Librarians & Leviathans

Necropolitans, episode 084: I's got schizophrenia, now'm permanently insane now, by the way

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 17:36:00 +0000

Hundreds of crazed survivors of an ancient civilization mob the Necropolitans, in Episode 084: I'm permanently insane now, by the way.

Iris’ player has some mic issues so is clipping a lot in this session, sorry.

I enjoyed creating a set of NPCs for them to fight, but actually managing them was, as usual, tricky. Not helped by trying to remember which one was which!

"Next level up, I bet you she's going to grow another leg." - it's about a different campaign, but it's still funny.

"'Mwahahaha', and then dark energy." - Makoa

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)

Necropolitans, episode 83: Only if you have sufficient hair gel

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Wed, 10 Jun 2026 17:13:00 +0000

The Necropolitans begin to worry about the inhabitants of the bunker, with good reason, in Episode 083: Only if you have sufficient hair gel.

The rules for Quintella's magical hair don't specify what kind of damage it is. This is a Big Deal in Pathfinder, because untyped damage bypasses damage reduction and ignores rules or abilities that protect against certain types of damage.

Iris ends up with a ranged attack here, though it's a long time before she makes any significant use of it. This is effectively a +2 weapon enchantment. For a Dex-based two-weapon fighter like Iris, being able to use your melee attacks as ranged attacks is really good because that is an enormous numbers of attacks and they benefit from all her melee-focused abilities.

"There's still not proof that that was Jaal's faul- there's very little proof that it was Jaal's fault." - Jaal, actually correct for once.

People building apocalypse bunkers to live out eternity in rarely consider how long they will remain sane.

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)

Necropolitans, episode 084: I's got schizophrenia, now'm permanently insane now, by the way

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Tue, 09 Jun 2026 16:26:00 +0000

An angel’s metaphysical compulsion to destroy undead proves an obstacle to negotiations, in Episode 082: He's got schizophrenia, now.

Iris’ player has some mic issues so is clipping a lot in this session, sorry.

The angel Bound of Contracts is bound to protect the inhabitants of the bunker from death, injury, and illness. Bound of Substance maintains the integrity of the structure. We haven't yet encountered the other protector, Bound of Eternity. The other two, Bound of Fate and Bound of Contracts, are meta-bindings, whose powers set up the whole arrangement and maintain its power.

"I'm just never going to succeed at anything Wisdom-related ever again," says Jaal, who has never used his Wisdom in the first place.

Nathan suggests that Jaal's mad insight is that the Jistkani must have bound an Elder God to this place. He is... not entirely wrong. Also, big ifrit reveal!

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)

Necropolitans, episode 81: Powerful friends from other elemental planes

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Mon, 08 Jun 2026 16:18:00 +0000

After defeating the shaitan Bound of Earth, the Necropolitans explore the strange magical binding of the Jistkan bunker, and cast the in-no-way-ominously-named mad sultan's melody, in Episode 081: Powerful magic friends from other elemental planes.

Narratively, the bound entities are extremely powerful outsiders. Mechanically, they're about CR 10-12, which I hoped would be sufficient to prove a challenge for the party when accompanied by allies, but really didn't. The PCs are quite optimized, the players are good at using them effectively, and they can steamroller things pretty effectively by focusing fire and simply ignoring the weaker critters. This remains a problem indefinitely.

"I could potentially replicate it," says Jaal, with no evidence whatsoever to support this assertion. In much the same way that I personally could replicate the moon landing because I did GCSE physics. Ahh, wild overestimation of one's own abilities...

As with other aspects of powerful magic, you simply have to ignore the actual magic rules. If a city-scaled magical binding that's lasted for thousands of years is just supported by a permanency spell, that means anyone who can cast 3rd-level spells can simply swan along and dispel it. That isn't how we want things to work, so you have to decree that it works differently and make up any necessary interactions yourself.

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)

Necropolitans, episode 80: Never bargain with an ifrit

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 14:07:00 +0000

Jaal's sanity continues to erode, and the Necropolitans encounter the guardians of the bunker, in Episode 080: Never bargain with an ifrit.

