Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Detteret Oct 18, 2011 13:47:38	Hi everyone; I have a group of seven adventurers who were arrested at the end of their last campaign (long story short: they had to release imprisoned water elementals to combat invading fire elementals - but nobody else knows about the fire elemental threat). Anyway - I have a prison break planned. There is a pulley operated lift in the prison. They will discover that it has a false stop at the bottom. If they override this stop they will be able to go to the true bottom of the lift The lift had once been an access point to an ancient underground dwarven city. In that city i will have them find adventure and usefull items. They will find a different exit than the lift. I am stuck on what should inhabit the city. It has to be something that was never motivated to use the lift to gain access to the surface kingdom. They already had an adventure against skeletons and zombies - any other ideas? It could even explain why the city was abandoned and forgotten... Don't forget - I will need to explain an ecology for why they are there - for example if werewolves took over, what do they eat? Why do they not use the lift? How did they get there? Why do they stay?
#2 Thukad Oct 18, 2011 14:01:13	How big is the city?
#3 TheForgottenCommand Oct 18, 2011 14:49:48	If this is a dwarven city, then it probably had connections in the Underdark. I recommend building off of that.    Whatever it is, it should not be something that can climb or hover, at least easily, otherwise why didn't they just follow the dwarves to the surface and destroy the lift? So beholders, spiders and thier assorted ilk, and the like seem out of the picture.    What about Druegar? Perhaps the dwarves needed surfacer help because the druegar are every bit just as stout and adept at blacksmithing as they were. The dwarves needed a group with different talents to help them fight a foe that they were matched evenly with. The Druegar are still battling ancient dwarven traps and defenses, but are close to conquering the city.    Or Foulspawn? Abberant creatures invaded from the bowels of the Underdark or swere summoned by mistake, and the dwarves neededhelp from the surfacers with knowledge of the stars and celestial cycles of the far realm. The foulspawn now just occupy the city, using it as a base for attacking and enslaving other races. The dwarves built the prison over it as a cover, and to protect the surface from thier influence. In terms of what the druegar eat, probably whatever the dwarves did, like fungus gardens or herds of corralled spiders. The foulspawn, well, they have uses for the slaves they capture, and for the weak among them...    Hope this helps
#4 Detteret Oct 18, 2011 22:10:11	There is no Underdark - this is a homebrew.   I've been pondering it today and I think I'm leaning toward modified zombies.   The premise will be that the city was sealed off when a sickness (demonic curse?) befell the inhabitants.   The dwarven inhabitants have all been infected and sat dormat for centuries... until food arrived.  They will be somewhat like freeze-dried zombies, only MUCH faster.   They are energized by absorbing heat somewhat like osmosis (so it will be very cold) but they feed on flesh...   Should any eat flesh they will be temporarily returned to their living state retaining full memory of what happened and with knowledge of their present condition.   I will probably throw in a few ghosts, a puzzle or two, and maybe a demonic minion or something...  Not sure about the last part.   For a big 'reveal' I may have a few guards follow them down the shaft only to be promptly eaten... I think I will make the infected repelled by light.  I'm trying to figure out a scene where the players end up in the dark before they know about the infected. When they light a torch they will find themselves surrounded...  Saved in a nick of time by the torch yet completely startled...  I may have trouble with that though due to the non-humans in my party who have infravision.  Hmmm... I also need to figure out an escape for the party.   I have a few magic items to drop for them - but most important is to get them some potions of dragon control.  This will be needed for them to repel the Orc/Goblin/evil-human attack on the kingdom where they were so receontly imprisoned.  That will happen in a few adventures and is how they will regain the good graces (and pardon) of the king.  They have no idea that an attack is forthcoming at this time. These are noob adventurers all around level five.  It looks to be a hack and slash adventure - but I would sure like to throw in something other than hack n slash.   Maybe a way of 'curing' the dwarves?   That might make it hard for the party to take the items I need them to have...  Perhapse they can return in the future to cure them... meaning they should limit the deaths they inflict now?  Or maybe they should just raze the whole place to protect the world from the disease and there is no cure?  Or maybe someone else has an idea better than these? Also - some of the characters were (temporarily) undead in a prior adventure - I was thinking of making them immune to the infection... Not sure how to tell them though... Seems like a neat idea for Haloween time - and it is dissimilar enough from the first level dungeon romp they had. That one was full of modified skeletons and a boss who wanted to be a lich.  He was a total wannabe but tough for 1-3rd levels...
