Tag Archives: shackles

Twentieth Session (14 page pdf) – “Devil’s Arches, Part IV” – The PCs brave an abandoned secret base full of traps and undead and terrain and other such impediments.

There’s a brutal fight with a coral golem that ends up being an exercise in escape and evasion. Then more elite Chelaxian undead water marines! And a chimera! And traps!

Best quote: Sindawe asks no one in particular, “When will authoritarian regimes realize that aquatic warriors are not the solution to their problems?!?”

Nineteenth Session (8 page pdf) – “Devil’s Arches, Part III” – The shore team heads out into Chimera Cove and a secret Chelish naval base. It’s not as abandoned as you’d hope.

So they finally have reached the Treasure of Chimera Cove and delve into it looking for the undead dragon turtle war machine called the Terraken.

They have some fights – giant poison octopus, elite sea zombies – but the trap with the gas and mimics is the most dangerous. PCs hate mimics! They refused to touch anything on the grounds “it could be a mimic” for the rest of the session.

Eighteenth Session (8 page pdf) – “Devil’s Arches, Part II” – A shore team strikes out across Devil’s Arches to find the resting place of a Chelish naval superweapon. Sindawe has his usual amount of luck with the ladies.

So I did some quick research and decided from geography to base the island on the real world Bissagos Islands. I also had a problem in that I didn’t know where they were going to go necessarily. So here’s my session prep; I looked up some perhaps relevant monsters.

Devil’s Arches (Bissagos islands)
Palm products, coconut, timber, slave trade
The people – animal masks (ox, stingray, shark), 
Ox wars http://www.africanamerica.org/topic/bijago-people-guinea-bissau-african-matriarchal-tribe
river banks are coated in mangroves, blue mud/slime, decay – malaria (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/afflictions/diseases/malaria-jungle-fever) is prevalent, dysentery, yellow fever
Gholdako if investigate arch in city of bleeding stones, duppies maybe
native village 
Soucoyants (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/monstrous-humanoids/soucouyant/) near the cove.  They know to lower a holy symbol of Aroden on 5 fathoms of silver line. But of course they want blood.

That’s all I need to prep sessions nowadays. So I describe the island as they head across it, where they meet some natives I base on the Bijago people. Sindawe gets another visit from Mama Watanna, who doesn’t want them to keep the undead dragon turtle they seek as a weapon, but to set Turtle’s spirit free. Conflict!!!

They don’t bother to go to the City of Bleeding Stones, and then they decide to give their native guides to the soucouyant for their blood to find out how to get into the Terraken base. (The soucouyant is reminiscent of the witch that tries to get Conan and then flies off as a fireball in Conan the Barbarian, I wonder if there was a relation there.)

Seventeenth Session (12 page pdf) – “Devil’s Arches” – Another naval encounter sets the pirates to flight. They decide to visit Medruzbal on Devil’s Arches, and ply the town for all it’s worth.

The Teeth of Araska, fresh from taking the Solution, is suckered in and ambushed by the Omen, a larger ship with 18 pound guns. They take some shots and decide to break contact, which they manage to do with some quick thinking spell work.

Then they sneak ashore on the island of the Devil’s Arches, where they want to go to Hell Harbor but don’t want to approach it by sea. So they go ashore on Medruzbal and plan to go overland. Luckily my copious collection of Golarion lore gives me some starting points and I improvise from there.

Our session scribe must have been hitting the sauce this time because the jokes roll hard. One of my favorites is “A hungry guard trips the trap while searching for the warthog. He squeals and yells and flops around like a Spanish soccer player.” There’s meme references, like “The torturer is dragged off to the gibbet. ‘You got knocked the fuck out!’ exclaim his soon-to-be-ex-comrades.” There’s inside jokes. Festive!

Sixteenth Session (10 page pdf) – “Hell’s Harbor” – The Teeth of Araska travels to Devil’s Arches, and fights some other ships in the meantime.

The Araska gets a new crewman in the form of a stowaway kenku. (The summary claims it’s a tengu but, you know, random Japanese critter names.) Now that they’re in the Shackles I have plenty of material from the Skull & Shackles Adventure Path, but at least one of the players has been in that one so I have to stay away from its major features.

They they come across a Port Peril “naval” schooner, the Solution, and capture it after a short but fierce engagement. The running joke of “Serpent is a doppleganger” is turned around by Serpent who uses his hat of disguise to take on the form of Sindawe and claim that Sindawe is a doppleganger, which gets him stabbed by his own crew till it all gets worked out. Serpent is hoping his PC immunity will protect him. Will it? We’ll see next time!