Campaign Building Advice Request: Aroden ; Dominion of the Black ; (Strange Aeons, Gatewalkers, Doomsday Dawn, Stolen Fate)


Advice


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I'm building/designing a campaign and it's getting a bit cluttered/busy in my head. Reference material I don't have would be Very helpful, as would Any ideas, strategies on mixing/matching/transitioning the published material from which I'm drawing upon.

Thanks in advance to anyone who tosses out some advice / suggestions!

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The first bit of help is just my asking if there are any adventures or setting books that have material relevant to what I'm designing that I haven't yet considered.

Campaign Conceits / Purpose:
Homebrew-- Aroden didn't necessarily die 100 years ago; he vanished, lost forever. Many of his Disciples went insane, many lost their Divine magic (etc), but a tiny few were relatively okay. I never intended doing anything else there; it just sounded more interesting to play over-the-table if that were the background instead of canon.

But I have a player who built an Oracle getting his power from Aroden (or somewhere, mwahahaha) who is obsessed with finding his lost god. Alas, that was not the campaign I had designed, so it was just that PC's background that we can play with a little from time to time in our current campaign -- which will be wrapping up in another six or seven Levels (I think they're 13th Level now.) But I've had SOO much fun designing Aroden background stuff that I want my next campaign to be Levels 1-20 "Where's Aroden" -- which is actually a little more like "What Happened to Joe's PC After Our Last Campaign Ended and His 20th Level PC Has Vanished, Too."

What I ended up concluding (while working through this Thread with y'all's help) is that Aroden was tracking down some Dark Tapestry stuff and got lost deep, deep in the space of Azathoth and Carcosa and etc.

New Campaign, Level One:
The PCs will awaken with no memories and play through the first volume of Strange Aeons, "In Search of Sanity." I'll tweak it a little bit, but it pretty well works for my needs almost exactly 'as-is.'

Instead of the Count having used the PCs from Strange Aeons, they are amnesiacs (and possibly insane without knowing) because they are Gatewalkers from that AP, which I'm having to significantly wrestle around with so it works for my needs here.

Finally, the bigger plot, beyond the problems faced in the opening adventure, are from Stolen Fate -- I'm reworking the overall background to tie in with my little Aroden-Dark-Tapestry thing.

Coincidentally, I was rereading the PF2 Playtest adventures Doomsday Dawn and it seems to fit perfectly for what I need, bringing in 'The Dominion of the Black' to the mix.

And also, at some point I will have the PCs play through the genius adventure "And Madness Follows" from Dungeon 134 -- it also fits very well (and quite frankly could have been a much better volume 2 of Strange Aeons than the one we got.)

But all in all, I'm starting to really wrestle with what I will be designing and putting together as a 1-20 campaign, starting with amnesia in a Ustalav asylum and the end of which sees the 20th Level PCs in the Dark Tapestry having learned the nature of the Gatewalkers, solved the Stolen Fate Harrow-Deck-Plot, defeated a thread of The Dominion of the Black getting Aucturn to beat-up Golarion, rescuing the old PC (from my current campaign) out in Carcosa or somewhere, and solving the mystery of what happened to Aroden 100 years ago.

So again, ALL ideas, suggestions, thoughts, bits of advice, whatever on the nature of the published material I'm using -- plus anything else you can think of that may fit in with what I'm trying to do but hasn't come to me yet -- is Very well appreciated!


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My first reaction is this sounds like a legendary campaign, truly epic in scope.

Since you are planning so far in advance you have the opportunity to drop hints about Aroden’s fate right from the start for some awesome foreshadowing. So my advice is be very clear about Aroden’s backstory and record it in great detail so that you can drop hints on the fly if the PC’s investigations don’t proceed as anticipated. Don’t worry about giving away the big reveal early on, my experience is that even if the PCs guess correctly they will never be sure and in a campaign that long they will end up second guessing themselves many times.


Question: do your players read the forums? I have some ideas but I don’t want your players to see them.


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You can post here -- I'd love anything you can suggest.

