I was hoping some of the folks running Mummy's Mask might provide me with some feedback on a divergent storyline I've been working on, and where the best place to make the break would be.
Some background, the party consists of:
A Samsaran who believes he was royalty in a previous life and is searching for clues of same.
A Tien fortune teller who believes she's called by fate for a great purpose.
An Ustalavan academic who believes Osirion's power was granted by aliens.
A halfling interested in fame that has since gained a higher purpose in defeating undead (he joined the Voices of the Spire).
And a wanderer devoted to Cayden Cailean and sees the liberation of slavery as the highest ideal.
An odd group of tomb robbers.
To give the storyline a more epic scope and to tie in some character background (and because they keep making references to hoping the adventure gets more Stargateish) I'm changing some things.
1) Samsaran's are aliens. They comes from another planet. They have advanced technology that they combine with magic.
2) The Samsaran homeworld was/is threatened by Eox, that undead world.
3) When earthfall happened on Golarion, the Samsaran sent people to help rebuild, and to gain allies in their fight against Eox. Golarion was a new world ripe with magic, whereas on their own homeworld magic was dying.
4) The Samsaran provided great technology to the people of Osirion, as well as elsewhere. (I may add a bit about Nethys originating from the Samsaran world) Shory technology originally comes from them as well.
5) After landing (teleporting? stargating?)on Golarion, they found they were unable to return home.
6)An unfortunate side effect of being on Golarion was that Samsaran lost their identity upon rebirth (which is not the case on their homeworld). They eventually lost who they truly are, forgetting their homeworld.
7) Hakotep, he was actually a Samsaran. His obsession with the Shory was actually a twisted fragment of his identity seeking a way home.
8) When his soul was further fragmented by those Blue Feather folk, Hakotep was unable to be reborn. He became trapped.
9) When recombined he will briefly remember everything (and relate it to the PCs) before his soul departs and prepares for reincarnation.
10) Based on what recombined Hakotep says, the mission becomes to activate his pyramid (which he'd discovered how to travel to other planets just before his death).
11) PCs travel to Samsaran homeworld and find the people subjugated by the undead of Eox.
12) PCs free Samsarans by triggering some cataclysmic event (I haven't thought of yet) that destroys undead and begins a cycle of rebirth for the entire planet.
I was originally thinking of changing things up in book 4 with Hakotep's memory returning when they kill the Forgotten Pharaoh, but might leave it till the end and simply consider this an epic continuation of the storyline. I'm uncertain though, since high level games typically don't last very long for us, and I'd like to include breadcrumb teasers connecting backgrounds to storyline a little earlier on.
Thoughts anyone?
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The Eox path sounds nice. I like the way you've gone with it. It would also be a pretty sweet adventure to fill out the last two levels to 20. You'll want to add things in Hakotep's pyramid that gives the truth of his Samsaran origin, and some other clues that help the players digest the events they'll be a part of when they take the space pyramid out for a drive.
Shory tech could be reclaimed Samsaran tech, ala the the whole Divinity situation in Numeria. Rather than barbarians and xenophobes controlling it, Shory had a magically advanced society that was eventually able to make the Samsaran tech ubiquitous rather than artifactory.
As for events, perhaps there is a large soul artifact that functions similar to the Mask of the FP and Hakotep's Heart, but functions on a species level. The base Samsaran souls are all in the canopic jar, but magics in eons past corrupted the output of the artifact, causing the escalating population of undead instead of new Samsarans. Those that fled to Golarion somehow moved far enough past the artifact's gravity and were able to be reborn outside of the Eoxian corruption. Resetting the soul hub could provide the correction to the corruption, adjust the flow to Pharasma, and shunt all of those corrupt undead Samsaran souls off to the boneyard, freeing the planet for the slave Samsarans to rebuild.
...
Another angle you could hit on, though, would be to put it instead on Aucturn. There is the whole Aucturn Enigma stuff with Osirion already, Hakotep's Queen was a Dark Tapestry Devotee, and rather than the implied sorcery she laid onto him to be a royal, he could be the one who chose her because of her connection to the dark things that enslaved his race on The Stranger. There are already a few Dominion creatures she had summoned into the pyramid; transitioning from there seems an easy fit.
The Sacrosanct Order of the Blue Feather could have found out about the whole trying to liberate the Samsarans on Aucturn thing and subsequently could tie into the latter Pharaohs of Ascension being derivative from the Order's research into Hakotep's goings on.
Sweet.
Those are all awesome ideas. I don't know much about the Aucturn angle to be honest. I'll have to do a bit more reading on that, but it looks to make perfect sense. I love the tainted soul artifact angle. Very cool stuff.
And you're bang on that I need to include hints. I was hoping to include them earlier on, way before reaching Hakoteps pyramid, to heighten motivation and anticipation.