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#1 EnderXenocide0 Aug 08, 2014 9:10:44	For those who don't know, The Forge of Fury is a 3.0 adventure. It is unabashedly a dungeon crawl, with little story to work off of. That said, it's still a very well designed adventure and one that I thoroughly enjoy. I've got a group of four 3rd level players at the moment and want to run them through this adventure, but I'd like to tie it into our current campaign. I need to make a few modifications to it, which is why I'd like some advice.  The Story So Far  Let me give you a little background on the campaign first. We've got four players: Hohenheim, a human artificer, Ixen, a kobold factotum, Siegfried, an aasimar cleric, Rohagar, a half-orc barbarian/ranger, and Kaziim, goblin a monk/rogue (Kaziim is a temporary character. The player was originally a changeling rogue, but due to circumstances I'll explain shortly, he's playing someone else for the time being). I run 3.5.  The party has been in Darguun for some time. During their excursions there, they managed to unearth a Grieving Tree (from Don Bassingthwaite's novels). Gin unfortunately gets knocked out in a fight around the tree and is hung from the tree by the villain who is eventually defeated, but not before Gin "died" (as I had just spent a few days working with the player on fleshing out Gin's backstory and goals, I didn't want to outright kill him in the next session). Gin is currently at -9 hp with a CON score of 1. Regular magic isn't healing him. It's time for a quest!  They soon learn that if anyone in Darguun can help them, it's probably the Duur'kala at Volaar Draal given the knowledge they have of ancient Dhakaan. On their way to Volaar Draal, they managed to enrage Lesh Haruuc and are currently wanted in Rhukaan Draal. They also helped save Kaziim from a group of Emerald Claw agents searching for old Dhakaani treasures. He agrees to help the group in their journeys to repay their aid. Fast forward to Volaar Draal.  NOTE: At this point in the campaign, a series of unforeseen actions by the players led me to a point where I was (for the first time in a long time) unsure of how to wing things for them.  Without thinking it through much, I decided that there was a Dhakaani artifact that could restore Gin's health, but it was split into pieces. And so I called it the Ashen Crown, even though in my campaign it bears little resemblance to the actual 4E artifact. Regardless, Tuura explains this to them and the importance of the artifact to Dhakaani history and allows them to aid the Kech Volaar in retrieving this artifact. She sends a Duur'kala with them to help (It's Ekhaas. Can you tell I like those novels?). I decide that there's a tunnel through the Seawall Mountains near Volaar Draal because of The Deep Mine (and because I wanted to expedite their travels).  Inserting the Adventure  So here's where I'm putting the adventure. Thanks to my mental hiccups in the last session, I've managed to back myself into a corner, I think. They went into the tunnel and found it collapsed, with only the old abandoned mine entrance available to them. They explored one room in (fought a couple enemies), then left, deciding the mines were unrelated to saving Gin or getting through the mountain and, thus, unimportant. So they left the adventure behind and headed back to Volaar Draal to choose a better way across the mountains.  One of the players realized there was a clear adventure meant in those mines and so now all the players know. They want to play the adventure, but we'd all prefer it to make sense in the story. What I'm thinking is this: on their return to Volaar Draal, they find Tuura speaking with a House Kundarak representative. The houses were mining in the mountains when the tunnel collapsed, separating this representative from the rest of his group. He knows the old abandoned mine has a mine shaft that will lead him to the other side. He either needs to get to other side quickly or needs to get something else to the other side quickly. I'm not sure what, yet.  Whatever his plight, he asks the party for help when Tuura refuses to get involved. In exchange for their services, he offers not only some gold, but also help with Gin. There's a Jorasco member that owes him a favor and he'll get them to look at Gin for the party if they succeed. This SHOULD, ultimately, be enough for the party to trek through the mines. Assuming it is, I need to alter the adventure a bit.  Here's a general outline of the adventure:  1. Party fights orcs, then descends further.  2. Party fights troglodytes, then descends further.  3. Party fights duergar, then descends further.  4. Party fights young black dragon, then collects treasure.  