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Let me begin by saying that I know a few of my players skulk around these forums and, as such, I'd like to warn them that this is the last place they should be, as there will be extensive spoilers for my campaign.
That said, Serpent's Skull is the first AP that I'm running using the Pathfinder system and setting. I held Paizo in high regard for their great work on Dungeon magazine, and while I've been out of D&D for some time, when I decided to return Pathfinder seemed much closer to my own sensibilities than current WotC productions.
Serpent's Skull seemed to be an opportunity to explore certain classic themes in D&D that I had never played around with before: jungle exploration and survival, lost cities, and a very pulp, Indiana Jones-ish vibe. While the campaign does deliver this in heavy doses (especially the excellently-written first chapter, "Souls for Smuggler's Shiv"), as the later chapters were released I found that not every choice made necessarily fit my own aesthetic. As we continue playing through "Souls for Smuggler's Shiv", I find myself wanting to modify the campaign to ever-greater degrees.
This journal will not be a straight recounting of events from the campaign, but instead a place to store and share my thoughts on the AP as well as the modifications that I've made to it.
To start with, one of the things that I've come to love about Pathfinder is their dedication to the history of the hobby and swords and sorcery literature that informed Gygax and Arneson's designs. As I engage in my own exploration of those roots and develop a relationship with them, I hope to grow in my understanding of the pulp tropes that pervade our hobby.
In the near future, I'll be discussing some of the sources I'm examining for inspiration and the PCs themselves, as well as providing a broad outline for the changes I'm currently working to incorporate into the game.
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I look forward to reading your thoughts.
Thank you!
Before I get properly started, I figured I'd take a little time to discuss my own relationship with D&D. Like many people of my generation (X), I started on 2nd Edition, easily the most reviled version of the game amongst both modern fans and grognards alike, although rules-wise it does seem to cleave fairly close to 1E. Looking back on those supplements now, I'm not sure that they deserve all the spite they've engendered. The weaknesses from a business standpoint (fracturing of the IP, lack of stand-out modules, etc.) have been elucidated elsewhere, but I have come to respect the willingness to smash boundaries and to "imagine the hell out of it".
Dark Sun, Planescape, Spelljammer, and other settings challenged what D&D could be by drawing on a variety of sources: Sword & Planet, Victorian Sci-Fi, and Post-Modern Literature all were part of the heady brew that I drank deeply from in my youth, even if I didn't necessarily recognize all of the source materials.
This isn't to say that I'm hoisting my flag to declare 2nd Edition as the finest of all versions of the game, but WotC's "Back To The Dungeon!" ethos in 3rd Edition may have caused the pendulum to swing too far in the other direction. 2nd Edition focused on certain elements that I want to highlight in my games, one of which I want to discuss today:
"Gygaxian Naturalism": A term coined by the excellent blog Grognardia, Gygaxian Naturalism presented the dungeon as a place where creatures could feasibly exist, with defined societies and ecologies interacting, as compared to earlier "funhouse dungeons".
Although we can attribute the father of our hobby with this innovation, 2nd Edition took this several steps further. Likely inspired by City of the Spider-Queen, many setting products looked at ways to address monster lairs that were more complex than simple delves, and these grew into entire societies, from the Dragon Kings of Tyr to the Illithad Empires of the Crystal Spheres.
Certain philosophies in game design decry this development as ultimately a waste, as world-building does little in facilitating adventures. From personal experience, I have to disagree with this assessment, for a number of reasons:
A. Cause and Effect: Perhaps best illustrated in the phenomenal scenario City of Skulls by Carl Sargeant, dungeons evolved into dynamic landscapes that react to player choices. No longer did monsters simply wait to be exterminated by the next party of adventurers to stumble upon their lair. Instead, they organized, retreated, and made pressed their advantage.
Beyond reacting to the players, they also reacted to each other. Decimating the hobgoblin tribe could lead to the rapid growth of the ooze pit they were keeping in check, or encourage the kuo-toa tribe below to assimilate the remaining hobgoblins as vassals.
Why does this matter, from the PC's standpoint? Not only does it build verisimilitude, by hinting at a wider world, but it reinforced the uncertainty of the dungeon environment - the chambers you cleared yesterday could now be housing something far worse.
