|
This is a GM advice thread, so spoilers ahead. Sorry if the intro to this is a bit long. I'm running Iron Gods and my players are currently between books 1 and 2 as they travel across the Numerian Plains. I've already been building off of the books to add a lot of homebrew content, including a warren of kobolds below Torch and additional gang factions in Scrapwall. However, with my players' permission, I'd like to make way more extensive changes to Book 3 of the campaign for a few reasons.
My players seem wary of extended dungeon crawls and respond better to smaller maps and more roleplay encounters, so I'd like to reserve what patience they have for large dungeons for the better ones (imo) in this campaign: books 4 and 6. The party has also really latched on to the Technic League as an antagonist, so I'd like to give them more chances to face off against the League directly.
My plan is for the League to be the main antagonistic force in books 3 and 5; first, they fight the League all over Numeria in book 3, with the League definitely having the upper hand. Then, after having gotten stronger and gathering allies (and knowing these players they absolutely will be trying to gather allies to fight the League; in fact, they've started doing so already), they can finally take the fight to Starfall in book 5. I don't want the ghost of the Choking Tower, who really isn't directly related to the threat of either the League or Unity itself, to distract from the villains the party is already invested in fighting.
This alternate book 3, which I'm calling "The Lost Oracle," will essentially be a race across Numeria against a few Technic League captains and other factions, who are also competing with each other, all trying to find the treasure that the enigmatic Hellion was seeking (which only the party is likely to know is Casandalee, at least at first). This frantic trek across the wilderness, for which I will probably draw a lot of inspiration from Dudemeister's excellent thread from a few years ago (https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2rw8i?Dudemeisters-Iron-Gods-Remixed-spoilers ), will follow Casandalee's journey as she fled from Silver Mount, with each major "campaign location" being another stop on that journey where the party (and their enemies) must find the next clue to her final resting place.
Iadenveigh will become the final campaign destination for the book, with Casandalee's body and the clues leading to book 4 being found in the Aurora. The final conflict in the book will revolve around the inevitable clash between the racing factions and whether or not the party can save the town from the crossfire, if they decide they even care about protecting it.
This, finally, brings me to my question for all of you: What stops would you put along the way, both to involve different aspects of Numeria or Golarion's history in 4226, when Casandalee fled? Where would you have her rest or hide from Unity's robot hunting party, and what would you have the players encounter there now? I'm curious both to find more ideas for my campaign, but also just to see what you think Casandalee's journey might have been like.
My biggest current ideas are:
1. The ruins of an Androffan military ship or security station, repurposed from the PFS module "Returned to the Sky," where the party would encounter the AI Phalanx.
2. A swamp that's home to a tribe of lizardfolk who incorporate technology into their traditional lifestyle after Casandalee taught them to use it generations ago, but I'll be honest, I'm mostly including this one because I think lizardfolk are cool.
3. Maybe a dwarven ruin of some kind, something left behind from the Quest for the Sky, but not a full Sky Citadel. I haven't developed this one as much yet.
4. Various encounters with different Kellid tribes.
I'd love to hear what you think of the idea in general, and what sorts of places you'd have the party searching for Casandalee's trail!
Well, we know that, thanks to Sanvil Trett, that the Technic League is at least aware of the PCs. So, is Unity/Ozmyn Zaidow keeping track of the PCs through their pawn Ghartone?
If so, it is very likely that the PCs may have acquired a Technic shadow. Add to this, it is extremely likely that Unity will realize who's trail the heroes are following.
This would lead to Ozmyn Ziadow sending at assault force towards Iadenveigh. Unity knows that they can't keep control of robots that far, but human wizards and soldiers don't require such direct control. This would both:
* - Crush a source of resistance to the League.
* - Allow Unity to find out what did happen to Casandalee.
--- --- ---
If you do use Returned to the Sky, the PCs defeat Neddrick Istavarti's squad would definitely cause the League to start paying attention to the Heroes.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I had once written a story of Casandalee's lives, which I emailed to my players after they found her compact AI. My setting for Iron Gods had two changes that greatly affected Casandalee's life: I had changed the Night of Fallen Stars when the Divinity fleet crashed from 9,000 years ago to only 900 years ago. And I changed androids from living shorter lives than humans to living longer lives than humans. My altered timeline conflicts with a piece of known Golarion history: "3637 AR: The Numerian “Machine Mage” Karamoss assaults Absalom in an attempt to claim the Starstone as an unparalleled power source. His metal automatons are defeated by the city’s druids."
