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 71 – Belcorra’s Rage

The party discussed their plan to bring the gug out of the cave into the bomb snares. Vydar the ranger, having recently returned from death, was curiously withdrawn, perhaps wrestling with his own internal demons. Lob, the goblin alchemist, decided he would enter the cave and use his launcher to attack the gug directly.

The Otari 2600’s gathered outside the whispering cave as Lob leapt the snares and sneaked into the cavern. Bombarded with dissonant whispers that flowed in a crescendo of sound from the walls, Lob raised his launcher and fired a fire bomb into the crouching gug, enraging the beast. It barreled after him.

Lob leapt the snares again, but the gug plummeted into them. The resulting explosion set the monster on fire. It ploughed through and savaged the party waiting outside. As Ezren the wizard dimension doored away so he could blast it from a distance, Gunnar the fighter stood his ground and sliced the gug with his magic scimitar. Corny the cleric sent telekinetic projectiles at the creature and healed Gunnar from afar. Eventually, the napalm fire raging across the gug’s body wore it down and it dropped, the Crimson Fulcrum Lens it had been protecting rolling from its dead hand.

Lob recovered the components of the bomb snare that had malfunctioned, and was assaulted by the dissonant whispers of the cave. This time, he learned more of what the lenses were for and how to use them:  “The lenses. She knows the secrets of the lenses. Three are within reach, one very close. The other lost by Yldaris. One held by the blood eaters. She keeps them apart while she works her petty vengeance, but the essences shall become one. Find the lenses and place their essences together within a host. Join the essences within Haruvex, and she can fall again. This is a promise of the Empty Death, a promise of empty death.”

Ezren realized from his readings of the Whispering Reads, that there were four lenses, and they could be used in some way against Belcorra Haruvex, the ghostly ruler of this place. Corny’s research into Nhimbaloth led him to believe that the goddess was no friend to her worshippers, and would prefer to consume their souls. Perhaps the lenses would attract the goddess, which would be bad news for a ghost.

Gunnar picked up the Crimson Fulcrum Lens, only to be filled with blinding rage. He realized the lens’s power could be harnessed, and that it could be passed to another creature, but he could not hold the lens any longer as those feelings went against the very core of his being. Lob grabbed the lens and was about to stuff it into his bag of holding, when the ghost of Belcorra emerged from the wall.

“Give me the lens!” She screamed, racing over to Gunnar and plunging her ghostly hand into his chest. The goblin alchemist hid the lens in the bag and leapt off a nearby ledge into the lake’s dark waters far below. Belcorra raged, sending apocalyptic visions into the minds of all present and knocking both Gunnar and Corny unconscious. Ezren blinked away and fed Corny a healing potion as the cavern’s dissonant whispers pounded on his skull.

Belcorra could not enter the cave – perhaps the secrets the whispers spoke prevented her, perhaps there was some other reason. Instead, she hovered over Gunnar’s prone form and threatened to extinguish the embers of his life if the lens wasn’t returned. Corny screamed back in defiance, and the ghost snuffed out Gunnar with a spell. She left, still raging against the party at the top of her ethereal lungs.

The party, shocked once again at the death of another party member, gathered somberly around the fighter’s body. Ezren summoned a gorilla to carry the prostrate form back to Otari. And with that, the despondent party left the Abomination Vaults and arrived back in the small town late that night.

At the Dawnflower Temple, Vandy allowed the party to store Gunnar on the oh-too-familiar slab, ready for the resurrection ritual. The requisite diamonds were still on their way from Absolom. Lob and Corny suggested they call in a favor owed by Alymora Inkleholtz, owner of the Whistledown Cutters lumber company. That would have to wait for tomorrow, however, as the party wearily made their way to the Rowdy Rockfish for another night of anxious rest.

The next day Inkleholtz provided the party with diamonds from her private store, thanking them for their work in saving the town, but pointing out her debt was paid.

The party returned to the Dawnflower Library, where they chanted for a day to return Gunnar’s soul to his lifeless body. The fighter arose, drained but alive. With that, they returned to the pub for a celebratory drink, before heading out to the fishing camp to rest and ponder the next stage of their mission…   

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