First thing first, thanks to Paizo for writing this. I am happy to see the Mythos make an appearance in a storyline devoted to horror...
That said, its crammed (CRAMMED I TELL YOU!!! Mwhahahahahaah!!!) with so many monsters that its almost like an academy award trying to cover everyone with special mentions and guest presenters.
Its not a Mythos adventure (the story is top knotch) as much as a hack n' slash fest through the beastiary... making sure to get everyone in.
I need to remove some of this for the sake of my own sanity as much as to make it special rather than 'ANOTHER Mythos beastie?! *shrug* Best kill it so we can move on to the other 5 more mythos encounters beyond it. Looking for some assistance with this from GM or purchasers of the AP.
Without further ado - Spoiler mode 'ON!'
Spoiler:
The Colour from Space:
This just jumped out at me as 'That would be totally cool - lets put it in... somewhere'. Forgive me if I am doing the writers an injustice. I think that some sort of Mi-go life force sucking machine could do the same deal.
The Dimensional Shamblers - thematically they make sense to the storyline but without some sort foreshadowing, it seems just like another fight encounter. They also appear twice, which I am not against but it felt wierd to me.
The Gug felt like it was just another addition.
Finally - love the final Rapture 'End' Scene - genius! teeheheheheee... however as each encounter added together may leave the party a gibbering wreck well before they get to the Rapture. Food for thought there.
Overall I enjoyed *tic* reading this AP *tic* Ai Cthulhu!
Any ideas to make the menagerie seem to flow better? Or thin them out even? I am cool with adding additional rooms, people, chapters and events.
Oracle of the Dark Tapestry - Amazing concept. Love it to bits... just not sure it
I have to say that the Colour has always been one of my favorite Lovecraftian horrors. I'm honestly not sure how well it works as a "monster", though. The original version was most certainly not something you could hit with a sword. Making it an intangible ooze with a life-drain aura... well, if you're going to turn the Colour into a D&D monster, I guess that's the way to go.
Thematically, I suppose it works as a confusing WTF!? encounter -- the PCs should have some difficulty figuring out what's even going on. And that's fine; Lovecraftian horror should be baffling and incomprehensible sometime.
In terms of the module, the Colour serves the purpose of killing off almost all of the "fostered" women and children. That's nasty, but in game terms it's probably easier to play than dropping a bunch of utterly helpless and confused low-level NPCs on the party halfway through the adventure. Also, it shows the PCs that, nasty as the town's deal with the skum was, something has gone terribly wrong with it now.
Completely agree with your assessment that a lot of the plot is there just to add another mythos encounter. The easiest way to simplify is to do the following:
Movie plot spoiler:
Remove the entire Mi-go plot convolution. "Certain fringe members of the skum cabal, seeking greater personal power and inf luence, began dabbling in forbidden magics tied to the alien powers of the Dark Tapestry...and summoned the moit of Shub-Niggurath." Hence the kidnapping is now being done by the skum for brain implantation.
Replace all unique monster room encounters with variant Mi-Go and their creations:
- unstable, braindead, mindlessly destructive villagers (or fostered) who break down (or explode) into gelatinous puddles of green goo upon death.
- leave Dimensional Shamblers in the final part intact. There are few spookier things than buzzing sound of monsters teleporting in and immediately attacking. Remove all Shamblers prior to tunnels.
- delete misguided underwater sorcerer. Replace it with a nasty swarm of flesheating fish (half-eaten criminal makes for a great foreshadowing element, the players will have to deal with the creatures to get to tunnels anyway, plus, the sorcerer can actually damage players' means of escape)
- the Color ooze is a great concept. Sadly, it does not fit here. This is not a Zoo. Replace fostered folk with exploding fostered folk.
- the Undiomedan house: replace all encounters with members of the order, have the bloodshed become result of infected fighting spawning cankers (the Order guys visited the house, went to sleep, got infected, and now it's a battle of attrition between those who succumbed and those who still resist infection).
- keep the final showdown.
- [OPTIONAL] replace all villagers in final part with exploding while the players are down there. And then let the players realize that this is a plague about to spread... and the only solution is to burn the whole town to the ground. Explanation could be difficult, but some biological weapon by Mi-Go, used to clean populations, should suffice.
There you go. No survivors at the end. All evidence wiped. Nobody is going to believe players that these things happened. Another little town which disappeared.
I think the Dark Young and the moit are good to go... but yeah, the other stuff can go bye bye... I can save it until later. The Dimensional Shamblers or the Hounds of Tindalos can be used at a later time (Carrion Hill prehaps) OR be in the mansion being summoned by a Skum/deep ones when interrupted by the party.
An alternative plot is the return of the Scion of House Undiomede returns - Hearing what is Father uncovered about his family past has made XXX study deeply in the Mythos and he returns to Illmarsh as another interloper... He works independently and arrives at the house a little after the party, where he summons a Dimensional Shambler for company.
But yeah, its way out there.
Alternatively, if any of the Clergy survive, their final revenge is to whistle up a hound later on.
Some interesting forshadowing of Illmarsh can even take place at the university with some bizarre pictures of an otherworldly, alien city under water hanging on the walls near where the seasage effigy was stolen from if the characters go to look at it in the Trial of the Beast.
There you go. No survivors at the end. All evidence wiped. Nobody is going to believe players that these things happened. Another little town which disappeared.
Regards,
Ruemere
You are EVIL - and have clearly played a lot of CoC in your time. Hope I get a chance to RP with you and your group. Its good stuff.
There you go. No survivors at the end. All evidence wiped. Nobody is going to believe players that these things happened. Another little town which disappeared.
Regards,
Ruemere
You are EVIL - and have clearly played a lot of CoC in your time. Hope I get a chance to RP with you and your group. Its good stuff.
You're flattering me :)
My horror experience is based on my Kult games... you know, the game known as "Call of Cthulhu, only without sense of hope". It lasted years (games, the campaigns were considerably shorter) until my players (and me) collectively decided that we were too "perfect" to play the game anymore (though I could not resist running final experiment with three groups of PCs and two GMs... probably the most intense experience short of having a LARP).
That said, I would be reluctant to unleash Kult-style horror on the players. [1]
Regards,
Ruemere
[1] Canonical example of Kult style horror is a character waking from fruitful slumber to the sound of something scratching on the door to her flat, finding no one (and nothing) outside. The scratchings continue several times until the character realizes that something was scratching the door from inside. From here the situation could develop into conventional horror (we have something bad inside our flat), Kultish mild horror (we were doing the scratching ourselves, it was our mind trying to let us know that we should be running... and we ignored the warning), Kultish severe horror (it was someone close to us doing the scratching, trying to run away from us... we're somewhat amnesiac, we're a Little Red Riding Hood and Big Bad Wolf, taking turns to replay a fairytale, only with with drugs and rusty knives) with possibly other stories... and the real thrill comes that each of these stories could overlap with another, or lead to another, with the story being obsessively rewound and changed each time we arrive at the "truth".
