I turned Dyr'ryd into an angel who fell from Celestia into the depths of Occipitus with Adimarchus and who turned into a demon with him. He was a righthandman of the Prince of Occipitus and created the Cagewrights after his lord's demise to save his master from his horrible fate.
I also created my own set of dreams, like others on these boards, to create Adimarchus' background story and I was sure to let the PCs catch some glimpses of his fire-haired lieutenant, Dyr'ryd, without giving away his name. So when the PCs finally met the leader of the Cagewrights, they knew it was someone from Adimarchus' inner circle.
I'm still early enough in my campaign that this hasn't been an issue yet, but I am worried about it. My plan for now is to treat the Cagewrights and Adimarchus as separate plotlines that intersect at a couple points. The most obvious intersection is Ch.6 in Occipitus, but there's also Vhalantru's twisted reappearance, which hints that there's more driving events than just the Cagewrights. And if Embril manages to steal a PC's body at the end of Shatterhorn, that's a pretty potent reason to seek out Adimarchus' prison even if they've had no other foreshadowing. And the DM can use dreams and indications of the growing madness sweeping the area (even the whole world?) to signal that there's something big going on.
But even so, the connections between the Cagewrights and Adimarchus are not well explained. How does their connection to Adimarchus motivate anything they're doing? Are the demodands supposed to be so happy to have a portal to Carceri opened that they're going to just hand Adimarchus over? That doesn't seem in keeping with their way of doing things. And even if Adimarchus is freed, what would the Cagewrights get out of it? A lot could be clearer there. I think the vagueness is a product of the fact that the writers of the early adventures didn't know how things would end, but even so....
One idea is that the opening gate is right on Skullrot so the prison fall on the prime, shatters and Adimarcus is free.
That's a link with the Demodands, Carceri and the Cagewright.
In the campaign I'm running right now (this is the 2nd time), the Cagewrights worship Adimarchus and want to set him free. I've already introduced all of the Cagewrights at the Demonskar Ball (they had no idea who they were, of course).
I haven't decided yet, but I'm also considering having the Cagewrights (or maybe just a few) show up at the end of Chapter 5; rather than having the Starry Mirror transport them to the desert, after the PCs defeat Nabthetoron I might have them show up and have a dialogue (and maybe a round or two of combat, just to show how powerful they are) and having the Cagewrights banish them to a desert (Anauroch, maybe; though the campaign started in Golarion, we just transplanted it to the Realms).
Then Kaurophon will show up to save them (he might be with the original gang), betraying his fellow Cagewrights for his own ambitions. Of course, this changes the dynamic of Chapter 6, but I think it might make it more interesting.
This means when the PCs show back up in Chapter 7, they will already know they have powerful enemies, but they won't know who they all are yet (i.e., Orbius).
I tend to sow a lot of foreshadowing seeds in my campaign. I also tend to throw in a lot of side adventures (the first one is going to be The Gauntlet from AD&D 1st Edition, which will take place after Chapter Three and that I had set up during Chapter 1 and further reinforced in Chapter Three).
They also left Zarkad alive in one of the prison cells in the Malachite Fortress (Chapter 1), and I'm considering having him come back with a newly resurrected Kazmojen (along with a new advanced howler, a la Prickles Jr.) in the Underdark.
Anyway, I like to use these side adventures to help foreshadow or expand on the plot, and I don't really slavishly adhere to the written word of the adventures, but tend to warp them a bit (as most GMs do). That being said, I like to build up my villains to make it all a bit more personal for the PCs. Since Adimarchus can affect people on the Prime Material Plane, I was also considering having his dark whispers infect the mind of one of my PCs (I just need to decide which player is the *most* corruptible and drunk for power...). Being a developer/writer for Earthdawn, my mind always tends to go to the "Horrors" route, and I have a lot of experience seducing players to the dark side through their machinations, so I will probably go that route.
