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Perhaps the ghouls burrow down to hide... and we know what's under Briarstone.
The doppelgangers could easily adopt disguises and claim to be survivors that hid through the ordeal. Maybe they wait till the PCs depart to emerge.
Creatures connected to the plane of nightmares could also evaporate with the fog for simplicity's sake.
Good ideas!
The bhole gives me another idea, specific to my own campaign. If the bhole heaves again after the Tatterman dies, that could cause another earthquake. That could bring down parts of the building where there are monsters lurking, taking care of them for the PCs.
Also, there's something classic horror about having the rest of the Asylum collapse as the PCs (and surviving patients) flee (think: Edgar Allen Poe).
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Yeouch.
After a lot of very bad rolls, the Tatterman nearly TPK'd the entire party. The psychic failed every single save against his fear aura, so he kept bouncing in and out of combat. Everyone else dropped.
I had to do something I've never done--I brought in an NPC to save them. Winter (my rebuild of Winter as a dreamthief changeling Royal Accuser inquisitor) rallied the fleeing psychic. She forged a path through the panicking Apostles in Orpiment in the large cafeteria room. On the fly, I gave her a spell like hide from undead but for dream creatures like the Tatterman, which enabled her and the last remaining player standing to get past him.
They managed to stabilize/heal the three other players. She took care of that, while sending the psychic down to Zandalus' quarters to grab the Chain of Nights.
During all of that (while the Tatterman when downstairs to murder all the remaining patients & Wren Elborne), the bhole lurched, causing an earthquake to destroy Briarstone. The party jumped from the open second-story walls and ran away, as the bhole destroyed the Asylum. I described the end as a rush of desert wind, leaving behind a ruined blight on the land, like an anti-oasis. The PCs (and Winter) were the only survivors.
I mention all of this because the Tatterman is enough of a difficult fight that a party who hits a bad streak of rolls can die outright in very little time. Especially if half of them run off due to failed Will saves, and subsequently flee into the river of blood haunt, getting slammed against the wall by a supernatural sanguineous waterfall. So it's worth preparing a back-up plan in case he drops them all.
The DR/good or silver coupled with regeneration really hurt. He healed back up to full FIVE times during the combat, and the only player who had a silver weapon had failed the save against his fear aura and couldn't be there for the fight... brutal.
Still, they got away psychologically traumatized and an entire asylum vanished from Golarion without a trace so... Lovecraftian all the way.
Is it revealed anywhere where Count Lowls got his copy of The Chain of Nights?
One of my PCs is an occultist, and he’s been using object reading—which gives me the chance to drop plot & atmosphere information as well as foreshadowing characters they will see.
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The origin of Chain of Nights is not spelled out explicitly, but Thrushmoor Terror does mention a few things about Lowls acquiring books from many sources. You might be able to link to something in there, like the old bookstore in town.
As for the Tatterman...your experiences were quite different to my own! While the Tatterman panicked several of my players, his damage output was never high enough to seriously harm them. But then, I also had a 5-man party, with 3 out of 5 built for melee.
Interesting. I may use it as a chance to foreshadow Miacknian Mun and Katheer.
Re: the Tatterman, he just wore them down. The only player with a weapon that could overcome his DR (and suppress the regeneration) spent most of the fight fleeing, or trying to get back into the fight--and then used alchemist's fire instead of the silver dagger that would've stopped the regeneration. The fight went on for 20+ rounds, and between the Tatterman's DR/regeneration & the PCs' bad rolls and eventual depletion of healing resources, he finally ground them down.
I felt bad bringing in an NPC to save them, but at least she didn't kill the bad guy. She just got them on their feet and helped them flee.
I know.
The fear aura wasn't what got them. (I misspoke on the post above about that combat).
Frightful presence does cause the frightened condition on a failed save, or panicked if they're 4 HD or fewer. The Tatterman attacked during the surprise round, which triggered the frightful presence ability on everyone in 30 feet. The DC on the save isn't high, but a couple players just rolled very badly. The nightmare template does not explicitly say that the frightful presence only works within the 30 foot radius (unlike the fear aura), so I went with the default 5d6 in the universal monster ability description.
Next, he moved on to cause fear, which he'd use as people got over their panic, in between ripping up the more courageous PCs and regenerating what little damage managed to get through his DR.
As 1-v-1 with the tatterman is likely a death sentence, I'd recommend he just drop someone off in a room with a ghoul, a courtyard with a haunt, or in the fog just outside the asylum (maybe outside the chapel so his obvious choice of getting out of the fog is breaking through the stained glass windows).
