Tag Archives: pirates

Ninth Session (10 page pdf) – “Architects of Ruin” – An assault on some hidden caves goes drastically wrong and half the party is captured by various miscreants. Pirates! Ghosts! Guns! Orca! Explosions! Gates to other worlds! Thrill to the hard-hitting action in the latest installment of Reavers on the Seas of Fate.

Well, this session didn’t quite go how I thought it would. The PCs found the hidden caves of dungeoney fun, but as most of them looked at going in through a secret door, Sindawe dives in through a sea cave and finds a whole crew of pirates at work. And then he decides to take them all on  himself! I was a bit surprised at that. He made a good run at it really, even when surrounding him and getting sneak attacks it took natural 20’s for the mook pirates hto hit his super boosted monk AC. And even the pirate captain, Screev Ten-tooth, was having a bit of a hard time shooting him with his nifty double barreled pistol. But then the captain pulled out his alchemical flare shots, which blinded Sindawe, and that left him open to some intense whupass.  I tried to encourage him to dive back in and swim for it (being in the water gets you some intense cover bonuses, he benefited from them coming in) but he just fought it out till he went down, I’m not sure why. He killed half the pirate gang, which came in handy later though, that’s for sure.

You can download Screev Ten-tooth from the Reavers NPC page. He’s an expert2/gunslinger4/rogue2.

While this was going on, the PCs tried to come in the other way – it’s possible they could have rolled the whole dungeon up in the middle – but the siren ghost fended them off, taking prisoners (Hatshepsut and Akron Erix), routing Clegg Zincher’s goons, and charming Serpent and Tommy.  So off they go, to find the giant dread wraith lover boy of the siren ghost – they were lovers back in the day, but a hateful priest and some villagers killed the siren and then the dude hung himself. I figured they were going to have to kill him, but they actually managed to talk the wraith down and get him to follow them to the siren’s lair. I made that really hard to do, and halfway he started going after Wogan because he confused him with the priest that killed the siren, but each time they talked him down – high skills and assists getting those 30+ DCs required. Thus they overcame the whole siren ghost/dread wraith thing pretty handily! She gave them a parting blessing, even.

Then they found the Dark Gate, the one opened by the blast from the Cyphergate, bringing the real world and the shadow world (aka spirit world, demon dimension, monster realm) together with their world. They realized the bits of Tammerhawk’s glyph that exploded when they disrupted the ritual in the Riddleport Light (aka Shadow in the Sky/Madness in Freeport) embedded in them are attuned to the gate somehow.

They did a hurry-up attack on the pirates – they had to break through a barricade in the face of a swivel gun, luckily Wogan knows just when to pop an obscuring mist to provide cover. They hacked through the pirate crew. The captain used a flare shot to shoot a gunpowder bomb with a short length of quickfuse on it. That took us into slo-mo really quickly – Serpent went for the keg, and other people dove for cover. I said the fuse would take d6 segments (ticks in the initiative count) to burn down, so there was a lot of risk involved. Serpent managed to grab it and chunk it out into the sea cave before it went off with a massive shuddering crash. Then the pirate captain held his gun in Sindawe and ordered them to surrender their arms.

I am not a kind and forgiving GM. When someone has a person in that position, they get a free coup de grace whenever anyone tries anything – I am NOT a believer in “the bad guy has a knife to her throat!” “We take our full round of attacks, he’s dead, yay!” That’s BS.  But luckily, Wogan had a spare Infamy Point to spend. He whipped his pistol out and shot that gun right out of the captain’s hand! He out-gunned a gunslinger. Good one. Then the orca watching over Sindawe came out of the water and chomped him.

(This generated some argument from Chris, Sindawe’s player… He swam into the sea cave during the day, when the water is illuminated from the sunlight outside and was seen easily; the orca came in at night when it couldn’t be seen… This chafed him for some reason.)

The session ended up with all of them in the water again – this time to escape the tender ministrations of the tentacle-dogs that came out of the Dark Gate after them. And then a shadow demon came boiling out!

