The maniacal laughter of the transcriber prevents the game from starting.

Baylon: The session begins with the group harassing the transcriber for no reason whatsoever! The transcriber can only hopelessly chuckle and tremble.

Step 2 of the Pathfinder Playtest features a new and well-known group of adventures summoned to the town of Katapesh, recently rebuilt after being overrun by slavers, gnolls, and goblins. They’ve been hired to meet a Lady Kommisarah of the Esoteric Order.

Kurag: Should we introduce ourselves to each other?
Baylon: We’re a well-known group of adventurers.
Grayson: Yeah, we’ve known each other for ages, shut the hell up and get going.
Baylon: (Sable voice) Before you guys move on, I would like to introduce my character and everything she’s got going on in her life right now.
Grayson: Twenty minutes later…

The transcriber demands character names AND IS HARASSED FURTHER! The dickbags wouldn’t introduce their characters! As it turns out, Grayson wields a greatsword while Kurag wields a greataxe.

Kurag: How weary you are of the arguments ‘axe vs. sword’ that dominate the campsite each night.
Grayson: I hang it over his head and call it Damocles.
Baylon: And an EQUALLY burly dwarven character.
Grayson: That’s a big cleric…
DM: I like the idea that on Grayson’s sheet it just says “Kurag plus one foot in height”.
Sujara: Apparently I am the weird one out because I am –
Baylon: A drow!
Sujara: No! A female elf, so I’m playing to type. I’m a druid.
Turk: And almost hidden amongst the crowd of giants is Turk, the little goblin, and because of all the whimpering between the sword and axes he chose to get himself a mace.

With the characters introduced, the DM wins, apparently slaying them all with a dragon. Arriving at their meeting spot, they are greeted rather rudely till they produce an invitation.

DM: He loudly proclaims, “You enter the distinguished presence of Lady Kommisarah, First Throne of the Esoteric Order of the Palantine Eye. My lady, your mercenaries have arrived.” A new voice echoes from the stairwell. “Cadmus, I might remind you we are meant to be a secret society. Perhaps you might refrain from speaking our name in front of the common laborer. Send my arrivals down to meet me, if you please.”
Kurag: “I am no longer a common laborer…”
Grayson: “Nothing about our work is common.”
Kurag: “The tongue we speak is Common. Perhaps that is the problem.”
Baylon: “We all speak Common now, do we? That’s great. I imagine it makes things much easier for communicating in our group. DON’T YOU AGREE?!”
Kurag: When dwarves agree, it summons the most hideous reptile. The eyesore.

Silence.

Baylon: What?
Kurag: Aye. Saur. The dinosaur. The aye-saur – COME ON!

A divergence on hero points ensues before they get down the stairs. Abruptly Phillips Tigris appears, a new PC apparently. They meet the older woman, who is sitting on a stool with the regality of nobility. She has been studying a person named Kelrie Debreen and an object under the Pale Mountain in the Tomb of Tellersach. The cult called Night Heralds are also seeking it, thus the adventurers. The PCs will get a back entrance to the tomb, giving them an advantage. Apparently they’re hunting a Countdown Clock?

Kurag: “I like this.”
Grayson: “Gold’s good. Promise of treasure.”
Kurag: “Risk and reward!”
Baylon: “Certainty of death!”
Kurag: “FOES TO SMASH!”
Baylon: “What are we waiting for?!”
Grayson: “What happens when this thing counts down?”

Silence.

Grayson: “I guess a better question is, is it gonna happen soon?”

They have no idea. The Heralds are trying to bring horrid things from beyond the stars to the world, apparently? So let’s not let them have the powerful artifact. They are awarded a +1 weapon and must decide who gets it!

Turk: Shortbows and longbows can be +1, right?
DM: (laughing as he reads) ‘Avoid issuing a ranged weapon.’ ‘Cuz it can skew the playtest.

They give it to Kurag, leading to questions as to why the Esoteric Order happened to have a Large-sized greataxe lying around. They are also supplied with camels.

DM: “May you find speed and insight on your course. For performing this service, you will earn a good name within the order, a reward greater than coin whether you believe so or not.”
Grayson: “Only time will tell.”
Kurag: “Oh no, they’re right. Slaying foes is a far greater reward than coin BUT I’m still taking the coin!”
Turk: “I could use higher standing. Hmm.”

No one picked languages, apparently, which becomes relevant as Cadmus bids them farewell in a different tongue. They spend a while debating this, to the DM’s amusement.