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Iam going to run this AP in the neer future. But i feel that iam missing something, when reading this.
1. Do the inmates of the asylum, have a standard set of clothes - like a grey robe and sandalds ?? What did you do??
2. Do the players stumble abon the 3 sarkonian godstones - that ariadnah made?
3. Were is Briarstone island vs. thrushmoor - were does the rowboat dock?
Iam going to run this AP in the neer future. But i feel that iam missing something, when reading this.
1. Do the inmates of the asylum, have a standard set of clothes - like a grey robe and sandalds ?? What did you do??
2. Do the players stumble abon the 3 sarkonian godstones - that ariadnah made?
3. Were is Briarstone island vs. thrushmoor - were does the rowboat dock?
1. I assume so. I described them as white tunics with linen pants. Except for the cultists, who had all dyed their clothes yellow. The image of the Apostle in Orpiment gives you a good idea of the style of clothes, after they've been dyed and torn up a bit.
2. Not unless you want them to. As long as the fog covers the island, they shouldn't be able to get to them without encountering horrifying, lethal monsters. The fog keeps them trapped in the Asylum. After that, my players wanted to get off the island quickly as possible. If your players want to find the stones and investigate them further, I suggest you use that as an opportunity to foreshadow later chapters, but have the stones themselves be inactive. If they've defeated the Tatterman and lifted the fog (which they have to do to be able to leave the Asylum), his stone should be inactive anyway.
3. Briarstone is "near" Thrushmoor. I can't find it specified exactly how far. I put it about a mile away--far enough that the curve of the coast would keep the town from seeing it, even on a clear day, but near enough to row easily. There's no map of Briarstone Island itself, because this chapter focuses entirely on being inside the Asylum. You can use your imagination to place the docks wherever you want, it's not that important.
All three of these questions are really up to you to answer. They don't affect the Search For Sanity events directly, so anything you come up with will be the correct answer.
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Is it revealed anywhere where Count Lowls got his copy of The Chain of Nights?
I don't think it's explicitly described as the same copy, but its mentioned that the event that drove Zandalous mad occurred when he was on an expedition with Dr. Henri Meirtmane to recover a copy of The Chain of Nights and was kidnapped by the cultists who owned it. I think it's mentioned in Thrushmoor Terror that Lowls' second published book was a take-down of Meirtmane's scholarship, so there's a bunch of history there you could tap to elaborate on the backstory.
Thanks! That sounds interesting...
Do Dr. Henri Meirtmane play a roll in the AP?
No real role in the ap. He's mentioned several times in the first book mainly for background flavor and as author of some of the tomes the characters can find in the asylum and a couple found later in the ap.
Yeouch. [...]
Hoo. I think I'll have to do a dry run of this AP to see just how lethal it is before we get started.
It's a funny thing--this narrative is much more PC-oriented than most APs, but on the flip side it's extremely likely that one or more PCs will get eviscerated along the way. I'm not yet sure how to reconcile that.
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Yeouch. [...]Hoo. I think I'll have to do a dry run of this AP to see just how lethal it is before we get started.
It's a funny thing--this narrative is much more PC-oriented than most APs, but on the flip side it's extremely likely that one or more PCs will get eviscerated along the way. I'm not yet sure how to reconcile that.
I have vague plans on employing Corruptions as get-out-of-death-not-quite-free cards if necessary. Also, in the second book, Klazcka might be able to get in contact with her superiors in the Church of Pharasma to arrange a Raise Dead or two, and in Book Three most of the really lethal encounters are in the Dreamlands where they won't fully 'take'. After that,they're starting to get to the levels where they can arrange their own ressurections more easily.
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I have never (in two decades) used a recurring "save-the-PCs" NPC. Can't say that any more.
I'm glad I rebuilt Winter Klaczka as a dreamthief changeling Royal Accuser inquisitor using PC rules. She's saved the party multiple times, from the first session when they got into it with Drs. Oathday and Latchke and made some bad tactical decisions, down to the last session when she showed up to help them take down the revenant in book 2, after it had almost one-shotted the psychic.
I keep checking with the players, to make sure they're ok with the occasional rescue. They love the sardonic, depressing Slavic deus ex machina. So I'll keep her around, just in case.
Because yeah, this AP *really* benefits from a consistent group of PCs.
