NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GuardianLurker" data-source="post: 6910667" data-attributes="member: 786">I'm a little disappointed, but understand. This was far, far, from what I'd consider ideal. Life happened, and while I had the initial idea locked down, instead of having 4+ hours to write it, I ended up with one. Unfortunately, what got posted was literally just a brain dump. As you can tell, seeing as how there's a line break in the middle of a word.It also really needed about another 250 words to get it all in. I could have probably editted it down, but literally just didn't have the time. Honestly, I should have postponed to the weekend, as I know I'm a slow writer (12.5 words/minute, blazingly fast.... not), but 4 hours would probably have been enough, and I felt I owed it, giving the kickoff-kerfluffle.What was missing: Most importantly, the backstory, which would have cleared up a lot of the WTF? meaning issues.First, this was all supposed to tie into a myth; the name-dropping section is the distilled info, as raw as it could get.The other key thing in the backstory was Pazkwel - who is actually the Arcane Gambler, not the window dressing. In the backstory, Pazkwel sets out to prove that the god's don't exist by disproving one of the more well-known myths, and one that even (supposedly) left tangible, material evidence.As an indicator off how big a difference the myth and backstory make, the Hungry Darkness was both the cave (and in a secondary sense the rift, but mostly the cave).  The Starless Stream was supposed to be the actual rift - which mirrored the path of the riverbed. The Pardon, was the weakest ingredient, but the key point of the (missing) myth. The myth basically broke down as follows - Hero God and Virgin Goddess are involved in a classic, long-drawn-out unresolved sexual tension situation. God tries to give goddess a ring; she throws it away, splitting the ground in two. Hero God goes off to fight Death, and dies, leaving the Virgin Goddess heartbroken. She cries over the ring, tears forming a river. As the tears flow over the ring, the tears crystallize over it, symbolizing both her regret and her too-late forgiveness. Oh, and during the Hero's fight, his sword cleaves a rift in the sky, destroying the stars, and providing the opening Death needs. The goddess' tears (and love) seal over the rift, and prevent Death from entering and destroying the world (though obviously making the inhabitants mortal).Pazkwel figures out how to essentially undo all of this - assuming the myth is real; he believes/wagers it isn't. So he builds the altar in the cave below. He destroys the crystal and takes the ring. He then uses the altar to de-power the ring. At this point things went wrong for Pazkwel - if destroying the ring worked, he planned to reforge it and escape through a portal (just as the successful characters would have). But when he de-powered the ring (that twitch), the bottom dropped out from the bottom of the pool, and into his cave system. He drowns in the flood. The cold is an artifact of the de-powering ritual.Failure consequences are classic "End-of-the-World" in the fullest sense - *everything* dies and the world is destroyed.Frankly, the hook was something that would have dies in the first edit (except for the Doomsayer), but it had gotten into my head and would not go away. It's a tongue-in-cheek reference to the card game "Red Dragon Inn". It doesn't really belong with the rest, but popped into my head during the brainstorming and would not leave.The entire adventure is a reference to "Pascal's Wager". Ideally, an adventure group setup would include a priest and a wizard at minimum. And the adventure could be easily set to any adventure; all that really needs to be tuned is the toughness of the dragon, and a little bit of its backstory to justify any lower level. Logistically, it'd probably work best at 4th to 8th in 3.x/PF. The availability of good divination and rapid/instant transport would probably reduce this to a single encounter.</blockquote>

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