Deviating from the plot (for Joey Virtue)


Second Darkness


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This is a thread for GMs to post ways they deviated from the plotline in running Second Darkness. What changes did you make?

In Shadow in the Sky, I didn't like Saul's sudden swing from liking the PCs to trying to get them killed, so I had him secretly working against them from the moment they foiled his plot to rob his own casino. Every mission he sent them on, he was purposely placing them in dangerous situations, hoping they wouldn't come back. When they went to the Foamrunner, instead of Braddikar Faje trying to steal from them, they ended up unknowingly stealing from him; the shipment of wine really was for Clegg Zincher, but Saul told him it was for the Goblin. Their act of theft and murder instigated Zincher's raid. Instead of a reverse-raid on the Gold Goblin after the Boneyard encounter, I had the PCs break into a locked-up casino just as Saul the veteran arsonist had it rigged to go up in flames. This served a double-purpose, as the Goblin sustained serious damage and the PCs were encouraged to go after the skymetal in the next book to get the money needed for repairs. The Teeth of Araska from the next book was the smuggling ship Depora Azrinae was using for shipments to Devil's Elbow and the one she leapt onto to make her escape.

Children of the Void changes coming up!

Joey Virtue:
I know you've already done Shadow in the Sky, but I'm a completist; it hurt me to try to start with book 2. :)


In the online campaign we started in Feb, Second Darkness s the backdrop, not the actual campaign, though the hereoes might get involved in some of the story.

I'm running this a bit more sandboxy, with a starting adventure and then some campaign hooks that will hopefully get the heroes interested in one plot or another...

However, the world goes on around them.

I'll be honest, I never much cared for the adventures after Armageddon Echo, though there was some great campaign background stuff there.


After a 2 hour battle in the return to the golden goblin I should of used your idea and had saul burning the place to the ground


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In Children of the Void, the Teeth of Araska was moored in a hidden harbor near the sea cave. The drow intended to use the ship to return to Celwynvian. In my game, the PCs ended up taking the ship first and storing their treasure and the people rescued from the other camps on it, intending to use it to return to Riddleport; of course, the attention-grabbing battle on the ship and the fact that the PCs rested out there before entering the cave system meant that they faced all the inhabitants of the sea cave in a single ambush. Once the battle was underway, the drow leaders' tactics were to escape under cover of darkness while the battle raged, leaving their inferiors to die while they retook the Teeth and sailed away from the island with hostages and the party's treasure.

One of my PCs was a junior member of the Shin'Rakorath. He returned to Riddleport when the Flying Cloud returned to contact Kwava, while the rest of the party remained hoping to find more skymetal. In my game, the elves' highest priority is to protect their race's secrets; now that the party has discovered the existence of drow, the Shin'Rakorath intend never to allow them to return to human society. The Lantern Bearers therefore sent a ship from the Mordant Spire to pick up the party and take them directly to the coast of the Mierani Forest. (The non-elf members of the party just think the elves are being helpful.)


Im going to use the Teeth being in the sea caves and I also have a junior member of the Shin'Rakorath (Kwava)

Im not sure about never letting them return to humans (my players i think will have lots of stuff to sell and make money on before they head up to the forest


Joey Virtue wrote:
Im not sure about never letting them return to humans (my players i think will have lots of stuff to sell and make money on before they head up to the forest

My players lost most of their treasure from the island when the drow took the ship. :) Plus, they took Samaritha, with whom one of the PCs had a romance going, so they were happy with going after the drow ship as quickly as possible.

Once they get to Crying Leaf, they'll have access to the merchants of Kyonin (not that they know that yet).


Joana wrote:

[My players lost most of their treasure from the island when the drow took the ship. :) Plus, they took Samaritha, with whom one of the PCs had a romance going, so they were happy with going after the drow ship as quickly as possible.