One idea I had (this will work for the second chapter) for replacement PCs is to have one Lowls' amnesiacs try to escape from the boat to Briarstone. He gets stabbed and falls overboard. Survives, wakes up on the shore near Thrushmoor with a knife wound and no memory of who he is.
That way, they'll still be tied to that piece of the story, while having an explanation for why they weren't in Briarstone--the Count figured they died when he shanked them and heaved them overboard.
Not a bad idea!
I'd thought about having a few nondescript "spare" sacrifices wake up with the PCs at the beginning but still be in a catatonic state only to become lucid if one of the PCs ends up permanently out of the picture. It's a weird sort of insurance policy, to be sure.
I do want to stress, my party's experience with the Tatterman was heavily colored by a series of epically bad die rolls.
Also, if I did it again and wanted them to win, I'd make sure to stash a few more silver weapons around in the loot--they had exactly 1, and the guy who had it spent a lot of time panicked. Not being able to stop his regeneration was the real deal-breaker. I wasn't tracking his total damage taken, but he regenerated to full health 5 different times.
As far as "spare" sacrifices go, nothing says that all of the amnesiacs had to wind up in the basement as doppleganger toys. There's lots of places in the asylum where a fugue-stated patient could wind up huddling, only to finally succumb to the Tatterman in a nightmare and thus become their "true selves", awakening with amnesia but abilities...
Anyone has a cool map for the initial dream sequence with the yellow fog and the Tatterman?
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Anyone has a cool map for the initial dream sequence with the yellow fog and the Tatterman?
I put down the basic City Streets Flip Mat with cloud markers for mist scattered about. The players are trained to take anything on a map seriously, so when they started dying, they started freaking out.
I knew if I ran it without the map, they would immediately start thinking it wasn't real or was just a dream.
Anyone has a cool map for the initial dream sequence with the yellow fog and the Tatterman?I put down the basic City Streets Flip Mat with cloud markers for mist scattered about. The players are trained to take anything on a map seriously, so when they started dying, they started freaking out.
I knew if I ran it without the map, they would immediately start thinking it wasn't real or was just a dream.
Amazing. I got that map! and I've ordered my doll filling, which I will dye yellow upon arrival... :)
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Amazing. I got that map! and I've ordered my doll filling, which I will dye yellow upon arrival... :)Anyone has a cool map for the initial dream sequence with the yellow fog and the Tatterman?I put down the basic City Streets Flip Mat with cloud markers for mist scattered about. The players are trained to take anything on a map seriously, so when they started dying, they started freaking out.
I knew if I ran it without the map, they would immediately start thinking it wasn't real or was just a dream.
Turns out the store we played at had all kinds of 3D medieval buildings... when the fog rolled in and started to swallow the entire city block, you should have seen the party scatter like mice through the alleys! LOL
Nice!
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So I still don't really understand how this amnesia thing is supposed to work.
- PCs woke up in the asylum and didn't recognise each other, but they'd already been together for a few days after losing their memories so they should actually remember that they'd been together for that period and arrived at Briarstone..?
No. They were in a fugue state, in which they were forming no new memories. They had what is known as anterograde amnesia.
- Also, Dr. Scaen didn't expect them to wake up so soon - I interpreted that as meaning they'd been sleeping for an unnaturally long time (how long?), and/or that was intended..?
No. They were unconscious. That is different than sleeping. How precisely they were render unconscious and dragged to the basement is left up to you, but that is the situation.
- Uhm aaalso, that revolt with Zandalus happened *after* the PCs arrived, so they shouldn't be totally clueless about what's going on (unless they were sleeping the whole time, but again, why? They surely were conscious upon committal, otherwise Losandro would have commented on it in her diary).
See previous note on anterograde amnesia.
- They didn't remember their own names and other information, (with one exception in my group), but Losandro suppedly wrote them down - where did she get that info from? Lowls who didn't want her to keep records..?
Where Losandro got the information is also left up to you. As is whether the PCs remember their names or not. In my case, I had her give them names based on gothic novels found in her office--it added to the overall disorientation. And yes, Lowls didn't want her to keep records, but she did anyway because she wasn't a dominated mind-slave. If she had the wherewithal to keep records, perhaps she had the ability to send to the mainland to ask around Thrushmoor and figure out who these mysterious figures were. Perhaps she sought out their identities in case she needed future leverage against Lowls. It's left deliberate up to your imagination, instead of spelled out in explicit detail.
Did I miss something here when reading through ISOS, are those things mentioned in later modules, or am I supposed to come up with explanations myself or hope that my players/characters won't notice how little sense it makes?
