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Okay, so as much as I can't wait to run The Slithering for my home game group this weekend, there's one element to the scenario that I have a hard time coming to grips with while I'm prepping it.
Going to immediately launch into GM Eyes only spoilers from here, so please avoid this if you aren't planning on running it.
The Plan: Everything up till and including Tomil's death goes as written. However, after he is turned into the Fuming Sludge, wheels start to turn. Tomil has connections (either in the Aspis or the Cult, which is my preference here) that have been made aware of his plan to release the Slithering. Upon his death and the curse backfiring, said connections arrange for a Reincarnation of Tomil, a ritual that is not only level-appropriate, but would also put his soul into a non-human body. Realizing what happened upon revival, Tomil rushes back to the city to keep abreast of the situation, re-asserting himself as the Aspis leader and (moving to hold the final dungeon until Cursebreaker could be neutralized as a threat) / (coming in after the encounter with Slime Whip once he hears about the Heroes' move to cleanse the city of the curse in a final attempt to stop it, Aspis already stationed there could be interpretted as a backup team to ensure the operation is not interrupted.) If he returns from the Cult, its possible he could maybe even run into the Heroes on the way back to Kibwe while they go to hunt down Cursebreaker, allowing him a chance to interact with the heroes before either side realizes the importance of the other.
Since its The Slithering and its in the appendix, I'm currently playing with the idea of making Tomil a Level 9 (tentatively Antipaladin of Angazhan, although I am considering other options that are more Int based as well) with Oozemotph feats replacing Ancestry feat picks (remnants of the curse interacting with the Reincarnation process). Level 9 works since Reincarnation works on Lv8 PCs and he could have levelled in the chaos of the Slithering while the PCs leveled twice. Reincarnation works especially well if the Cult initiates the ritual, considering Angazhan's anathema literally includes "Using Resurrection instead of Reincarnation." Cult could potentially see benefit in keeping him alive as a prospective future leader, especially with the oft-mentioned upheavals in Usaro. Oozemorph feats also open the door for Ooze Empathy at this level, so The Slithering could end with a fight against a humanoid Ooze and a real Ooze as an extra bonus to its existing flavor.
As for how his death would be discovered, my current seed there stems from another APG ritual: Heartbond. Give Tomil a romantic interest in the Cult/Aspis, make them be another human, have Tomil still have the Slithering contracted despite the new body (curses are hard to wash out of souls) and have the Heartbond be his minion in the finale, making the situation incredibly personal for Tomil.
Still has some kinks to iron out, but let me know what you guys think about the basic outline! Really looking forward to building a enemy fresh from the oven as well, so if anyone has any cool build suggestions I'd be open to hearing them as well at this point.
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Necro'ing this thread as the VTT playthrough has finished as of yesterday. (Biweekly 6-hourish meetups, had to pause temporarily due to player schedules for about a month, you know how it is.)
The plan was a success, all of my players loved the rewrite. Posted below is my writeup of everything I added to the module's backstory, followed by the actual changes to the module, then how I stat'ed the new encounter and my thoughts on how the fight went, and lastly the dialog I pre-wrote to prepare for the new encounter. Despite being broken into parts, it is meant to be read chronologically, so keep that in mind if a name doesn't make sense. As in the first post, the following is for GM EYES ONLY, as it contains plot/encounter spoilers and descriptions of modifications that will only really make sense with the Module in front of you.
I hope this thread proves helpful for any GM's seeking to run the Slithering, or as an inspiration on how to work your own spin on this modification into your own campaign.
Tomil Jabrin wakes up suddenly, surrounded by familiar faces. He looks down at his hand. The fingers are longer, more slender than he remembered. He knows what this means. The contingency he set up with his mother, Masoane Jabrin, has gone off. Through their shared participation in a Heartbond ritual, she had realized almost immediately that he had been slain in Kibwe. Gods know what abyssal pacts she had undergone to retrieve the materials for the reincarnation.
But, whatever had occurred, this meant that he had been killed. Who was even capable of such treason? Paga? No, impossible. Paga was no schemer, that was why he had left her out of the plan in the first place. Such a simple-minded agent could never understand His greatness. So what had done it then? Poison? Assassination? Who?
He had to return to Kibwe immediately, the plan could still be salvaged. And, more importantly, revenge must be taken. His mother quickly appointed an acting head-priest to serve in her absence, a family friend named Nyamat Mshwe. She would escort her son back to Kibwe, and see to it that whoever had done this to him was brought to death. Using the armor of a slain Hellknight that had assaulted the compound in the past, Tomil assumed the Hellknight's identity as a cover for his own and the two set off to reclaim his birthright.
