[Pathfinder Game] Impure Evil: Campaign Log

[Avoraciopoctules]

This is a Pathfinder game, where flare22 is acting as MC and a few different people are dropping in and out as players. In addition to the Pathfinder rules (plus a couple feats and classes from 3.5 splatbooks), we are using a variant of the existing Golarion setting, focusing on Isger. In this alternative timeline, the goblinoids and cults of Urgathoa grew in power to the point that they were a clear and severe threat to the people of Isger, and the puppet government controlled by Cheliax was incapable of responding effectively.

But then a new faction presented itself. A seemingly new church that revered Pharasma as a force of purification and destroyer of undead, they drove back the threats menacing the nation, and soon successfully broke Isger free of Chelish dominance through a combination of force of arms and not causing enough interference with the flow of trade to Cheliax to justify an expensive re-invasion. This church of purity took control of the nation on a tide of general acclaim, centered on the capital of Elidir.

Based in Elidir, the new church is trying to steer Isger into becoming a mono-religious caste system. The capital has shown rapid change, which is gradually bleeding into the surrounding countryside. It has also invested heavily in civic infrastructure and abolished serfdom, leading to increased power and influence for the lower classes. Power is less centralized, but overall productivity has improved. The goblins and undeath-cults have receded to a minor nuisance. However, it is likely the redistributions of power have caused some lingering resentment at several levels of society.

An interesting contrast with more mainstream interpretations of Pharasma's faith, the church of purification is fairly passive-aggressive when it comes to reducing the influence of most other faiths. They don't want to be viewed as religious tyrants, but also refuse to give up power over state policy. Overall, however, Pharasma's clergy have been successful in earning the support of most of the populace.

Especially in the capital, the church influences the structure of society dramatically. Each cleric chooses to use positive or negative energy primarily. This choice determines their role in the caste system. The life-channelers are the face of the faith, traveling around to help and heal those that offer praise and tribute to their god. The death-channelers stay closeted in the holy city, planning strategy and using their powers to expunge impure elements from the water supply. And yes, this does sound like the makings for something nefarious a couple plot-hook reveals from now.

In Elidir, the highest castes of Isger's new theocracy stay closeted so they never have to expose themselves to death or other unclean things. However, when they age to the point that death draws near, the church wants them to leave so they don't contaminate the enclave with their passing. This means that old-aged mid-to-high level clerics periodically exit the most exclusive district of the city in great pomp and ceremony and are exposed to a broad spectrum of life they have never encountered before, most of which involves people trying to use them to their own advantage.

The starting plot hook for this campaign is that a particularly powerful cleric is going to be exiting seclusion soon, and pilgrims are converging on the city to ask him for favors when he does. The protagonists are a motley assortment of adventurers who have developed an interest in something this priest can provide them, most likely some kind of magical aid such as healing or divination.
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SESSION 1:
The game begins with 2 PCs en route to Elidir. This session started pretty spontaneously, 3 people being unable to make it and one developing an interest on the spot even though they'd never played D&D before. (I don't know the guy personally, but he made a few references that made it pretty clear he had read D&D webcomics before. When I told him we were going to play an incredibly sketchy game about rolling dice and stabbing imaginary orcs in the face to take their loot, he was definitely interested.)

After some casual discussion, the new player decides to go with a Human Rogue. He is sort of statted up as we go, but the general idea is a hit and run specialist with two shortswords, a crossbow, and a web of criminal contacts that make it simple to get in contact with the local underworld boss. Flare22 is making the character, but I recommend that we give him the Shadow Blade feat from ToB to up his damage a little, plus a 2nd-level wand that turns out to be Levitate. This fellow, named Nero, is a thief-turned-adventurer from Cheliax. He lost an eye in an old job that went sour, and he'd like to regenerate it back.

Rock has been briefly mentioned in an earlier thread, and I've got a substantial backstory half-written in the Mythweavers page, but the general idea is that it's an earth elemental that made a foolish bargain. Smarter, but having suffered a terrible loss, it traveled one-way to the material plane in the hopes of amassing wealth and knowledge it could parley into power and revenge when it returns to its home plane. It would like to discover a 2-way portal that would let it come and go from the Plane of Earth, having established a network of contacts that would be interested in participating in interplanar trade. However, finding good unclaimed portals involves luck and/or powerful divination magic. The priest should be able to help with the latter.

After a bit of chatter, it is determined that, Nero (prior to losing the eye) teamed up with Rock when he had a sack of stolen rubies he wanted to pawn. Rock was like “Hey, stranger who just jumped out of a window! You looking for a seedy jeweler? I know plenty of disreputable jewelers. I can help you sell that for a cut.” And then they helped each other out in a variety of misadventures, which have culminated in Nero getting a rather serious injury. Fortunately for him, there's word that a powerful priest might be dispensing free miracles in Elidir soon.

And it turns out this isn't just any priest. This fellow was, until recently, the head of the entire theocracy. Tiberius was a dwarf in a position that had previously only been held by humans. His longer life allowed him to achieve much more than many of his predecessors. Tiberius is a reformer, softening some church codes to the point that now people who cast Contagion are merely executed themselves, rather than Pharasma's church putting their three closest friends to a gruesome end as well. Was distrusted initially for being a nonhuman, but his long life of competency earned some respect.

The political situation more coherently established, we focus in on the PCs, who have arrived outside Elidir. The city is well-fortified, but not on high alert. Ahead, the main gate is clogged with traffic as City Entrance Control makes sure nobody goes through with plague or undead “stuff”. Apparently there are a few elemental creatures in the city already, but Rock definitely draws attention. Nero winces as he realizes just how unsubtle the shambling mudman makes the party, but Rock is like, "dude, this just means they're too busy to pay attention to your sneaking".

We proceed into line, and soon after decide this whole "waiting politely" thing is for the birds. We tactfully attempt to bribe the guards to facilitate a quicker transition, and double down when they talk about the expensive complexities of making sure earth elementals are properly "pure". This works reasonably well, especially when we make it clear that we are adventurers with no real ulterior agenda... for now.

According to our permits, we are “Honorary 1st tier”, with an expiration date 20 days from the present. Until then, we count as 1 caste over noncitizens, and have access to the outer city in addition to the unofficial slums outside. We can take adventurer's contracts, but (basically) not permanent jobs. 2nd tier citizens would be long-term residents who can own property and enter the second layer of city, 3rd are high ranking nobles, and I assume 4th is priests or something?

Once in the city, we start looking for secure lodgings and networks of useful contacts. The guards recommend a "Salt Flats Inn" as a good place for adventurers, and the party resolves to meet there after making the rounds of the outer city.

Nero attempts to make contact with local organized crime, and is eventually successful. There's some kind of mafia, and upon establishing that he is a roguish sort of fellow, he is strongly encouraged to visit the don and kiss the ring. Once there, the Don has no opinion on the pope himself, but the increased presence of adventurers is seen as both opportunity and source of risk. Nero is encouraged to share information of value, and given leave to perform minor crimes within Elidir as long as he properly respects the people "in charge".

Rock talks to local metalworkers and mining interests. He's helped out such businesses in Isger in the past, and they probably know him by reputation. Apparently, business is going fine, and they don't need help for now. Isger has no substantial reserves of minerals beyond decent-quality stone and coal.

We drop by the Salt Flats Inn. It is Geographically stable, and designed to be readily fortified against assault or siege from the outside. Reinforced windows and ram-proofed door, wood alchemically treated against fire. The salt mephit Noel Terrio is the proprietor, a pleasant enough person. He greets Nero as a guest of the Don, and Rock as a fellow Earth elemental. 2 gold a week for rooms, with a deposit of 10 we'll get the extra back from if we don't break anything.

The campaign takes a break.

[Avoraciopoctules]

SESSION 2:

The day dawns upon the PCs heading out of the Salt Flats Inn and looking for work. It's 9 days till Tiberius leaves the cloister, so we need to figure out who we can stab in the face while we wait.

There's a small base for the Pathfinder's Guild, which the party checks out. Nothing productive comes out of it, it's more of an embassy than anything else.

Continuing to roam, the party sees a big procession that looks a little fancier than usual. We stop to look, and shortly thereafter a bunch of squealing dire rats burst out of alleys nearby and scatter the crowds. Most are yelling about "impure monsters" and "dread plagues."

Not the sort of people to give up a perfectly decent heropportunity, the party leaps into action. I narrate a gratuitous wrestling move or too as Rock unleashes his bland natural weapon attent on the rodent scourge. Midway through the fight, a Ratcatcher's Guild member comes in to help, a lizardfolk with javelins and leather armor. As it turns out, javelin is pretty devastating, a magical weapon enchanted to return to him.

The remaining rats are mopped up quite easily, and the lizardman introduces himself as "Finder Keeper" using a little chalkboard. Apparently ratcatchers are a holy order here, and he's taken a vow of silence or something. (update: they have more status after the theocratic revolution, and they're now in charge of controlling vermin and disease in general.) I guess swamp races are a little better suited to sewer work? Or maybe this guy's just unusual.

In any case, Finder Keeper uses some magic to clean the rat gore off the PCs and apologizes for the trouble. The rat attack came from a nest below that he just flushed out. We assist in burning the monster carcasses, but it looks like the fancy procession is over. A few people are still around.

The biggest standout is an expensive-looking yellow and black palanquin. Rock thinks this is a major bad sign, since those colors are used by the church of Calistria. Waspinators are all about getting elaborate revenge for minor slights, yo. Gotta watch out.

One of the burly half-orc bearers asks the party to come talk with their boss, who is apparently very impressed by the party's display of cruelty to animals. We figure that we might as well. In a pleasant surprise, it looks like we're actually dealing with a Chelish noble. Sepia Motorancy is a refined lady with lots of expensive jewelry (some magical, Mister Cavern gleefully assures us) and absolutely no hesitation with initating a dialogue with dangerous and unrefined adventurers. People get the feeling they aren't dealing with a fool here, and the party listens to her pitch cautiously.

So Sepia is a fairly big deal back in Cheliax. However, her husband was assassinated by a faction that has more influence, especially with the Asmodean church. No rez 4 U. She pulled strings to get attached to a diplomatic envoy, and is trying to sneak her husband's body into Isger to get him resurrected. Needs to keep it secret to avoid getting interference and further offending the home clergy. Has had a wizard protect her husband's body from scrying.

So far, so good, but now the complications come in. Going even farther in the name of stealth, she took a remote route to Isger. Her relatively small caravan was raided, and the sarcophagus with her husband's body was stolen en route. The attackers were a team of what sounds like 9 or so trained ninjas. Dressed all in black, crazy flips, sneaky in spite of the first 2, the whole 9 yards. And of course, the precautions she took ahead of time means that she can't scry on body or sarcophagus now.

The party could be a useful tool for getting her MacGuffin back. We express interest, and ask for more details. The attack turns out to be less spectacular than we initially imagined. While most of the group was sleeping at night, the ninjas snuck up and ambushed the guards. They made off with most of the travelling supplies and killed the then-current pallbearers.

We aren't just supposed to get the body, we also need to get the sarcophagus. It is onyx lined with gold, and "ruby eyes". A decoration on the facing or something? In any case, onyx mean we might be being duped into grabbed an evil necromancy coffin. The body itself, which we are to bring back unharmed, should have a wedding ring on the right hand, signet ring on left

We can keep everything else, including those of her supplies and horses that were taken.

Rock decides to offer his services at a fairly low price compared to his usual. This is a calculated gamble, intended to make him look more compelling as an adventurer-for-hire on future occasions. He does want to be reimbursed for expenses, but is just asking for a daily 50 GP after that. Nero listens to his reasoning, and then goes with the same thing. Finder Keeper elects to go with something similar (not perfectly sure what his aim is here), but wants some of his pay to go to the guild.

We do a little bit of shopping and then head out of the city toward the site of the ambush. We enter a farming region, which Rock notes as having impressive irrigation and a variety of crops that wouldn't normally grow in the region. Farmers seem wealthier than normal.

MC gives a little more political exposition. Feudalism is on the decline, mostly private farmers since the church abolished serfdom. More cash-cropping and business-minded farmers, irritating nobles but strengthening the overall economy.

Continuing onwards, we track the raiders into progressively swampier terrain. At one point, we find a goblin dead from plague in a shallow grave. A marked grave in the swamp, and the body is only a few days old. Interesting, compared with what we've heard about the culture of the now infrequently-seen goblinoids of Isger.

Eventually, following the trail into the night, we find a dry high-rise with the remnants of a camp. Around 12 hours old. We make camp without fires, and Rock keeps watch. We are interrupted before too long by a group of humanoids, and decide to ambush them. Rock will be the distraction, pretending to be a wild earth elemental hungry for their delicious metal weapons.

He shows up and is all "Graaaah! Rock hungers for succulent irons! Who you be, meat thing?" The (it turns out) hobgoblin warriors are very weirded out, but soon decide to just kill the mudman. This turns out to be pretty difficult, especially with sneak attack arrows picking them off. Once they realize they are out of their league, the survivors panick and flee. With a combination of burrowing past obstacles and shooting lots of projectiles, we manage to take out the runners and keep most or all (don't remember if we lost one or two out of the lot, but I don't think so. It was only like half a dozen, and they had good CON) of the hobgoblins from bleeding out.

The defeated warriors wake up tied up and disarmed, with a decidedly more urbane elemental ready to interrogate them. "Grah! I say, Grah! Are you quite comfortable, gents? My esteemed associate and I have some questions for you."

We confirm that they are working for a larger organization, and that they have seen this sarcophagus we're looking for. The hobgoblins seem reassured that we didn't kill them out of hand and aren't working for the government, and after some diplomacy we persuade them to take us to their leader at their main military camp. We'll let them all go free, and they can fill us full of arrows later if we can't make a deal.

The boss, Chief Coyote, is surprisingly reasonable. A well-equipped bugbear (we think he might be a cleric) who represents a unified goblinoid society, they are willing to deal with independant freelancers. He admits to possessing what the party seeks, and is willing to make a trade if the party also accept Marks of Justice keeping them from disclosing the existance of a major goblinoid state to the authorities.