Earlier in the session, Paul (Serpent), who had run Second Darkness for another group, had said “thanks for taking out that shadow demon, that thing was a bitch!” I was like “Uh, sure, no problem <snicker>.”

Maybe we should just start every session with the PCs all in water. Make a theme out of it. Maybe in the HBO series that will inevitably be made. “Reavers, this fall from HBO!”

My favorite exchange from this session:

The pirate captain calls, “Arr! Surrender and ye can be part of my crew!”
“What are the terms of this deal?” Sindawe calls while continuing to swim for the tunnel.
“Arr. You can be me cabin boy and I promise to not be too rough on ya.”

Eighth Session (8 page pdf) – “The Devil’s Elbow” – The PCs make some unlikely allies as they brave a remote island seemingly inhabited by beings from beyond time and space. All this and more, in the latest installment of Reavers on the Seas of Fate.

The PCs shack up with Clegg Zincher in an unlikely alliance.  Tommy really, really wants to kill Zincher, to the point where his player’s emailing me lengthy assassination plots to ask what I think about them. But apparently he and his men are the only other people on this Godforsaken island.I had fun with the players’ interaction with  him.  He doesn’t hate them like they hate him, he’s on top and they work for some guy he has had to put in his place a couple times.  Just business from his point of view.  And whenever the players got too sassy I had him just let out a big wiseguy “Ayyyyyyyyyyyyy!”

Plus, Tommy was suffering from void death from the bite of the tentacle-dogs. He was remarkably submissive about being strapped to a cot in the infirmary tent with two other infected as a precautionary measure.  Sindawe kindly decided to go in there and sit up with him.

My chase rules come in handy in all kinds of circumstances – the PCs got attacked by tentacle dogs in the woods and hightailed it to the beach. They did well and got to the sand just as the dogs attacked.  I then made Arbitrary Surf Checks – the waves came in and out, moving the water line up and back 1d6 squares each round. That made it lively.

The rest was just island exploration. Slow paced, but I like mixing up big action pieces with lulls that build tension. Next time, a big finish!

Seventh Session (14 page pdf) – “Children of the Void” – Rescued from an island in the Varisian Gulf by a friendly ship, the PCs make it to the Devil’s Elbow and find the place under siege. They try to rescue the Cyphermage contingent on the island and end up needing rescuing themselves. All this and more, in the latest installment of Reavers on the Seas of Fate.

This session was fun; it started with all the PCs clinging to rocks to avoid the embrace of a heaving sea, and it ends with the PCs clinging to a different set of rocks to avoid the embrace of a heaving sea.

The first part of the session was slow but fun.  The Reavers were marooned on an island after their swan boat got ripped apart by angry orca. Sindawe “made it up” to Mama Watanna, but that didn’t get them any closer to shore.  They made the most of their time being stranded, however – lots of inter-character role-playing. Tommy’s player Kevin was gone this session (with some complicated excuse involving the former guitar player for Dokken) and I subbed in for him, mainly in the vein of making off-color suggestions whenever the topic of Serpent’s mother came up. Serpent (Paul) was trying to send animal messengers to people he thought might help them, but Sindawe (Chris) hijacked some of them to send anonymous threatening letters to Bojask at the Gold Goblin, which set the tone for subsequent hilarity.

There was also more serious scenes, the most serious of which was Sindawe talking with Hatshepsut. It turns out she had full memory of what happened beneath the waves, when Mama Watanna possessed her body (“rode her,” in voodoo terms) and made love to Sindawe. I had a hard time with some of this – I had meant to ask a woman beforehand (one who would humor such a demented question) as to what a coherent reaction might be in this situation – this guy I just made love to for the first time apparently had some previous thing with a goddess who then possessed me and had sex with him with my body but as her… It’s more complicated than that even but this is a blog post. Anyway, Sindawe RPed it well and did awesome on a couple Sense Motive and Diplomacy checks, so things didn’t go real bad (with Hatshepsut, getting on her bad side often results in a trip to the ER). Talk about complexity. I had to resort to more explanation out of character than I like, but I had trouble forming that all in character. In the end, Hatshepsut was a little impressed by Sindawe’s courage (or foolhardiness) in defying a goddess to be with her. Though she’s not 100% sold on it.

