This is my first time posting a story, but I thought it was awesome and wanted to share what happened.
>Been playing Pathfinder with a group of friends over Roll20 for years now. >Our perma DM is getting campaign fatigue from running the Northlands Saga >I'm pretty attached to my dual-shielding fighter/paladin, but offer to run a side thing anyways >Everyone is hyped and decide they want to play an all cleric party >"Okay, I can work with this" >Using an altered Greyhawk setting and deities, but still Pathfinder >I advertise the campaign as a hunt for a necromancer, and the party prepares for undead >They've known me for years and still haven't grasped that I'm never that straightforward >Party starts off in Briarwood, a small town on the Wild Coast >Grafna Emmeron(aka Morgan Freeman) the priest of Pelor tells them to hunt Volcarim Severtongue, the necromancer >They've got a bitchy Inquisitor of St. Cuthbert, a saintly half-orc Paladin of Pelor, an insane cleric of Norebo specialized in curses and curse removal, and a gladiator/muscle-priest of Kord who is obsessed with fitness >whatcouldgowrong.jpg
Jackson Harris
>Party is sent to investigate several serious graverobbing incidents nearby, in small coastal mountain village of Appalain >Local Priest of Pelor, Abraham, sent letters to Grafna about all the graves months ago >Party gets there and Inquisitor immediately begins spamming detect alignment and detect lies on everyone they meet >Abe checks out as not evil, but claims that everything is fine, and the issue is resolved >Party thinks this is highly sketch, and decides to stick around a little, since Abe is a fucking master at not giving straight answers >Abe's got two kids, a dead wife, and a mysterious illness that showed up a month ago, right around when the grave robbing stopped >One is grown up and a member of the town guard (Izzik), the other is an adopted drow that looks like a child still (Drazzik) >Party meets the drow kid in the graveyard, and starts grilling him >Inquisitor has a soft spot for kids, so she doesn't go too harsh, but the kid is scared out of his mind and blatantly lying to them about everything being resolved already >Drazzik runs off to the chapel, and the party is convinced that something weird is happening in the town >The muscle-priest's character still hasn't shown up yet, since his player was running late and having trouble accessing his character sheet >Paladin thinks that they should ask around town, and the party stops at an elderly Baklunish chick's herb shop >Party buys some garlic because the insane cleric is utterly convinced that vampires have taken over the town, and rants at everyone he meets about it >Shopkeep tells them that Abe had been buying a shit ton of weird herbs lately >Stuff for delaying poisons, treating infections and bleeding, and stuff for the lungs and holding breath >Another guy had bought a bulk order of the stuff like three months ago >Party is coming up with more and more insane theories
Austin Jackson
>The group goes to see the town's mayor, since one of their crazy theories is that there's a wicker man thing going on here >Mayor is Dan Tinydove (aka Danny Devito), and the party likes him a lot >Cleric and Dan bond over mutual dislike of their ex-wives, and the mayor has a few too many >Party learns that the mayor and Abraham hadn't told anyone in town about the grave robbing incidents so as not to cause panic >Mayor lets slip that he may know someone who is involved directly with what's going on >Inquisitor rolls a nat 1 on intimidate, and the cleric fucks up his diplomacy roll >they get kicked out by the mayor's nephews, Lars and Bors, who are coincidentally also part of the town guard >The paladin asked to meet up with Izzik before hand, so the party heads down to the Green Arrow Inn/Tavern/Bar alongside Lars and Bors >The joint is poppin >Izzik waves them over, and the party asks him about the grave robbings point blank >The mayor's nephews are watching them like a hawk, and Izzik doesn't want to cause a scene so they step outside >They left the cleric with Lars and Bors to keep them occupied >That was their first mistake
Ryan Rodriguez