We see some funny business with restricted areas where everyone looks really sick, but decide they are mostly none of our concern. Unless we can make a profit out of it, of course. After a little haggling, Rock gives Coyote some restorative wands and gets the body and fancy coffin. We note that the rubies and rings are missing. He curses, launches a search, and allegedly disciplines some soldiers for unauthorized looting. We get all the stuff together eventually, and leave on vaguely conciliatory terms. Rock is quite pleased they refrained from finishing off any hobgoblins earlier.

We make vague overtures about acquiring medical supplies for the sick goblinoids, and Coyote promises to reward us handsomely if we actually follow through.

We return back to Sepia, present the objects of our quest, and get reimbursed. So basically, I don't have to bother amending potion and wand uses, it's just the same as when the adventure started. Plus around 300 GP apiece.

We are vague about what exactly we did, but our employer is pleased with our performance and seems likely to consider our services in the future. Once again, we make overtures about something we could do to help. In this case, she's looking for an opportunity to make contact with former boss-theocrat Tiberius. If we are in a position to arrange an introduction, it would be appreciated.

The party heads back to their base of operations, and Party Time commences.

[Avoraciopoctules]

SESSION 3:

Both players from last time show up, and both decide to switch PCs. Giles Wodeword is another rogue, built for a different combat style than Nero. Vahishta Asha is a Fire Nymph, a 3rd party monster with at-will fire spells and cold vulnerability. Great at level 5, won't scale well. Sepia Motorancy has a new job, but our old PCs are too busy setting up a profitable smuggling run that will bring medicinal supplies to the ailing goblin bandits.

Giles Wodeword the dual-wielding rogue is a local from the thieve's guild Nero gave a referral to. Vahishta Asha just happened to be at the Salt Flats Inn when Rock asked her as a fellow elemental to help with "some kind of pallbearer stuff, I dunno".

This is the day that Tiberius leaves the inner cloister and officially becomes a normal citizen. Sepia is doing the PCs a favor by letting them carry in the coffin, since that duty supercedes their permits and allows them into the inner city. We will go to the main cathedral and join the waiting crowd as part of the Motorancy party. The cathedral is big, sort of like a cross between the vatican and cambridge college, a cloister of enclosed buildings. The huge crowd is clustered outside the massive gates that lead into the complex.

The streets outside are barred and guarded for the procession. PCs are pallbearers, with the coffin right behind Sepia's palanquin. On the way in, guards stop the group and ask them to hand over weapons. Vahishta smiles and hands over the bow and knife she was carrying. Sepia's Orcs grudgingly surrender greatswords. MC goads with “Are you sure you don't want to smuggle weapons in, players?”, Giles tries sneaking in a shortsword. Ends up being 27 (17) versus 26 (20), and he narrowly avoids getting stopped. Vahishta is just "I'm sure I'll be perfectly safe without weapons. *Smile* After all, just look at all these big strong (combustible) guards!"

We join the crowd. Once in, MC lures Giles into pickpocketing. Roll is more successful, yielding 2000 GP worth of platinum jewelry with no alarm raised. Then we wait until Tiberius emerges.

As we were told before, he's a Dwarf. We weren't told he'd be bald with a massive purple beard, wearing black and yellow pharasman priest vestments. Wow, sounds kinda garish. I guess NecroPope can wear what he wants. Walking with cane and wearing silver holy symbols + nice jewelry. Carrying a briefcase with pharasma's symbol and wearing spectacles. (raises hand to eyes adjusting to sun) Met by 4 well-armed guards, who walk with him while others keep the crowd from pressing in.

Sepia's palanquin is near the front of the crowd, and she is visible peering out of it. Church guards speak through bullhorn, tell crowd to clear a path for holy lord Tiberius. With a bit of gentle shoving with their spearbutts, they open a path.

Something soft lands with a splat in the crowd, emanating magical darkness. Both PCs make a Will save and see through the darkness, but the orcs and crowd cannot see. Vahishta's first action is to direct the orcs toward the gate they came out, ensuring the escape of the adventurer's patron. She casts produce flame on both hands to keep people from swarming toward her by brandishing

“Is something on fire? Oh yes. Is the riot getting worse? Yes it is.”

Nefarious noises come from the center of the commotion. Someone totally nefarious-looking with a big scythe starts ranting about how Urgathoa's time has come and Pharasma's church will be destroyed. Giles spots some creepy dude with big bloody claws, tells Vahishta and she casts a flaming sphere on him. More come out, and Giles switches to leading the palanquin's guards, who are strong enough to shove people out off the way.

As the claw guy comes out of the fire sphere, Vahishta recognizes it as some kind of undead “cadaver”. She's like, well, great, it's a good thing I'm all about burning jerks to ash. “May the light of the dawnflower destroy the impure ones, fuck yeah!”

Tiberius winks and throws out a wave of terrifying death magic that seems to drive scythe guys' homies to attack him. Scythe guy rebukes them back under control, and then orders them to pull out a scroll and teleport away. Then Vahishta lobs in a bunch of magical fire to inconvenience them. Giles sneak-attacks the clawguy lieutenant that is ordering around the others, gets a decently damaging hit in that draws the cadaver's full attention. “Hah, we have him distracted! Smite him, Tiberius!” There's some confusion, and Mister EvilProphecy may have succeeded in escaping, I don't remember

The party's intervention has averted what would have otherwise been a slaughter, and new guards are streaming in, guys wearing white and gold instead of black and gold. The remaining bad guys are dispatched and the guard captain wants to talk to the PCs.

Adrian Leathers, who is actually wearing chainmail, is the most senior officer on the scene. He'll give us an exemption from the quarantine (and also presumably rampant abuse of fire magic within city limits + weapon smuggling), if we go talk to a fellow at a certain address confidentially and consider taking a quest. AND keep Sepia out of the loop. He doesn't want our current employer involved. We give vague assent.

Having cleared our names, we follow after the orcs we sent away, escort Sepia and the coffin back to her hotel and clean up at the Salt Flats Inn, tell associates which door to break down if we don't report back in time. Then it's time to go Go GO!

A city native, Giles realizes that our destination is the house of a bishop, senior member in the Order of the Spire. Sebastian, the elderly servant or butler or something, leads party into a waiting room until the Master or his Guest come to meet us.

A short gnome wearing fancy robes comes down with what look like possible adventurers, a basher, archer, and mage. Then he leads us up for an audience. There's a guy in bathrobe reading in front of a fireplace. Tiberius and guards as well, asking “are these the new candidates”.

Apparently, Tiberious has asked some of his own contacts to locate trustworthy adventurers, and stabbing murderzombies in the face to protect a crowd made us pretty strong choices for Adrian.

He recognizes the party, is a little surprised to see us, and asks what was up back there. We're like, shrug, if we see an opportunity to fight EvilFiends why not take it. No real agenda, and he seems to take this at face value.

We get a little exposition. Apparently Urgathoa's repressed Isger cult is operating in cells, but this is the first to infiltrate and trouble Elidir directly. Tiberius has Ideas for dealing with the threat the cult of Death and Fatness presents, but is having difficulty getting the Order of the Spire to go along with them. Cloister is going to try ignoring him as soon as it can, electing a new leader. His greatest of his dwindling power is who he picks as Favorati, his designated successor. So, in short, Tiberius has things to do. He isn't peacefully retiring, and isn't going to around doing nice things for random adventurers for free. He doesn't have time to grant many favors and needs to work discretely.

For now, Tiberius simply wants information. If we have anything we can tell him about a new goblin threat or local cultists, he will offer treasure or favors in trade. In particular, Tiberius wants the names of leaders or knocked out enemies he can then interrogate personally. We are one of several parties independently working for him. This means that we can pick and choose assignments as they come up, and also that there is a chance other adventurers will independently verify our work.

The party agrees to do some investigating, but says nothing about any goblins. Giles hits up his thieves guild contacts and finds out about a fence who finally managed to sell a Robe of Bones that had been collecting dust in their stores for a long time. Vahishta talks to the church of Sarenrae, and they don't know much. She sticks around to help their aid work, and tags in Yethok Issitus to accompany Giles. Yethok is a recent immigrant from the Shadow Plane with a bit of an accent. He has an extraordinary talent for violence, and unlike Vahishta he can sort of do "subtle" stuff.

Giles leads the way to the fence, who asks for 2000 GP for info on the necromancer he sold the robe to. Giles agonizes over this price, and Yethok eggs him on, because he certainly isn't handing someone dozens of pounds of gold for a hint that maybe is true and maybe has something to do with the job. They start thinking about smashing things in the store until the fence is more cooperative. Both PCs roll 1 on INT checks, and figure this guy selling adventurers magic tools is completely harmless. But Giles is like, wait, I'll get the guild mad at me! He resolves to put the bribe in his reimbursement bill and forks over all 2000 GP. We are directed toward a bookstore whose owner apparently is a practicing necromancer who stays strictly legal, with no undead or disease magic within city limits.

Yethok goes in, and engages her in conversation. He throws a fair amount of money around, picking up several obscure works on planar metaphysics and treating unusual diseases. He manages to draw the proprietor into a discussion of Shadow ecology and planar metaphysics while Giles sneaks in and starts snooping.

He finds lots of potions in the back rooms of book store, including a few sunning on the windowsill. He knocks one over on the way in. After looking around some more, he finds a hidden door concealing secret stairs down in the chimney. The secret basement room below is clean, but filled with purple runes. Some kind of massive heartlike organ floats in a rune circle, beating loudly.

Of course, this is around the same time that the highly potent acid Giles knocked over burns its way through the ceiling and starts dripping onto books in the room where Yethok is chatting up the necromancer. She is alarmed and whirls to check on her potions, while simultaneously trying to find a way to politely brush off the well-armed adventurer who is so enthusiastically offering to help out.

Giles hears the necromancer's shrieks of fury when she discovers someone has messed with her potions and opened her secret door, but he is unable to escape before she catches him. It looks like we might be in for a nasty boss fight... but then Yethok thinks fast. “Sorry, is this even the right cult's safehouse? You FOOL, we've gotten the directions wrong again. Terribly sorry about the confusion, miss.” He fast-talks as hard as he can. You know that long conversation about shadow physics? See, Yethok and his buddy are on the run from a Grand Tormentor of Shadow, a horrifyingly powerful outsider worshiped as a god by the Isgerian goblins. His name is SlaughterMaster Tzrg, and an avatar is hunting the PCs down right now. If she isn't a front for Hruggek's Ninja Temple or someplace else with a line to Jangling Hiter, she is an innocent bystander, and the party needs to get away from her right now. For her own safety, you see. Goodbye!

We leave the necromancer stammering in disbelief long enough to get out of line of sight, then Yethok turns to his companion. "Okay, Giles, I have a Plan. I need you to get the cops to raid this place, and I'll keep her distracted until then. I just need a few essentials, and I should be able to grab them before she finishes packing for her escape or sending a pack of shadows after us. Then she'll be distracted, all right."

Quickly, Yethok gathers his essentials. Some jugs of blood from a butcher. Metal chains. A potion of Disguise Self, and a few other trivialities. And soon enough, a horrifying figure stomps up to the bookstore and lets out a bloodcurdling wail of fury and hate. A twisted cross between bugbear and fiend, Slaughtermaster Tzrg is clothed in bronze chains that drip scarlet blood onto the cobblestones. His eyes glow with baleful light.

"I can TASTE your ESSENCE mortals. NOW, at LAST, sweet VENGEANCE will be MINE! HAHAHAHAAHAA! BURN!" He raises a foot and stomps upon the ground, sending a wave of very real magical fire washing over the ground. [Level 3 Desert Wind maneuver, unarmed strike as delivery mechanism] Then he smashes open the bookstore's door. "YOU! Woman, where ARE they! I can FEEL that those adventurers passed through HERE! DARE you conceal the TRUTH from SLAUGHTERMASTER TZRG! RAAA!" Flabbergasted, the woman points. Yethok stalks off in the direction indicated, periodically using a new maneuver to fake a monster power as he goes.

The city guard show up shortly thereafter, and Giles is along for the ride. He makes sure that Adrian will have access to the results of the raid, and the party calls it a successful job. Tiberius agrees, though he is somewhat surprised by the party's unconventional methods. Unfortunately, the necromancer escaped, but he still owes both of us a favor for what the guards did manage to dig up. We call it a success, and the party returns to the Salt Flats in for Party Time.

[Avoraciopoctules]

SESSION 4:

This game, on the 17th of May, involves the PCs being offered several different options for the mission they take on. The remaining jobs will be tackled by different adventurers that Tiberius is working with. We are given this info before play starts. The smuggling expedition that brings medical supplies to the ailing goblinoid raiders went off without a hitch after Nero and Rock paid the don to keep anyone from disturbing their warehouse pickup. This means a significant influx of jade and other precious minerals from the goblin mines, which are apparently much more productive than Isger's human-operated mines.

So anyways, recovering from the aftermath of Party Time, the PCs wake up in the relatively safe and mob-protected Salt Flats Inn. A letter with Pharasma's seal stamped on it in blue has been slipped under the door where Rock and Giles have been resting. Though both are fairly perceptive individuals, neither saw it coming. Rock stands, sighs, and announces that on general principle, he will try to poke it open with a 10-foot pole and read from a distance.

He fails, with a total of 6. Giles tries to take over, since he actually has a DEX bonus. He rolls a 2. We both fail to move it. “Or maybe you should check for traps! Hahaha.” We decide to cut the comedy of errors short and open it. Looks like a coin with an eagle on it and a note from Tiberius saying he has work for us, and that if we are interested to RSVP with the included Feather Token (messenger). The party is like, hey, a job that preemptively throws magic loot at the PCs just to save time? Hell yeah. Message sent, we proceed to the former church patriarch's current safehouse.

We aren't the first to show up, and we wait in the lobby while other adventurers take their job, then Sebastian escorts us up. Tiberius is talking to the owner of the estate, and this time we hear call the fellow “Mr. Ribbons”, discussing a mission they feel unfortunate that it has failed. But they don't give us details, and we don't ask. We are offered 3 possible tasks, with a reiteration that Tiberius wants information-gathering first, problem solving second. He wants to know what the hell is going on, before his resources diminish too much.