Here are some changes I've made already:  1. The Deep Mine is a platinum mine... on the surface. That's really a front for the fact that they're mining Khyber shards here. The mine goes deep enough to have found a path into Khyber. While the shards are still rare, the Houses are collaborating to mine further in, hoping to find more dragonshards. (Of course, this won't end well). The abandoned Glitterhame mine is on the other side of the mountain and tried doing the same a long time ago... but everyone was lost and no one goes down there anymore. The hubris of the Houses is great enough to allow them to try again.  2. The Orcs led by an Ogre from the start of the adventure are now Hobgoblins led by a bugbear. They're actually a Cult of the Dragon below and are kind of crazy.  3. The old Glitterhame is an abandoned remote mining site by the now missing dwarf clan Noldrun. The Duergar found deep within the mines are some of the twisted remnants of this clan, which stumbled across the Dealkyr Dyrrn ages ago down in Khyber.  Here's some questions I still have to answer:  1. What does the Cult believe and why are they here?  2. What do I replace the troglodytes with? I'd like the party to encounter some aberrations, I think. Perhaps some dolgaunts or dolgrims?  3. Why are the duergar still here? I like to think that the duergar are also a bit insane.  4. Should I change the black dragon any? I want to make Nightscale new to the area, having only arrived here recently, so I don't know that she needs to be affected by Dyrrn or the aberrations or anything. But just shoving a black dragon at the end adventure seems... pointless. Perhaps she covets something special in the hoard of old Noldrun treasures? Maybe the duergar are trying to retrieve it?  5. How do they clear the tunnel? They need the tunnel clear because they just purchased a set of horses and a covered wagon so they don't need to walk everywhere. The trip down through the mines is walkable, but their wagon isn't getting through. Maybe the Kundarak rep's magical macguffin is some blast disks? Or an item that will aid in clearing the tunnel somehow?  Any thoughts?
#2 Beoric Aug 08, 2014 16:41:40	IIRC, Hellcow mused in one of his posts that the descendants of Noldrun might actually be derro, so you might want to think about replacing either the trogs or the duergar with derro.  Or throw in aberrants led by some boss that the cultists worship.   I'm not sure which tunnel you are speaking of, but my first thought is:  Why does the party need to clear the tunnel?  If others have interest in the mines, could not some other party have already cleared it?  If you use the derro, or even the duergar, they could have cleared it as an entrace to the Glitterhame from their homes in the underdark.   I can't bring myself to use dragons in Eberron as a simple dungeon crawl monster, I need to tie them to the Prophesy, and the overall plot somehow.  I don't know if an aboleth is level appropriate (I skipped over 3e), but given the existince of the Black Lake, I would be tempted to swap an aboleth for the dragon unless you could work the dragon into the overall story.   I might then change the creatures on the duergar level into the aboleth's servitors.  The trogs could be duergar or derro, long lost descendants of the Noldrun, who were in the process of reclaiming the mine when they were forced out of the foundry by the aboleth's servitors.  The hobgoblins on the orc level are either cultists who worship the aboleth and are coming to its aid (perhaps being pushed in that direction by a Lord of Dust), or a radical faction of Bladebearers seeking Dhakaani artifacts and violently opposed to any non-Dhakanni or Kech Volaar who enter the mine.   Hope some of that helps.
(Reply to #2) EnderXenocide0	Beoric wrote:
#4 Beoric Aug 08, 2014 20:00:51	You could use another aberration if you can find one at the right power level, but would be a shame to waste that aquatic environment.   You could borrow a common 4e trick with the dragon, and just rename it as something else, keep essentially the same stats and abilities, but rename the powers.  So your black dragon become an aquatic, amorphous blob that blasts jets of acidic ichor.  Reflavour the bite and claws as tentacle lashes.    For that matter, you could call it an aberrant aboleth (if anything is going to have variation, it's abberations).  In 4e I could change the acid damage to psychic damage.  I don't know if you can do that in 3e, but if not you can just handwave the lack of psychic attacks, and rule that this variant needs time and a helpless victim to enslave its victims.  Or maybe the enslavement takes a long period of time but can reach over a greater distance (explaining the cultists), or is cast via a ritual and has different from normal effects.  Or the thralls were enslaved by its mama and it just borrowed them to go play.  You get the idea.   Or its a different sort of aberration with similar tactics to the aboleth.  Psychic enslavement seems to be a common evolutionary trait in Xorait - think illithids.  Then you still can have your thralls and your cultists.
