Cuindless's page

Update: 4 more deaths in Secrets of the Soul Pillars. The fight with Fetor Abradius was quite nearly a TPK...

Life's Bazaar - 1 (permanent)
Drakthar's Way - 1 (permanent)
Flood Season - 2 (both ressurected)
Zenith Trajectory - 2 (both resurrected)
Demonskar Legacy - 2 (both resurrected)
Test of the Smoking Eye - 2 (one resurrected, one permanent)
Secrets of the Soul Pillars - 5 so far... (resurrected)

Game Session Number 2 went pretty well. After a brief tussle with the starving wolves in the cave entrance, the characters burned down the spider webbing with a judicious use of lamp oil and torch. I hammed up the description of smoldering spider corpses littering the stairway down to the false tomb. As they entered, the sound of strange wind and whispers really affected the party's mood. The Scholar (aka Sorcerer) of the party put on a brave face and told the other characters that he had heard of this sort of thing in his studies (an outright lie). One of the thieves triggered the collapsing elevator trap and therefore released the swarm of acid beetles and the mad slasher. This event was greeted with a fairly horrified "What the hell are these things?!?" The barbarian rushed in to fight, and after taking some pretty serious damage, initiated the retreat. One of the thieves used the remaining lamp oil to create a fiery barrier so that the group could escape.

Once back in town, they needed a place to stay so that they could rest and recouperate. After attempting to rig the dogfight at the Feral Dog to make money, they were "politely asked to leave" by Kullen (the albino half-orc who I've replaced with a huge albino Cimmerian). They found Jalek's Flophouse and decided to find a room there. After a fight with the previous occupant, the party is now resting up and preparing to return.

All in all I'm happy with how things are going. I seem to be doing a good job of capturing the gritty violence of Conan's Hyboria while mixing in just the right amount of horrific suspense. The group seems genuinely worried about how exactly they're going to fight this swarm of strange beetle-monsters, and they are taking a great deal of time devising plans to kill and/or bypass the creatures. What really makes me happy is that this is only the beginning! Desecrated remains, necromancers and reanimated corpses await!

Wow... let's try and tally this up...

Life's Bazaar - 1 (permanent)
Drakthar's Way - 1 (permanent)
Flood Season - 2 (both ressurected)
Zenith Trajectory - 2 (both resurrected)
Demonskar Legacy - 2 (both resurrected)
Test of the Smoking Eye - 2 (one resurrected, one permanent)
Secrets of the Soul Pillars - 1 so far... (resurrected)

Cuindless wrote:

We're in the middle of Flood Season right now. We have five PCs and one NPC Henchman:

Alexavier Dessaris - Male Aasimar Paladin4
Elrohir Eveningfall - Male Elven Ranger4/Wizard2
Fiann MacCumhail - Male Dwarven Cleric5 (Marthammor Duin)
Quincey the Pirate - Male Human Swashbuckler2/Rogue3
Zeffa Pynapsion - Female Human Bard5/Cleric1 (Sune)
(NPC)Krylscar Endercott - Male Human Warrior2/Barbarian1

There have been two permanent character deaths:

Yasheida - Female Fire Genasi Wizard2
Lothar "The Lovable" - Male Human Rogue 3

Update:

The party now stands as:

Alexavier Dessaris - Male Aasimar Paladin9
Ruphus Laro (Cohort) - Male Human Cleric7
Elrohir Eveningfall - Male Elf Ranger7/Wizard2/Arcane Archer1
Fiann "Stonebender" MacCumhail - Male Dwarf Cleric10 (Marthammor Duin)
Quincey the Pirate - Male Human Swashbuckler5/Rogue5
Zeffa Pynapsion - Female Human Bard9/Cleric1 (Sune)
Nebron Farlander - Male Gnome Rogue9

Krylscar Endercott has been removed from the party as his services as bodyguard have become increasingly unnecessary.

Further Update - The party now stands as follows:

Alexavier Dessaris - Male Aasimar Paladin10
Ruphus Laro (Cohort) - Male Human Cleric8
Elrohir Eveningfall - Male Elf Ranger7/Wizard2/Arcane Archer2
Fiann "Stonebender" MacCumhail - Male Dwarf Cleric11 (Marthammor Duin)
Quincey the Pirate - Male Human Swashbuckler5/Rogue5/Dread Pirate1
Zeffa Pynapsion - Female Smoking Eye Human Bard9/Cleric1 (Sune)
Rickett Willow - Male Halfling Rogue7/Dungeon Delver3

I thought this would be a problem as well, but it wasn't. In fact, my PCs welcomed him with open arms and treating him like a sworn brother. Only one PC was distrustful and she was unanimously shouted down by the others. His betrayal was the ultimate "I told you so" moment for her.

