Master of the Fallen Fortress - A Friday Night One-Shot

This post has been sitting in my drafts for quite some time, so I decided to clean it up a little and put it out, since it was mostly done, anyway.

On some past Friday, I was set to run my ongoing Rise of the Runelords Pathfinder game (yes, the same one I had been posting about in the past), but various circumstances conspired against enough of the group showing up for us to be comfortable enough with running it, since the adventure EL was currently ~14.

Taylor, Angela, and I decided to play something, anyway, and Taylor downloaded the Free RPG Day module, Master of the Fallen Fortress. Angela made a Human Fighter and I cobbled together a Dwarf Ranger, both 1st level, and we started the adventure in media res, with our characters outside the ruined siege tower.

We made our way toward the tower, but are set upon by a small pack of three wild dogs, but we quickly dispatched them and made our way inside via a hole in the wall, only for myself to be covered in webs and then power my way out. The giant spider that provided the web then pressed the attack and charged Mira as she made her way through the opening, whereupon the warrior made good use of her earthbreaker to end the creature's life. In an adjacent area, we found the remains of someone's pet dog, that we took the bejeweled collar off of and headed up to the second level of the tower, climbing in from the outside.

There, we encounter a friendly little lizard that almost immediately tries to electrocute us, which eventually draws the attention of two pungent lizard-like beings, that attempt to put an end to our quest to find a little treasure and glory. The fight goes poorly for us, and we're forced to
leave for civilization to rest up, heal our wounds, and plan for another assault on the ruined tower. Almost a week later, we trudge back to the place and after giving the ground floor a cursory once-over, we head back up to the second level.

Shortly after ascending, we come across more (or the same?) of the nasty reptile people, but make relatively short work of the situation, then blunder right into the path of a mechanism that hurls javelins. I'm a little fuzzy as to our course here, but I believe we crawled up to the next level onto a ledge, but could see no egress, so we went back and backtracked to a central spiral stair we had seen before and came out in a large chapel area, obviously dedicated to Nethys, the god of magic. This place was guarded by two skeletons lit afire with eldritch power, but we were (barely) able to defeat one of the things, if memory serves, before we were made to turn back and again spend time at our homes, recuperating.

Our third foray into the tower met us with more opposition from the lizardy beast-men, but we managed to press through by the skin of our teeth and met with a human by the name of Balenar Forsend, who claimed to be a member of the Pathfinder Society. Though we (I, anyway) distrusted him, he healed some of our wounds and pledged to help us complete our task in the moldering keep, simply for the experience of it!

We returned Balenar's things - that we had liberated from the Troglodytes (as the Pathfinder called them) - and waited while he composed himself before venturing further up...this time to come face to face with one of these Troglodytes that could command magic! The thing also had a large pet lizard, the color of fresh snow, with a long snout filled with teeth! Battle was commenced, and after a long fight, we prevailed against the vile master of this ruin, despite his calling of a swarm of vermin and his brutish unnatural companion.

We took our spoils, dividing them as we saw fit and bade Balenar well on his travels, retiring to home and speaking of never doing a fool thing such as "adventuring" again.


Cast of Characters
Mira Silvano, Female Human Fighter 2 (Angela)
Whurvark Moonoath, Male Dwarf Ranger 2 (Buddy)