# [Pathfinder] Reavers on the Seas of Fate



## mxyzplk

Our group is starting a new campaign, and this time I’m the gamemaster! It’s a homebrew adventure path called "Reavers on the Seas of Fate," and is using the Pathfinder RPG rules to tell tales of piracy and horror on the high seas of the world of Golarion.

As usual, we’ll be posting session summaries, character writeups, etc. on the campaign home page.  Since I’m GMing, I’ll also be sharing "behind the scenes" reports on how I design and run the game. 

Expect a wild mashup of the first bit of Second Darkness, the Freeport Trilogy, Sinister Adventures' Razor Coast, and more!

The Characters:

 Melako “Ox” Chaalu, a barbaric Garundi slave from Rahadoum (Bruce)
 Tommy “Blacktoes” Burrowbank, a halfling rogue from “around” with an attitude (Kevin)
 “Serpent” Ref Jorenson, an Ulfen druid with a pet constrictor snake (Paul)
 Sindawe H’Kilata Narr, aka “Freak”, a Bonuwat Mwangi  (Chris)
 Wogan, a cleric of Gozreh from Cheliax (Patrick)


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## mxyzplk

We've already had our first session of Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

First Session (12 page pdf) – The characters, still lowly seamen, meet for the first time upon a poorly-disciplined ship, the Albers, bound to Riddleport from Kintargo.  With women on board and gambling and fighting allowed, it’s only a matter of time till the captain turns up dead, filling the crew with mutual suspicion, and then a mysterious ship comes out of the fog…

For this first adventure, I combined the old Atlas Games 3e scenario Maiden Voyage and the new Sinister Adventures pdf Mysteries of the Razor Sea.  Both are first level ghost ship scenarios; Maiden Voyage focussed more on the ship and crew the players were travelling with.  Mysteries of the Razor Sea was totally about the ghost ship - it had more horror and is tougher.  So I felt they complemented each other well; basically I am using the ghost ship from Razor and everything else from Maiden Voyage, with some changes to lead in to the next part of the adventure, which will be in Riddleport.  Entertainingly, the crewman "Bull" was actually named "Ox" in the adventure.  I considered letting him keep it and having him and the PC "Ox" really hate each other in the same way chicks wearing the same dress to a party would, but even with the minor name change they're both bald Garundi and I got a lot of the same dynamic.

As a side note, lots of the Atlas Games stuff is on clearance sale at paizo.com and it's good material.  Besides this adventure, I may use some of their other scenarios like Three Days to Kill, and I'm using Nyambe: African Adventures to flesh out the Mwangi Expanse.  Heck, if I decide to cross the sea to Arcadia I may use Northern Crown: New World Adventures.  Stock up while it's cheap and still available!

I felt the first session went well - I thought we'd get a lot farther, but the players got into the interaction with each other and the NPCs; we played three hands of the card game Skulls, investigated the death of the captain...  There were only two very minor combats, a boxing match between Bull and then the PCs helping to subdue Bull when he attacked the first mate, convinced he had murdered the captain.  The rest was all roleplaying fun!

And it'll be a great object lesson for when later in the campaign the characters sign on to a pirate charter and read "no women, no gambling, no fighting..."  They will nod sagely to themselves about the wisdom of all these strictures.


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## mxyzplk

The second session of our new Pathfinder campaign, Reavers on the Seas of Fate, went off like gangbusters.

*Second Session* (15 page pdf) - Insanity and chaos reigns as the crew of the Albers investigates the derelict Sea Bear.  Soon, they are turning their suspicions against each other.  And then, things get out of hand.
Later, the survivors struggle against the uncaring sea and the fury of random encounters!

This is the second part of the intro adventure I was running as a heavily modded combo of Maiden Voyage (3e, Atlas Games) and the new Mysteries of the Razor Sea (3.5e, Sinister Adventures).  In this episode, the PCs board a ghost ship that had its mainmast replaced with a native totem pole.  As you might expect, things started getting weird fast.  I was impressed with how much the players went with it - I started passing them notes about "You think person X is acting suspicious" and they just up and started stabbing one another. 

Fun scene - Ellis went running down into the hold to stop Ox and Bull, and Ox failed a Perception check so he got "a figure suddenly looms behind you in the hold!"  He stuck his pike right through the poor sea dog's chest.

The biggest DM dilemma I faced was when the PCs had the good idea of tossing the skeletons overboard.  The skeletons, incidentally, were the new Pathfinder "bloody skeletons" that have fast healing.  I had the totem pole raise them back to full unlife with two rounds of its drumming (it couldn't attack with animated objects during those rounds).  So Chris, quite innovatively, dumped them overboard when killed.  The big question - can a skeleton swim?  I ruled yes just to keep the heat on, but await the rogues' gallery's dissection of the physics involved.

I'm really happy with how the NPCs are working out.  Thalios Dondrell and Vincenz especially are being treated like "real people."  In find that by portraying NPCs as competent, but not infallible Mary Sues, PCs respect them - it's just that most NPCs you meet in games are such one-dimensional chumps, they don't get that.

After the ghost ship, a pretty large percentage of the crew was dead, including the navigator.  I am using a combination of the Stormwrack (WotC) and Broadsides! (Living Imagination) sea/shipfaring rules, so as they wandered the seas they exercised their skills trying to follow the charts and keep safe and on course as storms hit.  They weathered a big one, but got blown somewhat off course and got their rigging fairly jacked up.  They've come up on some islands they think delimit the Gulf of Varisia and stopped in a cove to refit, and had a more lighthearted combat with a dozen demented goblins. 

I love the Paizo take on goblins; they are well and truly insane.  Dangerous in their way, but spend half their combat actions running around like butt monkeys instead of actually fighting.  One clambered up to the crow's nest and was doing the Pantsless Goblin Victory Dance over the shrieking Old Pete when Ox finally got to it.

Seems like everyone enjoyed themselves!  Wogan was happy to get a wheellock pistol off the dead captain of the Sea Bear, Serpent was happy that his snake had the biggest kill count in the goblin fight, Ox liked being able to go nuts and kill allies, Sindawe liked the massive combat, and Blacktoes... liked fleeing a lot, I think.

As a final bonus - it turns our our group played Maiden Voyage once before!  I didn't remember because I was a player then and GMing now, and it was like four years ago.  Here's the session summary of our Eberron party going through Maiden Voyage!  I think you'll see some similarities and some differences...


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## mxyzplk

Our aspiring pirates get their first taste of honest ship-to-ship combat in the third installment of our Pathfinder campaign, Reavers on the Seas of Fate.

*Third Session* (12 page pdf) - The crew of the _Albers_ goes foraging on an island to replenish their stores, and comes across some escaped slaves.  Of course, the Chelaxian naval frigate bearing their former owner arrives shortly thereafter.  Just as they discover a goblin pirate ship!  It's hot three-way action in a naval boarding action.  And then it's off to Riddleport!

This was a stretch session.  I had planned for them to get to Riddleport and get into that this session, but the character who has lived in Riddleport and has most of the hooks for them wasn't going to be there.  So I figured I could expand the travel part enough to fill a session. 

Leafing through some random supplements, I found a couple things that struck a chord.  In WotC's Stormwrack, there is an adventure called "The Sable Drake," basically an encounter with a goblin pirate ship.  I had thrown some canoes full of goblins at the PCs last time, supposing they came from a village on the nearby island.  By converting those to goblins on two ship's boats from the _Sable Drake_, it was a lead-in.  Then in Atlas Games' En Route II: By Land Or By Sea, there's an encounter called "Water Stop" detailing some escaped slaves hiding on an island; the PCs meet them and then their old master shows up looking for them.  This was perfect; I wanted to start pulling in elements from PCs' backgrounds, and most of them have a beef against the Chelaxians.  Ox had been the slave of Captain Marcellano, a Chelish seafarer.  Thus I mixed the two together.

It wasn't too hard to convince them to go onto the island and poke around; they thought maybe the goblins came from there and they'd get to kick some more ass.  They came across the slaves and managed not to kill them (the way the encounter's written is that the poorly armed commoner-type slaves surround the PCs and try to get them to surrender to figure out if they're likely to rat them out; somewhat dangerous in that often PCs take any manner of threat as an invitation to maximum overkill).  The slaves tell them about a "weird black ship" in a hidden cove and then the Chelaxian Navy ship _Raptor_ appears and approaches the _Albers_ to see if they have seen some missing slaves.  Soon, they're both going after the goblin ship, who the PCs finger as having drug off a bunch of escaped-slave looking people. 

Really, the tough part about all this was that in Golarion, goblins are all total meatheads.  It was hard to believe they could pilot a ship, even with a wererat captain and a handful of adepts.  But hey, you work with what you're given.  I changed them substantially from the "leet ship" in Stormwrack to a barely actionable converted fishing ship. 

In the end, everything worked out for the PCs and the slaves.  The PCs hoped that the goblins would whittle down the Chelaxian marines enough that they could take them; they were quickly disabused of that - one of the things I wanted to get across before they took  up their future life of piracy is that the Chelaxian navy is no one to screw with. They were pretty sober as the goblin ship took three massive broadsides and sank to the bottom.

The noble was Marcello Marcellano, the son of the guy who owned Ox.  I expected him to go to greater lengths to try to kill him, but he played it cool.  A shame, I built a pretty good 4th level swashbuckler using the new class from Tome of Secrets (Adamant Entertainment) and the duelist feats etc. from Way of the Duel (Sinister Adventures).

They went back and started diving the goblin ship for loot...  It was funny, they encountered a reefclaw and after beating it all borked their Knowledge: Nature checks so that they were "sure those things live in large colonies!"  (They're solitary).  They made the checks in the open and came up with the alternate interpretation themselves.

Selene, Vincenz, and Thalios Dondrel son of Mordekai are now at large in Riddleport as well, so I'll have some good NPCs the PCs are very familiar with to use.  Next session's based on Pulp Fiction!


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## mxyzplk

Our would-be pirates are at large on the streets of Riddleport in this, the fourth session of Reavers on the Seas of Fate - "Cheat the Devil and Take His Gold."

*Fourth Session* (11 page pdf) - First, I hand out fake pirate gold coins I bought at a party shop to represent each character's Infamy Points!  I explain how they work (very powerful but rare hero points) and the group seems to like the idea.

Then, the PCs wander around Riddleport and I take the opportunity to introduce various local NPCs.  Snake meets Samaritha Beldusk outside the Cypher Lodge and they hit it off.  Tommy and Ox go to the temple of Calistria (aka whorehouse); Tommy gets real friendly with the tiefling prostitute Lavender Lil, and Ox gets requested by Selene.  Faithful readers will remember Selene was the captain's woman aboard their last ill-fated voyage; she was a hooker before meeting the Captain and so it's back to the life of a working girl.  Sindawe goes to find an altar to his god Shimye-Magalla; he finds something that looks kinda similar (the Mwangi worship a janiform incarnation of the god of wind and wave Gozreh and goddess of dream Desna) and has a bad string of luck - a stirge discovers him, and when he tosses himself into Riddleport Harbor to get it off, a swamp barracuda takes notice.  It chased him to shore and then chased him onto shore; there was an entertaining chase scene with both of them only moving like 10 feet a round (uphill in mud for Sindawe, and swamp barracuda aren't all that fast out of water).

I open up "Shadow in the Sky," the first installment of the Second Darkness Adventure Path, for the next part.  Tommy knows a local guy named Saul Vancaskerkin who owns a gambling hall; they go to his big devil-themed gambling festival "Cheat the Devil and Take His Gold" and end  up thwarting an armed robbery by two colorful miscreants and their gang of thugs.  I took Thuvalia's opening line from the restaurant robbery in Pulp Fiction; our session scribe didn't get it quite right in the summary but close enough.   I decided it would be fun to kinda base the two principals on Pumpkin and Honey Bunny from that fine film.  A more notable omission is that Sindawe used one of his Infamy Points to run across the heads and shoulders of a bunch of patrons to jump-kick Thuvalia and take her out before she escaped. Also, Wogan got to use his gun (and my firearm rules) for the first time - and the damage dice exploded; he shot Angvar right through the heart.  They end up being recruited by Saul to help run the Gold Goblin and, perhaps, some "side jobs" as well.

A lot of the session was spent getting introduced to Riddleport, the staff of the Goblin, et cetera, so not much action, but everyone had a good time role-playing!


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## mxyzplk

The characters decide to take the fight to the mean streets of Riddleport in the fifth installment of Reavers on the Seas of Fate, "St. Casperian's Salvation."

*Fifth Session* (11 page pdf) - Michael Vick, eat your heart out.  The PCs start off by arranging one of the Gold Goblin's underground animal fights.  The NPC ranger, Bojask, got a diseased bear off the back of a ship somewhere, and their boss Saul wanted a championship match with the current champ, Pigsaw the boar.  

I based this on reality - I read a recent news article about how all the spectacled bears at this German zoo all lost their fur all over except for on their faces.  Zoo staff is baffled.

Anyway, player reaction: OH MY GOD LOOK AT THAT THING.  They then spent an inordinate amount of their funds buying some drugs to knock it out so they could paint it green.  It seemed like the thing to do at the time.  They started channeling Don King and dubbed the fight "Pigsaw vs. Bearclaw."

The PCs wandered through Riddleport separately to go spread the word and got the worst end of the deal.  It's a rough town, and when Ox went into the gambling district run by the head crimelord and started putting up flyers, three goons quickly showed up, beat his ass senseless, and robbed him.  Others fared slightly better.

I was planning to run the 3e Atlas Games adventure "Three Days to Kill."  I handed out some rumors, though, gleaned while beating the streets doing fight promotion, and they were fascinated by a (totally false) rumor about a haunted treasure hoard in the cellar of St. Casperian's Mission, a local derelict flophouse where, it turns out, their old buddy Vincenz is hiding out.  I had planned to run "St. Casperian's Salvation," a side trek adventure set there, later, but the PCs were all over that mission like white on rice as soon as they heard a rumor of cash.  Ever prepared, I switched and ran that instead.  Basically there's a local small street gang using the second floor as a hideout.  This was somewhat of a surprise, and it was a brutal tight quarters battle.  The gang leader, the "Splithog Pauper," got away with the gang's loot.

Eventually they had the fight and the bear won.  In attendance was Captain Scarbelly, the orc pirate, a clear warning to those in the know that the Freeport trilogy is almost upon us.

Next time - Three Days to Kill!  I hope.


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## mxyzplk

The characters become more proactive in their criminal enterprises in the sixth installment of Reavers on the Seas of Fate, “Three Days to Kill.”  It's based on a 3e Atlas Games adventure also called “Three Days to Kill.”

*Sixth Session* (14 page pdf) - One of Clegg Zincher's capps, Braddikar Faje, is headed out of town on the road to Roderic's Cove to conduct some kind of sale at a villa in the hills.  Jacking up Zincher's day is more than enough motivation for Saul to send his favorite scum off to break up the deal.

But first, Tommy heads to the local whorehouse/temple of Calistria to see his favorite gal, Lavender Lil.  He finds her hiding behind a tapestry; Captain Scarbelly and his orc pirate crew are visiting, and, as she says, "I like it a little rough, but not orc rough." So Tommy tells her he and his comrades are headed out into the woods to try to find the secret Calistrian lesbian orgy they hear tell of, as a cover story for their real job.

It's probably about this time I should share the rumors the PCs got from hitting the streets of Riddleport.  It may explain otherwise bizarre behavior on the part of the guys.  (The weird terminology is mostly Riddleport slang...  As you can tell they are meant to be exactly as a random Riddleporter would relate them.)


