[Day 42 – Damn the Hydrodaemons!]
[This game uses the Pathfinder 1E roleplaying game. Game sessions happen once a week. This session happened February 13, 2023.]
[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 9th level Ninja
Zitch Grimreaper – male ratfolk 9th level Witch with a donkey rat (capybara) familiar
Roscuro – male ratfolk 9th level Monk
Swamprover – female grippli 9th level Wizard
Winston – male ratfolk 9th level Gunslinger
Via Roll20
Templeton von Trapp – male ratfolk 9th level Summoner (Synthesist)
NPCs
Gridik Stormstride – male blue kobold 7th level Wizard (Invoker)
Hrefna – female changeling 7th level Omdura
Ariphi – female tiefling 7th level Rogue
Autumn
Day 42 continued (mid-fight)
Attempting to counter the Deeper Darkness cast by one of the hydrodaemons, Winston opened his pathfinder and activated its Light feature. This was not strong enough to counter the darkness. Hrefna pulled out her Greater Halflite Charm and activated its Daylight effect, which was strong enough to counter the Deeper Darkness [counteracted by a light spell of equal or greater level and Daylight is the same level as Deeper Darkness]. With Winston’s pathfinder producing light now, Gridik was able to move and hit one of the original two hydrodaemons with Lightning Bolt. The newly summoned hydrodaemon in the centrifuge room squeezed through both doors of the Fish Trap room to reach the room adjacent to the cavern the fight was in. Ariphi rushed into that room to slow it down so the spellcasters would not face it directly.
Roscuro rushed the hydrodaemon across the bridge and punched it. Templeton performed a full attack routine on it [and may have killed it – my notes are incomplete here as I was paying more attention to the combat than taking notes]. The hydrodaemon in Swamprover’s acid pit raised the level of the water in the stream to fill the cavern with two feet of water. The stream turned out to be a branch of the River Styx. Gridik and Marativy were sickened by the malevolent waters [they were the only two to fail their WILL saves]. The hydrodaemon facing Ariphi attacked her and dropped her to unconsciousness with its attacks. Marativy advanced out of the cavern to the adjacent room where Ariphi had just fallen, which allowed her to shrug off the miasma from the river water [it gave her another save that she made]. Hrefna activated her healing aura, which revived Ariphi.
[My notes get very bare here, only noting some highlights. Sorry about that.] One of the hydrodaemons dropped Swamprover but she was revived by the healing aura. Winston’s gun malfunctioned twice and detonated on him. Fish [the grodaire with the party] lowered the stream level back into the channel and held it there until the end of the fight. Marativy took out the summoned hydrodaemon virtually by herself. Roscuro jumped down in the pit to land on the hydrodaemon down there and flurried on it, nearly killing it. Gridik came over and cast Magic Missile at it, which killed it but then Gridik slipped and fell into the pit, nearly dying himself. Roscuro fished the kobold out of the acid at the bottom of the pit and they stood on the corpse [for a couple rounds] until Swamprover’s spell ended and brought them back to the cavern floor surface. Roscuro had a talk with the impressionable kobold about jumping/falling into danger and how that was only safe for monks, not wizards.
After the fight, most of the Ratpack needed some healing. Hrefna raised a second healing aura to assist with this. While waiting for that to fully take effect, Fish was asked to lower the stream level even further to verify no more hydrodaemons were hiding down there. None were found, but two skeletons were spotted by Zitch and Winston. They carefully climbed down and retrieved a potion of water breathing and a ring of grit mastery. The ring went to Winston [after a little talk about it possibly going to Gridik, until we learned the ring stores grit from the user and Gridik has none].
It had also escaped no one’s notice that Selazny, the naga and last remaining member of the party the Ratpack was supposed to be rescuing, had left the Ratpack to face the hydrodaemons and run ahead.
With the wizards running low on spells and Winston sans musket, the group decided it was time to return to the surface. Fish, immune to the effects of the River Styx, decided to stay in the cavern and hang out as the surface did not interest him. On the way back to the surface, the Ratpack agrees among themselves to say nothing about the naga as it might complicate the reward situation.
On the Surface
Back at the surface, the Ratpack turned over the body bag of holding containing the body of the human woman Roscuro had snagged from the fire wasp workshop while it was partially flooded. He warned Elaneiros that the body might still be host to a swarm of demonic fire wasps and the bag contained a lot of water. Elaneiros raised an eyebrow at that but paid out the 1000gp bounty. He asked if the naga had been found. Roscuro stated that there were signs of her presence, but the Ratpack had not rescued her yet [all true, but leaving some things out].
End of Session
Rat Whispers
[Short writeup as there was really only one encounter. The combat was intense and we were not certain whether or not we might face a TPK or a mostly TPK with maybe Templeton escaping. I think if the hydrodaemons had summoned one more hydrodaemon we might not have made it. At the end of the fight, over half the group was down to single digits in hit points and most of our powerful magics had been spent.]
[The summon acid pit spell Swamprover cast both helped and hurt. It kept us from facing that hydrodaemon in melee but gave it time to do other things, like raise the water level and summon another hydrodaemon. Having said that, it also let our wizards cast spells without having to worry about being disrupted by a large creature with reach in their midst, so I think it was still in our favor. The acid wasn’t strong enough to be a factor and nearly killed Gridik when he fell in, so maybe a regular pit would have been better.]
[I forgot to write down the date of this session but I'm fairly certain it was February 13, 2023, as I'm fairly certain we skipped the 20th as a holiday. I have a question in to the other players, so this might get updated. Unfortunately, Roll20.net does not date-stamp entries in the chat and I lost all our text messages when my old phone died March 30th so I have no immediate backup resources.]
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 24
Next Session: Session 26
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