#5 TheForgottenCommand Oct 19, 2011 19:03:39	Well, the torchlight suprise sounds cool, but i would be careful with it. If members of the party have darkvision or tremorsense or something similar, it is already very difficult. And even if they didn't, relying on the party to take certain actions for events is a gamble. I would save it as a "if this happens, then i will do this..." rather than a "this WILL happen".    Definitely allow a cure. No heroic party can resist at least considering it, and saying that they have to kill the zombies can result in party backlash. However, make it risky and dangerous. Something along the lines of: you can heal the zombies, but in order to do so, you have to get to the halls of doom, and there is a slight chance that you could release them on the surface. this way both options have ups and downs, rewards and risks.    For the escape, i remember a rather fun way of exiting a underground fortress once. Does this city have any road to the surface, or is it without exit aside from the lift? If it does, they could at the climax of the story gain control of golems or earth elementals and ride them through the crumbling, collapsing highway. Players have responded favorably in the past to controling super-soldiers and the like. It is a nice change of pace, and you feel superpowered and unstoppable. Of course, this may not work with your plan, collapsing sections of the underground and the city may have consquences you are unwilling to go forward with. Just a suggestion of course...    Hope this helps...
#6 tirunus Oct 19, 2011 19:49:27	How about this. After the death of the king, the city was split into diffrent factions. The city was closed until the problem was resolved, the doors did not open, after continueing fighting the diffrent factions broke into diffrent tribes eating the cave fungus growing in the city, they do not build new rooms or make armour, they live as if they where a poor man liveing in a broken down crumbling mansion. THis continued on for hundreds of years until outsiders broke a passage by the ceiling.
#7 Detteret Oct 20, 2011 9:01:01	Forgotten - good advice about overplanning an encounter. Funny you should mention them riding 'bigs'... One of three reasons I have them in this adventure is to get a potion of drago control. I plan for one of them to fly a dragon in a soon-to-happen siege. Maybe I'll allow a few of them too. Giving all seven a dragon for that event may be much.. any thoughts? Trunnus - i love the role-play potential of what you offer, but it may be difficult for me to get the items to the group which I need to. My plan is that they will lower themselves feom the ceiling to one side of a huge dark cavern. They will very very gradually hear movement below (as their body heat animates the infected) The cavern will have a gemmed ceiling with an underground forest overgrowing what had once been subterranian farms (which specialized in subterranian fauna). Homes, shops and other locations have been carved into the terraced walls. A river will divide the cavern with a 'waterfall to oblivion' at one end. At the exact center of the well formed cavern will be a huge crystal with a stone carving at the base formed like a pommel. (The lost clan of the Crystal Sword). This sword is where and what a huge battle will be fought over much later in the campaign. (it is a locus for crossing planes) They will find a rim around the cavern filled with very light oil. If they set it on fire the rim around the whole cavern will slowly ignite and the whole gem covered ceiling will capture and spread the light in 30 minutes from one side to the orher of the cavern - like a dawn. In 12 hours it will burn out and create a dusk that moves across the cavern in similar fashion. It is how I create urgency. In 12 hours the oil will refill and be ready to ignite. (the oil seeps from a well in the wall with a vaulve which stops the flow when it is full) The infected are repelled by light - so the group can safely explore the cavern. There will be some monster plants and misc adventures, but they will have to enter the dwellings/caves to get the good stuff - where the infected are. They will have to repair a lift on the other side of the room to escape. Here is where I now am stuck; If the infected are repelled by light then my adventurers can raid they various rooms unhinded - all they need is torches or a light spell. I need more peril for them. I need them to discover a few of them are immune and why . (they drank the undead potion and were prompty restored four adventures ago) They need to discover the infected return to their former state if they eat flesh. Then they can find the story of the Crystal Tribe and consider a cure - that will happe in the campaigns final encounter... Hopefully they will be racing against time and get chased across the cavern by the infected as the gem light slowly goes out ...
