Twenty-third Session (8 page pdf) – “On The Road Again” – The Teeth of Araska and Wandering Dagger take to the sea lanes to raid Chelaxian shipping! They take a prize, but are harried by fish-men.

Fish-man (sahuagin)

The guys like the wavecrawling aspect of the campaign – taking a break from “plot” and just going out and pirating. And sometimes the tables are turned, like when they get attacked by some fish-men at night… The NPC pirates on guard (which I let the players run) are more than up to the challenge of running them off, however.

Samaritha gets tired of the pirates calling them fish men and says, “They are called sahuagin!”
This news upsets Pirro. “What? Why can’t we call them fish men?”
Samaritha explains, “There are over a dozen fish man races.” She goes into great detail about the differences between them.
Pirro replies, “What? What is the government doing about all these aquatic monsters!?!”

I try to bring my knowledge of realistic naval stuff to the table for the rest of the session – two allied ships hunting for merchants, there’s a lot of details about keeping each other in sight, who sees what other ships, primary claim to the booty coming from whoever boarded first, etc. They take the Dowager Queen and get some booty and a defecting Chelish marine, Luca Caletti, who is soon referred to as “Spaghetti” by the not-so-fond-of-Chelaxians crew.

Man-shark (adaro)

Twenty-fourth Session (6 page pdf) – “It Was Nice While It Lasted” – The pirates ply the sea lanes, until a derelict ship is revealed to be a Chelish trap!

We have more wavecrawling action – the Wandering Dagger takes a ship out of sight of the Teeth of Araska, which means they don’t have to share!  And then man-sharks attack the ship.  I’m ambivalent about these nuisance sea humanoid attacks; trying to attack up onto an elevated, bobbing ship seems… Unlikely. These guys just wanted to drag off someone to eat at least.  The PCs fight them off and get a couple spears with paralyzing toxin on them.  “Can we keep some?” they ask?  “Sure,” I say, with a devious grin.

After the first crewman is paralyzed “accidentally” by a man-shark harpoon, Captain Sindawe has the lot thrown overboard.

A pirate ship is much like a frat house with even more violence.

And then… a Chelish trap!  The PCs are lured onto a derelict ship with a bound hellcat on board, which is bad, but even worse is that while they’re still over there a fully armed Chelish warship appears from behind a veil with a full Hellknight on board and demands the two pirate ships surrender!

Twenty-fifth Session (13 page pdf) – “A Stacked Deck” – the Teeth of Araska and the Wandering Dagger grapple with the Chelaxian frigate Dominator and its Hellknight contingent for their very lives. And two more suspicious characters escape from the enemy’s brig during the fray, a Mwangi man and a half-elven woman.

The Dominator is a canonical Chelish pirate hunting ship, and the Hellknight they escaped from in Magnimar is on board, Paralictor Devreth Rotani. Captain Clap of the Dagger hates this guy. No discussion, he throws himself into the frigate’s broadside to try to attack them.  The Dagger gets blasted, marines board the Araska, Samaritha’s spells get dispelled… Pirates are riddled with wooden shivers, blood runs in the scuppers!

Meanwhile, we have two new PCs joining the game! They’re both in the Dominator’s brig, but use this opportunity to escape. (This is also an important part of balancing this fight, putting some distractions on board, so that the Dagger and Araska don’t both just get sunk out of hand. That kinda works.)

One of the enemy signifers casts Vision of Hell on their ship, our session scribe Chris renders the results in particularly inspired fashion thus:

The Dominator has one more trick. It shimmers as a desert mirage, then solidifies into a different vessel. The ship looks like a hellscape. Hatchways are now pleading mouths, wet with hunger and full of teeth. The ship’s rigging is a combination of wanton tentacles and leaking intestines. Each sail is made up of six hundred and sixty-six skinned faces of the damned that howl in agony. More skinned faces make up the Chelaxian flag, the skin pigmentation matched perfectly to that flag. Those faces moan Queen Abrogail II’s favorite waltz. The hull is formed of writhing torsos that provide a handsome and unexpected buoyancy, but uncertain footing. Everything is heavy with the stink of brimstone. The shrill noises of Fox News waft up from below decks.

Meanwhile, Mitabu and Zoamai make their way out of their cells and out of the ship… But the Wandering Dagger is pounded so badly by cannon fire and fire spells that it begins to sink, and after a hard fight the Paralictor kills Captain Clap – Sindawe and Serpent come to the rescue, but too late. Serpent and Sindawe wreak havoc on the enemy ship while the Araska tries to win free, and meet our two new PCs in a rush of Chelaxian murder. That being sufficient resume to become a pirate, they wordlessly fight free together and make the deck of the Araska… Will they escape?  Read on!

Twenty-sixth Session (11 page pdf) – “Deepmar Prison Blues” – The Wandering Dagger was destroyed and the Teeth of Araska badly damaged. They decide to put in at a nearby prison colony to refit (and maybe recruit) – but the place is strangely abandoned! They start repairs and investigate.

