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 55 – Shopping Daze

The party faced the screaming whisp! Gunnar the fighter collapsed backwards into one of the rooms, hitting his head and knocking himself unconscious. Corny the cleric rushed down to engage the whisp with his katar, but it deftly dodged both his knife swipes and Vydar the ranger’s arrows. Ezren the wizard peppered the creature with magic missiles, and Lob the goblin alchemist managed to burn it with alchemist’s fire. The party retreated back up the corridor with the whisp in pursuit. Ezren finally managed to destroy it with an enfilade of magic missiles.

The Otari 2600’s recovered Lob’s handmade wheelchair and loaded the unconscious Gunnar into it, wheeling and dragging him back upstairs to the 5th level of the dungeon, where they located one of the teleportation circles they had failed to activate earlier. One successful awaken portal ritual later and it was ready to go, teleporting them to the 3rd-level teleportation circle they had awakened some time before. 

Making their way upstairs, they exited into the Gauntlight ruins. The mitflits were gone, having moved back downstairs to their original lair (which had been taken over by morlocks, until the party dispatched them). Back to town via the Gaunt Trail, the party headed to the Rowdy Rockfish where they were welcomed by the motherly owner, Brelda Venkervale (still in their debt for returning her son Lasda to her). They slept well that night in rooms provided free of charge.

The next day, Ezren went through the spell books they had recovered from the vaults, learning several new spells. He also read through the Whispering Reeds, and realized there were dangers in reading the cursed tome devoted to Nimbaloth. Despite this, he decided to keep the book.

The rest of the party headed to Morlibint’s shop to return Zarmavdian’s spellbook, which they had borrowed to open up the lower vaults. They managed to sell a fair amount of magical gear there, then headed to the marketplace to sell the rest and buy potions of healing.

After that, the team headed to their fishing camp lair. Ezren transferred some runes onto weapons (improving Vydar’s composite bow and Lob’s morlock bomb launcher) and discovered the formula for Oil of Mending.

Session 56 – Delving below again…            

At the fishing camp, Gunnar the fighter made minor repairs to the buildings. Still reeling from the torture and Drider sex he had been forced to endure, he decided to spend a mental health day training, running and hunting. Lob the goblin alchemist, after investigating his new poison codex, asked the fighter to look for a giant wasp so he could manufacture some poison. As luck would have it, Gunnar encountered a giant wasp in the forest near the camp, killed it and dragged it back to the camp for Lob to milk. The goblin decided to store the wasp extract until he had some spare time to properly craft the poison.

Vydar headed to town to sell some of the basic weapons the party had recovered from the vaults. The market was closed, so he traded with the farmers guild, convincing guild head Jala Highstepper that the weapons could be jury-rigged into farming implements. Jala recognized him as one of the Otari 2600 heroes, and took the weapons off his hands as a one-off. Vydar took a liking to her, deciding he would visit again and attempt to sell more non-farming items!  

Corny the cleric spent his off-time smoking, catching waves and working at the Dawnflower library, doing some healing and earning a few gold pieces for his troubles.

Ezren the wizard, exhausted from all the crafting he’d done, dropped into a narcoleptic sleep.

After four days of downtime, the party loaded Ezren into Lob’s wheelchair (which the alchemist reinforced at the camp) and headed off to the Vaults again. Down they delved, through the upper levels, using the activated portals to travel deeper, until they arrived back on the fiend level.

Entering one of the old rooms the party had previously explored, they encountered 3 grothluts, easily dispatching all but not before one activated the red-light alarm and brought numerous dreshkans, a barbed devil and a zebub. While the fighting took some time, the outcome was never in doubt. Corny had some difficulty attempting to dry retch to ease the illness he felt from the exploding grothluts, but eventually he heroically brought it all up.

With a sigh of relief, the party retired to a safe room and licked their wounds.

Session 57 – Death & Taxes

The party headed north, past the red-light alarm room into a corridor, which opened into an area with a giant glowing door emblazoned with a pentagram. A niche for 5 amulets on the door indicated a fetch quest was inevitable. Corny the cleric sneaked to the east, finding the circular stairwell room Lob the goblin alchemist had scouted out previously, and viewing an empty drill room to the north. A mining elevator lay further north, however it was blocked by a transparent wall of energy.

Back in the corridor, Lob found a set of double doors and the party cautiously entered. Vydar the ranger opened a storeroom (struggling somewhat with the lock), in which Lob found a cache of magic items. It was Vydar’s lucky day – he received several magic arrows and was able to bulk up his bag of holding with several hundred normal arrows from supplies found in several cells. “Best. Room. Ever,” he sighed.

Another set of double doors lay at the northern end of the room. Corny listened, hearing the beating of a hammer on metal and two growling voices within. Vydar picked the lock on the door, Gunnar the fighter opened it and Corny cast a spell to dazzle the room’s occupants. Gunnar rushed in, attacking a hammer-wielding Erinyes devil. The Erinyes exclaimed in common: “Thank you for dispatching the guards.” The big fighter was quickly flanked by another Barbazu devil and knocked unconscious with some mighty hits. Corny managed to heal him, but his spell was less than its normal potency and the fighter was quickly felled again. Lob’s bombs proved ineffectual, so he hid. Vydar’s arrow shots were less than effective. The odds weren’t looking good for the Otari 2600s.

Next, Corny was dropped as the devils fled the room while Lob hid behind a chest in one of the cells. The devils caught up with Vydar at the end of the corridor and knocked him unconscious. The ranger bled out, slowly expiring as the devils left the room and fled up the corridor beyond – ex-prisoners, escaping to freedom. Corny rushed to the ranger’s side, but by the time he got there, Vydar had died.

The remnants of the party gathered sadly around their fallen comrade. Corny remembered that Vandy Banderdash at the Dawnflower Library could use a resurrect ritual to bring the ranger back to life. He sent a bird feather token to her with a message they were coming. Corny cast gentle repose to keep the body fresh, while Gunnar hauled Vydar back to the surface.

At the library, Vandy taught Corny the very expensive resurrect ritual, as he was a better caster than she was. With Vandy acting as the secondary caster, the two chanted for a full day. As the sun sank in the sky and smoke swirled in the chapel where the ranger’s body lay, Vydar’s eyes sprung open and he sucked in the salty air. For a moment there he thought he was a druid, but that faded. The ritual was a success, but Vydar was weakened. The party took him back to their fishing camp where he spent a week recovering.

During that time, Lob working on improving his bomb launcher and sold several goods and magic items in town at the market and Morlibint’s shop, refilling the party kitty.

(…and it wasn’t until a bit later that I realized the party shouldn’t have had access to the resurrect ritual at this level. Oh, well, it was a fun bit of gaming lol 🙂 )

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