Nickold Starweather

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Today, my group ran through most of the Mysterium (we picked up at the start of the second level). I thought I'd share some of what happened with you guys, as well as some of my thoughts.

Wall of Text:

I ended up changing a few things. I love this adventure path, but there is just a few ideas I wanted to use. The main thing that I did was introducing a new horror to the library: A Colour Out of Space. Like the other horrors, it was unleashed in Lowls' wake, and progressively made it's way through the levels from the second one, leaving it's mark everywhere. By the time the PC's entered the Mysterium, the Colour was resting in the Key to the Soul room, digesting its meals.

The great thing about the Colour is that allowed for a lot of build up. It started at the second level, where the air was tinged with the smell of ozone. Weird scorch marks could be found on the floor and the walls, and occasionally the PCs would stumble on a corpse or two that was reduced to fine, white dust. As for the enemies... I gave the mind-shattered guards in level two the colour-blighted template. Of course, this greatly decreased the actual threat they posed to the players, but I went for creepy rather than dangerous. Colour-drained, glowing guards, waiting apathetically for the alien to return to finish them off and reacting with violence to any attempt to approach them put the PCs a bit off, and they ended up leaving them alone.

I left in everything else, leaving Mun untouched because he's crazy enough as he is. The PCs captured Mun (Ice Tomb, man) and cleaned out everything else pretty handily, except for the Dread Wraith, which laid some real hurt on them. I kept building up to the confrontation with the Colour, which had crippled or killed some of the Mysterium guardians (I usually end up removing a couple of encounters and reward XP for progression instead, as I'm not a fan of very combat-heavy gameplay), culminating in a blast of stinging, choking air when the last angel gate was opened. At CR 10, the Colour wasn't a real challenge to level 11 PCs, but I played up the unknowable aspect of the creature for all that it was worth*, and it left a good impression. After a battle with the Keeper - holy smokes, that thing is brutal, killed the toughest party member - the Mysterium was saved.

My party chose to spend the full seven days they were allowed in the library. This meant that I had to improvise a lot, as the adventure has very little info on what they can actually learn there. I threw in some meager facts on the Necronomicon, and a few books on the list Adam linked. Great resource! I also improvised a book/account called "The World-Eater", which I used to explain and foreshadow things about Xhamen-Dor. I can share my notes on that book if you want!

Next stop, Okeno!

* Perhaps a bit cruelly, I ruled that the creature was immune to our Martial Artist's Exploit Weakness ability, even giving him a point of Wisdom damage "for foolishly opening his mind in an attempt to understand what cannot be understood. Fun fact: We play in Norwegian, and "Colour Out of Space" translates poorly, so I called it something like "The Colour that Does Not Exist".