Category Archives: session summaries

Reavers on the Seas of Fate, Season Five, Twenty-ninth Session

Twenty-ninth Session (10 page pdf) – “Nantambu, Ruins, and Riches” – The PCs go to the uncomfortably civilized Mwangi city of Nantambu to find an old “friend” of Mitabu’s that can get them to a fabled lost Shory flying city.  Getting there’s easy, you just have to shadow walk… The pirates all groan.  “What?” asks Mitabu.

It’s off to Nantambu, the Song-Wind City, the peak of civilization and magical learning in this part of the Mwangi Expanse. It was founded by Old-Mage Jatembe and his Ten Magic Warriors, mythical figures among the Mwangi people. It’s Good, it’s democratic… And as a result our pirates are a bit ill at ease, especially after their recent bout of native-slaughter, though between natives Mitabu and Sindawe they are able to navigate the place just fine.

Now we’re setting up the adventure Crucible of Chaos, about a lost Shory flying city full of unfathomable riches and horrific dangers. When they meet the guy who had been there and he had mouths for eyes, that is an image from an old, old computer ad (a video card I think?) that creeped me out back in the 1990s. This really made the PCs wary, and then when they had to travel through the Shadow Plane to get there, they knew it was going to be a problem since phantoms and shadow demons from that plane are their archenemies. Only smart use of an Infamy Point (a gold coin that lets you fundamentally change the narrative) lets them escape 26 points of Strength damage at the hands of shadows (at the cost of only a negative level)… Eek!

But they make it to the Valley of the Gwangi and the crashed lost city of Ulduvai, or at least it’s within sight – let’s see if they can make it there!

Reavers on the Seas of Fate, Season Five, Twenty-eighth Session

Twenty-eighth Session (10 page pdf) – “The Battle of Nightfall Station” – It’s death or glory as the Ekujae elves assault the station in force. Can the PCs stem the tide of these “savages?” Or will they fall to overwhelming numbers? Find out as we conclude River Into Darkness!

Well, it turns out one of the Hated British was actually a necromancer, making fast zombies out of elves and dead colonials alike. The Ekujae have very severe taboos around their dead so that explains their “wipe out whitey” program. There’s no opportunity to negotiate a peace, however, as wave after wave of elves throw themselves at Nightfall Station.

But finally they are rescued by a real high level party – the Hands of Slaughter from the Rival Guide, a real bad set of dudes (like, a gorilla antipaladin named “Eater of Elves” bad) that are the Aspis Consortium’s local enforcers. The party gets paid, levels up (they’ll level up again in… seven years I guess, spoiler alert), and heads off to Nantambu, putting the impending genocide out of their minds. “We’re pirates, man, this isn’t our problem.”

It’s always tricky emulating a problematic type of story, but I think everyone came away with the clear message “these were the bad guys and we were helping them.”

And with that, we have finished River of Darkness!

Reavers on the Seas of Fate, Season Five, Twenty-seventh Session

Twenty-seventh Session (9 page pdf) – “The Siege of Nightfall Station” – The PCs guard the station as the native elves harass them – but is treachery from within the bigger threat?

Nightfall Station is an interesting mix – it’s the beleaguered Europeans being attacked by violent natives, but it’s pretty obvious these Europeans aren’t the good guys (the heads on pikes and torture is a hint) – but are they ever? The elves start to hit the station and the PCs charge out to kill every time it happens. Luckily the elves like traps and ambushes.

Serpent leads the way in the dark right into a punji stick pit that swallows up him and Wogan. Sindawe narrowly avoids falling in as well, then relights his ioun stones. Wogan and Serpent extricate themselves, then Wogan heals them.
Serpent says, “I think there’s poop on these spikes.”
Wogan replies, “I hope it’s elf poop. That stuff has healing properties.”

Reavers on the Seas of Fate, Season Five, Twenty-sixth Session

Twenty-sixth Session (6 page pdf) – “Nightfall Station” – Mansquitos and sleeping sickness and elf ambushes dog the pirates until they finally reach their destination, Nightfall Station.  It’s a shithole.

A fight with a giant mosquito (which they name a “mansquito” since it is the size of a man) gets more complicated when they douse their captured shambling mound with water causing it to revive. And then they get ambushed by elves.

The Ekujae (jungle) elves have some cool tricks, like:

Thistle Arrows
These arrows are a specialty of the Ekujae shamans, who craft the arrowheads out of the thistles of a toxic plant that most creatures find highly caustic.
They deal normal damage but have a 25% chance of becoming embedded in the wound and causing an additional 1 point of damage each round from their irritating sap. Creatures immune to critical hits or sneak attacks are immune to this extra damage. A creature can remove an embedded thistle arrow as a move action without provoking attacks of opportunity, but doing so deals an additional 1d3 points of damage as the thorny barbs are pulled free. A DC 12 Heal check (made as a standard action) can pull free a thistle arrow’s head without dealing any additional damage.