The tenuous connection between Adimarchis and the Cagewrights was a pet peeve of mine for years as well. The reason for this was simple – there was planning to the campaign and no threads and links throughout. This is a huge flaw in what is otherwise a wonderful series of adventures.
The Path was written from the bottom up – making it up as it goes. So with those limitations in mind I thought to adapt and rewrite the campaign from the opposite direction – from the top down.
In my campaign Adimarchus is a general of the celestial armies whose forbidden love causes his fall from heaven and then desperate decision to seek the add of his greatest enemy which ultimately proves his undoing. He is manipulated into committing great acts of evil but it is his betrayal by his enemy that eventual sends him mad and unleashes his Inner Demon.
The Inner Demons ultimate plan is two-fold. First to create a gate into the material plan so his prison tumbles from Canceria and he can escape his physical bonds and secondily to destroy Adimarchus last threads of sanity forever so the Inner Demon can fully take over the angels body forever.
While Adimarchus cowers locked in his cage on Canceria and in his own mind, this Inner Demon reaches out to others through their dreams to corrupt and manipulate. In my game, Dry’ryd (leader of the Cagewrights) was the first to be corrupted to the Inner Demons Cause. Dyr’ryd second head, Ryd, is completely in Adimarchis hold to the point that he/it is merely a mouthpiece of the demon.
I changed the Cagewrights from, what I believed, was a group of faceless villains to a much smaller group broken up into one Leader – Dyr’ryd, 6 Master Cagewrights and 6 Apprentices = 13 Cagewrights. Of these I attempted to foreshadow these extensively so when the party eventually faced them they were meaningful battles.
Here’s a more thorough explanation –
http://therpgenius.pbworks.com/Alternate-Villains
I got rid of the adventure Strike on Shatterhorn which seemed pointless to me and created two mini adventures which I felt linked better with my new plot. One, which was to hunt down Embril and Alurid in the Haunted Village who had captured Adimarchus’ love – Nidrama and were trying to kill her to snap the angels sanity. The other involves the party stepping into Adimarchus’ mind and his madness – the Nightmare Realm where they need to work their way through his dreams before facing his Inner Demon and freeing his from this insanity.
Anyhow I don’t want to bore people with details but if anyone wants a copy of a more extensive document let me know.
Delvesdeep
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The tenuous connection between Adimarchis and the Cagewrights was a pet peeve of mine for years as well. The reason for this was simple – there was planning to the campaign and no threads and links throughout. This is a huge flaw in what is otherwise a wonderful series of adventures.
Hey gang - just popping back in this category of threads for a moment - havent looked at this section in over a year....
Having completed SCAP a year and a half ago, I can attest that DD's concerns were valid - and of which I shared in.
I will also give a standing credit to DD for his work that he did - and posted, of which I borrowed, edited etc and used in my own games which completely helped flesh out the Cagewrights and Adimarchus. Many of us on here brainstormed ideas on how to do it all better, myself included, but the Lion's Share was indeed done by him.
Robert
When I was heavily rewriting this adventure path, I did the same thing -- I chopped down the number of Cagewrights (e.g. I combined Ike Iverson and Shebeleth Regidin, among others) and I made the Cagewrights overtly dedicated to freeing Admiarchus. Scattering demodands around Golarion would just be a side affect of the rescue mission.
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I noticed that vague connection as well and remedied it in a similar manner to ones already mentioned.
The way I ran it I had Nabthatoron as one of Adimarchus' generals back in the day before Surabar and pals laid them all to waste. Nabthatoron was trapped on the prime and Adimarchus was imprisoned by Graz'zit in Skullrot. 800 years later the barrier between the planes is thin in the area. Adimarchus' madness has seeped into the prime and has been infecting the denizens, animals at first but later in the game higher functioning creatures. Dyr'ryd was a worshipper of Adimarchus and has saught to free his master through a complex ritual and put together The XIII, aka The Cagewrights, to complete the ritual and free his insane master.