B. Encourages Investigation: This is a stylistic preference, but as a die-hard fan of Call of Cthulhu, I find that a strong mystery component leads to a greater investment in the game world by the PCs. This style of play is encouraged in a world of Gygaxian Naturalism once the PCs begin to understand that their actions are linked to their environment, sometimes with unintended consequences. Hence, a more cautious tone is encouraged and rewarded, as the PCs seek to understand what is going on around them. I'll give two examples to elucidate this point:
First, returning to the City of Skulls, there is a beautiful encounter when the PCs are infiltrating a prison run by evil humanoids and run by foul cultists:
There is a 1 in 6 chance that a patrol encountered will actually be a 4th-level priest, with an entourage of 1d4+2 acolytes (level 1d2), being given a guided tour of the cells by 1d3 orcs and a 3HD orog (this encounter only occurs once).
This is a perfectly reasonable occurrence in any jail, and adds a lot of spice to what would otherwise be an ordinary random encounter. Further, it can potentially inspire some great snippets of overheard dialogue from a skulking rogue:
Orc Guard: "And here we have the torture chamber. As you can see, connected magic mirrors broadcast the horrific details into the cell of every prisoner, causing these worms to suffer even greater torments as they imagine themselves on the cutting board."
Priest: "Hmm, very nicely done. Yet, I can't help but notice that the instruments are still caked in blood and left in disarray. Tell me... Throk, why would this not be a prudent choice?"
Throk, Orc Guard (sweating): "I, ah, uhmm..."
Priest: "SILENCE! If one of these wretches were to escape, how would you know if they had managed to abscond with one of these scalpels when they are not properly laid in their case? Moreover, when these blades rust from misuse and a valuable prisoner dies from an infection, what excuse will you have then?"
Throk (stammering): "I-I-I did not th-think..."
Priest: "Exactly, Throk, you did not think." (Turning to his acolytes) "You see, my students, this is why you must always keep your dungeons tidy. An organized lair leads to an organized mind, which gives us the natural advantage over subhuman barbarians like Throk here." (Turning back towards Throk) "Thank you for this valuable lesson. Now, you will submit to 10 lashings on the morrow, and I'll have no more of these slip-ups, or next time it will be your head."
Throk (bowing his head): "Of... Of course."
Our second example comes from my most recent session of Souls for Smuggler's Shiv, wherein the party first encountered two of the abandoned camps and the first traps laid along the road. These camps led to wild speculation on their origin, how the cannibals maintained the road, and the purpose of the traps.
They came to the conclusion (with a bit of encouragement on my part, through the discovery of certain clues) that the abandoned camps were a sort of "venus fly trap". They encouraged shipwreck survivors to set up shop there, repairing the huts and growing complacent over time, while the traps were used as an early warning system to inform Thrunefang scouts of their occupation, allowing the cannibals to prepare a proper assault.
This reinforced the PCs respect and fear of the cannibal tribesmen, while also rewarding them with the satisfaction of avoiding such a fate themselves. Although not written into the scenario, it was certainly a highlight of the game session.
C. Negotiation Comes To The Fore: To elucidate this concept, let's take our example of Throk and the Priest above. If the party rogue listens in on this conversation, he will likely see a unique opportunity to gain an ally. Throk has been humiliated by his superior, and will face further consequences tomorrow. Should the party follow Throk, they could offer to take care of this problem for him by eliminating the priest. In exchange, Throk could continue his tour of the facility, except now the "Priest" and his black-robed "acolytes" are none other than the PCs in disguise.
This sort of encounter, once a common part of the adventuring experience, seems to be rarer today unless specifically scripted by the module. Paizo has attempted to encourage this sort of "uncomfortable alliance" in a number of their scenarios (most recently in Ashes at Dawn), but have been met with strong resistance by players on these message boards. Although many posters complained that they resented the railroad-y nature of such plots, I suspect it is because they have come to understand the dungeon as a place where faceless monsters wait to be slaughtered for their loot, rather than a foreign and exotic environment where they are mere intruders.
In a dungeon environment where causative effects are in place, the PCs are encouraged to think outside the box, play all the sides against each other, and engage the world on its own terms, not theirs. The mix of combat, investigation, and roleplay encounters demanded by Gygaxian Naturalism create a more varied, and in my opinion, richer experience overall.
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Okay, time to start outlining our protagonists. While I could spend a lot of time detailing the backstories of the PCs, I always find reading such things tedious, so I'll break them down into bullet points.
