Mary Yamato's page

After going back and forth with it for a long time, I decided that Perelir and Hyalin were both drow, having done too many black deeds in the Winter Council's service. This helped explain Perelir's tolerance of Hyalin in our Council Meeting scene. The PCs never did find this out about Hyalin--Recorporeal Incarnation is hard to detect--but managed to get a confession out of Perelir in a moment of weakness. They were more shocked than I expected. They hadn't believed that Allevrah just turned into a drow spontaneously, as it turns out; they'd assumed it was either an illusion, or revelation of what she'd been all along.

The game ended shortly after that, though. High level D&D is agonizing for me as a GM. Much as I liked the plot and characters, it just wasn't enough to make up for the prep burden and increasing difficulty of making things hang together. The player was becoming obsessed with preparing for what Allevrah actually ought to do (particularly, Planar Ally) and it was tearing holes in the gameworld reality.

A note if you're going to run #6; it is schizophrenic about its map scale. The printed map has a *huge* Land of Black Blood. There is no way that Allevrah's troops can move from one sigil to another in less than days. But the text seems to assume that things are much closer than that. Having Denrelwe over a hundred miles from base, with no transport, no support, no supplies, and no strong reason to be there, is very odd. (And if you are all alone like that, killing your own bodyguards is...stupid.)

Mary Kaye

There's a scene where drow clerics cast Mass CMW on each other in one of the modules. I would recommend re-picking this spell, as SR makes it very iffy. (It wasn't really a good idea anyway. These particular NPCs seem designed for ineffectiveness.)

Mary

I fudged it and got caught (my player has sharp eyes!). The UMD solution is a good one, if a little annoying to roll in play.

Player wasn't upset, though: he knows I'm not trying very hard to convert to Pathfinder for the NPCs, as it's just too much work.

Mary

I'd definitely do a whole clutch of eggs, maybe including one that the mother thinks is a runt and is going to kill off--it'd be cool if the PC father felt obliged to raise the thing himself!

A PC in one of my early campaigns, who was himself a half-ogre, fooled around while shapeshifted into a dog and a few months later was presented with a litter of puppies that occasionally turned into baby half-ogres. It was pretty fun, though too late in the campaign for extended play.

I'd also think about what the maturation rate will be. Half-orcs grow up pretty fast. If harpies do too, these could be "teenaged" harporcs within a few years. Lots of fun.

The mother must be immune to her babies' charm song, but the father probably isn't! And they will of course be motivated to charm him. If you are into Freudian psychology, the kill your mother / marry your father developmental phase could get *real* interesting.

Drow art

Drow paintings are often mainly black and white with splashes of intense color for emphasis, since this is how the world looks to them much of the time--darkvision filling in most of the image, color only where there's adequate light. They are displayed in lighted locations, however, so that the full range will be visible.

Drow love art and even lower-class drow tend to have some--if not actual paintings, then useful decorated objects such as clothing, curtains, door hangings, gargoyles on buildings, personal tattoos, etc.

The value of a piece of art is enhanced by an unusual, violent, or otherwise striking story attached to it. Stolen art can be quite prestigious. The last artwork of a given artist is particularly valued, sometimes to the point that drow nobles will kill the artist to enhance the value of their masterwork.

Drow theater

Compared to US audiences, drow enjoy a much wider variation in mood and tone within a single work--think Hong Kong cinema, with comedy, drama, and bloodsoaked violence in close proximity.

An observer familiar with elven culture will recognize many shared motifs and storylines in drow theater and music, but generally recast to be darker and bloodier, with more spectacle. (Compare _King Lear_ with _Ran_.) The drow would not appreciate comments on this, however.

A lot of socializing goes on during performances at the Cyclic Sublime, and the performances are paced accordingly, with quasi-breaks during which the onstage action is muted--a dance, singing, acrobatics, torture--and the audience is expected to chat and mingle. Assassinations do happen here from time to time, but large-scale combat is frowned upon. A stylish assassination should not interrupt the progress of the play.

Actor is one of the better outlets for an ambitious male drow; a popular male actor can accumulate a good deal of prestige and matronage, especially if he is beautiful as well as charismatic. Male actors tend to be pushed into supporting roles (much as in human ballet) but the occasional exceptions are among the best-known males in drow society.

The PCs negotiated with various surface-world allies--a gold dragon, a slime creature from the Storvall Deeps, the ruins of the Winter Council--and started thinking seriously about the Land of Black Blood. As the player is painfully aware, they're too low-level for it.

Miralwe Azrinae offered them reading rights in the Azrinae libraries if they'd help her take over her House, and they agreed. I used House Vonnarc, souped up with a whole lot of golems (nimblewrights, stone and iron golems, stained-glass golems, web golems) and a few other auto defenses. The attackers used the fact that the House defenses were set to react to Miralwe in preference to anything else to very good advantage, and won handily, Dominating Kardinnyr and killing his succubus lover. (She was, unfortunately for her, listening at the door the PCs came through, so they grappled her severely and she wasn't effective.)

At this point, the triumphant attackers discovered Alicavness Vonnarc in the Azrinae library-tower. (The PCs should not have been surprised; they were the ones who tipped off Vonnarc as to the right time to attack. But somehow they had not expected Alicavness herself.) The PC priest nearly lost his head over the prospect that Alicavness had, or would soon have, the Earthfall secret. But he realized he had to join the dickering between Miralwe and Alicavness or he wouldn't have any say at all.

So, a council: Alicavness, Miralwe, and two of the PCs. The PCs managed to make a good argument that Allevrah's next target after Kyonin would be Zirnakaynin, and get the drow to agree that she had to be stopped. They found, to their horror, that Alicavness had inherited the Master Key of the elf-gate network and could open or close gates at whim. She offered to trap Allevrah in the Land of Black Blood, which would have made Miralwe happy, but not the PCs. They finally convinced her to go off and verify for herself the nature of the threat to Zirnakaynin, and then consider joining with them in their plan--

For some reason, the PCs have become convinced that the Echo is key to Allevrah's plans, and to how to stop her. They propose a joint strike at Allevrah in the Land of Black Blood now, and wherever the glyphs are in Celwynvian-past. One of these gets to be done by NPCs, I think! Though maybe not--I have to look at the drowned city in Savage Tide and see if it will stand in for the aboleth glyphs under Celwynvian.

It is slowly dawning on the PCs that Alicavness has subverted Samaritha somehow, and probably Arkaxis as well. I like Alicavness, and am happy to see her having a richer role than she does in the actual modules (where she is mainly an annoying deus ex machina).

So, next will be a dual effort to get the Council of Widows and the Elven Court to help. I can't keep the PCs out of Kyonin after all. I give up trying. But maybe we can have the Elves do one of the two paths, and the PCs do the other.

Fun sessions, especially the council meeting.

I still don't give Miralwe a snowball's chance in the Abyss, though. Allevrah has really wrecked her House. This worked in the PCs' favor, as it was what convinced Alicavness that Allevrah might really mean to destroy Zirnakaynin.

For anyone who plans to do combat in House Vonnarc, either as itself or as a stand-in for Azrinae: it needs magical defenses *badly*. It's a total pushover for even midlevel PCs otherwise, which won't make sense in the gameworld.

While some amount of railroading is necessary to make any AP work, I do think there are plotlines that take too much of it, and a player can legitimately object to that without demanding that the GM go totally freeform.

If someone threatens the PCs or those they care about, it's perfectly legitimate to expect them to respond. If they accept a job to investigate something, it's perfectly legitimate to expect them to investigate it (and it's generally reasonable to expect them to take job offers, unless the offers are blatantly awful).

It's not so good if the module author gives the PCs evidence that they can't fight something, and then expects them to fight it anyway. Or if the PCs are hired to investigate something, but are expected not to investigate it, or to investigate something else instead. Or if they are expected to abandon the things they care about, or to fight for things they actively dislike, or to take jobs from someone who has previously betrayed them. Or if they are given clues that do not fit the actual solution, so that they can never successfully put the clues together. (I can give a published example for each of these, alas.)

So I don't think all railroading criticisms should be met by "Well, then you can't play an AP." Not all APs are alike. We had to do very little railroading to get RotRL to work, whereas there are some spots in SD which are almost impossible to force the PCs to do.

Mary

Something that can really help, both on the level of individual GMs and on the level of module authors, is to try to guess the likely interests of the PCs and write toward them, rather than away from them. You will never be 100% successful even with your own, known player group, and it's even harder as a module author writing for unknown players. But the more you can do this, the better the game will run. A railroad that goes where the players have already decided to go is infinitely more palatable than a railroad that goes in the wrong direction.

For many groups, the ship episode seems to be an example of railroading away from the PCs' goals. The players work hard to identify clues, trying to play actively and with engagement, and the GM is then obliged either to frustrate them or to kill them. If I were running this, I would want to redo it so that the PCs could successfully investigate the ship at the level where they are likely to want to do so. It's a lot of work, though, and if you are running modules due to lack of prep time, it may be unfeasible.

I think RotRL shows how the railroad can be aligned more tightly with what the PCs actually plan to do. As GM, I didn't have to push much to get the PCs to do most of the adventures; those were the kinds of things they would naturally be doing anyway, given the information they had.

Okay, we've now run the set pieces from _Endless Night_ and _Memory of Darkness_. Both were utter pushovers for a party of the level expected by the module. In both cases, most of the creatures are low-level melee fighters which cannot hit the PCs at all. "Blood Caves" makes this worse by putting them in high-ceiling caves, so that a standard Fly approach would render the entire adventure moot.

