Tag Archives: crucible of chaos

Thirty-Sixth Session (13 page pdf) – “Crucible of Chaos VI” – The party makes a new friend by using a magical bell to summon a flying ape! They all go to try to kill another of the leftover Shory rulers, who dwells at the heart of the chaos… And loves him some amorphous servants.  And not how you’re thinking – I mean he wants to have sex with them.

There’s some parenthetical comments about a lizard man with the party and I’m not sure where he came from. C’est la vie. Anyway, most of this session, after a short babau demon ambush, is them rolling into Yithdul the third undead Shory spellcaster’s place, and no diplomacy this time, they tear it up, but as a “chaos-warped dread wight” with some chaos beasts (which I declared his “consorts”, which really upset the players) and he gives them trouble, also the forsaken palace they go to is “a nightmare of shifting reality”.

For a setpiece battle it was very mobile and entertaining, and their new flying ape buddy got in some good spotlight time; they like him.

Thirty-Fifth Session (10 page pdf) – “Crucible of Chaos V” – The Discordant Tower is investigated, as is a weird tomb and a warehouse. And they find the piece of Shory tech they really want, a hover-platform!

Well we’re sure getting our money out of this adventure, well into the fifth session, and they fight ultra weird stuff in this chaos city. Eyeless creatures whose “bellow sweeps across them like a horde of razor blades!” (A destrachan.) An arsenic mist that tries to “get inside” them! (A belker.) Invisible stalkers! Chokers! But they will not be deterred and get their flying cargo platform.

Thirty-Third Session (missing) – “Crucible of Chaos III”  – The PCs all have a strange dream about wandering the streets of Ulduvai from which they have difficulty waking, mainly notable for Sindawe growing giant and fighting hordes of demon monkeys in a warehouse.  Correctly tracing this to its source, they kill the Shory Banderak.

Thirty-Fourth Session (9 page pdf) – “Crucible of Chaos IV” – The PCs go to the monkey warehouse from Sindawe’s dream, and sure enough there’s demon monkeys – but their monkeyshines attract the Shoggoth!

Well, sometimes a session summary just goes missing. Sorry all! But luckily in the first they dream about fighting demon monkeys and in the second they… Go fight demon monkeys. And Banderak. Banderak is a “nightmare creature” and has basically Freddie Krueger powers:

Night Terrors (Su): Once a nightmare creature enters a target’s mind with its dream or nightmare spell-like ability, it can attempt to control the target’s dream. If the target fails a Will saving throw, it remains asleep and trapped in the dream world with the nightmare creature. Thereafter, the nightmare creature controls all aspects of the dream. Each hour that passes, the target can attempt another saving throw to try to awaken (it automatically awakens after 8 hours or if the nightmare creature releases it). The target takes 1d4 points of Charisma damage each hour it is trapped in the dream; if it takes any Charisma damage, it is fatigued and unable to regain arcane spells for the next 24 hours. The target dies if this Charisma damage equals or exceeds its actual Charisma score.

But when fighting the monkeys in the “real world,” making too much ruckus in this city attracts the Shoggoth. Confusion and Wisdom loss result just from being around it. They escape but Mitabu gets all his Wisdom drained, which when combined with future events (stay tuned!) give him basically permanent schizophrenia. And the Shoggoth eats their magic Rain Tiger gem that has their teleport spell in it, which is their ticket home.

But, they find intel and items that get them closer to their goal – putting some ancient Shory aeromantic tech into their pirate ship so it can fly! Also, they love making up contents of weird books they find.

Kings of the Flying Apes (book) – page 1, “See the Flying Ape Terrorize the Naughty Children”; page 2, “See the Flying Ape Rescue the Treed Cat Familar”; page 3, “See the Flying Ape Eat the Juicy Fruit on the Toppest Branches”

Thirty-Second Session (9 page pdf) – “Crucible of Chaos II” – The chaos-warped ruins of Ulduvai still contain some of its original inhabitants! The PCs get to play “guess the weird undead type” as they meet them.

And they finally see… the shoggoth. They got warnings about something being in the city so they were a little wary but this really put the fear of God into them.

He sees a black pool of ooze that his terrible to behold. Its sound is also terrible but greatly dampened thanks to the ear plugs. Wogan pulls the others back and motions for “don’t look”. The next morning he bleeds from his mouth, eyes and ears until he heals himself.

They had seen a shoggoth once before, on the high seas back in Season Two, and they escaped it by sailing near another ship to let it eat them instead. And of course, they are all Lovecraft scholars like any true gamers. So this put the idea of “let’s just fight it” completely out of their minds, which is hard to do in D&D (ok, Pathfinder, whatever).

Then they meet 2/3 of the local ancient undead power players, who are much less spooky than the headless parrots, so they find it relaxing to talk and/or fight with them.

Thirty-first Session (9 page pdf) – “Crucible of Chaos” – The ruins of Ulduvai are full of weird and wondrous sights, smells, and feels… But an unfortunate number of things are missing one or two of those sensory indicators.

The “acid drippers” they fight at the beginning are babau demons – I think describing and not naming things is super effective and keeps the players way more engaged. As a result then end up making up names for a lot of their foes. Some GMs seem to get annoyed by that, I have no idea why, you worried Paizo (or Wizards) won’t get their product placement residuals?

This is a good adventure module; there’s some sites but also a lot of creepy environmental chaos elements, like mutated parrots.

A blue feathered creature lands on Wogan’s backpack – it has no head, four wings, and four claws. It clings to Wogan’s pack despite his frantic cries of, “Get it off!” The pirates trying offering it food and rum but it doesn’t bite. It radiates slight chaos magic. The pirates leave it on Wogan’s pack and continue on.

Some chaos, some monsters… But they have no idea what’s coming.

Thirtieth Session (11 page pdf) – “The Savage Land” – In a lost valley atop the frigid mountains, the PCs make enemies, then friends, then enemies of some intelligent monkeys and enemies, then friends of some lizardfolk.

We get deeper into the Crucible of Chaos, basically encountering most of what’s in the valley before they get to the real fun of the ruined (and Azathoth-blasted) flying city of the Shory.

They were really in a chatty mood this session, so everything from monkeys to lizard men called for attempts at dialogue – and, atypically, dialogue even after an initial combat (some days that makes PCs decide that GENOCIDE IS THE ONLY SOLUTION). It was also funny in that the lizardfolk don’t understand Common and also don’t understand a comprehend languages spell, so they try to make themselves understood by speaking slowly and pantomiming to the party, who understands them thanks to the spell, but then feel free to chat amongst themselves assuming they can’t be overheard. “Should we have them trampled to death yet?” “No no, not yet…”