the GM stop putting that sort of thing in the game. I told him he was asking the wrong person because I approve of the occasional SoD effect in a game, at every level.
We meet up with the rest of the second wave and almost immediately get embroiled in what appears to be brewing trouble. Several of the colonists are arguing vociferously for returning to Davania because they don't feel safe here. Ramona, the leader of the trip, again turns to the PCs to help smooth things over in the hopes that fellow colonists will find it easier to talk the dissenters down than she has. The other PCs do well but Tibor flubs his roll. He tried to comfort Petilia (?) the scribe but she is not reassured by his observations that every new settlement faces difficulty and success is not given and they will succeed, and must just try the best they can to make things work. Vår, who is (as is expected of this player) specc'ed for Diplomacy, swoops in and fixes the issue after calming down her first target.
We then are asked to fix the issue of the super slow ship. This is easily handled by Aidu and Tibor, primarily, since they can swim. Sylvia and Vår make minor contributions to the fight and Bo-bi spends the combat trying to rid himself of his armor so he can jump in and help. The fight is over well before he is. They do however spot some more grindylows watching the ship. Ramona again asks the party to take care of this things before the ship departs. Tibor decides to swim out to meet them, assuming he can either handle them if they attack, considering how he handled two in the first session, or can flee if they prove too much to handle. The grindylow flee but he manages to track them back to what he assumes is their lair. He returns to the rest of the colonists and informs them of his findings.
Ramona wants the PCs to 'handle' the issue to prevent further attacks and show the nervous members that things are being Taken Care Of. A brief discussion follows where we try to decide whether we should wait a night, in which case the ship would return to Thincol's Jewel and we would again need to trek cross country, or we should handle things now, in which case the ship will wait for us, considering it needs a few hours to get things ready in any case. We decide on the latter and head out, chooing to rappel down the small cliff rather than risk being caught in a boat on the open water. Clearing out the cave is mostly pretty easy, with only Salttooth proving dangerous, reducing Sylvia to 0 hp and wounding Vår. Tibor was a good tank, thanks to his AC being high enough they needed a natural 20 to hit, but poor rolls meant he was not as dangerous as he should be: he had a better than 50% chance to hit on paper but hit at best 30% of the time, and half the times he did hit he rolled 1s for damage. I got the feeling Vår again did more damage with crossbows and attack roll cantrips into melee but that may just be me being grumpy.
Despite this opposition the PCs prevail and Salttooth begged for mercy in broken Minean. Tibor, the only speaker of Minean, stops attacking and informs the party. There followed a brief discussion about what to do but the final decision was put off until next session since it was well past my bedtime.
Some of our readers (if you're there) might be confused about the names of the NPCs here (and the colony). That is because I have changed some of them around to fit better into the world of Mystara, specifically the names of characters from the Empire of Thyatis.
Thyatis is very inspired by the Roman Empire (a solid mix of its various periods and east/west), so the names are in similar often Roman/Latin sounding.
Here is a list of following name-changes (for now)
Zendrolio's Herald (renamed Liberty's Herald. Zendrolio is one of the old emperors of Thyatis, and this boat was named after him)
Thincol's Jewel (renamed Talmandor's Bounty. Thincol is the most recent emperor of Thyatis)
Hongli (Eamon Caranth, who is now a dark-skinned elf from the colony of Ochaela, which is pseudo-China inspired)
Galerius Andorux (Harcourt Carrolby, now a rich man from the Isle of Dawn. Played as if he was Daerran in Wrath of the Righteous, just not as amazing or douchey)
Luetin Pollux (Luetin Calewick)
Petillia Berys (Perrell Beys, our resident pencil pusher)
Ramona Avantus (Ramona Avandth)
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Rabio Arcturus (Rayland Arkley)
The ring with "my dearest Livvy" has been changed to "my dearest Livia".
We had a brief session last night (one player was down with the flu and I was feeling tired myself) to merely wrap up the fight with Brinetooth and move on to the Downtime at the colony.
The party chose to show mercy to the Grindylow Queen, much to her surprise (a surprise but a welcome one). She agreed to a wary peace between herself and the colony, and Tibor said that if they wished to speak with her, they'd plant a flag on the beach nearby so they wouldn't intrude on her territory again. As she recognizes them as someone stronger and far more dangerous than her, now that she doesn't have any minions left, Brinetooth gives them her locked chest as tribute (she hasn't opened it anyway) in recognition of their strength as "Big Bosses".
At this point, I the GM consider the ecology of the grindylows and what Brinetooth will do since she has no minions left... perhaps she will reproduce as an anglerfish does, and start laying some eggs to hatch new underlings. After all, the grindylows are more or less the goblins of the sea, so they probably respawn fast.
After peace has been brokered, the party returns to the Peregrine and reports to Ramona. She is pleased with the outcome and praises the PCs, and finally they all set sail back to Thincol's Jewel.
The PCs accept Ramona's offer, and settle down at Levin Farm (easily the best building, imo, for a group of adventurers who also want to have their own alchemy lab).
This is where I introduce the downtime rules, which I ripped more or less from Ultimate Campaign, but removed the use of Magic, Influence, Goods, etc, since I didn't feel like dealing with that extra mechanic. I saw others here on the board had let the players take a more active hand in shaping up the colony once settled, and we will be doing that as well, though I have to expand upon those rules some more as the main focus on working for the colony this time was to get everything in order and cleaned out. Sylvia set to work with brewing a lot of potions, donating a fair amount to the colony's use (most were not needed at the moment, but the soldiers appreciate having healing potions and such available in times of crisises), while Tibor and Vår spend their time helping the colony with anything that needs doing. Aidu will be focused on crafting his nest, and Bo-Bi's activities are currently unknown as he was the one down with the flu for the session, but he'll let us know in time.
If others are interested, here is my homebrew rules for downtime activities: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Euy4rJQ19IqvJIoS4BlEVQkw2cvXefcen3x3m-H opGk/edit?tab=t.0
The magic item creation houserules is an expansion upon already existing houserules Bjørn Røyrvik has used as a GM. I felt it would be nice to introduce them here too as this AP has limited options for shopping, so I wanted to angle for more self-sufficient PCs with Crafting capabilities. (which meant I also had to look up what the costs would be for crafting furniture, thankfully someone else had thought of it on the great internet)
We had a session before christmas (and one yesterday so we're behind on updating this journal).
The PCs enjoy some peace and quiet as everyone is settling into the colony, though the peace is quickly shattered only a day or so after. The two priests, Hongli and Kurvis, had originally moved into the house next to the chapel, but had ended up with an argument that made the two friends decide to take some time apart, thus both moved out of the house (Kurvis taking up abode in the chapel itself, and Hongli moving into the barracks).
This left one of the nice big houses vacant, making Luetin and Galerius both pounce on it. The group comes across their heated discussion and overhears the situation. Luetin, despite having an attached quarter to the smithy to live in, wants the house for his family when they arrive with the next wave of settlers (a wife and kid). Galerius desires the home for similar purposes (awaiting the arrival of his fiancé), and as a wealthy sponsor of the expedition feels entitled to it.
The PCs end up siding with Luetin, finding it more useful that the smith, who is currently working mostly solo, gets a nice dwelling to rest in close to his place of work. They convince Galerius to back down by appealing to the benefits of settling into a house that has more possibility for expanding and space for the horses he plans to rear and train. No surprise to this group, Vår does have very good Diplomacy and thanks to the others do a decent job of calming things down between the two men.
After this, they are finally able to enjoy almost two weeks of peaceful work for the colony. As noted above, Sylvia spends her time working to make potions for the colony, while Tibor and Vår do various jobs for the colony (Tibor puts his farming knowledge to use to help with salvaging the crops, while Vår uses her meager seamstress skills to mend clothes, bags, nets, and other things that require a needle and thread or simply just deft hands). Bo-Bi decides to help out in the smithy, which helps Luetin a lot even if it's just an untrained pair of hands (or pair of eyes that can keep an eye on the fire to maintain a steady heat).
One day, Carver Hastings, more or less the unofficial sheriff in the colony at this point due to his age and experience, pays a visit to the PCs' home at the farm. He asks them if there have been any unusual activity or happenings for them in the past days, to which they say no (which is also true), and they in return ask what has happened. Carver tells them that some shady figures have been seen lurking between the houses at night, which was worrying but nothing dangerous yet it seemed, but last night one of the carpenters, Da-Bi, was attacked in his home while asleep. Carver and the group pays a visit to Da-Bi and his wife Mi-Su, and hears the first-hand account of what happened; Da-Bi was sound asleep when he suddenly awoke because of a strangling sensation around his neck, and to his shock some sort of dark creature was on top of him as it tried to choke him to death. Tibor already suspects it might be a creature similar to the one that nearly did the same to him, and inspecting Da-Bi's neck, similar markings are visible to the injuries Tibor sustained before. Mi-Su explains that she had gotten up in the night to fetch herself some water to drink, and had come back into the room to see some monster strangling her husband. In panic she had grabbed the closest item, an iron pan, and hit it on the head. The attack caused the creature to let go and stagger away in a hurry, clearly dazed from the attack.
Our heroes assure the couple and Carver that they'll look into this strange matter to put an end to the danger, starting by searching for clues and tracks at the couples' house. Mi-Su informs them that the door was opened by the creature to get in, and it left that way too, so they look there to begin - easily Sylvia finds some tracks, almost identical to the tracks that they found before, and also leading to Levin Farm like the last time. This time however the tracks stop at the farm's well. It doesn't take much as they conclude the creature might have come up from the well and one of them takes a climb down to investigate. A crack in the wall, over the waterline, just big enough for a medium sized creature to squeeze through, seems to be the source of the problems. They gear up and decide to go into the dark, dank, tunnel.
After a very uncomfortable and squeezed trek through the darkness, they enter a more spacious cave, finding some common gemstones as their light reflects off of their surfaces. True to form, the group goes left when the cave splits in two directions, and come upon a group of four young chokers. The chokers are made aware of them pretty fast because of the light, and combat ensues! Tibor acts quickly and moves forward to face them off, and one of them takes a swipe at him with little effect. Seeing this, Vår decides to do a pincer move and place herself off to the side of Tibor, where she can shoot the choker with her crossbow (and miss). This does leave her completely open for charge from the remaining three chokers... and one of them proceeds to do exactly that and with one attack that grabs onto her (and constricts), Vår is reduced to unconscious. This causes some exasperation for the rest of the group as they have to deal with the chokers and also save Vår, but they manage to do a pretty good job of things, dishing out a lot of damage in one turn and taking out one of the young chokers. The remaining three, seeing that resistance is much tougher than anticipated, decide to flee back to Ma and Pa, as they would much rather risk any punishment from their parents than dying at the hands of these intruders. Bo-Bi gives some pursuit but decides against going too far into these unfamiliar tunnels, while the rest of the party gets Vår up again. Regrouped and healed, they follow Bo-Bi's lead after the fleeing chokers. Even if they see the obvious potential ambush for what it is, they don't know about Ma and Pa , expecting only the three they gave chase to. What follows is a somewhat brutal surprise attack and a tough battle in taking out the two adult chokers and their remaining offspring, but our heroes are successful in stomping out this evil that could have been a real threat to the safety of the colony.