(Reply to #4) EnderXenocide0	Hm... for now, I think I'm going to stick with the Black Dragon. Not sure if I'll alter it too much or not by the time they get to it. Any thoughts on the reason for their entrance into the mine? They're not the typical party that jumps at any adventure or quest placed before them. I thought that the Kundarak rep might know of some old dwarven magic item down below that could be of use (Something like Noldrun's Hammer, a magic item that can move large amounts of earth or something). I'm just not sure if it's necessary to throw in a macguffin. I'm not a fan of them unless it's really important that I push a specific plot point.   So, just to reiterate, the plot idea is as follows:   1. Return to Volaar Draal. 2. Kundarak rep needs someone to go down through the abandoned mines to get to the other side. 3. ??? 4. Profit.   While I set that up as a joke, it does serve to demonstrate the distinct lack of connections I have here. It's still pretty much, go to social hub, get quest, go questing, get treasure. It feels lacking to me aside from the potential chance they have to help their unconscious party member.
#6 Beoric Aug 09, 2014 19:08:39	Its tough to know without knowing the characters' (or players') motivations - and reading between the lines it doesn't sound like they are very developed.  If so, you might want to work with the players on that.   An obvious hook is to tie it to the resurrection of Gin, which at least one of your players is presumably motivated to do. You broke the Crown into fracments, so let one be down there.  But if it takes more than a figurative big sign saying "adventure this way", then it may be that the players are determined not to let you run that dungeon, and it would be better to abandon the idea and see where the players do want to go.
#7 EnderXenocide0 Aug 09, 2014 20:33:52	Well, I neglected to provide much information about the campaign or the players. A (very) brief outline of the campaign is this: the overarching enemy is the Dreaming Dark and, in an even more long-term capacity, the Lords of Dust. In the short term, they will be dealing with a scientist that's experimenting with planar travel. His experiments will utlimately weaken the Gatekeeper seals, allowing the Daelkyr and their minions to play a major role in the campaign. So turning the Glitterhame into an extention of the Daelkyr's Kyber-bound domains introduces this element into the story. The artificer is interested in planar magic and the half-orc is from a Gatekeeper tribe (but doesn't believe in her ancestors' superstitions). The factotum is currently going mad from a magic item he found and is looking for a cure. So each of those individuals may find things of importance down in the mines. Ultimately, I think I'm going to have the dragon have been driven mad, but possess a fragment of the prophecy that pertains to the group. One thing I omitted on purpose so far is that the party was sent back in time to the year 993 by an artifact that is tied to the prophecy. My only issue with that is that the dragon is supposed to be young (otherwise the CR is a bit too high). I see no reason for the dragon to really know anything about the prophesy (unless maybe this is a descendant of Vvaraak?).
#8 Beoric Aug 09, 2014 21:35:10	Well, any of those hooks would work, although they don't seem to have the urgency associated with resurrecting/restoring Gin.  If you can set more than one hook it might sweeten the deal a bit, but I suspect unless you can connect it to the urgent issues relating to Gin, you are going to have a hard time talking them into going there.   I note that DoE says that "Most Chamber observers are mature adults or younger", but perhaps not that young. Nightscale can be older if she is intended to be patron, rather than opponent.    The campaign you are currently running is remarkably similar to one of mine, so I am going to tell you what I am doing in case you can use any of it.  It is also set in Darguun, just after the Mourning.  The party just finished the Forge of Fury, which I placed slightly northeast of where you placed it.  I also have an overarching Quori theme, so when I saw the duergar in the Foundry, I immediately wanted to connect them to Sarlona, where you generally see them.  I made them a group combining mercenaries and slaves, commanded by a low-ish level Inspired hosting Lord Zoratesh.  Zoratesh is planning an invasion of Khorvaire, and wants to use Darguun as a beachhead because the general lawlessness helps to cover his preparations.  They have reopened the Foundry, where duergar slaves transported from Sarlona work to create weapons for local mercenaries.  The orcs and trogs are both tribes that have been influenced to move to the dungeon through their dreams, in order to serve as de facto guards to the entrances - of course, they don't know that is their function, they just think this is a good home.    Nightscale is not all that versed in the prophesy, but she is smart, irritated that her caverns have been invaded, and has suspicions that the Sarlonans are up to no good, and that this will be detrimental to her future peace and well being.  When she detects the adventurers in the caverns, she hides her hoard so they have no incentive to kill her, and when the party approaches she makes a pitch to give the party information regarding the dungeon, and aid, if they take out the duergar and inform her of any evidence they can find of their plans.  (The party was actually pretty beat up by the duergar, and had fled to the Black Lake to get away, so they were more in the mood to bargain than fight).  They find maps showing the liklihood of an invasion, and suddenly the party and Nighscale have common cause to put a stop to the invasion of their homeland.    This party also has a party member who was injured and is in a coma and inexplicably not healing (if you can believe it).  That party member is also a changeling, but the rest of the party does not know it.  She is from Kythri (long story), and the players don't know it yet, but she is the last descendant of the line of Taratai (through a combination of changeling reproduction mechanics, the presence of changelings in Sarlona, and the existence of Uutkleza, the Kythri Manifest Zone in Adar).  Depending on how everthing goes, she might give rise to the rebirth of that line.  Some of my vague future plans involve the Overlord, Tiamat.  The whole thing is very loosly based on the 4e adventure path, "Scales of War".
