squirmonke
Explorer
Hi all,
I've just finished my first readthrough of Zeitgeist, and it's awesome. I'm excited for my group to start playing it in a few weeks. However, my first read has left me with a few unresolved questions, especially surrounding some of the planar mechanics. I wonder if anyone here has thought about these questions, or has suggestions based on how they handled them in their game (or can just point me to where these are answered in the book, it's big, I probably missed some stuff).
In no particular order:
I think that's all of them for now. I greatly appreciate your taking the time to read this, and I'd be thrilled to hear anybody's thoughts on any of these questions!
I'm very excited!
I've just finished my first readthrough of Zeitgeist, and it's awesome. I'm excited for my group to start playing it in a few weeks. However, my first read has left me with a few unresolved questions, especially surrounding some of the planar mechanics. I wonder if anyone here has thought about these questions, or has suggestions based on how they handled them in their game (or can just point me to where these are answered in the book, it's big, I probably missed some stuff).
In no particular order:
- What's the deal with the Golden Icons? I know you need one icon (not necessarily made of gold) in each pillar beneath the Axis seal to finish the ritual (without cheating). But then there's the icons in the mines around the island, such as the icon of Avilona that the party can find in Adventure 1. Little mention is made of what these icons are doing there, except one time when someone suggests they were used to spread the energy of the ritual to the rest of the world. If this is true, does the Ob replace them during their Ritual in Adventure 9? Why doesn't taking them during adventure 1 mess things up? Does the party need to replace them if they choose to perform the ritual of the axis seal during the climax?
- Why is flight limited? I feel like the adventure contradicts itself a little here. Early on, it's said that people used to be able to fly, but then that fell apart because the Ancients weren't aware of the watery cave beneath the pillar that holds the Icon of Avilona. But then later on in the adventure, it's suggested that people can't fly because Avilona's just kind of a naughty word plane (and there's a fun WotBS reference thrown in in Adventure 12 to this effect), indeed that plane's effect is that flight cannot last more than five minutes. But Pemberton and the other Dragon Tyrants used to be able to fly right? And their time is well after the Ancients completed the Axis Seal
- When Nic completes the ritual during Adventure 9, it seems like he implements the MAP proposal. He uses celestial machines and giant wayfarer's lanterns across the globe to help the transition. Presumably the machine in Risur is disrupted. Apart from some brief mentions in Adventure 4, I didn't find much about what those lanterns around the world actually did. It's implied that people around the world have come under the Ob's control, but nothing in the MAP proposal suggests that it should do that inherently. Indeed, the Watchmakers faction says that they found that controlling people's minds was all or nothing. So the question is, what are the lighthouses doing, and in what way is Risur protected by the failure of the local ritual (since the people there still have their magic affected, form hiveminds, and get the bonus/penalty to diplomacy and intimidate, it seems kinda like the ritual mostly worked in Risur too)
- During Adventure 10, the Ziggurat of Av becomes linked to Jiese. Why? Of all the planes, Jiese was the only one that didn't move. If the portal relinked to anything, why not Mojang, the new plane of Life that should be in Av's place?
- During Adventure 10, Toteth Topec (I love the WotBS references) suggests that before the Axis Seal, there was no sun. What? When the party gets split by the shattering of Av, the half of them that lands in the real world finds that it's freezing over from the lack of sunlight. How did the world of the Ancients not completely freeze over?
- Shijen returns as an antagonist late in the campaign. How does he survive? My reading of Adventure 3 suggested that he either dies at the hands of the PCs, or he's annihilated by Nem when he connects the portal to Gidim.
- In Adventure 9, Catherine Romana returns to Risur to participate in the attempt to assassinate the King. But she was the leader of the Colossus faction during the convocation, and Nic tries to murder her during the Schism. If she survived, why would she join back up with him? And if she died, why would Nic trust her enough to let her into the Ghost Council (the whole point of the Blue Banquet is to excise problematic elements from his conspiracy, surely he wouldn't do that and then bring her right back?)
- Late in the campaign, it's mentioned (in the materials about how to design a new world) that in the original configuration, travel between the planes within the system was limited by an interaction between the magic of Urim and the fact that the Axis Seal is made of gold. If this is true, how did the Gidim invade the world from Apet after the original Axis Seal Ritual (they should also have been stopped by the gold plate in the Ziggurat of Apet which originally severed this world from that one)? Also, what is the nature of the "special protection" that turns Apet into a prison plane?
- What is the nature of the double-pane glass effect that trapped Shijen in the pocket dimension in the first place? The book mentions that a small sliver of each plane got ballooned away, but I'm not really sure what it's talking about there.
- I'm a little confused about the nature of the Gyre. In particular, once Av slams into the gears and gets chewed up, why is there still leftover Av-stuff waiting in the queue-of-planets-to-chew
- Why does Reida + Voice of Rot falling into the Gyre destroy the world? I'm worried my players aren't going to understand the stakes of this fight, unless they're particularly attached to using Reida as their Plane of Time (which I think they might, if they have romantic notions about the Skyseers, which presumably die off without Reida)
I think that's all of them for now. I greatly appreciate your taking the time to read this, and I'd be thrilled to hear anybody's thoughts on any of these questions!
I'm very excited!