Notes for a New Campaign City, Parsantium

[RichGreen]

The Underground River

I thought it would be fun to post my notes on the perilous trip down the underground river from the dungeons beneath Orloch Scragmane's tenement building <see Sellswords of Punjar> to the slave market.

The PCs can head down the underground river in the dungeons below the slum tenement [Sellswords, Area 2-6, p.27]. Controlling the slavers’ skiff is tricky but the PCs are unlikely to go wrong as the fast-moving river will take them straight to their destination – the underground slave market.
• Check what light source the PCs are using

The Underground River
(Skill challenge: 175 xp)

Level: 4th
Complexity: 1 (requires 4 successes before 3 failures).
Primary Skills: Dungeoneering, Nature, Acrobatics

Dungeoneering (DC 12): You are able to keep the boat on course in the dark tunnels despite the fast-flowing nature of the river. As you head north, the river widens as more water joins it from side passages.

Nature (DC 17): as Dungeoneering, this skill is less relevant so the DC is higher.

Acrobatics (DC 17): by leaning over in the right direction as the skiff hurtles through the darkness, you can keep yourselves afloat.

Success: Just before the PCs reach the underground lake, they must go over a waterfall. If they succeed on the challenge, they fly over it, landing safely with everyone still in the skiff!

Failure: The skiff shoots through the air, tipping the PCs out in all directions. Each PC loses a healing surge, must make a swim check (Athletics DC 10), climb back into the boat (another Athletics check DC 10) and is going to be at a disadvantage in the lake encounter.

Optional Encounter (600xp) - takes place during the skill challenge
• Stirges (6)

Moving around the skiff requires a balance check (DC 15), as does taking damage (see below). PCs fighting in the boat grant combat advantage to their enemies.

Balance: Part of a move action.

✦ DC: See the table.
✦ Success: You can move one-half your speed across a narrow or
unstable surface.
✦ Fail by 4 or Less: You stay in the square you started in and lose the rest of your move action, but you don’t fall. You can try again as part of a move action.
✦ Fail by 5 or More: You fall off the surface (see “Falling,” page 284) and lose the rest of your move action. If you are trying to move across an unstable surface that isn’t narrow, you instead fall prone in the square you started in. You can try again as part of a move action if you’re still on the surface.
✦ Grant Combat Advantage: While you are balancing, enemies have combat advantage against you.
✦ Taking Damage: If you take damage, you must make a new Acrobatics check to remain standing.

PCs failing their Acrobatics check by 5 or more have a 50% chance of falling prone in the boat and a 50% chance of falling into the river.
• PCs falling into the river need to make an Athletics check (DC 15) to swim <PH p.183>. They will continue to move downstream roughly in line with the skiff if they don’t do anything

While fighting the stirges, one PC (“the pilot”) should try and keep control of the skiff. If the boat goes out of control, balance checks increase to Acrobatics DC 20. If the PC uses two move actions to pilot the boat, he can try and outrun any stirges not attached, moving the skiff 12 squares (Speed 6)

Any suggestions gratefully received!


Richard

 

[RichGreen]

Need some suggestions!

Hi,

I'm about to start my second Parsantium campaign tomorrow, kicking off with the same adventure (the rat problem under the Black Dolphin's Wake), but I'm expecting the campaign to go into some different directions to the first one.

One of the PCs is an eladrin from the Feyshore Forest which is currently little more than a place name. It obviously touches the Feywild, is a short distance from Parsantium, running alongside the Griffin Water. There are some ancient Sahasran ruins in it.

What else? Any suggestions?

Cheers


Richard

 

[Jack7]

Well Rich, how exactly do you want it to be different from the first campaign?

More character development?
Do you wanna tie in the Eladrin specifically?
His people?

What are you shootin for? Or at?

 

[RichGreen]

Well Rich, how exactly do you want it to be different from the first campaign?

More character development?
Do you wanna tie in the Eladrin specifically?
His people?

What are you shootin for? Or at?

Oops, didn't make myself clear. I'm looking for suggestions on what the Feyshore Forest might be like, rather than for this campaign vs the one that's already underway.

