Zoro Gallade's page

Hope this thread is still active.

One of my players' PC is a druid who pretty much gets along (or tries to) with all kinds of flora and fauna and is especially curious about alien plants and animals.

I was thinking of letting her cultivate Milstamm's seed, since she probably wouldn't pass the chance to grow herself an alien alraune (and it could make a good bargaining chip when they eventually encounter her), but reading ahead into the Divinity Drive I got into a few snags.

First of all, of course, there's the question of whether or not it's possible to grow a baby alraune from the seedpod, or if Milstamm would have to grow it some more for it to become able to survive. Given that she will happily spare the PCs and work against Deacon Hope, it's obvious the seedpod has some value to her, either because she can't produce offspring without it or because it's her child. I would think it's the latter since she could produce another eventually so it wouldn't be that big of a material loss, but having it taken away by the Technic League must have had some impact on her.

Then there's the matter of alignment. The AP doesn't say much about how Castrovelian alraune are different, but I assume they still require flesh as nutrition (and Milstamm has so far sustained herself on leftovers from the kytons' experiment). Would a newborn alraune be able to be groomed into not hunting humans?

Lastly, what would the stats of a newly sprouted alraune be? Adding three Young templates could work but would give her 25 Dexterity, otherwise I was thinking about using the stats of a Lotus Leshy with adjusted ability scores...

Name: Julia
Race: Human
Classes/levels: Inquisitor 4/Paladin 2 of Iomedae
Adventure: Lords of Rust
Location: Hellion's Redoubt
Catalyst: Hellion's Kaboom

Hellion really doesn't take well to being called a false god and having an inhibitor chip shoved up his port. To prove itself mightier than the champion of Iomedae, it started pelting her with plasma shots (the party's Arcanist and Druid got lucky with Lightning Bolt and Arc Grenades and disabled Hellion's scrapyard robot backup, so they didn't need to worry about that).
She charged at the arachnid robot with Kulgara's chainsaw and kept trading blows with the AI, with both getting dangerously low on health. Julia went down to a plasma and claw combo, but managed to stabilize. Until the rest of the party finished Hellion off, killing her in the resulting plasma explosion (The party's druid expended Sarenrae's favor from Aldonard's grave to bring her back to life)

Or the Hosteling armor, assuming you have proficiency in Heavy armor.

My party is roughly at the beginning of the Choking Tower, and I've made quite a bit of adjustments to the campaign to keep it more flowing and adapt it to the PCs:
-A Kellid Tinkerer/Fighter from Starfall, who stole his robot familiar while attempting to escape Technic League body harvesters who were about to cut him up
-An Inquisitor/Paladin of Iomedae, also from Starfall who left her family after her mother began wasting away of necrosis and her father became obsessed with replacing her rotten parts with cybertech to lengthen her life span (this story will become relevant later)
-An Arcanist from Absalom sent to investigate on the whereabouts of two wizards who fled the League on separate occasions (one of them turned out to be Khonnir Baine, the other he just found is Furkas Xoud)
-A Halcyon Druid whose ward (a forest in the vicinity of the Felldales) is becoming corrupted with mutant beasts, pushing her to seek help among civilized people.

