| Bjørn Røyrvik |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Warning: another campaign log
I hadn't actually intended to run this one but I needed something for Othariel while Arly's players is gone for a bit, and my brain wasn't working too well, so here we are. This is looking like the shortest AP on record. This AP needed even more rewriting to make things fit, but I made it work. Korvosa is replaced by the Principality of the Thunder Rift, a small valley nestled between Glantri and Wendar. The city is reduced in size and is on a small lake rather than the coast. Otherwise the basic plot is the same: useless king marries hot evil chick, gets poisoned, and evil chick sparks riots in the streets. She's planning on releasing a plague in the city and using gathered blood and misery from people to make herself super powerful using a leftover magic item under the castle, mwahahahaha!
Most of the other elements are present, like most of the NPCs, various smaller tasks to do around town, getting hold of powerful artifacts in a barren land, etc.
Heading off to the future to see if her grand vision of multiple sentient races living together will work.
Ranya (Cleric 20 of Valerias)
Along for the ride
Tomokato Katamura (paladin 20 of Ixion)
Wants to shoot things
Othariel is fiddling around with the core of the time travel mirrors she and her friends picked up when fighting the Oard. Her highest level of technological know-how is 'there are things in the past and future called computers which are good and there are things called 'reactors' which blow up and shift the axis and orbit of the planet and cause thaumo-nuclear winter', so how hard can it be to make something like this work? With a little help from some gnomes, a piece of solidified time she picked up many years ago, and the firm belief that if she just fiddles with it long enough something useful will happen, she makes it work.
Thinking that the best way to see if something immensely dangerous like a time travel device will work is by jumping in head first, she gets her friends together. Arly is busy sucking up to other mages in hopes of getting Wishes out of them, so no arcane support for this adventure. They may have to *gasp* walk to places. Othariel fiddles with her innocuous-looking device and they disappear.
They end up in an unfamiliar city that seems to be on fire. They quickly realize there is a riot going on and split up and set about trying to calm things down. With the lowest Diplomacy score being in the mid-30s, getting people to stop rioting isn't too hard. A few bucket chains and Create Water spells take care of most of the fires.
They spend the night calming things down and keeping things safe. The next morning they head up to the castle and ask to see the ruler. The guards stutter something about not being able to let people in. The PCs act Diplomacy their way past the guards and go to a receiving room and wait for someone to show up. Guards of various ranks show up and try to get information out of the PCs and order them to give over their weapons. The PCs don't oblige. Queen Ileosa shows up and Othariel immediately gets on her bad side by not giving more than a perfunctory nod rather than a deep bow befitting Ileosa's status. Being an excellent actress, she doesn't let this show other than a raised eyebrow.
Not being a total fool, Ileosa expects some interference from 4-to-6 meddling do-gooders trying to stop her. She has made plans for this. She did not expect some very rich and dangerous-looking folks to show up the same day as she puts her plans into motion, speaking an archaic dialect of the local tongue and immediately make everyone in town feel in awe of them. She really didn't expect people claiming to be the founder of the kingdom and her legendary friends to show up. Only three of the four (or five or six - accounts vary) people are here but the names are right and they do look and sound rather old fashioned.
In short, she starts getting worried. With some elegance she dismisses the PCs' immediate claims about their identity but promises to arrange a proper test as soon as possible (it would be foolish to take them at their word or administer easily cheated tests, after all) and refuses to let them inspect the corpse of the king. She does give them guest rooms in the castle and offers full hospitality. The PCs spend a bit of time talking to servants and visiting the library, trying to figure out when they are and what has happened since they last were in these parts. To Othariel's great sorrow it seems that her dream of a multicultural realm has mostly failed. Several of the humanoid races were suppressed and killed or driven off, others live as second or third class citizens or have mostly isolated themselves in remote areas of the Rift. Even worse, her son disappeared and his fate was unknown, and her daughter died when the Rift was subjugated by Glantri.
