Two major components make up the Oraculum: a round sanctuary situated below and an observatory above. A steep set of steps ascends to the observatory from each of the cardinal directions, climbing 20 feet up the sloping exterior. Four sets of stone doors stand open along each of the ordinal directions, leading into the sanctuary.So, the doors - the dotted lines - are at the ordinal directions (NW, NE, SE, SW) and lead down into the sanctuary (C3) from street level.
The stairs lead up to the observatory (C2).
C2 and C3 are the same size.
Yeah, I thought so. The description told me as much, but the map conflicted with the description.
On an unrelated note, like Mal_Luck said on the first page, Xhamen-Dor's husk has a different DR Bypass than his full form. Why is the Husk DR/Epic and Lawful instead of Slashing?
Weird question for the people more knowledgeable on this AP than I: How game-breaking (if at all) would it be to make Kaklatath an Elder Yithian as opposed to a regular one? (Excluding the situation with fighting their seeded body; I can figure that one out myself)?
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A quick question for people about the Advanced Hungry Fog, on p17...what should the stats for its Enveloping Mists be? The standard Hungry Fog has an attack of 6d6, and an envelop that does 3d6, with a DC of 17. The Advanced version has not changed Charisma, but it does have 14HD, rather than 7. So, I believe this should make the DC 21 rather than 17. And should the damage scale with the touch attack? Meaning it should be 4d6, rather than 3d6?
I'm a bit confused about how the seedborne corruption should work on npcs. My group is travelling with a cohort and Kaklatath, and they are about to camp in the city. So if these two fail the will and fort save, are they waking up seeded and trying to attack the group? I dont see any rules about how quick the progression is.
I'm a bit confused about how the seedborne corruption should work on npcs. My group is travelling with a cohort and Kaklatath, and they are about to camp in the city. So if these two fail the will and fort save, are they waking up seeded and trying to attack the group? I dont see any rules about how quick the progression is.
Just take a look at the stat block seeded creatures on page 91. Seedborn consumption has a onset of one month.
But remember that the PC´s are carrier of this disease as well - they are just imune to it. So the cohort and kaklathat might be infectet the moment, they first get in contact with the pc`s
The stat block of Xamen dor states that there is a 1% chance per year to be targeted by his nightmare dream ability if you know the name of the god and are understanding his nature.
If you are affected by this ability you must do a safe or you are affected with seedborn consumption with no onset. This is stated on page 86/87
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Just about to start Book four. I really like the atmosphere and such, this is one of the books I was most looking forward to when I checked out the AP (the others being In Search of Sanity and Dreams of the Yellow King), though I'm going to have to change more than a few encounters to make them not be uninteresting pushovers for my very unoptimized party of six.
The Snarl in particular feels like it needs changes. As is, the party is probably going to miss half the encounters there, simply because they'll reach the Star Stelae, do what they came to do, then leave. I suppose I could just make a point of the ritual attracting the locals whenever they perform it, giving them more motivation to secure the area before attuning the stela.
The Saffron Prince is going to become an advanced glabrezu, which is a shame because that means I can't use his cool portrait. But doing so makes him a slightly more interesting fight, and also gives the players an actual reason to go along with his absurd demands: He has a wish to grant, after all.
I'm tempted to have all three main outsiders team up against the party during their sudden yet inevitable betrayal. (assuming Eshimal doesn't get what he wants otherwise, which I'd say is 50/50) It might be a bit too hard, but together they make a decent team, with Saffron as a frontline goon, Aeptilinu spamming psychic crush, and Eshimal playing support with summons, darkness, etc. I'd probably just play them as baseline versions of their creature types in that case.
Weiralai and Kakishari both need rebuilds, and are going to be working as a team. (I'm thinking Warpriest and Antipaladin respectively, with maybe some seeded cannon fodder) Weiralai has shown up a few times in my campaign, and I think she's a bit too interesting to waste trying to solo the party with a bad melee cleric build.
