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Figured we'd announce it first on the forums:
NEW PROJECT BEGINS!
Name: The Sky Scions
Projected Schedule: 2-3 marathons per year
Launch Marathon: Spring 2025
End Marathon: c. Spring 2027
Party: All dwarves of Clan Firecask
The Scions: The characters are all related to one another, a family tree represented by players out-of-game who will swap in and out of the party, including new cameos from members dating back to 1987 when OAD was founded. Your great-grandparent in-game could be sitting to your right at our actual out-of-game table, and so forth.
What's New: For years we have received messages asking about which optional rules we would play with if we decided to stray from strict adherence to the core rules set. This project will break from decades of OAD tradition and employ an optional rule from inside Pathfinder 2E.
What's Also New: For years we have received messages about which house rules, if any, OAD would employ if we ever chose to. This project will have a single house rule that should be interesting -- it's something we've always wanted to see. We must be getting old.
What's Fun: For starters, attempting to play on-location in a cave beneath the mountains of Pennsylvania.
Guests: We'll give a couple of teasers. Fellow Eagles fan Joe O'Brien from Glass Cannon will join us here and there, along with Brandon Gillam of Runehammer.
There's more, but we'll wait for the official introduction blog.
I think the last video I watched by Order of the Amber Die were just smaller bits from The Ruins of Azlant campaign. I agree with Gournandez, this should be fun to play and to watch!
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Glad everyone is as excited as we are about this one! We started creating a thread like this maybe a couple of projects back, and it’s great way to provide little updates or feedback from our journey that also stays permanently here for GMs to use for their own playthroughs.
One of the first challenges I faced while prepping this AP was the opening itself. The AP leans mostly toward having your players be a party of visitors to Highhelm, and doesn’t expect them to be a party of all dwarves.
For example, the first volume (Mantle of Gold) has the PCs wandering around the city of Highhelm, with the goal of building their reputation before the Clan Tolorr festival. But what if the PCs have already lived in the city for a hundred years or more?
I created a series of scenes providing extra motivation for the PCs to enhance the current place of Clan Firecask. Most of these scenes involved Perill Firecask, our clan leader from the sourcebook, reemphasizing to us the importance of the Tolorr festival and of maintaining our Goldhilt status. What makes this festival different? Well, there are a lot of changes taking place in Highhelm, starting with the construction of Torag’s Shield, which is not only a controversial citywide construction project as described in the Highhelm sourcebook, but has also placed economic and industrial strain on the economy of Highhelm. As Perhill explained, economic shifts in the city can often provide opportunities, especially if we can coincide this with the release of our new beer. We have been strategizing the release of Battle Axe ever since our clan began perfecting the recipe two decades ago. The Tolorr festival, the upcoming basilisk championship hosted in Highhelm, and the upheaval provided by Torag’s Shield have combined to provide us the perfect time to release Battle Axe. First, we needed to reinforce our reputation and put Clan Firecask at the forefront of popularity in Highhelm.
To do this, Perhill spent money from the clan’s coffers to secure us a room at Zelgin’s tavern in the King’s Heart district. But why not start in King’s Crown where our own clan hall is? Well, as Perhill explained, we often get a reputation of having “soft hands,” a Goldhilt clan from the top of the city that doesn’t know how to get dirty with the rest of Highhelm. We need to get down and work among the people of Stonebreach, the Depths, and anywhere else in the city that people might not expect Clan Firecask to show up and assist.
We played the first marathon a couple of months ago so a few words might be different, but it opened with something like this:
(the PCs stood before Perhill Firecask, who sat on a throne made from firkins of ages past, each container once holding a famous beer from clan history)
“The king’s construction project has taxed almost every resource in Highhelm, and it’s a great chance to build our reputation before the launch of Battle Axe. If that means they need help in the forges, I expect to hear about how well you handled the heat. If they need help in the mines, I want to hear how surprised they were that Clan Firecask could swing a pick. If you just end up handing out samples of Battle Axe, I want them saying that the reason they finished their workday on the Shield was the quality of our new beer. When Clan Tolorr sends us an invite to the upcoming festival, I want it to come complete with gold chairs for us to sit in. We need to get out there are remind the city why Firecask is a name that’s steeped in legend!”
At this point we shifted to the opening scene at Zelgin’s with the introduction to Ria, a key NPC, and Sky King’s Tomb had begun!