Man your PCs got to be pissed at the drow for stealin all their stuff and their girl friend


A digression on the elves of Kyonin:
One of the big issues I faced when I was getting ready to run this AP was understanding elven society and motivation. Elves are one of the races I've never really "gotten"; I never really understood what made them tick. But if I was going to delve deeply enough into the elven NPCs in this adventure to play them well, I was going to have to do some noodling to get inside their heads, so to speak. This is where I ended up:

The elves value their image above all: their reputation as the longest-lived race, as the custodians of culture, art & magic, as a bastion of civilization throughout centuries of savagery on the surface of Golarion. This is why they are so maniacally focussed on preventing the knowledge of the existence of drow from the other races; it exposes the darkness their race has in fact proven capable of, the Hyde to their Jekyll.

Because they have the longest lives of the humanoid races, they have long relied on their ability to take the long view -- and simply to wait problems out. Multiple ambassadors from various rulers of other races have waited decades in Kyonin for answers to various suits and demands, kept in the utmost luxury and assured daily that their issue would soon be decided and the queen could send for them at any time, when in reality, the elves have simply decided to do nothing and let whatever is causing the problem to die out or rectify itself. They are masters of delay. This allows them to keep surface relations with other races smooth, as they are never forced to deny a suit or request, no matter how infuriating representatives of other governments personally find being constantly put off.

The elves apply a similar tactic to deal with outsiders who have witnessed the existence of the drow. They are taken into genteel custody for "debriefing," or for their own protection, or in order to give eyewitness testimony which may prove vital to defeating the dark elves, or for whatever other reason the elves believe will prove convincing to the individuals in question. The witnesses are put up in luxurious quarters and given access to whatever diversions are intriguing to them, including many enticing secrets not usually shared by elves with outside races. The delays are always regrettable, as their meetings with the authorities are postponed again and again, and everyone is excrutiatingly polite and apologetic. In reality, of course, the elves' ultimate objective is to keep them in a holding pattern in a gilded cage for the rest of their lives rather than risk a member of a lesser and thus untrustworthy race from divulging their secrets.

In the case of the PCs in Second Darkness, the situation is even better from the elves' perspective: the witnesses are adventurers with their own stake in the fight against the drow. What better than to enlist the PCs as foot soldiers and tools in their own ongoing war? If they make headway, the elves are that much better off; if they are killed in the dangerous battlezones, the elves' secret is safe while their hands remain clean.

There remains an iron fist inside the velvet glove: elves who will not scruple to do whatever violent deeds are necessary to preserve the civilized veneer of their society. These are the Shin'Rakorath. When the utmost of the elves' civility fails against one of the outsider races, when one of their 'guests' proves recalcitrant and unable to be shamed out of causing a scene in the face of the elves unrelenting politeness, the Shin'Rakorath will step in and, with stealth and force, do what must be done to eliminate the threat to their race's image. They are willing to sully their own hands in violence in order to preserve the purity and innocence of the government in Iadara.


Joey Virtue wrote:
Joana wrote:

[My players lost most of their treasure from the island when the drow took the ship. :) Plus, they took Samaritha, with whom one of the PCs had a romance going, so they were happy with going after the drow ship as quickly as possible.

Man your PCs got to be pissed at the drow for stealin all their stuff and their girl friend

Yeah, I didn't have the problem some people have reported of the PCs not liking the elves. From their perspective, the elves are great: they brought them a ship and helped them chase after the drow and rescue Samaritha. Then they got a big banquet and rewards after winning the battle for Celwynvian. Of course, they haven't gotten to book 5 yet, but I have some ideas for helping them deal with the elves' "betrayal."


Joana wrote:
** spoiler omitted **...

I think this is a great way to look at the elves. This I think will help anyone running this AP


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber
Joana wrote:
Then they got a big banquet and rewards after winning the battle for Celwynvian. Of course, they haven't gotten to book 5 yet, but I have some ideas for helping them deal with the elves' "betrayal."

Great thread and thank you for sharing Joana. I would love to hear your ideas for #5.

Best.


