Runeslave Cauldron in Hell's Rebels.(Gm's only minor spoilers for Rise of the Runelords Ch. 4.

[Jakob Kiilerich]

I am currently running my group through Hell's Rebels (they just left the Livery.) and so far things are going well. In our previous game (Rise of the Runelords) where I was a player and one of my players were Gm'ing, we reached the stone giant fortress of Jorgenfist and found the Runeslave Cauldron in there. I was playing a particularly mercenary kind of character so with no prospects for profit in sight for the group plotted with our sorcerer to sell the cauldron. We had previously established that my character had done mercenary work for generals in Cheliax, therefore the GM accepted that my character knew of several prospective clients within the hierarchy of Cheliax, all of whom who would pay a pretty penny for the artifact. The game disintegrated as we finished chapter 4 so we never decided what actually happened to my character or the cauldron.

That brings me to the point of this thread, I am thinking that either the Church of Asmodeus or Barzillai himself has gotten a hold of the cauldron. So what I am wondering is where I could place this artifact in the adventure? Currently, I am thinking that Barzillai is holding it in reserve and is using his arsenal of advisors, slaves, servants and hired help to modify the cauldron to work on other creatures than giants.

I would then add, as a clue for the players, a series of academics and experts in arcane magic being invited to the city. If the players were to investigate this influx of academics and wizards they would find that even they don't really know what they are supposed to work with, however, the price that Barzillai has offered them was enough to overcome any apprehension they might have.

Then as the adventure reaches the middle, i am thinking sometime during Turn of the Torrent, Runeslaved soldiers start turning up bolstering the ranks of the Dottari and the Chelix citizens group. This new development should get them to look deeper and would, in the end, lead to one of Barzillai's experts attempting to defect as the he finds using the Runeslave Cauldron on Chelix citizens to be sick and wrong.

This little storyline would then conclude with the players learning of the existence of a Chelix fort a few miles north of the city, where Barzillai is using captured dissidents, dead Dottari and loyalists and other undesirable elements to bolster his forces with an army of runeslaves.

Any comments on this little idea?

[Razcar]

Jakob Kiilerich wrote:

Any comments on this little idea?

It's always fun when you can tie things together. There's a fine balance that needs to be tread though, so things doesn't get too implausible ("Fancy meeting the DM's fav Mary Sue NPC again, for the fourth AP in a row, and this time on the other side of the world!"). In my view your setup for this seems perfectly fine though. Maybe you can use Menador Keep as the place where the reconditioned artifact is kept? Unless it is too far. Or maybe the Records Hall is a better place for the cauldron, since then you can have Tiarise Izoni do the stirring.

I was myself thinking to have a certain Magnimar cult leader from RotR pop up in Vyre (to where he got banished in our RotR campaign, although my players don't know this).

[Jakob Kiilerich]

Originally I had not planned to include any characters from that game, but as I thought about it I got the idea that it might be fun to include my previous mercenary character as one of the prisoners held in Kintargo keep. She was one greedy little bugger, so much that she got marked for sacrifice by the Runelord's servants in RotR, so if she got imprisoned by Barzillai because of her own greed it would serve as some good poetic justice.

I had the idea of making Guttrugger (Shensen's awakened dinosaur friend) a Kobold instead of a dinosaur and let an awakened version of my previous characters animal companion Felix take the spot of this adventure's intelligent animal. I am considering that either Barzillai gave Felix to Lucian Thrune in Menador Keep as a White Elephant gift or to Tiarise as a research subject.

Both characters would merely act as helpers along the way to victory in Kintargo, and give some clarity to how Barzilai got his hands on the cauldron. The old character and Felix would then swiftly depart the city and the country, having grown quite tired of both. (And to prevent them from overstaying their welcome.)

And for the record, thanks a lot for the having Tiarise have the cauldron idea, it is brilliant, the whole witch stirring the pot image is so fitting. I think I am going to turn the hall of records into a slightly large compound, with the bit shown in the book being only the top floor, with a series of archives on basement floors that Tiarise has turned into laboratories for researching and altering the cauldron.