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 46 – Between a Rock and a Hard Place            

Ezren the wizard awoke in the ruins of Gauntlight Keep, surrounded by mitflits. They explained his companions had left him in their care to sleep off his narcolepsy. Paying Boss Skraung some gold for looking after him, Ezren followed Bob the mitflit to the secret door leading downstairs to the Abomination Vaults. The wizard made his way down to the level the Otari 2600s had entered, smelling the sulfur from the level below and hearing voices in Infernal speaking there. The wizard hid in a room off the side of the spiral staircase, observing a devil and a grothlut accessing the landing. The devil mentioned the Seugathi were no longer guarding the entry. Ezren quietly closed the door and found himself in an octagonal room stained with rust. High above, he could just make out an iron grate. Across the room, he located a cave tunnel, but didn’t proceed further for fear of what might lair there.

Back to the original door, cracking it open to look outside. The devil and grothlut had gone, perhaps back down to the level below. Ezren took the opportunity to dash over to the opposite door, opening it and entering a tunnel with a t-intersection at the end. “I wish the others had left a trail,” he mused. Turning the corner, he found an open door leading to a ledge enclosed in transparent stone. Beyond was an underground cavern and lake. Knowing the open door was likely the work of his party, he followed the path to an open secret door (they did leave a trail, after all!) and found a seugathi body, a few days dead. The sonic dinosaur he had encountered earlier paced back and forth behind the transparent stone wall, following him as he headed south towards Vydar the ranger’s torchlight.

Meanwhile, Gunnar the fighter had opened a secret door to reveal two mechanical dreshkan – horribly fleshwarped morlocks – and a seugathi. As the battle commenced, Lob pitched a bomb, burning the two dreshkan. The seugathi’s mindfog affected Gunnar briefly, but he shook off the effects. Corny’s divine lance missed. Vydar was in two minds, as the sonic dinosaur had followed Ezren and was now blasting the transparent stone nearby.

Ezren cast grease on the floor between Gunnar and the dreshkan, on which Gunnar slipped and fell. Ezren ran up a set of nearby stairs to get away from the sonic beast. Despite Corny’s protestations, Gunnar and Vydar entered the hallway and fought the seugathi, with the ranger impaling the slug-like creature against the wall. Unfortunately, its body deactivated the magic sigils and removed the transparent observation wall to the arena. Down below, the corpse flesh of the mound of bones and bodies, a Shanrighol Behemoth, slid up the side of the arena to the observation deck. Gunnar took Corny’s advice and fled up the stairs to the room of safety with Ezren. Vidar was struck by a rotting pseudopod and held fast, but managed to slip free and run away. Meanwhile, the sonic creature had broken through the transparent stone in its area and blasted Corny and Lob with sound waves, affecting their nervous systems. Lob flailed and stumbled up the corridor until Vydar grabbed and carried him up the stairs to the safe room. Soon all were inside, with the door closed behind them.

Vydar listened at the door, hearing the brief sounds of fighting below. Ezren read some notes left by a seugathi attempting to determine how the blade trap the party had encountered earlier worked. Its conclusion: the blades were completely randomized and there was no way to predict where they would appear. The door to the north led to the trapped room, so there was only one way out – back the way they came. After a brief rest to bind their wounds, the party followed Vidar as he sneaked down the stairs. The sonic dinosaur was nowhere to be seen, but as he and the party moved down the secret corridor to the observation room, everyone could hear the sound of the Shanrighol Behemoth slowly merging with the bodies of the dead dreshkan and seugathi in the arena below. Vydar tested the door to the north – it led to stairs going up. He switched to the west door, which led to some kind of sauna with a putrid smell emanating from within.

As the party poured in and closed the door, a groan erupted from one of the stalls…               

Session 47 – Like Ships, Passing in the Night…

(This session was all role playing, and as a result, one of my favorites from the campaign)

Blue clawed arms extended under the stalls, grasping and grabbing anything that came near. A putrid, rotting smell permeated the air, but none of the party were adversely affected. Ezren the wizard recognized the creatures in the stalls as ghasts. Each stall had an intricate clockwork latch linked to a lever on the wall, so the ghasts couldn’t escape the stalls. The party easily avoided them, with Corny the cleric casting lock on the balcony door to ensure nothing followed them in.

Lob the goblin alchemist sidled down the corridor to check the four curtained off rooms, which contained dilapidated massage tables. Steam was flowing from the room behind the last curtain at the end. Gunnar the fighter entered the sauna, where he confronted a burly skulk enjoying the steam. The skulk introduced himself as Murschen, his town’s best brawler. He spoke in the Common tongue, a language the party hadn’t yet heard in the Vaults. Murschen asked who they were, and Ezren did a round of introductions.

