Ratpack – Shattered Star Book 2, Session 41

[Day 65 Concludes – Puzzle Room solved (eventually) but we go back to camp]

[This game uses the Pathfinder 1E roleplaying game.  Game sessions happen once a week.  This session happened November 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

Via Roll20

Marativy – female ratfolk 7th level Ninja

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

Roscuro – male ratfolk 7th level Monk

Hrefna – female changeling 6th level Omdura

Swamprover – female grippli 6th level Wizard

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

NPCs

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

Ariphi – female tiefling 6th 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 65 (Continued)

After learning that a wrong combination of statue hugging produced hostile elementals, the Ratpack decided to be a bit more thorough in solving the Riddle Room.  First they took the time to hug each statue singularly to verify they all produced the gold light on the empty platform.  They did.

Based on the translation of the floor clue [“She who desires to ascend to the Lady’s Light must deign to embrace those with whom the Lady Lies.”], the Ratpack decided to try hugging all the statues, minus the statue of Sorshen, under the assumption she likely had sex with all the other Runelords at some point.  Hugging additional statues one at a time, when the third statue was hugged the elementals reappeared and attacked.

The Ratpack fought the elementals and took some damage before defeating them.  Zitch was able to heal up Hrefna, Swamprover’s familiar, Snek, and himself with his Healing Hex.

Trying a different set of statues, the spellcasters were placed on hug duty and the rest formed a combat line in front of the empty alcove.  Again, when the third statue was hugged, the elementals reappeared and attacked.  Ready for them, the Ratpack put them down quickly, but resources were being expended during each combat.

It was now obvious that three statues being hugged triggered the elementals appearing.  Taking that into account, the adventurers started testing combinations of only two statues.  After testing all the combinations involving the statue of Alaznist and then Xanderghul, testing of combinations with Karzug started.  When hugging the statues of Karzug and Sorshen a golden mist appeared and filled the empty alcove [as opposed to just golden light or four elementals].  The golden mist detected as moderate conjuration magic.  Hrefna threw an iron spike into the mist and it disappeared.  Not wanting to make assumptions, the Ratpack spent the next hour checking the rest of the two-statue combinations and verified Karzug and Sorshen was the only combination that produced the gold mist.

At this point the spellcasters were out of most of their spells and Marativy and Roscuro were both low on ki, so the group decided to stop here and return back to camp to rest.  The next day they would return and go through the teleportation mist to what surely was the lair of Sorshen.

On the way back through the tunnels under the lagoon, at the nexus cave, several members of the group heard noises down one of the tunnels the Ratpack had not explored.  Zitch said the sounds were amphibian in nature.  A quick poll determined that the Ratpack just didn’t care about the noises at this point.  Hrefna was asked to cast Alarm on the tunnel that led to the dungeon and she did.  This would alert her if anything moved through that tunnel, which was all the adventurers cared about at that point.  Once the spell was cast, the group resumed their march to the troglodyte caves and the surface.

An Hour Later

The adventurers returned to their camp and collapsed to rest.  Mel served another amazing dinner, much to the envy of the merchants sharing the campsite.

Third Watch

Late in the night, while Zitch was on watch with Templeton and Gridik, Zitch noticed a black pudding approaching the camp.  An alarm was raised and the adventurers fought the pudding, killing it.  Hrefna’s armor and Marativy’s wakizashi were both damaged by the pudding during the fight.  Hrefna and Swamprover cast Mend to repair the damage done.  The rest of the night was quiet.

End of Session

Rat Whispers

[With family responsibilities for Christmas done, I had time to type this up.  I hope to get another typed up and posted this week, but need to prep for the game tonight.  We are doing the wrap up and item crafting between Book 2 and Book 3 of the Shattered Star Adventure Path, which will be Session 49 and the last one for this book.]

[I hope everyone who celebrates it had a Merry Christmas and I hope everyone else had a pleasant weekend!  In case I don’t get another post up this week, I wish everyone a Happy New Year!]

Ratpack

Book 1:

Session 01 – Start

…

Session 32 – Conclusion

Book 2:

Session 1

…

Session 10

…

Session 20

…

Session 30

…

Session 40

Session 42

Happy Holidays!

 Happy Holidays for whichever holiday you celebrate!

