We were playing Paizo's Shackled City Adventure Path, deeply embedded in the comings and goings of the city of Cauldron. We'd rescued the children from being auctioned off and had moved onto dealing with Drakthar, the vampire gnoll and his graffiti scrawling army of Goblins. We'll never forget seeing scrawled on a wall the words: "STUPID HOOMANS, HOO BILDS CITY IN VOLCANO!?".

We had delved down into Drakthar's lair, killed him and stuck his head on a stick. We then spent a few more sessions cleaning out the rest of the elongated cave system. We killed many goblins, an animated throne of skin and bone and investigated mystery crates with birdcage symbols on as we progressed through to the exit point of the caves.

The final obstacle between us and the exit was three tough looking mercenaries that Drakthar had hired.
Our Bard had a healthy +14 to his persuasion skill, and so he decided we were going to talk our way out of it.

"Greetings!" he said to the mercenaries, "we have been sent to relieve you."

"Really who sent you?"

"Our boss, and your boss, Drakthar. He wants you to go guard the front entrance."

The DM asked our bard to roll! A 20!

"34 on my…

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