I don't know how the mechanics or Rogues work in the Conan setting, but let me give a piece of controversial advice before you get too deep into the story:

Consider replacing the idea that critical hits and sneak attacks are necessitated on striking "critical/vital organs" and adopt the idea that any object and/or creature can be critically hit/sneak attacked due to the strike being "spectacular". At a certain point in the path, there is no place for a rogue in Age of Worms (and that point comes as soon as the first Kyuss undead are introduced).

In my campaign, our rogue became a paladin (a sort of fantasy FBI agent, if you will). He gained the ability to sneak attack undead. In retrospect (and you may see this comming in 4e), it seems anti-climactic to not be able to deal this additional damage to your construct/ooze/undead foes.

Just my advice...

In Conan, because magic is so handicapped and difficult to use, most of the time the characters run from "monsters". I plan on replacing a lot of the hordes of undead with cultists and the like, which should allow the thief's backstab ability to continue being useful.

So, I started my Hyborian Age of Worms campaign yesterday and thought everything went pretty well. With two thieves, a scholar and a barbarian (those are core classes in the Conan RPG), the group was fairly well balanced (one of the thieves is a combat build while the other is more of a skill-jockey build). I went against the suggestion in the AP and had the characters arrive in Diamond Lake (called "Kosmelini" in my game) instead of being from there. This mean that most of the first session was spent roleplaying instead of fighting, which is okay by me. One of the players is a hard core Robert Howard fan, and he remarked how well I captured the look and feel of Conan's world (A+ for me!). By the end of the night the characters were flat broke (having consumed too much ale and partaken of too many "disreputable ladies" from the Midnight Salute) so there they were, out looking for an ancient tomb to plunder. Enter NPC with adventure hook stage left! Starting tomorrow (after their hangovers) they're setting out for the Whispering Cairn wherein waits both riches and madness...

Depends what you mean by worth it. One of the problems with the Hyborian setting so far is that it has no adventure paths. Admittedly Conan is written in a short story style but still some pcs and dms want campaigns so they can enjoy building up characters as we all know, and D&D still does this (in my humble opinion) better than most gaming systems. Using Age of Worms might be quite inspirational.

See, I thought Age of Worms was particularly fitting to the setting since it seems to be more horror oriented than high fantasy oriented. Savage Tide might work as well because of the preponderance of pirates in the Hyborian setting, but I'm not as familiar with that adventure path.

We're in the middle of Flood Season right now. We have five PCs and one NPC Henchman:

Alexavier Dessaris - Male Aasimar Paladin4
Elrohir Eveningfall - Male Elven Ranger4/Wizard2
Fiann MacCumhail - Male Dwarven Cleric5 (Marthammor Duin)
Quincey the Pirate - Male Human Swashbuckler2/Rogue3
Zeffa Pynapsion - Female Human Bard5/Cleric1 (Sune)
(NPC)Krylscar Endercott - Male Human Warrior2/Barbarian1

There have been two permanent character deaths:

Yasheida - Female Fire Genasi Wizard2
Lothar "The Lovable" - Male Human Rogue 3

Update:

The party now stands as:

Alexavier Dessaris - Male Aasimar Paladin9
Ruphus Laro (Cohort) - Male Human Cleric7
Elrohir Eveningfall - Male Elf Ranger7/Wizard2/Arcane Archer1
Fiann "Stonebender" MacCumhail - Male Dwarf Cleric10 (Marthammor Duin)
Quincey the Pirate - Male Human Swashbuckler5/Rogue5
Zeffa Pynapsion - Female Human Bard9/Cleric1 (Sune)
Nebron Farlander - Male Gnome Rogue9

Krylscar Endercott has been removed from the party as his services as bodyguard have become increasingly unnecessary.

For those unfamiliar with Hyboria, it is the world in which Robert Howard's Conan novels are set. It is a rather low magic, Sword and Sorcery type setting where monsters are decidedly more horrific and combat is distinctly more grim. It shares a lot of horror aspects with H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu novels, only set in a mythic age. Do any of you think that this would be a good setting to run AoW? If so, can you offer any advice? Has anyone familiar with the setting attempted this?

The one place where NPCs are missing in Cauldron, in my opinion, is in taverns. There are no Tavern-keepers, waitresses, barmaids, et cetera. If your groups are anything like mine, they'll spend a great deal of their time in the tavern. So I sat down and created a small group of interesting tavern-folk and then just plopped them into the tavern the PCs started going to regularly.