Reavers on the Seas of Fate, Season Five, Twenty-fifth Session

Twenty-fifth Session (12 page pdf) – “Brimstone Falls” – After leaving the somewhat-relieved Whitebridge Station and its casual racism, the PCs search for fuel for the River Queen, leading them into both toil and trouble in the depths of the jungle.

Anyway, the party has to go get some tumors off a shambling mound to power their magical riverboat. And in a cool twist, the adventure has some lizardfolk “come to pay homage to the loa spirits” that have statues along the path and they are “none too please to find strangers (especially “softskins”) at this sacred place, and don’t hesitate to attack.”

But the party, having a wendo goddess sponsor themselves, left an offering at each loa statue on the way up, and when they also parley with Serpent’s “serpent shaman” parseltongue trick, that’s enough to chill them out. I really, really like rewarding interacting with the fictional world and not just moving from “combat” to “combat”, that is so lame.

And (almost) just like that, they have a captive shambling mound!

Reavers on the Seas of Fate, Season Five, Twenty-fourth Session

Twenty-fourth Session (7 page pdf) – “River Into Darkness” – the PCs steam up the Vanji River on a magic-powered keelboat and deal with the snake-and-disease-intensive bowels of the jungles of the Mwangi Expanse. And the station house they come to seems strangely depopulated…

A lively kech attack from the trees overhead keeps the mood sinister – and finally, they reach Whitebridge Station which has fallen to some catastrophe – and finally, contact with the elves! Turns out they don’t have tails after all, that was just a racist rumor.

I feel like racism is an important theme in a story like this. Paizo has gone way the other way, trying to make everything sparklingly sensitive, which is great if all stories you want to tell are G-rated, but in my opinion if you are doing a story where, basically, fantasy Europeans are on the loose, it’s a cop-out to NOT have to deal with their racist depredations. Of course in this story, the PCs have been hired by the racist depredators, so we’ll see how it turns out…

Reavers on the Seas of Fate, Season Five, Twenty-third Session

Twenty-third Session (12 page pdf) – “Bloodcove” – After some hijinks in the city of Bloodcove, the PCs take a job going upriver into the darkest Mwangi to protect the East Indian Trading Company – I mean Aspis Consortium – against cannibal natives – I mean cannibal elf natives. They even have tails, we hear.

As usual I like saving myself the heavy lifting by using some of the thousands of dollars of gaming gear I’ve bought, so I sourced Bloodcove from both Heart of the Jungle and River of Darkness, the latter of which is their next adventure! After screwing around (literally and figuratively) in town, they head upriver on a riverboat for a Heart of Darkness type encounter with the Ekujae elves, since they may as well make some money while their ship is in drydock, and they want to go find a friend of Mitabu’s who knows about some ancient flying city that sounds lucrative.

This is their first true venturing into the African-type jungle of the Mwangi Expanse, so I did a bunch of both factual research and movie-type-inspiration research to try to make it super different and memorable. Sleeping sickness, here they come!

Reavers on the Seas of Fate, Season Five, Twenty-second Session

Twenty-second Session (9 page pdf) – “Crossing the Line” – The ship is threatened, first by mutated wyverns, and then by the equator!!!  And then by squibs!  Will the horror never cease?!?

After finishing a whole major plot arc, it was time for a fun session. They sailed south from the Shackles and across the equator. Crossing the equator, to sailors, is an occassion for all kinds of weird fun and games known as a line-crossing ceremony. Of course my players didn’t know that, nor did most of the players, so I got to surprise them…

Wogan notices that the crew is acting strangely. He asks Dum Dum about it. Dum Dum replies, “Nothing.” But when Wogan presses him further, he says “OK. I’ll show you. It’s in this sack.” The curious Wogan peers into the sack. The sack goes over Wogan’s head and he is beaten unconscious.

That evening Sindawe and Serpent are in the stateroom when there is a knock on the door. Upon opening, they are loudly informed by a Little Lord Fontleroy-clad Thalios Dondriel that “All officers and men of your ship are hereby advised that His Oceanic Majesty King Gozreh and his royal retinue will board your ship on the morning watch at eight bells for the purpose of cleansing your ship of all pollywogs as may be present. Be ye in all respects prepared to receive them with full oceanic honours.” He turns on his heel and stalks off.

