Talwyn's page

Hello everybody,

ie. everybody except Saredoc Sandheaver, Mustafa, Norr the Awkward and Rupert the Bright, of course!

After quite some time, I have finally started my very own version of Legacy of Fire. I have decided to customize and extend the adventures heavily, so in Howl of the Carrion King, the gnolls of the Three Jaws tribe are far more numerous than the adventure assumes. Thus, the heroes have to recruit allies for the upcoming battle in order to stand a chance against Kardswann's soldiers.

The PCs have already befriended Beshvi, the Nixie sorceress that lives at the waterfall north of Kelarane. They actually drove the Kulldis gnolls out of the old fort that had repeatedly spoiled Beshvi's "holy" pond. Being not a warlike creature herself, Beshvi offered to introduce the heroes to the savage Stormchaser centaurs that live in a isolated village in the foothills of the mountains further to the east. The centaurs are distrustful of strangers and are less than enthusiastic about helping them against the gnolls although the centaurs detest the hyenamen.

Yet there is a problem with which the PCs might help the centaurs and as one hand washes the other, there actually is a possibility for the heroes to assure themselves of the Stormchasers' help. The issue at hand is actually rooted in the clan history of the Stormchaser centaurs. Once the tribe has been favored by Gozreh and its brave warriors had been trusted by the god with the protection of a sacred artifact called the Holy Seed. To make a long story short, the Stormchasers failed their patron and lost the relic to the cult of Rovagug and thus, the centaurs fell from grace.

Shortly after the Great Failure, the last true priest among the Stormchasers fell ill and soon thereafter - yet not without uttering a mysterious prophecy that foretold a day when a group of two-legged heroes would come to the Stormchasers to finally succeed at the ancient Thunder Trial. The arrival of those heroes would be an omen that the restoration of the Holy Seed and thereby the redemption of the Stormchasers was close at hand.

The aforementioned Thunder Trial is a series of tests that the PCs must succeed if they want to forge an alliance with the Stormchaser centaurs. The ultimate goal of the trial is to summon a large storm elemental (Monster Manual III) and defeat it in combat. In order to enact the ritual, the heroes must first fulfill to prerequisite tasks:

1.) Catch at least 10 shocker lizards in the nearby Crackling Gorge - alive.
2.) Find 3 'frozen lighnings' (fulgurites) in the desert sand.

The frozen lightings are then arranged in a triangle and the shocker lizards are placed in the middle. Then the warriors of the clan would start to gallop around the mystic triangle in a circle while uttering the verses of an ancient prayer to Gozreh. While their hooves would raise more and more dust, the lizards would start to emit ever stronger shocks of electricity that are channeled by the fulgurites into a crackling ball of lightning that floats in the air over the triangle and increases in size as sight becomes poorer and prayer more intense. Finally, with a blinding flash of light and a deafening thunderclap, the storm elemental appears above the triangle and attacks the PCs.

So far I've almost finished the task of catching the shocker lizards for which I created a skill encounter according to the rules provided in the PDF 'Skill Encounters: Non-Combat Challenges' - which is awesome, by the way.

Maybe some of you find this write-up interesting, and maybe you also have some further ideas for consequences of failure. So just have a look at the first test of the Thunder Trial: Chasing Lightning.

So far, we have played two sessions and will continue tomorrow tomorrow in the evening. What has happened so far:

- The group arrived at the Sultan's claw and prevented the fire from spreading, saved Hadrdod's livestock, yet their help for the wounded mercenary chick didn't prove to be very helpful (natural 1 on Mustafa's Heal check).
- After interviewing the entire camp, the PCs ventured out into the pesh fields for the pugwampi hunt which they finished successfully, taking back a living gremlin that was then "questioned" by Garavel to reveal that its tribe dwelled in the ruined monastery north of the Sultan's Claw and was led by "mighty King Moknokk".
- On the next day, the party travelled to the monastery, stumbling over the mortal remains of a nomad warrior that animated as an undead skeleton as they approached and were put to final rest by a large rock thrown at its skull by Norr.
- The exploration of the above-ground part of the old monastery has been completed successfully even though the heroes got injured seriously in the battle against the baboons and the giant spider. The pugwampis in the chapel turned out as not so tough as my players were very lucky, rolling high against all odds which turned the aura of unluck virtually useless.
- The group decided to literally smoke out the pugwampis in the chapel and set the rafters, the pugwampi nest and the remains of the roof on fire. The pillar of smoke that rose from the monastery has of course been plainly visible in both Kelmarane and at the Sultan's Claw - so the gnolls have probably realized that something's going on in the monastery.

