The purpose of this thread is to clarify questions arising in this adventure. This is a SPOILER filled zone, do not venture further if you do not wish the adventure to be spoiled for you, and spoiler tags are not required when posting here.
This thread is a GM Reference thread for Part 1 of the Ruins of Azlant Adventure Path. Links for the individual threads for each part are as follows:
Alrighty then! I guess since I requested these threads, I should at least post once. Of course, I now have nothing to ask...
Anyone have an idea on what map they will use for area L : " The Harbinger’s Dais" ?
In the adventure, the adventurers may be able to choose their own house.
It mentions that the only house(s) unavailable are the common buildings and governor house. This implies that building A7 is up for grabs (and makes sense since it would need to house at least 4)
The encounter "First Among Equals" however, relies on that building being assigned to the priests first and bickering on who gets to live here later. the book does not detail how to handle this situation. There is no other house that people would argue over given the situation, so it is no simple matter of changing the house in question.
My solution to this was to move the encounter up so it is the first thing that happens. With the fact that the house gets assigned to the players resulting in Luetin and Harcourt picking a fight with the PC's in stead - a much more dangerous senario because players may feel "justified" in responding with force (deadly even).
I really wish the writers had just made that house off limit to, despite how little sense that would make.
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There's a few things I think might need shuffling to make work myself.
1) Involving the PC's. Unless they're hovering over the captain/crew when the ship docks you need a reason to involve them. The party may or may not know each other well (ingame) and are a bunch of 1st level characters. Yet the colony leader apparently drags them away from the other colonists and sends them to explore the colony rather than the higher level expedition members of the actual soldiers to avoid "unrest" amongst the colonists. I know if it were me I'd be saying wanting to know why I out of all the colonists am being sent off as a sacrificial canary.
2) Keeping the players from trying to take over the colony. By about midway through I'd be eyeing our illustrious leader and wondering just why I'm letting her run the colony when its looking more and more like I'd be a better choice, or maybe one of the other party members. We checked out the damaged village, we dealt with the slowed ship and now we're the ones calming everyone down and getting them to pull together. I can see players wanting to just shove this useless baggage aside and take over since they're the ones doing everything anyway. Even if I didn't want to run the colony I'd be more inclined to take the first ship home if she's the one "in charge", as her leadership seems to be more "you do this." A problem I think will be made worse since the AP seems detrmined to keep her out of the way to avoid treading on PC feet.
3) Fighting the Celedon's. This seems a bit unnecessary sure their initial pupil didn't come back but here's more new people even a simple logic chain should go "1 leaves = 4+ return = 4 leaves = 16+ return" if they keep letting people leave more will come and eventually they'll get ones interested rather than risking their lives fighitng to keep people who may not have food or water to sustain themselves. Especially since 6 damage will turn "5 or less they talk" to "crack, shatter they die."
4a)Reprogramming the warden jack. This is two issues really. First is saying its reprogramming is outside the scope of the adventure but that seems something pretty important to know if it does happen. Does it get temporarily shut down to allow the humans time to explore the research facility, does it get programmed to ignore humans but keep targetting scum and other threats, does it have is patrol area restricted to the tower entrace?
4b) It can be repogrammed at area L but what about inside the tower itself or does it not pursue the PC's if they enter the area its protecting?
5) Leaving Eliza evil. I think I'm missing something. If you point out she's evil then she say's she wants to attone but the options seem to assume either you do nothing or you do protection from evil and attonement. Am I correct in assuming taking her back to the colony and ONLY casting atonement will make her neutral good and then she'll betray and kill you because she's dominated?
I think there were others but that's what I remember from reading over it.
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1) Not really, for several reasons, more than one of which can be true. Mechanically, prior to arriving at the island, the concept of the "party" is meaningless since there's no defined in-game activity (other than the interviews that everyone underwent). It could simply be that the "party" consists of the several characters on the boat that the captain picks to check out the colony. Whether or not they know each other well, or at all, after 6 weeks of travel is irrelevant, too. Furthermore, most of the people on board either have a defined job (higher level NPCs) or they are variations of commoner types. The "party" are among the few with class levels, and the likely best non-crew candidates to handle the search. Certainly after 6 weeks of travel, the captain knows this. Finally, sending the soldiers in seems like a great idea except that someone has to defend the boat and its occupants while an investigation is performed.
Certainly, a few paragraphs could have spelled this out, and I'm sure a GM can come up with others. These were just the things off of the top of my head.