I was quite pleased with this bunker, which is entirely my own invention. The rulers of Rachikan created a bunker to wait out any calamity, where they would be preserved from harm for however long was necessary for their servitors to restore things to order. They enlisted extremely powerful extraplanar beings to power and defend the bunker, using their unrivalled talent at binding in a sort of pyramid: first bind a large number of powerful creatures, then combine their powers to summon an even more powerful being, and so on. So while it isn't obvious from the combat (because of the necessities of level-based combat), the entities bound here are narratively really powerful and important in their own realms. They aren't happy about their binding, especially after all this time, and it's probably bad that they're absent. Well... presumably by now they've been replaced.

The concept involves five bindings, with the outsiders involved having their identities suppressed by the magic: Bound of Substance, Bound of Guarding/Protection (I used both names in the game), Bound of Fate, Bound of Contracts, and Bound of Eternity.

It is incredibly Player Character energy, incredibly Wizard energy, and extremely Jaal energy to be bickering about whether you can hack a loophole in the magical binding over the voice of the shaitan trying to warn you about it. There are lots of situations where I would allow an attempt at something like that, if they had a concrete plan; Pathfinder doesn't actually include any rules for attempting such a thing, but then, it doesn't include any rules for weird magical situations in general, only specific spells and their effects - which feels like a weird, disappointing omission in a setting that is determined to cram enormous amounts of magic into the PCs and the monsters they fight. In this case: no, I was not about to let relatively low-level PCs who had no relevant information about the bindings, only a superficial exposure to it, and no knowledge whatsoever of Jistkan magic try to spontaneously hack a preposterously elaborate binding created by a group of staggeringly powerful outsiders at the behest of an entire city of genie-binders. You can't do everything with a skill check.

"If you get eaten again, that's fine." - Jaal

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)

Necropolitans, episode 79: I don't want to be the wizard king

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 13:42:00 +0000

The Necropolitans find evidence that someone’s been mapping the area, and argue about their weight, in Episode 079: I don't want to be the wizard king.

Being undead is very handy for underground exploration, freeing you from the really horrifying hazards of actual underground exploration.

Something I find interesting is how players tend to assume every friendly NPC they encounter is a weakling compared to them. Tlasritte is a homebrew archetype focused on architecture, and is very good at breaking stone, metal, etc. as well as being a mummy. One on one, he could probably have made a mess of the party, though he wouldn't actually win (NPCs don't get the various levelling boosts that PCs do, and he's also built to be an architect, not a warrior). This assumption will hold true throughout the campaign, although the flat-out most dangerous NPCs are the thirteen-year-old girl and Innocent, who don't get into fights in the first place.

Jaal's psychometry gives a clue as to the nature of this place: it's a doomsday bunker. Spoilers: it worked out really well for them.

"Jaal has problems with Iris but he doesn't actually want Iris to get hurt. Well, that hurt."

"You're the only person capable of damaging yourself."

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)

Necropolitans, episode 78: Can you teach me everything you know?

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Wed, 03 Jun 2026 13:23:00 +0000

The Necropolitans reconvene, to be eaten by dust creatures, in Episode 078: Can you teach me everything you know?

There is much digression and badmouthing of bards. We learn that being made of stone is not always a good thing.

I don't remember what the ooze actually was. This is an occupational hazard of writing up games from several years ago whose details I've long since had to delete to clear out space. I don't know what map I had either.

When I say "the guy from 3,000 years ago" I actually mean "5,000 years ago", but there was confusion about the current campaign date for a while.

"It slightly grinds you." - less erotic than it sounds.

"Jaal has problems with Iris but he doesn't actually want Iris to get hurt. Well, that hurt."

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)

Necropolitans, episode 77: We do have a great working relationship

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 12:45:00 +0000

Jaal and Iris apply the left- or right-hand rule, whichever they remember at the time, in Episode 077: We do have a great working relationship. I'm sure consistency isn't important.

I sneak in some linguistics fun here. Having devised an ancient Dwarven civilisation that the PCs have no historical record of at all, it made sense to me that the human civilisations that developed after them - recovering from the cataclysm of Earthfall - would naturally borrow their writing system. Thus, the ancient forms of Dwarven are also ancestral to the not-quite-so-ancient human script used for the Jistkan language, which eventually became many of the modern dialects of "Common". At various points in the campaign where very ancient languages appear, I also apply penalties or otherwise make it difficult for even Jaal, who as a wizard can know just about every language, to immediately understand everything.

