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Am I missing something? How did KoBA accidentally make a Macguffin fit for book 6? He left some ants behind when he was defeated by Jatemebe, and they somehow, without further guidance, created an egg that is powerful enough to twist fate, steal shadows, create a surreal fairyland, and birth a Kaiju? I assume he didn't do all of this on purpose, otherwise we'd see him have more Vesicant Eggs hidden elsewhere.
And the Vesicant Guardian thing at the end comes out of nowhere, no references or hints beforehand.
In all honesty, Book 6 feels like it's a mess/missing something. Was there a plot thread that was dropped during production? Was the Egg originally created by something else? There's no reason the egg should be powerful enough to make a Book 6 boss. In fact, let's look at wheat the PCs accomplish each book.
Book 1: Save the School
Book 2: Save the Town
Book 3: Save a region of the Sodden Land from a marauding cult.
Book 4: Stop Mazli from becoming an evil conquering empire/ help a god ascend/ find a mythical city.
Book 5: Save another PLANET from one of Jatembe's biggest foes, and bring the Old Mage back to Golarion.
Book 6: Save the school/town again?
Book 6 should have been the epic capstone to this adventure, make the players feel like the Warriors of old. Instead they get a whimsical fairyland adventure before fighting KoBA's final form.
So what am I missing? If I'm not missing anything, how can I make the Egg seem a bigger threat than KoBA's soul cannons were? How can I make Book 6 as epic as the books leading up to it?
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That “whimsical fairyland” feeling is them trying to emulate certain African mythic storytelling traditions.
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I get that, but without any narrative reason that explains the tiny world, I'm worried my players will feel less like they're heros of a classic fable, and more like they're on a Wonderland drug trip, complete with a talking cat and a red queen.
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I get that, but without any narrative reason that explains the tiny world, I'm worried my players will feel less like they're heros of a classic fable, and more like they're on a Wonderland drug trip, complete with a talking cat and a red queen.
Wow, sounds wonderful. Now I've GOT to play this.
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Having finished running the whole AP as a solo game (don’t ask - we played nearly every day for 5 months), I will say after a bit of time for reflection that book 6 was my least favorite overall, and is a bit of a disappointing note for the adventure’s end.
The beginning of the first chapter has a lot of holes. You arrive back at the Magaambya and just wait around to give time for all these familiar faces to come see your ceremony, and then you have to spend time trying to impress them for some reason. But all the while, you KNOW Koride has the Vesicant Egg and that it’s dangerous, but clearly no one’s doing anything about it since it turns out she and a few of your former classmates have just been chilling at a building the whole time. I rewrote all of this to have the search for Koride take place immediately, and moved the ceremony to the end of the book. This was my player’s favorite chapter of the book, especially for the fights against former friends.
Chapter 2, while a great concept, just feels pretty out of place in terms of the overall story. It was hard to encourage investment in all these new tiny factions who are totally new to the story and have no bearing on anything that came before or after.
And chapter 3… had so much potential. Saving the Magaambya from a kaiju-sized writhing larva should be SO cool. But as is, it’s a linear series of non-stop encounters, most of which revolving around large quantifies of the least interesting variety of high-level enemy I’ve ever seen. The wereants are painstakingly dull. My player was also pretty bummed there was no part where you actually go up against the larva itself - it’s just there as set dressing.
Still, we ultimately loved the AP as a whole, and wish we could relive it all over again. But if I had a second chance, I would make a lot of revisions to book 6.
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Thanks for the tip on Chapter 3. Yeah there are cool moments like when all the mages are summoned, but a bunch of repetitive fights against unimaginative enemies? Yeah, that's going to get reworked.
Ooh! I got it!
Chapter one stays as is, with the exception of the ceremony.
Cut out Chapter 2, and put in something similar right before the final boss fight.
Replace some of the Wereants in Chapter 3 with further Unshadowed NPCs the players have met.
After the Larva is trapped by the magical net, Jatembe gives the PCs Bunta, his magical soul boat. They go into the larva's soul, free everyone's shadows, and then fight the 3 bosses after they're ejected.
PCs are named the magic warriors; The End.
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With all that, the players aren't just stopping a Kaiju with 10th-level spells, they're also stopping a hive-mind of powerful spellcasters. Seems like an appropriate 6th book threat.
That “whimsical fairyland” feeling is them trying to emulate certain African mythic storytelling traditions.
I was gonna say the same thing. I'm pretty sure it's also the first time Pathfinder has used the "people get shrunk to the size of ants" type plot.