Plots & PlacesPost your PCs and NPCs for others to reference and enjoy. This is also an alternate location for long-term campaign and plot development. These can be system neutral or relate to any game or system.
Nail, I'm not picturing a city so much as a small trading post at a natural conjunction of tunnels. I'm not worried about who's going to keep people in line; as far as I'm concerned, this is a place of mutual convenience that people patronize because they can't get what they need anywhere else. Often times, creatures come in and trash sections of it - and the other merchants probably hide until the danger goes away. There are enough semi-powerful to powerful creatures there that annoying all of them would be unwise for the far-sighted traveler. I actually want a place where Emirikol the Chaotic might fireball a stand that cheats him, and then go into the arena to settle the disagreement once and for all. Since it's a "set piece" and not the basis for an entire campaign, I don't have to worry yet about any hidden masters.
Anyways, great ideas. I'll map the place out when all is said and done. I'm much more interested in NPCs with personality than with "half-template" power.
Last edited by Piratecat; 25th November 2002 at 07:19 PM..
This was something a group I was in witnessed in an underdark carnaval. The description went something like this:
As you round the corner, you see a large crowd gathered 'round a raised platform. On the platform is a large machine and a jovial bugbear yelling to the crowd.
The machine is a complicated set of pulleys, gears, chains, and metal pipes. On the top of it is a basket-like funnel, full of cute baby kittens.
"COME ONE COME ALL and see the cat-o-matic! It slices..."
He turns a large crank on the side. A peal of meows as squishing noises become squeeling gears crunchings, and the machine spits out evenly sliced... meat, into the screaming crowd.
"... It dices..." He turns the crack again, this time with more effort, and small cubes of meat spill out of the tubes in the machine onto the crowd
"... It even purees!" With all the effort he is capable of, the bugbear inches the crank around, and red liquid sprays over the masses. The scream in joy, holding up bags of coing and yelling for more...
mmm... kitty chow...
__________________ [Living ENWorld] Currently Playing Milo Bottleshanks setting out from the Red Dragon Inn(Start of "Tiggle's Order")
You need to have beholder architects. For when you need to hollow out that stalagtite tower. Maybe have the architect assisted by a bevy of charmed pech or dwarven helpers. For an additional cost it can add realistic statuary to your new underdark abode. Just don't criticise his "vision" or you may find yourself on the wrong end of a disintegration ray.
Galastor
Male Beholder
Large Aberration
13d8+13 (71 hp) CR 14
Initiative: +4 (Improved Initiative)
Speed: 5 ft., fly 20 ft. (good)
AC: 20 (-1 size, +11 natural)
Attacks: Eye rays +8 ranged touch, bite +3 melee
Damage: Bite 2d4
Face/Reach: 5 ft. by 5 ft./5 ft.
Special Attacks: Eye rays
Special Qualities: All-around vision, antimagic cone, fly
Saves: Fort +5, Ref +4, Will +12
Abilities: Str 10, Dex 10, Con 12, Int 17, Wis 15, Cha 15
Skills: Hide +7, Knowledge (arcana) +10, Knowledge (underdark architecture) +12, Listen +15, Search +18, Spot +20
Feats: Alertness, Flyby Attack, Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Shot on the Run
Eye Rays Range 150' DC 18, as 13th lv sorcerer
__________________ "I'm off to see what an 18 Charisma is worth 'under the hood'" Haley, Order of the Stick.
> You could do a spin on the usual setup by having a "Black Market" in surface-world items (especially anything requiring a Good alignment; would that make it a "White Market"?)
Some enterprising neutral Human mage goes up to the surface, buys all sorts of items from the good guys, then teleports down to the market to sell the items to all those races who desperately want certain items (*cough*Sunblade*cough*) but can't make them for themselves. I mean, no one specializes in anti-Undead like the good guys, but those races currently resisting the White Kingdom need stuff NOW. Vials of Holy Water are a good example of this.
Some races might not like the idea of having holy items being sold in their market, so this is done quietly. Likewise, you might have him sell anti-Illithid items for other paranoid Underdark residents, but you don't want the Illithids themselves to know who has the items or where they got them from.
It'd need to be someone who could fit in well with the setting without actually being evil... that Shadow Mind psion PrC I linked would probably work, if you made him focus on Telepathy and Psychoportation. A bit crazy, somewhat mercenary, but powerful enough to survive this sort of setting.
Other possible encounters:
> Golem salesman. Picture him as a used-car salesman, trying to sell you a Flesh Golem. Maybe a bit too cheesy, but it could be fun, especially if he's competing with the slave traders for business. Sort of like Arwink's undead deal; unruly slaves are sold at a discount to the golem makers for raw materials.
> The exotic food market. If Illithid are members of this community, you HAVE to have a Brain section. Freshly-harvested brains from various exotic races, held in stasis/Quintessence to preserve quality. It wouldn't all have to be disgusting stuff, though; there'd be a demand for rare spices or ingredients, especially if you have a restaurant next door with a good chef who knows how to cook ANYTHING.
> The "movie theater". Remember how the Defenders have fans who'd pay to watch them from Dylrath's room? You could have a shop that uses a big crystal ball to watch surface-world battles (the Church of Aeos versus the Necromancer Kings would be popular). It's especially fun if you give them a "record" function, so that the ball can replay past battles, although there you're getting awfully close to the Sensatorium concept. Problem: it'd be a big source of information to be able to see exactly what happened at, say, Mrid without using divinations.
For "current" battles, betting pools on the outcome are optional.
> Architecture:
You could have fun with extradimensional spaces here. Presumably, many of these merchants are powerful spellcasters. They'd want the ability to seal/remove/relocate their shops if needed. So, some (not all) of the shops could be located somewhere else with just an entrance portal in the market, or maybe it's less obvious, like a storefront that leads to an impossibly large shop.
You could also tie into this by using a variant on the Daern's Fortress: shops that shrink down to a small cube when the owner closes up for the night. So, a shop might not be in the same place two days in a row, and there'd be some competition for the good spots.
> In fact, the entire market could be semi-nomadic. They pick a town, set up in a cavern nearby, and stay there until local conditions become unpleasant or until the waste piles up, at which point they pick a new home and migrate. The mundane residents (mostly nonmagical "weak" races like Kobolds who do the grunt work) have to travel the old-fashioned way, but the magical ones simply appear once the market has re-established.
The only constant is centerpiece of the market, a very distinctive statue that casters can scry to find the market's current location. Since any change in the statue itself would cause Teleports to go badly, damaging or defacing the statue is usually a capital offense. I keep thinking of the statue from the Hitchhiker's books, where Arthur had 50 arms, each of which was killing Agrajag's reincarnations in a different way. Something irreproducibly distinctive and intimidating. (Hmm, wonder if P'Keen could be brought back into the story?)
For some reason my mind conjures up the image of a crazy old trapper/skinner. Instead of beaver pelts, perhaps he is bringing in brains for the mind flayers, or some otherwise creepy kind of pelt.
Another idea I have thought of before is an awakened mouse that pulls a Wizard of Oz style stunt. Ignore the rodent inside the mouse hole!
__________________ “When one awakes, and rolls from his pallet, and strides across the cold rushes to put flame to lantern. When the world is asleep around him. When the whippoorwill sings and crickets speak. When one is alone, in silence, with nothing but a book. That, my son, is glory. That is all the glory a man ever needs, and more besides.” - Sage Poridel Poriden, Sins of Our Fathers
Are you running SoW and are interested in getting some ideas on the overarching plot?
Looking for better ways to tie the disparate modules together?
Come visit my thread on doing exactly that! Also, visit the wiki it inspired! Player's stay out!
There was an underground traiding post in dungeon magazine no 75, ran by duergar.
You could take that as a root, and expand it. The Duergar are still running the show, but they could be overwhelmed by some of the more powerfull merchant... but they like things not too rowdy, so they let the duergar stay "in charge". The place could be at a "crossroad", each tunel entry walled and garded by duergar gards.
Water is an important resource in the underdark, and perhaps the duergar (or another group) have complete control over a water source at the post.
Creepy products:
-Troll in a box.
Troll blood is an important ingredient in the creation of healing potions. It is fairly abudant on the surface (some of the few semi-civilised trolls even sell their own blood on the side), but trolls are rare in several areas of the underdark.
The Troll in a box is an iron crate, with a troll stuffed inside. One hole is used to feed the troll, one hole is used to evacuate waste, one is for air intake and one is for blood collection. Should the troll be rescued, it will take him a few hours to go from cube shape to a functional troll form, at wich point he will attack everyone in a rage, turned mad by its poor treatment. The troll in a box probides enough blood to halve the creation cost of up to 10 healing potions a day.
__________________ “When one awakes, and rolls from his pallet, and strides across the cold rushes to put flame to lantern. When the world is asleep around him. When the whippoorwill sings and crickets speak. When one is alone, in silence, with nothing but a book. That, my son, is glory. That is all the glory a man ever needs, and more besides.” - Sage Poridel Poriden, Sins of Our Fathers
Are you running SoW and are interested in getting some ideas on the overarching plot?
Looking for better ways to tie the disparate modules together?
Come visit my thread on doing exactly that! Also, visit the wiki it inspired! Player's stay out!
Location: Cedar Rapids, IA PCs now: Genasi Warlord 5 Human BRV Fighter 5
Posts: 8,000
Quote:
Originally posted by Piratecat Since it's a "set piece" and not the basis for an entire campaign, I don't have to worry yet about any hidden masters.
True enough. Still, the "masters" of the place might be an interesting well o' ideas. I guess I just like NPC that are interesting and have a solid "reason for existence".
The masters could just be two or three powerful merchants, who are based in other areas but have "trading arms" set up deep in the underdark. The shops of the three big merchants have attracted other, smaller merchants and traders to the scene. Although there are no law-keeping force per se, self-interest keeps most in-line most of the time.
As for specific NPCs, I still think an "ordinary" human might be a great idea, especially when contrasted with all of the other rabble down there. Perhaps he's just a relatively high level rogue with a penchant for the dark and exotic? And yet his portly and open demeanor would mark him for a clean-living "nice" guy. He's just got to sell some slimey, vile product...then again, perhaps he sells Holy Water (credits to Spatzimaus).
(It's pretty hard to get a "strange" NPC from a campaign that's "seen it all", isn't it?)
This area also seems like a great place to recycle some of those old NPCs and plot threads you've got hanging around. Good grief, there must be a few appropriate old ones in your "cast of thousands"!
__________________ - Nail
Last edited by Nail: Today....just a few minutes ago
Jeez Louise... Not sure I can top some of the things already put down. All I can think of right now is an Advanced Hound Archon / Blackguard or something similiar that hires out as a bounty hunter and a tough. I will try to come up with more.
__________________ -Kaodi
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.
-Iago, Shakespeare's Othello, Act III. Scene III. Lines 180-186.
A platoon of kobold's with very vision-inhibitive helmets on armed with staves with porcupines lashed to the end of the stick!
They thump the porcupine on the ground once to get it nice and worked up, then they thwack people with the porcupine when they get out of line.
No one retaliates because of who backs the kobolds. And because attacking kobolds should seem to be beneath them or else their reputation would suffer!
Last edited by Jeremy; 27th November 2002 at 04:32 AM..
The idea of a White Market was really good, and as for slaves, that is what this idea pertains too:
Have some monster/creature is slavery that has the Legendary Template attached to it, and then make some kind of reason that the PCs need to free it. Not sure if this is what you want, and I don't have time to write on it more at the moment as I have to disconnect.
__________________ -Kaodi
Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him
And makes me poor indeed.
-Iago, Shakespeare's Othello, Act III. Scene III. Lines 180-186.
At least one of the stalls should have statuettes of Vendelo for sale....It'd be a particularly unexpected time and place for the poor old saint to be confronted with his unwanted celebrity.
__________________ A carrot is as close as a rabbit gets to a diamond.
...and amongst all these mad, weird, crazy, possibly evil loonies - have a man selling Sausage-inna-bun.
Why?
Because there is always someone trying to sell a sausage-inna-bun, wherever you go.
Pull out some real old corny D&D cliches. A man that runs a magic shop with a load of nearly useless items, but forbids magic use within his shop (so no casting detect magic on the sly to see what really is magical). An inn with a crusty old wizard sat in the corner that tries to get the PC's involved in something.
And I also think a very lost elf with some kind of disguise magic would be a nice bit of light relief. Imagine a 1st level elf in the Underdark by mistake...
Not that you should try it here, but something I've always wanted to pull on my players... a kid.
Just a normal, no-ability, teenager with a really high CHA (Expert 3 or so, with most of the skill points going to Bluff and Knowledge (local)). Lousy equipment, physically weak, that sort of thing. Nothing that'd cause a powerful creature to see any sort of threat.
How many people put ranks into Sense Motive, anyway? Besides Palladio, that is.
They're in this place in the Underdark, full of horrendous creatures that gives these divinely-empowered paragons of light the willies, and in the middle of it all is someone who's managed to convince everyone that he's really powerful simply by the obvious fact that if he wasn't, he wouldn't be there. (see also: Somebody Else's Problem field, Invisible Pink Unicorns)
After all, anyone that obviously weak has either massive innate abilities or very powerful friends. So, everyone has simply assumed that this kid is not someone to be trifled with.
Give him an item that prevents scrying and mindreading, and he bluffs his way through it all (maybe an item that gives +10 or +20 to Bluff). He's smart enough to stay around intelligent races (since you can't bluff an animal to not eat you as easily), and is mostly just seeing the sights.
Originally this basic concept came from an old campaign, except there, he also had a curse that gave him immortality in the Wile E. Coyote fashion; that is, no damage was ever fatal. Add this to the "When Wishes Go Bad" file under "eternal life".
Set off a trap, he'd be fine in a few minutes; he wouldn't gain XP from any encounter in which he died, so he pretty much always stayed a low-level NPC. But, he had all the accumulated memories of a lifetime of reckless adventuring, so he could easily come up with plausible lies.
I don't think this ability is absolutely necessary to the concept, but YMMV.
Last edited by Spatzimaus; 3rd December 2002 at 05:41 AM..
Sounds like John Constantine, who I was introduced to in "The Books of Magic" in Neil Gaiman's world. There is a scene where the Constantine is standing with a boy (the subject of mighty prophesy and talent) is in a room with a horde of powerful demons, devils, wizards, etc etc etc.
He is edging the boy towards to door, and quite confidently says something to the effect of:
"You are all, no doubt, quite aware of my reputation. The boy and I will now depart and no one will be hurt."
Those who know his rep pause, and all those who don't assume the worse when they see the other big baddies taking pause.
The boy is in wonder, until Constantine explains that he has practically no magical power whatsoever. But he once managed to imprision/destroy a demon of great power (thru luck and circumstance) and since then everything rumour wise has just kept piling up...
John
__________________ "The DM will do a lot of talking, but if he’s not rolling the dice then what he’s saying is probably not important."
- DM of the Rings
These are great. I'm prepping the trading post for next game, this Thursday. I have a name in mind, I think, but anyone want to suggest one?
When they are teleported in, I'm going to have them split up to 6 different spots across the area. That way they won't arrive in one tough clump; instead, they'll come in two people here, three people there. Much more... interesting. It will especially be fun for those folks who bamf in to the middle of the small gladitorial arena used for fun and solving arguments.
Last edited by Piratecat; 3rd December 2002 at 11:40 PM..
How about an exact clone of an old humanoid enemy of the PCs - but without that naaaasty evil alignment or hidden agenda?
If the enemy was:
selfish, the clone will be altruistic
sneaky, the clone will be forthright
violent, the clone will be a pacifist, or at least cowardly.
a spell caster, the clone will bear martial weapons or wear at least medium armor (non mithiril).
Be evasive with providing the clone's backstory
They won't know what to make of him/her/it.
Neat, right?
EDIT: Oh good golly, what about the PCs bumping into a clone of: THEMSLEVES!
__________________ Better Lucky than Good
Last edited by incognito; 4th December 2002 at 12:26 AM..
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