And then it happened. Mere minutes after leaving the compound, Masoane succumbed to the curse. His curse. Revelation suddenly washed over Tomil like a crashing wave: some incompetent whelp of an Agent had deigned to tamper with his plan. The curse had afflicted his very soul, and had remained potent even in his death. The man screamed in rage, a rage that could be heard for miles. A rage that stopped the ooze that was once his mother in its tracks. Tomil pauses, touching his hand to his throat. Slime.
"Kill for me."
The slime that was once Masoane immediately skewers a bird, depositing its remains before Tomil. He could work with this.
Returning to Kibwe, Tomil Jabrin, acting under an alias (I picked "Jathal Lanliss," personally) quickly figures out what is happening. Heroes have gone out to reclaim Cursebreaker, from the cult he had just returned from. Nothing to be done there, but there was one location they would be sure to return to; the Archive of the Sun. The council was looking for guards to watch over the archive in the heroes' absence. Seemed the perfect job for "Hellknight Jathal Lanliss." With a flash of his valid Hellknight credentials and some fervent lying, the job was his. Now, all he had to do was appoint his "civilian militia," and he knew some spineless whelps that would be perfect for the job. Rounding up the remaining Aspis in Kibwe, Tomil explained the plan to them in full: Humans die, they rise. He had the means to reincarnate the fallen, any casualties they suffered in fortifying the shrine from the heroes would be adequately compensated once he had taken the council. All lies, of course. Those who agreed were enlisted, those who weren't were slain on the spot.
A week passes. The Archive has been fortified by the dregs of the society he once led. Here, they would either prove their worth as agents, or die like the incompetent scum they were. Either way worked for him. He was done with the Aspis, and those who walked out of the upcoming confrontation alive would shed that organization like the dead weight it was, and be stronger for it. And so he waited, Masoane ever at his side, eager to meet the heroes Kibwe had hired. Perhaps they could be persuaded to come to his side. If they could retrieve Cursebreaker from the Plaza of the Feasting Fiend and cull the remaining chaff downstairs, they were the kind of underlings he may need going forward. If their morals opposed his, then it was better he end them here.
Now, for the seeds:
- C11: Rework the Moonlit Chain to be a unique set of Fullplate with the same mechanics as Moonlit Chain, with the following attached knowledge check: (Society DC 20 This armor appears to have originally been forged by modifying a suit of plundered Hellknight armor, potentially procured from a failed incursion into Holy Xatramba in the past. Crit success identifies it as still bearing scant ornamentation from the Order of the Pyre, an order dedicated to the eradication of dangerous heretical cults in the region.) This sets up the cult as having access to Hellknight armaments, and the word Hellknight should ring some bells for players upon return to Kibwe.
- C13: After describing the trend of the hands and the plaques beneath them, add the following detail: “There also appears to be two prepared spaces for a hand left on the wall at the moment. The most recent space is labelled "Nyamet Mshwe -" with a blank where the achievement would typically go. The one before it chronologically is labelled "Masoane Jabrin -," also followed by a blank.” This reinforces Tomil’s familial connection to the cult and implies that there is a living member of his family. The cult does not realize Masoane has died, and thus no achievement has been listed.
- C14: After the fight, ask the players to make a religion check while examining the room, giving them details as appropriate, with the following addition on result of 20 with extra details depending on how blatant you want to be with it: "In addition, there appears to be signs of a Ritual of some sort having taken place here within the past week. You find several faint symbols still smeared in blood on the ground, as well as several traces of rare herbs not typically found in the Mwangi expanse.” If there is a particularly high religion check, consider implying more directly that this resembles the leftover traces of an Abyssal Reincarnation ritual. If a lower level cultist is interrogated about this, have them not know much, but mention they saw three people enter the room, with a hooded fourth leaving alongside them later on. (In my run, the cultist being interrogated was Mshwe’s son, so this was a great interrogation with the details the scenario gave to him. Credit where it’s due, turning Ngira Mshwe into an ooze while the players were putting him on trial for his crimes was the best roleplay experience I’ve ever ran, especially since they hadn’t yet realized they were active disease vectors.)
- Chapter 3 Intro: I worked the onboarding of the players in in-between them acquiring their new equipment and the random encounters. Rather than having the “Seeking Abayone” section be optional, I had the party attract the attention of a Council courier while being checked at the gates. After fighting the Triceratops (I combined it with the Redcap fight for expediency, and because my players enjoy a challenge), the courrier returned with the following message:
Seeds should begin to sprout around here. I also reworked the “Rain of Ooze” encounter to occur on the way in to the Archive, as it made sense for Oozes to be flocking around the Archive due to it being in an underutilized part of the city, as well as its current occupant being an Ooze empath.
