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Reading the story, what I want to know is, how come the victim was naked, too? 
We'er actually trying something of a "megadungeon" in Shattered Star... sort of. It's actually six different dungeon locations rather than one giant location, but each volume of Shattered Star will feature a relatively large and iconic dungeon site as is primary location. That said... there's other stuff going on as well—Shattered Star isn't all dungeons all the time. There's wilderness and urban elements here and there, and lots of non-combat encounters (or combat encounters that can be resolved via things other than combat). 
Or gianna Michaels. Now there's a man with a good eye for talent. 
I think a lot of the epic sweep you can convey in lines like "twelve grueling days later, having hunkered down to avoid one blizzard and taking the caravan wide around a bloodbath of wolf packs savaging an enormous herd of caribou, you see... " Remind them of time often. Remind them of the landscape often. Play up the shift in the length of days and nights, the auroras and the white-outs that happen here and there. Be descriptive. I watched an episode of the HD nature series "Earth" about the Arctic one night, quite by accident, while I was writing this adventure. I took some inspiration for a bit of the naturalistic stuff in the adventure. A little flavor text goes a long way. 
The biggest change in the director's cut is the ending - Karzoug kills the PCs during the 3rd module, and the remaining modules consist entirely of recipes for bok choi. 
Things I expect to here my PCs say (or scream)as they explore Rappan Athuk.
Admittedly i am a new player,but wouldnt lowering a melee opponents str benefit the entire party?Optimists don't like relying on strategies that hinge on opponent saving throws. Don't you mean pessimists? 
Kvantum
(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Roleplaying Game, Campaign Setting, Companion, Modules Subscriber)
Correct... this focuses pretty much entirely on NPCs made with Core Rulebook only options. Unless we get an NPC Codex II using APG, UltM, and UltC, I am NOT a happy subscriber over this. I thought Paizo had moved on from the WotC school of "release a great big rules book and never mention its contents again". Edit: Could we at least get stat treatments for the Iconics from the other base classes, if nothing else? 
If you're a centaur cavalier, what do you get instead of a mount? A significant other? 
Screw the druid archetype
I daresay you'd get some takers on that...
My goal with the prestige classes in this book is to support Golarion-specific groups and organizations and factions with prestige classes. It is NOT to power up existing classes or to support specific multiclass combos—some of the latter will happen as a sort of side effect (such as by building a paladin of Irori class would result in a monk/paladin option)... but the philosophical push behind this book is to support Golarion's religions and fighting schools and traditions and factions and monsters with rules. And it serves another purpose. We really HAVEN'T done much with prestige classes yet—and many of the ones we have done are merely revisions of 3.5 ones or relatively rules-focused classes. I'm eager to see what we can come up with for more flavor-heavy classes... eager to try to present a new philosophy on what a prestige class can and should be... and eager to see if there IS a market for books like this. Because if we don't experiment... we get stagnant. 
After encountering three giant leeches at a bridge crossing, the party finds the warden's shack, but something very curious is going on. Walthus does not appear to want visitors, which might be normal for a hermit, but there's something distinctly off about him. While Keisos, Ing, and Paza talk with the halfling, Blade decides to scout around back and enter in a window, only to find that he's entered into a literal snake pit. When Keisos, Ing, and Paza see Walthus's features ripple, Keisos grabs the halfling, but "Walthus" changes into a horrible creature with a long, rasping tongue. While Blade fights off the enormous snakes, the party engages "Walthus" in combat. Several snake bites and tongue gouges later, the party defeats "Walthus." Hidden in a nearby room, the real Walthus stumbles out, in bad shape but in good humor. He invites them to all stay overnight in his shack and enjoy a hot meal (it's the least he could do) while he compiles some information on how where the goblins live in Brinestump marsh. XP earned: 400 each
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! 
Just paging through the guide and I may seem lowbrow for saying this but am I the only person who chuckled upon seeing that the weapon Hook hand has the Disarm special? 