I am aiming to get the next session notes up tomorrow (Thursday) but I might be able to - depends on how things shake out.  I will not be posting next week at all [taking some time off from everything] so the next posting day after that should be January 4th.

Thank you for reading and see you in 2022!

Ratpack – Shattered Star Book 2, Session 40

[More Day 65 – Blood Hall, Barracks, and the Puzzle Room.]

[This game uses the Pathfinder 1E roleplaying game.  Game sessions happen once a week.  This session happened October 25, 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 6th 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 65 (Continued)

Zitch healed up Roscuro’s and Marativy’s wounds from fighting what might be the last of the Grey Maidens.  Zitch applied his healing hex to both and then a Cure Moderate Wounds spell to both, bringing each to full health.

The group of adventurers entered the large octagonal room the Grey Maidens had attacked out of and looked around.  There were four other doorways out (3 single doors, one each on the north, west, and south walls, and one set of double-doors, on the southwest wall) and a massive pillar in the center of the room with a staircase wrapped around it going up into the ceiling.  The staircase, of course, had no bannister.

Marativy investigated all the doors, checking them for traps.  Only the set of double-doors on the southwest wall was trapped and Marativy dis-abled the trap.  The single doors had viewing slits at human eye level, so Roscuro had Hrefna peer into them and describe what she saw.  Each slit provided a view of a different cell.  Zitch used his wand to detect secret doors.  While none of the cells had a secret door, the main room had one on the southeast wall.  Marativy investigated it and stated it was not trapped.  The adventurers set up around the secret door, expecting more Grey Maidens or something else to attack, and Roscuro opened the secret door.

The secret door opened to the northwest corner of a large chamber or hall with two rows of columns going west to east and supporting the ceiling.  The walls were mostly covered with a huge mural that showed acts of blood-letting and blood-drinking.  The mural was incomplete and the remains of scaffolding were against the western wall.  The blood in the murals appeared to flow and the air was ripe with a coppery scent.  A corridor exiting the chamber could just be seen on the east wall.  Roscuro immediately dubbed the chamber “Blood Hall” for obvious reasons.

Hrefna cast Detect Evil from the doorway and sensed five sources of moderate evil, apparently in the mural.  A casting of See Invisible by Gridik did not produce any results and Detect Magic only confirmed that the blood effect in the mural was magical – but the points of evil where not.  Strange.

After a short discussion, the adventurers decided to cross the chamber single-file with Hrefna leading the way.  The thought was Hrefna could lead the group through without getting too close to any of the evil sources.  Unfortunately, as soon as Hrefna stepped into the room, the points of evil manifested as five separate mists that immediately moved to attack!

The mists were very quick and three of them immediately closed on Hrefna and started draining her blood [draining 2 points of Constitution each and causing the Bleed condition].  Zitch cast Protective Luck on Hrefna while Templeton held his action.  Roscuro grabbed Hrefna and dragged her out of the room, hitting the button to close the secret door along the way.  The rest of the adventurers held position as the secret door slowly closed.  One of the mists got a final hit in on Hrefna before being sealed back in Blood Hall.

While the rest of the group held their breathe in case the mists somehow got past the secret door, Zitch quickly explained what they were and about them.  He identified them as vampiric mists and knew they were corporeal and would take weapon damage and were susceptible to fire.  They clearly fed on blood and acted as though under a Haste spell when gorged.  They are extra-planar in nature.

Once all were certain the vampiric mists were not pursuing, Hrefna cast Cure Light Wounds and Lesser Restoration on herself.  After several castings of each, Hrefna was back to full health.

The group decided to look elsewhere for now and Roscuro opened the double-doors on the southwest wall.  These doors led to another barracks, undoubtedly for the Grey Maidens the adventurers had just killed.  There were 14 bunks and most appeared to have been slept in.  Marativy and Zitch searched everything, finding a total of 500gp hidden away in various places.

The only other path was up the staircase spiraling around the central pillar.  Roscuro, Marativy, and Templeton led the way up the stairs, going ahead as a sort of stealth vanguard, but Roscuro and Marativy chit-chatted about the dungeon the entire way up.  [We both rolled terrible on Stealth.]