My player's PCs went into "Sundagger" with the intention of not killing a single Elf, which does make it a bit harder. They were never even hit on the lower level. It looked to me as though a single PC fighter could have taken the entire level by himself. We have not yet done the upper level, but the player thinks it will be only mildly difficult.

"Blood Caves" could work okay for 7ths, I think. "Sundagger" is problematic because a lower-level party will be wiped out by Blasphemy unless they manage to stop it from being cast. It's a TPK setup for low-level PCs, but not really challenging for high-level ones.

They need to be rethought in terms of expected PC level.

That will come in handy in _Armageddon Echo_ when the PCs find a critical document that can't be taken with them.

The one thing to think about--if the PCs stumble briefly into a high-end research library, can you live with the consequences of them copying large chunks of it? If you can, great; if not, you might want to tone this down in some way. Such libraries are pretty common in the APs. I wouldn't have a problem with it myself, but some GMs like to keep information under tighter control.

Mary

We have only had two PC deaths all campaign (we're at the end of _Memory_ now). Both of them were here. It's dangerous.

Mary

My campaign seemed to fall down quite different. My non-good party seemed to have enough motivation throughout all the adventures to accomplish the goal. Even if it is only for their own safety and a pile of cash, they have had enough to make them go to the end. But they don't seem to hate the elves as much as you seem to, so that might impact things.

Mary

Mary Yamato wrote:

Speaking only for myself, I cannot sustain belief in a gameworld that is in constant danger of world-shattering events but is not constantly being shattered. I just don't understand how it could exist, and as a result I can't run in it.

My apologies for the multiple threadjacks :)

I always find this perspective a little off to me when it comes to DnD (other RPing games). Just look at the real world around us for tons of examples of this. Humans are messy, stupid, and rarely consistent or logical, but for some reason we expect NPCs to be always logical and consistent in our campaigns.

But yes, it's true, I'd like the major players to mainly make sense and promote their own goals, rather than being insane or stupid: it's more fun to play against worthy opponents. Who wants to be thinking, "Yeah, we won, but of course it's only because the NPCs were idiots"? To me it loses the sense of accomplishment.

I think the journal entries are another issue, though. I accept that some villains might do that. But when I see yet another journal, I don't (as a player) think "Okay, s/he might do that." I've seen so many, and always used for the same metagame purpose, that I just see metagaming. And this turns me off. I really don't think that Depora kept a journal because it flowed out of her personality as depicted; I think she kept a journal because Paizo doesn't trust PCs to ask questions before killing key NPCs, so there has to be a written record whether it makes any sense or not.

Similarly, if the excuse for NPC inaction is *always* that they're "realistically irrational"...it just sounds like a lame excuse. It could certainly work once. But if you have to do it every time, the metagame motivation, for me, overwhelms any sense that it's a real thing in the gameworld.

I have some markedly irrational NPC behavior in my game, but I try not to use it as an excuse for doing metagame-motivated stuff. My player tolerates and in fact enjoys in-character irrationality, but he's deeply cynical about its use as a railroading tool, which is what it is here. (As James says--the elves can't help because of the difficult and unsatisfying mass combat that would ensue, and that's the real reason. Players aren't blind to that.)

We ran it as a lead-in to the campaign. It's higher level than it says it is; easy to kill a whole party that way. But I liked the flavor.

My GM set it in a ruined town close to Korvosa. Several of the Noose NPCs ended up as recurring NPCs--those that didn't die, and the PCs worked pretty hard to keep them alive.

I would strongly recommend the answer "no", otherwise there will be trouble later on where suspicious people ought to notice that folks radiate magic who have no business doing so. This comes up in #3.

My player had enthusiasm for going after the Runelady of Wrath in drowned Bakrakhan next (but I had none; too high level for me). The drowned city in _Savage Tide_ might work here. I don't remember that adventure's exact level, but it should be in the ballpark.

_Age of Worms_ #10, the dragons versus giants module, might be adaptable here as well. Giants are certainly thematic. #11 is closer to your desired level but harder to adapt.

A few more drow thoughts:

Friendship

Female drow have something that could be called "friendship" or "sisterhood"--long-term relationships among relative peers, like Alicavness and the old Matron, or Depora and Shindiira. These are not entirely stable but they're among the most stable things in the society. They can cut across House lines, as with Alicavness, and this helps stabilize the House system.

There is no male equivalent, or at least it's not recognized in art or common thinking. There are female-dominant sexual relationships, which can be somewhat lasting and begin to resemble alliances, but they aren't considered friendships. The occasional male-dominant sexual relationship, such as Depora/Shindiira with Novelniss, isn't a friendship either--these are very unstable, being "contrary to nature" and thus expected by all parties not to last. Males have no relationship with their offspring, though they may have a tenuous one with their sisters' offspring. Beyond that, male alliances are shifting and pragmatic, lasting only long enough to get the males, or at least one of them, some advantage. This is part of why female drow see male drow as flighty.

(This is a hybrid of social structures existing in chimpanzees and in vervet monkeys. Real-world models are fun.)

If two males did become friends, they would be well advised to hide it.

House Azrinae

Each House does something for Zirnakaynin society as a whole. What did Azrinae do, before falling into its current state of complete dysfunction?

I suggest that the House of Dark Secrets brokered information among the Great Houses, and also, in subtle ways, worked to stabilize them by exerting pressure on Houses that become too powerful and supporting ones that become too weak (because if too many Houses become weak, one will end up on top--and it won't be Azrinae, it will be Vonnarc or Rasverein. This is of course intolerable.)

If Azrinae falls, Misraria is therefore its natural successor. And Chayt Gardens will then step in to fill the number back to 12.

Another Azrinae thought: The intro to _Endless Night_ said that "some Azrinae scions fled after the coup." If you want rich roleplaying in Zirnakaynin, those people are incredible resources! They hate the current Matron, they know a lot about the House, they're motivated to work with the PCs because they have little to lose. I invented a Second Daughter Miralwe Azrinae, an 11th level priest of Abraxas, who is plotting to take the House back from her idiot brother just as soon as she can figure out how to deal with Allevrah. But lower-level people could also be very interesting.

FatR wrote:

The math seems to be pretty simple: endless list of foes + quite finite list of defenders = foes win :).

I'd also suggest checking your math again, because your conclusion is only true as you actually approach infinity. At any point along the way - including during the campaign - you can say absolutely nothing one way or another about the current state of affairs.

My player is the same way--as soon as he sees that the world is like this, he's going to disconnect from the game and stop caring.

Kyonin is supposed to be, what, a thousand years old in its current incarnation? It has to have some degree of stability. If it's gotten that stability by bleeding power year by year until it has reached the "no time to stop Earthfall" state you describe, it's doomed anyway and a quest to save it feels futile. Better, actually, to let Earthfall drive the elves back to Sovryan.

He and I played in a GURPS game with the U-Mana rules, where your spellcasting is limited only by increasingly unpleasant botches. The top botch destroys kingdoms. Of course PCs are supposed to be deterred by the fact that this will kill them, too. But for both of us, that game-world ended up not making any sense. A single apprentice mage who has, say, been nastily jilted by his girlfriend can destroy the kingdom. No preparation, no warning, no way to stop it. And the kingdom is still there, when every two-bit mage (there were a lot of them, too) has the atom bomb? We couldn't believe in it.

Works for a lot of people, but I know enough players for whom it fails that I think it's worth avoiding.

Neil Mansell says--I can't quote it--"The Queen can't trust anyone, so she's best off sending the PCs."

My player has a more succinct description of this: "Elves are drow, except drow are competent."

Really. If Telandra can't trust *any* high-level people to be working to save Kyonin, elves are different from drow how? By being *less* able to work for the common good. Drow have defended Zirnakaynin successfully, after all, despite the House structure. But Telandra is ruler-for-life, something the drow don't have, and yet she can't save Kyonin.

I can make the elven mindset make sense, I think. Imagine that Sovryan is the classical Realm Outside of Time, where nothing really changes and there are no crises. The elves adapted to that. It was a dreadful mistake for them to come back, and with their long generation time they haven't yet re-adapted, especially as strong societal forces make it more difficult.

(I don't think they can always have been like that. They'd be extinct. Golarion is not a safe place.)

What I don't know how to do is make such elves appealing to my player, who is fond of competence. The only elf he's liked all campaign is Perelir. He clicks better with the drow. (So do I, frankly.) And...it's hard to risk your life to save people you neither like nor respect.

Neil Mansell wrote:

You have a point, but I HATE the idea of announcing to the PC's "okay you guys, you're the most powerful heroes in the area." Admittedly, I have some really mercenary players, but I fear they'll go on a rampage and kill the queen, take over the nation, and generally ruin the campaign.

Let them do it. I promise they'll only ever do it once.

After all of their allies have turned against them and they have all confirmed their alignments as evil, after they have killed all of the people who sought to protect the legitimate government and cowed the rest with fear... make them roleplay a lot.
After a while your players will probably hate their PCs as much as the rest of the populous (plus, they've given up being adventurers, so that'll be pretty dull).

Unless your players revel is being hated.

I'd be the one taking the blame for portraying the elves in this way. I have a lot of sympathy for the PC reaction, honestly. I would probably feel the same.

(I can also see scenarios where the PCs *wouldn't* make themselves universally hated. After all, the Winter Council has been doing some bad stuff, but life goes on. They could try to position themselves as good guys, even though they aren't. Elven society is rotten. It might accept this. It'd take politically savvy players, though.)

I do share the original poster's discomfort with PCs as the absolute top of the food chain. It's hard to have loose cannons like that as the top; it makes the setting feel unstable. And I don't really know how to do appropriate challenges, other than political ones, for top people. Mass combat is not fun for me; foes that can challenge the top people should be extremely rare; what's left?