Cheers


Richard

 

[RichGreen]

Hi,

I ran the first session in the second campaign this afternoon: you can read what happened here, but it's pretty similar to what happened when I ran this adventure the first time. This group has a very diverse set of player characters though and the players are a different set of personalities At one point, I was pretty convinced they were going to go after the Dockside Crew at the Old Fishery which would have been interesting but in the end they went after the rats instead.

Cheers


Richard

 

[Jack7]

I'm looking for suggestions on what the Feyshore Forest might be like

I think I got ya now Rich.

Okay, I don't know if this will help you or not, but here goes.

I do a lot of star-gazing and moon-watching. I've got a pretty good telescope and as a matter of fact I was out watching the full moon tonight. So this is how I got these ideas, years ago, although a new one even occurred to me tonight.

My setting has two worlds, our world, and a different world, geographically identical to ours but the life on it is completely different. It is inhabited by elves, and dwarves and giants and so forth.

In that world things also operate differently and in many ways it is a world with very unusual properties.

Such as, there are areas which glow at night, the stones, and plants, whole mountain ranges.
Areas where magic is amplified, or suppressed, or where it fluctuates wildly, or rapidly.
Liquids can turn into gases almost immediately and solids can transform shape or become liquids.

Areas of terrain will change and shift, sometimes while people are looking at it.

There are "telescopic areas" where things become magnified, and elongated, drawn out. And in these areas one can often see for miles and miles, even over or beyond the horizon.

There are "microscopic areas" (I don't call them that, but I'm saying it that way so it can be easily understood) where invisible things can be perceived, and impossibly small things can be seen.

There are corresponding areas where auditory and olfactory senses are microscoped and/or telescoped, and places where tactile senses and even a sort of heightened danger sense can become apparent.

There are areas where different stars or starlight spectra will have different visual and perceptual effects.

And tonight the idea occurred to me, since the moon was so bright, that a bright, full moon, a harvest moon, or a "blue moon" would have completely different effects on what can be perceived, and how things operate.

There are areas where the water is potent and healing, or will give the drinker temporary magical or even psychic powers.

Areas where magic will drain from objects into the surrounding environment. Animals will mutate or alter.

In other words that world itself is alive, and like any living organism has different capabilities.

I don't know if that helps you or not but that is also always how I've felt about the "elven world."

Or I guess you could say the Fey world.

 

[RichGreen]

I thought it would be fun to post my notes on the perilous trip down the underground river from the dungeons beneath Orloch Scragmane's tenement building <see Sellswords of Punjar> to the slave market.

I ran this last night and it worked pretty well, although I think the Dungeoneering DC 12 was a bit too low as they made it through the skill challenge easily. They also dealt with the stirges pretty handily and no one fell out of a rowboat!

I have high hopes for the next encounter with the black dragon.....


Richard

 

[RichGreen]

Session #7

Here's what happened in last night's exciting episode. Each PC gets 395 xp.

17th Maius (contd)

While Krivinn sets to work bashing down the secret panel, Sharden looks through the archway to the right. Below, he can see two gnolls loading chests and coffers into a rowboat holding a hooded eladrin. The villains spot the dwarf and battle is joined. El’em tries to leap down in amongst them but screws up and falls off the wooden ledge, landing at the feet of the gnolls. Gong enters the room, only to be shot at by a drow elf who had been skulking in the chamber beyond. Sharden’s prayer sends the eladrin mage into the river and he’s promptly swept away by the current. One gnoll is killed; the other is shoved into the water by El’em’s thunderwave and also disappears downstream. The drow, Drazen, is knocked unconscious and the PCs tie him up. The room he appeared from is dominated by a creepy-looking statue of the Rat God Nirumath; its eyes are rubies and it’s surrounded by treasure but there is something about it that gives the PCs pause (even El’em). Instead, the genasi opens a couple of the treasure chests, triggering an arrow trap, then sets off the caustic spear trap in the secret room and gets impaled.

After El’em has been rescued, the PCs interrogate Drazen, learning that he works for Orloch Scragmane but little else. Krivinn opens the door in the statue room, only to run into a skeleton which gives off a burst of bone shards when bloodied and explodes when it’s killed. Meanwhile, El’em tries to roll the trussed-up drow into the Rat God statue. Drazen takes umbrage, slips his bonds and makes a run for the boats. Sharden takes him down as he escapes with thunder of judgement.

