My players have decided they want to play SCAP, awesome, I thought. However they want to play it on Athas, in the Dark Sun setting. I'm cool with that, but it is a lot of work to convert it over. We'll still be playing 3.x so most of the mechanics will be usable as is, what I'm really looking for is any ideas about converting some of the story elements.
E.g. What can I do for "Flood Season"?
Half-Orcs to Half-Giants and Muls, Clerics to elemental priests, that kinda thing is easy. But what about Hookface? And Jzradune (spelling?)? The demonic/angelic NPCs?
Any help would be most appreciated, from both Dark Sun and SCAP players and fans.
Many thanks and Peace,
tfad
I'll have to cogitate about this a bit. I started converting Age of Worms to Dragonlance, and I thought that was a bit of a challenge. Hm.
Although devils and angels can exist in athas, it is EXTREMELY rare.
If they are powerful NPC's, I would probably substitute some elemental princes/dukes/lords in their place. I would say fire or magma ones would be good to promote the volcano becoming active, while the water or rain lords would be more on the "good guys" side of things.
The black and the grey are probably not suitable for sources for "outsider" NPC's of this nature.
Here are some initial thoughts. I am a huge Dark Sun fan as well as a Shackled City vet, so this whole idea is intriguing.
Conversion ideas behind the spoiler space.
When it comes to the city you could discard cauldron and go with an established city like tyr, or, better yet, something less well known like Urik or Raam. This way you have all the material you need to run the city as a focus for the campaign and something your players can recognise without making it feel shoehorned into the setting. When I ran the game I found Cauldron to be a bit to fantastic and created my own city, Caldera, situated around a small lake at the base of the volcano. Mostly, I think it is important to keep it in the Tablelands.
The exterior stuff is easy to describe an arid desert instead of a lush rain forest. This shouldn't change anything really.
For the Flood Season you will need to make some changes, obviously, but why not stay true to the setting and instead of a rainy season make perhaps there is an annual windy season that blows in off the Maelstrom and creates a massive sandstorm. You wouldn't need to make any changes to the adventure aside from some description.
The volcano can also be changed to something else. A volcano suddenly appearing in the middle of the Tablelands could stretch credibility a bit. However, you could easily make it a sinkhole or something and, again, nothing really needs to be changed in the adventure. The city will still need to be evacuated and chaos will still break out.
When it comes to Hookface, this is an easy fix as well. The entire Hookface story amounts to two encounters in the whole campaign. There is the encounter with Gotrrod outside Crazy Jared's hut in Zentih Trajectory, and the reprisal attack by Hookface in Foundation of Flame. When I ran the campaign I mixed this up a bit. In my homebrew 3E dragons were thought to be extinct, so I decided to play up this story a bit. I removed Dhorlot from Bhal-Hamatugn and replaced him with a bone devil. So the Hookface story became, Hookface was the daughter of an evil dragon from a great war when dragons were eliminated from the world, living in hiding. Her son, Gotrrod was the last true dragon in the family line. He had experimented with continuing his legacy and spawned the half-drgon/half-ogre offspring Zarik-Dhor. So the story became three encounters, the initial encounter with Gotrrod, a reprisal attack "My name is Zarik-Dor, you killed my father, prepare to die" during Secret of the Soul Pillars, and the final enraged attack by Hookface for eliminating her entire family line in Foundation of Flame.
In Dark Sun, Hookface can be replaced with any intelligent monster of equivalent challenge. You can remove Dorlot and play it out like I did only with a different monster instead of dragons, something mean and specific only to Dark Sun. I can't think of anything off the top of my head besides Drakes but they're not super smart, I don't think.
