Serpent Skull Finale

Last Friday night I ran the final session of my over a year long Pathfinder Campaign.

We have been playing The Serpent Skull Adventure path, and it has been a epic ride.

The sessions have ranged in size from 4 to 11 players (counting guest stars) and the final party that made its way into the Sanctum of the serpent god was 10 characters strong.

Seeks the Path The Human Oracle of Battle (Kate)
Gliiesh The Mwangian Druid (Dan), His pet Giant Snake, and his Lillend Bard Cohort.
Antol The Halfling Arsonist Freedom Fighter (Alchemist) (Drew)
Alain The Human Cavalier (Ceri) and her Horse and Paladin Cohort.
Toker The Mercenary Fighter (Matt) and his Succubus Courtesan.
Garret The Human Fighter thief (Robin) and his Red-mantis assassin love interest.

By the end of the fight Alain’s horse was dead, and Toker had been reduced to -110 HP (but saved by Seeks casting breath of Life to revive him) however The Serpent God and his high priest were both dead. The Party dealt over 3000 HP of damage over the first 4 rounds and finally killed him by striking off it’s head with a vorpal axe.

The campaign has run since April last year and for most of the year it ran weekly. We had a brief hiatus to start playtest D&D Next but have now brought the campaign to a close.

Of the 6 books my favorite was The Vaults of Madness a series of mini dungeons in the larger ruined city described in The City of Seven Spears unfortunately these vaults were infested with paranoia causing supernatural spores which soon infected the party. Who almost immediately turned on each other. Order was only restored when toker the only unaffected member of the party made a deal with a Succubus who Charmed each of his massively paranoid companions into trusting him. Making him de facto leader while they attempted to find a cure and explore the vaults.  

Unfortunately this same adventure led to almost the entire party getting killed. Rather than scrapping the campaign and inspired by one of these articles from Chris Perkins. I had the party captured by Serpent folk who imprisoned them in their fortress city deep beneath the earth. Which had the added advantage of letting me modify the adventure to make it more to do with my players rather than some of the NPC’s.

Another Idea I took from Chris’ articles was keeping a running session guide for the campaign. (some sessions got more of a write up than others). Each week before the game I emailed it to the players and at the start of each session I did a short “Previously on Serpent Skull” scene to remind them of things that would be important in the session.

I can view my session updates and player notes here.