1. There's been a murder-spree inside the general city, mostly outer districts. The victims are all beheaded, and the attacks started shortly after Tiberius left the cloister. Targets were typically obviously wealthy, and some were officers in Elidir's military. Recently (6th attack), the attempted robbery-murders changed pattern, and somebody saw a rider on a horse fleeing the scene of the crime. The attacker is less subtle, which might make them easier to catch.
2. Sporadic goblin attacks, which have troubled Isger throughout history, have changed pattern as well. Now, instead of random cattle-rustling on farms, crops are being systematically stolen. Tiberius thinks this is odd, because hobgoblin soldiers primarily go after cattle as more valuable to their meat-loving species. Why are they stealing crops? Find out.
3. The party could continue pursuing Grace Withers, the necromancer we found out earlier. Ideally bring her in for questioning, but failing that put her in the ground and make sure the death-mage stays there.

Well, number 3 is straight out. We don't want to take on a wizard with prep time and enough desperation to try risky stuff. Further, without a decoy running around going, “my, won't anyone help me and my soft, supple neck carry all these jewels?”” we can't think of any good leads for pursuing the murders beyond basic detective work.

Giles is a city native, and he will go down to the thieves guild to look for rumors. They say they aren't involved, and think this murderer is a random psychopath who doesn't use the criminal network to find his targets. The boldest was a city guard outpost in the middle of the street. Several reasonably well-off inns were targeted. Giles interviews crime scene guards, and apparently the murderer butchered their way through the entire population of the inn before looting everything. “Sounds like some adventurers going postal when they realized their MC wasn't awarding enough experience points, haha” Most were decapitated, and a few were clawed up, then decapitated after death. Jax, the forthcoming guardsman, is offered some money for his information and politely declines. About 24 people in total killed, nobody investigated the screaming until too late. Some cloaked dudes may have gone in first. Seemed much more professional than the ones in the street.

Rock tells Tiberius he knows a politically influential Chelaxian woman looking to get somebody resurrected, and he could put them in contact. Tiberius agrees, if she can keep a secret. Then Rock heads down to Sepia Motorancy and tells her that, after great effort, he and Giles have made contact with Tiberius, who is operating discretely but looking for new political influence now that his power with the church is fading. Sepia thanks us, tells us we are free to ask her for favors in the future, and gives us the address of the Chelaxian embassy, where she will be moving in with her husband after he gets rezzed.

We resolve to “investigate the goblins” and Tiberius offers the services of Bone Vandaroy, a Spire cleric of decent skill. We politely decline, saying that we prefer to work with stealth and precision, and he'd keep us from sneaking past sentries. Heh. Many jokes are made about how the players have a good thing going, and if you work for every side and get away with it, you get paid by every side.

The party navigates to the site of the old camp, and find it abandoned. We decide to investigate the caves they were keeping us out of before. Rock glides through the earth, and soon finds an odd metal canister under a small layer of dirt in the floor of the tunnel. Suspecting an alchemical bomb, he prods it from inside the earth, to no effect. Then he tries grabbing it and gliding to the surface, and it goes off for damage that would be quite intimidating if it weren't cut by the earth and a successful reflex save. Yeah, the goblins have landmines.

Rock surfaces and tells Giles about the discovery, and the rogue begins to disable and salvage the traps liberally scattered down the tunnel. The mines are fragmentation bombs of black powder, alchemist's fire, and nails attached to a pressure plate. 3D12+5 damage, activating when the two halves are pressed together. The party speculates about taking the bombs and affixing them to chinese-style rockets so they can put RPGs in their RPGs.

At the bottom of the first tunnel we choose is a huge cavern with a fairly recent mass grave, around 20 feet wide and 8 feet deep. Cadavers are mostly small-sized. Rock explores further, and finds a bunch of humanoids chanting around a big hollow idol. Figuring that the party probably wants to assay their nature before getting in stabbing range, Rock surfaces inside the idol and attempts to bluff.

“I say, is this the right cult? Good morrow, chaps. I'm Slaughtermaster Tzrg. I felt my worshippers calling me from the Astral Plane. Oh dear, this idol feels a bit... unusual. Terribly embarrassing. Who are you blokes?”

It doesn't turn out too well. We just sorta-defiled their sacred thingabob, and the boss priest is actually fairly smart. We exchange banter, escalate into sabre-rattling and outright threats, and then a fight starts. Mister Cavern rules that Channel Negative Energy reaches into the rock without penalty, and I agree that it is totally reasonable since I abuse my burrow speed horrendously. Dropping stolen mines from the ceiling, rolling objects in from the tunnel, and Giles sniping from out of darkvision range, we ruthlessly exploit the environment to our advantage.

It turns out we are fighting hobgoblin soldiers and a bugbear cleric, and they decide to pursue the guy who can't melt into the walls. I threaten to destroy the temple, so Hadregash, the cleric, stays to fight me while Giles lures hobs to the surface and picks them off one by one. My fight takes a really long time, and I use my elemental immunities in conjunction with smokesticks to get advantage in melee once he starts to get smart with his spells. (Partially, Hadregash summoned another earth elemental and started torturing it when Rock tried to play the long game. Also turns out he had a decent number of self-buffs.)

Eventually, Rock KOs Hadregash, takes his stuff, ties him up, and heals him. It turns out the whole thing was basically a huge misunderstanding, and after numerous apologies on both sides, stuff is returned. Apparently the main camp has moved, but Hadregash stayed behind. As a priest of the hero-deity, he and his retinue were in charge of protecting sites honoring the fallen. As a token of how impressed he is with our prowess, he gives the party some loot along with directions. Session wraps up there, but we still haven't figured out the deal with the crop raids exactly.

[Avoraciopoctules]

SESSION 5 Preview:

Aimless and unnecessary wandering through the wilderness!

International Diplomacy!

Ace Detective Work!

A new PC makes his glorious first appearance:

[Avoraciopoctules]

SESSION 5

Now we come to the introduction of a new player's character. Akula heard about Isger's undead hating theocracy and was like "man, I think it's time to get my necromance on if you know what I'm sayin'" (He's saying he wants to play a necromancer). After some thought, he comes up with a sorcerer who uses a racial favored class bonus to pick up dramatically more spells known. Many of them are necromancy, but he's low enough in level that he can't picks up Lesser Animate Dead until a little later on. After discussing the party's facility for hamhanded misdirection, he decides that his sorcerer will adventure in Isger under the persona "Party Wizard". He brings the party with him, garish spankles, alcohol handouts, and wub-wubing sonic spells all combining to rather effectively distract from his great familiarity and interest in death magic.

Party Wizard joins up with the loose association of adventurers operating out of the Salt Flats Inn and tags along with Rock and Giles when they stop back for supplies

Now, apparently we had forgotten the fact we'd picked up a method of contacting Chief Coyote at the end of last session. The PCs elect to wander randomly through the swamps and forest in the hopes of running into a goblin patrol again, but as the dice have it we encounter some hungry monsters. Spiders or griffins or something, all I remember is they had a starting point way over the PCs heads and me struggling to describe every one of Rocks natural weapon attacks as a different pro wrestling move to keep things interesting. Maybe it was spiders, I think I remember Party Wizard launching Rock into the air so he could arc down and tackle it through its web and into the ground. After the fight wraps up, we actually put our heads together and remember that, yeah, we have a feather token or something that would let us bypass the "wandering aimlessly" phase of interracial diplomacy.

So, the party exchanges some magic messages and head straight to the current location of the goblin camp. (though we're starting to suspect that there's more than just one of these moving bases, and the goblins have built up a lot of soldiers.) We trade some more medical supplies for precious minerals and tell Chief Coyote about the fact-finding mission we've been tasked with by the other side. We also mention some political theorizing we've been doing and the fact that the goblinoids might benefit from some kind of diplomatic emissary. Tiberius wants power, and being the primary point-of-contact for negotiation with one of Isgers old enemies might provide that. Perhaps they could avoid the kind of war that would kill off lots of people on both sides, and keep Rock and friends from getting well-paid for jobs without much real danger. We could provide security to such an emissary. At affordable rates, of course.

Chief Coyote is surprisingly receptive to the idea of diplomacy with the former Pharasman church patriarch. Sure, the goblins can send an emissary right now. In fact, Coyote will go personally, we can smuggle him into Elidir when we go to report our "findings from a trusted source" to Tiberius. Somewhat suspicious, we still agree because we did offer and this guy seems to have been a pretty fair dealer with us thus far. If he assassinates Former Necropope and pins it on us there'll be hell to pay, but we won't bring it up if he doesn't. And given that apparently the goblins used to work with some Urgathoa cultists before a double-cross that left a significant number of them afflicted with magic diseases, there's definitely some potential for a common enemy to act as a unifier here.

The trip to the city is fairly uneventful, and the party have passed in and out of the city with different people before. A bit of generosity to the guards and namedropping of the officials we are "on business for" gets us right in. However, getting all the way into the inner city is likely to be a bit more challenging. Coyote is disguised, but nevertheless we pick up tails as we move through more crowded parts of the city. Thankfully, it seems that they are working for different people, and by pointing guards toward suspicious characters, careful use of invisibility spells, and at one point switching disguises and splitting the party, we get the chief to Tiberius's safehouse and lure a diminished number of pursuers back out of the city through a different gate. At this point, all but one breaks off. The party lures this last follower a bit further into the woods outside Elidir, and then tries to bring him in closer by staging a dark ritual invoking the power of Slaughtermaster Tzrg. This half of the party splits again, half looping around to surprise their tail from behind. This turns out to be a pretty good move, since our mysterious tail tries to retreat back to the city a few seconds of coming into earshot of the fake chanting. We barely bring down what appears to be an undead wight dressed up for maximum skulkiness before it gets away. After disarming it of its poisons and crossbow (??? I guess it didn't want to create spawn because that would be really obvious), we ask it a few questions but it refuses to say anything useful. Party Wizard decides that the best course of action is to torture the creature with healing potions... Rock thinks this would be crossing a pretty significant dickery threshold, but Party Wizard has been pretty useful with his invisibility spells, and this wight does seem to be pretty bad news. Not sure if Giles was there, since he was key in escorting Chief Coyote the last leg of the trip to where Tiberius is holed up.

So, the wight rants about about how it's a servant of the Whispering Way, a necromantic Bad Guy cult that is a pretty big deal in Golarion. They've already got a foothold in the city, their dread magics will bring ruin to us all, blah blah blah. The Whispering Way thing is valuable information, and after we dispatch the wight we only stop to set aside all its fancy rogue/monk gear before hurrying to our employer with the news. Negotiations seem to be going pretty well, and the two leaders are reaching some kind of initial agreement. But we're to busy leveraging the information we've found to pay much attention. After hearing our tirade about how useful this info about the Whispering Way is politically, Tiberius directs the party to several key authority figures. To each, we introduce ourselves as the adventurers who busted Grace Withers, talk about how our new investigations have revealed strong evidence that the Whispering Way is active in Elidir, and then show off the wight and testify about the details of our interrogation under truth spells. Then we really lay it on thick with actually kinda reasonable doomsaying about how armies of rapidly reproducing horde undead and cabals of liches pose a grave threat to Isger's security, and they really should take drastic action. Just as before, we'll gladly take any reward but our main concern is that the church and state both do all they can deal with this threat. Old feuds (like the goblins and Cheliax, hint hint) should be secondary to actually stopping this evil. The party makes an impact, and we head back home somewhat richer and reasonably confident that a few more authority figures probably have a positive impression on us.

The whole thing actually went by pretty fast real-time, and players and MC have time to do another mission. We elect to tackle the murder investigation where someone keeps decapitating and robbing people.

Now that we have a primary spellcaster capable of some basic illusions, we are much more capable of setting up an effective decoy-ambush, and the party decides to make a really tempting target and wipe out the murderer when he/she/it attacks. Party Wizard picks up a wagon, horse, and a bunch of containers full of lead weights. Then it's all glamoured up to look like a big fancy spangled wagon loaded down with gold, pulled by a glowing rainbow horse. There's an illusionary driver, Party Wizard is actually hiding under a trapdoor in a little compartment where he can concentrate on the Silent Image without worrying about getting shot full of crossbow bolts. We spread rumors about a wealthy wizard coming to town, and then basically drive the wagon around in big circles after warning the Thieve's Guild about what's actually up. No bites, at least from who we're looking for, and after the second time we fend off rather unexceptional non-guild robbers the ruse is basically shot. Then there's another murder. We draw a pattern of Chelish-descended nouveau rich getting attacked at parties, and Party Wizard is very fond of any plan that lets him get paid adventuring money for downtime activities.

So we shadow Chelish parties (except Party Wizard, who generally stays in middle of them) until some crazy shadowy dudes with scythes bust in, heroically save the day and a bunch of civilian lives, and don't really learn anything we didn't already know. Still, it makes some money and reputation for the party, and since some of the attackers looked pretty undead we have further evidence that there is a necromantic faction up to no good we can turn all the paying-us factions against.

[Avoraciopoctules]

SESSION 6

[expand this one later]

This was basically a side-story where I ran something for Party Wizard, a cleric played by this campaign's MC, and a bow-focused paladin played by another guy who basically just showed up this once. The border between Isger and Molthune is normally blocked off by a big mountain range, but an unnatural thaw seems to have cleared out a pass and Molthune (a lawful neutral nation full of jingoistic expansionist slavers, pretty solidly black hat compared to Isger) seems to have stationed troops in it in an awful hurry. One of Tiberius's government contacts asks him to direct some trustworthy adventurers to see if they can figure out what's up and maybe block the pass again if it seems possible and Molthune is a likely threat to security.

The party is called in, and they head off to investigate. There are soldiers, sure enough. Most seem to be conscripts kept in line by harsh commisars, but these officers are few enough that Party Wizard manages to infiltrate one camp when none are around and he can take the guise of a fellow Molthuni soldier who has acquired a bunch of illicit booze and wants to share it out to all his comrades. After getting a little party started, he manages to get most of the story from them. Apparently one of Molthune's high officers has called together a force in a hurry to claim this pass. The officers all defer to some ..

There's two ways up to magical tower in the Forbidden Zone.

weather control tower

kobolds riding oversized shocker lizards using hit-and-run tactics

vrock freed by party

sorcerer lord turns out to be a marai rakshasa in disguise

both fiends driven off but not killed, party elects not to use the tower's magic to kill the invading army, and the Cleric sticks around as master of the tower while calling in Isgerian reinforcements.

