[Day 34 continues. Fighting columns and the entrance to the dungeon.]
[This game uses the Pathfinder 1E roleplaying game. Game sessions happen once a week. This session happened March 1, 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
Zitch Grimreaper – male ratfolk 5th level Witch with a donkey rat (capybara) familiar
Roscuro – male ratfolk 5th level Monk
Swamprover – female grippli 4th level Wizard
Marativy – female ratfolk 5th level Ninja
Via Roll20
Templeton von Trapp – male ratfolk 5th level Summoner (Synthesist)
Winston – male ratfolk 5th level Gunslinger
NPCs
Auto – a clockwork servant fixated on Winston
Gridik Stormstride – male blue kobold 2nd level Wizard (Invoker)
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 34, Expedition Day 4
Early Afternoon
Having killed all of the “bitey-pinchy bug” [they hope], the Ratpack searched the cavern. Marativy scouted the southern part of the chamber, finding two different tunnels, each heading different roughly southern directions. Roscuro and Winston assisted her afterwards checking the chamber for valuables and combined the found 18pp and 349gp. Most of the coins were of Magnimar mint, but some were from Korvosa.
In the meantime, Zitch and the other spellcasters inspected the monument in the center of the room using Detect Magic. They concluded that it held residual binding magic. The monument once held something inside that powered an effect, but they have no idea what was held and what effect it generated. They asked Marativy to climb up on the monument and see if it was hollow. Rather than climb on it, Marativy climbed the walls of the cavern and part way across the ceiling. She was able to get a look into the broken upper portion before slipping and falling. While her ring of feather falling slowly lowered her to the floor, she reported that the interior had a gap sized and shaped for a human woman. [Creepy. Also note - the actual descriptive text said "an attractive human female". So...big tits? As none of us is playing a human, the "attractive" descriptor seems unneeded for us and the Other GM is slowly editing the text mentally to allow for no humans in the group.]
The Ratpack took the passage west, as that was the general direction they wanted to go. [The Other GM asked us how we were determining directions underground. We pointed out that each of us had a Wayfinder that acted as a compass.] This passage was as long and windy as the previous one, with just as many offshoots that dead-ended [all of which we marked with chalk to simplify things later]. After nearly two hours of this the group arrived at a chamber of blue-veined white marble. The chamber had 12 floor-to-ceiling statues of Sorshen [Runelord of Lust] holding gisarmes and supporting the ceiling. In the center of the room was a 15 foot by 15 foot pit of blackness. Well, the Ratpack assumed it was a pit. It looked like a 15x15 foot square of darkness on the floor.
Zitch and Winston entered the edge of the chamber, careful to not enter the area demarked by the statues. Zitch cast Detect Magic and observed the statues and the “pit”. The statues all had preservative magic on them, but four of the statues had additional magics. It was immediately suspected that those four statues would animate at some point. The pit had three permanent spells on it: Deeper Darkness, Silence, and Feather Fall.
Roscuro advocated dealing with the statues before investigating the pit. Once everyone was ready, he slowly entered the chamber, walking towards the pit. Once he passed the line formed by the statues, the four statues with extra magic animated and moved to attack. Swamprover cast a Magic Missile spell at one of them and her two missiles merely splashed off the statue. This helped her identify the statues as Caryatid Columns, which are immune to most magics, break weapons that hit them, are constructs [making them immune to all of Zitch’s hexes], and have an unknown amount of resistance to damage. She called this information out to the group.
Zitch cast Protective Luck on Roscuro. The statues advanced and two attacked Roscuro, each hitting him once, nearly bloodying him. Marativy flung a cold iron shuriken and hit for no effect. Not liking the situation, Roscuro turned and fled, calling out for the rest of the group to do the same. The rest of the group agreed with his assessment and ran as well. Zitch, lagging behind the group, observed the statues stop their pursuit at the edge of the chamber and return to their original positions.
Zitch called this out and the Ratpack regrouped. Swamprover suggested that Winston would be the best at defeating the statues as his musket did high damage, likely overcoming the damage resistance. Additionally, his weapon would not be damaged by the statues at all. Zitch pointed out that ,due to a twist in the passage, there was a chokepoint they could block and let Winston keep shooting at the statues safely. If they piled their defensive magics on Templeton, he should be able to hold the statues at bay long enough for Winston to destroy them. Winston and Templeton agreed to give this a try.
The Ratpack set up at the chokepoint and piled defensive magics on Templeton. Winston rapid fired a pair of potshots at one of the caryatid columns. One did minor damage and the other did much better, allowing the Ratpack to estimate the damage resistance [it was DR5]. As the statues moved to the attack, Winston got in another pair of hits. There was a surprise when the statues were in position to attack – they had reach and could get to Winston!
Winston stepped back another five feet to [safely] shoot another pair of shots, finally destroying the first statue. Templeton cast Haste on Winston so he could fire faster and then went to a full defensive stance. This made it impossible for the statues to land any more blows while Winston gradually destroyed each statue in turn. [It took Winston a total of 29 shots to destroy the four statues, including two misfires which wasted shots. This was a large chuck of his remaining ammunition.]
Once the ringing from the repeated gunfire in a confined space allowed the Ratpack to hear again, they advanced and started searching the room for valuables. Templeton cast Rejuvenate Eidolon twice to heal up his eidolon. Zitch healed up Winston before joining in on searching the room. They were able to recover all four masterwork gisarmes, two undamaged statue heads and enough undamaged components to assemble 70% of a complete statue. They packed those components up to haul back for their patron.
The Ratpack next turned their attention to the pit. Swamprover volunteered to lowered with a rope tied off to one of the remaining statues. Roscuro coordinated with Swamprover a set of yanks on the rope to relay information [1 yank to start or stop feeding rope, 2 for “pull me up now”, and 3 for “I’m climbing up now”]. The rope was tied off to a statue and Swamprover.
The Ratpack played out the rope, slowly lowering Swamprover down the shaft. The darkness stopped after 50 feet. There was another 15 feet to the bottom of the shaft. The bottom of the shaft opened on a tall U-shaped passage with the shaft at the bottom of the U. The passage was well lit with arched ceiling and 25-foot tall statues of Sorshen down the center of it. Directly across the passage from the shaft entrance was a stone sarcophagus.
Deciding she did not want to proceed any further without the rest of the party, Swamprover yanked on the rope three times and started climbing back up. Feeling the yanks at the top, the Ratpack pulled the rope back up, speeding up Swamprover’s return.
Back at the top with the rest of the group, Swamprover relayed what she had seen. This appeared to be the actual entrance to the dungeon the group sought, but they were all tired and low on spells. The group decided to pack up stature parts and head back to camp, several hours away.
Returning through the tunnels took less time as they knew where they were going. They arrived at the troglodyte caves in little over an hour. There they said their goodbyes for the day and then hiked another three hours back to camp, arriving after sunset. Luckily Mel had kept dinner warm [a stew] and good food and drink was to be had at the end of a successful day.
End of Session
Rat Whispers
[At this point my character, Roscuro, considers the expedition to be a complete success. The group found an entrance to the dungeon containing the next shard, they’ve made contact with a local tribe they can introduce to the merchants, they have proof they found the dungeon, and they have enough treasure to recover expenses and show a profit. When they sell the statue parts to their patron, she will gladly pay enough to fund the next expedition where the real profits will happen. At this moment he is very content.]
[Hope he doesn’t get himself killed before they get back to Magnimar.]
Ratpack
Book 1:
…
Book 2:
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