Intro

Our last scene was the first half of a small dungeon delve. The party arrived at the Fair Fortune Livery after some shopping, negotiated with the small grimple community living in its ruined basement, and learned of “foul demons” inhabiting a “cursed land” next door to them.

They accessed a section of old buried city streets, and fought two lemures and some giant rats who made their homes there. Then they resumed exploring the underground area in search of the Silver Raven hideout.

[GM] Mythic Bookkeeping

The fight was actually a bit more chaotic than I anticipated. The opposition was kinda weak but that last lemure took a lot of killing and managed to inflict some damage before it was taken down. Let’s increase the Chaos Factor to 6.

Let’s also add the Livery Grimples as “characters”. In the default campaign they were enemies to be exterminated, but here they’re peaceful and might come up again.

Threads

  • The Path ***
  • Find the Missing Elves (Arcturus)
  • Find Shensen (Rosalia)
  • Contacting Ms. Docur (Jania)
  • Get Organized (Jade)

Characters

  • The Dottari
  • The Chelish Citizens Group
  • The Red Jills
  • The Asmodeans
  • The Three-Legged Devil
  • The Livery Grimples

Our PCs are progressing along The Path by continuing to delve the livery. This next scene is meant to cover the rest of the delve, ending when they leave the dungeon.

I roll a d10 and come up with a 7, which means there are no surprise alterations here.

[GM] Preparation Work

Time to plan what’s ahead. First of all: do I even want to include Blosodriette here?

She’s CR 4, and appears at a time when Pathfinder 1e PCs would be level 1. She has unreasonably high Stealth, at-will Invisibility, and her contract is disguised with an illusion spell the PCs can’t pierce at this level. She also has a wand of Acid Arrow with 9 charges, which could make short work of a level 1 party.

So clearly the book means for her to stay hidden, follow the PCs to their new hideout, and engage in sabotage during the back half of the adventure. The PCs are only meant to find her shortly before the end of the adventure, when their higher level and better gear makes fighting her a more reasonable proposition.

However, her sabotage is super annoying to deal with when playing solo. And our PCs are already powerful enough to take her on, and even to detect her presence right here. So I think I’ll let that happen, and run the fight here.

Blosodriette

We start with the stats for a Hrogn from the Nordlond Bestiary, which is equivalent to the D&D imp. We then replace the claw attack with a Stinger (a piercing Striker). And we add some rogue stuff and items on top of that.

[Author] I'm going to post a Bestiary entry for her too, as usual.

ST 6; DX 12; IQ 12; HT 11;

Dodge 11; SM -3

DR 2;

HP 6; Will 12; Per 12; FP –;

Speed 8.00; Move 8 (Flight Move 5).

  • Stinger (12): 1d-3 pi + 1d toxic follow-up. Roll HT-2 or become nauseated for 1d minutes. Reach C.

    • Stinger Backstab (12): 1d+2 pi + 1d toxic follow-up. Roll HT-2 or become nauseated for 1d minutes. Reach C. Only on unaware targets who don’t get a defense roll.

  • Tiny Blowpipe (12): Acc 1, Range 6. 1 pi + 1d toxic follow-up. Roll HT-2 or become nauseated for 1d minutes.

  • Lesser Wand of Explosive Fireball (12): Acc 1, Range 25/50, 1d burn ex.

Relevant Traits: Invisibility (selective), Injury Reduction 2 (non-magic damage), No Blood, No Neck, No Vitals, Backstabber 10.

Gear: Tiny blowpipe, 10 envenomed darts, Pipes of the Sewers, Lesser Wand of Explosive Fireball with 10 charges (worth $1600).

Blosodriette’s Loot

  • The “Tiny Blowpipe” is like the blowpipe on Adventurers, but with a max range of ST instead of STx4. It’s worthless and not suitable for PC use.

  • The Lesser Wand of Explosive Fireball replaces the Wand of Acid Arrow from the book. Per DF Magic Items 1, it’d be worth $9600 with the full 60 charges, so it’s only worth $1600 with 10. It’s a short baton. $1600, 0.25kg.

  • Pipes of the Sewers: A set of pipes ($40, 0.5kg) enchanted with Beast Summoning (Rats) ($8000) and Rat Control ($4000). I’m using the price for Vermin Control here because it’s only a single animal type instead of the more general categories. Playing the pipes summons a rat swarm and casts Rat Control on it (two separate spellcasting rolls at power 15 each). It works once per day (+$680). This is a bardic item, and Bardic Talent applies to the rolls instead of Power Investiture (Druidic). It requires the appropriate Musical Instrument skill. The spells only last for as long as the song continues. $12720, 0.5kg.

  • Gold-and-platinum signet ring worn as an armband ($1500), embroidered silk scarf worn as a wrap ($400).

Additional Loot In The Room

First Crate:

  • A pouch with a dozen pearls worth $1000 each. (total $12000)
  • A Balanced Pistol, from Pyramid #3/36: Acc 2, Range 75/450, Weight 1.5/0.005, RoF 1, Shots 1(20), damage 2d-1 pi+. $1000, 1.5kg.
  • A Balanced Silver-Coated Dwarven Mace: +1 to skill, sw+3 cr, reach 1, Parry 0. $550, 2.5kg.
  • A suit of Light Leather armor with a Fortify +1 enchantment. $1150, 9kg.

