Fomor: Session Two Writeup (Part 2)

The conclusion to session two. Again, I lost the majority of the recording for this session, so most of it is very sparse and has little detail. I remember some specifics because they were memorable. Note: I messed this session up very badly. I completely misread the party and thought they were not liking RP sections, when in reality they told me that they were just feeling awkward because they were unused to it. This adventure was almost purely combat-based, and I feel really bad about it. But that will be fixed in the future.


The party goes to find Dul in the morning. They walk through the courthouse of Bicka, which is little more than a barracks. It is built out of wood and stone and has little to no furnishings. They come across Kell Deathsickle sparring with some men in a fighting ring, where he casually tosses them about with his bare hands. He greets the party with a bear hug and tell them that Dul "is in a good mood right now." 
When they enter Dul's office, they see that there are a number of ships in bottles around the room. Unlike normal ships in bottles, these are fully animated with tiny people manning the ships. As they wait for Dul to let them see him, the ships begin firing on each other in a full-on naval engagement.

I saw that this was a legit monster in Pathfinder. The party didn't fight them, but it's too cool to just leave out.

They meet with Dul, and he is really only focused on Salma. The others are mostly irrelevant to him. He doesn't care at all that the letter was opened, and only tells the party that he requires "the heart of an evil fey" from them. He points them in the direction of a nearby forest that is home to one such fey, and sends them on their way. The party spends no time in town and sets off immediately.

Last session, the players didn't seem too into roleplaying. So this session I actually cut quite a lot of it out. They pretty much reported to Dul and then immediately headed off. This surprisingly wasn't railroaded that much and they pretty much went along with the hook. I found out from the players afterwards that they actually did want more roleplaying, but it felt awkward last time since they are unused to it. I feel really bad about that and will definitely emphasize it more in the future.

Dul pointed to a number of symbols on a large map, including the one that the party has seen so many times already. The party navigates to that place and begins the actual adventure of the session. This mostly follows the Black Forest adventure that I posted about earlier. Most of it was straightforward combat, with the party being introduced to zombies and the trap-plants. 

They weren't aware that zombies resist all but slashing damage. Made for some interesting times with Kheldar dealing 0 damage several turns in a row. Unfortunately, by this point my recording has cut out and I don't remember all the details. 

Salma's upgraded rifle manages to blast several zombies apart even with the damage resistance. The party continues forward into the forest and enters into a skills challenge when they stumble into a group of flowers. They barely manage to navigate through the flowers, with Kheldar and Salma being tied to the ground by the grasping vines. They narrowly escaped before the encroaching undead flowers sapped all of their life away. 
The party stumbles into an immediate combat with two Swamp Creatures. These had mostly the same stats as Giant Toads, with a slight tweaking. The party engages in a combat but manages to get the drop on the monsters. Succeeding the skills challenge, they were given a surprise round. Kheldar kills one with his Sneak Attack, and Salma's rifle blasts away at the other one. Strider slashes at it to kill it. The party is then ambushed by yet more Swamp Creatures.
The battle is fairly short. Strider is eaten by one of the monsters, but he quickly cuts himself out. The party cleans up the rest of the monsters in short order. Strider's healing is helpful, as now the party is fully rejuvenated before entering the dungeon.
The party enters a grove filled with zombies and plants. They see in the back of the grove a pool of water with a hole leading to darkness. They fight through the zombies with relative ease, and then go down into the hole. This opens them up into the actual dungeon. The first few rooms are small groups of monsters that are dispatched with ease. Salma notices that the party is in a limbo state between planes, and feels like they are being ripped out of their home plane.
The four enter a large room. There are about a dozen zombies and many large plants. As they fight the zombies, they notice that one of the plants is spawning more zombies each turn. Strider moves to be in range of every zombie and the spawning plant, and Channels Positive Energy to fry them all over three turns. The party cleans up the remainder and disables the plants so they won't be ambushed. They find another hole and move down.

This is the final boss room. Honestly, I rather liked this fight. The boss was the evil fey, and he was completely insane. He was somewhat based on Putrid Shadow of the Moon, but he was nowhere near as strong as that character is. The way he worked was the room was divided into four quadrants. There was one spawning plant in the very center, and then other various trap plants on separate pieces. Each round, I rolled 2d4 to select which moves the boss would use: 

• Blink randomly to one of the quadrants (roll 1d4 to decide)
• Spawn 2d4 undead (minions with 1 hp, roll randomly to determine where they spawn)
• Cast a minor curse on one of the party (roll 2d20s and take lower result on next attack)
• Randomize the locations of each flower trap (roll 1d4 to see where each trap goes)

The whole fight was a hectic mess. The boss would melee anyone near him, rolling to randomly determine who he actually clawed at.

The party enters the room, and finds the evil fey they are after. It is a satyr that is competely mad. It rambles on in every language imaginable, and even a few hundred they've never heard before. The fight is very long, and Kheldar nearly died when the satyr clawed at him.

The boss rolled two natural 20s on Kheldar in one round, and both of them confirmed. He went from full to negative two.

After much battling and maneuvering around the undead hordes being summoned all around the room, most of the party is beaten. They are low on hit points, almost out of spells, and being ravaged by the plant traps. The zombies are swarming over them, and each of them take attacks of opportunity as they move. Kheldar and Salma both manage to hit the boss several times, but he has a lot of hit points. Eventually Kheldar manages to barely bring him down, causing all the zombies to crumble into dust.

He literally rolled just enough to kill the boss. One less point of damage and the party very well may have died. Maybe not, since Strider still had one use of Channel Positive Energy, which could either heal the party or destroy all of the zombies. The party never attacked any of them in the boss fight, but these ones only had one hit point. All the other zombies in the adventure had twelve.

The party cuts out the fey's heart, and the cave begins collapsing. They barely escape before they are crushed underneath. They quickly make their way back to Bicka, recuperating from their wounds with Strider's magic and Kheldar's new Bard abilities.

He didn't use any Bard spells other than Cure Light Wounds. I still have no idea why he was so insistent on multiclassing.

The first thing they do in town is visit Dul Bilderbottom once again. He again shows no interest in anyone but Salma, and drops many hints that he knows exactly what her past is. She gets the feeling that he may know even more than she does. He takes the heart in one hand, and smashes it with his other.

The party passes out, and sees a flash of white light.

Salma comes to, and is surrounded by a field of feathers.

The session ends.