They're not so big on The Boards, here. My friend Mike DMs Play-by-Post and browses the Forums. He and I have both been playing since 1981, though, so neither of us are ever looking for Spoilers and, when we accidentally bump into one, frankly, we're both such jaded Grognards that we've already seen everything in-play, done every roleplay encounter, etc., -- one little Spoiler is just not gonna kill either of us.

But I do post under my Alias of "Hiding DM" instead of 'W E Ray' when I do these Threads.

As far as the rest of the group, I'm not really worried. In the campaign that we're playing now, the PCs have already gotten some clues or hints as to Aroden's fate -- though again, the campaign is not intended to be an Aroden campaign. It's just one player's individual roleplay journey. Unbeknownst to that player, my intention is to have him discover a trail of breadcrumbs (so to speak) of Aroden leading deep into the Dark Tapestry. Around 20th Level after they've finished our current campaign. Now, PCs sometimes go right instead of left, and that is still several Levels away. But my guess is that the Oracle of Aroden will *retire* heading off into The Dark Tapestry. We may even have a game session or two where the PCs -- at 21st or 22nd Level -- go with him for one adventure. I have no idea. And the other PCs in the group will finish their 20th Level PCs and retire based on their own stuff.

And I'm designing the next campaign. "The Search for Joe's Old PC Lost in The Dark Tapestry While Searching for Aroden." Or whatever you want to call it. So the Players will have a tiny bit of information about Where the campaign is going. Or Will They?!?!

I'm not planning on telling them the title or inspiration behind the campaign. Their PCs are going to wake up "In Search of Sanity" with amnesia -- find Gatewalker tattoos on them -- in time get Harrow Cards from Stolen Fate magically appearing on their chests or foreheads as they sleep -- learn of The Dominion of the Black -- etc., and etc., until at last they learn of this famous NPC Oracle of Aroden (Joe's old PC) who went to find Aroden in The Dark Tapestry, and they have to go find him -- and Aroden. And I think that'll be a memorable reveal, several Levels in, or at least several Sessions in the campaign -- that the latter half of the campaign is to find Joe's old character.

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Again, I'm just at the beginnings of designing this. I've got months to work through it as the group in our current game are only 13th Level. (The Oracle of Aroden is on the verge of learning of Aroden's war against Ibdurrengian and will visit the Layer of The Abyss (I'm sure) where they will have to fight Ibdurrengian's Ghost!

So I have time to find connections in Stolen Fate and Doomsday Dawn; I have time to create tie-ins between Gatewalkers and The Dominion of the Black. And time to find places "In Search of Sanity" where I can drop little clues of the bigger picture.

But it's obviously important to start Early!


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I was thinking you should have an overarching theme for this campaign. The first thing that came to mind is the duality of existence where many aspects of reality have two parts: light and dark, good and evil, chaos and order, life and death, male and female etc.

How this applies to Aroden is that when he ventured into the Dark Tapestry in the hope of uncovering the nature of reality he discovered things, terrible dangerous things, forbidden knowledge that was kept locked away for good reason. This knowledge was so powerful and profound it didn’t just drive Aroden to the edge of insanity it literally ripped him into two entirely different opposing beings. This is the real reason he can’t be contacted and is believed to be dead, he now exists as two new gods, one lawful good, the other lawful evil (and possibly one male and one female if you like).

Your Oracle PC unknowingly worships one half of the split god, but Aroden needs to be made whole again. That is the quest the Oracle embarked upon when he disappeared and that is the quest the new PCs will ultimately find themselves on. They must journey to the Dark Tapestry and fulfil the prophecy.

“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
And that which died shall forever be undone,
Unless the discordant two reconcile to one.”

Dark Archive

Boomerang Nebula wrote:

I was thinking you should have an overarching theme for this campaign. The first thing that came to mind is the duality of existence where many aspects of reality have two parts: light and dark, good and evil, chaos and order, life and death, male and female etc.

How this applies to Aroden is that when he ventured into the Dark Tapestry in the hope of uncovering the nature of reality he discovered things, terrible dangerous things, forbidden knowledge that was kept locked away for good reason. This knowledge was so powerful and profound it didn’t just drive Aroden to the edge of insanity it literally ripped him into two entirely different opposing beings. This is the real reason he can’t be contacted and is believed to be dead, he now exists as two new gods, one lawful good, the other lawful evil (and possibly one male and one female if you like).