We start off by introducing our new characters.  Mitabu “Keelbreaker” hates the Chelish and likes to sabotage ships (he’s a trapmaster rogue).  Zoamai hates elves and is super introverted but likes to set fires (she’s a sorceress). The crew agrees these are Fun People who should be signed on immediately.

The Teeth of Araska beaches to make repairs; I run a minor devilfish attack just to get the new players (Ed and Ashley, IRL) into the vibe with the rest of the group.

And then I start to run the Pathfinder module No Response From Deepmar, set on a Chelish penal colony. I had several things prepped; likely ports included Deepmar, Staufendorf Island (from earlier adventures), and others, but they liked the sound of this one.  When they get there, the penal colony is strangely abandoned… Which leads to immediate burglary attempts; the vault is protected by a permanent stinking cloud trap but they break out the diving helmet they’ve been holding on to for such an occasion.  Then a tripped out four armed giant ape attacks…

Twenty-seventh Session (10 page pdf) – “Jailhouse Rock” – Their investigation of the abandoned prison site uncovers some oddities, like the forgetfulness the sole survivor shows. They head out to investigate the mine sites, but run afoul of the local wildlife.

The PCs spend most of the time investigating the abandoned penal colony. They even call on Melella the druid to talk to the local chickens, with Far Side-esque results.

Melella says, “Captain, I arguably have information for you. I’ve been talking to the chickens. They keep saying that the day of deliverance has come. The blue men came and took away the oppressors. Power to the chickens.”

Sindawe nods, “OK. That might help. Return to the ship and tell them I want the docks, the path to the fort, and any other likely areas well-lit for tonight. Double guards. Blast first, ask questions later.”

Tommy asks, “Do you want us to blast that stone building that’s locked up tight?”

Sindawe replies, “In the morning. Maybe. We’re going to keep looking around.”

“Permission to eat the chickens, sir?”

Sindawe squints suspiciously at the rebel fowl. “Granted!”

They then start investigating the nearby mining sites, and encounter an aurumvorax.  This is very nearly fatal for Sindawe. “I’ll take care of this critter OH GOD!!!!”  Anyone who knows the aurumvorax from previous editions will be unsurprised by this; for a gold-covered eight-legged wolverine thing it’s super killy. It turns into one of those gruesome “keep pumping healing into the guy who’s being rent apart again and again” fights.

Aurumvorax, or Golden Gorger

Twenty-eighth Session (8 page pdf) – “Chain Gang” – They thwart an ambush by little blue freaks, aka derro! Down in a crystal mine, the pirates uncover their bizarre experiments.

Little Blue Freaks, aka Derro

First we have some good role-playing (sadly unrecorded in the summary itself) where the PCs swap stories of their past while they wait out a storm in a shack.  Then, they are too wily to get ambushed by some little guys and set up a counter-ambush instead…

Mitabu shoots one in the back (24pts) with a masterwork pistol. Then the ambushers leap up revealing blue skin, bulging white eyes, four fingered hands, and Don King hair… Derroes!!!

Twenty-ninth Session (9 page pdf) – “Derros and Derangements” – As the pirates continue to explore the derro caves beneath the prison colony, they find a derro alchemist with a cornucopia of bizarre experiments he is only more than happy to unleash upon them.

This is a full on dungeon crawl, touch and go in a derro warren. Zoamai proves her worth with her combination of fireballs and a rod of maximize spell, which leads to this exchange…

The pirates round a bend to see one derro with a bloodied leg strangling another derro. More derro cluster about the pair. Then there is a bright flash as Zoamai’s maximized fireball strikes the derro cluster. Smoke and burning derro fills the tunnel.

Serpent and Sindawe charge into the smoke to find two wounded derro crawling away. They handily dispatch the pair. The rest of the derro are dead.

Serpent emerges from the smoke and says to Zoamai, “I need to get a rod like that for my wife.” Sindawe and Wogan chortle amongst themselves like adolescent boys.

Then a fight with a derro alchemist, fungus-blighted humans, and the hit of the dungeon, an animated surgery table that tries to strap Wogan down on itself and fillet him.  They still talk about that table.

Drowning devil (sarglagon)

Thirtieth Session (20 page pdf) – “R&R On Deepmar” – The command crew finish liberating fungus-mutated prisoners from the derro warrens beneath Deepmar.

With a pirate ship full of crew and high level NPCs, it can be difficult for a foe to attack the ship and it really be a threat. So at times like this, while the PCs are occupied elsewhere, attacks on the ship are both a real threat and a test of their command competence.  So the PCs play some of our NPCs as the Chelish get their revenge by siccing a drowning devil on the escaped Araska.

So the PCs play Tommy, Lil, Little Mike, Samaritha, and Mase Venjum aboard the ship and they fight off the devil.  It’s a scary one, and can drown you with a look, and is full of poison. But Samaritha’s a full caster so they manage to take it down.

Back in the derro caves the PCs manage to make terrible use of a derro-on-golem fight and take the brunt of attacking both of them. And they recover Klangin the half-orc from the fungal experiments of the derro – she goes on to become a fun recurring NPC on the ship, and her determination to “take a man” is focused pretty much on Wogan.

They clear the rest of the derro, liberate prisoners and loot, and it’s back to Deepmar!