Beforehand,  I had put together a solid timeline of what all was transpiring back in Riddleport and on Devil’s Elbow, so given their timeline of sending calls for help it took five days to get rescue (even though they were only a half day from Riddleport).  In this case, it was Captain Creesy, whose crew was in ill humor after having a fire set aboardship by saboteurs in port.

I use some random weather tables for the sea voyages, and my rolls indicated first a windstorm, which required all the PCs to really exert their sea legs (and Wogan to use a wind fan) and then the next roll upped the level to hurricane strength! Apparently the first winter storm from the northeast was a bitch and a half. Luckily they all have very high Profession: Sailor skills and came through without significant damage (and even stayed on course).

Then it was time for the island itself, with weird zombies that have a big ass tongue-tentacle. The PCs were very lucky in that Sindawe critted with his very first shot and realized that they had to attack the tongues – you could attack the zombie all you wanted and it would keep coming. So they got through that easy enough and went to help the Cyphermages in the Witchlight.

Then Serpent got an unfortunate surprise. Fenella Bromathan, who he’s been suspecting is his mother or sister or something, had been wounded by the monsters on the island and was on her way to turning into a zombie herself. This led to a great session of roleplaying. She is all educated and Cyphermagey, but now with death looming she fell back on the ways of her people, the Ulfen.

“I need your help. I know none of the mages will have the courage to do what needs to be done. They are too civilized; they won’t be able to accept our ways. I am a wizard, but first, I am Ulfen.”
Serpent nods. “I can arrange for a pyre, I think.”
She says, “It will be good to die under the open sky.”

Over the strenuous objections of the remaining Cyphermages, they took Fenella up to the roof, built a pyre, and saw her off Ulfen style. Beforehand, she passed on a locket to Serpent that might have a clue to his origins!

They interacted with the surviving Cyphermages. I got their names and descriptions from daemonslye’s SD Pathfinder Beta conversion PDFs – Fustinius the Balding, Eli the 12-year-old prodigy, Jean-Jacques, and Georges St. Maarten. They explained that the monsters were resistant to magic and killed half their number before they locked themselves in the Witchlight.

Then the monsters attacked. They look a lot like Sammael from the Hellboy movie. I have changed them a lot from their Second Darkness writeup to fit my campaign arc; their high DR was part of that and made them a mighty tough fight. In the midst of it, the tower the PCs are in topples and rolls down a cliff! In the Children of the Void adventure there’s a great mini-game where the PCs are in the tumbling tower, monsters are still attacking, and it gets really crazy. Everyone but two of the Cyphermages survived, though – Georges was killed by Saluthra when he panicked and tried to unbar the door, and Jean-Jacques died in the tower tumble. In the end, they were all clutching the rocky beach at the base of the cliff; luckily salt water affects the monsters like acid and they are momentarily safe from attack.

I really enjoyed this session, it ranged from hardcore roleplay to fun roleplay to action setpiece. Woot!

Sixth Session (10 page pdf) – “Race for the Devil” – Elias Tammerhawk’s ship has been sighted at the Devil’s Elbow, and a pirate crew has retrieved some interesting artifacts from the site. Everyone wants to get there, but Riddleport’s mighty short on boats. The PCs decide to gamble on a one way ticket – but a one way ticket to where?

This time, we get started on the second chapter in the Second Darkness adventure path, Children of the Void, or at least my heavily modded version of it. Beware spoilers.

Like many sessions kicking off a new plot arc, this one was mostly wandering around in town – information gathering, buying and selling, talking to NPCs. Serpent went and talked to Fenella Bromathan, new Speaker of the Order of Cyphers. He noticed her a while back, and her super pale skin and dark hair is the same kind of odd coloration that he has – and he doesn’t know his mother, who he suspects was a witch or fey from Irrisen. He can’t find a good way of coming out and asking her about it, though.

