pirateshow
2008-12-05, 12:18 AM
Right, so I'm running a 4e campaign that is vaguely based on Keep On The Shadowfell... sort of. But the characters keep running off and exploring stuff in a crypt that I fudged for a session with only two players... and I keep saying 'yes, and' like a good little improviser. And now I'm in a corner. Help!
I decided that the magic juice fueling Ninaran's zombie fiesta would need one extra ingredient: the coffin dust of one dead at least four hundred years. And when two of my first-level PCs needed a session all to themselves, I led them to an ad-hoc excavation under the biggest crypt in the Winterhaven graveyard, where a tiefling no-goodnik (who would be the wayward Orcus-worshipping brother of the tiefling paladin PC) had been playing necromancer after finding Ninaran's coffin dust and trying to replicate the recipe. The PCs found the tiefling and his goons, summarily dispatched him (and with him some lovingly-crafted plot hooks, sigh), and got outta Dodge. On the map I was drawing for this sub-crypt, I left a couple of open-ended hallways, because I just can't help myself sometimes. Argh.
Two sessions later, two other PCs (the aforementioned tiefling paladin of Ioun and the dragonborn warlord who is captain of the inept Winterhaven Regulars) decide to go down there just to tank around and make sure all the dead stuff stayed dead. They took a wander down one of the open hallways, which I described as suddenly changing from ancient rough caves to cleverly-wrought stonework extending several hundred feet. Every so often a pair of columns lined the hall, each pair topped with busts of a different god depicted as humans. Okay, sure. The players are intrigued. I keep merrily making crap up.
At the end of the hallway is a small library full of apparently blank vellum scrolls. There are some low-level traps that kick them around a bit, and they find a riddle in a magic mouth-type device. The answer is 'darkness' (this was the only bit that I had in mind going into this mess), but nothing happens when they answer out loud. They bury their sunrods in a cloak, and in the darkness the scrolls reveal faintly glowing white text. In Elven script, because it was the first language that jumped to mind that neither of them spoke or read. They try to take a scroll out or the room, and it disintegrates and re-appears in its spot. Fair enough, it's a mystery for another day, and they'll bring the party's Eladrin wizard next time.
Except that, when I drew the room (off the top of my head, natch) I placed entryways on all four sides. They check the other three before heading back to the surface, and this is where I get myself into trouble. The first hall was the one they entered from. The second has all the same gods, good and evil, in the same order, but depicted as dwarves. The third, same deal, but they're all elves- I'm enjoying the idea that at some point, each race had envisioned the gods in their own image. The fourth corridor would have been halfings if I hadn't been feeling malicious, but the players were into it and I wanted to give them a scare to end the session: the last hallway also contained each god, but with furrowed brow and a mess of tentacles where a mouth should be. In that last hallway, the gods were depicted as (by?) illithids.
The players are level 2. Obviously the players know what an illithid is, though I've told them that *if* they've heard of mind flayers, it's likely as a ghost story and not in any kind of factual context. I had planned on having a big illithid territory under semi-nearby mountains, with most of the world's remaining dragonborn enslaved as the thralls, but I didn't plan on telling the players about it until near paragon tier. I'm hoping that the more immediate threat of Shadowfell Keep and the soon-to-be-opened rift keeps them occupied for at least a few sessions to come, but I still feel like I'm going to have to solve this mess before the players are ready to take on mind flayers.
The best solution I've got right now is to let the players find out (through an Arcana check at which neither the paladin nor warlord would have succeeded) that that entire library and its four hallways are extradimensional, each hallway leading to a location that was important to the relevant race at the time it was built. When they leave the rough-hewn cave beneath the Winterhaven graveyard, they're actually stepping through a fairly well-concealed portal: possibly a space where a treaty was negotiated (or attempted) long ago. This approach would save my butt because the other three portals don't necessarily still function. Figuring out why the human portal works and replicating that could be fun and interesting. Any thoughts?
And this still leaves the question: what do the scrolls say? I'm thinking that they might appear to be any language that the reader doesn't speak, until some sort of catalyst is introduced... which could be good quest bait, but I like puzzles with a bit more solveability than 'have the right object and it works'.