I'm somewhat worried about them skipping over most of the wasteland encounters. They've been using shadow walk to fast-travel, and will likely do something similar again. I'm mainly thinking of having the map directions be vague and unclear: "Head towards the face shaped mesa 5 miles away," "Follow the girtablilu trail markers for 10 miles," etc. This way the could still cut down on a lot of travel time if they spammed travel spells, but it gives me a few chances to fit in encounters with the giants, Amrivast, etc. How did other people deal with this? Did you just let them skip the wilderness stuff?
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The Saffron Prince is going to become an advanced glabrezu, which is a shame because that means I can't use his cool portrait. But doing so makes him a slightly more interesting fight, and also gives the players an actual reason to go along with his absurd demands: He has a wish to grant, after all.
Keep in mind that there's little keeping you from adding more abilities to an NPC. If you want them to be able to grant an ill-advised wish or throw the advanced simple template on someone, go for it.
I´m not a big fan of random encounters in an already well packed AP. In my opinion there are a lot of fights are taking away time which could better be used for rolleplaying time.
I have a 1 year old daughter and a couple at my table also have a very young offspring. So our playtime is fairly limited and depends how the two girls are "behaving".
Planning ahead for my next few game sessions and I am curious what "Demands" other DM's had the Saffron Prince make on their players? Drawing a blank other than kill so and so or such and such? Which is fine but reasoning would he have real or imagined to order the PC's to take out some other denizen of the city?
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Shouldn't Hoshbagh have four additional focus powers? I see the resonant and base focus powers for his 3 implements, but that's it. According to the Focus Powers class feature:
Whenever the occultist learns a new implement school, he gains the base power of that school. In addition, at 3rd level and every 2 levels thereafter, he learns a new focus power selected from the options granted by all of the implement schools he knows. The occultist can use focus powers only by expending mental focus (see Mental Focus).
I don't see anything in Tome Eater that changes that, unless I'm missing something.
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For Upianshe, is Perfect Strike usable with Teralindar's Honor? I would think no because there is no weapon damage being done.
Planning ahead for my next few game sessions and I am curious what "Demands" other DM's had the Saffron Prince make on their players? Drawing a blank other than kill so and so or such and such? Which is fine but reasoning would he have real or imagined to order the PC's to take out some other denizen of the city?
In my game they skipped this guy alltogether. They where told about the safron prince and there first response was like:
"We have enough problems - don´t bother with more crazy folk. We leave him be."
Keep in mind that magic easily can avoid encounters. I prepared for a long and daunting journey throught the parchlands when the Clerik casts "Wind walk" and the group just raced straight thrugh the desert.
Another time, magic destroyed my planes acured when i introduced the juggernauts. With a anti gravity spell, this deadly encounter went to a nice ballon party
So... the Path to Black Stars ritual seems... hard. Especially for a party that isn't necessarily knowledge focused, like mine ended up being. I realize that referencing the Nec. gives a +10 to the primary caster and +5 to secondaries, and they can take wisdom drain to increase it even more, but even then, before taking wisdom drain our highest knowledge arcana (sorcerer) would need to roll a 13 (DC 40, 13[kn arc]+10[nec]+4[CL 12][I suppose Kaklateth might help in the ritual, giving a +1 from having 4 secondary casters, but still]). He *might* be willing to take wisdom drain, but I can never be sure with these guys.
Specifically, that knowledge nobility one is the one I'm dreading the most. I've never played in a game where that skill was used and suddenly the party will need to take a d4 of wisdom drain, and roll a 14 to make it.
Even though the ritual only needs 4/6 successes, it still just could all fall apart with a couple bad die rolls. Any thoughts? Anyone who has run this in a similar situation with a party of not super intelligent PCs have you been ok with the ritual?
I did honestly lower the DC for the DotYK rituals, and admittedly didn't run them exactly as written (I didn't realize I'm supposed to make the rolls in secret so I allowed the party to stop mid ritual if they were rolling poorly), so I might end up doing something similar. I'm just not a big fan of RPG elements with only one solution and really delays or outright stops the party because of afew bad rolls.
