[I (finally) resume chronicling the adventures of the Ratpack, a group of ratfolk on the Shattered Star Adventure Path. It’s been a while, so you may need to go back and reread Session 20 to get caught up.]
[This game uses the Pathfinder 1E roleplaying game. Game sessions happen once a week. This session happened April 13, 2020.]
[SPOILERS! If you are likely to adventure through the Shattered Star Adventure Path from Paizo, this campaign will be spoilers all the way down.]
Player Characters
Marativy – female ratfolk 3rd level Ninja
Roscuro – male ratfolk 3rd level Monk
Zitch Grimreaper – male 3rd level Witch with a donkey rat (capybara) familiar
Via Roll20
Templeton von Trapp – male ratfolk 3rd level Summoner (Synthesist)
Winston – male ratfolk 3rd level Gunslinger
Day 14 (Resumes)
The Ratpack descended the stairs from the Nupperibo room [the room they killed two of the least of devils in] to a lower part of Sub-level 3. These stairs led to a small network of intersections. We went east one intersection [we looked around more, but my notes are a bit sketchy here]. The group looked down a passage to the south and could see another room at the edge of their darkvision. To the east immediately was another room, so the group decided to look there first. That room was empty except for a door in the east wall. Despite the door calling strongly to Roscuro, the group followed the passage south from the previous intersection. [I kept saying the word "door" when I meant the passage south here, so we decided that Roscuro was oddly drawn to the door. In hindsight, there was good in-game reason for this but we wouldn't discover that for another several sessions.]
The passage reached a small room containing a stone statue of Alaznist holding a metal ranseur in a battle ready pose and then continued south, into the darkness. Zitch cast detect magic and the ranseur the statue held radiated a faint aura but nothing else did. Roscuro investigated the statue, careful not to step in front of it, and determined that the metal ranseur was part of the stone statue and could not be removed without breaking the statue. Not wanting to damage something they planed to sell to Frederick, the ratfolk were stumped. They discussed the situation and thought maybe the statue pointed at the location of a secret door or something. Roscuro investigated the section of wall the ranseur pointed at for anything unusual…and triggered the fireball trap on the ranseur.
After the fireball burst, filling the room with fire and scorching Roscuro, Winston, and Marativy, the group quickly stepped past it before the trap reset. In the passage on the other side of the room the group paused for some healing. Zitch used his healing hex on Roscuro, Winston, and Marativy and cast cure light wounds on Roscuro and Winston.
The Ratpack followed the passage south to a corner and then west, discovering a long chamber that was clearly a ruined magical lab. There were tables on the south wall and broken glass everywhere. The north wall was covered with a mural showing a mountain carved into a human woman’s face. In front of the mountain was an immense bridge with demonic forces marching across it, as if emerging from the mountain. There were two exits to the long chamber, a passage of stairs up on the far end and a door on the far end of the south wall.
After verifying the room contained nothing salvageable, the group decided to follow the passage of stairs west. At the top of the stairs, the group estimated they were now back at the same depth as when they entered the octagon room on this sub-level. The western passage went a short ways and turned north. There were two passages on the east wall and a door on the west wall with the passage itself continued north into the darkness.
Marativy quietly moved forward to investigate the side passages. They both went ten feet and entered different ends of the same room. Inside were two blob-ish creatures with heads and arms but no distinct legs. They did not notice Marativy, who returned stealthily to the rest of the adventuring group. After describing what she saw, Zitch recognized the creatures as lemures, a lesser form of devil, and expounded upon their strengths and vulnerabilities [Zitch really seemed to know all about devils and demons based on his Knowledge checks]. The important part was they were vulnerable to silver and we had a single silver dagger.
Deciding to attack the creatures, the group sent Marativy and Roscuro in first as the stealthiest to use swarm tactics [two ratfolk may fight together in the same 5’ square and count as flanking if they attack the same target] with some back-stabbing on Marativy’s part [Ninja!].
This was not Marativy’s finest hour. She dropped the silver dagger on her first attack attempt [critical fumble] and then dropped it again when Roscuro picked it up and handed it back to her [a second critical fumble]. Luckily, the lemure were ineffectual and could not land a blow on either ratfolk. The rest of the group advanced and everyone attacked, dispatching both lemure before they could attempt a second round of attacks.
Searching the room afterwards, the Ratpack decided that it had once been an alchemical lab, but everything was now smashed. Nothing of value was found after a thorough search.
