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. The players, calling themselves the “Otari 2600s” (it’s amusing if you’re old enough to remember lol), are still currently playing the campaign every Sunday night!

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).

Steve 

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

Session 43 – Exploration Mode

The Velstrac proved somewhat trying for poor Gunnar the fighter, who was knocked unconscious twice by the lady in chains. Corny the cleric managed to heal the party at range, giving them a better chance against the creature. Lob the goblin alchemist hit the Velstrac with his alchemist fire, critically injuring it. Over time, the party wore down the fiend, until finally she fled the chamber. Vydar pursued and shot an arrow through the Velstrac’s head, the creature’s body turning to ash as she returned to the Abyss.

The battle had been quite an ordeal, so the party rested for the night in the cells. Gunnar repaired his damaged shield. Everyone leveled up to 7^th.

The next morning, they made their way to the east door of the Velstrac’s torture chamber. Gunnar decided to kick the door (which opened the opposite way) and jammed it, preventing them from moving forward. The south corridor proved more promising, and as the party headed back to the grand concourse, Vydar’s keen eyesight spotted a discolored section of wall on the other side. Testing the wall, he opened a secret door with a fanciful series of knocks. Inside the secret room were transparent walls, which Ezren the wizard determined were one-way viewing glass. Vydar opened a door to the south, discovering and activating the buzz blades they had encountered before. Luckily, they hit the north corridor and he escaped unscathed.

Laying down, the ranger discovered the pressure plate at the entry to the room was a combination of mechanical and magical components, and that a magical keyword might be required to disable it. Chafkem, the mummy, had informed the party he would reward them with a password to a trap and the layout of the dungeon if they killed Jafaki, his mortal enemy, and they guessed this was what he was referring to.

The party headed across the bridge and down a long corridor to a portcullis. Lob managed to squeeze through the bars (courtesy of some slippery ‘massage’ oil supplied by the ranger) and opened the door beyond. He faced a powerful shadow, which marked him for death. With Vydar unable to lift the portcullis, Gunnar rushed forward and lifted it to the ceiling. The fighter grabbed his glowing scimitar and rushed headlong to battle the shadow, but its dark blade pierced his chest. Ezren plied the creature with multiple magic missiles, while Corny lanced it several times with Disrupt Undead. Eventually the shadow was destroyed, and the party breathed easy again.

While Corny treated Gunnar’s wound, the octagonal room beyond the portcullis contained more doors, and more mysteries…     

Session 44 – Stoned & Stunned in the Abomination Vaults

The Otari 2600s investigated the cluster of rooms around the octagonal gate room. A rusty lever controlled the portcullis, and Gunnar the fighter managed to use a piton to jam it open. To the south they found a room with decaying furniture, where a footlocker produced a crumbling book of poison formulas and a hat of disguise. To the west was a long tunnel leading away from (and probably out) of the Abomination Vaults.

As the party ventured further south, Gunnar found the back of a secret door at the end of a long, narrow corridor. Passing through, he found himself on the balcony of a massive arena. Thirty feet below lay an enormous pile of foul-smelling bones, body parts and viscera. Lob the alchemist wondered whether it might be a bigger version of one of the bloody meat piles they had fought earlier.

As the others followed, Gunnar stealthily moved ahead to check a corridor to the north. Unfortunately, Lob was carrying a Morlock projectile launcher on his back that he had acquired some time ago (and had recently learned how to use). The butt of the weapon bounced off the stone tiles several times as he walked, echoing through the arena. A lizard creature appeared around the corner, its eyes flashing at Gunnar. The fighter felt his muscles tightening up, as another appeared and then turned him to stone. Corny the cleric identified the creatures as Basilisks. Lob took cover behind the stone balcony, but each time he tossed an alchemical bomb he glanced at the creatures and caught their eye. Soon, he too was petrified.

Vydar the ranger kept his distance, running to the opposite side of the balcony and using his composite longbow to take long ranged shots at the creatures. Unfortunately, his metabolism had also been affected by one of the basilisk’s stares, and he couldn’t fire as fast as he normally could. Corny managed to use calm emotions to stop one of the basilisks from eating the statue of Gunnar. Vydar filled one of the basilisks with arrows and it ran away, howling in pain. The other Basilisk pursued it into the dark northern corridor. Vydar used his arrows of illumination to light up the area, so he could volley arrows into the beasts from afar. He managed to dispatch one, and Corny lured the other back out onto the balcony where the ranger put an end to it, too.