Tomorrow I think that the adventurers will explore the monastery basement which I will run quite a bit different from what's written in the book. After that, we will see.

Warning: My players probably read this thread, so please no (major) spoilers.

I love the title. But technically, it's two men, since one of the "men" is a half-orc. ;)

Right, but he's a hulk and easily counts for a full man plus half an orc :D

This is the story about how three friends, one of which was a halfling, headed out into the deserted wasteland of northern Katapesh in order to help the merchant princess Almah Roveshki free the former trading outpost of Kelmarane from its gnoll occupiers. Let's introduce our heroes:

Norr the Awkward - half-orc ranger who has been captured by gnoll slavers when he was child. While he doesn't talk about his sobriquet, it is assumed that his awkwardness stands in direct connection to the fact that he has never remained for too long in the service of a single master. His last owner finally died without an heir so all his possessions fell to the Pactmasters who in turn offered Norr to earn his freedom by joining an expedition to Kelmarane.

Saredoc Sandheaver - a halfling rogue who grew up in the streets of Solku after his parents - you guess it - had been abducted by gnoll slavers. Fortunately for Saredoc, a benevolent woman by the name of Haleen took him under her wing and gave him food and shelter when he was in need. Lately, Haleen has gone missing without but the slightest of a trace that pointed to the woman having been seen near the ruined village of Kelmarane. When Saredoc heard about this guy called Garavel who was one the lookout for mercenaries to drive Kelmarane's gnoll occupiers off, he didn't hesitate for a moment and signed in.

Mustafa - mustafa is the third son of a wealthy merchant family from Katapesh city. While his father's business has lately been given to the hands of his two older brothers, Mustafa was sent to the temple of the Dawnflower to become a paladin - which would be a honorable profession was it not for the fact that Mustafa is more of a comfy guy who enjoys good food and delicious wines more than cutting through the hosts of darkness with a holy sword. Anyway, Mustafa was not a rebellious kid and so he did as he was asked. His apprenticeship in the temple has just ended and he has been sent on his first mission: The high priest ordered him to accompany an expedition to the village of Kelmarane that has been lost to gnoll raiders some years ago. Mustafa shall restore the village church of Sarenrae and report back to his superiors in Katapesh.

tbc.

Wow, using the Kingmaker rules for Kelmarane occurs to me as a no-brainer, now that I've found this thread. I'll definitely use them in my campaign (should it ever start).

I kind of liken it to going into a movie expecting it to be 2 hours long and, while it is, only the first and last 20 min relate to the main storyline for the movie...the other 1h20min might relate tangentially, but it's not exactly the movie you thought you were going to see.

But then it's an adventure module and not a movie, and from the announcements, Stolen Land is just about exactly what I was expecting.

Another update...

I've just converted the denizen of Leng PF #6 to PFRPG and found the creature to be way over the top for CR 8. Comparing to the charts in the Bestiary, the denizen of Leng is better in almost every single category such as hit points, armor class, attack bonuses, saves and so on - not to mention the no save 1d6 Dex drain on each successful bite attack.

I therefore decided to decrease the denizen's Dex and Con scores by 4 points each. Additionally disrupt flesh now allows a saving throw and drains only 1d3 points of Dexterity which is lethal enough I guess (especially if you consider that those dudes use poisoned weapons as well). I've written up a neat statblock, yet I'm not sure whether I would be allowed to post it concerning copyrights.

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Anyway, I've decided to expand the dream quest to an entire adventure that is heavily inspired by the last villain from "Exemplars of Evil" by WotC: Borak, an ancient blue dragon that rules over a ruined city in the desert and demands regular tributes from the nomad tribes in the area, backing up those claims with the powers of a bound djinni and an elite force of half-dragons called the Al Iborak or "sons of the dragon".

I've actually changed my mind concerning the mechanism of moving from the dream bubble to the actual Dimension of Dreams: The PCs won't have to kill the dreamer (which would be a nigh impossible task as an ancient blue dragon is a CR 18 monster).