Congratulations Bill, Greg and Chuck! 2 years and 71 books is a hell of an accomplishment!Let us not forget that we've had James Keegan at the helm of the Slumbering Tsar art from the inception of the company. We couldn't have done it without you, James! James's art is creepy-awesome!
Final 1st edition rules for the S(uperior) H(ybrid) I(nteractive) T(abletop) role-playing game have been sent to houstonderek (creative consultant) and TOZ (webmaster). Let me take this opportunity to thank everyone who contributed: especially Christopher Hauschild and, near the end, Alice Margatroid, James Harrison, and heliopolix. Also thanks to past and present playtesters (Jess Door, Silverhair, Andostre, Mundane, Psychicmachinery) and commenters (Mistah Green and others), and to Paizo for hosting this thread. Finally, a big thanks to everyone who showed an interest or who might be considering trying these variant rules at home. I'll probably personally hold off printing these in case some sort of major omission/blunder/brokenness turns up, but barring that, these are the official 1st edition rules. Happy Gaming!!! 
I missed this one - Initial layout has been finished and most of the final editing has been done. Hopefully we'll be off-and-running to the printer by early next week. :) On a slight tangent I, out of curiosity, mined the intertubuals for old threads about The Slumbering Tsar Saga from back when we announced and chuckled quietly to myself about the pronouncements that it was never going to happen and people not wanting to buy it because of the name (it was unclear whether they were speaking of the adventure itself or our company's name... probably both). Well, at the risk of sounding unprofessional... neener-neener :p (And yes, I know that some have fessed up to being nay-sayers and admitted they were incorrect... I am not neenering at you.) Thanks to everyone who believed in Greg and Bill enough to trust them and invest in making this one book happen, because of you, we've also managed to launch 68 other books to date in the past 2 years! And thanks to Bill for remembering that there was this Chuck/Pale Writer guy who maybe-might-could do the layout thing for us. And thanks to Greg for PMing me at the Necromancer Games boards. It's like a giant weight has been lifted off of my shoulders. And there's a lot more stuff incoming... I can hack it. :D 
Howdy folks! I just got around to posting some pics of our first session of Fortress of the Stone Giants: Hope you all like it! 
Amazon's release dates for RPGs book about as accurate as North Korea's government statements on the state of human rights there.
Will Kaer Maga show up in the Shattered Star Adventure Path? Yes. 
Oh, well where would you hide a quote? Among a bunch of words :P 
Now, we just need for this AP to have two great "Pirate" themed adventures, then abruptly switch to an Underdark campaign. 
I think it would be a bad idea to have Pathfinder 2 now. And I think doing it just because WotC is putting out 5E is a VERY bad idea. 5-10 years from now, sure. When that time does come, I'd like to see feats that scale with level and a markedly smaller reliance on magic gear (the Big Six should become a thing of the past)--magic gear should be cool and exciting when found, but not create a situation of, "but my barbarian can't survive with out a Thingy of X!" Amongst various smaller tweaks to skills, feats, and class abilities. 
Without the skill system of 3rd Edition, the game presumes that most characters can succeed at most tasks. Everybody can swim, everybody can light a fire and forage for food. Everybody can negotiate with the town guards, to the extent that a player's skills allow.Maybe that's what the game presumed, but that's not how my GMs ran it. They made us make ability checks for all those things, and often at penalty if they felt our character background/concept didn't support it. And because we had little on our character sheets to show our training, we were completely at the mercy of the GM's willing to be flexible or work with us. I think there's no game quite like AD&D for getting players to say "That's not how we did it in my group!" :-) 
True - back when an RPG was meant to be a fun game rather than course in mathematics... And optimization meant giving the big sword to the fighter, and using decent tactics, instead of over-analyzing everything to death to squeeze out another one-hundredth of a point of DPR in your build. 