> Bonfires are sometimes seen in the mountains to the northeast.  I hear a bunch of priestesses of Calistria gather there every new moon for secret all-lesbo orgiastic rituals, and they murder any man who glimpses them.  It still sounds pretty tempting to try.  Woooo!  Man, I wonder if that Pamodae sideshow goes there… Mmmmm…..
> 
> When the missionary who founded St. Casperian’s Mission died, he left behind a treasure cache of the money he defrauded from credulous citizens.  Although the building is dilapidated and overrun with grog-blossoms, there is a secret room beneath the ground where the priest hid his ill-gotten gains.  They say it’s guarded by a magical protector that has disappeared everyone that’s tried to claim it.
> 
> There are orcs wandering the streets of Riddleport!  Captain Scarbelly’s pirate ship, the Bloody Vengeance, is in town and the whole crew is orc.  People say he’s killed twenty-nine men in hand to hand combat.  He’s probably hooked up with Boss Croat, that snout-lover.  I could totally take an orc.  It’s about speed, not strength!
> 
> Gebediah Crix, keeper of the Riddleport Light, got killed by one of those devils he summons.  His parts were strewn all over the lighthouse.  The gendarmes have posted guards outside the place.  I wonder if the devil’s still around?  Hey, I recently came across some Vudran charms, guaranteed to keep evil spirits away.  Wanna buy one?
> 
> There’s some kind of gang of whiskers that operates in the Rotgut District.  I have a cousin who got robbed by a bunch of rats in an alley that suddenly turned into people.  And the gendarmes don’t do jack crap about it, say they’re low on funding.  The rats must be connected and that’s why they’re getting a pass.
> 
> Some guy, an out of town wizard, wanted to become a fancyboy, but when they wouldn’t let him in, he insulted Elias Tammerhawk, the Speaker of the Order of Cyphers.  They had a duel in Zincher’s arena.   Tammerhawk totally wasted that guy’s dumb ass in short order and magiced up a swarm of rats to eat the body.  He said that was what he got for running his rathole.  Haw haw haw!
> 
> There’s been some turf changes on the streets lately.  I hear Avery Slyeg is totally Croamarcky’s bitch now and they’re consolidating and looking to squeeze competitors out of the gambling biz.



The completely false St. Casperian rumor is what caused them to go all SWAT team on the mission last session.  Although their minds are going overtime, and they mentioned that "planting a rumor like that would be a good way to get someone to go in and kill of a rival gang..."

Anyway, they head out to the Trail's End villa and get a lot more than they bargained for - besides Faje and his men, there's Asmodean cultists, Marcello Marcellano (the Chelish son of Ox's former owner from "Water Stop"), and a bunch of raiding Shoanti braves.  They actually carve through the guards OK, but when the Asmodeans start summoning freaky demons from the mirror Faje is selling them, they decide to bail (over Serpent's objections, who really really wants to kill Faje and everyone else, despite Saul instructing them not to kill him.)

The PCs for some reason thought they had done poorly, I guess because of the default D&D expectation that the only success is found in killing everything in sight and looting it.  But Saul praised them - they killed everyone but Faje and one of his goons, who had to ride into town two to one horse.  The Asmodeans got the mirror without paying for it.  So Clegg is out like 8 guys, a bunch of horses, and the mirror with nothing to show for it, and Faje did NOT get killed and bring the wrath of Zincher and potentially other crime lords down on the Gold Goblin.  The PCs kinda wanted to murder the Asmodeans, Marcellano, and the Shoanti (which Saul couldn't care less about) and Faje (which would have pissed him off mightily).

But before they got back...  They happened upon the secret Calistrian lesbian orgy ritual.  Or, at least, Tommy snuck up onto something that might have been it and promptly got chased off by a manticore!

I was prepared to run an actual chase scene here, with the mounted PCs fleeing from the manticore, using chase rules from Adamant Entertainment's Tome of Secrets for Pathfinder.  It was not to be, however, as the usual D&D group problem emerged of one guy refusing to run and that making the rest of the party stand with him.  We then had a weird start-and-stop chase as Sindawe stopped to fight.  But when the manticore dropped his horse in one shot, he thought better of that and hid in the underbrush.  But of course Wogan and Serpent had stopped to help him...  They got away by popping obscuring mist and letting the manticore eat all their horses.  Ah well, all's well that ends well.

Once they got back, they went with the guy that they let live from the Splithog Pauper's gang, Madrat, to hit one of Avery Slyeg's couriers.  Of course, Madrat was a mole working for Slyeg.  So we left off with the PCs facing down a dozen crossbowmen and a crime lord in a warehouse.  Will they sleep with the fishes?  Find out next time, in Reavers on the Seas of Fate: Death in Freeport!


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## Rugult

Ok, I have to say this is a fantastic way to handle a story hour.  I love the associated documents, as I can download them and read at my leisure.  It also allows for non-forum intrusive text (like cast lists for every session).  The inclusion of GM commentary is nice, as it gives me ideas on things to do with my own campaigns and is not something you see everyday.

Being an avoid fan of the Pathfinder Setting, as well as the upcoming Razor Coast, I am quite interested to see how this continues.  Also, my Second Darkness campaign players had a crush on Clegg Zincher, so I like seeing his name show up again...  though in my game he was reincarnated as a bugbear.


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## mxyzplk

Thanks!  Yeah, I suspect this story hour doesn't get as much reading as the ones that post everything in the forum itself, but as you can see we keep much more detailed session summaries than anyone else.  I'm glad you're enjoying it!  I run the next session this Sunday.


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## rjohanek

I too enjoy your adventure write-ups.  I usually just read them on your web page, however.  I like your style, irreverant and a little tongue-in-cheek without taking yourselves too seriously.  It's a nice change from most story hours.  Please keep posting!


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## mxyzplk

We aim to please.  Glad to hear people are enjoying them.  If anyone needs even more than the 8 campaign's worth on my blog, there's a bunch of even older ones on our session scribe's decrepit old home page: BRT Home Page


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## Abciximab

Yeah, I saw that link on your home page, I'm working my way through the Bounty hunters of eberron. You can add me to the list of people that enjoy your recaps.


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## mxyzplk

Our heroes (?) continue in their shenanigans in Riddleport in Reavers on the Seas of Fate: Death in Riddleport, Part I.  I've been borrowing from Green Ronin's excellent Freeport setting to flesh out the pirate haven of Riddleport and here's where we kick into their classic adventure, Death in Freeport, but adapted to Riddleport and generally getting beefed up.

*Seventh Session* (14 page pdf), "Death in Riddleport, Part I" - Crimelord Avery Slyeg makes the PCs an offer they can't refuse, so they hunt down the Splithog Pauper (the leader of the criminal gang from "St. Casperian's Salvation").  And they look for their kidnapped friend Vincenz - rubbing elbows with Cyphermages requires them to clean up a bit.  The practical and moral dilemmas get harder as they work to rescue their friend.

I was pretty happy with this session.  The trick to a good campaign is having interesting NPCs that the PCs believe in enough to deal with realistically, and this session was all about that.  Man, the Splithog Pauper has gone from a side sub-boss with no real personality - less backstory than the average Paizo NPC, really - to a major player.  The first time he escaped, the PCs found his disguise kit and decided he was a master of disguise - to the point that as they were walking out right after the fight, they interrogated a legless homeless guy to ensure he wasn't the Pauper in disguise.  This time, he lived up to their expectations by being disguised as a peg-legged pirate captain.  Once they caught him and took him back for interrogation, he managed to talk his way out by trading the location of his hidden treasure for his life, and after they let him go, he told them the treasure was in the artificial leg from his disguise they already had in hand.  They were all impressed and like "Damn, he totally conned us!  That took balls of steel!"  Now they're convinced he's Golarion's answer to James Bond.  DM pro tip: every time the PCs decide an NPC is really bad ass, give them a level.  Ding!

And besides the Pauper, the interactions with Avery Slyeg, Samaritha, and Iesha are all going well.  When the PCs are taking NPCs as or more seriously than fights or loot then you can get some real stories going.

Other things I was proud of - I don't like when NPCs know things they shouldn't; I hate the "hivemind complex."  So the Pauper had a signal arranged - if he started singing "What Shall We Do With A Drunken Sailor," that meant trouble, and his new rent-a-goons should come downstairs shooting.  Well, the PCs were spread all over the bar doing various things and the goons had never seen them before, so they just started drive-by style random shooting at anyone that looked dangerous.  And in turn, that galvanized the PCs much more to immediate action than a standard thug attack.

During this session I made use of two of my custom rulesets - the gather information/random encounter/rumor combo I discuss in Life in the Big City - Gather Information, and the chase rules I lay out in Life In The Big City - Chase Rules.  Both chases (the Pauper and Enzo) went well; I think after another use or two the chase rules will be nice and solid.  The trick is to not make them too much of a "separate minigame" that causes problems with interactions with all the skills/feats/spells/etc of 3.5e play.

Next session - some shockingly brutal fights!


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## mxyzplk

*Eighth Session* (14 page pdf), “Death in Riddleport, Part II” – The PCs find a hidden temple under an abandoned house and engage in vicious combat with serpent men!  “Sorry, Vincenz, but that’s too tough!” they conclude after a couple runs at it.

The adventure was a beefed up version of Green Ronin’s “Death in Freeport.”  (Spoilers for that adventure ensue).  Did I beef it up too much?  The weakest part of the Freeport Trilogy, I thought, was that the great legendary serpent men were 1 HD (and 3.0 HD are like worth 1/2 a Pathfinder HD) pieces of crap.  Paizo printed some more “real” serpentfolk in their 3.5e Into the Darklands supplement.  I had to do the degenerate-statting and conversion to Pathfinder myself, but was left with some nice CR4 brute types.  I didn’t think that would be a horrible problem – these PCs are Pathfinder and pretty optimized, and have pretty much happily rolled over all the other fights so far.

Well, they got tromped by two of them.  There were a couple reasons why.  One, they were down a PC because Blacktoes wasn’t here, which means they were only four men against an unknown foe.

But shouldn’t a party of 4 second level PCs be able to take (though have it be tough) 2 CR4s?  Well, secondly, they’re pretty tough even for CR4s, I think, and I made a mistake in not nerfing their poison more (I converted from 3.5e to Pathfinder poison on the fly and the latter procs each round for 6 rounds, so needs a much lower penalty value).

But also some of it, the third part, was the PCs I think.  I’m trying to get them to think more tactically as part of a “gritter” campaign, but I’m afraid they still default to “screw it, let’s run around like butt monkeys.”  The villa assault in Three Days to Kill was a good example; they started in decent SpecOps style but then all started running round solo (and still did well – I tried to scare them some but I guess they may have gotten the lesson that that’s OK…).

Although maybe it worked out kinda decently in the end.  Samaritha went with them and they fought ten skeletons and three serpentfolk at once!  (You don’t hit a dungeon, leave, and return after two days without them getting a good reaction plan in place.  Sorry.)  And once the players got scared into really thinking hard, they did a good fighting withdrawl that they converted to a hasty ambush and took the enemy all out (albeit with using all their remaining action and Infamy points).  Which would have been fine, but that fight demoralized them enough that they bailed – not even to come back after healing, but just “bah, maybe after we level.”  I made it crystal clear that they were leaving Vincenz to his death, but that didn’t impress them.  They figured any more of those serpentfolk and they were meat.

Ironically, they had killed all of them off and just had the boss to fight – he’s tough but not as tough CR-wise as e.g. two serpentfolk.  But they didn’t know that and I don’t like giving metagame info; courage isn’t real courage if you are told the risk was low, so they walked away and I didn’t do much to stop them (except having the voice of an NPC speak as a conscience.  “You’re gonna leave your friend to die?”).   They pushed me to get a level at the end of the session.  Perhaps I’m cussed, but I didn’t want to reward failure with a level (and have them think on some level that I gave it to them so they can go back and succeed).  Not like they’re going to hang around awaiting the PCs’ leisure; I’m not big on static dungeons or villains that don’t respond to stuff like that.

They got some of the disappointment out of their system by going and beating the crap out of Braddikar Faje.  Second Darkness has some badly balanced encounters; as if a third level NPC fighter with some goons is going to be a credible threat to a whole party of PCs.  I had built up his street cred enough that they took him seriously, at least, but he couldn’t damage them worth a darn.

Now I have to figure out what’ll happen next.  I pretty much run things from a simulationist point of view during a session (what would logically happen next) but from a story point of view during sesssion prep (it might be interesting if person X goes and does Y…).  I reckon trouble will start coming to them; my hope is that they snap and become the ruthless pirates they are destined to be…

This group of players is a little of a challenge as I found out when they hated my Mutants & Masterminds campaign.  They really don’t like being bested, even if it’s nonfatal or dramatically good.  I guess we’ll see if this demoralizes them or what.


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## mxyzplk

*Ninth Session* (15 page pdf), "Holiday In The Sun/Flat On Rat Street" - The characters help Saul celebrate Swagfest in the streets of Riddleport, and there's a startling amount of violence.  Then, they go to a local moneylender to find out what happened to the bar's floor manager... and there's a startling amount of violence.

First, I ran "Holiday in the Sun", an interstitial Freeport adventure from the Freeport Trilogy.  There's a big street festival, like Riddleport's answer to Mardi Gras.  They got to have some random fun, choosing costumes, drinking, that kind of thing.  An assassin tried to take out Saul, and though the PCs stopped her, she totally took out Tommy in one shot.  He didn't take that well; he took her back to the animal cages and tortured the crap out of her.  Explicitly enough that it took the other players aback.  And when they came back and she was missing, he really got scared.  Mmmwah hah haaaa!

Then they participated in various festival games.  Sindawe had a bad turn when he ran off solo and stumbled into the lair of an ettercap and some dream spiders!  In the original adventure it was a rogue aranea; in this one I decided it made sense for one of the crime lords to have an ettercap working for him as tender for the dream spiders, whose valuable venom is used to make a drug named shiver.  He got bitten repeatedly by the spiders till he was tripping his balls off, and then he got webbed up.  Bruce (Ox) spent an Infamy Point to have him rescued by the Splithog Pauper.  Funnily enough, when the rest of the PCs found him in an alley with a note from the Pauper, their reaction was "We told that guy to leave town!  We hate him!"

Then, the Yellow Shields organize a hit on the PCs, which they get out of without a lot of trouble.  After, when Tommy's back at the Gold Goblin, he complains to Saul that they're all pretty beaten up and don't want to go back to the festival.  He tells him, not unkindly, to "Sack up and get back out there."

Next, it's "The Flat On Rat Street," from Shadow In The Sky (the first chapter of the Second Darkness adventure path, which I am somewhat using for inspiration).  Saul tells the PCs that the floor manager, Larur Feldin, went to make a payment to a moneylender named Lymas Smeed and hasn't come back.  The PCs go, bust in, kill his baboon, and beat him with a phone book for some time.

This scene really frustrated Sindawe's player particularly (he was already a little ill-humored about the spider thing).  He was convinced that he just wasn't beating the guy hard enough or searching good enough to find the answer, and it just wasn't appearing - that they must just be doing something wrong.  He got pretty upset about it (not till debrief afterwards did I fully understand what was going on).  Of course, in this particular scene, there is absolutely no way to figure out what really happened from within the scene; you have to move on and find out from other sources.

I blame training from bad D&D modules for twisting players' expectations.  Too many D&D scenarios wrap everything up nice and cozy.  Whenever you kill a bad guy, he always has a long note on him detailing his God-damned life story.  It's from the same playbook that states "monsters" fight to the death, et cetera.  There's always a convenient self-contained answer to the problem in the dungeon - the "silver weapon when there's lycanthropes coming" syndrome.  Real mystery, intrigue, or complication is rare.  I try to run things very "realistically" - meaning if something in the game world doesn't make sense to a reasonable person, it's not because Gary Gygax decided that "weather is magical" or other such , but instead because yeah, there is something wrong here.  Afterwards, I told the frustrated player that really he was more on the right track than everyone else - that yes, it doesn't make any sense that a common moneylender would let himself be tortured to death rather than give up the info they wanted, and that it shouldn't be a source of frustration, but instead an opportunity to use that correct first step to re-engage with the game world and find out the next step.  We got things back on track, but I think it's so unfortunate that there's so much crappy D&D that trains people to not trust their own senses because the answer's always "GM fiat" or "that's just what the module said" or whatnot.  In my mind, the acme of achievement (in a simulation-focused game) is to get it to where everyone feels like they can engage completely in the game world, without having to second-guess about what metagame stuff is going on.  Metagaming is for pussies.  Yes, you can quote me on that.


