Wrath of the Righteous pits the player-characters against demons that are trying to open a doorway into the Material Plane. For centuries armies have fought against the demon hordes attempting to invade the world, defending a spot known as the Worldwound where the barrier between the Abyss and the Material Plane is weak. Wrath of the Righteous is set in Pathfinder's default world of Golarion.
Unfortunately after we'd played only four or five sessions, the vicissitudes of life intervened and we had to put the game on indefinite hiatus. A few weeks ago my friend who is GMing this campaign finally felt he was ready to resume. Unfortunately in the intervening time period I misplaced my notes, so the information I have about what happened during those initial sessions is pretty minimal. But I thought I'd start blogging my summaries of our sessions, beginning with a brief recap of how the campaign began.
Note: Most of the players are using 'hybrid' classes from the Pathfinder Advanced Class Guide, with the exception of Asami.
Player Characters:
Aegronius - male half-elf slayer
Asamiel - female elf wizard (me)
Frairuna - female half-orc warpriest of Iomedae (played by my spouse)
Jiro - male human shaman
Zosta - female human brawler
Bohgong - Jiro's spirit animal, a white monkey also known as Uncle
Kirara - Asami's familiar, a white cat
Asami and Jiro come from Tian Xia, Golarion's Asia-equivalent region, where Asami hails from the Japanese-inspired elven nation of Jinin. Jiro comes from the nation of Minkai, which is also Japanese-inspired. Jiro, who had been a gardener for a noble family, discovered that he was actually a bastard son of said family, and that it was his destiny to go to the far-away Worldwound to prevent the oni from using it to emerge into the world. Asami was sent by the Council of the Golden Flame to accompany him and look after him. The Council believed that the Westerners of Avistan didn't know enough about oni and that only the Council's expertise as exemplified by Asami would be enough to save the world from a joint demon-oni invasion.
Runa was sent by her goddess, Iomedae, to join the fight against the demons. Zosta had gone to the city of Kenabres near the Worldwound to visit her parents, who were the bodyguards of a barbarian priestess named Cennami who was also engaged in fighting alongside the Crusaders against the demons. Aegronius and his companion Darra came seeking work with the Crusade.
Worldwound map
The five companions met on arriving in Kenabres where Cennami took charge of them and began their training in fighting demons. This training included sparring with Zosta's adopted brother Rhino, a redeemed demon who now worked alongside Cennami and the other barbarians to support the Crusaders.
Kenabres
After the group had been in Kenabres for a short while, they attended a festival in the city. As the city's leader Lord Hulruun delivered a speech, the crowd suddenly saw a demon lord appear, locked in battle with Terendelev, the silver dragon who acted as the protector of Kenabres. Then a deep chasm opened up in the earth and the five newcomers plummeted into it. As they fell, they saw Terendelev suffer a mortal wound. But before they could plunge to their deaths, the dragon cast a feather fall spell on them all. This didn't prevent them from being knocked unconscious by the long drop, but it did save their lives.
Terendelev in battle
After they recovered consciousness, the group began seeking a way to get back to the surface. But first they each found a single scale shed by Terendelev. These scales would grant them several different magical powers when used.
Dragon scale
After discovering the scales, they began exploring the tunnels in which they had landed and found that other people had also fallen through the crevice that opened in Kenabres as well: Anevia, a human woman who had suffered a broken leg in the fall; Aravashnial, an elf Riftwarden (the protectors of the Worldwound) who had been blinded by the demon that attacked Terendelev; and Horgus Gwerm, a nobleman scholar. These three joined forces with the five player-characters and continued the search for a way back up to Kenabres.
Anevia Tirabade
Aravashnial
Horgus Gwerm
They stumbled upon a site where someone had camped, but found no sign of the campsite's original occupant other than an emblem in the shape of a bat, which Runa picked up. They also had an encounter with a dwarf who seemed to have lost his mind and who attacked them, forcing them to kill him. This left them in possession of a spellbook and several scrolls, which Asami took charge of.
And that gets us up to the point at which we resumed the campaign.
February 7, 2016 restart
The party of people who had fallen into the subterranean caverns beneath Kenabres were obliged to climb up a shaft into a very large
cavern, which had stone arches that reminded them of a temple. The floor of the
cavern was cracked, and there was a tall stone tower that had collapsed. Runa caught
a glimpse of something near the rubble of the fallen tower, which turned out to be one of the Mongrelfolk who lived
beneath the city.
Mongrelfolk
When the group from the surface approached the Mongrelfolk person, who introduced himself as Lann, he told them that his companion had
become trapped under some rocks that shifted when the tower fell. After Jiro
allayed his fears a little, the group members combined their strength to lift the rocks and freed Lann’s
companion Crel, who like Anevia had suffered a broken leg. Lann explained that the fallen tower
was a watchtower, and that he and and Crel and their mute companion Dyra had been on
watch when it collapsed. Lann told the group from the surface that he knew a way to get back to
the surface, but it would require first going to the Mongrelfolk city. He agreed to show them the way.