2) Mine won't have a problem with this, nor would I. Besides, who really wants to run a colony? I'd really rather be exploring and adventuring, not managing squabbles between neighboring farmers.
3) I believe if you really take a look at their purpose in life, you'll see that this behavior is somewhat expected. They were created with a single purpose of mind, to serve their deity. They are ideologues at best, driven by what could be described as an instinct to serve. Proselytizing serves that purpose well. Even intelligent beings (they are average) lose sight of logic when driven by ideology. It may seem logical from the outside that they'd prefer to bring in more converts, but to them, the fact that they have 1 in hand is all that matters.
4) I was wondering about that, too. Some dev comments would be nice.
5) Another one I'm not sure how to handle. It seems to me that a party of good PCs would want to save her, which necessarily requires ending the domination. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.
I've got a while before I'll have to worry about any of these beyond my cursory thoughts, so I may change my mind on them before we start (assuming we play this one).
Managing Developer
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Sorry I'm late on answers... I've been away at Gen Con and have been catching up on work things, but now I'm back so...
1) Taks has the right of it in the post above for the most part. Don't approach it with a cynical point of view that you are burdened with the task of exploring an island. Think of it as your character was among the most capable in the group to get to take on this kind of opportunity. The PCs weren't selected for the expedition because they were awesome millers or potters, after all. They were selected because they had something more impressive than labor in their backgrounds.
2) Again, taks is on point here. The campaign wasn't written for the PCs to get into colony management. It's intended to be a vehicle for adventure. I also didn't develop it thinking that PCs wanted to oust a leader and take it over, but if a group wants to approach it that way they can. They just have to do a little more work.
3) While intelligent, celedons are very much focused on one particular task as part of their creation and they don't deviate from that. They can make their own decisions, but their focus is the dominant part of their personality. I can imagine an encounter or story where a celedon deviates from this, but that's not the point of the encounter mentioned. It's there to feed the PCs lore and give the PCs a chance to learn more about Acavna (and by default, ancient Azlant) in a cooler way than just reading a bunch of old stuff in a book.
4) "Beyond the scope of this adventure" is a long-used code phrase letting the GM know, "Hey, I don't have the space to detail this, and since it's only a rare possibility it will even happen and pretty inconsequential, make up whatever you want that fits your particular telling of this story." It's not likely that Jazradan would get the chance to do this, but since he has the ability to manipulate some of the other Azlanti constructs, it seemed reasonable that he'd have the ability to do so with the warden jack swarm. He would likely get it to follow the PCs and spy on them, but probably wouldn't want them hurt until he learns more about them, their power, and their motivations. The swarm could follow the PCs into the tower, as long as it didn't hae to deal with stairs.
5) I don't understand what you mean by "Leaving her evil." She is dedicated to Ochymua even without the dominate person effect, and wants to do anything it asks, so she doesn't have a ton of motivation to attone and only pretends that if she's detected as evil. Even if she wanted to attone, Eliza would need to be cleared of the domination to make an attonement worthwhile. Even if she wanted to redeem herself (which she doesn't without significant convincing) and the proper things were done to achieve that, if she was still under Ochymua's control, it can get her to do whatever it wants. It neither cares about her nor feels any obligation to her. She is a tool for the duration of her usability. Much of this outcome depends on how successful she is in deceiving the party. (Make sure to read her full write-up in addition to the information in the Concluding the Adventure.)
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Managing Developer
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In the adventure, the adventurers may be able to choose their own house.
It mentions that the only house(s) unavailable are the common buildings and governor house. This implies that building A7 is up for grabs (and makes sense since it would need to house at least 4)The encounter "First Among Equals" however, relies on that building being assigned to the priests first and bickering on who gets to live here later. the book does not detail how to handle this situation. There is no other house that people would argue over given the situation, so it is no simple matter of changing the house in question.
My solution to this was to move the encounter up so it is the first thing that happens. With the fact that the house gets assigned to the players resulting in Luetin and Harcourt picking a fight with the PC's in stead - a much more dangerous senario because players may feel "justified" in responding with force (deadly even).
I really wish the writers had just made that house off limit to, despite how little sense that would make.
Just add the home that was the former priest's home (A7) to the list of unavailable homes.
Yeah, I guess she wasn't exactly saving baby seals and going to church on Sunday before the island.
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Yeah, I guess she wasn't exactly saving baby seals and going to church on Sunday before the island.