The whole Adimarchus/Nidrama/Sureya/Occipitus/Nabthatoron/Skullrot thing, that's a bit harder to convert without too much work. The whole fallen angel story is kind of important to the campaign and if you remove that or change it too much you might start to loose the thrust of the game. Perhaps you could make them elemental lords or something, djinn maybe, and move Occipitus to one of the elemental planes. This would take away the good vs evil thing a bit, though. Maybe keep them as they are and make the whole exile of Adimarchus more extreme because he came to Athas. Like Pop'N'Fresh said, outsiders are super rare, so play with that idea. I'm not sure how that would work with the Surabar Spellmason/Nabthatoron conflict. In my game I tied it all together and made Nabthatoron one of Adimarchus' generals and it was Surabar and friend's interference that caused Adimarchus to get captured by Graz'zt.
All in all, I think this could be loads of fun and I'm curious to see what you do with it.
Conversion ideas
Thanks - there are some good ideas there!
I'm not sure of the correct etiquette, so I'll just spoiler this to be safe. Initial thoughts behind the spoiler:
RE: Cauldron, I guess I'd like to try to keep it as is as much as possible. I was thinking of placing it in the Ringing Mountains and using the SCAP jungles as the Forest Ridge. Canibal Halflings could attack the Lucky Monkey, and that'd be just cool.
What effects would this have on Dark Sun/Athas? I mean, if Cauldron is *not* comparable in size to most of the City States, could it work as a tiny "colony"?
Then all I have to do is shift the environs back out into the near-desert and #1 you're back to lots of Athasian desert survival stuff as the PCs leave and return to Cauldron each time, and #2 the Lucky Monkey could play a more important role to the PCs. Like a home away from home. Thoughts?
Using this idea, the Demonscar will work nicely as a desert encroachment in the Forest Ridge.
Loving the idea of the sandstorms - thanks! Also, I'm starting to look at potential dragon replacements.
I'm still thinking about Adimarchus. It's quite a big thing to start monkeying around with. I like the PopNFresh idea - thanks - of keeping the outsiders as outsiders. Makes it seem more epic. The only other serious thought I'm having is perhaps tying him to Rajaat's champions. We're not a group that's fussy about "canon", so that could work quite well.
Last quick question - Red Gorge - any thoughts? How important to SCAP is it? Would it work if the NPCs were relocated to another City State?
Many thanks again! Will post more as it happens!
Peace,
tfad
In your OP you asked for input from fans of SCAP or Dark Sun. Well, I'm both. :D
Notes below the spoiler space.
The more I've thought about it the more I like the idea of keeping Adimarchus as is and not messing with that story. That makes his fall and exile and everything much more epic.
As far as Cauldron is concerned, I would not put it in the Ringing Mountains because I think people want to play Dark Sun for the gritty wasteland survival type thing. That really is just a personal preference and the game could be quite fun if placed among the Forest Ridge.
In playing the game, I actually found Cauldron to be a little too small as written, especially as the party advances in level. I ended up fudging the economy a bit to make it easier to play, so if you beef up the size of the city a little, it really won't adversely effect the game.
On the Redgorge side, it really plays a pretty major role, or it has in my game. I made the party start there and move to the city during the first adventure so they would be tied to the town and have a larger interest in saving it later. It would be very easy to choose a city 0off the Dark Sun map and then just zoom in for the campaign. You can plop down the other locations onto the map without affecting the world at large. The way I see it, not every little settlement and trade fort is going to be on the map, play with it and have fun, no one will fault you if it is fun to play.
Here is what I would do when converting, and again, this is just how I would do it:
With the setting, Raam captures my attention and on the map it is pretty empty around the city, giving me room to play with without messing with the world map. I would then find an old 2E book that discusses Raam and see what there is to pull from, maps etc. I don't have any titles for you since I don't have one in my collection, but I'm sure you can track one down easily enough.
Once armed with what I can pillage for maps and such I would draw my own campaign map based on what I already had. The SCAP campaign map is about 200 square miles so I'd scribble some dots on a piece of paper for each of the major locations, Raam at the center. the surrounding towns and locations can be lifted pretty much as written without messing with anything.