After rummaging around the choker-cave to find some treasures, they continue exploring, and stumble upon some very precious shiny rocks. Sylvia is pretty eager to get her hands on them, as is Aidu, and the two are quite happy to dig through the piles of gems. As they do so, the rest of the group becomes aware of the approach of two crystal-like creatures. With no knowledge of the planes, no one can identify what they are, but Vår and Sylvia, are able to barely understand some of the strange sounds they make (because of some of the languages they know; as I make the GM decision that the gnomish language having some root to the Plane of Earth, and Druidic being a patois of many different sylvan and elemental languages). Though pretty much all they can make out are words like "Offspring", "Kin", "Grow" (or "Create", hard to tell).
Sylvia isn't very happy about backing off, but the creatures don't seem to be openly hostile (but are very much wary of the party and ready to fight if need be), so she decides to let them keep their shiny rocks. Aidu takes much more convincing, eventually being dragged off by the tail by Bo-Bi.
Leaving the Crysmals alone (which pleases me, and I'll think of some neat reward for this to come down the line, also I would've been concerned if they decided to fight the Crysmals since they can be pretty tough), they find a tunnel that leads back to the surface. Realising that there is more of the cave system they haven't explored, they backtrack some, and find a nest of Darkmantles, as identified by Vår who grew up with stories of them as boogeymen in nearby caves. The Darkmantles use their Darkness to great effect, removing the light of the party, and proceed to gang up on the only person available to attack - Tibor. Much to the Darkmantles' dismay, Tibor is suffering from the Red Curse of the Savage Coast, which means his body has gone through some horrible mutations... in his case, it has caused sharp growths and spikes to form on his shell. The Darkmantles are very upset that the food is biting back, and eventually let go of trying to envelop Tibor and just attack him instead. The fight is easily resolved after that.
Having cleared out the cave system now, they follow the tunnel up to the surface and finds that the exit isn't that far away from the colony. The group reports to Ramona and Carver what they found and the threats eliminated. Ramona thanks them for a job well done, but decides that apart from keeping the tunnel-entrance off-limits, there won't be anything said officially about what is down there apart from possible dangers. "We don't need idiots looking for treasure getting lost or worse in those tunnels"
The group pay a visit to Dora the alchemist after their report, which allows them to heal up and identify some of the loot they found. Dora listens to their story with great interest that reminds her of her own youth, serving them something refreshing to drink as they chat. She informs them that she would like to ask them for their services in procuring some reagents in the wilderness, but assures the party they can take their time in resting up after their little adventure before setting off.
We end the session there, and I award everyone a level as a christmas gift (a bit earlier than the book says, but it felt fitting considering it was christmas!).
After a couple of days of hard work but no adventures, one of the colonists reports being attacked by a horrid creature that tried to choke her. The PCs do some snooping and find tracks that lead to the well just outside their new home. They descend and find a tunnel. Entering they encounter a few chokers. The PCs engage and some questionable choices occur. Vår forgets she is a spellcaster and moves so she can get a clear shot with her crossbow, gets charged and is quickly reduced to negatives by a choker.
Tibor decides to increase his damage by letting the chokers hit him and hope they impale themselves on his spiky hide. They do but don't care and deal a lot of damage in the process before going down. The PCs fell two and the third runs off. Fortunately we had a good amount of healing so we could heal up before heading further in. It turns out we had been fighting young chokers and the parents were nastier. Fortunately the dice were more in our favor this fight and despite taking some damage, we prevailed without too much difficulty.
Once the chokers are killed, the rest of the 'dungeon' is easily cleared. The crysmals are not obviously dangerous and seem concerned with protecting the precious crystals rather than outright murder, so Tibor convinces the others to avoid killing things merely protecting what he conceives may be their eggs. Fortunately, they agree. Possibly influenced by the fact that healing is running out and they don't want to tempt fate.
The last arm of the cave sees a couple of darkmantles attack. Tibor again allows them to attach themselves to Tibor, take damage, and this time it has the desired effect of making the creatures disengage and run off. Once their darkness effect runs out they are picked off by ranged attacks.
The PCs exit the cave through the back passage, hide it, and decide to not tell anyone about this place. They are sure that if word gets out there are valuable crystals down there, some greedy person will go down, bug the crystal creatures, and probably get themselves killed. They return to the villlage and report that they killed the monsters and everyone is safe now. They tell the whole story to Ramona and she agrees that keeping the crystals secret is a good idea.
This done the PCs hope they can get back to being good little colonizers. This lasts another day or so before Ramona asks them to do some scouting. There are other colonists scouting the area but she wants a more complete picture of the island than she has. The PCs agree and just before they head out a breathless scout comes running to inform the village that her partner is stuck in quicksand. The PCs run headlong all the way, only barely getting stuck themselves in their haste to save their acquaintance-they-totally-knew-before-he-was-introduced-for-this-adventure- segment. Bo-bi had the best plan: tie a rope to his horse and send Aidu to fly out with and drop the end on the poor guy. Milo had conveniently waited until the PCs were there before failing his checks to stay afloat, and so cannot grab the rope. Sylvia and Tibor jump into the quicksand to try to help but Sylvia has the better potions to help and Tibor waddles back onto safe ground and grabs the rope. Sylvia manages to grab hold of Milo and the rope and drag him up enough for him to get some air and grab hold of the rope. Getting him out after this is easy. When it becomes known that Milo makes fermented beverages, three of the PCs are extra glad they saved him. Tibor never acquired a taste for rotten vegetable juice, so he's only regularly glad to have saved Milo.
After escorting the two exhausted NPC scouts the PCs do some scouting of their own. They come across some ruins which are only partially covered with vegetation. Tibor gets very excited at what little is shown and runs ahead of the rest of the party to find more architecture. As they approach what appears to be a stage of some sort ringed with pillars, they activate a magical effect. An illusion of a human appears and says something in a language unknown to the PCs, though Tibor wonders if it is related to Minean. The player spend some time ribbing Vår's player for not having Comprehend Languages. When leveling up he had asked for recommendations for his 1st level spell, and had been given CL. He was just about settled on that spell when he saw Snowball and chose that instead.
At the sight of the illlusions, Tibor's excitement dies a little. He had hoped this would be tortle ruins but it appears to be human. Still, it's somewhat exciting. The PCs do not have much time to poke around before they notice a small group of monkey goblins approaching. They try to hide but are noticed. Tibor steps forth, spreads his hands and tries to sound calm and non-threatening. They attack anyway. The battle is pretty easy though Vår is again reduced to negatives. When leveling Vår's player had asked for tips on what feat to take, and Toughness was mentioned. He chose Point Blank Shot instead, and the GM had to point out that if he had chosen Toughness he would have still been standing by the end of the combat. Cue some more ribbing of Vår's player.
He gripes a bit about feeling useless at compared to the martials and we tell him to just let us have this because in a few levels' time he will be outclassing us easily. Thus mollified the PCs check out the rest of the area. Tibor makes rubbings of all the writing he can find, does some sketches of the area, and makes a bunch of notes.
They return to Ramona, and she accompanies them the next day to look at the place and translate the languages. The recording turns out to be some form of proclamation about how everything is fine and people should just get on with their lives. The scene from the Naked Gun about how there is nothing to see comes to mind, just replace the exploding building with the Great Rain of Fire.
With our first real Clue to the AP's plot in hand, we end the session.
Over the course of several days Tibor scours the site of the recorded illusion for more information but finds little else of note. Other than this, life for the colony seems to be going well but there is the underlying tension from the fact that we still do not know what happened to the first wave of colonists.
Tibor spends his time split between farm life - farmers never lack chores - and spending a little time with Petillia to try to find clues to what happened to the missing colonists. Vår does minor chores around the colony, Sylvia makes potions and builds up a shop with Dora, and Bo-bi trains the militia.
Petillia notes that there are a couple missing pages in the log book, pages that were carefully excised to try to hide their lack. While interesting and almost certainly a lead to the mystery of the missing colonists, both assume that the missing pages were destroyed since we haven't found anything in the village and it makes sense for them to have been destroyed.
While Tibor and Petillia are going over documents, the other PCs are called down to the dock. There they spy some hunched fishmen that threaten one of the hapless villagers who was doing some fishing. Successful Knowledge checks indicate that Sylvia and Vår, as well as the rest of the women in the colony, are likely targets for 'reasons'. The battle is swift and in favor of the PCs though Vår took a few hits. Bo-bi suggests putting the heads of the skum on pole near the water's edge to warn off future attempts, and everyone agrees. Interestingly, the skum were carrying a map of the island with some landmarks hitherto unknown to the colony and some interesting writing that said 'Bring captives here'. If the skum were interested in - how to put it delicately? - getting to know the local women, they would probably not take them on land and far away from the water. This leads us to the conchat there is yet another party on the island that is powerufl enough to convince the skum to work for them and might be where our missing colonists have ended up. Ramona and the PCs decide that this is something that needs looking into sooner rather than later. The PCs decide to take a couple of days to prepare, then leave. Personally, I suspect the GM put this Very Obvious Clue to push her oblivious and passive players to going to the right place to advance the adventure.
During this time a cargo ship from Davania docks and people can buy some stuff. Ramona arranges some credit for the PCs, which they end up donating to Sylvia for 'supplies' and Sylvia can do some crafting for the group. She makes two Cloaks of Resistance +1, and promises to work on Bracers of Armor for Tibor when she has time. The PCs tell Ramona to expect them back within ten days, and to assume the worst if they are gone for more than fourteen.
The trip to the mysterious tower is interesting. They see signs of something that makes them think of a swarm of little things that tramped a nice big path through the jungle. This is what we call 'foreshadowing'.
Before reaching the tower, the PCs find a ruined glade with signs of overgrown pavement leading up to a circle of divine images. Tibor's player recognizes nearly all of the Immortals in their persona as Azcan gods, but Tibor himself does not roll well enough on the K. (religion) roll to do the same. When the two celadons animate and try to talk to the PCs we get a little nervous. Ramona had seen fit to give the party a potion of Tongues and two scrolls of Comprehend Languages. Again, I suspect divine GM intervention to make the adventure easier. Vår uses Comprehend Languages and manages to strike up a conversation with the constructs. The party quickly learns that someone else is active on the island and was here 'not long ago'. More importantly and interestingly, they learn the ruins here come from the time of the Great Rain of Fire (also known as the 'Blackmoor's Big Oopsie'). When the constructs indicate that they wish the PCs to stay here and learn, Tibor is elated though the others are less enthusiastic. They bring up things like 'we're on a mission' and 'duty to the colony', and 'I don't wanna be stuck here the rest of my life' and silly things like that. Vår manages to convince the celadons to make a compromise: the party will stay with the constructs and accept their tutelage for two days, then be on their way and come back 'soon'. The party gets an intensive and divinely augment course in the Azcan tongue, which is suspiciously similar to what another world would call 'Nahuatl'.
The party levels to 4th and Vår, again oblivious to any suggestions or foreshadowing, chooses Scorching Ray as her 2nd level spell. After all, she has Point Blank Shot.
When the party reaches the tower and see the warden jack swarm, they get that shocked Pikachu face and wonder how they could have ever predicted they'd meet a swarm.