She used to be Neutral Good :P She changed to NE when her mind got overwhelmed by alien intelligence(changing her psychic discipline) and she became desperate to do anything to save herself
Its kinda like certain other NPC from one other AP(though that NPC was evil to begin with, just not genocidally evil): The "More Than Mind Control" trope works very well as description xD
Also 3) While the encounter writing doesn't give any diplomacy dc or mention of it, there is really nothing in encounter that says you can't diplo or bluff them to leave. After all, it doesn't say "they attack you if you try to leave", it says "they attack PCs if they have to stop them from leaving"
Corvus is correct. Take this as poetic and figurative language and not literal. Eliza stared in the face of her own personal devil and she made a choice, to save herself, and maybe to be on the winning side.
She also had her brains rattled by an extremely powerful and alien consciousness—although I hesitate to play that up too much, because there that is more background rather than something I can point to with game mechanics. And some folks really need you to point to game mechanics before they can accept it.
Part of the underlying logic was an author/developer discussion I had with Adam. I hope he doesn't mind me sharing it. He felt that Ochymua should have Eliza dominated because he doesn't trust her. I argued that at 3rd level, its possible to make that DC 15 Sense Motive check. By having her act of her own volition, it allows the possibility of some roleplaying to occur (or opposed Bluff checks), instead of "Oh, she's dominated, just hit her." Maybe the PCs will go straight to combat anyway, but there is some wiggle room. Its up to the PCs and the GM and what happens at the table. It is reasonable for Ochymua to still dominate her (at Adam's request and recommendation) but give her a little slack and just follow along. Sure its a risk on Ochy's part, but it pays off in the story because Eliza is trying to earn his approval and trust. [What Ochy really thinks is entirely up to the GM]
All that necessitates an evil alignment, which is why I wrote her backstory as Corvus explains above.
As far as redemption, I don't like to write in absolutes of alignment. I am not sure that Eliza can be redeemed, but I was prepared to mention the possibility so the players can have the maximum number of options to explore—rather than tell them what they can't do.
As I write this, I am reminded of Harold, from Stephen King's The Stand. Very minor story spoiler.
I am not a fan of her redemption.
I am not a fan of her redemption.
I really wouldn't consider it as the default assumption.
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I'd say that I do see it being plausible to redeem her since its not like Aboleths are straight up lovecraftian monsters(aka its hopeless because everyone is doomed so nothing can be done yadda yadda), but from how its written, it doesn't sound like "I'll appeal to your previous goodness!" should be enough, it sounds like something more appropriate is essentially treating her as patient with mental disorder that needs help even though they don't understand it or want it* .-. Like, it sounds less like "She had her choice and made it to eeeeevil" (which just sounds black and white to me) and more like she turned to evil as result of trauma and desperation.
*(so less of "Come with us to church, we have atonement spell!" and more taking care of her until she is capable of wanting atonement herself. Especially since atonement isn't just "I pay cost to spell and now I'm good again", atonement is paying cost to have chance to ask your god for mercy and they can reject it if they don't feel you are genuine about it)
Like, to me it sounds like narratively appropriate option if you just try appeal to her previous goodness would be just her trying to escape from situation back to her master who at this point doesn't really care about her anymore since she lost her usefulness by messing up. So it would probably leave her as experiment to same thing whatever happened to original colonists or giving her to skum or whatever horrifying so players can run into her again when shes in even worse state to really drive the horrifying aspects of ap and drive the mystery further.(seriously, I think Ruins of Azlant is almost stealth horror ap O_o Lots of creepy mstery stuff)
Thats just my impression though.
[Adam] felt that Ochymua should have Eliza dominated because he doesn't trust her. I argued that at 3rd level, its possible to make that DC 15 Sense Motive check. By having her act of her own volition, it allows the possibility of some roleplaying to occur (or opposed Bluff checks), instead of "Oh, she's dominated, just hit her." Maybe the PCs will go straight to combat anyway, but there is some wiggle room. Its up to the PCs and the GM and what happens at the table. It is reasonable for Ochymua to still dominate her (at Adam's request and recommendation) but give her a little slack and just follow along. Sure its a risk on Ochy's part, but it pays off in the story because Eliza is trying to earn his approval and trust. [What Ochy really thinks is entirely up to the GM]
Not that I've read this portion of the adventure, but I'm not a fan of the villain being dominated but still being evil regardless. If the players take the time to determine she's dominated and then take her out but don't kill her and then lock her up until the dominate effect wears off, their reward is a villain whose still evil.
