Just remember that "Creatures that enter this fog must succeed at a DC 12 Will save or fall asleep. Additionally, they do not receive natural healing from resting for the next 24 hours."
That only affects creatures within 5' of the oneirogen, despite the fog extending to 10'
No, but you're stingy if you don't share the table ;)
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Am I too overprepared if I created an entire table of random dreams based on different themes within the adventure path? In total, I have 36 dreams including some that are Hastur related (Tatterman is a minion of Hastur), Xhamen-Dor related (PCs are infected through Lowls), Carcosa (empty city that Zandalus dreamed), Briarstone related (I think there's some cool background the PCs can't really learn as written), Dreamlands related, and plot related.
I made my players a deck of illustrated dream cards that they randomly drew from every time they slept.
So, I'd say underprepared. :D
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I built an Inception machine and invaded my players' RL dreams after every gaming session.
When you say "works pretty much the same way" how do you mean? Do you want that room to be dark and have the creature crying for its lamp, which the PCs have to find and return in order to make the darkness go away? Or do you want a creature with all the same abilities, but just not a child?
One thought that comes to mind is you could replace the child with a halfling patient of the Asylum--a fully grown adult, but one whose mind had regressed to a simpler, limited state, and who loved only his shadow lantern toy. Then you could find an image of a halfling to show your PCs instead--the creature would still be small and you could use all the stats of an attic whisperer, but RP it as a halfling.
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Ah, ok.
Have you considered the zuvembie? It's the same CR. The whistles and strange calls from the dark room would be extremely creepy. And swarms of birds or bats coming out of pitch darkness could give the players the heebie jeebies.
Its backstory could be that, in life they were a patient of Briarstone who had been a mute--only capable of communicating in whistles, which they would use to call birds. However, like Lenny from Of Mice and Men, they didn't understand their strength and so they often wound up hurting the birds. When killed in dreams by the Tatterman, the worst of their personality came out. They just want to play with the PCs, but don't realize they're Medium-sized, strong creatures with claw attacks...
You wouldn't necessarily need to tie it directly to the lantern--that could just magically banish the darkness for reasons that no one can figure out. Or the darkness could disappear once the zuvembie has been slain. Or the lantern could cast shadows of birds, moving around with a clever mechanism--which would entrance the zuvembie and enable the party to move past (or send it to its proper rest).
That way you wouldn't have to read any of the disturbing child stuff.
You're welcome! This AP is really bringing out my creativity. Creepy is my aesthetic, it seems...
About to start running this AP. Is it ever made clear why Lowls didn't just murder the PC's while in fugue state rather than handing them over to Briarstone?
Also, many of the rooms (including the basement room the party wakes up in) never seem to mention what light sources, if any, are present. Wondering how other folks handled this.
About to start running this AP. Is it ever made clear why Lowls didn't just murder the PC's while in fugue state rather than handing them over to Briarstone?
Also, many of the rooms (including the basement room the party wakes up in) never seem to mention what light sources, if any, are present. Wondering how other folks handled this.
In my campaign, Lowls stashed the PCs away in case he'd need them later and just forgot about them.
Unless specified, I treated indoor rooms as dim light unless they had no access to the outside at all, at which point I treated them as darkness. The outside was treated as normal light (but still shadowy fluff wise).
Murder?! Like a common thug?
A gentleman and scholar never resorts to such crude tools as murder. He's not, after all, a monster.
Murder?! Like a common thug?
A gentleman and scholar never resorts to such crude tools as murder. He's not, after all, a monster.
I never thought of Lowls as the type who couldn't get his hands dirty. I mean, he did drown the PCs with his own hands.
Which using his build as written (aristocrat 2/bard 2) is in of itself a bit of a stretch against 7th level characters, even if the drugging effects carried over to the dreamlands...
I'm rebuilding him as a 15th level occultist, though he'd be 13th at the time.
I suppose. There's a difference between drowning them in the Dreamlands (knowing it won't kill them) in order to gain the knowledge he seeks and deliberately killing them in the waking world when nothing was at stake.
My question would be: Why *would* he kill them?
I treated it as though he didn't think enough about the PCs to go through the trouble of murdering them. Why bother? They were tools to be used and discarded as necessary--and if the case gave him yet another in to Briarstone to get his hands on the volume of lore, so much the better.
