I'm looking for ideas for what the players encounter as they try to shut down Vervil Ashmantle's slavery operation.
After finding Ashmantle's letter to Kazmojen in the Malachite Fortress, they tried to track down who wrote the letter, but ran into dead ends. Later, I let them find an additional clue in the midst of Zenith Trajectory about the "surface merchant" who from Kingfisher Hollow who sells slaves to the underdark. They have more or less figured out the author of that letter in Life's Bazaar is the guy that runs the messenger service in Kingfisher Hollow.
What should the players encounter when they visit that town to end the slavery operation? I figure they might encounter Ashmantle himself, but he'll just try to get away with teleport so they can encounter him later in Lords of Oblivion at Thifirane Rhiavadi's gathering. I was thinking of maybe having mainly some low to mid-level experts who run the business part of the slavery operation, a few slaves being held for sale in a secret underground prison beneath the messenger service office, a secret room with hidden books on the accounting for the slave operation, some mid-level rogues who handle the "acquisitions" end of the business kidnapping travelers and the like, and maybe some orc guards in the underground prison. Any ideas on interesting encounters or interesting information they players should find?
Any ideas on interesting encounters or interesting information they players should find?
Here are two excerpts from an Agriculture Almanac I created for the area. The entire document is available at the Shackled City AP site
"Kingfisher Hollow sets on the shores of a large, fertile fresh water lake, fed from the springs and creeks of the Cauldron Mountains the lake is teaming with Tilapia, fresh water prawns, and other edible fish. The local fish mongers can be seen plying their nets for the first few hours of the morning. The fish are transferred from the net to barrels of water, and then onto carts, which move the live fish to Cauldron’s market. Late day catches are salted or pickled in Kingfisher for later transportation. It takes fourteen to sixteen hours for the catch to arrive in Cauldron.
RICE – The staple food source for the entire region it is found on the table of commoner
and noble alike nearly everyday. Cultivated in the low-lands to the west of Cauldron the wetlands near Kingfisher Hollow are famous for its large, healthy plantations. Grown in large enough quantities to enable export, the rice is harvested and packed into 50lb sacks, then loaded onto carts pulled by water buffalo for transportation to Cauldron where it is warehoused, and auctioned for transportation to Sasserine and on to the rest of Oerth. Small sub-markets also exist for rice wine, vinegar, and paper.
I'm looking for ideas for what the players encounter as they try to shut down Vervil Ashmantle's slavery operation.
zoroaster100,
I would recommend the following supplements depending on how involved you wanted to get regarding the slavery operation:
AD&D A1-4: Scourge of the Slavelords PDF
AD&D Greyhawk: Slavers PDF
Both are available here on Paizo’s website for $4.00 each and offer a wealth of information that could be adapted to your needs.
Of the two, the Scourge of the Slavelords has the module The Slaver’s Stockade that I think would work well for what you are already thinking about. It has some truly memorable foes, a fully mapped location, and is the most easily adapted adventure site to place in the Kingfisher Hollow region. In addition, it would only take minimal adversary changes to account for Ashmantle being the ringleader. The real work would be updating those adversaries in the module to 3.5.
I hope the idea is of some help,
Mark
I am going to run this idea based off the fact that one of the PCs is the nephew of Ghelve (that was great when they found out "Uncle Ghelve" was implicated in Life's Bazaar!)and another is an ex-slave who has passed through Ashmantle's clutches.
Ghelve's trial is due any day now, so as suggested in the book I will have Ashmantle arrange to spirit him away from prison to keep him from testifying.
If the party tracked Ashmantle's base of operations down I was going to just do a minor side trek, focussing on meeting Ashmantle (but him teleporting away) and closure for the ex-slave when he gets to have a show down with the gladiator pit master who made his life hell (hopefully in the very arena he used to have to fight in!) I was thinking of a few simple areas around this.
However, the suggestion of Slavers' Stockade is a superb one for those who want to expand this to make up a fully fledged adventure chapter. Hmm, maybe i will go dig it out myself and steal bits....
Thanks for the suggestions. The almanac passages will help me paint the scene of the area around the town. I own the A1 through A4 adventures (from when they were published together as a mega-adventure). I'll take a look at it for ideas. I probably won't use the whole stockade, though, just a piece or just to draw ideas, since I want to keep it as a short to medium side-trek rather than adding a whole other adventure, since the player characters have been pretty much on track with experience and level for where they are supposed to be for the overall Shackled City path.