Now even if she's evil, she could still provide the players with information to help them. But then they either kill her, send her back to Andor in chains or let her go despite the fact she's evil.
I'd rather say that Ochyma did dominate Eliza, but then he rummaged around in her head and learned everything there is to know about Eliza and saw what motivated her and how to appeal to her and get her to work for Ochyma. He then released the dominate effect and simply motivated her to work for him rather than forced her.
This means that Eliza is still evil. However if the players choose to bargain or deal with her (and successfully persuade her it is in her best interest) than they are willingly and knowingly making a deal with a bad person. Ochyma could also be spying on Eliza somehow (either through technology or scrying). If the players do successfully turn Eliza, then Ochyma can respond by dominating other allies in future books (or doing something else to ensure their compliance).
That said, I haven't read the entry on Eliza yet.
[EDIT]: Oh, and if you need an in game ability that lets Ochyma do the above, then you could give him an aboleth only feat or two levels of mesmerist with an aboleth only mesmerist trick that lets him do this.
@ John Lynch:
That's a fair perspective and I won't try to talk you out of it. Perhaps we should have went with one way instead of both. That said, the discussion is good because you understand the rationale now, and as far as I'm concerned you came up with an approach that works very well.
Perhaps we should have went with one way instead of both.
I don't think writing it up how you did is bad. Some groups will want the villain to be redeemable and so will take that option, others (like me) will be happy to have an evil villain and so will take that option instead.
That said, the discussion is good because you understand the rationale now
Definitely. I very well may not have examined the character so closely without this thread. So thank you for the insights into the development of the module.
My group does not tend toward the redemption side of the effort scale unless they can see clear benefit to all parties (theirs equally). However, only one has any long term experience with the moral quandries presented by RPGs in general, so I can't guess how they would react as a group.
I just realized, Jim, that you wrote Half Dead City, too. That was the first Pazio adventure I ever GM'd. I really liked it, too. My players did as well.
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I have to admit that I didn't realize she was both evil and dominated that does seem a bit unnecessary. Still I can see possibilities with a villain who literally doesn't care if you worship the ground he slimes on he'll still take over you mind because he can.
Thanks for the responses different mindset looking at things I guess.
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In the adventure, the adventurers may be able to choose their own house.
It mentions that the only house(s) unavailable are the common buildings and governor house. This implies that building A7 is up for grabs (and makes sense since it would need to house at least 4)The encounter "First Among Equals" however, relies on that building being assigned to the priests first and bickering on who gets to live here later. the book does not detail how to handle this situation. There is no other house that people would argue over given the situation, so it is no simple matter of changing the house in question.
My solution to this was to move the encounter up so it is the first thing that happens. With the fact that the house gets assigned to the players resulting in Luetin and Harcourt picking a fight with the PC's in stead - a much more dangerous senario because players may feel "justified" in responding with force (deadly even).
I really wish the writers had just made that house off limit to, despite how little sense that would make.
The book does make a suggestion on how to handle the disagreement over the house
Going back to the question earlier about why do the PCs get sent to the island I'd definitely big up the positives if they enquire - 'soldiers are great guys in a fight but investigation needs more flexible approach and you guys have really impressed me, plus I may need them to defend the ship.' seems much better. I was really bugged by the food excuse, the ship has already been described as carrying extra supplies for the whole colony.
Going back to the question earlier about why do the PCs get sent to the island I'd definitely big up the positives if they enquire - 'soldiers are great guys in a fight but investigation needs more flexible approach and you guys have really impressed me, plus I may need them to defend the ship.' seems much better. I was really bugged by the food excuse, the ship has already been described as carrying extra supplies for the whole colony.
One of my players came up with "We mix unique abilities with expendability."
I just had Ramona nod
I'm going the Eberron route: The PCs are exceptional in that they have PC classes, everyone else on the boat has NPC classes (I'm willing to rewrite NPCs to back that up). I'm also impressing upon them that they need to work together with the community and help contribute to it's survival.
I'm bothered by Silas for the same reason I don't like haunts. The "put to rest" condition seems unnecessarily complex. There is a poltergeist in this colony's church and they're meant to just continue on with business as usual? I get that it's intended to provide a stick to get the PCs investigating the circumstances of the priest's death, but does it even get resolved in book 1? Or is this a book 2 resolution?
