| Akumamajin |
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Hello peeps and fellow GMs,
I really love this campaign, and after a years long hiatus we are now in full swing to finally end this path. I have compiled here all (or most) of the changes that I have done, to mold this campaign to the greatest thing I have ever done in epic fantasy. Maybe it will inspire some of you to follow in some of my footsteps. Maybe you will laugh at my often over the top style and blatant theft of plot hooks. But I hope that you will all enjoy this ^^
- The demon that possessed Kardswann was from a race of likewise demons. This demons are from the Planet Aucturn.
- The tomb with the Jackalwere (the setpiece adventure "The Refuge of Nethys" in the first book) was a hideout of a rovagug cult, it was also hinted that the four elemental pharaos had dealings with the aucturn demons (hieroglyps and frescos of the demons)
- after the first book I took a few side adventures and let them rebuild Kelmerane with a curbed down version of the Kingdom Ruler rules from Kingmaker. They nearly finished the trade road to Katapesh, bulild a few farms, refurbished the battle market and stuff like that. Most importantly, they got some fancy titels and a say in the rulership of the place, which really let them bound to the city.
- I inserted the module with the tomb of the four pharaos and let them discover more disturbing connections between the pharaos and the aucturn/rovagug demons. The Pharao of Sky seemed to have connetions with them and some of the artifacts in his tomb could be used to open portals or even more large scale gates to aucturn, including the doomsday clock (that, I think, was later used in the Pathfinder 2 Playtest campaign) and some astrological devices that could "channel and harness to powers of the universe" for yet unknown purposes ... my players belived at that point that the main hook of the campaign would be a large scale invasion of this demons and the ressurcetion of Rovagug, which was fine with me. My initial goal was just to showcase a disturbingly high activity of Rovagug cults in the area and especially the leaders of the area, explained by the dreams of the dead Xotani.
- At this point one of the players wanted to play a new character, so his old one, a bard, married Alma, and he now plays this ones brother, an Asmodean Cleric ... charismatics must run deep in this family, hehe.
- when they found the map of Kakishon, an oracle revealed, that it was somehow connected to their destiny to learn its secrets and travel to Kakishon to learn how to defeat a great evil. The guy who originally opens the map in book three studied it for a long time, while the party as approached by the distrubing Captain of a Sunset ship, ie a Visitor from Leng, a plato on the Planet Aucturn, to part with the map for some rediculely high sum of money ... yikes. The cult of Rovagug would later try to steal the map, kidnap the sage etc and everything would mostly play out like in the adventure, ie that dungeon with that seed of rovagug as a boss.
- the Sage told them that the map would show them the way to Kakishon ... if it werent to badly damaged ... his divination, using the map as a focus, pointed at some nondescript mountain range at the mawangi coast, so they figured out that they would travel there.
- during their travel on the high seas they would occasionally spot the Sunset ship, which seemed to shadow them, and they would suffer from freak weathers and constant harrasment by deep sea aberrations. When they arrived at their location they found a whole region of the mountain range cut off by a very strong, very ancient and very big spherical energy field. While they explored this and looked for a way in, the Sunset Ship and its unsettling crew attacked them and my player finally got rid of them, but stranding on a random, small island.
- on the Island lived two tribes of Sylphs and Ifreet who were in a constant state of war with each other. Both were apparently lead by a singel Efreet and Djinn, who were remnants of the old Genie War, ie from Jhavhuls and Nafeshtis forces. They befriended the Djinn and went on their way to kill the Efreet. When they lay ruin to the Ifret village and arrived in the inner sanctum, ready to confront the Efreet ... they found him dead, just a pile of ash, that was still warm. While they wondered what this could mean, Davashuum showed up, mocked them for their weakness and lack of worth and demanded them to hand over the map of Kakishon.A short mock of a fight errupted, until they were all stunned by his stunning fists within seconds. When he took the map, Pashvan showed up and he berated Davashuum for having become so full of himselfs, as mortals were the ones that they once had sworn to protect, yadda yadda ... a fight ensued between the two, that was very Dragonball-esque, with flying combatants, big balls of energy flying about, teleporting and shockwaves from their unbridled attacks. At the hight of the battle, a lightning bolt from the clear sky slammed right between them into the ground and Nafeshti showed up for the first time. After a short exchange of words she looked at Davashuum with disappointment and said "so you betray me too, and fall from my grace." and with this she took her Wishpower from him, transforming him back into a simple Janni ... in shock and anger he fled into the jungles, not to be seen for the next third of this adventrue path.