Getting to the moon was a similar thing for me, one bad diplomacy roll and the party was basically stopped until I just decided on the spot that the Shantak had a broken wing and would help the party if they healed it.
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Husk of Xhamen-Dor's Dread Decay is supposed to automatically happen on any tentacle hit, or only Rend?
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I did honestly lower the DC for the DotYK rituals, and admittedly didn't run them exactly as written (I didn't realize I'm supposed to make the rolls in secret so I allowed the party to stop mid ritual if they were rolling poorly), so I might end up doing something similar. I'm just not a big fan of RPG elements with only one solution and really delays or outright stops the party because of afew bad rolls.
Getting to the moon was a similar thing for me, one bad diplomacy roll and the party was basically stopped until I just decided on the spot that the Shantak had a broken wing and would help the party if they healed it.
So...you didn't warn the players ahead of time that rituals might be important, and then changed the rules for rituals to make sure they succeeded...why not just do the same here? You've essentially handwaved away the rituals once before, why not now?
So...you didn't warn the players ahead of time that rituals might be important, and then changed the rules for rituals to make sure they succeeded...why not just do the same here? You've essentially handwaved away the rituals once before, why not now?
Yeah you're right, I might just try and homebrew something to fit them a little bit more than knowledge checks, as I definitely didn't make sure they were super knowledge oriented. Which would be my bad, obv.
...this ritual is more physical. It will require a series of specific checks to recreate the precise relative movements of certain astral bodies. Each check takes one hour.... roll acrobatics!
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Anyone else finding a lot of the Neruzavin surface encounters a bit random? The inhabitants of the sprawl are interesting feel they are a bit of a menagerie and not sure they really add to the story as written. In particular they seem somewhat avoidable and irrelevant. I’m thinking of rebuilding this part to create more of a rationale for interacting with them and a bit more of a logical sequence in what is already a very unstructured part of the adventure
1) Remove or adjust Hoshbagh - I actually like the Otyugh but I’m playing this in 5e and so the assumptions about excess magic items don’t really fit this magic item vendor well
2) Possibly reduce the inhabitants of the Snarl to Aeptolinu and either the Saffron King or the Heresy Devil
3) Make the Saffron King more of an obstacle/ gate keeper - he bars access to the star stellae and must be either bargained with, circumvented or defeated
4) I like that Aeptolinu just wanders around like Marvin the paranoid android, spouting nihilisms and potentially going psycho
5) what prevents access to the star stellae and the Speaker of the Deep? perhaps it’s just the Saffron King blocks the way
6) perhaps keep the devil, the Necronomicon fake could be good fun, but why is he just hanging around in a side corridor?
Does the community have any thoughts on 1) for a 5e lower-magic setting and the other points in general?
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So I'm having issues with the timeline of Lowls' pursuit, and was wondering how other people managed to reconcile this.
Whisper Out of Time, p.23: "In the week since Lowls and Mun triggered the library’s wards, the Mysterium has been on lockdown." So we have a concrete time frame as to when Lowls was in Katheer.
Whisper Out of Time, p.38: "...[the PCs] see a vision in their minds of Lowls...pulling a scroll from his coat. He casts a spell from the scroll and vanishes in a flash of magical energy. As he disappears, the scene shifts briefly to allow a glimpse of a steep-walled, cylindrical
building brimming with gnolls and topped with a lush garden. So Lowls teleported directly to Biting Lash. Great! His lead on the PCs is still at least a full week, if not a couple of extra days if the PCs had to rest in the Mysterium.
Whisper Out of Time, p.55: "...[Lowls] left with plenty of supplies, slaves to carry the supplies, and guards to help keep him safe and assist in navigation on his journey to the forgotten city." In short, he could no longer teleport because he had a supply train with him.
