Edit, July 21: I've updated this post with two more transcripts to finish out the quest.
The first transcript picks up a session or two into my previous post.]
First Transcript
When we last left our heroes, we had failed to stop the summoning of what we believed to be Rat King.
We followed a trail to the docks. On our way, we'd encountered a rather rude female pirate.
Ollie uses a Scrying orb to find the pirate, and I use my sailor knowledge to help narrow down the choices to the Sea Witch and the Blackbird.
Ollie talks with the watch on the Sea Witch. He claims she's not onboard.
Ollie talks with the watch on the Blackbird. After some golden persuasion, he thinks she may be the one Ollie's looking for.
We gather up Calathes, Darmos, and Bolt and head to an inn to rest till the morning.
Ollie travels back to see the pirate, who's a captain.
She proceeds to talk to us about the city, but does not volunteer any information that is useful.
Ollie believes she's telling telling the truth, but not all of it.
She suggests we talk travel to the left foot of the city to speak to the Obelisk. Tell it "Aldrack Must Live" and we may get some information. We can also try the flower shop in town to speak with a detective.
We leave.
At the obelisk, we discover it is a permanent Mage's Mansion. The lady inside doesn't seem happy that I'm hunting the Rat King. I offer for her to pay me off, and she refuses. She claims part of the Rat King is good. We move on to the flower shop.
We ask the flower guy some questions and don't really seem to have much useful information, until he mentions that he knows who created the scorch mark. We order a flower arrangement, which Cal intends to Locate Object. The flower man takes off (Back to the Future references with flaming feet and Dimension Doors). He also travels off with additional flowers. We begin tracking the flower arrangements.
We track one of them to a church, but underground. Ollie pilfers a manhole tool from a guard and we abscond into the catacombs.
In the catacombs we find a tomb after spending a ton of time dicking around. (getting worried we're not going to finish the quest).
We find the flower arrangement that was delivered down here.
We wake the ghost of the missing captain.
He doesn't seem to know anything about the Rat King.
We bring up the fact we took care of the cultists, and he sends a cat to the manor lady to ask what she meant.
We now believe that the captain, who appears to be leading the night watch, and the lady at the manor, are part of "The Rat Kings."
[That Mage's Mansion was like a Tardis, except that instead of materializing its whole exterior as a box it materialized only a door and only onto existing surfaces.
The "Ghost Captain" was actually an ex-general and vampire.
At the end of the session, the party got him to send a cat to the lady of the Magic Manor asking what the Rat King was, and they overheard the message come back "it's us." For reasons I don't think any of us remember very well, the players decided the best way to interrogate the gel cats was to challenge them to a fight to the death.
As you might realize from the NPC names, I made almost zero preparations for the following session.]
Second Transcript
We ask the gel cats where we may die by their hand. We believe they're related to "The Rat King." We believe it's the only way to truly find it. They agree to battle at General Patton's family tomb.
We do notice a magical battle took place nearby. With Legend Lore, we discern that it was between the now fallen Patton and the current King.
Bolt (the Monk) and Rhodes (the Brawler) go drinking at the inn while Cal (the Mage?) tries to woo the lady of the Magic Manor. Ollie (the Witch?) hexes rowdy bar-goers to sleep and receives everything on the house.
In the morning, we travel to the Citadel. It's very grand. Well dressed individuals with fancy clothing enter the Citadel with writs of invitation. Ollie flies over their heads (he's wearing a robe... Use your imagination) to see what's on the writs.
Major Tom is the master of arms at the Citadel. Cal offers his services.
Ollie goes after the City clerk. He inquires about the various burial grounds. The clerk points him towards the temples because they have the oldest records. Specifically, the temple that was raided the other night.
We're stopped by Lt. Dan. He tells us where a living cleric can be found: the Citadel.
We strive to reach the Citadel before the interrogation begins.
Ollie charms a guard.
The guard leads us to Captain Faceless. Who has no face. Wut.
We ask the Captain and cleric where we can find Patton's Family Tomb. He identifies it and we mark it the map. Cal pays for the cleric's freedom.
The cleric was evil. We return him to the guard.
We catch the speedster florist. He's just back from "seeing" the orcs. They're apparently building up a circus of freak creatures, which is why they wanted the Rat King to add to their collection. The party tries to switch allegiances, but Rhodes just wants to get paid.