#8 Detteret Oct 20, 2011 9:02:13	Sorry for typos - i am presently on iphone
#9 TheForgottenCommand Oct 20, 2011 15:05:07	For the dragons, go for it. Give them seven small dragons. Believe me; it may be a bit over the top, but nothing spells inter-party resentment like "he got the only dragon and i didn't!". It may be more realistic to only have one or two, but then it is also far less fun. Of course, if you discuss this with the party before hand, the topic, not the specific idea, and some of them are fine with only one dragon then thats fine. ABOVE ALL ELSE: allow everyone in the party to play an equally vital and heroic role in the battle. If one group flies dragons and acts as anti-seige, then the other has to defend the town's maingate from being overrun.    Are any of the PC's dwarves? The reason they are immune may not have to be related to being undead but to the demonic curse you mentioned earlier. They are immune because they were not at the city nor are descendents of those at the city when the curse was created. This also means that the PC's don't assume they are immune to all undead diseases simply because they have been undead once.    For the flesh=normal problem, what about the guards from earlier? A scout or, if you are feeling sadistic, guard dog runs into a lone zombie and the party can see him rip it apart. He's behind a gate or down a ledge, somewhere not easily accessible. Or if you want, perhaps rats, maybe even giant rats, have still survived here by eating the fungus. the party comes around the corner just in time to see a zombie pull a smeagle on a captured rat. www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6VBNRUyTr8    Hope this helps
#10 Detteret Oct 20, 2011 19:55:18	All great feedback and ideas.   Re: the reveal:  I even thought about going so far as to tell the group that one of them is likely to die....  But these guys are noobs and in love with their characters. I am thinking about nixing the immune thing.  I can't make the disease for locals-only or else there was no reason to seal the city off.   If nobody is immune then the trouble becomes; what if they get infected?   I am not sure my group could handle getting hozed like that - Complete death for a 1hp loss... In spite of that, my biggest obstacle right now is the light issue.. The diseased are mindless creatures who exist solely to eat flesh.   That is their sole pursuit.  They could not even be bothered to turn a doorknob (though they might crash through a door) to get prey.   They are fast and furious.   If I didn't make light repulse them then the adventureres would just get mobbed shortly after arriving in the cavern.   So I use light aversion to make the diseased retreate to the dark.  That solves one problem but creates another;  Rather than fight them or avoid the diseased, the party will just hold out their torches and/or light spells and skip merrily along on every encounter. Somehow I have to raise the peril level.   Maybe it is just gemlight that repels the diseased and other light sources only are avoidance issues?  That could be too complicated for the group to catch in time.   I really need some inspiration there.   I have some ghosts, a puzzle, some hazardous botanical mayhem, but the dieased are supposed to be the real hazard.   (and when they meet the first 'recovered' diseased person that poor soul will beg for death... in fact it could be interesting as the other diseased tear into the temporarily-recovered diseased - causing a chain reaction...) But the hazard to the group ... it is both too weak and too strong as it stands...   I need help.
