Tag Archives: sun

Nineteenth Session (10 page pdf) – “The Long Voyage Home” – The Teeth of Araska and captured Black Bunyip sail through the hazards of sunken Azlant. And a second chance encounter with the Fishwife ends up with a high body count.

First we get to  know the surviving crewmen of the Black Bunyip. Then we find out that JJ was built with a watertight internal cavity. Then Serpent weathers the wrath of Samaritha – she’s pregnant, but he doesn’t know that, so theories about why she’s acting psychotic range widely.

And then, they meet an old nemesis – the fishwife!  She lures sailors to their doom, and the squid she has dragging her ship around is no mean opponent either. A decent chunk of ship’s crew dies in the conflict, but most notably is the demise of Jaren the Jinx – allegedly at the hands of the squid but actually at the hands of Sindawe! He’s had it with that darn jinx-curse he bears (it turns all 1’s into critical fumbles). But you know why you never kill a cursed man, right? Every pirate knows that…

Finally, they make it out of the Azlanti islands into the cold northern waters! To get there you go along the trades to the south, but to get back to Avistan you have to come around far north to get the winds. More shipboard drama, next time!

Eighteenth Session (9 page pdf) – “Capture of the Black Bunyip” – The crew of the Araska finds out that Morgan Baumann has set an ambush for them. “What’s the plan?” “Let’s get ‘em!” It’s touch and go and many a gold Infamy Point coin is spent. Who leaves the crew on this very special episode of Reavers on the Seas of Fate?

All right, we’re back on board the Teeth of Araska and they’ve finally located who they came here to find, Captain Baumann, and gotten rid of pesky Flying Azlanti Death-Ray Lenses that stood in their way.

Most of the guys have read various naval fiction so I like throwing in some realism; they had to get started by towing the ship with the ship’s boats out of the cove. The Black Bunyip has laid a trap, as well, which in classic adventurer fashion they deliberately run right into!

Lacking any other options, Sindawe declares, “We’ll ram and kill them all in hand to  hand!” The pirates cheer, because that’s the way they roll.

The fight is brutal but in hand until a rogue dispel magic removes Samaritha’s domination of Daphne the sorceress. She snatches up the fallen Gareb’s dragon staff (he found it some damn place, it’s worth a fortune) and turns into a blue dragon and turns on the Araskans.

They manage to fell Baumann and drive off the dragon for now, at the cost of many Infamy Points. Sindawe cuts off her thumbs, an idea he got from when they found the thumbless Mase Venjum in the Araska’s brig originally.

JJ [the disturbingly anatomically correct sea-homunculus] approaches the officers and says, “Hey, hey. You know why thumbless people can’t  betray you?”

A concerned Sindawe replies, “No. Why?”

JJ hunches over and talks in a stage whisper, “Hey, do you know who’s going to betray  the captain?” He looks around conspiratorially and says, “This guy!” He begins poking his own chest, but keeps his thumbs hidden indicating that they have been cut off. The conspirator is crestfallen to realize that he can’t identify himself as “this guy.” This amuses the command staff greatly.

Those that survive, level! Ooh, level 7!  They all writhed in glee. (Remember we started in 2009, so it’s a little more than a level a year.)

Fourteenth Session (9 page pdf) – “Civil War” – The crew sponsors a coup of the cultist leadership and organizes a battle with most factions of the island mobilized against each other. Meanwhile they plan to kill the village priest and get the Lens control item.  They can handle two CR 12′s and some trash mobs right?

First – more planning! They negotiate with the Fertile Families and go get the crazy hermit and his killbot (turns out he’s the priest’s disenfranchised brother) into the fray.

They start the battle by luring the death ray away; as it returns Wogan casts a Lunar Veil spell that Saeng Ki gave them in the Rain Tiger, which I let work like a solar eclipse. The mass combat was a big barrel of pain, especially as whenever a cultist was defeated, a firey blob came out of them to join the fight itself. Olibrax the priest was high level, and he brought out his ace in the hole, left here deliberately to guard the Flame control – a Shining Child.

Shining Child

Remember our heroes are still sixth level. But it doesn’t have time for a symbol of insanity and a scintillating pattern would mainly mess up all the various mook troops around, so it scorching rays the heck out of them, nearly killing Samaritha. Every round is a whole load of pain for them. But they pull it out with an alley-oop – Serpent kills the priest and Sindawe passes the Flame control headgear to Xiola, and then Wogan drops the eclipse and Xiola burns the Shining Child to death with the Flame of Guidance! That reminded me of the anime Bastard! where the hero burns fire so hot that it fries an efreet… The Flame actually does half fire and half plasma damage so even flame critters get burned!

Efreet the Fire Elemental

There’s still a bunch of cultists, but this is enough to call for surrender… Next time!

Thirteenth Session (8 page pdf) – “Dreams of Conquest” – The crew and Xiola hatch a plan to get control of the Celestial Lens.  They get the outcast colony on board and create a battle plan that doesn’t involve them all getting wiped out.

