So I just finished off my two year long RotRL game. And while they did defeat Mr. Karzoug, well, Xin Shalast has become something of a large infiltration of the plane Leng...
Now we are off to play Kingmaker for a year or so, but my players are interested in some kind of sequel or even continuation, so I thought it might be entertaining to brainstorm a bit.
More details of how this ending occurred:
spoiler:
I thought it would be brilliant if, right before the final battle, the party was forced to briefly work with Karzoug to fight against a superior force.
The obvious candidate was Leng. So I filled the final module with weird, sinister signs like Denizens of Leng performing weird rituals and experimenting on skulks, with a feeling of unease, and periodic infiltrations of Hounds of Tindalos. The Cleric was already researching Leng, it was not hard for the party to put 2 and 2 together.
After fighting various Leng-ish guardians, the party made it to Karzoug, who was struggling to control his spell to bring his armies forward in time. The Cleric made his Knowledge:Planes check to realize that the spell had been subverted to bring a city of Leng to Xin Shalast instead.
Karzoug said 'There will be a reckoning Heroes, but if you wish to wrest the world from my grasp, you will need to save it first!'
....And the party proceeded to beat on Karzoug, even as I provided increasingly dire signs about this rapidly expanding spherical affront to reality. Finally, the mage-slayer paladin tried to close the portal, only to roll like 3 1's in a row on his spellcraft check. I really did not have much choice but to have the threatened dire eventuality come to pass.
I consider this somewhat my fault. Never underestimate PC's tunnel vision.
But there was still fun to be had. On the barren mountains of Leng, the players had a nice and epic fight with KZ (Wish -> Blasphemy is fun. As is Timestop and 5 prismatic spheres around each character.)
Once the party overwhelmed Karzoug with a critical disintegrate spell, that is where we left things.
And the current, kinda screwed up party:
spoiler:
All Level 16
LG Human Fighter 12/Paladin 4 - crit fisherman, and quite a high AC when smiting. Built with all the mage-slayer feats. Also has boots that let him Dimension Door 3/day. Also has a level warforged 14 Cleric cohort.
CN Human Sorcerer 16, dragon bloodline. An amnesiac former Lieutenant of Wrath, he's now got 2 parts of the Tome of Gluttony, and is well on his way to attaining the lich template. Has 2 flesh golems disguised as 'porters.'
NG Dwarf Lion Shaman 16, possessed by the transmutation portion of the Runelord of Wrath, which he can call on to help, but which has a cost. He's currently all veiny, healing magic still works but is is painful and animals hate him.
CN Elf Rogue 6, Arcane Trixter 10. After being trapped in the Pride section of the Runeforge for 10,000 years thinking he was a peacock, I suppose he has a lot less catching up to do than he thought. Quite pragmatic, except for being an arcane trixter
LG Human Cleric 16 of Serenrae. Focused on the redemption aspect of the faith, this former traveling friar has attracted the attentions of the Queen of Thorn and Shadow, a high-level Winter Court Fey charged with punishing Winter Fey who break the rules. He was planning on trapping himself and Karzoug in Leng, and had a spell for it, but that proved inapplicable. Rather broken up about the whole thing, he's now on a quest to destroy the Sword of Greed. The Queen has gifted him with a former Glabrezu trapped in the form of a magic lamp and ensorcled to do his bidding.
And finally, other interesting ways the plot has deviated from the norm:
spoiler:
Magnamar has been destroyed twice. Once by a deal with Karzoug to "get rid of Chellexian influence," (heh), and once by a filed Chellexian pacifying action. The remaining population has formed a subterrranian mageocracy.
The Sandpoint Devil was killed by the Chellexian invasion force.
A bunch of Chellexians are still at large, having melted away after their initial assault on Magnamar failed.
Sandpoint has been turned into a fortress to fight the Chellexians, giants, and what-have-you.
A Former PC warlock now runs Fort Rannik.
A former PC bard has recently been driven from his position as the local Sczarni Godfather.
I gave Leng a decidedly Far-Realm backstory or being part of the Prime Materal that was pinched off to prevent a Far-Realm incursion long ago, and which now is a demiplane adjacent to the Far Realm, but which wants to return.
So. Much fodder, I'd say. But now you have 5 PCs rich with newly won artifacts, in varying states of sanity, in the middle of a desolate hostile dimension which is currently in the Prime Material and expanding...
This sounds ripe for a trip into Leng itself to undo the plane's powers from within somehow. One Lovecraft novella features Leng extensively and could be mined for ideas:
There are lots of high-level extra-planar dungeon adventures you could remodel but the first thought that came to me was a little more out there...
