This week, Angela was unable to attend and run her Emerald Spire campaign, so I took the reins and had everyone roll up first level Pathfinder 1e characters while I looked for a published adventure to run. I settled on Patrick Wetmore's Anomalous Subsurface Environment; the party was created and off we went.
I decided on a whim to set the game in my own campaign setting and had our adventurers start in the town of Marstad, close to the western border of Gyr. An entrance to an underground complex had recently opened on the side of a nearby hill and the local government had hastily erected a gate over the opening and posted guards in the event that anything came out. A local mining interest and several members of local government were offering coin to those who explored, and a ragtag group was assembled for the mission.
Spoilers ahead for Anomalous Subsurface Environment!
The group were surprised to find that a long flight of stairs led down from the entrance and the structure was relatively clean and in good repair when they got to the base of the stairs. They first entered a room to their right which contained the skeletonized remains of a humanoid with scraps of clothing and bits of paper. One of the sheets of paper had a note saying they had been trapped in this complex and were being fired upon when trying to escape. The adventurers pocketed the note and moved on.
The group then went down a hall opposite the room they had just checked and came into a large hall almost knee deep with bones with a few passageways leading off and what appeared to be a large stone sarcophagus lying open at the far end. They first check a room on their right which is empty and mark the door leading out of the other side of it for further exploration and backtrack into the bone hall, moving toward the sarcophagus. Suddenly, a screech like a woman's scream erupts from a passage ahead of them and they rush in, fortunately holding the incoming albino humanoids in a chokepoint where they're able to hold their own long enough to force their aggressors back. The explorer's abandon this direction, not wanting to walk into what could be a trap and go back to the large hall. There, they finally make it to the sarcophagus and find it empty. Several small alcoves lie above it on the wall, but nothing can be gleaned, and it is marked for further experiments later if something can be found to fit in the alcoves.
Going back to the empty room from earlier, they move past the door on the opposite side and check another room, which seems to have rusty and dry rotted tools, then onto a room with a clump of lichen covering what appeared to be a complete humanoid skeleton, but below the fungus was only the hips and legs of a skeleton composed of tarnished silver! How the lichen mimicked the shape of the torso, head, and arms was a puzzlement, but a switch on the wall was manipulated by Malar and found to turn on an overhead light and open a secret door when pushed in. Another secret door was found at the end of a short hall and progress was made into a small empty room with a door leading out on the other side.
Traversing through the door and into a short hall brought them to an oddly pastoral scene. Four wooden statues of three-eyed gnomes with conical hats topped with large garnets sat in a circle in the middle of a large trapezoidal room. Woodland murals covered the walls and fake shrubs dotted the floor here and there. During inspection, one of the statues was touched and all four sprang to their feet and began to attack the party! The fight was hard, and the wooden warriors hit hard, but in the end the heroes prevailed and decided to head topside to report their findings and come back more prepared.
We called it there and may pick this back up if we have another Friday night where the group is short a player.
Cast of Characters
Malar Harken, Human Unchained Rogue 1 - David
Brunus Kegstand, Dwarf Barbarian 1 - James
RiRun, Catfolk Fighter 1 - Sam
Jobin Goldbloom, Halfling Sorcerer 1 - Taylor
Notes
• I didn't incorporate much of the setting into the game, as we wanted to get going fairly quickly. If we play it again, I'll be able to put more effort into expanding what the nation of Gyr is like, etc.
• I was converting ASE as I went and probably erred on the easier side when it came to monster stats. I wanted the players to have fun and feel like heroes. My goal wasn't to TPK, even though the wood golems could have easily done that without me boosting them any more.
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