Episode 18

Occasionally you have new people to add, or older people leave and that is certainly something that has to be addressed by the table.  This week we had a guy that several of my players had met and a few had not.  He is an experienced player and is involved in Pathfinder Society, so I was not worried about him in regards to rules.  He was also in the right age range (aka: not a teenager), so it seemed like he would fit in well.  But its not just up to me.  We play at my, and my wife's, house but the game we play is everyone's.  Turns out it was not a big deal, everyone was okay with it, so that's nice.  What it did mean was that- since he will not be a regular- that I needed to have an NPC ready for him.  I had been trying to figure out how I was going to work an angle later in the game and this presented a great opportunity for me.  So he is playing I'Olethia, the Silver Dragon Paladin.... This ought to be good.

Episode 18:

The party spent a little time getting acclimated to the grove they were in, since I drew a map and had a few places they could nab some resources from it was a good opportunity.  Afterwards (they really didn't care that much about the grove, but hopefully that will change in time) they went to meet with Oberron again.  He introduced them to a new outsider who had joined them in the Twilight Kingdom, a Paladin named I'Oethia.  She had slipped through the rift on her own and found the rebellious dark fey and wanted to assist them in their struggle against tyranny and evil.

Oberron takes this opportunity to explain his plan.  If they use this time to attack Mal'Inias' supply points they will pull her forces from her castle to protect her supplies so that she can continue her assault against the light world.  Using this to their advantage they will pick Mal'Inia apart until she is left much less defended at her doorstep.  Once that happens the heroes will attack her fortress, cut out Mal'Inia's heart, put it in a Cold Iron box, and then take it across the rift and kill her.

The players agree to take a strike force up to the river supply point and batter their way into the complex and destroy the supplies.  The fight itself was around a CR 9 (the APL is 9 as well, since there are 6 level 8 players).  This was more of the same monsters they fought last week.  I really don't like to over commit to a single type of monster, but it seemed reasonable that the most common monster would be here.  There were a number of goblins, a couple of Satyrs, and 2 Ogres (these are modified Ogres... so they were slightly more challenging).  This was really the first fight were the players got to stretch their legs as 8th level characters, so they got to do some fun stuff.  The battle wrapped up fairly quickly and the players pulled back to get to the grove.

On their way back to the grove the party ran into a Juvenile Umbral Dragon.  Yeah, immediately after the last fight they ran into a CR11-12 encounter- I love my job.  The Dragon, Daranus, tracked the players by the smell of the silver dragon they had with them.  Up until this point I'Olethia had not mentioned that she was a Silver Dragon, and at this point she changed shape from human to dragon form and flew right into combat. 

This was a tough dragon, I maxed his HP, I buffed him for the fight, and he was prepared to do some damage.  Somewhere around the 2nd round Sam hit a critical on scorching ray.  I use the critical cards and the one he got was time vortex, which means that the Dragon disappeared for 4 rounds.  Now there was some debate as to what happened there.  Ultimately I decided that he was in an alternate timeline for 4 rounds, so he got to take some actions as well.  The party formed up around him, then Daranus used his first action to take a AoO and flew far enough away to slam every member of the party with his negative energy breath weapon.  50 points of damage and 2 negative levels later I managed to nearly drop Sam, but to no avail.  Mark my words, I am taking Sam out sometime...

So after another couple of rounds they manage to drop Daranus and make their way back to the Grove. They get patched up, the healers take care of their negative levels and they go to sleep out in the tent city.  That night, while they are sleeping, Mal'Inia sends a Nightmare to the PC's.

They awake at the foot of her courtroom, fully rested and ready for combat.  I then take an opportunity to let the 1st 4 rounds of combat run so the players can get an idea of what her tactics are.  This was actually for a couple of reasons.  Mal'Inia is going to be a very difficult fight, and my group has not done combat at this level very often, so I wanted them to have a chance to see what could happen.  I also wanted to see what they would do, Mal'Inia is smart and if she has to fight the PC's she want's to know how to deal with them.

I nailed Urz and Sam with baleful polymorph, I trapped Damone with black tentacles, and the rest of the party was very quickly going to be in bad shape.

At that point the party was woken up from their Nightmare and were given an Amulet to hold back Mal'Inia's ability to use divination to track them.  At this point we were getting late at night.  The party agreed that they would prepare for the next phase the following week, but now recognized that dispel magic and the ability to detect invisibility would become critical if they were to survive Mal'Inia.

