One of my players, a tiefling sorcerer currently does not have any deity he follows. After meeting Longdreamer he was facinated of Desna and wants Desna as his deity.
I thought it would be nice to have some sort of rite of initiation, and came up with the idea to let him play a one shot adventure that is not real, but is a dream.
So the other players could get different character sheets playing his party in his dream. But I have no idea what an adventure designed around Desna could look like.
Maybe it could include some decisions, where he has to rely on his luck to pic the right decision, or something about traveling space between the planets (like Longdreamer did).. but I have nothing more..fleshed out. Any ideas??
Ok, maybe I have made something up that could be at least a bit interesting.
Party wakes up in the wilderness under a clear night sky. No clue where to go. When they mention the stars, I will give them 2-3 constellations they recognize. one of them the Stairs of Stars, the constellation of Desna. When they go in this direction, they will find a ruined temple, with the sign "Danger!".
The entry of that temple is a hall made of white stones, but unclear which material. A dried up water pool in the middle, and a destroyed desna statue on the far end. To the left and right there are two doors. One with a sign "Safe", the other with a sign "Unknown".
Behind the "Safe" door they will find two rooms, in both they have to fight hard monsters they already fought against, maybe a nasty robot, and the ghost of Furkas Xoud in the next room. The door in the last room brings them back to the entrance.
After the door "Unknown" comes another room with 6 doors, every door marked with the icon of an animal. Each door except from that marked with a butterfly leads into a room with a trap and a door on the far end, leading back to the 6 door room. The room with the butterfly leads to a room, where a night monarch waits. The night monarch tries to touch them, to communicate via telepathy. He says "trust me, climb my back".
When they do it, the monarch will breach through the ceiling of the ruin, flying off to the sky and into space. He will carry the SC through an asteroid field and through a nebula, to a planet far away.
He then says "Now jump, trust your luck". If they do it, they will fall down and land in a pool of water, in front of a second temple, this time fully intact. If they enter the temple, the entrance hall looks just like the one they came from, but not damaged. On the far end, there is a statue of desna, with a starknife. The voice of Desna tells the sorcerer "You have proven worthy, this is my gift for you". If he takes it, he will wake up where the party rested, being the only SC who remembers the dream. He finds the starknife in his hand (an adamantium starknife +2 with the ability to cast dimension door 1/day), and being able to wield the knife as he would have the talent to wield it. After that he worships desna and gets some knowledge religion bonuses in relevant situations.
Thoughts? ;)
Desna has been active in my Pathfinder campaigns, especially in my Rise of the Runelords campaign. In Iron Gods, I established that Desna had created the Divinity Drive herself as a gift to Androffa. She and the goddesses Brigh and Alseta have been working with the party to make sure Unity either transitions to a god in sane form or does not transition (the latter happened).
In addition, at 9th level, the strix skald in the party took the Leadership feat and acquired a lyrakien skald as an apprentice. I said that Longdreamer had directed the lyrakien to the strix.
In my games, visits to Desna on the plane Elysium, either by Plane Shift or in the afterlife, usually involve sitting down for hot cocoa at a nice outdoor café. The official home of Desna is the Sevenfold Cynosure, but I don't know enough about that place to create that setting.
An instructive dream would be appropriate for Desna to send. Living the launch of the Divinity would show her goals for the Divinity fleet, but that might derail the adventure directly to Silver Mount. The life of Casandalee would be more on the theme.
Imagine your tiefling sorcerer in a dream finding himself close to Iadenveigh, about 500 years ago in 4226 AR. He encounters a badly injured blue-skinned android, Casandalee. She is searching for an impact site where the Aurora crashed, so she is looking for a crater or a mound or solidified lava. This is before Iadenveigh was founded; instead, that location is an abandoned Kellid village, but the landscape is the same, so the sorcerer can help her find the Aurora and battle a mutated animal that made its lair there.
Casandalee is probably weaponless at this point, but she will have oracle spells. She might mention that she had been living in a cave to the northwest and had abandoned her stuff there. However, she avoids the topic of Unity and the Divinity, and instead tells of her travels from Alkenstar to Numeria. The themes of travel and luck and the stars should come up frequently. At the end, in the Aurora, she might well of the wonders of traveling the stars.
Thoughts? ;)
Oops, I had posted my ideas without refreshing the page to check for new posts.
I think of Desna as the kind who sends the unworthy on her missions rather than seeking out the worthy. She is great fun to play as a god who tries to get people to the right place at the right time and hopes that they do the right thing, yet refusing to follow her goals is part of their freedom. Thus, wandering at random is more Desna's style to me rather than following a trail of clues.
As for the nebula to fly through, look at the Butterfly Nebula.
Yep, thought of that nebula, too. Btw, my website ;)
http://space-view.net
Report from the ongoing session, played it as written and players really enjoyed it :)