Then the race was on to Devil’s Elbow. The PCs were bound and determined to get out there ASAP, and after the dwarves left heading that direction and Morgan Baumann (who Freeport fans will recognize) turned them down, they decided “what the hell” – they used Wogan’s swan boat feather token to head out there even though they would have no way back, reasoning that they’d be able to beg, borrow, or steal a ship once they reached the island.

And that plan would have worked, except that Mama Watanna was angry. The water goddess had made love to Sindawe and blessed him, contingent on him being faithful to her – but then last time, he and Hatshepsut made love. She often sends an orca to watch over Sindawe on his travels – and lo and behold, once they’re two-thirds of the way to the island, I roll a random encounter of 5 orcas. That’s fate right there, so I knew those orca were Mama Watanna payback. They attacked the ship and managed to breach its hull – the party probably could have killed them all, but Sindawe allowed himself to be carried off by one of the killer whales. Hatshepsut refused to let him go gently into that good night, and clung to the back of the beast as they dove into the ocean depths.  I figured that was good enough to summon the goddess herself. He had to spend an Infamy Point to convince Mama Watanna that he wasn’t really cheating on her because Hatshepsut is, like, basically one of her priestesses. In earlier sessions, before I knew whether Sindawe and Hatshepsut would fall for each other, I had considered whether Mama would possess her to be with Sindawe because she is about the closest thing Avistan has to a proper mambo, so this wasn’t totally off base.

In the end, most of the party was left clinging to a rock in the middle of the sea, thinking that the two monks might be lost, while Sindawe was really having more goddess/Hatshepsut sex deep underwater.

Second Session (11 page pdf) – “Carrion Hill” – The PCs discover that a cult seeking forbidden knowledge from beyond got more than they bargained for and have unleashed eldritch horror upon Riddleport.  It’s a race through the flooded streets of Riddleport to see who can murder everyone involved first!

In this episode, I’m using the Richard Pett adventure Carrion Hill, transplanted from its setting in Ustalav to Riddleport. With, of course, my own special touch.

Hatshepsut is getting some more character development, which is good.  It’s a little tough on me when there’s always like two (or more!) NPCs along with the party, but it also adds an additional dynamic I like.

The PCs are good and into the post-disaster devastation of Riddleport, it seems like I’ve successfully activated their imagination as to what a tsunami-ruined city is like.

Some DVD extras for you…

Paul (Serpent) was very unhappy about the high burst DC of doors and stuff. He’s a big strong Viking and yet can’t ever bust open doors.  Sure enough, the burst DC for a “strong wooden” item (like the concealed shutters on the tannery) is 25, which is impossible even for someone with an 18 STR to make. It’s a fair point. It did allow Tommy to make about a dozen jokes at his expense over the course of the session, though.  Oddly, Paul didn’t write any of those down in the session summary!

Wogan earned an Infamy Point for the extreme overkill of using Call Lightning to rid a tavern of a half dozen CR 1/2 giant cockroaches. After frying all the fleeing cockroaches, he and Sindawe wondered if the displaced locals would fall upon them as a tasty new food source. “The tsunami was only 24 hours ago, the populace is not quite to the point of gnawing on electrified giant bugs,” I informed the disappointed pair.

None of the PCs have much in the way of Knowledge skills, which makes for some hilarious discussions about religion, disease, and other subjects.  They toss in what they think and make some Knowledge rolls, which usually go badly, and I give them information (or disinformation, depending on the check results) then we all toss in random other thoughts into the mix.  Here’s an example of when they were all fascinated by Sindawe’s bout of diarrhea…

“Maybe it’s ghoul fever!”
“No, ghoul fever is a myth.”
<One PC rolls a Heal check>
“I think he just can’t hold his liquor.”
“He’s drunk way more than that before, I’ve seen it…”
“Well, this time he was drinking rag squeezin’s at the Dead Duck.”
“Fair point.”
“Maybe it’s cholera. Disaster area and all.”
<Another PC rolls a Heal check>
“I think it’s being caused by miasma.  He needs to get some clean air.”
“So get out of Riddleport, you mean.”
“Do you have a fever? I check him for fever.”
“Is he flushed?”
“Uh, I don’t know, he’s black. How do I tell?”
“Can we stop talking about my poo issues now? I feel fine to go on, really…”

