I majorly rewrote The Divinity Drive. The changes started when--to avoid conflict with the Technic League--the party fled Starfall in their small scout spacecraft. Unity took remote control of the spaceship, and though the party was capable of deactivating the remote control, they let Unity land them on top of the Divinity.
They bluffed that they were a repair crew trained by Casandalee. Unity was not fooled by the bluff, but he pretended to be fooled because he wanted Casandalee back, even in the form of some recorded memories on a compact AI. And he put the party to work as a repair crew. We had a lot of fun as the party made serious repairs to a damaged mile-long spaceship, fought shadows and wraiths, befriended some of Unity's other minions, and snuck around via maintenance tunnels to learn Unity's secret plan. The players liked the repairing-the-spaceship adventures so much that, except for the sneaking around, they kind of forgot that Unity was the enemy.
I changed Unity's secret plan. The module says
The Iron God’s methods of forcing worship and enslaving minds have been perfected, and it’s moved on to transform flesh as well. It has met with particular success with gargoyles here, for their supernatural association with earth and metal made them excellent targets for total subjugation. Unity is confident that once it escapes its confines within Silver Mount, it can use these methods of control over mind and flesh to spread its faith throughout Golarion like a disease. Central to Unity’s goal is the launch of a shuttle that’s been altered to carry the AI’s computer core and the Divinity Drive (see page 60) into orbit above Golarion.
Nope, the experiment with Hellion proved that a remote computer core is unreliable. Instead, it plans to launch the Divinity itself. Sure, the gigantic spaceship is half buried in a mountain and its engines are no longer capable of lifting it to orbit, but Unity has the Divinity Drive, a device that can open portals to outer space. Step 1. Dig tunnels around the Divinity and plant explosive charges that will clear the mountain away from the Divinity. Step 2. Open a portal above the Divinity with the gas giant Bretheda on the other side. The gravity from Bretheda will pull the Divinity through the portal. Step 3. Open another portal to escape to orbit around Aballon before the Divinity crashes into Bretheda. Step 4. Steal Aballonan technology to finish repairing the Divinity.
As for the city of Starfall, it will be crushed under avalanches and then sucked out into space. Unity will try to minimize the about of debris that accompanies the Divinity to space, so maybe half the city of 30,000 people will survive. Unity does not care about the lives of non-Androffan people.
The party snuck into the Godmind via the "weaknesses between planes" (page 65) in the Divinty Core chamber. I made the Godmind a lot bigger--as big as the Divinity--as a patchwork of interconnected computer games that Unity played to pass the time while it was stuck isolated before it could start repairs. Nevertheless, the PCs encountered Unity's solar angel avatar, almost at full strength, and had to fight it. A 15th-level party defeated a CR 23 evil solar angel that could also cast Unity's spells in an awesome battle that lasted across several game sessions and 10 minutes of in-game time.
They left the Godmind for the Shuttle Bay (room A17) via the teleporter. They discovered that while they had fought in the Godmind, Unity had loaded the Divinity Drive into its shuttle spacecraft along with the Overlord Robot, blown open the tunnel out of the Shuttle Bay, flown the shuttle to the top of the Command Center, and clamped it into place ready to open a portal in the sky. Unity can implement its evil plan immediately.
Unity agreed to a one-hour truce with the party. They could evacuate the slaves that planted the explosives in the tunnels around the mountain into the safe interior of the Divinity before Unity blew up the mountain.
The party left a charismatic NPC, Val Baine, to evacuate the slaves and rushed to the Security Center to get their dying repair drone cohort DW5, called Dwalin, repaired. That was a ruse, because after dropping off Dwalin they went to the Computer Core. I had slipped them a computer hacking rig. They were going to hack into Unity and replace its mind with Casandalee's. (My wife said, "I've been wanting to do that ever since Boffin met the insufferable computer.")
They were so good at this deception that I rewarded them by letting them lock high priestess Ophelia outside the Computer Core room. They fought the guardian robots and hacked into Unity. This took several rounds, so Ophelia blasted the door to bits with her rail gun. The wizard cohort cast Wall of Force to block her again. She switched to blasting through the wall. The party finished hacking Unity and escaped via the virtual game rigs back into the Godmind before they had to battle Ophelia. They had not rested after battling Unity's solar angel avatar and Ophelia had managed to hit a few with a quickened Irradiate, so they were in bad shape. Casandalee used the powers of the Godmind for quickened sleep and fast spell preparation for the party and then they returned to the Shuttle Bay via the teleporter again.
The Wall of Force expired. Ophelia entered the Computer Core room and cast Miracle to restore Unity to normal. Unity announced its restored presence to the party over the Shuttle Bay's public address system. then we ended the game session for the night. Both the players and I need time to plan.
The miracle did not re-establish Unity's link to the Godmind, so Unity is no longer an Iron God. Due to convoluted details too lengthy to describe here, Dwalin is now in charge of the Godmind. However, Unity can still blow up the mountain and open the portal in the sky.