Still, no time to grieve. The PCs cast Commune and ask some obvious questions like "Is Ileosa evil?" , "Did she kill the king?" and "Is she doing this for the good of the country?" While Misdirection stopped any Detect Evil from the paladins from seeing anything amiss, Ileosa has no protection from Commune. The PCs quickly make their way down to the crypt where the king's body is lying ready for disposal, incapacitate the guards and start trying to cast Raise Dead.
Ileosa catches them in the act, having brought her guards and many nobles with her in hopes of disposing of the king's body before the PCs got there. She spins the PCs' presence here to be proof of their heinous nature, trying to do unspeakable things to the corpse, and her uncontested lies do seem to work. Her guards, including Sabina, move forward to engage the PCs and she retreats up the stairs to not be in the line of fire. The guards are basically useless. A few lucky 20s on attacks still doesn't do more than annoy the PCs. Sabina is a bit harder to handle and gets in a blow or so eery round, and after turning his bow to a cosh to bludgeon her safely to unconsciousness, Tomokato gets frustrated that this takes more than 1 round (due to lesser attack bonus and lower damage) so he makes his bow a bow again and puts her down.
Togomor shows his face and dispels the Antilife Shell Ranya put up to stop people getting past her to bother Othariel, but he then eats a Destruction and pops like a bloated tick. ileosa's projected image is used to buff her guards, but even Bardic Performance, Haste and a few failed attempts at debuffs on the PCs can't put them on even footing with the PCs, so they go down (to mostly non-lethal damage) and Ileosa flees. Eodred does not wish to come back to life, so the PCs are stuck wondering what to do. We end the session there.
So in one session we played about half a chapter of the first book before the PCs skipped to the end. No Everdawn Pool thing going, even if I'm using those stats for Ileosa, though. I suspect that things will wrap up fairly quickly next time and more time will be spent on trying to find out what went wrong so Othariel can take steps to make sure they don't do so again (pre-gain?). Or maybe she'll accept it as a lesson in learning that you can't fix everything with time travel.
| Phillip Gastone |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Hmm.. Perhaps Ileosa tries some desperate magic with the Everdawn Pool and ends up teaming up with Kazavon(sp) who powers her up for a proper Mythic/Immortal showdown. They head to Kaza's old castle, draft the undead and sweep over the Shoanti to fill their ranks. Perhaps using the special disease to distract the PCs
| Bjørn Røyrvik |
Possibly, possibly. I like the idea of going to Kaz's old haunts (heh heh); that never occurred to me.
The main issue here is time. Unless the PCs decide to just go away and plan for a few days, they will be hot on her heels and she won't have time to do much of anything except stop running and start casting buffs. The lack of an arcane caster to teleport them or use various divinations may buy her some time, but even so if the PCs really want to, they can find her and get to her almost immediately.
| Bjørn Røyrvik |
Looks like I left out some background for the adventure. As part of her quest for Immortality, Othariel is on the Path of the Dynast and needs to:
1. found a realm above a certain size
2. rule it for a period
3. have an heir and an heir's heir ready to inherit
4. stop 4 major threats during her initial reign
5. find/make a time travel device
6. travel to three future times to help her heirs and country survive major challenges
Othariel is on step 6, and CotCT is a neat little adventure that fits right in to that general theme.
I suspect that once the PCs stop Ileosa they will spend more time trying to fix the damage done to the country over the last couple of centuries than they did stopping her. Things like reinstating the equality between races, convincing the marginalized or exiled humanoid races that they are welcome back into the country, getting proper leaders in charge, strengthening social cohesion, making Sable Company the Order of Thunder into a proper paladin order again instead of just a normal military organization, etc.
In short, Othariel & co. will likely have to do all of steps 1-3 again in step 6a.