[Avoraciopoctules]

SESSION 7

This game happens on October 13. Giles Wodeward and Rock are both at effective character level 6, with accumulated treasure in excess of the standard. Giles is somewhat impeded by his chain shirt, which has a max DEX lower than his DEX bonus after getting the wight's Monkey Belt. Party Wizard's player couldn't make it, so I feel little guilt about exploiting my elemental's near-unkillability in melee to its fullest. Mid-level-up, Giles player mentions that though he is a pathological criminal, he feels like the only sane member of the party.

So, we wake up to the horrifying news that the city is under quarantine and it is probably our fault thanks to all the fearmongering we've been doing. Our initial notice came from the salt mephit proprieter of this inn (was it Noel Terrio? Don't remember), who is apparently very happy to be hosting successful adventurers who have not broken a single thing or brought a fight back home thus far.

So what is the extent of the "level 1 quarantine"? People can't go in or out of city or between districts without special permits. Okay. There's curfews from sundown to sunup, and apparently random searches of houses/businesses if it's anything like 5 years ago when some people with mummy rot snuck into Elidir and it started a ridiculous mummy witch hunt.

Reaction? "this quest to get access to the next city district over might be like Neverwinter Nights 2, and that'd be hilarious" The party resolves they should talk to one of the government official that we've helped out, settle on Adrian Leathers. Meet up with some guards at the gate to the inner city, ask them to talk to Adrian for us. After awkward responses to the idea of writing a note, MC says we figure they're probably illiterate, and maybe the captain too. Damn, does the church think literate soldiers is "too Chelish" or something? Pretty clownshoes, unless they're deliberately trying to foster ignorance in the general population. A guard says that one will go tell Adrian some adventurers want to talk to him on their break, and we say we'll meet up at the gate again in 5 hours to give them plenty of time.

So once again, the party splits up to hit up their contacts. First, Giles heads to the "Legitimate Businessman's Men's Club". Young "stab-ya-preneurs" congregate, and apparently we are calling on the Don early, he shows up wearing a bathrobe. First order of business is to get the Thieve's Guild's take on the quarantine. Rock figures that the situation is likely a positive for them, since legitimate trade being impeded means increased trade in the black market and more ability to raise prices. Apparently Rock supposed wrong, since this guy is very concerned about a negative impact on business from quarantine lockdowns. In fact, the Don wants the quarantine lifted as soon as possible, and he knows enough about our own situation that he suspects that we'll be working with authorities in a position to raise the quarantine if we dig up the right information or stab the right baddies in the face.

In short, the thieve's guild says that if we can expedite whatever will end up lifting quarantine, we should do that. They don't say they'll owe us, but it's still good business. And they're smart enough not to get pushy about "purity" standards around people who seem to have sway with church inquisitors.

Giles does ask for more information and ideas, which leads to the Don hesitantly suggesting that we could acquire ambassadorial passes from a nation's embassy. The thieve's guild could make effective use of something like that. They could forge passes for their members and provide us with them on demand. Everyone would be able to move more freely if they could produce the paperwork to let groups through lockdown unmolested, and that would enable the kind of smuggling that would let the guild rake in lots of cash from this lockdown.

When Giles brings the news back to Rock, the elemental laughs and starts listing the reasons the Don would be worried about this plan. The only embassy the party has an in with is Chelish, and you don't want to fuck with Cheliax. They could find out and either wipe out the thieves guild for the insult or outright take it over. We might get hellknights or assassin devils after us. And even if we don't do this theft for the guild and just get personal passes, we will be publicly perceived as Cheliax collaborators and appear on the Asmodean church's radar.

Rock's revelations make Giles considerably hesitant about even contacting Sepia, since it would probably make him look bad. Rock's response? "I'm sorry man, they may be a nation of slave-trading jerks openly allied with Hell who merely a couple generations ago were gleefully crushing your own nation in a guantlet of oppression, but they have a lot of money". But yeah, walking around with an Asmodean star badge would be polarizing and we should keep our profitable semi-neutrality while we can.

So from this point, Rock's gonna pay a courtesy call on the Cheliax embassy anyways, and Giles can stay clear, maybe look into that possibility of getting better armor for his current DEX. Giles meets with a local dealer in rare metals and armor, and after some haggling arranges to get a +1 mithral shirt if he can smuggle in 20 or so pounds of mithral before the quarantine ends. Or 50 pounds of ironwood.

Rock goes straight to the embassy, which seems reasonably well fortified and guarded. The guards are rather intimidated by the appearance of an ogre-shaped earth monster with flint-spiked fists that look nastier than greatswords, but he is able to coax them into letting him in when he says he knows the Motorancies and wanted to call on them to see their take on the quarantine. After a delay Rock is let in, he greets the noblewoman in charge of the embassy, and he socializes with the assorted Cheliax citizens gathered for tea. Rock introduces himself as a representative of a local adventurer's association, and but he doesn't get into specifics. He chats about how the quarantine and witchhunt might let Cheliax improve local perceptions of it by denouncing the necromancers and offering hellknight assistance, and eventually peels off to meet with Sepia and her resurrected husband.

They seem to be doing all right. The diplomatic appointment Sepia used to get here is going to last a while, but they will head directly home once it is finished. They have no expectations that they will require the services of adventurers in the near future. Rock mentions that he or one of his associates might consider calling upon Sepia's family in the future, they might have business in Cheliax within the next few years. We confirm that the Motorancy estate is in the city of Westcrown, and Rocks associates are welcome to have somebody visit in the future. And that seems to be all our business for the time being, though I won't be surprised if it is now possible the Cheliax ambassador could offer us a job sometime.

After leaving the Chelish embassy and armorer, we meet up and head over to Tiberius in his safehouse, using a travel permit we are issued by Adrian Leathers the guard captain. Necropope and pals are muttering something about "potential threat" and "beheadings", but we don't pay much heed before trying to figure out why they let this quarantine lockdown thing take place without giving us some kind of warning beforehand. Apparently, they didn't bother giving us an idea what was coming for 2 reasons. 1, the Order of the Spire is in charge of quarantines, not Tiberius (and the Spire boss doesn't like him), and 2, we aren't especially useful to Tiberius right now. Negotiations are going well with the goblins, Tiberius may soon have the buffer state he's been wanting between Isger and Cheliax. He can write us a letter of introduction to the inquisitors and give us papers to enable travel in and out of the city, but he isn't going to blatantly use adventurers for expensive investigations when the inquisition is finally getting around to doing its own job.

So, the party's new prospective long-term employer (now that Sepia and Tiberius have merely become trusted contacts) is not on great terms with Tiberius, more of a military hardliner. We forgot to ask her name, but our letter is addressed to Grandmaster Cassidy Rufus, Grandmaster of the Order of the Spire. Apparently, she was out in the field and is returning with some of her troops to reinforce Elidir's quarantine.

We decide to pick up some stuff at home before heading out to meet this grandmaster on the way, and Cassidy's herald is dropping off a letter at the party's rooms in the inn just as we return. The timing is certainly convenient... in any case, apparently Cassidy is calling pretty much all of the adventurers in Elidir together for a general assembly regarding how they can help deal with the undead menace. We can meet her there with the others.

Once the party shows up, it looks like the assembly is a veritable Burger King Kids club of racial diversity. There is a pack of worgs wearing armor and spell component bags, even. Grandmaster Cassidy shows up and gives a big speech about how she thinks that the restrictions on travel her inquisitors have placed on adventurers will let her hire them for outright reasonable wages. Heinous. We can help the inquisitors out for prices they consider reasonable, or we can sit around and do nothing. Those are apparently all the options she is willing to consider. Adventurers willing to work directly for the Order of the Spire get in line for individual meetings and quest assignations.

Our party makes a pretty decent impression, since we've already been doing successful cult-busting far beyond what the inquisitors seem capable of. The letter of introduction is unexpected, but Rock and Giles just smile and say they've anticipated this development. Cassidy wants the party to wander around looking for more death cultists like Grace Withers, but we gently explain that our success there was due us tracing a careless black-market purchase, and we doubt this cult is gonna make the same mistake twice now that Cassidy's inquisitors let the necromancer escape and warn all her friends. Instead, the party thinks that Cassidy should give them autonomy. We've heard something about a tunnel that undead may be using to get in and out of the city. Rock is like "Oh, yeah, and we promise this isn't a transparent attempt to run away or whatever if that matters." We also would like the power to requision a troop deployment if we run into a large undead encampment or fortified tunnel. We don't want command, but we do want the ability to get an inquisitor to lead a bunch of tiny over to a specified place and do whatever they feel is right with the zombies or whatever lurking there. Cassidy accedes to both requests, and we don't bother asking about pay beyond, "oh, and you'll reimburse reasonable expenses, right?"

So we head out to talk to the goblins about the Urgathoa cultists that double-crossed them and retreated into the Underdark after infecting half the camps with plague. Thankfully, this time Coyote thought ahead and left us a note so we don't have to beat a line of communication out of one of his priests. We drop off some medical supplies in trade for minerals, Giles asks about ironwood or mithral, and both of the party try and get a better idea of what's going on with them deadites. Turns out we misunderstood the whole "undead-tunnel-into-Elidir" thing. The Urgathoa cultists DID make a 2-week journey down into the City of Ghouls in the Darklands for reinforcements. But when they came to the surface, they apparently just left overland, there was no tunnel into the caves below Elidir.

Giles makes his trade for the ironwood he needs, and we curse our bad luck. We ask Chief Coyote one last time if he's SURE he hasn't heard anything about any kind of undead/necromancer activity around here lately.

"Well, there's the hordes of ghouls, I suppose. We war with them all the time!" What.

Okay, my theory about the inquisitors being incompetent clowns suddenly has a lot more weight. Or this is some crazy conspiracy where they're deliberately letting massive numbers of the Hated Enemy swarm around to serve their twisted political aims. One or the other.

We get directions to one of the Ghoul Legion outposts, and it looks like a little farming hamlet. Overrun with hundreds of ghouls, of course. Giles and Rock do a little bit of scouting. Apparently there's a big building where a bunch of starving diseased people (probably ghoul fever) are locked up and one small stone (all the others are wooden) house where something big and heavy is giving a speech about how their dark aims are nearly met, Ahahahaaa! We set up a basic plan. Rock will assassinate the leader and make a huge nuisance of himself to get the attention of the ghouls, who should only be able to hit him on a natural 20 and even then will have difficulty bypassing DR. While the monsters are distracted, Giles will rescue their victims. In case he's seen, we buff him with a charge of Longstrider from Rock's wand and have him wear the ring of fire resistance. He can lead any pursuers into an area we've strategically soaked with oil and burn them all with little risk to himself. If that is insufficent, he can use his monkey belt to climb a tree and snipe them, leaping to another if they climb up after him.

The plan goes okay. Apparently the boss is a shaitan-turned-ghul. Don't know exactly what his abilities were, but he was definitely at least 4 times as tough as a regular ghoul. Rock punched him a bunch, and then intercepted him when he retreated down a secret tunnel and punched him some more. That worked reasonably well. Funnily enough, it was the first time Rock killed something sentient in this campaign. Giles busted out the prisoners, got them on a wagon, and then led most of the ghouls into the deathtrap we prepared. The remainder were either punched so hard they exploded or ran away into either the tunnel or forest. We gave the prisoners some charges of Infernal Healing from a wand, checked out the tunnel (it just ended in some random point in the woods), and grabbed a live ghoul for evidence later.

From there, it was straight to the gates of Elidir. "Hey guard-dudes, check it out! It's a wagonload of your citizens infected with Ghoul Fever. And a real ghoul! Turns out they aren't as extinct as we thought. You should probably bring these people in under heavy escort, make sure they don't turn before you cure them. And bring in your boss, he can take some basic statements and confirm he needs to call in his boss."

The farmers are taken into the city to be cured, but Rock refuses to bring the ghoul in. For one, he should pay lip service to this whole purity rigamorole, and for two, he kinda promised his ghoul prisoner that he wouldn't hurt it if it cooperated. So, we gradually go up the chain of command, until it is Grandmaster Cassidy herself in front of Elidir hearing the ghoul confirm that it was part of a huge army of undead committing organized genocide using undead plagues on Isger citizens to bolster their ranks. The people we saved are further witnesses, and they can be questioned under truth spells if necessary for confirmation. Rock is planning to let the ghoul go, since it has been helpful, it was recently spawned and not done anything hugely egregious yet, the party has killed hundreds like it and plans to kill hundreds more, he's given his word, and last and most importantly, showing this mercy now will help him build a reputation for reasonableness that may help in reaching diplomatic solutions to the Urgathoa cult problem later. Maybe he can persuade some of their backers to back off, making it easier to wipe the actual necromancers out.

So after confirming that they've asked the ghoul all the questions they want, Rock tells it that it is free to go. It starts to run off, and then the guards on the walls shoot the ghoul full of arrows. This is actually going to be a pretty significant moment for Rock. He can understand why the guards shot the thing down even after he explained why he was setting it free to 3 officials in the church/military, but he doesn't like it. He considers himself more complicit in this than the torture of the wight, since he actually gave the ghoul some vague assurances of protection.

It's kind of funny that Rock would lose any feelings of loyalty to the church of Isger as an institution over something so petty as this. He might have even let them dispatch the ghoul without argument if they bothered to actually talk about it first. If I turn Rock into an antagonist at some point, this will be a callback moment in his Evil Monologue. I hope somebody calls him out on how his adventurer etiquette is actually convoluted self-serving bullshit.

The Grandmaster seems pleased that we have discovered a horrifying system of undead concentration camps in Elidir's backyard when dozens upon dozens of midlevel Pharasman clerics were apparently unable to get a clue. We are offered either 1000 GP each or some items from Isger's armory that we can keep. Rock grabs 8 Lesser Restoration potions and Giles takes a stack of 50 +1 undead bane arrows. We give the ghul's body and unexciting treasure to the church in the hopes that this time, they can do some divinations on them and actually get something useful (though even if they do, I suppose they might not tell us about it).

