I've posted a couple of times on here to ask for advice and resources to run this campaign, and really enjoyed reading what others have done with their campaigns, so I'd like to share the report on how my group's Pathfinder game is going. We started this campaign near the end of June and have played about 7 or 8 sessions so far. This is my first time running Pathfinder (I'm a veteran GM of 7th Sea, but not so much the square-based roleplaying systems) I was inspired to write this because of a crowning moment of awesome that happened during The Dying Skyseer. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
First things first, the cast of heroes for this adventure:
Less, half-elf Monk, Martial Scientist and friend to orphans everywhere,
Silas, human Investigator, Yerasol veteran and flagrant racist towards tieflings,
Arla, human weather Druid and Skyseer. Queen of crowd control,
And finally, Asimov, an eladrin Rogue Technologist. The somewhat misanthropic face of this ragtag bunch of constables.
Without going too in depth, the first adventure went reasonably smoothly. The party managed to avert the blowing up of the Coaltongue by channelling the heat into the Brand with one round left to go, saved the goblin rogue from the infiltration team and subsequently talked down Asrabey. They killed the earth elemental when claiming the icons, but used the air elemental to good effect when taking the lighthouse. Symbolically, Silas signed control of the island away to Lya Jierre.
In the second adventure, our heroes thoroughly investigated the Danoran embassy and discovered a whole bunch of leads. They tracked von Recklinghausen to his rooms, finding that they'd been beaten to the punch by someone connected with the strange burnt oil. They chased down one of his contacts, but Barnaby Camp was unable to help them much, other than to tell them what he was doing in Risur. Less befriended the cab driver by paying for von Recklinghausen's dumped fare and a bit more besides in exchange for keeping an eye out for Deorn Feldman.
Investigations in the Thinking Man's Tavern that evening led the group to Tad Hilly (a name that caused no end of sniggering) and despite Asimov's foot-in-mouth moment by arguing with Barb about Nilasa's moral merits, Less and Silas argued with enough passion with Hennet for him to agree to give them information about Nilasa's connections to the Cloudwood and the Crisilliyri. The party split for the evening and the next morning filed a request for the report on Nilasa's arrest. While waiting for it, they found and interviewed Heward Sechim (quickly nicknamed Hewlett Packard) who told them about the troubles in the district, his concerns about Nilasa's company, and mentioning the threats he had received about his business. He asked the party to help his uncle, who had warned Heward of Nilasa's demise and who was influential with the fey terrorist Gale, who the party believed was linked due to Nilasa's flight magic. After returning to HQ and receiving Nilasa's report, they took a boat to the Estuarial reformatory and eventually managed to bargain information about the smuggling deal and the House Elf out of Ford Sorghum in exchange for releasing him and his partner on parole. Following their invite to the Theatre of Scoundrels on the way back to HQ, the party fell hook, line and sinker for Kell's tricks and were forced to agree to his terms, albeit with no intention of delivering any wands.
Their next stop the following day was the Cloudwood. Kell's goons were quickly dispatched, and although I held back all the bandits, who focussed their attention on rescuing the woman from the coach, Renard Woodsman and his druid soundly thrashed the party with the assistance of two summoned swarms. Eventually the party managed to plead for mercy to see Nevard, although not before Renard made his feelings clear during the negotiations by throwing one of the dying Kell brigands off the switchback.
The meeting with Nevard went far better, and the party agreed to make arrangements to accompany him up Cauldron Hill. A somewhat arduous journey to the Nettles met with success as after a short wait and brief chat with some staff the party was ushered in to meet Mayor Reed Macbannin who listened to their case and, eager to be associated with helping a famous skyseer, agreed to let them up Cauldron Hill. He offered some practical advice regarding protection from the spirits of the hill and the party organised a power nap before meeting Nevard to face the horrors of the mountain.
Once up the mountain, the session here was a bit of a slog. The party remained within the blood circle, and when the cackling crawler did its dance of death, the entire party except for Arla was dazed for 8 rounds and the only saving grace was that Arla's entangle had locked down the entire right side of the map, preventing them from being overrun by the mites. Unfortunately, even with ghost touch Arla missed the vestige of death 8 times in a row, bringing the party to the verge of death via spread charisma damage from the bonds of forced faith. Eventually she was forced to use obscuring mist, but this interrupted Nevard's observations of the skies and he joined the fight - with next to no impact as he repeatedly failed to hit the vestige with cure moderate wounds.
