Abomination Vaults: WHAT IF the party never interupted Boss Skrawng?

Hello! Long time no see! In the recent Abomination Vaults Campaign Diary, I released a special One-Shot episode in which a few of our heroes went through an alternate timeline in which Wrin never sent our heroes to the Gauntlight, and as such, no one was there to stop the Mitflit Boss Skrawng from finishing his army of giant insects.

Introduction

The one-shot was built for three, level three characters. It is assumed they went through the beginner’s box and saved the Otari fishery and then had solo adventures after, getting them the XP they needed to hit level 3. You can of course adjust this opening to suit your particular party and their story so far.

“In your universe, Wrin’s nightly routine and elven eyes allowed her to notice the renewed glow of the Gauntlight. The actions set into motion by this event would lead to a party of heroes disrupting the plans of an enterprising Mitflit named Boss Skrawng. In another universe, however, Wrin chose a different faith and never examined the stars enough to notice the glow in the northern night sky. Never having been disturbed, Boss Skrawng completed his army of insects and on a quiet Tuesday morning, the distant drone of buzzing insects filled the air of Otari’s northern sky.

It’s been several months since you and a few other budding adventurers cleared out the Otari Fishery. During that time, you’ve performed several other quests of little consequence but they have never-the-less allowed you to get stronger.

This particular morning, the town has been abuzz with activity. Since dawn, the northern swamp has been noisy with a distant incessant buzzing sound and the townsfolk are out in force, nervously complaining about the event. You have also ventured out to see what the fuss is about but as you’re conversing with neighbours at your various points in town, a scream echoes out across the town. Glancing up, you see the sunny sky-sprayed air grow dim as giant flies breach the top of the northern cliffs. Each one seems to be carrying something in its grasp and moments later, they release them. Giant insects rain from the heavens across Otari. Giant Maggots and Centipede’s slam into the ground all around. The townsfolk scream and huddle together for safety. As the insects swarm, each of you positions yourselves to protect those nearby.”

In my own introduction, I also included a section about why the missing party members were absent. If you are running this as a one-shot due to missing players, you can add in a section like this too!

Act 1: Defenders of the People (combat encounter)

The one-shot opens with a small combat encounter. I like to begin all my one-shots with an introductory fight, both because it allows your players to get some time to learn how their character plays, but also because with the time constraints of a one-shot, beginning with a ‘Hot Start’ removes the need for an introductory RP conversation, which while fun, does take an unpredictable amount of time.

This first combat has the party split across Otari at various locations, protecting the townsfolk. PF2e is a teamwork-focused game so it’s not something I do often, however in the context of this one-shot, it makes a lot of sense and also allows for some friendly competition between players as to who can clear their encounter first! The battle map I used is comprised of three separate sections, an alleyway, a portion of the market, and the entrance to the Dawnflower Library. If you run this one shot for more than just three players, you can add further locations as needed.

Since Pathfinder does rely heavily on teamwork, we don’t want to leave our heroes alone in these fights. As such, each player gets a single guard to fight alongside. You can either control these guards yourself or allow each player to control their guard.

The encounter itself uses the following enemies:

• 2 Mudflicker Maggots (known as Giant Maggots outside of AV)
• 1 Giant Centipede

The goal of this encounter is to protect the villagers cowering behind the PCs. The insects are viscous but ultimately pretty mindless in their tactics. They will always go for the nearest creature and fight until dead. With smart positioning, your heroes can protect the villagers simply by standing nearer to the insects than the villagers are.

Once the insects are defeated, Mayor Menhemes calls for a town meeting.

Act 2: A Call for Heroes (roleplay scene)

Almost immediately after the screams of battle quiet across Otari, the mayor calls for a town meeting. The whole of Otari gathers in the marketplace and Oseph Menhemes addresses the town.

He acknowledges the unexpected attack and thanks those who stepped forward to defend their home. With no information of his own to go on, he asks the crowd if anyone has any information about why this attack occurred or where the insects came from. While no one has any idea as to why it happened, people do call out from the crowd that they saw the Giant Flys appear from beyond the northern cliff and that the insects returned there. It is quickly settled on, that the insects must be hiding somewhere within the swamp.

Oseph puts out a call for brave heroes to search the swamp for this terrible army of giant bugs. Your party should volunteer at this point, however, they are not alone. Other members of Otari’s community will volunteer too. You can use whoever you like here. I personally chose Wrin, Yinyasmera and a PC backstory NPC called Gregory, as well as several garrison members and Osprey Club members. With a small army assembled, your PCs can take a short bit of time to treat any wounds they might have or to collect provisions.

Once they are ready, the army will assemble at the top of the northern cliff and the remaining townsfolk will retreat to the Crooks Nook for protection. If you have longer than a three-hour session, you could run an encounter here in which your PCs search the swamp. Using skill checks, spells or items, they could collect victory points in order to find the army of insects on their own terms, with a higher number of victory points leading to a possible ambush, while a low number of victory points meaning they get ambushed themselves.

Unfortunately, my group didn’t have time for this so we instead decided via roleplay that the group would fan out in a line across the swamp and move forward.

Act 3: The Battle of the Fogfen (combat encounter)

Once the party have located the insect army, they’ll need to face it. If you have more time and your group loves massive battles, you could very easily have the entire Otari army and the entire Mitflit army clash in one large battle. In this situation, I’d probably give each player a handful of soldiers to control so they aren’t waiting too long for a turn. However, in most cases either due to time limits or to make the battle less overwhelming, I’d split the fight into three groups. Your party and maybe one or two NPCs face the middle chunk of enemies, including their strongest combatants. Meanwhile, one group of NPCs faces a chunk of enemies to the left and the other faces a group of enemies to the right.