Whisper Out of Time, p.38: "...By ship, the journey from Katheer to Okeno is approximately 670 miles, and depending on the ship and quality of the winds, the trip takes anywhere from 1 to 2 weeks."
In short, according to the references to Lowls' travels, even if he didn't spend a single evening with Biting Lash and he made optimal time, it's 2 weeks for him and his retinue to arrive back in Katheer to start their trip to the Parchlands.
Unfortunately, my PCs didn't want to bother with "a week's research at the library" because they thought it would be wasted and they were in a hurry to catch Lowls.
They were 1 week behind (reference in WOoT to when the alarms sounded), then spent 3 days in Katheer, teleported to Okeno, spent 3 days there, and teleported back to Katheer.
Oops. They're in Katheer ahead of Lowls.
Sure, I can tell the PCs that time works differently for Lowls or something, but did anyone else notice this little hiccup?
I caught on from the early GM threads that the timeline was a bit tricky to reconstruct, so I just kept it vague enough that I always had enough wiggle room as a GM, so they didn't quite catch-up. My PCs tried, but early teleport access was no match for horrible crippling madness and the need to recover...
I'm fortunate that my current group is perfectly happy with hand-waving.
But in a former group I had a guy who meticulously tracked every date. It was a running obsession with him; you could not start a session until he knew the date.
So using the dates from Book 4 would trip up groups with THAT guy in it. I figure it's worth a warning to pad the dates a bit. Just take the time scale and add at least a week everywhere.
Since we use leveling points this isn't that much of an issue, but...
...even at 12th level the party's divine caster has access to Wind Walk. One cast and they can travel 480 miles in a day, more than enough to entirely bypass all of the Parchlands encounters and go straight to Neruzavin.
I don't see any repercussions in just skipping the giants and girtablilu, and I'm going to try to encourage them to land on occasion ("You see some giants setting up an ambush down below"), but I'm wondering whether anyone else had this happen, and whether they did anything about it other than letting the PCs just skip Section 1.
Question on seedborne consumption:
p.14 says, "Furthermore, these survivors often have Charisma scores of 11 or lower, allowing them to avoid transformation into the seeded."
p.90 says, "“Seeded creature” is an inherited template that can be added to any corporeal, living creature with a Charisma score of 12 or higher."
I infer from this that PCs with Charisma scores of 11 or lower are immune to seedborne consumption.
So... are they still carriers, in spite of their immunity? This becomes extraordinarily important in the fight with Xhamen-Dor.
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Question on seedborne consumption:
p.14 says, "Furthermore, these survivors often have Charisma scores of 11 or lower, allowing them to avoid transformation into the seeded."
p.90 says, "“Seeded creature” is an inherited template that can be added to any corporeal, living creature with a Charisma score of 12 or higher."I infer from this that PCs with Charisma scores of 11 or lower are immune to seedborne consumption.
So... are they still carriers, in spite of their immunity? This becomes extraordinarily important in the fight with Xhamen-Dor.
So my party had WindWalk too and used it. They definitely by-passed a few encounters as written, but they opened up some new possibilities that I took advantage of. Consider that most aerial individuals can likely be seen for miles against a clear desert sky. I had them encounter a phoenix, which I made sort of the defacto guardian of the approach to Neruzavin. It ordered them to land, and declared it too dangerous for them to go on to Neruzavin. When the party insisted, the phoenix offered them a chance to prove their strength and sent them to go kill Obsidian.
I used Obsidian at full health and had it initially lunge at the party out of a sand dune creating an immense cloud of dust in the process that provided it concealment for a few rounds.
Returning to the Phoenix victorious I had the phoenix tell them about the Ash Giant traders that it tolerates and their leader Mother Moon and the girtablilu tribe that essentially acts as its stewards, keeping trespassers away from the forbidden city of Neruzavin.