First Session (14 page pdf) – “After the Flood” – Riddleport is rocked by a tsunami and the PCs find love and danger in the aftermath.  And then there’s unexplained murders and Salvadora of the God Squad calls in her marker for the PCs to help investigate.  It’s Katrina horror time in the kickoff of our second season of Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

Well, we finished out the first huge year-long plot arc of Reavers last time, a mashup of the Freeport Trilogy, Second Darkness: Shadow In The Sky, and a raft of good 3e/3.5e adventures.  Everyone agreed to re-up for another run, so Season Two has begun!

When we last left our PCs, a tsunami had hit Riddleport.  In Second Darkness, this is mostly brushed off as color and it’s on with the story.  I wanted to dwell on it more.  Coming from the Gulf Coast originally, natural disasters like Katrina’s flooding of New Orleans and Galveston’s regular destruction by hurricanes are real threats and I wanted to reflect that in game.

I did some description of the aftermath, but the players filled in a lot for me.  They really got into the spirit of it.  There were exchanges like “I bet it smells like that time my apartment’s parking lot flooded and water got into my car and the carpet molded.”  “Ewwww!” It worked out pretty well and added a definite feel to the session.

Then it was time to meet up with all the people they left behind.  They were clearly considering just up and killing Saul for hanging them out to dry, but no one acted on it. The rest of the Gold Goblin crew was in evidence too.  And they went to rescue Lixy from her collapsed apartment, through the sewer grate she nearly threw Wogan’s gun down back in the day.  There was a lot of stuff that recurred from previous sessions. They even got to talk with Clegg Zincher.  Believe it or not, I didn’t realize what I was doing – Clegg owns this big coliseum and it made sense to me that they would put injured and homeless there, and then someone said “Oh, it’s the Superdome!”  I actually wouldn’t have done it if I’d thought of that analogy just because it was a little too-Katrina.

And then it was time for girlfriend visits.  Tommy’s visit to Lavender Lil was as usual intrigue and sex-soaked.  And then Serpent went looking for Samaritha.  That was more unexpected.  He has always been a little ambivalent about her, and was really irate once it turned out she was a serpent person; I personally wasn’t sure if he’d just forget about her, or try to kill her, or what. I thought it was brilliant how he got drunk and decided to go tell her off.  His interaction with the gendarmes guarding the Cypher Lodge was really funny. For some reason he kept rolling natural 1’s this session, but it wasn’t ever really dangerous, just funny.  After the gendarmes turned him away he wanted to sneak in, but rolled a 1, so he did the drunk-guy thing of wandering ten feet off and then trying to just walk by them again.  Then he tried to climb up to her window and fell off the building.He wasn’t playing it for laughs, and that made it even funnier but also more real.

I was pretty proud of the role-playing.  I know the player is somewhat uncomfortable with RPing relationships, and it wasn’t any more easy with the rest of the group kibitzing him (they were all really into this scene).  When he got in her window, he declared, “I unload all over her!” Everyone collapsed in gales of laughter.  “Uh… Physically, verbally, or sexually?” I inquired.  “No, I mean I really let her have it!”  More laughter.  “Again, physically, verbally, or sexually?” Then he tried talking with her.  It was tough, she was sure he would hate her and either Serpent or the player wasn’t letting much tenderness seep through, and so she was hard to convince.  He rolled a couple Diplomacy checks that didn’t go anywhere.  “You’re going to have to use the ‘L’ word!” the rest of the group advised him.  He finally showed a little bit of intimacy and that convinced her; she was really looking hard for anything to prove he did like her, and it took him a while but he came through.

And then it’s off with Salvadora to investigate some weird problem.  And with that we segue into the Richard Pett horror special, Carrion Hill.  Mmmwah hah hah haaaaaa! Pucker factor is high!