Maybe the characters can only travel there in their sleep and while there it's a bizarro world where everything is reversed and perverted.
Str gets swapped with Int, Dex with Wis, Con with Cha, they lose any gear they had but gain dream-gear appropriate to their new selves once they figure out what's going on.
Your Crit-fisher finds that he is newly weak but can manipulate the plane like a Wizard does, the Rogue is now a strong healer, the cleric is now a slippery sneak attacker and so on. You'd have to take character sheets and invert them into playable reflections of their waking world selves - they keep their skill ranks and feats but they are predicated on new abilities that no-longer fit. This would take a lot of work on your part but it could be kind of fun if you have the right kind of group.
Then when they have shut the plane down from the inside (maybe a twin Leng Device in some dream fortress), they return home, back to their own bodies and selves several years into the future in time for an epic clash between the armies of Leng and outnumbered and outclassed crusader armies assembled from civilized nations worldwide (or just mustered locally). Your group fills the role of strike team, attacking at the leadership of the Leng armies before they can overwhelm the world, perhaps with a Macguffin quest to get the pieces to take apart their alien extra-dimensional fortress and source of their powers or something.
Leng should be a horrible place -- it's always cold, the stars are wrong, and there's some Lovecraftian horror or other lurking around every corner.
The inhabitants that aren't automatically hostile should be even more disturbing than the ones that are. In Lovecraft's original Dream-Quest, the ghouls were the good guys! Have the PCs meet a party of high-level evil monsters who are normally kill-on-sight, vampires or something. And have them just want to be friendly -- they hate Leng, want to get out, and are desperately happy to see the "normal" party.
Leng should also be a *damaged* plane, one that's frayed by contact with the Far Realms. Like, there should be places where Leng just ends or stops -- a sheer cliff and nothing but stars. Or places where space twists upon itself to form M.C. Escher-like knots.
Certain forms of magic should work strangely or not at all. You know the "impeded magic" condition? That one requires you to roll a caster level check against 20 + spell level. So, 16th level caster would get his first level spells off on a 5, but would need a 12 for 8th level spells. Select certain spells and impede them. (I once had PCs travel through a layer of the Abyss where all divine spells were impeded. It only lasted a single session, but it was great.) Other spells -- teleports and Dim Doors, for instance -- may be right out; the twisted space of Leng won't allow them. Maybe divinations give garbled or insane results because of the proximity of the Far Realms. And so forth.
As to how the PCs can fix their mistake... well, you should give them some way. But it should be freaky as hell.
Yeah, the Leng flavor will be very important to properly show how much this place is different. I'm even thinking of getting rid of the air. At this level, mass planar adaptation shouldn't be too hard to cast, though it does make 'dispel magic' a save or die all of the sudden.
The stat switching is a cool idea (I love the cleric to rogue thing), and will probably feature at some point.
Still not sure what kind of deed would close a planar intrusion. The usual 'collect these 5 items' or seek and destroy quests seems a bit cliche, though if properly executed, would suffice.
I may check into some high level published adventures for inspiration.
I don't think the Coliseum Morpheum is as great as every claims, but it does have some interesting ideas for high level play. For instance, every character writes down three things -- a dream, a goal, and something else. Then it can "burn" these things like action points. Like, you can burn a point of dream to get out of trouble, gain critical information, reroll a die, play a plot card, whatever. But then your dream grows weaker. Burn two points of dream and *your PC no longer has that dream* -- he no longer wants to be King of Greyhawk, or be the greatest wizard in Avistan, or marry the cute bard, or retire to the little ivy-covered cottage. The dream is gone.
I don't think the way they elaborated this mechanism was all that great, but I think the underlying idea is frickin' brilliant. High level characters no longer care about hp damage, negative levels, or attribute drain. So what can you attack now? Why, the character itself.
As to how the PCs can fix their mistake... well, you should give them some way. But it should be freaky as hell.
First thing, Im not sure if Leng is the name of the guy or the plane, cause I havent gotten that far, nor have I ever read anything by lovecraft. So sorry if my post seems a bit confused.
~The PCs real selves are asleep on the Material plane, while their inverted-dream selves have to wander around the dream plane to figure out what to do.
~ They fight their way to where they think Leng is, but he's gone, cause he's successfully been summoned to the material plane.
~Apparently he can only REALLY be defeated on his own plane.