Has the party lost their chance to save Starfall? One of the most logical acts for Unity is to blow up the mountain right now, before the party can disable the detonation mechanism. Or should Unity give the party a third chance after they broke their bargain on the second chance? I feel guilty about undoing their hard work with an unexpected Miracle spell, but Ophelia did have it and its 25,000gp material component prepared. I allowed Dwalin an opposed Wisdom check to block the spell, since the spell was powered by the Godmind's energies, but Dwalin rolled a natural 1 and had a total of 5. Ophelia rolled an 18 for a total of 26.
I can delay opening the portal on the excuse that the Divinity Drive requires several minutes to do so. Or I could have the fun of Iron Gods in spaaace.
Have you finished the campaign yet?
Have you finished the campaign yet?
No. My wife, Boffin's player, is on a cross-country trip, driving her parents from Michigan to Arizona to see their new great-granddaughter, who is also our grandniece. The game is in hiatus until March 31.
I developed a plan for delaying the destruction of Silver Mount and Starfall. I rewrote Bastion as an ancient space-exploration robot and the party befriended him (see Make a Roll of Existential Philosophy). And in doing maintenance on the ship, they returned control of the terawatt anti-meteor particle beams from Unity to the Security Center. Bastion is going to fire those beams. Firing in an atmosphere, those beams will create enough static to block the radio signal to detonate the explosives planted around Silver Mount.
Since this solution resulted from the party's actions: befriending Bastion and altering the particle beams--it feels less like a Deus Ex Machina than other delaying tactics.
Then the party will be on the clock again, because Unity will send robots to cut off the power to the beams.
Last week, one player sent me an email about the Miracle spell that said, "You don’t so much cast a miracle as request one. You state what you would like to have happen and request that your deity (or the power you pray to for spells) intercede." Since the party had cut Unity off from the Godmind, that player argued that Ophelia could not cast Miracle. I had my own rules lawyer counter-arguments ready. And it irritated me. If my players cannot deal with failure in the game, then my urge is to teach them to deal with failure by giving them more practice at failure.
Fortunately, my main urge is to give them a second chance, because second chances are exciting. But this would be a third chance, and I could use advice on how third chances affect the mood of the game.
Have you finished the campaign yet?No. My wife, Boffin's player, is on a cross-country trip, driving her parents from Michigan to Arizona to see their new great-granddaughter, who is also our grandniece. The game is in hiatus until March 31.
I developed a plan for delaying the destruction of Silver Mount and Starfall. I rewrote Bastion as an ancient space-exploration robot and the party befriended him (see Make a Roll of Existential Philosophy). And in doing maintenance on the ship, they returned control of the terawatt anti-meteor particle beams from Unity to the Security Center. Bastion is going to fire those beams. Firing in an atmosphere, those beams will create enough static to block the radio signal to detonate the explosives planted around Silver Mount.
Since this solution resulted from the party's actions: befriending Bastion and altering the particle beams--it feels less like a Deus Ex Machina than other delaying tactics.
Then the party will be on the clock again, because Unity will send robots to cut off the power to the beams.
Last week, one player sent me an email about the Miracle spell that said, "You don’t so much cast a miracle as request one. You state what you would like to have happen and request that your deity (or the power you pray to for spells) intercede." Since the party had cut Unity off from the Godmind, that player argued that Ophelia could not cast Miracle. I had my own rules lawyer counter-arguments ready. And it irritated me. If my players cannot deal with failure in the game, then my urge is to teach them to deal with failure by giving them more practice at failure.
Fortunately, my main urge is to give them a second chance, because second chances are exciting. But this would be a third chance, and I could use advice on how third chances affect the mood of the game.
The first module of the Savage Tide Adventure Path has an undead creature who attained undead status at the whim of another dark deity when his own would not answer a prayer to save him. This could be the same case here. Perhaps Zyphus, or another evil deity whose worshippers the party encountered during the campaign, decided to intervene when it saw that Unity could no longer answer Ophelia's prayer. In my opinion, story trumps rules, especially when there is no way for the characters or players to know how or why a spell effect was successful.
Third chances are all well and good if the group is in consensus, but that includes you as well. Its ultimately your decision.
The first module of the Savage Tide Adventure Path has an undead creature who attained undead status at the whim of another dark deity when his own would not answer a prayer to save him. This could be the same case here. Perhaps Zyphus, or another evil deity whose worshippers the party encountered during the campaign, decided to intervene when it saw that Unity could no longer answer Ophelia's prayer. In my opinion, story trumps rules, especially when there is no way for the characters or players to know how or why a spell effect was successful.
That is a wonderful explanation! Unity's plan will kill tens of thousands of people in Starfall as a consequence of Unity not caring to protect them. That pointless mass murder is straight up Zyphus's alley.
Furthermore, that part about Dwalin having control of the Godmind was direct intervention by Brigh. The players had modified a shrine in a Godmind computer game to a shrine of Brigh, so she was able to act directly. Where one god acts, another one could also.
That idea is now part of my story. Thanks.
Glad I could help! I really enjoy reading your Iron Gods posts!