Twenty-Eighth Session (13 page pdf) – “Madness in Riddleport” – The PCs confront Elias Tammerhawk and his evil ritual in an epic battle atop the Riddleport Light.  But that’s nothing compared to the secrets they uncover after they are sucked into the spirit world!  Will Riddleport, and our Reavers, survive?  Find out in the grand finale of the first season of Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

Go read the summary first, there’s surprises a-plenty, and you don’t want to find them out from my behind the scenes commentary here.

No really, read the summary first.

Back?  OK!  I mashed up a bunch of stuff for this finale. The boss fight itself combines the Green Ronin classic Madness in Freeport, where it’s a serpent man posing as the Sea Lord in the lighthouse conducting a Cthulhuoid ritual to drive everyone in Freeport crazy, with the first chapter of Paizo’s Second Darkness Adventure Path, where it’s a drow using the Cyphergate to bring down a meteor and cause an incidental tsunami.  “Which one should I use?” is a question only suckers ask. A hardcore GM says, “Both, bitch, and here’s a third thing too!”

In this case, my third thing was the PCs’ jaunt into the spirit world.  Whatever you want to call it – shadow Riddleport, the ghostlands, the spirit realm – it’s what has been tying together the shadows and voodoo stuff going on in the campaign. And in terms of good places to go into the shadowlands, Riddleport is one of those places with a lot of restless souls per capita.  In fact, the PCs sent a lot of them there.

It was inspired by two things.  In Denizens of Freeport, there is an NPC, a crazy elven vampire named Lord Bonewrack, who reigns over a shadow Freeport.  Tammerhawk just being dead is lame, but being the vampiric overlord of an alternate Riddleport is cool.  And then also the Miyazaki movie Spirited Away inspired some of the visuals and experiences in the city.  (My daughter wanted the tasty food stand from the movie to be in the adventure; she was disappointed that Wogan resisted its lure and thus didn’t get attacked by the “fire-barfing piggies.”  Those who have seen the movie know about the food stand and the pigs, but she added in the “fire-barfing” part to kick it up a notch.  A girl after her father’s heart.)

The shadow Riddleport scene served several important purposes.  Sure, it gave them some valuable intel on Tammerhawk.  But it was also an opportunity to reinforce important story elements, especially past successes and failures and how past choices and experience have shaped the PCs’ lives.

They talked about going into the Gold Goblin’s basement but thought better of it when they remembered that was where the fighting pit was.  Which was good thinking, because just going down there and seeing the ghostly horror resulting from that would have been a 1d4 Wis loss!

Then they got to meet the “real” Elias Tammerhawk. I’m glad they didn’t attack him, that could have been messy. Facing the dead assassin Jesswin (who was technically a “blast shadow,” a new Pathfinder monster) was lively – Tommy had to spend an Infamy Point to not die under her flaming claws.  (A lot of Infamy Points got spent – Wogan used one to knock the serpent head out of the column of light, for example.)

And then bang, right back into the fight!  I liked the “You’re in the middle of a huge combat and…  Now you’re somewhere weird.  NOW YOU’RE BACK GO!” The time dilation of the spirit world meant I didn’t need to worry about their buffs expiring or whatnot.

Here’s a funny game table moment – when Thorgrim shattered the glass of the lighthouse letting the storm in, Wogan did proclaim the power of Gozreh was unleashed.

Paul, thinking this was a result of some actual game mechanic effect, asked Patrick “Oh, cool, what power do you get as a cleric of Gozreh when you’re in a storm?”

Patrick replied, “I get wet.”

The revelation of both the fake Tammerhawk and Samaritha worked out well.  Serpent (well, his player) suspected it, but the rest of the guys didn’t.  They did catch on really quick that she wasn’t in cahoots with Tammerhawk though. She fled in shame, Hatshepsut couldn’t bring herself to attack a serpent person, Zincher bailed out to “go get reinforcements”, and Thorgrim was convinced that the man he thought he was supposed to be protecting was really an impersonating monster freak!  Sindawe and Wogan managed to rejoin it idol and the seven glyphs worth of charge in the Cyphergate shot out in a bolt of energy (in my mind, somewhat resembling the gravity-lens superweapons from the anime Super Atragon, if anyone has seen that) boiling the ocean as it streaked to the south.