- B8-2: I moved the Paga encounter to here, and modified her spell list to utilize Strange Geometries as a confusion factor rather than Illusory Scene due to the more cramped quarters and Illusory Scene being a pain to run over VTT. In this variant of the scenario, she is much less important, and thus doesn’t need as much of the awkwardly placed buildup present in the final dungeon; since my players entered alongside Cursebreaker and were racing to follow in his wake, I completely skipped those details. I did, however, use her as a tool to exposit some preparatory dialog to buildup the finale:
The halfling yells to her fellow agents, “Trust the plan! Fight on!”
“You’ll never succeed! Once the humans are wiped out, it will be our turn to take Kibwe! It will be MY turn! Tomil will lead the Consortium to victory!”
The bard chokes out her last, spiteful words: “You will never defeat us! We will rise again, striking you down when you least expect it. Tomil’s plan is insurmountable, and your precious golem will never vanquish us…”
Goal here is to prime the players for the reveal of Jathal Lanliss as Tomil if they had not suspected him already.
I had moved the Alchemical Golem to earlier in the dungeon and removed the Medusas completely as I didn't think they meshed well with the story I wanted to tell (and party would have diplomacy'd them anyways). This made Paga's encounter the last fight before Tomil's new location, a throne room and floor all to himself. Other than those, most of my edits to the scenario were adjustments to keep things challenging for my players.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18QOdK4_0F-Ji1BtP0vf07VcM-Zh6_677H0C 4Ag-kcj0/edit?usp=sharing
Tomil in my run was a level 10 Cloistered Cleric of Angazhan with Antipaladin dedication. He was built roughly using the rules for PC creation, with the only rulebreak being that I allowed him to take feats from the unused Oozemorph archetype as Ancestry feats. This did not end up being anywhere close to unbalanced, as the only real effect it had on the campaign was giving him Ooze empathy (important for the fight setup) and allowing him to monologue from any location in the Archive, long before the PCs are within striking range.
Extreme 7, adjusted for the party of 5 that I was running for. Tomil’s stats can be adjusted and de-levelled as necessary to make this fight function for a party of 4. Before Tomil speaks to the party in B8-2, I had a wave of energy wash over the party in response to Cursebreaker reaching his destination; this functioned similarly to the party getting a full health/spell/resource reset. I knew going into this that I was essentially adding a second boss fight to the scenario, so I made sure the party would be going into it fresh as appropriate for Extreme-level fights.
Creature spoilers from Age of Ashes ahead, I used the monster statblock since it was relevant to this module and a suitably engaging partner to end the Slithering with. Encounter starts with Tomil standing alone, adjacent to a throne of dark crystal. Opening turn is to cast Wall of Flesh or another spell as appropriate, third action it to attack the throne with his Spear. The throne is not an actual throne, but rather a Weak-adjusted Carnivorous Crystal in Crystalline form; this is all that remains of Masoane Jabrin. Assuming an average attack roll, Tomil crits the creature’s flat-footed AC, critting it with his Thundering Spear. It is immune to non-sonic crit damage and resistant to Piercing, so damage to the ooze is minimal as the throne splits into twin large oozes. Oozes attempt to engulf the party while Tomil works to dispatch the PCs with his 3d6+1d6 sonic+5d10 negative Channel Smites. During my run, I reduced the Oozes’s pseudopod strikes by an additional die in addition to the weak adjustment, I do not think the adjustment was required for the fight. A key element of the fight I made sure to include was emphasizing Tomil’s use of Breath of Life to keep the last Carnivorous Crystal alive, having him scream out “You shall not slay my MOTHER!” as the verbal component.
The fight was pretty engaging for all the players involved. I let the players pre-fight buff beforehand, but Tomil likewise buffed to prepare for the party. He himself had Heroism active, and put Resist Energy on both himself and the Carnivorous Crystal. (The party in my run had been making liberal use of the lenient purchase restrictions in Kibwe to invest heavily in Necklaces of Fireballs which were spammed frequently throughout the dungeon, as their characters were going to be retired after the module.) Tomil did not get a chance to use his champion’s reaction due to how the fight played out unfortunately, but more importantly he did not have a good opportunity to use his domain spells. Going the warpriest route might be more engaging for some parties, as very few spell DCs were required for him to be an effective spellcaster and my party was likely to engage him in melee. If you use the statblock I linked, you may also want to consider retraining Advanced Domain with something like Cast Down or more Champion feats.
Overall, I thought this encounter was a great wrap-up to the module that functioned as a culmination of its many disparate elements, using its mastermind as the fulcrum. Players seemed to enjoy it even though Paga was more of a threat to them, so I considered the fight a success. Feel free to modify it as you see fit.