To me, having a poltergeist in the church is going to put the entire community on edge with calls for abandoning the colony seeming more and more reasonable. Is this intended or is this me making something out of nothing?
Assuming my above assertions are reasonable I'm inclined to do this: If the PCs take the time to reach out and try to put Silas's spirit to rest, why not let them have a partial victory that is more meaningful then 2d4 days or "a few weeks before he relapses"?
I'm thinking a gift from Silas to one of the PCs in the form of a cursed item? The difference is that the PCs will be to,d up front that it is a cursed item and Silas will exert more and more influence over the PC who carries it. If one of the PCs refuses to carry it, have one of the NPCs do so. If the PCs try to get rid of it, divine anger could be involved.
By having a cursed item that is exuding Silas's anger, you get the same effect that the PC's need to do something about the spirit of Silas, but the colony can get on it's feet without having a poltergeist in the town church.
What do people think? Am I way off base?
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@Eliandra Giltessan:
The characters can be compelled by Ramona or other colonists to "keep investigating the missing colonists," leading them to eventually hit areas N, O or P. They'll likely encounter the warden jack at some point even if they don't go looking for clues, which should prompt them to wonder where it came from, as its obviously constructed. The skum in area P know where the colonists are, so you can have them attack the colony if the characters still won't go investigate.The players can be compelled to investigate because they're playing the adventure, and that demands they keep investigating. They either implicitly or explicitly agreed to buy into the adventure and keep pursuing it, its on them to continue and find area P.
The book can easily just end (well, until Book 2 if the hints are any indication) if the players and characters are content to just live in town and not investigate. They're adventurers, they need to adventure!
I get that, I'm just confused why they would go THERE in particular. I haven't read AD2 yet---waiting til I get my physical copy today or tomorrow---but from the looks of the map, they explore the rest of the island in book 2, so to finish book 1, they need to go to those specific places. Now, it's possible books 1 and 2 can easily blend into each other/overlap, in which case, great! If not, obviously I can come up with a reason that Ramona sends them there---missing scouts, searching for the origin of the skum that attacked them, etc. I was just making sure there wasn't a reason in the text that I was missing.
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So I read the bit about Eliza and it makes sense how things happened.
Keying off an idea I had here I'm thinking of having Eliza be a sleeper agent. Back during the Azlanti days a failed program saw the aboleths install a bunch of false personas into a bunch of Azlanti that passed down to their descendants. Basically think Winter Soldier except it's a multi-generational thing.
The program has long since been abandoned, but these sleeper agents still exist. Ochymua instantly recognised that Eliza was one when she saw Eliza, and so she activated her. This made Eliza deathly loyal to Ochymua and was able to provide a full report as to what has happened over the centuries since Ochymua was last awake. Eliza will do anything in service to Ochymua, even if it means certain suicide as death means little to the new persona who can be activated in a new host when Eliza's body dies. The persona still has Eliza's original memories so she can attempt to emulate how Eliza acted before she became an active agent, but she can be caught out and does require bluffs in order to pull it off. Rayland wasn't a sleeper agent and so he just has a good old fashioned dominate person on him.
If the PC's somehow manage to quash the persona (and I honestly can't think of how they could do it) then the original Eliza personality will regain control and be fully restored. Rayland just has to wait for the dominate person effect to dissipate before he becomes normal again.
In this way the "Eliza persona" could be a recurring enemy if I so desire (who knows how many descendants the original Azlanti host had and which human-hybrid races they are. An aquatic half-elf or a gillman could easily be a distant relation of Eliza). It also helps key off the history of aboleths in manipulating human history and biology by having these sleeper agents doing things over the generations all to some grand design by the aboleths.
Any other DMs smacking their players around with all the grappling/constricting creatures in this AP? I've had nearly 3 TPKs with the Chokers/Darkmantles/Assassin Vine. Granted my dice rolling has been off the charts, but still.....
Also, I altered the Brindylow encounter, I gave the Queen the +1 Mithral shirt to wear. That also ended up being a TPK, but not due to the AC enhancement, but rather the Cleave feat and lucky dice...again.
The group is still enjoying adventure, just getting a bit fed up with all the grappling.
Question about the depth of water in different parts of the Shellcracker cave.
The text says something like the average depth is 5' and to refer to the map for portions of the cave where the depth is different (such as by -5, etc.). However, my map doesn't have any depth markings on it.
@Adam, is it just the dark blue portion in the back that was meant to be greater than 5' or were other parts of the cave also meaning to be different?