The second crate has a locked iron box. DR 6, HP 18, unmodified Lockpicking test to open. Inside is:

  • Charged Universal Scroll of Hide Emotions (1 hour duration): $200, neg.
  • Charged Universal Scroll of Hide Thoughts (30 mins duration): $500, neg.
  • Charged Universal Scroll of Scryguard (10 hour duration): $300, neg.
  • Charged Universal Scroll of Light Thread (10 minute duration): $200, neg.
  • The documents which are the goal of this whole delve.

The third crate has six Silver Raven Figurines of Wondrous Power. These can turn to life-sized mechanical ravens on command. The user can then use it like a D&D Animal Messenger. This means they can mentally imprint a location on the raven and have it carry a letter there, waiting for a specified amount of time and allowing the letter to be removed during that wait. Then it returns, possibly bearing a response.

[Player] The Old Hideout

Mechanically, we’re going with this procedure for the exploration, and I think it’s fair to say this includes Urist’s Detect Evil rolls. Me-The-Player would definitely argue for that with Me-The-GM.

The party arrives at the old hideout on their second exploration turn, take in the ruined ambience, and decide to spend another exploration turn searching the place. This is a no-brainer, really. So we get to make some Perception rolls for them.

  • Jania spots the nest in the corner, and notes it seems to have been recently used by a tiny humanoid creature.

  • Rosalia notices the three boxes of Stuff.

  • Urist’s Detect Evil power finds that there’s a demon in the area, but none of the others can find anything with their mundane senses.

Blosodriette is invisible and trying to be silent. I’m giving her Stealth 15, and no one could beat that with their Hearing rolls. However I do think the clues the party did find would make Jania cast See Invisible, and I want to say that’d let them spot her because she’d be relying on her invisibility to stay hidden.

[GM] Call it a +10 modifier to Jania's Perception because the imp is now in
plain sight for her. With the bonus, Jania succeeds by 14 while B only
succeeds by 7.

Jania spots the imp and calls it out. Blosodriette freaks out, startled and angry at life, and begins to fight. Let’s say she recognizes Jade, since she was definitely around when the Ravens were active!

No surprise, but only Jania can see the imp currently. The creature opens by launching a fireball from her wand at the party, but she misses, causing the projectile to hit a nearby wall and explode. Everyone is startled but no one is hurt.

Jania casts another See Invisible spell on Urist, which leaves her low on fatigue. The priest begins charging a Sunbolt spell.

Rosalia, meanwhile, figures that even though she can’t see Blosodriette the imp should be able to hear her just fine, so she begins her own string of insults as a Song of Humiliation, and manages to stun her target!

[GM] There is a penalty for not being able to see the target, but Rosalia
won the Quick Contest anyway.

The party’s melee fighters have a rough idea of where Blosodrtiette is and begin closing in on her position while she struggles and fails to recover from her mental stun. Urist lets his Sunbolt fly and slightly singes the imp, and then Arcturus ends the fight by grabbing at the flapping and cursing sounds and getting a good hold on the creature.

Blosodriette cannot possibly escape Arthur’s grasp, so this is when I go out of combat time. Frustrated, the imp just shouts for them to kill her already so she can go back home after a century trapped in this cesspit. Before anyone can reason whether this is really a good idea or not, Arthur wrings her like a wet rag and that’s that. She disappears in a puff of sulfur, leaving her gear behind.

The imp will pop up back in Hell, and though she’s in for a bad time down there for her “failure” she will still inform some higher-powered fiends about how the Sixth Raven is back, thus giving us a reason for more exciting Monsters of the Day.

Our heroes get to loot B’s gear and the three boxes described above now. Jania has no problem opening the locked box. She identifies that the stylish suit of leather armor inside one of the boxes is magical, and while she can’t feel any magic from the silvered mace next to it she figures there must be something special about it. And the pearls, oh the pearls. Jania and Rosalia get little gold pieces in their eyes as they realize how much these must be worth.

The silver raven figurines also ping as magical, and bear further analysis. There’s some magic mixed in with the big pile of documents too, but they’re not gonna sift through that right now. After Urist confirms none of this stuff is evil, they decide to carry everything out in its boxes and distribute later. B’s gear goes into the iron box for later sorting as well.

Victory Celebration

When the party emerges from the old hideout, they’re hailed as heroes by the grimples. A few of them bring out tiny improvised musical instruments for a celebration, which fascinates Rosalia enough that the decides to gift them the tiny pipes. They do get a bit scared when that summons a swarm of mundane rats who start dancing to the tune, but in the end the grimples are even more grateful for the party’s generosity.

Their leader pledges to help the party in the future, should they need it, and explains how to leave a letter at a place on the surface where they will check for it.

With that done, they set out on the long walk to the Long Roads Coffee House. It takes about 90 minutes.

[GM] Rewards

The party gets a total of 3 character points:

  • 1 for fully clearing the Livery.
  • 1 total for the battles inside.
  • 1 for retrieving a “quest item” (the documents).

For treasure, they get the $2500 platinum ring found in scene 4, and everything listed in this post except for the Pipes of the Sewers. Rosalia gave that away to the grimples. Yes, it’s really expensive, I know.

We’ll distribute the treasure in the next scene, after the party arrives at the Long Roads Coffee House.