Any ideas are welcome. I'm in too deep! I like all the pieces I've come up with on the fly, but it's all for nought if I can't fit them together...
I decided that the magic juice fueling Ninaran's zombie fiesta would need one extra ingredient: the coffin dust of one dead at least four hundred years. And when two of my first-level PCs needed a session all to themselves, I led them to an ad-hoc excavation under the biggest crypt in the Winterhaven graveyard, where a tiefling no-goodnik (who would be the wayward Orcus-worshipping brother of the tiefling paladin PC) had been playing necromancer after finding Ninaran's coffin dust and trying to replicate the recipe. The PCs found the tiefling and his goons, summarily dispatched him (and with him some lovingly-crafted plot hooks, sigh), and got outta Dodge. On the map I was drawing for this sub-crypt, I left a couple of open-ended hallways, because I just can't help myself sometimes. Argh.
Two sessions later, two other PCs (the aforementioned tiefling paladin of Ioun and the dragonborn warlord who is captain of the inept Winterhaven Regulars) decide to go down there just to tank around and make sure all the dead stuff stayed dead. They took a wander down one of the open hallways, which I described as suddenly changing from ancient rough caves to cleverly-wrought stonework extending several hundred feet. Every so often a pair of columns lined the hall, each pair topped with busts of a different god depicted as humans. Okay, sure. The players are intrigued. I keep merrily making crap up.
At the end of the hallway is a small library full of apparently blank vellum scrolls. There are some low-level traps that kick them around a bit, and they find a riddle in a magic mouth-type device. The answer is 'darkness' (this was the only bit that I had in mind going into this mess), but nothing happens when they answer out loud. They bury their sunrods in a cloak, and in the darkness the scrolls reveal faintly glowing white text. In Elven script, because it was the first language that jumped to mind that neither of them spoke or read. They try to take a scroll out or the room, and it disintegrates and re-appears in its spot. Fair enough, it's a mystery for another day, and they'll bring the party's Eladrin wizard next time.
Except that, when I drew the room (off the top of my head, natch) I placed entryways on all four sides. They check the other three before heading back to the surface, and this is where I get myself into trouble. The first hall was the one they entered from. The second has all the same gods, good and evil, in the same order, but depicted as dwarves. The third, same deal, but they're all elves- I'm enjoying the idea that at some point, each race had envisioned the gods in their own image. The fourth corridor would have been halfings if I hadn't been feeling malicious, but the players were into it and I wanted to give them a scare to end the session: the last hallway also contained each god, but with furrowed brow and a mess of tentacles where a mouth should be. In that last hallway, the gods were depicted as (by?) illithids.
The players are level 2. Obviously the players know what an illithid is, though I've told them that *if* they've heard of mind flayers, it's likely as a ghost story and not in any kind of factual context. I had planned on having a big illithid territory under semi-nearby mountains, with most of the world's remaining dragonborn enslaved as the thralls, but I didn't plan on telling the players about it until near paragon tier. I'm hoping that the more immediate threat of Shadowfell Keep and the soon-to-be-opened rift keeps them occupied for at least a few sessions to come, but I still feel like I'm going to have to solve this mess before the players are ready to take on mind flayers.
The best solution I've got right now is to let the players find out (through an Arcana check at which neither the paladin nor warlord would have succeeded) that that entire library and its four hallways are extradimensional, each hallway leading to a location that was important to the relevant race at the time it was built. When they leave the rough-hewn cave beneath the Winterhaven graveyard, they're actually stepping through a fairly well-concealed portal: possibly a space where a treaty was negotiated (or attempted) long ago. This approach would save my butt because the other three portals don't necessarily still function. Figuring out why the human portal works and replicating that could be fun and interesting. Any thoughts?
And this still leaves the question: what do the scrolls say? I'm thinking that they might appear to be any language that the reader doesn't speak, until some sort of catalyst is introduced... which could be good quest bait, but I like puzzles with a bit more solveability than 'have the right object and it works'.
Any ideas are welcome. I'm in too deep! I like all the pieces I've come up with on the fly, but it's all for nought if I can't fit them together...