Greetings everyone! I just picked up the first 3 installments of the new "Dungeon Magazine Adventure Path: Age of Worms" and I really like it. I just have one problem. I cant find the adventure hooks anywhere! I see where it says on page 16 "Pay particular attention to the Adventure Hooks section.." but there is no Adventure Hooks section! There is only a section in the backdrop diamond lake article about the origins of PC's and there is something about meeting at an old mine office, but it doesnt say why, or who asks the PCs to meet there. Please tell me I have just overlooked it! Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Sincerely,
RB Gnome
I cant find the adventure hooks anywhere!
I had a problem with that to, the hooks they list are centered around the idea that your characters are from diamond lake, they want to get out, and don't have the means to do so.
Players from Diamond lake should run into or hear of the adventurers in town looking intot he stirgenest cairn and hoping to find treasure. Players should remember visiting the Whispering Cairn and think that they should try it out.
I ran a few Roleplaying encounters in email before the start of my campaign, and when I failed to get them to decide to go to the whispering cairn themselves, I did what any self respecting GM would do... I stuck in a missing child.
So basically, while in town the party came across someone shouting for his daughter who didn't come home last night. With a little invetigating the party learned that she had been dared by some friends to stay the night at the whispering cairn. Her friends didn't tell anyone because they were covering for her and said she was staying with them. When the father or party comes looking for her, they have to break down and tell where she is at.
Party heads to the Whispering Cairn, find her stuck in a tree thanks to the wolves, and decide to investigate it themselves.
IIRC, there is not "Hooks" section as in other adventures, but the introductory text at the beginning of the adventure suggests something like this:
The adventurers (native to Diamond Lake) see an arrogant group of adventurers from Free City arrive in their town and boast about their desire to explore the Stirgenest Cairn. The heroes being from the town know that the Stirgenest is empty and has nothing to offer (except for Stirges...). On the other hand they know of another Cairn which is reputed full of treasures and haunted. It is a bit off the beaten track and only natives (like the heroes) know of it. It is their chance to make a fortune and show to these arrogant outsiders that they'd better not come like this and show off: they can do it better.
That's how I did it and it worked for us. ;-)
Otherwise, I guess that any reason to explore an old "dungeon" full of riches would do. The point is more to get your group started with this Cairn and as things go on, they will discover more and more about the problems of Diamond Lake (and will enter in some more or less friendly competition with the heroes with Free City).
Bocklin
Can't say for sure as I am steering away from looking at AoW (my DM is running it) but the hooks may very well be in the additional Download for the adventures.
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Hopefully your party will have a wizard, cleric or bard and will be willing to take some ranks in Knowledge (History, Planar, Arcana). When the players are making the PCs, be sure to give one them a background interest in the history of the cairns of the Cairn Hills. This really works well for a wizard you decide to apprentice to Allustan who already has a historical interest(almost a requirement in my mind judging by the future of the story arc). Relate to this player the general chronology of the cairns, newest to oldest. This creates a wonderful hook to get the ball rolling in regards to the Free City Trio looking at Stirgenest vs. the PCs checking out the teenaged testing ground of the Whispering Cairn. The PC knows that the Stirgenest is a Flan cairn built over the remains of a dwarven cairn that has been thoroughly ransacked/searched, with the dwarven traps having been disabled years ago. In contrast, the Whispering Cairn has only been known of existing (again) for a short time (20 years or so), having been forgotten about since the time the Seekers were there some 50 years ago.
My cairns come from six distinct periods. This isn't canon but it works for my campaign (newest to oldest):
Flan (they rarely built their own but reused looted ones)
Neo-Sueloise circa the Great Migrations
Dwarven
Ancient Sueloise (Vecna era in terms of 3FoE's labyrinth)
Age of the Gods (a nod to the City of the Gods of Blackmoor fame and hinted at in some of the old 1E Greyhawk material as cairns filled with "technological" terrors.)
Concordance of a Million Spheres is the era of the Wind Dukes when the Elementals fought against Chaos. Yes, I've taken a very Moorcockian slant on this, so far as to name the Queen of Chaos Xiombarg. I like to think the Oerth was once Elric's realm...
The final page of the backdrop article in the same issue as Whispering Cairn contains a two sentence hook for each race and/or class, if that helps.
Making your own hooks can be fun for this one too.
I started my players on the AoW as 2nd LVL characters from out of town. In fact, they had just completed Mike Mearls' "Salvage Operation". I had the party find an old map on board the derelict Emperor of the Waves that showed the location of the Whispering Cairn with some enticing notes from the former owner about "returning to town with the crew and plundering the riches". The Player's greed did the rest.
As it turned out the Whispering Cairn seemed perfectly suited to challenge a group of 2nd level characters as written. It's been entertaining watching the suspicion they have for the "Other" group of out-of-towners. The effort to keep the Cairn a secret has become a major element of the adventure and has added new significance to the abandoned mine manager's office as a character headquarters because they're paranoid of being robbed in town.
Anyway, it seems to me there are lots of ways to motivate the players to go to the Whispering Cairn even if you don't run things as written. One idea I didn't use (this assumes your characters are from out of town) is that they are sent by a "patron" in the Free City to investigate the Cairn's Archaeological significance. The patron is actually a rival scholar of the seekers and Khellek & Crew are there to "steal their data". Sets them up for a rematch in Free City and doesn't do much to hamper all the developing Kyuss mysteries.
Cheers,
C.