Legacy of Fire and The Witchwar Legacy Together?

[Thazar]

I am just finishing up Legacy of Fire with a group of 6 players. They are all about 15~16 as of the final battle. I was thinking of tying in Legacy of the Witchwar to the end of LoF. I have not picked up the module yet and wanted folks thoughts on how well it would work out. See the spoiler for my method of linking the module and the LoF AP.

Legacy of Fire Spoiler with Witchwar Question:

As a method of destroying the heart of Xotani the Firebleeded the book suggests a long quest ending in drowning the molten lava heart in the plane of water. Rather then going that route I was going to tie it into the ice region of Irrisen and the artifact listed in the module sales blurb. Any thoughts on this from folks who have read both the LoF AP and Witchwar? Thanks!

If needed they can get some XP to get them to 16~17 before they hit the dungeon during the travel from Katapesh. I figure with 6 players that they should be OK a little low. I am cross posting this in the modules section of the forums under Legacy of the Witchwar thread as well for folks that want to follow the responses.

[Akumamajin]

Thazar wrote:

I am just finishing up Legacy of Fire with a group of 6 players. They are all about 15~16 as of the final battle. I was thinking of tying in Legacy of the Witchwar to the end of LoF. I have not picked up the module yet and wanted folks thoughts on how well it would work out. See the spoiler for my method of linking the module and the LoF AP.

** spoiler omitted **
If needed they can get some XP to get them to 16~17 before they hit the dungeon during the travel from Katapesh. I figure with 6 players that they should be OK a little low. I am cross posting this in the modules section of the forums under Legacy of the Witchwar thread as well for folks that want to follow the responses.

I don't own the module myself, but I skimmed through it at my local comic book store.

I like your idea, it is a harsh departure from the Katapeshi desert region that your players will have been used to for the better part of their carrier, but that might be quite welcome ... and its about killing one of the offsprings of the God of Destruction, so its fine.

The adventure goes with the premisse, that the tomb of the ice queen has been breached and both, the ruling queen of irisen and the demon prince of ice are sending parties into the tomb to recover a certain magic artifact of ice. And that one of the parties tries to get the PCs into their boot.

I would change this a little bit: the PCs are researching an idea to destroy the heart of Xo'tani and stumble about mentions of the tomb and that its heart is the most frigid and cold place on the planet, a worthy place to destroy the heart of Rovagugs offspring. So they research some more stuff about the tomb, probably in Irisen, maybe undercover in the palace library. So the ruling queen gets wind and shadows them and allows them to find the tomb, which they can open with the help of Xo'tanis heart. After this, her agents ambush the party. Maybe the breaching of the wards even alerts the deamon prince of its presence and he hastiliy summons his own minions into the outskirts, so that the PCs now face a tomb full of traps, ancient horrors and frigging cold while queens agents and ice deamons and giants are teeming in their back and harassing them from time to time.

I think that this could definitely work, and it is a high level adventure that takes some work out of your hands, so I would say: buy it. Or at least do the same thing that I did and skim through at your local store. I think that this idea has potential. Another Idea for a great finish:
the imminent threat of death could rekindle Xo'tanis burning will for live, so that he resurrects in the frozen bowels of the north. And the PCs have to battle it out with a weakened and dieing Xo'tani who is hellbend to take them with him into his death (the CR 20 Xo'tani from the beastiary of the last AP part IS the weakened version :D ) while around them the waterfall is melting and stuff.

Lets toss this idea around :)

[Thazar]

I ordered a copy of the module and picked up the PDF for a quick read.

Between doing the research to find a way to destroy the heart of Xotani I can send the characters on a few side quests that do not lead to much...this will be easy stuff to let them flex their high power muscles a bit after the final LoF book. This will include checking out some old ruins as well as library and spell research.

But then after a few months have passed (to give the party some R&R where they can work on high level stuff like crafting and castle building type things) one of their contacts will get back to them and say they just got a "ping" from contact other plane about a lost relic that was previously hidden by powerful magic. Maybe they should go check it out up north as the relic is tied to the nation of ice and the queens of Isseren.