The fact that it moves faster than Tibor is a problem, but fortunately Vår remembered she had a wand of Flaming Sphere, and the swarm was taken out with only a few hit points lost. We end the session here.
Before the session begins the DM mentions that she leveled us to 4th ahead of when the AP intended us to do so, because the tower was a bit tough. She also said that the session would either be over quickly and we could get on to book 2 that evening, or we would spend most of the session and perhaps the next one faffing about with some potentially tricky parts.
I looked at her and said something to the effect of “you know which way it will go”. I was right.
We entered the tower and immediately got Aperture Science or VaultTec vibes from the art and infomercial stuff on the walls. The first room saw the PCs ambushed by a couple of skum, which went down without trouble. The second room looked fine but we fortunately noticed the tiny holes that dotted the walls, indicating something to look out for. Tibor, in what will be a running theme for the evening, puts his 18 Wisdom to work and cautiously steps out into the presumed Danger Zone. He quickly steps back after being pierced by several arrows. He pulls them out and licks his wounds.
The PCs determine that they can open the doors on either side without entering the confirmed Danger Zone, and do so. The first one opened on a pair of constructs that told us that the room was restricted access and we had to close the door (with us on the outside) or be eliminated. We chose the former, and tried the other door. That one opened on a couple of skum that were looting the base.
“Hold on,” we said. “We thought the skum were supposed to work for whoever is in this tower. Why are they looting it?”
At least that’s what we were about to think before the skum attacked Vår who, for reasons the rest of us cannot fathom, has a tendency to want to go first into dangerous places despite having the worst saves, AC and the fewest hit points of the group. Once combat is engaged Sylvia hits upon the brilliant idea of pulling the constructs into battle on the assumption that they can attack the skum and we can fall back while they kill each other. Of course what actually happens is that they attack us, so now we have twice as many enemies to fight. Tibor tells everyone else, especially Vår, to fall back and he will keep them busy. Needless to say Vår doesn’t even consider this option, electing instead to, over the course of several rounds, do minimal damage and take several attacks that threaten to fell her in a vain attempt to avoid provoking a couple attacks of opportunity while moving to actual safety.
Fortunately the encounter is not particularly difficult, just time-consuming. With more damage taken than would have been necessary due to poor judgement on several fronts, we confront the trapped hallway, which I correctly identify as the ‘either or’ obstacle the DM spoke of earlier, and we proceed, as I predicted, to faff about. Tibor elects to continue the trend of dumb ideas, picks up one of the dead skum (who, the PCs noticed, did not trigger the trap) and holds it in front of him in the hopes that he will register as a skum instead of a tortle. He does not.
Taking a bad idea and running with it, Tibor dashes across to the far end of the hall where the PCs had noticed a panel which they assumed would control the trap, holding the dead skum all the way. The GM was gracious and said that the corpse granted cover. Tibor still takes a few hits and is now at about half HP. On the far side he opens the panel and cannot make heads nor tails of the inner workings and decides on the Star Wars Solution, i.e. destroy any control panel you come across in hopes that that will do what you need it to do. It does not.
While Tibor meditates briefly on what exactly 18 Wisdom entails and how running into arrows unnecessarily isn’t that, the rest of the party check out the rooms off to the side. They take a couple of arrows each but manage to scout things out. One room is boring and empty, the other has corpses and body parts, which we assume come from the missing colonists. Tibor drinks a healing potion and runs back to the others, taking a few more hits. This is the point where the DM figured we would faff about, and faff about we do with lots of discussion about how to find the mechanism (no one has Disable Device, so that’s a no go), whether everyone should just run across and hope that the pain is spread evenly across the group, or wilder ideas. Then I hit upon the idea that we should just pull back and make a rough testudo from stuff around us and avoid the arrows that way. There are no convenient wooden tables or benches inside but there are trees outside. Most players think this sounds like a good idea. We’re running low on hit points anyway and want to top them up before facing whatever is up the stairs. Then a long discussion follows about how we should go about making our box. We do not have an axe, adze, nails, hammer or anything like that, just rope and a magic sword. Should we go back to the colony and get supplies? Should we send Aidu, who can fly? Should Sylvia go alone since she can travel faster without us hanging on? Should we try making a wicker weave basket and Metal Gear Solid our way across? After much talk Sylvia realizes she is a druid and can do other things than make healing potions, and so suggests she use Wood Shape which would make everything easier. Then there follows a discussion about how thick to make the box, what sort of wood to use, should we try to make wheels, etc.
All this takes well over an hour, and is exactly the sort of thing my old(ish) school self likes - creative answers to problems that aren’t just solved by a die roll. Bo-bi gets fed up with this dithering, takes charge, and nearly runs us into problems by charging us across the Danger Zone before the rest of the PCs and players say, “y’know, we’ll stick with the smart plan instead”. The Smart Plan is enacted and Sylvia casts Obscuring Mist in the hall as well, and we all make it across unscathed. We were, it turns out, triply protected as the Obscuring Mist obscured the targeting magic, the testudo box would have stopped any arrows, and boxes were not on the magical trap’s list of valid targets.
Faffing about done with, we go up to the next floor and we almost immediately get into a fight with a slightly more powerful skum, who goes down brutally fast. We look around and Tibor gets a brief surge of joy as he sees the second floor is a library and then his heart is dashed when he sees nearly all the books are rotted away. There are a few remaining and Sylvia tries to read one, amusingly titled “I prepared Explosive Runes this morning”.
The surviving books are put safely in Tibor’s pack, away from careless readers and they look around. Apart from the normal bits one would expect in a library, there is a strange bust with a spindle-shaped depression in it. We quickly suss out the purpose andput the spindle-shaped crystals they looted on the floor below in it. Some interesting scenes recorded from just before the Great Rain of Fire play out, and after a brief discussion about them we turn our attention to the big set of double doors in the middle of the tower. It appears to be a ‘holding tank’, which purports to be full of water. We are at the lower observation point, so a sign says, and not wanting to take the chance of dumping a ton of water on us, we forgo opening it. It may be empty, there may be some force field holding the water in, there may be a ton of nasties in there waiting to be released. It can wait. We then go up to the third floor.
There are two humans here, who apart from looking rather inhuman with slimy, almost transparent skin, immediately raise suspicion when they claim to be prisoners. We expected prisoners but for some reason do not find it credible that said ‘prisoners are fully armed, not guarded nor locked up, and give off weird vibes. When one of them introduces himself as Rabio Arcturus, the DM is surprised and gratified to see one of her players actually remember a name introduced earlier and what it did: kill Silas, the poor priest who became a haunt. The other ‘prisoner’ is Vår’s missing friend Arlia. No one is fooled by the claims of the two ‘prisoners’ and combat is joined when Tibor asks Rabio about his ‘friend’ Silas and gets a muddled and factually weird answer. The PCs try to do non-lethal damage while the enemies try to kill the PCs. The fight is long and difficult. Sylvia and Vår are both reduced to negatives and Bo-bi takes some damage but Tibor is mostly fine due to high AC, lots of HP and being ignored for most of the fight. The PCs prevail and we bless the Immortals (DM) who thought the fight would be too tough for a 3rd level party and let us level early.
We end the session there, so wrap-up of Book 1 and the start of Book 2 will be next time.
After tying up the unconscious villagers we loot the tower properly and wake them up to interrogate them. Vår is very willing to believe her friend and assume she is mostly harmless now, but the rest of the PCs are less inclined. Fortunately Sylvia recognizes the effects of a dominate person and we want to try to save the unfortunate victims instead of executing them. After some mostly fruitless questioning we decide to bring them back to the colony and put them under watchful guard in hopes that the Dominate effect will expire eventually.
It does, and the two, especially Rabio, collapse into rather pitiable messes with the trauma of having been mentally controlled and used for foul purposes. Questioning them gives a few more answers to what happened to the colony: Arlia was exploring the island, found the tower, found something in a stasis tank and released it. Her logic was that it was something from before the Great Rain of Fire, and how cool wouldn’t it be to talk to someone from that time?
The predictable result of releasing an ancient evil was that evil things started to happen to the colony. She got Dominated, Rabio got Dominated and they helped ruin the town. Sadly, most memories of their time in thrall were gone. When the supply ship next comes, Ramona packs Rabio and Arlia off to the mainland in hopes that some more powerful clerics there can help them overcome their trauma and their fishy skin.
Bo-bi decides to stick around the village to train the soldiers and raise his horses rather than go on adventures, withdrawing from the campaign. By pure coincidence, an adventurous rakasta Skald by name of Josephine comes on the latest ship and thinks that adventuring sounds fun, so the colony’s troubleshooters are still four in number.
We start upgrading the colony, and some questionable choices are made, such as a road to the old Azcan religious site and excessive time spent there, as well as a bathhouse and gaol, instead of more sensible things like a better docks for easier loading of cargo, or improved agriculture.
The rest of the session goes to spending waaaaaaay too much time going over the loot list trying to decide what to sell, and waaaaay too much time trying to decide what to buy for the money. Tibor settles on a Headband of Wisdom +2 and Vår goes for a Headband of Charisma, both of which Sylvia crafts. We also bought a few potions from her. Once this is done, Ramona calls the troubleshooters to her and reveals that Carver Hastings was not Thyatian but instead from Karameikos. For some reason Thyatis didn’t want Karameikans in the colony but were fine with a tortle and a rakasta from half a continent away. Carver shares some information about an explorer that had previously visited the island, seen a lot of things but investigated very few and he had run away from basically everything and everyone, then returned home and written about his adventures. When Tibor comments that this showed poor adventuring spirit, Sylvia points out he stayed alive, unlike most other adventurers.
Ramona indicates that she would appreciate it if we explore the rest of the island, especially the sites mentioned in the old adventurer’s journal. The players let the DM know which area of the frankly ridiculously small island they intend to investigate first, and we end the session there.
It should also be noted that in this playgroup, when I am the player I am the one who usually goes over our loot, make sure people get what they're interested in, and split the profits.
As a GM it was driving me bonkers that the players were mostly sitting on loot they weren't doing anything with some also acting like they didn't have any loot or valuables. In another group I play with, things like dividing loot and shopping (as well as other downtime activities) is something we handle between sessions, but with this group it is practically impossible to get people to do that outside of gaming-time, so alas we have to spend the session on things like this.
Lucky for me, I planned for it to take some time, giving me more chance to prep for the explorations in Book 2.
The party travels east on their grand exploration of the island and turns south once they hit a river. The trip is mostly uninteresting. Lots of jungle and insects but nothing particularly dangerous. The most notable landmark is the small mountain - mound, really - that looks like it’s missing its top. The picture of Mount Saint Helens after it blew is a good impression. The party investigates and finds ruins of statues and buildings, overgrown with plant life. A small inscription in dwarven runes on a fallen pillar at the lip of the crater intrigues us but no one can decipher it. It seems much newer than the ruins, most likely from the dwarven adventurer Carver Hastings had mentioned earlier.