We decide to go to Patton's family tomb.
Martha Patton and Thomas Patton have the places of honor.
We're attacked by Magic Manor lady and a giant slime cat. Bolt and Rhodes get slimed. Bolt escapes, but the cat shlorps Ollie.
The Magic Manor lady attacks again with a giant green fist. It just barely misses.
Rhodes gets pummeled. Cal blocks the attackers down a crypt hallway.
The Magic Manor Lady and the slime cat retreat.
Fade to black.
Third Transcript
[Final session. The opening bit with the "Answering Cat" was great, because as the party composed their return message, they also discussed all their plans openly in front of the cat. Luckily for the players, one of them thought to check whether the cat was recording *everything* they said, and got it to erase everything.]
We teleport to the Magic Manor Lady's (MML) obelisk and assault it with Dispel Magic. Because we're angry.
After that, we Scry on MML, which fails.
We travel to Patton's crypt, and discover that he's moved shop and left behind an Answering Cat.
"We were attacked by MML, we're going to assume she's one of the plagues of the city and we'll take care of her."
We make our way from Patton's crypt to his Family crypt because we think that's where he went.
We're met by a Messenger Cat
"I do not need any help policing the catacombs or the sewers. Do not mess with my family crypt. MML only attacked you because you wanted to go to your death at the hands of the cat."
Cal decides he wants to collapse the Family crypt anyway.
Bolt is punching rocks into smaller rocks.
Ollie comes bearing the message from Patton.
Rhodes doesn't like Cal's idea, but doesn't have any way to stop him.
Ollie, Cal, and Bolt argue about the value of collapsing the tunnels. We agree not to collapse the tunnels and instead head to the other spire near the Florist.
Bolt is giving Ollie dating advice. Ugh.
We ask the Florist about who he delivered our flowers to yesterday.
MML, Patton, Florist, On Clocktower(?), and gave one to the female pirate captain. We believe they are the "Rat King"
Ollie attempts to contact a lesser deity and succeeds at not melting his brains.
Ollie and the Florist head out for food because Ollie's spell makes him hungry.
Bolt begins investigating clock towers while the others go with Ollie and the Florist.
The Florist agrees to hire us to kill the orcs that hired us to kill the Florist. Oh, and set the animals they're holding captive free. Because "we're nice guys."
Ollie teleports us all to Gringotts, where the Orcs are.
We look into the circuses. Cunningham's Cunning Animals is the first stop. He doesn't have any magic animals, but they are quite clever.
Cal looks over the health of the animals. He asks about the gender of an elephant. Rhodes replies that it's ir-elephant. Ollie kills Rhodes. But not really.
We stop at another shop, this one is a bunch of elves trying to make money via illusions and technological tricks.
We somehow sleep for 2 hours.
A scruffy gentleman opens Darmos' coffin and is startled by Deimos trying to sleep there.
Someone tries to rob Rhodes. He snaps their wrists.
Someone tries to rob Ollie. He hexes them and they immediately fall asleep.
Someone tries to rob Bolt, and succeeds.
We move on to the Orc circus. The night hides our approach, but there are guards posted every 50ish feet.
Our group massacres the entire group of orcs in a matter of minutes. It was probably evil.
The Orcs had a splattering of very rare creatures in magic cages. And a peasant boy.
Ollie frees a Slephnir. He asks it to help free things, and it breaks the other cages and makes a mess of a couple tents.
We "end the quest" by killing our employers.
[It wasn't a circus, the party just assumed the Florist's description was accurate. My meta-plot villains (now all dead) had been collecting twelve legendary kings to ritually sacrifice.
They also had a chimera on hand to fill in for the missing Tiger, Dragon and Goat.
Rat: "Rat King" (not acquired) Ox: Minotaur Tiger: Rabbit: "Rabbit King" (Coney Island pageant winner) Dragon: Snake: Invidious Gem (sold previously by the party) Horse: Sleipnir Goat: Monkey: white orangutan Rooster: Easter Bird (ghost of the alpha male) Dog: head of city founder's statue Pig: piglet (transformed Hogzilla)
The Rat, Dog, and Pig all come from this same quest; the Rabbit and Rooster come from the one I ran before it, and the Ox from an extra-planar labyrinth glimpsed then also; the Monkey is from the first Pathfinder quest I ever ran for this group; the Snake and Horse are from quests the other players ran.]
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