Murschen explained he had travelled the world in search of fame and fortune, eventually arriving in the vaults a year ago because he’d heard the seugathi fleshwarpers could make him a better fighter. He had the Aklo sigil for ‘Victor’ on his forehead. He noticed that Ezren and Vydar the ranger had the sigil for ‘Loser’ on their foreheads and laughed as he discussed the teleport room and the challenge within. Murschen mentioned he had “put down” the sonic dinosaur, and that he remained unbeaten. Lob asked if he was aware of Jafaki, the seugathi they had been tasked to find, and Murschen said he did. The musclebound skulk mentioned one challenge had eluded him: Vischari, the urdefan manager of the Warped Brew bar, was a pugilist like him, and although he was keen to face her in a match, she wasn’t interested. If the party could arrange a fight with her, he would tell them where to find Jafaki.

Vydar wondered where the bar was, and Murschen explained it was up the north stairs off the balcony they’d just entered from. Lob and Corny both listened at the door to the balcony to see if the Shanrighol Behemoth was still there, but there was only silence beyond. Gunnar was keen to take out the ghasts, so Corny cast healing magic on the party, with the wave wounding the ghasts in their stalls. Gunnar then finished them off, with some minor assistance from Ezren and the cleric.

Lob used his wand of the mage to activate the magic sigils on the balcony wall, returning the transparent rock to block off the balcony from the shanrigol behemoth below in the arena. The party then made its way up the stairs to the Warped Brew.

Inside were a Drider and 4 Morlocks, who briefly looked up from their reading, drinking and card games and then promptly ignored the explorers. Lob made his way to the bar, climbed up on a barstool and ordered 3 brews from the morlock bartender, while asking whether Vischari was around. Gunnar and Ezren took their places at the bar next to the plucky goblin, who downed his foul-smelling brew easily. Gunnar decided to take a chance and drank his, but he was made of stern stuff and held it down. Ezren passed on his.

The bartender pointed to the Drider, mentioned she was Lallizanx, and that the party would need to talk to her if they wanted to see the manager. Only Lob and Ezren could speak Undercommon, so the wizard introduced himself to the Drider and explained they wanted to see Vishari. He summoned a spider to make a web with “hello” in Undercommon, but the spider took so long to make a single letter she wasn’t too impressed. The Drider changed her tune when Gunnar stood next to Ezren, however. She mentioned she’d be willing to get the manager if she had the pleasure of Gunnar’s company later that night. Gunnar, not understanding anything she said, simply nodded along as Ezren pimped him away.

Lallizanx retrieved Vischari from a back room, and the Urdefan informed the party that she would be willing to fight Murschen only if they could outperform the local band Shadow Malice, which had just appeared on the stage and launched into a punk rock song. A xulgath luteist, duergar drummer, ratfolk singer and caligni luteist performed to cheers from the morlocks. The party agreed to challenge the band.

Ezren was first up, using classy aerobatic displays of magic missile to hole silver coins and impress the audience. Next up, Gunnar stripped down, displaying his muscles and lifting Lallizanx in a feat of prodigious strength. She winked and mentioned there’d be more heavy lifting later, but Gunnar was still oblivious. Lob created some amazing fireworks from his alchemical bombs. Finally, Vydar fired his arrow through one of Ezren’s rings. Corny sat in the crowd, somewhat paranoid about the morlocks around him, as he smoked a joint or two.

Next, the party had to perform a song using the band’s instruments. The crowd was already revved up from the previous performances, and the impromptu song went down well. Descending off the stage to cheers, Vischari agreed to fight Murschen. Vydar collected the skulk brawler and Murschen  and Vischari faced off on the stage. After a grueling 15-minute bout, filled with bruising hits and much blood and sweat, the two called it a draw, kissed and retired from the stage to get to know each other MUCH better.

At this point Lallizanx beckoned Gunnar to follow her out the back, which he reluctantly did (but not before being fortified by some of Lob’s alchemical potions and one of Corny’s ‘Forget Everything’ brownies). Gunnar gave his all for his country, and an hour and a half later returned a changed man, covered in webbing, scratches and bruises, and walking oddly. He sat mutely in the corner.                  

Vischari and Murschen returned and the skulk informed the party where to find Jafaki. They would have to cross the floor of the arena (the shanrigol behemoth’s territory) to find Jafaki’s laboratory – exactly where they didn’t want to go. As the party left, Lallizanx gave Gunnar a smile and a wave.

Out on the balcony, the party viewed the unmoving mass of corpse flesh in the arena and discussed how they would steal past it. Eventually they arrived at a plan – Ezren would summon a horse, it would run down to the arena, distracting the Shanrigol so they could run to the eastern doors. Unfortunately, the Shanrigol behemoth had stirred and lifted itself to the balcony after Vydar started opening and closing the portcullises at the end of the stairs that descended to the area floor. Ezren summoned the horse, Lob dropped the transparent stone barrier and the behemoth promptly sent out a pseudopod to grab and absorb the horse. Next up on the menu: the Otari 2600s…   

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