Thirty-first Session (20 page pdf) – “Leaving Deepmar” –  The crew tears up the prison colony on their version of shore leave while the party investigates every part of the island that might contain something to impale themselves on. And Wogan may have gotten married.

Wogan decides to interrogate Klangin about her skills, and she takes his inquiries into her combat power and cooking skills to be mating inquiries. Oh, the other PCs needle him about that, insisting that clearly an orcish wedding had taken place. This becomes a recurring theme, with both orc barbarian Klangin and meek waitress Rucia trying to win the affections of the chaste-by-Gozreh-rules cleric.

They get back to Deepmar to see what happens when a pirate crew is bored for a couple days.

The travelers enter the colony, which is in very poor condition after three days of occupation by the Teeth of Araska’s crew. Several of the buildings have been burned. Every wall is covered in graffiti or filth. Furniture, clothing, and other mundane items litter the ground, evidence of overly ambitious looters. Pirate crew dot the facility, sleeping, fornicating, gaming and otherwise passing the time.

Then the pirates decide the rest of the island requires investigation!  Well, Paizo module to the rescue, there’s plenty out there.  And the aurumvorax from a couple sessions ago gets another lick in as its dead body now hosts a rot grub swarm. Needless to say “the dead body is twitching” requires up close investigation. Cue screams.

They come up with an innovative and money-making method of killing off the penal colony’s Chelish leader, a lottery!  All the pirates put in money to win a chance at deciding how the hapless Chel will die. Mitabu wins the lottery (fair and square, against a bunch of NPCs) and decides on “death by trap.” They tell the warden they’re letting him go back to his quarters.  Then…

From inside Ashforth angrily yells, “Who shit on my bed!?!” Saw blades spin to life. Then the screaming starts.

Next, they plan their next voyage, and it’s a long one – from here to Azir to Ilizmagorti, past the Eye of Abednego, through the Shackles, and to the Razor Coast!

Thirty-second Session (21 page pdf) – “Old Flames, False Promises” – The Teeth of Araska returns for a second raid on Staufendorf Island. But the locals there remember them… Perhaps over-fondly.

OK buckle in because this one’s a humdinger.  You may remember the harrowing tale of Staufendorf Island and the Staufen family from way back – starting in our eleventh session summary of this campaign, from back in 2010! “Let’s go back there and hassle them,” thinks the pirate crew.  Mmmmwah hah ha ha haaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!

Sorry.  Anyway, the old Green Ronin module Mansion of Shadows was the original source for this. The Staufen family were all “sin-touched,” being unnaturally aligned with the seven deadly sins. The PCs killed everyone except for the anorexic and envy-aligned Amalinda Staufen, in at least some part because Sindawe had sex with her in the family tomb. They had sealed her and the father’s four aasimar sex-slaves in the tomb to protect them from the pirates’ depredations. Then they looted manor and town and left. A year later, they reckon they might be able to double dip, since they’re so familiar with the place.

They plan their assault.  The first hint that there’s something wrong here is when Sindawe’s wendo goddess Mama Watanna visits him  for sex and cryptic plot hints as she is prone to.  But…

Watanna listens for a while then interrupts, “Never mind, boy. Give mama some sugar.”
Sindawe complies. Then it occurs to him, “The walls aren’t bleeding. What the hell?” The walls always bleed when he lies with Mama Watanna. The sex is that good. Sindawe throws himself clear of the woman, demanding, “Who the hell are you?”
Mama Watanna seems confused and hurt. Sindawe’s attitude doesn’t change. The woman’s attitude changes to scorn. She says, “Too bad.” A third eye of red opens on her forehead. Sindawe screams and screams.

But when people respond to his screams, he remembers nothing…

Cut to, the infiltration and assault. We had a… miscommunication… among the PCs that led to some humor but also some hurt feelings.  Ed’s character Mitabu was supposed to do the scouting – his character is really not very good in combat, but a scout and trapsetter.  But Paul (Serpent), who has a reasonably short attention span for listening to attack plans, heard that he was doing that so he swims ashore, kidnaps a halfling, and hoofs it all the way to Staufen Manor while his puzzled and consternated crewmates stand on the deck of their ship wondering WTF he’s doing. While he’s doing this,

Serpent hears a noise and glances up to see a woman stepping out of the darkness. It is Samaritha. She says, “Oh, what a tasty looking halfling.”
Serpent says, “What are you doing?”
Samaritha answers, “Sindawe sent me. To help.”
Serpent decides, “I don’t believe you. I was listening the whole time. He didn’t say anything about you flying ashore.”
Samaritha replies, “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll fly us back to the ship.” Serpent backs away and points his staff at her. She says, “Calm down…” A third eye of red opens in her forehead.

Serpent is dazed as the figure disappears, but retains some memory of this and animal-messages it back to the ship.  Lil and Tommy decide to bring out their succubus mistress (lest we forget, they have accepted the profane gift of Seyanna the succubus and are Nocticula worshippers) to help. She identifies the witchy creature as an erodaemon, the tempters of Abbadon, who tempt you with the person you desire the most. They offer up crewman Pirro’s “services” in recompense for this info. Back to the invasion! They go ashore and approach the keep, Mitabu going ahead.

