Let me know if anyone here has had any similar ideas. Personally I am not completely satisfied with the way how Spire of Long Shadows works out. I like it as an Arc, but the Visions granting XP just seems like some way to catch up the levels of the party.
I have already been planning to add a campaign arc between A Gathering of Winds and Spire, this just redoubles my efforts to do so.
I am going to take out the Vision XP from Spire and instead rely on xp gained in the arc I am going to Author. It seems that too much of the history of Kyuss is being neglected when it could be used to better advantage. The arc I am going to write will utilize information from WGR 3: Rary the Traitor and will go as follows, suggestions welcome.
-Players go to Magepoint (as begining of Spire)
-Meeting Manzorian/Tenser, instead of him knowing about Kaluth-Mar, he will suggest looking into the ruins of Sulm in the Bright Desert and will lament that Balakarde/Bucknard had only really confided in Rary, the only other member of the Circle of Eight who had been interested in Sulm. Of course, Rary is a traitor and evil, so he cannot be contacted (at least not by Tenser).
-Travelling to the Bright Desert
-Desert travel, dealing with the Desert Centuar and dervish tribes, probably dealing with the semi-open gate to the abyss at Shembai Oasis ti earn some trust. Meet Tolan-Kai.
-The Ruins of Utaa (former Sulmish capitol), various encounter, nothing truly learned.
-Tolan-Kai meets them and informs them of the Tower of Sleep and its mysetious inhabitant. They seek it. After the effects, meet Shemaya, she tells them a little more Kyuss backstory and tells them about his rival (by my estimation) Drokkas of Unaagh.
-The Necropolis of Unaagh (this ruin has sons of Kyuss in it, as has been brought up before, this link should be used I think). Basically the Sulmish land of the dead. Time for some nasty undead stuff, eventually culminating in meeting Drokkas' seneschal, Baron Krumik. Then an audience with the lich himself. I am going to make Drokkas a Dread Necromancer to make him a more likely rival to Kyuss from the old days.
Of course, this can be fully role-play or turn into a fight if the players are stupid and insult the 2000 year old lich.
I not sure if this will be fleshed out enough for me, I have some other stuff I might add as well. but I would appreciate your thoughts.
Yasha
Sounds very cool, some kind of adventure on the way to the Spire is a very good idea. My only concern is that, the way you've explained it, it sounds a bit too much like the Spire adventure, just a different setting. In other words, Kyuss-undead in ruins. So you might be in danger of undermining the Spire by having a prelude that's too similar as far as encounters go. Unless your players like to re-visit themes that way, one of the coolest things about the Age of Worms is that every adventure is different than the last. But it does sound cool, in that you've done your research into the Bright Desert and worked up some great ideas. Some published adventures you might want to look at for inspiration (although they won't be a particularly good fit) are Throne of Iuz (Dungeon 118), Tomb of Aknar Ratalla (Dungeon 119) and Lost Temple of Demogorgon (Dungeon 120).
For something completely different, I'd also suggest thinking about some sort of city-based encounter(s) too, for example in Hardby, Highport, Scant or Sasserine. Unfortunately I don't have any specific ideas for something around EL13 that's city-based.
I'm at about this spot in the AP. I'm doing away with the teleport paintings in Tenser's castle and setting it up so that Tenser knows very little about Bucknard's sojourn in the south except that for some reason he went to Gradsul in Keoland to visit the archives of the Matreyus expeditions that explored the Amedio Jungle some years before. (There is info on these expeditions in the Scarlet Brotherhood PDF and in an early edition of Oerth Journal). Unfortunately someone else is interested in Kyuss as well, and has beaten the party to the Matreyus Manor. This someone is a mystic theurge necromancer, who has brought along some scary minions and animated the skeleton of a T-rex that the Matreyus expedition brought back from the jungle--so there will be a big showdown in the main display room at the manor. Besides this, I'm going to run some encounters in Hardby and several seaborne encounters--to include some pirate-slavers from the Pomarj and a storm. To get from Gradsul to the Spire (which I am placing much farther into the Amedio than it is placed on maps of Sasserine/Cauldron in the other APs), I'm going to have the party hook up with the Olman hero-adventurer Rhialle, who is organizing an assault on a Scarlet Brotherhood held slaver port on the Amedio coast. Then they'll need to take boats upriver to Lake Matreyus and travel overland to the Spire, which I've located nearby.
This isn't quite an adventure arc, but a series of side-quests that fit in with the idea of exploring the world of Greyhawk a bit (my player is in his teens, so this is partly to get him into the best campaign worlf ever).
SPOILERS AHEAD about AoW, Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk, Rary the Traitor, Return of the Eight...
I am very much interested in your arcs (Bright Lands and Gradsul).
We are finishing Champion's Belt, and I plan on speeding/skipping parts of a Gathering of Winds (Ilthane will not fight to death and escape if possible, to be encountered later, as explained below).
My players are a little bit behind in XP, as I do not like so much the speedy way you get them and rise in third edition d&d... So I see there an opportunity for them to go other places and have more encounters with iconic NPC: Return of the Eight will provide me an opportunity to introduce Tenser (literally) as in my Campaign he is not revived yet!
I will use Expedition to the Ruins of Greyhawk (with Vaine and other leaders of Iuz Army actually members of the Ebon Triad, the Black Dragon being Ilthane and so on). This will introduce Robilar and a new tie with Rary, the Bright Desert and Sulm.
Hence, I am very interested in your plot arcs, and 3.5 conversions of NPC and such. Any possibility to get more information by email (and to share my little conversion of Return of the Eight with you of course) ?
Keep up the good game!
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I was just at the game store this afternoon, looking at Expedition to Castle Greyhawk and wondering if I could squeeze it into the AoW campaign I just started, as they're both set in The Free City of Greyhawk. My main concern, though, was the players getting too far ahead in xp. But it sounds like it might just work out. I'll have to look into it.
Egocentrix, if you put the Expedition into your campaign, let us know how it goes!
I will.
You may have to deal with advance XP, but the challenges are great, and some players might not make it without a few raise deadspells...
Also, you may scale future AoW installments to match you players levels, and end up with a clearly Epic finale !
Cheers