My resolution of this dilemma would be to avoid save-the-world scenarios. _Crimson Throne_ was not a success in our hands, but I did really appreciate that it's "Save Korvosa" and not "Save the world".

I did tone this one down to "Save Kyonin" and wish I'd done so sooner, but it's still big enough to be worrisome. In my hands, "save the world" in a world with many high-level NPCs is extraordinarily hard to make work. _Runelords_ was okay, because I can imagine that a lot of people don't care if Varisia falls--they figure they can hold off the new empire afterwards, and probably they're right. But a real attempt at a Second Darkness should get *everyone's* attention. "Why us?" just becomes a devastating question in terms of game-world logic.

For one thing, suppose the PCs then go on to try to destroy big chunks of world? We have just established that no one will mount an effective attempt to stop them! And that is really a problem for me. If the NPCs will stop a PC but not an NPC, there's my suspension of disbelief right out the window.

(My player plans to use the Earthfall glyphs. I hope he only means to use them to deflect the current crop of rocks. But I'm not positive of it.)

I know that save-the-world is a staple of the genre. But it goes with weaker game-worlds, with less sense of reality, than Golarion. Or at least with the Golarion I personally would like to see, a world with history and a real sense of action/reaction, and NPCs worth caring about.

Alicavness Vonnarc is male in her stat block and female (correctly) everywhere else.

There is no apparent way to reach the top floor of Tower Solacas, unless you are supposed to levitate through the hole in the floor. Rather annoying, as even the drow who have levitate have it only once a day.

People using the map of House Vonnarc should be aware that the Tower is oriented differently on its detail map than its base is on the main map! Otherwise you will go crazy trying to figure out the stairs. The same is true for the map of the main Zirnakaynin cavern and the map of Eirdresseir; they do not have North in the same place. In general, never assume anything about map orientation or scale.

All references to "where people sleep" should be replaced by "where people rest". You can leave the beds in there, though; drow don't sleep in them, but they might want to make love in them.

The reason I know this is that House Vonnarc is about to put in a cameo as House Azrinae, and I had to work through the entire map. Anyone else who intends to do this, I'd strongly recommend adding a *lot* of constructs. Spiderweb golems and stained glass golems are thematic.

James Jacobs wrote:

That's not an indication of "elves being dumb" though. It's an indication, honestly, of the game not handling mass combat well.

Uh, doesn't the third installment of this very AP have a frikkin
war in it, despite this?

My strong fear was that the PCs, who were elves, would end up in command of the elven forces, would organize them sensibly, and would trigger a mass combat that would be agonizing to run.

So I just didn't do it. I had the PCs raid into drow-held Celwynvian. That was more than enough combat anyway, and kept the elves offstage so they didn't have a chance to look like idiots.

My real regret with _Armageddon_ is that I didn't force the PCs to interact with the Echo more. It was the big GMing failure of the AP for me; I had the raw materials to do something good, but I didn't spot the opportunity until it was too late, and dead Celwynvian was just a tactical exercise.

I had another idea about making the elves in 5-6 more sympathetic: depict them in the middle of a series of hyper-aggressive raids by Treerazer, and barely keeping on top of those. Any top heroes the elves pull off that border now will directly equal dead elven villages, maybe even dead Iadara. All the magical goodies that might help the PCs are off on the border as well. The Queen is apologetic, but the maybe-threat of Allevrah just isn't enough to make her give up on the totally immediate and clear threat of Treerazer. (And she is not quite sure the PCs aren't a Winter Council trick, still.)

There is a danger that the PCs will try to pitch in, but hey, Treerazer's stats are in the module for a reason, right? And you can nudge the players toward choosing Allevrah rather than Treerazer as their first target relatively easily, I think.

At least the elves look a little more reasonable this way. You could show them as slow to react to new threats, and overwhelmed by the one they currently have. It means you won't get idyllic Iadara scenes, but that's okay.

I had to play the Winter Council folks as starkly insane, but that's all right--they do not need to be sympathetic so much as plausible. There are some nice clues to the insanity in the material as written, too ("I have died three times in the service of Thorn's End already" etc.) I made Malendil pathologically convinced she's going to turn into a drow, and Arlindil pathologically afraid that the corruption of the earth by Treerazer is corrupting him too. And I am just about resolved that both Hyalin and Perelir are already drow and have been hiding this. (It would explain the odd rapport between them that emerged in our version of the Council scene, despite Hyalin having been Dominating Perelir when the PCs arrived. She doesn't expect any better, just as a drow wouldn't; he had the power so he used it. Of course she'll get revenge when she has a good opportunity. She *is* a priestess of Calistria.)

One thing that may have contributed to the insanity of elven society is the Winter Council using memory wipes. I think they must have the ability, or the drow secret would have been out long ago--the drow obviously aren't trying to keep it! So they have gotten in the habit of memory-wiping anyone that seems to warrant it, which has poisoned Kyonin politics. In my game they have mothmen on their side, helping with this, as the Modify Memory spell is very limited in applicability and availability.

I like that a) you get a feel for the elves, and b) that they have a feel which is indicative of their makeup. Can you imagine if humans lived that long? If you think these elves are hate-worthy! *chuckles*

Whether this feel works in a particular campaign, is up to the group (as it always is). I haven't run the AP yet, but I have read them, and from I can tell, it will be helpful to have a certain type of party to start with. Like an all elvish party that is already part of one of the groups, or is looking to get into once of groups, perhaps raised in tradionally-minded families.

I think the main thing this does is change the emotional impact of the elves' behavior from "they're infuriating, why are we bothering to save them?" to "this is a personal betrayal of all I valued in my own people." Very dark stuff. It's hard to reconcile the elves' unwillingness to try to save themselves with elven PCs' willingness to do so, without ending up thinking that something has gone desperately, horribly wrong with elven society. They had the gumption to save themselves at the First Darkness. Where has it gotten to?

I don't know what the right party is for this AP. I wondered that from the start. Do-gooders are likely to have trouble with module 1. Bad guys are likely to have trouble with module 3. I like what my player came up with, and we've had a good campaign (almost ready to do module 6 now) but I made it work by sacrificing module 1. It's a really fun-sounding module, but if I'd run it for all that it was worth we would never have been able to run module 3, as the PCs' emotional ties would all have been to Riddleport.

For people who were successful with this AP: what were your PCs' motivations at the start? Later on? Were they internally motivated or just going along with the metagame necessities?

Well, that's assuming other high level elves arn't busy saving the world from other threats, that they can be contacted, and that they can make it to Kyonin in time to make a difference.

Save the world scenarios, for anything but well-connected very high level PCs, are inherently problematic. My player _will_ ask why the PCs are the ones doing this. We managed to make it work in _Rise of the Runelords_ partly because the danger was not widely perceived, partly because Varisia is very disorganized, partly because the PCs really did have unique advantages against the final foe that made them reasonable choices. But it takes a lot of work to retain plausibility.

I realized mid-campaign that the game would make more sense if only Kyonin were menaced, not the whole world, and made the necessary adjustments; I wish I'd done that sooner. For my particular group, "Why doesn't anyone in the world but us care?" is a real joy-killer. It destroys the sense of Golarion as a real place worth caring about.

I think _Second Darkness_ is tricky, but could possibly be made to work with a lot of "magician's forces" to make sure the PCs are the ones doing things at the end. But if you let the game get to Kyonin, you are faced with the unpalatable alternatives of making the elves helpless or stupid, or having them upstage the PCs, and I don't think this is easy to finesse.

That's not an indication of "elves being dumb" though. It's an indication, honestly, of the game not handling mass combat well. If you want to have a huge elven invasion of the Land of Black Blood, go for it! That's just not something we could really handle the scale of in a single volume of Pathfinder, and it runs the risk of robbbing the PCs of the opportunity of being the heroes of the whole AP.

A couple of alternative suggestions:

Allevrah has done a bang-up job of sealing off the Land of Black Blood so that no one can get there. One of the adventures provides a means whereby the PCs can get there, but they have to go RIGHT NOW and don't have time to head for Kyonin to get help. (Alicavness' Demon Lady is the Mistress of Gates, so having her involved here makes a lot of sense to me.)

This didn't work for us at _Armageddon_ because it wasn't made clear to the PCs that they had to go right now, but I think it can be made to work, and would avoid the dreaded mass combat (which I totally agree is undesirable).

Or--a suggestion due to my frustrated player--the Elves _do_ send a team to take out Allevrah. They don't want PC help; this is an internal Elven matter. But then that team fails--it would be good to sketch in the reasons why; I suggest internal treachery--and there is no time for anyone else but the PCs to act.

Or--at some point, an NPC such as Hyalin is headed for the Land of Black Blood to make Allevrah bump up the schedule. He has to be stopped _now_ or it's all over. But when the PCs get to the Land of Black Blood they are trapped there, unable to return to Kyonin for help.

Whatever the solution, for my particular group it would have been a complete game-wrecking disaster to have the Kyonin scenes at the beginnings of modules 5 and 6, because it is so hard to believe that elves _that_ insane could ever have become major players on Golarion, and also it is too tempting to let them die at that point, as they totally deserve it. If no elf will raise his hand to save his entire nation, they're a spiritually and morally dead race anyway. Better to clear them out and make more room for the drow, who my group rather liked. They are planning a drow recolonization of Celwynvian next.