Of course the fun thing about this crew is that “knowing doesn’t help…” As Mitabu infiltrates the keep he sees his lost love Marissa being mauled by a guardsman! He kills the guard and sneaks off with her. We (I can’t remember if it was Mitabu or someone else) ad-libbed that she had been a singer in a Chelaxian tavern called the “Pit Friend” whose sign bears a pit fiend in a two-thumbs-up “Buddy Christ” kind of pose. This provided hours of entertainment for us and is now canon as far as we’re concerned.

Amalinda Staufen

The keep is unguarded and seemingly unoccupied which leads to a lot of tension as they wander through it… And this leads to coming upon a “Rocky Horror” style human-meat formal dinner with Amalinda Staufen, four aasimars with iron masks welded to their faces, Mitabu, Serpent’s long lost mother, and other craziness! Here’s my visual aids for Amalinda and the aasimar women.

Amalinda is still all anorexic but now more strangely attractive. The aasimars are still hot but with the masks now. It’s all extra extra disturbing. What happens at dinner? You’ll just have to read the summary…

Iron-Masked Aasimar

To be able to run the erodaemon, when the session began I asked the PCs to write on a note card “who they desired most.” For Sindawe it was Mama Watanna, for Mitabu it was some waitress he’d known, and for Serpent it was a split between his wife and his unknown mom. They were pretty game about it, though Serpent did metagame hard when Samaritha showed up in the forest. He got into the spirit more when his “mom” showed up though.

Thirty-third Session (12 page pdf) –  “Old Flames, False Promises Part II” – The pirate crew fights their way through Staufendorf Manor, finding grotesque secrets along the way.

If you thought the previous session got squirrelly  you might want to skip this one. Things have gotten crazy for our pirates; a good honest shore raid has turned into a real mind-screw as everyone is confronted with what they long for the most. And not the least, the now ravenous Amalinda Staufen, who has apparently been pining away for Sindawe in his absence.  Anyway, as the pirates fight the keep guards – ceustodaemons!

Ceustodaemon

These guys get summoned by the erodaemon and one heads out after the skeleton-crewed Araska while the other joins in the fight. After some hot action the pirates take the keep, but it’s up to the PCs to go confront Amalinda and her friend. In the chapel, they make a gruesome find…

Wogan investigates the bodies. The flesh is sunken to the bone, the faces twisted in agony. The skin is lacquered. Wogan announces, “They were strangled to death.”
Sindawe asks, “Strangled? Or suffocated?”
Wogan points at ligature marks on a corpse, then says, “Literature marks.”
Sindawe stares at the round cleric a moment, “Uh… they got read to death?”
Mitabu offers, “Maybe someone put a heavy book on their necks.”
Sindawe nods at that; it sounds exactly like something Chelish nobles would do. What bastards!

Erodaemon

Of course even gruesome finds are rendered funny by the degree of confusion the PCs bring along with them. But humor fails them as they go down into the crypt. Trigger warnings for cannibalism, matricide, baby endangerment, forced matrimony, forced amputation… Not sure if I’m missing anything. Read on.

Of course, the erodaemon (who has been preying on the greatest desires of the PCs, including Serpent’s desire to find his lost mother) skedaddles once the going gets tough. And how is the Teeth of Araska doing with its own daemon attack?  Find out next time!

Thirty-fourth Session (11 page pdf) –  “Old Flames, False Promises Part III” – Cut to the Teeth of Araska, where a daemon tries its level best to sink the ship while it’s manned by a skeleton crew. Then, the town is looted! And while making their escape, the pirates see a prize too tempting to pass up…

Well, the crew manages to fight off the daemon, but lose two men in the process.  Then the crew negotiates a tenuous agreement with the townsfolk as they return the amputees and babies; they spend most of the rest of their time trying to get the villagers to give them supplies while restraining their crew from rapine and arson till they get underway. Finally they leave Staufendorf Island behind them, with a good honest fear of what I’ll have in store for them if they were to visit a third time. They bring three of the aasimar women, it turns out that Amalinda kept them around for the same reason her father did, but out of envy welded those iron masks to their faces. Eek!

They hand over two of the aasimars to the succubus and then decide it’s time to interrogate Luca Caletti, ex-Chelish Marine, to see if he has anything to do with the Chelish dogging them; they decide he’s clean.

And then, they see a fat Chelish merchantman stuck on a sandbar, with its escorts far away and downwind!  They attack!   This is from the Legendary Games mini-adventure Raid on the Emperor’s Hand.

It goes well at first but then the worm turns when the ship’s captain faces off against Sindawe and takes him down with a rapier thrust through the eye-socket!  What will become of our pirates?!?  Will they end their days hanging on a Chelaxian gibbet?  Read on…

Thirty-fifth Session (10 page pdf) – “The Empress’ Hand” – A fat Chelish merchant ship beached on a sandbar proves a difficult prize, as there’s limited time to board, best, and loot it before the Chelish Navy shows up!

