| DirtSailor |
In my session next Friday, our party will finally arrive at the ruined kingdom of Lattana, where they must collect the relic (pronounced "Ah-Tome") for the newly proclaimed Emperor Cifer.
I want this tomb to have three sections, the first two have doors that must have a riddle or puzzle solved to progress, the third has a chest which must be opened through a more combat oriented puzzle.
The first chamber, The Temple of the Child, Destroyer of Cities.
The second chamber, The Temple of the Glutton, Destroyer of Nations.
The third chamber, The Temple of the Patriot, The World Breaker.
For the first, I'm thinking there is an illusion where the party could only see the door when crouched or kneeling... ya know... from the vantage point of a child.
The second... not so sure about.
The third would be a gimmick fight... maybe one they have to submit to, or where they can't actually die, but they have to be brought to a single HP in order to open the chest.
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Also, if you are interested in the story, feel free to message me. I'd love to share my ideas... but I have a sneaky player who likes to peek at my posts...
| VRMH |
- A room filled with smoke would give the party a good reason to lay prone, especially if the smoke forces saves of some kind. It wouldn't need to be (very) dangerous, just thick enough to hinder sight.
- Maybe some sort of rapidly-growing plant, forcing the party to keep up the damage output in order to progress?
- If you want the party to be humbled without actually killing anyone, ability damage would probably be the way to go.
| Son of the Veterinarian |
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The Path of the Penitent Child - This first chamber is a test of faith. The floor is tiled with a pattern, a labyrinth, representing the legendary pilgrimage of the Penitent Child. One of the PCs (the penitent) must follow the pattern on his knees (check vs. pain) while doing a lengthy catechism (check vs. Knowledge: Religion).
Additionally, another PC (representing a knight who protects pilgrims) can follow the penitent along the pattern, protecting him from attackers. I'm thinking illusions representing foes faced by the original penitent child, that appear suddenly to try and disrupt the pilgrimage. The "knight" must defend his charge without leaving his position on the pattern behind the penitent.
The Path of the Devourer - The second chamber is filled with a vast swarm of locusts. This represents the great sin of the Penitent Child, who was tricked into allowing a demon lord of famine to ravage the lands. The swarm does not cause physical damage, but blocks all vision beyond five feet forcing the PCs to fumble around looking for the exit. Also, the cacophonous droning, as well as the constant sensation of insects crawling on ones skin requires regular saves vs. madness.
The Path of the Patriots - Representing the final stage of the Child's journey, his return home to find that a group of knights had, in the name of saving the nation from the demon lord and the famine it caused, imprisoned the king and implementing increasingly evil policies regarding distribution of the remaining food. The PCs must defend themselves from the spirits of the knights while making diplomacy checks to convince them they have fallen into the demon lords trap.
| DirtSailor |
These are all epic ideas, and I think I will combine the two f, or the Temple of the Child. The exit can only be seen on ones knees while the hazards can only be seen while standing... but if the "child" stands, the exit moves, if all crawl then the hazards move.
For the others, perhaps I should be a bit more specific with the Lore I am creating. The Child, The Glutton, and the Patriot are a vague reference to Little Boy, Fat Man, and the Minute Man nuclear warheads. The "Ah-Tome" is a mispronunciation of "Atom".
The party is unaware their world is a post-apocolyptic future where the soul is perminantly bound to the body. The Emperor sent them on a quest to basically retrieve a device where he can wipe out all life with nuclear holocaust.
For one of the trails... and maybe one later, they will need to solve a riddle and enter it using a tablet of ancient runes, each on a raised stone... a keyboard.
Smell what I'm stepping in?
Imbicatus
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For the Temple of the Patriot, you could have twin Juju zombies with gunslinger levels, Automatic Pistols (use revolver stats, but more shots, PC will have no way to reload them after the fight) and keys on a beaded chain around their necks. In order to unlock the final prize, the zombie's hands will need to be simultaneously placed on glowing stones on opposite sides of the room and the keys turned together.
