I'm about to start up Shackled City for the second time. The first time we quit at about 10th level due to incompatible schedules. This time around I have the beautiful SCHC to work with. I've done some reading about background and I'm starting to wonder about "Greyhawking" the AP a bit more.
One idea in particular that I picked up from the canonfire boards (and which I'm sure is nothing original besides) is the notion of using Joramy as a central religion in Cauldron. It certainly makes good sense. The way I see it, there are two different ways to do this. The first is to just plop a temple of Joramy into the city and add in plot-hooks or references to it. This would be a lot of work and quite frankly I'm both lazy and already too busy. The second is to replace a temple in Cauldron with one of Joramy. I've considered the pros and cons of swapping each temple with one of Joramy. Take a look and let me know what you think.
Kord - Not the most obvious choice, but given the temple of Kord's sponsorship of so many athletic festivities, it would be relatively simple to replace this with similar events that also heralded the very location of Cauldron itself. Perhaps a festival of the volcano where people light a pillar to memorialized the dormant volcano their city is built on. Obviously, this would relegate Joramy's church to a relatively minor role in the AP, which may work well since little adaptation is necessary. However, converting the Stormblade Zachary Aslaxin II to a cleric/ranger of Joramy is a nifty idea.
Pelor - The temple of Pelor has possibly the most minor role in the AP. Therefore this swap would add a touch of flavor, but impact the story little. In this case, Joramites could simply be a small sect, maybe a remnant of the days of Surabar (who could have been a worshipper, influencing his choice of city location). Joramy becomes an old faith in this regard.
St. Cuthbert - I like this option simply because I never liked the portrayal of the church of the Cudgel in this AP much in the first place. Jenya is LN but she acts more NG which would be a bit more justifiable as a cleric of Joramy. This has the advantage of getting the PCs to interact with Joramites a lot, but also requiring me to do a fair bit of conversion. Jenya is easy enough, I only have to swap domains and alignment. Of course, Alek Tercival becomes a problem since I don't think Paladins should be allowed to be two steps away from their deity's alignment (and Joramy is Neutral with Neutral Good tendencies). Perhaps I could make him a sentinnel (NG paladin variant from Dragon 310).
Wee Jas - This one is truly interesting. In this event, Embril is actually a worshipper of Pyremius who only pretends to follow Joramy. This idea has a lot of potential what with the Cagewrights causing the eruption and everything. The Joramites think fire and flame beautiful, but not when it is consuming their homes, while Pyremians would get a total kick out of it and make natural allies for the Cagewrights. Plus it also seems to add more suspense. Once the PCs start to get suspicious of the Joramites, they are likely to guess that Cauldron may not be so dormant, putting them on edge just waiting for that lava to start flowing.
Any ideas? Thoughts? Comments?
I like the Wee Jas idea, as presented in the AP they seem much too oriented with commanding the undead which isn't a big tenent of the faith normally.
Having Embril and perhaps a few other priests worship Pyremius in secret is a great idea.
I was trying to decide what to do about the spellweavers they really don't fit Greyhawk at all IMO.
I was considering just making them the famous archmages of the Suel Imperium and making the one the characters battle towards the end have demonic grafts to account for his extra arms (and spellcasting).