Well it’s the last episode of Season Four and our pirates have their latest plunder-taking go sideways.  It gets worse fast as Wogan has one of his gunpowder bombs go off prior to throwing it. They finally manage to rally and get the captain to surrender.  Sindawe is healed – he would have been killed outright except for use of an Infamy Point – the net result is he’s lost an eye!

They plunder the ship some and skedaddle before their escort arrives.  This adventure was an interesting and largely successful experiment in a “timed” adventure – every round spent fighting and looting was measured against the progress of the overwhelming-force enemy ships.

Besides money, they come away with a hostage – Octavia Selene, a Chelish diva!

The rest of the session is accounting and me taking the temperature of the players on what they want to do next.  They have a voyage planned, so I get their feedback on how much of each thing they want – Rahadoum, Ilizmagorti, Shackles, Sargava… Their votes and other feedback on what they want more or less of is recorded in the summary.  I’ll try to make it happen!

I called this season “Family Matters” because it was so family friendly!  Well, OK, it wasn’t family friendly at all.  But the major theme was family.

• Serpent and his (serpentfolk) wife Samaritha had their egg!
• The PCs go to help Wogan’s sister and baby nephew in Nisroch!
• They go back to Staufendorf Island where a would-be wife awaits Sindawe, Serpent’s long lost mother (well, kinda), as well as the bastard children of the pirates from their last raid.

I must say, those who leave family, marital relations, etc. out of their games are missing out. We had some great drama this season of a much more nuanced version that “bad guy gonna blow up world go get ’em!”

This season took more than a year and a half, realtime. In fact, it contains the five year mark of the campaign!

Things I really liked about this season:

• The PCs returning to Riddleport as conquering heroes, and partying up the place as real pirate players, instead of the hirelings and minions they started out as; dealing with Clegg Zincher as equals, etc. I meant for it to feel gratifying, and like a graduation of sorts. They left as pirate noobs in Season Two and this is their homecoming having made a legendary-scope pirate voyage. They’re unlikely to be back there ever/for a long while so I wanted to wrap it up and put a cherry on top.
• All of Nidal. It’s crazy spooky and I tried to use every GM technique to bring the suck to life. It’s so bad that even though they could have sold the info for good money, the Araska and Dagger command crews basically agreed to not tell anyone about White Estrid’s approaching attack fleet because “this place needs to get wiped off the fucking map.” And then them having to skedaddle in the middle of the invasion when it all went down!
• The return to Staufen Manor, and all the bizarre and horrific goings-on, from the erodaemon preying on their greatest desires (including Serpent’s lost mother), to the aasimars who have had iron masks welded to their faces by envy-haunted Amalinda Staufen, to the lacquered bodies of her family and their baby-feast, to the dungeon of amputees that provide meat to feed her new “Ravenous” template. All super jacked up, *and* with the pleasant frisson of the PCs being somewhat to blame for it all.

I liked the Deepmar module OK, but in the end it felt a bit more like filler.  But, I guess the PCs liked it, since they refused to leave before exploring every single nook and cranny of the island. And they got a new love interest for the celibate Wogan – half-orc barbarian Klangin and meek fledgling Nidalese cleric Rucia now both have their eyes set on him, much to his discomfort.

The pacing was also nice, with periods of good honest pirating between the landlubber adventures. The Teeth of Araska and its crew are a major character in their own right, and the PCs spend a lot of time interacting with, training, disciplining, etc. their crewmates.

Sources I used putting together Season Four, besides homebrew:

• Dark Wings Over Freeport (Green Ronin), at least a bit of it, for the old man/vrock attack in Riddleport
• The Midnight Mirror and U1 Gallery of Evil for the adventure in Karpad in Nidal, plus Nisroch info from Cities of Golarion and from reading the Pathfinder Tales novel Nightglass
• No Response from Deepmar, for Deepmar
• Hearkening back to Mansion of Shadows (Green Ronin), for Staufen Manor
• Raid on the Emperor’s Hand (Legendary Games), for the last bit of pirating

That’s not a huge amount of published page to get a year and a half out of, but it was well leavened with the PCs’ own plots and my fantasia upon all the published Golarion lore I can get my hands on from the various guidebooks, NPC books, etc.  The deep Golarion lore forms a kind of base layer it all sits on; every trip somewhere has some point of interest or whatnot… Heck the PCs even feel safe asking.  “Oh, what kind of things do they ship out of here?” “Well, lumber goes downriver, primarily darkwood and strangle tree wood.”  “Whoa cool!  Let’s buy some!”  Nowadays for session prep I really just need some notes in Evernote and a Hero Lab portfolio with some NPCs and critters in it, and it all just runs itself.