After the fight in B8-2, I had Tomil make his presence known with a slow villain clap. The players laughed at this, but putting myself into the villain’s shoes: at this point, the Heroes have accomplished one of the goals of his occupation of the Archive. The Aspis Consortium, the group that has taken the lives of both him and his mother, has been eradicated.
After a few seconds of peace, you hear a sound -*begin slow clap*- echo through the archive, followed by a clear, commanding voice.
“Bravo, heroes. Your aptitude for summary execution is quite laudable.” -pause for players- “Surely you appreciate my efforts in rounding up the last of the Aspis Consortium in Kibwe? It truly boggles the mind how easy it is to convince a handful of desperate, incompetent crooks to bend the knee. These simpletons will follow [u]anyone[/u] with but a mere honeyed word, an empty promise, and the right prop… But you and I are both well aware of what these base criminals have done…” (Around this point, I had him toss a piece of metal, ricocheting down the hall until it bounced down the stairs, landing at the heroes’ feet; his Aspis badge, of Gold rank. I knew this would get a strong reaction from some of my players, as Gold agents are incredibly rare to see in Pathfinder, and it seemed like a strong finale for a scenario using the Aspis as a pull-factor. He does not want to associate with the Consortium at this point, so this serves as a showcase of him casting away his affiliation as well. Response to this was middling, in my game, so YMMV if you decide to use this detail.)
“You know me well, I’m sure. Your council knows me as Jathal Lanliss, esteemed Hellknight of the Order of the Pyre! Ah, but what a moniker it is… But alas, now that we’re alone, I see no reason to lie to you… Perhaps the name Tomil Jabrin is one you’re more acquainted with?
You hear an echoing laugh that seems to fill the entire compound. “Tell me heroes, what is your price? I’m familiar with the Councilwomans’ rates. Having seen your handiwork, I’m sure your services are worth more than that…”-pause for players- “ What I can offer you is a seat at the table. I’ll need men I can trust when the chips are down, so to speak. You’d be working beneath me, of course, but I’ll see to it that your visions for Kibwe’s future are met. After all, I place a high premium on loyalty.”
“All we’d have to do is say that the dregs of the Aspis were… waiting in ambush. Ready to destroy Kibwe’s last hope for a cure. The heroes and “Jathal Lanliss” slaughtered them all to the last valiantly, but alas, Cursebreakers powers were insufficient to dispel the curse. We let the Slithering run its course, make a few choice house calls amidst the chaos, and then wrap things up with the ritual for real once the city is on the verge of collapse. We become the most respected heroes in all of Kibwe, and ad-lib from there. How’s about it?”
“The plan was flawless! The Slitherbound Stones were the perfect assassination tools for Kibwe’s Council of Representatives. All we had to do was distribute stones to each, pin the curse on them having “angered the ancestors” or some other tripe, and Kibwe would have fallen right into my hands, thanks to my philanthropic efforts. So imagine MY shock when I come to in the body of some ****** ELF, clasped in the arms of my dearest mother. Had I been assassinated? Poisoned? At least then I could respect the ambition of the act. But NO! Some empty-headed Bronze couldn’t mind their own damned business, and had to put their greasy, ****-smeared hands on MY AMBITION. TO HELL WITH THEM!... This incompetent organization has wasted enough of my precious time, but I figured they’d function well enough as… floormats, for my honored guests.”
“Masoane? Yet another person taken from me by this gutless organization. Those Nexian wizards are gifted with their craft, truly. A curse that binds to a person’s soul, turning their body to ooze… Imagine, having your soul touch the void itself, before waking up as if from a long slumber in the arms of a loved one. ‘We’ll fix this together, my beloved son. We’ll take your birthright yet…’ only to see their very countenance melt into [u]slag[/u].” A thunderous crash echoes through the hall. “Alas, I’ve made due with the hand I’ve had dealt… and there is work yet to be done.”
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Necro'ing this thread as the VTT playthrough has finished as of yesterday.
I am glad i came back and searched for this thread. I am just prepping the game now, and i see how ridiculously underwhelming the module's written boss encounter was - both form a story and combat perspective.
I like everything you proposed - and chose to go with - but i am a bit concerned about just how powerful you have made the final combat. Did you level the players up to 8 before the final encounter? or were you seriously pitting a level 7 party against a level 10 PC and a Level 10 Carnivorous Crystal?
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Necro'ing this thread as the VTT playthrough has finished as of yesterday.I am glad i came back and searched for this thread. I am just prepping the game now, and i see how ridiculously underwhelming the module's written boss encounter was - both form a story and combat perspective.
