Foreshadowing in Rise of the Runelords (Pathfinder)

[Ponderthought]

Hello! It's been ages since the last time I was active on these forms, but I have been presented with some dilemmas with a game I am intending to run. I'll hide them below, as they're will be some minor (ok major) spoilers.

While I haven't read the actual AP all the way through, I have a pretty good idea of what happens in each book and I'm wondering how I can keep up the horror themes from the first three books in the last half of the AP, particularly in Fortress of the Stone Giants. Secondly, I've seen that monsters from the cthulhu mythos become a bigger and bigger deal as things progress, and I'm wonder how I can foreshadow such things alongside the foreshadowing i'm intending to do for Big K himself. The lovecraft connections seem pretty important, so i'd rather not just spring it on my players.

[Keneth]

Where's the dilemmas? A dilemma is a problem with two equally bad solutions. :smalltongue:

Overall, the horror theme gets pretty hard to maintain. It's hard enough in the first three books, since this is D&D after all, but by the time the characters are 10th level and above, trying to creep them out seems kinda moot. They're far too powerful to be upset by typical sights of horror. Nevertheless, I still do my best to unnerve the players, even if it's unlikely the characters themselves would be. My giants are cold and especially ruthless, things are always scurrying in the corners of the characters' eyes, my dragons are stronger and much more terrifying in a fight, and I go to great lengths to describe malformed creatures.

As far as Cthulhu mythos is concerned, I'm not really sure what you're referring to. There are a lot of deformed or alien creatures, but there's no direct link to Cthulhu mythos in Rise of the Runelords.

[Ponderthought]

Cthulhu himself doesn't turn up in the AP, no, but creatures from the larger mythos do. There's the whole sub-plot with the Denizens of Leng in the last book, and they're classic Lovecraft. I was hopping to expand on that facet as it gives me another mode of horror to huck in the players direction after things peter out in the fourth and fifth sections.

[Kudaku]

The APs tend to be a little schizophrenic since each book is written by a different author - RotRL changes from fairly straight heroic fantasy (burnt offerings) to creeping horror (the misgivings, the skinsaw man) to plain ol' hillbilly horror (the grauls in particular) just in the first three books.

That said, there are a few options available.

You could replace Malfeshnikor with a hound of Tindalos. Play up the fact that the Thassilonian architecture doesn't use straight angles or corners to keep Tindalos dogs trapped. Add some Lovecraftian elements to Nualia's journal.

The Misgivings could be linked to Leng instead of lichdom: Vorel was trying to make a pact with a denizen of Leng but was interrupted by his wife mid-ritual, which gave the denizen the opening to leave - and leave behind a "present" in the form of the Phage.

The library underneath Jorgenfist is literally a treasure-trove of all things Thassilonian, it would make sense that there's also a comprehensive section dealing with Leng - for instance they reference a book called "Whispers from Leng: A Guide to the Beyond". There might be a few "fridge horror" moments when they realize why all the buildings are curiously rounded etc.
Mokmurian strikes me as a giant dumb enough to do some truly excessive experimentation, including on himself. Think giving him a tentacle is too obvious?

As far as horror goes...
I played up one of the mental patients in the asylum they visit in book two as being able to see denizens of Leng in his dreams, which was what drove him insane. The party spent a fair amount of time talking to him and taking notes on his visions of "giant purple spiders" (despite their general skepticism) before continuing to clear out the asylum - when they came back later on his cell was absolutely clogged with spider webs. They never saw him again.

A few days later, one of the PCs started having bad sleep, but he couldn't remember if he had dreams. I made him fatigued for a few days, no big deal for a 6th level PC. About a week later he started hearing intermittent spider chattering (I'd play various audio clips only on his headset, good times) - no one else in the party could hear it.

[Ponderthought]

The APs tend to be a little schizophrenic since each book is written by a different author - RotRL changes from fairly straight heroic fantasy (burnt offerings) to creeping horror (the misgivings, the skinsaw man) to plain ol' hillbilly horror (the grauls in particular) just in the first three books.

That said, there are a few options available.

You could replace Malfeshnikor with a hound of Tindalos. Play up the fact that the Thassilonian architecture doesn't use straight angles or corners to keep Tindalos dogs trapped. Add some Lovecraftian elements to Nualia's journal.

The Misgivings could be linked to Leng instead of lichdom: Vorel was trying to make a pact with a denizen of Leng but was interrupted by his wife mid-ritual, which gave the denizen the opening to leave - and leave behind a "present" in the form of the Phage.