The party came along and slowly discovered the plots of The XIII and began to dismantle the organization. By the time they uncovered the location of the Firey Sanctum and moved on the last of the Cagewright Masters Adimarchus' prison was weakening. They knew that the only way to stop Adimarchus' madness from infecting another prime world, creating another opportunity for escape, they went to Skullrot to slay him.
The way I played it the plan was less a conspiracy by Adimarchus and more a byproduct of his madness. However, he was still closely tied to the actions of the Big Bads and simply stopping them was not enough to stop his spreading insanity and inevitable escape.
I was looking through the SC hardback today and noticed that the exposition we get in the Introductory chapter doesn't mesh very well with the material at the end in Adimarchus' stat block. In the Intro, the book says outright that the Cagewrights are motivated by the hunger for power, and Adimarchus doesn't enter into the equation at all. Only Fetor Abradius is given a motive that involves Adimarchus. But in Adimarchus' description that accompanies the stat block, the book tells us that when Adimarchus' madness seeps into the Material Plane, it drives those it touches to seek a way to free him. To my mind the real center of the problem here is that the power-seeking motives ascribed to the bad guys at the beginning contradict the "free Adimarchus" motives that motivate Ch. 12; if Dyr'ryd and co. really want power, it's not at all clear that freeing Adimarchus is going to get them that. Something's got to give; either there needs to be a clear story told how freeing Adimarchus is going to make the Cagewrights more powerful (and for that matter, how opening a permanent portal to Carceri is going to make it easier to free Adimarchus), or the motives of (at least some of) the Cagewrights have to change a lot. And no doubt there are lots of possible ways to fix the problem.
You were a big part of those earlier discussions and idea pools. Funny thing is I'm only just now going to be playing out the Haunted Village advanture I came up with to replace the Strike on Shatterhorn all those years a go.
I'm still trying to work my way through my last adventure in Adimarchus Nightmare Realm. My idea has always been that the players needed to work through the Nightmares to unlock the layers of madness that protect the Inner Demon (Adimarchus' Demon Stats in the HC) so they can face it and effectively free the fallen angel of his insanity.
My concept was that the party would need to have the Spellweavers 'Dream Catcher' (or Dream Key/Nightmare Gate etc or whatever name works) and home face to face with the fallen angel to step into his Nightmares. They would then need to work their way through Adimarchus' Dreams somehow.
The Dreams would be the same as I wrote up in the alternative document and I thought perhaps they would need to either roleplay or fight their way to end each Nightmare. As you can see I have the basic structure of the adventure but not the details.
Any help would be fantastic from anyone.
Thanks
Delvesdeep
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Hey DD - if you can find the old (probably in Archives now) thread that I posted in regards to me finally finishing SCAP - I posted a lot of detail of how my climatic session went, including a lot of info as to how I ran the "entering Addy's mind/madness theme" via his dreams.
Essentially he was locked in his own dreams/madness and the PCs had to convince him that it was all in his head.
Meanwhile they had to fight Dark Myrakul etc while Addy was chained and in depressed repressed denial.
When Graz'zt appeared w/ Balors and his succubus daughter, thats when Addy started to learn the truth and actually was able to make a difference by controlling his own subconscious. A lot like being in a Freddy Nightmare movie.
Seeing the recent movie of Inception may help formulate ideas for the dream sequences.
Robert
Hey DD - if you can find the old (probably in Archives now) thread that I posted in regards to me finally finishing SCAP - I posted a lot of detail of how my climatic session went, including a lot of info as to how I ran the "entering Addy's mind/madness theme" via his dreams.
Here is one of the discussion threads I think you're referring to: Adimarcus Dreams.
I've had it on my desktop for a year or two now, and it will likely be at least that long before we get that far, but there are some great ideas there that I don't want to lose :)
More on this topic in this thread:
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The tenuous connection between Adimarchis and the Cagewrights was a pet peeve of mine for years as well. The reason for this was simple – there was planning to the campaign and no threads and links throughout. This is a huge flaw in what is otherwise a wonderful series of adventures.