The zombies are still wearing the ancient uniforms from their nation.
| DirtSailor |
Yes. This. The party camped out the first night in ruins where a linguistic check reviled two ancient runes, the second translated to "P"... it was a BP station. They are traveling on a road that seems to be made of a patchwork of large, flat, black stones... asphalt.
I've been cryptic enough that they haven't put it together, explaining the technology as it would look to someone with absolutely no knowledge of it. I'm going for a huge 'ah-ha' at the end.
| Mark Hoover |
Temple of the child: a chamber w/a blast door stuck in the "Down" position, but with a slight gap at the bottom, encouraging someone on the ground. The upper portions of the chamber contains a number of "Golem devices"; mechanical devices meant to restrain and potentially destroy intruders. A "magic mouth" constantly requests a "retinal scan" and goes on to say that "failure to comply will result in detention"; a brilliant red light will hover in the air, roughly about head level for a standard human.
Temple of the Glutton: once through the door the PCs find themselves inside an alchemist's lab. hundreds of pods, filled with glowing fluid, contain humanoid corpses. The laboratory is vast and labyrinthine; hundreds more pods in adjoining cysts which lie broken and open. Staggering around in all this dimly lit horror are hundreds of zombies. They aren't the "bite to become infected" types but they do appear hungry for flesh. They should also be extremely easy to kill (1hp ea) but there are SO many. Most of the zombies are naked however a scant few (perhaps 6 out of 587) are still garbed in lab coats, partial uniforms and have beaded chains around their necks with shiny waxen portraits (ID badges). The PCs need to acquire one of the portraits to put near the only door they find; the one leading to the Chamber of the Three Moons (neuclear/bio hazard triangle).
Temple of the Patriot: upon entering the inner lab, the PCs find the area stifling and claustrophobic. They must fight their way down, to a glowing core at the base of the complex. Once at the bottom the core may be glimpsed through extremely thick and strange-feeling glass. In this final chamber is a massive, mutant zombie with 4 arms; 2 of his rotting, fleshy substance and 2 with an outer skin of a black, leathery substance. The same substance coats its face forming 2 bulbous eyes and a bizarre snout that descends, rather than protrudes from its jaw (gas mask). The back of the creature reveals 2 holes, directly behind the black pair of arms. On a console before the core is a pair of ports, with a similar black coating on them, roughly the diameter of the monster's black arms. During the course of the fight the monster reveals the arms extend on tentacles. The idea is to injure the thing w/out killing it, force it to its knees, and get someone to shove their hands through it's back holes...into its "chest". Here they find a way to manipulate the black arms, thus enabling them to go through the console, disengage the core manually, and seal it in a shiny metal tube (neuclear bomb shell).
Of course, once the core is disengaged the main power of the facility is gone, causing it to go into emergency shutdown. This in turn initiates the failsafe self-destruct sequence. Permanent image generators (monitors) on the walls come on as the party races through the halls, replaying the last video-log entered in the system's memory, giving ghostly clues to the First World's final days, before the gods brought the misery that scorched the earth and remade it in their image.
Once the party escapes with the bomb, the players should begin to understand that this isn't Golarion.
| DirtSailor |
Oh I have a MUCH darker reason for why the soul is bound to the body ;). We're not talking disease, but rather nano machines that somehow lasso the soul to the flesh prison of the body. No matter how much physical damage the body takes, the soul remains attached. The catch is, the pain of the trauma continues, driving the individual violently insane.
Each of the members holds a weapon crafted by the 'Old Men' that releases the soul from the body... in actuality it disables the nano machines. The antagonist has a very different weapon. His katana actually harvests the nanomachines and thus the soul of the victim.
What the players do not know is 1.) What the artifact is and 2.) What the newly seated Emperor intends to do with it.