The library underneath Jorgenfist is literally a treasure-trove of all things Thassilonian, it would make sense that there's also a comprehensive section dealing with Leng - for instance they reference a book called "Whispers from Leng: A Guide to the Beyond". There might be a few "fridge horror" moments when they realize why all the buildings are curiously rounded etc.
Mokmurian strikes me as a giant dumb enough to do some truly excessive experimentation, including on himself. Think giving him a tentacle is too obvious?

As far as horror goes...
I played up one of the mental patients in the asylum they visit in book two as being able to see denizens of Leng in his dreams, which was what drew him insane. The party spent a fair amount of time talking to him and taking notes on his visions of "giant purple spiders" (despite their general skepticism) before continuing to clear out the asylum - when they came back later on his cell was absolutely clogged with spider webs. They never saw him again.

A few days later, one of the PCs started having bad sleep, but he couldn't remember if he had dreams. I made him fatigued for a few days, no big deal for a 6th level PC. About a week later he started hearing intermittent spider chattering (I'd play various audio clips only on his headset, good times) - no one else in the party could hear it.

Some of that stuff is goddamn art. Fantastic. I'd love to be able to manage the last bit, but I'll probably run up against technical difficulties there. Still, inspiring. Maybe I can do some stuff with Roll20's pretty robust handout system.

Now I'll just have to look into some of the player problems I've heard about the fourth and fifth book:

I've heard that Jorgenfist can become abit repetitive for some, and kind of lacks in the horror themes that even Burnt Offerings can pull off (Think Critters or Gremlins)Im not sure how to play it, other than using some of the excellent Leng foreshadowing. Theres something primal about being hunted by giants, as it taps into the exceedingly old human fear of being eaten by big predators. The only thing that comes to mind is Attack on Titan, but the stone giants are obviously a good deal more intelligent than that. Given that, maybe I can do some horror by proxy with the stone giants themselves, as their might be a sympathetic angle to work. As for the Runeforge, Ill have to do some more research. I've heard it can be really fun, but the original horror motifs that Fortress puts down really die off as things move to straight dungeon bash.

[Keneth]

There's the whole sub-plot with the Denizens of Leng in the last book, and they're classic Lovecraft.

Pathfinder's Leng is so loosely connected to Lovecraft's Platform of Leng (of which there are only a few references in the first place), that I don't really consider them part of the same mythos.

Not to mention there's not even a whiff of the mythos prior to that point, so if you want to foreshadow the plot, you're gonna have quite a bit of work (it's a really long campaign). Luckily, Pathfinder has implemented a lot of Lovecraftian monsters in the game, so it should be too hard to find useful material.

[Kudaku]

Some of that stuff is goddamn art. Fantastic. I'd love to be able to manage the last bit, but I'll probably run up against technical difficulties there. Still, inspiring. Maybe I can do some stuff with Roll20's pretty robust handout system.[/SPOILER]

Thanks! The campaign I referenced was actually played on Roll20. Each player had his own channel on Teamspeak that I could use to send personal audio in addition to the communal party voice-setup on Skype. That party only made it to the end of book 3 and I haven't read the latter books in years, so I have very limited advice on books 5 and 6.

Unfortunately I deleted the campaign after running into the storage capacity limit on Roll20 so the play list is long gone, but the majority of the audio clips I used were from Soundcloud (https://soundcloud.com/) - the website used for the Roll20 jukebox. If you do a little searching there you can find some amazingly creepy audio clips that're perfect for making the right atmosphere.

You might already have tried this, but the Paizo forums tend to be populated by very helpful people - making a thread in the Runelords forum might get a bit more post attention than a thread here. I picked up tons of great advice for running RotRL over there and I now make a point to peruse each AP's forum before GMing it.

[Pokonic]

One could have the Grauls have ties with something 'out there' to sort of explain their shear unwholesomeness, because nothing get's a bloodline becoming backwash like a coupling with a entity favored by the Black Goat.

Have the PC's have a chance at finding the 'family tree', and, besides the redneck jokes and the loving descriptions on how it sort of buckles backwards into itself and includes several creatures with fur, have a single name or symbol (goat horns?) show up multiple times on different levels of the tree, with the final time being a relatively long time ago but resulting in Muck Graul.

[Ponderthought]

Add a little Whately to that Graul blood, you think? It's got some possibility, if my players don't immediately catch on to the bit of Dunwich about them...