Instead there is a portal in each of those dream bubbles which the PCs must find as well as a key that can also be found somewhere in the dream. I'm not entirely sure yet, but I guess that the portal will be located somewhere in the catacombs deep beneath Borak's palace. The key might be a living creatures, maybe even one of the Al Iborak.

So the task for the PCs will be quite tricky:

1.) Figure out where the portal is.
2.) Find out about the key to the portal.
3.) Bring the key to the portal.
4.) Do all of the above without waking Borak - which will happen very likely if the dragon's dream becomes an unpleasant one - so the PCs should not try to work against the dragon ruler and free the nomads or anything - instead they might work out a plan to please Borak by giving a precious present to her.

In the waking world, Borak is a very old blue dragon, by the way, who has never reached the greatness of which she is dreaming now that she is old and awaiting death in her lair somewhere in the Brazen Peaks.

In this dream quest, the PCs will likely encounter the nomads, the Al Iborak and Borak's djinni servant. I might place any number of cool monsters in the catacombs beneath the palace (giant emperor scorpion anybody?).

Thanks for the hint. The version in the bonus bestiary is only CR 3, but I think, I'll just use 8 of them.

*UPDATE*

I've statted up Damayanti and Lakshimana, the two nagas that make up the fabled Eastern Oracle. While they're not meant to be killed, you never know what you're players are up to so I've created complete statblocks for them.

While I don't plan to run a combat against the nagas, statblocks like those are always useful.

The two nagas reside in a large domed temple at the top of a 3,000 ft. high basalt pillar that juts out of the shallow waters of the ocean in the dimension of dreams. Here are some ideas for that location:

- There's a dock at the bottom of the pillar, complete with a small circular temple the facade of which is surrounded by a collonade of 8 regular and 4 caryatid columns. The latter are actually not only an architectural feature but also an effective defense (caryatid column is a construct that has been published in the WotC's Fiend Folio for the last time and that I plan to convert to the PFRPG rules). In the temple is a fountain into which donations are thrown by those who have sought out the oracle for advice. Vandalizing the place (like for example picking the precious lapis lazuli and turquoise tiles from the mosaics on the floor) or stealing the donations from the fountain's basin results in the animation of the caryatid columns that then move in to attack.

- A narrow stairway spirals up to the oracle around the outer wall of the basalt pillar. Halfway up, there is a cave in the rugged wall (not easily visibile nor reachable from the stairs) in which a flock of harpies lair. They're led by an evil harpy witch (APG playtest class, CE female harpy witch 5) and attack the PCs on their way up to the oracle. The harpies try to abduct one healthy male PC in order to deliver him to their leader as a mate. Should the PCs investigate the harpies' lair, they will be able to salvage some treasure from it. The cave entry is hidden behind a patch of brush that grows on a narrow ledge on the basalt column's outer wall.

- The sea voyage from Celephais will take some time during which there may be some random encounters. I've been thinking about another ship from Leng, a sea serpent, water elementals, a storm giant, strange faceless raiders mounted on arrowhawks or pteranodons or other weird stuff like that. Not all of those encounters are meant to burst into violent martial conflict.

I haven't gotten to this point in my campaign yet, but it is the biggest question mark in my mind. My players are ultra-cautious about major magic items like the Scroll, and would be more likely to hand it over to the Church of Abadar to store in a vault for the next thousand years than to risk selling it or activating it -- even if they have no idea what happened at Pale Mountain or what is going on in Kakishon itself. I consider this the weakest link in the overall AP.

One of my tasks going forward is to try to come up with some storyline or quest objective that will compel them to travel into Kakishon, even if they are aware of the dangers and repercussions.

I agree in that it's always potentially difficult to depend the entire plotline on a single artifact because that stuff tends to get stolen, sold, destroyed, ignored, discarded, locked away or even never be found at all. Anyway, I think that this won't be a problem in my group because we have an agreement about playing and adventure path which includes some necessary railroading out of pragmatic reasons. And then, of course, I have a bunch of players who always press the big red button, labeled "DON'T PUSH! NONCOMPLIANCE MIGHT LEAD TO IMPLOSION OF THE MULTIVERSE! WIZARDS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACTIONS OF THEIR SUMMONED CREATURES!"

Perhaps you should remove the various merchants scrabbling for the Scroll from the adventure. As the adventure points out, they only reason they learn about the Scroll is essentially by author fiat due to story necessity. This introduces a possibly interesting or possibly tedious complication for the PCs. How can they keep their possession of such a powerful artifact a secret for an entire year?