Another good week in gaming, some quick thinking only a little cheating on my part made for some nicely challenging encounters- hopefully the players had a good time.

Thanks for reading!

-Ubercroz

Episode 17

This week I am beginning to lead my group on a little side jaunt.  Its been several sessions since we had a multi-night adventure so I had been working on something that I thought would be good.    I took some inspiration from Neil Spicer's Fellnight Queen Module.  I have not read his actual module, but I did read a review, and I read his proposal.  It certainly has my own twist on it, and I am using rules that don't exist... kinda.

Episode 17

The PC's took some time to prepare for the upcoming wedding of Duke Arlington and his new fiance.  They got in to some fancy clothes, haggled people down on prices and in general made sure that they were ready to go be guests at a royal wedding.

As they arrived it was obvious that something bad was going to happen, because I drew a battle map.  After the wedding as the reception was hitting a high point the windows broke open and inky black fog started pouring in.

As the fog rolled in dark grey skinned goblins and firey eyed satyrs with great axes began attacking the reception.  These were a racial template that I made called Dark Fey.  The main advantage they have is the can dimension step through the dark fog.  They are very mobile, though not particularly strong.  I gave the PC's control of the handful of guards in the room.  As more goblins filled the room a Dark Fey elf named Abalest stepped in and declared that his mistress Mal'Inia sent her greetings.  He then threw a swarm on the ground that immediately covered the Duke and poisoned him with an otherworldly source.

The Party fought off the goblins and then with the help of the High Priest of Tyr, Bertrand, that Typhus had been working with found that the source of the disease was a Fey Lord, in this case Mal'Inia.  Doing some research the party found Mal'Inia had been sealed into a pocket dimension by the Dukes family centuries ago.  Somehow her dimension had been breached and now she was preparing to wage war on the PC's dimension.

They headed to the Dukes estate and did some additional research, and during this time the hordes of Mal'Inia's Dark Fey had been attacking town along the northern mountains.  The point of the breach had been determined as being near the village of Ebonhon.  They also found that the only way to cure the Duke was to kill the Fey Lord who had infected him, and that you can't kill a Fey Lord in their own dimension.  Not knowing what else to do they decided to head to the rift and see if they could find a way to eliminate Mal'Inia.

The village was small, around the same size as Durrisburg- the first village they spent time in.  But the village had become occupied by the military.  There were wizards there holding back the fog and patrols trying to contain the Dark Fey from coming down the cliff and invading their dimension.

With the assistance of a local guide they made their way up the cliff avoiding the staging ground of the Dark fey army.  At the top of the cliff they found a a stone-henge like set of stones with 1 missing.  From the center there was a large dark rift.

Once they enetered the rift they saw a host of dark goblins, satyrs, lesser fey, Ogres, and various assortments of other monstrosities.  The PC's quickly slipped into the wilderness rather than facing the army head on.  As they passed through the forest they ran into a group of good dark fey who were fighting a rebellion against Mal'Inia and were taking to the encampment in the woods and to their leader, the Dark Unicorn Oberron.

Episode 16

Things have settled down a little for my group.  They have hit their stride in a number of ways, they know some NPC's and have relationships with them, they know the areas in Wisthaven and are developing a good reputation.  So tonight was following a little more in that theme.  Things will begin picking up again shortly in terms of pushing the party and I wanted to give them time to wrap a few things up and remind them that things are dangerous out there.

Episode 16:

At the end of the last adventure the party had just slain a powerful demon who had been brought into the world through a rift between Proveria and the Abyss.  Now they are still there standing in blood, rancid wine, and demon goo.  Chara- the Black Guard cleric- tells them that the rift is closed and gives them a stone that will indicate where rifts between dimensions are.  At this point they all head south back towards Sunlight Keep so they can tell Lord Argus what was happening up there.

On their way back Leanna, the Assassin, and Athis, the Graveknight, catch them on the road.  The party is not rested, low on spells, and in some cases well under 1/2 hitpoints.  Leanna laughs at them and begins to move forward saying that she needs to get rid of them so they stop interfering in her masters plans.  Nervously the party gets ready for a difficult battle.

As initiative turns, out pops Vlaad the anti-paladin Bounty hunter.  He shouts at Leanna to stop, he needs the party alive so he can collect the full price.  Over the next several initiatives the rest of his bounty hunter crew intercedes and tries to stop Athis and Leanna.  His crew consisted of an Elven Witch named Wrinn, an Orc Ranger named Gru'Utch, and a Human Monk named Giarra.