The 14d6 fireball trap, which spoiled my party's day, did do them one favor; the aboleth didn't care for it at all, and swam away. So we didn't have that encounter. I killed two PCs at the Academy of Arts anyway and didn't really need to dump anything else on them. (One via fireball, one via vrock.)

When they hit House Azrinae next week there'll be another aboleth for them to enjoy, though.

My player is a sucker for protecting pastoral idylls.

Any idea of where to insert a gently wondrous elven village where the characters spend idle nights drinking fine wines and snacking on delicate morsels while improbably beautiful elves sing ancient ballads and spend lazy days exploring art-gardens developed with a singular vision over centuries?

I then got the PCs to Celwynvian by having a patrol lost out of Findaladlara's Watch and the elves asking for help finding it.

It's amazing, though, how negatively the source material presents the elves. All of my PCs *were* elves, one was a cleric of Findaladlara, and they still ended up preferring the drow to their own kind--and that's without the assassination attempt or the scenes with the Queen, which I didn't run. The drow are cruel and arrogant, but they are smart, artistic, and interesting to be around. The elves are fools. My player does not forgive fools readily. And the relative shabbiness of Thorn's End versus Zirnakaynin made a big impression on the PCs, who care passionately about elven art.

I played Zirnakaynin as vile but very, very beautiful, and I liked the way that worked out. But my player is now considering a postlude game in which the PCs build a surface-drow House in Celwynvian, which should tell you where their sympathies lie.

My PCs realized that they needed a way to Devil's Elbow very early on, much earlier than the module seems to expect. So they came up with the idea of grabbing the first ship into port and sailing it out there. (They were higher level than the module expects, due to the way I was running it, and could reasonably try this.) Since I was told that a crime boss was doing the exact same thing, I had them both go for the ship--Araska, of course--but the PCs got there first. So they snuck aboard in harbor, trashed the pirates, dumped them onto the docks, boarded their own crew and sailed away just as the crime boss was arriving. Very satisfying, though it got them in trouble later when they came back to Riddleport.

They then used Araska to interdict Devil's Elbow until their help (needed, in their opinion, to be sure of the drow) arrived from Crying Leaf. And captured their second ship at Devil's Elbow, the one the drow came in (which is not in the module, but it must exist....) Of course that was Araska too, with some cosmetic changes.

I just got done looking at the set pieces from _Memory_ and _Midnight_ and I doubt very much I can use either one. The levels seem a bit odd in the later adventures. The Blood Caves are a total pushover for PCs of their rated level with any kind of tactics--the lesser morlocks won't be able to hit them, so there is really only one enemy and she'll go down in a flash. If the PCs fly, there is nothing here at all. It might run well for 7ths. I didn't look at the Sundagger one in detail but I had the same impression about it--much easier than the main line.

It does worry me some that we lose a page from every module doing setup for the side adventure that would not be needed if it were integrated, but then I've never found mining scenes out of APs all that difficult, so making them more detached is not a win for me.

Still, thank you for Araska! Would have been a pain to make those ships and sailors myself.

"Teeth of Araska" in _Children of the Void_ totally saved my butt. Not because I ran it as such, but because I kept needing pirate ships, drow ships, crime-boss ships, and there it was with a ship map and some sailors! The PCs ended up *owning* two copies of that ship by the end of _Children_.

So for me, the absolute ideal side adventure is one that contains pieces which are likely to be useful in the AP module it's in, or possibly the ones before or after. (Further off than that and it will be the wrong level, and therefore less useful.) For example, if the AP episode is a city adventure, a vignette set in the city would be most helpful.

I tried to run the side adventure for _Armageddon_ but the PCs wouldn't bite. I ran the one for _Endless Night_ but it was not a challenge for the PCs in any way, and I might as well not have bothered--something went wrong with the challenge level there. I didn't attempt any of the others. But "Araska" redeemed the whole concept for me--it was just the right material at the right time.

Having captured one of Allevrah's priestesses, the PCs retreated to Celwynvian. They caused consternation among the Elven defenders, who saw a succubus, two fiendish satyrs, a fleshwarped drow, and five regular drow. (And a silver dragon, a bronze dragon, and six baby copper dragons.) It took some Shin-Rakorath passwords and a lot of careful talking to smooth things over. Kavashiel, the Shin-Rakorath commander, was cut off from contact with the Winter Council and had to make a call on his own; he chose to cautiously treat with the PCs (and send Animal Messengers hither and yon).

The PCs sent messages of their own to Giseil and enlisted him in getting to Thorn's End. They had lost communication with Perelir and Giseil felt strongly that she was in danger; they also hoped to find help there.

Some very intense roleplaying here around the increasingly strange, and strained, composition of the PC's group. Also, they tried to question their captive and found that she'd been on the receiving end of a Miracle and was not sane any more. This scared them badly.

They went to Thorn's End, the whole lot of them plus Giseil and his skeletal dragon, and found the demon seige in place. They drew off the vrocks and beat them, then applied death from above to everything else. When they had nearly cleared the courtyard Armistril and his men came out to help. Another difficult piece of negotiation ensued. Everyone wants to know why the PCs, if they are really disguised Elves, don't drop their disguises!

The PCs *almost* agreed to let the Recorporeal Incarnations lapse. I was holding my breath, because if Samaritha tries to do that it won't work; Alicavness made hers permanent a little while ago. (Samaritha is working for Alicavness; she just doesn't know it yet.) But they settled for taking off the amulets, so they wouldn't read as chaotic evil, but not sending them far enough away to break the disguise itself.

The core PCs, Samaritha and Giseil went in, leaving everyone else outside, and talked first to Malendil, then to Malendil and Arlindil (memo: change those names, they are confusing!), then to the full Council. The Council believed that Perelir had gone mad, allying with drow and demons. The PCs pointed out that it looked a lot more like Domination than like madness, and forced Hyalin to drop the spell. Perelir promptly admitted that she *had* been allying with drow (starting with the drow PC) and demons (Quilindra). The conversation got very, very complicated. Hyalin had a lot of verbal ammunition to use against the PCs, starting with their own drow alliances and access to elf-into-drow magics. And Perelir, surprisingly, was ready to meet him halfway. So Arlindil and Malendil got pulled back and forth, and Hyalin was able to fend off any kind of resolution for hours on end.

We had to stop there, halfway through the conversation. (Downside of not being a teenager anymore; I can't play all night.) At this point I don't know if the raid on House Azrinae will ever happen. I'll be sad if it doesn't. I really like the character of Miralwe Azrinae, and the setting of Zirnakaynin, and would like more play there. The Land of Black Blood is less interesting to me. But the PCs are getting very goal-focused.

I have discussed with the player the likelihood that we will switch the campaign to a diplomacy/building focus after _Descent_, following the drow PC's attempts to resettle Celwynvian and build her own House out of exiles, surface drow, and renegade elves. It'll be a tough transition and I'm not sure we'll succeed, but the player is very keen.

We are hitting the point where combat is time-consuming and not necessarily interesting anymore. We abstracted the last third of the demon fight. Looking ahead, at least two of the Glyph fights will probably be abstracted as well. Ropers in the open? There's no need to fight that. What was Allevrah thinking? Or maybe I need to redo her defenses, though it will be a big pain.

Politics back in Zirnakaynin are really heating up. The player and I talked through them, which was quite entertaining in itself. Kardinnyr is under pressure to recover the missing priestess, which of course he can't do. Everyone is looking for the PCs, who aren't there to be found. Alicavness has captured the Azrinae delegate to the Council of Widows and is plotting an attack on House Azrinae itself, for its libraries. Miralwe is wondering where the PCs are and how long she can afford to wait for them. Arkaxis got a message from Kardinnyr appealing for help, which has him wickedly amused (though wondering how Kardinnyr found out where he was; the PCs think that Allevrah must have True Resurrected Novelniss. Maybe so.) Dolour has decided to protect the PCs' chattel in the lower city in order to curry favor. The market price of dragons has tripled.

Unless Allevrah comes back, which she won't, Azrinae in Zirnakaynin has only spell-cycles to live, and the main question is whether Miralwe or someone else moves first--and whether, if Miralwe does move first, she has a snowball's chance in the Abyss of holding what she takes. Maybe she should fake up some PCs, to keep people guessing! She could summon a succubus and have it impersonate the lead PC....

I want to be back in Zirnakaynin, that's what I want. What an excellent city! The late adventures in this AP don't, in my opinion, work at all, but Zirnakaynin is a fine piece of work and worth the price of admission by itself.

My main problem is not how to get the PCs to Thorn's End (they are there now) but how to keep them from going to Kyonin afterward.

_Descent_ as written has the Elves completely helpless and passive; they offer the PCs some money but that's it. (And complain if the PCs ask for more!) Even the surviving Winter Councilors don't offer constructive help. This is going to go over like a lead balloon with my player. It suggests that Elven society is so hopelessly degenerate that Allevrah's plan might as well be allowed to go forward--they know now that it will not wreck the rest of the world. It also suggests that if the PCs do stop Earthfall, the next step is the PCs' overthrow of the Elven government. I don't want to run this. It's ugly.

But a reasonable Elven response will lead to the PCs having a lot of backup going into the Land of Black Blood, and that will be painful to run. There *must* be some elves of 14th+ level in Kyonin somewhere. Given the level distribution we're shown elsewhere, it's impossible for me to rationalize that there aren't. And they really ought to care that their nation is about to be flattened by the drow. I understand why the Queen won't send an army, but I can't see why she won't send 3-4 very high level agents.

The best answer involves keeping the PCs out of Kyonin. I can just about live with them having three of the Councilors in the party going into _Descent_, but I really don't want more.