You're right, I didn't like the whole situation at all - first the adventure tells you, that the characters are not supposed to sell the scroll. Then they are basically forced to stage that dinner party even if they want to keep the artifact (and the enforcing party is the Pactmasters who then complain afterwards that the PCs dangle around with the scroll without having the intention to sell it - well, they just asked them to dangle, didn't they?)

In my game, there will be no dinner party unless the PCs are really going to sell the scroll. If they state their intent that they're not willing to sell, they might first get fabulous offers, followed by harassment and assassination attempts. If they can deliver proof about the perpetrators of those attempts to the Pactmasters, those will step up and declare openly that the keepers of the Scroll of Kakishon are not selling the artifact. That intent is to be respected in order to retain the city's reputation because merchants don't like to go to places where they must fear be robbed and/or murdered. From that point on, no one will dare to raise a hand against the party and the scroll will be as safe as it can be.

If the PCs care to raise at least some precautions to keep the scroll secret, I will happily go without bugging them with greedy merchants.

Wow! Okay, I'm probably stealing this. Nice work with the Lovecraft Mythos.

The best part about Pathfinder APs is that you have access to hundreds of other GMs who have run the same story as you. It's stuff like this that really sets them apart.

Thanks!

My big issue is that you need to make certain once the scroll's trigger is known, that it is opened in Katapesh. Well, I suppose they could open it anywhere and Jhavuul would still head for Pale Mountain, so maybe that's not so important.

That actually is a good point. But presumably, the sunset ship will still be anchored at the base of the basalt pillar when Jhavul's army emerges from the scroll - so the efreet sail into Katapesh and assault the city from the seaside. If the ship actually isn't there, Jhavul will certainly be able to get someone to wish a planeshift for him and his allies in the same way he granted the wishes to his worhippers in the House of the Beast.

Good point anyway, players tend to ask those nasty questions ;)

Hello everybody,

this is my first posting on these boards, so I first want to introduce myself: I'm a 26 years old gamer from Munich/Germany and have been playing RPGs since when I was 8.

At the moment I'm preparing to run Legacy of Fire with PFRPG rules for my group and am currently reading through the modules. Generally I really like most of the stuff presented in there although I will change some minor details.

The one adventure I wasn't all that fond of is "The Jackal's Price". While it contains good ideas and some really cool NPCs and encounters, I don't like the fact that the main objective of deciphering the Scroll of Kakishon is meant to be achieved by an NPC and the adventurers are supposed to do nothing of true relevance aside from protecting said NPC and rescuing him when railroadily gets kidnapped in the end anyway.

So to fix that for me, I came up with the following modification to the adventure (which will, in fact, be quite an extension):

The PCs travel to Katapesh as described in the adventure and meet with Rayhan who can then only identify the scroll as the old artifact it's supposed to be. Activation is another story yet, and Rayhan tells the PCs that he's not able to solve the riddle that is inscribed in the rune of Nex. Yet, he knows about a place called the Eastern Oracle which is located in a strange dimension that is very difficult to reach. This oracle is rumored to know all the glyphs in the world and be able to solve even the most intricate riddles.

The location of this oracle is a massive basalt column that juts out of the ocean of the Dimension of Dreams as described in "PFC: The Great Beyond". That dimension is very difficult to reach, but luckily there is the captain of the sunset ship in the module who hails from Leng, another dimension, that is accesible via the dimension of dreams as by the description in the above-mentioned tome. So supposedly, the sunset ship is able to reach the dimension of dreams (which makes even more sense if one knows Lovecraft's "The Dreamquest for the Unknown Kadath").

So basically, the planar route to Leng is the following:

Material Plane ==> Ethereal Plane ==> Dream bubble demiplane ==> Dimension of Dreams ==> Leng

Wow, that plane *is* hard to reach. Anyway, Knowledge (the Planes) or Rayhan may tell the PCs that he believes that the sunset ship can access the Dimension of Dreams. It's now up to the PCs to negotiate a deal with its captain to take them to the Eastern Oracle.

In order for such a deal to work, I will adjust the adventure a little, specifically by making the Scroll of Kakishon not a part of the agreement between Father Jackal and the captain, and I will also rule that, although the captain could simply take the jackalwere by force, a slave is worth much more back in Leng if he has entered servitude by an act of his own free will - in this case, failing to deliver the Rough Seed to the captain.

