So my group is coming up on the end of "Here There Be Monsters" and a couple of my players, as seems to be the pattern in my campaign at the end of every chapter, want to change characters. Since my party composition has shaken up considerably in the first four chapters - three deaths and about twice that in people changing characters for one reason or another - I suggested just having the characters pursue Rebuild Quests (Players' Handbook 2) instead of having to remove current party members and replace them with new faces. Given the sandbox nature of "Tides of Dread" I figured it would be the easiest place to put such sidequests - the players would only need to keep playing their current characters for two or three more sessions then could undergo a sidequest to obtain their new build.
So... any suggestions where might be appropriate? I have a Summoner|Alchemist rebuilding into a Sorcerer|Warlock or Sorcerer|Dragonfire Adept (he hasn't decided yet) and a Sorcerer|Oracle rebuilding to a Witch|Bard with Draconic Heritage feats. Was thinking of putting one through something around Zotzilaha's place, but hadn't come to any definite decisions yet. Any recommendations would be appreciated.
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32
|
Zotzilaha is perfect - maybe the Zombie Masters have a mission for the characters when the big Z doesn't fry them. Maybe returning the idol is enough - he could offer the treasures and say to the characters in question something about their inner nature trying to reassert itself and offering to help. If they agree he telekineses them into the lava! Cue an hour or two burning in flames that don't damage the flesh but still BURN, while the character realigns his powers and emerges purified.
Other spots... the missing village could have something soul-warping as reason for all the deaths. Maybe the souls of all the villagers are in some sort of artifact, and the character in question feels moved to break it/ free the souls to travel to their final rest. The passage of so many souls, viewpoints, and entire lives through him strips his own personality bare and leaves him with shreds of many identities struggling to form a new, complete personality and skillset.
Same with the rakasta temple... by the time I was finished with that one it was a deathtrap :-) There was a hidden Temple to Huehueteotl in mine, and with him being the God of Time (as well as Fire, Death etc etc etc) he's good for changing people's nature/ channeling an Olman soul into the corpse of a self-sacrificing party member or whatever.
Same with the rakasta temple... by the time I was finished with that one it was a deathtrap :-) There was a hidden Temple to Huehueteotl in mine, and with him being the God of Time (as well as Fire, Death etc etc etc) he's good for changing people's nature/ channeling an Olman soul into the corpse of a self-sacrificing party member or whatever.
I like this, and I'm intrigued about this "deathtrap" comment >:) Might you have some examples/suggestions available?
|
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32
|
Let's see...
The inside of the temple pyramid was scattered with head (skull)-less skeletons, and misty. In the mist lurked a Blood Amniote (Libris Mortis), which caused some upset. The shaft down was no problem since the wizard has Permanent Arcane Sight, though one character slipped and almost fell.
The ledge with tunnel to the couatl was a trap, with the real tunnel below the ledge, hidden behind slimy vines. When the Spellthief flew down to disarm the trapped door on the ledge she failed, collapsing the wall ... whereupon she got attacked by the waiting Skull Ripper (Pathfinder #3). It would have decapitated her in that first attack if the wizard hadn't been watching from above. He took the last damage with a Torc of Heroic Sacrifice!
By the time the party returned (three Flying, two carrying the others) the dust had cleared, revealing the extra nastiness - behind the Skull Rippper, a Symbol of Sleep was engraved on the wall! Spikes below, decapitating claws with enough reach to get the back of the shaft, and you're feeling drowsy? Oh dear...
The door behind the Skull Ripper was revealed to be fake, and the real entrance was found. The tunnel led diagonally down and was full of bloodstains, and Skinwalker graffiti. The next chamber was the dragon-head and big hammers trap from Dungeonscape, with the exit hidden under a statue of Huehueteotl. The party managed to wreck a big hammer and peek above the room at the mechanism. I thought on my feet and revealed the power source to be undead elephants - (thank you Curse of the Crimson Throne rakshasa labyrinth!)
They were almost home, and made their way to the last door after another long, diagonally sloping path. Here was more Skinwalker graffiti, and markings in Olman stating that this place was sacred to Huehueteotl and death to defilers etc. The party was pretty low on resources at this point, so I said that the warnings in Olman used very strong language. They opened the doors anyway.
The room with the couatl was just as in the magazine, except there were also three Nilbog/ Skinwalker sorcerors in it. With Huehueteotl being associated with time I had some fun here. Legend has it that He sometimes turns up at a village in the form of a smelly old man, to see how he is treated. If he is looked after, he gets steadily younger, leaving as a happy child over the course of a few months. If he is not welcomed then bad things happen.