After a total of 60 feet of climbing, the last 20-30 enclosed after the stairs pierced the ceiling, the stairs emerged in the center of a large circular, white-marbled chamber with an opalescent domed ceiling.  Writing in Thassilonian was inscribed in a circle on the floor and there were 8 large alcoves, each at a cardinal directions.  All but the one in the east contained a statue, but unlike every other statue in the dungeon, these were [mostly] of different people [only one was Sorshen in this set] and in color so they had a somewhat life-like appearance.  Marativy and Gridik conferred on the writing and announced it said, “She who desires to ascend to the Lady’s Light must deign to embrace those with whom the Lady Lies.”  Closer inspection of the statues resulted in them being identified as the seven Runelords.

The adventurers debated the meaning of the riddle.  For a while.  A long while.  They were fairly certain that Sorshen had sex with all of the Runelords at one point or another, so limiting it to “those with whom the Lady Lies” seemed difficult.  If it meant who she was sleeping with when their civilization ended, none of the adventurers were up on their 7000-year-old gossip.

Eventually, Roscuro decided to hug the statue of Xanderghul, the Runelord of Pride.  This caused a golden glow to manifest in the empty alcove.  Roscuro quickly stepped over to that alcove and hopped in, but nothing happened.  After a minute, the gold glow went away.  He then asked Marativy to hug the same statue while he remained in the empty alcove.  She did, the glow returned, but nothing else happened.

The adventurers experimented.  They discovered hugging Xanderghul and Karzug at the same time caused a stronger glow effect, but still no teleportation.  When three of the statues were hugged, four elementals appeared in the empty alcove, one each of fire, earth, air, and water, and attacked.

After the fight, many of the adventurers needed healing and that was done.  Clearly getting the combination wrong produced bad results.  More thinking was needed.

End of Session

Rat Whispers

[Sorry for the delay on this one.  End-of-year Day Job business combined with need to map a whole new dungeon level and stock it for my Adventures in the Green game took up all of my writing time.  I’m squeaking this one out late this week as I think I’m finally past the end of year rush at the Day Job but need to gear up for running the next Monday Group campaign, starting on December 27th.  I might talk about that in a later post next week – depends on how my schedule goes.]

[The puzzle room had us stumped for this session.  We end up getting a lot of good data on the combat abilities of elementals next session.]

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 38

Session 39

Session 41

Status Update

First, check out Shattered Star Book 2, Session 39, if you missed it as I'm dual posting today.

Second, we will finish Book 2 of the Shattered Star Adventure Path this month [December 2021].  When exactly is not certain, but we are just doing some mopping up of experience points after essentially completing the adventure in Book 2 at this point.  Making the situation slightly more complex, the Other GM has finished his training for his new job and expects to get assigned to his new position some time soon.  Some of those options are not in the Houston area, which means he and his wife [Marativy's player] might be moving this month, which clearly takes precedence over the game.  No one is sure of the timing here, so we are playing it by ear.

On top of which, the Other GM needs time to modify Book 3's content as we are rapidly leveling out of it.  The players don't see this as an issue but he wants to change it up and maybe cut some of the less playable sections.  We really did not like Book 2 very much as it dragged in parts and we always seemed to be fighting things that were designed to be hard for our level, exploiting weaknesses in the character classes that another level or two would fix [the writer was "punching down" as it were].  The glass golem was an excellent example of this - it nearly killed several characters when we encountered it, but another level [or two] higher and spells like Shatter became available and it is would be easier to defeat.

So December 27 we will be switching back to the Delvers Guild campaign.  As I'm running about 5 sessions behind on publishing my notes here, the Ratpack will continue to appear on the blog until the end of January.  I will probably finish by posting summary pages for Book 1 and Book 2 that list links to all of the sessions for each book and then put a link to those summary pages in the sidebar in the Campaign Archive widget.  I will also create one for the Delvers Guild.  

I'm going to change how I do links at the bottom of each session report, starting with the Delvers Guild campaign.  I will only be putting three links at the bottom of each post: one to the summary page, one to the previous session page and one to the next session page.  It gets tiring inserting an increasing number of links each post and I think this will solve that while still providing easy navigation back and forth.

Please let me know if you have any feedback on any of this in the comments.  Thank you!

