Exposition! So, here's where I reveal what a poser I am...
My first step was to check out Rune's older work. I was somewhat familiar with it already, having been in some of the same IronDMs in the past, but a review never hurt. Two things I like in his work are the grey areas and open-ended "endings". Normally in IronDMs, I try to narrow things down to Good and Evil, because that makes it easy for the Judge to follow, but I decided that with Rune at the helm, a good "there are no good guys" city was exactly what the doctor ordered.
So that was kind of cool.
And when I saw the bag of tricks and city and maze, I had a flash of inspiration: caffeinated ferret, crumbly walls, PCs that have to follow the ferret. (The idea of a leash has been pointed out to me - the people pointing this out have obviously not tried to leash a ferret, it doesn't stick; and that's why I mentioned how sickly and slow the animal looked, anyway).
After that, it kind of went downhill in the creativity department.
In order to get the crumbly walls I wanted, I knew right off that there was going to be a city maze. My first time, I had a maze built within the city just like any other building, by a mad inventor from ages past, which was long since abandoned. I came up with a bunch of ways to make sure that you had to
go through the maze rather than simply teleport, dimension door, etc.
Yeah, it was a poor choice. I fixed it later.
The harpy was an instant fit - she was calling the bag of tricks animal. This also gave me TWO action scenes: chasing the trick, and fighting a harpy.
Then I came back to the paranoid city. This is an evocative, beautiful ingredient. It's the sort of thing I normally just eat up. Couldn't think of a damned thing, other than a brief toying with the idea of making the city that drow city Drizz't is from. Ugh.
Waterlogged totem? Feh. I couldn't think of anything immediately, so I left it alone.
The sphinx was next (I usually go through the ingredients in reverse order except for the ones that inspire me immediately), so I went and looked her up in the monster manual. Most D&Ders don't examine the relationships of the sphinxes much, but there are
three species of male and one girl sphinx... and two of the three guys are essentially described as stupid jerks who "constantly seek" gynosphinxes. Now, given that the gynosphinx's primary love in life is intellectual challenge, does that seem like a good match up?
So I decided on a gynosphinx, and began delving through what she was. The gynosphinx is INT 18
base, loves riddles and puzzles (which mazes fit), are Neutral (neither good nor evil; they can do great good and still eat prey sentients, for example). That's when the REAL maze hit me, and although a Maze City is about as cliché as they come, I knew I had to do it to be true to Evaneskos.
So I wrote up a persuasive history for how what I wanted came to pass, made it obscure enough and small enough to fit into some pocket of anyone's D&D setting, threw in gnomes because gnomes are cool, and I had some good beginnings..
Except that the damned harpy couldn't fit into the new maze very easily. Nor was there a compelling reason for the party to be in an obscure, obviously messed up city... nor, for that matter, was the sphinx involved in the scenario - she was just back dressing, there to explain why the city was cool like it was.
In making grey areas, I'd written myself into a corner with no one to fight.
So I slept on it, woke up, moped early yesterday morning, and considered posting what I had as an "incomplete seasong is a loser" entry. Ugh.
Didn't want to do that, still had a few hours, boss was away from work... so I worked on it. I decided that the sphinx would be the employer. Rune thankfully didn't notice that there was no reason she needed to be a
sphinx, specifically - you could have put in a doppleganger or rakshasa and it would have fit as well (better, for the rakshasa). I fooled him, of course, by making Evaneskos a compelling character - SHE had to be a sphinx to be who she was, even if her sphinxness wasn't germane to the plot.
Then I made up some stuff about Yau being too gluttonous for her harpy sisters and finding her way to the city. I made a feat so she could function in a city, ignored some issues on how her power worked, and then "inspiration" struck - I'd put her in the waterlogged totem! Yeah! Brilliant! Rune rightfully called me on it
.
The rest was just going back and fixing up some hooks; all employment hooks, for which I am sad (I would have liked two or three seemingly heroic hooks), but I ran out of time and didn't have much choice.
I threw in some Rune hooks - Yau joins Evaneskos, and they can become a problem later; the party is working for their eventual enemy; the city provides lots of future scenarios to the creative GM; etc. But otherwise, the scenario was done.
I would have liked to have fleshed out some of the Rune hooks, to make them less outline-y; and I would have loved to have made the sphinx more integral to the plot (maybe another 300 words for her were burbling in my brain). But there it was - a collection of clichés with some comedic Action and a short fight, and lots of open-ended goodness.
!), Wulf, and others.