Upon returning down the mountain, Less fangirled out upon meeting Lieutenant Dale, but otherwise the party felt frustrated at a lack of progress as Nevard left to meditate upon what he had seen. The players wanted to just rest at Macbannin's manor again, and spent a long time trying to find the most optimal travel path to report while unsure of how to follow any more leads, since they couldn't yet meet Gale, didn't know how to find anything about the Crisillyri links and didn't put in any groundwork to track down apothecaries. I eventually prodded them into crashing at Heward Sechim's so that they could pass on the message about his factory being in danger. At this point, they called in some favours to essentially bring their in tray to them, including their cab driver reporting that Feldman was due in at Pine Island on the 4th but he couldn't say where. Upon being asked about the House Elf, he was only too happy to tell them about the amazing wizard who did a show over the lake. The party followed up this lead, busting the wizard with some characteristic straight talking from Silas (more than usual, considering the party was still suffering from severe charisma drain) and chasing the suspect through both of Two Fronts. After a tough stalemate, the party managed to negotiated with Danisca for the information in exchange for their lives. Gale's messenger arrived at his point to invite them to speak with her.
This session, the party started out preparing for the bust on the smuggling operation. They discussed with Delft who suggested calling in one of the RHC's boats for reinforcement, and the party leveraged Silas' reputation to get two constables of the RHC to pilot it while they went undercover with a chest of cutlery and bottletops covered with gold and some forged documents as payment for the wand trade. (I realise in retrospect that the money is supposed to be with Feldman. However, I couldn't figure out why Nilasa and the House Elf were connected, so I let the players pursue their plan.) Asimov smooth talked his way past the Bravuras and convinced Feldman that they were the backup plan put in place by the House Elf, since he was being watched by the RHC. They sailed out to the Ayres, with me feeling very nervous about how this fight was going to go down...
The party accompanied Feldman and their fake cash to the forecastle of the ship where they were greeted by Captain Amba Bandia. After exchanging some pleasantries, Captain Bandia asked to see the money, to which Asimov riposted "show me the goods". As the captain turned away, the group put their cunning plan into action with a surprise round:
First, Asimov shouted "well done captain Deorn for setting up this double cross!" in an attempt to confuse the sailors into engaging each other. Unfortunately, he got a 7 on his bluff. Less dropped the chest, Silas wrenched the wheel to cause Li Grifoni Grinyande into the smaller ship, knocking several sailors off the smaller boat or prone and finally, Arla cast obscuring mist, rendering the entire party untargetable by the vast number of now hostile sailors. With a case study in battlefield control, with Arla holding one set of steps and Asimov duelling Captain Bandia on the others, the party fought for several rounds, taking the occasional crossbow and wand shot in exchange for opportunity attacks. Many attacks were prevented by the mist on both sides - including Asimov who missed a confirmed crit to the vagaries of a 20% miss chance - but one of the greatest moments had to be when Arla exchanged castings of Grease wands with some sailors who then repeatedly failed to climb the steps to the sound of Yakety Sax. (Roll20's jukebox is a brilliant tool.) Finally, after defeating the two captains and with Asimov and Less forcing one of the Bravuras, who could see what was happening, to 1 hp, the bravura withdrew yelling to the crew that both captains were down.
Stepping forward through the mist, adopting a booming tone, Asimov declared "your captains have fallen, your lieutenants are running - surrender, and we will spare you..."
...and rolled a natural 20 on his intimidate check.
The sailor in front of him immediately threw down his weapon and cried out his surrender, followed moments later by the sound of a dozen other clunks from beyond the mist. Arla dismissed the mist, and after some out of character explaining about the limits of the surrender and the difficulty of arresting two dozen people with 4 constables, the party let the sailors go on the Silvio, arrested the two captains and took Li Grifoni Grinyande as evidence, complete with wands. They also agreed to transport two bravuras from the Family Wharf back to shore in exchange for their cooperation. (This will earn them brownie points with the Family, not that they know it yet). At the end of that fight, the only damage the party had taken was from Arla being hit with a wand of Magic Missile.
Since Saxby had been in the habit of chewing them out in her daily debriefs for doing things like meeting Kell, bothering Macbannin without her permission, not submitting a report on the night of the Cauldron Hill ascent etc the party decided to file a report straight to her when they got back to base at 3am and then crash at the office.
Less gets woken up at 7am and forced to report to Saxby who asks harsh questions about how this is related to the murder of Nilasa and sarcastically whether they think that the Crisillyris are likely to have the missing Danoran papers, but eases off a little when she hears they took advice from Delft and despite her harsh demeanour, it's clear she is impressed that the party managed to hijack a smuggler's vessel. She begrudgingly tells Less "good job", as she is dismissed, which makes Less' day.
Worried by the arson vision, the constables visit Heward Sechim's factory and when the man they had watching the factory told them Sechim had no guards at night after they had warned him, they headed in to have an argument with him about not taking their warnings seriously. Sechim assured them he did have guards, but in non-obvious places, since he wanted to catch the arsonists in the act.