Also, as far as Lowls being too low level to take on a party of 7th level characters, if the drug rendered them helpless (it's clear from the description the effects do carry over into the Dreamlands), it's really not a stretch of the imagination to have a 4th level character be able to drown a 7th level character.
Drowning rules are HARSH. All he has to do is hold them underwater for anywhere from 1-5 minutes. Even the highest Con character is going to fail that Con check by that point and then it's three rounds to death.
And that's not even assuming that the drug gave them the unconscious condition (while permitting enough mobility to shuffle after him).
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My take on Lowls not just killing the PCs is that he actually liked them. Lowls is more than a bit of a loser, and having an adventuring party was a big deal to him. That's why the Mad Poet demanded that particular sacrifice - Lowls had to give up something important to him to get the information he wanted. After the sacrifice, he spared them as basically his last act of human compassion before the Xhamen-dor corruption overtook him completely.
Obviously, I had to modify the backstory a bit to remove the part where the party were Lowls' slaves.
I also changed from the slavery story with Lowls. All my PCs had some kind of close connection with Lowls, two of them being assassins of sort, one being a bodyguard/ executioner, and the last actually being a close friend/ associate on the level of Munn. So yeah he didn't kill them because he did actually care about them, even in his own, twisted way.
This connection made their drive to murder the crap out of him eventually even stronger, they learned that they were all betrayed by a man they trusted.
I kept the slavery angle, but have it as a voluntary contract the players entered into for legal protection from the various factions they individually ticked off before meeting Lowls. Weiralei facilitated the meeting and contracting in Katapesh. She selected the PCs after based on specific arcane requirements having to do with the physical/geographic and spiritual/moral paths they had traveled to that point.
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Nothing.
My players did exactly that. It was fine.
I don't use the XP system (I tell them to level at appropriate times in the adventure). If you are using the XP system, you may have to jigger the numbers to account for missing the ghoul encounters.
OPINION: "Needed" in an AP is not ALWAYS a matter of story significance. Because the XP system is widely used (and treasure is often a factor), there are occasionally encounters whose function might not be directly related to a linear narrative. Instead, they are written as ways for GMs to make sure the party has enough levels/resources to meet the strictly story challenges.
This is not just true of Strange Aeons. Every AP I've run (up to 4), I've wound up trimming encounters (or the PCs just avoided them) and making up for it by adding treasure to the encounters they DID meet, IF the party seems low on resources. As I said, I don't use XP, so I don't have that worry. (E.g., there was one AP where they literally missed half the first book by picking the exact right set of turns to get out of the dungeon with minimal encounters).
Think of an AP not as a perfect, exact, step-by-step technical guide for a campaign. It's more of a recipe--contains lots of options and potential for variation. Remember, the writers are targeting a fairly broad audience of GMs/players, so they'll often include more than might be a perfect fit for any one specific group. On the other hand, some groups are completist and really like to check out every nook and cranny. The adventure offers enough material for both poles of style and everything in between.
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Although, in this case, the Oneirogens are contributing to keeping the Asylum in the state it's in. Killing Zandalus does not clear the fog/horrors surrounding the Asylum, but getting rid of the Oneirogens AND Zandalus will do that. If the PCs get rid of Zandalus but not the Oneirogens, they will probably still find their path out the front door blocked.
The left column on p34 mentions this, amongst the stuff about Losandro. Also, in the development section on the right of p51, this is touched on. The other oneirogens in area F2 also need to be dealt with, presumably, and would be harder to skip.
That's true. However, if the players go to the ghoul area, they'll never know about that one oneirogen in the area. Therefore, from a story perspective, that oneirogen doesn't exist and a GM can simply ignore the requirement of killing that last one to lift the fog.
My description of how it played out in my campaign is earlier in the thread. Tl;dr, the Tatterman nearly slaughtered them and I had to improv a solution that destroyed all of Briarstone except the players & Winter.
(NOTE: Later, as they were traveling across the Dreamlands to the Oasis - in Dreams of the Yellow King, I had them see Briarstone, shimmering in the distance in the desert. They elected NOT to visit.)
That should be "if the players DON'T go to the ghoul area..."