- Nafeshti then briefly spoke with the characters, with tears in her eyes looked at the map and said that the sight of it just brings back old pain and hardbrake to her, and disappeared in a wisp of smoke. Pashvan brievly lingered and explained some more cryptic stuff, and that the he did never believe that Kardsvanns, Zayifids and Davashuums xxx with the map would help Nafeshti in any way to ment her broken heart and then also disappeared.
- well, that was strange. After this they learned that a once big mage city was located behind the force field and that it was unreachable by ordinary means, but with the sunset ship stranded at the shore, they could reach it by traveling through the dreamlands. The ship was repaired and in its belly they found a strange contraption that powered it via the lifeforce of people, ie one had to strap into it and save vs gaining a negative level each hour, while the rest tried to make sense of the strange dreamscape of the dreamlands ... this was mostly flavor, but after some strange stuff they emerged back into the real world within the barrier and reached the shore of their target island.
- what follwed was the module "Crucible of Chaos", which playes within a stranded, once floating city from before the Starfall. The city itself was overrun by cthuloid horrors and Aucturn demons and full of unsettling chaos encounters, that were even trying to invade and reshape the players bodies ... and they were constantly shadowed and a few times nearly killed by a single, immense Shoggoth, who roamed the streets of the once fabled city.
- the City was once ruled by four mage kings, but it seems that one of the mage kings become touched by the Far Realms/Aucturn, instigated the church of Yogsosoth in the city and spread his chaotic influence far and wide. Soon two of the three other mage kings were also corrupted in this way, so the last and uncorrupted mage king, who went by the name of Nex, made a decision: he would steal the big chunk of formless chaos, that powered the city and was the source of its flight and abundance of magical wonders, and use its power to errect an nearly indestructable force field around the landed city. Then he would use the chaos matter to form a demiplane and flee there, to be save of his fellow mage kings wrath ... this demiplane would later be known as the fabled Island Archipelago of Kakishon.
- it would take a while till they found all this out, and in the meantime battles the three now undead and liche-fied mage kings one at a time, culminating with a battle royal with the shoggoth, the aucturn demons and some other nasties in the temple of Yoggsosoth, where they could destroy the taint of chaos by smashing the altar made of aucturn rock and stone and use the residual chaotic energies to activate the map of Kakishon ... when they activated it, it burst open, sucked them in and they released Jhavhuls army, while getting captured in Kakishon themselfes.
- after some exploring and going back and forth, they were approached by the giant dragon turtle, and some accompanying merefolk, who grinned dumbly at them and threw flasks with potions on board. One of my adventurous players drank it and nearly vomitted, as it was filled with some sort of vile slime ... as a side effect he couldn't breathe any longer and started to suffocoat on the nexian galley. The merefolk gestured for him to join them in the water and eventually he learned that the potions effect allowed him to breath water, but not air. Apparenty the master of the merevolk wished to speak to them.
- the undersea master turned out to be an Abloth .. yikes. The story here was, that Nex populated Kakishon with various servitude races from the outsides and chose Kuatoa for the underwater and sea-level attractions of Kakishon. When Nex disappeared, the now masterless Kuatoa used their racial power of collectie true-dreaming, to wish for a new master, an aboleth. The aboleth soon enslaved all the Kuatoa and other waterlevel creatures in Kakishon, but a) couldnt extent his influence towards the land, where Jhavhuls Efreet Army was situated and b) couldnt leave Kakishon, which frustrated him.
- he explained the situation to the players as such: back in the days, Nex formed his Demiplane, but it was unstable and would always revert back to its primal chaos form, without an ancor in the true world. So he broad 4 chunks of true elements into Kakishon, in the form of 4 pure Elemental Gems (haha yeah, super cheese Final Fantasy stuff) and enslaved some creatures from the Limbo and made Kakishon his permanent home. When a mage a couple of hundred years ago used some unsuited spell to rip Kakishon open and trap the Efreeti Army in it, it got severely damaged. When they could gather the 4 elemental Gems, then Kakishon could be reforged again and be used to transfer back and forth between it and the maps locaiton on the prime material plane.
- The Gem of Water was in its posession, so if they sided with it, they would just gain it without any problem. Fighting it for the Gem would be foolish, because they were in its lair and it had several hundred years to prepare for condingencies as plan accordingly.
