Serpent’s Skull – Part 68
Sanctum of the Serpent God – Assassins
We continue our Pathfinder Serpent’s Skull campaign on Roll20, continuing on after our 1 on 1 sessions where cultists of the Coils of Ydersius had tried to assassinate all of us. The half-elven ranger Tabansi is recording the events of our travels.
I should note that we’ve been playing this now for 6 years – the first session was on 28th June 2014.
Tabansi’s Journal, Part 68
Assassins had tried to kill all of us, and had failed. We met up back the the Artisan’s District to take stock of the situation. Both Athazog and Ek’Tura had managed to slay their assassins, whilst the others had escaped. Athazog had found the dead bodies of two of the locals hidden away, their appearances taken by the assassins who appeared to be humans.
Derek tried a Speak with Dead on the assassin that Athazog had killed, but got no useful information from them. I tried finding the tracks of my one again, and tracked her into the jungle to the north of the district, but after a few hundred yards lost her. It’s possible that she had teleported out after losing track of me.
We sheltered in the old ruined castle from the rain in the late afternoon, then headed back to camp. Ek’Tura’s Psycopomp was able to try Speak with Dead on the other assassin, and had more success, and we managed to glean some information from them.
- There had been five assassins hired to kill us.
- They had been hired by someone named Darnev Erkaiml.
- On success they were to return to Kalabuto and collect their reward.
- As far as they knew, no other assassins had been hired to kill us.
- At Kalabuto, they were to ask for Darnev at the Red Dragon Inn.
- If they failed, then they were to keep on trying.
Even though Ek’Tura had lived in Kalabuto for a while, he had never heard of the Red Dragon inn, so we weren’t entirely sure how reliable the information was. Personally, I felt it was useful to follow up on, but the others, especially Ek’Tura, weren’t.
That night, Ek’Tura created a Secure Shelter, and we spent the night in safety. By morning we wake to find a number of Aspis members coming into the camp. Apparently their camp was attacked and destroyed by a Popobala, probably the same one that attacked us some weeks back.
There was nothing we could do about this, so we decided to try and track down the assassins. I used my magic to track my attacker to the jungle south of where we were, and we made our way down there. There was an encampment there, but they heard us coming and teleported off before we could trap them.
Derek tries to track down his with a Discern Location, which located it in the middle of the merchant caravans in our camp. We teleported there immediately, and found ourselves in amongst a group of merchants.
There was no sign of any obvious assassin, but Arkin noticed that one of the apparent merchants was wearing a serpent belt just like that worn by the assassins. As I prepared to shoot him, Athazog leap towards him and cut him down with a single blow. He went down so easily, we immediately became suspicious that this merchant possibly wasn’t an assassin.
Derek drew on his heroism, and channelled a breath of life on him, immediately bringing him back to life. It appeared that we have been tricked. On recovering, the merchant claimed that his boss had given him the belt this morning – something his boss had denied. We assumed that the assassin had probably taken the shape of the boss that morning to sow confusion.
With morale in the camp low because of what happened, we sorted everyone in the camp into different groups, and tried using Discern Location again. However, the target wasn’t in any of the groups, and was apparently down in the Merchant’s District near the lake.
Ek’Tura uses dimension door to get us all down to the area, where we encounter the assassin – but he is already running from the scene. Ek’Tura slows him with an ice storm, and I manage to get ahead of him, but he teleports away. It seems that there is nothing we can do to stop these assassins – they either go invisible or teleport out as soon as they are in danger.
That evening, whilst myself and Derek were on watch, there was the sound of something flying nearby, and a strange hooting noise. We kicked the others awake and headed to where the sound was coming from.
It was back near the wagons again, where a chest was hovering in the air and making strange noises whilst one of the merchants was laying, possibly dead, on the ground.
A humanoid, bat-winged creature fly in out of the darkness, and then my head became clouded with alien thoughts. I remember feeling a hatred for my companions who had become the enemy, and I remember seeing bursts of fire and cold. And then my head cleared as the creature fled into the darkness.
Player’s Notes: The Popobala had cast a Dominate Person on me, and I rolled a 1 for my saving throw. I was then commanded to attack my friends – but we all forgot that this would give be a second saving throw. Derek’s Dispel Magic to remove the effect failed, but we then remembered the rules so ti was decided that this was what cured me of the spell.
Whilst playing Tabansi as Dominated, I tried to be effective, but not too effective in killing other PCs. I probably could have killed a character, but I split my attacks around a bit when it made sense to do so, so not a single person took all the damage. They in turn tried to do non-lethal damage to me, and got me down to within 8 points of knocking me out.
Apparently I had tried to kill Derek and Arkin, but Derek had managed to break the Domination effect just before the Popobala had been driven off.
