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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pukunui" data-source="post: 9707750" data-attributes="member: 54629">Just realized I need to add my Vidorant's Vault play report! Will have to get on that as soon as I can ...Also, I am prepping to run Shard of the Accursed next, and I'm having some difficulty with the established timeline.Thousands of years ago: Xeluan the giant and a band of heroes do their stuff. Xeluan builds a citadel for the heroes in a mountain pass. There are earthquakes threatening to destroy everything, so Xeluan sacrifices himself to make some magic wards that protect the area from earthquakes and such. Time passes. The heroes die. The locals die or move away. Everyone forgets about Xeluan, the heroes, and their tomb.One century ago: Explorers rediscover Xeluan's citadel but not the tomb. A new settlement, Oztocan, springs up around the citadel ruins.Twenty years ago: An elf named Rilago discovers some old documents in his family archives hinting at the existence of Xeluan's tomb. He travels to Oztocan to search for the tomb, but the then-mayor says no. His preteen daughter, Aminta, overhears and becomes obsessed with finding the tomb. Rilago settles in Oztocan, biding his time.Years later, the mayor has died, and his son, Tavio, has taken over. Aminta, meanwhile, has joined a criminal gang and become commander of Oztocan's town guard, corrupting all but two guards who are still loyal to Tavio. Aminta is able to strongarm her brother into allowing Rilago and her (who may have become lovers in the intervening time) to look for Xeluan's tomb, which they believe contains fabulous treasures. It doesn't, and so for "reasons" they decide to try carving up the giant's petrified body instead ... but it turns out to be indestructible! Until, that is, Rilago happens to strike the giant's body in frustration while wearing a ring belonging to his ancestor, who was one of the ancient heroes. This "breaks" Xeluan's heart, which results in Rilago's death!Regardless of which adventure hook is used, the PCs are told to talk to a playwright named Leandro who is in Oztocan. He tells the PCs that Rilago disappeared "a few weeks ago", around the same time that the earthquakes started.So Rilago has only been dead for a few weeks, but the shard that killed him has not only already made its way out into the wider world but has also developed a reputation as a cursed item complete with numerous false rumors about it!That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. That said, I'm guessing that the author wanted Aminta's mining operation to be a new thing or else she'd have already carved up most of Xeluan's body.However, upon reading the text more closely, it doesn't look like Aminta's workers are carving up Xeluan's body. They're "collecting" pieces of his body as they fall off. I'm not sure how that is as profitable as the author claims it is. I also don't see how that would require as large an operation as Aminta has set up in the tomb ... but anyway!I'm thinking I'm going to have to extend the timeline out by a few months at least. So it's been months since Rilago and Aminta found the tomb and Rilago died, but then Aminta took the shard that killed him out into the wider world to assess its value. Perhaps she ended up selling it or it got stolen, but she realized that pieces of Xeluan's body had magical properties and could be of great value. She then had to convince her Onyx Scar bosses to invest in the mining operation. She then had to get all the people and equipment to Oztocan. And so on. So she's only been actively working at collecting pieces of Xeluan's body for a few weeks by the time the PCs get there.A few months is probably still not enough time for the shard to build up a reputation in the wider world, but I might just downplay that aspect of it. Knowing my players, none of them will want to attune to it (even temporarily) anyway, so it might as well just be a nonmagical piece of crystal for all they'll experience in the game!As an aside, there's also a bit of a discrepancy regarding the spirits of the ancient heroes. On the one hand, Edino the evil elf Onyx Scar mage, has been conducting experiments and has "bound the souls of Xeluan's companions" to fallen pieces of his body. And yet, if the PCs disturb their crypt, the companions' spirits manifest as angry wraiths. I'm not sure how that's supposed to work ... unless the wraiths are meant to be like echoes or something and not the companions' actual spirits. This is a bit of a nothingburger for me, though, because Rilago's ghost pops up right at the entrance to the crypt and begs the PCs not to enter lest they anger the spirits. Knowing my players, they'll listen to him and won't encounter the wraiths anyway.</blockquote>

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