#11 TheForgottenCommand Oct 20, 2011 22:31:34	I think you need something else in the cavern which is only slightly less dangerous than the zombies and is attracted to the light. This could be swarms of bats, a few giant rats, myconids, spiders or something similar.    Maybe i am beating the golem/elemental idea to death, but what if the city had more than a few wizards with elemental beasts of burdan. The wizards carried staffs of the glowing crystal which can be "turned" on and off. The party can keep the light off and risk the zombies, or keep it on and risk the elementals, who are not binded properly anymore, running to find them (and then crush them).    You could also limit the amount of light that they can carry. They have to ration it, and they can't just keep it on all the time, although they could light it in the middle of an encounter-perhaps it takes a while to turn on. The crystals of the cave could affect light magic, which is why the dwarves have oil, and so light spells won't work right.    What do you mean by complete death at 1 HP? They just instantly become a zombie or within a few minutes? What if the process of becoming a zombie takes hours or even days of ever-building hungar and loss of rationality? This gives the party even more incentive to be quick with thier actions. When they leave they have to find a powerful priest who can heal thier friend (maybe he's foaming and screeching and in shackles by now, but at least he's there). or maybe the cure can be created with the right components and ritual inside the city, and this only works with a newly becoming a zombie-not a full time, and they could scavange it?    Just some ideas, hope this helps.
#12 Detteret Oct 21, 2011 12:00:24	Thanks Forgotten. It is a real help bouncing ideas off of you. Innitially I liked the idea of light awakening a different threat, but I can't give them control of the light (lightswitch) without losin some of the urgency and accompanying creepy ambiance. The 1 hp death would be from the infection. It must be uncureable or else there was never a reason to seal the chamber. I like the idea of scarcity of light. They will have to limit the time exploring the dark areas. Maybe I can put threats in there that could risk the light itself. Other non-fleshy monsters. Golems, ghosts, anything else? If even one gets scratched by a diseased it is over for them. It will scare the crap out of them. Still though - I need an out in case it is my 10yr old daughter... In fact - all of them will pout hard if they die from infection... Or anything else for that matter...
#13 TheForgottenCommand Oct 21, 2011 20:03:39	You should talk to them about character death, and see how attached they are to them. Character death is a real possibility, and although no one likes it, the game wouldn't be fun without a chance of death. No risk, no reward. you also have to consider what that player will do when their characters die. Will they just sit out for the rest of the adventure? This place doesn't seem to be an ideal location for new pc's to just walk in and join the group, it disturbs the "sealed ancient city full of danger" feeling. maybe they could play as one of the guards that ventured into the city afterward...    Honestly, i think you have thrown the group into a place full of too much danger overall. Avoiding a "touch of death" situation is exciting and very taxing on the players...when it is a single event or creature. But they are in a hive of "touch and die" creatures that are not only tough but incredibly fast and determined. How could the pc's not want to use evasion tatics instead of charging into encounters where death is substantially higher than normal? I really think that it should be curable, at great cost of course. Otherwise, they will see the situation as cruel and without a real fighting chance at victory.    There are other possible reasons why the city could have been sealed off. the king could have been misguided or insaine about the disease. or perhaps he believed there was no cure, but refused to go to the surface out of isolationist dwarven traditions, and it was a rogue faction that built the lift, or it was built a long time ago and the king ordered it shut down. He sealed the city to protect other dwarven cities in the area. Or maybe the city was sealed by surfaces who couldn't afford the cure for a kingdom and were afraid. But the cost for a few individuals is far less expensive.    Non fleshies that would make sense:  Elementals  Statues/Golems/Eidolon/Homunculus/Warforged  Ghosts  /Skeletons/Mummies   Oozes and Jellies   Insects  Fleshies that could not be easily eaten by the zombies like cloakers or bats  Plants like Predatory Vines or Vine Horrors, Myconids    Hope this helps
#14 reviler Oct 21, 2011 21:33:04	why not have the infected at first repelled by the light as they have had no experience with light for a long time, but gradually they find that it doesn't harm them and then they can boldly attack the pcs. Also what if they spread the infection by an aura, the pcs may never realize it, until they think back on the fights and, then they realize the reality of the situation.