Player Reflections

Chris (Sindawe) says:

• I enjoyed the minor missions and the party in Riddleport. But I also enjoyed leaving that place — I had the sense that it was a place we were permitted to touch but not break. And as with all social structures, most PCs don’t have the patience or time to penetrate them without murder and arson. [GM – Heh, it’s pretty appropriate as pirates that being around large settlements where there are consequences for e.g. arson is undesirable. The PCs always needle me about Riddleport being a pirate-started city and it still not letting people go on murder-sprees or burn stuff down… But that’s why the deep blue’s out there!]
• I liked Deepmar – it had a mystery that we could solve without having something held hostage. Fighting crazy derro was memorable. Mitabu had several moments to shine. [GM – Yeah, this taught me to continue to have a strong exploration element in the game because they really took to it.]
• I am disappointed that Ed and Ashley didn’t continue gaming with us. [GM – Agreed, Ed hadn’t left quite yet by the end of the season but I think Ashley had, I’ll cover this in a later blog post.]
• I enjoyed the return to Staufen Manor, though I had hoped to find a baby Sindawe. [GM – I briefly considered this but thought it would be too dark and uncomfortable in what was already one of the darkest sessions to date, apparently I was wrong!]
• I enjoyed Nidal’s redneck country side and the story around Wogan’s sister. Patrick was given more face time than he wanted and he handled it well. I regret not having Sindawe bathe in the “golden god hot springs”. I also regret that the PCs were not called upon to commit atrocities that guaranteed the sister’s noble position. [GM: Yeah, Patrick is a quiet player and I wanted to put him in a lead role for a little bit, worked out well I thought.]
• We got away with murder in Nidal, which was nice. [GM: Quite so. Seems like a good vacation shirt slogan. “I got away with murder in Nidal and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.”]

The other guys didn’t comment in email.  Their feedback is in summary 35, though, where I asked everyone what they wanted less of, liked and wanted more of, etc. going forward.

First Session (13 page pdf) -“King Xeros of Old Azlant” – With a hold full of loot and way too many women on board, the crew of the Teeth of Araska is rescued from their burgeoning soap opera by the appearance of a weird, crystal ship that just cries out to be boarded!

We start out Season Five, as well as the year 2015, with woman trouble.  The PCs picked up three aasimar sisters, Aelia, Flavia, and Volcatia, who were basically sex-slaves on Staufendorf island, first of the elder Staufen and then of Amalinda Staufen.  But of course, since she was all into the envy, she welded iron masks to their faces so they wouldn’t be purtier than her.  Sindawe tries to talk them into pirating, but they are way more interested in bedwarming – it’s a lot less work. This sounds good to some of the NPC officers, who are jealous of Tommy and Serpent keeping women on board. They talk him into it, and nearly talk him back out of it as the women manipulate the officers while the men try to impress them and pair off.

The Mikes are able to get Gareb and Stoke agree to operation “officer’s woman”.  They don’t tell Mase about the plan, because “Screw that guy.”

Also, on board the Empress’ Hand, they captured an honest-to-Shelyn Chelish diva (opera singer) named Octavia Selene, who is used to being kidnapped and is not impressed with the quality of the quarters on the ship. Samaritha, who is asking questions about how Serpent has been preparing for fatherhood when their egg hatches and getting some pretty pathetic answers, decides to evict him and host the diva in their quarters to engage in what humans call ‘girl talk.’  (Lest you forget, Samaritha is a serpentfolk who is chronically in magical disguise as a half-elf wizardess.)

Also, since Sindawe puts Klangin in charge of the prisoners’ safety, she gets more screen time, which means more talk of mating with Wogan!

Before the PCs all succumb to estrogen poisoning, they come across an island.  A quick shot at the island reveals it to be an illusion covering a weird ship! A strange crystal ship, of Azlanti make. This bears investigation! And with that we start the Pathfinder Society adventure King Xeros of Old Azlant, by Greg Vaughan (and heavily adapted by yours truly).

Second Session (6 page pdf) – “King Xeros of Old Azlant, Part II” – Alien lobster men beset the pirates as they tamper with Things Men Were Not Meant To Know aboard the planar ship King Xeros. But, they end up with a new Rahadoumi friend!

Sorry all, the summer got super busy.  But I’m back with more Reavers goodness, and plan to start posting about more than just the summaries too.

Lobster men, aka xill

This session had its ups and downs.  This is a Pathfinder Society module called “King Xeros of Old Azlant,” and it’s weird, with a planar-travelling Azlanti crystal ship and xill (lobster men) and more.

Sindawe went in alone, and was good-humored about being paralyzed and stuffed into the ship’s workings. Mitabu tried to mess with the controls, which ended up throwing a disintegrate at Hatshepsut, which would have zorched her if not for an Infamy Point spend.

They they fight off the rest of the xill, which turns out to be quite a challenge, but Samaritha frees the night hag whose soul-energy is currently being used to power the ship (it runs on sentient creatures, of course, because the Azlanti are dicks).

They beat the xill and free some Garundi humans, and then Mitabu goes to fiddle with the controls again.  This ended up in an argument after Samaritha mind controlled him to stop him from disintegrating anyone else.  Ed, Mitabu’s player, was upset about being mind controlled by Samaritha and felt it was railroading that they couldn’t get the planar ship for themselves. He had already been unhappy; Mitabu was built to be pretty ineffective in combat, and I tried to put in opportunities for him to shine but they got sabotaged (like when Serpent swiped his scouting mission on Staufendorf Island).  And his girlfriend Ashley had already left the game. End result, he ended up not returning to the game. Unfortunate, and I could have handled the mind-control differently (in fact, we retconned it right after it happened) but on the other hand, I wanted to be able to put in a side adventure like this without having the campaign turn into Planescape, so IMO you gotta work with the narrative sometimes. But, different strokes.

