After posting some old conversions of Magic the gathering Slivers (originally statted to replace the Akata) for someone else in the Conversion sub-forum, I was inspired to start mashing up the Night Below super-adventure with Second Darkness. Drow given mythic power by ancient aboleth magic plotting to destroy the surface races with meteors while the aboleths use the drow to summon their unspeakable elder god from the dark tapestry!
If you have some ideas, please share them.
I don't know much about the things you mention except MTG Slivers, but it sounds like a very cool campaign idea.
I suggest exploitable disharmony amongst the villains if its not there already.
The Night Below is an old AD&D mega-adventure in the underdark, Second Darkness is a wonderful (if imperfect) Adventure Path that takes place partially in the darklands, and finally Mythic is a way to ramp up a character/monster/game to 11!
Right now I'm planning to combine plot elements from book 1 of 3 of the Night Below (The Evils of Haranshire) with the first two books of Second Darkness. Thus, in Shadow in the Sky (Second Darkness vol. 1), the PCs will also hear about the abduction and disappearance of various spellcasters (important NPCs in riddleport, cyphermages, villains, etc) which conspiracy threorists will no dot link to the strange blot in the sky from which the first AP book gets its name. The climax of the first book will feature the main villain with a little mythic power to give her solo encounter a bit more oomph.
In the second book of the AP, Children of the Void, I'll introduce the slivers to foreshadow that the real danger falling from the sky is not just the large chunks of rocks, but rather the aberrations from beyond. They'll be just a symptom though, the dust in the eddies caused by the movement of the Aboleth elder thing/god/concept being called from the Dark Tapestry by the ritual the Drow have been duped into performing.
The Armageddon Echo, volume 3, will be largely unchanged, but will give clues to the purpose the kidnapped spellcasters are being put toward.
"Into the Deep Dark" through "Scales Before the Elves" from book 2 of 3 of the Night Below, The Perils of the Underdark will get inserted into the fourth volume of Second Darkness, Endless Night. Rather than teleporting to the drow city, the party will have to make their way there through the caverns and tunnels of the darklands. Ultimately, they will be able to teleport back to the surface from Zirnakaynin once the book wraps up.
A Memory of Darkness, the fifth volume, will be unchanged as well.
Descent into Midnight, will have the PCs teleporting back to Zirnakaynin and going through the rest of the Night Below's second book - "The Derro at War" and "The City of the Glass Pool." The City will be at the edge of the Land of Black Blood which is dominated by the titiular feature of the third and final book of the Night Below, The Sunless Sea. This will involve merging and mixing of the best areas from the Great Cavern described in that book with the locations described in volume six of Second Darkness. The climactic battle will use the Second Darkness villain (in place of Darlakanand from the Night Below), the Grand Savant and/or an avatar of the Blood Queen (the sliver queen!)
Dotted for cool idea!
Mythic power for the drow will come from a crystalized mixture of Aboleth mucus and Black Blood imbued with the essence of the kidnapped spellcasters. As the PCs gain access to this material, they'll be able to gain mythic powers (think V from The Boys) too. This power will come with a cost of course; the link to the Aboleth makes users easier to dominate.
While the drow are given the smaller imperfect crystals, the larger ones are used to form the earthfall glyphs which they believe will call down comets to block out the sun and greatly weaken the surface races prior to an invasion by the drow's slave armies. The Aboleth aren't concerned with the dark elves' ambitions because they know the true aim of the earthfall ritual is the summoning of the Blood Queen from the dark tapestry. Once she is fully manifest in their dimension, nothing will have the power to stop her and the Aboleths will ascend to dominate all of Golarion.
My wife heard me talking about this and actually tracked down a complete hard copy of "The Night Below" for Christmas! Guess I'll actually get to run this after I wrap up my current Shackled City remix.
A year later, and Shackled City is only half done. Still planning on running this someday.
A year later and it still sounds awsome, I can only dream of play a game like that, as my group is very much against even trying mythic anything
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Kadance, thank you for the idea.
I am currently running a Second Darkness campaign where I'm beginning to borrow from your mythic mashup.
In the 1st book the PCs practically went through the first 3 chapters without much change to the Second Darkness storyline. During The Boneyard Ambush, two of my players (just so happens they both played spellcasters) were away for one session, which gave me the opportunity I need to inject some weirdness.
The dummies in the middle of the ambush turned out to be scarecrow, and I gave them a little bit of liberty to clobber the casters (the players weren't there to defend themselves), and disappear with the casters in tow. Following the fight, Kwava did this usual intro, but suggested for the PCs to check up on the wizard at the Riddleport Light.
While there, the PCs find weird things (lovecraftian monsters, and a teleportation circle) and are transported away to the Broken Spire Keep (ported from Night Below), which I've placed somewhere in the Bis district of Kaer Maga, and instead of bandits, the place now primarily houses a cult of the elder mythos. The PCs are in the middle of going through the dungeon now.
Amongst other things planned in the future, I'm thinking of dropping a Dreamstone (ported from The House on Hook Street) into Gold Goblin's undertunnels, and using dreamscape visions as their mythic "contact" event.
Though, herein is the beginning of my issue. Skimming through the rest of the books in Second Darkness, I'm hard pressed to find any events to identify as the PCs' mythic "awakening" event. Any suggestions?
Just to be clear, you're still in the first book, right?
If so, my planned first encounter with Mythic would be the fight with Azrinae. The party would see her pop some of the crystal mythic drug during the chase and fight and would find some extra crystals on her or in her room.
If you're past that, consider having the dark elves processing akata (or their stand in) corpses into the mythic-granting substance, so the players can get some of it at the beginning of book 2.
Just to be clear, you're still in the first book, right?
If so, my planned first encounter with Mythic would be the fight with Azrinae. The party would see her pop some of the crystal mythic drug during the chase and fight and would find some extra crystals on her or in her room.
If you're past that, consider having the dark elves processing akata (or their stand in) corpses into the mythic-granting substance, so the players can get some of it at the beginning of book 2.
Indeed. My characters just came back from the Broken aspire Keep that I injected into Kaer Maga, and are just about to return to the Gold Goblin to have it out with Saul (Part 4 of Book 1).
Good ideas! I never thought of using a drug to "induce" a mythic state of being, even though I probably did read about the consumables a dozen times in the book. Also, my version of the Akatas I think will resemble the Ridley Scott/H.R. Ginger Aliens I think, and again I never thought to engineer any use for them, much less to the actual manufacture of drugs.
Good ideas indeed.