PF2e 12 - The Wail of Keston

This week, we had a bit of a bonus quest tacked on to last week’s. After a night of sleep, the party went north up the river to Keston, where they were told something strange was happening. No other information was provided, so it was up to them to figure out what was going on and how to fix it.

As they approached town, they could see that the river was cluttered with debris. As they moved further up stream into the town, they could see that several ships have recently wrecked on the shores of the town. The Thaumaturge and the Druid rushed to start helping. The Thaum grabbed an axe and started hacking at the parts of the boat that were backing up the river, and the Druid dropped some rocks and trees on things with their spells to try to collapse some stuff down. All told, the three ships that came aground were a merchant ship, a military ship, and, most recently, a pirate ship from Arlon.

The three split off to gather information. The Druid talked to some ivy growing on a building near the river, and found out that the boats crashing is a new thing, and all they could see was that they all started drifting towards the shore at a certain point near town. The Ranger went and found some rats who were aboard the pirate ship. They didn’t know too much about what was happening, but the rat said his cousin kept trying to walk through the wall of the boat, and there was a weird high pitched pressure before he started doing that. The Thaumaturge talked to the pirates, and met the Pirate King of Arlon: Tiger Lord. He didn’t know exactly what happened because he was asleep, and trusted his helmsman, Brock to handle things. Aiden, Brayden, and Bryce were awake but unaffected. They claimed that the air got weird and fuzzy and that there were a few high pitched tones in the air. Brock was still unconscious, and the crew had to wait to get some carts to take their merchandise back to town.

All the pirate underlings were jock himbo types. Brayden invited the Thaumaturge to come play some ultimate frisbee with them since they needed time, and they needed another member since Brock was down. He declined, so they just switched to making a basket for Frisbee Golf.

The Ranger using his knowledge pieced together that the issue was either caused by some sort of siren, or a like, magic bird type thing.

The Thaumaturge pieced it together, and nailed down that it was a Rusalka. Now this is normally a level 12 creature. I had to assure the party that no, this wasn’t the level 12 version of the creature, this was scaled down because holy shit I would not go “Hey you have a mission to exterminate this thing, go do it” and then throw something way out of their depths at them.

As evening fell, they, and everyone in town, heard something. A haunting bar of music that made the air feel heavy and wavy. It also sounded like it came from several locations at once. The party was worried there were multiple Rusalka at first, before realizing that it was echoing up from multiple wells and houses, as it was echoing up from below.

Their attention was taken though by a townsperson in a trance, walking towards the well. The man had a butchers knife in hand and his cutting board with his mid-prep dinner and just tumbled into the well. There was only a few splashes, and then silence. The party went to investigate and caught him just swimming into an alcove at the bottom of the well. After pursuit, they ended up in a natural cave area with deep pools of water. They had to restrain the guy, as he was about to walk into a deep pool of water. Suddenly, the Thaumaturge and the now-tied-up citizen were shrouded in mist, concealing them from the rest of the party.

The fight was the toned-down Rusalka and 3 Hyacinth Lampreys just reflavored to Lampreys, because while plant lampreys are cool, they’re not appropriate. The initial concealment provided by the Obscuring Mist really messed with the party’s ability to hit the Rusalka, and it missed an attack or two on the party because of it, but they weren’t too threatened. This was another “dead in three turns” encounter.

I don’t regret giving the Thaumaturge the Sparkblade, which is a +1 Striking Shortsword, buuuut it’s also considered Cold Iron. And the last two major encounters I’ve thrown at the party (The Rulsalka and the Kelpie) were both weak to Cold Iron, which gave him some extra damage, on top of his other Thaumaturge Bullshit (affectionate). But some might say that it’s good I’m giving it a chance to shine, so who’s to say if it was an bad accident or good accident.

Anyways, a couple blasts of damage, a couple strong Cold Iron strikes and double bow shots, and the issue was resolved. They caught a ride back to town with the pirates, and the town was saved.

Go team.

So, what’s next? Well, I want to have a bigger downtime but I know that won’t last so I’ll need some sort of backup to fall on. A good ol’ fashioned monster hunt might be fun. I do want to put them on trial eventually so they have to fight in the colosseum, but I need to find a way to make them appear guilty of something.

For the downtime I want to set up 1 on 1 scenes with each of them, each kind of reflecting on everything and looking forward. Meet with people they’ve met, visit old places, that sort of thing, and then give them a memento of the occasion using the Relic rules. Part of me wants to give them choices for each of the Minor gifts, and have it be more custom, but giving them pre-made ones is Easier. We’ll see how I feel this weekend when I start working more on this.

For now, the party is now level 5 and I need to thread the needle of keeping them involved in the overarching plot, while also not getting them in over their heads. We’re working towards of resolution of finding the Ranger/Magus’ clan, we’ve set up that there are certain types of the metallic blight that can be fixed, though it still leaves its mark on the land, and we’ve got… I wanted a list of three but couldn’t figure it out, ok?

Until next time.