We hit up our contacts, give them the information, but only Sepia seems particularly enthusiastic. She doesn't have anyone else likely to forward facts like this, and the inquisition is keeping Ghoul Auschwitz pretty hush-hush right now. We're sure that she can use this to some advantage in the Chelish embassy, but that's her field and we don't bother giving specific suggestions. We ask if Sepia's learned anything that might help us in our own ongoing investigations, and she mentions a funny encounter she had earlier.

So apparently, back in the plague years Elidir artisans put a lot of effort into developing perfumes that could counter the charnel stench blanketing much of the city. This led to the development of perfumes very marketable as trade goods in the modern economy. Not too long ago, Sepia was shopping for perfume and a store owner said something like "there's no place better than Elidir to hide the smell of death". It struck her as odd, and she gives us the place's address in case this might be a useful lead. Session ends there.

This session was really fun, and it's inspired me to try running another Pathfinder scenario of my own pretty soon. I'm thinking a remake of Hammers of the God, which, after a few questions about people's preferences, will likely be set in Khatapesh. Probably won't be strongly linked to this specific campaign (being on a different continent and all that), though.

[Avoraciopoctules]

SESSION 8:

This session marks the appearance of BMX Bard-It. A bard with an 800-gold-piece gnome-built bicycle, he can pop a sick wheelie in combat to give everyone piles of sonic damage on all their attacks.The character shows up as the party is getting ready to go looking for their next job, saying that he is a friend of Party Wizard. Dressed in "a fine suit of spun wool with patches on the knees and elbows, suitable for any environment from the highest courts to the lowest slums", he and Giles seem to put each other on edge immediately. Giles thinks that perfect subtlety involves unseen knives, BMX thinks that if you are subtle, there need not be any violence at all. BMX spends the rest of the session making intermittent comments sniping at the rogue. Vahishta is just kind of there, seeming quite preoccupied after having gotten a letter.

The party shows up at Spire-boss Cassidy's quest-dispensing station. She gives a basic spiel about what's going on and gives "BM" his work pass for the city. She tells us she either wants us to track down a second serial beheader spreading vampirism or hunt down whoever's smuggling undead into the city.

BMX indicates that underdark Ghoul infestation, plague cult, vampire serial killers, might all be seperate problems with their own way into the city. We will be lucky if we uncover one of them. There is some confusion, but we are ultimately reassured that we don't have to magically solve everything, just make real progress.

We ask about what we are allowed to do as investigators, and it turns out we can just cast an illusion of a zombie in someone's house and ignore their legal rights to privacy. We basically have the Patriot Act on our side. Funnily enough, the rest of the time the church is really concerned with stuff like citizen rights to privacy.

So, the preliminaries aside, we investigate the Street of Scents, where perfume is sold. We are following up on the lead Sepia Motorancy gave us earlier. There are a bunch of fancy department stores, but 2 are bigger and fancier than others, with armed guards to keep the riffraff out.

Vahishta does a gather info check, spending 2 hours wandering around the stores and neighborhood buying stuff and gossiping. BMX uses bardic knowledge and Giles hits up his criminal contacts. The store we are looking for and the one next to it are the two most famous perfume sellers in the known world. Both have changed ownership over the years, the store we are looking for was recently acquired by a noble family after feudalism was abolished. Nobody outside the family has shares in the business, and they have reason to bear a grudge against the theocrats.

These nobles had low ranks, but they are fabulously wealthy now, beyond their aspirations as feudalists. The nobles are trying to avoid flaunting their wealth, and some feel they have turned to unknown benefactors for to get lots of cash in a hurry. Organized crime says that the perfumers sell great bleach for getting rid of bloodstains, and the Don's wife frequently shops there.

Rajivari is the family name, BMX discovers (apparently the name is obscure enough that you need a high bard roll to know it???), an all-female family since 10 years ago last male heir stumbled and broke neck shortly before the perfume business was purchased. The family claim to be worshippers of Sarenrae, but don't frequent church. Probably going with the minority religion because they are still mad about losing Viscount privileges.

We conclude that it is a shady business, the family is incredibly suspicious from an adventurer perspective, and they are not specifically paying protection money to the mob. We should still be sneaky, we'd get in major trouble if we trashed the place without finding evidence.

The fashion palace we are interested in is different than the other, slightly more successful one because ownership is linked to the family rather than one individual. They have stakeholder meetings and vote on what the owner should do. The uppermost floor isn't dedicated to selling perfume, clothes, etc. Instead, they have an off-limits family penthouse.

When Vahishta is chattering away about local news, Eugene and Lady Dentworth register as evasive when talking about undead threat. Possible lead for future investigation.

BMX sneaks into the basement, doesn't find anything suspicious obviously. But it's a quick solo sweep, and Mister Cavern hints heavily that we might have wanted more eyes and time. We respond that we are saving that for our night-time break-in, when there aren't civilians all over the place. Onyx perfume stoppers have been explicitly mentioned by the MC like 3 times, so there's a chance they have plot significance. Maybe a way to sneak around Animate Dead components?

We do a more casual sweep of fashion shop number 2 to see any obvious differences, but the only clear one is that the 4th floor is not restricted because the owner doesn't live on-site.

Reconnaisance accomplished, it is time for our illegal break-in. After a successful Diplomacy check to get our employers to provide a couple potions of invisibility and a spy-cam gem enchanted with nondetection, we wait for nightfall.

We come back after dark, and BMX Bard-it's hypnotic bike tricks Suggest that the guards scram. Then our rogue works on the door. He opens it, disables a trap, but thinks he set off a silent alarm.

Since we set off a silent alarm on the way in, we need to move fast. We quickly hit the basement and steal an onyx stopper + a couple outfits as a distraction from our ultimate purpose.

After a short search, We find a secret door leading to stairs down. Giles disarms a trap, and BMX Arcane Locks the door behind us.

Descend into the dungeon, we find a large torture room with 3 closed iron maidens and an abused guy tied to a table or something. Preemptively, we drop some flaming spheres between us and the iron maidens in case they animate or release undead, and then untie the prisoner. His name is Jimmy or something, a farmer who got vampire-napped and intermittently nibbled on until we showed up. One PC frees him, one keeps an eye on the stairs behind us, and one keeps an eye on the iron maidens. At the same time, we loudly announce that with the evidence before us we are now agents of the Inquisition rather than illegal spies. The gem-cam has been rolling this whole time.

Sure enough, eerie mist floats out of the iron maidens and turns into 3 vampire spawn. They pose dramatically next to the giant fireballs. Vahishta starts to react by suggesting a fighting retreat, but BMX says he thinks that we can probably take them.

He proceeds to pop the sickest wheelie, resonating with the arcane leylines of this place, and everyone's attacks now deal an extra 6d6 sonic damage. We tear through the vampires pretty fast, especially when they decide that the best idea for combat tactics is grappling the rogue without a flanking buddy to enable his sneak attacks.

As we mop up the vampires, 3 of the shop ladies from before come up from behind with chainmail and magic scythes. When I roll a fireball in the way, they cast fire resistance and walk right through it. They must have had some kind of whacky mobility powers to get armor on, pass through the magically locked door, and then also walk through the flaming sphere as if it wasn't a physical presence blocking the hall. All in the span of 3 or 4 minutes. Maybe they were already armed upstairs, and one of them had knock as a domain spell? Someone thinks they hear something from a corner at the same time, and we test for invisibles with a flour bomb and Burning Hands. Surprise, Grace Withers, the necromancer lady from before, is also in the basement.

The fight with the 3 clerics and the necromancer is a little harder, we take some damage and Giles gets hit with an enervation. But our absurd DPR lets us cut through them fairly easily, and we blow up the iron maidens so the vamps can't regenerate. At that point, we've won.

There is a brief argument over what to do with the necromancer, who is still alive. As a worshipper of the Dawnflower, Vahishta believes strongly in the virtues of mercy, forgiveness, and redemption. Plus, she knows Rock and Yethok would love to keep stretching their elaborate "slaughterlord Tzrg" practical joke further. (Rock also wants to avoid crippling either side in the war so he keeps getting lucrative contracts from one or the other.) Vahishta wants to put Grace somewhere out of the way with a note saying that she's being given a second chance, and that Slaughterlord Tzrg no longer owes her a favor. Giles and BMX want to kill her on the spot or turn her over to the inquisitors. They win the vote, and we resolve to take her stuff and then send for church backup.

Grace has a handful of bland booster items, a ring of Jumping, a bunch of potions, and a hidden tattoo she can use as a spellbook entry for Enervation. BMX casts Erase to make the tattoo vanish.

I don't say anything this session, but if I was playing a wizard with a spell tattoo, the whole point would be that people would think they were safe after finding it. A feat spent on Spell Mastery would guarantee all the spell access I needed for my daring escape. Given fact that casting Blood Biography or Communion seems beyond our employers, I won't be surprised their security is equally lacking and Grace shows up for a rematch after leveling up in her escape. (Or my "the Inquisition is Evil" theory turns out to be right)

So we shoot signal fires into the air and shout until the city guard and Order of the Spire show up, and then turn the whole thing over to them. Some vampires fly off, but we don't have the means or desire to pursue. We get rewarded with some gold and items.

Then we head back to the Salt Flats Inn. It turns out the place is cordoned off by police, who say that someone broke in and slaughtered everyone.

The inn that was described as a miniature, riot-proof fortress. Home to multiple bands of adventurers. Someone broke into a fortified business staffed by outsiders and patronized by adventurers, under the protection of a crime syndicate powerful enough to deal in magical weapons and tools without getting pillaged by mariliths. Someone burst in and killed their way through like 8 parties of 4-6 characters of level 4-9. All the PCs we weren't just playing or out of town are now dead.

Well, this changes things. Perhaps if they had some idea who was responsible they'd contemplate vengeance, but Rock and Vahishta aren't foolish or desperate enough to expose themselves to this kind of risk further. They are going off-plane and staying off-plane, maybe covering their tracks a little in case level 15 vampire lords or liches come looking for them.

My theory is either one of our hypothetical high-ranking Whispering Way cultists finally started taking decisive action, OR Head-choppy Supreme was way out of our league all along and decided to take this place out because regular murder became boring.

So what does this bode for future sessions? I was considering bringing in a Celestial Commander archetyped summoner to back up BMX Bard-it, but I don't think either of them would want to make themselves targets with the stakes and available information like this.

The A-team is too smart not to hop into a portal and go far away, the B-team is dead. It is time for the third-stringers. Crazy and/or desperate characters. I'm building 2 hypothetical adventurers, a summoner who hears headvoices and a drug-addict minotaur fighter who got an early release from jail if he takes scut work for the inquisition. Since we are leveling to 7 anyways, it's not a lot of extra work.

[Avoraciopoctules]

SESSION 9:

So, our game begins with all but one of the surviving party members throwing up their hands and resolving to get out of Isger. Vahishta might come back someday, but only if she joins up with a genuinely competent crusade of dawnflower dervishes. Giles is the only person left, so he goes to Cassidy's Adventurer Hall and holds up his looking for group sign. He is met by a man shrouded in a pale desert nomad's outfit which includes a face-obscuring cloth. Nevertheless, the fellow's smirk is palpable as he introduces himself as originally from Cheliax, that bastion of civilization and order. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be many other prospects, and “Malabolg the Summoner” claims to wield powerful magic. In passing, Cassidy mentions that she's going to be pulling her soldiers out of the city, and we should report to Tiberius for future assignments.

Malabolg joins up, and Giles gives him the lowdown about the cult stuff on the way to investigate the Salt Flats Inn for clues on the murder of his associates. Giles is carefully silent about his Mob connections and the Iodine in Hell Adventurer Association's proud history of scams and pranks. He mentions the classic “Slaughtermaster Tzrg” gambit after a little pushing. Malabolg rubs his hands together in anticipation of the day when he will be able to summon multiple flaming kytons at once.

The party checks out the inn, no signs of forced entry, 7 bodies all decapitated, some gnawed or blood-drained. Looks like attackers were let in, possibly with the help of mind-control magic. Someone escaped through a window, removed grate and disarmed the traps on. A skilled rogue or well informed agent with a pick escaped, possible survivor or hit-team informant. We find a half-burnt note in the fireplace. "Make sure...... 8 P.M. ...... PS, rendevous at the usual location." Was written by someone of Small size, salt stains imply that the writer or reader was the mephit proprietor. Giles knows that the owner had underworld connections.

Giles is going to hit up his mob contacts, and asks the summoner to shove off while he does some “delicate investigatory work”. His companion acquiesces, but first gives Giles a smokestick to use as a signal if he wants help (Mister Cavern let me get special colored smokesticks in character creation for a price markup) Malabolg asks some guards to show him a good vantage point from which to observe the city. They let him use the old Don's mansion in the Upper District, where the summoner reclines against the chimney and smokes a cigar. If he sees a smoke signal from Giles, he'll come to the rescue with a posse of dire bats. Malabolg will of course do this by jumping off the building and summoning his flying mounts midfall. Style is important.

“Don Posh” (Mister cavern has finally decided on a name, after months of agonizing indecision) in the Legitimate Businessman's Club is actually wearing armor this time. He doesn't seem surprised or disappointed especially at the news of the slaughter at the inn. Takes Giles aside and explains that the Mob was paid an exorbitant amount to let the murderers into the inn. His people all survived, but he is still willing to give Giles the address of the attackers in exchange for a 20% cut of their treasure. The location turns out to be a warehouse in the seedier part of town where there's little mob control (???). Lots of drug dealing, the district is used for cattle storage and smells awful.

After returning with news, we determine that Giles will do recon, since Malabolg doesn't seem to be an especially subtle type. Malabolg tries to find the closest thing to a decent cafe across the block and wait. He sips his sour beer and onion soup while Giles opens the warehouse doors and discovers a bunch of stockaded pigs and considerably more pig excrement. Broken pumps and building furnishings. A couple of guards, horribly equipped and depressed-looking.