The Great Seltzer Battle of the Abyss

One of my PCs has taken Profession Clown. During the second test of the Smoking Eye, half the party failed to get teleported with the rest of the group during one of the battles. Realizing they had no means to get to their comrades quickly, the clown brought out his seltzer bottle and aimed it at the annoying gnome sorcerer. She had readied a Wall of Force, so used it to stop the seltzer.

The battle of wills continued for several rounds until the gnome was thoroughly doused.

There is no way to capture the juvenile hilarity of the situation in a post. The action between the clown Ranger/Pathwarden was far more entertaining than the life-or-death struggle against a greater basilisk.

Orcus hung his head in shame.

That's hilarious! One of the PCs in my game is a gnomish rogue going for the Thief-Acrobat prestige class. He is constantly pulling pranks on the other party members. For instance: The leader of the party, an Aasimar paladin, found a nice shiny magical breastplate that he was so fond of he wore it everywhere, including the tavern. One day the gnome gets up to get himself another drink, and the paladin asks him to get a mug of ale. The gnome comes back saying, "Here's your ale" and sticks it right to the breastplate with an application of sovereign glue. The paladin must have had that mug attached to his breastplate for hours before he found Vortimax Weer and enough gold to buy some universal solvent. In game hilarity like that is just too rare.

Well I see you've already taken care of this interesting circumstance in your campaign, so my information will be more of a "here's what I did" than any sort of advice. Incidentally, I posted a thread about the interesting similarities in appearance between Cora, Triel and the Lord Mayor in a previous thread and got some pretty good responses.

First, I established early on in my campaign that Triel is in her mid thirties now, having been around 25 years old when she went on her "killing spree". This along with the different last names ruled out Triel being Cora's sister, but it went well for being an aunt. This made Lorelei Lathenmire nee Eldurast. I also created a romantic connection between her and Terseon Skellerang to create dramatic tension when the PCs ended up hauling her in front of the "good" Captain for arrest and trial.

I must admit I'm a little sad to hear that you switched her god from Hextor to Erythnul. I'm running SCAP in Forgotten Realms, so she was a Priestess of Bane in my game. One of the players is very knowledgeable about FR, so he was able to ask some very interesting questions upon discovering she was a Priestess of Bane. He presented to the group that, if she follows Bane then she's almost certainly Lawful Evil. This didn't sit well with the allegedly insane wholesale slaughter of several fellow guards. He was able to piece together the idea that she was acting on orders from a superior she considered legitimate. More foreshadowing for the later conspiracy. Throw in Skaven Umbermeads mad scribblings and they thought they had it all figured out...

This wasn't really a situation in the game, but it was an extremely funny moment for me as the DM.

We had a player depart the group in the middle of the Kopru Ruins. I run a pretty good game, so I have a waiting list of players who wanted in. The guy I invited decided to make a Dwarven Cleric. We're doing a few Q&A about his background, et cetera, when I ask the question, "Is your character afraid of any monsters or does he have any phobias?" He responds, "Sure, uh... my character's afraid of... spiders, I guess."

I just sat there blinking, thinking about the 4 different rooms filled with monstrous spiders, not to mention the Harpoon Spider guarding one of the Wands of Control Water. I couldn't help it, I just burst into laughter and said, "Okay, awesome!"

Needless to say, it made for some great roleplaying when the characters finally ran into the spiders.

My PCs wanted a name that represented each of them equally. Eventually, they called themselves "The Fiery Drums of War Band". After the disappearance of the Fire Genasi wizard, they became "The Drums of War". Most Cauldronites call them "The Wardrums".

My players pretty much cleared out both Jzadirune and the Malachite Hold completely. It was a wholesale Dark Creeper and Skulk slaughter until the Paladin decided, finally, to detect evil and discovered that the denizens of Jzadirune were (gasp) Neutral...

The choicest bit of roleplay, though, was a little exchange between two players when they finally made it to Starbrow.

See, one of the PCs was an orphan, while another was a wizard. The orphan was very angry with Keygan, while the wizard was sympathetic. The ultimate moment came when the orphan PC said, "I don't care one lick about Keygan... he can die for all I care, and his familiar too. He traded the lives of 4 children for a stinkin' rat..." Now, the wizard gets all defensive and says, "Its not just a rat, its his familiar!" "Seems to me," the orphan PC says, "that this thing looks, smells and takes a dump just like a rat..."

