I
started Paragon tier with no real idea of where I wanted to go with the
campaign.
I gave the characters a few
months in game time to sort out their new holdings or businesses and wondered
if I could tie in anything from their character backgrounds.
All the players had provided me with
background material, some of it very extensive.
Each player had provided at least one interesting past event, contact or
location; it was more a case of narrowing stuff down.
Tol’s
player asked if he could set up a Frost Fair on Lake Windrush north of
Threshold. He wanted to run events that
would help bring the peoples of Karameikos together. I thought this sounded promising; it allowed
the players to have some social interaction, emphasised their importance in the
land, and could be a smooth introduction to Paragon tier. I designed a map of the various stalls and
tents on the ice and a timetable of programmed events that was based around
Tols’ player’s suggestions of groups to invite.
The programme divided each of the seven days of the fair into four
(morning, afternoon, evening and night).
Each block of time had at least one scheduled event and many had events
that provided adventure opportunities. A
lot of the events were simply to enrich the background, and allowed the heroes
to catch up with various groups they had met before, such as the Galeb-Dhur of
Gorion. There were also incidents that
played on tensions which needed the heroes to address them if the fair was to
be a success. This included elves and
dwarves, and Thyatians and Traldar.
There was also a list of interesting visitors, including a being from a
realm of extreme cold, and the Thyatian emperor.
Alongside
this was a plot line of young children going missing. This was a hark back to the hags of Heroic
tier to indicate that the less active members of the Karameikan coven were
still active. A powerful hag like
creature (the Ice Queen) periodically took young girls from the surrounding
settlements to train as apprentices. She
always left a substantial reward with the families, part bribe, part exchange. Ozzie was able to use an Object Reading on a
child’s doll to reveal something of the nature of the abductor.
By
the end of the fair the heroes had ensured its success, enjoyed a romantic
entanglement in the case of the ranger, had met the Emperor of Thyatis and the
Grand Duke, had driven off a vampire feeding on the fair-goers, and had a
mystery to solve.
The
frost fair was a great example of how my players were good at giving me ideas
to work with. Tol’s player had a lot of
input in setting up the Frost Fair, I came up with the mechanics and the various
elements that made it a fun adventure.
Furthermore, we did this during a short break form D&D which allowed
us to surprise the players, just as Tol surprised the characters.
I
think the adventure nicely transitioned into the new tier, with the heroes able
to explore some of their new abilities and responsibilities. Memnon was able to promote Eltan’s Spring
Ale, while Switch sold pipeweed and met up with various traders to make deals. Ozzie led a school trip and got his
apprentices to provide magical services and act as general goffers. Kathra organised a team of dwarves to fix any
structural issues, essentially a maintenance team for the fair.
Once
the Frost Fair was over the heroes wanted to rescue the missing girl. A bit of investigation revealed a pattern
over the years; the winters would get colder and longer, then a girl would go
missing. I had already dropped hints
about the more severe winters during Heroic tier (though without a specific
reason other than to increase a sense of menace and to explain why certain
monsters were moving out of the mountains) so the players accepted that this
was the pattern repeating itself.
The
tales led them north into the debatable land between Karameikos and
Darokin. Here a small village of dwarves
welcomed them, and further investigation turned up the tale of a dwarf
prospector, long thought crazy, who claimed to have found a hidden valley of
beautiful women. They welcomed him, but
when he stole from them they turned him out.
The dwarf had since vanished, but Ozzie was able to use a ritual he had
learnt to work out where items the dwarf had stolen had come from.
The
Valley of the Frost Witches was a fairly straight forward adventure. The valley had several opportunities for
adventure, including the tombs of Frost Giants, now inhabited by the Undead,
and a tribe of yeti that could perhaps be swayed to the heroes cause.
Inside
the Frost Witches’ ice caves the heroes battled through various cold creatures,
some of the apprentice frost witches, and also encountered the souls of past
victims. The Ice Queen was willing the
talk with the heroes and explained something of her history. Ozzie realised she was a childhood
acquaintance, and begged her to return with him. She rejected his offer, and said she would
allow the heroes to leave, provided they kept the valley secret. The young girl, she said, was happier with
her that she would have been with her parents.
The heroes refused, and after a long battle (including a ‘time out’
thanks to a powerful ally they met at the Frost Fair) felled the Ice Queen,
though at the cost of Kathra and Ozzie’s life.