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Therefore, from a story perspective, that oneirogen doesn't exist and a GM can simply ignore the requirement of killing that last one to lift the fog.
Personally, I tend not to change this sort of thing on the fly, as it breaks my versimilitude. YMMV.
If the fog lift doesn't lift after killing the big T, it basically forces the group to explore any areas they haven't explored. I'm also fairly sure Doc Elbourne points the group at that tower, so he could be used to remind them, if they forget.
Could anyone tell me if any of the NPC's besides Winter are important for the other modules. I only have a copy of In Search of Sanity.
They aren't, not really. You can always make them significant, but the AP doesn't assume anyone from In Search of Sanity continues into later modules. Even Winter isn't vital--as written, she's a useful way to introduce the PCs to Thrushmoor in the next chapter.
NOTE: I rebuilt her as a Royal Accuser inquisitor changeling, gave her a sardonic personality, and had her helping the PCs out for both this chapter and the next one before she went on to other things.
Hey all,
Just in case this'll help, I have a few things to contribute:
1. I wanted Red Destiny to have a more literal name and be something one of my players would be inclined to keep for a long time to come and so I have created the following:
Red Destiny releases a low hum as it gently vibrates at the first sign of combat. This grants the wielder a +4 bonus to initiative as it knows exactly when it's needed. Additionally, this +2 Short Sword enables its wielder to cast Deathwatch 3/day as a swift action. To the wielder of this weapon, one might say destiny is in your hands.
2. I have a 3 person party. Before they began this campaign we were running through Hollow's Last Hope, plus a follow up side quest they loved, which had them working with my GMPC/NPC (Alexi Vandemir) to overthrow Thuldrin Kreed as Mayor. This brought them up to level 3. Now, they're new to roleplaying in general, but are very creative people who just don't want to see their characters die. So, I got them into Strange Aeons by using one of their own personal character plot hooks (one character was searching for her real parents and their last known location was Caliphas, Ustalav) and to keep things somewhat balanced, I had them all start on half health plus a number of extra hp equal to their Fortitude save. I also removed all but 2 of their 20 odd potions, chalking it up to the fact they would have used some in the two years they were working for Lowl's, but unknown to them, about 12 of these potions are in the bag hidden under the pier in book 2, for Keldrin Mon to point them to. Anyway, her father wasn't there when she turned up and she was instead directed to Thrushmoor by one of the residents of Caliphas. This lead her to becoming enslaved by a Denizen of Leng and the other two party members (an Ulfen blooded Were-Bear kin Druid from Olfden and a Sellsword Ranger from Arcadia) were coerced into helping if they ever wanted their friend back. This meant the party weren't evil to begin with like the AP suggests, but were more a victim of circumstance.
So, for anyone wanting the bad deeds to be more consequences of unfortunate circumstance, here's what I've created for the reveal:
Ursa's theme - Distant Memory/Memories of that Day, FF9
Ursa - You came here with the other two people you see beside you, initially in search of Naureen's parents, but later found yourself stuck here, a slave to the Count and Mayor of this town - Haserton Lowl's IV.
Traveling from Darkmoon Vale, you left behind your boyfriend, Alexi Vandemir, who currently lords over the town of Falcon's Hollow, delivering more and more on his promise to you and the citizen's of Falcon's Hollow with each passing day.
You remained in contact with him until 6 months ago. This is when you were taken somewhere - a dreamlike realm, often nightmarish and tainted with yellow hue. Realising that same yellow hue currently swirls around you, it hits you that the dreamlike place you suddenly remember visiting so vividly was here. Next to you is the pool you now remember willingly bathing in just 6 months ago, where the memories of your life up til now had all washed away.
Read privately to Ursa's player - Your heritage had gifted you a heightened sense of smell from birth, and having spent a year of your life together, the scent of the mysterious man clad in armour next to you was unmistakable - It's Alexi. He must have set out to find you as soon as you stopped communicating and has been watching over you and the party ever since you first saw him mysteriously diving down through the clouded yellow nightsky, Double-Spear in hand, saving you all from the nightmarish flying monstrosity known as the Nightgaunt.
Only where you came together, he came alone, fighting his way through the many creatures plaguing the sky, knowing full well that once in, there was little chance of escape.
