Last night I ran the continuing in-person game of Pathfinder that investigates what the players are going to do to finally rid the world of the God Ydersius. The previous week had the players realise that it was time to act and once and for all destroy the skull that was keeping the God alive but they found out that no item on the material plane was capable of such damage. They also found out that the most likely device was the hammer of Torag that apparently was located in the Abyss…
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| The table last night |
The game opened with the players discussing a way forward as they arrived back at the camp in Savith Yhi. Seleca’s husband (Captain of the guard there) offered up that if Torag’s hammer was missing why didn’t people know about it and perhaps they had better start by doing a bit of research as Savith’s ghost would be around a millenia old and perhaps not up to date with things as possibly she could be. To do this they headed to Absalom, Janthir’s adopted home town. On arrival there (after a mis-teleport) they arrived in Janthir’s apartment to find it ransacked. A few notes on his investigations into destroying the skull were missing but overall nothing else was gone.
The next couple of weeks saw Janthir and Kaleb moving from library to library researching firstly the hammer of Torag. During this time they found reference to a little known story that Torag lost his hammer in a deal with a Devil. The legend stated that the Devil Gilgaxion (a favoured pit lord from the ninth layer of hell) kidnapped Torag’s son Kols in retribution for Torag not honouring a deal with the Devils that he had made. It is said that to secure the peace and his child’s life Torag handed over his hammer Kaglemros which was the original cost of the contract. Alongside this record were numerous letters of complaint from the high priest of the church that such heresy was allowed to remain in print and also details of the public execution of the Bard that recorded the tale for heresy at the hands of the Dwarven Church.
Once they had this information their investigations turned to focus on Gilgaxion. They were confusedas to why the possibility a Devil had the hammer at some stage meant that it ended in the Abyss. Their research in this area was a little less fruitful. Yes, there had been a pit fiend that went by the name Gilgaxion and he was one of the favoured of Asmodeus and served on the ninth layer of hell for a time. Records indicate though a very swift shifting of fortunes after the time the hammer may have been taken and Gilgaxion was cast up to the sixth layer of hell to suffer the torments of those there. Mention of the Pit Fiend disappeared from records past this point which was many millenia in the past.
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| The old crew at it again! |
The group then decided to travel to the land of the five kings, in particular Highhelm and question the devout followers of Torag about these issues. They had realised that this was a very testing subject for the church and that they should approach it carefully. They arrived in Highhelm as heroes at the Pathfinder lodge. Unfortunately the inner bickering of the small group of heroes and differences between their tale and what had been in the journals soon caused friction at the Venture house. Regardless, the group pushed on and made their way to Torag’s church.
Janthir had a good plan and approached the Chancellor of the hall of records with a cryptic request that offered hope for a reasonable answer without putting the church out of sorts. Unfortunately the others felt they should be forthright and mentioned the lost hammer. This got the Chancellor’s back up as it is either a heresy or a major conspiracy in the church, either way he was very annoyed.
This lead to a series of plans to try and get the information from the church which all ended in naught as well as the group were now being tailed by Pathfinders as the local venture captain attempted to walk the political divide between the Church which was a powerful force and the fact that these were high ranked Pathfinder members.
Finally they decided to take a different tack and attempted to get the name of a sage who could offer up some independent but informed advice on the matter without involving the church. The Venture captain refused to give them a name although he knew one as he realised if it came to light that this had occurred it would be an untenable political situation for the Pathfinders who were not well regarded in the city as it were.
Through some imaginative uses of Polymorph and Detect Thoughts the group eventually got the name of the sage and we called it a night. I enjoyed the game, although there was a fair bit of unpreparedness at the start of the night. Once we got beyond that there were only two fights as Seleca and Hank both went fighting in the gladitorial pits. Both won their fights (which meant Hank is now level 19 due to the Deck of Many Things issues of the previous game) and Seleca managed to kill a 20th level fighter in one round (the Infernal Champion in the NPC Codex) without him lifting his blade. I do like a good game of political intrigue and machinations and I can see the group will need to do a fair bit of research in the near future to get the information they need to proceed.
It was a nice loose game last night and I am still feeling my way into the Mythic Mindset. I do have a plan to up the mythic content next game but the players were enjoying their newfound powers last night. Nearly every one of them started using their surge dice and testing powers and feats. It is quite an exciting idea this mythic thing and so I am organising at least one trial for the group in next weeks adventure! Until next time, Keep rolling.