Adapting APs for Eberron - Part 2


Pathfinder Adventure Path General Discussion

Scarab Sages

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I'm a huge fan of Paizo's Adventure Paths so I'm wondering if anyone has every run any of them in an Eberron game? I did find an old thread about it but I was hoping for some suggestions on running some of the newer APs?

I was thinking of running either Iron Gods or Mummy's Mask and was hoping if someone could suggest the best land to set either of those two paths?

Also hoping some talented people can suggest adapting the newer APs for Eberron.

Acquisitives

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

there's a thread in the Giantslayer AP thread about it:

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2s4mw?Adapting-Giantslayer-to-Eberron

the gist is that he just set it in Xen'drik, and honestly, it kinda fits better over there in some ways.

That being said, Mummy's Mask doesn't seem like a great fit, because it kinda requires an Egypt analog unless you want to do a lot of rework. Dunno about Iron Gods. Eberron uses magic-technology, and Iron Gods is straightup machines & cybernetics.

I would imagine that (haven't read either) that Serpent's Skull would fit in Xen'drik and Skull & Shackles could be plopped into Lhazaar (make it a little colder and turn Cheliax into Karrnath). Rise of the Runelords might be plopped into plenty of places in the 5 Kingdoms.

That's just some thoughts.


Wow, that's a memory.

I'm not super-familiar with either of the APs you mentioned, but I usually get the first volume of each AP just to get a feel for what they are (and get the handy summary at the end of each). Based on those, I can offer some broad ideas for Mummy's Mask and Iron Gods, but details will be minimal.

Still, figure I'll use some spoiler tags just out of courtesy:

Mummy's Mask:

Based on that 3-page synopis, I wonder if Mummy's Mask could be re-imagined to take place on Sarlona. The Inspired have opened up one of their grave districts to exploration (which should raise some eyebrows across the globe). Ultimately the flying pyramid could be represented as akin to one of those crystal egg structures they're building on Xendrik.

Iron Gods:

I'd initially thought IG not worth doing in Eberron (either losing too much of the Eberron flavor or too much of the Iron Gods flavor), but as I thought about it, I thought the story arc could be used to great effect if placed in the Mournlands.

It might require a lot more rewriting than is worth it when choosing a pre-published adventure, but perhaps the crashed starship could be replaced with a lost Cannith research facility which houses the original "soul" that they used to birth the warforged. By the end, you can have a guest appearance by the Lord of Blades himself (as one of the "androids" working to elevate the AI spirit) and perhaps even give an answer to what caused the Mourning.

Just a couple off-the-cuff ideas to spark discussion. In the meantime, I think I'll re-read those AP summaries and see if anything else comes to mind.

Unfortunately, that's about where my Pathfinder knowledge ends. My interest in APs faded a bit until recently when a growing interest in Ironfang Invasion brought me back to these forums just in time to catch your post. Interesting coincidence, really.


Serpent's skull really is made for Eberron, and it's also supposed to be the pulp AP. I spent a lot of work on converting Second Darkness to work in Stormreach, Xen'drik. There are intelligent drow on Eberron, they're the Umbragen and they have an official write up in "Dungeon". I'll send you my notes for Serpent's skull and Second Darkness if you're interested.

I recently found War of the Burning Sky, it's a 3.5 rules other publisher campaign, but it really struck me as perfect for an alternate Last War. The parts I read so far were 1 & 2, but it sounds so fun to play and DM.

I've also heard of the old Shackled City being used in Eberron. The DM who did it put the city in the Demon Wastes, but I thought Sharn would work well. Of course, the city is under a volcano and is destroyed in the end, but wasting Sharn under a manifest zone is also super fun. Sharn is supposed to have forges, etc. under it.

WotR would work well in the Demon Wastes and Kingmaker in Q'barra or in Eldeen in the past, when Breland was trying to tame the wilds. The upcoming Ironfang Invasion would also translate over well in Eldeen and areas.

As for Mummy's Mask and Iron Gods, I'm not super familiar with those. Xen'drik does have a large desert that is mostly undetailed. I really like your idea with Mummy's Mask and I'd love to see where you go with it. I'd put IG in the Mournlands too. Having the Lord of Blades involved is just too good to pass up. Who knows what caused the Day of Mourning after all?

