Help - What should the PC's know about Carceri?

[Olaf the Stout]

Last session one of the PC's in my party cast See Invisibility in the fight vs Zenith Splintershied and the Invisible Stalker. As a result he saw the invisible birthmark of Carceri on Zenith's face. I showed him a picture of what he saw and he wanted to know if he knew what it was or meant.

So what exactly should the PC's know about the Carcerian sign at this point? What will various knowledge checks tell them? I want to give him some information but I'm not sure what I should be telling the players at this point. Is there information and DC's in the hardcover or the magazines? If there is can someone tell me the page numbers so I can look it up.

The next session is about 24 hours from now and I had forgotten all about this so I need help quickly!

Thanks in advance,

Olaf the Stout

[hogarth]

I thought there was a big table of Knowledge DCs near the beginning of the hardcover, but maybe I dreamt that. Unfortunately I don't have the book in front of me right now...

[Findas]

Hi Olaf,

Good questions, and you got me thinking about it, as I'm about to start Zenith's Trajectory soon. My PCs have already seen the sign (in some rambling notes of Skaven's, as I made him a dream-haunted), but they haven't done more than ask a few folks if they know what it is (Including Shebeleth, who is masquerading as the Arch Bishop of St. Cuthbert right now - I could only snicker to myself as I'm sure Shebeleth did as well).

In any case, I can only find a couple of references regarding your dilemma, and they don't actually do much to clear it up - In the hardcover:

Page 147 - Behind the Scenes box-out: "The PCs could learn about the shackleborn in this chapter. If they discover the strange birthmark on Zenith's face, they can research it as detailed in the introduction to this book."

I had a read through the introduction after that, but it is far from "detailed" on how to research the sign this early in AP. There are a couple of mentions in the intro:

Page 7 - "Every few generations, an indication of this taint surfaces in the form of an invisible birthmark in the shape of an unholy sigil known as the Carcerian Sign. These are the Shackleborn."

But what I think the authors might actually be referencing is the "Researching the Villians" section on page 10. However, they also point out there that "...there's little the PCs can do to really learn more about [the Cagewrights] until they recover the journals and notes of one of their members, such as Fetor Abradius or Thifirane (in Chapters 7 and 8)..."

There are some DCs there to know things about the Cagewrights, but it seems clear that the PCs aren't really supposed to know much until these later chapters. And even then the DCs are quite high - DC35 to know that the Cagewrights are searching for individuals called the "Shackleborn."

Obviously, it's ultimately up to you as far as just how much you want the players to know at this point. I think if it were me, I wouldn't give them much, because they just don't have the means to know. How are they going about their research, with what resources? I think at the most I might tell them that it is some kind of unholy sigil, and that's it - not even that it's related to Carceri. But even that much I'd make them work for (casting divination or researching at the Blue Crater Academy or something).

Hope this is in time, and that it helps!

[hogarth]

Findas wrote:

There are some DCs there to know things about the Cagewrights, but it seems clear that the PCs aren't really supposed to know much until these later chapters. And even then the DCs are quite high - DC35 to know that the Cagewrights are searching for individuals called the "Shackleborn."

That's what I must have been thinking of; it's good to know I'm not completely crazy.

By the way, one of the PCs in my game is a warlock with the invocation that allows him to see invisibility, so he's seen the Sign (as well as a certain duergar, and a certain quasit...). There hasn't been any discussion of it so far, though.

[J J 528]

Mine know more or less what is written in the intro (Carceri as the prison plane where the demodands came from). They are about to finish Zenith, so similar place as you. Here is the actual text they received from me last session as part of a minor staged event - this is taken almost literally from the book, with some necessary omissions and alterations. It explains Carceri, the carcerian sign, the shackleborn, connects a couple dots and paints a couple others:

"A group of demons, called the demodands, was released upon the flaeness 320 years ago, with a horrible purpose - to seed as many humans as possible so as to create offspring tainted with the demodand spirit. By merging the bloodlines, they defined their goal: to eventually lead to the establishment of a spiritual bridge between Greyhawn and the prison plane, Carceri, thereby allowing the demodands to harvest slaves and inmates for the massive prisons and asylums of that realm. For a month, these demodands ravaged anything they could find in the world. Eventually slain, they left in their wake a horrifying number of unwanted and unnatural pregnancies.

The resulting spawn were mostly stillborn, but a few survived. With the generations, the fiendish corruption grew ever more diluted, and eventually all traces of demodand ancestry faded entirely. But the taint in the blood and soul remained. In almost every generation of these distant offspring, it ever so often surfaces in the form of an invisible birthmark in the shape of an unholy sigil known as the Carcerian Sign. The people marked this way are known to the few who know the story as the Shackleborn."

By the end of chapter 4, this seems to me like a good amount of information for them to have.