Most of the session is then engaged in weird shenanigans and they finally arrive at Rickety’s Squibs where they intend to get the Teeth of Araska renamed to Chainbreaker, upgraded, and her lines changed to no longer be recognizable as her previous self.

Reavers on the Seas of Fate, Season Five, Twenty-first Session

Sea-sworn

It’s been a long time but we’re still playing this campaign! I’ve been posting sessions on the session summary page but have fallen behind blogging them, I’ll try to get caught up.

Twenty-first Session (12 page pdf) – “Devil’s Arches, Part V” – The PCs finally reach the Terraken (or “Terrorkin,” as they call it). But- betrayal!  They make a daring escape, but then a recurring enemy gives them what for.

They find the undead dragon turtle weapon the Terraken but Sindawe decides it’s going to be too much trouble in the long term and just murders Mase Venjum instead and they bury the ancient weapon. They escape the collapsing island complex and sail out to the Teeth of Araska, where they again run across their pirate foes on the Omen from season 5 session 17. They try to ambush them with a night boarding but it goes poorly; Mitabu manages to break their keel to prevent pursuit and our crew slips away in the night.

And that finishes our run through the Treasure of Chimera Cove!

Sentinel Comics RPG – Kaiju Hunters, Collection 3 – “Kaiju World Tour”

Our third collection of the Sentinels RPG with our Aussie family of Kaiju hunters went swimmingly. I (The Yowie) got bone cursed and had to go to the Dreamtime to fix that up, that was fun.

Follow along with our exploits!

Thirteenth Session – “New Charleston Incursion”
The Abyssal is now The Umbral, sinking even deeper into dark magic depravity. We go pub crawling until we are interrupted with a call for help fighting kaiju off from New Charleston Island. If the Samoans can’t handle it, it must be bad! Sure enough, it’s basically Starship Troopers except most of us don’t have guns, or look good naked. And Yowie gets a death curse put on him for appropriating Aboriginal magic. Fair enough.

Fourteenth Session – “The Beginning of the Endlings”
We get to meet the Endlings, which is some Jack Kirby on crack shit. Yowie likes the Terminarch, Jansa Vi Dero, because she’s huge! We then go to catch a kaiju for her, but of course way more dangerous than a giant monster is some rich one percenter bastard.

Fifteenth Session – “The Dreamtime”
The Aboriginal sorcerer Merricumana refuses to lift the bone curse from Yowie, which means we have to venture into the Dreamtime to try to fix the problem! We go to Ayers Rock and smoke it up and sure enough we end up in the Dreamtime. We then have to intervene in various Very Symbolic Activities, hoping that we are intervening in a way that will help and not hurt. And then we get to fight dark versions of ourselves! Except for Umbral, who fights a jolly shining elf version of himself (I’m kidding).

Sixteenth Session – “Fear the Bunyip”
After enjoying some finger limes, we have to fight some weirdo carrying a giant black rock and protect a giant white rock who has two cute lil’ whale and koala pals. We are traumatized by having to fight the cute guys. We fight the Bunyip, the Yowie dies but is brought back to life by the Rainbow Serpent, and defeats the Bunyip with the help of his friends… We return successful to the waking world, to be confronted with a plague of spore-bearing pterodactyls.

Seventeenth Session – “What To Expect When You’re Expecting”
First we have to save Sydney from a rampaging Kangasaurus Rex (or, as we like to call it, “Tuesday”) when Golden Key’s daughter from the future comes back! She tells us we must fight the future and so we go to Zurich and fight a Tatzylwyrm and eat Strudel and look for magical instruments.

Eighteenth Session – “Sleepless in Seattle”
We have to join up with the Argent Adept, who Umbral hates, to fight Heretic, who we all hate, in Seattle, which we all also hate. A random environment generated dude, Stan the Battalion Mechanic, a gruff blue-collar maintenance man who keeps fixing the battle platform we’re trying to invate, becomes a favorite of ours during the fight so we recruit him once we win.

Sentinel Comics RPG – Kaiju Hunters, Collection 2 – “Atlantean Memories”

Our second collection of six issues (game sessions) of the Sentinel Comics RPG hits newsstands! In a desperate bid from alliteration, we go from Australia to Argentina to Atlantis over the course of the arc. We ally with El Genio, fight The Heretic, and then alternately ally with and fight the Luminary/Baron Blade.

You don’t really “level up” in Sentinels RPG, you just can do anything from swap little things to rebuild at the end of a collection. I (The Yowie) don’t change much but others do.

We’ve gotten used to the rules and the “ticking clock” of each combat. I do wish there was a little more texture to the rules – you really need to min-max those dice to get successes, and there’s not much to do with them if you don’t have a power other than the basic moves, so we have started doing the same moves a lot.