Your Oracle PC unknowingly worships one half of the split god, but Aroden needs to be made whole again. That is the quest the Oracle embarked upon when he disappeared and that is the quest the new PCs will ultimately find themselves on. They must journey to the Dark Tapestry and fulfil the prophecy.

“That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die.
And that which died shall forever be undone,
Unless the discordant two reconcile to one.”

I like the sound of that.

Maybe they can bump into a LG (or even a CG) version of Zon-Kuthon / Dou-Bral while they are at it.


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Aroden on PFWiki for lore. His role is the lost god of humanity.
For what it's worth he could be in The Dreamlands, the Empty Court in Axis, a floating statue-corpse in the far astral, or perhaps the Starstone still has a shard of his soul. There are two references in the above lore that have shards of Aroden. Once you know that backtracking his locale would be the natural course of action.
The key theme of Lovecraftian space is the tacit supremacy of otherness and the innate rejection/fear of that concept by humans. It also means if Aroden got entangled in that he's now someone's lunch buffet. Yog-Sothoth probably knows and may have been petitioned for someone's permanent hiatus, exit stage right.


amethal wrote:


I like the sound of that.

Maybe they can bump into a LG (or even a CG) version of Zon-Kuthon / Dou-Bral while they are at it.

YES!!! Great idea!!!

I was thinking it would be kind of cool if Zon-Kuthon was evil Aroden but I’m not sure how that would fit into existing Pathfinder canon.


I have Zon Kuthon as kind of an 'opposite' or 'anti' Aroden: Aroden on The Material Plane got the Starstone and became a god; Dou Bral on The Shadow Plane got a Cenobite Box (Dark Tapestry / Count Ranalc connections) and became The Midnight Lord.

I do have quite a few connections between Count Ranalc (First World Elder touching The Dark Tapestry and bringing Aklo to evil Fey), and Dou Bral tracking Count Ranalc and getting too close to The Dark Tapestry (finding the Cenobite Box), and Aroden tracking Count Ranalc and then, instead of committing ritual suicide 100 years ago, just getting lost in the space between the stars.


Over the next few weeks I'm going to be rereading Gatewalkers and Stolen Fate to find where to tinker with the Gatewalker events to make them in line with Dark Tapestry & Lost Aroden storylines, and same with the Harrow Cards and changing Fate / rewriting Time and Space for the same storyline. The theme and Flavor and even quite a bit of Crunch from those two APs just feel so perfect for what I intend to create. And The Doomsday Dawn playtest adventures, or rather, the threads that connect those adventures, seem to be exactly what I need as a source for BBEGs and villains as my Level 1-20 Campaign moves forward. I swear, if I could start the group tomorrow as 1st Level amnesiacs in the Strange Aeons adventure "In Search of Sanity" tomorrow and get this campaign underway immediately I would.

But alas, our current campaign is only well into 13th Level and the PC obsessed with finding his lost god won't even discover Aroden's in The Dark Tapestry for another four or five Levels.

But I am really enthused about this next campaign.

Please, keep all your ideas and suggestions and thoughts coming! Much appreciated!


If you are anticipating the PCs going into the Dark Tapestry then you might like to blow the dust off some old Lovecraft literature and read it again.

I’ve always found that helps my creative process.


Conspiracy

Pharasma's lost divinity and divine shell is held in the Eye of Abendego (it even has the same initials as the Eye of Aroden, too coincidental if you ask me...)
And what better place to chain a god than with an immense island chain... and that's why it's called The Shackles. Held in an chain of divinely-wrought creation and shielded by a perpetual storm...
Just another coincidence that it formed just as Aroden 'disappeared' and Pharasma's most devout seers and followers went 'blind and insane'...


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I like the conspiracy theory but alas it can't work at my table.... When Varisia was first published in RotRL and the location of Windsong Abbey was introduced, it felt to me like a cheesy gimmick to 'provide an answer for' when PCs want to worship a Core deity but their god ain't got a rep in Sandpoint: Here's Windsong Abbey. It was always grossly incongruous to me. I ignored (didn't even acknowledge) its existence for years until a PC wanted to be a Monk and we handwaved he was from there.

