Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 AvonRekaes Nov 06, 2013 14:49:50	So, my players are headed into Xen'drik on a Morgrave expedition. I have some encounters planned (Two-headed T-Rex, giant squids that float through the air, etc.) One I'm having trouble with is the Abeil (the bee-people from the MM2).   Reading through Secrets of Xen'drik, it came to me that Abeils are probably exceedingly likely to run into the Du'raksha Tul (the Madness of Crowds), which is the curse that keeps anyone from forming a nation in Xen'drik. As per SoX, the curse takes effect when a population gets too big. The Abeil are aggressively expansionist, so I had the idea of the PCs stumbling onto an expansive Hive-city that is currently tearing itself apart.   So... any idea on how to portray Abeil under the effects of the Du'raksha Tul? I'm running the game in 3.5/Pathfinder, but I'm willing to take fluff suggestions that I can make my own crunch to.   Right now the only idea I had was to make all the abeil perma-raged like barbarians, but I'm not sure that's interesting enough...
#2 EnderXenocide0 Nov 06, 2013 15:05:53	The description of the Du'rashka Tul on page 53 of Secrets of Xen'drik seems a lot like the Tainted Raver template from page 154 of Heroes of Horror... which is essentially the perma-rage barbarians you thought of. I agree that it's seems a bit bland, though. Story-wise, it might be more interesting if the PCs enter the hive city just before the curse has taken effect and they watch the hive begin to tear itself apart while they're there.
(Reply to #2) AvonRekaes	Wow, that is a much better idea than just finding one already going crazy. So simple too.   Thanks for pointing me toward the Tainted Raver. I coulda sworn there was a template like it but couldn't find it (I was linking them to the Ravers in Fallen, thought it was in an Eberron book). It seems at least marginally more interesting, with the immunity to confusion and insanity, especially if I bake in some Taint effects (without actually using the taint rules) as part of the curse...   Thanks Ender!
#4 StrikerGreen Nov 07, 2013 13:03:41	Great concept, AvonRekaes! I like where you're going.   My suggestion would be to have the hive city split into a number of factions; street wars have broken out, the hive is totally disfuncitonal and is falling apart due to neglect and outright destruction.   I would not suggest having the Abeil in a 'perma-rage' state, but instead portray the curse as the inability to negotiate and find common ground (this is D&D, you can change the curse howEVER you want!). This would allow you to have NPCs who are not raging, but instead are locked in a struggle they believe in. I envision a dense urban landscape, blasted and falling apart as different factions engage in street battles, sabatoge of supplies, and constantly shifting alliances. Think mini-Last War.   However, my question to you is, can the PCs lift the curse? Is that even an option? If they did lift the curse what would happen?   Good luck, this is awesome!
(Reply to #4) AvonRekaes	In a campaign that planned to spend more time with the Abeil and this specific hive-city, I'd see no problem with the PCs finding a way to lift the curse.   In my campaign, however, the answer is no. The curse is an ancient beyond-epic-level arcane working laid down by the dragons (and probably draconic Sovereigns) that has shaped the contiennt of Xen'drik for thousands upon thousands of years, along with the Traveler's Curse, and this encounter with crazed bee-people is more just to highlight the "broken-ness" of Xen'drik as setting flavor than to present them with a problem to solve.   Though I guess no plan survives contact with actual players, so, who knows!
#6 StrikerGreen Nov 08, 2013 7:58:11	Sounds like you've got the angles covered! Let us know how it goes?
(Reply to #6) AvonRekaes	Will do!   I think I've decided on a combination of the two suggestions. Instead of multiple factions, there's basically two: Those not affected by the curse and those who are. So while some of the Abeil will have crazy madness rage effects, others will just be trying to protect innocents, and the PCs will be caught in the middle of all this. Maybe an Abeil NPC tries to get them to saftey, hussles them through all the city using back alleys and his local knowledge so that they aren't caught by ravening Abeil soldiers, only to succumb to the curse when the PCs are just about safe, forcing them to put him down.
#8 StrikerGreen Nov 18, 2013 8:00:11	LOVE the idea of the curse slowly taking over the PC's allies!
#9 Hellcow Nov 29, 2013 7:22:52	This is what happens when I fall off the board for a month - I miss all sorts of interesting topics.   Honestly, I don't have much to add to what's already been said. I agree that I'd be more likely to have the curse manefest subtly as opposed to perma-ravers; the perma-raver solution WORKS, but among other things, once you've done it once it's not very interesting to do it again. If it manifests in a more subtle manner, you have to wonder if it's already started in other places - like Stormreach - and you just haven't noticed yet.   As a side note, if *I* was going to use Abeil in Xen'drik (something I've often used as an example but never actually done), I'd be likely to make it a single isolated city that for whatever reason never HAS expanded; perhaps they only have a single Queen, and a new one is never born until the old one dies (and perhaps a queen is only born from other species, so any time outsiders arrive we have to see if they've got a potential Queen!). I say this not as an attempt to change your adventure, but to point out that such a city would be safe from the Du'rashka Tul. The DT hits a civilization when it hits a certain size. The Sulatar have been around for ages, but simply never grown to a size sufficient to trigger it. So it's an explanation for why you've never had a MAJOR society arise, but it shouldn't stop you from having interesting small civilizations.
#10 StrikerGreen Dec 06, 2013 9:55:12	The Stormreach angle is inspired! Thanks, HellCow!
#11 Syltorian Dec 07, 2013 10:48:33	Hm. Speaking about "other places" where the curse might have taken effect, the following just struck me: could the curse be portable - attached to important artefacts of Xen'drik, as well as to the continent itself? If so, it could be unwittingly taken somewhere beyond Xen'drik, somewhere where there are large enough accumulations of Xen'drik artifacts to make the place count, in some magic way, as Xen'drik. Such as Sharn. The PCs would have to figure out why the city is going mad (well, madder than usual), and then disperse/return the contaminated artifacts.   Although we're getting away from the abeil here. I wonder whether the natural tendency of abeil, faced with either multiple queens or an excessive population, would not be to swarm, just like bees do. The curse takes hold because they don't, so the PCs might have to figure out why they don't swarm. Perhaps the population has expanded, but there is no second queen to follow.   Another, sinister way, would be to consider whether the Abeil never fell victim to the curse because someone was there to cull them. That someone (a giant beekeeper, or a dragon) has, for some reason, not done this recently (there's a dragon in Dragons of Eberron who was supposed to keep watch over Xen'drik, but who has mostly avoided that duty recently). So now the PCs would need to decide whether they can morally condone killing off sentient beings until the population level drops beneath whatever threshold Du'raksha Tul requires as a trigger, or whether they can find a different way of solving the problem (say, leading an exodus, "swarming", as explained above, if necessary providing a Queen). This would raise the question, though, whether the curse can be 'healed' once it has been triggered by the simple expedient of eliminating its trigger (high population).
#12 StrikerGreen Dec 11, 2013 8:25:21	Giant Apiarist for the Win!