I was just curious because places where characters can't stand are obviously going to make the combat a bit more challenging.
Also, did anyone try making the depth over 5' for most of the cave and if so do you think that was too much a challenge in the end?
1) Involving the PC's. Unless they're hovering over the captain/crew when the ship docks you need a reason to involve them. The party may or may not know each other well (ingame) and are a bunch of 1st level characters. Yet the colony leader apparently drags them away from the other colonists and sends them to explore the colony rather than the higher level expedition members of the actual soldiers to avoid "unrest" amongst the colonists. I know if it were me I'd be saying wanting to know why I out of all the colonists am being sent off as a sacrificial canary.
I'm running two separate groups through this AP and handled the intro differently for each group. With the first group, Ramona addressed just one of the characters (Investigator) and told him to gather three others that he could trust. The 'sacrificial canary' question did come up, Senko (good call!), and I just had Ramona pause, take stock of the colonists and then turn back to the PC saying that she thinks he's the best qualified to figure out what's really going on. I suppose, because of his class, this worked. Of course, we also ran the risk of him picking characters other than the remaining PCs to go along with him, but, luckily, the player was a good sport and picked the PCs.
I ran the second group through this just last night and changed things up a bit. I started with everyone, in medias res, already in the rowboat headed to shore. I didn't give this group access to the RoA Player's Guide, so they were all totally confused as to where they were and what they were doing in a boat. I told them they could ask me any question they wanted and they could each earn one Hero Point if, within the hour, they could devise a credible and interesting background story for their party to explain just why they were in this situation. It was actually a lot of fun and they came up with a great backstory. The dialogue with Ramona was then filled in retrospectively to match their story. Incidentally, they did not question why they were selected because they ended up providing the rationale in their own story and all of them received a hero point. This group did, however, have unbelievable difficulty with the grindylows just moments later. They were nearly wiped out and a couple of them ended up using their freshly minted hero point.
I'm bothered by Silas for the same reason I don't like haunts. The "put to rest" condition seems unnecessarily complex. There is a poltergeist in this colony's church and they're meant to just continue on with business as usual? I get that it's intended to provide a stick to get the PCs investigating the circumstances of the priest's death, but does it even get resolved in book 1? Or is this a book 2 resolution?<snip>
What do people think? Am I way off base?
Interesting angle to take, John. Did you go with the cursed gift from Silas, or something else?
Only one of my groups has tussled with Silas, so far. The PCs fought their little hearts out, but in the end they fled the encounter and now keep their distance from the church. From the PCs perspective, they are trying to figure out what happened to the first wave of colonists. At first they thought maybe the grindylows carried them off, but now they are focused on Silas. The party seems to think the first-wave colonists most likely fled from him and are at the second landing site. So, as far as advancing the storyline, I like running the Silas encounter as written. Silas is the second of what will be a long line of theories regarding the fate of alpha-colony.
Most likely, these PCs will make one more attempt at dealing with Silas after they have investigated the rest of Talmandor's Bounty. As you have already noted, if they defeat him or not they will still have to deal with putting him to rest before the colony can re-establish itself by confronting him with the truth behind Arkley - which (as you noted) is going to be a Book 2 event.
If they defeat polter-Silas, I think I will take the Rapping-Spirit-Silas option because I think it will be a more sinister element in the story (a malevolent, yet harmless, force which cannot communicate with them in a traditional sense being much more sinister than, say, Casper the Friendly Ghost who just tells the PCs what's bugging him). Depending on how the party interacts with Eamon and Kurvis (the two beta-colony priests and the people best equipped to deal with Silas) will dictate how beta-colony settles in at Talmandor's. The colonists may have to abandon the palisade compound and stick to the farmhouses until Silas can be adequately dealt with. I think that will actually be a lot of fun and will give the players a real sense of accomplishment if they can resolve this issue.
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I'm running this campaign right now, and my players are right about to start Part 3 of the adventure.
Silas has been the most memorable part of this adventure by far. First, the way the adventure is written, he is tied to the *body*, rather than the location, as is typical for a Poltergeist. I hadn't GMed in awhile, and didn't read the standard Poltergeist entry prior to running the encounter, so I took it at its word. The players spotted the body while being battered by candlesticks and church pews, and snatched it out of the altar to run away with it. Poor invisible Silas chased after them, tethered to his corpse, and used his Telekinesis to disarm them of their shovels every time they tried to put him to rest. Eventually, they got fed up with him and just threw him into the ocean, to be claimed by the sea.