Heh, well in my Second Darkness campaign, there are no elves or drow or meteors. I combined it with the Freeport Trilogy and SitS was a plot by a serpent man disguised as Elias Tammerhawk to open the Cyphergate to fell ends. And Samaritha was a secret serpent person as well. She's dating one of the PCs. Saul and the Gold Goblin crew are Sopranos-style amoral but not working with fell forces or anything. Well, except for the assassin PC. We've just started on Children of the Void, which kinda starts the same, except again no drow. Or elves of any sort really. I hate fricking elves. No reason not to use all the written chunks of the AP, rearranged, reskinned, and revamped, however!


Elorebaen, thanks for the kind words! My campaign journal is here, if you are interested in all the crazy things my players have been doing with the game. We are nearing the end of book 4 now.


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In The Armageddon Echo, the party was landed in boats on the north shore of the Mierani Forest, skipping over the Riddleport and overland encounters. They found the Teeth of Araska wrecked and most of the hostages murdered onshore.* A party of Shin'Rakorath met by Kaer'ishiel met them and led them to Crying Leaf.

In Celwynvian, I used the set-piece adventure as one of the missions before the battle at the Academy of Arts. The elves knew of Jochareil from legend and sent the PCs in to obtain her help against the drow. The ghost had been driven over the edge by the drow having stolen the original of the Ode in Heaven, which I moved from the wall of area 7 to one of the pillars -- and then had the pillar recently missing. In order to restore Jochareil to sanity and obtain her assistance, the party had to track down the missing column and return it to its place.

I also worked up the mention of the drow necromancers, Fisaria and Bixus, in the Fluted Goblet into an encounter to introduce the recorporeal incarnation spell. They had a scroll of it and a note saying it had been stolen from House Vonnarc and they should refine it for use against the surface elves. I had a recorporeal incarnationed troglodyte in the corpse of an elf lead the party into an ambush by the necromancers, so they could see for themselves what the spell could do.

In the Echo, the main change I made was letting the party negotiate with Razorhorn rather than fight him. (I don't believe that the primary tactic of any LE villain ought to be "attack on sight and fight to the death.") He allowed them to free the prisoners they were looking for in exchange for their promise to bring him the portal key. Since he only allied with the drow on their promise to rid Mierani of surface elves and they had now failed, putting his lair in jeopardy, his plan was to flee back to Celwynvian, use the portal key to open the gate to Zirnakaynin, do a quick smash-and-grab in the drow city to get a start on a new treasure horde, then find his way back to the surface and another forest. (Of course, the party double-crossed him, but he made it back to the real world too when the meteorites began to hit, being near enough to the portal key, and survived to have his revenge on the PCs another day.)

*:
The anonymous cyphermages and pirates were killed, but in my game, the named NPCs who were taken, Samaritha and Akron, survived. While this is very 'convenient,' I rationalized it in-game as them keeping Samaritha as evidence that interbreeding is possible between elves and humans; they intended vile experiments on her for the purposes of breeding slave races. Akron was charmed by Shindiira a la Clegg Zincher to carry the heavy supplies. That way I could show the Eeeevilness of the drow in the pile of redshirt corpses without making the players feel like they had failed. It also provides ongoing incentive to fight the drow and rescue the prisoners, apart from the elves' request.


Joana wrote:


In Celwynvian, I used the set-piece adventure as one of the missions before the battle at the Academy of Arts. The elves knew of Jochareil from legend and sent the PCs in to obtain her help against the drow. The ghost had been driven over the edge by the drow having stolen the original of the Ode in Heaven, which I moved from the wall of area 7 to one of the pillars -- and then had the pillar recently missing. In order to restore Jochareil to sanity and obtain her assistance, the party had to track down the missing column and return it to its place.

I also worked up the mention of the drow necromancers, Fisaria and Bixus, in the Fluted Goblet into an encounter to introduce the recorporeal incarnation spell. They had a scroll of it and a note saying it had been stolen from House Vonnarc and they should refine it for use against the surface elves. I had a recorporeal incarnationed troglodyte in the corpse of an elf lead the party into an ambush by the necromancers, so they could see for themselves what the spell could do.