Some rules to build into your game. Neonates are ignorant
But let them piece a kind of truth together. Let them feel like they know what going on, let them identify the camarilla clans, their strengths their weaknesses, their archetypes. Let them develop prejudices. Vampires do not kill one another very often:
Have a fixed cast:
Vampires don't travel well:
Focus on the blood
Now put the cat amongst the pigeons The sabbat break all the rules the players think they have learned. The sabbat are right about g'henna, they know enough about the world to try and change it, they kill other vampires, they engage in mass sireings, they shatter the masquerade, they travel from city to city. 1/3's to 1/2 of the way into a chronicle, once the PCs have started to understand the rules above, hit them with the Sabbat. See what happens when they realise they are suddenly fighting for their unlives against monsters even worse than they are. But hold this back, you can only do this once and have full effect. 
That was some great advice Matthew! Because I can't sleep, I'm going to add a few things I usually do for a game. It's mostly rudimentary type stuff, but typing is better then lying in bed staring at the ceiling. I tend to do most (but no means all) of my WoD stuff as sandbox games. I usually pick a city and populate it with some kindred. Unless I'm using one of the By Night books I focus on the main power players, the ones that want to be the power players, and those stuck at the bottom. I then do a quick relationship chart for them. (Pretty much all of the By Night books use these, and I've found them quite helpful. In case you're not familiar with them it's just a simple flowchart that says things like: Vampire A fears Vampire B. Vampire B took Vampire C's place in the Primogen, and Vampire C knows Vampire A's dirty secret). Of course not every vampire in the city feels strongly enough about every other vampire in the city to warrant this. Just stick to the ones that you think would play well off each other. Once I get a good idea of the climate of the city, I come up with at least one big event to use as a backdrop for the game (For example, A Justicar has come to the city for a "vacation" after a particular difficult hunt. Is he really there to rest, or is it just part of a bigger plot? Either way, his presence throws the entire politics of the city into chaos as half the kindred try to curry his favor, and the other half avoid him like the plague. Meanwhile everyone is trying to bury their secrets deep) I don't always introduce this from the start, and sometimes I never use it at all if the players are having fun and keeping me busy with their character's actions. They're just good to have to shake things up if you feel like it or to use as an unexpected monkey wrench. (and they're just tons of fun to think up) You'll probably want to put social, political, and combat types of characters/events into the city, so you can plan for what the players want once they're are done creating their characters. (That being said, if you have specific type of game in mind, but sure to let the players know before they start making characters) Once I get all of that lined up, I get my players together and make characters. It's nice to have all of these ducks lined up in a row before character creation, because then you're prepared to say to someone who wants to play a Nos, "Sure, but just to warn you because they lack a Primogen member, they've gone on "strike". They're not dealing any information, regardless of payment. So they're not very well liked right now. Even more the usual."
Really focus these questions on Backgrounds and Merits & Flaws (if you use them) because this is where a lot of your story seeds are going to come from. The character has a Contact that's a lawyer in the DA's office. How did they meet? What deals have they already done for each other? How can you use the Contact in a story, what use does she have for the character?
Finally after character creation is done, have a list of Twenty Questions. The rule books lists a bunch of these, but you don't need to ask all of those ones. Tailor a few of them to your chronicle. If you're feeling really ambitious and can think fast on the fly, you can replace a few of your original questions with new ones based off the info you just got. Pretty much the one question I recommend always asking is "What is your character's goals?" It's a simple and blatant way to get an upfront answer as to what each player wants out of your game. The players are choose to answer you questions the way they did, picked their Backgrounds, Merits and Flaws for a reason. Once you find out those reasons and learn the story behind each choice, and you start to find the threads the players are giving you to weave into the stuff you've already set up. You find the place where their police contact fits into your Prince's hold on the Commissioner. Where your missing Harpy intersects with their Infamous Sire. You find out if they want a gritty street level drama, a cinematic ride with bullets and fangs, or a dark slide from man into beast. And that's where you start to find your story.
I'd like Pathfinder 1e to run for at least another 5-6 years. When it does come, I don't want it to be constrained by an attempt at backwards compatibility with Pathfinder 1e.
