PF2e 11 - Shores of Duvall 2

Lots of time off before this session. Been 3 weeks since our last game but we wrapped this one up pretty tightly.

Continuing on the streak of “Moderate Encounters Only” for this mission, the party had two fights that they won pretty handily. But before the fights, we had to reestablish things and have a bit of a chat. They left off in the home of some local Ratfolk who were housing two people from the desert Ratfolk tribe, one critically injured and one assisting in healing him.

Used this to recap what’s happening (town being metallic’d, the metal undead were ravaging the place, the metal corrupted livestock and was encroaching on buildings), and that the source appeared to be coming from just offshore in the ocean.

They left the Ratfolk house to try to solve the issue, they were going to sneak along the back of some houses to avoid any direct confrontations on the roads, but the Druid botched a stealth check. What drew the enemy’s attention wasn’t something she did, rather, she got noticed by the family in the house they were near. The loud, boisterious, self-important Silph family, of brewers. Now, I used these folks last time too, with their Shitty Teenage Son yelling from the second floor, threatening them, demanding they come help, all while his voice was breaking and he tried to act tough. The teenage daughter also filled the role of heckler who was a very like… very Mean Valley Girl at them. The Matriarch was the one who caught the druid though, opening up the window and yelling at them for not already fixing hte town and saying city folk like them have no work ethic and the like, which drew some Rust Zombie Attention.

As a reminder, all undead in this campaign setting are an amalgamation of dark magics, people’s bodies/souls, and metal. I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that recently, so I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page, visually.

So the next encounter was 4 level 1 Zombies (party is level 4), and 2 additional slots on the initiative tracker were the family, out to heckle them. They came in five fun flavors.

• Patriarch - Loud, full of bluster
• Matriarch - Loud, complaining, nagging, demeaning
• Shitty Teenage Son - Puberty voice cracking of threats and shittalking
• Shitty Teenage Daughter - Condescending
• Youngest Preteen Daughter - Very polite, asked the party to save the family, including their puppy.

The combat lasted 2.5 turns, so the family only got 4 turns to act. The youngest daughter was the one that kept the party from just leaving the house or retaliating on the ungrateful family.

From there, the party made their way to the shore to handle the task at hand. The sand of the shore were particularly affected by the metallic creep, making it sharp as hell. This dealt 4d6 damage to pass through without an Acrobatics action. The party instead went out on the port dock and saw the kelpie, Subsumed, and accompanied by a Crocodile.

The benefit of a VTT is that I can make tokens invisible, and that’s what I ended up doing, as both the croc and the kelpie Swam into the solid metal water. Why not, I thought, it makes it fun and has some mystery to where they could end up. Before the kelpie dove, they created a wall of metal cutting off the Thaumaturge from the rest of the party, which they, the character, liked because “1v1 me bro” but the player was like “please help”.

It was a pretty anticlimactic fight. The croc surfaced near the shore and the Druid and Ranger had held actions and uncorked them, OTK’ing it, and when the Kelpie resurfaced, it uh… It took a ton of damage from the Thaum because they had a Cold Iron weapon, which stacked with their other ability, and a crit… so the 60 HP monster went down to like, 20 in a turn.

Upon defeat, there was a metallic pulse and ring, and the metal that had overtaken the city started to recede, but the damage was done. The affected livestock was now weakened, the grass was dead, and crops were ruined. Better than the alternative sure, but I wanted to get across that there were still stakes to this stuff.

As they regrouped, the group’s Thaum got a letter via bird messenger, stating that they were needed to take care of something else. This was one of their responsibilities that they knew they would be taking as they joined the more serious tier of the guild. They got to stay the night to rest, and will be heading out, next time.

So, final verdict on an All Moderate Encounter adventure. It was fine. I wish I had a bit more climax in the final fight, but I think some forethought on my part would have helped. If I had the creatures submerge ahead of time, or kept the second creature with the Kelpie secret, it could have added a nice twist. But now, I get to work on a bit of a mystery.