So where had the drow taken the ODE?

So I like your idea but I also like my idea of the Lich Shade how did the encounter go with the Trog did it really sell the players on how powerful and badass the spell was or were they just kinda like cool?


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber

Thank you for sharing Joana. Great example of the idea that if you can find creative ways to deal with the flaws of this AP, the good stuff can be really good.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Prepare for the inevitable massive rewrite of Memory of Darkness :)


Gorbacz wrote:
Prepare for the inevitable massive rewrite of Memory of Darkness :)

Man you hated Memory of Darkness did you guys quit with that one or did you do some rewrite of it?

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I didn't have to yet, because my party is barely into CotCT, but I really want to run SD for them someday. Maybe then I'll take a holiday and re-do MoD... I have a few ideas bouncing around in my head for this.


Gorbacz wrote:
I didn't have to yet, because my party is barely into CotCT, but I really want to run SD for them someday. Maybe then I'll take a holiday and re-do MoD... I have a few ideas bouncing around in my head for this.

Well post them on here and we can help and maybe steal some of your ideas

Silver Crusade

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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

SD spoilers, watch out:

- The queen doesn't play the PCs. She's bluntly honest - she wants to act, but the Winter Council is preventing her from that. And since WC has some leverage in elven society, going against them openly is not an option. She needs them neutered in a non-violent way. And PCs are great for that, because they can't be tracked back to her. So, no forced shafting the PCs over, and still a very Callistran move. OFCs, PCs get showered with gold for this mission.
- The succubus prisoner is tricked into thinking that PCs are prisoners and a fake escape is staged. She buys the idea of leading PCs into the demon territory thinking that they want to take the elves out.
- PCs double-cross the demons and help WC lift the siege. Some assault on a demon camp/fortress with a mid-boss battle against the siege commander. This is the tough part, because I have to write and stat up a major chunk of XP in the module :/
- grateful for lifting the siege, the WC lets PCs in their hold.
- it's time for some diplomacy to convince WC members to grab their balls and act the part.
- final battle, where Hialin breaks the spike and calls forth demonic reinforcements.


Are u going to have him "break" the spike or remove it cause I was thinking I could See my PCs wanting to keep it as a base of operations for latter battles with Tree Razer


Joey Virtue wrote:
So where had the drow taken the ODE?

Well, it was kind of metagamey. It would have made sense for them to take the Ode and put it in the Academy of Arts, ready to be taken back to Zirnakaynin. (My drow really play up the idea that they are the owners of elven heritage on Golarion since the surface elves abandoned it. While in the Echo, my PCs met the ancestor of the Vonnarcs, a sweet young elf who was rescuing the art left behind in the Constellar Gallery by the fleeing elves and taking it underground where she hoped to survive the meteor strike; then, in book 4, one of the PCs recognized one of the same artworks in House Vonnarc's gallery.)

I knew by the time they hit the Academy, though, that would be the lead-up to the end battle, and they wouldn't have time to stop and take the column back to the Conservatory. I also wanted to make them search the whole city and run the gamut of random encounters. So I put it in the Garden of Eternal Ease; Fisaria and Bixus ended up taking cover behind it while fighting the PCs. They could use the wand of levitate they found on the drow wizards to return it to the Conservatory. If the players had asked why the drow had put it there of all places, I guess I would have had to come up with an explanation, but they didn't question it.

Joey Virtue wrote:
how did the encounter go with the Trog did it really sell the players on how powerful and badass the spell was or were they just kinda like cool?

It was pretty cool, actually. The melee guys ran into the Fluted Goblet, where the r.i.ed trog told them a bunch of troglodytes were and got hit with enervation and ray of enfeeblement by the necromancers; then the "elf" who had stayed back with the bard and the rogue attacked the unsuspecting weaker links. (If I'd wanted to be really mean, I guess I could have given him rogue levels and let him do sneak attack damage to them.)

