[Days 1 to 4 – Sailing up the Yondabakari River with stop over at Wartle for side quests.]
[This game uses the Pathfinder 1E roleplaying game. Game sessions happen once a week. This session happened August 1, 2022.]
[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 8th level Ninja
Zitch Grimreaper – male ratfolk 8th level Witch with a donkey rat (capybara) familiar
Roscuro – male ratfolk 8th level Monk
Swamprover – female grippli 7th level Wizard
Hrefna – female changeling 7th level Omdura
Via Roll20
Templeton von Trapp – male ratfolk 8th level Summoner (Synthesist)
NPCs
Gridik Stormstride – male blue kobold 6th level Wizard (Invoker)
Ariphi – female tiefling 7th 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 1 (continued)
During this day of sailing up the Yondabakari River, Gridik and Swamprover spent time adding spells to their spellbooks from scrolls they had recently purchased. For Gridik, this took the traditional form of transcribing the spell to The Storm Compendium with special inks and stylus. Gridik transcribed Fabricate Bullets and Defensive Shock.
Swamprover, beings a Familiar Adept, used her familiar, Snek, as her spellbook and instead uses a special ritual to feed the magic from the scrolls to Snek. Gridik is not one to denigrate another’s style of magic but he does consider this an odd way to store spells for a wizard. Zitch learns new spells the same way as Swamprover, but Zitch is a witch and Gridik knows they do things weirdly.
Evening
The Lucky Jenny pulled over to the bank of the river and anchored for the night. Mel cooked dinner for the adventuring party.
Day 2
Morning
Gridik finished transcribing spells to his spellbook, copying over Reloading Hands and Unerring Weapon.
Afternoon
It started raining after lunch but not so heavy as to slow down the trip. The rain tapered off after sunset.
Evening
The Lucky Jenny pulled over to the bank of the river and anchored for the night. Mel cooked dinner for the adventuring party.
Day 3
Noon
The Lucky Jenny arrived at the town of Wartle just past Noon. Wanting to stretch their legs, the adventurers debarked and explored the town. The plan was to spend the night at Wartle so the two taller members of the group can sleep in beds sized for them.
Roscuro purchased a nice set of dominos to help pass the time on the boat. He also investigated street food vendors in the market square. Zitch, also in the market square, noticed a human walking oddly. The human was walking in straight lines and ignored everyone around him.
Zitch used his ring of telepathy to notify Marativy, Roscuro, and Templeton of the situation and his plan to look closer. Attempting to interact with the human was difficult until Zitch stood directly in the man’s way. The man appeared to have travelled a lot recently and not taken any care of his clothing, which showed small tears and rips as a result. He also appeared to be exhausted. The man started getting belligerent, which drew the attention of a town guard. Zitch noticed a small tendril of plant matter clinging to the man's chest mostly hidden by the man’s shirt.
Hrefna, wandering through the town heard the noise of the belligerent man, Zitch, and the town guard arguing and approached to see if Zitch needed any assistance. Noticing the human appeared to be exhausted, Hrefna cast Lesser Restoration on the man. This caused an unexpected reaction as some sort of small plant thing erupted from the man’s chest and attempted to flee the area!
Amidst a hue and cry from the townsfolk and the guard, Hrefna reacted quickly and attacked the plant thing with a Radiant Charge. This literally exploded the plant thing, getting small, quiescent bits of plant matter on all those in the vicinity. This focused the guard’s attention on Hrefna and the town guardsman, Hrefna, and Zitch had a noisy conversation to sort the whole thing out. Zitch used his ring of telepathy to let the others the situation had resolved itself and now they were just arguing with the town guard about it and questioning the human involved.
Roscuro took the time provided by "not being involved with the excitement" to track down the town's public notice board. There were two postings that seemed relevant. The first was a warning by the town council that some citizens of Wartle going into the forest north of town had disappeared. The second was from a family that had lost contact with relatives in the village of Brannock, located in the forest north of town, and sought assistance in re-establishing communication.