Nevertheless, a few lives might serve as inspiration for AndroidLich's story.
Despite the time that the party spent searching for Casandalee; afterward, the party was so busy that her simulation on the Compact AI has not had time to say more than a few sentences in the game. It is the nature of roleplaying: actions take precedence over conversations. But the party spent several months of downtime in Torch before heading to Starfall. They had time to hear Casandalee's history.
Casandalee was decanted on planet Androffa as a blue-skinned technician android six months before the Divinity fleet was launched. She was created for that mission and saw very little of Androffa itself.
She served as a junior engineering technician aboard the Divinity, mostly conducting repairs under supervision, because young androids are often careless. Everyone in the fleet was abuzz with excitement, and despite her minor role, she caught the excitement, too. They discovered kasathans and lashunta and brought representatives of each race along with them.
When Casandalee was three years old, they discovered the Dominion of the Black and had to flee through an uncalculated portal. Alas, some Dominion creatures followed them by clinging to the Androffan spaceships and continued the fight in the skies above the unknown world, Golarion. The central computer, Unity, tried to burn the Dominion off the Divinity's skin with reentry heat by diving the fleet into the atmosphere. One of the cooling units had been damaged during the initial fight, but engineering had juryrigged it to operate again. Casandalee was one of the engineers keeping that unit running, when it blew up and killed her.
The nanites in androids are designed to repair them after any injury, and often they can repair after death. The original inventors of androids were surprised that androids have souls and that death freed that soul to the afterlife, so when an android renewed itself after death, it became a new person. A minor renewal, such as repairing old age, could take as little as a month. Casandalee's body stayed dead for a year.
Casandalee Two woke up in a camp established near a stream two miles from Silver Mount. She inherited some of the original Casandalee's skills and values, but only faint memories of her life aboard the Divinity.
The Divinity had crashed and buried itself in a mountain. The survivors of the crash, human and android, could not remain in the Divinity because it was haunted with hostile ghosts. Amazingly this new planet also had humans, and unfortunately those humans were barbarians hostile to strangers. The Androffans had scavenged what they could from the upper decks. A enormous number of military robots had survived. Once the Androffans had recovered the robots, they had driven the barbarians away. Alas, the survivors were exhausting the food supplies from the Divinity, and their second Numerian winter on Golarion was approaching. Most of them decided to migrate south.
Only a handful of androids remained behind, protecting more dead androids rescued from the Divinity until they renewed. Casandalee Two, still too new to her second life to travel, remained with them. The winter was hard, but the camp had enough shelters and supplies for the small group.
In the spring the barbarians returned. The androids had patrols of gearsmen to protect them, but the barbarian Gray Wolf tribe made swift raids that avoided the gearsmen. The barbarians captured several androids, including Casandalee Two. She looked attractive to humans, so she was given to a strong warrior as a junior wife. When the barbarians eventually figured out that androids don't bear children, her status dropped. Yet five decades later, she was an old widow and earned the status of wise woman. She lived to become the oldest wise woman.
When she died of old age, the other wise women knew about android renewal and trained the renewed Casandalee, named Liramie, as a shaman, wielding divine magic.
While the Gray Wolf tribe had become sympathetic to androids, most other Numerian tribes had become hostile to technology, robots, and androids. When Liramie was forty-two years old, she was killed in the battle that wiped out the Gray Wolves.
The other tribes did not know of android renewal and left her body to rot, so Casandalee's body rose again. No-one named her because in her short life, she never spoke to another person. The Nameless One remembered that her people had gone south, and she followed. Less than five months old, she was killed by a dire boar in Ustalav.
She arose again as Wild Blue. This time, she befriended a wolf as an animal companion and developed Hunter abilities. She reached civilized lands in the River Kingdoms. She avoided the towns, but remembered enough Common to trade furs for gear at caravan camps. At one such camp, she encountered a traveler who recognized her as an android. He led her to a family of Androffan descent that had settled in the Arch-Duchy of Melcat, an area called Razmiran in current times. The Yurvan family told her that the Androffan migration had broken up, some blending in locally and others growing more militant. The militant group had claimed the robots and continued traveling south, toward more advanced civilizations.
Finding a connection that Wild Blue had not realized she missed, she remained in the Arch-Duchy of Melcat as a caravan guard. When she was killed fighting off bandits years later, her body was returned to the Yurvans. They named her Teal Yurvan when she renewed.