I thought that this would be an interesting turn of events.  I knew that if the party stayed they would get killed. I hoped that they would not stay.  But I wanted to do a few things here, I wanted to show the rest of the bounty hunters and let the party get a feel for what they were capable of.  I also wanted to show what each groups motivations were.  The bounty hunters are interested in the money and were willing to let the PC's get away so they can get another shot at them later.  Leanna and Athis are done messing around and now know where the party is and were taking steps to eliminate them.  I also found the idea that an Anti-Paladin coming to their rescue was a funny, especially an Anti-Paladin that has aims to take them out.

The party quickly realizes things are bad and decides to haste and high-tail it.  They manage to get away and get back to town where things are much calmer and the people around them are glad the Heroes are there.  Urz recieves a message from Ismana and from Duke Arlington.  Ismana says that she may have figured out how to make the dragon wings he left with her fly- but she needs something.  And the Duke has invited Urz to participate in a tournament of arms in a couple of days.

Urz read the word invitation and insisted this mean he could go and see the Duke immediately.  So he storms the castle where they don't want to let him in.  He tries to scale the walls and eventually is left sitting on the drawbridge until he is let in.  Several hours later Sam realized Urz was still there and gently convinced him to go back and train for the tournament only 2 days from then.

Urz had been trying to get an underground fighting ring going for a couple of sessions at this point, unfortunately he lacked the social skills to do anything but frighten people.  So I decided to do this to let him get the result he wanted.  The tournament was pretty simple, and it qualified him for the next round of more difficult fights.  I had several events they could compete in, and ultimately Urz did melee combat, unarmed combat, and the team did group tactics.

After a couple bouts they qualified for the next round of games and decided to go and see what Ismana wanted.  She said she needed a Bebelith's abdomen to harvest the silk, and with that she might be able to make Urzs' dragon wings fly.  The good news, she said, is that the fabric of reality is tearing so a Beblith has slipped through and taken up residence in some nearby ruins.

The party went in to the ruins the next day.  The ruins were in poor shape and a good amount of it had collapsed, but side tunnels were built to allow movement around the collapses.  Traps had been set up in the cave by a couple of tricky imps who had made a deal with the Bebelith to exchange fresh food for safety.

The party wound its way through the traps and had a difficult encounter with their first Huge size catagory monster.  It had reach on them and cleaved the hell out of them.  It was a difficult encounter, but not as hard as the demon the week before.  We wrapped up the fight and they found the imps secret lair in the back that had the collected treasure from the unfortunate souls who they had led to the Bebeliths lair.

The week again wrapped up nicely.

Until next time!

-Ubercroz

Episode 15

Another great week in gaming.  I have recently began running Pathfinder Society games as well, which for whatever reason I don't have a high comfort level with.  Its a mental block more than anything.  I don't feel like the NPC's are my NPC's, so I am hesitant to take liberty with them in how they act.  I have never really liked box text and I feel like I am forced to use it, and it doesn't come out naturally.

What I think I will be doing in the future is just getting a good idea for what the dialogue is, and wing it rather than read it, as long as I hit the big points it should be fine.  Regardless, we had another good session this week and as fast as we went last week we seemed to have slowed down slightly this week, which is fine we had fun.

Episode 15:

The party picked up back in the Dragon Cults lair.  After a little work they found his hoard of 35,000 copper pieces  (I love giving them copper pieces) a long with a bunch of other good stuff.  The town guard and the Paladins of Tyr were happy to see that this black mar in the city of Wisthaven had been erased.  So the party has once again endeared themselves to the townsfolk- though there is an angry dragon with no hoard somewhere out there.

Once the party headed back to the smoking hound they decided it was time to get back on track.  They took a couple of days to heal up and re-gear themselves.  During this time Lina got a note from Tian letting her know that their old friend Leanna had been asking for information about them.  Tian likes the party so gave them a heads-up but made sure they knew that he would still give Leanna information.... eventually.  Sam was with her and they also discovered that Leanna is now traveling with Athis, the Graveknight.

At the same time Typhus received a note from Xerxes, the head of the White Lodge (which is a guild of adventurers for hire) that let him know the bounty hunters hired by the Stoutfellow clan were spotted in town as well.  All that was going on while Sam was learning that the Travelers (the sorcerers who can shift between dimensions) are some how connected to Alanus, a being whose power once rivaled the gods'.