Unfortunately, as we all know, Father Jackal actually did manage to deliver that seed. In my version of the adventure, the sunset ship will not arrive in Katapesh earlier than one year after the PCs have first entered the city. This means, of course, that the PCs may seek out the captain before he receives the seed from Father Jackal - which results in the captain telling the PCs about the infamous jackalwere slaver who has stolen the seed from him in the past and asks the PCs to go and retrieve the item from the Jackal's Den (were he won't be present, of course).

In the end, the captain will gain both the Rough Seed and Father Jackal who will be forced to keep true to the word he has given seven years before. Should the PCs learn about this, they might very well refuse to deliver the jackalwere - villain or not - to the unspeakable fate the captain of the sunset ship. I absolutely do not plan to railroad the PCs in one direction or the other because they might just as well join forces with Father Jackal and bring the cruel captain of the sunset ship to justice and finally commandeer the powerful vessel to go and search for the Eastern Oracle themselves.

One way or another, the PCs will hopefully end up on the mysterious ship and sail out of the harbour of Katapesh. At nightfall they will sail into a bank of thick fog and suddenly they will realize that they've travelled to the ethreal plane from where they can reach a vast number of highly volatile dream bubbles, demiplanes that are spawned by the dreams of sentient beings all over the multiverse that last only as long as the dream itself. When the dreamer awakes, the bubble collapses, forcing all dreamwalkers within to a random spot in the multiverse.

So after actually finding a bubble (the sunset ship's compass always points to the nearest) the next challenge will be to identify one that is fairly stable - a task that can be easily accomplished by the routined captain of the sunset ship but is quite hard for the PCs who lack the experience required for that job. Anyway, I will place the captain's log in his cabin which will contain clues so that with Knowledge (the Planes), divination magic and Rayhan's help, the PCs should be able to find a bubble that is at least not mere minutes before popping.

When they enter this bubble, they find themselves inside a dream that is dreamt by some creature. This will be a bizarre self-contained world that is subject to change just like real dreams are. From there, the heroes can try to reach the dimension of dreams. To do so, they must find the dreamer himself and defeat him in battle. The nature of the dreamland depends on the PCs' bubble choosing fu as well as on a certain amount of randomness - I plan to come up with a table to determine who the dreamer is - a halfling farmer or an ancient red dragon - you never can tell.

The exploration of the dream will then depend on which bubble the PCs have chosen. If it's the farmer, they will probably find themselves on a lakeshore with fertile hills ahead. If it's the dragon they will emerge in a volcanic waste, the ship anchoring in a river of fire. I don't plan to make this dream quest a huge adventure on its own, but it will definitely present some challenges to overcome. Depending on the stability of the chosen bubble, there might also be a time limit (and I plan to warn the PCs about the dreamer slowly waking up by making "reality" flicker ever more often).

The final challenge in the dream bubble will be fighting the dreamer himself. After this battle, the PCs don't have much time and must quickly return to the sunset ship and set course for a clearly discernible portal that appears after the dreamer's defeat.

Beyond that portal lies the city of Celephais from where the heroes may finally set sails for the Eastern Oracle. This final journey through the dimension of dreams may contain some more encounters, perhaps with other slavers from Leng who attack the characters if they have commandeered the ship back in Katapesh or are otherwise not accompanied by the the captain and original crew.

Once the PCs arrive at the oracle, they only have to scale the enormous basalt column on top of which there is a dome-topped building where a spirit naga and a dark naga have already been waiting for them. When the PCs present the scroll of Kakishon, the serpentine creatures offer the solution on how to activate the scroll - in the form of multiple logic riddles in the form of "Once there were three brothers, Genrar, Marik and Jasyr. Genrar never married. Marik is the oldest of the three. The youngest brother's wife betrayed him with the owner of the Golden Key." (mere flavour example, presumably not solvable).

Solving those riddles will give the players the order in which to touch the islands on the Scroll of Kakishon, in order to activate the artifact and procede with "The End of Eternity".

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So that's it, thanks to anybody who actually read this kinda lengthy post. Do you see any problems with that plotline? Did I perhaps miss something? What do you think is cool about this? What's lame? Why would you (not) run the adventure this way?

Thanks for all the input I might get,
Talwyn