The party goes into the crater to investigate the big hole in the middle of it and spend some time looking down into it. They drop some Light into it and see how far down it goes, and see some water at the bottom. Considering how there are some streams feeding into the pit (never mind that this is the highest point on the map, so how can there be actual streams forming in the few feet from lip to pit?) but the hole isn’t filled with water, they assume there is some way for the water to drain out. While staring into the hole the party almost entirely fails to notice how the sky darkens and turns on ominous flame color. They do notice the faint, almost shadowy figures that appear and run in terror. Then they look up and see the incoming Rain of Fire. Tibor assumes this is a harmless psychic imprint, similar to the poltergeist they met upon first arriving in the colony, and does nothing but observe what is about to happen (later he meditates on what 18 Wisdom actually entails). The other three PCs leg it. Fortunately for Tibor, he has Evasion and avoids the psychic fire damage, while the others take a little damage. Pulling back from the crater, the PCs notice the sky lightens to its normal blue, and they discuss things. Tibor wonders why such haunts don’t exist all over the world after the GRoF, and it is pointed out that maybe they did but were exorcised by places where people settled in the four thousand years since.
The party decides to check out the rest of the southern tip of the island and spend some time deciphering the inscription before tackling the Pit. The inscription is deciphered and it warns of undead in the pit, and the party wonders why a warning is in a cipher. Surely, if you want to warn of something you make the warning as clear and easy to understand as possible. We are told not to worry our pretty little heads about that.
Working on the hypothesis that there must be another way into the Pit from closer to the sea, Sylvia, wildshaped into a dolphin, and Tibor check along the coast for any underwater tunnels into the Pit. The two find no obvious tunnels into the Pit but they do find a blue shark. The shark is fairly full (which in shark-think means it is only considering eating you rather than determined to eat you) but Sylvia convinces it to back off without combat.
After a night’s rest they make their way back to the Pit, well prepared for the trip. Sylvia protects Josephine with Resist Energy Fire, then the rakasta and the tortle tie a knotted rope to a stone to facilitate easy ingress and egress to the pit, and jump in. Sylvia and Vår follow once they see the rope is secure, running across the burning haunt. Once they get to the bottom the party is almost immediately set upon by some undead. They are surrounded by a cloud of ash and flames, which makes hitting them very difficult (50% miss chance) and deals fire damage to adjacent creatures. The undead also hit back hard, regularly overcoming Tibor’s AC of 25, never mind everyone else.
The fight is long and brutal, with everyone but Josephine going down at some point. It was a perfect example of how in combat healing is a poor way of winning a battle but how it occasionally is necessary. Without Sylvia and Vår healing what they could, people would have died. The group really isn’t good at combat, especially now that Bo-bi was replaced by someone whose main contribution to combat is to slightly buff Tibor rather than out-damage him. The GM noted that the undead actually had a 5d6 damage death throes, and made sure to rub it in that she had removed that. Even with the GM nerfing encounters for our sake we managed to prevail only by the skin of our teeth. Nearly all our resources were gone and a few tactical blunders (and an unfavorable arena) had drawn the combat on far longer than necessary. We deduce that the burning undead might well be connected to the larger haunt and could possibly regenerate after a while. While this might be the case, we determine we have used up way too many resources to continue and pull back for the night.
The next day we go back even better prepared, with tailored spell choices and better tactics, and the encounter is handled pretty easily. The party then investigate the ruins, find an Ioun Gauntlet and another ioun stone (the extra benefits that it and his Wayfinder grant keep trolling Tibor by being useful only to spellcasters). The final door is obviously opened by using an ioun stone to plug into the magic circuitry, which we do, and we easily defeat the last blasthaunt (which is what Tibor has taken to calling these undead nasties). The party watches the recorded message, and discovers how the area seems to have been a broadcasting station. There is not much left of it and the party loots what there is to loot, and exits. The GRoF haunt seems to have been banished with the destruction of the blasthaunts, and the party heads east and north, to explore another bit of the island.
After the harrowing experience in the crater/communications hub, the party heads up the east coast and comes across some more ruins. These are far newer than the Azcan ruins, probably only a few centuries old at best. The party investigates and first comes across an unpleasant drowning sensation as they near the water. Tibor again shows the difference between player intelligence and character intelligence, and stays in the area and approaches the water. He is unsurprised by the surprise undead northmen who pop out to kill him and the rest of the party. They hit fairly hard and the lack of combat power in the group is again driven home. One of them even manages to energy drain Tibor, and his player is filled with conflicting feelings on the weak-ass energy drain of PF1 compared to pre 3.x versions of D&D. The party manages to vanquish the undead even so.
The party also encounters a big pig and some smaller but still big piglets, which they mercilessly butcher and eat.
The party decides to take a brief trip back to the colony. As far as they know they are not on a timer, though the metagaming players assume we are. A few days back to report and make a few new potions, divvy loot, get reports from other scouts, which report of fish people and bird people to the north-west. We briefly consider checking out the volcano in the middle of the island but Sylvia’s player insists that it screams ‘boss area’, and we put it off until last. The original plan was to take the easternmost section between two rivers but the existence of actual (presumably) people to interact with pushes us to go to them first and try to figure out their intentions. The fish people, or kna, turn out to be quite friendly and can even speak decent Thyatian. We exchange information, learning about several important plot hooks, including an evil witch on the island, a beleaguered water naga in the ocean, a bunch of sharkfolk that the kna dislike, and something nasty called an tooth (?) or aboleth - a foul creature that steals your will away from you. That sounds familiar….
The kna also voice their displeasure with the bird people, who apparently killed one of the kna on their way here, and now the kna feel trapped on the island. (I don’t see how, since the kna could presumably just swim underwater, a place fliers tend to struggle with)
The party agreed to look into the matter, and this set the stage for future trade.
Yet another session with very little actual plot development or, well, much of anything. Half the players showed up late and we spent a lot of time faffing about, especially when it comes to loot.
Later, the DM expresses concern at the group’s general suckiness. She asks me if she should run the encounters as they are and have a very real of a TPK, or if she should just reduce difficulty. I lean towards the former but say she will have to make that decision on her own, possibly getting input from the rest of the players.
Sylvia summons a couple of hippocampi to ferry the three mammals across while Tibor just swims. He’s slower than the hippocampi but it is a short trip. The party is slightly concerned they might be attacked on the way over but they see no signs of birdpeople on the way. On the shore of the tiny island they are met with two notable things: the first is the giant blue crystal that dominates the hill on the island, the other is the grisly sight of a dead, mostly devoured and decomposed kna hung on a pole, with its gear piled next to it. The party takes this as a sign that the birdpeople do not want visitors, or at the very least do not like kna, so they talk about how to proceed. The option of returning without attempting to make contact is discarded, even if this means a greater likelihood of combat. What takes a lot of time is the discussion of how to make contact. Sylvia and Tibor argue for staying on the beach and trying to attract attention from there. Vår wants to sneak up into their home and make contact that way. Sylvia and Tibor argue that staying on the beach rather than coming into their home is less threatening and easier for the party to escape into the sea than if they get into the middle of the island and piss the locals off by intruding on their home. Vår doesn’t want to give the obviously dangerous bird people a chance to organize and hunt the party by giving them advance warning. Josephine just stands still and silent, looking vacantly into the air.
The high-Wisdom couple prevail and the party builds a small but very smoky fire on the beach to announce their presence. Pretty soon the locals arrive. Only one shows themself - a tall, willowy winged elf - while the rest hide in the forest. The description of the elf made me think of the Gliders from ElfQuest. Peaceful contact is established and Vår, the only character Diplomacy worth a damn, uses a Tongues spell and starts talking. The players of Sylvia and Tibor soon wish their characters could join in the conversation because Vår has a tendency to ignore questions posed, make comments that could seem threatening, and show an utter incomprehension that anything she says or does could be anything less than perfectly OK. This is a constant issue with her player. We know that the point of skill systems is to allow characters to do things players cannot, but some players make it really hard to get behind.
Fortunately the winged elf looks at Tibor and asks in heavily accented Slag if he is related to the tortles of the Savage Coast, because she seems to recognize the Red Curse he suffers from. Tibor is happy to find people from his neck of the woods and they talk a bit about the old country. Sylvia finally offers to cast Share Language so everyone can take part in the discussion, and the elf accepts.
The winged elves, faenare as they call themselves, are a colony that came to the island some 70 years ago from their homeland on the Arm of the Immortals, which is not far off from Zul, where Tibor was born and raised. They moved here after one of their Windsingers had a vision that they needed to come here, specifically to the big blue crystal that reflects sea and sky. Conversation then comes to the dead kna. The faenare claim it was a case of mistaken identity. They thought the kna were skum, and did not realize their mistake until after they had killed the scout. They put his body and his belongings on the shore for the other kna to recover. After this they just kept to themselves. The party is relieved that there was nothing worse about this affair. The faenare invite the party to their hamlet and help the party into the trees where their ‘nests’ are. The mammals are easily lifted by a single warrior each but three have to strain to get Tibor up. A young, blind faenare is the only child in the tribe and she is ecstatic over encountering actual outsiders for the first time. She and Vår hit it off and talk up a storm. Other than general introduction of everyone and sharing information about the presence of the Thyatian colony on the larger island, trade negotiations are opened. The PCs are curious about the big blue crystal and the faenare are thankfully cool with that. Sylvia and Vår investigate it to the best of their abilities but are unable to find out anything other than that it once was very magical. Tibor wonders idly if it used to be an ioun stone for the entire world.
The next day the party decides to return to the kna and the faenare send an emissary to the kna and Thincol’s Jewel. The kna are a bit skeptical of the winged elf but are willing to accept the idea that the death of their scout was due to mistaken identity, though they are insulted at the idea that anyone could confuse skum and kna. Tibor points out that yes, it is strange to us [reptile and fishfolk] that anyone could make that mistake but just look at those mammals and see how hard it is to tell their races apart, especially when they are not standing next to each other.
The kna and the faenare are probably never going to be friends but they are willing to meet with a neutral third party, the colony of Thincol’s Jewel, to work out issues of diplomacy and trade. The kna then give a small reward and offer a number of useful items for sale (“special price for you my friend”) as thanks for the party’s aid in this matter. Unfortunately, the interesting items are well outside of the party’s means, but the kna assure them that the offer will not expire and they are welcome to come back later.
The party briefly contemplates exploring the rest of the island but that idea is quickly nixed because they have an emissary to bring to town and while the elf says he will accompany the party on whatever route they took, it would be a bad look if they got him killed on a stupid adventure. They return home, make introductions, and are immediately asked to go out and take care of a few monsters that attacked the town militia and are probably behind the disappearance of a fisherman they were out looking for. The party does this, and Vår, as usual, runs ahead of everyone else in her eagerness to get places. This time the rest of the party and players just let it happen, and Vår seems surprised when she runs headfirst into the monsters and gets attacked. Fortunately the monsters only reduce her hit point total by a third on a single attack and she survives to fall back. Tibor uses his Hokuto Hyakuretsu-ken once each on the monsters and a Burning Hands from Sylvia (who just took one level of Wizard, on her way to Mystic Theurge) ends the encounter.