Taking all that in to account the party got together, shared their information, and poured their resources into.... throwing a party.

Yup they decided that with their recent fame and fortune they would garner some good will from the townsfolk by throwing a party in the city square.  I had no idea this was coming, but it was a great idea.  It really makes them popular, it got the Duke to come down and see them, it gave them a chance to try and spot the badguys that were looking for them, and Urz got drunk and got laid.  To be fair Damone got drunk and laid too.... By 3 girls and 1 guy... Damone has a freakishly high charisma score.

After they collected themselves and raked in some profit for the night they went to the Sunlight Keep.  This is where one of the Seals that Belfast (the main badguy if you still remember who he is) was after.  So they went there, found the place to be well guarded (and also found out some paladins have no love for inquisitors) and were asked to help with a problem.  You see there is a small town to the north of Sunlight Keep where no one has been heard from for days.  A scout ran up that way a few days ago and has not returned and the Paladin Lord Argus would like the party to look into it and make sure that everything was okay.

The party agreed and went up north to go figure out what the problem was.  From just outside the town they heard the sounds of battle and went to go see what was going on.  In the middle of the city center the Black Guard Cultists were fighting a number of demons in what appeared to be a deserted town.

This was around a CR8/9 encounter with 4 Dretches, 1 Nabasu, and the death cultists in the mix too.  This was not a tough fight the death cultists were helping (a Lvl 5 Cleric and 3 Lvl 4 warriors).  So a lot of the pressure was taken off of the party here.  They still got dinged up a little and 2 of the cultists died, but it set the stage.  Something was wrong in this town and there were demons afoot, and the Black Guard was there.

After the fight the party learns that the Black Guard is not all bad.  The cleric who is still left standing is LN and she is only interested in putting down demons.  She works for Belfast, and does not entirely trust the PC's, but if they are willing to help her end the Demon scourge in this town she will take their help while they offer it.

The party is then led to a winery, where it seems that the emanations of evil are coming from.  Inside is a Succubus and a Babau demon.  this is a pretty tough fight, no awful since there are 6 PC's and a cleric NPC, but difficult none-the-less.  The succubus is grappling people and draining levels, the Babau is smacking people with his long spear, but the party eventually brings them down with a couple of sneak attacks and cold iron.  They take a few minutes to rest and get some health back before heading down to take on the guy below.  The Black Guard, Charra, has explained that where an abyssal rift exists there is a source for that rift.  If they can eliminate that source the rift will vanish.  In the basement is that rift.

They head downstairs to face the CR11/12 demon of the homebrew variety.  This is a large sized demon that has an insect like visage.  It's basically a reskinned barbed devil, it has a grabby hand and a stabby hand.  It also lost most of its spell like abilities, but it gained the ability to summon a swarm of flies and it can flap its wings to spread a nauseating effect on any within 30' (DC24).

This was a very hard fight, the swarm was really messing up the party and this demon had HP and DR for days.  What made a big difference is that the Demon grabbed Urz with his pincer hand and then stabbed him with his stabby hand over and over.  Urz is now a 7th level barbarian 1/2 orc.  He has a sick amount of hp.  It took this demon (mind you barbed devil like in grappling and impaling) 4 rounds to get him to negative hp. Then Urz was still fighting.  Then Urz was healed so he had ANOTHER few rounds to get grabbed and stabed.  It took 6 rounds to get that barbarian unconcious, without that time the party would have died.

This may have realistically been too hard of an encounter for the group.  I was unsure, since they would have some additional help and it was a large group.  however, if I rolled well and they rolled average I would have wiped the party out.  Turns out no one died and everyone almost died, but it worked out.

This is where the night ended.  We had a party found out a lot of good information, learned about the tower, and killed a legitimately powerful demon.  All in all, a very good night.

Until Next Time!

-Ubercroz

Episode 14

Good stuff this week.  I had planned for the first half of this game to take all night.  I had planned for the second half to take another full night.  This was probably the best single night of the campaign so far, in terms of having fun.  There are times as a GM when you over prepare and you wonder why you spent so much time working on something the party never gets to, and then there are nights where you are under prepared and have to wing it.  This was a rare occasion where the party did the things I expected in roughly the way I planned and did all of it quickly and cleanly.  Really good night.

