Well THAT was a long season. 40 sessions, which is early 2015 to early 2017. (As of 2024 we’re coming towards campaign end!) Season Four was all the stuff with Staufendorf Island (adding the three aasimar sisters to the crew) and Deepmar Prison (from which they got Klangin). Heck Samaritha laid her egg back in the first part of S4 and we just got around to it hatching in S5!
This season I dubbed “Sailing to the Edge of the World” because in it they go from Riddleport down past Avistan to Garund and then south and further south through the Fever Sea, past Rahadoum, Ilizmagorti, the Eye of Abendego, the Sodden Lands Devil’s Arches, the Shackles, the equator, Bloodcove, and now beyond, preparing to go off the edge of officially published Golarion maps.
I used a few Pathfinder adventure modules as part of this season – Treasure of Chimera Cove, River of Darkness, Crucible of Chaos – and some smaller ones like King Xeros of Old Azlant the Pathfinder Society scenario and Tarin’s Crown from Legendary Games, but most of it was just smaller encounters and a lot of setting lore content from all the Golarion world content I could scrape together (which is a lot, I subscribed to all Paizo’s content during Pathfinder 1e so I have a bookcase full). Plus, since these places have real-world analogues, I did loads of research on the African coast from Morocco on to the Bissagos Islands off Guinea-Bissau to add fun details. Talk about exploring Golarion! Too often the setting is just a place for a little color before going off on a generic dungeon crawl. I don’t like that, I mean, travel is fun in the real world and the “work we do while we’re there” is not the draw, is it? They spent four seasons up around Cheliax and now they get to travel the world.
On the one hand, this entire season could be seen as a “between.” Their origin is up north and they need to get to Port Shaw on the Razor Coast down south for the campaign endgame. But if you’re a pirate, the journey is the real adventure! None of these adventures were “mandatory” for the plot but were things that made sense for our pirates to do to get power/money/booty/allies/etc.! To sum up our S5 arc:
- Can we get a planar ship? Nope, didn’t work out.
- Woo, Morocco (Rahadoum) parties!
- Woo, Mediogalti Island parties! The players tell me Mediogalti Island parties are the best in Golarion. Cities of Golarion has a whole section on Ilizmagorti including specialty alcoholic drinks there. And the PCs had money, didn’t have anyone immediately after them, and the risk of Red Mantis Assassins being irritated at large scale disruption let everyone focus on the partying and not get friskier.
- Can we get a giant undead dragon turtle murder machine? Uh, maybe we don’t want that after all.
- Let’s fight off some native elves in the heart of darkness! We hate elves. I mean, I’m sure some of them are fine people!
- Can we make our ship fly? Yes we can!
- Woo, Bloodcove parties!
Don’t worry, S6 is shorter, basically the journey to the Razor Coast where I start the foreshadowing harder (we get a little with the phantom inhabited guy at the end of S5). If you are too antsy to wait for these blog posts, the summaries are posted up through S9 on the session summary page.