ELH-powered Groundhog-Day plot - Help Wanted, Inquire within!

Hi all,

A while back, I referred to a time-loop plot where the players get trapped within a demi-plane that is the prison for a horrifying entity "that must not be released."

I finally think the time is ripe to run it, but I need a few ideas.

The hook: The players are currently after their arch-nemesis, a powerful conjurer named Galea. They finally track Galea down and find that her demense has been taken over by a powerful evil fey creature (a paragon dannanshee) and she charmed Galea's allies and servants and forced Galea to enter a gate that the Galea had opened during her experiments (being an evil conjurer, she naturally poked around in places she shouldn't be poking around.) Most likely, the Dannanshee will be able the charm the party, and she will force the players into the same gate she forced Galea into. Even if the party prevails against the Dannanshee, her servants will report that Galea fled into the gate and the party is likely to follow.

A powerful and horrific godlike entity (with ELH in hand, I have decided this is an atropol) has been trapped in a demiplane that the gate leads to. The demiplane is trapped in a time-loop that prevents the creature from engineering its escape, since every 24 hours, time "resets" and time repeats itself.

The PCs get trapped in this plane. If a PC survives until the end of the day, the day restarts with knowledge of the prior days intact and can use that knowledge to influence the next day's events. However, if the PC is slain, the PC returns to the state they were in when they entered the Demiplane (i.e., alive with no level loss) but do not remember anything about the previous day. The implication of this should soon become clear: if there is ever a total party kill, the party is doomed to eternally replay their deaths.

The party is currently 16th-17th level and an Atropol should hand the party their collective posterior.
That's the concept. Here's the questions:

1) How does the party escape? There needs to be some way for the party to escape, some trick or mechanism, some way out of the time loop. But what? I am thinking there is a stucture of some sort within the demiplane; perhaps the demiplane was created around the atropol when it was imprisoned, and some of the buildings and landscape from the ancient empire it rules/controlled was pulled out with it.

I want to make the puzzle somewhat difficult but solvable. Also, since PCs can easily come back, I can afford to make the opposition really deadly and the traps extremely nasty, but eventually the PCs can find their way though by means of a hideous trial-and-error. (Anyone ever read Rogue Moon?)

2) I am considering something interesting from a roleplaying perspective. Begin the adventure by assuming the PCs got killed once but one PC escaped. E.G. They saw Galea in the demiplane and defeated her, but immediately thereafter (exhaused of their best spells and down on HP) they are ambushed by a horde of Nightcrawlers and only one PC escapes to live to the next day.

So using this approach, I choose a PC and take them aside and explain what they saw, and then start the play with the party about to initiate combat with Galea but having one of the PCs say "no -- don't -- I saw you all die" etc. I think this might make for a more interesting roleplaying situation then having them play it out from the start.

What do you think?

Groundhog Day?

Looks like you have an incredibly cool adventure idea.

Does the Dannanshee know about the Atropal?

Since you are already doing a time loop bit, perhaps you could structure this adventure similar to the movie Groundhog Day .
The party has to make sure a specific event in the past happens correctly, or time just repeats itself over and over again. The party could be bystanders, or actually take the role of other characters who were present at the original event. Perhaps the heroes have to prevent some great evil from being committed that caused the atropal to be imprisoned.

Perhaps they must make the people/gods responisible for the creation of the atropal face their crimes instead of just locking the atropal away. You could play up the atropal as a tragic figure in addition to being a horrible monster.
Or the party could try to alter this past event so that the atropal does not become evil, sort of like the old 2E Ravenloft adventure in the Castles Forlorn boxed set.

maybe the PCs could make use of some unpredictable feature to aid their escape: as in "back to the future" where the lightniing will strike the clock at a certain time - if they know it strikes the old willow tree at dusk, then maybe they can get their foes to that point in readiness.

