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So this is the situation.
My players have had an unfortunate case of death in the Sightless Sphinx and now the Mask of the Forgotten Pharaoh is in the hands of the Forgotten Pharaoh and the ib and ka have been rejoined.
My players want to continue the campaign with new 12th level characters but I have a quandry. Everything in the campaign assumes that Hakotep rises as a result of the release of his ib when the Forgotten Pharaoh dies. That hasn't happened because the Forgotten Pharaoh is still alive, the ib and the ka have in fact rejoined.
Given that I don't want to go back to the Sightless Sphinx and I don't want to give my players an effective redo of the fight against the Forgotten Pharaoh I am turning to you guys to give out some advice.
For me this makes the FP the ultimate BBEG of the campaign. He/she will be the final fight of the campaign rather than Hakotep. But from a campaign perspective what happens next?
So with that in mind how should I proceed?
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I suggest doing as I did when my party captured fp and put her on ice (technically she was a statue). Skip part 1 of book 5 entirely.
No risen hakotep, no assault on Osirion. Now with your old party dead it becomes a bit of an issue. Did Tetsurah the gynosphinx from book 3 die? If not she could have discovered the wherabouts of the khepsutanem while cleaning up chisiseks tomb post party and upon seeing fp win book 4 sets out to find new heroes to finish the ap. Book 5 becomes race to control hakoteps tomb and the slave trenches.
I posted some of this in another thread recently, but with fp in power I would make the final battle against fakotep be on the sun disk as either the party or fakotep manages to summon the pyramid. In this I would play the elemental guy as wanting to ally with party instead of fp and in the end have a big melee between the party, the fp, and all the ossumentals as the sun disk charges up.
If the party dies here there is nothing really left to carry on the ap as the fp absorbs the ba and mikes book 6. You could really make a high level game out of a failure here though. If the party wins, then I would make neferuset the boss of book 6, giving her a second fight in hakoteps throne room with some of the mythos monsters in the book 6 bestiary and maybe another few enemies tossed in for a challenge.
My party steamrolled an upgraded neferuset and three of the blue mythos critters in their final fight so maybe some other high level whatsits to tank.
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Well, from how I read it, either FP kills self to reunite the three in Hakotep's ba, or just have his gorgeous figure for the rest of his life. Either way, the ib and the ka together create a fully aware Hakotep essence within the FP (both the seat of emotion ka and will ib), and she? would probably go about trying to reclaim 1st her body then 2nd her country.
If, in the above example 3 way combat atop the sun disk, the FP won and reclaimed her pyramid, I would probably go with the following scenario:
Fakotep descends to her throne room, claiming her crook and flail, destroying or subjugating her lieutenants and wife, and going about determining if she needs her former ba or if her current ba will suffice. Perhaps she destroys her old body and the ba from it comes and supercedes her ba and morphs her back into ye olde Hakotep, or the ba's just merge and she remains in Fakotep's body. Regardless, she spends some time at the Khepsutanem recharging the Sun Disk and getting her ducks in a row before calling up all the attack pyramids to begin operations Book 5 and 6.
Fakotep ravages Osirion, but the Ruby Prince puts up a good fight, and the coalition between the upper Garundi states fights her off causing a retreat across the Barrier Wall. Fakotep flies her pyramid over the top of Uldavi and begins a reign of terror across the Shory ruins and their nearby villages as she extracts more and more lost arts from the descendants of his greatest foe.
The Sphinx from the after the campaign wakes up and starts coordinating Fakotep's return across the Barrier Wall. Ruby Prince gets word and goes and hunts down some demigod level PCs to get business done.
PC's have to figure out how to beat the Sphinx, then learn where Fakotep is staging in Mwangi. Travel there, fight through Shory Mistakes (TM), and get to the Pyramid.
Run through a modified Book 6 with appropriately juiced encounters culminating in a fight against a Shory Tech augmented Fakotep.