There's more going on inside a star than heat damage. Immunity to fire will help, but you'll also probably need immunity to electricity, immunity to staggering gravity and pressure, immunity to blindness, no need to breathe, immunity to high winds, and more. Stars are not healthy places to live. And nuclear fusion is, I would say, something altogether different than mere fire, honestly. It'd be a brand new type of damage, perhaps. Or a combination of multiple types of damage. All good questions to answer if and when we do a Numeria adventure path, perhaps... 
Sort of related question: I've never been super sure on how to run a game of Vampire (I've tried with varying degrees of success). Does anyone have a good adventures to suggest? I'd like to see how certain staples of the game should work. Like how do you make roleplaying spending the evening in Elysium or some nightclub any fun? It's been a while since I've picked up a tube of d10s... Adventures, start small. I ususally set my games in Columbus or Newark, since I know the former ok, and the later very well. If you're starting the 'default' Camerilla game, then the characters are not going to be the big shots.* So you can play up the night to night. Pick an area you want to use as 'The Rack' where the low ranking vamps go to feed. Also make them flesh out those backgrounds. Assuming you're in the US, check your wallet. How much cash do you have on you? ($33 and change for me right now, but that's unusually high) so how are they maintaining resources or other backgrounds?** For antagonists, I prefer mortals, with a little help. Let the players get grounded before they encounter the rest of the WoD.*** Social encounters: Yeah, this requires a lot of role play, you're playing a cast while they're playing one character each. Emphasize the non-combatant nature. Maybe by showing a vamp goaded into frenzy being destroyed in 'self defence'. If you have more than the character's sires in the city, put the vampires in different ages in clothing from their time. (Elysium is where they can be themselves.) Maybe that Vetrue is wearing a 1930's style suit, while the toreador is dressed as a 20's flapper and the Tremere is dressed in his labcoat. But also tweak it up. That flapper might be a neonate trying to play an older part, or that Ventrue may be 200 years old, the 30's is where he just stopped trying to keep up with mortal fashion. Show how social power is more important than physical power.**** Try to get your players immersed in the favor exchange early. Especially if they have high backgrounds or are lacking them completely. "Mr. Neonate, may I snack on your herd? I'll give you X." "Miss Neonate, you look famished! Here, take a blood doll of mine. Oh, don't worry, I'm sure I'll think of something you can do to repay me..." Long term, I'd start by playing up the inhumanness of the vampires. The casual disregard for life and humanity, show someone fighting until the Kiss hits, point out how no one is breathing. At the same time, play up the humans activites. Describe their sounds, scents, sights etc. As the game advances, allow the other vamps to seem more normal, while the humans get less and less detail, unless they're focused on. When you subtly go from "A young couple, maybe in their 20's clearly in love by the way they hold hands, her smile, the scent of orchids in her perfume," to "a couple of people, maybe a man and a woman, walking down the street. She's smiling," to "A pair of humans, oblivious to your presence. Come to think of it, how many BP do you have left?" and the players don't realize it, you've hit on one of the horror themes of Vampire. * Spoiler:
Another route is to make them expendable. I ran a Columbus by night game where the neonates were embraced by outside vamps and sent to scout, since every vampire in the city had disappeared. Had the game continued, they very well could have been the big shots by claiming the power themselves. ** Spoiler:
One new way for resources is medical transcription. Doctors send their notes overseas to be transcribed during our night (their day) and have the transcription ready when they get in the next morning. A Vamp might be able to do this. *** Spoiler:
This also depends on how much you want to rely on other books or wing it. A cascading effect can work for this too. Vampire knows gangs are terroizing his neighborhood. He takes control of one of them, starts removing the others. Player's comfortable with mechanics? Good, now one of the other gangs has a couple ghouls on their payroll. Player takes them out, Vampire wants to know what happend. Or maybe one of the gangers that gets killed is a Kinfolk... **** Spoiler:
A good example would be who controls a school/hospital/other important mortal place. Not so much as in 'behind the scenes' as in 'I claim this territory.' When the PC's sister is injured in the car wreck, how eager is she to get into the hospital to see her? What is she willing to pay? Does she let the vampire know why she wants in? 
