Our 8 session jungle trek campaign complete, my home group is now (temporarily?) under new management as Robert takes the DM chair. He's running us through a short adventure for level 20 Pathfinder characters. So far, very awesome.
TL;DR
Band of level 20 characters consisting of paladin, rogue, wizard is hired to transport delicate anti-dragon artifact to frontier town on dragon continent. Discover plot to destroy artifact by alliance of kobolds, undead and dragons, and (separate?) plot to turn settlers into kobolds, possibly run by an old traitor to the crown who they're sure they already offed once but will not mind doing in again.MISCREANTS
Our characters are part of a larger adventuring guild called the Slick Swords. Our own characters:- Bas plays Mo and the Show. Mo is a paladin of the god of metal dragons, The Show is his familiar - a winged eye with a little superman-cape that eye-beams healing powers at people. Poster boy for the lantern jawed hero, Mo sports angel wings and delivers ludicrous amounts of slayage using holy blade. Charisma naturally through the roof, explained as a magical armor that is always spotless.
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- Irene plays Baerdt the Bard, a halfling rogue growing a bit old and stiff (Dexterity now only in the high 30s) and still carrying around the golden ring of invisibility he swiped from his uncle Frodo way back when. Or looted from some n00b lich who didn't think through the whole "I'll anchor myself to this awesome tower", Baerdt is fuzzy on where the thing came from. Sick slashing potential, but so far has been taking it easy, lounging on his flying carpet.
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| Previous victim. Did anyone else think that Sauron was going to get pierced by that lower tower? |
- Gieljan plays Marvin Boggs, crusty paranoid old wizard with a deep held conviction that the Snakemen are behind everything. Probably a side effect of concurrently running every perception spell known to man 24h/day. Is looking forward to retiring on private tiki-themed demiplane. Is also quietly exploring options to extend life via thus far neglected school of necromancy. Has swapped out traditional wizard robe for colourful and much shorter hawaii shirt. Still adjusting to having to wear pants.
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KNOWN ASSOCIATES
Our guys came of age in the larger adventuring company called the Slick Swords. Here are some of the NPCs waiting in the wings:- Jordan Lightbringer - cleric of freedom and pleasure. Recently designated as living saint and using this new status to set up a string of high quality, violence free and disease free houses of pleasure across the nation. Brother in law to Feldar Bork. Has handed out long distance contact and bail-out amulets to the party for emergencies, activation phrase SEXY MOTHERFUCKER. Has recently (since Feldar married his sister) set a limit of one resurrection per company member per year.
- Feldar Bork - rapier wielding rake who decided to become the world's most awesome dude with a blade, succeeded in his 30s and then cruised through life from there on out. Married Jordan's younger sister, which apparently caused the 1/year resurrection limit for all company members. Rumors as to Feldar's latest demise in a freak negative energy volcano accident are completely unsubstantiated.
- Lokke - druid who loved nature so much, he's now exploring the roots of it on a 5 month extraplanar cruise to the planes of fire, air, earth and water, and the plane of copious amounts of booze at the on-vessel bar.
- Break this glass in case of emergency: we decide there's also a barbarian group member out there, in the form of a (middle) finger bone encased in a glass vial filled with a resurrection potion.
THE MISSION
The Empire of Gurrenhall is a meritocratic affair full of adventurers (such as our gang). Gurrenhall has been colonizing the Dragon continent. No, it's not a name some PR guy thought up, and so the frontier city of Shieldhaven is having an artifact installed to protect it from large flying scaly beasts. The Dragonshield is an incredibly delicate and finicky bit of work that has been constructed in Gurrenhall after months of fetch quests by our team. Our mission: to transport the artifact across sea and land to its installation site carefully and without any flying or teleporting shenanigans.We stare at the DM in disbelief. Travel the actual godsforsaken miles for weeks instead of *BAMF* teleporting over there, installing the thingie and *BAMF*ing back in time for lunch? Yes, apparently Shieldhaven is where our retirement home sits, so we've got an interest in keeping it lizard free. Fine, we'll play.