Memnon
brought Ozzie back quite happily, but Kathra’s player was uncomfortable with
the ease with which the spell worked. He
also was unhappy with the party killing off one of the apprentices, who was, in
effect, only defending herself and following the orders of her mistress. As a result of conversations about this I
decided that the Heroes of Dymrak might be ready to face the consequences of
their actions.
The
heroes returned to Knosht, location of Ozzie’s magic school. The first bit of bad news was that Kathra was
unavailable for Raise Dead, her soul refused to answer Memnon’s call. The second was the appearance of Bargle,
acting on behalf of both Baron von Hendricks and the Grand Duke. He had a warrant for their arrest. Switch, Tol and Ozzie agreed to accompany
him, but Memnon, stung by his failure to bring Kathra back, snatched her body
and fled, now an outlaw. The three
heroes found themselves well and truly under arrest. The charge was murder, that of one of the Ice
Queen’s apprentices who had been knocked senseless by the party before being
dispatched by Tol and Switch. To make
matters worse, although as Court Lords they were allowed to be tried by nobles,
the judge chosen for the initial hearing was von Hendricks (though he was later
replaced by the Duke’s son). With Bargle
assisting the Baron was able to prove that the crime had indeed taken place,
the girl was defenceless when slain.
Switch’s player found this hard to accept, after all, Switch was a
tax-paying resident, whereas the girl was a monster (it was pointed out that
one of the rewards the Duke had given them was exemption from tax for a year).
After
much interesting and tense verbal exchange, the heroes (along with Memnon, who
had surrendered himself) were found guilty.
There were extenuating circumstances, and they were punished by being
given a task to perform; slay a Black Dragon that was menacing the Black Eagle
Barony. To ensure the party’s
compliance, they were accompanied by an elven woman who had been one of the
witnesses. Kathra’s player brought in
another character, Althea, who happened to have been the nursemaid of one of
the girls taken by the Frost Witches and then killed by the heroes. Knowing that the heroes were responsible for
her charge’s death she was happy to help in their trial, and at the end agreed
to try and keep them on the straight and narrow.
The
next adventure involved the heroes travelling to Fort Doom and encountering
Falorax the Black. Their interactions
with von Hendricks and Bargle didn’t make them change their minds about the
Baron, indeed they disliked the pair even more, but were forced into compliance
by the terms of the verdict, and Althea was there to keep an eye on them,
though she did begin to wonder about the motives of the Black Eagle.
There
was much to-ing and fro-ing with Falorax attacking Fort Doom apparently after
the currently absent Bargle, then the party rushing to Knosht to defend it
against Falorax, as that was where Bargle was currently dwelling. The attack on Knosht cost the heroes Ozzie
(again) and Memnon’s father, this time the wizard’s body was carried off by the
dragon, preventing Memnon raising him.
Francesca,
a wizard acquaintance of Ozzie’s was enlisted to help find Ozzie’s body, and
take down the dragon. The heroes traced
Falorax back to his lair and fought him, eventually slaying him after learning
that the dragon was in thrall to Trinkla the Black (another reference from the module AC11), a legendary, and apparently
Undead, wizard, who also now was in possession of Ozzie’s body. Falorax wasn’t finished however, his flesh
sloughed off his body, and a skeletal dragon stood where he had died. Trinkla’s voice taunted the heroes as it flew
away.
Chasing
the undead dragon to Trinkla’s lair, the heroes were forced to entertain the lich;
this deadly game included fighting the now undead Falorax and Ozzie
himself. Once both were defeated Trinkla
allowed the heroes to depart, taking their slain wizard with them.
The
fights with Falorax proved exciting and suitably climactic. The heroes faced him four times, including
his dracolich form, and the first couple of times he escaped them to face them
again. I had to handle the fight against
Ozzie carefully; there is a danger with putting characters against each other
that the group can fracture. For this
the players were in no doubt that the Ozzie they faced was not their friend,
and that they had to defeat him to get him back. Full marks to his player who played him
pretty deadly, though the combined might of the rest of the party proved too
much.
Although
Heroic Tier marked the end of the Eyes of Traldar campaign arc, the end of this
adventure marked the point where the heroes moved away from Karameikos and
became more wanderers in the wider world and beyond. There were plenty of plot threads left
dangling, some of which we returned to, but the main focus of the campaign
shifted.