I'd also like to take a moment to express frustration at PC naming conventions. I'm not sure why so many players have difficulty developing proper names, but one of my goals is to develop larger lists of appropriate-by-culture names for players to choose from, so that we don't have so many dissonant, silly, or mundane names. That said, here we go:
Samuel True, Worldwound Deserter and Heretic of Iomedae
1. Vudran by birth, Sam's parents migrated and settled in Mendev to support the war effort, believing that the Worldwound was an issue that all people must face.
2. Sam was raised in a caring and compassionate household, which conflicted with his militaristic training to become a warrior-cleric of Iomedae.
3. Assigned to lead a small scouting unit, Sam came into frequent conflict with his superior, Col. Solannus Albion, who resented his piety and popularity.
4. Col. Albion, looking to eliminate True, assigned him to a post near Storasta. His troops were decimated by the bizarre and hostile flora and fauna in the area and True ordered his men to flee the region as their position was untenable.
5. Facing charges for desertion in Mendev, True led his men westward to Varisia, pursued by inquisitors and beset by many dangers. During the long overland trip all of his troops were slain save one, the embittered Sarkorian Squire Thalis.
6. Squire Thalis made fast friends with Gelik when they reached Magnimar, but a petty scam hatched by the two of them was interrupted by pursuing inquisitors and Thalis was arrested. Gelik and Sam barely managed to elude capture by boarding the Jenivere.
***
One of the experiments I've been conducting with this game is an attempt to adopt certain stylistic differences between each character. Although there are the larger moods and themes that encapsulate the group's story arc over the AP, I wanted to try to craft individual storylines that each had a different mood, or aesthetic sensibility. This way, each player has a sense that their character truly matters. I'm not entirely certain that I will be successful in this endeavor, but I think it's an interesting experiment and we'll see if it enhances the player experience or dilute the larger narrative.
In the case of Sam, my go-to sources are Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, Umberto Eco's In the Name of the Rose, and a variety of scholarly readings on heresy and doctrinal disputes in the history of the Christian Church. I've posted some about these themes here.
I want to highlight the uncertainties that are provided by this thread to reflect the character's struggles with his faith, sense of honor, and duty. The story of a deserter is one of shame, but should also provide the possibility of redemption. The player has expressed an interest in developing a heretical sect of Iomedae worship that emphasizes her more compassionate qualities, which will certainly be an avenue for this redemption, but I don't intend to make it easy for him.
***
Sam is the character of one of my favorite players, Duane. Unfortunately for him, being one of my favorites means that I'm probably going to put you through a hell of a wringer, since I spend a lot of time thinking about how to hose his character.
If this seems strange, this sort of design philosophy is very well explained in John Wick's excellent Play Dirty, which I heartily recommend. If you don't have access to this tome, though, I'll attempt to summarize:
In all great stories, the protagonists must suffer to achieve their victories. It is, in fact, this suffering that gives their struggles meaning. If an objective is achieved too easily, the reward becomes worthless. Therefore, the greater the trials the PC faces, the greater the feeling of accomplishment the player will feel when he overcomes them.
And certainly there will be trials for Sam to face. Outside of those presented by the AP proper, I intend to give him three "personal" foes that will haunt him over the course of the AP:
1. Squire Thalis - Having been captured by inquisitors, Thalis will escape punishment when he is liberated by bandits. Over the course of the next few months, Thalis will make his way southward as a brigand, eventually joining the Shackles pirates and meeting up with Sam once more. Thalis is based on the character of Squire Jons in The Seventh Seal, a callow and cynical veteran of the Crusades who has embraced a mocking nihilism. His primary purpose within this story is to act as an accuser and reminder of Sam's weakness, casting doubts on his piety and courage. Thalis is not so much the enemy of Sam as he is a rival, a darker reflection who takes great joy in trying to drag Sam into the muck and calling him on every mistake. If (when?) Sam acts in any way that is less than holy, I'll be sure to have Thalis there, calling him on it.
2. Col. Albion and Father Prater - These two characters will act as representatives for the Church of Iomedae, and the political ideologies that motivate this religion. Father Prater is Sam's mentor in the Church and an old family friend, now having retired to Sargava where he promotes Iomedae's interests there.