It makes perfect sense. Read through the thread above:
-The PCs are in a fugue state.
-The uprising happens.
-The Tatterman's "kill you in your dreams" ability reveals people's "true selves".
-While unconscious, the PCs are killed in their dreams by the Tatterman, which removes the fugue state, but is not sufficient to completely wipe away the amnesia (being the result of a 20th level character's doing as revealed in the third chapter).
All of this is left deliberately open to accommodate different play styles. Some parties may want to not even know their names, whereas others might want to at least know each other and their names, even if the rest of their lives are a blank. Same thing with backgrounds (as spelled out in the Player's Guide). As long as the past few years are blurry, the AP leaves room to have a player who remembers everything up till a few years ago as well as a player who doesn't even remember their own name or abilities. It's a feature, not a bug.
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I recommend scrolling through the GM threads until you find the posted timeline of events. This will help you tremendously in understanding what happened before your PCs start the adventure and what should happen next.
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If you haven't yet read book 6...
That whole thing made me so, so happy.
Agreed. I'd really recommend at least a quick read-through of the other chapters. At the very least, read the "Adventure Summary" pages at the front. The chapters in this AP are more inter-linked than many of the other APs, in terms of questions your PCs might wind up having. And as Davor said, it'll give you lots of cool story options.
You can do it without doing that, if you're strapped for time, but it'll be a more satisfying campaign if you can manage even a cursory scan.
Sorry if I seemed a bit helpless facing that improvisation bit, it's my first time DM'ing and I expected an AP to be more like "this is how things are supposed to be".
My hat is off to you! This is one of the more challenging Adventure Paths to run. Sounds like you're off to a great start!
Sorry if I seemed a bit helpless facing that improvisation bit, it's my first time DM'ing and I expected an AP to be more like "this is how things are supposed to be".My hat is off to you! This is one of the more challenging Adventure Paths to run. Sounds like you're off to a great start!
Like Quibblemuch already said. Reading you´re checkpoints it seems you have done a really good job about this.
Keep up this good job and don´t hesitate to ask the swarm :-)
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This thread has been really really useful as I have prepared to start this AP soon (2 days!), so thank you to everyone who as contributed their experiences and ideas for the good of other people who are going to run it!
I would like to "plant" an item on each of the PC's starting equipment lists that could provide another link to the story, add a unique and immediate "unknown" to each character, and serve as a glimpse into their history.
I have 3 figured out but would love suggestions for other three.
PCs and loose backgrounds
1. Changling Investigator. History: Curator of Lowl's occult collections. Item: Book "Revelation of Hali" mentioned in Book #2 records room as belonging to Lowls.
2. Halfling Unchained Rogue. History: Cultist of Hastur, target of the revenant in book #2. Item: Ceremonial Silver Dagger (because of Tatterman, may make this a Masterwork dagger, not silver? Thoughts)
3. Half-Orc Barbarian. History: Bouncer/strong arm, Slave. Bar fight book #2. Item: Modified brass knuckles
4. Dwarf Druid, small cat animal companion. History: Enforcer, intimidator, arsonist, former slave. Item: ?????
5. Gnome Sorcerer. History: Lowls personal lawyer and defender. Friend of Keldrin in boook #2. Item: ???? (Something that could be his arcane bond?)
6. Elf Ranger, ranged. History: ???, maybe house gaurd or tracker? Item:????
2. an empty dagger sheath that, upon close inspection, used to hold a silver dagger.
4. Tindertwigs and a flask of moonshine (at least 150 proof)
5. A few pages showing some of Lowl's actual tax income and possibly falsified amounts reported to the Crown. A message from the Fort Hailcourse constable asking where the pay is for the guards.
6. Groundskeeper. Pruning sheers and a pack of flower seeds that match the overgrown garden at Iris Hill.
2. I would consider giving them the silver dagger, based on my experience (see above for the full story). Tl;dr: My PCs only had one silver weapon and the guy who had it failed the save against fear which meant no one could stop the Tatterman's regeneration and he pwned them.
4. A pair of manacles, perhaps with Biting Lash's sigil etched into them. Every party can find a use for manacles...
5. A signet ring with his attorney's sign on it (that can be his arcane bond as well). Or a barrister's amulet (something fancy to show he's a member of that elite group) which can equally serve as the arcane bond.
6. Can't improve on kadance's idea--a good callback when they get to Iris Hill.