The PCs look around and find no signs of the missing person but return to the colony and make their report. Then they head off north again to continue their investigation of the island. On the beach past where they met the kna, they come across a fairly recent construction of whalebones and hides. Abandoned and old enough to be of limited use to anyone attempting to use it now, but far more recent than most things they have found here. They suspect it might be of merrow make, an aquatic humanoid race found in many seas throughout the world. While investigating, Tibor gets the urge to kick Vår quite hard but resists and informs the rest of the party that he was just under some form of mental attack. He spots what seems to be a big fiendish grasshopper some distance off, but it disappears. The party looks around for a bit but finds no sign of it, shrug, and move off cautiously. They note they may have to come back here later. The party, sadly, has no method of seeing invisible creatures.
Then they come to a strange twisted forest with red leaves and a smell of burning permeating the air. They find nothing of worth and realize that staying there for a protected amount of time would be bad for their health, and they make their way through as quickly as possible. On their way out they see some strange lights in the woods and are filled with a desire to follow them. Fortunately, the party makes their skill check and recognizes will’o’wisps and decide to just avoid them. Vår thinks we could take them because she has Magic Missile. Questions about this idea are asked, like how many Magic Missiles it takes to take down one wisp, how many wisps they will encounter, how much damage can the party take while Vår shoots her spells, and what use the rest of the party can be, and how they are going to even see the bastard things without any way of seeing invisible?
Eventually Vår sees the metaphorical light and the party just ignores the wisps, putting them on the map and noting Do Not Enter on the forest. The GM is secretly relieved and not a little surprised at our sensibleness.
The session ends here, somewhat early as the next encounter would end up in combat, which would take too much time considering I had to get up rather early the next day.
Picking up from last time, the PCs wander along the northern coast of the island and find a cave with a pile of assorted bones outside, including those of merrow and shark-kin. Being adventurers, the party enters, ready for combat. Almost instantly Tibor triggers a trap which takes out a third of his hit points and alerts whatever is hiding in the cave to the party’s presence.
Sylvia heals him up just in time for the enemies to arrive. These are probably merrow, by the looks of them. They smell terrible, and not just in a fishy way. The pile of obviously gnawed-upon merrow bones outside indicates that these are probably cannibalistic. They attack but don’t do very much against Tibor’s impressive AC. Josephine Bo-bi and Aidu are slightly easier to hit but the fight goes pretty well, though the party is concerned to hear spellcasting further in the cave. The first group of merrow is partially killed and the rest run away, allowing the party to recover some hit points before going to find the spellcasters. The cleric and the bug thing that tried to get Tibor to attack Vår are both there, and call out to Atzanteotl. The fight goes fairly well, though the cleric and the bug are hard to hurt, thanks to Blur and DR in the case of the bug. It manages to escape, leaving the merrow to die.
The place is looted and the shrine to Atzanteotl (whom the party recognizes as a god who delights in corrupting people) is destroyed, and the merrow corpses thrown into the ocean for scavengers.
The party explores a bit more of the northeastern bit of the island, a bit warily in case the bug shows up again. They follow the river inland and come to a nice waterfall that looks very idyllic. Not being complete noobs, Bo-bi and Tibor automatically assume there is a hidden cave behind the waterfall. They and Aidu enter the water to investigate and are set upon by a chuul. Bo-bi has no hope of winning against it but Tibor and Aidu manage to get it to flee, and they manage to kill it before Bo-bi drowns. Vår spent most of the combat on shore not being able to help much and Sylvia got pulled away by the current when she waded in to help, but managed to save herself by gulping a Touch of the Sea potion.
Once Bo-bi is healed back up the party makes their way behind the waterfall where - lo and behold! - there’s the entrance to a cave. The party finds the chuul offspring and eggs and easily takes them out. Fortunately no one makes their Knowledge (dungeoneering) checks to determine that the chuul is intelligent and they settle down to their meal of sorta-lobster once they’ve explored the rest of the cave. The iron ore that suffuses the cave is interesting enough but the cave paintings of humans fighting giant snake-people and the one of Terra and Ixion bringing fire and agriculture to them has Tibor in as archeological tizzy. These seem even older than the Azcan ruins they have found so far. He wants to avoid telling the colony of the resources here to preserve the paintings. The rest of the party make non-committal noises to this suggestion.
This place thoroughly explored, they head to the red forest and are amazed at the weird look and vibes of the place. We have to end the session there because there will probably be another big fight and we are nothing if not very slow in combat.
So, Bo-bi is back with a little handwave to retcon so Josephine stays in town on this particular expedition. The player is getting pretty tired of D&D and had hoped to find the Skald more interesting to play but it wasn’t, and he realized just how badly the party needed more damage output, so Bo-bi is back. The downside is that we don’t get all the lovely skills she has. The upside is our chances of survival have gone up considerably, especially since Aidu is now useful in combat. The usual jokes of the PC being accoutrement to the mount are made.
The red forest looks a lot creepier up close than it does at a distance. The cause of the blood-red leaves seems to be actual blood, as is evident when the party takes a sap sample from one of the trees. Most of the forest is like an oak forest - little in the way of undergrowth or other types of trees. The party does spot one very obvious place to go, a large tree pretty much smack dab in the middle of the forest.
On their way to the Obvious Encounter Point, the party does come across a pile of vines that suddenly move to attack them. The vines are handled easily. Soon after they come across a strange giant creature lying covered in the same sort of vines that they had recently defeated. The party rescues the creature, which mumbles something in a tongue they do not recognize. Sylvia, for once, gulps a Tongues potion and questions the creature. It is a scrag, something the party had not recognized by sight but are slightly more familiar with by reputation. It claimed to be working for the Witch, sent here to gather certain things, but was taken unawares by the vines and subdued, and lay there basically helpless, only its regeneration keeping it alive. It is grateful to be rescued and does not want to return to the witch’s service. It gives the PCs some inside information, such as an underwater entrance to the witch’s lair. Sylvia, despite being the naturalist amongst the party, had a hard time understanding the concept of a caldera lake and kept thinking there was an undersea entrance far longer than she should have. Nevermind the rivers of the island flowing from the volcano, I guess. The party lets the scrag depart in peace despite some misgivings and move further into the forest. Pretty soon after the scrag they come across what look to be human corpses that have been very infected by a woody, crimson substance. The pseudo undead have some damage reduction which significantly hampers the party’s efforts at killing them, except for Vår, whose Snowballs make her the DPS queen of the encounter. The zombies are not particularly dangerous, fortunately, and the party moves on with minimal damage taken.
Slightly more interesting was some strange tracks they discovered just a bit on, a motley collection of hooves, claws and feathers. Initial assumptions about what could make the tracks land on hippogriffs, and the party starts wondering if they could tame some for later use. Of course the monsters that left the tracks were perytons, far smarter and less nice than hippogriffs, and combat is engaged quickly. The perytons use their flight to stay above the party, but Bo-bi has a lance and Tibor puts his recently acquired High Jump ability to good use. Tibor’s ki pool (magic) also comes in clutch in overcoming the DR (Magic) of the creatures, while Bo-bi and Aidu lament their lack of magical enhancement on weapons. Both Tibor and Bo-bi get annoyed at Vår getting in the way of them getting to the enemies, and consequently being targeted by the enemies, taking damage, then running to hide amongst the frontliners. In general, they are tired of Vår doing stupid stuff and getting in the way when combat ensues, then running away and whining about how scary things are when she gets smacked. They consider certain measures to stop this happening. Obvious solutions like asking her not to get in the way don’t work, so more extreme measures are considered, like putting a collar and leash on her then tying her to a stake when combat starts.
The party heals up and comes to the Big Tree. Some more plant zombies attack the players, as well as the roots and vines of the tree. Tibor ignores the zombies and goes straight to the tree and starts hitting it on the assumption that it somehow controls the zombies. He deals damage but is grappled in turn, which he does not resist. His spikey shell deals a bit extra damage to the tree, and he attempts to deal more damage in grapple instead of trying to extricate himself. He is quickly pinned on the tree’s next turn, and left to spend the rest of the combat contemplating the meaning of 18 Wisdom.
Fortunately the combat is pretty easy, with Vår’s Snowballs being very important. The party identifies the remains of the tree as a variant of a yellow musk creeper. Bo-bi and Tibor are ecstatic to find a mithril breastplate and magic lance as part of the loot. Bo-bi because he wants better gear and Tibor because of their historic nature, being from an ancient Azcan noble, possibly royal.
The party decals this section of the island explored, leaving the will’o’wisps for a later date, reminding Vår again that without a way to see invisible the party would most likely die. With only two sections of the island unexplored, the party decides to leave the witch for a bit and check out the easternmost part of the island. They head there and on the coast they find a cave with strange, fragrant moss hanging in front of the mouth. The moss is not the kind one would expect on something at sea level, so we assume it was hung there intentionally. Remembering that there is supposed to be a naga in these parts, Tibor and Sylvia suspect this might be its home. Vår, of course, thinks they should just wander in and see what’s there. Tibor suggests that wandering uninvited into someone’s home is not the best way to make a good first impression (quite the opposite). There is, as Vår points out, the chance that whatever is in the cave is hostile and calling in would warn it of the party’s presence, but the rest of the party thinks this is worth the risk.
Tibor calls into the cave and a large, finned, serpentine creature emerges. It looks scary but does indeed try to talk rather than instantly attacking the party, and since the party knows Azcan, there is no need for Tongues. The party introduces themselves, where they come from, and that they are interested in getting to know the neighbors. The naga, surprised at the visitors, invites them in for tea. She says she is pleased that the visitors are polite and wait for permission before entering her home. Tibor says nothing but shoots a Look at Vår. Aidu loves the cave and comments on how cozy it is, with just the right sort of rocks to scratch yourself on and lots of treasure piled up on the walls. The naga relates its story about how it found the waters around the island full of old Azcan stuff and was fascinated by it. She made her home in an old sunken ship but was recently driven out by the shark-kin. When the naga learns that Tibor also is something of a historian, the two hit it off and talk shop for a while. The naga is very interested in the various Azcan ruins on the island. Eventually, the party brings up the idea of an alliance. The naga wants her old lair back and the shark-kin gone, the kna want the shark-kin gone, and though the colony has had no contact with them, aggressive neighbors are the sort of thing they want to get rid of. The naga is initially reluctant to commit to anything and Vår thinks that the best way to convince her of the scheme is to show off how powerful the party is. This she does by casting Scorching Ray in the cave. To reiterate, she casts a hostile spell without warning in the home of a cautious and powerful being who strictly speaking has no reason to trust the party apart from them being polite. Yes, this is the sort of thing this player does constantly. Sometimes I suspect he maxes Diplomacy on every character to make up for his utter inability to see how his actions might not be popular with NPCs. If ever there was a reason to roll-play and not roleplay, he is it. He means well, just cannot help but screw up.
With a lot of apologies and stern looks at Vår, the party does manage to salvage the situation. The naga makes a cautious agreement, gifting the party with a few magic items in advance to cement the deal, and the party decides to head back to Thincol’s Jewel and report, and possibly contact the kna possibly even the faenare and see if they are willing to participate in action against the shark-kin. Vår is very excited and wants to get to the shark-slaying immediately and sees no reason to report home first. She also is making herself at home in the naga’s cave and thinks the party should spend the night there. Arguments about why this is not a good idea fall on deaf ears. Arguments like while AIdu, the dumb drake, might like it and Tibor finds it passable, mammals will not like it. Arguments like it’s a tidal cave and most of it will fill with water at some point, drowning air breathers. Arguments like the naga invited us in for tea, not to spend the night. Argument’s like it’s a short hike home to your own bed rather than the wet, hard rock and you would be sleeping near a large carnivorous creature that might find you an annoying house guest after you tried to burn its lair. The idea of a collar and leash is increasingly popular.