Although Prater is a just man, he is extremely stern and believes wholeheartedly in the cultural superiority of Cheliax, viewing the Mwangi people as "savages" which must be saved. To achieve these aims, he has supported the Hellknight Order of the Coil, hoping to mold them into an order of Iomedae-worshiping knights. By doing so, however, their philosophies have begun to rub off on him. When Sam escapes the Shiv and arrives in Eledar, Prater will attempt to convince him to submit to justice. When this is rejected, as I'm sure it will, Prater will be forced to attempt to bring his former student to justice. Over time, these two will become bitter political enemies, and his pet Hellknights will prove to be a regular thorn in Sam's side.
Col. Albion, on the other hand, will continue to grow in power and prestige in Mendev, and for a long time will only be mentioned in passing as a great hero of the Worldwound. This is mostly just rubbing salt in Sam's wounds, but it will also seed Albion's eventual arrival in Sargava. The Church of Iomedae has long-term plans to crush House Thrune and root out the influence of Asmodeus in Cheliax. They view Sargava as one of the viable points through which to stage an assault on Cheliax, and therefore wish to maintain the current status quo. When this is threatened by invasion from the Mzali and political machinations by the Cheliaxians, Albion is ordered to lead a force to Sargava to maintain the peace, no matter what the cost. This will bring Sam head-to-head with his betrayer, with the soul of Sargava and the future of the Iomedaen church at stake.
I'll describe Sam's third foe, Hirreta the Crone, in my next post. She's intended to be one of my campaign's most enduring villains, and is a concept that I've been very excited about.
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3. Hirreta, the Crone - One of the major villains of the campaign, Hirreta is an ancient Night Hag and leader of the Seven Sisters of Midnight, a coven dedicated to Cyth-V'sug that spans a variety of worlds. Over the course of the campaign they will act as recurring antagonists, leading to a final confrontation with Hirreta herself on the Ethereal Plane.
In a piece of history yet to be revealed in-game, Hirreta posed as a maiden outside Storasta and seduced Sam. After becoming pregnant, Hirreta revealed her true nature and swore to return for his soul. Since then, Hirreta has stalked Sam in his dreams, taking great delight in torturing the cleric of Iomedae.
Although Hirreta has many plans which I'll reveal over time, her master stroke will come through her daughter with Sam, Ilonna. Ilonna is currently being trained as a warrior woman in an aspect of the Abyss where time moves much faster than in Golarion. Late in the campaign, she'll be sent by her mother to gain Sam's confidence, seduce him, and eventually marry him. After they have consummated their vows on the wedding bed, Ilonna is to sacrifice Sam in the name of the Seven Sisters of Midnight.
This act is not only a sadistic final attack on Sam by Hiretta, but is also a bizarre dominance game that she is playing on her own daughter. Ilonna has not been told that Sam is her father, and when Hirreta reveals this horrifying fact it will come as much a surprise to the warrior woman as it will to Sam. Hirreta actually hopes that Ilonna will fall in love with Sam, moved by the cleric's wisdom and kindness, so that her repulsion and disgust will be heightened by the revelation of incest. "Tough love", Night Hag-style.
***
The story arc here was inspired by a variety of different sources: Sophocles' Theban Plays, especially Oedipus the King, Neil LaBute's In The Company of Men, Roger Zelazny's Chronicles of Amber and Sam Raimi's Drag Me To Hell provided the backbone, but I also have to credit the excellent Paizo supplement Classic Horrors Revised and the delightful Call of Cthulhu supplement Our Ladies of Sorrow by Kevin Ross for wanting to play around with hags for some time now.
Hirreta's creative origins actually are born of necessity, as Smuggler's Shiv is so isolated from the rest of the campaign world. I knew that the PCs time on the Shiv would mean they would be trapped for months IRL in an isolated locale. While I loved the survivalist aspects of the island, I was concerned that the PCs would lose their sense of character as their individual stories took a backseat to the realities of the jungle. As the PCs have little time before landing on the isle to truly define their place in the world, I wanted to ensure there was reminders of their former life. I decided to accomplish this through a series of dream sequences that would highlight aspects of their histories.
Dreams are a tricky thing to handle in an RPG. Overdone, they become repetitive and boring. I've therefore been careful not to conduct these sequences too often, only employing dreams once every 2-3 sessions. So far, this has proven to be effective, although I'm uncertain how they'll hold up over time.
Another problem is that players do not necessarily feel at risk in dreams, so the stakes are much lower. A Night Hag provides the danger necessary, but on their own is a foe that no PC group of levels 1-3 can realistically face. Therefore, she must have minions that can credibly pose a threat over a variety of levels.