Another option: If dying/sleeping brings about the restart of they day, perhaps you could go for another slant. If the monsters dies each day and that causes the loop, perhaps they could save it from death and so stop the loop. maybe the monster IS sad and or crazy and by talking it out of killing itself they free themselves and it. maybe the monster isn't a monster at all, but someone who once freed from the enchantment can aid them in their main quest.

hope this makes sense - time loops hurt my brain!

mel.

Re: Groundhog Day?

Psychotic Jim said:

Does the Dannanshee know about the Atropal?

Click to expand...

She might. She knew that the demiplane that she sent Galea too was functional as a prison. I haven't decided whether she knew that and Galea didn't, or if she extracted that information from Galea. I'm thinking Galea found some info about the plane in question but the Dannanshee knew a few more of its secrets and took adantage of the situation.

Since you are already doing a time loop bit, perhaps you could structure this adventure similar to the movie Groundhog Day .

Click to expand...

That's the basic idea... hence the name of the thread.

The party has to make sure a specific event in the past happens correctly, or time just repeats itself over and over again.

Click to expand...

Possibly.

The party could be bystanders, or actually take the role of other characters who were present at the original event. Perhaps the heroes have to prevent some great evil from being committed that caused the atropal to be imprisoned.

Click to expand...

No... that doesn't work for me. The demiplane is a self contained time-loop; events outside cannot be affected. Otherwise, it seems too much like a time-travel plot, which gives me the willies.

I don't mind, however, a plot wherein you might have to replay a specific event, much as with the Atlas adventure The Last Dance.

Thanks for the input.

wighair said:

Another option: If dying/sleeping brings about the restart of they day,

Click to expand...

It doesn't. Dying just makes it so that when the day restarts, your memory returns to the state you were in. The reason that the Atropol cannot escape is because it is undead. I was going to make life the key to escaping some conditions of the time loop... and might be the eventual key to PCs escaping.

If the monsters dies each day and that causes the loop, perhaps they could save it from death and so stop the loop.

Click to expand...

If the monster could merely be killed, then the point of the time loop would be lost, since it was sort of made as an unescapable prison. As it stands now, the reason the atropol cannot escape is that it is undead.

Now if I changed the creature into one that, for example, always reincarnated when it died I could go this route. Actually, that sounds pretty compelling -- the players discover the time loop by proceeding through the day until there is a jarring "restart". By avoiding certain obstacles, they can get to where this creature dies and prevent it.

But this still leaves the question of how they actually escape the dimension.

Also, is there a ready made creature that would fit this description? The game is tomorrow night.

Perhaps I could still use the atropol, and have there be an NPC (a paladin) from an ancient age that has entered the demiplane to destroy the creature, and then does so. The party must convince the paladin to not kill the creature. Of course, that takes some of the looming threat out of the creature if it actually seems killable, and I'll lose a lot of the horror element.

Thanks for the input.

Maybe some sort of screwed up Half-Fiend Phoenix?

Psion said:

It doesn't. Dying just makes it so that when the day restarts, your memory returns to the state you were in. The reason that the Atropol cannot escape is because it is undead. I was going to make life the key to escaping some conditions of the time loop... and might be the eventual key to PCs escaping.

If the monster could merely be killed, then the point of the time loop would be lost, since it was sort of made as an unescapable prison. As it stands now, the reason the atropol cannot escape is that it is undead.

Now if I changed the creature into one that, for example, always reincarnated when it died I could go this route. Actually, that sounds pretty compelling -- the players discover the time loop by proceeding through the day until there is a jarring "restart". By avoiding certain obstacles, they can get to where this creature dies and prevent it.

Click to expand...

Perhaps the key might be to reverse the loop by giving the atropal a rebirth of sorts. It might be an easy (relatively) to convince the atropal to let it be the subject of a resurrection spell. Or perhaps the characters have to gather key artifacts and information to enact some sort of ritual to let the atropal be born again. Perhaps this ritual is the reversal of whatever epic spell imprisoned the atropal in the demi-plane in the first place. The players have to exactly recreate the spell, but only exactly backwards.