But my player is saying to me, out of band, that it's getting increasingly difficult to rationalize why the PCs aren't going. They know what level Allevrah is. They've seen the results of her casting _miracle_. They are themselves 12th level, and know perfectly well that they ought to lose that fight, so it's natural for them to look for help, or better yet, someone else better suited for the role. They hoped to find that at Thorn's End, but found madness and despair instead. So of course they should go to Kyonin.

The player's suggestion is that they do go to Kyonin, and the Queen says that she has a team all ready and is sending it. And then that team fails, and it's too late for anyone but the PCs to step in. I'm not really comfortable with this--it sends such a clear "This is too hard for you" signal.

The backup seems to be that the PCs go ahead into _Descent_ with Perelir, Arlindil and Malindil as backup. This probably means the raid on Azrinae won't happen, to my disappointment, as the Winter Council alliance is not strong enough to survive side adventures. It will mean an awkwardly large party in the Land of Black Blood. Tactically, none of the Glyph fights are likely to be interesting except the last one. (Someone else posted an end-of-game summary and came to the same conclusion: the scenarios don't allow for flight/invisibility/defenses combos. So they probably won't be interesting even with the core party.)

My player seems more interested in what happens after Allevrah falls than in the scenario of _Descent_, so maybe I should abstract large hunks of _Descent_ and then go into a post-endgame with a very different emphasis and pacing. The drow PC is thinking of resettling a bunch of drow in Celwynvian. That should provide plenty of political, if not combat, action. I couldn't do this in a multi-player game because one of the PCs has no scope in such a continuation, but for a single player game it may work.

I knew going in that _Memory_ would be a problem, but I hoped to find a solution before I got here. I'm still struggling. The Winter Council scene itself was really great, and I'm not sorry the PCs got here, but I wish I didn't have to choose between making the Elves out to be idiots and sabotaging the last episode. I do want to see a PC/Allevrah confrontation.

About that anti-demon ward:

In my game, the group likely to arrive at Thorn's End will be Anka's body in a portable hole, Anka's soul in Quilindra's body (due to Magic Jar), and Quilindra's soul in a gemstone, possibly in the portable hole.

Will the ward stop Quilindra's body with a non-evil, non-outsider soul in it? Will it stop the gem, or does it only stop voluntary movement? And does putting something in the portable hole (an extra-dimensional space) make a difference?

If the ward doesn't stop either Q's body or her soul-in-gem, she will end up inside the wards when the Magic Jar runs out.

(The PC has been Magic Jar'ing Quilindra all the way through _Endless Night_, 18 hours out of every 24. As payment, Quilindra has been enjoying the fleshpots of Zirnakaynin 6 hours out of every 24. It's a weird turn of events but it seems to somehow meet the player's goals.... Anka would rather be a succubus than a drow, apparently.)

Mary

It looks as though the rest of _Endless Night/Memory of Darkness_ for the Winter Council PCs will look like this:

(1) Hit one of the Azrinae priestesses for her gatekey.
(2) Hit House Azrinae with Second Daughter Miralwe's help, planning to kill Kardinnyr's succubus and force him to turn over the defenses to Miralwe. This plan will be oddly simplified by the fact that the House defenses have been set to go after Miralwe above any other target--Allevrah's parting curse--and that makes them easy to divert.
(3) Pry Samaritha out of Vonnarc, where she is getting much too settled.

However, they probably should have reversed the order of #2 and #3, because Alicavness has found Samaritha and picked her brains, and the result of Miralwe and the PCs raiding Azrinae (if they succeed) is that they're going to turn around and find Alicavness and a substantial Vonnarc force just behind them. On consideration, Alicavness thinks that keeping Azrinae viable but totally under her thumb would be a great outcome (she wants the Azrinae libraries, too) and Miralwe probably has little choice but to play along.

So Alicavness will close the Gates, trapping Allevrah in the Land of Black Blood, and give Miralwe time to consolidate in Zirnakaynin.

If the PCs ask her very nicely she might let them go through at some point. She has no love for Allevrah.

(All of this will make more sense if you know that we don't have Teleport or any related spells. It's Gates or a 200 mile walk.)

My biggest worry here is that the PCs will go to Kyonin and demand help. It's a real logic issue in the AP: last time the Elves were threatened by Earthfall they had enough advance warning, and organizational moxie, to evacuate an entire planet. Why aren't they doing anything about it this time? Yes, the Winter Council has gone rogue, but there have to be other elves who know what the portents mean.

I wish I could have Alicavness say, "You can go through if you want, but you must go now. I'm not going to open the Gates again." That would handle my plot problems perfectly--except the PCs are 12th level and they need to be about 16th. I guess they could be 13th after hitting Azrinae. It's still a big gap. They are powerful for their level, and have a dragon helping them, but I'm still not sure I can run _Descent into Midnight_ for 13ths.

One alternative is to have the PCs go ahead and call in help. But it's hard to run if done in detail, and dramatically unsatisfying if abstracted. And the player is almost guaranteed to react to the unsatisfying ending by wanting to continue--with the drow PC's plans to resettle Celwynvian with "re-educated" drow. I'm not sure I know how to run that.

A somewhat lame-ass alternative is to try to get the PCs to rescue Perelir, and then the next time they go through a Gate (probably meaning to go to Kyonin) they find themselves in the Land of Black Blood, courtesy of Alicavness and Areshkigal. I could at least get a level raise or two in there if they do Thorn's End.

One thing I do like about this whole continuation is that Alicavness has motives I can believe--killing Allevrah, getting Azrinae under her thumb--and needn't care about Earthfall at all. In my hands, PC/NPC alliances are more fun when the PCs and NPCs do not have precisely the same goals.

Hm. Wizard 12/Bard 1, Cleric 12/Fighter 1, Fighter 11/Ranger 2 (or something like that). Samaritha adds Wizard 8/Rogue 4. A Young Adult silver dragon, a Young copper dragon, and six Wyrmling bronze dragons. A couple of Dominated drow fighters around 9th level, if they dare take those (one Dispel Magic could ruin their whole day). Possibly a Dominated Cleric 9 of Abraxas (same comment). I could maybe see adding Perelir, who is Cleric 13; or Miralwe, who would be Cleric 12 by then. Can this group possibly do the Land of Black Blood? I'm no judge of high-level play.

It looks as though the rest of _Endless Night/Memory of Darkness_ for the Winter Council PCs will look like this:

(1) Hit one of the Azrinae priestesses for her gatekey.
(2) Hit House Azrinae with Second Daughter Miralwe's help, planning to kill Kardinnyr's succubus and force him to turn over the defenses to Miralwe. This plan will be oddly simplified by the fact that the House defenses have been set to go after Miralwe above any other target--Allevrah's parting curse--and that makes them easy to divert.
(3) Pry Samaritha out of Vonnarc, where she is getting much too settled.
(4) Go back to Celwynvian, recruit Giseil, and head off to rescue Perelir from her imprisonment and upcoming trial for treason by the Winter Council.
(5) Go into the Land of Black Blood after Allevrah, with any and all available allies.

The PCs are too low level for this plan to work directly. They can probably do #1-4 but #5 will kill them, unless they have a *lot* of help. I'm looking around for something to interpolate. We don't use EXP, but I can't just level-jump the PCs; they need to learn how to use their new abilities, and that requires play time. Currently they're 11th; they need to be more like 16th.

Other than that I'm happy. The PCs are mostly driving events, with about the right amount of outside pressure. Miralwe is a fun character; she's a natural ally but has *totally* different priorities than the PCs, leading to interesting kinds of friction. (When she finds out that they PCs have offered to sell the Azrinae priestess captured in step #1 to House Dolour, there will be trouble.) Miralwe is going to save House Azrinae from its incipient doom, and incidentally make herself Matron Mother. She petitioned Abraxas for aid in carrying out this audacious plan, and Abraxas, in great amusement, gave her the hint that let her find the PCs.

These are my own ideas and may contradict things Paizo has published, but perhaps they'll be of use to someone.

Time

The Underdark drow long ago lost the concepts of days, seasons, and years. The one meaningful measure of time is the spell-cycle; the amount of time that must pass before you can renew your spells. A tenth-cycle is the common unit of daily time (about 2.4 hours). A hundred cycles is about a season; a thousand cycles is about three years; Zirnakaynin has existed for around three hundred thousand cycles.

No one has the *same* spell cycle, though. There is no active/inactive pattern in the city; it's always more or less active. (After all, drow don't sleep, and there is nothing to gain from having everyone meditate at the same time--it just makes the group vulnerable.)

Even otherwise polite drow are not at all punctual, with a few exceptions in the wizarding subculture. If they arrive during the right tenth-cycle that's close enough. People have servants to deal with too-early guests or business contacts, after all.

Drow are very aware of events in their history, but often extremely fuzzy on how long ago those events happened. Whether something is ten thousand or twenty thousand cycles ago doesn't matter much, especially when that's outside a particular drow's lifespan.

This is a good place for small PC slip-ups.

Drow Males

The Underdark sourcebook says that males are little better than slaves, but Zirnakaynin doesn't support this--there are way too many males in positions of power. (Starting with the head of one House and the acting head of another, but also chief arcanists, guard commanders, etc. Almost everything but priests.)

I think female drow grasp that males can be very capable. But there's a stereotype of male drow as frivolous, relatively unambitious, and not good at grasping the big picture or making long-term plans. They need female direction to be at their best. On the other hand, they are less ambitious than females, therefore safer in some respects, and a good choice for dull mid-level positions.

None of this is necessarily true, but it's widely believed by both males and females--and ambitious males use it to conceal their ambition, which is how I think the Patron of Caldrana got where he is.