Follow along with our exploits!

Seventh Session – “We Come From A Land Down Under”
We travel from Australia to Argentina to earn our “international Kaiju hunter” certification from GLOBAL. There a giant hydra is molesting both the livestock and the gauchos. We fend it off with the help of El Genio (think El Santo), who is laid low in the process.

Eighth Session – “The Serpent and the Rainbow”
The heroes take on an Argentinian black site with a super-scientist in residence. Then things get really weird and we go deal with a bunch of gods of the Guarani people, including a set of challenges from Jasy Jatere and a wrestling match with Teju Jagua to get some juice from the infinita fruit to heal El Genio.

Ninth Session – “American Serpent”
The Heretic demands 300 billion pesos or else he’ll destroy the Los Caracoles Dam and flood a lot of San Juan. We defeat the hydra and head out to find the Heretic, who has taken refuge in a vineyard and winery. Little does he realize that we are Australian and drinking plonk is one of our superpowers!

Tenth Session – “Armenian Vodka”
We get our own rooms back at Kaiju Defence Inc. headquarters until we are interrupted by a host of giant tentacles. Then we go sit down for a lovely Mordengradian lunch with what turns out to be the deposed Baron Blade aka the Luminary aka Ivan Romanat! Well obviously we have to team up with him to go to Atlantis…

Eleventh Session – “The Inevitable Betrayal”
Baron Blade turns on us and sics Cthulhu on us. We try to look surprised. He bails after we grind his forces to cornmeal and smack Space Cthulhu around. Piece of piss.

Twelfth Session – “Reality Discontinuity”
The Abyssal freaks out and goes dark magic crazy. But we need to go to a super hero convention, Freedom Con! More chaos than usual ensues.

Sentinel Comics RPG – Kaiju Hunters, Collection 1 – “Kaiju Defenders: Next Gen”

We’ve finished our first collection of six issues (game sessions) of the Sentinel Comics RPG, as our brave Aussies fend off all kinds of kaiju from the Australian shores. You can read all the individual session summaries in depth on our session summaries page (including some kaiju pics!).

Paul’s doing a great job running the game. I’m playing a Magnum P.I. inspired PI who can grow into a giant Australian yeti monster (the Yowie). Bruce is playing the arcane weirdo The Abyssal, Chris is playing speedster X-Celerate, Patrick is playing the gyrocopter-flying Overwatch, and Tim the killer robot Dynamo Joe.

One of my favorite parts has been researching Australian slang terms and phrases and inflicting them on the group. I worked with some Aussies at a startup once so I have some bonus ones to pull out on them. I enjoy the reaction when we pulled up to a trailer park being ravaged by a kaiju and I get to say “Well let’s get started, we didn’t just come here to fuck spiders!” (Do it in a strong Australian accent for best results.)

We’re playing semi-remote. Bruce is in Dallas and the rest of us are in Austin, so we’re using Google Meet and Roll20, though Chris, Patrick, and I have taken to getting together for fellowship and booze.

Follow along with our exploits!

First Session – “Fire on the Deep”
Giant sea serpents and pretty darn big fleas attack an oil rig of the Australian coast and need fending off! It’s hard yakka!

Second Session – “Scared Heart Hospital”
The fleas have infected everyone with chest-bursting fleas and we have to go flea stomping yet again, and end up fighting a giant mutated dog in a trailer park with many bogans looking on.

Third Session – “Between the Tasmanian Devil and the Deep Blue Sea”
The heroes have to go defend a supervillain transport barge from the attack of a giant mutated kaiju. You’d think the yobbos would be grateful, but of course not.

Fourth Session – “Melbourne Nights”
The Vegemite factory in Melbourne is at risk from not one but two kaiju! The heroes must overcome their greatest hurdle yet – getting to Melbourne from Sydney.

Fifth Session – “Basic Cthulhus and Catwomen”
The Dijkstra Museum of History in Sydney is threatened both by a giant sea kaiju called “Squidface” from without and from Ermine and the Gentleman (think Catwoman/Black Cat and Gentleman Ghost before he dies and becomes a ghost) inside. And our emo bro Nightwalker gets sucked into some bad dimension.

Sixth Session – “Advanced Cthulhus and Catwomen”
X-Celerate hooks up with villainess Ermine and gets to know her intimately and impregnates her. At the same time, the Nexus of the Void gets to know Nightwalker intimately and impregnates him. We rescue one of the two of them. Finally we go to a big spooky mansion to have it out with Cthulhu (aka the Herald of xxtz’Hulissh).