I'd then take the infrastructure of Cauldron and superimpose it onto Raam, keeping as much of the SCAP material as I could, the noble vs merchant conflict and so on. It helps to make a guide for your players so the details of the setting are known to them. The nobles in Cauldron control the outlying areas so this keeps everything tied together and doesn't mess with the campaign world at large.
Once the setting is established I'd take a look at the backstory. The story can get a bit muddled at times so when I ran SCAP I simplified and tied things together. If you are interested in how I brought it all together I'd be happy to share, but do what feels right for you. Ultimately it won't effect the fact you're in Dark Sun too much except for when you come to Adimarchus' fall and exile. I'd keep the outsider angle because I like that, but he came to Athas is a bigger deal than if he came to another world.
Once the setting and backstory is established I'd go adventure by adventure and make conversion notes. I do this with all my games so it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me. I'd create a big outline, painting in broad strokes the things that happen and the major changes. From there I'd do detailed notes for encounter by encounter changes. For example, decide how you want to handle the Spellweaver ruins (ruins from the Green Age perhaps?) and elements like the flood and the volcano as we already discussed.
I'd be happy to offer up some suggestions as to what to do with specific elements in each adventure. The way I run things tends to make less changes to the game mechanics and more descriptive set dressing changes.
Hope you can mine this stuff for ideas. :D
More cool stuff
Thanks! Again, in the spoiler!
After having a chat with the players, I'm going to redraw the Athas map, following some of your advice. Like I said we're not sticklers for canon, and the players just want the feel of Dark Sun, not to read the novels.
So Cauldron is going to be placed in the Ringing Mountains, with the Lucky Monkey serving as a stop off on the safe-ish road to the Tablelands. Everything else is going to be out in the desert. The road will look something like this:
Cauldron-Lucky Monkey-Red Gorge-Tyr
Excepting the Lucky Monkey, the settlements will be getting bigger, with Red Gorge revised into a larger, more vital town. This is to get the players traveling a bit more, searching further afield as the campaign progresses.
The players also want Red Gorge to be ruled by a Dragon King.
To be honest, I'm not sure what to do with that, could Spellmason have ascended to become a dragon? Suggestions are welcome!
I'm going to leave the plot intact and change nothing about Adimarchus, Graazt, etc. However, I am going to add hints that Adi was once a hero of Athas, perhaps during the ancient past, in order to tie things together a bit more. I'm thinking of having his insane dreams being filled with images of Athas as it was during his lifetime, all green and lush. Plus I love the idea of mad people drinking what they think is fresh water; insert something comical/gross here! Jzadriune is just going to be older than SCAP suggests.
I'm not sure if I should leave the Demodands as the source of the sign or not? On the one hand, I feel like the outsider count is getting too big for Athas, on the other hand I like the idea of playing up the similarities between Athas and Carceri as both being prisons.
Thoughts? Comments?
Peace,
tfad
As ususal, notes behind the spoiler space.
As far as Nabthatoron and his cronies goes, you can say that Adimarchus brought them with him to Athas. In my opinion that would up the stakes for a BBEG to have brought demons to Athas.
Also, when it comes to Redgorge, making a dragon king rule it lessens the threat of the attack from the Demonskar, if you choose to run the Siege of Redgorge. If you're going to skip this side trek, it really won't make much difference. Perhaps Surabar ascended to become an avangion instead of a dragon. Or you could simply state that Cauldron is ruled by a dragon king (the lord mayor) and certain members of the noble council have also begun the transformation, including the noble overseeing Redgorge (Taskerhill, I think?). The only problem I can see with this approach is that players may focus too heavily on the evil government and not on the plot.
When I ran the game I made both the noble council and the merchant alliance morally gray and sympathetic so characters could choose either side in the conflict. This is before they learn that there are evil forces (the Cagewrights) manipulating things behind the scenes.