Yeah, maybe it wasn't such a good idea to cancel those magazines after all? Who knew? 
I don't see anything in here that should automatically preclude ALL Barbarians from being Lawful. Especially if you consider the Urban Barbarian and his "controlled rage." I really hate alignment restrictions. They honestly don't add anything to the game, in my opinion. Hell, I'm still upset that the Assassin is an evil only class. 
Welcome to America. We'll support the rights of your discontented citizens, but ours are fair game. 
You win. From the first time I heard about "Jade Regent," I had no desire to play it, run, it, buy, it, or have anything to do with it. I don't give a hoot about Asian settings or tropes. I couldn't care less about samurai, ninjas, oni, or tea services. I'd rather have an adventure set ANYWHERE else on Golarion than in Tian Xia. But heck, I thought, it's only one AP. Money is tight and I could use the disposable income somewhere else, but I won't cancel my AP subscription for one AP I have no interest in. So, the players guide comes out and I read through it and the rules for caravans and relationships seem very, very cool, and the quality of the guide knocks my socks off. So what? think I, it's not like I'll ever play the AP. Maybe I can adapt the relationship rules though. Then "The Brinewall Legacy" comes and, after sitting unread a couple of weeks, I pick it up and flip through it when I'm on the can. Hey...this is a pretty cool adventure. Very well written, very clever, intriguing, and exciting. Too bad it kicks off an AP I have no interest in. "Night of Frozen Shadows" arrives a couple weeks later and I read it. Dang, that's some good stuff. I mean GOOD stuff. I just wish it was part of an AP I wanted anything to do with. Then comes "The Hungry Storm," and I read it and then reread it and think, "Oh man, this is awesome! It just sucks that it's part of this AP, because I'd love to run this." And then "Forest of Spirits." I read it, my mind racing with how cool it is and how exciting and how much I'd love to run it and how much fun my players would have going through it -- And then I realize, of course, that I love this AP. It's amazing, amazing stuff. I want desperately to run it, and will do when my current Kingmaker game ends. You win. James, Greg, Jason, Richard, you win. You with your remorseless commitment to quality, your excellent writing, and your enthusiasm for the subject matter. I went from dead set against wanting the any association with what I was sure would be completely uninvolving (for me) to panting with eagerness for the next book to come out. I surrender. Now fork over the last two installments and nobody gets hurt. ;-)
As for folks who are eager and hopeful we'll do something for the good guys... ...patience! We have heard! 
One of the worst ideas I've seen spouted in the gaming community is that we must hold our games to some realistic ideal. I say thee, nay. This is fantasy, and fantasy can be anything. Ban things you don't like, not things that are historically inaccurate. 