(Reply to #8) EnderXenocide0	Beoric wrote:
(Reply to #9) EnderXenocide0	As for plot hooks, in addition to the ones they discover while down in the mines, I'm still starting with the Kundarak rep's offer to help Gin. I'm just not sure if I should tease the other hooks somehow. Perhaps the duur'kala have tales of the dwarves that once mined the mountain and other tales of the strange things that have been seen.
#11 Beoric Aug 10, 2014 11:10:28	If helping Gin is conditional on them going to the Forge, I don't see how they can ignore it without giving up on Gin (or at least coming up with another plan of their own devising).   If it was me, and I was confident that they were going there anyway, I might leave the discovery of the other hooks until they got there, so they can feel good about that choice once they are there.  If they don't bite on the "saving Gin" hook, then they are so committed to not going that if you start adding other hooks they might feel railroaded.
(Reply to #11) EnderXenocide0	Agreed. I don't like railroading players. They have already, out of game, decided that they want to run the adventure; they just want a good reason to run it in-game. When I first placed it there for them, it was the equivalent of a large sign that read "ADVENTURE AWAITS!". And that was then I discovered that wasn't going to cut it with this group (though, in fairness, I should have suspected that when a few sessions prior, they spent an hour standing outside the final room in a wizard's lair debating whether or not to enter). So I think that the expedience of clearing the tunnel coupled with the Kundarak rep's offer of calling in a favor with Jorasco should be enough to get them to go down the mine. Once in the mines, the other plot hooks should become apparent over time. This is all, of course, theoretical. I had not expected them to try to steal from Lesh Haruuc, either, but hey, that happened! So I'm ruling out nothing.
#13 EnderXenocide0 Aug 11, 2014 9:59:46	UPDATE: So we had the first session last night and it took very little convincing to get them to go into the mines. They were presented with the Kundarak rep's offer of money and aid for Gin and that was pretty much enough. About half an hour before the session, I decided on a plotline that may be a tiny bit convoluted, but I like it.   So basically, there were dwarves mining in the mountains here during the Daelkyr War (If the players are keen enough to ask why there were dwarves here at that time, the answer is that they struck a deal with the Dhakaani to build the Glitterhame in this mountain and were allowed to keep a share of what was mined). While mining platinum, they discovered Khyber shards (that they decided to keep from the Dhakaani) and a series of tunnels into Khyber. There were, of course, other things in the mines. From time to time, they fought other creatures, but nothing serious. What they failed to notice, until it was too late, were the Breed Leeches that slithered into their bed chambers at night and latched on to any of the women that were pregnant. When this was discovered, the dwarves decided to leave the mines until they had a better understanding of what was happening. A message was sent back to the clans warning them to leave the mines alone. They would soon return with more information.   While all that was going on, however, the hobgoblin general Aal'drash was going mad and deserted the Dhakaani. He took his loyal troops and began following a plan he believed was given to him by the gods. (In truth, he was aiding the Dyrrn the Corruptor) He led his men to the mines and, before the dwarves could depart, captured some of them. The rest were slaughtered. He enslaved the survivors and began using the breed leeches to produce Daelkyr Half-Bloods (in my games, I treat Daelkyr Half-Blood as an inherited template that can be applied to pretty much anything, resulting in births that just aren't quite right). Soon, he began using captured Dhakaani as well. All this was to further the experiments of Dyrrn, though Aal'drash believed that he was perfecting a new generation of hobgoblins that would conquer the whole of Eberron. His own men turned against him, unable to follow his madness any further. They managed to kill Aal'drash and send a message to the Gatekeepers, but they all died in the process, leaving no one in the mines. They had collapsed the tunnels into Khyber and tried as best they could to bar the entrance into the mines.   