The group decided to continue north along the passage and not open a second door on the west wall on the theory that opening doors only led to trouble. The passage north ended at a large square room [30x30’] with a passage out in the far corner on the east wall. There was a glowing circle on the floor with two small fire elementals orbiting the space inside the circle. The elementals took no notice of the adventurers at the entry. The group debated whether to fight the elementals or not. Based on their map, the passage out most likely led back to the octagon room and the stairs up and this would be a shorter and safer route back to the surface.
Rather than just attack, they decided to get the elemental’s attention and see what the elementals did. If they could be reasoned with, the Ratpack was fine with that. Roscuro stepped into the room and whistled loudly to get their attention. The elementals immediately moved to attack. Winston shot one of the elementals twice with his musket, killing it. Roscuro stepped up and punched the other elemental, killing it with one blow [critical hit!]…and getting burned by its fire aura. Roscuro had Zitch use the wand of cure light wounds to heal up his burns but was very enthused about the result of the combat otherwise.
The group backtracked at this point, returning to the second door on the west wall they had ignored. Beyond the door was a short passage that led to a small rectangular room with a chain curtain on the south wall. In the room were two lemure who were immediately hostile. Winston and Marativy quickly killed them. A search of the room found nothing of value and no magic.
Marativy checked the chain curtain for traps and found none, so the group parted the curtain and found another, smaller chamber that appeared empty. The walls had writing on them, covering every surface. The language appeared to be Infernal but none of the ratfolk could read it. A voice addressed the group in a couple of languages until it tried Common and invited the ratfolk in.
The voice introduced itself as the Suzerain of Little Erebus and asked the ratfolk to do a job for it. A pretender to his throne, calling itself Lord Baz, has stolen Suzerain’s two favorite lemure. Suzerain asked the ratfolk to drive away or kill Lord Baz and rescue his two favorite lemure. Suzerain also threatened to kill all the ratfolk if they didn’t take the job. Terms were then negotiated. If the ratfolk did what Suzerain asked, he would supply the metal shard they were looking for, plus “magical knowledge”. If Suzerain did not have the actual shard, he would pay the ratfolk 5000 gp plus the “magical knowledge”. The Ratpack agreed to these terms and Suzerain caused an X to appear on the ratfolk’s map, showing where Lord Baz could be found. It was in an area not yet explored.
[At this point, I was fairly certain we were dealing with an imp, but if it could get us the Shard we were looking for, Roscuro was willing to take the short cut. The other players agreed. SPOILER: We were very wrong.]
Once back in the main passage and reasonably certain Suzerain was not amongst them, the ratfolk quickly consulted with each other. No one liked the “do this job or I’ll kill you” aspect and all agreed this was likely a “Mite King” situation [see Session 17] and we were likely to kill Suzerain after he paid us, especially if he tried to skip out on the payment. [Nope – no lawful good characters amongst this group.]
The group headed south to check the other door in this hallway. The door was jammed, so brute force was used to knock the door in. The room on the other side was some sort of storage closet, apparently full of junk. A search of the room turned up a set of smithy tools, a brass crank with pearl inlay, and a clockwork servant! The brass crank did not fit the keyhole of the servant and the servant was about 600 pounds, making it difficult to move. The ratfolk decided to leave it here. It’s great weight made it unlikely anyone else would make off with it and when it became necessary they could improvise a sled from the broken door and Templeton could drag it.
End of Session
Rat Whispers
[So, that break was longer than planned, but I did get my OD&D clone RPG written and edited to a point where I feel comfortable sharing it (see the Downloads sidebar for Adventures in the Green, Draft B).]
[At this point in real time, we’ve reached Session 32 and finished Book 1 of the Shattered Star Adventure Path, so I have another 11 or so session notes to write up and post. I will work to get as many typed up next week as I can as the company I am contracted to is closing for a week. I have some work that still must be done, but a lot more leeway in how I spend the rest of my time. I'll post two a week if I can until I catch up.]
[In the meantime, we are switching back to playing in the Delvers Guild campaign. Book 1 of the Shattered Star AP was supposed to be a short break so I could get ahead in my map creation for Delvers Guild. This did not happen in two ways – it took much longer to finish Book 1 and I did not get much done on the maps. That said, the break from GM duties was really what I needed and I got that.]
[Also? Not a huge fan of the new Blogger interface. So if the formatting of the blog seems different now? That's why.]
Ratpack
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