We moved onto the fourth adventure in the
Council of Thieves AP this weekend,
The Infernal Syndrome. It was a good session, and this particular module looks a lot better than the last.
With Dave's monk having sacrificed himself to save the party last session, Dave created a scythe-wielding fighter for himself, who specialised in tripping his opponents. Meanwhile, Greg rebuilt his character away from the Ranger/Wizard to become a Fighter/Ranger. So, Fighter, Fighter/Ranger, Cleric, Rogue and Sorcerer were the classes in play as All Hell Broke Loose.
It was a couple of weeks after the group returned from Delvehaven, and they were just getting ready to hunt shadow beasts, when the Mayor's mansion blew up... and even after the explosion, there were five pillars of fire reaching into the sky. What would any self-respecting group of heroes do but investigate?
The Battered Mayor
As the group made their way towards the devastation, they were hailed by the Mayor of Westcrown, looking much the worse for wear. He revealed that the containment unit on the nuclear reactor beneath his mansion had gone into meltdown, and the group needed to turn it off before it destroyed the city.
Oh, wait - this is a fantasy RPG! It was actually a chained pit devil, who the House of Thrune had used to power the mansion and provide energy for magical experiments (not that the Mayor had used it in the latter manner, as he was not the arcanist that his forebears were). Something had gone wrong in the Nessian Spiral that contained it, and it would destroy the city if not stopped. The Mayor gave them a copy of the pit fiend's contract (amended so that they could use it as "co-owners" of the pit-fiend), explained that despite being decadent and corrupt, he loved his city, and disappeared off into the darkness.
Really, this was a big info-dump, with very little real conversation (some players love interacting with NPCs, this group, not so much), but very important to letting the group know what's going on. As such, big thumbs up: I hate leaving the players in the dark.
The Guards and the Devil
The Dottari - the city watch - had already put up barricades around the mansion when the party arrived. The group swiftly realised that all wasn't well: although the normal guards were fine, their leaders were tired and, well, dominated. (Sense Motive DC 15 to detect - rather easy, that one!)
Not that the group did anything about it, instead following the guard lieutenant's advice and going to the gatehouse to the manor...
Not surprisingly, it was a trap!
Just a word here: I really, really, really hate Paizo's attitude towards maps when there are combats on them. Paizo have, over many years, shown they want maps to be the size to be at the scale they are in real life. That's fine, but it makes combats unduly constricted, especially if there are 6 PCs. (Very boring as well). Now, consider the map:
Consider that in this encounter there is a Bone Devil (in D3 or D6, large: 2x2) and two Advanced Lemures (in D2a and D2b, large: 2x2) and then consider how they fit on the map. It'd be a lot better if large was 1x1, but in the encounter-as-written, you've got squeezing devils and not many able to attack at one time.
So I had the Bone Devil attack them as they tried to enter the gatehouse and then chase them out into the street (where there was enough room for Michael's rogue to flank). The Lemures just stayed back in the gatehouse side rooms (2a and 2b). At this point, I discovered that Lee hadn't prepared
Align Weapon, and so the combat was a *lot* more difficult than I expected. However, Dave's new character was able to trip the devil a lot, and Dave and Michael (with some help from Tim's sorcerer) were able to finish it off.
Following my suggestion, the group then returned home to allow Lee to craft a wand of Align Weapon, then they headed back to the mansion.
The Guards and the Vampire
During the break, I made sure the group were aware of what wands and spells they had, which meant that the group used the wand of
Break Enchantment they'd acquired to free the guard lieutenant from the domination he was under. He revealed that he'd been dominated by a vampire who was lairing in the nearby ruined guardhouse.
The group went to deal with the vampire, and instead discovered the house guards that he'd dominated and left to deal with intruders. The battle went pretty badly against the guards, until one of the guards threw a vial of alchemist's fire and ignited the entire building, which had been soaked in oil. The group tried to save one of the house guards, but were unable to (their
break enchantment wand failed), and so slew the guards as they escaped the burning building.
No sign of the vampire... but he'll probably return at some point.
The Council of Thieves
The group had learnt from the Mayor that elements of the outlawed thieves' guild had taken up residence in the surviving wing of the manor, and they now resolved to investigate it (bypassing the Pit and the Pillars of Fire).
Some of the group made their Perception checks and saw a patrol of thieves lurking in the shadows. Michael's rogue then (without telling the rest of the party) went and hid as well - hiding himself from the thieves quite successfully. Then, when the thieves attacked the group, Michael attacked them as well with surprise!
This was a fun little combat, mainly for the fact that Tim's sorcerer never got an action - being both surprised and last in the initiative order. By the time we reached him, the remaining thief had surrendered! Under interrogation, the group learnt that a couple of Council leaders were in the manor, whilst others had gone below to the Nessian Spiral.
"The Dealer"
Entering the (alerted) manor, the group used the secret knock to enter the room used by "The Dealer", a halfling sorcerer. He was backed up by four regular thieves, in a 15' square room. Oh, boy. No room to move!
And yes, as noted before, I hate combats like this.
In any case, the Dealer was taken down by the group (though not before he hit Dave's fighter with three negative levels by virtue of
enervation). In fact, he surrendered - along with the other thieves - once he got hurt too much. Then he revealed a lot of information about the Council of Thieves in the second infodump of the session. Again, really valuable material that brings the entire AP into focus for the players.
The group learnt - in particular - that Chammady, a woman they'd met in the last two adventures, was behind what had just happened to the Mayor's manor, as she tried to free the Pit Fiend for her own purposes. And they also learnt how to get past the magical lock on the door to the Nessian Spiral.
They were left with the traitorous major domo of the Mayor to deal with, but we'd now used up the 4 hours available for the session, so we left it there. Next session they confront the major domo, and then make their way down into the Nessian Spiral to try and prevent the city from being destroyed.
All in all, I rather enjoyed this session: the group is working better and the adventure is progressing nicely in terms of story. I hope it keeps up for the next session.
Cheers!