Since I already knew that I wanted this split battle approach, I had Wrin recommend the strategy of splitting into 3 teams. Since this suggestion came from a well-trusted NPC, they were much more likely to agree to it.

If you go for the split fight approach as I did, your PCs will face the following enemies in the centre:

• 1 Giant Scorpion
• 2 Mitflits
• 1 Giant Fly
• 1 Giant Centipede

I had one of the Mitflits mounted atop the Giant Fly, just for the purposes of getting it into combat quicker, but feel free to modify these enemies to whatever suits your group. You want it to be around a 120xp encounter if they’ve got an ally such as Wrin backing them up, or slightly less if it’s just the heroes.

With the training and guidance of the Mitflits, the insects will be more tactical in this fight than in the previous. They’ll pick their targets and flank your party, however, once both the Mitflit are dead, I’d switch back to just attacking wildly at whoever is closest.

Due to our time constraints, I’d let this battle run on either until all the enemies are dead or until 5 rounds have passed, after which, Wrin or whichever chosen ally they have with them will call out that they can feel something burrowing towards Otari and that our heroes need to rush back to town to save them.

Act 4: The Race back to Otari (chase encounter)

Chases are a really fun and adaptable subsystem of PF2e. They allow for fast-paced, action-focused travel that turns what could be a break in momentum into an engaging encounter in its own right! I won’t go through all the rules here as that’s not the goal of this post, but if you want to learn more there are plenty of great videos on the subject (I recommend Lexchxn’s channel) and the rules are free on Archives of Nethys.

For this race back to Otari, I modified the system slightly as it wasn’t a direct chase, it was a race against whatever threat was burrowing for the town. While I ran the system as normal, I implemented Drawbacks to certain locations. This worked as temporary debuffs upon failing a check. None of them were particularly harsh, just bothersome little effects to make failure seem more impactful than simple non-progress.

As with all chases, adjusting your goals on the fly is very important. In my own running of this encounter, I was to set in what I had planned and it resulted in an unwinnable situation for one of my players. Stay loose, stay adaptable and react accordingly to your player’s choices.

Here’s how I split the locations:

Location	Suggested Skills	Drawback	Successes
Deep Swamp	Athletics: DC 15 Survival: DC 15 Occultism: DC 18	A hero who fails is frightened 1 until after their next check.	3
Shallow Swamp	Athletics: DC 15 Survival: DC 15 Nature: DC 18	A hero who fails is slippery and unable to take the Cliff path.	2
Forest	Athletics: DC 15 Survival: DC 15 Nature: DC 15	A hero who fails, cuts themselves as they run and takes 1d4 slashing damage.	1
Cliff or Road	Athletics: DC 20	None	2
Cliff or Road	Athletics: DC 15 Fort Save: DC 15	A hero who fails more than once is fatigued 1.	4
Town	Athletics: DC 15 Society: DC 15 Otari Lore: DC 13	None	2

Alongside these suggested skills, your party is free to utilise other skills, items, spells or feats as long as they make sense. For example, in the forest, one of my players used Intimidation instead of nature to scare away the dangerous wildlife and at the cliff, a Skyborne Tengu used their immunity to fall damage to get an automatic success.

Also, be sure to adjust the number of required successes based on the path each hero takes. Your party might split up at the Cliff or Road section. If only one player takes the road, you’ll need to reduce the number of successes as alone they can only progress once per round even with success checks.

The objective of this chase is to reach the Crook’s Nook before the enemy. For each location the heroes beat the enemy by, give them one round of prep. If they fail and the enemy reaches the Crook’s Nook first, kill one villager for each round they take to arrive.

Act 5: Showdown with Boss Skrawng (combat encounter)

After the party arrive at the Crook’s Nook, they have a brief moment to prepare before a huge Maggot burrows out from the ground and explodes in a shower of slime and gore. From the corpse, Boss Skrawng and his allies emerge and assault the tavern. Their objective is to kill those within, while the party should try their best to save them. If you like, you can begin this encounter by having Boss Skrawng monologue his victory a bit, so that he feels like a true boss fight! (If your party failed the chase, this group might have already emerged and burst into the tavern.)

This is the battle map I made of the Crooks Nook. You can download it below or use your own map!

In this fight, the enemies your heroes will face are as follows:

• Boss Skrawng with the Elite template
• Bite Bite (Giant Solifugid)
• 2 Mitflits
• 1 Giant Fly

This enemy list is for three, level three heroes. Increase or decrease the number of enemies based on your needs.

During the combat encounter, the mitflits will try to enter the tavern and begin killing the commoners within, while Boss Skrawng and his insects will engage the party outside. You should make it clear that his objective is to kill as many villagers as possible, so your heroes should prioritise coming to their defence. As this is a one-shot and will typically have no follow-up, all enemies will fight to the death, even the usually cowardly Mitflits.

If all goes well, your heroes will triumph over the Mitflit squad and be hailed as victorious heroes! You can describe a cheer going out across time as shortly after the town’s army emerges triumphantly from the northern cliff!

And with that, you’re done! Boss Skrawng may have finished his insect army but the heroics of your PCs and the townsfolk of Otari prevented a disaster. And hey… this doesn’t mean a beam of haunting blue light won’t still illuminate the Otari Graveyard not long after!

Thanks for reading, and hopefully watching the associated episode of our Abomination Vaults Campaign Diary! If you’re left with any questions, watching the campaign diary should clear things up and if not, feel free to leave any questions in the comments. I’ll be sure to answer them.

If you want to see more of me, I release campaign diaries of official Pazio adventures on the Veneon Reforged channel. They’re great opportunities to see how another GM handles the twists and turns of running an AP, while still letting you enjoy the story without committing 4 hours a week to an actual play campaign!

You can also join the discord and reach out to me personally there!