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Message: <blockquote data-quote="el-remmen" data-source="post: 8160187" data-attributes="member: 11">The Fate of the Firebird* (a spelljammer adventure)Bardic CollegeCursed SwordBinary SunsName LevelRedundant OgreStuck ElevatorDark ParagonHooks:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A one-shot, all the PCs being different types/multi-classed bardic students accompanying their faculty advisor to investigate the S.S. Symposium</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The party is hired by the bardic college to accompany Igor Alerut to investigate (perhaps with the promise of rare magic as reward)</li> </ul> The Music of the Spheres Bardic College is well-known throughout the cosmos for training bards and sages, with a reputation for teaching and preserving all kinds of music and lore. The party accompanies Professor Igor Alerut to investigate what happened to the S.S. Symposium, an enormous spelljamming ship. The ship— is a combination conservatory, museum, and zoo—houses a “Semester at Space” (think “Semester at Sea”) program. It went missing with a dozen bardic grad students and its professorial captain, Hallward Alme. Explaining that scrying the ship/occupants has had limited success, Alerut brings the party to a distant Crystal Sphere in one of the college’s Hammerships. Now closer, he uses a magic sword he brought with him from the school to detect for the ship. The S.S. Symposium is found in a figure-eight decaying orbit amid and around a strange smallish binary suns. One sun (Hemera) shines with radiant energy, the other (Erebus) glows with negative energy. The Symposium’s orbit around both suns takes 60 hours. As the PCs arrive, the ship is about to begin its loop around Erebus (within an hour it’ll in the corona). It leaves Erebus’s corona after 25 hours and reaches Hemera’s in another five. On its return approach to Erebus, it will plummet into it. As the ship does its figure-eight orbit different sides of the ship face the radiant or negative sun, creating different effects, including sudden reversals of gravity. The top decks face Erebus as it circles it, and the lower decks face Hemera when it circles it. While in Erebus’s corona during the first circuit, undead in the upper decks are bolstered and energy drain attacks are stronger. On a second circuit of Erebus, the entire ship will be under this effect. While in Hemera’s corona, the non-corporeal undead in the lower decks temporarily dissipate and any corporeal undead of less than 8HD are destroyed. Furthermore, a Deva appears and explains about the phoenix egg and how celestial laws ban it from acting directly. He may send some lesser celestial creature to aid them, but it disappears when re-entering Erebus’ corona. Professor Alerut is a runty half-ogre who overcompensates for the common view of ogres. Thus, he is articulate, refined, book-learned, and a bit haughty. He has a lovely singing voice. Unfortunately, he has also under the sway of an evil intelligent cursed sword (the one he claims detected the ship). In reality, the sword is calling the shots, and manipulated Alerut into suggesting Hallward seek out the binary suns. The sword speaks telepathically to the wielder. The Symposium is a huge ship (Use a real-world ocean liner map as the basis) with multiple thematically name(d) levels (Decks). The Hammership can land atop the Symposium to access it from a hatch on top, or land on the open Lido deck in the upper front. Alerut will insist they make their way to the engine room in a rear lower deck to find Hallward. As he and the party make their way through the ship, they will find various specimens set free and/or changed into aberrations. They will also find the bardic grad students transformed by the influence of Erebus into various undead (with bardic features). Each deck is a set-piece of one or more rooms or habitats ruled over by one of the thematically-appropriate undead grad student bards. Some of the decks include: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Lido/Aquatheater: Orca zombies. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Queen’s Deck (Formian “Ant” Farm) - imagine a spectral formian bard! </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Symphony (rehearsal spaces, costume rooms, etc) </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Deck 13: Cursed Magical Instruments guarded by gibbering mouthers </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Promenade: A gallery of many stalls showing off art and music of different places and cultures </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Celestial Gala: Magic shutters give a panoramic view in a ballroom with dancing ghosts. </li> </ul> At some point before getting to the Engine Room, Virxorex and the Drop-Outs arrive in Smalljammer to exact his revenge on Alerut. Virxorex is an ogre-mage with a crew of disgruntled former students who want to stop Alerut and hopefully kill him. Virxorex was also a professor at the bardic college, but his areas of expertise overlapped with Alerut’s, leading him to being a Redundant Ogre. Thus, he was not given tenure, as the college board preferred the obsequious Alerut to the cutting and aggressive Virxorex. His research has led to the same conclusion about the results of the phoenix egg entering one of the suns (see below). He does not care so much about preventing the destruction but wants to foil Alerut’s plan and get evidence to get his job back. Virxorex assumes the PCs are in on Alerut’s plan and is not one much for explanations. As the party makes their way through the ship encountering the various set-pieces, they can either flee Virxorex or try to make a stand. Alerut explains that there is no reasoning with the other ogre and if the party makes a stand, he makes a run for the engine room while the PCs “hold him off.” He might also try to get “lost” in the confusion of a battle, like in the Formian maze. Otherwise, if the party makes it to the Engine Room, Alerut will suggest they make their stand outside and hold the doors closed while he goes in and tries to “fix” things. The Engine Room also serves the throne room of Hallward in his new Crypt King form (give him bardic powers and some other undead guardians). He uses his Crypt King powers to separate and confuse the party, teleporting them to different decks. The transformed Hallward will recognize the sword and not harass Alerut, and the professor will clearly not attack the undead here. A party teleported to different parts of the ship will have to regroup and maybe try to ally themselves with Virxorex. The engine room holds a spelljamming helm drawing power from a large red egg that pulses with white and black fire. The egg holds a paragon phoenix: legendary fiery bird who is the apex example of the interconnection of creation and destruction/substance and void, whose immolation helps spread life. Disconnecting it will not stop the ship, but still requires powerful dispel magic or some extreme effort physically remove it (the feedback should be strong enough to have a chance of killing whoever tries). The room also holds various clockwork mechanisms controlling the ship’s sails, fins, and rudders. But the actual controls have been destroyed. At the back of the room, an inspection will reveal that the ship’s elevator (the horizontal fin that controls the ship’s altitude) is sticky, perhaps contributing to the decaying orbit. Unfortunately, trapped in the gravity well as it is, the Symposium cannot be broken free, but Alerut plans to use the cursed sword to make sure the elevator remains stuck, pivoting the ship into a more rapid descent into Erebus in the process. Ludocrat is a sentient sword—a destroyer of constructs and machinery and was forged from Erebus. It is a +4 weapon that deals 4d6 extra damage to constructs and can emanate an anti-magic zone around itself. Constructs struck by the sword must save or be destroyed outright! Whoever grasps it must willingly give up their soul of compassion (become CE) to pull it out of any machine or construct it has been stuck into and submit to its will. The anti-magic zone should mean that a PC will have to do it themselves. This will allow the elevator to be moved back just beyond its original position but cannot avoid the ship’s ultimate fate. It will now crash into Hemera. The sword wants to return to the void, hating all life and machinery (even after life is gone, machinery can continue). It takes pleasure from doing its part to destroy the very foundational machinery of the universe (crystal spheres). The sword will try to dominate its wielder to get the ship to crash into Erebus. A humbled but insufficiently repentant Alerut will be freed if this happens. The egg hatches when the Symposium crashes into one of the suns: Erebus: The egg explodes into a Dark Paragon phoenix, instigating a reverse “big bang.” The bird is made of flames of negative energy, sucking in all the contents of the sphere until it shatters, causing cascading explosions of phlogiston that will have cosmic implications. Anything within 1000 miles of the sphere will be destroyed. Hemera: Explodes into a Radiant paragon phoenix seeding new life throughout the Crystal Sphere (think Star Trek II). However, anything within the sphere will be destroyed in the process of creating whole new ecosystem and creatures to be studied. Leading to a desperate escape scene. Conclusion: This should be a hard adventure, with good chance of total failure (thus the one-shot recommendation).</blockquote>

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