Acquisitives

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Fletch wrote:

Wow, that's a memory.

I'm not super-familiar with either of the APs you mentioned, but I usually get the first volume of each AP just to get a feel for what they are (and get the handy summary at the end of each). Based on those, I can offer some broad ideas for Mummy's Mask and Iron Gods, but details will be minimal.

Still, figure I'll use some spoiler tags just out of courtesy:

** spoiler omitted **

** spoiler omitted **

Just a couple off-the-cuff ideas to spark discussion. In the meantime, I think I'll re-read those AP summaries and see if anything else comes to mind.

Unfortunately, that's about where my Pathfinder knowledge ends. My interest in APs faded a bit until recently when a growing interest in Ironfang Invasion brought me back to these forums just in time to catch your post. Interesting coincidence, really.

WELL... the Lord of Blades can be the Black Tyrant.

which makes the decision about redeeming him all the more important. and the weird juices running around Numeria more like bizzzaro motor-oils for the warforged.

There's something in Faiths of Eberron where they talk about some of the warforged assembling an artifice-god. Could very well be Unity/Cassandlee.

OOHHH OOOOHHHHH!!!!

Spoiler:
The Warforged are Quori spirits (theoretically, right???) sooo... when the PCs descend into UNITY in book 6 - the burgeoning warforged god - they are descending INTO DAL QUOR.


I don't recall the warforged ever having Quori in them. The warforged are a unique species, given sentience when they are formed. The Inspired have a Quori spirit in them, they are Vessels.

Iron Gods Eberron sounds awesome. I might have to take a look.

Acquisitives

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

i suppose you could also swap in Karrnath for Ustalav in Carrion Crown. Tar Baphon could either be a lich or a trapped Rakshasa (it's not really important for the AP's action).

Acquisitives

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GreatKhanArtist wrote:
I don't recall the warforged ever having Quori in them. The warforged are a unique species, given sentience when they are formed. The Inspired have a Quori spirit in them, they are Vessels.

in Eberron it was hinted at that the warforged were inhabited by Quori spirits, which animated their bodies. That's why House Cannith couldn't get them to work until they got SOMETHING from Xen'drik (which is where the Quori had tried to take over in the distant past).

for some reason, the Quori sentience is erased when it enters the body of the warforged (maybe). which is why they aren't all complete psychopaths.

at least, that was my reading of the material.


I'm curious where you read that. It's an interesting concept, that's for sure.

The upcoming Ironfang Invasion would work well with Droaam. There are tonnes of remnants of the hobgoblin empire kicking around Khorvaire and Breland is due for a beat down from the Lhesh Haruuk. Maybe the new female villain replaces him and unites the warring tribes, like Genghis Khan? I'm super excited for this AP.

Acquisitives

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
GreatKhanArtist wrote:

I'm curious where you read that. It's an interesting concept, that's for sure.

The upcoming Ironfang Invasion would work well with Droaam. There are tonnes of remnants of the hobgoblin empire kicking around Khorvaire and Breland is due for a beat down from the Lhesh Haruuk. Maybe the new female villain replaces him and unites the warring tribes, like Genghis Khan? I'm super excited for this AP.

Darguun still has some Cyrean refugees huddling around in it as well.

Isn't Droaam the hag/medusa/??? empire?

Darguun is the resurrected hobgoblin kingdom, right?

The Exchange

Yakman wrote:

Isn't Droaam the hag/medusa/??? empire?

Darguun is the resurrected hobgoblin kingdom, right?

yes.


Yakman wrote:
GreatKhanArtist wrote:
I don't recall the warforged ever having Quori in them. The warforged are a unique species, given sentience when they are formed. The Inspired have a Quori spirit in them, they are Vessels.

in Eberron it was hinted at that the warforged were inhabited by Quori spirits, which animated their bodies. That's why House Cannith couldn't get them to work until they got SOMETHING from Xen'drik (which is where the Quori had tried to take over in the distant past).

for some reason, the Quori sentience is erased when it enters the body of the warforged (maybe). which is why they aren't all complete psychopaths.
at least, that was my reading of the material.
GreatKhanArtist wrote:
I'm curious where you read that. It's an interesting concept, that's for sure.

