Halivar
First Post
UPDATE: New info and some story questions I have you guys at this post.
EDIT: I changed every occurrence of Lloth to Lolth, since WD is right and it's 1E.
The thread is marked 1st Edition, but what I need is some general story advice.
First let me tell a story.
My players started 1st Edition with a dungeon that I randomly rolled up using the DMG. One of the encounters was a group of stirges, and the loot for this particular encounter rolled up a ring of three wishes. Now, a better DM than I might have said, "You guys are level 1, so I think I'll roll again." For whatever reason, I was amused by the strange odds, and I let it stand. After all, it was a one-off dungeon we were just doing for funsies while on break from 4E. Besides, they needed one of the wishes to regrow an arm the ninja lost to a green slime.
The elven wizard put the ring in his backpack, wrote it down on the back of his character sheet, and it passed out of all recollection.
And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.
Fast-forward 4 or 5 months. I want to start the Temple of Elemental Evil. All the other campaigns are done, and I want to go for the long haul here. My players really liked their characters from the one-off, and ask if they can keep them. I say yes, because with their loot they can hire proper henchmen (and hopefully lose fewer limbs).
We go through T1: Hommlet. The party's doing really well. On the last approach to Lareth, however, the party overextends itself. By the time they reach Lareth, most of the party is in the 1-3 hit-point range, and several of them have already crossed the 0 threshold, and can thus not take part in any fighting. Lareth and 8 guards now face the players.
I believed that we were in for a TPK, as did the players. Everyone is pouring over their character sheets, desperate for a last gambit to save them. The wizard jumps up exultantly. "I pull the ring of wishes out of my bags! I wish Lareth the Beautiful was on our side!"
I sat there for a bit. I actually didn't know what you could do with a wish. I'd totally forgotten the ring even existed. But I figure my choices are (1) let the player have his wish or (2) end the game in a TPK and we do something else next week. I let it play. Both Lareth and the M-U collapse into a comatose state. The party barely manages to wipe out the guards.
So what changed?
In changing Lareth's alignment and allegiances, the module has to be severely modified. For one thing, the party gained access to plot-critical information MUCH earlier than the module would otherwise allow. They know about Zuggtmoy, the alliance with Iuz, and, most importantly, the intense factional antagonism in the ToEE.
According to the module, once Lareth is killed, an assassin shows up to attack the party. I modified this so that the assassin comes for Lareth instead, with a diversionary attack on the players to give the master assassin cover.
How Lolth is involved
In T1, Lareth is described as "the young, dark hope of chaotic evil" and as an adherent of Lolth. In fact, this is appears to be the beginning and end of Lolth's involvement in the Temple of Elemental Evil (unless I missed something). With Lareth dead (if you go by the module as written), Lolth has no further power base in the temple's faction war.
However, Lolth didn't lose Lareth to death; if she had, she would still have what was hers: his soul. By redeeming Lareth, the party did something worse to Lolth: they stole from her something that was rightfully hers. Lareth was "vested" by Lolth; her loss in these events would be palpable, and not something easily ignored, even by such a cruel and capricious demoness.
The last wish
I wasn't sure what to do with Lolth, so I put her on the back-burner while the party ventured to Nulb. There they met Otis, Y'dey, and all the other personalities of that pirate town. They picked some fights, burned down an inn, and in general made themselves VERY unwelcome.
The party found themselves without a home-base of any sort. They decided to wish one into existence, using the last wish in the ring of three wishes. By this time, I'd read the wish rules, but still found them to be quite vague. Because the party's need was great, I decided to be permissive: I ruled that wish had a 6-second cast time, and thus they could wish for whatever they could cram into those 6 seconds. I pulled out a stop-watch (you should have seen their faces; everything turned serious so quickly).
The players spent the better part of that session nailing down the exact legalese and doing practice runs to see if they could say the wish in exactly 6 seconds or less. I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed imagining ways to turn their out-takes and misspoken words into terrible calamities.
In the end, they wished for a ring that could summon a hidden portal (once a day) leading to a fully-staffed, SAFE extra-dimensional palace with food and drink, dismissable at will. Thus they could adventure for days, possibly weeks before returning to home-base.
Seem like a lot? It is. However, the wording on wish is very adamant on one point: the wish is granted by a deity. Which deity? Well, when the party steps into their mansion (after spending 20 minutes searching for the "hidden" portal, as specified in the wish), they are greeted by an enormous, obsidian shrine of Lolth.
I've decided that Lolth feels the party owes them a champion. They took her last one, so they will take his place in advancing her agenda in the Temple of Elemental Evil.
Questions I have:
1) What is Lolth's agenda in the ToEE? Lareth was at a forward post of the ToEE, but he had no troops or acolytes in the temple itself.
2) Why was he outcast?
3) What was his eventual goal w.r.t. the ToEE? What does Lolth want?
4) WHY does she want the party to succeed? Revenge? Or is this a Kaiser Sose-like double-cross?
BTW, I'm about to introduce A1, tying it to Nulb instead of Freeport. It's my understanding that the Slave Lords series leads up to the Queen of the Spiders series. How can I better integrate the complications that have arisen in T1-4, along with Lolth's deeper involvement, and the AGDQ series?
EDIT: I forgot to mention that the ring itself is artifact level, since it is almost as powerful as Baba Yaga's hut. The M-U obtained a legend lore reading for it, upon which he discovered that it is a wedding ring that grants some drow racial abilities. I wanted time to make an appropriate rhyme for it, but I can't do that on the spot. I'll make one for him before next week.