DM: If you want to take it, I can tell you what it means. It’s not nearly as bad or as important as you think it is. It’s not like, “go fuck yourselves”!
Grayson: ‘I hope you all die.’ ‘The half-orcs stink like hell.’
Phillips: ‘Elves are overrated.’
Sujara: Awww!
Phillips: That was out of character. Wait, aren’t you only half?
Sujara: No, I’m full.
Phillips: Aww, damn it. Sorry.

A small spate of roleplaying ensues – among Kurag and Grayson, while the others just focus on calling out Kurag for being loud. Off they head to the mountains, taking about five days to get to the hidden back entrance. They spend an odd amount of time trying to determine if they’re lost or not, despite explicitly being told they’re not… When they finally clear that up, they move on to complaining about Transformers movies.

Baylon: They know that five minutes is gold and it’ll get people like me into the theater to watch it and—
Grayson: It’ll be a sappy stupid story for the rest of it.
Kurag: Nothin’ but humans.
Baylon: The problem that every single movie adaptation has made is that it assumes that all of us are REALLY interested in one or two human characters, and the robots aren’t characters.
Grayson: I want one, barely on the screen.
Baylon: Spike was just a proxy for the little boys watching the cartoons so they could be like, “yeah, I feel like I’m there!” ‘Cuz this blank slate Spike is there with this fucking construction hat.

The DM is making the map, which explains it. The entire map is rough terrain with a couple of exceptions, and happy little trees clog the map. They drop down minis, and then lapse into a long examination of animal companions and how to make use of them.

Baylon: ‘Kurag, does my magic item do this?’
Kurag: (deathglare)
Baylon: ‘I don’t know, it’s your magic item!’ The frustration jumping off the screen…

The DM calls for Perception-slash-initiative! It goes poorly for Kurag; he can see precisely one hyena, while most of the group can see other hyenas.

DM: And for the ONE DAMN PERSON, of course it was Sujara, WHO ROLLED 25, she can see, just barely make out in the back, a slightly larger hyena. But he’s not actually large, that’s just the plate he’s on.
Baylon: Displacer hyena!
Sujara: If they’re within earshot of me, I will call it out.
Kurag: How quiet are you, that we’re right next to you…
Sujara: Hey, I’m very quiet! I’m one with the forest, you fuckers.

Seek actions and Perception checks are a bit different, so it leads to a bit of debate onto how that works now and what she can accomplish by way of pointing out the hyenas she’s aware of. Then they lapse into rules for handling and commanding animals and thence to stealth so cat companions can sneak around. It gets weird.

Kurag: I SAID LEMON DROP! LEMON DROP!
Sujara: Not turd drop!

Phillips attempts to ‘go into stealth’, demonstrating that he hadn’t been listening to any of the previous conversation. He ends up ducking into the tall grass and sneaking forward.

DM: Baylon, you can barely make out the hyenas here. They’re watching you closely but remaining hidden.
Baylon: It’s the laughing that gives them away… So they have concealment?
DM: To you, no.
Baylon: “Well then!” (miming shooting)
Kurag: “What’s he firing at?”
Baylon: Haven’t you been made aware?!
Kurag: No!
Baylon: Didn’t she waste – take an action to tell everyone there were those hyenas?

It gets weird as Baylon points out the hyena.

Baylon: “There’s a bloody canine creature in the grass!”
Grayson: “What, over there by the bushes?”
Baylon: “WHERE I’M SHOOTING, YOU DAMN—“

Turk produces his bow and fires at a hyena, missing! A hyena charges down Grayson, though it doesn’t have the actions to attack him.

Grayson: Oh boy! Right to my sword.
Phillips: The white one didn’t move?
DM: He rolled the worst. Leave him alone! He does the best he can.
Phillips: I’d make a white privilege joke, but…
Grayson: 15 damage.
DM: Good hit! Just as the dog attempts to attack you, you deftly slash at it. Its fail at hiding was its undoing as a slash almost guts him, but it’s barely alive. You can see it holding its paw up as it’s barely held on by a few sinews. The gash rough, he does not look good.

Baylon mutters about how characters in the game suck, even as Grayson manages to hit with his third attack and slays the beast. Kurag wades in, crits, spends some time checking the crit rules, then discovers he has to roll something like 4d12 damage. He ends up with 39 damage.

DM: Peeling out, you charge it, your giant axe deftly moving so fast no one can hear it, as it slices air, slices through the hyena’s body, right in twine. A silent moment as the hyena seems to still be moving, but it’s really only one side, slides to the ground.
Kurag: “I like this weapon!”
DM: All right, well, that guy’s out of combat…

One of the hyenas is totally hidden now, so Sujara gears up a Summon Nature’s Ally. The battlefield is silent for the moment. Hidden movement! A fire beetle shows up. It’s a hand for some reason, primarily the lack of beetle miniatures. After a lot of talk, Phillips manages to see a hyena, then attempts to Sneak at it.