The Path was written from the bottom up – making it up as it goes. So with those limitations in mind I thought to adapt and rewrite the campaign from the opposite direction – from the top down.
In my campaign Adimarchus is a general of the celestial armies whose forbidden love causes his fall from heaven and then desperate decision to seek the add of his greatest enemy which ultimately proves his undoing. He is manipulated into committing great acts of evil but it is his betrayal by his enemy that eventual sends him mad and unleashes his Inner Demon.
The Inner Demons ultimate plan is two-fold. First to create a gate into the material plan so his prison tumbles from Canceria and he can escape his physical bonds and secondily to destroy Adimarchus last threads of sanity forever so the Inner Demon can fully take over the angels body forever.
While Adimarchus cowers locked in his cage on Canceria and in his own mind, this Inner Demon reaches out to others through their dreams to corrupt and manipulate. In my game, Dry’ryd (leader of the Cagewrights) was the first to be corrupted to the Inner Demons Cause. Dyr’ryd second head, Ryd, is completely in Adimarchis hold to the point that he/it is merely a mouthpiece of the demon.
I changed the Cagewrights from, what I believed, was a group of faceless villains to a much smaller group broken up into one Leader – Dyr’ryd, 6 Master Cagewrights and 6 Apprentices = 13 Cagewrights. Of these I attempted to foreshadow these extensively so when the party eventually faced them they were meaningful battles.
Here’s a more thorough explanation –
http://therpgenius.pbworks.com/Alternate-VillainsI got rid of the adventure Strike on Shatterhorn which seemed pointless to me and created...
Delvesdeep, I am currently running a group through SCAP (just finished assault on temple of Wee Jas) and have incorporated many of your ideas about Adimarchus' fall and restructuring the Cagewrights. I would love to see your replacement for Strike on Shatterhorn.
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Man, I cannot wait to start feeding my Shackleborn character the dreams. He ended up dead in The Underdark and was rezzed. I told him the only thing he remembered was being led by a skeletal fiend past a cage containing a massive man with a burning flame in his left eye. So now he'll start getting more lucid dreams than the night terrors he grew up with! :) Should be a blast.
Side note, I don't like Gau Kleeoch or whatever her name is. Thinking I am going to swap a more interesting character for her. Maybe Tirok Coalfire, that fire giant. I figure Dugobras can mention him in passing as a customer that didn't pay up for the work done on Coldfire. A slight hint that the smith would be happy to see him dead. I just don't think having a random Minotaur attack the city is all that solid. Better to have the Blue Duke warn that his general will avenge him and have the Flamewarders in Oblivion talk up their glorious leader. Then he isn't just a fire giant in a volcano.
Another tidbit is I plan on having Dugobras using a hammer with a permanent silence spell on it. Hearing protection while at work. I look forward to my party turning the corner to see a giant smithing without making a sound. :) he can toss it across the room to talk to them.
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Hey delves...I love what i have read on RPgenius, and if you have more, would love to see it.
feel free to send it to my personal email: Patman21967@comcast.net
I do not get the part about having them work their way through his dreams. I was thinking that the dreams would serve a cool purpose by letting a PC have them. I have one who is a teifling, and I thought this would be a cool, close connection..I would love to see your stuff though...We are only at chapter 3 now...
Thanks,
Patrick
Hey delves...I love what i have read on RPgenius, and if you have more, would love to see it.
feel free to send it to my personal email: Patman21967@comcast.net
I do not get the part about having them work their way through his dreams. I was thinking that the dreams would serve a cool purpose by letting a PC have them. I have one who is a teifling, and I thought this would be a cool, close connection..I would love to see your stuff though...We are only at chapter 3 now...
Thanks,
Patrick
Thanks Pat. To be honest, the problem with sharing the final few adventures is that I haven't written them in full yet. In fact I may run them using the stats I included! I'm still unsure.