I'll be honest, part of me frankly dislikes the ease with which RPG characters can normally pick up languages (or get around it entirely using magic, which is trivial by about 3rd level). It detracts from the mystery of the ancient world, for me, and there's also an aspect of my own language-learning experience crashing against suspension of disbelief: I don't care how intelligent a PC is, they simply cannot learn twenty languages fluently in the space of a few months, that's not how languages work. We've all got our quirks...

When I say "the guy from 3,000 years ago" I actually mean "5,000 years ago", but there was confusion about the current campaign date for a while.

"Are you actually telling him you want to become a lich?" - recurring questions for Jaal.

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)

Necropolitans, episode 76: In his teeth

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 12:21:00 +0000

Jaal and Iris dispute the semantics of spell-targeting, in Episode 076: In his teeth.

The lift incident is an absolute classic of GM and player simply not grasping each others' perceptions of a scene. To me, it took ages to work out what they were trying to do, because it couldn't possibly be "work out how to get to the bottom of this lift shaft complete with working lift". But they had not grasped or not assumed the "working lift" part.

Difficulties of split sessions, as discussed around 0:24 - if half the party have already done several hours' worth of things, narrating as they did that their friends stayed somewhere else, flashing back to the other half of the party and then trying to integrate them is problematic for the GM. Sometimes you can handwave it. Sometimes you really can't and it wouldn't make sense at all.

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)

Necropolitans, episode 75: Necromancer grabby hands

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Fri, 29 May 2026 11:10:00 +0000

Makoa and Quintella continue exploring Rachikan by themselves, finding a variety of... remains, in Episode 075: Necromancer grabby hands.

They find a variety of carved stone spheres with landscape images, and the slagged remains of Hellknights who picked a fight with something. They discover some of the horrible fates of some of the inhabitants, now persisting as deadly haunts.

The haunts were slightly disappointing, as the players either forgot about them or decided it wasn't something they wanted to pursue. Considering their own undead state and Makoa's zeal to put undead to rest, I hoped to get some more mileage out of them trying to work out how to handle the haunts. I cannot remember exactly what was going on with the haunts, but their fates would have revealed historical information about the fall of Rachikan: the fiend-infused golems and so on breaking free of their control and turning their powers on the citizenry.

Much of this was clues about the dangers of the fiend-golems still prowling the ruins centuries later. In my head these are essentially daemon engines from Warhammer lore: huge, hulking things whose metal twists into flesh as the power of the daemon within claims it, dripping with balefire and sprouting new spikes and skulls occasionally. Since Rachikan is so under-described, I didn't feel up to letting them explore the entire city, but that's fine; I had a plan for that.

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)

Necropolitans, episode 74: Give me a butter knife and about three days

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Thu, 28 May 2026 11:03:00 +0000

Makoa and Quintella explore the depths of Rachikan, encountering a squid-like being and a sword. The shoe is on the other foot for this grapple-inclined cephalopod! Or would be, if it wore shoes. Presumably quite a lot of shoes, in Episode 074: Give me a butter knife and about three days.

The sword is extremely relevant to the plot, but it's one of the things that the players just kept forgetting about and/or deciding wasn't interesting enough in favour of looking for things to punch in the face.

The ruined city of Rachikan is canonically home to... morlocks. No, I'm not entirely sure why either. There are loads of significant locations in Golarion which are either quite vaguely described, or have a couple of very specific locations described during a specific adventure, but are otherwise left entirely for the GM to make up. It's not that I'd want lots of excruciatingly-detailed city books, but especially when it's a ruined city of a civilization that no longer exists, having a basic map of the city with some key locations and a flavour of what it's like would really help.

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)

Necropolitans, episode 73: Doing a Spiderman impression

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Wed, 27 May 2026 21:29:00 +0000

Jaal commits a time robbery and finally resumes humanoid form, somewhat to my disappointment, in Episode 073: Doing a Spiderman impression.

Considering how much effort people went to to get them these books, the PCs end up taking a looong time to read them and to really focus on why they might be important. They keep getting distracted by little things like "monsters trying to eat your face" and "a girl".

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)

Necropolitans, episode 72: I've got myself a nice bone mug

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Tue, 26 May 2026 21:25:00 +0000

A blurry gnome admits to having some involvement in this whole temporal side trip, in Episode 072: I've got myself a nice bone mug.

Okay, so, the blurry gnome is actually a character from another campaign, with some time-magic powers. I originally threw her in as a joke, but it ended up turning into something a bit larger thanks to the players' handling of it.

As always, handling of time travel in games is tricky. As always, players make it trickier, especially players who ask a lot of awkward questions!