Baylon: A Sneak, a Seek, and a Strike!
Phillips: Ohhhh god. Oh fuck. Uugh.
Grayson: At least it wasn’t a 1.
Kurag: You step in a gopher hole.
DM: Below your feet you see an entire pile of sticks and rubbish and stuff you managed to crush.

Phillips whips out a bastard sword and crits the hyena! It loses an ear. Baylon fires at a hyena, plinking it!

Kurag: Did you knock him into a previous year? Because then it would be a plink to the past.
Phillips: Awwww.

With a Seek action, Baylon spots the hyena exactly where it was. Phillips comes under hyena attack, but the DM’s terrible rolling leaves him unarmed.

Baylon: “Dinnae break me arrow shaft when ya kill the beast!”

Turk and his cat Harmony move into action, the cat debuffing the hyena and Turk shooting it! Because he hits, the debuff leaves it flat-footed.

DM: All feet are flat on the ground as the arrow pierces its skull and it falls over.
Baylon: And becomes a wolf when it dies. And your pet is cat-footed.

The hidden hyena finally pops up to eat Sujara, believing her to be the most tempting target. She takes 11 points of damage and falls prone!

Grayson: I’ll turn around and be like, “DAAAGH! BAAHDDAAAAHG!”
Kurag: You called it a badger?
Grayson: A bad dog!

With an excellent intimidation roll, Grayson inflicted Frightened 2 and Fleeing on the hyena. Spellcasting and concentration modifiers are discussed, and with some effort they persuade Sujara to actually stand up. Another hyena lunges out of stealth to attack Grayson.

DM: Attempting to allow his brother – his young – his young cub, I guess, to run.
Baylon: Oh, now we’re killing families.
Grayson: We’re monsters…

Grayson takes a blow to 11 and is sent prone as well, and then some confusion erupts over what the rules for dragging are. Difficult terrain screws over Phillips, then Kurag.

Kurag: Fuck difficult terrain, you guys just standing all over the place…
Baylon: OH! YOU’RE talking about difficult terrain right now! Did you just fucking complain about difficult terrain?! Master of fucking terrain encounters!
Kurag: When have I ever made the ENTIRE BATTLEFIELD difficult terrain?!
Baylon: Uh… fair enough, but this is a small battlefield in terms of surface area…

Kurag attempts a long jump over the terrain, but the DC is 25 and he only manages 23. The DM complains about how poorly his hyenas rolled on stealth compared to how good the players rolled on perception. It gets weird.

DM: Another hyena appears on the battlefield, pooped out of the larger one!
Kurag: It’s a brown ooze.
Baylon: I stare pensively at the Cthulhu hyena.
DM: What are you going to do?
Baylon: I did nothing. I attacked three times, I missed three times.

Turk moves to get the larger one, but Harmony the pet has to scramble forward to attack. The group babble aggressively at each other. It gets weird.

Baylon: You must clean up in a funnel-cake eating competition!

A hyena flees and is out of combat. Grayson is up!

Grayson: I rise slowly, seething with rage.
Kurag: Hey!
Grayson: Whereas my friend will retain that rage, I expel it in a roar against this thing and try to intimidate it.
Kurag: Natural 1.
Grayson: This is where I happens.

Grayson inflicts frightened 1 on the hyena, then whacks it ineffectually. Kurag makes a language joke which earns him threats of sodomy. He smashes for 22 damage. Sujara moves her cat directly into the path of the melee fighters, driving them mad. Someone finally looks up the rules for the summoned fire beetle.

DM: This is more like being used as a torch, is what this fucking bug is for, a glorified torch. It has the ability to light flash.
Phillips: Well, now we know.
Kurag: And knowing is half the battle.

The hyena tries to drag Kurag off, but only manages to knock him over. Turk reload, fires his crossbow, then fires his die. The fire beetle is in the way!

Baylon: Again! It’s foiled everyone, so far! I feel like I should just try shooting through a beetle so it foils all of its. It’s foiled an attack from everyone else…

Turk nails the hyena with a mighty mighty hit that is actually a crit, somehow only doing 12 damage. Still, this is enough to slay the hyena!

DM: The battlefield is yours… as far as YOU know! I’m just playing.
Turk: While I’m at it, can I see the one that ran away?
Baylon: Turk wants to kill the one that fled. Because he’s bloodthirsty.
DM: It’s gone at this point. Even after the fear ended, he was like, ‘fuck it, all my other dudes are dead, I’m gonna go find me a mate and try to rebuild.’

The encounter ends, and it is cake time! Hooray!