I am looking forward to the Haunted Village adventure though. That and Jarl's hold have always been two locations I feel that were unrealised as potential adventure locations in the campaign.
I am looking forward to revealing Nidrama as Adimarchus' lost love. I want to make the last few adventures meaningful for the party and ensure they are drawn to the conclusion rather than just stumble through it. If I can have the party share in the tragedy that is Adimarchus' fall, loss of love and utimate betrayal in which I created through the dreams and finals adventure changes, then I will have feel I have improved the campaign for the better.
The whole journey through Admarchus Nightmares is a further effort towards that goal. I was never 100% happy with the logistics of the 'Nightmare Realm' adventure myself but the crux of it is -
-The Party stands before the caged fallen angel - Adimarchus
-The group uses the 'Dreamcatcher' magical item to step through a gate into Adimarchus' maddening dreams
- The party stand in a circular chamber that has no beginning or end. Doors are periodically spaced out along the external wall of the corridor. Adimarchus' lost mentor Haloen, now a trapped ghost in his subconscious, appears before the party to act as a guide.
- Haloen explains the adventurers that through each of the doors lays the dreams of events that most haunt Adimarchus. They torment him and drive him to madness. Only by entering these dreams and defeating the evil within can they hope to strip his insanity away.
-Haloen appears in every scene next to the party to explain the challenge contained in each scenerio. Behind each door is a scene that will be familar to the party for each is one of the Nightmares they have experienced.
-Once each Nightmares is dispelled the door the party steps through back into the corridor vanishes. Once all the doors disappear, the middle wall of the corridor disappears revealing a large circular chamber. Within the centre of the chamber, upon a throne, awaits Adimarchus' Inner Demon (use Adimarchus Evil demon manifestation).
-Once the Inner Demon has been defeated the party appears before the real Adimarchus and his insanity is cured.
Does this help at all or confuse you further?
Delvesdeep
Interesting. Bookmarked for later use.
What I've been thinking about the Cagewrights, is to make them the (somewhat) unwitting pawns of Adimarchus, them being afflicted by his madness into freeing him, perhaps unknowingly by most. I was thinking into making Shebeleth an exception to this: since he is stated as worshipping Adimarchus, perhaps he is the only one, or one of the few, aware of the Cagewright's true goal (something not even Dyr'ryd realizes). He won't be the backstabbing or "own agenda" sort of villian, since his and Dyr'ryd's goal is essentially the same (the opening of a permanent portal to Carceri),but only Shebeleth knows that doing so would free Adimarchus.
That was my spin on it, the first time I GMed it. We didn't get that far, though.
G'day Eduardo. My biggest issues with the latter portion of the campaign were the same as your own but the extent of the problems I felt were greater than one adventure.
My biggest concern was flow and purpose of the lead villians of the Path. For mine, the early villians were much stronger personalities and much better foreshadowed than there later counterparts. This seemed skewed.
Orbius/Vhalantru was the best villian of the campaign yet was not even one of the Paths ultimate villians: the Cagewrights?
There was not enough foreshadowing or links full stop. The Adventure Paths was written in the wrong order - from start to finish rather than finish to start. You never begin a campain without the end in mind and yet this is what the writers did. There as no management of the campaign which is why there is the problems we all can see.
@delvesdeep: I like some of your ideas, especially the revamping of the Cagewrights, tough I'm unsure of taking out Strike on Shatterhorn. I'd like to know though, using your revamped/replaced Cagewrights, how do you intend to replace the xp/items from Shatterhorn, since most of the Cagewrights featured there would be replaced/taken out?
My biggest focus was on purpose for taking out Strike on Shatterhorn was as much to reduce the amount of meaningless villians who were meant to be the biggest, most important villians in the campaign. It just didn't make sense that the first time the party heard of these villians they were fighting them. 25+ lead villians is far to much to foreshadow or legitimise.