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)

Necropolitans, episode 71: So I’ll harvest souls in a little bit

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Mon, 25 May 2026 21:15:00 +0000

Iris, Makoa, and Quintella escape the time loop, hoping (to varying extents) that Jaal will find his own way out. The destruction of magical books is debated, but interrupted by harpies swooping down from the cliffs to ensnare them in fateful song – which goes about as well as you’d expect, in Episode 071: So I’ll harvest souls in a little bit.

Those poor harpies.

Nathan remains away for this session, so Jaal's fate remains murky. The other characters' ambivalence about that is a running theme of the campaign, which honestly I feel is how most people should feel about most spellcasters most of the time... but Jaal, the emotionally immature teenager (he's the youngest of them all) striving for recognition in all the wrong ways, really hits that button.

The Sacred Necromancer that Makoa plays has the ability to "harness the souls" of the dying, using the Animist field of study. We flavoured this as a purely benevolent process, drawing on spiritualist ideas: Makoa frees the souls of lingering excess emotion and pain, which he can use to aid, heal, or harm others, while helping the spirit to pass on to its fate unburdened. This was important because treating the dead well is a theme of the whole campaign, and those who exploit the dead and undead are to be stopped. Having Makoa as a morally-grey character would have really interfered with party dynamics. Besides, Jaal already has the morally-questionable ally spot covered as far as the others are concerned...

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)

Necropolitans, episode 70: Hair is indestructible, hands are not

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Fri, 22 May 2026 20:58:00 +0000

The Necropolitans’ attempts to understand their situation are complicated by the arrival of an extratemporal monstrosity, which is more or less entirely Jaal’s fault, in Episode 070: Hair is indestructible, hands are not.

Nathan was away for this session, so I took the opportunity to have Jaal whisked away by temporal peculiarness to explain why he wasn't answering all their magical questions. He'll be back soon. The Hounds of Tindalos are much less scary to undead creatures that are immune to virtually all of their abilities, which is an omission I would correct in future if I cared. But so is virtually everything else. Anyway, the party have been fairly cautious about time nonsense since this session. Which is to say, Iris threatens to kill Jaal whenever he talks about doing The Ritual.

In retrospect, "Have you spent much time underneath fir trees" is one of those questions that probably sounds quite strange if your childhood didn't involve frequent hikes up various Welsh hills with conifer plantations on them, and the proximity of the Formby pinewoods, and so on. I think my players are a fairly urban lot, as opposed to "technically suburban but the farms start one street over and my family really like country walks". At the time this didn't occur to me at all, but I have often been perplexed by other people's responses to perfectly normal things like "we weren't allowed to go there because of the quicksand" and "but it was a Wednesday so all the shops were shut" and popular fears that the river was radioactive.

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)

Necropolitans, episode 69: Is the octopus aggressive?

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Thu, 21 May 2026 20:08:00 +0000

We learn that fish generally fail to understand languages, in Episode 069:Is the octopus aggressive?

I really liked the concept of this: a fight taking place on land against opponents who were apparently underwater, with the environment ambiguously between the two. The players seemed to enjoy it as well.

You might wonder about the Ironheads, and in fact, I do know exactly what happened to them and why. The players intended to try and reunite him with his surviving clan members with a trip to Ustalav, but they got distracted. Maybe it'll come up some time.

I enjoyed Jaal idea of using the genie's power to whisk NPCs away to safety. They ended up teleported to a forest hundreds of miles away. I rolled to see how that worked out, and... well, not all the NPCs made it back. Years later in real time, Jaal's player has learned what happened to them.

Spoiler: one of the NPCs he lost ended up becoming his grandmother.

"It's a big fish, it's not a clever fish."

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)

Necropolitans, episode 68: I should have stayed inside my wall

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Wed, 20 May 2026 17:48:00 +0000

It was necessary that at some point the undead PCs should run into exactly the wrong person, as they do in Episode 068: I should have stayed inside my wall.

The results were... not quite what I expected, but I was happy enough for it not to end up as a fight. There was enough of that going on as I mashed the results of their various readings of the magical book into a single weird whole. This dwarf is called Arvale Mucklebrow, and I do eventually get to reinsert him into the campaign as an ancient dwarf, to my delight.