~They run into a party that you would normally think are bad guys, but instead are good guys: Nualia, Xanesha, Barl Breakbones, Aldern Foxglove, Jagrath Kreeg, Mokmurian, Lucretia, Longtooth, Karzoug, Xalasia, the rest of the Runelords, etc (not all, just some combination of them). Important and memorable enemy npcs from the past of the game, with inverted versions of their living selves. If you use Karzoug (why wouldnt you), he could be a mighty warrior instead of a powerful mage. Basically, invert them like you would the players.
~They need to summon the beeg back to the dream-plane to fight him, but cant do it by themselves. They need to team up with their former enemies inverted selves in order to summon and defeat the bbeg.
~Success. They wake up, several years in the future, and have to fight Karzoug again, unless they already defeated him earlier. Sounds like they didnt kill him in your first post.
Also, I really like Doug's idea of having them burn a dream, goal, or something else personal. Maybe memories of events passed.
It's not my idea -- it's the author of Coliseum Morpheion. As I said, I don't think they implemented it very well, but the underlying insight is brilliant.
I might ask each PC to list a dream, a goal, and three special memories -- whether precious, or painful, or just important. Then I might have them physically manifest as glowing symbols or abstract butterfly-like things that float and flutter around the character. Then have a PC accidentally crush one. He gets a huge temporary rush of power... but that memory is gone, gone forever. Have a PC who rolled high on a Knowledge roll remember a cryptic phrase or poem about how "in Leng, dreams themselves are power".
Then have them meet a monster that can snatch their dreams and memories away and eat them.
If Leng is an inversion and perversion or the real world, you could reuse the iconic RotR locations, invert them and run them bottom to top - escape from Thistletop, restore Misgivings by solving a new stained-glass puzzle, defend Fort Rannick from hoards of attacking somethings.
I'd even think about inverting monsters - gives you a chance to attack with inverted Angels, Coatles, Gold Dragons, etc.
There's still the question of what the PCs need to do but it could be solving some puzzle that is keyed to each PC's history, either their motivations or their weaknesses or something. Once they defeat the dream puzzles, they can then go to the fortress of whatever and shut the plane down from within.
Looking at Lovecraft, Leng probably needs:
Degenerate humans who practice cannibalism.
A prehistoric, disturbing monastery inhabited by a terrible, inhuman high-priest.
A constant air of unreality and disturbing things seen out of the corner of one's eye.
For PFRPG purposes you probably need a solution: a way to push Leng back from Xin-Shalast.
Maybe Leng and The Worldwound are antithetical and bringing something from the worldwound into the region will push it back, or perhaps something to do with the lens?
Not sure if the dreaming idea works too well as a larger arc with high level characters.
Love the idea of having to return to old areas, and of bad guys gone good, since this whole thing happened when the party refused to even briefly cooperate with a villain, why not hammer that idea home?
I'm not sure if this group is strong enough role-players to properly deal with an externally caused loss of ambition or attachment, but I very much like the idea of making death more menacing at this level. Not by making it permanent or anything, but by making it costly, somehow. Like you're automatically resurrected upon death, but lose some memories, having to realize what you have allowed to happen each time you return.
I always liked the puzzles and existential questions that idea opened in "Planescape: Torment."
So then, to mash up the original places with Leng-ness.
Here is what I have so far. Will edit this as I can.
spoiler:
In reverse order of visitation:
Xin-Shalast - A blasted mountain range where nothing lives except for Denizens and Flying Polyps. It is cold here, very cold. And there is no air.
Quest - Raise up Karzoug, Only his ancient and intimate knowledge of Leng can find a way to reverse what has been done.
Magnamar - The mageocracy has built a maze of tunnels beneath the glaciers that now dominate the are. The strange effects of Leng has caused the massive construction to come alive, and it is slowly digesting the inhabitants, leeching them of first their magic, then their imagination, then their free will.
Quest - force feed the entity enough chaos that it's liver-equivalent becomes full of the stuff, then remove the crystalline organ. This will be useful later.
Sandpoint - Cannibal State. Status dictates who you can eat.
Quest - restore order.
-LEVEL 17-
Runeforge -
The Rimeskull -
Catacombs of Wrath
Jorgenfist -
Xin-Shalast - A blasted mountain range where nothing lives except for Denizens and Flying Polyps. It is cold here, very cold. And there is no air.
Quest - Raise up Karzoug as the new Runelord of Wealth, Only his ancient and intimate knowledge of Leng can find a way to reverse what has been done.
Magnamar - The mageocracy has built a maze of tunnels beneath the glaciers that now dominate the are. The strange effects of Leng has caused the massive construction to come alive, and it is slowly digesting the inhabitants, leeching them of first their magic, then their imagination, then their free will.