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## mxyzplk

*Tenth Session* (11 page pdf), "Death in Riddleport, Part III" - Samaritha's gone missing, and the PCs track her to - yes, you guessed it - the serpent temple.  Along with a new friend, they hit the place hard, and there's no retreating this time.

Sadly, Bruce (Ox), our usual session scribe, moved to Dallas and no one else brought a laptop, so this isn't one of our traditional session summaries.  I took some notes while running the session and have written it up in a more short story kind of format.  I think it turned out pretty well, and hope you all enjoy it.

As a bonus, I've started a "Monsters and NPCs" page where you can check out the full character sheets for Salvadora Beckett and Milos the cultist.  Salvadora was an example of a new class, the Inquisitor, that Paizo is having an open playtest for as part of their upcoming Advanced Player's Guide.   There's also updated character sheets for many of the PCs on the Characters page.

The session went really well.  We finally finished Death in Freeport!  Now that they're third level, the serpentfolk weren't an insurmountable obstacle, though even when the PCs prepared with antitoxins they definitely took some damage at their hands.

There were a bunch of really great moments this session.  My favorites:

    * When Lixy asked Wogan, the chaste cleric of Gozreh, "exactly" what his religion prohibits as she cozied up to him.  I could virtually see the word balloon with "Gulp!" in it appear over Patrick's head.
    * When Wogan went to pull his pistol in the ensuing combat and it wasn't there.  That's one of those moments GMs live for.  "What do you mean it's not...  Oh...  Crap." <sound of weapon cocking behind him>  I wanted to giggle and hop up and down clapping my hands like a little girl.  Then her tossing it towards the latrine as a diversion rather than trying to shoot him - what can I say, I was very proud of myself.  The possibility of getting shot didn't scare the player, but the thought of his 500 gp masterwork pistol getting flushed- that got to him.  That whole scene was totally movie-worthy.
    * When Milos created his fast zombies!  I was reading the new Bestiary and it not only detailed some variant zombies but was specific about how to create them - in this case, remove paralysis as part of the animate dead makes "28 Days Later" style fast zombies.  Wogan was actually using Spellcraft to figure out what was being cast and the remove paralysis really confused him, he figured he had some big paralyzed monster he was letting loose or something.
    * When Sindawe broke through all the undead blockers and dealt out double crits to Milos.  We are using the Paizo "Critical Hit Cards" and they said he busted his kneecap and then spun him around, rendering him flat-footed.  It let Tommy get in a sneak attack sling stone shot that put him down (while standing upside down on the ceiling, thanks to spider climb) - a three hit boss kill!
    * When Sindawe hugged Salvadora unexpectedly after they cleared the serpent temple.  The rest of the players really did give him the hairy eyeball, and he really did say "What?!?  She saved my life like twice!"

There were fun little bits besides that, like trying to convince the apothecary they really needed something to counteract snake poison and not VD, and carrying out that big teak desk past the crowd of gendarmes.  I think the party started to really fire on all cylinders this session, and everyone got a chance to really pitch in.


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## mxyzplk

*Eleventh Session* (10 page pdf), “Mansion of Shadows, Part I” – After the PCs kill Jasker Gant, one of crime lord Boss Croat’s lieutenants, they decide to go on the lam for a while.  They get “loaned out” by Saul to Captain Clap of the pirate ship Wandering Dagger, who has a little job for them.  Also, the triumphal return of Thalios Dondrel, son of Mordekai!  [Reavers on the Seas of Fate Home]

Mansion of Shadows is a Green Ronin "Bleeding Edge" adventure from back in the day.  I liked the line, they were all pretty good.

Using this adventure illustrates two important principles useful for everyone running a pirate campaign (the best kind of campaign).

1.  It's easy to take any adventure location and make it an island.  When 3e was new, my gaming group and I (rotating DMs) ran a pirate campaign.  I bought all the initial wave of third party d20 adventures and handed them out.  Since most of them try to be "generic" by placing themselves in some semi isolated location that doesn't have too much relation to the surrounding world,  you can usually wave your magic wand and call it an island with zero additional work.   One of them I remember had a map that was a huge field of mountains, with one road leading in, and the town/adventure location right there in the middle of it!  Might as well have been an island in the first place.  This one is no exception - the town of Staufendorf is largely encircled by rivers.  A wave of my lasso tool in GIMP and oh look it's an island.

2.  It's easy to take any adventure and make it suitable for evil (or neutral-piratey) characters.  A lot of adventures - and Paizo and Green Ronin's are frequently examples - have several factions of bad guys for you to play off each other.  Paladin-heavy parties have angst about that but piratey parties sure don't.  Frankly most adventures have a fairly simplistic view of good - "go kill the bad guys and take their stuff!"  Well, that's as rousing a battle cry for bad PCs - good sticks together, but evil is happy to cannibalize itself.

*Behind the Scenes*

The party totally did not want to go help the slaves, but Ox (now in NPC form since Bruce moved) wasn't to be persuaded to leave them behind.  So it was the worst of all worlds, in that only Ox and Sindawe were there for the fight!  No worries, however - Jasker Gant rolled totally crappy and Ox got a megacrit on him and then on one of the goons in short order.  The party's general conclusion was "Oh sure, now he becomes effective!"

I knew they wouldn't be able to resist killing another crime lord's capp ("made man"/lieutenant) for long.  They barely refrained from killing Braddikar Faje earlier, and this time they didn't even worry about it.  (Tommy's player Kevin was playing Ox for the encounter).

Anyway, they went and wangled themselves a gig with a pirate ship to go raid a Chelaxian manor house.  After the pirates put them on board a pleasure yacht, I rolled two random encounters.  The first, a wyvern, was pretty tough.  The second was a dire shark!!!  I'm not a big believer in "level appropriate" when it comes to wilderness encounters.  But I had mercy - they killed the wyvern and had it on a tow rope, so when the shark showed up it just ate the wyvern.  Seeing a 60 foot shark go by caused a real brown pants moment.

Then they wandered around Staufendorf a while.  Everyone they talked to, they tried to get at "why are there crucified commoners about?" but everyone would just say in a loud voice, pretty much verbatim, "Staufendorf is a lovely place to live, full of honest and hard-working folk.  It's a great place to raise a family!"  It got the point across, heh heh heh.

So now they're infiltrating the nobles' mansion, trying to figure out how to weaken it enough that 30 pirates can take the place.  They're kinda worried about it since it's very well defended.  I'm not sure how they're going to do it, but I'm sure they'll figure it out.


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## mxyzplk

*Twelfth Session* (12 page pdf), "Mansion of Shadows, Part II" - The PCs hang out with a Chelish noble family for a while, and witness depths of degeneration that make even hardened criminals from Riddleport uncomfortable.  After a long night of sneaking around the mansion and fleeing from horrid things, they lure the eldest son out to the forest and whack him.

[Note: spoilers for Mansion of Shadows, a Green Ronin d20 adventure]

Our Pathfinder campaign, Reavers on the Seas of Fate, continues in good spirits as our fledgling pirates continue their infiltration of the Staufen family manor.  I haven't had to change the adventure a whole lot from the Green Ronin original; "demented devil worshipping noble family" drops right into Golarion's Cheliax without a second thought.  In fact, the players are already speculating on both the Asmodeus worship and "seven sins" ancient Thassilonian elements, both of which came along in the original!

The players definitely found the mansion super creepy.  The best parts were:

    * The hugely fat naked freak eating nonstop in the kitchen.  My impression of it picking up its battleaxe and giving them the hairy eyeball even as it continued to munch on a leg of mutton, and that later when it was sleeping it was sleep-gnawing on the same mutton, made quite an impression. But they were most disturbed when they found out it was female (Leanor Staufen).

    * Serpent being too nosy and ending up running around Three Stooges style fleeing from one devil after another in the mansion at night, even tossing himself down a staircase to escape more quickly.  "Woowoowoowoowoo!"   

    * Sindawe seducing Amalinda Staufen in the catacombs under the temple to Asmodeus, and after she put out the candle, he started to realize that her cadaverous body was horribly similar to a lot of the preserved corpses in the room.  He got so nervous that he lit a sunrod and passed it off as "Oh, I just wanted to be able to look at you."

Rules note, Serpent had to spend an Infamy Point to stop Jack from getting away.  The PCs didn't really coordinate ahead of time and so when Serpent decided to attack Erich it caused enough confusion that Jack rode off on his horse, which would have been pretty much a scenario-derailer - if they couldn't find a way back into the mansion then the pirate attack would pretty much be a non-starter.  But Serpent coughed up an Infamy Point so I rolled a random encounter and said "His horse got disabled by a... dire badger... so you're able to catch up to him."  So in the end it worked out fine.

Next time in Mansion of Shadows, Part III - both a mass combat and a naval battle!  I'm working on rules for both to make them fun and not onerous.


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## mxyzplk

Thirteenth Session (16 page pdf), "Mansion of Shadows, Part III" - The inevitable holocaust of violence descends on Staufen Manor.  At the Asmodean funeral for the eldest son, the PCs decide it's time to wipe out the whole family - but the priest is ready for them with summoned devils.  Simultaneously, the pirates assault the island!  The fledgling pirates carefully decide who to rape and kill and who to protect from the raping and killing.  Who gets it?  Read and find out!

This was a super-sized session, we went for about 8 hours, which was good because the players just had so much fun intriguing with the Staufens that it took us a while to get to the violence.  Every time I'd try to advance the timeline they'd run off and do something else in some dark corner of the keep.  Fair enough!

Then the fight in the chapel went pretty fast.  The priest was 7th level but Sindawe used an Infamy Point to do him in - he pulled the mirror down on him and spent a point and we decided that it happened just as he was channeling to summon more critters and he went through the gate the other way, ending up in Hell!  And there was much chortling.

They were happy to see most of the Staufens meet their brutal ends.  Then, they kept complaining that I wouldn't let them loot all the bodies with a bunch of Staufen guards standing around.  "Surely they will leave us alone to molest the body of their dead lord soon!"  Sigh.

We used my new Quickie Mass Combat Rules to handle the pirate attack. It went pretty fast and smooth.  It seems like it lends itself well to handing out index cards with units on them to the players to have them pick  up some of the slack too.  The PCs were thinking fast, I was proud.  Wogan laid a fog cloud on the parapet to disrupt the orc crossbowmen, which was good because they were going to get free attacks on the pirates till that gate got open.  Then once the battle was joined, they even remembered about the other door in the inner wall and used it to flank the guards - that's the kind of things PCs love to just forget about.  And then Wogan used one of his Infamy Points to bullseye Jack from across the battle.  "Yo ho ho, bitch!"  he shouted as Jack crumpled.  The other players really liked that.

I'm going to have to tighten up on the use of Infamy Points to autokill enemy leaders once I start getting some I want to stay around longer.  These guys are just mooks so if they die, great; if they live I'll level them and bring them back for later torment.

The looting sequence was fun; the PCs got to run rampant over all the color text they had seen before.  They were sad that a) they weren't supposed to keep whatever they looted, the pirates do fair shares and b) that the halfling alchemist wasn't retarded, and when pirates attacked right after weirdo visitors paid her about a thousand gold for every weaponizable product she had, she took the money and ran.  They were bemused but entertained by the huge pumpkin that they took as loot.  My personal theory is that pirate (and orc) looting pretty much operates according to the Redneck Principle, which is that things are taken based on how good it feels to hold them up and scream "WOOOOOOOO!!!!!" at the top of your lungs.  Some of that is gold and jewels - and in this case, some of it is 70 pound pumpkins and inn signs.

Next time, back to Riddleport.  But first... <cue Mars, the Bringer of War>


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## mxyzplk

*Fourteenth Session* (11 page pdf), “Booty in Riddleport” – Naval combat!  The PCs’ pirate ship takes on a Chelish navy vessel.  They escape, and take a nice plump merchant ship as a prize, and make their way back to Riddleport.  The next couple weeks are a blur of loot, booze, hookers, drugs, and recreational violence.

It wouldn't be a pirate outing without some naval combat.  The Chelaxian ship from Session Summary 3, the Raptor (Captain Vix Charlo, commanding), appeared as the PCs' ship, the Wandering Dagger, was leaving the sacked Staufendorf Island.  Wogan immediately had the brilliant idea of loosing their new eversmoking bottle on the stern, which combined with clever maneuvering kept them almost unharmed by the navy ship's chase gun.  It was back and forth - the Raptor nearly overtook them before they got up to speed, but then they got a lead, but then the Chelish nearly caught up, but in the end they escaped without a full battle.  And that darn Thalios Dondrel made his Will save.

I won't post my naval rules here yet because I submitted them for the Fire As She Bears competition from Lou Agresta and Sinister Adventures, but they'll be OGL so you'll get your paws on them one way or another soon enough.  Hint, I combined my already field-tested OGL cannon rules, chase rules, and mass combat rules (along with a bunch of new stuff) to put it together. 

Then they get to be predator, not prey, when they take a merchant ship.  The PCs were initally concerned about the ten gun-ports on the thing, but Captain Clap just roared, "I said, RUN OUT THE GUNS!!!!"  Turns out the gunports were fake and he knew about it.  Being a pirate isn't all about kicking ass; living long is about being wily is the lesson to take away.

Then back to Riddleport and a taste of the rock star lifestyle that pirates flush with loot enjoy there!  The PCs entertained themselves for the rest of their session, with such stirring quotes as "Hey let's go double up on a tiefling hooker," "I can milk anything with nipples," and "Now we'll rip off the local drug suppliers and go into the narcotics business!"  I don't know, I think I might should change their alignments from Lawful Good, what do you think?

By the way, here's where an iPhone with Google access is bad ass.  The PCs say, "We want to go kidnap some spiders!  What can we get that'll keep spiders off us?"  Rather than say "No!" or "Uh, anti-spider herbs?" I did a quick search on "repel spiders" and BAM!  Hedge apples! (aka horse apples, aka osage-oranges.)  I know some people have given up on the roots of D&D as a vector to research weird information, but not me baby!


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## mxyzplk

*Fifteenth Session* (10 page pdf), “Terror in Riddleport” – The PCs get led into a deathtrap, the serpent temple is back in business, Avery Slyeg gets assassinated, the PCs get framed for it, the Gold Goblin is attacked, and Sindawe beats up Bojask for kicks!  It’s an action packed session where death lurks around every corner.

My mashing up of the classic Freeport Trilogy and the first chapters of the Second Darkness Adventure Path hits full stride in this session.  I was somewhat surprised, but my old gaming group in Memphis cited the deathtrap in Terror in Freeport (the second Freeport adventure) as one of their most vivid memories.  I had been tempted to ax it, as I'm not a big trap guy, but I ran it pretty much as written instead, and had the assassination they happen upon afterwards be crimelord Avery Slyeg's.  Jesswin (the assassin who tried to kill Saul, and then got tortured by Tommy) is both the lure to the trap and the hitter, and the Splithog Pauper in there too!

Then, both in Terror and in Shadow in the Sky (the first adventure in Second Darkness), the next part is defending a friendly building against a large scale assault - in this case the Gold Goblin.  A whole load more of previously-encountered NPCs show up for the fight -  Braddikar Faje, Angvar, and Thuvalia.  Probably the most entertaining part of the assault was the hard fight against the raging orc barbarian, who got greased and reduced and otherwise tampered with for a long time before he went down.  Anyway, they give them all a good killing.