Additionally, playing up the forbidden city angle, I put a mystical temporal barrier of sorts all around Neruzavin. On the initial approach what seems to be a heat mirage hides it from view and the entire area is under the influence of a non-detection spell. Additionally, the wards and the nature of the place cause the city itself to be slightly unhinged from time, which has some follow up effects. 1) All powers with a duration initiated on one side of the barrier immediately end when moving across the barrier, as essentially their duration time runs out instantly. 2) Teleportation across the barrier is ill-advised, as it is unlikely for the caster to be on target, and the wards might even have teleportation traps. Teleportation within the city limits works fine.
Hope some of that helps or stirs some new ideas.
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Question on seedborne consumption:
p.14 says, "Furthermore, these survivors often have Charisma scores of 11 or lower, allowing them to avoid transformation into the seeded."
p.90 says, "“Seeded creature” is an inherited template that can be added to any corporeal, living creature with a Charisma score of 12 or higher."I infer from this that PCs with Charisma scores of 11 or lower are immune to seedborne consumption.
So... are they still carriers, in spite of their immunity? This becomes extraordinarily important in the fight with Xhamen-Dor.
I've honestly struggled a bit with seedborne consumption. I've been probably making it more scary than it is by RAW, but that feels right for the story. By RAW, I think it is essentially a disease you can get in some strange ways, and the only ones immune are those immune to disease or mindless.
For my game, my players all know they have the disease at this point in the story. They know they are infected, though seemingly immune, it is not clear why, though it most assuredly has something to do with the what Lowls did to them. They know that sharing their knowledge will infect others, and they know they are carriers. Additionally (something I added) it has become clear that one of the vectors of infection is emotional attachment. People they share their hopes and dreams with get infected regardless of what they talk about.
Due to the psychic nature of the illness, memory altering cures have come into play. In one extreme case, one PC had to erase himself from his true loves mind in order for her illness to be forgotten.
Now in Neruzavin, close to the source, restorative magics are failing to hit the mark, and while memory altering magic may still work, depending on circumstances, only limited wish or more powerful magics are proving sufficient. Additionally, in Neruzavin, no one is immune to Seedborne Consumption, unless they are incorporeal or mindless. Also, I've been having any exposure in Neruzavin cause an immediate onset (time is strange in my Neruzavin), so one fortitude save to negate the cha drain upon any exposure.
In the end, especially in Neruzavin, I recommend tailoring the disease, infestation, psychic curse, however you think of it to keep it feeling like a threat that requires serious resources to keep at bay. It will help motivate a need to confront the Inmost Blot. Really enjoying this module and hope your group is too.
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UPDATES:
(1) Amusingly enough, after all of my concerns, the group was vehemently opposed to using Wind Walk because of the 5-round transformation. I guess I didn't play up the urgency of stopping Lowls enough, but that turns out to be a good thing as the AP can proceed as-written.
(2) In terms of the seedborne consumption, my group is pretty much ready to quit the AP outright at this point. (BEFORE Book 5 -- it's certainly not THIS book's fault... yet.) One of the reasons is because of the massive number of save or sucks. (And yes, we're all Call of Cthulu players, but in our opinion the AP doesn't translate well. Which even the author admits is a shortcoming of a CoC/Pathfinder crossover.)
So yet again ignoring the rules and saying, "Oh, no, even though the rules say it does, Heal doesn't work for... reasons...", or, "Even though the entry in this very module says it doesn't affect creatures with a Charisma score of under 12, you're affected for... reasons..." is just going to lead to open player revolt and abandonment of the AP. They are very, very, VERY tired of, "This creature/effect/trap/story element ignores the rules because it's convenient for it to do so," so I'm not going to be bending things any farther. Heal will cure the consumption, and characters with Charisma scores under 12 won't have it at all.
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From what I understood, based on the text on p14 'and are effectively immune to its effects.' - the PCs are already infected with seedborne consumption, but despite being carriers, they are immune to the effects. This says to me they don't suffer ANY effects of being seedborne, and so don't have the automatic compulsion to walk to the Husk. And, even if (when...) they fail the Unspeakable Presence, they will be compelled to move into range of the Husk, and will still suffer the Dex loss and staggering, but they won't become seeded. After all...they already ARE seeded, just not being consumed.