When they managed to drop him, I really played up the decaying flesh boiling away to reveal the trog underneath. Made the party very paranoid from then on, never knowing if they were seeing an ally or an enemy in disguise. And once they found the scroll, it was their idea to use it against the drow.


Shafting and the Winter Council:

Spoiler:

For my campaign, the elves of Celwynvian are isolationists due to IMC events and the shame of the drow. They've successfully hidden from the rest of the world for centuries now. The drow getting out and about threaten that.

The Winter Council are the adamant isolationists of the elves and a very powerful, secret-police type of organization.

While the Queen would like to see the isolation end, she has to be very careful of the Winter Council. She doesn't know who in her court might be informants, hence she has to act as still being loyal to the Winter Council ideals. While she imprisons the PCs, she also arranges for their escape and hopes, ideally, that the PCs can put an end to the Winter Council for her.

I intend to play that out as a mysterious benefactor that helps the party out as needed. Eventually they'll learn that it was the Queen acting tough in public, but secretly helping them.


Joana wrote:

It was pretty cool, actually. The melee guys ran into the Fluted Goblet, where the r.i.ed trog told them a bunch of troglodytes were and got hit with enervation and ray of enfeeblement by the necromancers; then the "elf" who had stayed back with the bard and the rogue attacked the unsuspecting weaker links. (If I'd wanted to be really mean, I guess I could have given him rogue levels and let him do sneak attack damage to them.)

When they managed to drop him, I really played up the decaying flesh boiling away to reveal the trog underneath. Made the party very paranoid from then on, never knowing if they were seeing an ally or an enemy in disguise. And once they found the scroll, it was their idea to use it against the drow.

I like the Lich Shade but more more makes me want to throw the necromancers out at them

And Im a jerk he will be a rogue Trog for sure


So Im going to have the Captain for The Teeth Charmed by the Drow and have them go investigate what happened to Zincher after my party took him out
I think I will have the Grudge and Castilia run back to the drow and then have the Drows poison and kill him as they begin to pack up his ship and tie up loose ends
So they better hope they catch or kill all the crew when they come to attack them at the Zinchers Camp


If you need a diversion, have akatas attack a few rounds into the battle between the pirates and the PCs. See if they team up to fight the new threat or if the PCs try to take on both forces at once. That will allow a handful of the crew to slip away, if the battle's going poorly for them and you want the drow to get away with the Teeth.


I really dont want them to get away just trying to make it more realistic

Cause If they get away they wont get the trunk with all the info and my PCs were smart enought to pay the boat to come back like every day or so

So they got rid of Samarita and the cybermages and the dwarf from the forges


Hey Joana did you ever do any of the writing for the characters out at Devils Elbow if the drow didnt get away?


Gorbacz wrote:
Prepare for the inevitable massive rewrite of Memory of Darkness :)

The adventures after AE are the ones that were less interesting to me. So I'm going to have the heroes stop the plot at the end of AE and then move on to somethign else. It would take to much to rewrite the last three books of the AP to turn them into something less dungeon-crawly.


gigglestick wrote:
Gorbacz wrote:
Prepare for the inevitable massive rewrite of Memory of Darkness :)
The adventures after AE are the ones that were less interesting to me. So I'm going to have the heroes stop the plot at the end of AE and then move on to somethign else. It would take to much to rewrite the last three books of the AP to turn them into something less dungeon-crawly.

I think the idea of putting the drow skin on is super cool and one of the reasons I think the PCs will remember this AP


Joey Virtue wrote:
gigglestick wrote:
Gorbacz wrote:
Prepare for the inevitable massive rewrite of Memory of Darkness :)
The adventures after AE are the ones that were less interesting to me. So I'm going to have the heroes stop the plot at the end of AE and then move on to somethign else. It would take to much to rewrite the last three books of the AP to turn them into something less dungeon-crawly.
I think the idea of putting the drow skin on is super cool and one of the reasons I think the PCs will remember this AP

Yeah, the main reason I picked up this AP to run was to relive the part of Baldur's Gate where the PCs went undercover in the drow city. That said, though, I found that the end of Armageddon Echo made for a very satisfying stopping place, both storyline-wise and because the fight in the Echo has the potential to be a big knock-down drag-out like the end of a campaign deserves. All you'd have to do would be to make Nolveniss Azrinae the ultimate bad guy (or switch genders and make him Allevrah!) so the threat is eliminated when the PCs defeat him.