I asked in the James Jacobs Thread many years ago if Windsong Abbey were indeed just a gimmick so that, back when the setting was only a few months old, PCs could pick any Core deity and have a place to be from. He said he always wanted a "United Nations" building so he created Windsong Abbey. I felt strongly that such a place had to be in Absalom and I was back to square one just effectively treating it like it doesn't even exist.

When Shattered Star came out, though, and the chapter "Beyond the Doomsday Door" -- it put a dungeon of Groetus underneath W.A. dedicated to Groetus that the Clerics and Monks protected.

It finally gave me the answer for *my* games, and makes Aroden and Pharasma friends.... In my game, 600+ years ago that Cult of Groetus was kicking butt and the Varisians under Pharasma & Desna just could not defeat the Cult of Groetus -- and their evil machinations were coming to pass. Meanwhile, way out in Absalom, the top-dog high priest of Aroden got a vision from his god to Plane Shift himself and a small army of clerics and warpriests up to Aroden's palace in The Astral where Aroden would then Plane Shift them back to Golaria where they could join a war against Groetus. So the combined forces of Clerics of Aroden, Pharasma and Desna defeated the cult of Groetus and built Windsong Abbey above the dungeon to guard it.

So in my game, Windsong Abbey is Pharasma, Desna, Aroden and that's all. (Though as DM I could always retroactively add Sarenrae.)

And ever since then, W.A. has indeed shown up in my games as that, so I can't really use Pharasma vs Aroden. (But I do really like your conspiracy theory.)


What I did (spoiler, I really like Nocticula) is this:

--Aroden noted that the dark tapestry f@**ed him. At the end of his prophecies, tentacles fall, everything ends. So he needs to unmade prophecy.

--For which he has to unmake himself

--But if anyone know that this is what happened, a kind of contingency activates, and tentacles fall everything dies happens. So he has to disappear, and not by his own, or any deities hand.

--He also has to die, but his spark has to survive, where there is no light.

--his death must stay a secret for 100 years

--No man nor god may kill him

Aroden negotiates with Nocticula, about taking on a hit on himself. She agrees to kill him, having had some of her own run ins with the dark tapestry. She kills him... very pleseantly, in a way they bond. Aroden is part of why she can change alignments as she rises.
With his dying breath, Aroden, who knows that the Worldwound will happen, asks for a hit on Deskari or Baphomet.
Nocticula has a very very secretive divine child from killing Aroden.

If the players figure this out, they risk endangering creation, and making his sacrifice useless.

If Nocticula, demonlord of assassinations, thinks (perhaps wrongly) that the players figured it out, she will come after them hard.


Thanks Mightypion!

This actually gives me something I can use in case I need it. In my head Aroden is just 'lost' out in The Dark Tapestry. But. If I need to come up with some specific description for my PCs. Or if I need some other specific information to give to the PCs -- you know, once they get there -- I can use this.

I'd likely use Nocticula since, well, it's your idea and I ought to use your choice for this Abyssal baddie instead of my picking another at random. But you know how fluid Campaigns can be; I may not have any avenue to use Nocticula when the PCs go way left instead of right and then, all the sudden, I need to make it Graz'zt or Abraxas or even Count Ranalc. In any case, if I need something like this in a few months, I'll be all over your post.

Par Joakimson:
As it turns out, my current Homegame -- with the PC Oracle of Aroden -- is the 'Concordance of The Abyss' that I tried to run as a PbP with, among others, your Par Joakimson. I was always so disgruntled about effectively losing that PbP just from one mishandled encounter / mishandled logistic or miscommunication. I so desperately wanted to DM that campaign and thought I could handle a PbP even with my work schedule. Alas it was not meant to be. But of course, the next Homegame I started, yeah: Concordance of the Abyss.

Ah neat, You and I were also in 'The Damned Troop' where your Rorek Thricedamned adventured very briefly with my Portia Porphyria-Jeggare.


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the scene:

The queen of midnight eternal looks you straight in the eyes

You wish to know? But do you? Very well you will, you will know why you must yield to me

There is darkness, not unlike the one in Alyushinyrra.