I removed SoS because it was a clean up adventure which did nothing to further the plot as a whole. Whether you move it before or after other adventures this doesn't change and neither do the villians who make up the adventure. These villians are just another encounter to the party because there are too many major villain and too many faceless villians imho.
In terms of replacing the xp/items from Shatterhorn I have included a new adventure located in the Haubted Village where the party face off against Aluzid and Embril (the only two Cagewright Masters I thought were worth saving and I could easily faoreshadow earlier in the campaign). I tried to design this adventure as a stepping stone to the latter adventures to give the campaign more flow.
I'm also not into throwing Nidrama into the mix, other than having her as the somewhat detached protector of the Caludron region.
The importance of including Nidrama came from trying to ensure that Adimarchus became more than a faceless ultimate villian. As written, the party really have little reason to despise Adimarchus or even care about him. Unless the Cagewrights or other earlier villians are linked to Adimarchus then why care if he lives, dies, is saved or condemned?
This is also why I created the Haunted Dreams. They allow the party to learn about Adimarchus and hopefully learn of his sad fate. In my campaign Nidrama is his last link to sanity which is in turn the only thing stopping the Fallen Angels Inner Demon from completely breaking his spirit and consuming his mind completely.
My take is that, Adimarchus needs to be saved and his Inner Demon, who is the true villian mastermind of the campaign, destroyed. Nidrama is Adimarchus' love and reason why he was expelled from the Heavens.
Without Nidrama, the final encounter becomes another meaningless fight against another meaningless villian.
Once more, in my opinion, the campaign loses direction straight after the death of Orbius and at a push - Tree of Shackled Souls Adventure.
This is merely my take of course and I can see we are both trying to achieve the same goal but just coming from different direction.
Cheers
Delvesdeep
I'm thinking about running this soon. If I do I'm planning on making Shebeleth the true mastermind of the whole plot while Dyr'ryd and his plan to open a planar rift are just a means to an end. Maybe Dyr'ryd suspects Shebeleth of having an ulterior motive or may not - no one can read the emotionless priest and without Shebeleth's (and Fetor's)knowledge the plan can't come to fruition.
Thanks DD for all the info.
Thanks DD for all the info.
No worries mate! Glad to be of use.
hey guys,
not sure who is still reading, but you (especially Eduardo) just helped my 2nd installment of the SCAP to a vast improvement.
Having Shebeleth as the mastermind behind the CW's actions to open the portal for connecting the plot with Adimarchus is very workable as he is the only cagewright with the means to resurrect other CWs and thus, essentially controls the whole group, guided by his god directly or indirectly, but in any case, like necessary (for the path :)
But moving "Strike on Shatterhorn" between LoO and FoF makes so much more sense to me. Let me explain:
Having SoS so early means, the PCs are likely heavily outclassed, which comes to me as a great option to show them their limits. There can be plenty of reasons to let them live, one being the fact that half of the group is about to leave for the Volcano, the rest wants to keep the PCs around and busy, playing with them. (If they quickly kill one or two, teh rest might flee and return to Cauldron where they are most likely a hindrance). Maybe, especially when the Smoking Eye character is along for the ride, (s)he being a goal to freeing Adimarchus could be intentionally spared by Shebeleth, who might even intervene to save that character, if things get rough under Shatterhorn. I'm sure I would find other reasons for a group of mad, insane cultists to suddenly ignore an adventuring group.
All that the PCs need from Shatterhorn is the ACTUAL location for the ritual, which makes it not quite into a strike, but more into a stealth mission. It's something my 3-4 roguish characters will love.
They don't need to mop the antagonists, they need to avoid them and just get the info they need. On leaving, they indeed encounter the burning city and should start hurrying towards the tree.
Whether I skip the roleplaying opportunity of chosing the new mayor or use it together with Kravichak to give them the possibility to follow (e.g. scry) the guy back to Shatterhorn, I'll leave to fate at this point, however, the possiblities seem endless and finally with this twist, for me at least, the whole story makes even more sense than before...
Thanks.
Nib