Then we have some “Alien” style aftereffects (the xill are Alien ripoffs) with some of the survivors, but they catch that early. And it’s off to Azir, also known as Port Godless!

Azir, aka Port Godless

Third Session (13 page pdf) – “Ra-ha-DOOM!” – A layover in Azir, also known as Port Godless, gets complicated when some of the crew are sold into slavery. A mix of diplomacy, wealth, and violence is used to solve their problems.

This session was about flavor – Rahadoum is like an atheist Morocco (Essaouria, specifically, I decided, especially since it still looks ancient not modern making pictures like the above ready-made visual aids).  So I wanted the PCs to get plenty of the cultural flavor.  First, the Pure Legion searches their ship for any religious contraband and warns them about divine spellcasting in the Kingdom of Man.

Then, their rescued friend Youssef ben Youssef turns out to be a man of some means. He gives them guidance, hooks them up with people that can craft magic items, helps them sell their booty… All for a very reasonable percentage, at least that’s what they are led to understand.

They have lovely and exotic dinners with Youssef (“a tajine of lamb, plums, and eggs, harissa with olives and lemon pickle, and a pastilla of squabs”), drink mint tea, et cetera. When hitting a new country, I do a lot of prep work – I read everything I can find Golarion lore wise, and then I research relevant real-world cultures where there’s an obvious analogue, and then I make stuff up.  But for some north Africa, there’s not a lot of need to make stuff up, there’s flavor galore. Architecture, culture, food, clothing, etc.

And of course, as with any shore leave, I roll for every member of the crew to see what goes well or awry – there’s a lot of crew, so even with just 1-2 and 19-20 being material, a lot happens.  Nazzio buys into some scam about being a Chelish count and leaves the ship; they get an albino goat as a mascot which they immediately name Nazzio.  And slavers try to abduct a bunch of the crew; half get away but Slasher Jim, Mase Venjum, Pirro, and Zorzi are taken!

Lacking divine magic, they draft children instead, and manage to free everyone but Zorzi. but they find out who she got sold to.  However, slavery’s legal here and there’s a bill of sale and everything, so they just barrrrrrely restrain themselves from home invasion and murder and negotiate for her return. The local urchin Said is a big hit, especially when he sasses the pirates about “of course, all citizens of Azir can read” and philosophizes, showing that even street urchins in Azir consider themselves well lettered.

The negotiation ends up involving their captive Chelish diva, Octavia.  She’s a drama queen who spends half her time getting kidnapped and ransomed so she’s usually a step ahead.  She convinces the soft-hearted Rucia to sneak her off the ship – the plan’s discovered. I was interested in whether Wogan would narc her out to Sindawe and whether Sindawe would beat/murder her like he would any disobedient crewman, but he puts her on laundry duty as punishment and handles it “in house.”

Fourth Session (13 page pdf) – “Ra-ha-DOOM! Part II” – Planning, a hard boiled egg eating contest, and a prisoner escape – Port Godless has everything!

Ahbib Atomy

Crewwoman Zorzi has been bought by a local man obsessed with green eyes. The PCs have diva Octavia Selene, who also has green eyes, and they try to broker a swap but my random roll decides Atomy’s pretty happy with the current deal.  The “two women with green eyes” thing, as you might surmise, was ad-libbed as a Big Trouble in Little China reference (the whole slaver thing was made up on the spot due to bad shore leave rolls). I considered spinning it into a bigger Lo Pan kind of thing but in the last season I had asked how in depth the PCs wanted each leg of the journey to be, and they said “not much Rahadoum.”  They sure got into it once they were there, but I respected their earlier vote and didn’t go too nuts.

They hire a navigator to get them to Ilizmagorti, secret island of the Red Mantis!  Well, not that secret, it’s a big port.  But secret, they destroy all maps!  Somewhat confusing in the lore, so I decide that maps are out but navigators who’ve been there before are in, and a valuable commodity.  Also, high level crewwoman Kitty the Cantankerous came down pregnant from a bad shore leave roll months ago and absents herself on pregnancy leave.

Rombom the Sage

They go to a sage named Rombom to research the black stone egg they cut out of a xill survivor.  I made that shit up off a random roll in the first place so I had to scramble, off a random Google I decided it’s related to a nalusa falaya, a Choctaw shadow-type spirit. They were into it enough I decided that having it in you (embedded, swallowed) would protect you against inhabitation by the nalusa falaya and related stuff, like say the recurring shadow demon villain who likes to possess the PCs. So Serpent swallows it (using his serpent transformation to make that feasible).

After this the session took a turn for the increasingly more hilarious.

The egg thing “inspires” the PCs to hold a Cool Hand Luke style egg eating contest to gamble with the locals about. I forget the exact mechanic I used, but it was like a Fort save that got incrementally harder with each egg eaten… It couldn’t have been more than +1 because Billy Breadbasket managed to make it to 23 eggs and defeat all comers.