The next day, the Rapping Spirit returned to the church, and tapped out "Why, Rayland my friend, why?" in morse code, but I didn't give them any of the breaks between words, so it took them a while to get it, and they loved the puzzle.
The Poltergeist came back a couple of days later, and the PCs didn't even know at first - I had Kurvis and Eamon just blast it down with a couple of channels apiece, as a way to demonstrate how much stronger some of the colonists are. They were completely unfazed by the whole thing, just rearranging church pews and chuckling about it, and the PCs were sort of in awe.
This solved the problem of the PCs just taking over the colony, because they're scared of Kurvis, Eamon, and the others by extension. It also gave the PCs some indication of the betrayal that occurred, without giving away too much, and adding to the general mystery of the disappearance.
As an aside, I think the NPCs are the highlight of this book. I've had a ton of fun making all of the characters interesting, and finding ways to make the PCs care about them.
Anya enlisted the help of the party's wizard, specifically, for the boar hunt. Because she wanted to "make him hard, and not soft like a baby." When they dropped the boars, she seemed...amused, and still unimpressed. Now he's personally out to prove her wrong, which is hilarious.
Luetin has made friends with the Gorumite Druid because the PC helped him get the house during "First Among Equals." He feels indebted, but also admire's the Druid's rugged, no-nonsense attitude.
Harcourt Carrolby has been nominated as Ambassador to the Goblins - they captured one of the Monkey Goblins and want to start trading with the creatures, and Harcourt considers it part of his personal mission to civilize the beasties.
Kurvis has a terrible lisp, and Eamon refers to him as "Papa Grouse" rather than father. The party refers to Eamon as "Easy E," after overhearing Kurvis call him "Father Easy." They love that the two are in a rad bromance, and that Eamon is obsessed with marrying people and playing matchmaker with the PCs and other colonists (he's an old school Erastil-worshipper).
The possibilities for the rest are endless.
They also love Carver Hastings because the description mentions that he "shaves every couple of days" while his picture has an enormous beard. So they're convinced that he has some kind of condition, and want to be his friend on the off-chance he's a werewolf. :D
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...I think the NPCs are the highlight of this book. I've had a ton of fun making all of the characters interesting, and finding ways to make the PCs care about them.
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Agreed! (And, thanks for the enjoyable recap, Hedwick!)
And, in reply to CorvusMask's post in the Shattered Continent thread I think we should start our own "The 100 Project", listing out the names and references of any of the original colonists as they appear in the AP books.
So far I have:
Rayland Arkley (A9) also probably owner of flask at (G4), (P12)
Father Adran Felton (A7 and A6)
Livvy Felton (A7)
Silas Weatherbee (A6)
Una Hendrake - clue from spellbook in Arkley’s house (A9), and U.H. on wand in barracks (A11) and the note (A17)
Dulin (from the note - A17)
Barnabas (from the note - A17)
Eliza Haniver - (Area N, P12)
Edwin Fox - ankheg’s dinner and former owner of the ring of protection (A13)
Farmer Levin (A18) - I think we might assume Levin had a spouse and at least one (maybe 2?) children.
Raila Lyonhart (Area C)
That's 11 (or 14) accounted for.
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Also, if anyone is interested in providing the text for the colony's charter, I have one available here.
This is (for the most part) the actual charter granted to Sir Walter Raleigh for the original lost colony of Roanoke in America (1585). I've replaced bits and pieces here and there to reflect the Bountiful Venture Company.
I told one of my groups that it is written in Old Taldane, the preferred legalese vernacular of the elite in Almas. The list of 100 colonists include any names of the original 100 I have found in the AP books so far and the rest are random names. I'll replace the random names with actual names from the official material as they surface.
Enjoy!
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...I think the NPCs are the highlight of this book. I've had a ton of fun making all of the characters interesting, and finding ways to make the PCs care about them.
...Agreed! (And, thanks for the enjoyable recap, Hedwick!)
And, in reply to CorvusMask's post in the Shattered Continent thread I think we should start our own "The 100 Project", listing out the names and references of any of the original colonists as they appear in the AP books.
