Pathfinder 18-21 – Fuck, it’s been a while

Yeah… so it seems that “a day or two” translates to a month, when I’m working 10 hour days.

So, we’ve had 4 sessions in that time.  I’ll go through them as if they were one, and I’ll be fairly quick about it.

One thing I noticed, though, is that I blog much faster when the module really pisses me off, which it hasn’t been doing as much recently.  Huh.  I wonder what that says about me.

When we last left our intrepid heroes, they had finished off an annoying part of Book 4, and were continuing on after a room of zombies.

From there, they entered a hallway with a big inscribed (locked) door at one end.  They ignored it, assuming it to be Mokmurian (Stone Giant leader), and went the other way first.

(I should note, if you haven’t figured it out yet, that my players tend to play D&D like Diablo or NWN.  Perhaps a comparison to WoW raids could be made, but I’m not the one to do it.  Explore and loot everything before hitting the boss to end the dungeon.  This will possibly change once we’re playing 4e and they realise how treasure works in that edition, though that’s doubtful.  ^_^   (Note for my players who read this, most enemies don’t have magical treasure in 4e.  You won’t walk out of a dungeon with 50 +1 rapiers to sell.  You’ll walk out with a smaller number of more useful items instead.))

This direction let to an odd-looking cavern.  It looked vaguely natural, but all edges were smoothed and rounded.  Here, I threw them up against a Spawn of Juiblex (see picture), the “architect” of the cave.  Neat battle, surprised the group with the Spawn’s ability to “flow”, or move without AoOs.  Brought Nonnie into negative hit points, too, so that was fun.

Rant time.

Okay, this room was originally supposed to be home to a few Hourds of Tindalos.  These are Cthulhuian monsters that can teleport all over the place, at will, as long as they start and end by an angle.  Mokmurian had smoothed this room down to keep them from teleporting.

Now, ignoring the fact that even a rounded edge has angles, and this may or may not have made the engineers in the group have fits, this is a stupid encounter.  I can imagine the discussion.

Guy 1: “Hey, let’s put these stupidly weak (CR 6) Lovecraft monsters here, because they’re cool and unique.  They have a great backstory and this uber-neat ability.”

Guy 2: “Okay.  Sounds awesome.  But make sure that they don’t tie into the story at all, and that the players have no way to get any of the cool background information.  Oh, and let’s arrange the room just right so that the creatures have no chance to use their super-cool-and-unique ability.”

And thus, the Hounds of Tindalos became, in this adventure, ugly dog things with nothing special about them.

Sigh.

Anyways, one near-death experience later, and they continued through the room.

By the way, there are only 3 people here this week.  Thorbar, Nonnie and Nox.  So, a striker, a blaster sorcerer, and a meat-shield who’s very good against giants.  No healer present, but they were healed up by the cleric and bard between battles.

Upon opening the door, they find themselves in an arcane laboratory of sorts.  Papers are strewn about, and two giants are working, while another sits on a throne on a raised section.  The giant on the throne calls to the others, as wind begins to swirl around him.  The two down below turn to look, one erupts into flame, and the other hardens like rock.

Second rant.

A level 14 wizard is a CR 14 creature.

A stone giant is a CR 8 creature.

A stone giant with 14 levels of Wizard is a CR 15 creature.

…yeah, no.

Look, I know the whole “class levels that don’t play to a monster’s strengths add 1/2 CR” rule.

But when you have 14 levels of wizard, Wizard is now your strength!  “Stone Giant” is now the nonassociated part!  Reverse the fucking math.

14 + (8/2) = 18.  So make him a level 11 Wizard, and 11 + (8/2) = 15.  Or something.

But I didn’t want to redo the boss, and I hate playing high-level casters as enemies anyways, so I dropped him, and replaced him with the three Elemental Magi from the Monster Manual 5.

Like you’d catch Monkurian alone anyways…

So, good battle.  Nox got beaten up pretty good.  Thorbar got to use his new Giant Bane-Blind armour, which made him happy.

Upon killing Mokmurian, he froze in the air, as if gripped by giant hands, turned clumsily to face the party, and spoke in a voice that wasn’t his own.  The group knew the voice, though.  Runelord Karzoug, who they had heard speaking way back in the goblin fort (book 1) in an endless loop.

So, villainous taunting, etc etc.

They find a key and a map, with a mark over Sandpoint (as well as a few out to sea) and a reference to a place called Runeforge.  Apparently, the coastline used to be a mountain range inland, but something happened to sink half the continent… or something.  The key opens the door from before, leading to a huge library with a robot librarian.

Yeah.  Awesome.

The library is used for tons of plot exposition, as the group researches all it can think of about the Runelords and the ancient empire they ruled over.  Whee!

Runeforge, they discover, was a magical demiplane, neutral to all the runelords, where magical research was conducted.  If found, it could awaken Karzoug, and bad stuff would happen.

Conna the Stone Giant Elder hasn’t wasted any time, during this, and is reclaiming power as they research.  The giant tribes around the fort have already started to dissipate.

So everyone goes to the cave up in the mountains to fight a dragon.  Woot!  Dragon fight!  Red dragon breath weapon hurts like a bitch.  Dragon dies, horde is looted.

From the map, and the stuff they dug up about Runeforge, they decide to return to Sandpoint.  They teleport to the Rusty Dragon Inn, directly beside their regular table.

…and are greeted enthusiastically!  More so than usual, even.  Something about a sinkhole…

…which apparently appeared in the center of town a couple nights earlier, has weird howling sounds coming from it, and swallowed up a team of guards that went to investigate.

Yeah.  This stuff just keeps happening, doesn’t it.

And down into the sinkhole they go.  In there, they are greeted by a disembodied voice, who calls himself…

The Scribbler

Laughter ensues.

Sounds like a B-list Batman villain.

Anyways, The Scribbler is actually a divine servant of Lamashtu, charged with guarding the shrine they’re entering, and has been there since the fall of Thassilon.  He questions them, to learn of what has occurred over the past 1000 years, and they question him back.  The party asks about Runeforge, and he tells them that the way to Runeforge is among the scribblings on the walls in the temple.  (The temple walls are covered with writing.)  The party enters further.

Blah blah, fight a demon, fight some dog things.

Eventually, they ended up encountering The Scribbler himself.  This was a neat fight.  The Scribbler made timely use of the Heal spell, which pissed everyone off. 🙂

They find all the appropriate writings on the wall, arrange them appropriately, and (with some good knowledge checks) take off towards their destination, Lake Stormunder, and Rimeskull.

Once there, they need to solve a small puzzle.  There were 7 runelords, each with dominion over a specific school of magic.  Here, there are 7 stone heads in a circle.  You need to cast the appropriate magic in front of each one in order to get it to cough up a key.

The Warlock’s at-will Detect Magic makes quick work of this.

Another dragon fight!  A huge white dragon swoops down, breathing frost on everyone.  Next turn, it dives in, and grabs the Sorcerer in its jaws, snatching him up and dropping him into negative hit points.

“Fuck!” says everyone, and the most damaging attacks available are unleashed asap.  Reza rushes over and drops the dragon with a Harm.  Hell yeah!

Keys in hand, the groups ascends the stairs up the cliff.  Everyone is wearing a Sihedron medallion (7-pointed star), which is good, because if they weren’t, they would have been attacked by a bunch of huge earth elementals with the Awesome Blow (teeheehee) feat, and knocked 200 feet off the cliff.

Fun.

Horde is looted again.  Keys are placed in the appropriate spots in the dragon’s lair.  A portal forms.

And we end for the day week month.

Playing tomorrow.  Shouldn’t be this long again.

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