[Days 43 and 44 – A Day Topside, then the Ratpack finds the Menhir and enters the Dark Forest]
[This game uses the Pathfinder 1E roleplaying game. Game sessions happen once a week. This session happened February 27, 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
Fish – male grodaire, actual name is Hummlgau
Autumn
Day 43
Over breakfast at the Grange, the Ratpack discussed whether to return to the Thassilonian Workshop that day or take a day preparing. Winston stated he wanted to spend the day crafting adamantine bullets. It would only take a day to make a small batch but with his bag of abundant ammunition, it would go a long way. Considering the level of opposition the group was facing in the Thassilonian Workshop, the group decided this would be worth doing.
Winston spent some time locating 600gp of raw adamantine and then spent the rest of the day crafting 9 bullets out of it.
Zitch used his telepathy earring to contact Fish to let him know the Ratpack was staying on the surface an extra day and would be back down in the dungeon tomorrow. He was then trapped in an extended conversation with Fish on various abstract concepts [or at least concepts that were abstract to Fish] until the telepathy duration ended.
Gridik spent time in the Spire library researching Thassilonian workshops. He learned some general information about them [what kinds of things/labs were discovered in them] and where they and other Thassilonian sites were located.
Zitch joined Gridik in the library once he was done talking with Fish and inquired about defoliants. He was looking for a way to safely enter the room blocked by the plant overgrowth down in the Thassilonian Workshop. He was told about an alchemical defoliant that should meet his needs. He then went to the Tarheel Promenade and searched the shops until he located and purchased two doses of it.
Marativy found a gambling den and spent the day cheating at cards. During a break in the game, a goblin player from her table quietly confronted her about her cheating and demanded half her earnings so far to remain silent. Marativy thought about it and then paid the goblin, who left afterwards. She reasoned that she could win more back at the table if she paid him but absolutely nothing if he blabbed. She did take the time to memorize his face for later.
Roscuro spent the day doing paperwork for the Pathfinder Society. This included a summary of the expedition to date that he put in the post for Sheila.
Day 44
Morning
On the way back down to the dungeon, the Ratpack decided to check an unexplored doorway in the crooked passage between the wasp room and the centrifuge. They approached the door through the centrifuge room and then the crooked passage [southwest door from that room, with the southeast door going to the fish trap room].
Marativy checked the door thoroughly while the rest of the group waited around a corner. After she verified it had no traps, Roscuro walked up and carefully opened the door just enough so he and Marativy could see past it. The other side was a room of some size with a sandy floor. Both could see a gibbering mouther in a quiescent pile 20 feet or so from the door.
Roscuro opened the door a little wider so Marativy could stick her head into the room and look around. She saw three more gibbering mouthers in the room, which appeared to be a gladiatorial pit. On the far wall, ten feet up, was a viewing booth. Scattered across the sand were some bones and worn weapons. One crossbow stood out as it was in good shape. She pulled her head back out of the doorway and closed the door. She related what she had seen to Roscuro and they went back to the rest of the group to tell them. After some discussion, the group decided that a potentially magic crossbow wasn’t tempting enough to face 4 gibbering mouthers while they were still looking for the shard. Maybe afterwards they would come back and retrieve it.
The group backtracked to the centrifuge room and then exited through the fish trap room, the hall past that with the murals, and then across the cavern where the fight with the hydrodaemons took place. There they picked up Fish from the stream there and then continued forward. The passage beyond turned immediately south and ended in a smaller cavern that contained the Black Menhir. Two Caulborn, immediately identifiable by their lack of eyes and two mouths, were waiting there.
They immediately attempted to read the minds of the entire group [rude!]. They failed against most of the group but not all, learning the names of all the adventurers [and who knows what else]. Roscuro spoke with the Caulborn, confirming that the group was expected and that Selazny had already gone through to the Dark Forest. The Caulborn then activated the menhir and instructed the adventurers to all touch it.
Each adventurer touched the menhir and then found themselves touching a different menhir in a forest clearing. Just after the last of the Ratpack appeared, the runes on the menhir glowed yellow and volumes of rotgrubs started extruding from the stone. The Rat pack scattered away as two rotgrub swarms took shape. During the following combat, Gridik and Zitch were infected by the swarms, Gridik majorly. A series of spells including Fireball, Dragon Breath, and Lightning Bolt killed off the rotgrubs.
Hrefna activated her healing aura to heal the injuries and Zitch used the wand of lesser restoration to repair the [Constitution] damage done by the rotgrub infections.
While the healing was happening, the rest of the group looked around and noticed several things. The place they were in was only six miles across and was the interior of a sphere. The top half appeared to be sky, but the light from it was shadowy, making everything appear a colorless black and white. The bottom half of the sphere contained the Dark Forest, a patchy and foreboding expanse of dark trees. At the bottom of the bow could be seen a keep of some sort, made of black stone – undoubtably the resting place of the shard the Ratpack sought.
Roscuro noticed one other thing: in one of the larger clumps of trees something very large was moving. Roscuro could not see the thing itself, but only the fact that it pushed fully grown trees aside as it moved by them.
Something to be avoided.
End of Session
Rat Whispers
[It will be Day 44 for a while. We are currently 5 sessions ahead of this one and were finally able to rest at the end of the session. I won’t go into details now because SPOILERS, but get comfortable – this day lasts a while.]
[During the fight with the rotgrub swarms, the Other GM had both swarms roll onto Gridik. It made sense tactically as he was the closest target for both, but later we discussed it and realized that either the swarms would avoid each other or would damage each other. Something to keep in mind as we will likely continue facing multiple swarms due to our level.]
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 25
Next Session: Session 27
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