Teal liked delicate craftsmanship and became a silversmith. She lived in the Arch-Duchy of Melcat for almost fifty years.
The Arch-Duchy of Melcat, like many River Kingdoms, was subject to civil wars. Three adult grandchildren of the Yurvan family decided to flee the danger, and they invited Teal along. They sailed across Lake Encarthan to the Kalistocracy of Druma. The Yurvan family worshipped Desna as the Universal God, but deistic religions are discouraged in Druma. Emotionless Teal had no difficulty pretending to be a follower of the Prophecies of Kalistrade. With silver from the dwarven mines of the Five Kings Mountains creating demand for silversmiths, she could afford the displays of wealth expected of a kalistocrat.
Teal Yurvan died of old age. Without Teal's protection, the family decided to move on, bringing Teal's body along in a coffin. The android renewed as Skyblue Yurvan on the road to Andoran. They arrived in time for Andoran's revolt against the Taldane Empire in 4081 AR. With the zeal of youth, Skyblue joined the revolution and trained as a freedom-fighting cleric of Desna.
She died on the battlefield in the Verduran Forest. No-one buried the dead. Her body repaired the fatal sword wound in a few weeks. Alone in the largest forest on the Avastian continent, she once again befriended a wolf. Soon afterwards, the druids found her, took her in, and named her Ulrikke. Because the gnomes of Wispil were amused by her exotic appearance, she became a liaison to their city. Her emotions blossomed in that environment. She caught the gnomish wanderlust and in her last years caught passage down the Sellen River to the Inner Sea. She died of old age at sea and was buried at sea.
She washed ashore on Stonespine Island in Katapesh. The local gnolls sold her into slavery in the Fleshmarkets of Okeno. However, she had renewed as an oracle of the waves mystery, haunted by sea spirits. She broke free of her bonds, and hired onto a pirate ship to escape. She took the name Bonnie Ann. After nine years of piracy, her ship was chased by the Gray Corsairs of Andoran. Their emblem bought back a glimpse of old memories from her previous life as Skyblue. Conflicted, she jumped ship on mainland Katapesh. She worked her way south again, but stopped when she encountered another android, Brawn, in Alkenstar City at the Mana Wastes. She settled down there, happy to be surrounded by industry, even if she lived in the Smokeside slums. She was mugged while returning from drinking at the tavern. She fought so hard that the robbers wounded her quite deeply. Brawn, seeing that she would need three months to renew, left her body in the care of a monastery of Brigh.
She renewed with oracle powers again, this time with ancestors mystery and shattered psyche curse. The ancestors of her mystery were her earlier lives, which she experienced in visions. She resumed her original name, Casandalee, making her Casandalee Three. She remained in the monastery for a year, trying to make sense of her multiple selves, and finally decided to return to her origins at the Divinity. With her knowledge of the sea from Bonnie Ann, she joined a merchant ship going to Andoran, and then a river boat going up the Sellen River. She stopped in Wispil in Taldor for a few years, for many of the gnomes she had known as Ulrikke remembered her.
She finally reached Silver Mount in 4221 AR and spent the next five years delving into and repairing the spaceship. Her oracle powers kept the undead at bay. The computer Unity had changed, becoming more person than machine, but she gradually realized that it was a cruel person with terrible plans for her adopted world. The realization was slow because she herself was insane, dropping into the mindset of her previous lives at some triggering reminder. She resolved to create a sane version of herself, using a stolen neurocam and compact AI, and hoping that the android creation facilities in the Aurora were still intact. But she fleed westward first as Unity's robots chased her. She lost the compact AI at the Scar of the Spider. Other evidence shows that she continued to the Aurora to use its facilities to heal deep injuries. Unity's robots caught up to her there, and she battled them to a permanent death.
The compact AI remembers the life of Casandalee Three and the visions Casandalee had of her past lives, but does not remember the past lives directly. Since Casandalee Three spent much time going over the maps of the Divinity and recalling the first Casandalee's life as a repair technician, the AI has strong memories of the layout of the Divinity. The personality simulation program in the Compact AI animates Casandalee's memories as if she were a human, rather than an android, so she comes across as more emphatic than the real Casandalee.
Timeline of Births
Casandalee 3807 AR
Casandalee Two 3812 AR
Liramie 3902 AR
Nameless One 3944 AR
Wild Blue 3944 AR
Teal Yurvan 3978 AR
Skyblue Yurvan 4081 AR
Ulrikke 4083 AR
Bonnie Ann 4185 AR
Casandalee Three 4199 AR
copied memories to Compact AI in 4226 AR
died 4226 AR
Well, we know that, thanks to Sanvil Trett, that the Technic League is at least aware of the PCs. So, is Unity/Ozmyn Zaidow keeping track of the PCs through their pawn Ghartone?