I may have to dodge a few books aimed at my head.
| Phillip Gastone |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Othar: i have to have more kids? Can't i just adopt some orphan who was born with a strange birthmark after they were born from a peach when a kindly old couple prayed for a child they were never able to have?
| Phillip Gastone |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Hmm. Perhaps Return of the Runelords and Wrath of the Righteous are good epic level threats. Sorshen could be an actual peer and Wrath can allow you to use all those old D&D demon names(Cawing,Croaking,Hissing and some others)
| Bjørn Røyrvik |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Othar: i have to have more kids? Can't i just adopt some orphan who was born with a strange birthmark
This was her first heir, an orphan boy left after a big ol' dragon ravaged the TR. Though the Path of the Dynast rules say child/grandchild as heirs, they also say adoption is OK. Othariel's grand-heir was her daughter by blood. So, unintentionally, Othariel had made a situation where she had an onii-chan and an imouto not related by blood so everything [REDACTED] is OK.
When I pointed this out I was told I was sleeping on the couch that night.Hmm. Perhaps Return of the Runelords and Wrath of the Righteous are good epic level threats. Sorshen could be an actual peer and Wrath can allow you to use all those old D&D demon names(Cawing,Croaking,Hissing and some others)
Oh, don't worry. Once Arly's player is back the gang will return to killing Runelords and taking their Sihedron shards. Since I'm following the order in which they are found from Shattered Star, it means Sorshen is up next. It also means that Xanderghul will be last, which is fitting since he is supposed to be the most powerful of the Runelords. It would be nice if James Jacobs released the full stats for Xanderghul before then, but I may have to do the work on my own.
And good ol' B/X-BECMI names for demons have been used alongside more modern names throughout the game. Beloved children have many names, as we say here. I haven't kept their Exalted status, however.
| Phillip Gastone |
Wrath could be titled, 'Don't make me come down there (to the Abyss and beat you all up.)'
| Bjørn Røyrvik |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
As usual, my initial predictions were wildly wrong: there's at least one more session left of the adventure after this, possibly more.
Thanks to a good suggestion about Ileosa heading off to Scarwall, my creative plagiaristic juices got flowing.
I had already established that Othariel's first heir, her adopted son Dioras, had led a force of paladins and more from the local Order of Thunder against a foul enemy in the Adri Varma plateau to the west. They never came back but the evil was presumably defeated.
They had gone to Scarwall to stop an invading force led by a powerful spellcaster by the name of Zev Ravenka. They were successful, but only at the expense of their lives. The caster had found the Star Tower, which was an ancient Carnifex (from "Twilight Calling") tower and he found his way inside and discovered the Everdawn Pool, an item which probably contributed to the Immortals' decision to get rid of the Carnifex. He got it working again and was just about to cheat his way to Immortality (or so he hoped) when Dioras and his merry meddling murderous paladin pals came calling and ruined everything. Dioras and his army were not powerful enough to stop Zev on their own and Dioras called on his patron Khoronus, on Valerias, even on his mother, for aid to no avail. In desperation he called on Nyx, lady of darkness and undead, an otherwise less than popular Immortal but one who had a small cult in the Thunder Rift due to a favor She had done for Othariel. Nyx answered and turned Dioras into a new type of undead (creating new types of undead is Nyx' passion) - a chained spirit. Using his closest friends as anchors and every warrior in the castle as soul power, Dioras bound Zev and prevented him from ascending. Instead, Zev became a demilich and was placed in a chapel to Nyx, unable to leave. Nyx also sent a handful of devils to watch over the place and report on how the new undead were doing.
Ileosa discovered Scarwall several years before she came to the Thunder Rift, and made peaceful contact with Zev. She learned of the Everdawn Pool and how to use it. On her own Ileosa had little chance of defeating Dioras and his undead minions, but she made a deal with Zev: if he shared his knowledge of the Everdawn Pool with her, she would free him when she was done with it and let him finish his ascension. The alternative was being stuck for an indeterminate term, so Zev agreed. Ileosa then scouted out surrounding lands and found the Thunder Rift, finding it populated, not particularly power, and with an easily manipulated king. She downed some Potions of Longevity to make her young again, and started her plan. Once she was queen she intended to make a permanent Teleportation Circle from the Rift to the Pool for easy access, set in motion her plan to make people sick and take their blood, and hopefully ascend. She had heard of how Zev's brutal and unsubtle plan of just taking blood from anyone he came across brought too much scrutiny on him, so she decided to try to do it a bit more circumspectly.