That actually gives me an idea. If your players just want the opportunity to clash with a dragon king you can make Dyr'ryd one instead of a demodand. The players might feel disappointed at first that you didn't include one and then discover later that you really did. That might make Adimarchus seem even more badass because his puppet is a g-damn dragon. Imagine the power of a being that can control a dragon! This would also allow you to include a dragon without muddying the political scene any more than it already is. the political conflict in Cauldron is the facade that the Cagewrights use and the focus of most of the second act of the campaign.
My players plowed through all the turmoil and thought that the political SNAFU in Cauldron was the thrust of the campaign until they finally learned of the Cagewrights and the facade came crumbling down. It was a pretty cool revelation moment for them as all the other random happenings finally started to make sense and the pieces began falling into place.
Man, this is making me wish I'd run this in Dark Sun. lol
Thanks for the continued help!
Perhaps Surabar ascended to become an avangion instead of a dragon
Y'know, I had completely forgotten about the avangion. That's a really interesting idea, just wondering how to use it. IIRC, the avangions are not really detailed that much (unless there's stuff in the novels, which I never read), so there is a lot of blank-slate potential there.
I understand the idea of a Dragon King lessening the threat to Red Gorge, but what if the DK was a little standoffish. If the threat changed from saving Red Gorge, to saving the people of Red Gorge, i.e. acting before the DK does in order to save those who would otherwise die to to the DK's slowness to act. "What's that? They're killing my slaves?! Well I have enough, and they pose no threat to me. I'll kill them all before they get to my gates, don't worry. The people? Ptah!"
Could that work? I dunno.
I like the idea of Dyr'ryd being a dragon, that could really work. I'm going to consult my SCAP book and see exactly how this would effect things before I decide, but this might work out quite well.
I think the main reason that my players wanted Red Gorge as the home to a DK, is that Cauldron doesn't have one, and Tyr doesn't have one (at the time the adventures are set).
N.b. We're going to use Tyr as Sassarine. I think this is a good preparatory move, as several times things are referenced as taking place off in the capital, to keep powerful NPCs out of the way. I can just see my players saying: "Your boss is higher level than us, but he's away on business? Well we'll just go get him for you!" They can be wonderfully literally-logical, and, IMHO, too willing to pass things off to NPCs.
So, back on topic, I think they want Red Gorge to belong to a DK, to include that aspect of the setting in the game. Changing the Lord Mayor of Cauldron into a DK might work a bit better. It'll distract the PCs from the other political stuff and make the "game" the beholder plays (Vhalthrue?) all the more dangerous, playing to the insanity of the beholders (which my group loves).
Any thoughts on how this would play out? How would the beholder get rid of a Dragon King?
Hmm.
Peace,
tfad
As usual, ideas behind the cut.
Check out this site for the books. TSR Archive
Your ideas for Redgorge could work, and remember, the entire attack of the town by Nabthatoron's forces is a side trek and not included in the adventures at all. So really, whatever you felt like adding can work. Personally, I like the idea, my only issue is Redgorge is not a very big town, so what interest does a Dragon King have in it? As far as Dry'yrd is concerned, you can make him whatever you want and it really won't change the story and, IMO, fit better with a Dark Sun story if he is not a demodand.
Perhaps the hardcover is different, I ran from the magazines, but from what I can remember there is only one reference to an NPC being away in Sasserine and that is in Flood Season when the high priest is there getting the wands. The city is there in the distance but not a part of the campaign. In my game the party never went there and besides some passing references by them and NPCs it never came into play.
A beholder, IMO, would attempt to dethrone a dragon king through political treachery, such as the shenanigans that Vhalantru gets up to. The conflict between the Chisel and the nobles could easily lead the party to believe the nameless beholder is behind the maneuverings. Is the beholder Maavu perhaps? Hmmmm. In my game I removed the beholder and replaced him with a vrock, for various reasons, but the party wondered for some time who he was, and then when they saw him again consulting with Nabthatoron prior to the attack on Redgorge they became obsessed with uncovering who he was, they were quite surprised when they found out it was Vhalantru, of course, there had been hints.