Out of curiosity, we ask what would happen if the artifact were to destabilize, i.e. were we just handed a fantasy nuke? Nope, coughing in the artifact's general direction or using any magic on it it will just ruin all our characters' previous (off-screen) work. Delicate touch it is.
All aboard
We embark on one of three convoys of ships that will criss-cross the ocean. The Dragonshield wil sit on the completely non-magical Steamhammer, a metal Dwarf invention that belches black smoke and doesn't use sails. We ourselves have cabins on two escorting galleons full of soldiers. Mo takes place on deck in shining armor, Baerdt is immediately out of sight (with a stealth rating so high that the invisibility ring is frankly just decoration), and Marvin wanders into a closet to get a cocktail in his private tiki-demiplane.
Interested parties
As the days pass, Marvin summons four gigantic water elementals as escort for the ship. He also keeps track of any and all scrying attempts on the convoy, and discovers that dozens of people are keeping tabs on the mission. Two are particularly interesting because they are on the Dragon Continent instead of on Gurrenhall: a black dragon with a domain hundreds of miles from Shieldhaven, and a high priest of a death/disease/undead cult, the kind our group has tangled with so much that they all look the same by now.
DRAGON!
We settle into a routine (pose on deck; find new hiding spots in plain sight; and investigate possible snake men in the crew) for a couple of weeks, and one day we get shaken up by the lookout. What's that, up there in the sky? A sizeable red dragon you say? Mo sprouts wings and is UP THERE to kick tail and dispense justice. He also spots a rotten-looking galleon on an intercept course, crewed with sizeable kobolds
(kobolds? we have 20 character levels each, several hot angels on speed dial and we're doing kobolds?)
...who quaff water breathing potions, water walking potions and flying potions to do a sweet three pronged attack on our little convoy. Two of Marvins water elementals turn into a maelstrom to harrass the galleon, as Baerdt slices his way through the airborne kobolds on his flying carpet. Meanwhile the dragon strafes one galleon with fire (a water elemental immediately starts to put it out) and then loses its head a bit: Mo shows us exactly what happens to naughty lizards as he kills the beast mid-air in six seconds flat.
Marvin flies up, shooting a lightning bolt at some kobolds that have boarded the Steamhammer (a dwarf with an electrified beard like a dandelion pops a hatch and curses). All seems well in hand.
That's when the enemy galleon morphs into a hammerhead shark
(what? awesome!)
and attacks underwater. It bites into the water elementals, but Mo also has a ring of waterbreathing, takes a clean dive into the ocean and wrecks the animated ship. Where its figure head should have been is an undead strapped into a control rig. The whole setup is sent to the depths with a few cuts of the holy avenger.
The fight is over, cheers and hoorahs are heard. The rest of the voyage is uneventful. More cocktails from the tiki-plane?
WALK WALK WALK THROUGH THE SODDING WOODS
We disembark at the end of the ocean trip, have a nice diner at the local castle and ask around for info about kobolds, dragons and undead. It turns out there have been raids by kobolds before, adventuring bands have been sent but have not reported back, and so on. Marvin tries to scry for disappeared people, gets oddly vague reception, switches to heavy duty magical locators with same result. Targets not dead, not resisting scrying, but also not quite the people the spells are looking for. We'll discover what's happened a bit later.
After a few days to recover from the ocean trip, we set out with the Dragonshield artifact on a cart and some soldiers to help us guard it. Their leader is an unpleasant knight named Melaton the Purple. Efficient sort, but he does set off Mo's sense for loose ethics so we watch him closely.
Weeks go by. We keep getting scryed by the same black dragon and same eeeeeevil high priest, we keep not getting ambushed, we keep investigating Melaton's bedroll for any loose scales that may have slipped from under his disguise, as he is OBVIOUSLY a snake man who needs to be watched.