Corny remembered that basilisk blood restored creatures they had petrified, and so the two remaining heroes drained one creature’s blood and poured it over Gunnar and Lob, returning them to normality. After a brief discussion about restoring a nearby stoned Mulventok and Urdefan, the party decided it was better to move on.

Through a set of double doors on the eastern side of the arena and up some stairs to the room where they previously fought the bone gladiator and Ezren the wizard lost his way in a teleportation circle. Down a side set of stairs into a dank, bloodstained room surrounded by a balcony with a transparent wall, where a slug-like Seugathi monitored the area from a place of safety. A great dinosaur-like creature with no eyes and a mouth encompassing its face appeared around the corner, using a sonic scream to blast half the party. Gunnar rushed up to attack, but the creature managed to tear a big chunk out of him.

Corny healed the big fighter from a distance, but it wasn’t long before the creature used a different sonic cry to stun and deafen Lob and incapacitate the cleric. Vydar had also run into the chamber, wielding his newly acquired dagger of venom because his supply of arrows was low, and he suffered at the jaws and claws of the beast. He managed to claim one of Lob’s healing potions and feed it to Corny. Gunnar made a tactical retreat and dragged the cleric up the stairs. Lob followed and Vydar reversed course, ran into the room and made it to the teleportation circle Ezren had used several days before.

Upstairs, the party collapsed in a heap, vowing to review their approach to clearing the Vaults…         

Session 45 – Upstairs & Downstairs

The Otari 2600s rested up in a spell locked room, licking their wounds and considering strategies to take on the sonic monster they had fought earlier. Ezren the wizard slept fitfully, while Corny the cleric twisted and turned, mumbling plans in his sleep. After eight hours, the party arose to discuss strategies. Although Gunnar the fighter wanted to confront the beast they had run from, Lob the goblin alchemist preferred taking a different way down; Vydar the ranger didn’t mind either way. Eventually the team agreed they should visit the Mitflits upstairs, to whom they had promised they would clear the 2^nd level of Morlocks.

The party backtracked through the levels, up the stairs and through dank passages, until they emerged into the evening darkness, making their way to a door at the foot of the Gauntlight lighthouse. Gunnar’s shoulder turned it to matchwood, but as he entered the circular room, glancing at the spiral staircase that led to a trapdoor 100 feet above, a pool of blood on the floor rose into a pillar resembling Belcorra, and started blasting the fighter with blue eye beams. Unperturbed by the beams (which struck with the ferocity of mosquito bites), the big fighter flanked the spinning pillar of blood as Vydar rushed in with his dagger. Together, they vanquished the blood pillar, which spiraled up to the ceiling and disappeared through the keyhole of the trapdoor.

Gunnar dashed up the creaking iron stairs, the others not far behind him. The bronze trapdoor was locked, requiring both Lob and Vydar’s skills to bypass. Gunnar burst into the room to be confronted by a Vampiric Mist, which the party easily dispatched. The Gauntlight glowed a nauseating blue, but it was much less intense than previously. Gunnar’s attempts to break the light’s mechanism failed.

The party decided to head back down to the castle ruin where they met with Boss Skraung and his mitflits. Lob explained the morlocks were all dead, and made a deal with the boss to look after the narcoleptic Ezren while the party explored further below. Vydar purchased 40 arrows from the mitflits, as his supplies had been rapidly dwindling.

Back into the depths, the Otari 2600’s descended the spiral stairs to the level below, finding a curved transparent wall overlooking an underground lake and facing a Seugathi guard and a Grothlut. Lob finished the Seugathi with a bomb and Vydar pinned the grothlut to the transparent wall with a deadly accurate arrow. Investigating further, the party noticed the spiral staircase led further down, the smell of sulfur rising from below. This intermingled with the acrid chemical smell that seemed to pervade this level of the dungeon.

Gunnar opened a door opposite the stairwell, and Gunnar carefully reconnoitered the corridor beyond. Another door to the north revealed a path overlooking the lake, hemmed in by a winding transparent wall. The door to the south led to a room with two plinths and solid metal door. Lob and Vydar checked the plinths and realized the locks on the plinths were beyond their skillsets.

The party headed north, following the winding trail southwards and across a bridge, still overlooking the lake. After meeting two dead ends, they backtracked and Corny identified a secret door and foot switch. Entering a room with another transparent wall, the Otari 2600s recognized the room they had fought the sonic beast in. Luckily the monster was on the other side of the stone glass. They fought a Seugathi researcher, then moved south to investigate a storeroom, where Lob found a few useful items.

Corny discovered another secret door with a corridor leading west. Gunnar approached the secret door at the other end, opening it and revealing another Seugathi and two biomechanical morlock creatures…   

Next Week: Fight!