#15 Detteret Oct 21, 2011 22:57:01	I think I found my inspiration tonight!  Only a few bugs left (pun intended)   I am going to continue with the hive of infected, but the infected will be a background threat.  Light will become the focus and preoccupation of the group.   I don't recall the name of the creatures, but I seem to recall something from 2nd edition.   Tiny mischievous little flying demons.  If I can't find them I'll homebrew something;  Maybe insectoid like so they aren't tasty to the infected...  These mini-demons will harass the group in the dark rooms, attempting to steal their light and torches.   Maybe have a creature from the negative plan which absorbs light, a few other things to harass the group as well.   So long as they protect their light they are safe. Meanwhile the back story (which they won't know until well after the adventure)  is that the crystal has been corrupted and  a chaotic-evil demon-god has sway over the cavern.   The chaos lord has cursed the occupants with the plague and controls the minions (mini demons)   The chaos lord cannot cross through (yet) but his influence is strong.   (He is stronger than a standard demon, but not quite godlike) At the end as the group is getting away from the infected and the cavern I will have the chaos lord reveal his existence for the first time ever.  He will manifest by massing the whole of the swarm of infected together into a single huge, unwilling, body-cluster.  It will be shaped somewhat like his natural form.    He will attempt to prevent their escape.  (A hold undead staff they will find will paralyze the infected in that limb, and therefore the limb - allowing escape)  I think that will be a nice shock for them! Here are a few other things I'm thinking about.   Option 1)  Somehow a fleshie falls into a mass of infected.   He is killed and those infected which ate him get restored - and are promptly eaten and those that ate them are restored - and are promptly eaten... etc. etc. etc.   Very greusome.   The last ones standing are terrified because they know the death which awaits them - they have all been through it at least once.  Some may even kill each other out of mercy.  Could be an interesting occurrance.  Not sure I can make it happen, but it would illustrate the hell that the city occupants are cursed to. Option 2)  A fleshie still dies, but to only one infected.   That infected becomes a guide for the group and informs them of the key pieces of the dungeon in exchange for their promise of a 'clean' death for him when they are done (he would still be infected, but at least THIS death won't be by getting eaten alive)... and to one day find a cure or at least a lasting death for the whole clan.  I would love to do both if I can figure how to make it flow naturally... So I seem to have figured out everything except where the fleshie comes from.   I decided I can't have guards follow them or else I risk releasing the plague on the whole world.   The entrance they find must seal itself somehow...    Not sure how just yet.   Probably not too hard to think of something.. If they cannot be followed then I guess that means either I kill one from the group, or they have a guard captive.   Or maybe I give them a summon animal spell somehow?  I am almost ready to put this together.   I just gotta get me a 'red-shirt' and I'm good. btw- I think a discussion of character death is a good idea.  It will be in order eventually and soon, but not yet.   I have a few new players for whom I can't yet introduce the risk/reward.  They are still having fun with the newness of it all.   A death would really suck.   Maybe I'll have their 'guide' show them how a cure was almost found, but it had to be administered soon after exposure and it requires a rare item not found in the cave....  Too late for the infected but not too late for the party...
#16 TheForgottenCommand Oct 22, 2011 17:20:42	be careful with the guide. I have crafted plenty of colorful and helpful npc's that were supposed to be integral with the story, only to have them killed by the party because they assume every thief is a generic enemy or every hobgoblin wants to conquer the world. Don't assume the party will befriend the guide because you know he is important. its all in the presentation, and with first impressions.    if you really need a red shirt, the party could find a summon animal scroll inside a library of wizard guildhall, or a trapped one inside of a crstal that is set to "release on touch". I wouldn't count on the guard captive; they may abandon him or tire of him, or even kill him as vengeful retribution, before you are ready for his...grand purpose.      Seems like you have most of everything figured, good work and good luck with the campaign.     Hope this helps
#17 Detteret Oct 22, 2011 23:23:40	Heh,  I've trained them to be open minded about NPCs - one of their best friends is an unusual undead (he didn't realize he was dead until the group met him in a dungeon)   and they also rescued a village of friendly orcs...   They are friendly because their ancesteres were cursed by their deity to be non-violent after they failed in battle...   The non-violent orcs like to farm and write poetry... LOL!