PIRATES VS. UNDERWATER POD PEOPLE

[pennywit]

Yes, yes, this sounds like a SyFy Original Movie. But bear with me here.

The climax of Skull & Shackles involves going to war with the Chelaxian navy and (as I recall) a battle with the Hurricane King.

A couple sessions ago, while we were doing the earl stages of Plunder & Peril, my players nearly got TPKed by an elder nirento. This has left my players really, REALLY paranoid about trees that might try to kill them.

I flipped through the Pathfinder plant critters. If my players are going to be paranoid about trees, I want to play with that a little. Then I came across this fellow: The Bodythief. It is a tree devoted to order that eats people and turns them into pod people.

Which gave me an idea for a new Big Bad. What if I rechannel the AP so that the Big Bad is a bodythief, or a cabal of bodythiefs that want to bring order to the Shackles by wiping out piracy?

If I slap the Aquatic template on them, I have underwater trees, and they can have underwater pod-spawned critters as minions. (I imagine pad Adaros and such swimming around).

Might this work?

[rkotitan]

It became a running joke in my Skull and Shackles campaign that the true danger and the eventual bbeg would be a jellyfish. The party was nearly tpk'd by jellyfish monsters a couple of times. The joke was that the day they became the new rulers of the Shackles an army of jellyfish wearing above water breathing apparatuses would march on the lands of men and start a terrible war that would be the next stage of the campaign.

[*Khan*]

Personally I would avoid changing the scenario from a classic Pirate Tale to a Horror Story.
Roleplaying-vice I think greedy/power hungry humanoids are more fun as the main villain. They are easier to talk to and their goals are easier to comprehend. This will make roleplaying more fun and engaging in my experience.

[Tacticslion]

I have been thinking about expanding the game a lot myself, and one of the foes I entertained/suggested was a kind of "living castle" of sorts made of lots of sea anenomes and similar creatures with a large number of merrow and creatures bullied into service by them.

This thread is inspiring, though; I might do something with this concept, however, as well - either instead of, or in addition to this. If it's with this one, I might blend the giant coral and anemone monsters with a bodythief plant via the amalgam template (plant and plant -> plant so I don't have to worry about that).

The "castle" itself in my game is a huge earth elemental (made of living choral because of course it is; might make it a "plant"... I'unno) with the giant and gigantean templates (making it a colossal+ creature, giving it the Massive SQ, and generally making it a bad thing to tangle with) though probably dropping the burrow speed don't want our castle whoopsing into the ground! might replace it with the ability to phase through plants or something, I'unno, and probably a few more - aquatic (without a swim speed don't want our castle leavin' the ground!), degenerate (for that sweet, sweet 2-Int castle), pod-spawned (maybe), repeatedly drained (using the growing plants on it to "drain" it instead of a vampire), and maybe have the whole thing covered in a continuous murky obscuring mist spell (possibly blind and relying on its tremorsense and/or with some sort of blindsense, not sure).

I wasn't sure if I was making it fiendish or just leaving it a dangerous force of nature coopted by chaotic evil merrows. And now whether or not to turn those into lawful evil pod-spawned merrows. Ah! Decisions, decisions.

I'm toying with the idea of making a kind of corruption - some variant of aboleth, deep one, and hive, but I'm not sure. Maybe dovetailing it into plant (specifically aquatic plant) of some kind.

I already have a hybrid aboleth/hellbound/shadowbound thingy going on tied directly to another antagonist set up in the background of the game for some time.

Man, though - that question of blending these two forces into the same or actually splitting them into two, maybe even having them come into conflict, causing problems for the pirates above the waves... hm. Ah, I'll figure it out, maybe. :D

ANYway, it's a neat idea - thanks for sharing it!