We end the session there, in hopes that Vår will have forgotten this suggestion next time.
The session starts with a long, long rehash of the argument we ended last week with, with Vår pushing for getting on with things and Tibor and Sylvia pushing for returning home to report and try to get the kna on board. We end up all returning back to Thincol’s Jewel and reporting on what we have found so far. While we are there, Ramona mentions two things that are rather concerning. The fisherman that had disappeared a while ago was back, seemingly no worse for wear. Tibor is instantly suspicious; the colony still has no real idea what happened to the original wave of colonists other than that two of their number were under mental control by something aquatic. The fact that this guy was gone at sea and suddenly came back is something to be wary of, at the very least. He voices his suspicions to Ramona, who asks the clerics in townif they might be able to help. They prepare and cast Detect Charm but find nothing out of the ordinary.
The second concerning thing is that one of the teens of the colony is suspected of stealing some important documents and money from Ramona’s office. She has her suspicions about who the culprit might be and wants the party to investigate. The colony follow Thyatian law so she would be duty-bound to lop off a hand if she found out officially whodunnit and Ramona wants to avoid such unpleasantries, especially since she suspects the culprit is a bored and rebellious teen rather than a genuine ne’er-do’-well. Thus the best thing for everyone involved would be for the PCs to fix things and give no hard confirmation or denial of Ramona’s suspicions. Ramona was partially correct in her suspicions and the girl flees at the first hint of an accusation. The party assumes this to be panic behavior learned in a larger city rather than a sensible reaction to her situation on the island. She is swiftly apprehended and questioned. She confesses to taking the money and returns it, but claims she had nothing to do with the documents - according to her she dumped them on the ground and fled with the money. So we are left with another theft of important documents, just like what apparently happened to the first wave of the colony, and a suspicious returned fisherman. Sadly, we are on a timer and have to head north to the kna.
The kna are amenable to an alliance, despite Tibor’s clumsy attempts to woo them (bad Diplomacy roll). Fortunately Vår swoops in and uses her significantly better score to secure their aid. Only their leader bothers to join us, but we are assured she is the best warrior amongst them. Back in Thincol’s Jewel we convince the faenare diplomat to join the party, though he will not be coming underwater with the rest of the party. His job will be to keep an eye on the surface, especially the volcano, and whatever he can see from the air and drop colored dye into the water to warn us of incoming threats. Back in Thincol’s Jewel we have yet another strange occurrence to investigate. Several goats were killed, with wounds that look like what one might expect from a giant lamprey. Even more puzzling, the only footsteps in the area appear to be human, and they lead to the beach and into the water. Everyone’s first thought is chupacabras, but this seems unlikely. The party muddles about and Sylvia shapeshifts into a dog to try to pick up some scent. The smell is nothing she is familiar with. Tibor suggests she goes and sniffs people around town, especially the returned fisherman. Said returnee does indeed smell similar but not identical. Without any more information to go on, the party puts this on the back burner and heads off to the naga.
At the naga’s cave on the east coast, the party makes introductions all around and a simple plan is made - charge in and kill everything we see. It is a simple plan, one with decades of gaming experience behind it. It used to be that we would spend hours debating issues and coming up with complex and intricate plans, only for them to end up being Charge and Kill upon execution. These days we save a ton of game time skipping past the planning and going straight to C&K.
The first shark-kin are easily dispatched, and even the tougher ones that come a bit later are not much of an issue. The real issue is the giant shark that appears after a couple of rounds. It’s big and scary and its bite has a real chance of killing characters in one chomp. The naga, whose name will forever be Whiskas in my head, and Sylvia are sorely wounded and Vår is reduced to nearly dead (saved only by the ioun stone we found that lets her Con count as 2 points higher for negative HP) in a single bite each. Bo-bi is ecstatic, however. After many levels he is finally, finally, allowed to get his full Cavalier benefits of Challenge, and a mounted charge with a lance and Spirited Charge. He manages to do this twice in combat and is easily the one who deals most damage to the monstrosity. Tibor’s contribution to combat was to basically make three attacks a round, roll a nat 1 on one of them, miss normally with the second, and deal minimum damage on the third. Seriously, my virtual dice hated me this session. However, on the whole he took very little damage thanks to high AC, even if the big shark did hit him once, and he did soak up a lot of attacks from most shark-kin.
Eventually the shark-kin are defeated and the allies rejoice, and the PCs level up.
After a brief discussion, the party decides to go for the sea witch without delay, other than resting for spells and healing. They do not wish for word of the defeat of her minions to reach the witch and possibly give her time to prepare and go on the offensive. Whiskas bemoans the state of her home and sets about repairing and redecorating, obviously uninterested in much more company. The kna leader makes her way back to her fellows and the faenare scout will tell Thincol’s Jewel of our decision, and to expect the worst if they are not back within a week.
The trip to the center of the island of Ancorato is uneventful and the party easily makes it up the slope of the dead volcano to gaze on the interior of the crater. To their surprise it is a lake with a central island and an ancient tower there. The remains of a broken bridge are visible but the primary means of crossing seems to be an unsafe-looking barge. Tibor slips into the water to see if he can find the secret entrance mentioned by the scrag they rescued. He comes up again rather quickly when he sees a really big crab coming up to meet him. The rest of the party, now fully equipped with Necklaces of Adaptation, jump in and they easily dispatch the poor crab. Aidu discovers he likes crab meat and spends some time gorging himself.
The party finds the secret entrance and easily notices that it is trapped, to deal some damage and make a lot of noise. Without anyone to disarm it, the party decides to try to use it as a distraction. They plan to use a summoned creature to set it off, then run to the entrance to the tower on the topside of the little island and sneak in that way. This plan, as the less smooth-brained reader might notice, makes some dumb assumptions, which become apparent when the PCs enact it. Setting off the trap works wonderfully, and the PCs rush to the front door and find it barred. No one thought to check it before assuming the plan would work. So the party tries to batter the door down. Bo-bi, as the strongest character, leads the attempt and keeps rolling badly compared to those using Aid Another. Not once in this campaign has Aid Another ever worked as intended, since in every case it would have been better for one of the aiders to lead the attempt. The party batters the door for several rounds before it suddenly gives way to show two scrag just inside. One of the scrag is holding the bar and uses it to hit Tibor. Battle is engaged and the two sea trolls go down fairly easily. Once they are taken care of, Sylvia suggests they run upstairs to find the sea witch. The party agrees but only goes up one floor before someone suggests they go back down and clear the first floor in case there are any enemies there. Tibor is rather annoyed at the wishy-washy decision making here, but they go back down and clear the tower in proper fashion.
On the second floor there is a poor blind cyclops that looks to have been kept in terrible conditions. Fortunately, two of the party speak Minean and can communicate with him. They set him free and he gives a brief version of his story, which amounts to the witch trying to use his blood and various other body parts for divination. The PCs heal him up and let him sit down for a bit. They briefly consider taking him out and returning to confront the witch but Tibor thinks this is a bad idea for many reasons. He manages to convince the party to go for the witch.
The witch turned out to be a hag and the two melee characters failed their save against her ugliness and were weakened. She was seemingly unaware of their presence before they confronted her, and she tried to monologue at them about how she was so close to learning something very important. Tibor was having none of it and rudely interrupted the ranting, starting combat. The hag’s minions in the room are two vampiric mists, which do a number on Sylvia and Vår before being killed. Tibor rushes to the hag and starts hitting her. In true monk fashion, he uses Stunning Fist a lot but it is basically useless. The hag fills the room with Haunting Mists, which also nerf several in the party and makes hitting her really difficult. Thanks to the Con damage suffered, Sylvia goes down rather quickly and the party doesn’t realize it for a couple of rounds because she was hidden in the mists. They get a clue when they notice she had not done anything for a while and did not respond when called. Vår is the only one with any healing that might work but she cannot move fast enough to reach the nearly dead Sylvia, so Tibor bull rushes her the last bit of the way. In retrospect I’m unsure if this should have worked since Tibor and Vår strictly speaking couldn’t see Sylvia and just assumed they knew well enough where she lay. In any case, the DM allowed it because it was a cool move and she’s a bit too soft-hearted to like killing PCs.
Between Sylvia going down and her rescue, Vår wants to try out her new 3rd level spell, Lightning Bolt. She is quite annoyed that Bo-bi, Aidu and Tibor are in the line of fire, and has an epiphany of how annoying it is to have other party members get in the way when you want to do something (Vår has continually been getting in the way of Bo-bi’s charge attempts since the beginning of the campaign). We will see if this newfound wisdom results in a change in behavior going forward. Towards the end of the combat, Tibor’s fourth Stunning Fist attempt finally works and the hag is quickly brought down the next round.
The party spends a little time looking at the powerful magical orrery here and notice that it portrays a solar system rather different than the one they know (some planets missing). Though Tibor would love to stay and investigate fully, the party just loots the tower and escorts the poor blind cyclops back to Thincol’s Jewel.
The trip back to Thincol’s Jewel takes a couple of days since the party is moving very slowly because of the cyclops. The poor creature cannot see where it is going, does not have much muscle mass to support it, and is terrified of everything. Every little bug that brushes against him, every peep from a bird causes the poor thing to twitch. Back in town the colonists flock to see the cyclops, and are rather skeptical to the idea of taking him in, but the party insists that he is harmless and needs help. They do not have a good place to put him, so they put up a tent adjacent to their house with plenty of blankets and padding for him to sleep on. The idea is to build a proper house for him when they get the time.
While this is going on the PCs overhear a couple locals bellyaching about some issues and Vår and Tibor go to investigate while Sylvia and Bo-bi remain behind to settle the cyclops in his new home. Vår and Tibor (mostly Vår) settle the minds of a few unsettled settlers and get Aggripina, a recently arrived noblewoman, to start eating again after her silly little hunger strike at the town being poorly defended. In gratitude for having her ego stroked, the woman suggests a big party for the entire village. Ramona comes to see the cyclops that had the villagers in a tizzy and Sylvia assures her that things are going to be a lot better on the island now that the hag is dead. Once Vår and Tibor have met up with her and conveyed that they have calmed things down, Ramona agrees that a party sounds like a good idea and will use some funds to pay for it. A supply ship is in port now and the sailors would probably like a party as well. Ramona goes off to organize the event and the PCs are left to their own devices for a few hours before nightfall.
The faenare ambassador comes by with the Locate Object scrolls the party had ordered to try to find the missing log books, so they use one and fail to find anything. The assumption is that the books are beyond the range of the spell, which is concerning. At the moment they do not see how they can do more to find the missing books, so put the issue aside for the moment.