The
newly raised Ozzie proved a darker and more sinister person. His light-hearted approach to life seemed to
have died in the swamp. He was more
driven, and had received disturbing news about his father, long thought to have
died defending Knosht with Ozzie’s mother when Ozzie was just a child. Now is seemed that what all thought was his
father had in fact been a shape-shifting serpent folk.
Ozzie
wanted to trace his father’s movements and seek out his goal, the Lost Library,
but he still had sufficient loyalty to want to find Kathra. His time in the Veiled Lady’s court (my
version of the Raven Queen) revealed that Kathra’s soul was not in the Shadow
Realm or the natural world. Travelling
to the Shadow Realm to find out more, the heroes thwarted plans to create a
powerful shadow creature that would have threatened the rule of the Veiled
Lady, Immortal ruler of the realm. In return she revealed that the
dwarf's soul was elsewhere, and sent them to the Fae Realm to seek it
out. Here more of Kathra's strange backstory was revealed, and two
warring tribes were reconciled. The dwarf was once more one of the Heroes
of Dymrak, though now inhabiting her sister’s body, but Althea mysteriously
failed to travel with them to the Fae Realm.
The heroes learnt many things about the nature of the different realms,
including the (later very significant) fact that time moved differently in each
realm.
Once
more reunited, the heroes traced Ozzie’s father’s travels. In Thyatis City they became involved in the
unrest of the times and uncovered a nest of serpent folk who were working to
somehow take over the world. The serpent
folk answered to a larger group somewhere beyond Sind, a long way to the west.
The
heroes took ship to Sind and travelled through the country to the deserts
beyond. Here they found an underground
civilisation of elves and gnolls (or beastmen as Memnon insisted on calling
them). They learnt to trust these
strange allies and fought a beholder for them, learning more about the threat
from creatures ‘beyond’ the normal world.
The
beholder lair was great fun to do, as I wanted to give a feel of something
truly alien. Given that beholders hover
through the air, and have the ability to disintegrate, I thought they would
have no need of flat floors. The lair
consisted of circular tunnels that connected spherical chambers. The heroes struggled to simply get around,
and it was obvious they faced a very different foe to the norm.
They
were then taxed by a huge Blue Dragon who took magic items off each of them,
and found an old fort now inhabited by the Serpent Folk. In the caverns beneath they found a whole
city of the creatures, and rescued many prisoners, including Ozzie’s father.
The
quest for the lost Library continued, and the heroes eventually found it and
discovered that it had been overrun by creatures from beyond the natural
realm. Many of the staff were still
there, though now warped into hideous forms, and definitely hostile. The heroes eventually triumphed and took
control of the Library. They continued
to use it as a hide away and treasure store for the rest of the campaign.
This
was perhaps the most epic looking adventure.
The set up (see
here for more details) encouraged the players to see the
site as truly three dimensional.
Lots of
flying monsters helped.
I was also
influenced by a feature in many video game dungeons; that of the large central
space that has to be revisited several times to progress ever further into the
complex.
The ever present threat of
fiend (demons) in this space meant that careful mapping allowed the heroes to
prepare for expected encounters and the repetition helped them learn and
develop tactics.
Shutting the doors
would have helped too.
They
learnt enough in the Lost Library to drive them on to the end of Paragon
Tier. An ancient evil, the Carnifex, had
lain various plots against the world as they seemed to worship powerful beings
that dwelt Beyond. It seemed as if there
was a threat mounting now, and the heroes learnt of a ruined Carnifex city in
the southern continent of Davania that might provide more clues.
I took the development of the Carnifex from various
writers on the Piazza Mystara Forum. The
creatures appear in one module, M3 Twilight Calling, where they are described
thus; The Carnifex are an ancient evil race,
kin to both lizards and dinosaurs. Long ago they developed a civilization based
on the darkest exploitation of magic. Their lust for power became dangerous but
one experiment that went wrong left them trapped in another dimension. They have been
developed by various Mystaraphiles, notably Geoff Gander, as a race connected
with and subservient to a powerful group of entities, effectively a Mystaran
version of the Great Old Ones. As a fan
of the Cthulhu Mythos, this works for me as an ultimate evil for the heroes to
struggle against.