*Warning - Sensitive Topic!  Don't proceed if you're not comfortable with the topic of rape in a RPG.*



Then as "party HR manager," Sindawe throws Bojask a beating for raping Gold Goblin croupier/captive Lixy Parmenter; he had boasted about it to him last session.  The quote:

    On the way out of Saul's office Sindawe has a short conversation with Bojask where he makes a number of crude comments that indicate that while he is watching Lixy Parmenter and making sure she doesn't leave the Gold Goblin he is sexually abusing her as well. Sindawe makes no comment in reply.

After some subsequent investigation, though, the complexity of the situation came out a little more - it wasn't a total "overpower the woman with violence" kind of situation, it was more "Hey, that Sindawe guy totally has it out for you, but I can protect you."  Lixy didn't want to but as he pushed her down she was too scared to cry out, for fear that he or Sindawe or someone else would do something even worse to her.  Bojask was actually surprised that Sindawe cared about this; he's an all around bad guy and figured his fellow drug lords/killers are bad guys too, and if Sindawe had wanted her he would have taken her once he and the gang had basically kidnapped her back to the Gold Goblin to keep her from leaving.

So why include this?  Not for prurient interest.  In a game where people play "bad guys," I like to make them confront their badness and its implications.  When Lixy was going to leave the Gold Goblin, they went and killed a bunch of guys and brought her back by main force.  They're working for a crime lord, going on pirate raids, manufacturing drugs...  They've built a reputation on violence.  They've taken many a stripped captive down to the animal pits below the Gold Goblin.  Heck, Tommy viciously tortured the assassin Jesswin down there.  The PCs were surprised when they brought Lixy back to the Goblin that she was gibbering in fear and terrified they'd take her down there and do the same to her.  "We're not monsters," they said. But so where's the line?

Bojask was confused by that too.  They do all these other bad things and they're not prudes; heck, Sindawe and a pirate had group sex with prostitute (and Tommy's girlfriend) Lavender Lil last session.  So when he boasted he was "getting a piece" from Lixy, he expected camaraderie and not condemnation from Sindawe.

In fact, I thought it was interesting that Sindawe didn't react at the time.  Even he (and his player) had to think about that; he didn't get around to beating Bojask up for it till way later.

Once they become pirates, what will they do?  Rape or not rape?  What if the crew they're on does?  If they become in charge, will they disallow it and face the repercussions of a frustrated crew?  What if it's another PC?

I think it's an interesting topic that RPGs ignore as they basically promote mass murder.  If your PCs are hired killers (and drug dealers, and torturers, and robbers, and...) then where do they draw the line?  And why?

Making people think - the ability to do that is what really separates RPGs from board games, CRPGs, etc.  I don't believe in "evil campaigns" that are just an excuse for indulging in demented fantasies - they're an opportunity to engage in moral questions, often at a deeper level than in a campaign where everyone plays thoughtlessly goody two-shoes.  (Though in a game like that, I similarly try to show people's reactions to their behavior - the actions RPG characters define as "good" are still a lot like "crazed homicide" to bystanders.)


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## mxyzplk

*Sixteenth Session* (13 page pdf) - "The Sitdown" - A meeting of all Riddleport's crimelords is held and Saul and the PCs are invited.  Saul is given Avery Slyeg's empty seat at the table and they engage in negotiations with Riddleport's other "serious people" and their demented minions.  It seems like things go well, except when they get sent on a simple message-delivery mission afterward, it's a trap!  Business as usual in this sixteenth game session of Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

This was a role-play heavy session, which I enjoy.  The big crime lord sit-down was inspired by like very Mafia movie ever made.  It was an adaptation of the opening scene of Madness in Freeport, the third module in the Freeport Trilogy - but in that one, the Freeport Captain's Council holds a ball.  A ball?  Jeez, this is Riddleport.  So instead we have a standard "goons around a table" meeting.  It served a couple purposes.  One was to give the PCs a glimpse into the larger power dynamics of Riddleport and also to meet personally all the movers and shakers now that they're a respectable level (character level and level of Infamy they've gained).  Another is to help set up explanations for what's about to happen.  In the Second Darkness Adventure Path as written, there's this whole 'the drow are behind it' subplot that I'm not using a bit of, instead going for more of a motivation/plot from Freeport using the location and NPCs of Riddleport - although the perceptive will notice some Freeport originals making their way in (Milos, Anton Mescher, Karl the Kraken...) .

Running it all this way has let me use recurring characters a lot more.  If you just run Freeport as written, there's a lot of "who the heck is this new guy" syndrome.  But here, when Avery Slyeg (Riddleport's answer to Councilor Verlaine) is assassinated, it's two people the PCs are familiar with doing it.  When they go to this crime lord sitdown, some of the people are new to them, but they know a lot of them.  In fact the PCs were gratified to see that Clegg Zincher had to fill his third accompanying-minion slot with some low level goon since they took out his capp Braddikar Faje earlier.  I worked in people they knew from earlier and tried to throw in other NPCs they'll be dealing with in the future like Captain Grudge. 

One of my general rules of GMing is "use the same NPC when you can!"  It's analagous to the theory of Chekov's Gun.  That's the one place where I felt like the original Freeport trilogy kinda fell down - it kept putting in new hapless guys to rescue (Lucius, Egil, Thuron) and so I've collapsed all three of them into one character (Samaritha).  Well, I had Vincenz standing on for Lucius but he got offed.

So now the PCs realize they're Marked for Death (tm)!  They're not sure what to do.  "Bust in and kill Saul" is one of the leading options under discussion, but I'm worried that's because two of the players know "that's what's supposed to happen next" in Second Darkness.  Like I said, I'm using NPCs and encounters from SD but have pretty much already totally left its plot behind.  But I guess we'll find out - tomorrow!


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## Redwald

Any chance of an update?


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## mxyzplk

One's definitely coming - we're still playing once every two weeks, but the guy writing the summaries during the session lost the 17th one (late May) in a disk formatting accident, so we're reconstructing it and adding it to the summary for the game after (early June), but I was on a business trip all this week so haven't had time to edit, PDF, and post it.  Probably later this week (I am running session 19 tomorrow, and just got in from the airport, so I need to prioritize prep).  It'll be a double session summary when it goes up, though!


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## Redwald

mxyzplk said:


> One's definitely coming - we're still playing once every two weeks, but the guy writing the summaries during the session lost the 17th one (late May) in a disk formatting accident, so we're reconstructing it and adding it to the summary for the game after (early June), but I was on a business trip all this week so haven't had time to edit, PDF, and post it.  Probably later this week (I am running session 19 tomorrow, and just got in from the airport, so I need to prioritize prep).  It'll be a double session summary when it goes up, though!




I'm relieved to hear that the game didn't fall apart. Looking forward to the further adventures!


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## mxyzplk

*Seventeenth and Eighteenth Sessions* (14 page pdf) – “Fleeing Riddleport” and “Beyond the Towers” – In this special double summary, the PCs flee Riddleport with shadows, gendarmes, and half-orc enforcers on their heels.  Samaritha suddenly comes out with a whole bunch of information about how they need to go to an ancient ruin deep inland in Varisia called Viperwall.  They are suspicious, but go anyway.  The trip is pleasant, and an old voodoo mambo living in the swamp gives them some aid.  Then, it’s into the ancient trap-infested ruins of a lost culture!

*Seventeen*

Sadly, Session Seventeen's original writeup was lost in an untoward laptop OS reinstall incident.  We put it back together as best as we could, but of course it is a bit more brief.  The PCs fled Riddleport after discovering all the crime lords voted to have them whacked.  The group disagreed as to how guilty Saul was in all this.  Some felt that he had betrayed them and should die; others felt that he was stuck in a situation where he had no choice and did the best he could.

The trip, though reasonably uneventful, was fun.  There are two things that PCs can't get enough of - shopping and goblins.  I had the new Adventurer's Armory book and threw in some random weird stuff for them to find - naturally, they bought about everything.  I think their favorite was Sindawe's purchase of a set of cold iron brass knuckles crudely engraved with "Elf Puncher" - ELFPU on one hand and NCHER on the other.

I don't let PCs buy just anything they want; common equipment is readily available but if you're looking for people to have unusual stuff (especially magic) "on hand" then there's a lot of random chance involved.  You can commission things, if you plan to be around and not be dead or in jail in a week or so, which is a sadly uncommon state for player characters.

They then had a pretty calm trip upriver. So calm that they were getting a little stir crazy, when a batch of goblins appeared.  They were all stuffed into a washtub they were using as a boat to tow a bloated cow corpse somewhere.  There was a fire going in the tub for unspecified reasons.  This captured the PCs' imagination like no one's business, and they ended up betting on who could shoot the most goblins.  There was zero danger in this encounter; goblins are incompetent in general and they only had a couple bows between the lot of them.  Good old redneck style fun.

Everyone really enjoyed the session.  I find that to often be the case - shopping and travel and the other "mundane" parts of life bring out the role-playing and world immersion in folks, and they really get into it.  It never fails to surprise me, but in previous campaigns as well I've had PCs have a great time going through bazaars and shops finding random stuff to buy.  It's a popular recreation in real life too, I reckon.

*Eighteen*

I had a little fun with this one.  After the previous session, I remembered the other thing besides shopping and goblin abuse that groups always love - and that's hating gnomes.  Nilbog the trapper is the typical crazy gnome, and I borrowed liberally from various movies to spice it up.

Nilbog's Trapper Song was taken from the awesome Cannibal: The Musical (Trey Parker's first feature length film).  Watch it to get the full experience!  (I replaced "Eskimo" with "Wendigo" to make it more Golarion friendly but otherwise it was usable as written!)

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xKl0e8jALY"]Watch the Trapper Song[/ame]

And his crazed raccoon and trunk full of rabbits in his boat was taken from another great movie, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (Clint Eastwood, Jeff Bridges).  [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFIgKk-k9N8"]Start watching about 4 minutes in.[/ame]

And to be honest some of this adventure was inspired by the Disney movie "The Princess and the Frog."  The voodoo mambo who was living in the boat in the tree was inspired by Mama Odie, and Glapion is inspired by Doctor Faciler (at least in part).

I combined two adventures as part of the dungeon - Beyond the Towers, a Green Ronin adventure, which served as the layout for the swamp and the human temple of Viperwall, and Madness in Freeport, which gave us the serpent temple.  And replaced the lizard guys in the swamp in BtT with boggards, the classic Varisian marsh threat.

More next time!


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## mxyzplk

Whoops, double post.


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## mxyzplk

*Nineteenth Session* (10 page pdf) – “Viperwall” – The ancient human ruins of Viperwall give way to even more ancient serpentfolk ruins beneath.  And a shadow-cursed high priest of that race asks Serpent for help!   Traps, shadows, demons, and ancient artifacts abound, but there is nothing more dangerous than another PC.  Check out the hot PvP action in this installment.

This episode is a good example of how to successfully weave together published scenarios into a campaign.  I combined two adventures as part of the dungeon - Beyond the Towers, a Green Ronin adventure, which served as the layout for the swamp and the human temple of Viperwall, and Madness in Freeport, which gave us the subterranean serpent temple.  (I'm doing the same thing with Second Darkness in general... Riddleport yay, meteor and drow nonsense boo).

Where they have elements that support your themes - like the shadows in the serpent temple - you keep it.  Where they have elements that don't - like the lizardy guys BtT placed in the swamp - you change it (to boggards, the classic Varisian swamp threat, in my case).  The players were surprised to find out that the upper/human temple and the lower/serpent temple were taken from completely different adventures, and that's the way you want it.

The PCs faced some decent fights this session, but the biggest one was when Wogan got dominated by a statue magic trap thingy and unloaded on the party.  He wasn't going to kill anyone, but they had to be careful with hurting their priest, and he was blowing valuable spells and channels on them.

Next time, the dungeon crawl reaches its conclusion!  I am not really a huge dungeon fan, truth be told, but they're good as one element in a complete mix.


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## mxyzplk

*Twentieth Session* (10 page pdf) - "The Lower Temple" - As the party continues to wind deeper into the ancient serpentfolk temple beneath Viperwall, there's investigation, puzzles, and loads of undead threat.  Then the group faces the avatar of the semi-dead god Ydersius.  Death looms near for our favorite Ulfen snake lover...  All in the latest installment of [url="http://mxyzplk.wordpress.com/session-summaries/reavers-on-the-seas-of-fate/"Reavers on the Seas of Fate[/url]!

Beware, there are plenty of spoilers for Green Ronin's Madness in Freeport adventure, from which the serpent temple was taken.  And you may want to brush up on the previous couple summaries; there's a lot in here that ties in with previous events but it's not expanded on in the summary all the time.

After many levels of the "Upper Temple," what was the human area of Viperwall, the Reavers have made it down into the "Lower Temple," of ancient serpentfolk provenance.  And it's big.  Last time they hit four of its levels, and each one gets larger as they descend. This time, it's levels five and six.

I think it was a bit unexpected to the PCs that the shadows (which usually attack them) of the serpent men (which usually attack them) were only sometimes hostile; mostly they were caught in their own mildly crazed, shade-trapped existence and the group talked with some of them, ignored some of them, and fought some of them. It was a lot more interesting than a "kill a billion shadows" dungeon crawl.

Here's one weakness I have though - I'm terrible at riddles.  I knew the riddle in the scenario sucked, but I couldn't think a better one up (and had been off the plane from California for only like 8 hours when I had to run the session and hadn't had prep time to search something out).  And it was made worse by Wogan legitimately guessing "egg!" even before Sseth spouted his riddle (fricking Gollum...).  Ah well, an easy win for Wogan.

The group finally released the high priestess trapped in the mirror.  She's from thousands of years ago.  In traditional adventurer style they went through fits of just wanting to kill her and take her stuff despite her not being overly hostile (she wasn't overly friendly either - last time she knew she was high priestess of a huge civilization, and now suddenly she's among a bunch of scruffy nerf herders in skull makeup looting the place).  They settled for beating her down and taking her stuff.  Things were going OK with only threats of violence until Serpent rolled a 1 on his Diplomacy roll trying to convince her of the situation; that made her decide they were just tomb robbers.  Her high level spells are gone since her god is mostly-dead (they nearly crapped themselves when they realized she tried to cast dictum on them) but her low-level ones and her serpent style kung fu made a decent showing of it.

I am up for suggestions here actually - so far she's still with them, and I'd like to depict well someone who is from a wildly different, ancient culture.  She only speaks Aklo of course, so communication is only via Samaritha (and Serpent, in this chapter) - I'm trying to come up with less verbal stuff for her to do - I don't know, weird habits, eating rituals, smacking people for weird stuff - to help depict that she's very different.

The snake fight is short in the summary but the thing did horrific amounts of damage to people - bite, grab, and constrict and away go the hit points.  Serpent had to spend an Infamy Point to not die (he wanted to get a lot more out of it, but he waited until he had taken enough damage to go past -10, so an emergency save is all it got him). I think Sindawe might have spent one too.  Well, that's what they're for.

In the end, they broke the curse, freed the shades of the serpent priests, collapsed the temple, and got the idol!  Wictory!  So now with idol and priestess in tow, and a delay poison wand to get them safely past the poison gas the ruin weeps outside, they're heading out to return to Riddleport and prevent the arcane nastiness!  But it's not going to be that simple...


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## mxyzplk

*Twenty-first Session* (9 page pdf) - "Voodoo Man" - As the party departs the ruins of Viperwall, the voodoo bokor Glapion catches up with them.  He summons forces from the spirit world to destroy them; in an epic battle they defeat him by main force and a little voodoo of their own.  Then it's back to Magnimar where they meet up with some old friends!