By using the "Ah-Tome" he will activate the U.S. Peacekeeper missile system. A set of ICBM's with the goal of wiping out all life on earth. He seeks to 'end all pain' and usher forth a new era where the people of Ned'E can go forth outside the Kingdom walls. He feels that he is justified, that by nuking the surface of the earth he will accomplish his goals.
Here is where it gets dark. After the Emperor has been defeated (once with the sword in hand, the second after he commits harikari and transforms into an Oni) they will face one last chamber deep within the castle. In the center is a young girl, maybe 12 or so years old, suspended in a vat of fluid. She speaks to the party through 'metal horns' around the room.
The story will come vaguely, basically she had an inoperable tumor of some sort, her father created the nano machines to keep her alive until a cure could be found... but it never happened. The military got ahold of it, tried to create an immortal army... and if you give a mouse a nuke cookie...
The party will be left with the choice to leave her, and live in a world where they are the sole survivors, or to kill her, thus deactivating ALL the nano machines. Two members of the party, a male cleric named Daam and a females monk named Vee are 25 years old. The others are 200+.
Deactivate. All sentient life save those two immediately fall dead. Daam, which is Adam rearranged, and Vee, Eve rearranged, are the only two left. Their DNA scrambled to prevent their children from having to worry about inbreeding.
Close curtain.
| DirtSailor |
I would also like to mention that the 'girl' is only a girl in appearance. Her nano machines are 'perfect' as all others were reverse engineered from them when the scientist refused to help create an army.
All sentient life other than her ages at roughly 1/10th the normal speed once they hit physical maturity at around 25 or so... so some who looks 30 is really 300, 50 in looks is 500 and so forth.
The 'girl' could easily be tens of thousands of years old... and she will not die quietly. I'm thinking of playing with the Kraken build for metallic tentacles and give her a wide array of magic (magic is created by the nanomachines, thus an added downfall of taking her out.)
Suggestions? Moans? Groans? Gripes? Complaints?
| Mark Hoover |
Nothing but love here. Hopefully you can use some of my suggestion anyways; otherwise it looks as if you've got things well in hand. One question though; does EVERYONE have the nanites? I ask because wouldn't the party be killing themselves if they shut the girl down? That might actually make it more interesting.
Say if the 2 25 year old PCs haven't yet acquired nanites (they coalesce in the air and bond to a corpse when someone's body is about to die for the first time and therefore they don't radiate the "magic" until after their first Awakening or something) then if the party kills the girl/kraken and shuts everything down, these 2 live on to re-populate everything. However, if they don't shut the girl down then the world remains doomed but they spare their friends from the "Final Solution."
| DirtSailor |
I'll probably restructure the third puzzle but keep some of the core elements. With the second I'm going to have to be careful, myself and all my players are in the military so we are all VERY familiar with CAC Cards. I may use the 'retina scan' idea with yours. Not every schmuk would have access to the final chamber, the coats set them apart.
I've been doing a 13th Warrioresque play on the translations. The 'runes' and even the voices are in English... but Common doesn't have to be English. A decent linguistics check could say something about, "Present sallak eye of the worthy.". It's not a literal translation.
As for the nanites, I'm thinking they act like a dam on the aging process. Destroy them and the PCs that are 200+ suddenly start to rapidly age. Gives them a chance to say some nice final words.
| DirtSailor |
And I remember your profile pic. Hiyo! In case you were wondering, trying to write the Lore while someone else DMed lead to far too many misinterpretations. Last session we were missing two of our usual players and gained a new one so we decided to try a new story I had been toying around with... this one. And it was a hit XD.
| DirtSailor |
As for Fallout, believe me... it was VERY tempting to have a Megaton-like cult that worshiped "Ah-Tome.".
I intend on having the person who showed them where the temple was teleport them to a fallout shelter when the Nukes go off... maybe the inhabitants will wear "a seamless blue and yellow garb that covers from head to toe, cinched shut, not with buttons, but a metallic strip of binding teeth. Upon their backs, the symbol for unity stands beside the symbol for trinity."