Joey Virtue wrote:
Hey Joana did you ever do any of the writing for the characters out at Devils Elbow if the drow didnt get away?

Hm, if they had killed all the drow, they would have had the rescued Cyphermages, the captured pirates, the drow's noqual, and the Teeth of Araska to play with, along with Josper Creesy's ship coming back for them the following evening. Without a captive drow that the Shin'Rakorath PC knew to keep covered up at all costs, they might have gone back to Riddleport before Kwava contacted them, and I probably would have run the beginning of Armageddon Echo much closer to as written, with an overland journey to the Mierani.

As quickly as your group is moving, you're likely to finish up before we do! We have a hard time juggling everyone's schedules to be able to get together more than once a month.


Joana wrote:
Joey Virtue wrote:
gigglestick wrote:
Gorbacz wrote:
Prepare for the inevitable massive rewrite of Memory of Darkness :)
The adventures after AE are the ones that were less interesting to me. So I'm going to have the heroes stop the plot at the end of AE and then move on to somethign else. It would take to much to rewrite the last three books of the AP to turn them into something less dungeon-crawly.
I think the idea of putting the drow skin on is super cool and one of the reasons I think the PCs will remember this AP
Yeah, the main reason I picked up this AP to run was to relive the part of Baldur's Gate where the PCs went undercover in the drow city. That said, though, I found that the end of Armageddon Echo made for a very satisfying stopping place, both storyline-wise and because the fight in the Echo has the potential to be a big knock-down drag-out like the end of a campaign deserves. All you'd have to do would be to make Nolveniss Azrinae the ultimate bad guy (or switch genders and make him Allevrah!) so the threat is eliminated when the PCs defeat him.

First of all, the plot itself wasn't horrible, there just isn't as much cool stuff (except Treerazor...my ROTR players were planning to go after him when they reached level 18 once they heard about him...at level 3!)and a lot of betrayal and so on. All three of the groups I GM for take their time roleplaying with the locals and several of the later adventures make that more difficult.

Second, I really hated Baldur's Gate, so reliving any part of it would not be a big draw for me...but you didn't know that.

Seriously though, its not a HORRIBLE AP, I just want to move on to another plot after AE...


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Joey Virtue has probably just about caught up with me, his group is so efficient and mine is so slow, but we finally finished book 4 last week.

One of the big complaints about this chapter was that the PCs were expected to join up with House Vonnarc rather than go straight for House Azrinae where they would think the real information was. I began foreshadowing House Vonnarc's involvement with Depora's journal way back in Shadow in the Sky, and the elves learned that the footsoldiers in Celwynvian bore the rune of House Vonnarc and specifically sent them to that House.

I expanded Gadak Simiryin's role in the story, making him Alicavniss' agent to spy on the PCs and later to mislead them. The players hated him so much, I just couldn't let such an intense rivalry drop. Plus, I had the idea of Alicavniss flaying him and using his skin as decoration early on as something that would creep the players out and convince them she wasn't someone they wanted to tangle with at this point.

The big weakness of this book to me was that it basically leaves the PCs to sit around and mark time until an NPC drops the information they need in their lap. Unaware that the adventure is on a time-release lock, the players are likely to get anxious about not getting anywhere and do something reckless. So, instead of leaving them spinning their wheels until they gain enough Servitor Points, I let the PCs attempts at investigation bear fruit. By tracking down Kardinnyr Azrinae and rolling some good Diplomacy/Bluff checks, they were able to extract Allevrah Azrinae's general location ahead of "schedule," but since I expressed to them how large an area the Land of Black Blood covers, they were still willing to stay in Zirnakaynin and play out the rest of the adventure hoping to discover more rather than deciding their mission was complete and leaving before Alicavniss' big scene.