The fight with Glapion took about three hours.  He kept summoning shadows and shadow creatures, and the players fought and fought.  It was an excellent endurance fight.  I did some voodoo research to prepare for the big event; he invoked various Petro loas during the battle (like Kalfou, Samedi, and various Simbi loa) to trigger appropriate powers.

Here's Glapion's character sheet.  I wanted him to be able to summon shadow spirits, as that's one of the themes of the campaign, so I made him an Oracle of Bones (from the Paizo Advanced Player's Guide preview)  with levels in the 3.5e prestige class "Master of Shrouds."

I think he came off very well.  Even though the spark of inspiration, I will admit, was from seeing Disney's "Princess and the Frog" with my daughter, this is how he appeared (the art is from a comic called Doctor Voodoo).  Reskinning foes is so easy, you can find the core of an idea and then hang whatever visuals you want on it.  I made him very exotic, from his hunga munga to his gunpowder-infused bottle of rum.

Once he reached the end of his powers and the shadow demon came into play, things got hairy.  It magic jarred Tommy and started to telekinetically toss around other PCs. That was entertaining.

Then the rest of the session was travel and roleplay.  They went back to the interracial-friendly town of Nybor and interacted with their semi-insane gnomish swamp guide, then went back to Magnimar where they met their good old buddy, Thalios Dondrel, son of Mordekai!

There was also an important development with Sindawe.  He had an Angel Heart-esque sexual encounter (walls bleeding, snakes writhing, etc.) with a kava store clerk who turned out to be Mama Watanna, the "old voodoo mambo" from the ship in the tree at the beginning of their foray into Viperwall.  This is also courtesy of my research; Mama Watanna is effectively a Golarion-ized aspect of Mami Wata, well-known African water deity.  Mami Wata is known to take lovers, and give them good luck in exchange for their fidelity; that's basically what happened to Sindawe.

Sindawe is Mwangi (Golarion's Africa) and venerates Shimye-Magalla, a janiform deity that is also partially goddess of the water, but he hasn't put 2 and 2 together on that yet.

You know, there's a lot of people out there apparently, grown adults, that don't do any kind of adult themes or "icky sex" in their games.  And that's their huge loss.  The vast majority of real world myth, fiction, etc. strongly incorporates sex/love/romance, human frailties, the horrors that men do, etc. - that's what gives them their impact.  I mean, if you just want to "play casual" and kick down doors and kill orcs, fine, but I got over that after my first ten years of playing RPGs...

Anyway, the session went really well - hardcore combat, hardcore roleplay.  Can you believe it's 21 sessions?  We're nearly at a year.  As I keep telling them, "you'll be done with the first chapter of Second Darkness any session now..."


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## mxyzplk

*Twenty-second Session*  (12 page pdf) – “A Dreadful Dawn” – After a daring and violent escape from Magnimar and the Hellknights, the party goes to find the cursed son of a dead pirate to get the secret to entering the smuggler’s caves under the Riddleport Light.  When they find him running an inn near Korvosa, however, they have to contend with a squad of cultists conducting a nighttime slaughter off the staff and patrons!  If only they weren’t all so drunk…

The first part of the session was inspired by Chris (Sindawe) telling me how much he enjoyed the pirate movie "Nate and Hayes" and described a running land/sea fight with the heroes running around under bombardment.  So I set out to reproduce that feel with the send-off the _Wandering Dagger_ got in Magnimar from the Hellknights!

I was half afraid that the PCs would go after the Paralictor himself, but they correctly divined that a Hellknight in bizarre armor with an enchanted adamantine halberd is probably more than, say, twice their level.  They avoided that pier and headed down the other one to try to catch up with the Dagger - at first, they planned to commandeer a fishing boat but after a bit they saw there was no way they'd get it out in time so they fought their way onto a Magnimarian Navy ship that was firing on the Dagger and then boarded the Dagger from there.  Very awesome!

The funniest part was when Tommy first leapt into the fishing boat and asked me, "Is there anyone in it?"  As a DM, that is a cue to toss a random encounter into the mix, and rolled a fierce guard dog.  This took Tommy aback, but Serpent jumped aboard and murdered the dog with a single shot.  After that, the cries of "AND, they even KILLED the DOG!!!" were incessant.

So then they wanted to go back to the Riddleport Light to stop the evil deeds happening there, which I'm mixing together from Madness in Freeport, the third installment in Green Ronin's Freeport trilogy, and Shadow In The Sky, the first chapter in Paizo's Second Darkness Adventure Path.  But I wanted them to have to work for it (and I needed more time to work up the grand finale) so Captain Clap sent them on the track of the man who could get them into the smuggler's caves under the Light - Jaren the Jinx.

There's all kinds of weird synergies in RPG products that make them entertaining to remix.  In Freeport, the sea caves are Black Dog's Caves, named after a dead pirate.  In the Pathfinder NPC Guide, there's a cursed pirate named Jaren the Jinx whose father is a dead pirate named Black Dog.  Cha-ching!  I decided he was trying to retire from pirating and was running an inn.  I wanted to walk a narrow line with him - a bit of a sad sack that does have bad luck and some bad judgment (hence Thalios Dondrel's explanation of "Because he's a dumb , that's why!" to all queries about Jaren) but is also a, say, sixth level pirate who's the son of a really famous pirate.  I think it came off OK.  Also, I made it where Jaren was missing his arm, not only because it adds to the pathetic aspect but also because I'm using him as a hook to run the Wicked Fantasy Factory adventure "Throwdown with the Arm-Ripper" next time!

The whole serial killer thing in the inn is from the Atlas Games module A Dreadful Dawn (on sale for $2 on paizo.com!).  They were basically there at the behest of a minion of the Shark God - something I'm using to bridge Jaren's backstory (a pirate called the Shark Lord was Black Dog's nemesis) and the upcoming Sinister Games release Razor Coast (if it ever actually releases).    It wasn't intended to be too difficult, which is good because the PCs decided to drink themselves into abject stupors beforehand.

That whole thing was really entertaining.  It wasn't a surprise - the bartender said "sip it!" and they quickly realized that drinking Grandma's Secret Recipe required continually escalating Fort saves with decent INT damage and being sickened for each one you miss - but they didn't care.  Sindawe and Thalios quit and staggered away, INT-drained and vomiting, but Serpent and Wogan were determined to get to the bottom of the jar of moonshine or die trying, and they both drank themselves to 0 INT.  This caused quite a stir at the bar, since basically four guys walked up to the bar, grabbed big jars of turpentine, and just slammed them and were vomiting and/or unconscious in less than a minute.  And then, rather than be concerned about the pretty good likelihood that they'd die of alcohol poisoning, Thalios and Sindawe haul the two upstairs, strip them, put them in bed together, and scrawl things like "I Like C**k" on their faces.  Pirates really are the medieval equivalent of frat boys.  Luckily that was early afternoon, so by 2 AM when the killing started they were up to 2 INT and could stagger around and try to fight people.

In the end, Jaren's girlfriend, staff, and some of his patrons were killed.  Ah well, all's well that ends well!  Next time, and old school dungeon crawl extraordinaire!


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## mxyzplk

*Twenty-third Session* (10 page pdf) – “The Baneful Depths” – Jaren the Jinx wants his arm back, so the party accompanies him to a dungeon his pirate father sometimes used to stash treasure.  Random encounter chart – 01-25: serpent chickens; 26-50: rape bugs; 51-75: bad dogs; 76-00 women!

We’re closing in on the finale of the first plot arc of the Reavers on the Seas of Fate campaign.  I comboed up three major things for this session.  First, the cultists, including the halfling riding the easy-chair-headed zombie, were from the adventure I used last time, Green Ronin’s “A Dreadful Dawn,” from their Bleeding Edge line of d20 adventures.  Then for the “arm recovery” plot, I was using Goodman Games’ “Throwdown with the Arm-Ripper,” from their Wicked Fantasy Factory line.  Finally, for the meat of the dungeon, I used a randomly generated dungeon, courtesy of Dizzy Dragon Games’ awesome online Adventure Generator.

I really enjoyed using the random dungeon generator.  The process of taking a completely random dungeon and turning it into something that seems ‘real’ is something I’ll post about separately because it’s a big topic, but I was very happy how it did most of the heavy lifting for me, and I just had to edit it and come up with the whys and wherefores.  It turned into a pretty organic interconnected area, and since it was super old and all the doors had fallen down and everything, there was an interesting effect; instead of the “open a door, deal with that threat, open another door, deal with that threat” syndrome, there were a lot of locations with critters that could detect or be detected by the PCs at varying ranges.  The hell hound mass rush, the rust monsters attacking when the PCs were investigating a pit, the rust monsters attacking while the group was ambushing some more hell hounds, and Sindawe running across the women adventurers while chasing a hell hound all contributed to a very free-roaming and dynamic environment.  It was unlike an organized force, though, like attacking a castle where all the guards and stuff communicate and come after you with coherence.  So, for example, the hell hounds ended up attacking some of the rust monsters as well.

The illusion of the adventuring party was entertaining.  I use picture printouts clipped to my DM screen as visual aids for many NPCs and critters.  For this one, I removed all the printouts and indicated the big raft of iconics that adorn the screen itself – Valeros, Seoni, Merisel, et cetera.  it kinda tipped Sindawe off that the whole thing was an illusion, but the players’ initial reaction of “Really?!?” was worth it.


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## mxyzplk

*Twenty-fourth Session*  (9 page pdf) – “Throwdown With the Arm-Ripper” – The party works their way through the ruined complex to an ancient druidic shrine, only to meet two of Jaren’s old friends – a witch and the Arm-Ripper!  Is Jaren’s missing arm a coincidence?  Hint: no!

We finished up with my randomly generated dungeon and kicked into Throwdown with the Arm-Ripper.  I have a soft spot for those Wicked Fantasy Factory adventures – they need work, but they shine in the setpieces.

Before that, they ran across a sleeping cave bear.  “We’ll sneak up on it and kill it,” they declared.  I took a look at the dire bear stats and shuddered.  Even with the sleeping perception penalty, there was a real good chance that with three PCs sneaking up, one of them would be heard, and if that thing woke up in close quarters with the three PCs, someone was going to get ripped to bits.  But they all snuck up successfully and all executed coup de graces.  The bear was tough, and it rolled TWO natural 20′s on its Fort saves – but luckily, it failed its third.

The interaction with Gilmy the ettin was entertaining.  They thought he was maybe some druidic guardian, and that his forehead scars were maybe lobotomy scars – they weren’t, they were a plot point, and he had been turned from a human into a mutated ettin by Mythra and the altar (also used the same way to make the Arm-Ripper).

And then it was The Big Fight.  A freaky altar!  An Arm-Ripper!  A witch (druid, really)!  A wolf!  The Arm-Ripper and Mythra weren’t all that hard per se, but the altar goes nuts when there’s violence and strong emotions going on and it kept affecting the environment, raising and/or animating dead foes, etc.

In the end, it resurrected Mythra but everyone else was dead and she didn’t have the starch to keep fighting.  She surrendered and helped them regrow Jaren’s arm and make the dragon helm (it’s probably for the best that they didn’t have to rely on their Knowledge skills).

So, mission successful!  Now it’s back to Riddleport for the grand finale of the first main plot arc.


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## mxyzplk

*Twenty-fifth Session*  (8 page pdf) – “Return to Madness” – First, a bunch of goblins attacks our brave heroes’ genital regions.  Then, they sail back to Riddleport, where the re-dedication of the Riddleport Light is set to begin.  It’s into Black Dog’s caves and thence to the lighthouse!  But as you’d suspect, it’s not going to be that easy.  Thrill to this, the twenty-fifth session of our Pathfinder pirate campaign, Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

The “Junk-Kicker” tribe is from the Goodman Games/Wicked Fantasy Factory adventure Throwdown with the Arm-Ripper.  Strangely, in that adventure, they don’t actually kick anyone in the balls.  This is a significant oversight in my opinion, so I rectified it.  And a quick Google search for “goblins with big iron boots” got an image I used for their chief, Krik Junk-Kick [pdf character sheet].

His tribe surrounded the PCs like the natives surrounded Indy in Raiders of the Lost Ark; then half of them shrieked fiercely and kicked the other half in the balls as a show of force.  This made a big impression on the PCs.  And itheir “junk-kicking” attack even has a simple in-game implementation, the new “Dirty Trick” maneuver from the new Advanced Player’s Guide!  Yay Pathfinder!

(Careful readers will note that I foreshadowed this with the story the two doppleganger “girls” told the PCs when they met them in the dungeon, that all the men of their village were too scared to fight the Junk-Kicker goblins so they had to go.)

You’d think 30 goblins would be a challenge, but I know my PCs.  Sure, they’re fourth level, but I had confidence that it would be a pretty easy fight.  The most dangerous part, really, was that one goblin tried to run off with Sindawe’s thrown magic spear during the battle.  Threaten their gear, that’ll get them motivated!  And this encounter threatened their gear in several different ways, if you get my meaning.

After that, they sailed back to Riddleport.  I did up some random encounters on the way there using some of the tables in the also-new GameMastery Guide, including the stranded “Heartbreak” Hinsin, who immediately started to compete with Jaren the Jinx for the favor of Hatshepsut.  She didn’t really groove on either one, but was more favorable towards Jaren.  Although there’s a little episode that didn’t get into the summary; Jaren and Hatshepsut went ashore in Roderick’s Cove and he put some moves on her and she didn’t like it; she went back to the ship upset and Sindawe tried to figure out what was wrong and comfort her, in his own somewhat clumsy way.

Then they get into Black Dog’s Caves!  More about that next time, but they fight a tojanida, which just about takes out Sindawe – Hatshepsut comes to his rescue and lifeguards him to shore – and then a dread allip comes for them.

It ended with them finding the fake treasure room.  The dialogue there isn’t made up; when Sindawe and Tommy scouted ahead and saw all those treasure chests, Sindawe immediately started shouting, “Don’t come in here!  We’re having gay sex!  Really gay sex!  We’ll be out in a while!”  Of course, that caused the rest of them to come running.

Next time – Reavers turns one year old!


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## mxyzplk

*Twenty-sixth Session* (8 page pdf) – “Black Dog’s Caves” – The haunting is thick in the sea caves used by infamous pirate Black Dog to hide his treasure.  Last time, the group fought Redlegs his first mate (now a dread allip); this time they face the ghost of Black Dog himself!  And huge chests of loot hang in the balance!  It’s the anniversary installment of our Pathfinder pirate campaign, Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

You know how in Ghostbusters, Egon describes the increase in ghost activity in Twinkie terms? “Well, let’s say this Twinkie represents the normal amount of psychokinetic energy in the New York area. Based on this morning’s sample, it would be a Twinkie… thirty-five feet long, weighing approximately six hundred pounds.”  Well, it’s becoming clear to our heroes (and I use the term loosely) that they are in Big Twinkie territory.

I didn’t actually expect them to fight the ghost of Black Dog, and when they did, I didn’t really expect them to win, as he was like a twelfth level guy as a ghost… But they did!  Good on them.  They got a huge amount of loot out of it.  On the other hand, I knew exactly who was going to respond to Black Dog’s geas – “WHICH ONE OF YE WANTS TO BE A PIRATE THEY WILL SING SONGS ABOUT AFTER HE’S DEAD?!?” has Tommy Blacktoes written all over it.  They’re all violent psychopaths (well, maybe not Wogan) and Sindawe has emerged as the group’s leader, but Tommy is the one who is balls out on board with being a pirate.

Here’s Black Dog’s ghost courtesy of one of my Google image searches; I think it’s from one of the Monkey Island games or something.