The PCs return to the rebel colony and, as usual, anytime all the PCs are gone I do some rolling to see what happened in the meantime – in this case, one death, one marriage, some loot, and a recruit. And a lead on finding the Black Bunyip!

The group does what they do best, which is gathering intel and synthesizing an attack plan out of it. They will wait till a day where the control doodad for the Flame of Guidance, aka the Flying Azlanti Death Ray Lens, is in the less secure hands of the cultist colony instead of the “near infinite CR” third island which is a blasted fiery hellscape. They convince the Fertile Families of the Sun Temple group and the rebel colonists to help to various degrees. All session is spent on the battle planning and prep – but they know the better they plan, the better it will go – next time!

Ninth Session (9 page pdf) – “Torches In The Night” – The crew hangs out with a friendly member of the Sun Temple Colony, but their head priest decides to just burn them all out. Then it’s time to mess with Azlanti quicksilver grave/study aids.

Xiola Chelman

Well, the PCs befriend Xiola Chelman, leader of the Fertile Families from the Sun Temple Colony, and she takes them back there. In usual fashion they don’t exactly make a good first impression…

This is one of those weird cases where the party had a good idea – asking about local rules – but then somehow rather than shutting up and listening for an answer they started explaining and elaborating and getting wrapped around their own axle. This led to a semi-in-character, semi-not discussion about the feasibility of asking about “places not to pee.”

Anyway, they get boarded up in a house and burned to death.  Or at least, that’s the plan, but they break out, taking the drunken Xiola and the flame-goo-possessed Lefty. Once the head priest summons a salamander they skedaddle for the forest. When they were trying to wake up the drunken Xiola and she muttered “Lemme along or I’m gonna kill ya,” that’s an Easter egg quote from a well-known tale of mine having to do with strippers and Jamaica.

They find out that Lefty has indeed been a plant for the cultists, but content themselves with winging him when he tries to flee and tying him up. Then they use a weird Azlanti graveyard/computer thing (actually from Shore to Sea but they never interacted with it there so I moved it here) and discovered that there’s an underground temple to the vampire goddess Zura underneath – and it turns out that Sindawe’s treasure map leads to it, as a Mwangi trail marker he finds that his father left indicates!

Eighth Session (14 page pdf) – “Cultists, Guns, and Money” – The line between friend and foe grows ever more slim and tenuous as the crew trades with a hermit and his killbot, fights some Sun Colonists and saves others, and are maybe betrayed by yet another…

OK, sorry, I’ve gotten like 2 years behind on blog posts for this campaign – we are still hacking away at it every other week like clockwork though! It’s going for epic length. Let’s see if I can get you all caught up.

When we last left our friendly pirate crew they had ventured out into the Arcadian Ocean to seek treasure in the spires of lost Azlant, as well as bring wanted pirate Morgan Baumann of the Black Bunyip back to Riddleport. They found the long-lost Sun Temple Colony (described in Lost Cities of Golarion, and I’m riffing off it) and have begun to explore and befriend (and/or slay) the natives. They discovered that the main group on the island has some kind of weird sun god and controls a Floating Azlanti Death Lens that does an ant-meets-magnifying-glass routine on anyone trying to come or go from the island. They have a buddy from the other group of ex-colonists, a one-handed lad named Lefty, who is guiding them as they explore the isle further.

First they get cornered by mutated gibbering dudes that set things on fire by touch. They escape them and meet a crazed hermit with a “killbot” who also pounds on them until they manage to engage him in conversation.  He reminds several people in the group of their crazy old Fox News-watching grandparents and so the discussion tends towards the evils of immigrants and the perils of fluoride in the water; they end up trading him stuff for cool bits of lost Azlanti tech.

Then they have a run-in with the Sun Temple Colonists, which is quite violent and during which they find out that they have some kind of fire-blobs in them and are immune to fire. They start to get suspicious of Lefty, which leads to my favorite exchange of the session:

Wogan turns on Lefty, slaps him and says, “Did you signal those guys from the tower? Are you working with the cultists?” Wogan slaps him again for good measure.

Lefty reddens and begins to tear up. He manages, “No…”

Wogan says, “I don’t believe you! What are you up to?” More slapping and yelling follows until Lefty cries out, “I’m changing! I can’t stay with my people much longer; I’ll have to join the cultists.”

Serpent says, “Puberty?”

Wogan asks, “Fish peoplism?”

Lefty replies, “I can’t tell you! My people consider it evil!”

Sindawe says, “Look, you can always join my crew. We don’t care what you’re changing into, because we can always use an extra set of hands.” Then considering the possibilities, he adds, “Are you turning into one of those touch burning mutants? Because that would be a lower rate of pay than ‘cultist’.”

Wogan whispers, “‘Bullet to the head’ sort of wages.” Serpent nods.

Then, based on their experience from Shore to Sea, they decide to talk to the Watchers, aka Azlanti Streetlamps, aka will-o-the-wisps.  That goes a little rocky, but they save a lady named Xiola from the colony!