Jürgen Hubert
First Post
The PCs in my party just arrived in Waterdeep at the end of last session. As for now, they are planning to do two things:
- The pureblood yuan-ti who has been mentoring the elan psion wants them to bring back a book ("Comparative Herpetology of Chult") to a book seller ("since you are going there anywhere"...). The psion also hopes that that book seller can help him with the books required to enter the Psion Uncarnate prestige class. When they arrive at his store, both he and his shop will be gone, and the new occupants will deny any knowledge of him.
- The same yuan-ti has also heard of an yuan-ti abomination setting up shop somewhere under Waterdeep and creating a criminal organisation there. The strange thing is that many of his new recruits - including some long-known low lifes - have been displaying something like psionic powers. Since it is hard to teach ordinary humans psionics, and the mentor thinks that few yuan-ti would bother with it, anyway, he has concluded that the abomination is turning them into something like the elan, and the PCs are now convinced that that yuan-ti abomination is responsible for turning their psion into an elan as well. Now they want to find out more about how and why he did that, and what his future plans are.
They are wrong, however - the yuan-ti abomination is turning the lowlifes into Tainted Ones, not elan, and an entirely different group was responsible for the PC elan. For the full details of how that happened - and why the PC is still not sure what he is - see here.
Well, discovering the schemes of the yuan-ti abomination should be a fairly straightforward investigative adventure, with plenty of opportunities for humorous misunderstandings, death threats, and mysteriously vanishing informants, but I welcome any ideas for "spicing it up". I'm still not sure what to do with the vanished book seller, though - and I want this event to be fairly disconnected from the other one (Waterdeep is a big city, after all). It would be especially amusing if someone among the city authorities was "hushing it up" and have someone follow the PCs if they get too nosy. But I still need a plot and a motive here.
Possible side plots could happen when the PCs visit the temples of Oghma (one of the PCs is a cleric of Oghma) and Selune (another one is a druid of Selune - and they bring news that some sort of Shar cult from Calimport has been trying to free a powerful servitor of Shar imprisoned behind a barrier in the Moonwood).
All in all, I want to impress on the PCs that Waterdeep is a huge and scarey place, where lots of intrigues and schemes are going on at any moment. There are lots of opportunities and great sights to be seen (the PCs do have a tendency to act like a bunch of tourists), but eventually there should be so much going on that they will jump at every shadow.
And I fully intend to make their paranoia work for me.
Additional notes: Two of the PCs have reached 7th level, while one of them is still at 6th level. As for reading material on Waterdeep, I have the old "Waterdeep and the North", "Volo's Guide to Waterdeep", and the new "Waterdeep - City of Splendors", but I haven't had the time yet to read through the latter.
So, any comments, advice and suggestions?
- The pureblood yuan-ti who has been mentoring the elan psion wants them to bring back a book ("Comparative Herpetology of Chult") to a book seller ("since you are going there anywhere"...). The psion also hopes that that book seller can help him with the books required to enter the Psion Uncarnate prestige class. When they arrive at his store, both he and his shop will be gone, and the new occupants will deny any knowledge of him.
- The same yuan-ti has also heard of an yuan-ti abomination setting up shop somewhere under Waterdeep and creating a criminal organisation there. The strange thing is that many of his new recruits - including some long-known low lifes - have been displaying something like psionic powers. Since it is hard to teach ordinary humans psionics, and the mentor thinks that few yuan-ti would bother with it, anyway, he has concluded that the abomination is turning them into something like the elan, and the PCs are now convinced that that yuan-ti abomination is responsible for turning their psion into an elan as well. Now they want to find out more about how and why he did that, and what his future plans are.
They are wrong, however - the yuan-ti abomination is turning the lowlifes into Tainted Ones, not elan, and an entirely different group was responsible for the PC elan. For the full details of how that happened - and why the PC is still not sure what he is - see here.
Well, discovering the schemes of the yuan-ti abomination should be a fairly straightforward investigative adventure, with plenty of opportunities for humorous misunderstandings, death threats, and mysteriously vanishing informants, but I welcome any ideas for "spicing it up". I'm still not sure what to do with the vanished book seller, though - and I want this event to be fairly disconnected from the other one (Waterdeep is a big city, after all). It would be especially amusing if someone among the city authorities was "hushing it up" and have someone follow the PCs if they get too nosy. But I still need a plot and a motive here.
Possible side plots could happen when the PCs visit the temples of Oghma (one of the PCs is a cleric of Oghma) and Selune (another one is a druid of Selune - and they bring news that some sort of Shar cult from Calimport has been trying to free a powerful servitor of Shar imprisoned behind a barrier in the Moonwood).
All in all, I want to impress on the PCs that Waterdeep is a huge and scarey place, where lots of intrigues and schemes are going on at any moment. There are lots of opportunities and great sights to be seen (the PCs do have a tendency to act like a bunch of tourists), but eventually there should be so much going on that they will jump at every shadow.
And I fully intend to make their paranoia work for me.
Additional notes: Two of the PCs have reached 7th level, while one of them is still at 6th level. As for reading material on Waterdeep, I have the old "Waterdeep and the North", "Volo's Guide to Waterdeep", and the new "Waterdeep - City of Splendors", but I haven't had the time yet to read through the latter.
So, any comments, advice and suggestions?
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