The Skinwalkers who managed to penetrate this far has their souls almost torn out of their bodies in excruciating pain and before they actually died Time was slowed and reversed for them. Basically their soul was being tormented by Huehueteotl for ever, and they could not end it by killing themselves to (hopefully) get their just rewards at the hand of the Big D or Khala because all the damage they did to themselves just pushed them back in time towards the moment they were cursed. None of them could try healing, and they refused to repent and ask the Couatl for release. After many attempts to get them to repent, Tonatiuh ended up squatting on the Astral Plane, feeling sorry for himself that he hadn't been able to protect his people, and not able to leave as Huehueteotl had told him to wait for a sign.
The Skinwalkers were terrified to let the soul-wrenching continue to their final end - they didn't want Huehueteotl to get their souls - so they have basically spent the last few months fireballing each other and clawing each other up to stay alive.
The party opened the door noisily and ate three Fireballs right away. The Skinwalkers played hit-and-run until the party closed for a fight. The sight of wizened, badly burned Skinwalkers that healed when they were hit was kind of freaky... and doubly so as there was no healing except for a wand of cure light wounds!
They ended up grappling and healing them to death one-at-a-time.. eventually with some telepathic help from Tonatiuh.
That's about how I remember it :-)
I redid the Rakasta parts of the storyline by replacing them with Dusklings (the Fey from Magic of Incarnum) as I'd wanted to use it as a hook for one of my players playing a Duskling and said that his race was native to the Isle of Dread. Thus Skinwalkers are, instead of ex-Rakasta who became even more bestial, ex-Dusklings who let their beast totems gain control of them in their savage insanity.
I kept your idea of having a dungeon beneath the Couatl's hangout, but decided to have it entered by the doorway to the secret room under the altar in the Couatl's room lead down into a full dungeon rather than just a little weapon cache. This room was designed by the Dusklings to partially overlap with the realm of Faerie from which they first came, and due to the chaos of the old Savage Tide combined with the entropy of time the Shadow Plane has made some encroachments as well.
At the heart of this dungeon is Cuezaltzin - "The flame", an ancient shrine to Huehueteotl, containing a white fire that would never fade no matter how much time passed. One who allows themselves to be burned by this fire finds their wounds healing as if time had been rewound so they were never harmed at all. A character who leaps into the flames finds his entire timeline rewritten.
The current prisoners of the labyrinth, since I'm wanting to stick with a Fey theme (Tonatiuh told the character that he'd be passing into the realms from which the Dusklings first came), will be mostly Shadar-Kai with class levels, a large raiding party that thought they would be leaping onto a Material Plane Duskling settlement and got caught in the planar well instead. They can't escape, but they don't want to - they want to get to Cuezaltzin so they can use its flames (or the opportunity for rebirth, if that doesn't work) to rid themselves of their Shadow Curse. They're accompanied by a few equally unfriendly Fey (Redcaps, Splinterwaifs, or Shimmerlings from MM3; Joystealer and Lunar Ravager from MM4; Grey Jester from HoH; Dinosaurs/Terror Birds/other Isle of Dread fauna with the Unseelie Fey template from Dragon Compendium) or monsters like Plants or Magical Beasts that seem like they would be associated with unfriendly Fey (Greenvise from MM2; Blackroot Marauder from Dragon Compendium; etc. etc. etc.). Shout out if you can think of anything particularly appropriate I've overlooked ;)
But Cuezaltzin is guarded - after all, I don't think Huehueteotl would leave something like that so anyone could get to it. I want it to be sort of a mini-boss - tough enough to be memorable alongside a souped-up Temauhti-Tecauni or Skephilipika, but not to the point where Vanthus appears easy in comparison (yes I'm rebuilding him). Theoretically, this thing should have been keeping the Shadar-Kai and their allies at bay for years, but still be defeatable by a party of Level-8 Gestalt characters. Given Huehueteotl's association with time I was considering a LN Chronotyryn (Fiend Folio p 33) or Quarut Inevitable that looks like a statue of Hueh (FF p 102) with either option dumbed down to CR 10-12.
Thoughts?
Went with the Quarut, though after a near-TPK with an overload of encounters in the previous room (two Shadar-Kai warblade|rogues, two Shadar-Kai shadowcaster|black dragon shamans, four Elder Redcaps, and one large-size Blackroot Marauder) he was a bit of a letdown.
He got off a dominate on one party member but I forgot to have him give an order (don't use dominate much, not completely familiar with the rules) and he hit one party member with a death effect but they made the save. Thanks to PF taking away constructs' immunity to crits, two powerful blows - one from the Crusader, one from the Eidolon - pretty much did more than his DR and Fast Healing could keep up with.
Still, the players greatly enjoyed the encounter and I had a lot of fun with the Shadar-Kai - especially when the group managed to convince a prisoner they had taken (crit deck had her get several fingers severed and the other hand rendered useless, and the good guys in the group have things against striking down unarmed opponents) that the fey could use the rebirth artifact once the heroes were done with it and had her talk the other Shadar-Kai out of attacking them further.
Full story is in my campaign journal :) Thanks for the inspiration Carb!