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Wasum
2018-08-13, 12:17 PM
Hello giants,

I have a question concerning my pathfinder campaign. First of some overview:

The party is at 9th level and consists of a nature oracle (summon focus), a support bard, a paladina, an alchemist (THF melee), an inquisitor and finally a wizard. The group is good equipped and has by now an extraordinary standing within the hierachy of the city they live in and therefore access to a lot of resources if necessary.

The next session will begin with the marriage of the wizard and a local noble woman, right after that the drama begins. A long time friend of the group, a priest of Abadar is actually a cultist who worships Kytons and has been catching specific inhabitants of the city to bring the to the City of Dis in Hell, where Kytons practice surgeries to enhance their own bodies. One of these Kytons (more precise: a Kyton Apostle Pakalchi Magus and art collector) wishes for the heart of a freshly married noble and the body of his wife. It has to be true love and stuff and therefore the wizard will be captured right at the end of the wedding. The false priest will invite him over and lure him into an anti magic field where two Kytons will torture him until he collapses in pain (at this point let me state: I talked to the player of the wizard at some point and made sure an event like that is fine for him and he agreed - there's already an alternative PC he will play until his main one is rescued. He just doesn't know when it is going to happen as this conversation took place about one year ago).

The overall idea - in case everything works out as intended - is to have a journy to hell as the next major event the players have to face. They will travel to Avernus, from there to Dis and finally have to find out where the heart of the wizard and the body of his wife are brought to, they will face this cult of self-enhancing Kytons and finally find the galery of the art collector Kyton who will have the heart of the wizard implantet and who will have made a living statue from the wizards wife. All this is going to reference the orpheus myth at several points with the art collector Kyton in the end appearing as the one entity who finds in art the trancendental access to what lies beyond the multiverse - the dependency on real life creatures who determine every single action a character takes in the ficional world. While all this is already enriched with a lot of details, symbolism and literature I'm still facing a minor difficulty at the beginning that I want to bend in smooth somehow:

The false priest obviously has interests in not getting busted. If possible he wants to remain hidden. It will be easy for the players to find out the missed wizard met with this very priest but I dont know how they could pinpoint the wizard in the layers of hell. How do they know he is there? How could I add some hints of his location without making the false priest seem like an idiot. It should be easy for him to erase all signs of the wizard being there. Is there anything - maybe a spell or an item, maybe a class feature, anything - that smoothly directs the players to hell? It doesnt even have to be the precise location, just the plane of existance where the wizard is at right now would be perfect.

Thank you in advance - I'm curious to read your ideas :)


Wasum

Darth Ultron
2018-08-13, 02:27 PM
They could Scry for the missing person, or use Discern Location somehow.

Sending can also work for a 'quick call' to the person...enough for them to say 'help I'm in Hell!"

Commune or contact outer plane can narrow it down. Ask ''is he on the planet?", then just just to the obvious next place...hell.

Maybe have the wizard leave a message?

Wasum
2018-08-14, 01:29 AM
They could Scry for the missing person, or use Discern Location somehow.

Sending can also work for a 'quick call' to the person...enough for them to say 'help I'm in Hell!"

Commune or contact outer plane can narrow it down. Ask ''is he on the planet?", then just just to the obvious next place...hell.

Maybe have the wizard leave a message?

Thank you for the input!
Scrying probably bears the most profit - but as the target - the wizard - will be unconscious it will be hard to get too much benefit out of the spell. Discern Location would work without any doubts but is to high level to be used by the group.

Sending faces the same problems as scrying - the wiz will not be able to respond.

Now what the group legitimately can find out is that the wizard visited the false priest. So they will probably go to the temple of Abadar. But what will they find? The entrance will probably be blocked but the PC are likely to find a way around that. Inside the temple they will look for the priests chamber and arrive at the inner sanctum where he praised his Kyton Demagogues. But will this chamber be easily accessible? He would probably conceal it somehow because he can expect the group to look for the wizard - but how? And how can the group find out what happened or where to find the wizard anyway?

I'd appreciate and kind of ideas :)

Fizban
2018-08-14, 02:14 AM
In 3.5, unless the DM wants something hidden, Divination is the first (and possibly last) stop for anything you need, or Commune for more power. Unless you specifically don't want them to work, they work. Once they've reached the appropriate hellish city, Gather Information checks ought to do the job, unless these devils have also hidden their operation on their home plane.