Honestly, after I realised the PCs are immune to the effects, I stopped bothering to have them save against the consumption. There really was nothing added in tracking it.
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Advice: Don't use the Parchlands encounter table at all, unless you're customizing it into story encounters (as Barmy and others have done).
I tried to use it, but at only one roll per day and one roll per night. Even then, the 30% encounter chance and the average CR 14 encounters against a resting 13th level party led my group to give up after just 2 days of walking (including an encounter with a sepid div that killed all their mounts) and use Wind Walk the rest of the way. They then refused to interact with the giants, barely talked to the girtablilu (only taking long enough to decide to avoid them as well), and got to Neruzavin without doing much of anything in the Parchlands, exactly as I was worried about.
Had I skipped the random encounters, they would have gone on foot and that section would have run as-written.
Live and learn.
Ending the AP Early?
My PCs have decided that they don't particularly care about chasing Lowls to Carcosa, and would rather just destroy all the Star Stelae and leave him stranded there, saving the world in the process.
So, given that they'll have the Necronomicon to justify using Spellcraft and Knowledge: Arcana to determine the means of the stelae's destruction, and they'll likely have the means to do it (necromancer and flying polyps), are there any repercussions from taking that route?
Seems like you kill Xhamen Dor, destroy the stelae, and save the world, all without having to do Book 6 at all.
(I'm looking at Possession to take ownership of the polyp until such time as the necromancer can buy a pile of 15-20 Dominate Monster scrolls, at which point the polyp'll eventually roll a 1.)
I don't like derailing my players when they have a good idea, and we have a bookcase full of other APs to run, so I just want to make sure we don't get a classic Call of Cthulu, "You thought you fixed things, but you actually destroyed the world through your ignorance" kind of thing.
It's been a while since I read book six (my campaign died out due to life issues near the end of book 3), but isn't there some time travel elements that could negatively impact the party? It sets them up for a paradox if they aren't able to go back in time and wake themselves up from the fugue state. You could run it so that, in destroying the Stelae, they are sucked into Carcosa with bonuses? Or maybe it shunts them to the final chapter of book six (modified for level obv) so that they get the closure of the loop on waking up from the fugue state. This would focus more on the whole "shunted through time" part of book six, expanding on that aspect rather than Carcossa itself. Just some idle thoughts while I wait for the caffeine to kick in this morning :)Theoretically, but if they skip book 6, they'll never know they were the ones who supposedly woke them up at the start, so there'll be no apparent paradox.
They'll miss out on a cool little plot twist, but not in a way that'll ruin anyone's game.
Awesome. Thanks!
We'll see how it plays out, but at the moment they're of the, "If we break everything we'll seal all the evil far, far away," mentality, so I'm thinking both the stelae and the Necronomicon are doomed, but as I said, we'll see.
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Ending the AP Early?
My PCs have decided that they don't particularly care about chasing Lowls to Carcosa, and would rather just destroy all the Star Stelae and leave him stranded there, saving the world in the process.
So, given that they'll have the Necronomicon to justify using Spellcraft and Knowledge: Arcana to determine the means of the stelae's destruction, and they'll likely have the means to do it (necromancer and flying polyps), are there any repercussions from taking that route?
Seems like you kill Xhamen Dor, destroy the stelae, and save the world, all without having to do Book 6 at all.
(I'm looking at Possession to take ownership of the polyp until such time as the necromancer can buy a pile of 15-20 Dominate Monster scrolls, at which point the polyp'll eventually roll a 1.)
I don't like derailing my players when they have a good idea, and we have a bookcase full of other APs to run, so I just want to make sure we don't get a classic Call of Cthulu, "You thought you fixed things, but you actually destroyed the world through your ignorance" kind of thing.
I believe Book 6 indicates that Lowls' actions will pull Thrushmoor into Carcosa if Book 6 isn't done. Not world-ending, but not great. Plus, he'll become a new Xhamen-Dor, where killing him in book 6 *might* eliminate the threat of Xhamen-Dor permanently.