Quori Outpost; Secrets of Xen'drik, page 44:
During their invasion of Xen'drik, the quori set up bases to marshal their forces and conduct complex magical research... Though rumors abound, few know that House Cannith's discovery of such an outpost led to the creation of the modern warforged soldiers used in the last war. Fewer still suspect that the original design for the warforged did not originate with the giants, but with the quori.

Warforged, Quorcraft (template); Secrets of Xen'drik, page 84-85:
The secrets behind the creation of the warforged go back nearly forty thousand years to the war between the giants and the quori. During that conflict, the quori created prototypical warforged, crafting a host of constructs that bear a resemblance to modern warforged but are distinctly different. (Note that these warforged possessed the construct type which overrode the typical warforged's living construct traits. As a construct, a quorcraft warforged has no Intelligence or Constitution scores, and possesses a Charisma of 1.)

Shira (Docent Component); Secrets of Xen'drik, page 154-155:
Docents (ECS 269) are intelligent magic items designed to advise and aid the warforged who utilize them. However, the docent that calls itself Shira claims that these items originally had a different purpose - designed to hold quori spirits, providing a refuge from the spiritual change that destroyed the quori of the last age and paved the way for the coming of the Dreaming Dark. Shira claims to be the sole success of the docent program and the last survivor of the previous age of Dal Quor. Is she telling the truth, or playing a game of her own?

The implication in Secrets of Xen'drik (and I believe in some of Keith Baker's WotC Dragonshards and/or postings on his website) was that the quori of the last age created the quorcraft warforged and docents such as Shira to serve as host bodies on Eberron in order to survive the pending end of their age of Dal Quor (referred to as the Dreaming Heart). However, the source(s) of the souls of modern-age, living construct warforged is still up for debate (i.e., TBD by individual DMs). Quori spirits are one possibility.


I'm thinking Strange Aeons would be a really cool Eberron AP. Just use the elder evils as quori. Who wouldn't want to take it to the quori on their own plane? Especially if they were kalashtar and the ties to the Inspired were used. The AP involves going to the plane of dreams, so I think this is a natural fit.

Dark Archive

Late to the discussion, but I've had some ideas over the years...

Rise of the Runelords:
My struggle with this one is in deciding where to locate it within the setting. The general idea of a group of supremely powerful wizards wizards magically side-stepping the cataclysmic collapse of their empire led me to two possibilities, each with their own set of complications...

Firstly, Xen'drik. Thassilon was a giant empire and the Runelords were either giants themselves (which naturally ups the difficulty level) or powerful elven mages that rose above their station as a slave race (or possibly a mix of both), with the destruction of the giant civilization at the hands of the dragons serving as the cataclysm they went into hibernation to avoid. Stormreach would stand in for Magnimar, but by and large the nature of Xen'drik lets you put basically anything you want in there and really plays up the "untamed frontier" theme that Varisia is supposed to invoke. Throw in some Vulkoori drow when appropriate and frankly, it shouldn't take too much to adapt.

On the other hand, I also considered setting it in Sarlona, mostly in the Syrkarn region. This allows you to keep the Runelords human by making Thassilon one of the not-quite-as-ancient human empires that collapsed due to quori meddling, but also puts everything in the shadow of Riedra and tints the situation in a more "how do we deal with this problem before the Inspired decide to bring the hammer down" kind of light.

Curse of the Crimson Throne:
Korvosa may be a city-state, but this one simply HAS to happen in one of the Five Nations. I can see a case being made for it either being set in Aundair, with Queen Aurala serving as Ileosa, or perhaps in Cyre with Queen Dannel during the Last War (possibly with the PCs failure resulting in the Day of Mourning).

That said, I like to consider setting it in Breland. In one of the books (not at home presently, or I'd look it up), King Boranel is said to have had a daughter (named Borann, I think) who was a renowned warrior-princess that served as a high-ranked officer in Breland's army during the Last War, but she was lost when she and her band were in Cyran territory on the Day of Mourning. Part of his war-weariness and lingering melancholy is thought to be attributed to her death.