There seems to be a nasty rumor floating around that dwarves are better miners than kobolds. As a kobold, I can inform you all that this is NOT TRUE. We get a +2 bonus to Profession (mining) checks, and dwarves do not. End of story.Interestingly, Gnomes can do just as well. *Twitch* AARAARARARRARARARARARAraRARRAGH!:
WHO THE HELL GAVE THEM THAT BONUS?! THEY AREN'T EVEN UNDERGROUND CREATURES ANYMORE! WE KOBOLDS SPEND ALL OUR LIVES DIGGING AWAY, WE BLOODY WELL LIVE DOWN THERE, AND WHEN THE MORON DWARVES AREN'T TAKING OUR GLORY IT'S THESE GORRAM GNOMES?! SMURF IT! IDIOT BLEACHING DISCO-COLORED IDIOT GNOMES! I WILL NOT STAND FOR IT! ARARARARGH! KILL EVERYONE! *Draws mushroom cleaver and runs off* 
With the vastness of Avistan and Garund we have a LOT going on on the macro and micro levels. There's the Cheliax/Andoran conflict, the cold war between Taldor and Qadira, the possibility of true peace between Nex and Geb, Razmiran proselytizers, and so much more. While all of these are fantastic material for adventure, the world is static. The setting isn't actually changing much (outside of expansion into Tian Xia and elsewhere). Cheliax and Andoran are still rivals, Razmiran priests are still mucking about, the Hordes of Belkenzen remain in their mountains, etc. Many of the nations of the Inner Sea region have a ton of potential for this, depending on where an individual GM wants to go with it (although I agree with the above statements about not wanting the canonical setting itself to get shaken up every couple of years!). Event option 1,
The Worldwound is currently on 'slow boil,' but could explode at any moment, and if Mendev falls, a much more intriguing set of battle-lines, with Ustalav, Numeria, Belkzen and the Realms of the Mammoth Lords could take place. (The demons don't expand north, onto the Crown of the World, 'cause of hard-learned experience of A) how little there is to plunder and devour there and B) how really unfriendly Shoggoth are to those who attempt to plunder their frozen abandoned haunts...) Sections of Ustalav could fall, only to have someone take advantage of the chaos to free Tar-Baphon (or perhaps one of his powerful servants, the 'Kas' to his 'Vecna'), and create a eternal war between undead hordes and demonic minions, with the surviving mortal population of Ustalav caught in the middle, viewed as tasty snacks and squishy playthings by one side, and a fresh supply of soon-to-be-undead recruits by the other. In Belkzen, the orcs no more want to be devoured by rampaging demons than anyone else, and a surge of Gorumite-led orcish mercenary groups could attempt to hold the line, and create their own versions of 'warding stones' to protect their own holdings. Lacking the special advantages of some of the other lands, Belkzen might be almost overrun in short order, and troops from Lastwall (bolstered by fresh recruits from Nirmathas, Molthune, the Five Kingdoms, etc.) might ride into the heart of Belkzen, right past retreating and regrouping orcish encampments and refugee trains, to engage the approaching demons, to the shock and confusion of orc and crusader alike, as they buy the orcs time to regroup (and get their non-combatants to safety, behind *human* lines!). Tensions will be strained by orc tribes converting en masse to demon-worship, revering the strength of their conquerors, and wanting to be 'on the winning side.' On the front lines, troops of dwarves, humans and orcs will fight demonic invaders, with orcs of their own, and the occasional Five Kingdoms axe or Nirmathan arrow may find itself lodged in the wrong orcish skull, in a sort of 'friendly fire' accident... In Numeria, the Black Sovereign and his 'techno-mages' won't give up Starmount without a fight, and big gun-equipped mecha-scorpions won't be the only surprise they are ready to bring to bear on the encroaching demon hordes. Mendevian knights forced to retreat into Numeria will be grudgingly tolerated, and wonder behind their hastily-constructed fallback redoubts, what sort of horrible alliance they have made, as drug-addicted techno-sorcerers and soulless mechanical horrors from beyond the stars fight the demons at their side. The Realm of the Mammoth Lords seems likely to fare worse, lacking the more supernatural defenses available to Numeria, and, in the worst case, to Ustalav. Still, there's something to be said for the damage a herd of mammoths, or even a stampede of dinosaurs, could inflict, even to demons! It's also possible that agents of Baba Yaga could be drawn into the fray, intending to stop the demonic incursion before it reaches Irrisen (and, in the process, taking the Mammoth Lords lands for themselves). The Mammoth Lords may have no love for the Winter Witches (and vice-versa), but when demons are pouring over their eastern flank, better to allow winter wolf and ice troll slaves of the witches to engage them than to risk the extinction of their local mega-fauna on suicide charges. Druma would contribute no troops, but every Drumite craftsmage would be set to pumping out arrows of demon slaying by the thousands, and they would be made available at precisely controlled prices by the Kalistocracy (single-handedly preventing wartime price-gouging, as they seize utter control of certain markets, out of 'enlightened self-interest'). Cheliax, while offering token support to the actions in Numeria and Belkzen (through Molthune, in the latter case), would buckle down and ruthlessly secure their own country and borders, erecting wardstones of their own, rumored to exist more to keep Chelish citizens in, than outside forces out. There was gonna be an 'Option 2; Azlant Rising' and 'Option 3; The Gebbite Gambit,' but Option 1 kind of ran long... 
