Pathfinder – How about you find your way out of this game (7/23)
About two weeks ago we had a Pathfinder game! And people supposedly thought it was pretty fun? It’s entirely possible, nay probable, that they are a group of lying scum but since there’s no way for me to prove it yet I’ll just have to take their word at face value. I know a few people felt burned that they were asked to leave the group, but the truth is I felt this game went about ten thousand times more smoothly than the last one I ran, where we had seven players. I believe we started very close to on time, which is 2 PM, and we actually finished up what I had prepared (which was two parts of the six-part module) by around 6 or 7 iirc. Everyone wanted to keep going, and with Jack and Justin driving up from Chesapeake to play I suspected they might. So we broke for a few hours to eat and I read through the next section and then played that until 2 or 3 AM!
Starting off, the party had just finished off their initial purpose – defeating the rat-bastard Gaedren Lann at the behest of Zelarra, a local fortune teller whose son had died. At the conclusion of that task they learned that Zelarra was actually dead and manifesting herself through her deck of Harrow cards. Armed with a powerful new ghost ally the group exited the fishery Lann had been hiding in to discover a city gone mad. Riots, fires, screaming and violence were rampant, with Hellknights invited inside the city to restore order and mounted griffin riders of the Korvosan Sable Company dropping from the sky like drunken flies shot by arrows or fireballs or whatever. The ailing King has finally died, and the foreign (and ill-thought of) Queen has ascended to the throne. A lot of people weren’t happy about this, apparently.
After a little stop at Johnny Ikea’s House of Furniture ‘N Thangs to sell off the goodies found in Lann’s horde, a nearby blacksmith and neighboring scroll and potion shops owned by elderly twin brothers, the group discovered that one of the items taken by Lann was a brooch belonging to the Queen, who is now sitting pretty on the throne (she’s pretty and she’s also sitting pretty so you see I sdkfj;lkjeriou). After Mr. Ikea informed them about the reward the players went forth, but the riot made journeying through the beleaguered city difficult at best. After being accosted by a group of miniature devils (and saved by a nearby pack of pseudodragons), being manhandled by a grimy crazy man and diffusing an escalating confrontation between a noble and a gang of disillusioned laborers, the PCs made it to the castle and sought an audience with the Queen.
Queen Ileosa expressed her gratitude and rewarded the party with a hefty coffer of gold, then asked if they would be willing to help out the Korvosan Guard in the city’s time of need. They accepted, and after talking to the officer in charge at the Citadel, were put up in a local inn and told to come back tomorrow. That evening, the players encountered a drunken guard, whom they dragged back to the Citadel after listening to him count his woes over several pints. After returning, they met the sell-sword Krox, a lovable guy who offered his services as a mighty warrior should the party require it (at a very reasonable rate). The PCs, who were without a strong front-line fighter, gladly accepted, and so they decided to meet over breakfast the following morning.
The next day the same Citadel officer told the party about a silver-tongued deserter, who had taken advantage of the chaos to lure a few fellow guards into his plans. Holed up in a previously deserted butcher shop, the group was giving out meat to the poor for free. What a great bunch of fellows! But as the group discovered not all was as it seemed, and in a series of intense encounters the group snuck through the back of the shop during normal business hours and were greeted with a great deal of hostility and boars. In the course of hacking their way through jerks and traitors and thoroughly demoralizing animals, the group found the leader, one dude whose name I don’t remember. It was a tough fight, but after a hard battle he surrendered and permitted himself to be carted back to the Citadel for interrogation. The party was given a pat on the head and told to wait for further instructions. Then they went back to the meat shop and discovered the dismembered remains of humanoids in the sewers underneath. What is going on?!? I DON’T KNOW AND NEITHER DO THEY! I guess we’ll have to wait and see!
Highlights of the Adventure:
Darzzo telling animals exactly what he thought of them
Alora using her claws and eliciting an audible groan from the entire table
Kali forgetting a favorable rule for firearms and still managing to blow a head or two clean off
Sumak helping Darzzo up over a five-foot fence and face-first into a pile of manure
Xia stabbing a lotta dudes, like three dudes
Krox being the best character ever created
I hope everyone had a decent time and is prepared for the next Pathfinder game, which will take place on September 17th. Excelsior!