That message reaches the Gatekeepers, but they are so far away in the Shadow Marches. What they never knew, however, was that Vvaraak's descendants have lived among the Gatekeepers for many ages. They assume the guise of orcs to go unnoticed. The dragon, hearing of this, flies to the mountain herself to investigate. There, she finds the dwarves and the hobgoblins all dead. She also discovers the Breed Leeches, something previously unknown. She makes the Black Lake her lair, hoping to study these creatures and determine just what Dyrrn is up to.   Fast forward a few centuries. House Kundarak has records indicating there was a mine in the Seawall Mountains a few centuries ago, but the record-keeping of those days wasn't the best. To make matters worse, no records survived from the Dhakaani side of the deal. All they know is that there was platinum and Khyber shards in the Seawall Mountains... and that there is a warning on record asking that the mines be sealed until the miners returned... but they never did. So Kundarak, Tharashk, and the Mroranon clan band together to investigate. At the time, Darguun was in a bit of turmoil with a new Lhesh just coming to power and uniting the nation. He had to appear strong and, thus, was purposefully keeping outsiders from meddling in the afairs of the Dar. So the coalition couldn't get right at the old Glitterhame. Instead, they approached the Zil, who let them dig into the Seawall Mountains. Sure enough, there was platinum in plenty below. Thus was formed the Deep Mine.   At about the same time, the Kech Sharaat sent a small warband out to determine the feasibility of attacking Volaar Draal. Removing Tuura Dhakaan from this world would weaken any claim on the throne that the Kech Volaar may feel they have. The war party found the entrance to the now abandoned Glitterhame and decided to set up a base of operations there. Over time, they cleared away most of the blockades that the previous occupants had put up. Making their way through the caves, they eventually reached the Black Lake. There, they found the body of a black dragon, crushed under a collapsed section of the cavern (it turns out that Kundarak's blasting over in the Deep Mines shook loose parts of the Glitterhame that the former occupants had already weakened). The Kech Sharaat did, however, encounter a young black dragon. Over the centuries, the mother that had been here went off and found a mate, then returned to her lair to continue her studies. But she was too big to notice the Breed Leeches that had attached themselves to her. And so her child ended up being a Daelkyr Half-Blood (to represent this, Nightscale's mind is a little unhinged and her tongue will be more like a tentacle whip). She raised the child herself, knowing that other dragons may see the taint in Nightscale and simply kill her. When the mother died, Nightscale tried to take up her studies, but she began to think like Aal'drash had: that perhaps the Breed Leeches were the next evolutionary step. Certainly she was stronger for being a Half-Blood, wasn't she? The Kech Sharaat that discovered her were brought into the fold over time as well. Now they are a Cult of the Dragon Below (literally) and are raiding Darguun villages, stealing fresh blood for their cult and trying to use the Breed Leeches to produce new Half-Bloods.   Kundarak only recently made a pact with Lhesh Haruuc to allow them to dig a topside tunnel from the Deep Mine to the Glitterhame. When they arrived, they encountered the Kech Sharaat, who rebuffed them. Soon after, they stole some of the Kundarak's blasting disks and collapsed the topside tunnel. And that's where the party entered. Kundarak asked them to go into the old Glitterhame mines, deliver some of the stolen blast disks to the other side, clear out any "hobgoblin raiders" along the way, and they'd be rewarded. Upon re-entrance, the party discovered that the hobgoblins didn't seem to be in their right minds. The goblin PC and hobgoblin NPC also wanted to know why the Kech Sharaat were right outside Volaar Drall. The artificer then discovered a Breed Leech (though he doesn't know what it is) attaching itself to a woman. Without much thought to it, he flung some alchemist's fire on the pregnant woman (because fire is usually his answer to any problem). So that's where it's at so far. This ought to be interesting.