The last Pathfinder session I ran for my group's Council of Thieves lasted quite a while. This is a session that began at around 10pm one night and ran until 4am. It then recommenced at 10-10.30am and ran to around 3pm. Quite a long (and difficult to run) session.
After the heroes had successfully survived The Six Trials of Larazod (well, some did and one was resurrected at the mayor's expense), they were invited to a decadent party to celebrate the play - thrown by none other than the mayor.
This was the entire point of the party acting the play in the first place. Let me back up a bit and explain. The city of Westcrown used to be the capital of Cheliax - until their deity Aroden died. How exactly a God can die is a bit beyond me, but anyway what followed was years of civil war - eventually with the House of Thrune - followers of Asmodeus (a Lawful Evil deity) won. They moved the capital north - leaving Westcrown as a shadow of its former glory.
Even worse, in recent years shadow beasts have taken to the streets of Westcrown - preying on all that venture outdoors after sundown. People are generally unhappy with the way things are in the city, which is where the campaign begins. The players are contacted by Janiven Key, a ranger who is also among the leadership for a revolutionary group that is attempting, at first nyway, to "make Westcrown a better place to live".
After rescuing the group's true leader (a half-elf cleric named Arael) from the incredibly fascist Hellknight Order of the Rack, the group has been beginning to fight for the people. First off they defeated the Bastards of Erebus. Though if you've read my earlier Pathfinder posts you'd know what they've done!
So an undercover Pathfinder requested that the players investigate the Westfall Pathfinder lodge (named Delvehaven) since there may be some clue there to the cause of the shadow beast scourge. However, data about Delvehaven is stored in a Chelish Crux (essentially a puzzle box mixed with a bag of holding), in the Asmodean Knot, which is a demonic pocket dimension attached to the mayor's home in Westcrown. They infiltrate the mayor's house by performing in the play.
So, surviving the play got them invited to the Cornucopia - a party held by the mayor at his home. The group attends, and tries to get as much information as possible about the Asmodean knot via rumours and such (they didn't learn much) before everyone gets too drunk and passes out - allowing the players to explore the house, find the knot, and enter it. Of course, it wasn't quite this simple.
Kynan was busy having ~fun~ with Calseinica (an actress from the play they were involved in). This kind of fun involved a pregnancy die roll. I will not reveal the results of said roll at the moment!
Also, Azelia decided it was a great idea to draw a smiley face on the passed out mayor. He woke up and summoned his guards, who threw her out.
Being 2am, she was promptly attacked by a shadow beast (finally confirming to the group that their existence was not simply rumour). The rest of the group heroically exited the mansion to save her, and then reentered. It shouldn't have been so easy to let them back in, but I let them do it simply due to them having done the right thing in rescuing her! Besides, the guards may well have gotten drunk too :P
When they eventually "found" the entrance to the knot (with some nudging from yours truly), Azelia was quite quickly cursed with a scroll. Within a day, a bone devil was doomed to come find her, and annihilate her unless she could get a Remove Curse spell cast on her, or get someone else to willingly accept the scroll. Luckily, she was able to pawn it off to an insane bearded devil later on in the dungeon.
The Asmodean Knot is a strange place. Constructed by the first mayor of Westcrown (after the civil war), it was orginally used simply as a vault. The second mayor expanded on this, by using it to conduct experiments in sadism using demons and prisoners. This, of course, left a lot of random monsters in the knot - as well as some traps (most of which were already disarmed). The knot itself had many a room which didn't adhere to the laws of physics - rooms that had staircases that folded in on themselves, leading the party back to where they originally were, rooms where the gravity was slower than usual, and falling off the bridge meant a slow fall downwards, and reappearing above the party as if in some kind of twisted video-game world!
The current mayor is the third mayor of Westcrown, and had no interest in the knot whatsoever, and never really explored it. Lucky for him, as the knot is a dangerous place!
When they found the prison, Azelia cleverly palmed the cursed scroll off to a clearly insane bearded devil. The devil was insane due to having spent decades in its cell. Once it was killed by the bone demon, they searched the dead devil, to find a spear made out of pure malice. This was taken by Dorn, who now owns an intelligent magical item!
This spear worships Asmodeus, and casts bleed upon any fallen creature - including other allies! (unless the wielder also worships Asmodeus - which Dorn does not... yet). Fun times for all.
Eventually the group encountered a giant poison devil, beat it down and acquired the Crux. As they were leaving, Crux and new treasures in hand, they were ambushed by a tiefling named Sian. After dealing heavy damage to Arael, and almost getting annihilated by Kynan and Dorn's combination of summoned Stirges and giant weaponry, she escaped. Dorn is very unhappy with letting her live - and it seems he will not rest until she is safely not-breathing-anymore.
Next up, the group has to figure out how to open the crux, and then glean as much information from it as they can before entering Delvehaven, looking for the cause behind the shadow beasts.
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