The enlarged group eventually came upon a broad chasm which
they must cross to reach the Mongrelfolk city. Aegron strung ropes across it, but despite the ropes Runa fell
in, overburdened by her heavy armor and weapons and her own large size. Aegron had to pull her out
after she removed her armor and weapons and sent them out separately. The group
formed a cradle of ropes to carry across the injured Anevia and Krell and the
blind Aravashnial.
The party next encountered a circular cavern, which Lann warned
was inhabited by ‘spore coughers’, a kind of fungus that would attack anyone
who entered the cavern. He advised that the fungus creatures disliked fire. The
group spotted two bodies in the cavern, wearing the robes of priests of
Iomedae. Jiro crept up to examine them and found that both were dead. The
fungus was dead too, but it didn’t appear that the two priests had been slain by the fungus.
Both men bore wounds caused by weapons. Aegron noticed that one of the men had a
small brass bull’s head with red gemstone eyes clutched in his hand. Several of
the other members of the group recognized this object as an unholy symbol of the demon lord Baphomet, and Runa realized that the men weren’t carrying the traditional
longswords of priests of Iomedae. Instead they carried glaives, the holy
weapons of Baphomet. They must be imposters.
"Spore cougher"
Vestments of Iomedae clerics
Glaive
Lann told the group that he and his people had seen many
other men like these in the caverns recently. The bodies were searched,
revealing a curative potion and a scroll of a spell that could be used to cause fear in the spell's target. The group decided to make a litter from the glaives to carry one of the corpses with them so that when they returned to the surface
they could show the priests of Iomedae that there might be infiltrators in their
midst.
Suddenly three men also wearing the garb of Ioemedae’s
priesthood appeared on the other side of the cavern, wielding bows. Two of them
shot Asami and she collapsed. Runa extended Iomedae's blessing to
the group, and Aegron rushed up to meet the three enemies. Jiro cast a curative spell on Asami, who was on the
verge of death. Runa charged the assailants. Zosta also moved forward, facing a
man who dropped his bow and revealed spiked gauntlets. Aravashnial summoned a large lizard and commanded it
to attack the archers, as he couldn’t see what was happening and didn’t
realize that the newly recovered Asami was about to fire her bow at their foes.
Asami abandoned using her bow and sent a missile of magical force at the man in front of
Zosta, who fell. The other two archers fired their bows but missed their
targets. Jiro followed the example of his companions and rushed forward, but he
also failed to connect. Aegron knocked down another of the enemies. Jiro,
Zosta, and the lizard attacked the remaining man and overcame him. Runa then suggested that the one living man be taken
prisoner and taken to the surface instead of as a corpse. The
group members took two healing potions
and a quantity of arrows from the bodies of the fallen Baphomet cultists.
Lann then guided them to an enormous cavern with a lake in the
center, where the Mongrelfolk city of Neathholm sat on an island in the midst of the water.
They were carried to the island on rafts assembled of various salvaged materials. Runa
had earlier found a bat symbol at an apparently abandoned campsite the group
found after they fell into the chasm. This bat symbol turned out to have belonged to
the son of the Mongrelfolk chief, who had left after a disagreement with his
father.
Though Chief Sull was initially insulted by some condescending things Aravashnial said
about the subterranean folk, Asami shushed Aravashnial and the other members of
the group managed to be more diplomatic. The chief agreed to help in the fight
against the demons after he was told what had happened in Kenabres. He gifted the
party members a bandolier containing six potions for healing wounds and three potions of that could remove debilitating conditions. He also presented them with a morningstar. In addition
they had acquired five chain shirts from the imposter priests, though few of the group could actually make use of such armor.
After their meeting with the chief, the group planned to
join the Mongrelfolk in an attack on the false priests’ underground camp. Chief Sull had explained that the only route back to the surface he knew of passed directly through territory held by the cultists.
Loot:
Spellbook: all cantrips, color spray, mage armor, magic missile, grease, detect secret doors, blur, levitate, fog cloud, invisibility, resist energy, shocking grasp, silent image
Scroll of cause fear
Unholy symbol of Baphomet
Two glaives
Five chain shirts
Six potions of cure light wounds
Three potions of lesser restoration
Morningstar
42 arrows
February 28, 2016
Previously: Chief
Sull, leader of the mongrelfolk, had told the party that the route back to the
surface led through territory held by some bad mongrelfolk. He also told them
that the priests of Baphomet had already been present in the caverns prior to the
attack on Kenabres.
The group from Kenabres sold some of the items to the mongrelfolk that they had acquired in
fighting the Baphomet priests and the mad dwarf. They each gained 116 gold coins from
this transaction.
The mongrelfolk village had no inn, so that night the group
stayed in a communal space. During their relaxation time, Aravanshial permitted
Asami to copy a spell that could create an arrow of acid
from his spellbook into her own. That evening while Runa took the third watch,
she was bitten by a spider. In the morning as they were preparing to leave,
Jiro spotted a spirit, which Zosta refused to believe was real.