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I just want to say, Hoshbagh was a big hit with my players.
I just want to say, Hoshbagh was a big hit with my players.
I agree. Hosbagh was hilarious. My Players struck a deal with them. They transported him to a major city in exchange for some of his items.
"So my friend, you will not get any money out of us - but imagine to resettle in a nice cosy sewer. And maybe you can start your buisness better there. What is a buisiness with no customers?"
On this ocation i slipped them "Madmen" the voodoo doll because there was no reason that they bought such a thing from him
The Husk of Xhamen-Dor's unspeakable presence worked awesomely at our table. The players nearly all failed the save. Having half their actions taken up by complying with a Great Old One's horrifying will (i.e., moving towards it) and the other half fighting against it made for a perfect lovecraftian horror RP experience.
"I must destroy this thing! I must move towards this thing!"
Fantastic!
I have a question about Kaklatath's knowledge and in general, her timeline. Just how long has it been trapped in the body of this human? If Kaklatath's body is in Neruzavin, I am assuming that it 'lives' there and would have a lot more knowledge of the place than the book is stating. Did the Yithians have no idea that XD was in that lake? Did they interact at all with Neruzavins current inhabitants. I didn't see it specified in the book how much info Kakl has, and presumably it's with the party as they are learning stuff from Hoshbagh/Upianshe/Aeptolinu ect. I feel like my PC's are gonna just turn to Kakl at that point and be like, why didn't you tell us any of this? Unless Yithians extend the life of the person they are inhabiting, but I didn't see anything about that in the Yithian article (I may have missed it though). Any thoughts?
I have a question about Kaklatath's knowledge and in general, her timeline. Just how long has it been trapped in the body of this human? If Kaklatath's body is in Neruzavin, I am assuming that it 'lives' there and would have a lot more knowledge of the place than the book is stating. Did the Yithians have no idea that XD was in that lake? Did they interact at all with Neruzavins current inhabitants. I didn't see it specified in the book how much info Kakl has, and presumably it's with the party as they are learning stuff from Hoshbagh/Upianshe/Aeptolinu ect. I feel like my PC's are gonna just turn to Kakl at that point and be like, why didn't you tell us any of this? Unless Yithians extend the life of the person they are inhabiting, but I didn't see anything about that in the Yithian article (I may have missed it though). Any thoughts?
I had Kaklatath's Yithian body being held in stasis somewhere in Neruzavin while her mind spent millennia roaming around in borrowed bodies, actively suppressing knowledge of Xhamen-Dor and Neruzavin. Consequently, her knowledge of the state of the city and its inhabitants is limited - while her body has been there since before Starfall, she rarely spends any time in it, and has effectively not been "in" Neruzavin for centuries.
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That's basically the same approach I took. Although the current body has only been inhabited for 50-60 years, there have been thousands of other bodies in between, with virtually no time at all spent in its original body. And so Kaklatath's knowledge of Neruzavin is millenia out of date, and it is unaware of the fate of its fellow Yithians.
That makes sense, thanks for helping to clear that up.
Here's a mechanics question: I'm about to run the Terror Hall room in my next session with the fearborn devourers and caller in darkness, and I don't get the shock matrix trap. Does it get set off when someone is within 5 feet of a pillar? If so, wouldn't the devourers set it off constantly? This is another one that has me scratching my head...
The simplest answer might be to say it only detects living creatures; not to say it doesn't affect undead, but that it isn't set off by them.
If Xhamen Dor is 550 feet underwater, then starting a fight with it seems a bit awkward. Underwater combat rules aside, it just seems like it will make the fight much more difficult. Even if you pull it closer to the surface or shore, it will still have line of sight/effect from beneath the water. How does everyone else see this fight going?
I'm about to run this next session and I had the same question. Couldn't find an answer anywhere on the forums. How did you all run this?
