Session 21: Halfling Brawl, Part 2
Post date: Sep 01, 2016 11:46:36 PM
This session summary was originally posted to The Piazza in July 2014, and has been edited to remove spoilers for future sessions. Out-of-character commentary is in italics.
After Session 20, the campaign took a long hiatus due to 4 of our 5 players relocating from MA to KY. During that time, we played some short-term games run by other members of the group. and converted "Winds of Freeport" from D&D v.3.5 to Pathfinder. We finally resumed play in July 2014--through sheer serendipity,, one year to the day from our last session.
After conversion, the party now consists of:
Inacio: vanara ranger 6, with the urban ranger and skirmisher archetypes. To preserve the hadozee feel, I'm letting him swap prehensile tail and low-light vision for the kobolds' gliding wings alternate racial trait. His animal companion will be Lapras, an elasmosaurus--which at his next level, will grow big enough to ride.
Larkspur: undine druid 6. She has chosen alternate racial traits that give her an increased swim speed and water breathing, rather than taking an archetype that grants them later. Her animal companion will be Atoll, a crocodile with the totem guide archetype.
Harissa: azhari freebooter 6. Freebooter is the PF version of the corsair class. We had considered using ifrits for azhar, since the new Pathfinder Freeport book won't be available for some time yet, and the two races are nearly identical in origin and abilities. However, the azhari's skill bonuses matter to the character, so we used the version in the original Pathfinder Freeport Companion until the first preview draft of the new book became available.
Marisol: azhari wizard 6 (water school). Marisol will be an NPC from now on, and her race will be the same as Harissa's. She will have a bonded item instead of a familiar.
Session 21 (7/6/2014)
We've started actual playing again! For the first session, the PCs (minus Marisol) had another run-in with the survivors of a bar-brawl they started a while back. In that first encounter, Inacio picked a fight with a halfling bard and her companions. (The runt had the nerve to sing the praises of Barty the Small, a halfling pirate this player ran in my last Freeport game. His current character's backstory includes a stint as Barty's prisoner after the ship Inacio was traveling on was boarded.) The bard, her rogue cohort, and the NPC party's dwarf fighter were slain by the PCs, but the azhari fire cleric and holiness necromancer escaped.
This time, the cleric and wizard were joined by the bard's vengeful ranger brother, and a fetching monk/rogue who tailed the party as the approached the ambush. Naturally, the halfling didn't survive, and the goblin and fetching narrowly managed to evade pursuit when things went against them. The cleric vanished early on, after the initial assault failed. Inacio managed to trail him across town to Kafe Ilkan, where Larkspur went in to talk to with the azhari in a setting where neither wanted to start a public fight. They negotiated an uneasy cease-fire. Harissa came in shortly after, as backup, but completely missed the conversation (thanks to very poor Perception checks to pick out the cleric in the crowd).
On the way out, however, Harissa finally noticed that someone had taken an interest in her, and was quizzing the proprietor about her. She was shocked to recognize the man in spite of his disguise as the azhari merchant's son that she had been betrothed to back in Kizmir. Fleeing that arrangement was what first led her into a new life as a pirate, and she's frantic to get out of town before her intended--or worse, her family--chases her down.
Luckily, the dead halfling carried a treasure map, which the party is now researching--and this will launch us into "Cut-Throat's Gold" (from Tales of Freeport).