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Reavers on the Seas of Fate, Season Seven, Fifth Session

Posted on April 21, 2025 | Leave a comment

Fifth Session (12 page pdf) – “Shadow Conspiracy” – The night gets longer as they have to dispose of a body. Finally they check in at their ship and split time between planning to fund a brothel and searching down leads related to their phantom attacker, which sends them from the church to a bar to a sewer.

“And then guess what the fourth shark took?!?“

The party struggles on, having been awake for several days at this point. Every time they think about turning in some new demented entertainment is offered up by Port Shaw. They go to dispose of the phantom/businessman’s mortal remains at a local inn that offers that as a value add service, And, of course, drink and gamble some more. Even when they get back to the ship, they take some reports before finally turning in…

But Serpent’s family has moved out (he forgot that this was the plan, to be honest) and Sindawe’s captain’s quarters are occupied by Lefty and a local girl. A rough night on an improvised pallet for both of them then!

They then split their time between investigating phantom sightings and arranging to own a proper brothel that their four new prostitute besties can set up in. Since Lavender Lil was a proper (?) brothel prostitute back in Riddleport they put her in charge, which is a great idea except for the fact she and all the other women immediately decided they hated each other on sight.

I generally roll informal reaction checks whenever people meet each other to see how well they get along. Years ago the group was entertained by Samaritha and Ameiko Kaijutsu of Sandpoint (the latter eventually travelling to Tian Xia and being the empress apparent in the Jade Regent adventure path) both rolling nat 1’s when meeting each other, causing them to fall into that inexplicable state of implacably cold hate that only women just meeting each other can immediately muster. Well, many years later it happened again, so the rowdy whores are quite a handful and it’ll take a while to get to some equilibrium on that (more to come!).

And finally, they find a sad native girl who indicates that the “Roach King” took one of her friends into the sewers to be eaten. The sewers are suspiciously locked and guarded by Dragoons. This is their cue to find Capt’n Lester Farrows, a swamp pirate (no really) and his raft to venture therein!

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate, Season Seven, Fourth Session

Posted on April 18, 2025 | Leave a comment

Fourth Session (9 page pdf) – “Fight Club Raids and Noose Races” – The crew isn’t done with having fun yet, so they continue to cut a swath across Port Shaw. A Dragoon raid and an infamous pirate cause an early end to the fight club for the evening, so they go find the “Noose Races” they have heard so much about.  But after a Conan-esque night of debauchery, an old threat appears.

Anyone who refers to time an adventuring party spends in a city as “downtime”, give yourself a big ol’ wedgie and then read on.

Last session went great so I took a chance. In the Razor Coast book there’s a very “Captain Jack Sparrow” type of infamous pirate named Falken Drango. However, I know that Chris (Sindawe’s player) hates Captain Jack Sparrow.

So how do I introduce him without triggering that? I mean, he’s not plot critical, but I wanted to use him as a recurring NPC to introduce them to the local piracy scene, so I wanted to do something where they wouldn’t kill him/avoid him. So instead I had him be in disguise and be Sindawe’s first foe in the Broken Skull fight club ring!

Some background – Sindawe decided he really, really hated a Riddleport NPC called the Splithog Pauper who was always in disguise. They were “frenemies” sometimes on the same side, sometimes opposing, like every character in Sons of Anarchy. The last time they saw him was in 2011 and left it like this:

“Our heroes fail to lure the Splithog Pauper to his death behind the building; he makes a “I am keeping my eyes on you” gesture which is reciprocated with “I am going to kill you” gestures.”

For whatever reason he has become Sindawe’s greatest nemesis (in Sindawe’s mind) and so when the fighter was in disguise he was convinced it must be the Splithog Pauper. When it wasn’t, he was so relieved – and then the Dragoons went after him – and the relief plus their normal “fuck the police” sentiment meant they helped him escape!

As they wandered the active night streets of the Bawd District after that, eating lizards on a stick or whatever, they are clearly ready for more hijinks so it’s time for the noose races!!!

What’s a noose race? Beats the shit out of me, but it’s mentioned in the Bawd District writeup in the Razor Coast book and then never after:

The low-burning, smoky tar lanterns of Bawd call sailors and other visitors to her dark twisting alleys and dock-ways, luring them to experiment with exotic and far-ranging narcotics, to lose their shirts (and occasionally their teeth) at gambling dens, to enjoy Port Shaw’s infamous houses of ill repute and to attend her myriad entertainments: performances from the Speckled Eyes snake charmer’s guild, baboon fights, gourd-gazing seers, legendary scorpion baths, noose races and other wild spectacles.

I had read this to the players at some point and the noose races captured their fancy, so I worked them up as a minigame. They give you a swig of arsenic, tighten a noose around your neck so you can’t breathe, and then loose a greased naked Keleshite you have to catch. As there are no other rules, violence between the runners is encouraged. Used our custom chase rules plus the normal Pathfinder “holding breath” rules and losing 1 “breath” per action.

