(Post-Rusthenge Spoilers) Where to find a pool of molten dawnsilver?

[Virellius]

So, my party completed Rusthenge. Everybody loved it and they want to keep going! So: bringing them to Magnimar to meet with Sheila Heidmarch about what the hell they have in their possession, they will discover via some rituals or some such how it must be destroyed. Step one is washing it in nectar from a peach plucked from an immortal arboreal (we're going to Tian Xia, baby!).

Step two is dipping it into a pool of molten dawnsilver. Now, the easy option is just 'melt a bunch of it' but that's boring. Where in Golarion do we think would have reason to have a pool of molten mithral? First thought is Highhelm, but is that too obvious?

My goals are to show off a lot of Golarion if I can. I thought perhaps Kyonin, since elves have an association with dawnsilver as well, but is there anywhere more fitting or more interesting?

I had also considered Nex, since perhaps the alchemists there have something going on that needs liquid metal. Anyone got any better ideas?

[keftiu]

Jinin feels like a likely bet!

[Virellius]

keftiu wrote:

Jinin feels like a likely bet!

Well, since they're doing Tian Xia for the first step I was trying to maybe avoid the general region for the second... Hrm.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Might I suggest the Five Kings Mountains? Plenty of metal deposits and volcanoes (and/or dragons)!

[Virellius]

Archpaladin Zousha wrote:

Might I suggest the Five Kings Mountains? Plenty of metal deposits and volcanoes (and/or dragons)!

Highhelm was the thought, yeah. Time to review my Highhelm source book! :D

Maybe I can just rip a battlemap from the Dwarf AP too, hmm...

[The Raven Black]

Maybe they would need also/instead to bathe it in the waters at the very bottom of Gorum's Tankard in the Lands of the Linnorm Kings.

Now, how the place has been affected by Gorum's death and the Godsrain is anyone's guess.

[James Jacobs]

Some idle ruminations from the guy who developed said adventure...

Spoiler:

The destruction methods for THAT ITEM are meant to gatelock it to very high level play, so my suggestion would be to have the quest to locate and travel to and secure access to said pool of molten dawnsilver be something significant that becomes the goal of multiple levels of play. A "chunk" of dawnsilver (about what you'd get by scooping something out of such a pool and letting it cool) is worth 500 gp, which equates to a level 8 item, so you want to grant access to that pool to your PCs at some point where being able to farm that stuff is less destructive to the economy. You can also build in elements of "dawnsilver harvested vanishes soon after it's taken" or put some powerful creatures in there as guardians who the PCs must negotiate with in order to use the pool (and promise not to steal from it), but all of that, to me, suggests that the earliest you'd want to give the PCs access to a pool of molten dawnsilver would be, at a minimum, 14th level, since 14th level consumable items cost more than a single chunk of dawnsilver. Of course, the higher level you go, the less you have to worry about the PCs harvesting dawnsilver... and you can also minimize that by setting the size of the molten pool so that there's a hard limit as to how much dawnsilver they can harvest (using the wealth by level guidelines as examples).

All of that's a long way of saying a pool of molten dawnsilver would be an enormously valuable resource, one that could fund an entire nation and draw enemy armies like flies. It's something that, in my take, would not exist anywhere on Golarion, but would be something that the PCs would have to travel far to find. My suggestion here is that they'd need to travel to somewhere dangerous and high level on the Plane of Metal to find it. Alternately, they might need to travel to Elysium (since dawnsilver has ties to elves, and Elysium is where the elven gods live) to dicker with the elven pantheon for access to a primal source of dawnsilver.

To me, a logical conclusion to this whole plot to destroy THAT ITEM would be for the PCs to face an undead or just-resurrected version of the creature THAT ITEM came from as part of the final destruction, which would be a delightful 20th level finale!

[Virellius]

James Jacobs wrote:

Some idle ruminations from the guy who developed said adventure...

** spoiler omitted **...

Oh this is all so very good! I had planned on making the entire process be a loooong form adventure, so this is really good. I'd considered the Plane of Metal briefly but hadn't even thought of Elysium. One of my players is a Vindicator of Ketephys so that's actually VERY fitting and good. The chance to potentially meet her deity or at least a herald of him would be a fantastic plotline... but then again we also have a Talos Metal Kineticist. Perhaps they travel to Elysium and bargain for the location of the pool which is kept on the Plane of Metal? Get both of them very personally invested. This is a great lead, thank you so much!

On that note,

Spoilers for Rusthenge:

while still being very vague, for step 3, are we talking a remorseful demon on the level of perhaps Arushalae? I wouldn't exactly consider Nocticula remorseful and she's also so far beyond being just a demon now anyway, right? My table -loves- Wrath of the Righteous so somehow incorporating Aru into it would be a really nice cameo but also I wouldn't want to just have her show up and make it easy. Does she even count as a demon anymore on a metaphysical level? Maybe use her as a lead to point them in the direction of maybe another demon on the brink of changing their ways?

[James Jacobs]

For step 3, it would need to be someone more powerful; someone who if the PCs fought them would be at least a Moderate challenge.

Spoiler:

Arushalae still counts as a demon even after her redemption. Depending on how powerful she got in your Wrath game, having her show up as a cameo role would be cool, though, but you still want to make getting her to cry over the horn be a challenge. If she's an ally who would want to help the PCs, then maybe they need to rescue her first because the forces arrayed against them who want to prevent the destruction know that they'd go for her tears and they tried to do an end run around it by catching her. Or even killing her—having the PCs have to resurrect her or the like is a pretty potent high level plot.

[Virellius]

James Jacobs wrote:

For step 3, it would need to be someone more powerful; someone who if the PCs fought them would be at least a Moderate challenge.

** spoiler omitted **

This is great, thank you! Will absolutely be considering this. They're currently still very early in finding out what even constitutes 'step one of the process' and my extremely proactive and lovably foolish players are currently discussing a safe way to pay a visit to speak with

Spoilers:

Dispater as he was responsible for severing the horn in the first place. I can't imagine The Lord of the Second wants more of their city to be turned to rust in the event of a revival. On that note, I did have another lore/setting question. I was browsing some old APs and happened upon the Ferrugons in I think one of the Hell's Rebels bestiaries; I know a lot of the old fiends haven't been reprinted in 2e but would it be safe to assume they may still exist? If so, how would they factor into the situation in Dis considering that Xar-Azmak was responsible for turning a portion to rust during his attack, are the Ferrugons helping to remedy the situation or are they maybe looked upon as potential threats by the infernal population?

EDIT: Also, in the event that Arushalae did die, what happens to the soul of an ascended demon? I imagine Desna would have a pretty strong claim on her, right?

[James Jacobs]

Creatures that rise from mortal souls, like demons or angels or the like, are already judged and do not go to the boneyard. When they die, their physical bodies decay (unless they have supernatural death things going on in their stats) and their souls accrete into the physicality of an associated outer plane, becoming quintessence that makes up those planes (in a parallel way to how mortal creature remains break down into matter that then becomes a part of the world, be it soil or fossils or oil or whatever), and all that quintessence is eventually recycled back into Creation's Forge to provide the building blocks for brand new souls.

There's not really an "afterlife" for demons or angels or the like, because they're already there and generally immortal, barring death from violence or misadventure or the like.

The amount of time it takes for a dead demon or whatever to be fully "recycled" and thus beyond the point of being resurrected or otherwise brought back to life varies on all sorts of circumstances that basically boil down to "if the GM wants them to be able to be brought back, and if the spell in question can bring back someone who's been dead for a short enough period of time that they can still be affected by said spell, then there's still time."

[Mammoth Daddy]

Love seeing more Rusthenge advice