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 51 – Nightmare Fuel

The party left Ezren the wizard behind in the sauna room, where he snored in a narcoleptic coma. They made their way out to the massive arena and down to its ground floor. While opening the double doors on the west side of the arena, Corny the cleric thought he heard a buzzing sound. As Gunnar the fighter headed up the corridor, an invisible zebub appeared before him. The big fighter’s scimitar made short work of it, but a set of double doors to the south burst open and a Barbazu devil and two more zebubs charged into the fray. Corny the cleric was bitten by a zebub, the wound festering. The Barbazu opened up fiendish wounds with its infernal glaive. Eventually the Otari 2600s dispatched the monsters.

Lob the goblin alchemist searched the torture chamber the devils had exited, finding a cache of magic weapons. Vydar the ranger returned to the arena to get the second Bag of Holding from Ezren, but noticed a morlock reactivating the transparent wall, preventing him from climbing the stairs to the sauna chamber.

The party headed up the corridor to the northern doors, which Lob opened. Gunnar stepped into the room to be confronted by a nightmarish Irnacurse. Its horrifying cry stupified the fighter and Vydar, and its long tentacles stunned the two whenever they hit (which was often). Corny managed to heal his fallen comrades, and Lob peppered the Irnacurse with fire and acid bombs from a distance. Just when the party thought they were done for, Vydar managed to get away from the creature, turning and firing two arrows into its brain. The threat was over, but the hazy mindedness effecting Gunnar and Vydar would last for some time to come.

Lob found a key on a set of stairs leading down to the sulfur-choked level below, but the party decided to return to the sauna and get Ezren. Back through the bar (where Lob borrowed a chair), then down the stairs to the sauna, where Ezren was sleeping idyllically. Lob put together some wooden wheels for the chair so they could drag the narcoleptic wizard around with them.

Back through the secret passage to (as Lob called him) the “audio” dinosaur’s lair. Back to the north and using two found keys to open one of the south doors, providing a useful shortcut if the party ever wanted to come back this way. Past the landing stairs and into the rusty room beyond to where the chamber with the Ochre jellies the party had spotted earlier waited…       

Session 52 – Jellies, Wisps & Wallflowers     

Vydar the ranger, concerned about Ezren the wizard’s narcoleptic state, elected to wheel the wizard’s sleeping form in the wheelchair Lob the alchemist concocted for him. He kept the wizard safe and away from harm, following the party at a discreet distance.

Gunnar the fighter and Corny the cleric formulated a plan with Lob. They knew two Ochre Jellies were in the room and wanted to draw them out into the corridor. Lob realized the jellies might respond like black puddings to slashing/piercing attacks and advised Gunnar to use his hammer. As Lob manipulated the door handle with his hand of the mage, Gunnar stood ready with his hammer and shield; once the door was open, Gunnar rushed in. Several metal shelves and operating tables revealed this was previously some kind of lab. Rubbish, junk and weapons ejected from holes in the ceiling covered part of the floor. Gunnar rushed in and slammed his hammer into the nearest ochre jelly, grabbing its attention. As he ran back to the corridor, the two jellies followed, sliding along the stone floor leaving a slime trail.

Outside in the corridor Gunnar was caught in one jelly’s acidic pseudopod grip. Despite this, he managed to mash the thing with his hammer, while Corny reveled in the use of his Spiritual Weapon –  a magical surfboard – which he used to flatten the jelly to great aplomb. Lob decided to throw a lightning bomb at one of the jellies, then realized his mistake as the electricity split it in two. They now had three jellies to face. Despite this, it wasn’t long before the trio managed to dispatch the oozes.

A decision had to be made how to progress: should the party take the spiral staircase down or the staircase where they previously faced the Irnakurse? Lob scouted down the spiral staircase. The smell of sulfur thickened the lower he went, until he stealthily emerged into a four-way intersection with 20-foot ceilings and red glowing diabolic signs on the walls. To the north, a chamber where a Barbazu devil was drilling numerous sluglike Grothluts. To the east and south, multiple stone doors. To the west, a huge set of circular red doors, covered with pentagrams.

Stealing his way back upstairs, Lob informed the Otari 2600’s, who agreed they should also check out the irnakurse staircase. Once again, Lob scouted below, spying a corridor and a hovering will-o-wisp. The party agreed this was the preferred entry point, and down they went, Gunnar leading the way with his glowing magic scimitar (courtesy of Corny’s light spell).

At the bottom of the stairs, Gunnar was surprised by an invisible will-o-wisp. The fight was on as another appeared. This time, the party coped with them much more easily – Corny used faerie fire to neutralize the wisps’ invisibility, while Lob and Gunnar battered the creatures into non-existence.

Further along the corridor, Gunnar found a cell – inside, hanging manacled from the ankles, was Cynemi, a tiefling bounty hunter. Gunnar rushed in and held Lob aloft to open her manacles, and Corny caught her before she fell. The cleric nursed the starving and dehydrated Cynemi back to health over the next hour. Gunnar made quite an impression on her in that time, and the sickly tiefling told them her story. A bounty hunter by trade, Cynemi learned that a contract devil named Urevian had offered a high bounty for a specific target. Cynemi made her way to the Abomination Vaults to take up the contract and agreed to retrieve Carman Rajani (who the party had worked with previously to access the lower levels) for a healthy sum. Unfortunately, Carman proved too cunning, hustling Cynemi out of her magic armor and leaving her stranded on a leaky boat on the Inner Sea. By the time Cynemi swam back to shore, the time she negotiated with Urevian to catch Carman had run out, so an erinys dragged her back and placed her in shackles in this cell. She had been here ever since, fed only irregularly and often hung by her feet. Cynemi suspected she had spent months or even years imprisoned.

Lob gave her a warpick (recovered from the Jelly room) and a map showing the way out. Corny attempted to proselytize about Sarenrae, but Cynemi wouldn’t have a bar of it. The tiefling thanked them all, limping up the stairs to escape the Abomination Vaults (and Corny’s religious overtures).

The party found another empty cell to the north, then approached a raised portcullis nearby. Naturally suspicious, they probed the floor below it for some kind of trap. Lob checked it and cleared the way to the double doors at the end of the corridor…

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