After this the PCs go shopping, which amounts to Sylvia insisting she can craft most of what we need and the player mostly handwaving away concerns that while Sylvia can do so in theory, the adventure’s timeline may have other ideas. Ultimately, Tibor is convinced to let his Headband of Wisdom be upgraded. The night of the party a bunch of settlers meet up with the party outside their home, reveal themselves to be faceless stalkers, and attack. Tibor’s player sighs at being proven right about the game not giving the PCs a break, and combat ensues. The stalkers are handled fairly easily, though Sylvia and Vår take a little Constitution damage. Hearing screams from the rest of town and seeing fires popping up, the party hurries on, first to the dock. The ship is on fire and the sailors are fighting more faceless stalkers. The PCs clean up here too, take a little more damage, and leave the crew to save their ship. They would have stayed to help fight the flames but heard more unrest in the rest of the village and decide to prioritize helping people over saving property.
They see two groups of frightened villagers, each led by one of the prominent NPCs they have met so far (the smith and the snooty noble), each blaming the other for the attacks and accusing one another of being monsters. The PCs calm things down but are still rather paranoid since these faceless stalkers can look like anyone. Tibor remembers a snippet of legend about these monsters, namely that they can speak any language. In an attempt to root out the baddies, Tibor turns to the rest of the party and, in Azcan (since only the party and one NPC in town not present here know that tongue) says that it is impossible to tell friend from foe, so they should take the villagers to a house on the pretense of taking them to safety, then lock them in and burn the house down. He hopes that any faceless stalkers would give themselves away at hearing this. What actually happens is that no villager appears to understand him and the other PCs give him shocked looks at the suggestion, since he did not explain his little deception. With this ploy failed and no apparent baddies here, they move around town, trying to find more survivors while keeping an eye on the ones they just saved. When they get near the main administrative building they see Carver Hastings stick his head out and frantically waving at them. They group enters and are only annoyed and resigned when the doors are slammed shut and locked behind them and ‘Carver’ starts throwing bad anime villain banter at the party. Combat ensues. Vår, predictably, nearly dies, Sylvia and Bo-bi take some serious damage, and the enemies get a lucky hit (double 20s) on Tibor but he’s otherwise unscathed.
Once everything hostile is dead, the session ends.
An hour or so of the session is spent making sure people have leveled up properly. Vår made some good spell choices (Fly and Protection from Evil) and a questionable feat choice (Prodigy for two Perform skills of no use). Generally we are perfectly fine with some mechanical flavor that has no use in game, but this is mostly reserved for the odd skill point, not something as rare as a feat. It wouldn’t have been worth mentioning if it weren’t for the fact that the GM has complained how weak our party is on numerous occasions and how we need all the help we can get. Oh well. She’ll either have to let people die or put on the kiddie gloves (more than she already has).
In the aftermath of the attack on the colony the party helps put out fires and do some first aid, then as dawn breaks Sylvia notices that a storm is incoming. Understanding that the storm will probably erase any clues the faceless stalkers may have left, the party other than Tibor decides to go to sleep so they can replenish HP and spells. Also, Sylvia insists on finishing the upgrade of Tibor’s Headband of Wisdom because he is certain that if he does not finish it and I try to wear it, it will be destroyed. The DM assures him this is not the case but he insists. The look of disbelief on the GM’s face elicits sympathy from me. Tibor does what he can about going through town and gathering clues before heading to bed. The rest of the party does not continue the investigation before Tibor wakes, and they decide to follow what scant clues he got once he gets up. They find some sign of a place where a small boat was moored and people probably tied up. This along with the signal mirror found on “Carver’s” body indicated to the party that the enemies were situated on one of the nearby islands rather than Ancorato, and hopefully the missing people would be there. Which one, was the question and lacking other good leads, they hit upon using Speak with Dead to interrogate the faceless stalkers. No one in the party could cast it and the clerics in Thincol’s Jewel were not high enough level. They decide to see if the faenare can provide the service, which they can. The flying elves also let the party know that they have seen longboats travelling from Ancorato to the larger island straight west of it, and had assumed it was explorers from Thincol’s Jewel. They seem disturbed at the idea of faceless stalkers. The nest-mother herself is powerful enough to cast Speak With Dead and has it available (I suspect the GM fudging a bit to keep the idiots she DMs for from getting stuck) accompanies the party back to the colony. A brief introduction to Ramona and the elf gets to work.
The party spends some time making a list of questions, trying to make them as useful as possible and as detailed as possible to avoid bad answers. The scene from the recent D&D movie was obviously referenced and riffed on a few times. The party gets some answers from ‘Carver’ but suspect he is not entirely truthful. They spring for a second casting, and the other faceless stalker is far more forthcoming and almost helpful. This is a bit suspicious, but it fits with the other hints they already have and the party finally seems to think they have to hurry. A brief discussion follows if they should take a boat across or try to go underwater in hopes that fewer things will be guarding the approach in that direction. Tibor argues strenuously for the latter, and the fact that they would be traveling faster that way wins out. Sylvia summons her underwater cavalry to carry herself, Vår and Bo-bi’s new cohort Josephine, while Bo-bi himself rides Aidu and Tibor swims under his own power.
Despite the DM’s previously stated dislike of random encounters, one shows up - a trio of sea drakes by the names of Johnny, Ronny, and Roy-Johnny. They take a look at Aidu and start huffing and puffing, or hissing and spitting and asking what a little lizard like him is doing as a pet. Aidu answers that it is Bo-bi who is the pet and what the heck are three dumb hicks like those three gonna do about it. Combat ensues and Bo-bi gets to charge one of them and nearly one-shot him, but get some serious hurt in return when it breathes on them. Vår kills it with a Snowball, then Tibor flurries, hits every time and crits once, avoids the attack, and flurries and crits on his next turn, easily killing it. The third sea drake had charged Bo-bi in retaliation but seeing two of his friends go down makes him rethink his life and he swims off, saying he doesn’t have time to finish the job because he just remembered something he had to do.
Bo-bi and Aidu are healed up and the trip continues. Not far on they see a couple of floating puddles of rancid fat that makes those weird blob-fish look handsome. The puddles swim towards the PCs, but they just outswim the things, not wanting to waste more time and resources.
The session ends there.
The DM privately bemoaned our lack of haste and did the whole “when I played in this game we did everything better” rant. I told her we have been playing with these people for at least 13 years, twenty or so in a couple of cases, and how could she have not known this would happen.
In my last post I said that the DM would have to let PCs die and it seems she listened to me. Here follows a tale of brutal death and mutilation.
The party comes ashore on the island and quickly hides in the jungle. Sylvia wildshapes to an eagle and scouts the island. Upon her return she informs the party of what she has seen on her brief jaunt. They discuss which of the notable elements - a ring of shipwrecks on the western beach, an observatory on the mount overlooking the island, and a ruined tower on the eastern shore - to investigate first. Sylvia votes for the shipwrecks on the grounds that it seems most like a camp, Tibor votes for the tower on the grounds that it is likely where the faceless stalkers would station a guard, which they could hopefully capture and question. Bo-bi doesn’t care which way they go so long as they do something other than stand around discussing what to do, and Vår votes for the tower because it’s to our left [referring to a long-standing tradition in our group that we always head left unless there are obvious reasons not to], so the tower it is.
Tibor ninjas his way around the outskirts of the tower and finds a ship’s boat on the shore and some signs of recent movement outside the tower. He waits outside while the rest of the party makes their unstealthy way to it, in case a runner from inside tries to warn people further inland. The tower proves to be empty of enemies. It’s full of trash and has nothing of interest aside from some interesting old, corroded metal maps from Azcan times, with later additions in an unknown tongue. Josephine casts Comprehend Languages and sees that the legend of the map indicates a new place, marked ‘home’ which sits inland, about half way between the eastern and western shores. The party thinks this seems like a good place to investigate next. The tower seems safe enough that they consider using it as a temporary base, until the table takes a bite out of Vår, nearly killing her. The mimic is a vicious opponent and it reduces Vår to negative hit points and kills Sylvia before it is itself killed. The party is shocked by this but Tibor rallies them and insists that they push on. Many of their fellows in Thincol’s Jewel have been killed already and the faceless stalkers are still out there, and they need to wipe out this threat. They wrap Sylvia’s body in blankets and bury it under the rubble in the tower for later retrieval. Lucius, Sylvia’s apprentice who reluctantly joined her for the expedition, now finds himself taking Sylvia’s place as arcane support and suddenly levels up a couple of times.
Then the party presses on to their next goal. The place marked ‘home’ turns out to be a small cave, from which the howls of a tortured rat drift. The party carefully enters and sees a large rat on the floor, writhing about as its body morphs and bulges and ebbs and flows. The cause of this strange affliction is soon apparent as two barely morphus creatures, which Josephine identifies as chaos beasts, attack. They land a single lucky blow on Tibor but he makes his save against the nastiness. He remains unscathed other than this. Bo-bi and Aidu are also hit but are not so lucky with their initial saves and start deteriorating. The beasts are killed off fairly quickly but Bo-bi and Aidu cannot make enough saves to shake off the affliction and are reduced to unstable, nearly mindless flesh lumps. Vår, Tibor, Josephine, and Lucius realize they cannot take the diminished duo with them on the mission and have any real hope of success, so Lucius remains behind to babysit them. Tibor, Vår and Josephine head on to the ring of shipwrecks.
Once there Tibor scouts around a bit. He finds the ring inhabited by what looks like wispy wood spirits. He overhears them speaking Azcan and talking worriedly about ‘spies’. Tibor returns to the others and reports his findings. He assumes the additions to the Azcan map found in the tower were made by the faceless stalkers and the ‘enemies’ noted there would be these woody beings. Under the assumption that “my enemy’s enemy is at least friendlier to me than they are to our common enemy and we might be able to work together”, the party approaches the woodies openly and calmly. They are nowhere to be seen as the party approaches so Vår calls out, in Azcan, that they come in peace and wish to talk.
The woodies barely show themselves, training bows at the party, and very suspiciously demand to know who they are. Some delicate negotiations take place and some good Diplomacy rolls by Vår assures the woodies that the party has peaceful intentions, wishing only to rescue their lost comrades and destroy the faceless stalkers. Josephine quietly informs the other two that these creatures are actually a form of construct, one that is brought to genuine life by the power of ioun stones. As a show of good will, Tibor gives up one of his ioun stones, the cherished mossy green one that gives him a bonus to Knowledge (history). The woodies are almost embarrassingly grateful to the Lifegiver, and promise to ally themselves with the party against the faceless stalkers. The party thanks them for this, and heads off to explore the rest of the island in an attempt to find the bastards. The woodies mention an area with will’o’wisps to the south, and the party puts that on the list. First they head to the old observatory, since it is closer and seems to them to be a likely place to be inhabited. On the way they are assaulted by variant wraiths that drain Charisma instead of Constitution …. against a party that currently consists of two Charisma-based classes out of a total of three people.
By the time the wraiths are defeated Vår and Josephine are sorely reduced but not to the point of uselessness. The session ends with the trio returning to the cave with Lucius and the Dumfounded Duo, and some serious discussion about how to proceed.
Well, that went about as expected once the GM stopped fudging to keep people alive. Mimics are perhaps the DM’s favorite monster in all of D&D so the fact that there was one here was a source of pure joy for her. There were accusations of DM b+#~&$+! to attack our weak points, and defensive protestations that she was merely running the AP as written. Maybe it’s the fact that I have taken little damage in the campaign so far, but I am fine with a little danger and PC death. If we are guaranteed to survive, any wins we have are not satisfying. Now there is a real chance we will fail and that makes the stakes seem more serious and any win we might pull off will feel far more earned.