So really, you probably wouldn't have to change much story-wise, if you placed a dragon king in Cauldron. You will probably have to decide what elements you want to emphasise in your telling of the story, and really, it might be a good idea to stramline it all a bit and make it more tied together. The story can end up with lots of loose ends if you run it just as written.
If you want to know the story as I told it, I'm happy to share. As written it's good, but needs some work.
I think the book was Defilers and Preservers because I never owned Dragon Kings.
More awesome ideas
Thanks for the continued imput. We could be starting as early as next week, so I'm kinda in DS overdrive at the moment. Clicky!
I'm working from the hardback, I have the Dungeon issues, but they're sealed in a box somewhere after I moved back from Korea. I have no idea of the difference level between the two.
I don't have much DS stuff, so the only place I know the avangion from is 'Dragon Kings' - they appear with a MM level of info in the back of the book. If you don't have DK, I can recommend it. It has a fantastic way for setting up Epic Level adventures in DS - I wish the 3E ELH was a little more similar to it.
Now I've got my commission, where were we? ;p
There are references to Sasserine in Flood Season and in Life's Bazaar. I guess I'm making more of this than SCAP does because I know my players well. I don't think there will be any problems substituting Tyr in its place - I've already drawn up a quick map of the area.
Which really just leaves the idea of the dragon king and where to place him (her?).
I guess Red Gorge is good because that's where my players wanted the DK to be. It's also good because it doesn't mess with the complex machinations going on in Cauldron, although it is bad because it muddies the water somewhat, adding an extra layer to all the political machinations. As you pointed out, it doesn't make too much sense as written, because Red Gorge doesn't hold much of value.
After thinking a lot about this, here's my idea - please tell me if you think it'd work.
I'm going to have a single DK rule both Cauldron and Red Gorge. Red Gorge used to be the base until they relocated to Cauldron, but it remains firmly in the DK's territory. Red Gorge, as well as being home to the red stone used to build a lot of Cauldron, also used to have a rich vein of red psionic crystals, long since exhausted by the DK's miners. This should explain the set up described in SCAP without changing anything.
The DK is a descendant of Spellmason, and is going to be unaware of the beholder's plots to remove them and rule the area. I'm still not 100% sure of what I'm going to do with Dry'yrd - I'll get back to you.
Peace,
tfad
We had our first game on Saturday, adventure zero if you will, and it went very well. I'll not type up the whole thing here, but I thought it could be a good resource if I took a little time to record some of the ideas I had and we used here. The goal of #0 was to get the players familiar with the region, and into the mindset of Dark Sun. Without further ado:
The players started out in Tyr, with personal reasons to get to Cauldron. They joined a caravan with some other mercenaries, taking them as far as Red Gorge - another group, the Storm Blades, had been arranged to escort it from Red Gorge to Cauldron. The PCs were confident they could make their own way from Red Gorge.
The caravan owner was Skie - of Skie's Treasury, remodeled to be a Pterran. The contacts in Tyr will help explain future expansion of the magic item shop. I have a 100% rewrite of the items for sale, all psionic as opposed to magical, which I can post if anyone wants me to. I've got an Excel sheet set up to handle the treasury's 'books'.
After some fun in Tyr, some desert survival action, and much roleplaying, they finally got to Red Gorge and stayed in the Redhaired Miner for two days, waiting out bad weather. Skie and the Stormblades chanced it and headed on to Cauldron. Not before the Lurk (PC name Beth, played by my wife) managed to embarrass Zachary. Looking forward to some more interaction with the Stormblades later!
Over the course of their stay in Red Gorge, some bonds were forged, handled in a way other SCAP groups might find useful:
I played up the idea of Patrons, with the group picking up one in Red Gorge and starting with one in Tyr. The idea being that in a harsh world, nobles and such like enjoy being the patrons of adventurers. They get to hear their tales, get protection, and status, in exchange for a the costs of putting them up, helping them out, etc.