With everyone somewhat the worse for wear, the PCs return through the Hidden Quarter tunnels to the surface and then on to the Temple of Niu Dahan, taking Wang Jin We, Lady Patricia and her handmaidens, and the little girl Bhuvi with them. (Barius and Theus are locked in the slave cages). Wang Jin We tells the PCs that a man named Sreedhar who had been looking to hire adventurers was among the slaves taken to the slave market. He urges them to rescue all the captives. The PCs get the rest of the chests and coffers open and then rest.

Evening
Return to the dungeons beneath the slum tenement and head downstream in the rowboats. Krivinn pilots the first one with Sharden and El’em as passengers; Gong and Brave Ella are in the second. Despite a few hairy moments when the PCs at the helm struggle to control the boats in the current, the party are able to guide their vessels through the network of underground tunnels. An attack by half a dozen stirges is successfully repelled and the two “captains” even manage to keep the rowboats upright as they fly over a waterfall and into a large underground cavern. At the far side are some wooden docks; on the water is another boat with two gnolls….

 

[RichGreen]

I think I got ya now Rich.

I don't know if that helps you or not but that is also always how I've felt about the "elven world."

Or I guess you could say the Fey world.

Thanks Jack! I like your post. I'll give this some more thought and try and write something in the next few days....

Cheers


Richard

 

[RichGreen]

Slave Market encounter

Hi,

Here's some notes on the big climactic fight at the slave market. I need to add some more descriptive/flavour text, but I've worked out who the villains are. Bit worried about running a combat with 12 enemies, but I didn't really want to miss any of these guys out! Originally, there was going to be some derro too...


The Amphitheatre (Level 7, 1,514 xp)
• Assumes 5 PCs, Party Level 3

Setup
On the other side of the curtain, a slave auction is in progress. Orloch Scragmane stands on the stage, taking bids on Sreedhar, a handsome Sahasran who's obviously been beaten up. Standing nearby are two gnoll guards.

The audience is composed of a variety of sinister characters. There are three goggle-eyed fish-men, a dark-robed man accompanied by a pair of zombies, a human woman dressed in bright red fetish gear, a grey-skinned couple covered in tattoos and piercings, and several other human men (hooded priests of Kali, decadent nobles, sleazy brothel-keepers etc)

This encounter includes the following:
• Orloch Scragmane
• 2 Mangy Curs
• Laskaris, Crazed Necromancer
• 2 Zombie Rotters
• Myrissa, Shadar-Kai Dark Warlock
• Dalimyr, Shadar-kai Chainfighter (Level 3)
• Kuo-Toa Priest (reskinned sahuagin with slimy maneuver instead of blood frenzy)
• 2 Kuo-Toa Guards (ditto)
• Sreedhar

Tactics
If combat occurs, all the humans except the necromancer leave hurriedly through the double doors, heading for the Hidden Quarter tunnels to the left. Those leaving include Zeno Meverel and Firmina (madam of the Fallen Angel)

• The gnolls stand next to Orloch so they can use pack tactics
• The kuo-toa use slick maneuver to flank enemies; the priest keeps his distance
• The necromancer keeps his distance and relies on his zombies to defend him from the PCs. If anyone comes close, he uses horrific visage.
• Myrissa uses spiteful glamour, cursing a different target each round. When she’s cursed three different PCs, she uses cursebite. The chainfighter uses his reach to stay out of the PCs’ way.
• Sreedhar is chained to the stage but will make a fist attack at Orloch if he gets the chance.

Treasure: in addition to the money and gems some of the monsters are carrying, there is a chest next to Orloch on the stage. This contains 2 pp, 310 gp, 239 sp and a silver necklace decorated with seven pieces of turquoise (worth 250 gp).

Development: The rescue of Sreedhar can lead the PCs on to an adventure outside the city, perhaps exploring some ancient ruins in the Feyshore Forest (dating back to the early years of Parsantium when it was Dhak Janjua)

Any comments?


Richard