Some Changes to "Bastards of Erebus" (Spoilers)


Council of Thieves


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While I really enjoy the plot for Bastards of Erebus, I feel like a few changes would go a long way in solidifying the themes of the adventure for players. Here's what I've done the first couple times that my players and I enjoyed:

-When you introduce the Children of Westcrown, instead of throwing a dozen NPC's at the players all at once just introduce the NPC's that share a class with your players (or a similar class). The Children will look up to their respective PC and you can make the other Children recruitable throughout the adventure (with possible XP rewards!)

-Show the shadow monsters as a threat early on, preferably "on screen." A PC could be woken up at night to the sound of something scratching at their window. A neighbor could disappear after stepping out the back door for a quick smoke. Bonus points if you can maneuver your players into staying out in the late evening.

-Show the Bastards gang doing bad stuff. If you want your players to care about something make sure it happens "on screen." They could be shaking down shopkeepers for "protection" money, beating someone up in an alley, dealing drugs (pesh and shiver), or robbing people at dusk (right before the shadow monsters come out and everyone is rushing home. This will help the PC's zero in on taking the Bastards as an achievable goal.

-When the PC's decide to start going after the Bastards (I recommend shortly after they rescue Arael), have the Bastards retaliate. PC's stop the Bastards from beating up a debtor? Bastards try to steal that PC's magic wand. PC's save a shop from being burnt down? Bastards send leg-breakers to rough them up. If the PC's are clever they can actually use these encounters to find the Bastards' base of operations before hand.

-In between dealing with the Bastards you can toss in an encounter with the Church of Asmodeus (which is notably absent from the entire adventure path). What I did was have a pyromaniac bard and cleric of Asmodeus give a sermon in a poor neighborhood that focused on the punishments lawbreakers, thieves, and rebels rightly suffered. The bard & cleric then bring out some poor fool who said the wrong thing after a couple drinks (and maybe a recruitable NPC?) to be burned alive. The only people around are the horrified onlookers and a couple guards (lvl 1 warriors), plus these particular bard and cleric are pretty unpopular in the Church, so the PC's have the chance to save the person without too great a risk.

-Another side mission you can have is to escort some cattle ranchers back to their homestead outside of the city. Along the road they can deal with some Bastards plus the hanniver gremlins from the book's Bestiary section. This will give them a chance to get outside the city and get to know how the commoners live under Chelish rule.

-Lastly, I like to include something to introduce the idea of the Flies hags. PC's can overhear a scary story about the witch of the swamps, a friendly NPC could get sick from the bugs after sailing too close to the swamp, mercenaries in town could mention at a bar that they're getting ready to head into the forest, etc. The Mother of Flies is an important NPC and should really talked about before book five, at least.

What stuff have you changed or added on for Bastards of Erebus?


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I'm planning on taking a bunch of stuff from the module Broken Chains (not the pregnancy stuff tho, ew) and replacing the Bastards with it.

Reskinning the Garden of Chains as a section of the Pleatra. The Abandoned Qanat becomes the Westcrown sewers (so they get to go sewer crawling twice!) Instead of a cult of Lamashtu it's a cult of Mammon and they're smuggling slaves in from outside (as drug mules and to dodge taxes).

I decided that they're making the drug Ice Tears using an imprisoned Gelugon (foreshadowing for the Infernal Syndrome) that was gifted to them by the Drovenges/Melavengian. They milk the Gelugon's stinger/blood and then dilute that substance by infusing Hellspawn Tieflings, which makes them crazy ('the madness'). They can do this with other humanoids but it's lethal so they can't double up on selling them as slaves afterwards.

Ankhazu, the ghost at the end, I swapped out for the ghost of the Sister of Flies who was brought here by her followers after Vassindio Drovenge killed her and the Daughter of Flies 23 years ago. The priestess she's been possessing has instructions for destroying the Sister "just in case" hidden under her bed. It's mostly just a jar full of salt to coat her maggot-covered corpse in.

(bonus: one of my players is playing a hagblood sorcerer and she doesn't know it yet but she's a changeling meant to be the new daughter of flies, and the Sister is gonna recognize her)

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