As for a creature that automatically reincarnates itself, you might want to look at making some sort of creature with the Contingent Ressurection ability, sort of like the Hoary Hunter from the ELH.
Wighair's idea about an evil Phoenix is pretty cool too.

Also, if you go with the paladin idea, maybe the true monster isn't the atropal/creature but actually the "paladin", who is some sort of paranoid, deranged, LE zealout of sorts.

Consider that the creature imprisoned in here WAS the Paladin - the Atropal is in fact a construct of the Paladin's.

The Paladin is a (slightly) insane zealot who somehow has the immensely powerful innate power to shape the world around him. Hell-bent on questing, and finding evil, wherever he went, greater and greater evil kept appearing (so he could snuff it, of course).

The gods nutted out just how incredibly dangerous he actually was, and so, rather than try kill him (after all, he kept warping reality, and his own faith in his own 'rightness' made him impossibly strong), simply locked him in his own little world, where he could play soldier forever more.

Just an idea, don't know how you can expand on it...

For those interested in how it turned out, I threw together some ideas at the last minute to complete this game and here is how it turned out.

I didn't entertain any of the ideas about "altering the course of history" -- those are strictly a no-no in my campaign. The time loop is strictly limited to the demiplane that was created to imprison the atropol. Almost any effect that enters or leaves the demiplane results in the players returning to the starting point.

The players finally get the artifact they need to scry on their archenemy Galea. The mirror magess who casts the scry spell is able to find out where she last was, but cannot reach her any longer.

The party teleports to Galea's mansion in the wizards city in Bluffside to see what happened. They explore the inside and everyone but the party's ghostwalker (with all of his iron will garbage) fails the save versus the paragon Dannanshee's song. The ghostwalker manages to survive long enough to force new will saves allowing the monk and the sorcerer to escape her will as well and force her to retreat.

The party interrogates Ozur, Galea's compatriot that was also enslaved by the Dannanshee. He explains that the Dannanshee forced galea through the gate.

The party goes after Galea through the gate. The arrive right next to Galea. The see a glimpse of the ancient world as the demiplane is being created. They see a bright flash, and instantly the sky fades to a pale grey and a huge earthquake shakes the land into pieces. They also see huge batlike creatures (nightwings) emerge from a sphere of darkness and start attacking something in the distance.

The party takes Galea prisoner and starts exploring the demiplane. The soon discover that going away from the dark sphere is not an option, as the edge of the demiplane is a virtiual event horizon... time slows as you get near it.

So they head inward, towards the globe of darkness. They notice the nightwings have finished off whatever is on the ground and are attacking some amorphous blob in the air and destroy it before they can get there.

When they arrive, the party faces of with the nightwings and wins (Sunburst is nasty against nightshades.) The find the corpses of many elves, thri-kreen, and the glowin amoeba thing. Amongst the corpses is an elven priest with some sort of ritual in a book.

(The blob thing was a teratomorph from MMII. It is a focus for the ritual spell and also the party's ticket out of here... its reality warping can produce portals that can pierce the time loop bubble.)

They go to investigate the globe of darkenss and fight some nightcrawlers along the way.

Galea can see through the darkness -- it is a version of the spell in BoVD that evil creatures can see through. And she sees the atropol. The sorcerer uses this info to launch an attack.

The atropol responds. In short order, it is upon the party. They party lasts longer than I thought they would, but pretty soon the atropol starts to take its toll. The rogue uses a wish in the luck blade to remove the party from the dimension.

The party ends up back at the gate and the day starts over again. The dead people are alive again but don't remember anything. The other members of the party immediately figure out what they have to do -- put apart their differences and save the priest and the teratomorph from the nightwings.

They do so, and with the help of the elven priest, discover that the teratomorph's warps can get them out of here. They take it and end up elsewhere*.

The players were really on the ball for this one and I was actually surprised they figured out the way out after only one iteration.

* - They ended up in acheron, where Galea was slain and reborn as a bounty hunter in the service of Feng Lui, minister of thunder. But that is another story.