I may have mentioned it before, but it is fascinating to me how Black Dog has emerged in my game.  In the Madness in Freeport adventure, these sea caves are referred to as “Black Dog’s caves” but it doesn’t go into that much.  But then, in the Pathfinder NPC Guide supplement, the pirate “Jaren the Jinx” has a backstory where his father was “the infamous pirate Black Dog.”  That tells me that fate is at work.  As a result, it let me foreshadow Black Dog via Jaren for months now, which gives his appearance more impact, and now his geas makes him an ongoing part of the game.  Woot DMing!

Then, Samaritha kisses Serpent!  And ghost bat swarms nearly kill him!  And tentacle monsters attack!  You know, a day in the life.

Finally they reach the Riddleport Light and head into it, only to be accosted by a five-headed hydra sporting a Tiamat color scheme.  More on the lighthouse next time…  Enjoy the session summary!


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## mxyzplk

*Twenty-seventh Session *(11 page pdf) – “Rumble in the Wizard’s Tower” – It’s a mixed field of angels, demons, and ghosts as the PCs sweep and clear the Riddleport Light looking for an evil ritual.  I mean, an evil ritual besides the ones they are performing. That’s a big Twinkie.  Welcome to the one year anniversary of our Pathfinder pirate campaign, Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

As my adaptation of Madness in Freeport progresses, I used the Goodman Games/Wicked Fantasy Factory adventure “Rumble in the Wizard’s Tower” to flesh out the lighthouse.  In MiF it’s just a boring new lighthouse, but the Riddleport Light is old and was the hangout of a demon summoning sorcerer.  Which calls for some “zazz!”

May I note that a lot of the Goodman stuff is on super-sale at Paizo.com, the WFF adventures are currently $2 a pop – go get them!  They’re good stuff.

Anyway, there’s all kinds of weirdness going on.  Time is speeding up and slowing down.  Everyone that has ever died in the zip code seems to be coming back as a ghost.  Every weird little altar seems to have a direct line to Deity Central.  Who ya gonna call?  The Reavers!

First we had a big setpiece fight with a mess of Riddleport gendarmes guarding the inside of the tower, which was fun.  Then they find the Naughty Box.  I don’t even remember which movie I saw this scene in; I remember an iron box in a big room simply surrounded with crosses and stuff.  Here, it was surrounded with all kinds of evil stuff. They freed an angel from it but it was a little crazy.  Wogan did a good job of wrangling it; Tommy and Sindawe are evil after all so it tended to shoot at them when in doubt.  Then when the imp showed up, it made for some good roleplaying. Sindawe made the call to give the succubus to the imp after having her kill the angel.  Wogan wasn’t all that happy with it but everyone defers to Sindawe. Even if he is a little demon-possessed and crazy.

Then they talk down the ghost of Gebediah Crix and meet their two cop friends.  I wanted to throw in a familiar face to reassert that they are in Riddleport and not just some remote dungeon location.  Next time, it’s the big finale!  They’re prepared to bust through the door and take on Elias Tammerhawk.  Will it be that simple?  Hint: no!  Mmmmwah hah ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!


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## mxyzplk

*Twenty-eighth Session*  (13 page pdf) - "Madness in Riddleport" - The PCs confront Elias Tammerhawk and his evil ritual in an epic battle atop the Riddleport Light.  But that's nothing compared to the secrets they uncover after they are sucked into the spirit world!  Will Riddleport, and our Reavers, survive?  Find out in the grand finale of the first season of Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

Go read the summary first, there's surprises a-plenty, and you don't want to find them out from my behind the scenes commentary here.

No really, read the summary first.

Back?  OK!  I mashed up a bunch of stuff for this finale. The boss fight itself combines the Green Ronin classic Madness in Freeport, where it's a serpent man posing as the Sea Lord in the lighthouse conducting a Cthulhuoid ritual to drive everyone in Freeport crazy, with the first chapter of Paizo's Second Darkness Adventure Path, where it's a drow using the Cyphergate to bring down a meteor and cause an incidental tsunami.  "Which one should I use?" is a question only suckers ask. A hardcore GM says, "Both, bitch, and here's a third thing too!"

In this case, my third thing was the PCs' jaunt into the spirit world.  Whatever you want to call it - shadow Riddleport, the ghostlands, the spirit realm - it's what has been tying together the shadows and voodoo stuff going on in the campaign. And in terms of good places to go into the shadowlands, Riddleport is one of those places with a lot of restless souls per capita.  In fact, the PCs sent a lot of them there.

It was inspired by two things.  In Denizens of Freeport, there is an NPC, a crazy elven vampire named Lord Bonewrack, who reigns over a shadow Freeport.  Tammerhawk just being dead is lame, but being the vampiric overlord of an alternate Riddleport is cool.  And then also the Miyazaki movie Spirited Away inspired some of the visuals and experiences in the city.  (My daughter wanted the tasty food stand from the movie to be in the adventure; she was disappointed that Wogan resisted its lure and thus didn't get attacked by the "fire-barfing piggies."  Those who have seen the movie know about the food stand and the pigs, but she added in the "fire-barfing" part to kick it up a notch.  A girl after her father's heart.  

The shadow Riddleport scene served several important purposes.  Sure, it gave them some valuable intel on Tammerhawk.  But it was also an opportunity to reinforce important story elements, especially past successes and failures and how past choices and experience have shaped the PCs' lives. 

They talked about going into the Gold Goblin's basement but thought better of it when they remembered that was where the fighting pit was.  Which was good thinking, because just going down there and seeing the ghostly horror resulting from that would have been a 1d4 Wis loss!

Then they got to meet the "real" Elias Tammerhawk. I'm glad they didn't attack him, that could have been messy.Facing the dead assassin Jesswin (who was technically a "blast shadow," a new Pathfinder monster) was lively - Tommy had to spend an Infamy Point to not die under her flaming claws.  (A lot of Infamy Points got spent - Wogan used one to knock the serpent head out of the column of light, for example.)

And then bang, right back into the fight!  I liked the "You're in the middle of a huge combat and...  Now you're somewhere weird.  NOW YOU'RE BACK GO!" The time dilation of the spirit world meant I didn't need to worry about their buffs expiring or whatnot.

Here's a funny game table moment - when Thorgrim shattered the glass of the lighthouse letting the storm in, Wogan did proclaim the power of Gozreh was unleashed. 

Paul, thinking this was a result of some actual game mechanic effect, asked Patrick "Oh, cool, what power do you get as a cleric of Gozreh when you're in a storm?"

Patrick replied, "I get wet."

The revelation of both the fake Tammerhawk and Samaritha worked out well.  Serpent (well, his player) suspected it, but the rest of the guys didn't.  They did catch on really quick that she wasn't in cahoots with Tammerhawk though. She fled in shame, Hatshepsut couldn't bring herself to attack a serpent person, Zincher bailed out to "go get reinforcements", and Thorgrim was convinced that the man he thought he was supposed to be protecting was really an impersonating monster freak!  Sindawe and Wogan managed to rejoin it idol and the seven glyphs worth of charge in the Cyphergate shot out in a bolt of energy (in my mind, somewhat resembling the gravity-lens superweapons from the anime Super Atragon, if anyone has seen that) boiling the ocean as it streaked to the south.

It wasn't mandated that Tammerhawk get away - I actually thought they might pursue him down and do a chase across the Cyphergate, but then it turned out no one had any spider climb or feather fall or anything to do that.  I was a little surprised; Tommy is always buying spider climb potions but I reckon he was out.  And then their gendarme friend Salvadora showed up. 

Interestingly enough it was Sindawe who chased down Samaritha to talk to her - sure, he's twice as fast as Serpent, but it didn't seem to even occur to Serpent.  We'll see how it goes with him - she can run off, stay with the party, or do anything in between based on how things develop.

Tammerhawk's escape was a little bit of a letdown to the PCs, but the expected denouement didn't happen - instead, a tsunami came!  Paul (Serpent) and Patrick (Wogan) knew what it means when the tide goes out like that, but Serpent made a poor Knowledge:Nature check and figured it was normal. Poor portly Wogan just about didn't make it to the top of the lighthouse.  I actually thought they'd flee into the city instead, but they reckoned the lighthouse was far up enough on the bluff that it'd make it through.

So in the end of the first "season" of Reavers, they've succeeded but at a high cost - both personal (friends lost) and practical (Riddleport is in a very post-Katrina state at the moment).

And that's the end of my first big plot arc.  Based on what's happened and what the PCs intend to do next will determine where I go with it.  Piracy on the high seas, with Razor Coast and maybe Sunken Empires?  Off to the Mwangi coast and head into the Serpent's Skull AP?  Do more around Riddleport and use Freeport and Second Darkness adventures?  We'll see, but I know what I'm doing next time - our next game day is on Halloween, so be prepared for a Very Special Episode (tm) of Reavers on the Seas of Fate!


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## mxyzplk

Welcome to the continued adventures of our bunch of salty dogs in Riddleport, the Reavers on the Seas of Fate!  

Season One, a year-long combo of Shadow in the Sky, the Freeport trilogy, many of the Green Ronin Bleeding Edge and Goodman Games Wicked Fantasy Factory modules, and much more, finished with a bang as the PCs stopped a serpent man posing as Elias Tammerhawk, Speaker of the Order of Cyphers, from opening the Cyphergate using the Jade Serpent of Yig from the Riddleport Light. "Tammerhawk" fled, as did part ally Samaritha Beldusk, also unmasked as a serpent person. But success was not without price, as a tsunami hit Riddleport and left it in shambles.

Into this gap step our fierce and mostly-evilly-aligned party... And so opens Season Two!

*First Session* (14 page pdf) – “After the Flood” – Riddleport is rocked by a tsunami and the PCs find love and danger in the aftermath.  And then there’s unexplained murders and Salvadora of the God Squad calls in her marker for the PCs to help investigate.  It’s Katrina horror time in the kickoff of our second season of Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

Well, we finished out the first huge year-long plot arc of Reavers last time, a mashup of the Freeport Trilogy, Second Darkness: Shadow In The Sky, and a raft of good 3e/3.5e adventures.  Everyone agreed to re-up for another run, so Season Two has begun!

When we last left our PCs, a tsunami had hit Riddleport.  In Second Darkness, this is mostly brushed off as color and it’s on with the story.  I wanted to dwell on it more.  Coming from the Gulf Coast originally, natural disasters like Katrina’s flooding of New Orleans and Galveston’s regular destruction by hurricanes are real threats and I wanted to reflect that in game.

I did some description of the aftermath, but the players filled in a lot for me.  They really got into the spirit of it.  There were exchanges like “I bet it smells like that time my apartment’s parking lot flooded and water got into my car and the carpet molded.”  “Ewwww!” It worked out pretty well and added a definite feel to the session.

Then it was time to meet up with all the people they left behind.  They were clearly considering just up and killing Saul for hanging them out to dry, but no one acted on it. The rest of the Gold Goblin crew was in evidence too.  And they went to rescue Lixy from her collapsed apartment, through the sewer grate she nearly threw Wogan’s gun down back in the day.  There was a lot of stuff that recurred from previous sessions. They even got to talk with Clegg Zincher.  Believe it or not, I didn’t realize what I was doing – Clegg owns this big coliseum and it made sense to me that they would put injured and homeless there, and then someone said “Oh, it’s the Superdome!”  I actually wouldn’t have done it if I’d thought of that analogy just because it was a little too-Katrina.

And then it was time for girlfriend visits.  Tommy’s visit to Lavender Lil was as usual intrigue and sex-soaked.  And then Serpent went looking for Samaritha.  That was more unexpected.  He has always been a little ambivalent about her, and was really irate once it turned out she was a serpent person; I personally wasn’t sure if he’d just forget about her, or try to kill her, or what. I thought it was brilliant how he got drunk and decided to go tell her off.  His interaction with the gendarmes guarding the Cypher Lodge was really funny. For some reason he kept rolling natural 1's this session, but it wasn’t ever really dangerous, just funny.  After the gendarmes turned him away he wanted to sneak in, but rolled a 1, so he did the drunk-guy thing of wandering ten feet off and then trying to just walk by them again.  Then he tried to climb up to her window and fell off the building.He wasn’t playing it for laughs, and that made it even funnier but also more real.

I was pretty proud of the role-playing.  I know the player is somewhat uncomfortable with RPing relationships, and it wasn’t any more easy with the rest of the group kibitzing him (they were all really into this scene).  When he got in her window, he declared, “I unload all over her!” Everyone collapsed in gales of laughter.  “Uh… Physically, verbally, or sexually?” I inquired.  “No, I mean I really let her have it!”  More laughter.  “Again, physically, verbally, or sexually?” Then he tried talking with her.  It was tough, she was sure he would hate her and either Serpent or the player wasn’t letting much tenderness seep through, and so she was hard to convince.  He rolled a couple Diplomacy checks that didn’t go anywhere.  “You’re going to have to use the ‘L’ word!” the rest of the group advised him.  He finally showed a little bit of intimacy and that convinced her; she was really looking hard for anything to prove he did like her, and it took him a while but he came through.

And then it’s off with Salvadora to investigate some weird problem.  And with that we segue into the Richard Pett horror special, Carrion Hill.  Mmmwah hah hah haaaaaa! Pucker factor is high!


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## mxyzplk

*Second Session* (11 page pdf) - "Carrion Hill" - The PCs discover that a cult seeking forbidden knowledge from beyond got more than they bargained for and have unleashed eldritch horror upon Riddleport.  It's a race through the flooded streets of Riddleport to see who can murder everyone involved first!

In this episode, I'm using the Richard Pett adventure Carrion Hill, transplanted from its setting in Ustalav to Riddleport. With, of course, my own special touch.

Hatshepsut is getting some more character development, which is good.  It's a little tough on me when there's always like two (or more!) NPCs along with the party, but it also adds an additional dynamic I like.

The PCs are good and into the post-disaster devastation of Riddleport, it seems like I've successfully activated their imagination as to what a tsunami-ruined city is like.

Some DVD extras for you...

Paul (Serpent) was very unhappy about the high burst DC of doors and stuff. He's a big strong Viking and yet can't ever bust open doors.  Sure enough, the burst DC for a "strong wooden" item (like the concealed shutters on the tannery) is 25, which is impossible even for someone with an 18 STR to make. It's a fair point. It did allow Tommy to make about a dozen jokes at his expense over the course of the session, though.  Oddly, Paul didn't write any of those down in the session summary!

Wogan earned an Infamy Point for the extreme overkill of using Call Lightning to rid a tavern of a half dozen CR 1/2 giant cockroaches. After frying all the fleeing cockroaches, he and Sindawe wondered if the displaced locals would fall upon them as a tasty new food source. "The tsunami was only 24 hours ago, the populace is not quite to the point of gnawing on electrified giant bugs," I informed the disappointed pair.

None of the PCs have much in the way of Knowledge skills, which makes for some hilarious discussions about religion, disease, and other subjects.  They toss in what they think and make some Knowledge rolls, which usually go badly, and I give them information (or disinformation, depending on the check results) then we all toss in random other thoughts into the mix.  Here's an example of when they were all fascinated by Sindawe's bout of diarrhea...

"Maybe it's ghoul fever!"
"No, ghoul fever is a myth."
<One PC rolls a Heal check>
"I think he just can't hold his liquor."
"He's drunk way more than that before, I've seen it..."
"Well, this time he was drinking rag squeezin's at the Dead Duck."
"Fair point."
"Maybe it's cholera. Disaster area and all."
<Another PC rolls a Heal check>
"I think it's being caused by miasma.  He needs to get some clean air."
"So get out of Riddleport, you mean."
"Do you have a fever? I check him for fever."
"Is he flushed?"
"Uh, I don't know, he's black. How do I tell?"
"Can we stop talking about my poo issues now? I feel fine to go on, really..."


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## mxyzplk

*Third Session* (9 page pdf) - "The Stink" - As they seek the cultists who summoned the creature, the PCs head into the city's garbage dump, freshly stirred by the tsunami, and discover some wonderful smells, as well as a friendly neighborhood serial killer!

