The weekly Pathfinder RPG group took a week off to let their DM watch the NY Mets lose the 2015 World Series and I took my sweet time posting this recap. I needed some time to mentally recover from that ordeal.
Catch up with week 4 here.
Band of the Golden Sun Week 5 – Headless Corpse Edition
All six skulls descend upon the unfortunate magus, who was the first to enter the room. The other members of the party rush in to engage these undead, flying foes. Luckily, the skulls are not too formidable and after receiving a few relatively harmless headbutts, the adventurers are able to dispatch them all quite quickly. Looking around after the fight, the party discovers a collection of finery lying atop the stone pedestal—six silver goblets and six silver plates. After collecting their loot, they head south to continue exploring the house.
Their investigation leads them to the west side of the estate. Miles is the first person of the group to step through a set of western doors into the courtyard, where he suddenly spies a humanoid figure poking its head out of a reflecting pool to the south. Catching a glimpse of the adventurers, the figure quickly drops back into the empty pool, disappearing from view. The rogue hurries back to tell his companions what he saw. They decide to attempt communication. Miles gestures for the barbarian to take the lead and Damira starts walking towards the pool shouting, “Hellooooo! Is anyone there?” at the top of her lungs.
Expecting to see a person come forth from the pool, everyone is horrified when a giant centipede crawls out instead. The monstrous creature immediately lashes out at the party. What follows is a long and grueling fight, but eventually the party emerges victorious. Stepping over the gory remains of the centipede to check the pool for any other surprises, they only find sand and other kinds of gritty accumulation at the bottom of the empty pool, though Miles is still pretty sure he had seen a person. Broken and battered from the fight and suffering from poisonous ability damage, the party decides to head back into town to recuperate their health and pick up more supplies. (Centipede bites hurt, yo!)
As the party passes through the main gates, a loud wail rings through the air, frightening the rogue and the barbarian. In their panic, the two of them take off running in opposite directions and Miles ends up in the eastern side of the estate, huddling in fear beside a small one-room structure. Suddenly, he shrieks as a two-headed death dog steps out of this building, alerting the other members to the danger. The party engages the death dog, battling it until it succumbs to its wounds and dies. However, while the adventurers were occupied with their fighting, a large snake had noticed the scuffle, slithering over from its hiding place under a table to take advantage of the chaos, hoping to score an easy lunch. It is denied; however, as the adventurers kill it dead with what’s left of their remaining strength and spells. Not wanting to wait a minute more, the party packs it up and hobbles out of the estate, desperately in need of some rest and restoration. Nearly having to carry the cleric all the way back to town due to the poison damage, the group sleeps off all their ills and injuries, and also takes this opportunity to sell off their silver goblets and plates. The group uses the gold to help pay for more potions as well as healing for the cleric, who had sustained so much poison damage that he was found walking into walls and falling out of chairs. Everyone was ready to tackle The House of Pentheru again.
The next day they head back into the estate, picking up where they left off in the eastern courtyard. Miles takes the lead again, exploring a couple of side structures in the northwest corner which appear to be servants’ quarters. But as he steps into one of the buildings, three skeletons in the room come to life and attack him. Clearly they were a little upset about their minimum wage jobs in their former life. The rest of the party quickly helps him clear the place. There is nothing of interest in here, so they move on to explore the adjacent room, which turns out to be a granary. Here they find a scarab swarm, which the adventurers quickly burn up using some not-so-well placed oil and fire, covering the whole place (and a couple of party members) in a slick fiery mess. After dousing the immediate area and making it safe again, Damira peers into the granary and finds a heavy flail constructed of some otherworldly metal. Nefre determines that it is not magical, but it appears to be extremely well crafted.
With the first floor completely explored, the party heads for the stairs going up to the second floor. In the first room upstairs, they find a dead body which appears to have been lying there for quite a while, though the corpse is missing its head. On closer inspection, Nefre notes that instead of a clean decapitation, the head looks to have been pulled off with great force. On the dead body they also find a simple gold wedding ring with a loving inscription. No one recognizes the names on it, so the rogue pockets the ring just in case they find out more about it later. The next room they enter looks to be an office, with a worn out desk surrounded by crumbling bookshelves. Nefre searches the desk and finds a brass key in one of the drawers.
Everything seems quiet as the party continues to search the second floor, moving steadily in a counter-clockwise direction. However, inside the third room they come to, the adventurers only have time to spy something large, scary, green and bat-like flying at full-speed towards them as Miles eases open the door…