Quest - force feed the entity enough chaos that it's liver-equivalent becomes full of the stuff, then remove the crystalline organ. This solid manifestation of chaotic power is useful.
Sandpoint - Cannibal State. Status dictates who you can eat.
Quest - restore order.-LEVEL 17-
The Rimeskull - The Great White Wyrm that guards this place was taken unawares by the sudden infiltration of Leng as he slept. Now he has become enslaved by a death-cult of shapeshifting leng natives, the Rimeskull itself alternatively forcing him into rages and catatonia as the leng natives seek death at his claws play-acting as put-upon villagers.
Quest - Enter the Runeforge.
Runeforge - Now taken over by Gluttony, the Runeforge has become an organized undead military base as Kazaven scries what has happened in the real world, and prepares for the coming assault as the demiplane begins to collapse back into the Prime Material.
The Runeforge is also one of the few places with a working economy where the PCs can buy level-appropriate items. The economy is goldfish based, though.
Quest - restore the Runeforge's dimensional barrier, such that it may serve as a safe haven for future assaults.
Catacombs of Wrath - Miraculously, the Scribbler has managed not only to survive, but to protect the catacombs from the rampaging hordes of Sandpoint and beyond. Furthermore, his preexisting madness seems to have insulated him from the madness above. And his constant battle has only made hims stronger and better equipped.
Now that things in Sandpoint have calmed down some, he again makes his presence known.
Quest - Restore the Scribbler's sanity, and elevate him to the Runelord of Eager Striving.
Jorgenfist - This is one of the few true refuges from the Lengpocolypse. The reformed Black Arrows have moved here and set up powerful wards (powered by enslaved kobold souls, but who cares about that?). When they are not defending themselves, they are working on determining exactly what happened and trying to reverse it.
Quest - Gather his body, and raise Mockmurian as the Runelord of well-deserved rest.
-LEVEL 18-
Skull's Crossing - This area is now under water, and controlled by Aboleths. They hold the Runelord of Wrath, having betrayed her long ago.
Quest - Defeat the Runelord of Wrath, and her Aboleth jailers.
Fort Rannik - abandoned by the reformed Black Arrows, the fort has been merged with an some ancient edifice of Leng and is now the site of a doomsday cult led by an inhuman high priest. The cult has set up a signal that calls ever more hordes from Leng into this world.
Quest - cleanse the fort.
Turtleback Ferry - Flooded before the Lengpocolypse, a strange resonance between the planetouched Mother of Oblivion and the queer emenations of Leng caused a large island to form out of twisted and corrupt coral. Inside, a wizard has fleshcrafted creatures, and uses them to defend against the hordes of Leng called by the Rannik Signal.
But the price he has paid to learn so fast and so well was his sanity. The wizard thoughts, once of defending against the encroaching chaos, now think only of domination and control. Little does he know that a Mother of Oblivion egg survived the careful culling, and that his carefully controlled weapons may be his Achilles heel.
Quest - Free the juvenile Mother of Oblivion, who will later become the Runelord of fertility.
Magnimar revisited - Despite being destroyed like four times now, Magnamar has a great harbor, and the few battle-hardened people that remain are rebuilding. However, Leng will not stand for such a thing, and has decreed that the city will be hollowed out into a worthless husk a year from now.
Quest - Kingmaker-like, build and fortify the city for sieges from within and without.
- LEVEL 20 -
The Shadow Clock -
Misgivings -
Thistletop -
Catacombs of Wrath -
Sandpoint revisited -
I really like where you're going with this, especially for a reunion game a year or two after finishing the campaign with a handful of puzzles/encounters per location.
One thing that would add to the Lengishness would be to tweak the dungeons to include some hyperbolic geometry (straight lines that curve without curving), so you can have some of the floors of buildings connect laterally rather than vertically or you can connect the edges of complexes to each other (like the Pac-Man maze). Give them a chance to figure out that the maps are related to what they knew and then screw with their perceptions.
I really like where you're going with this, especially for a reunion game a year or two after finishing the campaign with a handful of puzzles/encounters per location.
One thing that would add to the Lengishness would be to tweak the dungeons to include some hyperbolic geometry (straight lines that curve without curving), so you can have some of the floors of buildings connect laterally rather than vertically or you can connect the edges of complexes to each other (like the Pac-Man maze). Give them a chance to figure out that the maps are related to what they knew and then screw with their perceptions.
That's a good point. Probably should have that effect in Rannik, and some parts of Jorgenfist.