Episode 14:

The party began the night in the bandit fortress from the week before.  They quickly went through the fortress and looted everything they could.  Several scrolls of shield, mage armor, and protection from good as well as a +2 great sword and couple of decent suits of armor.  They also found a book inscribed in a language they could not make out, oddly they didn't even look into it.

So the party now heads back to Wisthaven, before they get back they have a pow-wow and decide to let Lina know that the cloak she is wearing does not make her invisible, even though she is convinced it does.  They cast remove curse on her and she gets a little red-cheaked about thinking she was wondering around invisible all the time.  That night Lina decided to cut Sam's hair (he is still a girl due to his robe).  Sam didn't know about this haircut until the morning when Lina presented him a hair bracelet with a gem she had stolen earlier.  Sam was a little put off, but he (she) understood and was prepared to blackmail Lina in short order.

Back in Town the party found out that Sam's nemesis, Eric Erinson, who Lina had paid some thieves guild information dealers to follow, had killed the people following him in a somewhat brutal fashion- and they have not found the entirety of the slain men.  Tian Primrose (the guy she paid) was not very happy with the situation.

Typhus looked in on the bandit they sent back to town and were pleased to hear that he had NOT escaped and he was about to be tried.  Typhus wrote a letter explaining what the bandit had done and that he was guilty.  Typhus went to the Bertrand the High Priest of Tyr afterwards and gave him the lowdown of their activities.

At this point Sam decided to blackmail Lina, he had seen her steal a gem from the party earlier and promised that he "Wouldn't tell Typhus" if she helped him check out the mansion that his robes personality, Minya, wanted to get in their to lift her curse.  So Lina and Sam head to the mansion.  Once inside the walls bleed, Minya screams, and they are hit by a fear affect and run away.  This mansion is filled with haunts.  Sam decided to let the rest of the party know why he has turned in to a girl and that he needs to get in there to release Minya from her curse.

The party travels through the Mansion and they see haunts that drain their strength, dexterity, and constitution and also explain the story of how Caris Balarous sacrificed his student Minya so that he could gain a powerful cloak.  He then dominated her personality with wards and used his newfound power to become a successful adventurer that eventually led his family to become more rich and more powerful.  At the end of the Mansion they fought the ghost of Caris- a 9th level wizard.  He was dimensional stepping around dropping fireballs and enervation's on people (sapped 4 levels from Sam) and eventually was smothered by the robe of Minya.  At this point it is important to note that Sam had mentioned in jest earlier that he "always wore his sexy underwear".  So when he (she) took off her robe, he was in sexy underwear.  Once the Caris was destroyed Sam reverted to his masculine ways... still in sexy underwear.

After this the party had to rest about 5 days to regain their strength.  Damone put this time to good use by finding out some information on the Cult that was in the "Bottoms" of Wisthaven.  They knew that they were after a cult and decided to pull in some favors from the Paladins of Tyr and the Wisthaven guard to cause a distraction so they could get in close to the shrine of this cult and find out what was going on.  Outside the Shrine they had a pretty easy fight and blasted through.  Inside they shrine they fought a Dragon Disciple who was fighter/sorceror based.  I designed this gal with high AC and mean natural attacks.  With all the bonuses she averaged about 45 damage per round if she hit with every attack.

It turns out that this was a cult to a Blue Dragon who goes by the name Que'etzl, and this Dragon Disciple was his head enforcer.  All the clerics there were Aasimar, I liked it because they are so charismatic and it plays against type.  But lets be honest if a few Aasimar chicks asked you to worship a dragon in some low cut clerical robes you might agree too.  The party found a secret door that led into the sewers and wound its way through a few traps and fed into a lair where Que'etzl's pet lived.  His pet is a CR10 blue dragon chimera.

This ended up not being a very long fight, but it dropped Sam to -13 (16 con) and nearly dropped 2 more.  This Chimera was a substitution I made earlier in case the party bit on this hook too early.  Originally they were going to fight the Adult Blue Dragon down there, but I changed it up earlier because I could feel the hints of them going this way last week.

So now the party is standing in the bottom of the cultist lair after killing the chimera and soon their legend will spread.  Turns out blue dragons are pretty adept at hearing legends and rumors.  So now the Heroes of Pastan may have to deal with an angry blue dragon in the not too distant future.... a dragon villain, man that should be good.

Until Next Time!

-Ubercroz