Introduction

I previously posted some warts-and-all email summaries of the ‘Curse of Strahd’ campaign I ran in 2017-18, the ‘Tomb of Annihilation’ campaign I ran in 2018-19, the ‘Out of the Abyss’, a campaign I ran in 2020, the ‘Phandelver’s Pact’ campaign I ran from 2020-21, and the ‘Shadows over Saltmarsh’ campaign from 2021-22. CoS was the first campaign I sent summaries to players by email after each game (I was a bit lazy prior to that), which is why I could use them for this column.

Here are the session summaries from my first Pathfinder 2e campaign which I started running in 2023 after WoTC stunned the TTRPG community by deciding to be dicks about the OGL (remember that?). Like many who started playing PF2e, we commenced with the Beginner’s Box, progressed to Troubles in Otari and then to the Abomination Vaults campaign.

I apologize in advance for the writing in these summaries – they’re a bit raw, and not fancy at all (I don’t have time for fancy writing when typing them up late at night after each game lol). The campaign continues, and we’re still learning as we go!

Steve 🙂

Warning: These summaries contain spoilers for Paizo’s Abomination Vaults campaign

Session 25 – The Pining Ghost

The party rested for the night in the luxurious office they had defeated the sprite in. Corny the cleric cast Remove Disease and managed to cure Bequian the bard of 2^nd stage Ghoul Fever he had picked up in the battle with the ghoul tattooist. The bard was very tired after a bad night’s sleep and opted to rest in the office while the others continued exploring.

The party headed back to the restricted records room. Opening one of the doors to the south, Gunnar the fighter encountered two Canker Cultist ghouls in a stinking scriptorium. The party made short work of them. Corny sensed magic not far away. Gunnar opened the next door along, and found a scriptorium in much better order, replete with desks, books, papers, quills and ink – and a ghostly woman, who enquired as to where the party had been, why they had taken so long to get there and to start work transcribing several books.

Gunnar appeared to offend the ghost when, while brandishing his sword, he advised her they weren’t there for that. The ghost screamed in despair, pining for her lost lover “Volluk”. Gunnar was affected, agonizing over the bad decisions he’d made in life as a massive weight of ennui descended upon him. Corny and Lob, the goblin alchemist, were unaffected and moved to desks to start transcribing (or at least pretending to – the paper was rotten and much of the ink dried out). The ruse worked – the ghost praised them for their good work, and it distracted her from attacking Gunnar. Corny explained the big fighter was a bodyguard and their escort.

While the ghost supervised Lob and Corny, she ignored Gunnar, who investigated a skeleton by the south wall. It was clutching a small painted image of Volluk, a dark elf the ghost was apparently pining for. Gunnar took the picture to show to Corny, but the ghost became upset. She passed through the wall and then returned a minute later, emerging from the same area. Gunnar checked the wall and found a secret door, which he opened.

The ghost, now incensed, attacked the fighter and eventually almost brought him low. Gunnar informed her she was dead, which she refused to believe and which upset her even more. Lob, Gunnar and Corny’s initial attacks were somewhat ineffectual. Lob burned the skeleton in an attempt to put the ghost to rest, but it didn’t work. He attempted to persuade the ghost to give up pining for Volluk, but it was Corny’s much more persuasive attempt that upset her. Corny tried to blast the ghost with a heal spell, but she was too strong. The ghost rendered Corny unconscious, but Lob sneaked under the desks to feed the cleric a healing potion. Corny’s second attempt to heal almost destroyed the ghost, however, and Gunnar managed to finish her off with his Smoking Sword.

Lob pulled a magical chain shirt from the ashes of the skeleton, which Gunnar put on. The party headed to the secret door to investigate what lay beyond…      

Session 26 – The Gauntlight Beam

Beyond the secret door lay the scriptorium ghost’s sanctum, which contained a desk covered in scrolls and a filing cabinet. Using an iron key found on the skeletal body in the scriptorium, Lob the goblin alchemist opened the cabinet and recovered more books for Morlibint. The Bag of Holding was reaching capacity, so the Otari 2600s decided to head back to town. Corny the cleric pulled a strange scroll covered in red writing of an unknown script from the desk. No one could read it, so into the bag it went.

They headed back to the sofa room to wake Bequian the bard. The magically locked door was ajar and the bard was nowhere to be found. Had something from the dungeons taken him, or had he wandered away? The party took the elevator upstairs and strode back to the secret room where the ex-prisoners had been left with food and water. The three were very happy to see them, as it had been several days since they had been deposited there.

Upstairs, Lob and Gunnar the fighter met with Bob the Mitflit, who took them to Boss Skrawng. They presented the Mitflit boss with the head of the Morlock king. Skrawng and the Mitflits cheered as the head was held aloft – now they could move back to their former domain on the level below. Gunnar warned they might want to wait until the party had cleared the rest of the level.

As the Otari 2600s exited the keep and walked through the fogfen, the ground shook and the Gauntlight lighthouse projected a beam of eerie blue light towards Otari. Fearing the worst, the party ran south through the forest. Arriving at the forest’s edge, they witnessed the beam striking the graveyard on the cliff’s summit. Skeletons and zombies clawed their way out of the ground and charged to the cliff’s edge in a vain attempt to assault the town below (most of them fell to their second deaths). The party rushed to the cemetery, where several guards were quaking in fear. Battling their way through skeletons and zombies, the Otari 2600s eventually faced off against a spider-like Scalathrax, with Gunnar bearing most of the brunt (as usual). Ezren the wizard was in town, and having noticed the commotion up on the cliff, hastened to the cemetery to join the battle, summoning an Azer and assisting his friends to defeat the remaining undead. All were overjoyed for the wizard’s return, and they headed down the narrow winding path to the Dawnflower Library and the town.

At the library, Vandy Banderdash advised Corny the Cleric she would do some research on Belcorra, the sorceress behind Gauntlight, who had been defeated by the Roseguard some 500 years before.

The Otari 2600s headed to popular bar ‘The Crook’s Nook’, which spanned a bridge over the river. There they met Yinyasmera, owner of the tavern. She rewarded them with 50 GP for recuing her “boys” from the dungeons, and although Gunnar and Lob attempted to wheedle why the ex-prisoners were at the keep, they found the friendly Yinyasmera unforthcoming. Despite this, they received free drinks and fish and chips takeaway.

The party had agreed to camp outside the cemetery, just in case of another Gauntlight attack. As they settled down around the fire to catch up and fill Ezren in on what he had missed, the wily wizard discovered the scroll recovered in the scriptorium was actually a devil’s contract, written in Infernal. There was a loophole in the contract that could end the devil Korlock’s service if pointed out to him. So far, the party had not encountered such a creature.

As they settled down for the night, each had their own personal sense of foreboding. What was going on in Gauntlight? What secrets were yet to be revealed, deep below the crumbling keep…

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