Finally, there has yet to be a robust ruleset developed by Paizo for adventuring in dreams. I have recently purchased Super Genius Games' Dream Magic and Rite Publishing's Coliseum Morpheuon in hopes that these will provide some direction on how to conduct such adventures, but I've yet to thoroughly review them, so we'll see if they bear fruit.
In my next post I'll talk a little about how I've fleshed out my ideas about the Dimension of Dreams, the Ethereal Plane, and the types of threats Night Hags pose therein.
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I'm going to save myself a bit of time here and repost from the Patron thread of Dark Roads and Golden Hells, an Open Design project currently in development. I shared some of my thoughts about Night Hags there, and while they may yet end up on the cutting-room floor, I certainly will be using them for my home campaign:
Night Hags, as they're presented in the Bestiary, stalk mortals in their dreams so as to steal their souls and sell them in the markets of the Planes. They're also mentioned as poachers of the dead, stealing souls during their journey to judgement. Clearly, to the Night Hag, the soul represents a resource to be harvested, bartered, and sold for their own benefit. Yet why does the soul hold such fascination to these vile thieves of dreams?
When mortals dream they tap into the spark of pure creation that resides within their soul, creating emphereal realities as their soul travels the Ethereal Plane, which dissipate on awakening. The Night Hag wanders these realms, stalking dreamers and taking inventory of their creations. This is remarkably akin to a home-invading stick-up artist "casing the joint" before moving in.
If a Night Hag finds dreams that particularly appeal to their sensibilites, they'll steal into the dream and hijack particular places, creatures, and objects for their own amusement. Yet, for these dream-creations to persist beyond the mortal's rest, they must be imbued with something "real". Thus, the need for the soul.
A Night Hag does not merely sell souls to angels and devils for occult secrets and objects of power. No, they keep the choicest pickings for themselves, unweaving the soul into threads that can turn dreams into reality. Their stolen dream-creations are stitched with the loom of the human soul, giving them a persistent half-reality that they use to spin their dream-palaces filled with servants from the minds of sleeping mortals. These bizarre palaces are a patchwork of scenes from many individuals' nightmares, from blasted fields of the dead to sumptuous parlors, depending entirely on the tastes of the individual Night Hag.
The servants of these Hags are perhaps their most horrific creations, however, as they are comprised of patchwork para-personalities created from the memories of mortals and aspects of broken souls. Although these creatures are only half-realized on the Material Plane (gaining the Ectoplasmic template from Haunting of Harrowstone), the comatose soulless husks created in the wake of the Hags sometimes reawaken, possessed by these para-personalities to do the work of the Hags on the material Plane.
...
When the Night Hag stalks her prey, she often takes delight in involving multiple mortals, using her Shroud Adherer servants (from Misfit Monsters Redeemed) to stitch together dreams on the fly. Thus, multiple dreamers may stumble into each other's creations, or worse, into the palaces of the Night Hags. Particularly inventive or sadistic Hags may even lift memories from one mortal's dreams and implant them into another, causing them to recall events that never happened to them.
Inspirations: Solaris, Dollhouse, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Inception, Wildest Dreams and Forgotten Lives for Over the Edge, and Grant Morrison's The Filth.
***
Now, you may ask, how will this apply to my campaign in particular? Well, so far I've been careful to be subtle with these elements. One of my problems as a DM is that I'm often too quick to overplay my hand, overemphasizing the subplots that I'm most excited about by incorporating them too frequently. As such, the only manifestations over the last few months have been:
1. An intrusion by Hirreta into one of Sam's dreams, murdering his father during a childhood memory and stalking the terrified child-version of Sam through their home.
2. Having one PC stumble through their dream into that of another shortly before they both wake. Since their dreams are being "stitched" together, this will actually allow PCs to credibly share dreams, which is something that I've always wanted.
These intrusions into their dreams will become more prominent over time, however, with their dreams even spilling forth into reality.
Hirreta doesn't only have her eye on Sam, however, and soon I'll return to discuss the strange story of Crispin/Cyn, another one of our PCs.
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Although I'll be returning to PC profiles soon, I wanted to take a minute to talk about Kyle Hunter's Downer, and how it truly embodies the "2nd Edition Spirit" that I've discussed previously.
