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I'm running a game where a party wishes to destroy the sword Ovinrbaane, an artifact of Gorum. In order to do so, they must strike their own gravestone in the Boneyard 3 times with it. How one does this seemingly impossible task is not detailed in the Kingmaker adventure path or the artifact's splatbook.
Darn.
So, I decided that as a goddess of both death and fate, Pharasma probably already has your gravestone ready for you in the Boneyard, inscribed with the date you will eventually die. While this is a neat way to allow PC's to destroy the artifact without actually dying (they need only planar travel at that point), it could raise an issue if the PC reads the date of his/her future death.
Sure, they could avoid looking at it and remain unburdened by the chains of knowing one's fate but what if they look? Would it be possible to run a game with a player who's character knew which day they would die on? Would their character take impossible risks, knowing they were safe until whatever day they die arrives? What happens if they get Scythe-critted by a monster and die unexpectedly in the middle of a fight? Did their character know all along this could happen?
Would any of you as DM's ever give a PC an opportunity to know their own end before it happened?
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If you go with the deity-made pre-fab grave stone, then the death date for your PC's could simply be left blank, or be a constantly shifting blur. Or it could be readable, but change while they are interacting with it, making decisions near it, each time they strike it, etc. (butterfly effect)
If it includes how they met their death, that could be similarly changing.
"Trampled while saddling the Tarrasque"
"Choked on a mulberry"
"Eaten by rats"
"Perished in the act of destroying Ovinrbaane".
So on and so forth. Even their name on the stone could change while they watch, reflecting titles or nicknames.
Might make finding the right stone something of an adventure in itself. If you really want to mess with their heads, maybe the third strike shatters the grave stone as well as the sword. (*cue spooky music*)
Personally as a DM I'd not be too keen on giving players an exact date/method for their death unless there was a really good storyline reason for doing so. Too many variables.
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A few of ways to handle this that I can think of:
1) Pharasma instead has your gravestone ready with your birth date inscribed but not your death date.
2) You instead have a prophecy inscribed on the tombstone that gives a vague hint as to how the character would die that can fit a variety of situations. If the character dies in a way that clearly doesn't fit the prophecy, hey prophecy isn't guaranteed to work in Golarion anymore.
3) Have the death date be the day that they'd die of natural causes if nothing happens before then.
Hope that helps!
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I'd create a pre-made gravestone that will appear before the PC's in the Boneyard. Only, every time at least one PC isn't observing it, the date [and language it is written in] both automatically change, and say that every round the date changes at least once, so that the PC's never know which date would be the final. Then if they try and go back, it has mysteriously been replaced by a statue of a crying angel, creating a new encounter with Weeping Angels.
Well, maybe in order for the destruction to occur it has to be someone who is already dead, such as a partitioner, in order to destroy the tombstone.
Also, considering that the destruction method looks fairly simple, you need to make sure you include something where striking a gravestone with the sword is NOT as easy as it would seem. For example, you could do the following:
1) In order to have a Tombstone in the Boneyard, the character must be dead: raising him/her has the tombstone removed and placed into storage. Therefore, the PCs need to find a suitably powerful partitioner in order to perform the task.
2) After they manage to reclaim the soul, they have to fully restore its memory to the partitioner. Perhaps this involves a trip down the River Styx to some forgotten recess of Abbaddon for a dungeon crawl.
3) After restoring the partitioner's memory (and its PC class levels), the PCs need to return to the Boneyard and find the partitioner's tombstone while avoiding agents of Gorum (who recognize the danger) and Pharasma (who want to return the soul to its just course). Perhaps the mission concludes with a face-off against one of the CR 20 dragon-like psychopomps from Bestiary 4.
4) When the tombstone is finally found, the first time it is struck with the sword, some horrendous minions are born from the fragments of the tombstone that chip off, such as a number of stone golems, earth elementals, or something suitably sinister.
5) The second time the tombstone is struck, the partitioner starts to fade away and become incorporeal as the tombstone splits in half, unleashing a powerful, ancient guardian of the grave. (Maybe even a psychopomp usher.)
6) The third, and final, time the tombstone is struck, it is destroyed alongside the sword, but the "removal" of the creature's tombstone pulls the partitioner back into the cycle of reincarnation, where it becomes destined to be born to one of the PCs as their child. In order words, the partitioner can't be resurrected.
Just a thought.
Wow, there is some awesome ideas here. I definitely agree that it shouldn't be as simple as just 3 easy strikes. Also, the Yamaraj thing from Bestiary 4 is great. You can't go wrong with a breath weapon that shoots carnivorous beetles xD
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Not all gravestones state the cause of death. you could also make it vague, like 'Sacrificed Himself For The World' or 'Died As He Lived ... Like An Idiot'.