As this is a pirate campaign, they were way into it, and emerge victorious after a hilarious action sequence romp through the nighttime crowds of the Bawd District.

And then they meet up with their new favorite quartet of hookers from last time, Ophelia, Molly, Feather, and Joy. They had them set up a meeting with a local businessman and john of Joy’s that was looking to join the Lodge, the local ruling council. You need their approval to buy businesses and stuff, so from an organized crime point of view they figure he’s a good guy to talk to.

So they meet their friends in the bar, in comes Joy and the businessman – and cyper glyphs burn. He’s a phantom!!! A sudden, brutal fight breaks out.

This was sobering (in and out of game), they hadn’t come across phantoms in Port Shaw yet. So after all the hilarity it was like throwing a bucket of cold water on them at the end of the session! I love GMing. Definitely wound them up for the next game.

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Reavers on the Seas of Fate, Season Seven, Third Session

Posted on April 15, 2025 | Leave a comment

Third Session (7 page pdf) – “Drinking, Whoring, Gambling, and Brawling” – Our crew is in the mood for some shore leave.  They meet a quartet of hookers that they take a shine to and gamble with. Then they go fight at a fight club.  Good clean fun!

Port Shaw is a city of 20,000 people. Sindawe is originally from this area but it’s pretty different from when he left as a youth. Whaling and overfishing and plantations have driven off much of the wildlife. Native practices are considered an entertaining diversion in the city, and something to be whipped out in the plantations. It has four proper districts – Tide, Bawd, Silk, and Jade, plus the plantations and outskirts. In the words of the city’s stat block, Here’s a little interlude that sums the place up pretty well:

  • Silk: Home to Port Shaw’s artisans and artists.
  • Jade: The lair of Port Shaw’s wealthiest upper crust.
  • Bawd: Entertainments abound–narcotics, gambling, prostitution, pugilism and more.
  • Tide: The mercantile heart of Port Shaw encompassing trade, fishing and whaling.
  • Plantation: Slave estates growing pineapples, taro, sugar cane and mangos.
  • Outskirts: Tulita ghetto struggling against disease, famine and aggressive predators.

They got into town and went right into wandering around to fight weresharks, and they want a break. Now it’s time for a slice of life on the mean streets of Port Shaw’s Bawd district. I had a boy (Tanga) offer himself as a guide, it’s helpful to the PCs but also for me to plausibly infodump about local places and practices.

He leads them deeper into the district, past ale houses, houses of ill repute, drug dens, apartments, nice walled compounds, and the general chaos of its denizens going about their business. Dragoons keep the peace by watching and doing little, including a halfling robbing an elder gnome openly on the street. Sindawe intervenes by kicking the halfling robber away. Olgum the gnome leaves with his wallet intact. He sobs and clings to Wogan a moment; the group invites him to lunch with them later. He begs off given a prior engagement, and scuttles off with Wogan’s coin-purse (unbeknownst to them).

They wanted to go to a random inn to eat, so I used this random inn generator to create one on the fly, the Cursed Spear. Then, I can’t even remember what I was using for random encounter tables, might have been “Lawless Port City” from d20PFSRD (576 pages and no random encounter tables for Port Shaw, boo), but they ran across four local hookers in robes and togas, and for some reason they really took to them! Even though none of them had prurient interest, because Sindawe knows Mama Watanna is a jealous loa-lover, Serpent knows his wife Samaritha is a jealous serpentfolk wizard-lover, and Wogan knows his god is jealous of his weiner (or whatever Gozreh’s motivation is).

I pulled up this random brothel generator to generate them but I lost the initial pdf – my notes simply record quick descriptions and who they were hitting up. “Molly (Wogan, impressive, nice, varisian neck tattoo, hood piercing, knows business guy), Ophelia (Sindawe, clean, dragon face tattoo, potter’s apprentice), Feather (Serpent, greedy, dextrous, tiny, long hair, hottest), Joy (30, left out, matching Molly tattoo).”

The PCs and prostitutes (P&P, the exciting new OSR variant) hit it off and gamble, drink, and chat the afternoon away. In a followthrough from the previous quote…

Wogan discovers all his money is missing when the call to ante up comes and has to borrow money to get started. Molly asks him if “He’d like to make 14 gold the hard way,” which he declines to the amusement of the other pirates.

Sometimes, players are really in the mood to role-play and the GM is firing on all cylinders role-playing as well, and you get magic moments that end up being more lasting than the actual locations/NPCs in the source material and session prep. Eventually the PCs leave to go to the Broken Skull and get back on plotline, but expect to see the girls again soon! Spoiler alert, they become long term NPCs.

At the Broken Skull, they discover that Sindawe’s long-lost brother Ochiba (well… technically Sindawe is the long-lost one, since he’s from here and went up north to whitey-land for a decade or so) is currently the champion of the bare knuckle brawler fights the place features. They bet on the fights and Sindawe signs up to fight as well!

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