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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MrsMongoose" data-source="post: 9559005" data-attributes="member: 7026582">SO more clarity on this then?"Adapting the Adventure.All the beginning Zeitgeist adventures assume the PCs are agents of theRoyal Homeland Constabulary. If your players are free agents, they might be brought in as specialist investigators due to the tricky political natureof a murder at the Danoran consulate. Alternately, a PC with the Docker or Vekeshi Mystic theme feat might have known Nilasa and so have apersonal reason to solve the mystery.If you’re using this adventure in a different setting and want to stripout the technological elements, you need to keep a similar element ofsimmering social unrest. You might replace factories with more old-fashioned sweatshops making goods for a group of distrusted foreigners;perhaps the workers blame some mysterious disease on those foreigners.The mystery generally remains the same, with the emphasis on trackingdown people who have clues to secrets hidden in the Bleak Gate (or, more traditionally, the Plane of Shadow), while another group tries to stop theinvestigation. You’ll need a reason for Reed Macbannin to be refining witchoil, particularly if you’re not planning to run the later adventures"Well, MacB's house is more like "base camp" than right at the top of the hill (where the Skyseer wants to go). C.H. is a BIG hill...1) There are no real authority figures in the bit round the lake, The Nettles - apart from Mayor of Nettles MacB - the people who work there are pretty desperate to keep their jobs, if they have one at all. By the time the city authorities ever did anything, it would be too late: the factory would burn (Secchim is an exception to most other factory owners in this setting, as they are rich, don't live in that part of town and can hire more staff. There are always more staff)a. You could Big up the two thugs doing all the fire-setting: it's possible they are going further than originally intended by whoever hired them. Maybe they decided to cut out the middleman?OR b. There's a possibility that MacB knows about the oil but not what it's for, and is Unwittingly bottling it for someone else, because he thinks that getting rid of it will make the Hill less haunted and his job easier. Of course, he can't have the PCs find out he's helping whoever, before his temporary underground base is dismantled... otherwise He'd be out of a job...2) Cauldron Hill is sat over a LAKE of witchoil, due to it being a weak spot between the Bleak Gate for having being used as a site of ritual gubbins by a bunch of witches until defeated by a bunch of couple hundred years ago PCs-now-background characters. The Flasks are just a way of making it portable for other "members" of the organisation MacB works for.(Read Bonds of Forced Faith if you want more background on C.H. and what to sicc on them up the hill)This is why a certain something/one is being built near there... and why if you aren't running further, then the bolded bit above is the crux of the adventure: Why does the Baddie need SoulJuice(tm)?Sounds like (Fake) Philosopher Stone materials from FullMetal Alchemist if you want a one-off alternate reason... So... Alchemy instead of ArcanoTechIf you are only doing episode 2 in act 1, You may as well take Quital/Borne/Gnomes out of the picture period, but if your players ever want to pick up where they left off in another "short" campaign following on from this at some nebulous future date, consider your remaining throughlines into the next episode/act. Or by then you'll probably have enough character threads to work with, and take inspiration from the city setting as and when?</blockquote>

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