The PCs, at least those still alive and able to think clearly, feel the press of time but realize they are almost certainly not in any state to take on a bunch of faceless stalkers and whatever their shadowy master might be. They head back to the ships boat they found on the coast by the ruined watchtower and head towards that isle of the faenare in hopes that they might be able to cure at least some of the afflictions. This takes the rest of the day, and when they arrive at dusk, are welcomed and given a place to sleep for the night. They have the requisite spells and components for Remove Curse, Raise Dead, and several Restorations, which makes me suspect the DM is being nice again. With everyone alive and in good shape again, Tibor sets a gruelling pace, pushing everyone to the brink of exhaustion. First they head back to the crazy island, at which point Vår wants to rest. Tibor says “No.” Then they check out the observatory that was listed on the map they found. The observatory was interesting, with a magical telescope and magical control panel. Tibor shoos everyone out and pushes on when it is clear that there are no enemies or friends here. Vår again wants to rest, and Tibor says “No!”
They push on to the columns that Sylvia noted on her flyover, located fairly far south west on the island. The columns are magical but no one can identify the effects here. They do manage to identify the hounds of Tindalos that appear and attack. The hounds get a good first round, even managing to hit Tibor, but they do not do much else as everyone either averts their eyes o Lord, or makes their save (barring one failed save from Tibor), or fails their save but the DM rolls poorly on their gaze damage. Yet again Vår asks to rest and Tibor says “NO!!”
Tibor pushes the party on. They head south to the marsh and see a bunch of will’o’wisps in the distance. No one wants to stick their hand in that particular blender and they assume that the faceless stalkers would not be there either, so they give it a miss.
The last thing they try is towards the giant bees they saw earlier that day. This proves fruitful when they find a clockwork bee that they can wind up and give commands. This, along with a successful Knowledge (history) indicates that there might be the ruins of a temple nearby. The PCs finally get to rest, and the next morning they command the clockwork contraption to lead them to the temple. Here they finally see something promising: a hidden, mostly submerged complex with armed guards. They are far enough away that they cannot see everything clearly, but it looks to be faceless stalkers. Here the PCs debate about what to do: do they call on the woodies for help, delaying any rescue action by the better part of another day, or do they charge in now?
That is a question for next time since the PCs had handily charged through or ignored everything the DM had prepared for the session in their quest to find the kidnapped colonists. If we waste too much time, the DM complains about that. If we actually try to focus on what we are supposed to, we are told we’re going too fast. Truly, the life of a player is one of never-ending criticism.
I want to say, in my defense as the GM, that my complaints is mostly due to my prepared work being useless for the session and causing me to wing it to some degree.
Some time is spent discussing whether or not the party has time to invite the woodies to the fight or if they should press on right now, concluding with “yes, we do have time”. Sylvia is sent to contact them since she can move fastest. The woodies are not familiar with her but she was given enough information to more or less prove her non-faceless stalker nature, and the woodies quickly make ready to fight. Fortunately the woodies do not get tired so they can hustle and be fresh for fight upon arrival, which ends up being at night.
The initial assault on the complex is cut-scened because of overwhelming force and surprise, and everyone enters the ruined temple. The woodies end up protecting the entrance, both to stop any reinforcements from coming from outside and to stop anyone escaping from this direction.
The PCs make their way down the stairs from the entrance hall and immediately face some people who look human and blame us for their kidnapping, and a destrachan. There is some discussion about the quality of the ‘ch’ in the monster. The DM wants it to be a hard ‘k’ sound, I lean towards a velar fricative, but despite our best efforts it ends up being destra-chan. The fight inflicts some damage and the stunning roar actually does stun a couple PCs but no one is in real danger. Of more concern is the nature of the opponents. Remembering the attack on Thincol’s Jewel, the PCs mostly assume that these are faceless stalkers, though Tibor has a nagging feeling that some of them might be dominated colonists. Some of the opposition turns to faceless stalkers upon being felled but some do not. Not wanting to accidentally kill more friends, the party starts dealing non-lethal damage and ties up unconscious ‘humans’.
Tibor then presses the party fast through the complex, ignoring anything that smacks of wasting time on looting or otherwise interesting things like reading or fiddling with the crafting stations. He is partially successful in this. A room with clockwork constructs standing inactive is ignored, and so is the room that appears to give power to the entire structure. Yes, the party might be able to turn things on and have a bunch of construct allies against the baddies, but these constructs might also turn out to be hostile, and we have no idea how much time turning things on would take, so Tibor insists that the party leaves things as they are. The first interesting thing they bother to interact with is a broken construct which they activate. It turns out to be a sentient cleric of Ka* the Preserver, but one that has been inactive for 4000 years and seems to have lost his clerical mojo. They are lacking a leg and Josephine stays behind to help repair them.
The party presses on and sees a broken vault with lots of shinies on the floor. For some reason no one wonders why it hasn’t been looted yet, but even so Tibor insists that they leave it and move on. Vår, who should have been called ‘Magpie’, is utterly incapable of not trying to loot something and casts Detect Magic and picks up some shiny magic pearls. This is obviously a trap and the party is subject to Murderous Command. Fortunately some people make their save, and those who do not make their save fail to do much damage. The party beats a hasty retreat, taking nothing with them. With some restraint, Tibor again reminds people that he said looting could wait until later, and everyone agrees again. This agreement lasts precisely until the next opportunity to loot, at which point Tibor gives up.
When investigating a room that turns out to be tombs of Ka’s clergy, the floor gives way and sends Vår and Tibor down into the flood room below, which is another tomb. Surprising exactly no one, there are undead down here: three of the sarcophagi open to reveal mummies. Tibor rolls his second natural 1 on a save this session, making it two of three saves rolled. Being paralyzed with fear at the mercy of mummies is not a fun prospect. Bo-bi and Aidu heroically leap down to save their frozen friends, and Bo-bi also fails the save. The GM is nice and declares that the mummies attack Aidu, who is the only active combatant. Aidu has a lot of attacks but DR 5/- reduces most of his damage to negligible amounts. Fortunately he survives being pummeled for three rounds until the paralysis wears off. At this point Vår shows off her new 4th level spell: Dimension Door. She grabs Bo-bi and Tibor and teleports up to Sylvia and his apprentice, while Aidu flies away. Since we do not hear any sounds of the mummies attempting to follow us, we decide to leave well enough alone and just ignore them. If we survive the rest of the dungeon and manage to save the colonists, we can come back and grant them rest. Until then they are not worth tangling with.
A crueler (i.e. more tactical) DM might have reasoned that the mummies would focus on taking out the helpless ones first before taking out the lone active opponent, trusting their DR to keep them standing while they do so. A kind, wonderful, very forgiving DM sighs and keeps the kid gloves on.
With the above-water bits of the dungeon cleared, we end the session.
*The original AP apparently had the construct be a cleric of some god that died in the years between Earthfall and the AP. This doesn’t work with the Azcan pantheon as established by the DM, so many jokes were made about the poor cleric’s spell subscription being canceled, them running on outdated software and in need of an update, needing to contact customer servie to reset their password and similar excuses for why they could not cast spells.
More seriously, it was explained that whatever magic had been stored in their mind had ‘leaked’ away over the years and Ka had not gotten any response from them for so long He wrote them off as dead. The poor construct cleric will need to pray and reconnect to their patron for a while before getting spells again.
Most of the session was spent on combat, so a very short update this time.
Before heading down into the water, the party asks the newly re-limbed Aoinse about the electricity room and the clockwork constructs. The reply is pretty much what Tibor expected: the constructs could be useful but the power would need to be turned on and repairing everything would take far longer than Tibor thinks is reasonable given the circumstances. Without any way to know how powerful a combatant Aoinse is without their spells, and to ease the DM’s burden of running many characters and monsters, Aoinse remains behind to try to repair and restore power to the temple.
In the water the party is almost immediately set upon by a bunch of skum, which are not particularly dangerous, even if they are tougher opposition than the skum they encountered earlier in the AP. The mummies that the party had previously tried to ignore enter the frey and attack both sides. They are pretty nasty, and their DR makes things difficult for the party, until Sylvia’s apprentice Lucius tries out his new feat and spell: Fireball modified by Steam Spell. The mummies all fail their saves and are easily finished off with a subsequent round of attacks.
Tibor again pushes the party to quickly clear rooms and ignore looting, until they come to another room with more skum, including one that the DM labeled as an herbalist on the VTT. Sylvia’s attempts to distract with shop talk as one herbalist to another fails, and combat is engaged. It was a slog of a fight, with Tibor missing a lot and movement being really slow and difficult for everyone but Tibor because no one else has a swim speed. Things got a lot better when Sylvia remembered she had the Aquatic Cavalry spell. The PCs are now far more mobile and Bo-bi able to charge with his lance, combat is swiftly ended.
Pressing on the party finds yet another room full of skum, but with everyone more mobile combat is fairly uneventful. Josephine exhausts her Wand of Cure Light Wounds and there are not many potions left from Sylvia’s once great stock of them. Hopefully the party will be able to find and free the missing colonists, and destroy the rest of the enemies here without needing too much more healing.
Once the skum are defeated the party clears out the rest of this floor, stealing a magic ring off the finger of a statue of Ka the Preserver. For once the rest of the party exhibits some reluctance to loot something, not wanting to incur the ire of an actual god. Tibor intones a holy prayer along the lines of “O great Father Earth, if you do not want me to loot this ring, give me a sign”. No signs are shown, and no divine wrath is evident when he gingerly slides the ring off the statue’s finger.
A statue of a hero beheading a giant snake is found and the party fails to easily remove the sword. Tibor, a bit testily, pushes the party on after a few tugs fail to free the sword, bulldozing over Vår’s timid attempts to try again. Heading downstairs into another part of the temple, the party is immediately set upon by horrible crusty monstrosities wearing scraps of fabric. Could these be the missing colonists?
Either way, the mutants instantly attack and despite their DR and decent HP, they are defeated. Our single Haste spell is used in the combat and Bo-bi takes a fair amount of damage, causing Vår to spend her last 3rd level slot on healing him.
The enemies are defeated and the session ends. Hopefully the next session will see the last of this temple.
The DM has expressed some annoyance at Tibor’s AC of “only on a 20” (which technically only applies to mooks) but agrees that he built into it at the expense of being less effective at dealing damage. Mediocre attack rolls and poor damage rolls this session did not help.
When the description of Saveth defeating Ydersius came up I was puzzled at the description, which did not fit with what I had told the players of the event when I ran Serpent’s Skull. Then I became depressed when I realized that was because no one remembered much of anything about that AP. It turns out that the DM remembered well and decided to keep this bit of the AP unchanged because it looked cool with the justification that just because someone put up a statue of an event doesn’t mean the event took place as depicted. So I’m mollified that someone remembered it, at least, and am now left to wonder at how the Azcans learned of Ydersius and his defeat by the Carnifex many thousand years before their rise. Perhaps they got some stories from serpentfolk and edited them for their own purposes.