So far I have:
Rayland Arkley (A9) also probably owner of flask at (G4), (P12)
Father Adran Felton (A7 and A6)
Livvy Felton (A7)
Silas Weatherbee (A6)
Una Hendrake - clue from spellbook in Arkley’s house (A9), and U.H. on wand in barracks (A11) and the note (A17)
Dulin (from the note - A17)
Barnabas (from the note - A17)
Eliza Haniver - (Area N, P12)
Edwin Fox - ankheg’s dinner and former owner of the ring of protection (A13)
Farmer Levin (A18) - I think we might assume Levin had a spouse and at least one (maybe 2?) children.
Raila Lyonhart (Area C)That's 11 (or 14) accounted for.
Just checking whether I've misunderstood something: the scenario mentions the possibility of Rayland throwing off the domination effect. But he can only do this if he rolls a 20, right? (Because a natural 20 is still a success, I believe? His Will save is +3, so even with an additional +2 on his save, he can't beat a DC of 26.)
If Rayland is making the attempt without assistant, that seems to be correct, which does makes sense as he hasn't managed to save against Ochymua, yet on his own. But, if someone successfully drops Protection from Evil, especially in combination with the above noted +2 circumstance bonus and, say, Owl's Wisdom, it could really give the guy a fighting chance. Of course, taking him prisoner and holding him for 11 days away from Ochymua could also work.
Neither of my groups have reached this encounter, yet. I predict at least one group will sniff out the Dominate effect and make the Sense Motive check, but I'd bet money Rayland will meet an unfortunate and grisly end. I may not be giving my players enough credit here, but I suspect neither group will try too hard to save him, which will be unfortunate, IMHO.
Let us know how it all works out, Uqbarian. What about the rest of the folks in this thread? I see a lot of speculation, but how many Rayland's actually survived? :) What about Eliza? Did she escape? Has any group tried to save her soul? If so, how'd that work out?
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So my party met their first ankheg nymph (in the barracks), and I referred to it as a "baby bug," and now they think it's cute and don't want to hurt it. They're about to try to lure it out of the barracks with a hunk of salted meat tied to a fishing pole.
If they give it a name, I don't think I can make them kill it.
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So my party met their first ankheg nymph (in the barracks), and I referred to it as a "baby bug," and now they think it's cute and don't want to hurt it. They're about to try to lure it out of the barracks with a hunk of salted meat tied to a fishing pole.
If they give it a name, I don't think I can make them kill it.
What a fun mascot. I say let them train it with Handle Animal checks at DC +5, and maybe it can be trained as a guard murderbug.
Yeah, I'm inclined to let non-murdery actions work out somehow, and ankhegs can be domesticated, just normally by hobgoblins and orcs.
I would say something like:
(a) Some time must be spent (~1 week) essentially in diplomacy with the animal to make it non-hostile to their future handling. This would be something like feeding it while standing around and being non-hostile to it. A week is probably generous - it takes longer than that for the squirrels on my deck to not be afraid of me when I am out there - but, this is a fantasy game. If they have someone with Wild Empathy, then this could be skipped.
(b) Once its attitude it changed from Hostile/Unfriendly to Friendly/Helpful, then I would let them start training it at that point, if they chose to. Without training, even if friendly to them, it should still be a nuisance to the rest of the community and likely to get itself or other colonists killed.
(c) They could rear and domesticate it at this point, DC 15 + 5 + 5 Handle Animal (rear + non-animal), and also start training it.
Sounds cool; I am sure most groups would just make short work of them and increase their food stocks.
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Welp, now it has a name. Karl the ankheg.
I have the best players.
So, my players just wrapped Book 1 last night, and they handled it in an interesting way. Eliza and Rayland agreed to be subjected to the soul soap from one of the earlier floors, after the party bluffed them *hard* on what it was.
Rayland nailed his save, and was freed from the domination effect. Eliza did not.
I made Rayland denounce Eliza and surrender, but I'm curious - how much does he actually know about Eliza's conduct? What brought him to the Spindlelock Solutions tower in the first place? I had him sort of forget a lot of things, as if his memory had also been tampered with, for fear of giving away too much.
Additionally, Eliza tried to flee after Rayland started shouting accusations that she was culpable, but the PCs knocked her out and took her back to Talmandor's Bounty, where they shackled her, threw a hood over her head, and began interrogating her.
She failed her will save on a Zone of Truth (the first time that's ever happened in the history of the spell!) and they began to grill her.
Does she know Ochymua's name? Does she know what he is? I'm reluctant to spill too much, because I don't want to mess with the 2nd book and all of the secret stuff happening, but I also want to reward them somehow for their line of questioning. Thoughts?