Play - Roses of May, FF9 for the following:
If confronted, Ahringar will lift off his helmet, glancing at you all (the party) with a knowing smile before grabbing Ursa in a gentle embrace; "These last few days (or weeks) have been so painful to endure. Seeing you all, unable to recall who you were, why you were here or what you had done - it must have been truly awful.
Ursa, my love, having spent countless nights alone in that Asylum, plagued by the many nightmares that stirred with each passing night was nothing when compared to seeing you this entire time, completely unaware of even my existence....that was...the hardest part for me."
To everyone - "I could not reveal my identity sooner for a number of reasons, and for that I am truly sorry, but if the public were to learn that I lead a double life - one of both Noble responsibility and that of an adventurer, I fear the town of Falcon's Hollow would be in grave danger. I know it's asking a lot, but please, keep this secret solely between us.
Whether lover or friend, you are all my allies and from here on out, we do this together, like we did three years ago, back at the old ruined Dwarven Monastery of Darkmoon Vale. Where we were once green, it's clear now that we are all seasoned adventurers and Lowl's isn't going to know what hit him!"
Play - Terra, FF9
Naureen - Searching for your parents only lead you into the cruel and manipulative hands of Count Haserton Lowls IV. While searching for your parents, a cruel and unnatural humanoid had captured you and taken you to Count Lowl's' manor at Iris Hill, forcing you into slavery.
When both Ursa and Draken realised what had happened, they investigated Thrushmoor and after finding their way to Lowl's, discovered that your captor was working for this man, and he promised to free you, should they both work for him. To this, they hesitantly agreed, causing this whole mess to begin with.
Standing by the otherworldly oasis, you feel yourself drawn to the pool as it shows to you your father has sadly passed and though you had never met, you can feel within your heart that the man you so often saw smiling at you and granting comfort from within your dreams, was your father, Adwale Okurele - a man of Mwangi descent.
Though your surrogate parents are good people, your journey has been one of finding yourself. Your real father was a slave, forced into slavery by Katapeshi slavers and was often forced to fight in the arena of Katapesh to appease his owner and earn him some coin on the side. It was through the arena that your father met a Drow woman by the name of Ansell Lanaseela. The two had a tryst and eventually won their freedom shortly after Ansell had discovered her pregnancy, but eventually, wanting different things they ended up going their separate ways.
If the pool has any truth to it, you can see your Drow mother alive and well, hunting in an unknown mountainous region and returning to her homely looking shack.
You also recall your first real romance with Gnomeo back in Falcon's Hollow and the many drinks you had with Keldrin Mon in Thrushmoor. Under the employ of Lowl's, he was just a mere Stevedore (dock worker), but a good man and loyal friend of yours, true to his word. You had many drinks and laughs with him - a pleasant break from the hardships of working for Lowl's.
- When the fight at the oasis breaks out: A small breeze causes your dreadlocks to gently flow to the side, as suddenly you feel the weight of a hand on your right shoulder.
"I am here for you daughter. I have been watching...waiting. It was not my intent to abandon you, but know that the life your mother and I had was not one we wanted you to grow up with. You have endured much my child and I am here to guide you on your journey through the dreamlands. Here, things are different - both living and dead can travel and interact within the world of dreams. My soul is yet to pass on, and while I am no longer living, I am here for you now and will accompany both you and your friends for as long as you exist within this realm."
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GM Note: After being enslaved by the Denizen of Leng and forced to do participate in a number of rituals as a test subject, Naureen's father passed but remained attached to her, watching over her as events unfolded and gave her comfort as she dreamed in the basement of Briarstone Asylum.
He can serve as a guide within the Dimension of Dreams and only allows his soul to pass on once he knows his daughter is safe.
Alternatively, as a side effect of all of the experimentation with the dream world, Adwale could possibly be able to step out as a physical being to live the life with Naureen he never had the chance to, for this isn't a dream version of he, but his actual soul trapped here as a result of Lowl's dream experimentation.
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Play - You're Not Alone, FF9
Draken - Perhaps having the hardest time of all, the tasks Lowl's required were less than savoury, but not wanting your friends to go through such hardships, you bore that burden yourself.