I'm hoping this will work well with respect to SCAP's patron in Cauldron, with the PCs readily accepting it. It has also helped to form bonds with Red Gorge.
From Red Gorge the PCs moved on to the Lucky Monkey, where they met the new owners, after a little foreshadowing of the insanity to come (including some mad wildlife). I had the previous landlord of the inn run screaming into the jungle before the PCs arrived, leaving the only customers, an adventuring duo Human/Thri-Kreen, as the new owners. I'm hoping this will make the inn more memorable, lending more tension to the future events that take place there. Also, setting the precedent of simply taking over - I didn't like how it seems to sit empty in SCAP, and know my group won't let it, this gives them the chance to run it if they want to, or to pass on ownership to an NPC - there are plenty in SCAP who might want to start over!
They stayed the night at the inn, which was where we left the game, with each of the PCs having the same dream, of Athas' past oceans and the Smoking Eye lurking beneath the surface of the water.
Hopefully the next game can start with the opening of Life's Bazaar, as the group reaches Cauldron in what will be the early evening.
We played through another game this weekend, starting off with the opening events from both Life's Bazaar and Drakthar's Way. I wanted a lot more to be going on, so mixed the starts of the two chapters, hoping to create less of a modular feel to the adventures. A couple of Cauldron/SCAP on Athas notes follow.
As Cauldron doesn't have an arena, essential to all Athasian cities, I established that arena duels are fought on a small raft, pushed out into the lake.
The idea of the flood festival was changed to be when the elementalist priests try to summon help to clean and purify the water, which otherwise stagnates and gets dirty over the course of each year.
To build a little tension for Flood Season, it was established it has been a bad year so far, and the water is infected with cerebral parasites (XPH, DC 15; incubation 1d4 days; damage 1d8 power points). No infected PCs yet!
The four temples in SCAP were changed to the four paraelemental temples from Darksun (revised?). I'd advise using whichever paraelement your PCs might have a connection to in place of St. Cuthbert, as it feature's predominantly. Also, using any one your PCs might have an antagonistic relationship with in place of Wee Jas (Sun for us).
The Sun Temple has a crematorium, which has been used as a kiln to bake the Last Laugh coins in circulation. Bad guys and plot elements unite!
The goblins from Drakthar's Way have been scribbling graffiti all over town during Life's Bazaar. Except they're not goblins, but Gith. This has worked *very* well, giving the PCs an extra direction to point the finger - are the Gith responsible for the kidnappings?
Ghelve's Locks has been abandoned for a long time. Ghelve was never a gnome, as they were all cleansed long before Cauldron was founded, and the business failed as there was not enough metal/demand for his locks.
I removed all the story pointers to Ghelve as my players would much rather work things out themselves. I let them chat to various NPCs, using the missing person information as leads to the abandoned area.
Solid ideas all around. Looks like it's shaping up well, awesome to hear.
Solid ideas all around. Looks like it's shaping up well, awesome to hear.
Thanks! The next game is on Sunday, so we'll see how that goes, although I can't imagine that there will be much to report as the players are going to be going into Jzadriune. Just cosmetic changes really, and a lot of rusted metal!
Stay tuned though, I'll keep posting anything I think is worthwhile as notes for anyone else attempting something similar.
Peace,
tfad
The game is still going on, but we're waaay off the track now. The players are preoccupied with building a pier, stretching out in the lake of Cauldron. Lol - I love my group. :D
Not much to report, but I'm still keeping an eye on this thread, intend to post any useful conversion notes, and am willing to answer any questions about running SCAP on Athas.
Peace,
tfad
Glad to see your game got off to a good start. Dark Sun rocks, Shackled City rocks, so how is that not a recipe for awesome?