Finally the constables met with a lieutenant of Kell's who took them to the doctor's hideout in the Nettles. Kell's underlings left while the party interrogated the doctor, who told them about witchoil and his side of the story. He negotiated with ther part that he would hand over the documents in exchange for a visa to Ber and protective custody, and we broke for the session there, on the cusp of an ambush, and freshly dinged to level 3.
First things first, the cast of heroes for this adventure:
Less, half-elf Monk, Martial Scientist and friend to orphans everywhere,
Silas, human Investigator, Yerasol veteran and flagrant racist towards tieflings,
Arla, human weather Druid and Skyseer. Queen of crowd control,
And finally, Asimov, an eladrin Rogue Technologist. The somewhat misanthropic face of this ragtag bunch of constables.
Without going too in depth, the first adventure went reasonably smoothly. The party managed to avert the blowing up of the Coaltongue by channelling the heat into the Brand with one round left to go, saved the goblin rogue from the infiltration team and subsequently talked down Asrabey. They killed the earth elemental when claiming the icons, but used the air elemental to good effect when taking the lighthouse. Symbolically, Silas signed control of the island away to Lya Jierre.
In the second adventure, our heroes thoroughly investigated the Danoran embassy and discovered a whole bunch of leads. They tracked von Recklinghausen to his rooms, finding that they'd been beaten to the punch by someone connected with the strange burnt oil. They chased down one of his contacts, but Barnaby Camp was unable to help them much, other than to tell them what he was doing in Risur. Less befriended the cab driver by paying for von Recklinghausen's dumped fare and a bit more besides in exchange for keeping an eye out for Deorn Feldman.
Investigations in the Thinking Man's Tavern that evening led the group to Tad Hilly (a name that caused no end of sniggering) and despite Asimov's foot-in-mouth moment by arguing with Barb about Nilasa's moral merits, Less and Silas argued with enough passion with Hennet for him to agree to give them information about Nilasa's connections to the Cloudwood and the Crisilliyri. The party split for the evening and the next morning filed a request for the report on Nilasa's arrest. While waiting for it, they found and interviewed Heward Sechim (quickly nicknamed Hewlett Packard) who told them about the troubles in the district, his concerns about Nilasa's company, and mentioning the threats he had received about his business. He asked the party to help his uncle, who had warned Heward of Nilasa's demise and who was influential with the fey terrorist Gale, who the party believed was linked due to Nilasa's flight magic. After returning to HQ and receiving Nilasa's report, they took a boat to the Estuarial reformatory and eventually managed to bargain information about the smuggling deal and the House Elf out of Ford Sorghum in exchange for releasing him and his partner on parole. Following their invite to the Theatre of Scoundrels on the way back to HQ, the party fell hook, line and sinker for Kell's tricks and were forced to agree to his terms, albeit with no intention of delivering any wands.
Their next stop the following day was the Cloudwood. Kell's goons were quickly dispatched, and although I held back all the bandits, who focussed their attention on rescuing the woman from the coach, Renard Woodsman and his druid soundly thrashed the party with the assistance of two summoned swarms. Eventually the party managed to plead for mercy to see Nevard, although not before Renard made his feelings clear during the negotiations by throwing one of the dying Kell brigands off the switchback.
The meeting with Nevard went far better, and the party agreed to make arrangements to accompany him up Cauldron Hill. A somewhat arduous journey to the Nettles met with success as after a short wait and brief chat with some staff the party was ushered in to meet Mayor Reed Macbannin who listened to their case and, eager to be associated with helping a famous skyseer, agreed to let them up Cauldron Hill. He offered some practical advice regarding protection from the spirits of the hill and the party organised a power nap before meeting Nevard to face the horrors of the mountain.
Once up the mountain, the session here was a bit of a slog. The party remained within the blood circle, and when the cackling crawler did its dance of death, the entire party except for Arla was dazed for 8 rounds and the only saving grace was that Arla's entangle had locked down the entire right side of the map, preventing them from being overrun by the mites. Unfortunately, even with ghost touch Arla missed the vestige of death 8 times in a row, bringing the party to the verge of death via spread charisma damage from the bonds of forced faith. Eventually she was forced to use obscuring mist, but this interrupted Nevard's observations of the skies and he joined the fight - with next to no impact as he repeatedly failed to hit the vestige with cure moderate wounds.
Upon returning down the mountain, Less fangirled out upon meeting Lieutenant Dale, but otherwise the party felt frustrated at a lack of progress as Nevard left to meditate upon what he had seen. The players wanted to just rest at Macbannin's manor again, and spent a long time trying to find the most optimal travel path to report while unsure of how to follow any more leads, since they couldn't yet meet Gale, didn't know how to find anything about the Crisillyri links and didn't put in any groundwork to track down apothecaries. I eventually prodded them into crashing at Heward Sechim's so that they could pass on the message about his factory being in danger. At this point, they called in some favours to essentially bring their in tray to them, including their cab driver reporting that Feldman was due in at Pine Island on the 4th but he couldn't say where. Upon being asked about the House Elf, he was only too happy to tell them about the amazing wizard who did a show over the lake. The party followed up this lead, busting the wizard with some characteristic straight talking from Silas (more than usual, considering the party was still suffering from severe charisma drain) and chasing the suspect through both of Two Fronts. After a tough stalemate, the party managed to negotiated with Danisca for the information in exchange for their lives. Gale's messenger arrived at his point to invite them to speak with her.