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)

Necropolitans, episode 67: Or we’ll come and eat you and your children

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Tue, 19 May 2026 17:18:00 +0000

The Necropolitans learn the importance of public relations, and experience further book-related inconveniences, in Episode 067: Or we’ll come and eat you and your children.

"I don't think anybody can help Jaal." -- Nathan.

I did not make up the things that local people would logically be terrified of! Those are legitimate, canonical campaign-setting details of the ancient mythical horrors that villagers in this region would all have heard about in their childhoods. They just happen to closely match certain members of the party!

I enjoyed the botched attempt at subterfuge by Iris and getting to flesh that out as something just totally unrelated to the party. Everyone in the world has their own concerns, and even when they're suddenly suspicious about something you did, their suspicion might be pointed in a completely different direction. This is part of the world being a living place, bigger than the PCs. There's a time for the PCs being the most exciting thing that ever happened in a village, and a time for them being a minor hiccup in somebody's routine.

Sudden Transpositions

And then... they're somewhere else. Yes, this is book-related shenanigans.

Okay, cards on the table: the campaign gets distinctly weird here on account of them travelling back in time. This is for a reason! In hindsight I was merely setting myself up for further complications and difficulty remembering what has happened during the campaign, but it made sense at the time. And the books gave me a pretext for suddenly moving them to an entirely different part of the world, over a century in the past.

See, part of the long-term goings on are Things With The Stars. But why hasn't anybody else worked this out? Well, for one thing, canonically, the best group of astronomer-astrologers in the world fell apart and largely took their own lives after... it's complicated, a prophecy turned out really badly and they found something that the setting never discloses when they tried to find out more. And you could just shrug and say, well, some sages maybe worked some things out and everybody forgot. Or, right, like me, you could create an elaborate backstory for a sage who did work it out and got banished for talking nonsense, and ended up in a distant part of the world, and whose notebooks were all in a castle that is canonically destroyed by a massive earthquake a hundred years ago.

Nobody else has seen what she wrote, but with the power of time travel, it can turn out that you stole those notebook before the castle was destroyed! For your reading pleasure, I include my backstory below...

The Saoc Connection

The current campaign year is AR 4709, in the normal timeline.

Canonically, the Saoc were a group of extremely talented astrologer-astronomers in the country of Lirgen. Lirgen was largely destroyed after prophecies of Aroden's return in the AR 4600s failed; instead, in AR 4606, a colossal and permanent storm formed, devastating the nations in that area and submerging much of the land. Following that, the leadership of the Saoc made a voyage into the storm's heart to try and uncover its secrets. On returning, they took their own lives.

Rajelsis Coor was a Lirgen astronomer following the Saoc tradition. She ended up exiled and travelled extensively, ending up in the distant town of Edgeside Keep, in the Porthmos Gap region, on the far side of the continent. She died around AR 4550. Her granddaughter is the librarian at the actual Keep, and Rajelsis' books have ended up there as the only significant library around.

Coor's books include a research journal describing (and demonstrating) increasing astronomic similarities between her current period and reconstructions of some records of the Cyclops kingdom around AR -5200, which is to say, roughly 9700 years ago, and importantly, about a century before a meteor strike wiped out most of the civilizations on the planet. Coor expresses a strong interest in studying the Cyclops prophecies of that time.

Later, Coor mentions gaining entrance to a temple archive in Hyrantam (the Emerald Temple), and investigating the prophecies and star charts of the oracle there. According to her notes, her findings support her theory but she made enemies during her studies.

Further notes include hiring ships to visit the seas above lost Ghol-Gan (the Cyclops capital), and a hired sea-elf aquamancer who bound deep-sea creatures to search for clues in the ruins. According to Coor, information was unsurprisingly extremely limited, but she discovered a few scraps that appear to support her theories.

In 4522, Coor reports falling foul of political realignments that left her family in strong disfavour, and a few weeks later, having an attempt made on her life. She is charged with embezzlement along with several relatives; the journal is rather ambiguous as to whether this charge has merit. They are exiled from Hyrantam and she gradually makes her way into Cheliax, then along the coast to Taldor. At some point she meets and falls in love with a Taldan noble, and ends up settling in the Porthmos Gap. The librarian and her parents kept the books, but had little interest in the subject, only in their familial value. Adnoi Coor, the current librarian, donated the books to the Edgeside Keep archive but they’re far outside most people’s interests and haven’t been read to any significant extent.