- The Gem of Fire was on the Ilses of Fire to the east, were it rested in the heart of a mighty Bull of Fire (in one of the bestiaries there was this very big Fire Bull from persian mythology). I used some childhood fairytails and the last unicorn cartoon from the 80s for this: one of the isles was a lush green paradise during the day, with flocks of unicorn prancing all over it. At night, the Flame Bull would awaken, bunring the jungle to cinders and hunted all the unicorns and drove them into the waves of the sea, where they become the golden glimmer on the waves. After he drove the last unicorn into the waves, the bull would settle down and sleep, the fire in his breath dying down to a small ember, and during his sleep the jungle would grow again in the vertil soul and ashes and within hours the island was back to its lush and verdant form and even the unicorns would reemerge back from the sea and the cycle would start anew.
- The Gem of Air was located below Nexs pleasure palace (which I left undestroyed, so the players could relax their to their hearts content), where it would generate a nice and welcome breeze and pleasant humors that drifted through the whole structure. The vault was some sort of subterrainian cave system, where the gem was watched over by a tribe of ... Flumphs. The entrance to their hideout was protected by an antimagic field, so the players needed the help of the natural buyond cratures to get to it. They knew that Nex had abandoned them, so they aggreed to hand the gem over .. if the players helped them with a little problem: there was a creature down in the lower caves, that hunted them or turned them to stone. If they could kindly kill it, pleeeese? So the players located the cave, which was decorated with some petrified creatures of Kakishons wildlife and even a few Gnolls and Efreet. In the cave they found a big hoard of gold and other treasures .. and a medusa presiding over it ... they charge to fight her, but she is just an illusion, hiding some aweful, magic traps. After this they also got attacked by some other creatures and delved deeper. After this, the caves layout changed dramatically and became decidedly alien: there were several levels, all connected by stright, vertical, perfectly round shafts, that were very hard to traverse. They could make no rime nore reason of all this and deep down they finally found a Janni, who was sitting at an otherwise empty table. He looked up in bewilderment and tried to shuush them out. When this didnt work, he cast darkness and disappeared. The players with high ranks in Perception could guess the direction: stright through one of the caves walls, which turned out to be a permanent illusion.
- they followed him and finally emerged in a very big, round room with several, tall collums, made out of some reflecting material, some sleeping area, surrounded by several dozen scrolls of varrying powerlevels and the shocking reveal of the true master of the deep caves!!!! A beh- *cough* an eye ty- *cough cough* .. a magical, flying orb of many colored death ... that was strange .. and fun, as they stumbled into the fight with some fortitude buffs, because they expected a Medusa, but woufully unprepared for a magical, flying orb of many colored death. I used some homebrewed version of this guy and I think that it was one of the most memorable encounters that we ever had. In the end my players emerged victorious, but on the brink of death.
The Gem of Earth was in the possession of the earth genie, who defected from Jhavhul and used it to build a community under the crystal forest in Kakishon, where they experimented on one of the captured proteans, whom they had stretched and captured in an impossible complicated arcane aparatus, that was unraveling him in a controlled way, in order to facilate some escape from Kakishon.
- I left the encounter at the edge of the map and the isles of not nearly unchanged (well, I expanded a bit on the strange and chaotic nature of the place, but nothing out of the ordinary) and in essence the players had three means of escaping Kakishon, all of which with some sort of moral hook, to ponder:
1) Gather the four True Elemental Gems and force the proteans to reforge Kakishon, essentially keeping them in prolonged slavery and forcing them to create permanency against their chaotic urged.
2) Side with the Earth Genie, capturing and bringing to them one or two more proteans. This would destroy the proteans essence once and for all, but unravel Kakishon in a way that everyone would escape and the remaining proteans could then return home to the Mealstrom.
3) Side with the Proteans: the proteans would very much love to let Kakishon slip back into chaos, shed their shackles, and escape back into the Maelstorm, but they are still bound by Nexs powerful wishes and binding spells. One of the wrinkles of Nexes wish was to "create a permanent and pleasant envionment for the new inhabitants of Kakishon to call home", so if all the sentient creatures in Kakishon would die, then the Proteans would be free to remake it and let the players escape in the seconds before the colllapse.
- most of the players didn't like that the proteans were effective slaves for thousands of years, but they did like the notion of mass genocide even less. In essence the Asmodean Cleric took things in hands and made a big, long and convoluted develish contract with the Abboleth, that he wouldn't betray them and stay true to his word, if they gathered the Elemental Gems for him, and then they went with this route ... this preserved Kakishon for them as a pocket paradise, by the way, albait now with a Mindcontrolled Dilix in charge of the pleasure palace :P
- oh, and of course, they found out what happened to Nafeshtis lover and adopted Spooky, the Cat Familiar.