Then the PCs showed and immediately ruined everything. Now she runs off to Scarwall hoping the PCs will not follow. If not, she can lick her wounds and figure out another plan to ascend. If they do, she hopes the undead and the leftover Carnifex monster slumbering in the deepest parts of the Star Tower.
After Sabina goes down, the remaining guards retreat upstairs and attempt to block the door to the basement. the PCs D.Door past and find some of the nobles trying to hide behind curtains, cowering in corners and similar useless things, but Ileosa is nowhere to be seen. Othariel activates her halo and extends her wings and raises her silver arm and demands to know where Ileosa is. Othariel is used to commanding people, especially in the Rift, and though she tries to be kind and diplomatic, it comes out as an order, which everyone present is happy to comply with. They say she disappeared and they have no clue where. A Locate Person does not find her, so Ranya starts casting Discern Location.
Meanwhile, Othariel gives a speech about how Ilosa is bad news and does not have the best interests of the Rift in mind. The nobles don't really like Ileosa, but find her claims that the PCs are frauds and just after power immensely persuasive. Othariel now seems equally persuasive and she really does look like the old surviving statues of the Founder, right down to the silver arm (plus she's an elf and could still be alive), so they side with the elf. The current batch of nobles probably don't care more for Othariel's goody-goody nature any more than Ileosa's power hungry nature, but Othariel is here and less likely to behead them or stab them in the back. They for one welcome their new old overlord!
Discern Location reveals that Ileosa is at Castle Scarwall in the Adri Varma plateau. Without Arly with them on this adventure, they have no arcane support, scrying available and only Othariel's Boots of Teleportation or Wind Walk (which would take too long) as means of fast transportation that doesn't require waiting a day to load in new spells, so Ranya uses a Miracle to take them to the castle. The PCs look out over the desolate plain and the foreboding castle, get their wings out and fly over, and land in the courtyard. The creepy aura has zero effect on the PCs, since two of them are paladins, and Othariel has the Fearless Aura feat which extends her aura's range and makes people inside it immune to fear.
The Star Tower looks interesting, so they set about trying to get in there. This means they go to the clerical tower and find Zev and defeat him handily, even when I buffed Wail of the Banshee to do half damage on a successful save. Everyone casts Death Ward after the first wail, and the rest of the fight is short and brutal. Othariel's player remembered the version of the demilich from the Epic-Level Handbook, which I wish I had remembered as well so I could have used that one instead of the wimpy PF version. I still think the PCs would have won even if I useed the ELH version, because it isn't worth CR 29, no matter what the book says, but it would have been more of a challenge. As it was, Tomokato took him out with two arrows.
Sometimes I wish my players could, just once, not instinctively go straight to the most interesting monster in the place and kill it easily, bypassing everything else.
They pick up the remains of the skull and stuff it into a bag. They suspect Zev will reform in a day or so, so they want to have him on hand to regularly smash the skill until they find a more permanent solution.
The PCs then spend an hour or so trying to get into the Star Tower, with no luck. They decide there must be a key or something elsewhere in the tower. They quickly find the night hag, who seems impressed that they took out the demilich so easily, and she asks if they could help her. She explains that the place is under the influence of powerful undead spirits, spirits which she would like to harvest. She cannot weaken them on her own, but if the PCs do so she can snap up the spirits in special containers. This would remove a bunch of undead from the world, clean up the cursed area and make everyone happy. Plus it would make it easier for the PCs to get into the Star Tower and follow Ileosa. With misgivings, the PCs agree. Making small talk, the hag wonders how they are holding up in the oppressive, scary aura of Scarwall. "What aura?" they ask, genuinely puzzled. The hag leads the PCs to all the anchors, which die depressingly fast, as do a handful of Scarwall guards, juju zombies and the trench mist (which is now undead, because it makes way more sense that way). In fact, the only creature that did any notable harm was the super wraith, which managed to drain Othariel for 2 Constitution while it moaned about the PCs "not going to hurt him!"
