That would be awesome!
I am going to remember this idea and probably use it as well. We are in EOME now, so this won't be long.
Likewise, so stolen!
Your overall plot - in particular the usurpation by the Obyrith - is actually very similar to my own....
One, Nurn feels the Abyss has become too stagnant with having one solidified ruler for too long, and thus wants to upset the "balance" and re-establish the chaotic disorder of the Abyss by offing Demogorgon. Which, given the opportunity to possibly seize the crown for themselves, almost all the other demon lords are more than up for, and has allowed him - via proxies - to make arrangements toward that end, as well as encouraging Hethradiah's plan with the Savage Tide. Even if that fails, the Savage Tide still causes massive chaos on the Material Plane, so it's a decent consolation prize.
Two, Nurn himself wants to become an even greater agent of chaos. By instigating, guiding, and completing such an immense disruptive plan, he seeks to instigate enough chaos into the universe to "earn" himself advancement. Should he succeed - and survive - he'll end the campaign by "evolving" from a death slaad to a unique keketar protean.
I'll be borrowing and adapting a lot of your plot ideas to that end, so thanks a ton!
Aha, well, I'm glad people like it :3
I will be interested to hear how things work out. Make sure you post and let me know! I'm particularly interested in what becomes of Vanthus, as he is my favorite NPC of all time, at least after I changed a lot of stuff about him >_>
I figured he was just too...I dunno, too petty, the way he was written. I mean, his motivations were great: kill his parents for the inheritance and - sort of - for revenge, an incestuous desire for his sister, and unchecked ambition leading to his meteoric rise through the ranks of the Crimson Fleet. But he just sort of bumbled his way through all of that in a lot of ways...then at the very end when Nulunga gets up and flies around in his corpse, it was just too much. The adventure even says the campaign's original villain has "come back," but really he was just a larva writhing around while his dilapidated zombie body flailed at the party. Having him reappear AGAIN as a balor just seems so much more fitting, especially since he could make a treacherous bid for the Crown and snatch victory from the party at the last second, one more time for old times' sake!
Ahh, I did remember another change I'd made.
Zotzilaha...when the party got their reward from him I added in personalized magic items for everyone, but the big change was that, instead of the Tooth of Ahazu (which I thought was kind of silly anyway, not to mention an extremely tenuous link with "Wells of Darkness"), they found a tuning fork (for plane shift) attuned to the Wells of Darkness. It took them forever to even figure out what it was (in fact, it took them until someone got access to plane shift, ohoho), and the campaign fell apart before they used it or discovered the layer it was attuned to.
In fact, in Dungeon 148's "Savage Tidings" explores the cost of these rods, and they are not free. (There is a post on a message board about plane shift around here somewhere that has exact values, if you don't have that issue.) It turns out that a fork attuned to the Wells of Darkness is valued to - heh - the tune of 40,000 gp.
So...Pale Night's minions left them a much more substantial clue that something was on that layer, and saved them a large amount of money at the same time. And that's assuming they could even have found one on the open market.
Granted, I believe that as written, Malcanthet just loans them a fork for the Wells of Darkness that she just conveniently has on her, but...foreshadowing! Besides, it ties in so well with the rest of the conspiracy (and justifies the kind of insane lengths that someone went to - stealing the idol, placing it in some random dungeon, ensuring that the PCs find it, and ensuring that they would have to return it, and thus find the item left in its place - in order to get the PCs ready to free Shami-Amourae in the first place). Besides, who doesn't love to see the looks of dawning comprehension when the players realize they've been manipulated by cosmic forces the entire time? >:) And all this time they thought they were just chasing Vanthus! ^^
It was not Malcanthet, but Red Shroud, and she does not loan it to the group, but sell it, and I seem to remember that is was for 40,000 go, but my memory might be wrong.
In fact wasn't it Red Shroud who sent Sutolore to fiddle around with Zotzilaha's stuff in the first place? Or was that Malcanthet?
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In fact wasn't it Red Shroud who sent Sutolore to fiddle around with Zotzilaha's stuff in the first place? Or was that Malcanthet?
It was Malcanthet who sent Sutolore, although Red Shroud knows about it and tells the party when they meet with her (if they are sufficiently diplomatic and tell her they have the Tooth of Ahazu).
It was not Malcanthet, but Red Shroud, and she does not loan it to the group, but sell it, and I seem to remember that is was for 40,000 go, but my memory might be wrong.
I checked, and I had misremembered. The party can buy a key for 40,000 gp plus Red Shroud's tax, the amount of which I forget. If she is made Helpful she lifts the tax, reducing the cost. However because the party has to pay 10,000 gp to her directly to meet with her in the first place, they end up paying 50,000 gp, minimum, to get to the Wells of Darkness one way or another.
There is also a portal in Red Shroud's palace that leads to the Wells of Darkness that can only be activated by a tooth of one of the beings imprisoned there. Red Shroud tells them about this if she knows they have the Tooth of Ahazu, so they can use that for free (well, after they pay her 10,000 gp for an audience in the first place). However, I thought this was kind of convenient (in a deus ex machina kind of way, rather than a planar conspiracy kind of way), so...Besides, a plane shift focus is a lot easier to figure out what to do with than a random demon fang O_o
Also, there was one more factor in my decision to swap the Tooth of Ahazu out...basically, in order to really benefit from it (other than possibly using it as a portal key), the party would have to either: (i) install it in someone's mouth, or (ii) toss it into the Well of Ahazu. (i) requires substantial spiritual risk for minimal payout. (ii) requires the party to make a shady deal with an evil outsider, which is fine, except that they may have already done that with Red Shroud and, with or without the rewrites I made to the end of the campaign, would have had to do that about ten times in "Enemies of My Enemy" anyway. I figured sparing them one more demonic bargain would probably improve morale. Wells of Darkness sees them freeing a demon lord already...a good-aligned party shouldn't have to do that AND help Ahazu the Seizer along on his path to evil godhood or whatever AND butter up five or six other demon lords immediately after...plus, the way I had written the end of the campaign there was a chance the party would end up giving the Crown of the Abyss to Pale Night anyway in exchange for the layer of Androlynne. Talk about a catch-22 for a good party: save a generation of otherwise doomed eladrin children, but hand over the Crown of the Abyss to the most evil being in the entire multiverse, or take the Crown themselves in a (no doubt futile) attempt to dilute the evil of the entire Abyss with their own good alignment, knowing that Pale Night would wipe out the eladrin in reprisal? So...yeah...
Of course, if Vanthus successfully betrayed Big D at the last second and took the Crown for himself, then killed everybody, that particular thorny question would have been avoided ^^
Well, my group is not good, so that makes a lot of difference. I really enjoyed how my players kept speculating about the use of the tooth of Ahazu and kept experimenting with it (in vain of course).