Warning: Spoilers for Downer abound!
I have fond memories of Downer, although I was able to follow it only infrequently, and so recently I picked up the anthologized Wandering Monster. Hoping to mine the book for inspiration, I was struck by a quote from the introduction:
I really like the idea that the blossoming industry of dungeon crawling is a gnarly eco-bomb. It's rough on the environment, plunders lost ruins, and leaves generations of aberrant orphaned monsters.
This is a phenomenal encapsulation of "Gygaxian Naturalism", and readily applies to Serpent's Skull, especially The City of Seven Spears. Many people have criticized this volume, for a variety of reasons, but my greatest disappointment was that the city seemed very "flat". Saventh-Yhi is not abandoned by any stretch of the imagination. It is a fully populated city, and has a rich and diverse eco-system: the Charau-Ka Children of the Spear, the Akarundo-led Serpentfolk, the Vegepymgy tribe, the Human Tribe of the Sacred Serpent, the Troglodyte Cult of the Mantis, and the Boggard Tribe of the Green God.
Yet, these tribes do not have any long-range plans of their own. They mostly keep to themselves, developing no relations between each other, and only exist to react to the PCs. Moreover, the majority of them have no interest in negotiating with the PCs nor with the other factions who have entered the city. The ultimate consequence of this design choice is that they can only respond to the intrusion by the PCs with large-scale attacks of identically-statted NPCs until genocidal slaughter forces them to flee.
Compare this to Downer's Oubliette. There is a similar number of factions running the city, including the beholder Manglecramps, Araaka's Temple of Lolth, the undead Abolakia Union led by Lady Nahg, the Thieves Guild run by the Rakshasa Kalro, and the Illithids, run by Garriok. Each of these villains has their own agenda:
1. Manglecramps attempts to double-cross the Prison Plane of Carceri to barter off the Ulolok in a high-stakes gamble to gain power in Sigil.
2. Araaka has made a deal with the forces of Hell to overtake the city and bring it under her thumb.
3. Abolakia stays above the fray, withholding her forces until the final minute so as to force concessions from her "allies."
4. Garriok seeks to build his own army to get out from under Abolakia's thumb.
5. Kalro wants to maintain stability at all costs to ensure his business remains profitable.
Despite their often-adversarial relations, they meet regularly as a ruling council of elites to negotiate the future of the city. Oubliette is divided into districts, but a certain level of integration exists. It is a city of evil monsters, but they act as a rational, functioning society.
When a team of adventurers show up, the balance of power is thrown way out of wack and everyone is scrambling to achieve their own agendas while adjusting to the rapidly-shifting balance of power. Alliances shift, gambits are played, and nothing is certain. The setting truly comes alive.
If a single adventuring party causes all of this havoc, imagine what an invasion by five international political factions would do! The story potential here is phenomenal, as it should be in Saventh-Yhi. Instead of a slog through hundreds of same-y monsters, City of Seven Spears should have been a high tension political thriller where nothing is certain and everything is up for grabs.
The challenge is: How do we accomplish this?
I'll be exploring this over the course of this campaign journal, and I hope that some of the solutions I come to will prove useful in your campaigns. In the meantime, I'm very interested in hearing what you did to make Saventh-Yhi your own.
Finally, here's the takeaway from Downer:
1. Monster cities should have a functioning society, including a form of governence (which is likely a council of some sort).
2. Each faction within the city should have their own agenda that they were actively working toward before the PCs arrived on the scene.
3. These factions will have relationships with each other, including rivals, allies, and sworn enemies.
4. Integration is key to selling the verismillitude of a multi-ethnic "monster town", so there should be at least one district that acts as a DMZ where trade can be conducted.
5. When the balance of power is upset by the intrusion of PCs, things tend to fall apart. Alliances shift, agendas change, and carefully-laid plans may be thrown out of balance. In short, it becomes a world of adventure.
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After an extended absence, the campaign journal is back with another character profile. This time, we'll be looking at one of the 'zanier' concepts that has been pitched for the game, Crispin / Cin, schizophrenic witch of Molthune:
1. Born a peasant of Molthune, Crispin was mentored by his village elder in the ways of witchcraft.
2. Although able to eke out a living providing folk medicines to the locals, Crispin wanted to offer a better life to his children and so enlisted in the military as a field medic.