Throughout their brief tour of the undead of Scarwall, Othariel suspects she is going to have an unpleasant revelation later, since she has noticed the symbol of the Order of Thunder on the armor of several bodies, including two of the anchors.
The session was rather short, due to kids and work and whatnot delaying things, so we should wrap up next time. Or, knowing my players, the session after that. Ileosa will have had an hour or two to prepare, which may prove unfortunate for the PCs.
| Phillip Gastone |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Oh dear! I just remembered that with no plucky 1st level PCs to go after him, Lamm will continue to rule over his Lambs and keep the fortuneteller's head in a box..
| Bjørn Røyrvik |
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Sounds like a good opportunity for some up and coming NPC heroes to gain some glory. If there is one thing my PCs have learned, especially the ones with domains, is that they can't do everything and it is often better for them to focus on the big stuff which most other people cannot handle and let lesser problems be handled by less capable people. Delegation and ignoring small issues are good lessons for Immortals.
And to look at it another way, by going straight after Ileosa they have prevented a horrible plague, the creation of the Gray Maidens and the cruel use Ileosa put them to, riots/civil war, and a full Everdawn Pool.
| Bjørn Røyrvik |
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Wasting little time, the PCs and their night hag guide make their way to the main hall, where the hag says the lynchpin of Castle Scarwall's curse resides. They buff themselves and enter. As Othariel had suspected, the chained spirit was none other than her son. The room was also filled with basically all the remaining corporeal undead of Scarwall - several Scarwall guards, the baykoks, the sayona, the banshee, the ash giant juju zombie, the mummy, and the fext. Initially willing to talk, he tells of his ill-fated expedition here and his abandonment of/by his patron Immortal and his mother. Othariel was shocked, almost insulted, at the notion that she wouldn't have helped her baby if he asked for it. Arguments that she literally wasn't in the same time frame as Dioras and technically not an Immortal yet/then(past)/then(future)/then(potentially different timeline) - time travel really needs some better adverbs - fell on deaf ears.
Dioras gets more and more agitated, shouting at Othariel for abandoning him to this fate, and everyone sees where this is headed and rolls for initiative.
The opening salvo of Searing Light and arrows kill the banshee and reduces the hit points of the giant and the sayona significantly, and the undead's attempts at harming the PCs are laughable - though Tomokato is a divine hunter paladin and thus not immune to fear, Othariel has the feat that extends her Aura of Courage and makes everyone inside immune to fear, so anything that tries to scare the PCs fails miserably. As a GM it's a constant issue for me to not metagame and have enemies automatically know what things are useless to try against the PCs, but I won the struggle once again. Sigh. The mummy casts Blade Barrier to cut Othariel off from the rest of the group. Ranya walks through and, unlike at the Pinnacle of Avarice, does not botch her Reflex save (it's somewhat nice, somewhat annoying to have PCs whose saves are basically 'Yes').
Othariel casts Holy Word and blinds and deafens a number of the enemy but only manages to kill the supposedly friendly night hag. "....ooops." I promptly forget about all the blind and deaf undead because I'm juggling a dozen enemies at once and had done a piss poor job of organizing their stats to make it easy to flip between. Tomokato is staggered by the Sayona's gaze, which really puts a damper on the heroes' damage output.
Dioras was last in the round and summons the rest of the undead in Scarwall - all the incorporeal ones and the nightshade. Now the room is filled with half a dozen wraits, 4 spectres, 4 greter shadows, a geist, a dance macabre, a nightwing, and Othariel regrets wasting her Holy Word since that would have easily eliminated most of the newcomers. On the bright side, space around the PCs is suddenly so crowded that not all the drainy undead can touch them, and even so the PCs have pretty good touch ACs. Even so they lose a bit of Charisma and Strength. A channel from Othariel and a Conflagration from Ranya weaken most of the undead, and in spite of a little more ability drain, the last round sees a Mass Heal, a channel and a full attack from the now un-staggered Tomokato, and the undead all die.
