My PCs have recently finished the Shackled City Adventure Path, and I am now leading it into a Epic Campaign of my own devising. The concept behind the epic campaign is that they must collect a set of artifacts of extreme power before the villains can obtain them and use them to a universe-ending effect by unlocking the Citadel of Eternity at end of the Temporal Plane. Each artifact is fundamental to the existance of the universe, and removing one from it's place has plane-shattering effects (including but not limited to planar destruction, the eradication of gods, and the end of the Blood War).
The events of the epic campaign make the events of Shackled City look fairly small, however, I do not want to forget about the events of the shackled city as they progress to a plane-spanning quest of epic size and importance. One of the PC's rules occipitus, and I was thinking of granting him the ability to establish morphic control over the layer of the abyss, but other than that, I'm coming up short. The problem is that most of the enemies and events from the SCAP seem rather minor next to the things I'm going to be throwing at them. Any suggetions on how I can intergrate the events of the SCAP into my epic campaign?
So... no one has any thoughts they'd like to donate?
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Not sure but I think focusing on Occiptus and it's morphic traits might be the way forward. It's a cosmic enough event that a deep understanding of the nature of planes and how they change may be critical to stopping your villians. Possibly some planar quest around unlocking Occipitus' potential?
I also cottoned on to Occiptus as being an epic setting. However we have decided to abstract the campaign post completion. In my campaign the Wee Jasidan Wizard/Cloistered Cleric/Mystic Theurge (and True necromancer soon) has the Smoking Eye template (as well as being Shackleborn) and wants to experiment with the morphic potential of Occiptus. He is aware there are risks but he does not realise that Adimarchus is a demon prince of insanity.
My logic is when they finally meet and kill him in Skullrot he re-appears in state upon Occipitus and reforms. The PCs will then kill him again and the plane will absorb it's former lord. I have decided the plane will then be contaminated with insanity and the morphic interference is a two way street, you fiddle with it, it fiddles with you, particularly for mortals. So the post campaign PC will start going mad.
He accepts he will never recover the plane, it will take too long, and it will always remain in the Abyss. In the end he will probably become a half fiend for the power and to control the demons on the plane and a lich for the immortality and power (a sort of self powering lich-fiend). We realised using Sean K Reynolds Savage Progression Templates at the WoTC web site would help. By this point we realised he would be a Wiz3/Cloistered Cleric3/Mystic Theurge10/True Necromancer14/Smoking Eye1/Half-fiend4/Lich4 and would be a demon lord/demi-god of undeath and madness and be treading on Afflux/Nerull/Orcus/Vecna's toes, and would be at war with Grazz't for what he did to Adimarchus and Occipitus. At this point we stopped drinking beer and free association thinking :)
My point with the ramble above is sound out your players about what they expect from epic play. You may get inspiration from their expectations :) I have, even though we will do nothing about it :) My player's idea might seem munchkinny in a general sense but he accepted he would try to tame Occipitus as a test from the Lady of Book and Bone, would fail and probably become corrupted by chaos and become a demon of madness and undeath, and probably try to become a god (at this point I recalled the AoW AP mentioning Kyuss' portfolio would be floating free at the end of that campaign and grinned).
Now all this is fun as a thought experiment, but the Saint Cuthbertian will just want to rebuild and protect Cauldron and the Pelorian, now a Saint, will most likely wander doing Pelor's works (probably in the Shield Lands) or be risen as a celestial and replace Nidrama. All have expectations for how their characters will occupy themselves in retirement and they don't mesh. Makes planning an adventure a little bit more difficult. Again, you will need to talk to your players, little point writing the module if even one of your players won't get it or it doesn't fit his/her expectations of epic play with their character. Basically epic campaigns probably only work if highly personalised and totally focused on the PCs.
As an aside one thing did occur to me was inspired by the Wormfood article on gating in help. When running AoW it may be possible to gate in either player to aid in the fights against Dragotha and Kyuss, the Pelorian saint as they are undead and the fallen Wee Jasidan necromancer as they are undead (and he covets their power). Maybe you can do something similar, tying in Nidrama or Celeste to your add on modules. Killing off much loved NPCs permanently is an old tactic that always gets PCs blood boiling and looking for their weapons :) Make it personal and the PCs will come, armed to the teeth and looking for payback and trouble :) For example, even though the PCs saved Cauldron, and are probably quiet attached to it, blow it up or somesuch, again, and do it properly. For example, in my take on Surabar Spellmason he really did quieten the volcano. The Cagewrights ritual could unravel his magic and be an accident waiting to happen. Put the players in a dilemma, say they need to use Alakast as part of a ritual to make a artifact to contain Cauldron's volcano but then they discover they need the same artifact to fight your villains. Removing it means Cauldron goes bang, but the PCs save the multiverse. If your PCs may not ne able to handle the sacrifice say they have x time to use the artifact before returning it or Cauldron goes bang. I don't know your players, you know them best, mine respond to gritty campaigns where bad things happen.
Other random ideas are have shards from the Tree of Shackled Souls as one of the artifacts you mentioned, that happens to be useable post partial eruption and Shackleborn absorption (or the cages or bits of them). Or make the Lens of the Darksun mentioned in Test of the Smoking Eye one of the artifacts, and as the Wee Jasidan's where looking for it in Occiptus have it on the plane somewhere, possibly above the plasms (egtting there will be fun). They can actually have been there searching for it as a precurssor to your new arc i.e. Wee Jas [insert god/goddess of magic here] knows what they where up to and has started making moves to stop them (them as in your villains).
I shall invite my crazy player around tomorrow night (the missus is going out with the girls), print a copy of this thread minus spoilers (not many, my players worked out Adimarchus must be imprisoned in Carceri as it is a prison plane and that was the only logical link between Carceri and Ocipitus, quite clever when sober and paying attention), drink lots of lager to aid cogitation, and then see where we end up with random thinking :)
Thus endeth the ramble.
I'm thinking of using the adventure Force of Nature (available for free download on D&D wesite) as a supplement encounter before Asylum. This is a 17th level encounter and might be adaptive to epic play.
The synopsis is the modrons establish order out of chaos by controling nature (as it happens, a volcano). Perhaps the Church of Wee Jas knows about this machine and as kept this secret since its founding in Cauldron... it could even be the reason for establishing the Wee Jas church in Cauldron, to keep the machine running, or even the reason for founding Cauldron in a volcano.
The adventure takes the characters on "a whirlwind tour of the elemental planes" and includes a rogue modron (anarchist modrons?). Sounds to me like there are some epic elements within this context - planar travel, the four elements, a secret history of Cauldron's founding, church conspiracy a la Da Vinci Code and anarchist modrons.
I just got a pretty good suggestion from a friend if they PC is deadset on returning occipitus to angelic status... if he raises it, he only succedes in crushing the city that has been built in it's place in the intervening years... and have a massive trial for the characters soul or something of the such. I took your idea of asking the PC's and it's turning out pretty well.
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How about that the quest for the artifacts leads to a rearrangement of the Planar Wheel. If this is done without a malleable anchor, it could lead to meltdown of the multiverse. This anchor is Occipitus. Let the group find out, how to learn morphing good enough, that Occipitus won't get torn apart featuring as new anchor of the multiverse.