Post date: Sep 02, 2016 2:1:42 AM
These session summaries were originally posted to The Piazza in June, July, and August 2016, and have been edited to remove spoilers for future sessions. Out-of-character commentary is in italics.
Now that "Winds of Freeport" has concluded, GM Notes for "Gorilla Island" (with stat blocks and other details) have been posted to this wiki.
Session 42 (6/11/2016)
The party approached the river by longboat, with Larkspur swimming on one side and Inacio riding his elasmosaurus on the other. As they navigated through the cluster of islets at the river mouth, Larkspur noticed they were being followed, but could not get a good look at their shadow.
The party rowed upstream to the source of the small river. They found a ruined temple consisting of a broken square of columns with a smaller ring of columns at the center. They guessed that the inner ring must have once stood within a small spring-fed pool, but now nearly all of the temple foundations were flooded by a large pond. The surviving columns and statuary were carved with much-weathered depictions of sea creatures and various fish-human hybrids. Damarak concluded that this had been a temple of the sea god Nodens, and that its priests probably had contact with worshipers of Eadro, god of the merfolk and locathah.
While the party examined the ruins, Issalia and Damarak spotted a tojanida some distance away--probably their mysterious pursuer. The cleric hailed it, but insulted it by calling it a crab. Issalia and Larkspur continued the conversation more smoothly. The tojanida stated that it was following them because they had passed near its home, so it wanted to know what they were doing. The party learned from it that the karkinoi lived in caves under the island, which could be reached from both the river mouth and the center of the temple.
The party decided to go to the hole in the temple, since they were already here. Damarak and Larkspur provided the party with water breathing, and Issalia left her owl behind to watch the longboat. As they approached the deep water inside the inner ring of columns, one of the statues near them moved. Larkspur wild shaped into a giant squid, and the party closed with the statue. It was a huge, slow-moving construct [a tiberolith, from Bestiary 4], and its first act was to create a shockwave that electrocuted most of the party. Damarak channeled energy to heal the party of those wounds [exactly, in fact--except for himself, who had failed the save and taken full damage]. Virali cast haste on the party, and Harissa landed a couple of early critical hits (but even with her magic adamantine yatagan, it did not take full damage from her blows). Larskpur successfully grappled the construct, pulling it to her, and then in next round managed to pin it. Miraculously, the tiberolith failed to break the pin [it rolled a natural 1!], and its severed impaired state made it an easier target for the other PCs. Larkspur bit the construct once before it finally broke free, but before it could attack again, Inacio landed the killing blow.
The party will now descend into the pit-like cave below the pond, in search of the karkinoi and their captives.
Here is a photo of the party fighting the tiberlith: Larkspur (as a giant squid) grapples the construct, while the rest of the party makes flanking attacks and cast spells.
Session 43 (7/3/2016)
After some quick healing, the party dived down into the deep pool, which turned out to be a deep, twisting tunnel to a larger cave chamber. Here they encountered two karkinoi guarding the entrance. Larkspur, who was still in giant squid form, grappled one of them while Issalia put the other to sleep. The grappled crab-man grabbed her in return, but then the druid pinned it, allowing her allies to quickly dispatch both foes.
In the room beyond, the party could see a couple of pits filled with slightly phosphorent kelp. A few humanoids were moving about the room; some hid behind the kelp while one fled down a passage on the other side. These humanoids--a kech, a vanara, and two locathah--all had mollusk-like things attached to their heads and upper bodies. Inacio recognized these as aboleth larvae, which instantly put the party on high, paranoid alert. [I used the incutilis from Bestiary 4 to represent these larval aboleths. Not terribly powerful, but very creepy!] As the party worked to dispatch the larvae, they found a couple more (without hosts) hiding in the kelp beds.
Before they could finish off the spawn, an adult aboleth entered the chamber. Damarak cast a spell at it, which failed because the aboleth was only an illusion. He informed the others, but the party struggled to make their own disbelief saves. Virali, however, made hers, and cast glitterdust into the next room, behind the aboleth—which revealed a small dogfish hiding there, but nothing else. (The aboleth was using veil to disguise itself as the smaller creature, and project image to view and magically attack the party.) Lapras, Inacio’s elasmosaurus companion, failed its save against the aboleth’s dominate monster power, and bit his master. Issalia saved the party from further mauling by hexing the beast with slumber.
Harissa entered the mucus around the aboleth, which was enough for her to see through the illusion. Before she could reach the sparkly fish, however, the aboleth dominated her, and commanded her to defend it. This caused her to attack Damarak when he started casting another spell. Miraculously, she just barely missed, but he lost his spell (due to failing the caster level check to cast a fire spell underwater). Harissa then moved towards the “dogfish” to protect it but failed her save against the glitterdust and was blinded.
Issalia used her ring of jetting to zip past the aboleth and dogfish, but swam straight into the real aboleth’s mucus cloud. She managed to see through the veil and warn the others where it really was. Harissa heard this, and blindly tried to stab it—not realizing yet that the dogfish and aboleth were the same. She missed, but came too close for the aberration’s comfort, so it commanded her to simply keep still.
By this time, Larkspur had found the other passage into the aboleth’s chamber. She immediately pierced the illusion, and attacked it with her tentacles, landing the party’s first blow on the real thing. She didn’t much like the look of the slime on and around its body, so kept her distance rather than grappling. This left Issalia as the only threat within its reach, so it whipped her with its tentacles. The witch failed her save, and found her skin and flesh turning into slime.
