Wednesday, November 24, 2021

Ratpack – Shattered Star Book 2, Session 38

[Day 64 Concludes – Aftermath of the Ballroom blitz, more Grey Maidens, then back to the surface]

[This game uses the Pathfinder 1E roleplaying game.  Game sessions happen once a week.  This session happened October 11, 2021.]

[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

Via Roll20

Swamprover – female grippli 5th level Wizard

Roscuro – male ratfolk 7th level Monk

Templeton von Trapp – male ratfolk 7th level Summoner (Synthesist)

Marativy – female ratfolk 7th level Ninja

Zitch Grimreaper – male ratfolk 7th level Witch with a donkey rat (capybara) familiar

Hrefna – female changeling 5th level Omdura


NPCs

Gridik Stormstride – male blue kobold 5th level Wizard (Invoker)

Ariphi – female tiefling 5th level Rogue

Mel Sharples – male halfling Cook (Expert of unknown level)

Alice Hyatt – female halfling Bodyguard (Warrior of unknown level)

Flo’ Castleberry – female gnome Bodyguard (Warrior of unknown level)



Autumn

Day 64 (Continued)

After the conclusion of the fight with the lust sinspawn, Hrefna activated her healing aura to heal up the adventurers.  During this time Marativy and Swamprover searched the body of the fallen sinspawn.  They found three pieces of jewelry worth taking, a crown and two amulets, and the thing's polearm, a guisarme.  Zitch cast Detect Magic and found only the gisarme was magical [+1].  Marativy cut off one of the sinspawn’s hands as a trophy.  [This is the beginning of a trend Roscuro will find disturbing, although he does not realize it yet.]

Once the healing was done, Roscuro, Gridik, and Zitch headed down to the far end of the ballroom.  The ruby throne and statues of Sorshen were still there, but the raised platform where the orchestra was sitting was completely empty.  Roscuro swapped his amulet of mighty fists for his golembane scarab and used the scarab’s powers to determine none of the statues of Sorshen were golems.  Zitch and Gridik confirmed nothing in the area detected as magic.  Upon closer inspection, the ruby throne was not actually made of ruby but alchemically treated stone.  Roscuro was actually disappointed – he had grown used to the Runelords’ overwhelming amount of magic use and expected the throne to actually be ruby.

Once the "all clear" was given, the rest of the adventurers walked down to the far end of the ballroom to look around.  The stage area was lined with burgundy and gold tapestries.  Hrefna cast Detect Evil and searched the stage area, but found no evil there.  Roscuro threw rocks at the tapestries to verify they were not mimics.  Roscuro then asked Zitch to use his wand of detect secret doors on the area.  Zitch found no secret doors in the stage area, but there was one on the wall just to the south of the stage.  Marativy checked the secret door and found it was trap free, so Roscuro opened it.

Beyond the secret door was an octagonal room.  The floor was covered by a mosaic of snakes and arms and there was an oak door on the far wall.  Zitch cast Detect Magic from the doorway and discovered the room had a faint abjuration magic on it.  He then used his wand to check for secret doors and found none.  Roscuro and Marativy entered the room and walked over to the oak door.  Marativy inspected it for traps and found none.  Roscuro tried the door handle to see if the door was locked – it wasn’t.

Just as Roscuro was going to discretely pull the door open, several Grey Maidens bull-rushed into the room [one with fancier armor than the others] while archers in the area beyond the door shot at Marativy and Roscuro.  Roscuro deflected the arrow shot at him, but Marativy was hit.

A hectic melee ensued, with the Grey Maidens mixed in with the Ratpack to gain flanking on the ratfolk.  Templeton cast Haste on the Ratpack and Swamprover cast Create Pit [among other spells] in the oak doorway, effectively stopping anymore Grey Maidens from entering the room.  The Grey Maiden archers quickly learned it was pointless to shoot at Roscuro, who kept deflecting their arrows.  The Grey Maiden leader hit hard, scoring hits on Hrefna, Roscuro, Marativy, and Swamprover.  At one point in the fight Swamprover dropped to the floor and played dead to avoid being hit again and killed.

The Ratpack gradually killed the Grey Maidens in the room one by one until only their leader stood.  They then piled all their attacks on her until she dropped.  This convinced those Maidens on the other side of the pit to retreat.  The Ratpack let them.

While catching their breath, the Ratpack searched the bodies for valuables, only finding armor and weapons.  Gridik cast Detect Magic and two items on the leader and her sword and armor glowed.  While the leader’s armor was stripped off her, Hrefna raised her healing aura as most of the adventurers needed a lot of healing.

The Ratpack retreated to the ballroom and closed the secret door.  Zitch took 10 minutes to cast Secure Shelter on the stage.  The spell would last 14 hours and would give the Grey Maidens something to concentrate on rather than follow the Ratpack back to the surface.  The Ratpack then withdrew, returning to the surface.

After Dinner

Back on the surface and after another fine meal cooked by Mel, the Ratpack discussed their options.  There was much interest in going after the pyrohydra now, but also staying on task and dealing with the Grey Maidens.  Zitch pointed out there was a chance they could catch the Grey Maidens waiting in ambush on the secure shelter and the Ratpack could ambush them instead.  There was a finite window on that as the spell would eventually end and the Grey Maidens would realize the adventurers were not inside it.  The group eventually decided to do both.  They would go raid the pyrohydra’s lair early in the morning and then use the tunnel in the back of the lair to access the dungeon, arriving before the spell expired.

During this conversation Swamprover scribed a scroll of Snow Ball for Gridik.  Gridik then transcribed the spell into his spellbook [the Storm Compendium].  In the morning he would memorize several castings to target the hydra as heads were cut off to keep them from growing back.

Zitch identified the magic items taken from the Grey Maiden leader as a +1 longsword and +1 full plate armor.

End of Session


Rat Whispers

[The fight was quite the hurly-burly and Swamprover went down to single digit hit points when she decided to play dead.  Her casting Create Pit completely tipped the balance of the fight to favor the Ratpack.  The Grey Maiden leader was doing enough damage that two hits had a chance of killing any one of the adventurers.  It was a challenging combat run well by the Other GM.]

[Sorry for this being a bit late.  Last minute rush of meeting project milestones before the holiday made the last couple days very busy.  The next several days will be very busy as well, but with family and friends so much better.  Saturday I’m hosting a board game get together and if I remember to take pictures, I’ll post them next week as a bonus blog entry.  I expect to get in at least one game of Milton Bradley’s Shogun (now called Samurai Swords).  It’s been ages since I last got in a game of it.]


Ratpack

Book 1:

Session 01 – Start

Session 32 – Conclusion


Book 2:

Session 1

Session 10

Session 20

Session 30

Session 31

Session 32

Session 33

Session 34

Session 35

Session 36

Session 37


Session 39



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