>Inquisitor immediately starts grilling Izzik, and the party finds out that some serious shit went down a month ago >Drazzik disappeared in the middle of the night while watching the graves as always >Abe ran off into the mists to find him >Izzik, Lars, and Bors had been patrolling around the graveyard since like 3 months ago >Nobody saw anything, but Abe came up to Izzik pretty soon after, covered in blood and followed by Drazzik >said "There was a necromancer, he's taken care of, help me rebury your mother." >Party flips their shit and is convinced that Abe's been replaced by the necromancer >Inside, the cleric spontaneously decides that he wants to get to the bottom of things and draw out the necromancer >He goes nuts >Tells the pair a tale of how he married a demon, owes several thousand souls to his god, and threatens to rip out Lars' heart from his chest >Cleric decides to cast Boneshaker on Lars in the middle of the crowded tavern >Everything goes to hell >People are screaming about necromancers >Everyone's running >Lars is bleeding to death via his eyes on the floor >Bors is trying to stab the Cleric >Izzik and the others run back inside and try to stop the chaos, but a nat 1 on Diplomacy turns everyone against the party >Around this time the missing player is finally ready to return >The tavern doors are kicked off their hinges, and everyone stops >A gigantic, muscley, barechested man in a helmet stomps in and begins shouting and jojo posing at everyone >Nat 20 on Diplomacy >Everyone is stunned into inaction, and the gladiator nets and grapples the cleric >the Paladin takes the time to heal Lars, and save him from death >Muscle-priest amazes everyone with his fame and reknown as a gladiator from greyhawk >Muscle priest demands custody of crazy-cleric, and what do you know, another nat 20 >Party sits down and cools off in the tavern, after bribing the owner a large sum of gold >They discuss plans from there, and give muscle-priest an update
Jordan Wood
>Party stays up too late discussing plans in the tavern, and a sketchy bald guy appears on the stairs >He asks if they've heard the name "Volcarim Severtongue" >Immediately on edge >Inquisitor tries to scan him, but he runs off and escapes by kicking a barrel down the stairs >Party decides 'hey let's go check out the graves that got dug up' and goes off in the middle of the night >The party digs up the grave of Abe's wife >She's got all kinds of burns from holy fire >They find a moon shaped sapphire ring with an aura of divination on it >Inquisitor decides to wear it, and through it she senses something about an hour to the east >Party reburies everything and finally goes to sleep >Wake up next morning and talk to Izzik >Izzik mentions that Abe's been treating Drazzik really cold and restricting his grave keeper duties since that night >Inquisitor suddenly realizes that maybe Drazzik tried to bring back his mom, and Abe's trying to protect his kid >Party comes up with plan to split up and distract Abe while they grill Drazzik >The Inquisitor rolls a nat 1 again >Drazzik runs off, and the party regroups >Izzik is concerned, but mentions that he can still find his brother thanks to their paired amulets >"Wait a second" >Paladin asks if they're shaped like the sun and moon >Izzik says yeah, his mom made them to be like hers and Abe's own locating rings >Party doesn't remember Abe wearing a ring >Izzik says Abe must have lost his that night >ohshit.jpg >Where is the necromancer's body >The party is back to Abe being an impostor
Jacob Edwards
>Party goes back to town to regroup, and find a localized map >Can't find a map, but they hear about how the town used to be all about mining before they switched over to apple orchards >Mines right on the coast failed a long long time ago due to poison gas and strange hallucinations / paranormal activity etc. >mines were bought by a group of super rich wizards, and the town got a huge influx of wealth >Nobody knew what the wizards were up to, but the place completely collapsed at some point >Paladin thinks Abe may be being held prisoner in the mines >They go there >Party investigates the collapsed entrance, and finds a side passage that's covered by illusions >They see through it thanks to muscle priest randomly chucking large rocks and rubble around as part of his workout routine >Weird bald guy rolls out of the bushes and stops them from going into the ruins >Reveals that he's an ex-headhunter from Narwell, and has been personally seeking vengeance against Severtongue >Cleric manages to figure out that there's a divination spell set to alert the necromancer if anyone living enters his lair >Bald guy (Stay-up Stretch) says that he's almost certain they're right about Abe being Severtongue in disguise >Wants to be sure though, in case they're wrong and Severtongue manages to flee >Party comes up with the idea to pretend to 'catch' Drazzik and leave town >Stretch says that the moment Severtongue feels safe, he'll return to the ruins to check on his projects >The party will corner him in his own lair, and strike him and his minions down in one fell swoop
Ethan Wright
>Natural 20 on Diplomacy I was wondering when you would get to this. Your story is shit, fuck off.