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RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)

Necropolitans, episode 66: Boneshatter, Boneshatter, Boneshatter

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Mon, 18 May 2026 16:43:00 +0000

Makoa now has one solution to all problems, in Episode 066: Boneshatter, Boneshatter, Boneshatter.. Weird undead template things that I did continue to make life more difficult than necessary. There is much levelling-up and some attempt to work out how Cheliax, and especially its rebellious provinces, actually work.

Boneshatter is one of those spells - you get some at every level - that is simply extremely good for most combats. Like most such spells it does so by having an effect even on a successful saving throw, and a nasty one: on top of hefty damage that works against most living and undead creatures, it applies exhaustion (on a failure) or fatigue (on a success). A fatigued creature can't charge or run, besides minor stat penalties; an exhausted one has larger penalties and also moves slowly. The condition lasts for minutes per level, while the average combat lasts for less than a minute. Some monsters and NPCs are designed to lean heavily on charges - rhino-type monsters, feline beings that can attack multiple times on a charge, creatures that inspire their allies by charging, mounted combatants - and simply being targeted by this spell automatically negates those abilities entirely.

Either condition also entirely prevents barbarians from raging; since almost every barbarian ability (particularly the offensive ones) relies on being in a rage, this effectively turns a barbarian into a warrior with some extra hit points. There are few other things that can simply turn off an entire class, beyond somehow trapping a spellcaster in an antimagic field. So it's great for squishy targets (with poor Fortitude saves and low HP, who'll suffer a lot of damage) and for combatants (who'll be inconvenienced by the side effects even on a successful save, and in some cases are crippled by it).

Oh, and of course, you can guarantee that something becomes exhausted by simply casting this spell twice. While that is two spell slots, it doesn't matter how tough the target is. Assuming it doesn't have spell resistance that shrugs off your spell entirely, two castings will halve its speed, render it incapable of raging, prevent charging, and impose a hefty penalty to attacks, damage, Reflex saving throws, and defences.

Between scaling damage and a hampering condition that remains useful at high levels, it's a very good spell. When looking at other spells available at the same level (especially to the wizard, who gets it as a 4th-level spell) it is simply far more flexible and widely useful than the alternatives. To me, this suggests some kind of imbalance. There is virtually no situation where casting boneshatter on an obvious important enemy is not one of your best options. Even by the time you have disintegrate and so on, you'll then have enough lower-level slots available that throwing a boneshatter is relatively cheap as well as effective!

Anyway, Makoa's player makes ample use of this spell for a while, but he is reasonable and does not use it for absolutely everything.

Direct Links

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Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)

Necropolitans, episode 65: But would that not set fire to the villagers?

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Fri, 15 May 2026 13:43:00 +0000

Our friendly neighbourhood undead are called in to deal with a landshark problem, in Episode 065: But would that not set fire to the villagers?.

I like this kind of thing: some ordinary folks doing a thing and needing help, expressing gratitude for their help in small and community-focused ways. It's not epic adventure, it's not grand treasures, it's offering a feast and showing the PCs some of their local traditions and making them part of the world. These villagers are going to tell tales of this day for generations.

There need to be more fights involving helpless bystanders that the PCs need to worry about or protect from things. This gets increasingly hard as adventures take place in far-flung places with few or no inhabitants. It's one of the few ways to rein in PCs from using powerful AoE abilities, and to force them to pay attention to things that aren't the optimal target - while PCs can blithely ignore weaker enemies that either can't hit them or whose HP damage is trivial, they can't do so if those enemies are attacking innocents.

"I'm feeling like I'm owed something." - a classic, reusable Jaal quote.

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Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)

Necropolitans, episode 64: Running at x4 speed forever

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Thu, 14 May 2026 13:15:00 +0000

I am forced to lay some ground rules on things that might mechanically possible for our undead PCs but would also be quite silly, in Episode 064: Running at x4 speed forever. The session provides an example of why that sort of thing might be best avoided - you could miss plot hooks!

It becomes increasingly clear as I progress through this campaign that Pathfinder is in no way designed to cope with undead PCs. This is about the most extreme case, but it also highlights the... unwisdom of allowing all kinds of weird and wonderful entities as PCs who accumulate immunities and special abilities, especially in combination with class features that do the same. Makoa, for example, is a sacred necromancer (a third-party class that we agreed was very thematic), and one version of the class allows you simply become undead. Even explicitly removing the immunity from mind-affecting effects (which I personally think should be true for all free-willed undead), that is an extremely potent set of abilities in ways that aren't obvious, like... being able to travel across the world at twelve times the expected speed because you don't need to sleep, rest, or eat, and are immune to almost every hazard of travel.