- they then found themselves in the City of Brass, in Jhavhuls family stronghold, but they weren't bound there by a curse, but the city itself was protected against teleportation and planar travel, save in designated spots, like the pactmasters ambassy. During the time in the palace they rescued a few of their former City Guards, who were held here, and Garavel, who was tortured in the Brass Bull in the courtyard. I had to rebuild a few things here, so I did away with most of the factions and just populated the place with a token force of Efreet, Fire Giants and Janni specialists. The players motivation to clear out the palace was Ezer Hazabaim, who revealed that he was Jhavhuls former summoner and master and that he knew his True Name .. a potential powerful weapon in the upcomming conflict. When they rescued him, of course, the Red Dragon of the Sultan of the Efreets showed up and demanded to hand him over, a big fight ensued and they escaped with Ezer and Shehazade back to the Prime Material Plane.
- They wished to emerge back into the real world not in Kelmerane, but in one of their allied Gnoll tribes. When they arrived, they caused quite the comotion: the Gnolls were obvious ready for war, having done their arms, armor and warpaint, but they backed away from their former allies. From the command tent emerged an Efreeti commander, demanding to know what was causing this ruckus, and after a short fight, the players were one Gnoll tribe further to the Libaration of Kelmerane.
- I detailed the next few sessions more in the GM post about The Final Wish, but in shortform: they found out that Kelmerane was occupied and Nafeshti hid out in the old monastery of the dawnflower. The lead the charge of her armies, consisting of some two hundred Janni and Djinn and liberated Kelmerane, that was held by some 200 Gnolls, 100 Jannis and a small force of elite Efreeti Janisary. The Gnoll cleric that they encounterd in the defiled Temple of Sarenrae was a powerful, wishinfused monstrocity, packing some 3 Ranks of Mythic abilities, and Nafeshit offered them to Wish for becoming her new Templers. Those who did this became transformed into Rank 3 Mythic, wishinfused warriros of tremendous power.
- the next session will see them pit their new found powers against an unfairly strong wishinfused Davashuum in the Brass Tower. When they kill him, he will pull out the bone key from his pokets and laught "Buwahaha .. you will never arrive in Rhavhuls inner sanctum, because so he wished" and with his the bone key will turn to sand, which will be blown away by the stiff breeze in the upper level of the brass tower ...
- when they travel to the house of the beast they soon realize that this will be much harder then they expected to be, for the plains surrounding the Pale Mountain are teeming with Efreety and Janni armies ... more then the eye can count, all those armies they spend the centuries in the lands of Kakishon ... all seems lost when suddenly, out of nowhere
- a big shadow falls on them. They look up and see .. the flying city, the one from which they started their odysee into other planes and dimensions.
- as they fly up their they learn, that Zastoran, when Jhavhuls armies arrived, sneaked into the players house, took all the stuff that they left their, and trief to find them. the Diviner in Katapesh pointed to the city, which now lay exposed (Jhavhul wished the force field away) and free of taint. The players had taken away all the artifacts of the magekings, but he retrofitted the enginge of the Sunset ship into the command room of the city ... it is flying by his life power and his life is nearly spend ... but he will gladly crash the flying city into the house of the beast, crack open the earth and open the way for them to end Rhavhul .... BAMM! Most epic thing that I have ever done, even though I stole it from an old, old SNES JRPG called Breath of Fire 2 ... quite fitting, huh? ;D
- also, when they confront Jhavhul during the uttering of the final wish, it will be quite personal: Alma is forced with the Scimitar at the throat of her husband, the Amodean Clerics former character, to utter the titualr Final Wish.
- during the fight, Rhavhul will be Mythic Rank 10, but if the players can protect Ezer long enough to utter Jhavhuls true name, this will rob him of most of his crazy powers and strip him of his mythic ranks.
- one final adventure will deal with the destruction of Cotanis heart in the coldest place of the Multiverse, ie Cania, the 8th level of hell. There, Mephistopheles, the ruler of the 8th, and Lord of Hellfire (a cruel joke of Asmodeus) will escort them to the deepest glacier and then try to get possession of Xotanis heart, merge with it and then usurb Asmodeus as supreme leader of Hell. Mephestiopheles is a CR 30 monster, so he might be an awesome way to end the campaign.