Drunk and full of eggs they wander back to the ship.  Crew craftsman Karomander had gotten a good shore leave roll and so got something… I don’t remember how “clown puppet” made the list but it was probably stolen from something a player said.  So Karomander decides to put his new clown marionette guarding the ship’s gangplank.  To a crew of PCs, ‘creepy clown figure’ is just another day in the life, but typically, they start ultra botching the fight against an inanimate object. Wogan nearly shoots Serpent in a panic when the clown jumps on him.  Good times.  I gave it 50/50 whether Sindawe would murder the man, but he was so impressed with its ability to inspire incontinence in potential boarders he gave his approval to the whole scheme.

And then, having a Chelish diva on board leads inevitably to DRAMA!!!  So the Argentate Blades, a bunch of swashbuckling do-gooders from the Rival Guide, come to spring her! Sindawe’s the only one who notices a noise on deck and goes out there…

They exchange blows while Sindawe yells, “Boarders!”
From the map room, Wogan yells back, “Charge them rent!”
Serpent yells, “Hoarders?!? The bane of every tidy ship!”
A caster hidden by the fog shoots a blinding light at Sindawe that dazzles him for a round, then Estella stabs him. Then she steps back into the mist.
Serpent charges out and seeing no one else demands, “Captain! Settle a bet. What did you yell – boarders or hoarders?”
Sindawe grits his teeth.

So the Blades fight with the three PCs, with the swordswoman Estrella giving Sindawe a run for his money, their little halfling mom popping out of the mist to cast spells, and…

A voice rings out, “Haha! You are too late!” A man wearing light armor and hot pants is standing on the rail with Octavia clinging tightly to his torso. The man grabs a rope and swings them to the pier. Wogan shouts, “How did we see that? There’s fog and darkness!” The man yells back from the pier, “I used my cloak to swish the fog away. Drama!”

Wogan keeps trying to find the halfling in the dark and mist and he just keeps rolling so badly, I couldn’t keep from punking him…

Wogan finally hears the stealthy halfling and slaps her with a held cause critical wounds. But it turns out to only be the ship’s clown doll, Mr. Smiles. “Come on!!!” he laments.

So Billy Breadbasket, as careful readers of the summaries may note, has been eyeing Pirro for a while, and Pirro is pretty drunk right now; they didn’t quite make it back to the ship but as the fight moves to the dock…

Serpent runs after them only to slam into the partially naked figures of Billy Breadbasket and Pirro who are emerging from behind the crates to figure out what the heck is going on. All three pirates go down in a heap.

I’m a big fan of “the dice are often more right than I am.”  Sindawe demands to know who was supposed to be on watch when these goons got on board.  I roll randomly on the crew table and it falls on a couple crewmen who died, but no one took them off the Word doc we use as a crew list.  So I decided that in-game, too, no one had noticed that the people who were supposed to be on watch weren’t around any more.  The group found that immediately plausible. “The bane of every pirate – paperwork!!!” They updated their list.

And we end with a civilized sit-down and deal with the Argentate Blades.  It’s really, really hard in D&D to pull off the otherwise common trope of fighting someone and then befriending or at least dealing civilly with them; usually it just puts them on the ETERNAL IMMEDIATE HATE MURDER LIST so I was proud of me and my players that we managed to pull it off.

This whole session was pretty much driven off a couple random rolls and whatever the PCs got it in their minds to do and me brainstorming ways to make their lives interesting while in port.  It was a very successful session, from my side of the table it seemed at least! It’s these kinds of sessions that get us these 13-page summaries, whereas combat heavy ones are just like “and we fought something, done.” There’s a lesson there somewhere.

Waxberry

Third Session (6 page pdf) – We venture into the Ineluctable Prison in the Abyss to fight demodands and oozes. Then we are confronted with three cells, one with a demon, one with a devil, and one with a halfling… What to do?

Well, so funny story… We finished up this AP and then I forgot to post the remaining summaries!  So here you go, some Paizo mythic AP goodness.

Mainly, we fight demodands.  And more demodands.  And we find out there’s a Runelord about, which is bracing.  That’s about it for this one!  Chapter 5 of each AP may as well be called “The Interminable Dungeon.”

Ivory Minotaur

Fourth Session (8 page pdf) – It turns into Mazes & Minotaurs as we get closer to Baphomet.  And we find a ball of twine that ends up being the best magic item ever. Plus a heart to unlock the next plot portion. This AP is… very video-gamey.

For some reason Chris starts calling our allied Solar Sargona “Belinda Sargona.” And sometimes “Beverly Sargona.” We get our entertainment where we can.

Most of this session is a giant puzzle room, which we make good headway on solving until Trystan decides “run around like a butt monkey and just trigger it all” is a better plan. Sigh. We could have done that without all the commune spells and planning and stuff. Paraphrased from memory:

“I open the door that obviously summons minotaurs!”
“A minotaur appears and attacks you.”
“I open it again!”
“Another minotaur appears and attacks you.”
“Dude, what the fuck is your problem?”