This gives them the way in to the module and the party can then perhaps find out about the groups involved in the race to claim the relic. I figure I will tie the destruction of the heart to the Torc in some way. One is fire and the other is ice so there are lots of options. Plus they are both tied to destruction. Perhaps have the two of them combined with a wish from a creature of nurturing and order? This would destroy both items in the name of good. An evil group could do something similar but rather then destroy them combine them to make a major artifact or something... but that is not an issue for my group currently. ;)

I will play around with it a bit and if folks have any ideas I would like to hear them. :)

[Akumamajin]

Maybe be destroying the torc you open a portal directly to Cania, the 8th layer of hell and one of the most fridging cold place in the whole universe. There the glaciers have a will of their own und move with malign intend to ground every living thing to dust. This could be a suitable place, too, to destroy the heart of Xotani, searching out the most dangerous glacier and placing the heart in front of it.

[Thazar]

I found a little bit of info on that location HERE. Not much there but it links the source books published by Paizo that have info on it. So off to do some reading.

I may set it up so that 100 frost giants have to carry the heart to Caina and place it in front of a glacier to be buried in Ice for all time. I would also set it up so the heart that is very big is oozing lava every round. So to get 100 frost giants in position to carry the heart several things would have to happen.

1. The giants would need to be made smaller and the heart made bigger so they all can get a hand hold on it at the same time.
2. The giants would need to be protected against the lava or healed as they take damage every round.
3. The Torc is needed to control that many giants at the same time.

I may try and work a way so that the Torc is destroyed along with the heart... maybe the torc has to be placed with the heart as it goes under the glacier at the last second causing a bog explosion that melts and then re-freezes a lot of ice to form a tomb or something. This would require Time Stop, Wish, Miracle, etc to time it right and keep the giants under control until it cannot be prevented.

Anyone else have any thoughts, comments, or suggestions?

[Thazar]

A minor point of correction. It appears in Paizo's view of the planes the Seventh Layer of Hell is the icy one. Cocytus.

[Akumamajin]

Yeah, that is strange, but seems to be paizo's twist to the things, maybe because of the OGL? This here is a text copied from the DnD Wiki about Caina:

Cania
Cania (or Caina), the Eighth Hell, is an unimaginably cold wasteland, where few living things can survive more than a few moments in an unsheltered area. Huge fast moving glaciers crash around the layer sending snow and ice up in the sky. It is dominated by intense, freezing cold, and is extremely hostile toward those who are unwelcome on the layer, which includes nearly every being that enters. It is the home of the gelugon baatezu.
The layer is ruled over by Mephistopheles, from his great citadel of ice Mephistar. It sits upon a giant glacier called Nargus, the movement of which is controlled by Mephistopheles himself. Inside Mephistar huge heated baths and fire warm the citadel, providing quite a comfortable environment.
Many things lie hidden under the ice of Cania: vast lost cities, frozen armies of creatures. The primary portal to access Nessus is through a gaping hole guarded by 9,999 gelugons. At the bottom of the dizzyingly deep pit is an icy body of water and 1,001 fathoms deep in that is a silvery portal to Malsheem.

The thing with the ice giants sounds funny, but caveat would be, that it sounds way to technical. Most of the ways to destroy an artefact are truly epic in scale, but rather simple in execution. Like being thrown into the fires of mount doom, crushed unter the heel of a certain god or sundered in the very heart of the plane of earth.

Using the torc to let a unit of frost giants deliver it to cania sounds cool, and part of the adventure could be to protect the giants from the denizens and perils of that plane, but I would not have it to be 100, a dozen (or unholy thirteen) is just as fine a number and much more manageable while it would still require the torc. Most of the work should be the travel in the plane itself, it might be some sort of pilgrimage to the most cold and dark and deep recesses, so that the PCs have to walk and can't just teleport there. Another twist: Mephistopheles, the ruler of cania, is lord of the hellfire, the hottest flames known to exist. His flames are only held in check because he IS residing in cania. Its no fare stretch to imagine that the lord of hellfire would sell his soul for the heart of the firebleeder ... especially when it is paraded right trough his realm!! I really like this :>

[Kalraan]

I love this although at the rate my party is going, its going to be a long time before I use it. Sounds like a great idea though which I will be stealing :)

[Xenomorph 27]

Hey Thazar!

Did you run this setup and finish it?
I'm planning on adding this to LOF as well.