One night at the Silver Wagon, one of the punters grabbed Ursa's arse as she walked past. By this point she was already drunk herself and had run up a pretty large tab, but out of sheer frustration and humiliation, she turned and socked the man square in the jaw, nearly knocking him off his chair following the surprisingly audible smack for someone of her stature. It was here that the man and four of his friends decided to gang up on your friend, forcing you to step in, and while this got you both banned from the Inn, neither of you were to blame. That still didn't stop Ursa from being imprisoned for the night for causing unrest. It would seem in the town of thrushmoor it was far easier to blame outsiders than it was the local regulars, no matter how rowdy they got. Once they realised Naureen, who was in there the same night having a drink with Keldrin on an opposite table, was part of your group, they banned her too. This was nothing in comparison to what would follow however.
While you all acted as intimidators on behalf of Count Lowl's IV, pressing the elderly for money and taxes and scaring children away who got a little too close to Lowl's manor on Iris Hill, you pushed the stevedores to work even harder and purposely covered up the crimes of those employed by Lowl's by pinning them on other less savoury people (some of whom regardless of how awful their personality was, were innocent of any crime). You even once murdered for the man, though not by choice.
Having been sent to intimidate Klyn Murik after Lowl's discovered he had been stealing food from his kitchen, fearing for his life, Klyn grabbed a rolling pin and struck you over the head with it. Staggered and out of self-defense, you retaliated by hitting the man with the pommel of your sword several times in an attempt to get him to back off, only as he went down, he hit his head on the kitchen worktop and died.
To Everyone:
All of you remember working for Lowl's, not out of loyalty or pride, but out of coercion, for he promised to free Naureen from his Leng slaver, provided you worked for him, carrying out any task without question. What he did instead however, was use you, bring you to this very oasis and purge you of your memories before chucking you into Briarstone Asylum, where he assumed you would remain, absent of mind, never to be seen again. He was wrong however, and now you have only one goal in mind and that's to stop Haserton Lowls!
The PC who's likely to wield Red Destiny is a Ranger with Favoured Enemy: Aberration. This was the top choice of enemy to choose in the players guide, only upon reading the encounters throughout every book, I don't possibly see how this character will shine when there oddly simply aren't enough aberrations in the campaign for his choice to mean much. Sure there are quite a few in the random encounters table, but the AP itself says there's very little chance outside of what's written to include random encounters. This is a bit of a letdown really, so instead, because a large amount of the creatures are connected to the dream plane, many variations of typical creatures have changed and don't really belong in reality, so would you say it's fair for me to consider any dream/nightmare plane creatures as Aberrations rather than just monstrous humanoids with the nightmare template? Specifically the first creature that comes to mind is The Tatterman. Would many of you agree to including him in the list of Aberrations? He fits the description of an Aberration, but is considered a monstrous humanoid.
Lastly, I accidentally read the description of B12 wrong, so the party have already dealt with Klades and the two Ghouls.
Instead of the collapse, I think I accidentally read the wrong section, reading the part of "the wall has collapsed here, revealing the controls of the showers inside of the shower room" - paraphrashing here.
The Crossbow-Woman Fighter took out the two lesser ghouls with Rapid Shot before they could even reach the party. Klades jumped up out of his throne and didn't quite make it across the pool, falling in himself. When he made it to the party, everyone became effected by his Stench Aura and everyone contracted Ghoul Fever (they're hoping they can find somebody to heal them only nobody in book 1, not even Winter, has that ability). The Ranger was paralysed for 4 rounds, the Druid for 2 and this just left Klades and the Crossbow-Woman (Naureen) fighting it out.
Naureen kept rolling around (with acrobatics), getting to a safe distance and firing a shot off. Her health was pretty low and she knew if she went down the rest of the party would be done for. So, she carried on rolling acrobatics, taking a few AoO's in the process and when she finally got bitten and paralysed, it was that exact round where Ursa the druid (already shifted into a Bear, but frozen in place with paralysis), moved 5ft (difficult terrain so technically 10ft) and bit the Ghoul, landing a crit (Amulet of Mighty Strikes being used for Acid damage) and dealing a whopping 29 damage as she lifted the Ghast up into the air, shook her head violently, causing Klades head to smash open against the wall before finally shaking his body in two.
Now they're in the room with the Apostle, the dead woman and the Ghoul eating the womans arm. They managed to speak to the Ghoul, get his name as Argade and got a little hint of what's to come from him. If they're clever I'll allow them to free him to fight and hopefully weaken Oathsday, but I don't honestly think they'll think to do that.
