Deckenpuppel's page

Download worked fine for me Thanks for continuing the great work!

As it so happened, my ToN group played yesterday and we are slowly moving towards ending the first book. Homebrewed a lot of stuff, and the route my players took it seems like they might not go to Vothys at all but rather focus on helping the Xan and Xan-Zara to contain the awakening essence of Z'ggu that has slowly started corrupting the Xan, leading to sorcerers and bloodragers awakening and going crazy. My players seem to like the weird duality and mystery of the Xan's worship of these two "deities" (haven't found out more yet).

I will definitely keep looking towards this thread for future inspiration.

Just for the record, I for one appreciate everything you have done and keep doing here in the thread, Kevin_video. I don't expect anything official will ever happen, but for as long as my group and I will keep playing our dwarven campaign, I will keep checking this thread to see what's new and how people expanded/added to the AP.

I also discovered druchite relatively recently and also intend to put them into the ToN world. For a simple material though, I thought it might be a bit much for my group of dwarves, and so I turned it into basically the one kind of weapon enchantment the Svirfneblin excel in. I think it fits the hole gnomes and illusions stick pretty well and I also like how creatures that have similar abilities are already in the adventure and can either have been the inspiration or can maybe provide component parts for such enchantments.

My own version of Dammerhall is not yet fully fleshed out, but I kind of decided I would try and take some inspiration from Eberron's Sharn when it comes to the layout of the city. Districts could be named after kings of a past age (that are also represented by the statues seen in the picture of Dammerhall).

The Skisral got wiped out in my game so they were a non-starter. As for trade I think the majority of underground caravans are made up of giant lizards which have a climbing speed. So going up and down ridges and cave walls shouldn't be to much of a problem.

Hmm, I don't think that will work for me. The lizards by themselves might have no problems, but if Gunther's caravan is the example, they were using carts for which climbing simply is not an option. Even if they make the lizards carry the supplies in a different fashion, the guards still would have to make their way down. Sure, the lizard could be forced to make multiple trips, but with large shipments of marble of all things, I can't really see that working out so well.

In my game, I have simply added some ramps there. Surely with Vaustenstad being a major city at one point, there should be what is left of formerly established trade routes.

The Skis'raal in my game escaped from another plan, where a sinister overlord kept them as a slave raise to do his bidding and supply him with silk. To keep them in check/bound to him, he put a curse upon them, making them all but infertile, and only he knew to how to suppress that curse. Eventually, the white spider led the other Skis'raal in rebellion anyway and they escaped, but not without her mate having to sacrifice himself keep the overlord from following. That's why they are in decline. They simply can't reproduce in enough numbers to maintain their population, and every Skis'raal lost is a serious blow.

Now I just need a better reason why the Skis'raal and Xan are in opposition.

Has anyone elaborated on the background and culture of the Skis'raal? I feel like we got enough to get going when it comes to the Xan, but the Skis'raal seem a bit bland to me. Yes, they are spider people, but where do they come from and what do they want? If they are the apex predator of the jungle, why are they in decline? What happened to the other females, how where their other caves/settlements destroyed/abandoned. The AP indicates that their latest settlement is only about 220 years old. Does that mean the Skis'raal have only been in the fungal jungle such a relatively short period?

I am also curious about how people have dealt with the marble shipments from Fasturvalt to Vothys. If the dark road is held a secret by the Drow, I would assume they would not use it to transport the marble back to Vothys, and it also does not seem particularly evil for them to make it easy for the Svirfneblin, so I would assume the Svirfneblin were responsible for getting the marble to Vothys as part of the deal, which would mean they would regularly have to travel through the Fungal Jungle with a trade caravan. Unfortunately, the way it is written, none of the entrances to the jungle are at all suited for such a caravan, requiring climbing, and there is also no indication of any Svirfneblin trade routes or structures along the week-long track they would have to travel for each shipment. Or am I missing something?

I am currently still running Throne of Night. Actually started off with two groups (one dwarf, one drow) because I liked both angles and wanted to explore them both (separate versions of the world though, so no pvp). The drow have since fallen into hibernation due to time constrains on my part, but the dwarves are still standing tall, despite the fact that due to people being spread out, we are only able to sit down together every two or three months. Consequently, we are still in part 1.

With the drow, I decided to go with the seven demonic siblings being banished to Vothys. I had the young drow arrive at the outpost as small children, protected by the last influence and wealth of their collapsing house being used to buy them the time to grow up. We then went through the years until they reached maturity in intervals of a decade and used a very simple system to see how well their training was going and how well the seven managed to establish their house in Vothys, basically doing appropriate skill checks in a turn-based resource management game. The main idea was to give the players time to get to know the characters in Vothys (many of them were actually trained by the named drow mentioned in the AP) and allow them a first taste of leading the political entity of a noble house.

All of this took place under the "previous baron" that is mentioned in the AP, so the group was actually there when Satha arrived at the outpost (she too became the teacher of the group's magus, leading to some tension within the house because they were beginning to doubt his loyalties). After dealing with a couple of other outcast houses/families in Vothys and making and breaking some alliances, the prelude eventually ended with the group's rogue being "tested" by Zethra Morgus by being tasked to place some jewels throughout the Baron's tower, which turn out to be the very same fire jewels that are later used in the AP. In the chaos that errupted, the Baron was slain and Satha finally took over Vothys, leaving the group quite angry with her. Sadly that is pretty much where we stopped, with the group being summoned by the new baroness.

As I said, the dwarves managed to keep going. They won the battle of Fasturvalt a couple of sessions ago and are currently about to head into the fungal jungle, while simultaneously trying to navigate their way through the politics of Kladdenvalt, dealing with the conservative religious factions too timid to realise that the drow are a threat that cannot simply be ignored any longer.

So, despite everything that is going on (or not going on) with the AP, I have to say I am still very much enjoying the campaign. Naturally, I have started collecting my own ideas for how things might continue, as well as what is actually going on in Dammerhall. One character in the dwarf party is an oracle with a custom apocalypse/fire mystery that is dealing mostly with the dwarven deity of Dorosdwantar, the lord of the black flame that is the dwarven god of ruin, decline and misfortune and that is strongly connected/associated with the fall of Dammerhall, which made it kind of necessary for me to have a vague notion of what is going on due to the visions the oracle is receiving.

I tried accessing the site today. Avast Free Antivirus has still flagged it as dangerous and denied me access.

I was waiting for it to become available as well. Kind of disappointing, I was looking forward to reading it all week.