[Epic] Forgotten Realms Campaign

[Mystery Man]

Okay, then... let's brainstorm.

Clearly, Klauth doesn't have the skull. Let's say he's dead. No, not just dead... he's frozen in a giant sheet of ice, his visage (along with a whole lot of treasure, (including a mess of skulls) just visible through the ice sheet. His cave is inhabited by a tribe of illusion-using lizard creatures who worship the dead dragon as a God. .

I was reading about Asabis ruled by 60 ancient Sarrukh liches in Crypt of Dreaming Lizard's. It's located up inthe High Ice of Anourach. Hm.

Defrosting Klauth's corpse will reveal that it was frozen so that his freakin' huge undead zombie body would stop attacking people. Boy, that's an unfortunate thing to find out when you just plan to speak with dead or examine the treasure. . .

Whoever could do that or even just magically imprison him, needs to be taken very seriously. I think it would be even more amusing and rat bastardly to find out that after infiltrating his lair and fighting through all his traps and protections only to find he's not there.

So where did the skull go? Divinations can lead the group around for a bit, but it's actually owned by a fairly nice, VERY important political figure in a major city.

LoL that's great! I'd think Waterdeep and one of the masked lords.

Option: the original skull is long destroyed. It had no real powers, and was just a symbol. But try telling THAT to the warring forces...

SHHH!

Hmm. Needs a lot of elaboration and fine tuning, but maybe it'll provide some food for thought

Yup. Awesome thanks!

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

Hello,

This isn’t exactly lore RE: beyond the Spine of the World, but it might be useful to you.

Dungeon #93 includes an Epic Level adventure titled, Into the Storm Lord’s Keep”.

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obligatory spoiler space….
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This adventure revolves around a contingent of Cloud Giants that lair in a massive castle that sits atop a nearly 6 miles tall thundercloud and contains adjacent keeps and a great gate at points further down the thundercloud.

The Storm Lord roams from human settlement to human settlement, laying waist to everything on the ground with a permanent Storm of Vengeance at the base of the thundercloud and an aerial army Giant White Roc riding Clould Giants. Their goal is to both exact vengeance on the lesser races and find those who’ve (inadvertently, as it turns out) stolen the soul of the next-in-line-heir to the throne of the Storm Lord.

A somewhat mundane plot, save for the fact that the Cloud Giants swore fealty to the deity of Storms/Air over a millennia ago and have been charged with guarding the unwanted Epic offspring of said god (a Chichimec) for all eternity. Only the Storm Lord can properly keep such a creature bound.

You could easily use Talos as the giant’s patron deity (and father of the Epic offspring), and substitute the stolen-for-Klauth-by-the-PC’s artifact as the object of the Giant’s search, where recovery of that artifact is necessary to keep the deific offspring contained.

Or perhaps the artifact is the key to an extradimensional space that holds the bodies/spirits of countless dragons captured and contained by the giants 5 or 10 millennia ago? Mayhap Klauth sought this item to free his ancestors, only to be slain (and encased in ice as Piratecat suggested) by another being (or beings) as soon as he obtained it?

How Faerûn would shake were those dragons to be set free! (And fits nicely as the “true” reason why Alaundo named an upcoming year as that of the Rogue Dragons).

Alternatively, you could use the adventure as a Sidetrek, where the Storm Lord and his keep do not house any unwanted deific offspring, but instead serve as a scouting/maurading contingent of a much larger Giant army, whose job it is to test the defenses of their enemy and slay all in their path. Depending on how powerful your players are, you could perhaps send two or three such keeps at once.

You could create some tension in the game by giving the players a choice between fending of the first unstoppable-except-by-the-PC’s giant force or ignoring it in order to spend more time finding the twice-stolen artifiact.

I plan on revising Into the Storm Lord’s Keep to 3.5 for my own Realms Campaign (which officially turned Epic this last Monday), and would be happy to pass along any notes to you if you’d like.

Best of luck!

J. Grenemyer

 

[humble minion]

First of all - don't worry too much about getting the skull info to your players. Epic PCs have incredible resources re info-gathering (Bardic Knowledge +20?) and divination. They should be able to work it out by themselves.

Ok, brainstorming.

Sarrukh and other reptilian creatures, being cold-blooded, aren't going to be happy with anyone who wants to bring a new Ice Age to the north. They're going to want to crush the giant shamans, and they're not going to care too much what other non-scaled ones get caught in up. The awakening of the liches in the Vault of Sleeping Lizards could be an option here. Or perhaps the sarruhk have got their claws into Klauth - are dragons susceptible to the Sarrukh's dominance over Scaled Ones? I have't got my copy of Serpent Kingdoms handy. The sarrukh might be on the lookout for warmblooded pawns to go to the Frozenfar and do their dirty work for them - they might slip the PCs the information themselves.

The Demon prince Kochkitsche is likely interested in this sort of thing. Giants and cold are all in his purview. Check out Sepulchrave II's Rogues Gallery thread for one version of his stats. Anyone who succeeds in unleashing an Ice Age like this is well on the way to being a Chosen of Auril too. Auril's wanted to freeze the north since forever. The skull could end up in either of their extraplanar domains. Mask could pinch it just because he can - what's a greater act of thievery than stealing something that half the continent wants?

The sarrukh want the skull beacuse the Jarl's spirit is still tethered to it. The jarl battled long against the Scaled Ones in life, and he might know where certain Sarrukh treasures are hidden.

A disproportionate amount of the North's population consists of dwarves. If too many dwarven holds fall, it could mean the death of Gorm (see Faiths and Pantheons). The centres of dwarven culture might shift to the more distant, unfriendly Great Rift. Mithril and fine weapons and armour will become hard to come by.

Zhentil Keep (and possibly Cormyr, depending on how parlous the kingdom is in your campaign) are both going to want to 'lend a hand' to the Silver Marches at a ruinous price, and possibly snip off a bit of territory for themselves.

 

[Mystery Man]

Dungeon #93 includes an Epic Level adventure titled, Into the Storm Lord’s Keep”.

I have that and plan on yoinking the floating castle for my own nefarious purposes.

I plan on revising Into the Storm Lord’s Keep to 3.5 for my own Realms Campaign (which officially turned Epic this last Monday), and would be happy to pass along any notes to you if you’d like.

Always. force (dot) dragon (at) gmail (dot) com

 

[Mystery Man]

Or perhaps the sarruhk have got their claws into Klauth - are dragons susceptible to the Sarrukh's dominance over Scaled Ones?

Wyrms of the North - Klauth "Old Snarl"

I have him jacked up to about a CR 28-32. About the only things out there that might be able to trick him would be the Sarrukh.

 

[diaglo]

steal some ideas from here: http://www.fierydragon.com/Products/prod-tgs.htm not for the PCs but for NPCs also trying to get the same thing.


other adventures to consider: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/downloads

for duty and deity
four from cormyr updated and changed to a north city
and how the mighty have fallen

all of these would make great epic or near epic adventures to add fr flavor.

 

[diaglo]

of course the best EPic adventure is to make the frost giant skull...


a demi-lich. and use the ToH.