So what good is a ruby tuning fork, anyway? [Spoilers for The Jackal's Price and The End of Eternity]

[Demiurge 1138]

Alright, so at the end of The Jackal's Price, the PCs are given a ruby tuning fork by the Captain of the Sunset Ship, assuming they ally with him. The Jackal's Price claims that this odd magical device (it radiates abjuration magic) will prove to be useful in Kakishon, but it's never mentioned in The End of Eternity

Now, tuning forks of unusual materials are traditionally the focus components of plane shift spells, but plane shift doesn't work at all in Kakishon. Now, if one or more of our esteemed authors could interject with what the tuning fork's supposed to do, that'd be great, but in the meantime, we might as well brainstorm possibilities, right?

I think the tuning fork could be used as...

1) A galley charm if struck against a waypoint dock.

2) A bribe, suitable for gaining the favor of either shaitan faction or the xorns of the Singing Isle.

3) The key to the Earth Seed, capable of activating it to send the PCs out of Kakishon without securing the cooperation of an earth elemental creature.

4) A ward against the harmful effects of the entropy fluxes.

Any other suggestions?

[James Jacobs]

Crap.

The ruby tuning fork is an excellent example of the type of damage that can be inflicted on an Adventure Path when we try to do a 574 page book at the same time we're already doing an adventure path. In short, I just completely forgot about the ruby tuning fork and its implications in the next adventure, which is horrifically and incredibly frustrating to me.

The choices on how to deal with this are:

1) Ignore the tuning fork entirely, and cut it from "The Jackal's Price."

2) Use it as I originally intended, as a "key to the Earth Seed" like you mention above; the original intent was that by striking the ruby tuning fork to the Earth Seed, the PCs could then use the ruby tuning fork as a material component for plane shift to escape Kakishon, yet that would automatically funnel them back out of Kakishon not to where they want to go, but to wherever the map currently exists in the real world.

In fact, all of the suggestions you list above would work great for tuning fork uses, to be honest.

[Mothman]

James Jacobs wrote:

Crap.

The ruby tuning fork is an excellent example of the type of damage that can be inflicted on an Adventure Path when we try to do a 574 page book at the same time we're already doing an adventure path. In short, I just completely forgot about the ruby tuning fork and its implications in the next adventure, which is horrifically and incredibly frustrating to me.

oops! ;-)

[AGITIGA]

Demiurge 1138 wrote:

Alright, so at the end of The Jackal's Price, the PCs are given a ruby tuning fork by the Captain of the Sunset Ship, assuming they ally with him. The Jackal's Price claims that this odd magical device (it radiates abjuration magic) will prove to be useful in Kakishon, but it's never mentioned in The End of Eternity...

I had same question with you, so your suggestions(and Mr.Jacobs's answer) enlightend me very much. Thank you!

[Jason Nelson]

Mothman wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

Crap.

The ruby tuning fork is an excellent example of the type of damage that can be inflicted on an Adventure Path when we try to do a 574 page book at the same time we're already doing an adventure path. In short, I just completely forgot about the ruby tuning fork and its implications in the next adventure, which is horrifically and incredibly frustrating to me.

oops! ;-)

Oops indeed. I plead total ignorance! That said, all of the OP's suggestions sound like perfect notions for uses for the fork.

[Camris]

I spent the next ten character levels worrying about what to do with that thing...

[Akumamajin]

I heavily modified this section of the adventure path (by far my favorite part of this AP) and expanded a bit on it.

I changed it in a way that there were 4 elemental seeds in Kakishon, who are the building blocks of the whole Island, and that the players needed all four to either escape the island by bringing all four elemental seeds to the Proteans, so that they could unravel Kakishon, or defeat the Protean leader and perform a ritual with all four seeds in his cyst while he reforms, in order to renew the slave pact and reforge Kakishon.

The Earth seed was with the Oreads,basically unchanged to the original. But I went with the location below the crystal forest, because I liked it a bit more then yet another desert :P

The Air seed was in a structure within the lofty main palast grounds (which wasn't destroyed in my home campaign), from where the fair winds emerged that caressed the main island. In this vertical dungeon a tribe of Flumps would guard the seed within an antimagic field that only then with their natural air buoyancy could traverse. Nex once gave it to them for save guarding, but they were beset by a monster that nestled within the hollowed out mountain, so in exchange for its death, the seed would change hands.

The Water seed was within the big dragon turtles nest, but with a twist. Together with the dragon turtle, there was also a tribe of the kuo-toa that could make their dreams come true and they dreamed themselves a strong leader to protect them from all who would prey on them, bringing an Aboleth into the oceans of Kakishon, who quickly enslaved them all, but also turned out to be a capable leader.
The Aboleth would help the players and turn over his water seed, if they in turn made him the new leader of Kakishon. An unassailable transdimensional base of operations would be every Aboleth dank dream come true, eh?

And finally, the Fire seed was situated on one of the isles with changing day and night cycles. I shamelessly "borrowed" from two fantasy sources of my youth, ie the Last Unicorn and the Neverending Story. On an island that constantly changed between blistering hot days and cool nights, there was a constant cycle of tragedy. During the night the island was covered with lush vegetation and a thick forest, with big herds of Unicorns frolicking around. But every dawn, the fiery bull of the island would wake (he was in one of the bestiary, I think of book 5,but could be mistaken), burn the forest until just a desert remained, and drove all the unicorn into the waves of the sea, where they would turn into golden foam. At dusk he would tire, and while asleep the unicorn would emerge from the water, nurture the forest back to its former glory and the cycle would start anew. It was an interesting set piece, with my players setting a cool tidal trap, to weaken the bull in ankle-deep water.

So, if someone would want to use any of this in their home game, the tuning fork could easily be part of either the ritual for escaping / reforging, or be used to call or tame the dragon turtle / confuse the bull / open up the crystalline fortress of the Oreads or any other work for a proper mcguffin.

EDIT: some spelling, because I'm on my phone and long post are always tiresome and prone to auto-correct issues and just general misspellings.