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My personal favorite is the mind numb effect.
No matter how much you stare at it, the words seem real, the numbers and letters you all recognize.
At the same time it doesn't state a "thing" it states a concept. It states an infinite multitude of realities, all of which are constantly swirling, their patterns interweaving, and at times even breaking or overlapping.
Yes there are words there, yes you can read them. Your mind cannot grasp the infinite number of realities and which one you dwell within.
(Aspect of Keanu Reeves)
"...Whoa."
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Not all gravestones state the cause of death. you could also make it vague, like 'Sacrificed Himself For The World' or 'Died As He Lived ... Like An Idiot'.
He died doing the right thing. (Mandatory inclusion to the above list)
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Not all gravestones state the cause of death. you could also make it vague, like 'Sacrificed Himself For The World' or 'Died As He Lived ... Like An Idiot'.He died doing the right thing. (Mandatory inclusion to the above list)
Chocked on a piece of broccoli.
Someone should make a table
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I can't tell if thats good, bad, or sarcastic.My personal favorite is the mind numb effect.
No matter how much you stare at it, the words seem real, the numbers and letters you all recognize.
At the same time it doesn't state a "thing" it states a concept. It states an infinite multitude of realities, all of which are constantly swirling, their patterns interweaving, and at times even breaking or overlapping.
Yes there are words there, yes you can read them. Your mind cannot grasp the infinite number of realities and which one you dwell within.
(Aspect of Keanu Reeves)
"...Whoa."
Sorry for my ambiguous and silly response. I was genuinely impressed by the way you phrased that.
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So, I decided that as a goddess of both death and fate, Pharasma probably already has your gravestone ready for you in the Boneyard, inscribed with the date you will eventually die. While this is a neat way to allow PC's to destroy the artifact without actually dying (they need only planar travel at that point), it could raise an issue if the PC reads the date of his/her future death.
I am going to assume that Pharasma will have the date of their FINAL and lasting deaths? Since raise dead, etc. exist any single date on the stone would be sort of inconclusive unless it was the one they did not come back from.
Or will it have the date of their NEXT death?
Also, who says Pharasma will have the dates on the stones? She knows them, why does she need to have them posted?
Lastly, if they are on the stones, who is to say they are not in the 'Language of Death' and therefore readable only to Pharasma and those she allows? Or that the dating system is something they even use on the prime material plane?
She could very well post the date in the common tongue but be using the dates based off the 'Deific Infinity" dating system used amongst the gods, which no mortal can know of fathom. Even if not in common or a language they know Read Languages would give them the numbers and letters but the message may still mean nothing to them if they have no idea what the calender system is.
Otherwise just have all the dates be really close to the current game date and make sure the characters are killed on that date.
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If there is one thing Pharasma is NOT keen on, it's mortals knowing when they are going to die, thereby taking on sod-all risks. It's not just that they KNOW, which is bad enough, it's that their knowledge of this changes their behaviour NOW. Simply showing those death dates on the gravestones would be pointless and dangerous. I would be good with the "you can see it, but you can't understand it" model above, though.
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I've been through this module. My character had previously died but had been fished out of the river of souls and put in some sort of arena before the party managed a scroll of raise dead. As a worshiper of Pharasma, my (raised) character was made aware in a dream that Pharasma was NOT happy that someone was "fishing without a license" in her river.
Since you need a tuning fork attuned to the plane you're trying to reach to Plane Shift there was questing to get them including travel to planes other than the final destination plane complete with random encounters, bargaining, diplomacy, etc. Upon finally reaching the boneyard, there was finding the right gravestone. If I recall, it had the date of my original death on it.
The primary issue with striking the gravestone with Ovinrbane was that only the person who's gravestone it was could do it. There was some concern about Ovinrbane's ego being more powerful than my characters, so many buffs were cast. On the third strike with Ovinrbane, the sword shattered (well more like exploded) requiring a reflex save or have bits of the sword stuck in you (with unknown but probably bad consequences).
I did have a little feedback from certain other party-members along the line of "I don't worship Pharasma, I don't owe her jack, why am I risking myself along on this quest again ?". But wizards are always grumpy.
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In warhammer fantasy roleplay 2nd edition, you have a table to roll from (as a human, it's a religion thing) that will give you your "doom". It's pretty generic (with stuff like "luck will abandon thee") but it applies to everyone.