If so, it is very likely that the PCs may have acquired a Technic shadow. Add to this, it is extremely likely that Unity will realize who's trail the heroes are following.
This would lead to Ozmyn Ziadow sending at assault force towards Iadenveigh. Unity knows that they can't keep control of robots that far, but human wizards and soldiers don't require such direct control. This would both:
* - Crush a source of resistance to the League.
* - Allow Unity to find out what did happen to Casandalee.--- --- ---
If you do use Returned to the Sky, the PCs defeat Neddrick Istavarti's squad would definitely cause the League to start paying attention to the Heroes.
My party had successfully fooled Sanvil Trett, who thought they were just local smiths and their out-of-town friends. Instead, the Technic League discovered them after the 2nd module, Lords of Rust. I had let the party dig out and repair the haunted wreck in the Valley of Mists, and that attracted attention. I sent Neddrick Istavarti's team from Returned to Sky after them, but he arrived three days too late and got to see them fly off in their refurbished tiny spaceship.
The party--Boffin, Elric, Kheld, Kirii, and Val Baine--had entered Scrapwall under false names--Gremlinbane, Lifestealer, Cold Iron, Nightingale, and Jolt--so the Technic League never traced them back to Torch.
One word of warning that I learned from this forum: Lords of Rust barely mentions Casandalee, leaving a very weak plot hook for the next module. I had Hellion mention Casandalee personally as the only person who ever thwarted Unity and he wanted her advice. The adventure path also makes finding the compact AI fairly anti-climactic, since it happens at the end of Valley of the Brain Collectors and is barely mentioned afterwards. My players, however, used Casandalee as a liaison (via radio) with Unity, who had a soft spot for his former high priest.
|
|
Well, we know that, thanks to Sanvil Trett, that the Technic League is at least aware of the PCs. So, is Unity/Ozmyn Zaidow keeping track of the PCs through their pawn Ghartone?
If so, it is very likely that the PCs may have acquired a Technic shadow. Add to this, it is extremely likely that Unity will realize who's trail the heroes are following.
This would lead to Ozmyn Ziadow sending at assault force towards Iadenveigh. Unity knows that they can't keep control of robots that far, but human wizards and soldiers don't require such direct control. This would both:
* - Crush a source of resistance to the League.
* - Allow Unity to find out what did happen to Casandalee.--- --- ---
If you do use Returned to the Sky, the PCs defeat Neddrick Istavarti's squad would definitely cause the League to start paying attention to the Heroes.
You actually hit on a few of my intended plot points here; I'm planning to have Neddrick Istavarti leading the assault force that the PCs must race across Numeria as they track Casandalee, which will eventually converge on Iadenveigh. There are a few other League captains involved, some of which the party could potentially win to their side, but I'm planning to use Istavarti as the primary, certain antagonist of Book 3.
I've added some other aspects to Unity's plan that Ozmyn and Ghartone are busy with, so even though Ghartone got Sanvil's report, he didn't pay too much attention (yet), giving the party a bit of a head start where only a few captains are after them before the whole weight of the League comes down on them and their allies. Discovering and interfering with Ghartone's mission is another potential way they can lessen Unity's resources, though despite some hints I've been dropping I'm not sure they'll take that bait.
That's a good idea to have a League agent shadowing them already in Book 2, though! That could also foreshadow the conflict for book 3, by which point they'll know more clearly who they're up against, as far as the League is concerned at least.
|
|
I had once written a story of Casandalee's lives, which I emailed to my players after they found her compact AI. My setting for Iron Gods had two changes that greatly affected Casandalee's life: I had changed the Night of Fallen Stars when the Divinity fleet crashed from 9,000 years ago to only 900 years ago. And I changed androids from living shorter lives than humans to living longer lives than humans. My altered timeline conflicts with a piece of known Golarion history: "3637 AR: The Numerian “Machine Mage” Karamoss assaults Absalom in an attempt to claim the Starstone as an unparalleled power source. His metal automatons are defeated by the city’s druids."
Nevertheless, a few lives might serve as inspiration for AndroidLich's story.
Fantastic narrative for Casandalee's lives, definitely inspiring! I love how you managed to weave so many seemingly disparate parts of the setting together in her story.