Marvin occupied with scale sweeping, the group is alerted to a band of brigands in ambush a bit up the road
(a bandit ambush? how quaint! oh, that takes us back, remember when we used to get ambushed?)
Mo flies ahead to confront the ambushers, Baerdt and Marvin turn invisible and follow. Earth elementals hang back to keep an eye on Melaton, who frankly is letting down the team by not sabotaging the whole mission there and then.
Threat neutralization at level 20
Radiant and splenderous, the paladin descends down to earth on angel wings...to confront some twenty bandits barely out of their first level.
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Mo: "I really think you guys should rethink this ambush."
Bandit leader: "Sez you!"
*attacks, misses*
*attacks, misses*
*attacks, misses*
Baerdt: "You know, I'm feeling a bit sad for these guys."
Marvin: "Yeah. Let's try and end this before it gets out of hand."
Baerdt: *wins initiative, plants a cube of adamantium at the feet of a couple of tough looking bandits and whispers the command word to turn it into a 10x10x80 meter adamantium tower*
Two robbers are splattered into a red mist, two others bounce away.
Irene is a new player to D&D and has stocked up on all kinds of creative gear, including the instant fortress, three rods of immovability, a bottle of air, bottle of pressured water and a portable hole. I pity our opponents.
Marvin: *considers various forms of eldritch doom available, settles on a reverse gravity spell that targets all surviving bandits except the leader*
Said leader -still swinging fruitlessly- gets asked to look over his shoulder, sees his entire band hanging apologetically in mid-air and decides to surrender. Questioned, he admits to being in the employ of Lord Manfred "the nose" Parlousian, known traitor to the Crown and known dead guy - another happy moment in our group’s shared history. Apparently, dude is back with a vengeance, but still missing the nose he lost when we first tangled.
That's it - we decide to install the stupid artifact, then track down anyone and everything involved with Manfred, the kobolds, the undead, the dragons - but first, what do we do with 20 bandits? Melaton offers to off them then and there, we think that's a bit too much and decide to teleport the whole bunch to the Shieldhaven jail, then teleport back to finish the artifact delivery by cart.
Which works fine, except that teleporting back to "that forest glade we camped out in" isn't specific enough, so Marvin and Mo end up taking a little 400 mile detour. All's well that ends in Greater Teleport, though.
Delivery for you
We slog the last days to Shieldhaven and deliver the Dragonshield to the local mage guild. They get to work installing the damned contraption, we get celebrated by the lord mayor and subtly inquire as to any koboldy, undeady, Manfred the Nose-y happenings:
"Oi, anyone seen Manfred the Nose around with a band of undead kobolds?"
...or something to that effect. No result, although a merchant seems to hide a smirk.
the session is running late so we don't follow up on that, but totes we noticed and will shake this guy down at some point
Scrying again for lost adventurers leads us to Manfred's former estate (now owned by a retired adventurer, who knows nuthin' about nuthin' and has taken up farming after greatswording), and on to Wagonhall, a village three days' ride away that's been awfully quiet the last few weeks. Having finally ditched our allergic-to-magic-package, we rip into the plane of shadow, fast-shuffle to the village of Wagonhall in an hour, and find it completely deserted.
In the village center is the remannt of a teleportation circle, etched glass into the surrounding sand. It's not active anymore, hasn't been for weeks, but tracks from all over the village lead here. Tracks of shoes from the villagers, and kobold paw tracks. Guards, kidnappers? Scrying for the lost villagers with their personal effects finally gives us a clue: the crystal ball resolves on someone that should be a kidnapped villager, but looks for all the world like a kobold.
Up next:
Has someone been kidnapping people and turning them into kobolds?
Is there a priest of some undead cult behind this? Or a dragon?
Is Manfred the Nose really back from the dead to run this scheme, and what horrific nickname will he get when we off him this time?
Find out with us, next session!
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| Manfred the Nose wishes he was as cool as Tycho Brahe. |
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