Neighborhood Structure

There are no power vacuums in drow society. The Great Houses exert direct control over some parts of Zirnakaynin (for example, Vexidyre over the Pale Market) but everywhere else the role is taken by neighborhood bosses of various kinds, often with overlapping domains. These people enforce the basic order necessary to allow a dense city to function, though they are more like the crimelords of Riddleport than like conventional authorities.

Many of these are organized as little Houses. If one of the Great Houses were to fall, these would jockey to take its place. Chayt Gardens is perhaps the most logical current candidate. Banking is an unfilled niche at the moment.

The House structure comes naturally to drow, as they are marginally more able to trust their relatives than to trust anyone else. (There's a sense of "You may betray me, but you're not going to do it in a way that will ruin the House" and this gives a little predictability that smooths business relationships.)

"Relatives" always involves a lot of adoption as well as birth. No drow House of any size is composed mainly of blood relatives. But House membership *matters* to drow emotionally, even if they are adopted. This is as true of tiny organizations like street gangs as it is of the Great Houses--though most drow would betray their birth organization if it got them Great House status.

Up and Down

It's clear from looking at Zirnakaynin that up is the direction of high status and down of low status. The image of "clawing up from the streets" is a powerful one in drow thinking, and it's a literal climb, from the hell-pit of Rosgirnan to the heights of Eirdresseir. Even House Vonnarc is organized with the top people unequivocally on top. (Does this help keep them away from burrowing monsters?)

This is a significant part of why people who may never have seen a surface elf, or the surface, in their entire lives still hate them so much. Just by existing where they do, the surface elves are staking a claim to being higher status than drow! Most drow have never really thought about this, but it flavors their feelings.

Fertility

Drow are much more fertile than surface elves, perhaps comparable to humans. This hasn't always been the case, and one root of the matriarchy is the extreme value of fertile females during the early years--males were expendable, females were not. (Hence the "Council of Widows". Most drow today couldn't tell you what "widow" means, other than "councillor", as they don't marry. But the name stands.)

A creature as long-lived as an elf and as fertile as a human will overpopulate without high mortality, but that's not a problem in the given environment. Drow children are valued, but not in anything like the obsessive way that elf children are. Drow adolescents are preliminary adults, and treated as such. They can be rather dangerous, as they're as aggressive as their elders and have less common sense. More easily manipulated, though.

Mary

One way to deal with a too-powerful group without fiat is to send part of it on an akata hunt. After all, the druid wants to study them, and he'd need help catching some. Then you can have the enemies encoutered as two groups rather than one, which will make them much less dangerous (assuming you don't get cruel with when the second group returns).

My PCs were much higher level than expected for this and still found the shadow demon to be a severe problem. So that would be my choice for who to send away with the druid.

Of course, this is less plausible if it's daytime, though the hunters could be holed up (say, in the non-haunted lighthouse) waiting for dark.

Mary

Mary, thanks so much for posting this!

I'm starting my "SD with WC PCs" campaign in a week, and I'm very glad to be able to read this first.

Do you have any comments about what to allow/require/forbid during character creation? In particular, do you think that someone playing a drow when everyone else wasn't (as opposed to your system of multiple PCs by one player) would have too much/too little spotlight time?

I think that having a PC playing the role (taken by Arkaxis in our game) of native guide to Zirnakaynin would be really problematic. Our drow wasn't raised in drow society so she doesn't do that. I wouldn't recommend native drow.

A couple of recommendations:

(1) Give the PCs a patron on the Winter Council (I chose Perelir) and introduce that person, at least obliquely through messages, much earlier. This helps set up #5.
(2) Avoid the kind of cleric who focuses strongly on spellcasting as "what I do." They are problematic in Zirnakaynin. (Possible exception for a god the drow would tolerate, but my PC is a priest of Findaladlara, which really won't do.) And if you do a paladin--I don't recommend it--make sure she is flexible. Moral flexibility will be helpful in general. If the PCs are too straight-laced they will not have fun interactions with Zirnakaynin, which would be a shame. It's the best part of our game so far.
(3) Think in advance about what the party will look like as drow. If just one is a female, that player will have more power than usual in Zirnakaynin. Is the resulting power dynamic going to be okay with your players? (Alternatively you can change PCs' apparent gender with the bodychanging spell, but many players won't go for that.)
(4) The PCs can do their job a lot more easily--at least as I conceived that job--if they have some mind magic and some good disguise capabilities. This also helps encourage them to develop into people who will actually be willing to try #4.
(5) I don't think the PCs should all be Shin-Rakorath. It might be fine if one or two are, but I see that organization as expendible outer-layer flunkies of the Winter Council, and also too organized to make really good PC fodder. I'd make the PC party a special ops team instead, or at least have it rapidly become one.

And a couple of points on the adventure:
(1) You will have to rework the drow expedition seen in #1-#3 so that it makes sense--how did they get there? Why is Depora alone, and shouldn't Depora and Shindiira be reversed? Why is Depora still chipping on the Cyphergate when Novelniss has had all he needs for months? How long has everyone been in place? What are they waiting for? How do they plan to get home? It's the PCs' job to investigate this, and these questions are either unanswered or answered in illogical ways in the modules.
(2) The big logic problem of the series is how the elves actually keep the drow secret, especially as the drow clearly aren't cooperating (Depora is just relying on a veil to keep her secret!) I don't have a good solution, though I did give them massive memory-erasing capabilities. My player agreed not to challenge this point too hard, but it's a real weakness.
(3) In my hands, for elf PCs, Celwynvian (#3) did not live up to potential at all. If I had it to do again I would make interacting with the past elves much more relevant. We began to develop a subplot about the Princess who chose to stay in Celwynvian to the bitter end. If the PCs had had to convince her of something in order to get at Novelniss that would have been so much richer. (And then she could have turned out to be a famous drow ancestress, revered in Zirnakaynin.) My player also suggests that the PCs should have to see enough Celwynvian politics to recognize Zirnakaynin politics as a mirror of them. Having some past elves with drow-House names would be a start. But above all, get the PCs to interact with the past elves. Otherwise this entire adventure is pointless.
(4) Be prepared for the PCs to be in Zirnakaynin proper, rather than immured in a drow House. The plan to go into Vonnarc is not a particularly good one, and PCs with any initiative may come up with something else. Zirnakaynin is a wonderful city--might as well enjoy it! The Houses are actually sickeningly isolated.

For me personally, the Winter Council concept made this game work where I think it would otherwise have been a total flop. Good luck with it! I'll want to hear reports!

Mary

The PCs flatly refused to go into Zirnakaynin as drow. Even the one who *is* drow. So they came up with a truly strange plan:

They asked Perelir to cast Planar Ally to call a succubus in the service of Calistria. (I used Quillindra--yes, she's too high level, but it just felt right.) They bargained with the succubus: 18 hours a day she'd be Magic Jarred, 6 hours a day she could play in Zirnakaynin as long as she didn't jeopardize the mission in any way. While risky, this plan struck Quillindra as so much fun, it had to be tried....

They killed two half-fiend satyrs and used Recorporeal Incarnation to give those forms to the other two PCs. Only the party NPC, Samaritha, agreed to become a drow. The plan was that she and Arkaxis would infiltrate Vonnarc (conveniently getting the two NPCs offstage) and the other three would work from a base in the city.

So the PCs are living in a tower near the Pale Market, going about openly as a succubus and two half-fiend satyrs (and using hats of disguise whenever that's not convenient). They've been very involved with the environment; they have a clan of young drow rogues working for them as runners and information sources, they're running errands for House Sardavic, their Vonnarc infiltrators are sending them information (mindlink), they're skirmishing with Orvignato, who wants protection money, and they're generally stirring the waters to see what emerges.

Their main concern is of course Azrinae. I've depicted that House as nearly gutted, controlled by a single male noble backed mainly by constructs and auto defenses. This is leaving a huge power vacuum in the city, and stirring things up. The PCs have dossiers on all major Azrinae, mainly the Circle of Nine (the 9th level priestesses in _Midnight_) and the Matron's daughters.

A Second Daughter of Azrinae has gone rogue and is somewhere in the city plotting. I meant this as a hook to get the PCs necessary inside information about Azrinae. I had no idea they would find out about this person's existance, be unable to locate her, and *decide that she is in fact Perelir.* They have an elaborate story about how a drow got onto the Winter Council. (It's clear that a spell which could permit this exists, isn't it?!)

I put a Gate to the Land of Black Blood near House Azrinae, because I don't want to deal with the journey there, and we don't have Wind Walk/Teleport/etc. in this game. The PCs need a gatekey. Their current plan is to nab one of the Nine who is expected at Vonnarc shortly in order to dicker for needed magical supplies. (I didn't like the idea that the head Azrinae are completely and permanently gone: it would frustrate the player too much.)

They have stirred the political pot a *lot* by offering this not-yet-caught priestess to House Dolour when they're done with her. They have a meeting with Dolour next session to bargain over this.

In the meantime, they have Dominated a flunky of the First Son of Azrinae and have been very openly parading him around town. Kardinnyr hasn't got a lot of people-power so he's going to hire someone to squish them; I expect that fight next session too. (They know this, and are deliberately provoking it to measure Kardinnyr's strength. I hope they haven't underestimated him.)