3. During an excursion in Nirmathas, Crispin's unit was informed by the locals of a passage into the Darklands which could give them access to the fallen sky citadel of Kraggodan. Intrigued, the troops descended into darkness.
4. Unfortunately, the passage led them into the territory of the Derro, who slowly picked them off one by one. The last thing Crispin remembers is his torch sputtering out, the last of his unit, and waiting for the horrible fate that awaited him...
5. Weeks later, Crispin was found comatose outside the Nirmathi village and became a ward of the state. This was five years ago.
6. A month before the campaign started, Crispin's comatose form was visited by a multi-colored glowing orb, which pulsated weirdly over his bed. After a few moments, Crispin awoke, but was a changed man. Now referring to himself as 'Cin', and with a new, strangely alien personality, he escaped from the institution and made a long pilgrimage to Varisia.
7. This new persona, 'Cin', lacked emotion and viewed the world from a strangely detached perspective, yet seemed to take orders from the sphere which now constantly rotated around his head. At the guidance of the orb, he waited patiently in Magnimar until Samuel True arrived in the city. Tracking down the priest, Cin declared that he had been 'guided by the stars' to join True in a quest that he knew nothing about. Soon, they would both be Southbound to Sargava and, unknown to them, Smuggler's Shiv.
8. Once upon Smuggler's Shiv, the 'Cin' persona would fade and Crispin, remembering nothing of the last few years, found himself on the other side of the world and in another decade. Now, Crispin maintains control most of the time, with Cin taking over during moments of stress.
A rather convoluted and bizarre backstory, but PCs always do seem to come with baggage, don't they?
The core idea of a possessed character came from the player (Paul), as well as the emotionally disconnected / shell-shocked persona. I helped Paul fill in the details about Molthune and Nirmathas, and have (so far) kept him in the dark about the nature of his tormentors beneath the earth.
Paul initially began play as Cin in what could be considered (in retrospect) to be an ill-considered experiment in characterization.
Off-Topic Discussion About Motivation in RPGs Begins Now!
As player and GM, Paul and I have argued several times about what compels a PC to adventure. Paul is of the school of thought that believes every adventure should have a deeply personal motivation for each character, and that at the beginning of a scenario the GM's primary goal is to convince the PCs that the stakes are high enough that they are forced to take action.
I, on the other hand, am of the school of thought that believes PCs should be built as 'men of action', characters crafted with an inherent desire to go out adventuring, whether it be for virtuous reasons or personal gain. From that point, the PC can be further invested in the individual scenario by revealing additional motivations that pertain to the situation at hand.
An example would be a character that I had played in a previous campaign, Pastor Fryday, corruption-busting cleric of Pelor. When, during the party's first dungeon-delving expedition, they discovered the ancient history of the maze they had entered. Pastor Fryday quickly became excited at the marvelous find they had uncovered. Previously unrevealed to the rest of the party, Fryday fancied himself a bit of an amateur archeologist and historian, and the significance of the tomb simply could not be ignored! Why, after they had cleared the dungeon of its dangers (and secured its treasures), they would have to contact the local university and organize a fully-fledged excavation!
Now, in my initial conception of Fryday, I had not conceived of the character as a history buff. However, I saw this as a perfect opportunity: give the GM a chance to provide backstory (which we always appreciate) and hype the rest of the party on why the dungeon we were delving was unbelievably cool.
Off-Topic Discussion Complete
Cin was an attempt by Paul to create a character without internal motivation which would be compelled by a purely mysterious external factor, the glowing orb (which is, in fact, a Paracletus). After a few sessions, however, it became obvious that Cin's Data-like non-personality would not be sustainable for a long-term campaign. The schtick would get old and the player would get bored with a throw-away concept. Discussing the issue with Paul, we agreed to have Crispin make a miraculous reawakening, a 'Rip Van Winkle' who found himself under very strange circumstances and wanting nothing more than to get home to his family.
So, what do I have in store for poor Crispin?
In the short term, the greatest difficulty I'll be facing is when the characters get off the island. After all, if Crispin's motive is to return to Molthune and reunite with his family, why wouldn't he book passage on the first ship out of Sargava?
Thinking on this issue, I came up with a rather peculiar solution. What if Crispin was nothing more than one of the para-personalities crafted by Hirretta? His experiences were drawn primarily from a Molthuni regular whose nightmares had provided much fuel for the Crone during the Nirmathi rebellion of 4648, meaning that his wife had long ago passed on, his children now dottering in old age, and grandchildren grown adults. With the horrific realization that his whole existance is a lie (and that the body he inhabits is not even his), what does he ultimately have to go back to?