Last weekend we played another game. We're currently at a mixture between Drakthar's Way, and somewhere the designers never intended (I love my group).
The PCs had their first encounter with Drakthar, who has been very much changed to fit in with Athas a bit more. She's now an aquatic Elf who survived from the previous age because she was a vampire. "Drakthar" isn't her actual name, but the name the Gith she has surrounded herself with gave her.
We had an awesome scene, right out of a Lovecraft story, with her awakening in a cavern full of drumming Gith. It scared me just running it!
One of the PCs was dominated by her, swimming in Cauldron's lake so she could experience it. That was as far as things got, though. She became very jealous when said PC walked arm-in-arm with Jenya, leading the Lurk and NPC priest to "counterspell by stealth" Drakthar's hold on him. The last thing he heard was her screaming in his head - heck hath no fury like a woman scorned!
Interestingly, through the domination, the PCs learned that Drakthar opposes those responsible for the maddening dreams and threatened she might be forced to act against them. I did this to tie Drakthar to the plot a bit more - although that's all I'm saying for now in-case one of my players stops by here.
Peace,
DoD - Kev'
aka tfad
Sounds like it a success so far, that's pretty awesome. I ran this out of the magazines so I am not familiar with the details of Drakthar's Way. I'm interested to know what happens when the 'flood season' rolls around. :D
I ran this out of the magazines so I am not familiar with the details of Drakthar's Way.
It's actually a pretty cool adventure. It doesn't really "fit" into the ongoing events, but as a stand-alone-adventure it works well. Most of the changes I've made to it have been to tie it in with everything else.
I'm interested to know what happens when the 'flood season' rolls around.
I imagine the next session will wrap up Drakthar's Way, although we might have a new player joining us, so that could slow things down. One or two sessions, either way. Then we'll have about two months of down-time to roleplay through, as the characters wanted to set off for the Flood Festival well in advance, in case they got lost/attacked in the desert. As they got there without too much hassle, they've got some time to kill. Looking forward to all the roleplaying - one of the PCs set up Cpt. Skellerang with her mother! That's going to be fun to watch....
Peace,
DoD - Kev'
So we had another game yesterday, wrapping up Drakthar's Way. There were a lot of changes made to adventure, but it has nicely set up some future events:
Drakthar was actually an aquatic Elf from the Blue age, having survived into the present due to becoming a vampire.
She surrounded herself with Gith - it was the Gith her named her "Drakthar", she had a traditional Elven name: Auriel
Deep below Drakthar's Way, the PCs found out that she was not involved in the creeping madness surrounding Cauldron, but was aware of it and suggested she might have to act against it in the future.
Drakthar had discovered/was using as her coffin, one of the Githzerai's psionic-nukes from before the apocalypse. The Gith were worshiping it/her like something out of Beneath the Planet of the Apes.
The bomb was floated down a river of magma to under Red Gorge, where it was moved to the Bath House (which was changed to mud baths), complete with dominated Dwarf owner.
The PCs didn't figure this out, but Drakthar was planning to use the weapon against the Dragon Queen in an effort to take the region for herself.
The PCs won the day, destroying Drakthar by smashing down a section of wall and exposing her to the Athasian sun. Does she have another coffin hidden away? Could she come back?
The Queen's Templars took the bomb and informed the PCs that it wasn't a bomb, Men In Black style. Also it was revealed they were headhunting one of the PCs.
Now, with a little RPing to go, it'll be on to Flood Season!
Peace,
DoD - Kev'
Just wanted to make a quick post about Skie's Treasury. The hardback has some info on running the "Ye Olde Magic Item Shoppe", and it seemed like good advice up until now (Flood Season). However, now it seems to be that with the escalating costs of the higher-level items, Skie ends up with a lot fewer items in stock than at lower levels.
I don't have any magic formula or solution to this, other than to say you might need to add a few more items to the inventory in order to meet player expectations of stock levels.
Peace,
DoD - Kev