Ratpack – Shattered Star Book 2, Session 39

[Day 65 – Hydra hunt failure and Grey Maiden cleanup]

[This game uses the Pathfinder 1E roleplaying game.  Game sessions happen once a week.  This session happened October 18, 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 6th 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 65

Over breakfast, the Ratpack decided that this was the day they were going to go kill the pyrohydra.  They spent some time discussing the route and what spells needed to be cast.  The spellcasters organized their memorized spells in preparation for fighting the hydra before the group headed southeast to the ford across the river.

An hour later they started approaching the pyrohydra’s lair.  Marativy and Zitch started scouting ahead to verify that the hydra was in its lair.  The air was humid and foggy and Marativy and Zitch stumbled across some sort of greenish fog clouds.  The group attempted to go around the clouds but the clouds attacked, engulfing Hrefna and doing damage [I did not note what kind of damage, but it was 19 points worth].  Roscuro told everyone else to run for it and he would stay and help Hrefna escape.  With Roscuro’s help, Hrefna broke free.

The clouds attempted to engulf Roscuro and failed.  Surrounded, he withdrew, but two of the clouds got in hits as he left [two natural 20 rolls on attacks of opportunity].  The Ratpack fled the area and quickly outpaced the clouds.  Once the group felt they were clear of the area, Hrefna used a healing aura to heal the damage she and Roscuro had taken.

Marativy resumed scouting the way and saw many tracks of the hydra.  Once the group was within five minutes of the cave entrance, they stopped so Marativy could sneak in and verify the hydra was in its lair.  Zitch put his Ward on her and cast Heroism on her.  He then activated the earrings of telepathy so he could stay in touch with her.

Marativy safely reached the cave entrance and entered the hydra’s lair.  She made it all the way to the hydra’s bed/loot pile without finding the hydra.  Certain that the hydra was not there, she approached the bed/loot pile, noticing a wand sticking out of a bag of coins.  She quietly removed the bag from the pile and stashed it in her box of holding.

Over the telepathic link with Zitch, she asked the group if they wanted to loot the loot pile.  Roscuro asked if there was a back exit from the lair to the Deep Caves.  Marativy explored further and found it.  She reported back there was an exit.  After a quick discussion, the rest of the group decided to join Marativy in the lair and extracted the valuables from the loot pile.  Checking for magic, two items glowed: a ring and the wand.  They would be identified later as a ring of swimming and a wand of acid arrow with 25 charges remaining.  The adventurers took the back exit to the deep caves.

Noon

The Deep Caves from the hydra’s lair took longer to navigate, both because it was a new route and because it was longer than the troglodyte route, but it did eventually reach the nexus chamber and then the dungeon.  The adventurers made their way down into the dungeon until they returned to the Inner Sanctum.

Marativy went up the stairs to the east to the balcony to spy upon the ballroom.  From the empty balcony she could see that the Secure Shelter Zitch cast was still up but she could not see any of the Grey Maidens.  She returned to the group and reported what she had seen.

The Ratpack took the corridor to the south and followed it around until it reached the ballroom.  From there, Roscuro had Zitch drop the Secure Shelter to see what happened.  Zitch did so, which triggered some sort of fireball trap that engulfed the stage area in fire.  From 80 feet away it looked impressive.

The group approached the secret door to the south of the stage and prepared for a fight.  Roscuro opened the secret door and the Grey Maidens waiting in ambush attacked, as expected.  What was not expected was their use of scrolls of hold person.  Two attempted to hold Roscuro but failed [he made his save twice] but a third successfully held Hrefna, who was immobile for the rest of the fight.  During the fight the Ratpack gradually pushed into the room past the secret door and killed the six Grey Maidens there.

While waiting for Hrefna to become mobile, the bodies were checked and two potions of cure light wounds were found along with a scroll of hold person.

End of Session

Rat Whispers

[This session was a lot of frustration for the players.  We made a plan, went to go execute the plan, and the Other GM denied us the fruits of our labor.  There was no reason for the hydra to not be there from a game perspective.  The last time we had seen it was during the day while it was sleeping off a meal.  The Other GM could easily have decided it was doing the same on this day and the PCs would have had a minor triumph.  Very frustrating.]

[We do eventually kill that hydra, but several sessions later.]

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 38

Session 40