Giles has no climb skill, so he comes back to Malabolg for a casting of Levitate and tries to look through the second-floor window. Malabolg casts the spell in full view of bartender and other patrons, and loudly offers “Hey, ya want an invisibility with that?” Giles declines the invisibility, figuring his high stealth bonus should suffice. It doesn't. Giles rolls low on his efforts at infiltration and gets the attention of both guards and people on the street as he floats at second story level. When people start shouting at the flying guy spying on the second floor of the warehouse, he fails again when he tries to “look casual”, and flees the scene as the guards make half-hearted pursuit. A few people chuck things at him. However, they give up pretty soon, since someone points out that harassing a powerful wizard as he frantically pulls himself through the air with window frames and a 10-foot pole is a good way end up turned into frogs. Giles escapes into an alley and meets back up with Malabolg, who complains about his terrible experience with the pub food.

The party returns at night, and there is a single but different guard in front of the door. Better equipped, more determined-looking. Not constantly drinking from a hip flask. We circle around to the side and Giles throws a grappling hook through a second-story window. Malabolg reclines against a wall on the far side of the street and smokes. When Giles has climbed like 3/4ths of the way, the guard comes around to investigate and gasps in alarm. Before he can shout, Malabolg holds a finger up to his mouth (the upper part of his face is still obscured by goggles) and goes “Shhhhhh.” A towering monstrous scorpion materializes right in front of the guard around the same time.

Our new acquaintance turns to run, but the scorpion is nearly twice as fast, and it circles around to block him. Malabolg says, no, the fellow should stick around so we can resolve our differences in a civilized, diplomatic fashion. The summoner introduces himself by name as an inquisitorial investigator who, along with his companion who just disappeared into the window, is here tracking an undead cultist and serial killer. If the guard shares whatever information he has and helps us bring those criminals to justice, why, he might make up for whatever offenses got him assigned to guarding a giant box of pig shit. The implied threat of the summoned monster and the appeals to greed, patriotism, and fear of undead/plague seems to be an effective mix, and the guy spills what he knows. Sure, somebody is using the warehouse as a hideout, they pay him a little and give him better equipment to look out for them but he doesn't know the details of whatever they are up to.

Meanwhile, Giles gets sucker-punched for half his hit points by a pair of mummies. He makes his saves against stunlock and scrambles back out the window, shouting about undead monsters. Malabolg smirks and has everyone climb onto the giant scorpion that moves at over twice the mummy's speed. When the 2 emerge, we kite them, throwing flaming oil as they pursue through the streets. We are of course retreating toward the nearest city guard outpost. Soon, the mummies realize that their plan is stupid and start to retreat back toward home.

At this point, we split the party. Malabolg's giant scorpion (melee MVP) will carry the NPC guard off to fetch reinforcements after the summoner takes a hair sample and politely threatens to punish treachery with unspecified curses. Meanwhile, the PCs will weaken and delay the mummies with more oil, alchemist's fire, and at least one casting of Grease. Our undead opponents are well ablaze by the time they get back into their hideout, and they try to extinguish themselves in the muck. Yes, they try to become less on fire by charging into a morass of pig-produced dung and methane. It doesn't turn out well for them, and the whole first floor is now on fire. Giles follows our enemies up to the second-floor and finishes them both off with a full attack. He sees more generic stockhouse paraphenalia and also a giant magical doom ritual room full of severed heads. He shouts what he found, and the summoner responds "Why don't you grab the 5 heads you like the most and we'll give the don 1 as his cut."

That brings us back to the outside. Malabolg is circling the warehouse, waiting for cultists to bolt for it or try something he can interfere with. Sure enough, a cloud of green mist pours out of the window and forms into a vampire with a super spooky magic scythe. It is our old friend Head-choppy Supreme, and he launches into an evil speech about how disappointed he is that it has taken this long for investigators to track him down. Then he opens an interplanar gateway to escape before we can mob him in summoned panthers. Around this time, the peasants have started panicking and running around getting in the way, because Malabolg both cast spells and shouted a warning that undead mummies are on the loose and they need to stay out of the way. You see, he is obviously a lich. Malabolg levitates out of their reach. Before too long, the guards make their appearance. Apparently, though they are illiterate and parasite-ridden (Mister Cavern made my summoner roll a Fort save versus lice infestation when he bagged the first guard's hair sample) they are really good at riot control in an unspecified manner, and the situation is soon brought under control. They even save most of the pigs (though given the pigs were sharing a pen with a bunch of dog-sized grub monsters that chased Giles straight through ).

After reflecting on how near a thing it came to the slums turning into an uncontrolled firestorm, Malabolg decides he is thankful this turned out better than his first adventure at level 1. Then it turns out that the inquisition's magical detectives have finished their work. The party has repeatedly turned down the opportunity to investigate the serial killers chopping people's heads off. It looked like it would lead to fights with stuff outside their weight class. Now, very grudgingly, they have uncovered what was up, and it turns out to have been a nefarious Urgathoa-cult ritual called the Reaping. Basically, some jerk priest with a vorpal scythe kills people and takes their heads. If they get lots of heads and possibly a few particularly noteworthy ones, Urgathoa infuses them with a commensurate amount of divine might when the killing spree is finally uncovered. So what the detectives are saying is that it may have been a better idea to just let the warehouse burn to the ground and not look around inside. Duly noted, we'll consider it next time we are evaluating a plan's potential for collateral damage. Oh, and we get some exposition about some ghoul-god Kabriri's cult and Urgathoa cult seemingly working together, which certainly seems in line with everything we've heard about the Necrochubsters running to the Darklands for armies of ghoul buddies in the past.

After showing proof of our findings to a different branch of the inquisition and being rewarded with weapons and armor that have slightly higher plusses, Cassidy informs the party that we have a new assignment. The church's diviners have finally uncovered something useful! An event of grave consequence will be happening within 24 hours, something with the potential to shape Elidir's fate dramatically. What kind of event? How is it important? Ah ha ha! She has no idea. But she highly encourages us and all the rest of the mercenaries she has banned from leaving the country to wander around the capital in the hopes of finding out. Maybe we can do something about it!

Cassidy is of course still proceeding with her plan of pulling the entire military out of the capital to “crush the ghoul rebellion”, leaving only the city guards who Mister Cavern takes every opportunity to highlight as being illiterate parasite-ridden (literally! In Purity Town!) oafs. But she's sure that we can work with them to defeat the megavampire who just tore through a fortified bunker full of better-powergamed adventurers. Even if our strategy for dealing with city cultists has so far been “call in the military and keep the cultists busy long enough for help to arrive.” Even if the vampire is clearly working on something big and freshly infused with new superpowers from a ritual.

So, working theory for now is that Cassidy is working with Head-Choppy Supreme for some kind of coup, or deliberately mismanaging things in the hope that the priests will all get eaten by vampires and she can pick up the pieces as military dictator. Asked again for some kind of lead, Cassidy directs the party to a building where the 9 worg adventurers we've seen before live. Apparently they have smelled “something interesting”, which leads to a mafia safehouse where some big secret meeting is happening. All the giant wolf monsters without opposable thumbs are carefully preparing their armor and spellbooks for the upcoming investigation.

Now, we'd been warned before the session started that Mister Cavern wanted to do a little railroading so he could throw us into a megadungeon at the appropriate level. Clearly sensing the railroad approaching, Malabolg declares that he is going to do tourist things, admire artwork and eat at cafes, then follow the worgs when they get around to going on their investigation. After all, he doesn't know Giles is a mobster who could ask the boss about what's up with this big meeting on their turf. Giles decides that he too will wait around and follow the worgs when they check out this meeting. One short timeskip later, it is night and dozens of different adventurers are converging on this warehouse from all sorts of different directions. Apparently the city is littered with clues pointing to something important happening in this one construction site, which Giles identifies as a Mob-controlled site for disposing of bodies. He doesn't tell anyone else about this as the party is waved through by the armed guards stationed at the construction site's... gates?

So, a massive pack of adventurers just openly wanders in, here to check out the meeting they've heard of. They include furry quadrupedal monsters, robed arcanists clutching spellstaves or books, and clanking mail-clad soldiers. Inside is a big amphitheater, where there's a bunch of people talking. The only spot open to observe is a rickety balcony accessed by climbing a bunch of scaffolding. So everyone (including giant wolves and pack animals) climbs up the scaffolding and crowds onto this one little balcony, which turns out to be suspended over a huge pit leading into fast-rushing water.

It turns out to be a bunch of necromancers arguing with Head-choppy Supreme about what to do next, he says that since the moderate leader Grace Withers is gone they should follow his lead and have a gloriously violent uprising. Looks like letting her go was actually a fairly good idea we avoided. Malabolg calls out “Hey, you guys looking for somebody? Perhaps some adventurers could help out with that.” Face twisting in what I really hope was feigned surprise, Head-choppy Supreme yells something about intruders discovering the meeting and waves mystically at the deathtrap balcony. It collapses, spilling all the adventurers into the rapid currents. Malabolg levitates up out of the water, and a few other adventurers follow suit. But then a bunch of “flying, invisible wizards” suddenly unleash such a torrent of dispels that everyone falls back into the water without dice being rolled. Malabolg taunts the gathered necromancers, telling them that idiots who turn down sincere offers of help from murder hobos rarely prosper. Then he swims after the less mobile people as they are sucked down into the Elidir sewers (he's actually in pretty good condition, given that his summoned horse apparently climbed up the scaffolding with everyone else and allowed him to break his fall on the way down).

The party is sucked down into a channel featuring giant spinning fan blades and walkways on the side, and a combination of the local sewerworker's guild and summoned apes fish people out before any adventurers are minced. We are greeted by some guy who is apparently in charge of the Sewer Workers Guild, and he says that conveniently enough they could really use some adventurers. Weird things have been happening. Giles thinks the sewer boss is mob-reminiscent, so metagame it's probably the former don that Mister Cavern name-dropped as the former owner of the abandoned mansion Malabolg lurked on top of earlier in the session.

The session ends with a debate. Giles argues that this is all Malabolg's fault, because of course everyone would have gotten inevitably trapped here anyways, but if we just sat down and shut up we might have heard some ~valuable clues~. Malabolg responds that the chance to do that taunting was totally worth it. But he decides to hold back his concerns about the manipulations of Cassidy, Don Posh, and Head-choppy Supreme. In Malabolg's estimation, it might actually be safest for the adventurers down here right now. This nice roguish fellow might not be able to handle that kind of news.

Of course, Malabolg is more articulate when he brings up the rumors he's heard about the sewers being dimensionally locked. Apparently the whole complex is used as some kind of weird prison, and the guards are just prisoners who work in exchange for early escape. If there's any truth to that nonsense, then Giles might just have to work a lot harder in the battles that await us up ahead. After all, Malabolg is a soft, delicate flower, unsuited to the harshness of melee. He could end up doing a lot of hiding 2 rooms away after dispensing buff spells to the designated Fighting Man. “Good luck!” the summoner says with a vivid smirk.

[Ikeren]

I just read this campaign journal. Highly entertaining.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Glad you liked it! I just finished expanding the session notes above your post.

[Avoraciopoctules]

SESSION 10:

When we last left our heroes, they had gotten fished out of the water by probable criminals and then been told that there�'s adventure to be found in them thar hills. Party Wizard�'s player is around, but wants to have Party Wizard retraining off camera so he can come in at level 8 with a multi-templated skeleton army and fireballs that deal 80+ damage. New PC time! There�'s an ugly guy wearing monk�'s robes and carrying a bow, frantically shaking his drowned buddy and telling them to wake up. The party tells him the unfortunate body probably just needs a rez, and he should stick with them until they find a priest to pay or threaten. Damien is a Monk Archer who dumped CHA and INT to around 5 each. Good at making perception checks, and burst damage with arrows, but not much else. Reasonably resilient at melee, range, and saves.

We chat a bit with the new guy. His story is that he�'s been in and out of a LOT of different prisons. He got offered freedom in exchange for helping out the inquisition, but now it looks like he�'s in the clink yet again! Oh no! He gives us some heartfelt advice: "Wanna live, get a shiv". There is a merry discussion about the merits of delegating the nasty dangerous work of adventuring, in which Malabolg confirms that nothing will stop him from summoning 27 celestial crocodiles today. The tragedy is, of course, that crocodiles appear to be utter rubbish at crafting shivs for us. We resolve that through the power of Friendship (the power of gators, arrows, and Giles stabbing fools in the back all at the same time) our glorious fellowship may yet weather the unfortunate paucity of shivworthy material in this dungeon. After all, do we really need material when we have materiel in such prodigious amounts?

So the green-armored dude in charge of these "sewer wardens" says that they want to confiscate all our weapons. Malabolg responds with a smirking "sure, buddy! " and heaves an extraplanar crocodile into him. Damian offers to distribute some arrows into the others since they seem so earnest about this. While they are stammering in confusion, we bait them a little, talking about how stupid trying to disarm several dozen angry adventurers is and how we are reasonably confident the mobsters above are actively collaborating with the undead. Our opposition spins about and runs off, escaping through a secret door. We follow closely, soon followed by like 3 dozen other adventurers when the drainage blender closes up and the room begins to flood.

Briefly, the party considers dowsing lights and pursuing with darkvision but we are then informed that there is bright light everywhere from glowing wall fungus. When we come to an intersection, the other adventurers brightly suggest that we split up. Damien and Malabolg laugh in their faces and say they are free to do whatever, but we think staying in one pack is survival-oriented behavior. There are a few wizards among the rest and they decide they are gonna try teleporting out. Malabolg warns again that he's heard of a nasty dimension lock on this sewer/prison. The teleport carries off all but the worgs and like 6 other miscellaneous adventurers, and most of these promptly go wandering in different directions.

One of the remaining adventurers can apparently track, and we continue to follow the path of the mobsters until we come to a padlocked door. Giles disarms an electricity trap and opens several locks. Once we begin breaking the unlocked but still bolted-from-behind door down, the boss of the mobsters attempts to negotiate through some kind of speaking tube. As an administrator in this inmate-run prison, he might be able to help us escape to the surface IF we do him a few favors. He is allegedly surprised to hear that the city overhead is overwhelmed by murderous high-level vampires and all the competent adventurers and soldiers have either left the city deliberately or been dumped in the sewers. He�'s like, dudes, you gotta get out of here, the survival rate is like 1 in 3. We cheerily reply that in fact, we would definitely rather stay down here where the survival rate is a comparatively nice 33%. One mob-backed vampire assault inflicted like 90% casualties on the adventurer population sunside, so people must really have it easy down here.

