Maevis's page

So the status is like this, PC's have cleared out about half of Jzadirune and driven out the remaining dark one's and skulks (they fled with their loot to the underdark, Kazmojen doesn't know that.) Ghelve's locks has a dozen town watch guarding the place, with PC's and Stormblades (the latter yet to only have succeeded on providing comic relief) making forays.

They have also made their way into area M22 (direct route, more or less), and killed or captured (and not handed over to the town guard) like 16 Hobgoblins. They've definitely raised the alarm, though they retreated to the surface.

Now they're considering to clear out the rest of Jzadirune and resting before going back down into the Malachite fortress.

I as a DM have two considerations to make:

#1: stormblades and Jzadirune, how much of it does it make sense for them to have cleared out? (Northernmost part remain unexplored by PC's). They've had a day, more or less, to work on it. Although a fun idea is to have the Raggamoffyn's taken stormblades captive.

#2: What does Kazmojen do? Shore up defenses? How? Flee?
Pyllrak takes off with the four children? (Terrem isn't important in my story).

Logic might suggest that he takes all of his wealth and marches out, slaves in tow. The PC's knows how to track, so that shouldn't be the end of it.

So I ordered the book, though with me being in Europe it might take some time for it to arrive. Though we finished Savage Tide this weekend, so we may not wish to wait for quite so long, and I do have Dungeon.

1. The book provides character traits, I found this list, are these ones accurate?

http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/shackledcityzero/wikis/shackled-city -traits

2. Anything of noteworthiness that was changed in Life's Bazaar from Magazine to book?

3. Could someone provide a short summary of Drakthar's way?
-What relation, if any, does it have to the rest of the story?
-What sort of opponents does the group have to face?

Not sure if I ever will run it, depends on what the RL group wants, we're still a fair bit away from finishing Savage Tide, but I like to ponder.

Having read through the campaign, I want to cut away Adimarchus completely, Thirteen cages is to be the Climax.

Plan is to pick up on some of the hints about making Valanthru a patron, the premise is that the PC's are from Sasserine and hired as caravan guards, making a stop at the lucky monkey (also picking up a few hints here and there about that), where the PC's are introduced to a few of the rumours about what's going on in Cauldron, also going to have the "Cauldron breeds adventurers" motivation. The cargo they are guarding could be anything from standard goods to a nobleman's bride (liking the last idea, could be fun), maybe an encounter, maybe not.

They meet Valanthru who redirects them towards the temple of St. Cuthbert and they stumble across the mugging scene.

For the rest of Life's Bazaar, I don't plan to change much, maybe make Valanthru helpful in finding the orphan, he's not going to appear to grab the boy at the end, prefering to use other tools (like the PC's, and having some nondescript backup-plan if that fails), remaining hidden.

Also, I don't want him to be a beholder, but rather a Rakshasha using the spell in the Stormreach supplement to fool even true seeing. Tacking on sorcerer levels to get the CR right. Having him be the mastermind of the whole plot to open up a portal to Carceri. And the one they have to defeat at the end of thirteen cages. This is mostly me adding a personal touch based on the fact that a Beholder is generally raving mad, while a Rakshasha is a manupulative behind the scenes bon vivant with eternal life, and therefore having the neccesary long range perspective to have pulled off the entire Shackleborn thing.

Not sure how to play their earlier combat with him, they might defeat him only to see him teleport away (and should they kill him, he has contingencies for that, so pop away anyways). Embryl could be added to the final battle to increase the ECL without making him more powerful, or she could replace one of the other villains that just seems to be there as a high level NPCs for the PC's to kill.

Might also be appropriate to simply replace several of those NPCs with other Raksasha's and perhaps bound outsiders/Demodand allies. I'd prefer to replace NPC's with backstories that only the DM knows about with NPC's/monsters without such backstories but more obvious connections to Orbius/Carceri.

Test of the smoking eye would obviously have to be thrown out of the window, but what of demonskar legacy? Any ideas on how to tie things back on track for secrets of the soul pillars?

Also would like to figure out a good motivation for Embryl and the rest of the Church of Wee Jas, one idea is that Embryl simply is madly in love with Orbius and Wee Jas tolerates her actions because of this. Perhaps Demonskar Legacy sets the PC's on the trail to Sasserine where suspicion and concern about the events of Cauldron puts them on the path of confrontation of the church, and Iverson&co is merely defending the Temple from what he believes to be evil enemies, unaware of what Embryl really is up to.

On expansion on that, the rivalry between the stormblades and the PC's (which should be a lot more present than the campaign makes it out to be), in no small part engineered by Valanthru, is a direct cause to the hostility shown towards the PC's. Perhaps one of them gets to be a Wee Jas cleric.

For the PC-stormblade rivalry, I was thinking that the stormblades show up after the boss-fight in Life's Bazaar (or as deus ex machina) and starts claiming their "fair share" of the loot, and tries to squeese as much credit for putting an end to the kidnappings as they can.

That's the ideas I have currently. Thoughts? Comments?

Mostly to sate my curiosity than anything else, I have not found an answer to the question, and I can't exactly look into the GM notes either, seeing that I'm playing in the campaign, all I have seen yet is references to "recent events" in the player's guide and maybe one or two of the player supplements.

Savage Tide seems to start about a year after Age of Worms ends (or at least that's what the GM said), so I could dig into that path to see if anything is said there, but that might spoil the fun if we ever embarked on that campaign.

So anyone knows or have a good idea about how much time passed since shackled city?