Mine is "Ranald will abandon thee" (GM say ranald is the god of luck/thieves) which is pretty fitting since my character is a follower of the goddess Verena, goddess of justice & truth (who apparently dislikes ranald a lot).
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Prophecy has been vague and inaccurate since the death of Aroden. Play on this.
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Here lies Karg the Impaler.
Died on a wednesday,
With not a coin to his name.
Substitute Karg for any other character name as needed :-)
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Have the tomb stone specify the exact date.
Have them find a chisel next to it.
:)
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Does time flow the same on all planes? The date could be the date on that plane and have no relation to the date on the prime material plane.
I prefer the blurred date / reason or constantly changing one, myself.
/cevah
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I like the shifting words the best.
But I kinda also like the idea of the Inevitables being involved. If only one PC sees his death date, make it very soon, then have some way he "cheats" it. Uses a forbidden, Outer Realm artifact or something. Make a deal with a devil. Whatever. Then, he cheats fate, and Inevitables get pissed. He was SUPPOSED to die that day.
EDITED TO ADD: You could even have some cool, weird side-effect to cheating death. People have a harder and harder time remembering his name / when his name is written, it gets slightly blurry. Maybe even something bigger than that, due to the artifact/deal used. He gets unnatural powers, in addition to unnatural curses.
Also, the original death would have to be something that he couldn't be raised from. Some epic something.
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No reason it should have a date.
Remember, Pharasma is the FORMER Goddess of Prophecy. She no longer has that power.
Maybe have one lightly painted on, but not set in stone? Pharasma & minions have a hypothesis, but not a conclusion. Also, go for the joke and include all prior deaths and resurrections. Maybe have more deaths and resurrections painted on, too.
I think the Haunting Of Harrowstone (book one of Carrion Crown) had a haunt that relayed spookiness through gravestones, might be some inspiration in there as well.
Uh, not exactly. Actually...
The word "grave" appears a lot more often, but doesn't directly connect to a specific haunt (though there is one event it connects to).
Still, there's nothing preventing you from doing so.
No reason it should have a date.
Remember, Pharasma is the FORMER Goddess of Prophecy. She no longer has that power.
Not exactly. She's still the goddess of prophecy, but people are just not acknowledging it as much because prophecy seems broken in Golarion (this has happened before).
Put one of their names and a date on a gravestone for them to see. Have the date be very soon.
When that date comes around its likely the PC will know and be on edge all game. Throw some dangerous encounters at them where the PC thinks he is going to die. Make them progressively more and more dangerous. Its likely the Player will avoid any combat so make sure its an ambush he cant run from. If he actually does get critted or whatever else that would kill him just flub the roll. Make sure he gets dangerously close to death but doesn't die.
When the day finally passes after everyone was likely standing guard all night and the Players are like wtf? They'll likely go check out the gravestone..only to see its been supernaturally changed to a far later date since they've changed their own fate.
+1
Not exactly. She's still the goddess of prophecy, but people are just not acknowledging it as much because prophecy seems broken in Golarion (this has happened before).
I remember seeing a bit somewhere that explicitly states something along the lines of "her portfolio includes...prophecy (former)" but can't remember where.
In any case, there's this bit from Carrion Crown (book 2 has a large bit on Pharasma) on the thread subject.
At the moment of birth, she knows where a particular soul will end up, but she reserves her official verdict until the last possible moment, as she knows prophecies can be wrong or fail completely. She believes in fate and predestination but understands the need for vagueness and misinterpretation to allow for the illusion of free will.
So a tombstone would most definitely not have your death date on it.
The tombstone could have all (and I mean ALL) of the details of the character's death on it, BUT...
Whenever they try to even think about the details their memory becomes foggy, like trying to remember last night's dream. No matter how hard they try, or what kind of magic they use, all they can remember is that they looked at the tombstone and that it had the details of their death on it.
You could make the effect even more surreal by having it happen to the PC while they are looking at the tombstone. You could even have this work whenever they look at anyone's tombstone who is still alive. Or any tombstone at all, since pretty much any creature in Golarion could be resurrected at some point by someone (or something).
Time Travel.
Or
Somehow they die, but their spectre or ghost is around and can actually move the weapon to hit their gravestone 3 times with it. Perhaps they have such a strong will that after life they come back as such?
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Just make it a sarcastic rhyming epithet.
He tried to sneak, so as not to wake it
But he was loud. He did not make it.
He tried to fight a dog from Hell
It grabbed his leg. And he fell.
They told him twas too hard a fight
He called them wrong. They were right.
He stared too long at slabs of stone
But in this Yard, he's not alone.