This is working out better than I dared hope for. The roleplaying is very interesting; the drow PC is liking Zirnakaynin, the other two are not! (And Samaritha is being seduced by the arcane might of Vonnarc--she wanted to be a Cyphermage but these folk make them look like dabblers.) Arkaxis gives the PCs enough cultural background that they can function in the city. Of course he'll betray them in the end, but for now they've convinced him of one of their own conclusions:

Allevrah never meant to come back to Zirnakaynin, or she wouldn't have left her House dangling, its political power bleeding away day by day. (Well, spell-cycle by spell-cycle. I'm trying to teach myself never to measure time in days.) In fact, she may plan to destroy Zirnakaynin as well as Kyonin. The worst, and not unlikely, possibility is that all of this is an attempt to free Rovagug.

At some point in the future the PCs will hear, via their mindlink with her, that Perelir has been condemned by the Winter Council and imprisoned at Thorn's End. I hope this will cause the events of _Memory of Darkness_ to more or less happen. If they don't, I have a level problem for _Midnight_ and will have to invent some in-between adventures.

I haven't been able to use any of _Endless Night_ directly--not a big surprise--but the stat blocks and city writeup are useful. The Houses are quite nicely done. In my own descriptions I'm trying to emphasize the beauty of Zirnakaynin over its depravity; I actually think that'll upset these PCs more. In some ways drow are what Golarionese elves only dream of being (compare what we know of Kyonin society with Zirnakaynin and you'll see what I mean). The PCs went to a performance at the Cyclic Sublime and found that it was a retelling of a traditional elven legend, only hyped up 100% and completely blood-drenched and done better than any performance they'd ever seen. They were shaken by this. (I'm picturing _Ran_ here.)

Mary

Various places in Endless Night describe "guards": at the gates, and as street patrols in the random encounter table. I'm wondering who these are, given the lack of city government.

I see four possibilities, but I'm curious which one(s) the designers had in mind:

(1) One of the Great Houses (presumably Rasivrein or possibly Vesidyre) is in charge of city patrols and of the heavy military needed to protect Zirnakaynin from the continual outside assaults mentioned in the sourcebook. This would seem to give that House too much power relative to the others.

(2) The Great Houses conjointly supply the military. If so, it must have an internal command structure, and it would be interesting to know where that's based (Ileccinoc, I suppose) and what it's like, as it's a weakness in the House system.

(3) There isn't a standing military--the Houses raise their own forces in case of an attack. The "patrols" on the streets come from whoever has power in that bit of town--Vesidyre in the Pale Market, Caldrana in Rygirnan, crime bosses in various areas not under tight control. I don't know where the gate guards come from in that case.

(4) There really is a city bureacracy capable of posting guards, even though it lacks House status. Presumably it's a kind of headless hydra, with low-level power and authority but totally at the whim of the Council of Widows.

I went with a combo of (2) and (3). Guards at the Gates rotate among the Houses (currently it's Vesidyre), as do guards at key internal locations needed to staunch riots or major attacks. But every "neighborhood" has someone in power, and that person or group also patrols their turf. My PCs are living in Orvignato's turf, and see his enforcers pretty often. Not far from them is the much more heavily policed Market with Vesidyre enforcers; a little further away is Sinocoscriel with a local crime boss who in fact reports secretly to Vonnarc.

(It really matters in our game; my player has gotten very political in Zirnakaynin.)

Mary

My PCs captured Arkaxas here, though not Novelniss, so we had similar issues. I recommend working out the backstory of the expedition. It's clearly the parent expedition of which the groups in Riddleport and Devil's Elbow were offshoots. Those groups apparently did *not* get there via teleport (when I ran Devil's Elbow I added a slave ship) as they don't seem to have had a mage of Novelniss' level. So they sailed there, which would take a while. I'd go with the idea mentioned by the previous poster that Novelniss has been in Celwynvian for a long time.

In my game, he's in fact been hung out to dry--that is, his mistress no longer cares what happens to him, as she has everything she needs. So he hasn't been in touch with her for a while. He does, clearly, know about the basic plan of Earthfall, but for security reasons he doesn't know where.

What else he knows had better depend on how you plan to run Endless Night. If you are going with the module as written, he'd better not know that most of the Azrinae are away from their House--that would push toward an intrusion into the House which the module doesn't support. If you are substituting the Vonnarc writeup for Azrinae, on the other hand, by all means have Novelniss tell them that Azrinae is weak and currently recruiting.

My reading of Novelniss based on his actions is that he's crazy even by drow standards, and if tortured is more likely to go raving mad than to give out much useful information; however, Detect Thoughts/Charm Monster/Dominate/Speak with Dead are all possible ways he could be induced to spill something, so you'd better assume he will. He's not likely to ally with the PCs in any meaningful fashion though he might bargain in the hopes of getting an escape chance, as the other poster describes.

Mary

After much head-scratching, we decided to run _Second
Darkness_ "backwards": PCs as direct agents of the
Winter Council from the start. This was the best way we
could find to solve motivation and information problems
throughout the AP. (Thank you to tbug for this idea.)

The PCs were three relatives from a town in the deep
Mieriani: two elves, and a drow raised as an elf (an
experiment on her community's part). The elves were
a cleric/ranger and a ranger/fighter; the drow was a
wizard/bard. They were much higher level than intended
for the modules, but somewhat suboptimally multi-classed.
We felt that Winter Council agents should be pretty capable
people, and we wanted to reduce the pressure to optimize.

Shadow in the Sky:

I gave Riddleport an elven agent of the Winter Council,
Kytel, and made him Samaritha's father as well as a
friend/relative of the PCs. We intended from the start
that Samaritha would end up as a permanent party NPC.
I made a timetable of enemy actions, ending with Kytel's
kidnapping by Saul and sale to Depora about five days
before the PCs' arrival. The PCs were in town to follow up
on reports of freaks of nature, and also to check on Kytel.

The PCs followed out the clue chains, confronted Saul to
find out what had happened, went after Depora and captured
her. (My PCs always capture people and interrogate them,
so the "BBG diary" elements are irrelevant.) Most of the
module went unused; the PCs were totally uninterested
in the Gold Goblin. That was okay by me as I did not
want to have them commit when the upcoming modules leave
Riddleport permanently. We did have a bit of wererat
politics, but basically this was a short mystery scenario.

The starfall and subsequent chaos in the city was very
nice. I had no use for "St. Crispian" and thought it
was dull.

Children of the Void:

As written this module starts several weeks after the
previous one ends. My player didn't let that happen; as
soon as it became clear where the star had hit, the PCs
were in the ship market. To my amusement, they came up
with the same plan as one of the crimelords--nab the first
ship to hit harbor--and when I rolled for relative timing,
the PCs were there *just* before the crimelord and sailed
off in his ship. (The PCs had set this up by recruiting
unemployed sailors in advance, so that when they took the
ship, they had a crew for it.)

However, the PCs "knew" that there must be a major drow
stronghold on Devil's Elbow, and believed they couldn't
handle this without backup from the Council. So they
attempted to prevent all other groups from reaching Devil's
Elbow until their backup arrived. This led to a lot of
ship combat. Thank goodness for "Teeth of Araska"--I
desperately needed those ship maps and sailor stats.
Most useful side adventure ever!

The PCs went out as far as Devil's Elbow and captured
the drow transport (this ship must presumably exist
though it is never mentioned--"Teeth of Araska" again.)
With their two-ship fleet they then fenced with all four
of the other groups trying to reach Devil's Elbow, and due
to spellcaster concentration were able to drive them back.
(They sent Zincher's ship a note that said "I prepared
Explosive Runes this morning." Boom.) The Cyphermages
tried again with a more prepared expedition and the PCs
let them through, figuring it would be too dangerous to
stop them.

It became apparent that having the PCs leave Riddleport
permanently after this module would not be a problem, as
they are now personae non grata in Riddleport. (Though a
lot of folks love them for embarrassing the crimelords.)

Finally the PCs' backup arrived--six rangers and two
wizards from Crying Leaf--and they went back to Devil's
Elbow. Nothing ran as in the module, of course, since
most of the factions had never arrived. But the PCs
straightforwardly beat the akata and drow. They found
Kytel in Shindiira's collection, badly psychologically
scarred. They couldn't touch the demon, so it escaped.
They negotiated with the siren and freed her lover's ghost
much as expected. They then collected all the people who
knew too much about drow (mainly, the crew of the drow
ship) and headed off for an Elven community where they
could be brainwashed.

(I don't love brainwashing, but you have to assume the
Elves do it, or this whole secret thing is not going to
be sustainable.)

The Armageddon Echo:

I tried to run "Requiem for Crystal Rains" as a stand-alone
in the mountains outside the Mieriani, but the PCs were
having none of it. They bypassed it and marched the human
sailors to their hometown, Findaladlara's Watch, north
of Celwynvian--I positioned that town as the main HQ of
anti-drow efforts in the Mieriani. In town they learned
that drow had taken a Shin-Rakorath patrol recently, and
also that the town was seeing a lot of haunts. They were
asked to go after the patrol and see if it could be saved.

Halfway to Celwynvian they found that a powerful faery
had hit the drow-and-prisoners party and taken an elf
and a drow, charming them to see if they could be made
to get along. They extracted the elf and uncharmed her,
then fought the faery and her animals until she withdrew.
They hope to deal with her later. I was trying to touch
on a key character question here: can drow be redeemed?
Are they always evil, at least if raised among drow?
Will the drow PC go bad the way her fellows do? What kind
of evil does drow evil entitle us to commit in response?

There was also a subplot about Kytel's attempts to decide
a proper revenge on Shindiira, touching on the same themes.

The PCs trailed the rest of the drow, with prisoners,
into Celwynvian itself. They bypassed the set-piece
locations, hit a random encounter which triggered a patrol
which triggered a second patrol (quite a long fight but
never in doubt) and then went in to the Academy of Arts,
still trailing the prisoners. They eventually ended up
fighting everything at the Academy at once.

