|
I'd be grateful for any comments on my unsuccessful submission.
It may have been a bit too classic. The hook is too vague and might leave open the possibility that players will fail to find the adventure. The first encounter may read as random since I left out better ideas that I had for how it relates to the later events.
TIDE OF MORNING
Introduction
Reports have reached the Pathfinder Society of a madman under the care of a hospice in the river port of Bellis. Found wandering in the woods, no trader recognises his northern accent and he speaks familiarly of events centuries gone. "I return!" he gabbles, "I return on the tide of morning."
Summary
The Pathfinders take ship to Bellis to discover the out-of-place man's identity and what has caused this state. They learn that the time-lost madman, Huzgin Sellocq, and his fellows were trapped in a mysterious vale by a tree that stole their minds. Back-tracking where he emerged, a strange riverboat takes them into a dangerous borderland of the First World. They encounter the transformed pirate crew, a guardian creature, and the perilous Tree, where they recover the sanity of Huzgin and his companions. Dawn brings an opportunity to escape the garden.
Flowers found in the addled sailor's clothing are green asphodel, a rare herb that grows only along one stretch of the riverbank. In disjointed ramblings, he says he is from Port Ice in Issia (Knowledge (history) DC 15: pirates from former Issia raided the Sellen River 300 years ago). His crew chased a white pirogue at midnight. Where it beached, the man in the moon attacked them, driving them to a tree that took away their wits. Huzgin jumped into the river when dawn came and swam to shore.
Blood Deer
Following Huzgin's game trail, the characters glimpse a white hind drinking at a stream and running strongly through the forest. As they sight the river, the deer steps into their path, showing red pointed predatory teeth, and attacks. This fey creature foreshadows the otherworldly dangers ahead.
1-2: Dire weasel
4-5: Dire weasel (6HD)
Midnight Voyage
At the appointed hour, a white vessel guided by a silent fey maiden glides shoreward, waiting a hundred heartbeats for any travellers to board. If attacked, the steerswoman is insubstantial (as a shadow) and flees across the water, while the boat continues on its way. As it courses out of sight of shore, lithe figures swim alongside, beginning an alluring song to entice the Pathfinders to jump into the water.
1-2: Nixies (2)
4-5: Nixies (3)
Fox-Headed Men
As the Pathfinders step onto a pebbly beach next to a drawn-up river-galley, figures dressed in archaic garb, with the heads of foxes, bound from the blackberries. These are Issian pirates reduced to a bloodthirsty animal state.
1-2: Baboons (4)
4-5: Baboons (8)
Watcher
Among the moonlit apple trees and thickets, heaped leaves stir, as if in an unfelt gust, swirling up into a mass with a half-formed face that reaches to enfold intruders and befuddle their minds with imbued spells.
The Watcher carries unconscious characters to the Tree of Wits. If killed, the Watcher reforms at dawn.
1-2: Gelatinous cube
4-5: Chain devil
Tree of Wits
The branches of this 15-foot-high fruit tree hang with clear, shining gems (1-2: five gems, 4-5: eight gems). Any character who touches its living bark or leaves must make a Will save (DC 14) or lose his wits, becoming a fox-headed man with the character's current hit points which attacks the party, as another gem grows from a branch. The gems are razor sharp, cutting through skin and leather at a touch (1d10 damage), but each drops easily from the branch once it contacts blood.
Conclusion
Each gem brightens as it approaches the victim whose wits it contains and, touched to that person's skin, disintegrates, returning him to human form and sanity. Gems whose owners have died retain their souls (as trap the soul).
Twelve hours later, the sun rises just above the horizon. It sets again in ten minutes for those on shore. If the Pathfinders take one of the two boats or swim out, the sun remains in the sky while they are on the water and they soon reach the earthly Sellen River (if taken, the white vessel vanishes at that point). They have been gone two days, doubling for each dawn passed in the valley. Fox-headed men taken from the garden regain their form, but not their sanity, when they return to Golarion.
Cutting down the Tree or sinking the white vessel ends its visits. Otherwise, it visits the Sellen River irregularly, carrying anyone who boards at midnight to the First World, where any who pass the Watcher can take a path rising from the head of the valley into unknown places beyond.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16
|
Starglim, thank you for posting this proposal. It has a kind of eerie air about it, and I'm sure it would be a notably creepy experience for people, even in the hustle and chaos of a convention session.
Gray Eminence had a concern about making this adventure sync up with the mercenary relic-hunters of the Pathfinder Society, and I agree with him (him? her?) with the outline as written, but I think you can make this work: if you had given the NPC's some lore that the Decemivrate wanted keenly, the PCs could have been assigned to ferret out those lost memories.
My concerns are a little different.
Put simply, this is a fey-based adventure with no opportunity to negotiate or communicate with them. That's playing against the strengths of the fey; most of them are very hard to pin-point and attack, so parties usually need to be clever and solicitous. in this adventure, they just need to survive. And it seems very, very deadly.
Particular concerns:
1) Getting the PCs moving in the right direction requires a lot of assumed skill rolls here: identifying flowers, making knowledge rolls about their rarity and the local environment, tracking through the woods, and so on. If the party misses any of these skill checks, how would the adventure continue?
2) By the way, a deer that attaches itself to a victim and sucks blood? That's really creepy. And a foreshadowing encounter is a good idea here.
3) What if the party refuses to get on board the fey raft? What would motivate them to do so, since the boatswain does not speak? While the image of a Charon-like boat ride to the land of the Other is a powerful image, I would have liked to have seen stats for an overland route.
4) The nixie encounter is deadly: the nixies can stay 25 feet away from the boat, can avoid missile fire by submerging, and have spell resistance. They can continue to cast charm person until every PC fails a will save. How does a low-level party keep from being charmed?
5) Excellent job, using the stats for baboons to represent the feral fox-headed men. For what it's worth, I had to read "bound from the blackberries" about a half-dozen times before it made sense.
6) The description of the Watcher ("befuddle their minds with imbued spell") doesn't match with a gelatinous cube. If a G-cube "enfolds" you, it eats your face with acid, rather than befuddle you. Oozes have other properties as well, that a swirl of leaves does not.
I'm afraid a chain devil is even worse. The party has no idea they're fighting an evil outsider with damage reduction /good or silver and regeneration. Again, chain devils don't befuddle people; the party will be lucky to survive.
The more serious problem: neither gelatinous cubes nor chain devils, in my experience, can pass for fey. I think you'll need to take the page space and stat up a new monster here, a fey swarm of some type.
7) The tree encounter: can fruit be harvested without blood, say, by an unseen servant or some other ranged attempt? Because, if not, this is another likely kill for a 1st- Level party.
DC 14 Will saves are more often failed than made. Having the party's cleric transform and attack the other members of the party is likely to lead to the people rolling dice to kill each other's characters.
And touching a gem causes 1d10 damage, which is likely to drop most 1st-Level characters. A Tier 1 party needs to take at least 5 packages of that damage to retrieve the gems --more if one of the PCs became a fox-headed man himself.
(The PCs will need to pluck the gems of any PCs who die here, to make raise dead possible, yes?)
On the plus side: your descriptions are terse yet evocative. You have a strong proficiency with the language. And nice job, avoiding passive voice.