Larkspur cast geyser under the aboleth, which pushed it away from the party for a moment. Issalia put Harissa to sleep, then retreated slowly (to avoid more tentacle attacks). Inacio finally made his save to see through the false aboleth, and rushed forward to strike the real one. The aboleth now had many targets to attack, but failed to slime any more PCs. It and Larkspur traded tentacle slaps from a distance, then Damarak used his longspear to deliver the killing blow from safely outside its mucus cloud.
The party then hunted down the last incultilises. Larkspur found some aboleth eggs hidden in the kelp, and carefully smashed them. Another tunnel continued past these rooms, but the party needed to withdraw to heal and regain spells before facing any more battles. Back at their ship, Isslaia had to remain in the water to keep her transformed flesh moist, and was unable to breathe air for a few hours due to the mucus she inhaled, so Larkspur stood guard over for the night until Damarak could cure her the next morning.
Here are a few photos of the aboleth battle:
Fighting the karkinoi guards (the Bionicle models).
The aboleth appears! This shot shows most of the battle map. (The large gears in the back are dead karkinoi.)
The "tentacle slap-fight" near the end (Larkspur's player's words). The aboleth mini is now real one; the lid is the projected image. The red plate marks where Harissa is sleeping.
Session 44 (8/13/2016)
Once Damarak healed Issalia the next morning, the party headed back down into the submerged caves. They had retreated before searching the aboleth's chamber thoroughly, so when they returned, they found the tojanida here before them, pilfering things while invisible. Larkspur noticed one of the objects here disappearing, and after a couple tries, Virali caught it in the area of a glitterdust spell. The tojanida was a bard with the street performer archetype, which gave it the "harmless performer" ability, which works like sanctuary. This allowed it to get out of the room while only suffering one attack, then it used an elemental gem to summon a water elemental to cover its flight. The elemental kept Harissa, Damarak, and Virali tied up in melee, but Inacio (riding Lapras), Larkspur (in giant squid form), and Issalia (with her ring of jetting) pursued and caught up with the tojanida. The druid grappled the creature, and the witch dropped a slumber hex on it. That allowed the elasmosaurus to coup de grace it. Meanwhile, the elemental badly mauled Harissa (including one crit), while had to whittle it down very slowly due to its DR. She eventually killed it, and Damarak tended her injuries.
The tojanida's sack of loot included a potion, a wand, a magic kukri, a scroll, inscribed on a seashell, a couple pearls, and a coral statuette of Lotan (a demonic sea god resembling a shark-kraken hybrid). [Lotan is the same as Dagon, whose sahuagin cult they've fought in the past.] The creature also had a magic buckler strapped to one of its pincers, and a bandolier holding some potions and a wand. Issalia was able to identify most of these items simply using detect magic, and the party divided them magic between them before exploring further down the tunnel than they had reached the day before.
The long-twisting tunnel led to an area with several side chambers, where two karkinoi stood guard. The crab-men noticed them, but their reactions were slow. The nearest karkinoi was badly wounded before it could act, which persuaded its fellow to flee these strong invaders. The party finished off the first one quickly, and the fastest swimmers--Inacio on Lapras, and Larkspur still in wild shape--pursued the fleeing one. (I did not bother playing out that last fight, as it was clear that the PCs would win handily.)
The side chambers here turned out to be rooms for the aboleth's slaves, which included merfolk, locathah, vanara, and even a couple kech. These prisoners had been infected with the aboleth's slime, and in their weakened condition they were forced into slave labor in the aboleth's breeding pit (the room the party had cleared of incutilises on their first foray here). Damarak spoke to the prisoners, reassuring them that the PCs were here to rescue them, and that he could cure their afflictions. He healed one of the freed captives to demonstrate his sincerity, and they eagerly and gratefully followed him out of the caves. The kech, on the other hand, the party refused to help other than allowing them to leave the caves unmolested; they would have to find their own cure, if able.
The prisoners included three survivors of the missing merfolk hunting party. (The other two were killed in the attack, and eaten by the crab-men.) The party took the freed slaves to the merfolk tribe, and after a night's rest, Damarak removed the effects of the slime. The merfolk were very grateful for the cleric's help, but in his haste to claim the beautiful mermaid Sushandrali's affections, he overstepped the bounds of propriety and found her much more resistant to his overtures than he expected. [He rolled a natural 1 on his Charisma check.] He took the new tack of staying with the merfolk for a while in order to explain how he and his companions had greatly thinned out the sahaugin population near the Serpent's Teeth, and promising to help them rebuild. [He will also retrain one of his feats to Aquatic Ancestry, so that he can become fully amphibious, like Larkspur and the merfolk are.] That path, while much longer, is more certain to make a better impression on the mermaid he's smitten with.
The rest of the party returned the freed vanara to their kinfolk on the island. Inacio, despite his abysmal Charisma, had better luck finding a female vanara willing to overlook his flaws to offer some brief companionship. (He succeeded in large part because he wasn't expecting to find any!)
The party will return to Freeport without Damarak, after making arrangements for him to use a sending spell to let them know when he is ready to rejoin them.
We ended things there, until such time as we revisit these characters for a future adventure. Inacio, Harissa, and Larkpsur's players are interested in playing out the hadozee's attempt to get revenge on the halfling pirate Barty the Small, which will likely be a single session involving a full-scale ship-to-ship battle. We can play that out at some point when we can't get the full group together for the new campaign ("Time of the Tarrasque").
And here are a couple photos from this last session: