All Good Things - Heroic Tier

So my long running 4E D&D campaign is over, here I talked a bit about the set up and the characters; this post is about the plotline (for the first ten levels anyway) and I talk about how things went.

The campaign was focused around a set group of characters; rather like an ensemble cast TV show.   The cast did change somewhat over time, but two of the players kept the same characters throughout, Memnon the tiefling cleric of Halav and Tol-Flemin the half elf ranger.  Memnon has the distinction of surviving the entire campaign without dying.

There was also Ozzie the human wizard.  During one of Ozzie's frequent deaths the player took a second wizard, xxxx. At the beginning of the campaign we had a human rogue, Teflon, but after the character's death the player dropped out, to be replaced initially by Fyodor, a human bard.  The fifth player began with the dwarven fighter Kathra.  When she died the player brought in the elven Warden Althea, then bringing back Kathra (in her sister's body and conveniently known now as Kathka) before finishing epic tier with Althea again.  This player also ran Fyodor the bard, who eventually left the player character roster to take up the position of Seer of the Lake of Lost Dreams. Sometime after Teflon's death another player joined the group with Switch the halfling rogue.

The campaign began with the first published 4E module, Keep on the Shadowfell.  In retrospect this is a poor module.  Whilst there are many good points about it, it has more flaws.  The initial encounter, even just with kobolds, can easily be deadly to a level 1 party, especially if they are learning the rules as well.  The first part of the adventure provides a well detailed and interesting settlement, with a few encounters in the surrounding area, but once the party enter the complex below the ruined keep the adventure is very linear. There is rarely a significant choice of path to be made, and the final fight against Kalarel the Priest of Orcus we found underwhelming.  I added a skill challenge as suggested in a Dragon article somewhere, otherwise there had been no opportunity to use this new mechanic in the dungeon.

It was partly my dissatisfaction with this adventure that prompted me to design my own adventures, or at least adapt commercial adventures.  A side trek in Dungeon magazine included an encounter with a hag, and I've always liked these monsters, especially as they can hide within a society, appearing to be nothing more sinister than an aging crone.  I took the idea of a coven of hags and made them subservient to Orcus.  The Eyes of Traldar are an established item in Mystaran lore (though I think there are only two actually in cannon) so I used them as quest items for both the party and the hags.  Whoever had the most would be able to significantly affect the land of Karameikos.  I decided to theme the Eyes in pairs such as life and death, fire and water.  Their powers were not that strong, though the option existed to replace a character's eye with one of the Eyes.  The players never did this, though one NPC did.  I used an idea I had been considering for a while, that of the societal significance of an item.  The Traldar people venerated the idea of the Eyes, regardless of actual power, if they were known to be in the possession of evil beings, the morale of the citizens would be shattered.  I'm not sure how well this came across. 

A letter in the possession of the hag led the heroes to Specularum where they sought another hag.  This ‘sweet old lady’ had a gang of children swarming around her, among which were Dark Creepers, a Shadowfell race which returned several times in the campaign.  Further investigation revealed a cult popular among the poor and downtrodden, promising redemption at a price.  The heroes powered through their lair and found it was led by Klaus Jorga, a fallen priest of the Cult of Halav (one of Karameikos’ more fringe religions).  He is actually an NPC from the 2E adventure Hail the Heroes, and Memnon’s player recognised him.  They also realised that the Dark Ones were enemies of the cult and were also after the Eyes, presumably for their hag leader. Jorga’s trail then led to an estate outside the city, where a burial vault, along with lots of traps, was plundered to culminate in a battle with the deluded priest.  I lifted the trap level from a Dungeon adventure, though I can’t now remember which one.  The heroes also became aware that House Toronescu wanted to recover the Eyes to use them as a rallying point for a Traldar renaissance.  One of that House, Fyodor, joined the group after they lost Teflon, struck down after resisting arrest.

Information gained from the dead hag showed the existence of more Eyes, along with vague suggestions where they might be found.

The heroes then set out for the Dymrak Forest.  Tol the ranger believed that his organisation, the Watchers of Dymrak, had a long time connection with the Eyes, and might know more about them.  After several encounters, including a night in an abandoned chapel assaulted by hordes of zombies (Dead by Dawn from Dungeon magazine) they met both with a powerful hag and the spiritual leader of the Watchers, the Seer of the Lake of Lost Dreams.  Here they learned of the balance between Light and Dark, and that some of the lesser hags had upset the balance.  The Seer gave them directions to find the Eye of Water and the Eye of Fire, the Blight Swamp and the Caverns of Dhur respectively.  I was all set for the Eye of Fire adventure first; I don’t know why I thought that would be the character’s choice.  I had the adventure ready with the swamp stuff roughed out.  Of course the players decided to go to the swamp first.  Fortunately we found that 4E plays slowly, especially in encounters, so I soon caught up, and using the online tools it was easy to tweak the levels of the encounters for the Eye of Fire adventure later.

The adventurers set out westwards first for Luln.  Here they learnt about an earlier expedition into the Blight Swamp during the Thyatian occupation.  They realised that one of the expedition had one of the Eyes, and learnt something about the dangers to be faced.  I took this straight from a Basic D&D adventure AC11 Combat Shield, which included a short wilderness adventure based around a found manuscript.  Several DMs have placed this in Karameikos in the Blight Swamp area, and I though it fit just fine as background.

The party battled ghouls and lizard folk, and made friends with a smaller, more civilised breed of lizard kin called Cay-men.  They also lost Fyodor, who, in extremis used a ritual the Seer had taught him, was magically whisked back to the Lake of Lost Dreams (to the heroes he had just vanished, though the players were well aware of what happened.  This was because we had a new player who would be running a halfling rogue rather than Kathra’s player running two characters).  They also rescued an angry halfling from the larger cannibal creatures and he, Switch agreed to join them as he was sneaky and good with locks etc.  Eventually they realised that the Eye of Water venerated by the Cay-men had helped them become more civilised.  They couldn’t take it without having a catastrophic effect on them, and the Cay-men would doubtless fight to protect it.  Hoping they would be strong enough to guard it, the heroes left for the mountains and the Eye of Fire.  This may sound like a strange ending, in truth, the players had several options; they could have fought the Cay-men for the eye and left them to (presumably sink back into more primitive behaviour), they could have stolen it, with the same results, and if discovered in the act, a chase through the swamps would have been very dramatic, they could even have reasoned that it didn’t have to be that Eye, one of the lesser powered ones could have been exchanged in the hopes that the Cay-men would still benefit.  In the end the players decided to leave things as they were.  There was a temptation to apply the principle of ‘no good deed goes unpunished’ and have a hag wielding the Eye of Water later in the campaign, but I resisted; too much of that makes the players disinclined to do selfless acts.

The journey north included a few encounters, social as well as combat, and helped introduce the heroes to some of the people and places in Northern Karameikos.  There was even a reference to an old character of Memnon’s player.  Eventually they reached the village of Highdell, close to the Mines of Duhr where they believed the Eye of Flame was hidden.  They also heard tales of a strange dragon, Kathra, who had a history with dragons wondered if it were Volvagia, long though slain or imprisoned.  OK, I admit this part was inspired by LoZ games.  Volvagia is the name of the Boss in the Fire Temple, and I used the idea and description of the Gorons, especially as depicted in Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess applied to the Galeb Dhur.  Check the description, they are pretty similar I feel.  I don’t think any of the players noticed anyway, but it did give me some ideas for portraying the GD as NPCs, and I nicked a few personal names as well.

The Mines of Dhur were, I think, the best dungeon I had run so far.  The scale was grand, with movement on the general map measured in hours and days.  Three different routes led to the final chamber where the dragon had been imprisoned (and had presumably escaped).  The GD used the Eye of Fire to seal a rift to a portion of the Plane of Fire.  The dragon (a Volcano Dragon in 4E) had been trapped within, but the manipulation of the hags had weakened the seal.  The chamber could only be entered through a door that required a four part key (shades of the TP Goron mines), these parts were scattered around the mines.  I gave each level of the mines a distinct feel, and a particular set of enemies to be encountered.  The first chamber included a bridge over a river of lava.  Once the party had crossed and were battling fire bats, Volvagia swooped up out of the lava, smashing the bridge and diving back, splashing lava.  The players loved this feel of having been cut off from the outside and being forced to progress.  They had the choice of which level(s) to explore, and there were a few places where they could change levels if they wanted.  The bottom level was winding passages with pools and streams of lava.  Heat was a hazard here, and the creatures were various creatures from the elemental plane of Fire, presumably escaped through the rift with the dragon.

The middle level was natural caves, but without the lava and heat.  There was much evidence of mining here.  The caves and passages were inhabited by Troglodytes and their creatures.

The top level had regular rooms and corridors, though they were walled and floored with iron plates. Various items of smelting and processing equipment were here. Gnolls and similar roamed this level.  In Karameikan history the gnolls are known as the Beastmen, and play an important role in the story of Halav.  I have always ruled that Halav drove them off, and they are more or less legendary.  Now of course they are starting to return, another effect of the hags’ meddling with the Eyes.  Seeing them gave the cleric of Halav a shock, and he responded to them with suitable rage.  Eventually the party made it to the door to the chamber, despite possessing only three keys Switch was able to finesse it open (I didn’t want the lack of a key to halt the adventure, so suitable Thievery checks could substitute.

I modelled the boss fight off some of the Angry GMs articles; there is an issue with solo monsters in D&D, the action economy doesn’t work in their favour.  Merely giving them more hit points doesn’t make up for all the extra attacks and effects that a party can lay on them. They also quickly devolve into a slug fest where the party runs out of options other than basic attacks and just stand there and knock lumps of the boss monster.  The fight against Kalarel in Keep on the Shadowfell was a good example of this.  Angry’s system splits the boss into three stages, each of which is counted as a separate monster with its own stat block and distinctive attacks.  Many video games use this model to good effect.

Ultimately this worked well, but it perhaps wasn’t the epic encounter the players deserved.  Although I liked the three stage boss fight, I didn’t use it again.  I probably didn’t have the stages quite impressive enough, and I’m sure I could do a better job now.  I did approach boss fights differently from this point on.

Once the heroes had won, and claimed the Eye, which due to an obscure Galeb Dhur prophecy, the owners were happy to hand over, the party headed back to Specularum.  On the way they met a military encampment, it seemed as if the Black Eagle Barony had sent troops to the area led by his wizard Bargle the Magnificent.  They knew about the threat the hags posed and had captured one of them.  The heroes were in the situation of knowing that Bargle was bad (he magic missiled a soldier who brought him bad news, just in case they hadn’t got the point), but Bargle was doing their work for them.  In fact, when the heroes called for the hag to be executed, Bargle insisted that she be taken for trial.  This was an excellent introduction to the Black Eagle and his politics.  I have always played him as very suave, very sinister, and very clever at manipulating things for his own benefit.  After all, he has fooled his cousin for years, so I don’t think he is a scenery chewing madman.  Bargle even requested that the heroes hand over any Eyes to his safe keeping (they refused), and allowed them to watch as he questioned the hag.  They learnt about the hag’s ritual of blinding, designed to spoil the Eyes and plunge the land into darkness.  Worse, Bargle’s right hand man was the tiefling uncle of Memnon.  They insisted that the heroes accompany them to the Black Eagle Barony as witnesses to the trial, under guard if necessary.  As things started to look tricky, a group of Knights of the Griffon, led by Alena Halloran, niece of the ruler of Threshold, arrived and arrested the heroes.  The law stated that they must be taken in chains back to Specularum.  Good Insight on the part of the heroes suggested they go along with this, and even though Bargle realised it was a ploy, he was forced to let them go.

This gave the players the opportunity to mix with some of the heroes, and villains, of the land, and built up more resentment for the Black Eagle and Bargle.  This set up some interesting conflicts in Paragon tier.  I also re-introduced Fyodor, now the apprentice of the Seer.  He asked the heroes to help find his master, who had gone missing in the Lake of Lost Dreams.

Using the travel ritual the party arrived at the Lake and discovered that the island on the lake is a nexus between the natural world, the Fae Realm and the Shadow Realm.  They met various denizens of these realms, not all unfriendly, and managed to split the party between realms.  This was an opportunity to learn more about the different Realms (Fae and Shadow).  I don’t run quite the same world as the official 4E world.  Some of the concepts don’t quite fit in Mystara, but there is precedent for different realms that are adjacent to the normal world, so I have used this concept to introduce the Shadowfell and the Feywild.  The heroes met more of the Dark Kin in the Shadow Realm, building on their experiences in Specualrum, and setting up expectations for a further jaunt into the realms in Paragon tier.  The also discovered that time flows differently in the different realms, which would be a very important bit of information in the final adventure (although six years later they did need some reminding).  They underwent a trail to rescue the soul of the Seer (and a powerful hag).  This chase through forest glades sequence was heavily inspired by the Lost Woods section of LoZ:TP, though I don’t think the players realised (none of them every having played this game).

In the ruins of a temple the heroes battled trolls and Grushenka, a powerful hag, who revealed that part of her plan had been to depose the hag leader.  Rather than die at their hands she fled not before ‘blinding’ the Eye of Ice and the Eye of Fire.

Further LoZ inspired puzzles (the statue moving one taken absolutely directly from TP) revealed the Temple as it existed 500 years ago.  Inside Traldar warriors were frozen in time in the midst of a battle with orcs.  The heroes help finish the fight, even when a Beholder appears (what better foe in an adventure series based around magical Eyes?).  Once back in their own world and time, the heroes consult with an ancient being known only as The Historian who provides the necessary exposition.  At his urging the heroes realise that the hags have broken an ancient pact with the Seer, and call foul.  This allows Zirchev, one of the Immortals who watch over Karameikos, to bring them to account.  Sadly, the Seer did not survive, so Fyodor took up his mantle as Seer of the Lake of Lost Dreams.  Zirchev summoned the Eyes, which it is clear were important to him, and scattered them across Karameikos.  He informed the heroes that they had done well and that the danger from the hags was over (for now).  The players then had the opportunity to ask him any questions that they wanted, though they might not always have understood his answers.  He then transported them to a strange banquet that the Grand Duke laid on for them, without really knowing why.  He recognised that they had done great service to his land however, and rewarded them with titles and land grants or other rewards.

Paragon Tier is covered here.