All the nightwing did was eat attacks and fail to do anything of note, and the mummy priest only managed to extend the life of himself and the nightwing by one round with his Harms.
Still, the PCs need to use some Restorations to fix their drained stats, and they start off towards the Star Tower. Othariel would like to immediately see if she can resurrect her son, but knows she has to wait at least until Ileosa is handled.
Now that the dimensional lock effect is gone, they can teleport inside, and Othariel's player is thrilled to learn she correctly guessed the Carnifex origin of the tower. They head quickly down to the bottom and find Ileosa standing on the edge of the Everdawn Pool, surrounded by minions/allies (drawn fronm a couple different books of the AP), including the pharmakos, the belier devil, a couple erinyes, the Mantis assassin and some of her minions, the black dragon, the akaruzug (a Carnifex monstrosity with a Carnifex attached), the scarlet walker, the immortal ichor, and something big and nasty they can't quite make out bubbling in the Pool.
Othariel charges in and hopes to attract the attention of everyone so she won't have to run around the room to catch them. ileosa buffs her minions with Haste and Bardic Performance. Tomokato then smites and shoots Ileosa, taking out all her Stoneskin pool (I've houseruled that Stoneskin gives a layer of protection similar to temporary HP), and much of her 300+ hp, and Ranya fires off her last Conflagration, taking out the would-be queen and all the lesser assassins as well as doing a lot of damage to everyone else. The rest of the combat was pretty pedestrian. The Pharmakos managed to inflict a little Strength damage and pain to Othariel, which was enough to ruin her attacks for a round, but once she was healed and had removed the Strength damage with LoH she was fine - which annoyed O's player because she realized she should have done that before attacking instead of after. A few Unholy Blights from the erinyes, some minor damage from the akaruzug but nothing dangerous until the enemies are dead.
The PCs then have a couple of rounds to recover before the havero emerges from the Everdawn Pool. Kazavon doesn't fit in my game, and since I had already decided the E.P. was an old Carnifex artifact, I wondered what might happen if a bunch of blood lay in a super-magical pool for many millennia without being used, and came to the conclusion that coalescing into a horrible super aberration was a good answer.
For a CR 24 creature it wasn't particularly impressive, and only got off two rounds before dying. It did manage to do a little acid damage since a DC 38 Reflex save is not a "fail only on a 1" even for my PCs - Tomokato rolled poorly on two saves and Ranya failed half. Even so, that was only 16d6 and 24d6 points of acid damage. I should have doubled damage from the monster to make it at least somewhat interesting.
We ended the session there since we were already about 30 minutes overtime. Next session: loot and getting the country back on track. As predicted, Othariel's player was not happy at the thought of having to spend years redoing all the work she already did 300+ years ago.
I may have to think of a different solution.
Conflagration
(Evocation) [fire, good]
Level: Clr/Or 9
Components: V,S,M,DF
Casting time: 1 standard action
Duration: instantaneous
Range: 0
Area: 100 feet +10 feet/level diameter
Saving throw: none
SR: yes
This spell is an improvement of the Flame Strike spell. You create a 10 foot high wave of flame that springs up from you and quickly flashes outward to the limit of the area. Everything flammable ignites. Paper, cloth, wood and similar items are immediately reduced to ash, while glass is instantly liquefied. Non-magical metals and stone are set aflame and melt in 1d4 rounds unless doused (complete submersion in water or similar equal to 10 times the mass of the metal in question). Magical metals and stones grow white hot, but are otherwise unaffected.
The fire created is both magical and holy, and even creatures normally resistant or immune to fire suffer full damage. You, and 1 creature per level you designate are immune to the damage. Any being caught in the area suffers 1d8 points of damage, up to a maximum of 20d8. Until the fires are doused of snuffed, affected creatures continue to suffer 1d8 points of damage per round. If left unattended, fires continue for 1 round per level.
The material component for this spell is a blessed burnable item (such as a candle or a vial of lamp oil etc.)
Note: this is slightly altered from the 2nd Edition version. I think I have to rework this conversion, since ignoring immunities and no save are a bit too good when combined.