My thought process is that she never actually died (body never found, et al.) and just barely managed to escape with a few comrades over the border into Darguun. Spent a year or more as prisoners, hiding her identity, fighting her way to freedom, and ultimately making a triumphant return to Breland some time before the campaign begins. Problem is, she came across "something" during her journey that changed her mentality for the worse (the Fangs, or something with a similar effect) and what returns is a cunning, scheming woman with great ambition, loosened morals, and a tremendous distaste for the peace her father helped negotiate. She would love nothing so much as to return the continent to the days of Last War.

Boranel is assassinated, his returned heir becomes Queen, and in short order Breland begins to turn militarized and increasingly dictatorial at a frightening pace, sidelining and suppressing the Parliament, whipping up nationalistic fervor, pinning blame for atrocities on their neighbors, and generally chipping away at the Treaty of Thronehold, with the covert aid and advice of devils from Shavarath (which is a plane of constant warfare in Eberron's cosmology, rather than just standard "Hell" - not going with the 4E Campaign Setting's inclusion of Baator, despite the fact that I actually like most of what they did in that book).

Obviously this changes the character of "Ileosa" a fair bit, and would probably require some effort to rework the final portion of Book 6 (I get the feeling this version would be less fixated on eternal youth than the original), to say nothing of scaling everything up to a nation-wide level, but that is definitely how I would choose to go with it.

Have other ideas formed to a greater or lesser extent, but I need to leave it at that, for now.


I think Korvosa might very well be adapted to be one of the Lhazaar Principalities.

Dark Archive

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Fabius Maximus wrote:
I think Korvosa might very well be adapted to be one of the Lhazaar Principalities.

Hmm... If you want to keep the setting more on the city-state level, that would probably be a good place to put it, with Karrnath serving as Korvosa's "parent nation" in the way Cheliax does in Golarion.

Given the culture of the Principalities, it might be good to drop Eodred and Ileosa down to Count/Countess or other lesser noble rank, at least initially, since Lhazaarites at large, to say nothing of the Sea Prince and his peers, would be less than positively disposed to having a self-proclaimed Queen in their midst. That can change once her power's on the rise, of course. You would definitely need to scale up the presence and influence of Korvosa's naval forces though, since the Principalities are all about naval dominance.

The followers of Zon-Kuthon could become cultists of the Blood of Vol, which plays nicely into the blood/vampire themes related to Sorshen, although depending on how you decide to handle the Runelords in general, she might need to be replaced with another enigmatic, never-seen figure of immense power. Perhaps Vol herself?

Overall, not a bad choice, and certainly less work to adapt than my take above.

Speaking of...

Hell's Rebels & Hell's Vengeance:
Despite the originals' devil-centric themes, these seem almost tailor-made for a Thranish civil war.

First, Hell's Vengeance: Recently empowered through any number of means, the Galifar Loyalist faction make a concerted push to retake leadership of Thrane from the Church of the Silver Flame. Better yet, since this is a political conflict rather than a religious one (or even Good vs. Evil), the PCs could fairly easily work for either side: reporting either to Cardinal Krozen (and/or Keeper Jaela Daran) on the side of the Church or to Blood Regent/Queen Diani on the side of the Throneholders. Main issue would be to scale back the "Muahahaha! We're Evil!" aspects (unless Krozen is involved) and make it strictly horrors-of-war pragmatic villainy, or even fight-for-your-country patriotic heroism (ideally, a mix of both).

On the flip-side, Hell's Rebels just screams Thaliost to me. Twisted by whispers from the Shadow in the Flame and largely unsupervised as most of Thrane is caught up in civil war, the Archbishop in charge of Thaliost opts to crack down hard in order prevent the Aundairian "La Résistance" from getting any ideas. Simultaneously, he is working toward completion of a grand ritual that he believes will turn him into a living avatar of the Silver Flame, making him into a modern day Tira Miron and likely bringing all of Thrane under his fanatical sway in short order. Naturally, this gives the PCs, loyal Aundairian freedom fighters that they are, more than enough reason to make sure it all backfires on him splendidly.

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