This didn't go well. The player was in military mode,
but the Academy is not set up as a rational military
base--it's a dungeon instead, and he didn't realize that
quickly enough. He lost his wizard to the fireball trap
and Samaritha to the vrock. I disliked this dungeon very
much--I should have rewritten it as a drow base camp.
It contributed to an unpleasant sense that nothing in
Celwynvian was real. I was starting to see a lot of
no-roleplaying combat mode from my player, which was
disappointing after pretty good roleplaying earlier.

We had a metagame discussion of how to proceed, and I
ended up having the PCs' sponsor on the Winter Council,
Perelir, arrive to raise the dead characters. There was
an interesting conversation between Perelir and the drow
PC: Perelir sees this PC as a test case for whether her
friend Allevrah can possibly be redeemed.

The PCs asked Perelir and her bodyguards for help
clearing out the Echo. They went in through the Gate,
located Novelniss, and fought an inconclusive battle at
the Observatory. They were convinced that there were far
more drow than there actually are, so when they were badly
hurt they withdrew without finishing Novelniss. (They also
expected he'd be 14th level--it's a logical deduction from
the fireball trap. An unpleasant false clue.)

They captured Arkaxis the assassin and questioned him
with charm magic. I reasoned that Novelniss is a terrible
commander and a smart assassin like Arkaxis would resent
that. So he was willing to deal for his life, and the
PCs recruited him for the greater goal of getting into
Zirnakaynin. This touched nicely on the "can drow ever
be trusted?" theme. Reassured that Novelniss was not 14
level, the PCs went back and trashed him.

Future directions:

I expect that we will now do some mutant version of
_Endless Night_, but I am waiting to hear the PCs' planning
session with Arkaxis before I decide if the House writeup
I'm given will stand in for Vonnarc or Azrinae. I have to
think hard about the Winter Council intrigue here. I don't
want Perelir to go to Zirnakaynin; the easiest explanation
is that she has a dangerous enemy on the Council and cannot
afford to (a) be gone a long time and (b) be suspected
of being in league with Allevrah. She isn't telling that
latter to the PCs, of course, so I need to figure out what
she does tell them. It's lucky that the PCs accept her
authority to order them to Zirnakaynin, because frankly I
am not sure they would go otherwise; they think it should
be done by top-rank Winter Council operatives. It hasn't
dawned on them how close to top rank they themselves are.

The AP makes coherent sense with the PCs working for the
Winter Council; personally, I can't see myself making
it work with the "standard" setup so I'm glad we ran it
backwards. I don't know how the fifth part will work out.
I need to come up with a diplomatic goal for the PCs in
their interactions with the ruins of the Winter Council.
The module as written has nothing useful for the PCs to do,
which my player will not tolerate.

I may try to have the PCs gain a lot more levels in
Zirnakaynin, so that if _Memory_ is mostly skipped they
will be of the correct level for _Midnight_. But it's a
pity not to involve Winter Council PCs in the resolution
of the Winter Council situation. We'll see what happens
in Zirnakaynin.

I wonder if Perelir still believes that Allevrah is trying
to call down Earthfall *on the drow*? That misconception
could bear fruit here.

Nab failed a save (which he'd only fail on a 1, as I recall) on round 1 and was stunned long enough for the six PCs to pound him.

This was one of those times where an anticlimatic outcome was perfectly okay, though--the PCs were convinced they would lose, and the fight was plenty tense even with Nab not able to act. Both the GM and I thought that it was a likely TPK otherwise. Occipitus in general was way too hard for those PCs. (Wizard, cleric, fighter, rogue, paladin, fighter/rogue/dervish. I don't remember their levels anymore, but about what the module expected. But they were not equipped for diverse DR and heavy SR, and by the time they realized that this was a lethal problem, they were trapped on Occipitus and it was too late.)

I loved the concepts in _Shackled City_ but we had continual and finally game-killing issues with difficulty level.

It may be helpful--next game if not this one--to state clearly up front to the players that party cohesion is THEIR PROBLEM. It is very hard for a GM to make a party stick together, and some character conceptions make it practically impossible.

In particular, any player who wants to play the Reluctant Hero or the Sullen Loner should have to justify, to the group, exactly how he is going to make this work. This puts the responsibility squarely on the person in a position to do something about it. These conceptions are very tricky in a multi-player game, and the GM is not, in my view, obliged to do all the hard stuff for the player. GMing is hard enough already!

That said, the beginning of Crimson Throne is tricky, because the PCs are encouraged to have no connection except Lamm--and then he dies way too soon before any more connections can develop. You'll want to look for something else to draw the PCs in right away. For my group it was Cressida. She came across as sympathetic, interesting, and important, and this helped the PCs bond.

Mary

My player's PCs captured Nolveniss' assassin Arkaxis and struck a deal with him; they are planning to use him as their entry point into drow society. This was made easier by the fact that Nolveniss seems to be a bad person to work for, even by drow standards; he keeps forgetting to get his people out when the Echo resets, and he sets them up to die (look at the layout of the Academy).

Arkaxis is likely to betray them at some point, of course, but they know that.

My quandary at this point is that the PCs are very goal-focused and will be determined to get information on Azrinae, but they know that a direct approach to Azrinae may be too dangerous. I could get them into Vonnarc but then I have no writeup for Azrinae when they investigate, and they will. Or I could substitute the Vonnarc writeup for Azrinae, with some difficulty, but then if they decide they need a power base in another House I've used up the module prep already. No matter what, I fear I'll have to do a drow House from scratch. I don't feel good about simply making investigation of Azrinae impossible.

My player and I were both worrying a lot about how the drow-city arc could be made to work; the capture of Arkaxis was a godsend. I'm still not sure it will work but the chances have gone up.

You might think about running the Freeport modules--they fit into Riddleport quite well--rather than continuing immediately with the AP. It's a shame, if the PCs are really clicking with Riddleport, to drag them away. (If it's only one player, sure, but if the whole group is getting into the Gold Goblin arc, the rest of the AP may not be a good choice right away.)

One of the reasons we chose to do Second Darkness "backwards" (with the PCs as committed agents of the Winter Council from the start) is that I thought this would probably happen with my player as well. I think Shadow in the Sky is, on its own, a good module, but it doesn't lead into the rest of the AP (past Children of the Void) in a natural way.

The Winter Council agents never committed to the Gold Goblin at all, of course, but that was okay. They did hook up nicely with Samaritha.

If you were going to do Freeport, there might be some way to replace or link up the lighthouse plot in Freeport with the starfall plot in Second Darkness.

Mary

If the PCs want to bumble about a vast alien city with no guide, let them. They should quickly learn that the residents of Zirnakaynin are far more suspicious of strangers and far more hostile to no-bodies than they are to those that are the property (and thus protected) by their city’s noble houses.

I loved the idea of infiltrating a drow city from the first I heard of it; this was the module that convinced me to try this AP. But I also wondered, from the first I heard of it, how you could possibly design a scenario (especially for this level range) where infiltration was a good plan.

I hope I can come up with an answer before I get there. As it stands it doesn't look like infiltration *is* a good plan.

Darn!

Mary

Wes, can I ask why you chose not to write "PCs investigate Azrinae"? Presumably, if the infiltration of Vonnarc is not impossible, the infiltration of Azrinae could also have been set up to be possible. And it would have been easier to get the PCs to do it, because it relates so much more clearly to their goal.

Mary

Wes's comments bring up a good point, although I'm not sure he ever out and out says it:

An adventure path is not an open game; it's a railroad in the sense that the adventure has a storyline with a start and an end. The advantage of this is that we can build an adventure similarly to how one would build a novel or movie; you can create cool NPCs and situations and encounters in a VERY space-efficient manner. We generally know where the adventure's going, so we don't have to spend time detailing things too far off the track.

A railroad which consists of giving the PCs a burning need to investigate Azrinae, and then not permitting them to do so, is not a well functioning railroad. In fact, the more diligent and cooperative the players are, the more likely they are to go wrong here, because it will simply not occur to them that they have been sent on an investigative scenario where it is TOTALLY USELESS TO INVESTIGATE.

I understand that these things have to be railroads, and that if we diverge, we're on our own. But I really really want two things:

(1) A clear reason that the PCs are doing the railroad scenario,
(2) Something for them to gain through their efforts.

It's just not a fun railroad without those. The players can't help the GM, because they will never realize that they are supposed to be passive and wait for the GM to deliver the answer on a plate. So they will flounder, trying to figure out what the GM wants them to *do*, and making an awful mess of the given prep in the process.

This is my prediction, anyway. I won't be running it as written so my group will provide no evidence. But I am betting this module will fall apart in play for a lot of groups, because the link between what the PCs are trying to accomplish and what they are supposed to do is too weak.

Mary

Hmm.

This module could go wrong at the start in a lot of ways.

--What if the PCs don't speak the relevant languages? Clearly they can't pass themselves off as drow if they can't communicate, and Common just won't do; it wasn't invented yet when the drow went underground.

Unless I am mistaken, neither Comprehend Languages nor Tongues provides the impression that you can actually speak the language.

--What if the PCs object, reasonably, that they will have the identity of specific recognizable drow, but don't know anything about those individuals? That's a great way to get caught immediately. Speak with Dead might help a little bit here.

A solution to both of these would be to have some memories come along with the stolen drow form. The way Speak with Dead works, it is clear that flesh retains memory even with the soul departed, so this would make sense. I couldn't resist, of course, having some behavioral tendencies come along with the memories....

Mary