Back in
Specularum the heroes met once more with the Duke and explained their theories
and fears. After discussion with Teldon,
head of the Wizard’s Guild he agreed to sponsor their expedition to Davania. A ship was chartered under the guise of a
trading expedition, but even as they set out it was clear that enemies were on
their trail. The Cult of the Ebon Key
chased them out of the harbour, and it seemed that even the Wizard’s Guild had
been infiltrated.
Various plots
dogged the heroes’ journey. Machinations
in the Minrothad Guilds ensured that a Minrothadi agent was hired as part of
the crew, pirates attacked, resulting in some fun ship to ship action, and a
cures placed on the ship required a stop-over on an island for repairs.
On the island
the heroes investigated a recently exposed underground complex where they
uncovered evidence of the Carnifex, including something foul that they may have
worshiped, and a map of the ancient empire.
They also explored
the remains of a doomed Thyatian settlement and fought of undead while they
discovered the tragic tale of the settlement.
South again to
Davania and the Thyatian city of Ravenscarp.
Here the Ebon Key again tried to disrupt their plans; then on to the
ruins of the Carnifex city. This city is
mentioned in one of Geoff Gander’s stories.
There is a suggestion that a strange effect takes explorers back to the
time of the city’s grandeur. I borrowed
this idea to demonstrate the evil of the Carnifex and to foreshadow some of the
future events in the campaign that I had in mind.
To make the trip
into the past really different I had the heroes’ souls inhabit the bodies of
just sacrificed victims. I also used 5th
edition rules, with the characters being first level. I’m not sure how well this worked; perhaps I
tried to be too clever and the new rules were one too many things to keep track
of. I think the general feel of the city
in the past came across well. There was a lot of information provided that would
help with the heroes’ exploration of the ruined city and its catacombs, I think
some of this was lost. Anyway,
everything ended with a bang as the heroes sabotaged a nasty Carnifex device
that collected and focused ‘soul energy’ from mass sacrifices. The heroes were contacted by the Immortal Proteus who explained a bit about the dangers the Carnifex posed, and that he had sent their souls back to find out more. They then awakened in their present, in
their own bodies, and could explore the ruined city.
I hoped that their experiences in the past would have given them some insight into the layout of the complex. To some extent this worked, and the players enjoyed revisiting areas they knew from the past. The dungeon ended with a boss fight against a Carnifex lich who they were sure was following some complex Carnifex plot. Once it was destroyed the dungeon collapsed around them and they beat a hasty retreat. They hadn't found the lich's phylactery, and could only hope it was buried under the rubble.
Above ground they walked straight into an ambush. The Ebon Key had followed them and were out for vengeance. As the battle started, help arrived from an unexpected quarter; an Alphatian sky ship was overhead and signalled to the heroes to come aboard.
Apparently Ozzie was a Prince of one of the Alphatian cities, though not close to the throne. The ship was sent to inform him of certain duties he should undertake to ensure his place in the line of succession. However, more important events overtook this.
On the voyage the heroes were once more contacted by Proteus who had a plan. He believed that a great danger existed in the past. If the Carnifex were able to rip open a series of portals in a city known as Lhomar, they would weaken the fabric of reality enough for that which exists Beyond to smash through. It didn't matter that history said that they had failed. History could change, as the heroes had seen for themselves. Proteus wished to ensure that the Carnifex failed, and the heroes were his tool to do so. The heroes requested they be taken straight to Specularum to prepare for the next phase of their adventures.
Paragon Tier ended with the players and heroes poised to begin the arc that would see them try to save reality itself, a suitably epic storyline for Epic Tier. The story so far seemed to have worked. At times I was unsure quite where to go to. The Obsidian City of the Carnifex was a fun end to the tier, but I think I would have been better off not changing to 5E. There was enough going on without the intelectual load of trying a new game system. I suppose Basic D&D would have been a more appropriate system, given that we were supposed to be harking back to the past, but I wanted to introduce the new system and some of the players hadn't experienced it.
I also had a suitable climax planned with the heroes once more confronting the Blue Dragon that had taxed them in the desert. While not a fully designed adventure, I had roughed out a series of encounters and developed suitable creatures for the dragon's servants. However, once I started bringing a reality threatening danger into the picture the players decided, rightly, that nothing else really mattered.
You can find out how we fared with Epic Tier here.