I like everything you proposed - and chose to go with - but i am a bit concerned about just how powerful you have made the final combat. Did you level the players up to 8 before the final encounter? or were you seriously pitting a level 7 party against a level 10 PC and a Level 10 Carnivorous Crystal?
My home group is pretty used to challenging fights, but that said it was a party of 5 fighting a Level 10 NPC and a Weak-adjusted CR11. I was under the impression that Weak was roughly a -2 to CR, but even if it is intended to be equal to a -1, I had given it a handful of additional nerfs as well and the party handled it well overall. (In case I forgot to list them above, its peudopod strike was reduced by an additional d8 to 3d8+5 instead of 4d8+7, and I never used their Crystallize effect as, as written, it is essentially a save-or-die due to how Engulf works, and I didn't like the idea of being able to kill a PC in one turn.) Add in giving them a full heal before the combat, and it ended up actually being easier for the party than the Paga fight despite being an Extreme-level encounter on paper (Paga opened with a Command, told the party to Flee, and both the Guards got AoOs on them as they ran for their first action, nearly dropping two PCS due to the Cleave effect). If those edits seem like a lot, I'd likely just de-level Tomil to adjust the encounter level overall, as I found the combination of the two as a boss fight to make a pretty good pair, and, admittedly, there aren't many good oozes that haven't been used elsewhere in the scenario that are good boss material (Maybe an elite fuming sludge?). As a final precaution, I was ready to let the players take control of Cursebreaker to assist them in the fight if things got out of hand, perhaps if one of the PCs dropped in combat as a means to let the player still contribute.
Since it was the last fight of the module and characters were being retired afterwards, I figured most players would be okay if a PC death occurred in the fight, but if you have plans to continue playing with those characters in future adventures, or have less challenge-hungry players, feel free to edit the fight to match the group.
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Thanks for the info. I really liked the idea of Tomil pretending to be a Hellknight having been dispatched there to help restore order... but I think I will have him come back with a few cultists also pretending to be Hellknights/Hellknight Signifiers. It would definitely help give Tomil more authority upon his arrival in Kibwe.
Now I wonder if I should have a social encounter with the 'Hellknight' order midway between Xatramba and Kibwe. Maybe a campsite encounter...
Tomil could use a Sending to warn his cultist brethren in Xatramba about the incoming adventurers... and and come up with a plan for when he reaches Kibwe that would serve as a contingency for if the Heroes manage to free Cursebreaker.
I like the idea that the PCs would actually meet him before the final battle, but I need a reason why he wouldn't try to just murder them while the slept... Oh! He could still be in a weakened state due to the recovery period from the reincarnation ritual. Oooh that would be juicy to add into the final Pre-battle BBEG Monologue.
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Thanks for the info. I really liked the idea of Tomil pretending to be a Hellknight having been dispatched there to help restore order... but I think I will have him come back with a few cultists also pretending to be Hellknights/Hellknight Signifiers. It would definitely help give Tomil more authority upon his arrival in Kibwe.
Now I wonder if I should have a social encounter with the 'Hellknight' order midway between Xatramba and Kibwe. Maybe a campsite encounter...
Tomil could use a Sending to warn his cultist brethren in Xatramba about the incoming adventurers... and and come up with a plan for when he reaches Kibwe that would serve as a contingency for if the Heroes manage to free Cursebreaker.I like the idea that the PCs would actually meet him before the final battle, but I need a reason why he wouldn't try to just murder them while the slept... Oh! He could still be in a weakened state due to the recovery period from the reincarnation ritual. Oooh that would be juicy to add into the final Pre-battle BBEG Monologue.
Meant to reply to this earlier in the week, but one of my scrapped ideas that I never got around to using was to have Tomil show up to bail the PCs out of a bind during the random encounters if things got too serious; eg, having him show up with a well placed spell or spear throw to help turn the tide in the players' favor. Some of the random encounters in part 2 are very deadly (*coughspectrescough*) so having a tool for the GM to bail the party out when/if things go bad could be handy. From Tomil's perspective, he could see the party as a useful source of information, and leverage his assistance to glean some information about the current situation in Kibwe prior to re-entering the city. The rest of his contingent in your case could be keeping to the shadows of the surrounding forest for his signal, as Tomil may not trust the rest of the cult's ability to convincingly lie. If you do opt for this route, make sure you place the more dangerous encounters (drakes/spectres in my experience) closer to Kibwe in order to give Tomil a more reasonable time frame in which to set up for part 3; after all, if he helps the heroes out when they're a day off from Holy Xatramba, that only gives him a two-day window to set up in Kibwe.