-One of the first changes I made was to retcon Sanvil Trett into being a double agent from the start, with a soft spot (being horrified at the experiments Ghartone was about to perform on Val and aiding Khonnir in his escape by covering his sabotage as a freak accident) that the PCs could leverage to get him on their side completely.
-Then, Wrennie Delnorn became a bit more prominent, secretly asking them for help stop Garmen Ulreth from blackmailing her and giving them a hook for uncovering the shady deal he had struck with Meyanda. She became a temporary follower during the investigation, which ended with them apprehending Garmen, forcing him to confess he was about to skip town (since he had a vague warning from the android that the city would blow up in less than a few weeks) and shutting down the power relay. She also stuck around as backup until they found Khonnir in the ruins, and provided them with a small thank-you gift (a couple healing potions, scrolls and emergency money she kept in case she was forced to flee the town) which brought them up to par with their 2nd-level wealth as they inadvertently destroyed some loot by breaking open crates since none of them had Disable Device or a Knock scroll .
-As soon as the power relay was shut down, they decided to keep it in the city barracks. They woke up the next morning to sounds of combat in the northern part of town, with roughly half of Meyanda's forces (plus her collector robot) storming the barracks to reclaim the relay. With a few guards (Foot Soldier CR 1/3) and Captain Aaronlu Langer (Guard Officer CR3) against the orcs, ratfolk and robot (whose hardness meant the captain could barely dent it), the PCs were vital in tipping the scales and saving as many guards as they could. This handily reiterated the threat within Black Hill while also getting the invaders on their guard since their first attack had been foiled.
-Khonnir was saved, though the alchemist and inquisitor (who had known him for a long time) were angry and distrustful towards him and Val for hiding the truth about their ties to the Technic League, and only begrudgingly agreed that there were more important things to take care of.
-Skip to the Engineering Deck. After clearing the floor of the leftover orcs, the party bypassed the electric field into the room with the altar (where they failed their Perception checks to recognize the gargoyle), and Meyanda calmly demanded that they surrender the relay and leave, moving in to attack as soon as they attacked her (they successfully caught her off-guard by Bluffing, but the Gargoyle saw through it so Meyanda was the only one cut out of the surprise round). They captured her alive with two party members downed and forced her to reveal what she knew about Scrapwall and Hellion's plans. The city council promptly issued the 8000 gp bounty on the Lords of Rust.
Then, Lords of Rust started.
-With two players coming from the Kingmaker videogame and being fans of Amiri, I put in a small cameo appearance with her (At level 7, but severely outnumbered) fighting off a gang of Blood Gars, wherein they joined the battle and had a nice chitchat with her afterwards, learning she's off to Starfall to "Beat up fake coward chief", aka fight Kevoth-Kul's regime so she can prove herself mightier than a Kellid chieftain. She'll make another brief cameo in Palace of Fallen Stars.
-With the Rhu-Chalik out for their blood (and brains), I decide to make an early appearance of Longdreamer after the party gets "vivid nightmares" (the Wisdom damage from the alien's attacks) twice in a row and is frantically trying to balance fending off attacks from the Scrapwall gangs and searching for the alien. Longdreamer contacts them via Dream disguising herself as a cleric of Desna and warning them that a creature is nested in Scrapwall preying on the dreamers' minds. This gives them the idea to ambush the Rhu-Chalik the next time they sleep through the use of the Arcanist's dimensional slide and Glitterdust to stop it from escaping, and they succeed.
-Nalakai also comes after them, with a heavy escort (a half dozen orcs and acolytes) to give them a message from Hellion (a tiny hologram projector where the AI first shows them its avatar) which invites them to come prove their inferiority in the Arena. They take advantage of this to hide their allies (Sevroth's men, Dinvaya's golem and Redtooth's raiders) among the crowd of spectators and signal them to scatter Hellion's lackeys once the fight is over. They manage a pretty close fight against Helskarg (the Arcanist gets critted by her autograpnel) and the crowd falls into chaos as they go chase the members of the Lords of Rust who have bunkered down inside Chrysalis.
-I beefed up Hellion a bit, giving it not only its spell like abilities but also its domain's powers to harass the PCs throughout the excavator, and making him able to possess other robots inside the compound (like the junkyard robot in the battery room or the Observer robots in the control center. The party had a good laugh with the tiny, insect-sized Hellion throwing taunts at them and doing minimal damage (the druid had cast communal Energy Resistance against fire, so most damage from its laser torch was blocked).
Once they used the inhibitor facet and Hellion had to shut the excavator down, though, things got a lot more eerie. They had already killed every major enemy except Zagmaander and the Chuul, so they went through the dark caves without Hellion's usual mockery and taunts. The Chuul nearly killed the Alchemist by grappling and drowning him in the pond while he was paralyzed, one Dark Slayer critted the Inquisitor with Inflict Moderate Wounds and they thankfully managed to send Zagmaander back to her plane by undoing her curse, so they only had Hellion left. They mounted camp inside the control room and fought Hellion's arachnid robot. The plasma beam tore through the Inquisitor, downing her and killing her when the chassis exploded, but the Druid brought her back with the Breath of Life she had received from Sarenrae as thanks for freeing Aldonard. Meyanda was toting the EMP gun from the manticore's nest on semi-auto with Deadly Aim, so she was a good asset in the fight. She "shut down" emotionally after the battle, since she pretty much had no motivation left on doing anything after taking revenge on Hellion.

In a series of purely RP sessions inbetween them, I decided that the Facets they found were compatible with androids, with the same restrictions as AIs (1 facet could be surgically implanted per 4 HD of the android). Doing that, they left Meyanda in Torch after implanting the Ego facet in her brain, which started "awakening" her into a more fleshed out personality (which will eventually bring her to worship Brigh). They rendezvous with Longdreamer, clashing with the giants and warden robot (the giants having been duped to unearth the robot by the Will o Wisp from Scrapwall, who fled in anger after they dispelled the undead from the wreck) and taking up her offer to bring them to Iadenveigh after failing to open the gate of the Choking Tower.