[Pathfinder] Reavers on the Seas of Fate

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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!

 

[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!

 

[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.”​

 

[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!

 

[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!

 

[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.