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), have now finished the campaign after 85 Sunday night sessions!

I apologize in advance for the writing in these summaries – they’re a bit raw and not fancy at all (I didn’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 67 – Whisps Galore 

The party ventured forth onto the beach. The huge crater left by Lob’s bomb scarred the landscape. The underground lake’s foul waters gently lapped the shore. The confounding mists rolled across the lake’s surface, occasionally parting to reveal the rocky walls of the cavern arching above.

Sevastin the catfolk monk/rogue used his clockwork grapple to cross the waters to the rickety wharf in the south east of the cavern. He found the remnants of a door, destroyed by the Gug earlier, and a corridor beyond. The rest of the Otari 2600’s made their way to their raft and joined the catfolk on the southern shore.

Sevastin scouted ahead down the corridor with Vydar the ranger not far behind. While the rogue entered a large chamber filled with the carnage of ravaged and exploded bodies, Vydar checked the door of a side corridor. He called for Gunnar the fighter, who came down to open it.

Lob the goblin alchemist and Corny the cleric entered Sevastin’s chamber. Lob tasted the contents of a vat slowly cooking over a fire. Several brown and purple eggs were arrayed on a rack above the vat. Lob took one for Vydar to identify, but the ranger hadn’t seen anything like them before. Sevastin glanced through a splintered hole in a door to the north, noting several sets of stairs and some nooks in the corridor, a faint glimmer of movement in the distance.   

As Gunnar opened the door at the end of the short corridor, he stepped into a wide hall with a door at the far end, six nooks in the walls (four of which contained stone planters filled with swampy water) and a pile of rags. Suddenly four will-o-whisps flew forth from the nooks, sending charges of electricity flowing through the fighter. Hearing Gunnar’s calls, the rest of the party made their way to the room, Sevastin entering to flank one of the whisps and Lob rushing in to throw electrical bombs at them. Vydar, Corny and Ezren the wizard stayed back in the entry corridor.

Once the whisps attacked, they faded from sight, reappearing whenever they sent forth a charge of electricity. Corny was able to make two fully visible via a faerie fire spell, but two managed to fly out of the room and attack the ranger and cleric invisibly from above, reappearing as they did. Eventually Sevastin and Gunnar took out one of the whisps, with Lob and Ezren destroying the other. Ezren closed the door on the other two, trapping them in the corridor outside.

At that moment the ghostly visage of Belcorra passed partway through the west wall, extending her hand and casting phantasmal calamity on the party. As they experienced visions of the apocalyptic downfall of Absolom, each of them became highly distressed and bled from the eyes and ears (only Ezren managed to hold it together). At one point, Gunnar thought he was trapped in a fissure as the ground appeared to open up below him (it was all in his mind). Belcorra raged: she knew who they were, that they should leave her dungeons. As quickly as she appeared, she withdrew into the wall.

Gunnar, carrying more trauma than the rest of the party put together, sat mutely on the floor as the others treated their wounds to recover. The poor fighter was aghast at the horrors he had faced in the Apocalypse Vaults: his time being tortured by the Voidglutton, the night with the Drider in the bar, the sheer number of times he had been taken out by monsters. Ezren realized Gunnar was suffering an intense form of PTSD and depression. Corny tried to slap him out of it and told him to pull himself together. Lob and Ezren worked to repair the fighter’s shield. Eventually the fighter dragged himself to his feet, ready to face the world again. His cynicism about his chances of every leaving the Vaults alive remained.

The party headed west, Gunnar leading the way. Beyond a section of walls covered with slime and fungus (which Lob burned away), the fighter found a spiral stairway that rose upwards and was eventually blocked by rubble. Lob surmised this was the spiral stairway that led to the devil’s level above. Down they went, back to the chamber they had exited previously.

Along the way, Gunnar stopped to inspect the wall at the base of the stair. He found the outline of a secret door and a concave dish carved into its center. Ezren supposed something needed to be placed there to open it. Sevastin realized the shape was similar to the crystal held by the gug he found in the cavern off the lake to the north.

Realizing they would have to fight another powerful creature, the party headed to the other door. Beyond, the whisps were no doubt waiting. Corny turned the handle…        

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