Speaking of Venom Kiss, I can't stand random "Go to this place you've never heard of and kill this stranger" sidequests so I tied Venom Kiss into the storyline ahead of when Alicavniss was supposed to send them there. Kardinnyr Azrinae was supposed to be afraid of all the wards and spells on his House anyway, so I had him leaving it behind for the pleasures Orvignato could provide. On Orvignato's side, living in a city that's all about power plays and blackmail, getting Kardinnyr addicted to his wares was not only good for him financially but also an investment in House politics. Then I decided not to even use Alicavniss' quest as written. If she can kill a House Matron and go undetected, couldn't she deal with an aging, unconnected CR 12 drow on her own without cluttering the move up with underlings?

Instead, to fill out that sidequest, I invented an information broker named Tarlith'eth who lived with his gang in the Garden of Reflection on the fungus islands in Lake Cythvahei. Widely known for keeping secrets for various players in the city, his islands were a perfect draw for outsiders looking for hidden information. I just used the stats given for Orvignato and his men and slapped new names and locales on them.

I wrote out Alicavniss' whole monologue to make sure I included all the information the PCs needed to know. It can be found under the spoiler in my campaign journal here.

I filled out the journey from Zirnakaynin to the elfgate with hazards I initially intended for using in a chase scene. Knowing my PCs, though, they would have just stood and fought if they were pursued, and I couldn't figure out what I could make them chase if they ran across it since they were very focussed on the mission of just getting out of the Darklands with the information they were sent to find. I decided just to make them obstacles in their way as they travelled toward the elfgate.

Hazards and DCs:
Fungal Flytrap This is a kind of carnivorous fungus like a Venus Flytrap which covered the surfaces of one cavern. Knowlege (dungeoneering) DC 25 to identify; Acrobatics DC 20 to move through without setting it off; Reflex DC 16 to avoid once triggered.

Nightmare Vapor The tunnel dipped down low where heavier-than-air Nightmare Vapor accumulated. Knowledge (arcana) DC 26 to identify.

Trap Door Spider I used the stats for the Giant Black Widow out of the Bestiary 2 and made it a trap-door spider in a cavern full of hidden pit traps full of webs. Perception DC 29 to find the traps; Reflex DC 25 to avoid falling in; and each pit was filled with webs that falling PCs would have to break free from.

Moraine One wall of a cavern had caved in, filling the area with a vast hill of loose rock and gravel. Acrobatics DC 29 to avoid causing an avalanche; Reflex DC 21 to avoid being swept along with it; 9d4 nonlethal damage and buried in loose gravel in danger of suffocation if they can't dig out.

Slippery Slope Water seeps through tiny pores in the rock surface of this steep slope, punctuated by stalagmites and jagged rock. 3 Acrobatics checks at DC 20 to make it all the way down; Reflex DC 33+: no damage taken as the PC catches himself; Reflex DC 25-32: 9d4 nonlethal damage as the PC slides a short way and comes up against a stalagmite; Reflex 17-24: 9d6 lethal damage as the PC slides and is cut on the sharp jabs of rock; Reflex 9-16: 13d6 lethal damage as the PC slides down and falls over a sudden sharp cliff/waterfall; Reflex DC 1-8: 13d6 lethal damage + 1d6 Dex damage as the PC slides all the way down the slope and sprains his ankle.

Azure Fungus The water running down the slippery slope soon collects in a shallow underground lake in a vast cavern. Some 50 feet away is a tunnel in the wall above water level, but the cave walls are covered with azure fungus. Knowledge (dungeoneering) DC 26 to identify as a fungus which gives off an electrical discharge when disturbed; 1d6 rounds between discharges; 13d6 electrical damage to everyone in the water; Fort DC 20 for half-damage; Climb DC 25 to climb the damp and slippery wall to get into the escape tunnel.

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