Cooper Murphy
>Party goes back to town and lets Izzik know about their plan >They pretend to arrest Drazzik in the chapel, in front of Abe >Abe tries to stop them briefly >Inquisitor can see through his shit, and knows he's only acting >Izzik pretends to follow after them, but takes care of Drazzik instead >Party leaves town and waits by the ruins with Stretch >Night falls, and Abraham shows up at about midnight >"I fucking knew it" >Abe/Severtongue wanders into the ruins and the party follows after him >magic sigil marks them all with red eyes >he gets pissed and runs further into his lair >Party runs into a trip wire with a bell attached, and suddenly they're pinned down in the middle of a corridor intersection >there's a metric fuckton of undead coming at them from all sides >fast zombies, bloody skeletons, skeleton archers, and more >CHANNEL ENERGY >The entire hallway is filled with the charred, smoking remains of undead >more are still coming >party fights their way through, and runs into a big room with a wide, 60ft deep pit taking up the entire middle >there's like a hundred zombies down there >It's supposed to be a deadly obstacle that makes them go around >the fucking muscle priest-jumps in >screams "BY THE POWER OF GREYHAWK!" and survives the landing >I tell him he's about to be eaten alive unless he finds a way back up >he says "I CHANNEL ENERGY" >Pathfinder's channel energy doesn't have a limit on the number of enemies or HD it can affect, just a range around the user >Muscle-priest single handedly AoEs the entire pit full of ravenous, uncontrolled corpses >fuckhowdidiforgetaboutthat >TFW I have to come up with a reason not to give them all buckets and buckets of EXP
Carson Collins
Nah mate, it's true - and even if it weren't I'd have still tried to find a way of letting them succeed - the party going off the rails and killing the town guard would have completely derailed things - this was the day that Mythweavers was down last week. They forgot to renew their security code and he was paranoid AF about signing into it anyways
David Miller
Anyways
>I own up to not expecting them to do that and offer to instead give full EXP for an appropriately CR'd encounter instead >Party is cool with it >Party fishes muscle-priest out of the pit, and gets back to exploring >I should mention that Stretch is still waiting out front for Volcarim in case he doubles back past them or they fail >They stumble onto a library that's been completely tossed and cluttered >Inquisitor wants to investigate, and Paladin wants to hurry and track down the necromancer >Inquisitor finds a few old journals and checks them >I knew that her player would want to investigate everything >I wrote up a few cryptic paragraphs of info to give clues for the plot twist that was still coming >Party finds a few more of these journals as they explore the dungeon >The journals all keep referencing a staff, strange gasses, hallucinations, a chasm of some sort, and true resurrection >there are alot of ominous clues about something driving the wizards mad and causing everyone to die >The last journal's writer was the one who intentionally collapsed the ruins, in order to prevent something from getting out >Party is sufficiently on edge now that they know there's more to this than just the necromancer >Party is ambushed by some Tar Jellies in an empty room while reading one book >I rule that the muscle-priest's constant bombastic shouting alerts some dogs with the burning skeleton template, and three of them charge into the room and things get crazy >the cleric nearly dies after being grappled by a flaming Tar monster >paladin saves his ass, but can't get his sword unstuck >I severely overestimated the danger of this encounter for them >they manage to pull it off, and heal up >next room is an empty hallway, with some rubble blocking a side passage >party clears the rubble because they can see light behind it, and find an easter egg room >I threw in some of our PC's weapons from our Northlands game as loot >they got a kick out of it