After a short consultation with Zitch, Marativy, and Templeton through the telepathic link, the Ratpack decided to investigate the situation. Roscuro tracked down the family that posted the notice about family in Brannock. They lived in a modest home. The matron of the human family was Seline and she was pleased that someone was willing to look into her problem. Roscuro sat with her and listened as she explained the situation. Her son, Kayden, had recently married and moved to Brannock with his wife. Brannock was expanding and there were good opportunities for him there. Usually Seline received a letter from Kayden once a week, but none have arrived for the past three weeks. Seline could only offer a family heirloom belt as a reward. Roscuro agreed to look into the matter with his companions. He asked for a letter from Seline explaining the situation to Kayden so Kayden would know that Roscuro was on the level. She provided one and Roscuro left to go meet up with the rest of the group.
Evening
The Ratpack shared information on the situation. Zitch and Hrefna were certain that the plant creature was a leshen and it likely infected Ceal [the human] around Brannock. Zitch and Hrefna had talked with Ceal but he had no memory of the previous two weeks nor the plant creature that had infested him. They had paid for food and a night’s rest at a local inn for him as he was clearly exhausted from the ordeal.
Day 4
Morning
Zitch cast Conjure Carriage and the Ratpack [except Gridik and Ariphi] loaded up on and in it for the trip to Brannock. Along the way, Zitch noticed crows evenly spaced on the trail and warned the rest of the Ratpack they were likely being spied upon.
Noon
The Ratpack arrived at Brannock. The village gate was open and had a great deal of plant growth covering it. Inside the village walls all the buildings had significant plant growth draped on them and a fully grown oak tree filled the village well. The town was silent.
Using instructions provided by Ceal, the adventurers located the mayor’s house. Roscuro knocked at the front door, but received no reply. The adventurers went inside the mayor’s home and started looking around, hoping to find a journal or something similar to learn what had happened.
In the bedroom they found the mayor, covered in plants and apparently sleeping. Hrefna raised her healing aura and then cast Lesser Restoration while the rest of the Ratpack prepared to kill the parasite when it fled the mayor’s body.
The casting of Lesser Restoration forced the parasite from the mayor’s body, but this one was much larger that the parasite faced in Wartle. In the process of ripping free from the mayor’s body, it nearly killed her and only Hrefna’s healing aura kept her alive. The Ratpack rapidly rained attacks on the parasite, killing it.
With the parasite dead and the mayor now awake, Ariphi carefully cut her free from the plants covering her using her adamantine dagger. The group [with the mayor] then moved to the front door of the house, ready to save other villagers trapped in their homes by the plants.
When Roscuro opened the front door he found the roofs of all the nearby buildings covered in crows, all staring directly at the adventurers. In the distance, the Ratpack heard the calls of a pack of wolves rapidly approaching.
Clearly the leshen was not going to let the Ratpack just walk away.
Zitch cast Heroism on Roscuro and Marativy in preparation for the fight to come.
End of Session
Rat Whispers
[I’m pretty certain that all of this content was all material added by the Other GM. We didn’t quite catch the name of the leshen when the Other GM told us what it was. He apparently was borrowing it from either D&D or the TV show The Witcher or both. I’ve heard of leshies from Pathfinder and D&D and that’s what I thought he said. Others heard something different. As a result, we the players kept using different names when referring to the creature, at first accidentally, but in later sessions on purpose, eventually culminating it being called the leshy-rama-lama-ding-dong. This amused us greatly, the GM not as much.]
Ratpack
Book 1: Shards of Sin Landing Page – Links to all Book 1 sessions
Book 2: Curse of the Lady’s Light Landing Page – Links to all Book 2 sessions
Book 3: The Asylum Stone Landing Page – Links to all Book 3 sessions
Last Session: Session 1 - Final conversations and getting on a boat
Next Session: Session 3
[EDIT: Ariphi and Gridik did not travel to Brannock but stayed with the Lucky Jenny, partially due to lack of space in the carriage and partly to make sure the Lucky Jenny did not leave.]