We're in the middle of Flood Season right now. We have five PCs and one NPC Henchman:

Alexavier Dessaris - Male Aasimar Paladin4
Elrohir Eveningfall - Male Elven Ranger4/Wizard2
Fiann MacCumhail - Male Dwarven Cleric5 (Marthammor Duin)
Quincey the Pirate - Male Human Swashbuckler2/Rogue3
Zeffa Pynapsion - Female Human Bard5/Cleric1 (Sune)
(NPC)Krylscar Endercott - Male Human Warrior2/Barbarian1

There have been two permanent character deaths:

Yasheida - Female Fire Genasi Wizard2
Lothar "The Lovable" - Male Human Rogue 3

Good question. Maybe the killing took place before she turned to Hextor/Bane or the guards offended her, or they discovered she revered an evil deity, who knows....

That's also not a bad idea. Maybe she lost it, murdered a bunch of her fellow guardsmen, fled to the woods wounded and deranged where she was found by Banite Clergy seeking to establish a foothold in the area. Seeing her formerly powerful discipline (being a Helmite... the St. Cuthbert equivalent in FR), they saw great potential in her and told her about Bane. She and Bane fit together like two interlocking puzzle pieces, and since then she's found a renewed vigor in her life...

She worked indirectly for the Cagewrights and thus Lord Vhalantru, the Ebon Triad was just hired to assist in the construction of the soulcages. I let my players find a notebook belonging to Skaven, which gives a little background concerning the members of the Triad. Encrypted parts mention the cages and the involvement of Lord Vhalantru/Orbius.

I had forgotten about that. She actually was doing work for the "Secret Lords of Cauldron", just not directly. Now how do I let my players know some of that without revealing too much... villainous monologue, anyone?

Before Triel killed her fellow gaurds Triel had been bethrothed to Skylar Krewis.

That's not a bad idea. Unfortunately I've already established in my game that Skylar is a young up-and-comer in the guard, and I've put his age at roughly 19. This was to make him a romantic interest to one of the female PCs. Since I've also established that Triel killed the guardsmen almost 10 years ago, that's a no go for me.

However... I can make her betrothed to one Terseon Skellerang before "going nuts". That would make for some juicy dramatic tension there.

This would be a great twist to say that the Lord Mayor had a delience with Cora's mother and that Triel had initially come to the city looking for her real father and found him in the lord mayor. Before she revealed her origins to him she thought she would prove herself t him and get closer to him by joining the gaurd.

I had considered this, though I thought that roping too many prominent PCs into the same lineage would stretch the bounds of credibility a little. Though given the state of medieval noble inbreeding in the real world, that might not be such a stretch after all. Still, muddying the waters with "so-and-so is so-and-so's distant cousin" might be a little too intricate. I run a game not a geneology lesson.

Again in my campaign the wands were stolen to lower the Phantom Lake but she used the excuse of randsome to sell the idea to Shaven.

Wow! That's a really good idea, and it adds in another level of intricacy to her plot. This way she stole the wands to:

a) Scare the populace of Cauldron and hold the entire town hostage unless they meet certain demands.

b) Eventually ransom the wands back when the flooding is at its worst, thus bankrolling her "army" for conquest.

c) Use the wands while they are in her possession to lower Phantom Lake and recover some magical items supposedly lost underneath.

Of course, there don't need to be any actual items there if the PCs decide to try and find them themselves, but the rumor would be enough to fuel such actions. Great ideas all around!

My players are currently investigating the Kopru Ruins and are asking some very tough questions about Triel Eldurast's background. So far, they've only been talking amongst one another rather than asking me (or any NPCs) questions directly, but its only a matter of time before some NPC gets the third degree here. Here are some of the questions they've been asking:

1. Why did Triel kill all those guards? If she's a worshipper of Bane (my game takes place in FR), she's probably Lawful Evil. "Just going nuts" isn't a common occurence for the cold, calculating murderousness of Lawful Evil.

Right now my thinking is to create a tenuous link between her and Vhalantru, Thifirane Rhiavadi, Embril Aloustinai and other "secret lords" of Cauldron. This can provide both foreshadowing and a logical reason behind "executing traitorous dissadents".

2. Why do Cora Lathenmire and Triel Eldurast look so much alike? The resemblance is uncanny! There's also a little resemblance to the Lord Mayor...

My response to this will probably be that Cora Lathenmire's mother was the older sister, or perhaps cousin, of Triel, thus explaining the familial resemblance. As for the Lord Mayor, perhaps the similarities there are just a regional trait. Any ideas?

3. Why did she steal the wands in the first place?

Though the stated answer of ransoming them back to Cauldron to fund her army is an acceptable one, it doesn't have the flair of the truly villainous. Money is rarely a good enough motive for criminal masterminds such as a Cleric of Bane. What I'm thinking about doing is making them part of a tyrannical plot to hold Cauldron hostage while sowing fear, strife and discontent, all things that her glorious God would desire.

Thoughts? Ideas? Interesting stories to tell about your own alterations? Please let me know.