Damian begins to shoot adamantine arrows through their door, and they grudgingly shut off the flooding trap they were trying to kill us with. They get more desperate with their frantic demands that we do their side quests. You see, whether we are to escape or not, the mobsters need our help on the 1st floor. That is the control station, capable of flooding the whole city. The exit to the surface is also there. Undead are rampaging through the sewers, and they might get control if they aren�'t stopped. There is a little discussion. "Why should we want to go up there? Well, flooding the city might inconvenience the vampires, and I really dislike them." "NO, you fools! I want you to stop the city from being flooded to save thousands of lives." We laugh a little at Green Mobster talking about how he wants people not to get drowned by the drowning machine right after admitting that he tried drowning us with his drowning machine to steal our weapons, and determine that this guy is too much of a chump to bother any further. We decide to demand a guide to the upper levels after making some vague claims to look into it. "hostage is such an uncivilized word"

The guide comes out. He�'s got a pink hat on and is constantly cringing. We ask him for directions onward and he tells us that we can basically go wherever. He reinforces this stance when we remind him that horrible death awaits if he steers us awry, but doubles down on his boss�'s position that they can�ft let us into the relatively safe maintenance tunnels because of regulations. That might add months to his sentence, you see. He cringes at the thought of leaving with us once we get to the alleged escape route. You see, he wants to serve out his sentence honest-like. In the next breath, we get him to tell us about he totally plans to join a necromancer street gang first thing after he gets out. Maybe if he plays his cards right he�'ll get turned.

We shrug, and proceed to navigate literally randomly. Every path split is resolved by coin flip. Eventually, we have to choose between a slow route with less danger and a fast route with more. You see, there are color coded stripes on the wall and red means people allowed, black means Monster Eat You!!! We ask our �"guide�" why we shouldn't just tunnel straight up, and he whines about time getting added to his sentence. So, left with two choices, the solution is obvious. "Flippy the Coin has steered us well so far, we can't give up on him now."

We go for the Black path, and end up inside a giant room filled with steam boilers that somehow charge these big foot-thick electric cables that bring power to the mechanisms in the rest of the dungeon. All I can say is, it�'s better than one game I was in where frost giants used nuclear power to boil water for their steam powered catapults. In any case, we get attacked by wights with magic crossbows riding big ghoul bats with a stunning screech attack that targets Will. Giles has a garbage Will save, and doesn�'t do much in this fight. But we bog the enemy down with summoned dire bats and Damian takes no penalties for shooting at concealed targets in a melee, so it goes fairly well. When Giles comes out of his stunlock, he finishes off the fallen survivor of the wight commandos before it climbs up to melee us. The creature had fired a grapple line up at us as it fell past the ledge we looked into the steam room from. We get excited about the flaming burst arrows we loot, but then they are amended to be crossbow bolts, so they buff our summoner�'s default ranged attack. We give our guide a light crossbow to go with his club.

It turns out that, unlike us, the undead invaders have no problems tunneling around all the puzzles and trash mobs. I tell our summoned bats to carry us up through the hole in the ceiling the undead bat riders used. We steer clear of the sparking electric cables as we escape the room occluded by dense steam. Above we find some stairs and a secret door. Our guide whines that we can�ft go through the secret door, because that will get him in trouble. We laugh, and resort to Flippy the Coin. We end up skulking through a tunnel and kiting a magma ooze (shredded by arrows, since a minmaxed archer can basically deplete all of a monster's HP in one round in this level unless it has a good counter tactic or resistance. Plus, we were faster than it.) Then, after several misunderstandings about how fast it is moving, we fight another ooze in a room full of more electrified cables. At least this high-voltage room isn�'t full of dripping water.

Suddenly our guide complains that, after leaving all navigation decisions up to us and then watching as we leave navigation up to Flippy, he doesn't know where to go. We laugh at him and joke about smashing things again. And suddenly, our guide has a terrifying revelation. Maybe he didn�'t know the way out this whole time. Could he have somehow been hoodwinked by his boss? Malabolg pats him on the shoulder patronizingly and encourages him to slowly, aloud, think through all the implications of this. The conclusion is that our guide�'s memories have somehow been tampered with, and Green Dude was hoping he�'d get us all killed. No surprise there. But he does give a vague indication that the way to Level 2 is probably in a Black Zone, because he isn�'t supposed to go there. Glad to hear that the Path of Flippy was the right one all along, we continue to wander aimlessly, but make more of a point to barrel into all of the rooms that look like deathtraps. In one such, we find a speaking tube and decide to taunt Green Dude. Some lady responds that we probably have the wrong tube. It turns out that she is charge of level 2. Someone makes a knowledge check and we realize that this is apparently the mother of the Isgerian general we�'ve been getting our quests from. The layout of level functions and administrators apparently works out like this:
Level 3: Power Plant, Green Dude (Crime Boss�'s Brother)
Level 2: Prison, Crusader General�'s Mom
Level 1: City Genocide Machine and Exit, Crime Boss

We proceed with our usual overblown paranoid doomsaying that is backed up surprisingly well with the facts of the situation, with added insinuations that Green Dude and Crime Boss are working with the undead. Malabolg decides on the spur of the moment that the undead have basically won if he can�ft work out some way to schism their alliances or make a compromise, and he declares that his goal is to make it to Grace Withers and free her. Since she is apparently the moderate leader of Elidir�'s astonishingly large necromancer population, she might be able to reign in some of the genocide enthusiasts. (or just work out a profitable exit plan for him and a handful of other adventurers. His personal goal is to loot some specific tombs, and that would probably be more acceptable to necromancer wizards than Pharasman priests.). Of course, she might just have gone murder-crazy or died, but the risk is worth the potential reward. Crusader General�'s Mom decides she is okay with this, and gives us a MacGuffin that will open some doors through a pneumatic tube.

Now we know that when we find some weird doors that match up with our magic rock, we can advance to the next level of the dungeon. Until then, it is Flippy Time. We run into an injured guy, but a giant ghoul Koolaid Mans his way through a door and kills him before we can do anything. The ghoul then asks us to leave it alone in exchange for some vague information about how to get to the next floor, but we shoot it when it tries messing with the power cables. We�'ll probably need those working to get through the MacGuffin doors after all. Apparently the ghoul had Deflect Arrows, but it still gets shredded by one character�'s rapid shot full attack. In the room the ghoul came from, there are a bunch of ice golems. Giles cuts them to pieces with flaming sword sneak attacks and some ape flanking buddies/meat shields. We also run into a copy-paste of the climactic final encounter of Haunting of Harrowstone, but since the Splatter Man�'s twin brother is apparently just haunting part of one random hallway, we jog through and simply take our 2 points wisdom damage each.

There�'s a canal of fast-moving water out of which we drag a half-drowned gnome. Apparently he was one of the adventurers who tried teleporting, and sure enough they were randomly scattered throughout the most dangerous deathtraps of the dungeon. He claims that if we tried wading through the canal, maybe it�'d take us to dungeon level two, but the party overall votes against this idea. If there are zombie fish or something, the water�'s deep enough that we'd probably have to break out the swimming combat rules. And without enough swim ranks to auto-pass most of the checks, I don�'t think we want that. We resolve to return to our aimless wandering. The thought of rest is raised, and then discarded. We have plenty of daily resources left.

As the session draws to a close, we marvel over how so many people in the dungeon seem to share a single accent. The phrasing careens wildly between Cockney and Australian, with a few unusual colloquialisms. Not until we entered the Elidir prison/sewer/powerplant/doomsday device system did we run into people who answered half our questions with "Yah, brah, definitely."

[Avoraciopoctules]

Session 11:

The monk's player didn't make it, so his PC decides to wade through the doom canal after all. And I'm kinda busy taking notes, so my PC declares “It's up to you, Giles. Our friend has left, so Flippy the coin is no longer here to advise us.”

Our rogue searches the area and finds a secret door, we go through that instead of backtracking or following Monk PC. Soon there is an Ochre Jelly attack, which sparks an immediate rendition of “Beware of the Blob”. We lure them to the trapdoor and they go after easier prey, then collectively lift a portcullis in the way. Jokes are made about how we might have just made things harder for Archer Monk since he tends to leave a trail of monster carcasses behind him, each gibbed in a single round. Then again, eating the parade of meat heaps should probably slow down the oozes enough that they won't actually meet up.

We head into a corridor, which gets closed off and starts flooding. Malabolg summons an extradimensional pit in the floor under the next door so we can just go under the door and resurface on the other side. When we see dispensers fill the room with piranhas, we laugh and jump in the pit before they flop their way after us and their stolen water.

In the pit, Giles helps the group up and out by climbing a 10 foot pole and letting down a rope for the rest of us. Malabolg and the NPC ranger make it up fine, but panicky guy is bitten a few times. The next room has a suffocation trap and crates full of supplies, but our pit allows plenty of air. We summon another pit and get past the second door after Giles loots a masterwork trap kit.

We find a way back into the maintenance tunnels, and decide we are going to conscript the level 1 boss who tried to get us killed. Panicky hostage guy (healed with a wand) leads us to a ludicrously huge mess hall, capable of serving hundreds of people, since we refuse to let him wander out of sight. The place is mostly unoccupied, but then we head into the kitchens and watch yet another person spazz out because we aren't in the trap rooms being murdered. After we listen to some more whining about how we aren't supposed to be here, we give our renewed undead apocalypse and grand conspiracies rant, and add on that we're now working with the level 2 boss. The chief cook decides to smuggle us into the leadership's meeting in a giant soup cauldron.

So we get wheeled in, listen to leaders panicking over the constant influx of hostile undead monsters. And soon enough, there is an opportunity for Malabolg to interject “Perhaps I could be of some assistance with that” and hop out. We immediately launch an intense verbal assault on Green Guy and rub the crisis situation into everyone's faces. Brandishing our fancy pass from level 2 as proof that another overseer is backing us is very useful in getting a diplomatic solution. Especially when we're like, hey, aren't you and Giles supposed to be crime buddies and Green Guy finally recognizes him. “Don't you have some kind of secret crime handshake or something?“ “Yeah, but he didn't do it.”

The people here on level 1 (which is kind of weird if this is the lowest level, but whatevs) must resolve to settle in for a long siege, since they can no longer expect safe supplies from the surface while the undead apocalypse is going on around them. Green Guy asks the party to help sneak him and some special lieutenants out if the situation looks dire, and Malabolg says something vague about getting word back to him if it looks unlikely that the crusaders outside will stabilize things. In any case, sewer crew are no longer going to be setting off traps on us, and Green Guy gives us a fancy wax tablet with a map to the next level checkpoint, which will magically melt in an hour. That should help us with our stated plan of breaking the possibly reasonable necromancer Grace Withers out of prison before the undead do so first.

Soon after coming to our agreement with Green Guy's goon squad (alliteration!), we head out following the directions on our map. The sewer wardens are actually helping us now, so we try to help them by avoiding killing any more monsters. Going is fairly fast, but we do make a stop when we find a records room full of files on prisoners, just after fighting some Crypt Fiends, which are apparently teleporting undead that arbitrarily ignore the special teleport-scrambling of the dungeon. We steal the whole ledger on political prisoners.
- Grace Withers guilty of “Conspiracy to Assist Undead”, life imprisonment.
- Chief Omingo, Warden Floor 3, conspiracies of various sorts, forgery, impersonating priest.
- Warden Floor 1, Adrian, drug and poison distribution and creation, sentence is over, but is now remaining as a voluntary employee of the system.
- Warden section 2, Cassidy's mother is a volunteer, rapid rise through the ranks.

Past the records room, there is a long, pitch-black tunnel full of traps. Since they are not being set off on us no distractions from finding the point marked on our map. We go through a hidden door, hear arrow shots and screaming from monsters in the water-filled canal, but ignore our currently NPC buddy as we take the ladder up to finally, the level 2 checkpoint.

Unfortunately, this is when the boss fight music starts playing. There is a meditating figure in robes right in front of the gate, clearly a desiccated corpse when we get closer. It is very polite (though always referring to itself in the 3rd person) when it introduces itself as Plaguemaster Tallow's guardian, assigned to keep anyone unapproved from passing through the area. Sadly, we aren't on the list.

Malabolg decides that he rather likes this monster's manners, and offers to resolve the matter of passage with a simple contest of champions, but our adversary is confident that “this humble one can fight all of you”. Well, it's their (second) funeral. AGGRESS.

The fight is closer than expected. Turns out this was a Frost Wight with 4 monk levels, applied negative levels and 2d6 cold damage (frost punch amulet and inherent monster power) with its flurry of blows. My original strategy was wear it down with waves of summoned mooks. But it heals with every hit, and it can punch 4 times in every round. Giles is sniping with undead bane arrows, but he's throwing out fewer arrows than our dedicated archer at a foe with Deflect Arrows as a feat.

I bring in my pouncecat eidolon, with a bunch of slams that each trigger grapple checks and a high AC. It does better, but apparently grappling gives it negative levels against this opponent. So I go all out, with summoned hound archon and eidolon simultaneously out and Haste on all friendlies. We wear it down faster than it can heal, and then Giles closes to finish it off with a flanking sneak attack with dual shortswords.

Guardian dispatched, we loot the remains. We get the magical returning javelin it used to initiate combat, some dedicated monk items that mostly help our eidolon, and the ashes of the undead itself. Liking its spirit, Malabolg elects to keep the ashes in case we meet a necromancer with Revive Undead who is looking for a cohort.

We signal the level 2 boss, and confirm that the area is clear. We pass the checkpoint and arrive at a tall vertical shaft with a ladder and a dangling basket elevator. We ride the elevator up, and find that we have now come to a floor that actually smells like a sewer. The boss of this floor is there to greet us, and declares “Welcome, to Level 2.”

I'm not sure what Mister Cavern was aiming for, but now I'm probably stuck using this as the megasewer dungeon theme. In any case, the utterance marked the end of that day's game. It was a short session since 2 MCs both ran something that day, but it was still fun. I hope we have more fights that force us to adapt our tactics like that. Looming over the unnamed NPCs cheerily talking about the doom all around and our uncertainty whether we actually locked any doors behind us until they awkwardly decided to help us on our way was honestly really enjoyable too.