This being a late development in the game, I had two kinks that needed to be fixed, however:
A. What does a Paracletus have to do with a Night Hag?
Initially, I had conceived of the Aeon's intervention being motivated primarily by a need to correct an issue of cosmic imbalance created by Aroden's death. Part of Aroden's portfolio is a god of history, and therefore the progress of time. With his death, time itself has been undergoing a readjustment on Golarion, and ancient threats and secrets have been uncovered at an ever-increasing rate as history slips into a regressive cycle (explaining the timely reemergence of Runelords, Dragon Liches, Serpentfolk, and so on in the various APs). The Aeons have therefore been subtly acting to ensure that civilization marches forward and the proper flow of time is maintained. In service of this goal, Cin was activated to play a part in Ydersius' defeat, ensuring that the Serpentfolk stay buried in the past.
Although I'm likely to continue to pursue this idea, it occurred to me that the Aeon could be working to serve a secondary goal as well: the Aeons, as the 'maintenance men' of the Planes, view the Night Hags as parasites who interrupt the proper migration of souls. As such the Paracletus' superiors saw the 'hijacking' of one of Hirretta's sleepers to be icing on the cake.
B. So, what's the deal with the Derro?
Having Crispin's unit decimated by the Derro was a bit of a lay-up for a later development in the campaign. The Urdefan of Ilmurea left me cold, as I haven't been able to muster a lot of interest in this particular monster. Rather than slog through Thousand Fangs Below with a long string of encounters with a baddie that I felt ho-hum about, I decided to pull a bit of a switcheroo and have them replaced by the Derro, which really pushed my buttons in Into the Darklands. The Derro, using the Morlocks of Ilmurea as stock for their experiments, worship Cyth-V'sug from their blue-litten caverns and work to unlock the secrets of the ancient city.
As mentioned in my previous post about Hirretta, the parapersonalities are built from bits and pieces of experience extracted from Hirretta's former victims. With the decision to make 'Crispin' one of these false personas, it occurred to me that perhaps the horrifying experience beneath Nirmathas was actually that of a Morlock in Ilmurea. As Crispin enters the city beneath Saventh-Yhi, he'll discover that he still has a living family, but they are the inbred degenerates that comprise the slave class of the Darklands. Will a character so strongly driven by his need for family be able to find solace in the only kin that will embrace him?
Time will tell.
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As readers may have noticed from the previous post, I did not mention a particular theme for Crispin. To be honest, he was the one character who I had not really nailed down. Looking over this journal, however, I do detect particularly Lovecraftian elements:
* Transmigration of the soul.
* Existential horror, where one's assumptions about one's self and reality are called into question.
* An emphasis on dreams, where the character is both stalked by a hag and inhabited by a higher, cosmic being.
* Relation to a subhuman, degenerate offshoot of mankind.
* Manipulation by unknowable, inscrutible otherwordly forces.
I find little surprise in this, as my last major campaign was a two-year run on Call of Cthulhu, and undoubtedly these themes are still in the back of my mind.
Having realized this, though, I suspect the best thing to do is to embrace it. One thing I can do to set Crispin's story apart is that while I incorporated a number of elements from Lovecraft's imagination, the campaign was a modern, conspiracy-horror spin. Here, it might be interesting to actually capture the tone of a classic Lovecraftian weird tale. By attempting to emulate HPL's antiquarian sensibilities and prevasive mood of creeping horror, it may help set the character apart. I'll probably borrow a bit from David Lynch, too, whose darkly surreal dreamscapes and existential themes should be a good fit.
Inspirational Reading / Viewing:
* Lovecraft:
*** Dreams: Beyond the Wall of Sleep, Dreams in the Witch House, From Beyond, Hypnos
*** Subhuman Degenerates: The Picture in the House, Facts Concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family, The Lurking Fear, The Rats in the Walls, The Festival
*** False Sense of Self: The Quest of Iranon, The Outsider
*** Transmigration of the Soul: The Strange High House in the Mist, The Thing on the Doorstep, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Shadow Out of Time
* Lynch: Twin Peaks (for the sequences in the Red Room), Lost Highway (for the transmigration elements), and Mulholland Drive (for the false reality).