EDIT: I changed every occurrence of Lloth to Lolth, since WD is right and it's 1E.
The thread is marked 1st Edition, but what I need is some general story advice.
First let me tell a story.
My players started 1st Edition with a dungeon that I randomly rolled up using the DMG. One of the encounters was a group of stirges, and the loot for this particular encounter rolled up a ring of three wishes. Now, a better DM than I might have said, "You guys are level 1, so I think I'll roll again." For whatever reason, I was amused by the strange odds, and I let it stand. After all, it was a one-off dungeon we were just doing for funsies while on break from 4E. Besides, they needed one of the wishes to regrow an arm the ninja lost to a green slime.
The elven wizard put the ring in his backpack, wrote it down on the back of his character sheet, and it passed out of all recollection.
And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost.
Fast-forward 4 or 5 months. I want to start the Temple of Elemental Evil. All the other campaigns are done, and I want to go for the long haul here. My players really liked their characters from the one-off, and ask if they can keep them. I say yes, because with their loot they can hire proper henchmen (and hopefully lose fewer limbs).
We go through T1: Hommlet. The party's doing really well. On the last approach to Lareth, however, the party overextends itself. By the time they reach Lareth, most of the party is in the 1-3 hit-point range, and several of them have already crossed the 0 threshold, and can thus not take part in any fighting. Lareth and 8 guards now face the players.
I believed that we were in for a TPK, as did the players. Everyone is pouring over their character sheets, desperate for a last gambit to save them. The wizard jumps up exultantly. "I pull the ring of wishes out of my bags! I wish Lareth the Beautiful was on our side!"
I sat there for a bit. I actually didn't know what you could do with a wish. I'd totally forgotten the ring even existed. But I figure my choices are (1) let the player have his wish or (2) end the game in a TPK and we do something else next week. I let it play. Both Lareth and the M-U collapse into a comatose state. The party barely manages to wipe out the guards.
So what changed?
In changing Lareth's alignment and allegiances, the module has to be severely modified. For one thing, the party gained access to plot-critical information MUCH earlier than the module would otherwise allow. They know about Zuggtmoy, the alliance with Iuz, and, most importantly, the intense factional antagonism in the ToEE.
According to the module, once Lareth is killed, an assassin shows up to attack the party. I modified this so that the assassin comes for Lareth instead, with a diversionary attack on the players to give the master assassin cover.
How Lolth is involved
In T1, Lareth is described as "the young, dark hope of chaotic evil" and as an adherent of Lolth. In fact, this is appears to be the beginning and end of Lolth's involvement in the Temple of Elemental Evil (unless I missed something). With Lareth dead (if you go by the module as written), Lolth has no further power base in the temple's faction war.
However, Lolth didn't lose Lareth to death; if she had, she would still have what was hers: his soul. By redeeming Lareth, the party did something worse to Lolth: they stole from her something that was rightfully hers. Lareth was "vested" by Lolth; her loss in these events would be palpable, and not something easily ignored, even by such a cruel and capricious demoness.
The last wish
I wasn't sure what to do with Lolth, so I put her on the back-burner while the party ventured to Nulb. There they met Otis, Y'dey, and all the other personalities of that pirate town. They picked some fights, burned down an inn, and in general made themselves VERY unwelcome.
The party found themselves without a home-base of any sort. They decided to wish one into existence, using the last wish in the ring of three wishes. By this time, I'd read the wish rules, but still found them to be quite vague. Because the party's need was great, I decided to be permissive: I ruled that wish had a 6-second cast time, and thus they could wish for whatever they could cram into those 6 seconds. I pulled out a stop-watch (you should have seen their faces; everything turned serious so quickly).
The players spent the better part of that session nailing down the exact legalese and doing practice runs to see if they could say the wish in exactly 6 seconds or less. I have to say, I thoroughly enjoyed imagining ways to turn their out-takes and misspoken words into terrible calamities.
In the end, they wished for a ring that could summon a hidden portal (once a day) leading to a fully-staffed, SAFE extra-dimensional palace with food and drink, dismissable at will. Thus they could adventure for days, possibly weeks before returning to home-base.
Seem like a lot? It is. However, the wording on wish is very adamant on one point: the wish is granted by a deity. Which deity? Well, when the party steps into their mansion (after spending 20 minutes searching for the "hidden" portal, as specified in the wish), they are greeted by an enormous, obsidian shrine of Lolth.
I've decided that Lolth feels the party owes them a champion. They took her last one, so they will take his place in advancing her agenda in the Temple of Elemental Evil.
Questions I have:
1) What is Lolth's agenda in the ToEE? Lareth was at a forward post of the ToEE, but he had no troops or acolytes in the temple itself.
2) Why was he outcast?
3) What was his eventual goal w.r.t. the ToEE? What does Lolth want?
4) WHY does she want the party to succeed? Revenge? Or is this a Kaiser Sose-like double-cross?
BTW, I'm about to introduce A1, tying it to Nulb instead of Freeport. It's my understanding that the Slave Lords series leads up to the Queen of the Spiders series. How can I better integrate the complications that have arisen in T1-4, along with Lolth's deeper involvement, and the AGDQ series?
EDIT: I forgot to mention that the ring itself is artifact level, since it is almost as powerful as Baba Yaga's hut. The M-U obtained a legend lore reading for it, upon which he discovered that it is a wedding ring that grants some drow racial abilities. I wanted time to make an appropriate rhyme for it, but I can't do that on the spot. I'll make one for him before next week.
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