I use Hero Points as they're new players, but have ruled that they get one per session (with the ability to earn more via exceptional roleplay or cinematic moments), but these must be spent each session or else they're wasted. With this, I allow them to remain conscious on 1hp if they were going to be KO'd or die, but also allow them to spend one point to heal 1d6 with Savage Worlds explosion rules (I allow explosion rules on this and crits only). Funnily enough the Ranger rolled a 6 3 times in a row for healing and thought it was a bad thing as he doesn't really read any notes I make to help them. This meant with 3 6's and a 2, he was back up to full hp before fighting Klades. As it stands now, Draken is on 24hp, the Druid (Ursa) is on 10 and the Crossbow-Woman (Naureen) is on 9. Naureen was actually MVP last game and for MVP's I allow them to have advantage on any one roll of their choice (roll twice, take the better result), so that should help, but they have no healing and are on this hp after managing to convince York to aid them a little as they dragged the bodies of everything they killed up towards the barricade.
They made too much noise talking to Argade and freeing the Apostle, so Oathsday heard them and is currently on the bed in the other room under the guise of Iza Weeds. They saw through Doctor Latchke's elderly nurse front, so let's just hope they win next session.
I've also created a fun little thing - A document in Oathsdays lab with her nicknames of the party members, so they'll likely think the names on here are their real names for a time (I hope the players buy into it and go with it for fun at least). Instead of Draken, Ursa and Naureen, it's Johnny, Violet and Mercy.
Am I missing something? What is the significance of the PC's going to E11, or the ghoul encampment at all? Killing the oneirogen in E11 thins the fog somewhat but I can't see anywhere that it is needed.
What's stopping the PC's from just headed to Zandalus?
Just came here to ask this!
The fake doctor guy says the PCs should go over there and take out the one oneirogen, but otherwise there's no real push for them to head over that way, not when Zandalus is right above them. I've been thinking about possible rationales for needing to remove the tower oneirogen before Zandalus but haven't come up with anything solid yet.
I posted on this above. My PCs went straight for Zandalus. If your players never find that other oneirogen, it might as well not exist. Same with the ghouls. It worked out fine (we’re on book 6 now and never once has skipping a section of Briarstone come up).
On an unrelated note, what would you say is your favorite encounter in the book?
Definitely the Nightgaunt. I had him swoop in, grab the fighter, fly up and tickle him. It was fun.
Yeah, running the Nightgaunt outside was fun, because it scared the players to death. Running the first and final encounters with the Tatterman were a lot of fun too. I liked the buildup and foreshadowing created by the first encounter and then the finale was a brutal pay-off.
I think you've got a good idea with the point of no return with the cult. You can also hit them with nightmares if they get knocked unconscious (either through HP or a sleep effect like approaching to close to an oneirogen).
Some standard sanity checks (from the sanity system):
1) First time a character encounters a dead body:
probably already happened
2) First time a character encounters a gruesome scene of death:
like a crucified corpse in the cult area, maybe the strangler's victims if you haven't hit them yet, or the crushed bodies in the western hallway
3) First time a character encounters a horrifying creature:
The tatterman can count, as can any number of things coming from the fog outside (like the nightgaunt or voonith)
You do have to make them up as you go along. If a scene is supposed to be extra creepy, or a monster is supposed to be disgusting, call for a sanity check.
Sent you a PM, and thanks for the kind words.
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Does this work for you? or do you need just room D6, or a bunch of blood in that room?
I like the idea of unlocking spirits in the asylum. I'm curious as to why you went with the mythic paths rather than say something from the Harrow?
I'd maybe switch them out for Books, Hammers, Shields, Stars, Crowns, and lastly Keys.
This ties them in visually and thematically to the Harrow. I like to use the Harrow in all of my Golarion based games at some point. Doing a reading for the group often has either hilarious or spooky results.
That's my suggestion and it's a good one!
If you have attempted to get to my linked file(s) above and found that you needed to ask permission, you have my apology. I was not regularly checking the e-mail address attached to the account.
I have now removed the google security update from hundreds of my shared files, so hopefully no one will have to ask permission to view them.