"No, I'm not going to say that. It's better if I just leave it with that evil laugh."

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Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)

Necropolitans, episode 63: Some interesting books

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Wed, 13 May 2026 13:09:00 +0000

A very short episode discussing the various books Jaal's found, in Episode 063: Some interesting books.

There are distressingly few weird magical books in this setting, something I feel should really be changed. There are wizards! There should be thousands of weird magical books that might have unfortunate side-effects! I've both GM'd for and played characters who are very book-focused and it's a missed opportunity both for characterization and for poor decisions.

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)

Necropolitans, episode 62: Nice, big, warm dwarf

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Tue, 12 May 2026 12:41:00 +0000

The winter hag is finally defeated and we can move onto comparative theology, in Episode 062: Nice, big, warm dwarf.

I enjoyed the Winter Toad, one of the little NPCs I had fun devising. He is his tribe's priest responsible for appeasing Brrr'korprrr't, a minor god of bad luck and catastrophe, and propitiates Brrr'korprrr't by ensuring enough of those things happen somewhere that it doesn't feel inclined to inflict them on the boggarts. He's not a bad person.

I commented last session that this is the longest combat I'd been in to that point, and it continues. It might still be the longest combat of the entire campaign. While I don't actually want combats to last for hours of real time (genuinely, I tend to find the combat the least interesting part of the game, which raises enormous questions about my choice of system - but then it was my first time running a campaign, or Pathfinder! It's just carried on for a long time!) on this occasion the combination of planning, luck, and the PCs having a still relatively limited list of absolute bullshit they could pull made it possible to keep the major antagonist alive for an extended period and to significantly hinder Iris' ability to transform everything into a fine paste.

Obviously, this doesn't last. This particular option (and a very large list of other control options) only existed because the PCs were still mostly restricted to travelling on the ground. Once they reach the point of being able to fly constantly, and do so, this spell and many others become irrelevant and the GM's options to block or otherwise inconveience them dwindle yet further.

You'll notice in this session the players asking what spell exactly the hag is using to get out of Iris' reach. This happens a lot; I think it's a feature of the "system mastery" that Pathfinder emphasizes. Whenever I use a mildly interesting ability, I know full well the players are jumping onto the Archives of Nethys to read up on exactly what it does and how it might interact with other abilities, and indeed, planning ways to overcome it. At times this can be annoying, and perhaps I should ask them to stop. It sometimes plays into a behaviour I've noticed where the PCs instantly use the optimal counter to anything the opposition does, because the players have just read up on the exact mechanics and spent the time until their turn cross-referencing against all their own abilities to find what works best, rather than just trying to react naturally. We are too far into the campaign to feel like it's reasonable to ask for a change of tack, though. They enjoy the mechanics and the tacticality.

"I just need some... clarification." About 60ccs of nice, fresh clarification...

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)

Necropolitans, episode 61: You're also grappled, oh boy!

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Mon, 11 May 2026 12:41:00 +0000

The frantic defence of the hotel continues with the assistance of the merchant and her infernal companion, as Iris desperately attempts to get out of a hole, in Episode 061: You're also grappled - Oh boy!.

My voice sounds extremely odd in this for some reason. I assume weird audio stretching/squashing. It's another combat-focused session.

In this session we apparently agreed that Iris' eyes are all black now, but we clearly changed at in our minds because she's continued to have different coloured glass eyes for several years.

"He's pretty much an open book, it's just a very complex, deep book."

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)

Necropolitans, episode 60: Spooning the guy in the bed

noreply@blogger.com (Shimmin Beg) — Sat, 24 Jan 2026 21:57:00 +0000

The undead continue to bother the innocent inhabitants of a remote hotel during a blizzard, in Episode 060: Spooning the Guy in the Bed.

Jaal's cryophobia becomes deeply inconvenient in these circumstances, and he resorts to extreme, one might suppose illegal, measures. Otherwise I'm pretty sure this episode is fighting and more fighting, so if that's not your thing, you might want to wait for the next. It's hard to remember exactly what happened as I write this, seven years later and months after editing the audio. Sorry.

Direct Links

RSS feed for all episodes
Episode 001: Character Generation
Master list of episodes
Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)