Help: Brainstorm for alternate 'Impossible Eye'

[Akumamajin]

Hello everyone,

so most of the boards here seem to believe, that 'The Impossible Eye' is the most weak part of the AP and that it is bad form and the same plot two adventures after the other, that the PCs are just AGAIN imprisoned far away from home.

So, I want to change some of the core parts of this adventure. Like that the palace is besieged by the Viziers Army and that is why they can't leave just like that. And that there aren't that many strange different factions but just the Jahvuls Guards, the mad Imam and his elite warriors and the invading Viziers army.

The situation should be, that the powerful protective spells around the palace that had been in place "as long as one of the noble line of al-bazed lives" had been lowered by Jahvul, so that part of his army could retake the palace. The Vizier gets informed about this and launches an attack to go after the eye that was imprisoned all this years. Meanwhile the Iman hat gone mad because he couldn't leave the palace and preys upon both invading parties and the battle is raging in some places of the palace and the palace gates are quite heavily besieged.

That is the situation when the players arrive at the party. One thing that I want is for the party to get some serious information in this part, like some diaries and plans of Jahvul in his private chamber or concrete prove of his delusions about Imiri in the pyramid. So that the players get a sense of accomplicement when they fight trough all this. Maybe even something like the magic words to enter the Brass Tower in Kelmarane (even if they don't know the significance of this find yet). And of course, the Impossible Eye itself could play a greater part in the defeat of Jahvul, maybe being even mandatory. I mean: this campaign will end soon, so it doesn't matter if the PCs get their hands on some ultra powerful, if narrow-use, major artifact (of course, the dream would be to stretch things a little so that my players would be around lvl 17/18 when they confront Jahvul so that they could witness his transformation into Xotani and beet the $$%&% out of him before his new body rises to full power and he gets the hand of all his new powers).

So I am open for any neat ideas. The players could just fight everything that moves or ally with either Jahvuls army or the Viziers strike force. And the thing should not be that combat heavy. At that level combat takes awfully long and some roleplay opportunity and exploration of a reeeeaaaaally exotic place would be fun. I want my players to WANT to explore the palace and use this ultra great opportunity to infiltrate their worst enemies stronghold and get some intelligence out of it.

Thanks in advance

[Charles Evans 25]

Whilst not quite what you say you're looking for here, I recently posted on the Impossible Eye reference thread with a suggestion for a slightly different lead-in to The Impossible Eye. (EDIT: *link*) It might be something you could work in to your campaign though.

[Erik Freund]

The issue with both of your proposals is that the PCs will desperately want to return to the material plane ASAP after emerging from Karkishon. They just saw Jahvul escape in a spectacular manner, and they know he's up to no good back at their precious Kelmerane. And using the excuse of "they need to gain 3 more levels before they can fight him" is a bit too metagamey of a reason to stick around in the city of Brass. There needs to be a strong outside force keeping them there.

[Charles Evans 25]

What specific groups of PCs know, think that they know, do and desperately want varies from campaign to campaign, depending on the players and GMs...

As another general thought it's also possible to turn The Impossible Eye around to focus entirely on Shazathared and gaining her freedom as the point of the adventure, since she is, effectively, doubly imprisoned, first by the fountain and secondly by the Vizier's Curse which keeps and reinforces the trap of the fountain.