This session, the party started out preparing for the bust on the smuggling operation. They discussed with Delft who suggested calling in one of the RHC's boats for reinforcement, and the party leveraged Silas' reputation to get two constables of the RHC to pilot it while they went undercover with a chest of cutlery and bottletops covered with gold and some forged documents as payment for the wand trade. (I realise in retrospect that the money is supposed to be with Feldman. However, I couldn't figure out why Nilasa and the House Elf were connected, so I let the players pursue their plan.) Asimov smooth talked his way past the Bravuras and convinced Feldman that they were the backup plan put in place by the House Elf, since he was being watched by the RHC. They sailed out to the Ayres, with me feeling very nervous about how this fight was going to go down...
The party accompanied Feldman and their fake cash to the forecastle of the ship where they were greeted by Captain Amba Bandia. After exchanging some pleasantries, Captain Bandia asked to see the money, to which Asimov riposted "show me the goods". As the captain turned away, the group put their cunning plan into action with a surprise round:
First, Asimov shouted "well done captain Deorn for setting up this double cross!" in an attempt to confuse the sailors into engaging each other. Unfortunately, he got a 7 on his bluff. Less dropped the chest, Silas wrenched the wheel to cause Li Grifoni Grinyande into the smaller ship, knocking several sailors off the smaller boat or prone and finally, Arla cast obscuring mist, rendering the entire party untargetable by the vast number of now hostile sailors. With a case study in battlefield control, with Arla holding one set of steps and Asimov duelling Captain Bandia on the others, the party fought for several rounds, taking the occasional crossbow and wand shot in exchange for opportunity attacks. Many attacks were prevented by the mist on both sides - including Asimov who missed a confirmed crit to the vagaries of a 20% miss chance - but one of the greatest moments had to be when Arla exchanged castings of Grease wands with some sailors who then repeatedly failed to climb the steps to the sound of Yakety Sax. (Roll20's jukebox is a brilliant tool.) Finally, after defeating the two captains and with Asimov and Less forcing one of the Bravuras, who could see what was happening, to 1 hp, the bravura withdrew yelling to the crew that both captains were down.
Stepping forward through the mist, adopting a booming tone, Asimov declared "your captains have fallen, your lieutenants are running - surrender, and we will spare you..."
...and rolled a natural 20 on his intimidate check.
The sailor in front of him immediately threw down his weapon and cried out his surrender, followed moments later by the sound of a dozen other clunks from beyond the mist. Arla dismissed the mist, and after some out of character explaining about the limits of the surrender and the difficulty of arresting two dozen people with 4 constables, the party let the sailors go on the Silvio, arrested the two captains and took Li Grifoni Grinyande as evidence, complete with wands. They also agreed to transport two bravuras from the Family Wharf back to shore in exchange for their cooperation. (This will earn them brownie points with the Family, not that they know it yet). At the end of that fight, the only damage the party had taken was from Arla being hit with a wand of Magic Missile.
Since Saxby had been in the habit of chewing them out in her daily debriefs for doing things like meeting Kell, bothering Macbannin without her permission, not submitting a report on the night of the Cauldron Hill ascent etc the party decided to file a report straight to her when they got back to base at 3am and then crash at the office.
Less gets woken up at 7am and forced to report to Saxby who asks harsh questions about how this is related to the murder of Nilasa and sarcastically whether they think that the Crisillyris are likely to have the missing Danoran papers, but eases off a little when she hears they took advice from Delft and despite her harsh demeanour, it's clear she is impressed that the party managed to hijack a smuggler's vessel. She begrudgingly tells Less "good job", as she is dismissed, which makes Less' day.
Worried by the arson vision, the constables visit Heward Sechim's factory and when the man they had watching the factory told them Sechim had no guards at night after they had warned him, they headed in to have an argument with him about not taking their warnings seriously. Sechim assured them he did have guards, but in non-obvious places, since he wanted to catch the arsonists in the act.
Finally the constables met with a lieutenant of Kell's who took them to the doctor's hideout in the Nettles. Kell's underlings left while the party interrogated the doctor, who told them about witchoil and his side of the story. He negotiated with ther part that he would hand over the documents in exchange for a visa to Ber and protective custody, and we broke for the session there, on the cusp of an ambush, and freshly dinged to level 3.