I went onto the Paizo boards asking for good adventures to do a "Katrina horror" kind of scenario with, and both Greg Vaughan and Richard Pett checked in with some recommendations.  As a result, I am combining the Pathfinder module Carrion Hill with the Dungeon Magazine #105 "The Stink."  That whole run of Dungeon mags was gold.

Kevin, Tommy's player, was out sick.  Which was fine, because his character was also afflicted with disease, one of the themes of the day.  To tie it all together and fit it into larger campaign events, I retrofitted The Stink substantially.  It was easy to inject by just making Riddleport's junkyard man slash serial killer, Hyrum Crooge, one of the Keepers from Carrion Hill, and then make him the principal of The Stink. The Stink suffered from not having a strong villain anyway.  I changed the bad guy mobs to ghasts that spread the six new plagues in the adventure - in the original a lot of text was spent on those diseases but chances to contract them were few and far between.  I remedied that by making the ghasts' bite transmit one at random. (Or, conversely, biting a ghoul, which unfortunately meant that Serpent's pet snake has like two different diseases now.) Two of the party members being monks means that's not as bad as it could be.

I like how when the players invest in the game world it pays off.  They found the desecrated statue of Sarenrae and Paul (Serpent) immediately put two and two together - undead, disease, females desecrated from the waist down - and determined that the dark goddess Urgathoa was involved. Then, something started toying with them, attacking from the dark and melting away when they investigated... And left them a present, a female corpse mutilated to resemble the goddess.  For anyone with a good bit of Knowledge: Local, the inevitable conclusion is that the victims of the Rotgut Ripper that have been found - usually effeminate men or elves left disembowled - are actually just this killer's rejects; the good ones he brings home and treats real nice...

I think it came across well; our gamer groupie Georgina was in attendance and she declared it "creepy."

Next time, more Stink, and then we recur back up a level to Carrion Hill for the finale!  Then, on with Second Darkness.


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## mxyzplk

*Fourth Session* (10 page pdf) - "The Rotgut Ripper" - When strange and virulent diseases affect the PCs, their hunt becomes more deadly as it becomes clear their quarry is hunting them in turn. Will they be added to the Rotgut Ripper's sick collection of trophies, or is an even worse fate incubating under the Stink?

In this episode, we finish out Dungeon #105's "The Stink," which I've slotted into the plot of Richard Pett's Pathfinder module Carrion Hill, and then livened up by adding in a crazy bad ass serial killer. Hyram Crooge is mentioned as the guy who runs the junkyard and is secretly both a bugbear and a serial killer in the Riddleport material, but that's all there is on him. I decided to make him a demented follower of Urgathoa, goddess of disease, who kills women and defaces them to resemble the goddess. He has killed a lot of people - the dead bodies ascribed to him by the locals are actually just the rejects, people he kills and then decides are not worthy (elves and effeminate male prostitutes especially sometimes get killed before he realizes they're not women - to bugbears, humans all kinda look alike). Eventually some ghouls found him and they started incubating some hellish super-diseases. This plan was somewhat cut short by the tsunami that inundated Riddleport and its dump and generally messed things up. He was participating in the main Carrion Hill plot as a random cultist seeking forbidden knowledge, those guys always smell each other out. Crooge is a creeper, and so in his garbagey lair, he stalked the PCs looking for ways to kill them once they made their presence known.

This was a design challenge for me as a DM.  I don't like to cheat/fudge especially in situations like this where it's frustrating for the players anyway, so I didn't want to just do a bunch of fiatting of how this guy could evade the PCs. Solo rogues are often meat for the beast anyway.

Here's Hyram Crooge's character sheet as the Rotgut Ripper. I did two things - one is really maximize stealth, with a +18 Stealth, Camouflage and Fast Stealth rogue abilities.  That worked out pretty well, he'd attack from a distance and as soon as he could move into concealment (which, as they were in caves made of garbage, was practically ubiquitous) he could stealth again.

The other was to try to maximize the Intimidate chain. He had +18 Intimidate, Intimidating Prowess (+STR to Intimidate), Cornugon Smash (free Intimidate on a Power Attack hit), Scent of Fear (special bugbear feat from Classic Monsters Revisited, which was worthless), and Frightening (up the number of rounds of shaken, and escalate to frightened). The plan was to scare people off to avoid being trapped into melee. This worked kinda OK, but not super - he really needed Dazzling Display so he could Intimidate more than one person at a time, but that requires Weapon Focus so however you slice it he comes out one feat short. Of course, Intimidate works a little too easily in Pathfinder so that could have made it too overpowering (and frustrating!).

And in the end, I know that in this adventure the PCs are racing the clock and have to face a bunch of foes without rest, so I didn't want him to be too high a CR. On his home ground, playing him cleverly, he got a lot more done than he would otherwise against a whole party of fifth level folks. He'd make an awesome foe stalking a smaller number of PCs, so feel free and unleash him on your own groups.

After Crooge, I put in a Daughter of Urgathoa from "Seven Days to the Grave," part of the Curse of the Crimson Throne AP. She had a big ol' bucket of hit points and towards the end, she got lucky - down to 2 hp, she lasted 2 additional rounds due to bad dice luck on the PCs' part.

Next time, we finish up Carrion Hill!  I suspect portions of the next session will be X-rated, so be warned.


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## mxyzplk

*Fifth Session* (15 page pdf) - "Sex, Death, Gods, and Demons"  - [WARNING: NSFW] The PCs race to kill the last Keeper before the horror from the Dark Tapestry destroys Riddleport. But that's not the greatest foe they face, as it turns out sex is the deadliest weapon of all.

*About Adult Content, or, Love Riddleport style*

No, seriously, this session is NC-17 rated (that's X-rated for you old folks), so don't read further if you're easily offended.  Also, there are spoilers for Richard Pett's adventure Carrion Hill. Below, I give you a look into the planning that went into all this. Some people think RPGs should be bowdlerized like comics were under the old Comics Code. Well, I disagree; even most classic literature revolves around "adult" real world concepts about sex, infidelity, temptation, et cetera. I believe RPGs are a serious art form and don't have to be just escapist power fantasy - if you disagree, you're welcome to your own game, but to me it's like Hamlet vs. Donald Duck comics - you can enjoy the latter, but if you claim they're the acme of literature like the former, then real people will look down on you like the punk you are.

To telegraph the inclusion of sexual content in this session to the group, I added some sexual tension with Iesha at the Gold Goblin (always do a little foreshadowing) and then because of the nature of the Tommy scene especially I just plain told all the players (and our groupie Georgina who was spectating) that this scene would be sexually explicit and they could take a powder if they were uncomfortable, but they were all down. I felt that they all (Tommy mainly in this scene, Sindawe later on, and the others in their turn) did a great job of roleplaying through all these heavy topics.  Good work guys!

*About The Graphic Sex Scene with Tommy, Lil, and Seyanna*

One of Tommy the halfling's long term goals is to become a respected and feared pirate/crime lord with a hot human mistress. He's recently taken a level of assassin and is notable for his enthusiastic torture of the captured assassin Jesswin, and the trapped tiefling prostitute Lavender Lil has been #1 on the future-mistress list. Well, recently I got Paizo's Lords of Chaos, Book of the Damned Volume 2 and the idea of the demonic boons and whatnot were interesting, so I thought I'd see if Tommy could be tempted.  Turns out he could! You may remember Seyanna the succubus from the Riddleport Light back in Season One - she was a slave of the old sorcerer who used to keep it, Gebediah Crix. Sindawe ended up gifting her to a helpful imp. Fortunately for her, the tsunami hit the city immediately thereafter and in the chaos she managed to get the golden key that controls her away from the imp, tore him into devil bits, and went on her way.  But a good GM never tosses away an NPC! Upon reading Lords of Chaos, I realized there was a perfect fit here. Nocticula (she's on the cover) is the demon queen of succubi, assassins, whores, and related shenanigans. An aspiring assassin not afraid of getting his hands dirty and who has a soft spot for the demon booty - well that's something that's going to show up on her radar. So Seyanna (who can read minds, so knows all about Tommy, and reckons he's a good Nocticula prospect) headed over to the House of the Silken Veil to get a job. It took some doing to fool the cunning head priestess of Calistria, Shorafa Pamodae, but that's where succubi are Vikings.  In fact, last time Tommy visited she was in the waiting room for her job interview - I gave him a Perception check to recognize the clothes she was wearing from their encounter in the lighthouse (she had changed form of course, but not clothing) but alas he failed it. So in short order she sexually enslaved Lil and laid out a high quality temptation for Tommy. In the end he accepted her dark gift. This entire scene was the most graphically sexual of the campaign, and it had to be, to reinforce the nature of these demons  - sexual, perverse, violent - and make it clear what he's getting into. Like any good ensnarement, there was an element of threat and an element of cupidity, it works on marks every day in real life and it worked on Tommy.  It's not clear what he plans to do now - go along with it?  Turn against Lil? Try to get the succubus somehow? And what are her plans? Help him? Hurt him? Corrupt his precious bodily fluids? We'll see, this has provided enough plot hooks to sustain a campaign into infinity.

*About the Asylum*

This was the climax to Carrion Hill - what is essentially a Spawn of Yog-Sothoth from Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror" is loose in Riddleport and they are trying to get rid of it, starting with killing its summoners so it can't kill them itself and take their power.  The last Keeper runs an asylum, of course. You should have seen the dismayed looks on the faces of the players, they knew it was going to be Real Messed Up (tm). Richard Pett did a good job on this adventure adding all kinds of cool setpieces and Lovecraftian horror tropes.

In the end the PCs couldn't quite kill the Keeper before he ran away and loosed the resident chaos beast - and then as they slew him, the Spawn showed up. I was liberally adding Will saves to prevent Wisdom damage as a stand-in for Sanity mechanics. The best part of this was when everyone managed to get clear (well, Wogan just about didn't, but Sindawe helped him out) and ran off as the chaos beast and the Spawn met.  Everyone, that is, except the curious Serpent, who stayed behind, peering at the meeting out of curiosity.  Would they fight?  Is one the other's baby or something? Would they mate? Well, he'll never know, because he rolled a natural 1 on his Will save and went completely insane - temporarily (mostly), but his mind blanked out and he came shrieking and gibbering out of the asylum behind the others.

I let them get away with just "blowing up the gas lines" in classic Call of Cthulhu fashion instead of fighting the spawn. They were all beat to hell and were clever slash lucky enough to get the spawn and the chaos beast to meet (that was a pretty low percentage play). And then they were like "Oh, the gas lines!  All that leaking dwarven gas line stuff during the flood was foreshadowing!" And I was like "Uhhh... Yes!  Yes it was!"  So they gleefully wandered away from a burning asylum as many insane people burned to death screaming.  Shadow Riddleport will be quite lively if anyone visits again! And the spawn might be dead.  Maybe.  Or maybe it's a big ass chaos beast.  Or maybe it's napping. No hints from me!

*About the Guns*

We changed our gun rules for this game - we had been using these rules I put together, but Paizo has their new gun rules from the upcoming Ultimate Combat out for playtest so we thought we'd use them. We like using period-appropriate guns especially in a pirate game of this sort, so slow to load black powder wheellock pistols and muskets are in the hands of some of the local guards, and our cleric of Gozreh, Wogan, has a soft spot for them. They're expensive, but he's managed to get a small collection.

We had mixed results on the rules. These new guns perform a touch attack at short range, which was a nice boost and let him actually hit things. But damage was just too small (1d12 musket/1d8 pistol). Since you have to reload for a long time, you can't get in a lot of attacks and certainly can't get the rapid shot/multishot/iterative attack kinds of things every bowman has. So someone with a bow can pop off 2 or more arrows a round for 1d8 + STR damage each even at low level, but with a pistol you can fire once every other round for 1d8, not easily enhanceable. I'm going to boost damage significantly (2d6 for pistols, 3d6 for muskets) - guns are expensive and require a special feat and are slow, so there needs to be compensation.

*About Sindawe and Hatshepsut*

I hadn't been planning on doing this in the same session as the succubus thing, but that's how it ended up happening. Anyway, you may remember that back in Season One, Sindawe ended up making love to an avatar or something of voodoo goddess Mama Watanna, after which she blessed him but warned him he had to be faithful to her and keep it secret. I basically ripped off RL African deity Mami Wata for this bit. To quote the relevant bit from Wikipedia, "Mami Wata's association with sex and lust is somewhat paradoxically linked to one with fidelity. According to a Nigerian tradition, male followers may encounter the spirit in the guise of a beautiful, sexually promiscuous woman, such as a prostitute. In Nigerian popular stories, Mami Wata may seduce a favoured male devotee and then show herself to him following coitus. She then demands his complete sexual faithfulness and secrecy about the matter. Acceptance means wealth and fortune; rejection spells the ruin of his family, finances, and job." And that's what happened. Anyway, Sindawe got a CHA boost out of the gig and has been faithful so far.

Well, he'd developed this friendship with Hatshepsut, monk and priestess of a lost civilization they thawed out back in Viperwall. At first, it was just "let's not murder her" when Serpent wanted to just murder her... But then he stepped in to help since she doesn't speak Common and sometimes axe kicks people who violate her weird ancient customs.  And Sindawe wanted to learn Aklo from her to have a secret party language.  As they are both monks they ended up fighting together a lot, and saving each others' lives from time to time - Sindawe has even spent his precious Infamy Points to help her out.

I wondered how he'd respond to a spark; I just needed the right time.  Hatshepsut got hit by the chaos beast's attack during the run on the asylum and nearly got mutated. She puts up a stern front but the whole "guess what it's hundreds of years later and your gods and people are all dead and you're a hobo now" thing is tough on her, and the chaos thing really shook her. Buty she has her pride. So in Red Sonja fashion, she challenged Sindawe to spar, and when he won, she offered herself to him. And he decided, "OK, let's do this."  I knew some random hottie wouldn't be tempting to him, but a reliable comrade, that's a different thing.

So what will happen with an irate water goddess?  I guess we'll see! One PC uses sex to get into bed with a higher power, and one uses it to get out. Interesting times.

Was it sex-drenched?  Yes.  And that's how you do it!  As a result we have personal investment and drama!  Roleplaying isn't dead yet. Stay tuned for next time, when we kick the second major campaign plot arc into high gear.


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## mxyzplk

*Sixth Session* (10 page pdf) - "Race for the Devil" - Elias Tammerhawk's ship has been sighted at the Devil's Elbow, and a pirate crew has retrieved some interesting artifacts from the site. Everyone wants to get there, but Riddleport's mighty short on boats. The PCs decide to gamble on a one way ticket - but a one way ticket to where?

This time, we get started on the second chapter in the Second Darkness adventure path, Children of the Void, or at least my heavily modded version of it. Beware spoilers.

Like many sessions kicking off a new plot arc, this one was mostly wandering around in town - information gathering, buying and selling, talking to NPCs. Serpent went and talked to Fenella Bromathan, new Speaker of the Order of Cyphers. He noticed her a while back, and her super pale skin and dark hair is the same kind of odd coloration that he has - and he doesn't know his mother, who he suspects was a witch or fey from Irrisen. He can't find a good way of coming out and asking her about it, though.

Then the race was on to Devil's Elbow. The PCs were bound and determined to get out there ASAP, and after the dwarves left heading that direction and Morgan Baumann (who Freeport fans will recognize) turned them down, they decided "what the hell" - they used Wogan's swan boat feather token to head out there even though they would have no way back, reasoning that they'd be able to beg, borrow, or steal a ship once they reached the island.