Lann escorted the party out of his village. He didn’t
personally know the way to the surface, but knew the correct direction to
travel. Shortly after leaving the village on the lake they entered a narrow
passageway, only wide enough for them to walk in single file. They could see
the marks of chisels on its walls. Suddenly Lan spotted something blocking the
crevice. A wooden barricade about five feet high had been built where the
passage widened. There was one sentry visible behind the barrier.
Runa took the lead in speaking to the sentry, who demanded
that she go forward alone. Aegron and Zosta also moved forward to be a little
closer to her, but only Runa approached the barrier. The sentry appeared to be
talking to someone else and stalling for time. They heard some type of alarm
given as someone shouted from behind the barricade. Runa tried to convince the
guard to let her pass by showing the Baphomet holy symbol she carried and
taking on an imperious tone, but the mongrelfolk sentry didn’t appear to be
convinced, so she ran around the barrier to attack him. Aegron also threw a
javelin at him but missed.
A second mongrelfolk appeared behind the barricade to attack
Runa. Jiro ran forward to join his companions in attacking the barricade
guards. Zosta leaped over the wall and kicked the sentry. Asami ran forward,
leaving Aravashnial, Anevia, and Horgus behind. She paused to cast a spell on herself that cloaked her in arcane armor before approaching
the barrier. The wall sentry could be heard shouting, “Help! Faster!” to someone else.
Two more mongrelfolk emerged from a door behind the
barricade and attacked Runa, seriously injuring her. She had to drink a potion
to heal her wounds. Zosta hit the wall sentry and he collapsed. Asami ran
around the barrier and hurled her wooden spear at one of the mongrelfolk, showering him with splinters that left tiny bleeding wounds.
Jiro was fighting another of the mongrelfolk using the morningstar Chief Sull had gifted
to the group, while protecting himself from a second foe with a shield of stone he had conjured. Jiro smashed his opponent
with his morningstar. The mongrelfolk who had hit Runa fled. Aegron pursued him,
but wasn’t able to hit him. Asami threw her spear at one of Jiro’s foes but
missed. The fleeing mongrelfolk ran through the door and shut it behind him. One
of the remaining enemies struck Jiro a dire blow, but Jiro hit back with equal
force and killed his opponent.
Aegron opened the door and found the mongrelfolk he’d been
chasing lying just beyond it, collapsed from the wounds he’d suffered. The last
mongrelfolk behind the barrier fell after Asami directed a ray of bitter cold at him. The group then passed through the doorway.
There they found three rooms, one of them set up as a bunk room. A large lizard
charged Aegron and bit him, then held on. Asami and Zosta attacked it to get it
to release Aegron. After it died Jiro realized that its bite was poisonous.
There was no one else in the other rooms, and Asami
determined that they contained nothing magical. The group went on through a
door leading out of the bunk room. As Zosta opened the door, someone shot her
twice with a crossbow, and she saw a dark figure apparently disappear into the
floor. Runa went into the room first, finding no one, and located another door
in a corner. Aegron found that the attacker had descended a rope ladder that
led down from the room’s other far corner. He descended the ladder, while Runa
opened the door.
The door Runa had opened led to a downward sloping ramp and
a heap of garbage, apparently serving as the mongrelfolk's trash midden. Runa
slipped and slid down the ramp into the rubbish, where she discovered that
garbage wasn’t the only thing at the bottom of the ramp. Something hidden under
the refuse grabbed her and burned her with acid. Zosta pulled a rope out of her
pack, and Asami cast a spell on the rope to allow her to direct its movement from the doorway to pull Runa away from the creature, which Jiro identified as a giant
amoeba. When Asami, Jiro, and Zosta all hauled on the rope together, they were able to
drag Runa away from the amoeba’s grasp.
Meanwhile Aegron had
found more mongrelfolk at the bottom of the ladder, too many for him to handle
on his own. He was shot several times and collapsed, unconscious. By the time
Jiro looked down the ladder, he saw only bloodstains on the floor below but no
sign of Aegron. He climbed down the ladder to find another barrier similar to
the one they had encountered in the crevice outside. Runa then descended the
ladder but her heavy armor caused her to lose her grip and fall. She landed
prone at the bottom, swearing loudly, which alerted the mongrelfolk that more
people had entered the chamber. A second battle ensued. Aravashniel summoned a monitor lizard from Elysium to
help the group battle the mongrelfolk.
The last surviving mongrelfolk pleaded for mercy and said he
would tell them where Aegron was. Jiro approached the door beyond the barricade
and heard labored breathing coming from the other side. The mongrelfolk told
them that Aegron was on the other side of that door. He also told them that the
leader of the mongrelfolk was a human woman named Osilla, who had slain their
previous leader. Jiro opened the door to see Aegron lying on a table, and yet
more doorways leading out of the room.
Next: Episode 2, Enemies In the Deep
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