I know for a fact that not everyone at Paizo hated LA. Sean K Reynolds posted in this very thread, and he put a lot of work into Level Adjustment, monster classes, and so on. But maybe he moved on to whatever magical new system they're working on. I'm sure in any industry, you'll find people who look back and say, "well, it was a good idea at the time." LA is one of those things. LA is really only needed for players and GMs who insist "OMG EVERY PC MUST BE BALANCED AGAINST THE OTHER." But that's a pipe dream--you can't even balance the damage output of a human bard vs. a human sorcerer. There's no reason why you can't have a level 1 human, level 1 werewolf, level 1 drow, and level 1 kobold playing in the same group... as long as the players agree to it and everyone is having fun. If the players can agree on that, you don't need an LA mechanic. And if the players can't agree on that, no LA mechanic is going to prevent some minmaxer from creating a super-cheesed monster PC that'll blow an "equivalent" level human PC out of the water.
tribeof1
(Pathfinder Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Roleplaying Game, Campaign Setting, Companion, Tales Subscriber)
(Note: Mods feel free to move this, but I put it here to get feedback from posters familiar with the AP). So, as a break from my Legacy of Fire game I decided to run some 3rd-edition Shadowrun. Partly to see if I could do it, I decided to use Carrion Crown as a basic road map for a plotline I'm working in between more traditional runs (mostly from the first season Missions adventures on Catalyst's site). I've not been too worried about following CC exactly. Game's set in Seattle as the runners come together for the funeral of Dr. Peter Larrimer, a mage and surgeon who ran a charity hospital in the barrens and had done favors for each of them in the past. While doing runs to keep the hospital afloat (and arrange protection from the yakuza) the group recovers Larrimer's journals that mention Harrowstone, a private prison complex destroyed in a fire several years earlier. Larrimer had been keeping an eye on the place, which was the site of clandestine, corporate research into cyber-zombie creation before the "accident" that left it a spirit-haunted ruin. He was killed by agents of the Whispering Way that visited the prison to extract a powerful free spirit trapped in a warded research area. The group is approached by the Palatine Eye, an initiatory group that opposes the Whispering Way's attempts to resurrect a long dormant spirit of some kind, probably using a modified form of the rituals used in cybermancy creation - at least, that's my translation of the spiritual "MacGuffins" the WW is after so far. For Trial of the Beast, I'm going with a simplified plotline: A local gang has turned in the body of the notorious "Beast of Leper Street," a barrens monster that has terrorized the locals for several months. The scarred carcass turns out to be a troll incarcerated at Harrowstone when it burned, but the body contains several more recent cyber-mods (in quantities verging on fatal). The runners eventually will track down the beast's maker, a deranged cyber-surgeon who has been experimenting in hiding since Harrowstone's fall. He's on high alert when the runners arrive after recently being robbed by Whispering Way cultists seeking some magical doodads he spirited out of the prison. For Broken Moon I'm thinking of moving in Native American Nation territory - have the runners infiltrate a corporate hunting lodge at a time when the local tribal councils (stand-ins for the werewolves) are at each other's throats over succession. I could work in some HMHVV-infected loup-garou or Wendigo to keep the werewolf vibe. I'm looking for ideas on a MacGuffin for Broken Moon, though, as well as ideas for translating the later parts of the AP. I'm not sure where to place Wake of the Watcher - maybe farther up the coast, or south in Tir Tairngire or California Free State? The vampires of the Ordo Maximus, with their rumored knowledge of advanced cybermanchy, seem perfect for Ashes at Dawn, so I might sub in London for Caliphas. For Shadows of Gallowspire, I'm torn between placing the endgame in a buried temple complex or in a corporate skyscraper in Seattle or some other megaplex. Thoughts?
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