And that plan would have worked, except that Mama Watanna was angry. The water goddess had made love to Sindawe and blessed him, contingent on him being faithful to her - but then last time, he and Hatshepsut made love. She often sends an orca to watch over Sindawe on his travels - and lo and behold, once they're two-thirds of the way to the island, I roll a random encounter of 5 orcas. That's fate right there, so I knew those orca were Mama Watanna payback. They attacked the ship and managed to breach its hull - the party probably could have killed them all, but Sindawe allowed himself to be carried off by one of the killer whales. Hatshepsut refused to let him go gently into that good night, and clung to the back of the beast as they dove into the ocean depths.  I figured that was good enough to summon the goddess herself. He had to spend an Infamy Point to convince Mama Watanna that he wasn't really cheating on her because Hatshepsut is, like, basically one of her priestesses. In earlier sessions, before I knew whether Sindawe and Hatshepsut would fall for each other, I had considered whether Mama would possess her to be with Sindawe because she is about the closest thing Avistan has to a proper mambo, so this wasn't totally off base.

In the end, most of the party was left clinging to a rock in the middle of the sea, thinking that the two monks might be lost, while Sindawe was really having more goddess/Hatshepsut sex deep underwater.


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## mxyzplk

*Seventh Session* (14 page pdf) – “Children of the Void” – Rescued from an island in the Varisian Gulf by a friendly ship, the PCs make it to the Devil’s Elbow and find the place under siege. They try to rescue the Cyphermage contingent on the island and end up needing rescuing themselves. All this and more, in the latest installment of Reavers on the Seas of Fate.

This session was fun; it started with all the PCs clinging to rocks to avoid the embrace of a heaving sea, and it ends with the PCs clinging to a different set of rocks to avoid the embrace of a heaving sea.

The first part of the session was slow but fun.  The Reavers were marooned on an island after their swan boat got ripped apart by angry orca. Sindawe "made it up" to Mama Watanna, but that didn't get them any closer to shore.  They made the most of their time being stranded, however - lots of inter-character role-playing. Tommy's player Kevin was gone this session (with some complicated excuse involving the former guitar player for Dokken) and I subbed in for him, mainly in the vein of making off-color suggestions whenever the topic of Serpent's mother came up. Serpent (Paul) was trying to send animal messengers to people he thought might help them, but Sindawe (Chris) hijacked some of them to send anonymous threatening letters to Bojask at the Gold Goblin, which set the tone for subsequent hilarity.

There was also more serious scenes, the most serious of which was Sindawe talking with Hatshepsut. It turns out she had full memory of what happened beneath the waves, when Mama Watanna possessed her body ("rode her," in voodoo terms) and made love to Sindawe. I had a hard time with some of this - I had meant to ask a woman beforehand (one who would humor such a demented question) as to what a coherent reaction might be in this situation - this guy I just made love to for the first time apparently had some previous thing with a goddess who then possessed me and had sex with him with my body but as her... It's more complicated than that even but this is a blog post. Anyway, Sindawe RPed it well and did awesome on a couple Sense Motive and Diplomacy checks, so things didn't go real bad (with Hatshepsut, getting on her bad side often results in a trip to the ER). Talk about complexity. I had to resort to more explanation out of character than I like, but I had trouble forming that all in character. In the end, Hatshepsut was a little impressed by Sindawe's courage (or foolhardiness) in defying a goddess to be with her. Though she's not 100% sold on it.

Beforehand,  I had put together a solid timeline of what all was transpiring back in Riddleport and on Devil's Elbow, so given their timeline of sending calls for help it took five days to get rescue (even though they were only a half day from Riddleport).  In this case, it was Captain Creesy, whose crew was in ill humor after having a fire set aboardship by saboteurs in port.

I use some random weather tables for the sea voyages, and my rolls indicated first a windstorm, which required all the PCs to really exert their sea legs (and Wogan to use a wind fan) and then the next roll upped the level to hurricane strength! Apparently the first winter storm from the northeast was a bitch and a half. Luckily they all have very high Profession: Sailor skills and came through without significant damage (and even stayed on course).

Then it was time for the island itself, with weird zombies that have a big ass tongue-tentacle. The PCs were very lucky in that Sindawe critted with his very first shot and realized that they had to attack the tongues - you could attack the zombie all you wanted and it would keep coming. So they got through that easy enough and went to help the Cyphermages in the Witchlight.

Then Serpent got an unfortunate surprise. Fenella Bromathan, who he's been suspecting is his mother or sister or something, had been wounded by the monsters on the island and was on her way to turning into a zombie herself. This led to a great session of roleplaying. She is all educated and Cyphermagey, but now with death looming she fell back on the ways of her people, the Ulfen.

    “I need your help. I know none of the mages will have the courage to do what needs to be done. They are too civilized; they won’t be able to accept our ways. I am a wizard, but first, I am Ulfen.”
    Serpent nods. “I can arrange for a pyre, I think.”
    She says, “It will be good to die under the open sky.”

Over the strenuous objections of the remaining Cyphermages, they took Fenella up to the roof, built a pyre, and saw her off Ulfen style. Beforehand, she passed on a locket to Serpent that might have a clue to his origins!

They interacted with the surviving Cyphermages. I got their names and descriptions from daemonslye's SD Pathfinder Beta conversion PDFs - Fustinius the Balding, Eli the 12-year-old prodigy, Jean-Jacques, and Georges St. Maarten. They explained that the monsters were resistant to magic and killed half their number before they locked themselves in the Witchlight.

Then the monsters attacked. They look a lot like Sammael from the Hellboy movie. I have changed them a lot from their Second Darkness writeup to fit my campaign arc; their high DR was part of that and made them a mighty tough fight. In the midst of it, the tower the PCs are in topples and rolls down a cliff! In the Children of the Void adventure there's a great mini-game where the PCs are in the tumbling tower, monsters are still attacking, and it gets really crazy. Everyone but two of the Cyphermages survived, though - Georges was killed by Saluthra when he panicked and tried to unbar the door, and Jean-Jacques died in the tower tumble. In the end, they were all clutching the rocky beach at the base of the cliff; luckily salt water affects the monsters like acid and they are momentarily safe from attack.

I really enjoyed this session, it ranged from hardcore roleplay to fun roleplay to action setpiece. Woot!


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## mxyzplk

*Eighth Session* (8 page pdf) - "The Devil's Elbow" - The PCs make some unlikely allies as they brave a remote island seemingly inhabited by beings from beyond time and space. All this and more, in the latest installment of Reavers on the Seas of Fate.

The PCs shack up with Clegg Zincher in an unlikely alliance.  Tommy really, really wants to kill Zincher, to the point where his player's emailing me lengthy assassination plots to ask what I think about them. But apparently he and his men are the only other people on this Godforsaken island.I had fun with the players' interaction with  him.  He doesn't hate them like they hate him, he's on top and they work for some guy he has had to put in his place a couple times.  Just business from his point of view.  And whenever the players got too sassy I had him just let out a big wiseguy "Ayyyyyyyyyyyyy!"

Plus, Tommy was suffering from void death from the bite of the tentacle-dogs. He was remarkably submissive about being strapped to a cot in the infirmary tent with two other infected as a precautionary measure.  Sindawe kindly decided to go in there and sit up with him.

My chase rules come in handy in all kinds of circumstances - the PCs got attacked by tentacle dogs in the woods and hightailed it to the beach. They did well and got to the sand just as the dogs attacked.  I then made Arbitrary Surf Checks - the waves came in and out, moving the water line up and back 1d6 squares each round. That made it lively.

The rest was just island exploration. Slow paced, but I like mixing up big action pieces with lulls that build tension. Next time, a big finish!


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## mxyzplk

*Ninth Session* (10 page pdf) – “Architects of Ruin” – An assault on some hidden caves goes drastically wrong and half the party is captured by various miscreants. Pirates! Ghosts! Guns! Orca! Explosions! Gates to other worlds! Thrill to the hard-hitting action in the latest installment of Reavers on the Seas of Fate.

Well, this session didn't quite go how I thought it would. The PCs found the hidden caves of dungeoney fun, but as most of them looked at going in through a secret door, Sindawe dives in through a sea cave and finds a whole crew of pirates at work. And then he decides to take them all on  himself! I was a bit surprised at that. He made a good run at it really, even when surrounding him and getting sneak attacks it took natural 20's for the mook pirates hto hit his super boosted monk AC. And even the pirate captain, Screev Ten-tooth, was having a bit of a hard time shooting him with his nifty double barreled pistol. But then the captain pulled out his alchemical flare shots, which blinded Sindawe, and that left him open to some intense whupass.  I tried to encourage him to dive back in and swim for it (being in the water gets you some intense cover bonuses, he benefited from them coming in) but he just fought it out till he went down, I'm not sure why. He killed half the pirate gang, which came in handy later though, that's for sure.

You can download Screev Ten-tooth from the Reavers NPC page. He's an expert2/gunslinger4/rogue2.

While this was going on, the PCs tried to come in the other way - it's possible they could have rolled the whole dungeon up in the middle - but the siren ghost fended them off, taking prisoners (Hatshepsut and Akron Erix), routing Clegg Zincher's goons, and charming Serpent and Tommy.  So off they go, to find the giant dread wraith lover boy of the siren ghost - they were lovers back in the day, but a hateful priest and some villagers killed the siren and then the dude hung himself. I figured they were going to have to kill him, but they actually managed to talk the wraith down and get him to follow them to the siren's lair. I made that really hard to do, and halfway he started going after Wogan because he confused him with the priest that killed the siren, but each time they talked him down - high skills and assists getting those 30+ DCs required. Thus they overcame the whole siren ghost/dread wraith thing pretty handily! She gave them a parting blessing, even.

Then they found the Dark Gate, the one opened by the blast from the Cyphergate, bringing the real world and the shadow world (aka spirit world, demon dimension, monster realm) together with their world. They realized the bits of Tammerhawk's glyph that exploded when they disrupted the ritual in the Riddleport Light (aka Shadow in the Sky/Madness in Freeport) embedded in them are attuned to the gate somehow.

They did a hurry-up attack on the pirates - they had to break through a barricade in the face of a swivel gun, luckily Wogan knows just when to pop an obscuring mist to provide cover. They hacked through the pirate crew. The captain used a flare shot to shoot a gunpowder bomb with a short length of quickfuse on it. That took us into slo-mo really quickly - Serpent went for the keg, and other people dove for cover. I said the fuse would take d6 segments (ticks in the initiative count) to burn down, so there was a lot of risk involved. Serpent managed to grab it and chunk it out into the sea cave before it went off with a massive shuddering crash. Then the pirate captain held his gun in Sindawe and ordered them to surrender their arms.

I am not a kind and forgiving GM. When someone has a person in that position, they get a free coup de grace whenever anyone tries anything - I am NOT a believer in "the bad guy has a knife to her throat!" "We take our full round of attacks, he's dead, yay!" That's BS.  But luckily, Wogan had a spare Infamy Point to spend. He whipped his pistol out and shot that gun right out of the captain's hand! He out-gunned a gunslinger. Good one. Then the orca watching over Sindawe came out of the water and chomped him.

(This generated some argument from Chris, Sindawe's player... He swam into the sea cave during the day, when the water is illuminated from the sunlight outside and was seen easily; the orca came in at night when it couldn't be seen... This chafed him for some reason.)

The session ended up with all of them in the water again - this time to escape the tender ministrations of the tentacle-dogs that came out of the Dark Gate after them. And then a shadow demon came boiling out!

Earlier in the session, Paul (Serpent), who had run Second Darkness for another group, had said "thanks for taking out that shadow demon, that thing was a bitch!" I was like "Uh, sure, no problem (snicker)."

Maybe we should just start every session with the PCs all in water. Make a theme out of it. Maybe in the HBO series that will inevitably be made. "Reavers, this fall from HBO!"

My favorite exchange from this session:

The pirate captain calls, “Arr! Surrender and ye can be part of my crew!”
    “What are the terms of this deal?” Sindawe calls while continuing to swim for the tunnel.
    “Arr. You can be me cabin boy and I promise to not be too rough on ya.”​


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## mxyzplk

*Tenth Session* (7 page pdf) - "Sign of the Void" - A shadow demon tries to claim the PCs' allegiance and takes rejection poorly. But their rune-markings unlock odd new weapons that prove most efficacious against the phantoms he unleashes from beyond the dark gate. Will they work as well against Clegg Zincher and cannon shot? They find out!

This session was basically two big battles; the first was a continuation of the major sea-cave setpiece from last session. Chmetugo the shadow demon showed up and laid a rap on them about how they are marked with the sign of the void and are fated to serve him and to transform the world into some weird monster realm. Naturally they turned him down. So he raised all the pirates as undead and sicced them on the party as basically unlimited numbers of tentacle-dogs came through the dark gate into our world.

I came up with a cool environmental thing; the shadow demon used his cold powers to make the surface of the water start freezing, moving outward another 10' radius every round. This allowed the tentacle-dogs to attack (albeit precariously), provided danger for the PCs in the water, and generally made things interesting. They enjoyed breaking the ice, sliding around on the ice, and generally indulging in shenanigans. They finally decided that the only way to take care of the whole thing is to blow it up, which is fair enough.

Also, they investigated their weird runes they got from the activation of the Cyphergate. Glyphs from Tammerhawk's glyph-plaque that exploded are embedded in their bodies and tattoolike runes appear over their location. They know that the glyphs burn when the tentacle-dogs are close, but now once they touched the gate they seem to be more active somehow. They resonate with the matching larger glyphs that once sealed this gate. During the fight they got a hold of the glyphs and they turn into weapons made of orichalcum that allow the PCs to hurt the shadow creatures. And when they saw Zincher with a similar weapon, they realized that he too was there in the Riddleport Light that day. They didn't have a lot of spare time, but they started counting glyph plaques and trying to put two and two together. And the metaplot rolls on.

And more Clegg Zincher. That's always fun. They kinda want to kill him and kinda not.  But he's threatening Tommy's girlfriend! But he's a made man! But we don't like him, he worked against us and Saul! But he does a lot of damage with that pickaxe! But he told the demon he refused to be its butt-boy! But... I see Zincher as an interesting Mafia type guy. He tells demons and Commies and other undesirables to go hose, and is out there personally helping people in the neighborhood when disasters come. But he's a ruthless businessman who is not hesitant about having people killed.  But he operates under a certain code of honor. And he loves birds.

So pretty much, two three hour long fights! I don't usually do that, I go in for more RP and stuff, but I wanted to really amp up this start of a new leg of the campaign. The first season was mostly urban and not so much pirate; this leg will be real pirate in spades!


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## Guilberwood

Hello,

I'm stopping by just to mention how useful this thread/story hour is, especially for other GMs. 
I’m not a fan of modules myself, but recently it has come to my attention that some modules can be used for inspiration or adapted to fit into your campaign. For me, it’s very hard to find a module that can be played exactly as written, but it’s also very hard to find a module in which nothing can be used (a npc, an encounter, an adventure seed, etc.).  
This behind the scenes thread shows how to incorporate published adventures and still have an unique campaign, tailored specifically for your players and their characters.
Nice job!


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## mxyzplk

Oh, thanks man!  I stopped posting here because I never got any replies, but we are two and a half years in on this campaign and still going.  Everyone can keep reading along at Reavers Session Summaries | Geek Related.

And I'm glad you noticed what I consider to be one of my specialties - I don't have time to create stuff whole cloth, but it's super easy to repurpose bits from other things.  I don't like running modules straight much for the reasons you note - they seem artificial - but with judicious reuse, replacement of NPCs and motives, and reskinning, it's custom for your campaign but with less than half the work!

Heck, sometimes I don't even understand the depths of how interlinked a miscellaneous adventure is with the overall campaign plot till the PCs get in there and figure it out... 

Both in the summaries and my associated blog posts I try to give insight not only into "how it turned out" (summaries like that tend to bore me) but also how it played out and how I set it up in the first place.


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