Through good use of some divination spells, great teamwork, great spell selection and lucky rolls, my players managed to find and enter the Shrine of Kyuss and defeat Bozan on the second day of the games. They also figured out how to remove the containment sphere from around the ulgurstasta, which is where we left off for the week.
If they manage to take out the ulgurstasta this week, I'm considering cancelling the remainder of the games, and thus the remainder of the CB adventure. They didn't find Lahaka's zombie before she left to fulfill Bozan's final orders. Aside from locating Lahaka, the party's lone goal was to track down the Apostolic Scrolls (which they've obviously done now). Thus, there's no reason for them to continue in the games. Further, there's no logical reason Raknian would hang around fulfilling his hosting duties for the remainder of the games.
So, if we skip the remainder of the adventure the party would miss out on the three remaining arena combats and the resulting purses. They'll hear about Ilthane's attack on Diamond Lake, which should be enough to get them back home and continue the adventure path. Thoughts?
Itd be a shame to miss out on the end of the games..... anyways to still be able to finish them?
Thus, there's no reason for them to continue in the games. Further, there's no logical reason Raknian would hang around fulfilling his hosting duties for the remainder of the games.So, if we skip the remainder of the adventure the party would miss out on the three remaining arena combats and the resulting purses. They'll hear about Ilthane's attack on Diamond Lake, which should be enough to get them back home and continue the adventure path. Thoughts?
Dude! Harsh! There is the biggest reason for them to complete the games--they get to take on some singular challenges and win some dough! And, from a meta perspective, an even bigger reason--those fights are fun! My group took the pitchblade triplets (enlarged becuase they number 6 rather than 4) quite personally and wound up fighting the pitchblade twins, slipped in by some of the local security, in themiddle of the night. They had a blast with it! Let them finish it off, by all means!
Well as I recall, the three final arena battles are attempts by Raknain to kill the PCs. Having the PCs ruin Raknain's plans early on in the games should motivate him to send a few of the encounters the PCs, for revenge, or to limit the damage they have done ie kill them before they tell anyone what they know. Yeah the PCs have Little reason to continue in the arena, but they aren't out of the woods yet.
-1) the show will go on, 60,000 rabid fans and Talabir Welik, will insure the show will go on... unless the PCs enter the arena in an reveil the evil plot to the free city arena, in a shocking announcement.
-2)Lahaka zombie corpse will make Raknain want to get out of town, and maybe Rankain sends Okoral to pay a visit to the PCs after he is done with Eligos
The meta-game problem is that the PCs that finish the belt early lose out in xp, and miss the oppertunity for some cool fights. To resolve this you could award the xp for the remaining battles anyway, afterall they did find away to beat the adventure ahead of schedual, that is worth a story award. Or you could have an important NPC come to the PCs and plead that they finish the games as planned to avoid causing a panic by revealing the vile plot. Or you could run the encounters out side the arena, Raknain unleashes frogmouth in coenoby to sow confusion and cover his escape, pitchblade comes looking for the PCs because they cheated them the glory of an arena battle, Auric shows up to carryout Raknains final orders. The downside of this approach is that unlike the arena battles the PCs might get too much loot! but they did very well in champs belt and deserve some reward above the normal.
Goodluck!
Plus doesn't it say in the text that Rakinian is unaware of the demise of Bozal and the Ultragarasta until the last day of the tournament? I.e. he doesn't check down there until the last day of the contest. If he finds that the Ultragarasta is freed, he runs and if its alive he frees it.
I can't imagine your players not wanting to finish up the games, there is gold and glory there.
I'd love to play out the rest of the battles! I made up fight cards & odds sheets for the entire games. I'm not sure that my players are as interested in the remainder of the contest, honestly. They've been focused almost entirely on recovering the scrolls and are only tengentially interested in Lahaka. Other than being able to bet on themselves in the arena has kept them interested in the gladiator combats, and that not so much.
I can work the Froghemoth into a different encounter. I'd already added a third member to Pitchblade, perhaps Okoral will send the trio after the party once he figures out what happened. And Auric and Khellek will definitely show up again, perhaps in Alhaster.
I suppose I'll have the wizard ref (can't remember his name at the moment) call a meeting early on the third day before any battles begin and tell the remaining teams the Raknian's dissappeared. The Greyhawk business leaders have a stake in the games continuing and have offered to put up a portion of the purses for any teams interested in continuing. That gives the PCs the choice between continuing in the arena or leaving and continuing on the AP.
Plus doesn't it say in the text that Rakinian is unaware of the demise of Bozal and the Ultragarasta until the last day of the tournament? I.e. he doesn't check down there until the last day of the contest. If he finds that the Ultragarasta is freed, he runs and if its alive he frees it.
I can't imagine your players not wanting to finish up the games, there is gold and glory there.
Don't forget about Lahaka's zombie. He'll be aware once she shows up for dinner....
Something major you've left out--deactivating the Apostolic Scrolls merely removes the shield keeping the Arena (and the Free City) safe from one mean Ulgurstasta. It should break out very soon after the shield is deactivated. Depending on what time of day or night this happens, it could have huge repercussions or relatively minor ones. At the least, the PCs should become aware of what is happening because of the noise of the thing breaking through the ceiling into the Arena, and unless they are complete wankers, they will presumably run upstairs to confront the thing rather than let it barf skeletons all over the streets of Greyhawk. (Edit--whoops, I reread the original post and see the PCs know how to deactivate the containment and may decide to release the Apostle early, destroy it, then blow off the rest of the games.)
If it's the middle of the night, you can always have some of the contestants they were supposed to fight hear the noise and come to investigate as well, with whatever consequences seem reasonable. If it's daytime when they pull the plug on the containment, have the thing interrupt another gladiator fight--when the PCs show up in the middle of the battle, things get interesting. If you want to really raise havoc, have the Ulgurstasta break the Froghemoth's cage where it sits in the Arena. Whatever you do, don't let your players off the hook without a climactic final battle!
There was an earlier thread about some of these issues--you might run a search in the archives.
Sorry - should have clarified. We ended last session just as they dispelled the containment sphere around the ulgurstasta. So we begin this week with combat.