| Mediator92 |
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Y'all have some incredible ideas and storytelling chops, and I wish I'd both found and taken the time to read through this whole adventure thread before running this campaign. My campaign has been working through Strange Aeons every week since 2018 (lots of roleplaying, including homebrew romances and side-quests on the Sellen Starling), and we're only just now about to wrap up the Mysterium. I'm glad most everyone else is dissatisfied with the Okeno conclusion, and I'm hoping to get feedback and input for my alternate version of the Kaklatath Rescue.
Short and sweet, without the Necronomicon, there is no way to reach Neruzavin, as "ages ago, lost heroes beseeched the gods themselves to destroy it. Unwilling to unleash their wrath against the city for fear of simply fueling the nascent Great Old One, they instead sealed it away, encasing the alien city in divine wards." Now, without the Necronomicon, they will need Kaklatath's help in finding a way around those wards (my plan is to have her (possibly the Yithian mind in a human brain in a Mi-go Jar idea from earlier) help them follow Ley Lines through the First World to find the right Ley Line Intersection instead of navigating the Parchlands (this way there can be some more crazy shenanigans with Eldest and the foreshadowed rumors of a Shub-Niggurath corruption spreading through the verdant realm).
Anyway, that was a tangent- instead of Okeno, I've got Kaklatath trapped in a Mindscape based in a Cult of Hastur Headquarters (publicly known as the Kororo Estate, a la Melisenn Kororo, from Book 2). In terms of background, I have Kaklatath having spent the past several centuries flitting from host to host, in an effort to track down any and all knowledge that could help the Yithians defeat the Flying Polyps, Hastur, and Xhamen-Dor for good. Her most recent excursion (and which led to her being trapped in an elderly keleshite body) was the infiltration of the Qadiran chapter of the Hastur cult posing as a helpless and clueless slave. She was investigating the Cult's library when Lowls and Zandalus reawakened Xhamen-Dor, and in her haste to get out, she accidentally triggered some occult wards the Cult had put in place, and was captured, and her identity found out, since she was now unable to use her powers thanks to Xhamen-Dor's physical corruption of her 'original' body. The cultists, not being stupid, realized just how valuable and potentially dangerous a Yithian prisoner could be, and threw the kitchen sink at rendering her helpless (the High Priest of Hastur, Melisenn's father, has some hefty political clout in his public persona).
Now trapped and magically-crippled in a cult prison, the party will have to infiltrate the home of an important noble in the nation of Qadira (homeland to one of the PCs) in order to rescue Kaklatath. However, the actual prison will technically be hidden behind a Permanency-d Mindscape Door, allowing for infinite opportunities to not just crank up the psychological horror, but also get the PCs to start questioning whether or not their goal of stopping Xhamen-Dor is for the best or not (a major NPC I've introduced is effectively an emissary of Nyarlathotep, and is 'guiding' them on their quest to stop Xhamen-Dor because, in his summarized words, "Hastur and Xhamen-Dor are getting impatient - their actions jeopardize the full potential of the stars aligning. Stop them, and everything will fall into place as it should".
TL;DR Do y'all have any advice for running a psychological horror Mindscape Dungeon Crawl to rescue Kaklatath trapped in the depths of a Cult of Hastur HQ?