It wasn’t mandated that Tammerhawk get away – I actually thought they might pursue him down and do a chase across the Cyphergate, but then it turned out no one had any spider climb or feather fall or anything to do that.  I was a little surprised; Tommy is always buying spider climb potions but I reckon he was out.  And then their gendarme friend Salvadora showed up.

Interestingly enough it was Sindawe who chased down Samaritha to talk to her – sure, he’s twice as fast as Serpent, but it didn’t seem to even occur to Serpent.  We’ll see how it goes with him – she can run off, stay with the party, or do anything in between based on how things develop.

Tammerhawk’s escape was a little bit of a letdown to the PCs, but the expected denouement didn’t happen – instead, a tsunami came!  Paul (Serpent) and Patrick (Wogan) knew what it means when the tide goes out like that, but Serpent made a poor Knowledge:Nature check and figured it was normal. Poor portly Wogan just about didn’t make it to the top of the lighthouse.  I actually thought they’d flee into the city instead, but they reckoned the lighthouse was far up enough on the bluff that it’d make it through.

So in the end of the first “season” of Reavers, they’ve succeeded but at a high cost – both personal (friends lost) and practical (Riddleport is in a very post-Katrina state at the moment).

And that’s the end of my first big plot arc.  Based on what’s happened and what the PCs intend to do next will determine where I go with it.  Piracy on the high seas, with Razor Coast and maybe Sunken Empires?  Off to the Mwangi coast and head into the Serpent’s Skull AP?  Do more around Riddleport and use Freeport and Second Darkness adventures?  We’ll see, but I know what I’m doing next time – our next game day is on Halloween, so be prepared for a Very Special Episode ™ of Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

Twenty-seventh Session (11 page pdf) – “Rumble in the Wizard’s Tower” – It’s a mixed field of angels, demons, and ghosts as the PCs sweep and clear the Riddleport Light looking for an evil ritual.  I mean, an evil ritual besides the ones they are performing. That’s a big Twinkie.  Welcome to the one year anniversary of our Pathfinder pirate campaign, Reavers on the Seas of Fate!

As my adaptation of Madness in Freeport progresses, I used the Goodman Games/Wicked Fantasy Factory adventure “Rumble in the Wizard’s Tower” to flesh out the lighthouse.  In MiF it’s just a boring new lighthouse, but the Riddleport Light is old and was the hangout of a demon summoning sorcerer.  Which calls for some “zazz!”

May I note that a lot of the Goodman stuff is on super-sale at Paizo.com, the WFF adventures are currently $2 a pop – go get them!  They’re good stuff.

Anyway, there’s all kinds of weirdness going on.  Time is speeding up and slowing down.  Everyone that has ever died in the zip code seems to be coming back as a ghost.  Every weird little altar seems to have a direct line to Deity Central.  Who ya gonna call?  The Reavers!

First we had a big setpiece fight with a mess of Riddleport gendarmes guarding the inside of the tower, which was fun.  Then they find the Naughty Box.  I don’t even remember which movie I saw this scene in; I remember an iron box in a big room simply surrounded with crosses and stuff.  Here, it was surrounded with all kinds of evil stuff. They freed an angel from it but it was a little crazy.  Wogan did a good job of wrangling it; Tommy and Sindawe are evil after all so it tended to shoot at them when in doubt.  Then when the imp showed up, it made for some good roleplaying. Sindawe made the call to give the succubus to the imp after having her kill the angel.  Wogan wasn’t all that happy with it but everyone defers to Sindawe. Even if he is a little demon-possessed and crazy.

Then they talk down the ghost of Gebediah Crix and meet their two cop friends.  I wanted to throw in a familiar face to reassert that they are in Riddleport and not just some remote dungeon location.  Next time, it’s the big finale!  They’re prepared to bust through the door and take on Elias Tammerhawk.  Will it be that simple?  Hint: no!  Mmmmwah hah ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!