You look up at your crossed legs, it would seem your are setting, and you can seen the molten iron from your hooves. It is clear that you are Nocticula, this is one of her memories.

Then, you see Aroden. In the flesh, with a weary expression.

You wish to talk, god of mankind You hear yourself speaks, your own inflection filling every single word with double or even triple meanings.

Lady in Shadow Aroden answers

I have need of... Dying. And it must be a secret.
The god of mankind answers.

The dark tapestry? Prophecies that bind not just you, but all of mankind to a fate not of your choosing? You speak, each word calculated, calibrated.

Aroden looks you in the eye as you met his gaze.

I am glad I dont need to explain too much.
He says

If I wanted to kill you, lord of mankind, I would have made you think that only your self sacrifice can save mankind from destruction. I do vow that I have not set such plans in motion. You hear yourself say, for a moment, Aroden looks surprised

It appears I have chosen well. Have you divined why I need to die, at the hand of neither man nor god, and in secret?
The god of mankind asks

I have not, for... I am quite aware of... bidirectional knowledge, and make use of this myself. I seek to limit my interface with the dark tapestry to a... tastefull minimum. But I get the gist. How long must your secret be kept?
You hear yourself speak, in her voice

One hundred years and one hundred days
The god of mankind answers

Done
You say with a finality that is not yours

A request though, Lady in Shadows. If I disappear, Deskari will come. He himself will not be an issue, but he may bring... allies of a sort, more clever demons who seek to exploit him. Deal with these in my... permanent absence.

Done
You do not yet know who Deskaris partner in invading Golarion will be. Perhaps, if you are lucky, your old foe Socothbenoth. If you are unlikely, something ugly like Mazzmezz. But on balance, some third tier demonlord like Baphomet. Yes, he is quite likely.

When? You hear yourself ask

Whenever you are ready Aroden answers

Let us begin then. You wish that something of you remains, do you not? You rise, and approach him. The short flare of hope betrays the god of mankinds answer

Done You say
Done and Done and Done You intone as you take his hand and draw him towards you, your wings closing around him.

The vision ends

You know too much, what you know could... invalidate his end. Simply yield to me, I will keep you sequestered until the alloted time has run off, you will not age, not be concious, and free to go once this secret... is no longer required to be secret.


You could have Aroden leave clues behind for his disciples to follow and find him. Unfortunately, some nefarious entity has destroyed the clues, so the PCs will have to find a way into the Dimension of Time so that they can witness Aroden in the past and see what clues he left behind.

You could run the Dimension of Time like some weird mega-dungeon where a few of the rooms hold scenes from Aroden’s past (but most are just really hazardous). The PCs have to negotiate the mega-dungeon, gather and interpret the clues, and then use them to find Aroden somewhere in the Dark Tapestry.


There is definitely going to be a need for a mechanism 'to get to' The Dark Tapestry close to the "Lost PC (now NPC) who went searching for Aroden." Depending on the gameplay and roleplay of the first half of the campaign (Levels 1-12ish), and where it takes the game, I can see The Time Dimension being that (though I don't like at all the canonical description (forests, etc) and would change it to conform to something I like). But of course, it's also very likely that I'll just have PCs who, in-game over several Levels, have focused so much of their attention and energy and enjoyment to Gatewalker and Stolen Fate leads and that I'll find specific mechanisms from those two APs to use. Hmm, although thinking about those two APs, it may be that The Time Dimension is at least tacitly already there. I've been thinking so much about the first half of the upcoming campaign for design that I haven't really researched material for inspiration for the second half.

Again, BIG Thanks for sharing your ideas!


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The Dimension of Time is so mysterious that you could hand wave the canonical jungle description as the perspective of a single traveler following their own timeline.


The other interesting thing about the Dimension of Time is that the Necronomicon is one of the known ways to access it, which ties in nicely with any Dark Tapestry related plot.


Ah goodness, yes. I will take a long look at the Necronomicon article in "What Grows Within" and likely even the adventure by John Compton since it's part of the Strange Aeons AP as well as the one in which I'm starting this campaign. I am certain I can find a connection and -- with some thought -- tie-ins with Gatewalkers and Stolen Fate. Thank you very much!

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