[Avoraciopoctules]

SESSION 11:

This game involved an entirely new player, so Mister Cavern decided to run a side-story back on the surface. I got really excited about street-fighting against the undead apocalypse and made an angel summoner with an array of statlines for murderbeasts that could hold off the ghouls as we tried to save people. He had zero social skills, and a distinct disdain for the theocrats who had let hordes of megazombies slaughter villages wholesale a days ride off from their capital. Our new player decided to build a Kitsune Transmuter/Arcane Trickster who had a bunch of utility powers but very little to do in combat. This character, Nankitu, had the explicit goal of bringing down Isger's pharasmite theocracy.

So, with characters introduced and established as having met up and bonded over their distaste for the pharasmites, we move on to the game. The PCs are staying at an inn in Elidir. "What!? Okay, well I guess we'd better head out there and start fighting the undead while we figure out how to save people."

It seems that most people in the city don't think the undead incursion is that big a deal. Sure, ghouls will try to murder you at night, but that's only like half the day! People can just hide in their homes after dark! Surely the city guard has everything well in hand, even though they hear all of the adventurers Boss Crusader Cassidy conscripted got dumped into the sewers. "Wow, this Joe Everyman is disturbingly calm about this. Have the vampires dominated everyone already?" "Nah, see, he's an optimist, a glass-half-full kind of guy." "But the glass is half full of undead!"

So we get a letter from some guy named Tiberius. Neither of us know who this clown is, but he says he's some kind of church bigwig. But we hate the church! It messed up and now ghouls are everywhere! Well, he wants to hire us for a sensitive job anyways. In fact, he wants to deputize us to bring in some criminals, even though he has no legal authority to arrest people personally. You see, he has heard rumors that the old nobles are plotting to regain power. They've been talking to the wrong crowd, you know. So he has a list of names, and we are to either drag them before him in manacles or kill them on the spot.

"Oh ya, heil! Ve have our list, yavole!" We are openly skeptical about this whole thing, and he says he'll reward us with whatever magical items we want. And free resurrections! He'll lend us a magic carpet or a teleportation scroll so we can go to the distant city where the political dissidents live.

My compatriot and I consult. This guy is incredibly sketchy and seems to be doing whatever he can to send us on some wild goose chase where we can't interfere with the undead assault on Elidir. He is probably the bad guy. But if we let on that we know, he might have us killed on the spot. We should pretend to go along now, but refuse his items and horses so he can't spy on us. Maybe we can find allies in this city of Logos he mentioned.

Departing the city, we are periodically stopped by war parties who demand to see our papers. There are piles of decapitated and unburied corpses along the road, resembling ghouls, with the occasional wight or vampire spawn. It really looks like Boss Crusader Cassidy is being kept busy through sacrificing only the weakest and most disposable of the undead hordes while the bulk of their forces terrorize the capital. And this decapitation thing is awful reminiscent of the killer who took out all the PCs that actually cared about Isger.

When we get to Logos, we find that it is surrounded by mercenary encampments, who are laughing about how they got hired away from the church army by the nobles. (So the purity crusaders employed a bunch of mercenaries for what???) In any case, Lucen the summoner and Nankitu the arcane trickster try to do some research. It looks like the nobles are actually fairly well-liked by the populace, so we figure they can't be any less competent than the Pharasmites.

Nankitu rolls a 20 on his "do I know anybody in town" check, and finds one of his old acquaintances wearing a lieutenant's uniform in one mercenary camp. Apparently the mercenaries don't know what they've been hired for exactly (who signed that contract???), but it's good money. Nankitu asks how a wanderer like him might pick up a few paychecks doing spells-for-hire in this big new force before heading off on his way again, and is told that he should swear fealty to one of the local lords. You see, if the nobles hire you to work for them for the rest of your life as a feudal retainer, you aren't subject to security screening and background checks.

Meanwhile, I discover that when approached by powerful adventurers with connections curious about whether they should side with this new faction forming up, the nobles are like "yeah, we're building up a huge army for something, but we're not going to tell you what we plan to do with it." After like half an hour of reasoning with them and picking apart very obvious lies, Lucen confirms that yes, they plan to storm the cloister of pharasmites and make sure they never hold power again.

But you know what? At least they'll probably have to hack their way through the ghoul hordes to get there. The pharasmites couldn't deal with the undead, and word is Elidir's situation is constantly worsening, maybe this wave of sword guys will improve things. Lucen is just going to stay out of this and Nankitu is going to work with the nobles since he hates the pharasmites too.

A Chelish noble with a demon (not a devil?!) next to them claims that the nobles are actually in league with the church of Urgathoa and plotting to become vampires. Then she jumps into a portable hole and the demon teleports away while the guards do nothing. Lucen has a sense motive of +0 and Nankitu doesn't know what the church of Urgathoa even is, so we smile, high-five, and call it ADVENTURE COMPLETE! Surely those nobles twitching every time I say that I am the scourge of undeath don't mean anything by it. After all, they probably have >0 ranks in bluff.

Game was hilarious. Only 1 round of combat, when we saved the nobles from assassins that burst through the windows right after I said they needed to be alert because assassins could strike at any moment. And now it looks like Malabolg's prediction that Elidir will be a blasted, vampire-haunted hellscape by the time he comes back is even more likely than before.

[flare22]

yeah everything seems correct except the chellish noble had a devil not a demon though I may have said demon by accident so my bad

[Avoraciopoctules]

It's cool. I probably ought to have asked for clarification when I was taking notes down. Definitely looking forward to seeing what happens next...Though the next IE session probably won't be happening for a couple of weeks at least.

I'm going to be running a dungeoncrawl through a temple of Tlaloc in a different campaign next game, and people might have other scenarios they want to try. I hear someone might be contemplating a level 12 raid on a fortress of fire giants, for instance. Our group generally has at least 3 different campaigns going at any given time, based on who shows up and which people feel like MCing at the moment.

[Avoraciopoctules]

SESSION 12:
Notes are little sparser for this game, since I was filling out some unrelated paperwork at the same time.

Giles and Malabolg are discussing the situation with Sewer Boss 2. Apparently, the undead actually invaded through a portal to the Elemental Plane of Earth, so the chances of the surface being a Mad Max hellscape is slightly reduced. The portal is apparently a state secret, despite the fact that we've been told about open trade between the Plane of Earth and Isger like 5 times now. When we ask for clarification, we are told that the bureaucrats in charge are just that incompetent. Further, apparently the Shaitans are taking Isgerian sewage as part of some kind of trade agreement. Wow, that's almost like paying an Efreet to light your candles. I give even odds that the Shaitans gave the ghoul army free passage to attack Isger, and really hope that they aren't openly supported by Ayrzul the Fossilized King.

After some incoherent explanations of the situation from the battered church-soldiers, we resolve that first we will go to the portal room and punch it until it stops working. Once the giant monster spawner is disabled, we will grab the moderate leader of Isger's necromancers, spring her from jail, and strongly suggest that she join the party so we can do something about stopping the war. Then we have a shot at resolving this with less violence, and can turn some of our enemies into Pokemon on the way.

The hundreds of traps throughout the complex are set to go off if anything goes near them, so we grab a cleric to accompany us and point out the traps or useful shortcuts as they show up. The cleric, who is never named, does nothing of the sort, but he does help out in combat a few times. We fight some wraiths, and Malabolg does his best impression of a human extra in Casper the Friendly Ghost. But most of the wraiths end up running from us after a successful turn attempt.

We fight some undead adventurers, who apparently made it to level 2 before us. The ghast wizard is pretty nasty when Malabolg stops goading him into screaming arguments over planar metaphysics, and he disables Giles for most of the fight with a stinking cloud. However, Giles is actually the last PC standing at the end of the fight, with both Malabolg and the NPC cleric lying unconscious at negative HP. Malabolg is magically blind and invisible, but his summons keep chugging along without him and start munching on the destroyed undead. At least one magical ring goes into a giant extraplanar scorpion's stomache before Malabolg is revived from his near death from being fireballed repeatedly while blind.

After punching everything that moves or glows in the portal room, we return to find that the church-soldiers used our attack to secure more of the second floor, and the traps should leave us alone now. We are let into maximum security prison for a meeting with the necromancer Grace Withers. There is an exchange of information where we confirm some suspicions but learn nothing new, and she joins the party. Withers agrees that Head-Choppy Supreme's naked power grab is a problem, and in exchange for us freeing and helping her, she agrees to drop her grudge with Giles and owe Malabolg one reasonable favor. Technically our necromancer is still a condemned prisoner transferred to our oversight, but she might get a pardon later. Spell selection is currently limited to what was in the ghast's spellbook and whatever she picked for Spell Mastery.

The undead adventurers we dispatched claimed that the greatest of their number, a fighter, was so much more powerful that he left them behind for slowing him down. He will surely crush us. I have my doubts about that. Though I do feel some concern about whatever ended up turning the people who were apparently faster and more effective than us into undead minions. They weren't more than a day or 2 faster than us, so it's probably still around. It's a good thing we have a level 8 necromancer on our side now, plus a cleric who can do something useful in combat now that we gave him the ghast's necklace of fireballs.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Oh dear. I just got a look at our new necromancer's character sheet. Now, I already asked whether her gear could be taken out of escrow, only to be informed that it had either been rapidly traded away to other countries or dumped into a furnace. So we needed to equip her using our own loot, fair enough. I asked whether she had some spells available through Spell Mastery in addition to the fireblasts in the ghast's spellbook, and was told yes. I repeatedly mentioned that Command Undead would be a really nice spell for her to have.

First, Mister Cavern has decided that our necromancer is a bonded object wizard, so now every spell she casts has a significant risk of fizzling until we spend a full day of downtime and more than 1600 GP in expensive components. She's also banned Evocation and Transmutation, which makes a lot of the fireblasts more slot-consumptive.

Next, apparently Spell Mastery was a very recent choice. Animate Dead (needs expensive component), Contagion (useless against expected opposition, too slow-acting to be useful in most other fights), Enervation (might be useful in another campaign, but even then involves a bunch of tedious recalculation every time it is cast), Invisibility (Greater) (I can already cast it), Shadow Conjuration (actually useful if you dumpster-dive for versatility), Stoneskin (needs expensive component). So we have one genuinely helpful addition to party versatility, and we also have a secondary buffer for our rogue. We're really gonna have to pick up some scrolls for better level 1 and 2 spells.

Int is high enough for decent save DCs (though our non-spell version of Command Undead uses CHA for the DC, dropping us a full 5 points), but most of the spells we have available are useless against the opposition we'll face. They'll be nice later on when we are slaughtering the thieves guild, but for now, this is the best we can do with a spellbook mostly full of both our banned schools :

Level 1:
1x (counts as 2x) Feather Fall
1x Identify
3x Mage Armor (for buffing summons or undead)
1x Chill Touch (only necromancy spell available for specialist slot, might help if we want to make some zombies run away)

Level 2:
5x Invisibility
1x blank Necromancy slot (in case we find a scroll with something better than Ghoul Touch)

Level 3:
4x Protection from Energy
1x blank Necromancy slot (in case we find a scroll with something better than Vampiric Touch)

Level 4:
1x Greater Invisibility
3x Shadow Conjuration
1x Animate Dead (maybe we can pull some black onyx off a dead enemy and make a couple backup minions.)

At level 9, I'm going to strongly encourage our necromancer to take Spell Mastery again or retrain it so she can add some decent spells at levels 1, 2, and 3. Command Undead, Communal Resist Energy, Halt Undead, Floating Disk (for getting more reliable full attacks on our melee specialists), and maybe keeping Shadow Conjuration, swapping out Greater Invisibility for normal level 2 Invisibility. Of course, that probably involves digging up scrolls for the new spells first.

Shadow Conjuration is our most useful in-combat trick, potentially giving us inflated-DC versions of Grease, Glitterdust, Web, Communal Mount (for blocking lots of squares with horses), Spiked Pit, Sleet Storm, or Aqueous Orb as needed.

EDIT: May also recommend retraining some feats. If we could get a good familiar for delivering touch attacks instead of a bonded object, some carefully selected metamagic, or a few channel boosters like Undead Master / Sacred Conduit (through Additional Traits), that would mean increased overall effectiveness.

[Avoraciopoctules]

SESSION 13:

Picked up a new PC party member, Roy the alchemist, specialized in bombs. Unfortunately, the adventure itself was kind of a bummer. We slogged through nondescript sewer levels and fought some either mindless or really dumb monsters. Occasionally we found a piece of treasure identical to something we already had. We used a tactical map, but it was really confusing since the hexes were declared to be different sizes every engagement and it was never something divisible by 5.

Not only is our new necromancer blander than I remember, Mister Cavern's "I don't want to roleplay 2 NPCs talking to each other if one's currently in the party" policy means she's basically useless for talking our way past undead (Well, except we can use her as a prop when we've already entered parley) In fact, when undead attack us out of nowhere they generally target her first before routine invisibility on the squishies becomes a plan.

The disappointment in our new party member is compounded when she declares that she isn't going to help us fight people who might worship the same god as her. Plus, she isn't really interested in being used as the figurehead for some undead civil war, she'd rather just gather her followers and go into voluntary exile.

When the NPC he put serious scheming time into rescuing declares that they aren't interested in the plot, bugger this for a lark, it is a transcendent moment for Malabolg. She's a key figure in the politics of this, and he's just an increasingly bored mercenary. If she can say "fuck this", so can he. He's not interested in fighting for either side anymore, he's just going to get out of here as fast as he can, raid the tomb with the artifact he wants using the war as a diversion, and then move to some other country to get very drunk.

Towards the end, we find the "super-fighter" basically just standing in front of the door to the next level and going "you shall not pass" like the monk from before. We fight a little bit. Then we talk a little bit. There was a pretty cool set piece with a slowly flooding room and a barge the cairn wight barbarian was holding us off from boarding. Giles tries to suprise-stab the enemy during negotiations, but he's already at really low health, went in without backup from the party, and the enemy drank a Harm potion, so he just ends up cairn wight spawn. The surviving party members agree to peaceful coexistance with the wight, who gets a shares of Giles' stuff. Then he lets us pass, asking us to talk to his boss and see if Head-Choppy Supreme is willing to hire us for a job after all.