Planning a halloween adventure

[Greenfield]

I'm slated to DM the next bit of our story, and it is October, so...

I'm trying to come up with something good, seasonally speaking, without departing completely from our story line.

Story line has me taking the group to Rome to propose peace talks between Alba/Pictland and Britania, which is still, in name at least, a Roman province.

Most of the party is from Britania, Scotland or Ireland/Caledonia, soa nice little Samhain side trip can fit in. Just need some ideas.

Things on the table: We have a dead Cleric the party is going to try to bring back. Used to worship a jealous "I'm he only god there is" deity named Taiia, from central/southern Africa, then converted to the Egyptian pantheon, favoring Amon Ra. (She used to swear that Taiia was real and all other deities were false. Now she swears that the other deities are real and that Taiia is false.)

I've been considering a trip to the afterlife for the group, with the discovery that ownership of Zula's soul is in dispute between her two patrons.

I've also considered that the road to the afterlife is done via Shadow Walk. We've often described the Plane of Shadows as the land of nightmares, and the books do describe it as a twisted version of reality, so there's a lot to work with there as well.

And since both of her patron deities are sun gods, the Plane of Shadows seems like the perfect neutral ground for such a dispute: A place where the sun never shines.

And yes, unless Problem Child refuses, I'm going to give him back his precious character, the one whose death he complained about so much.

Of course, with a nightmare realm to traverse, and two Greater gods arguing over her, she'll probably leave a piece of herself someplace along the way. (i.e. she'll lose a level, as appropriate for Res and Raise.)

But ideas for what to throw at the group are always appreciated.

When I've run previous Halloween dungeons I've gone over the top, piling on cliche after cliche, sometimes taking a classic monster movie and twisting into something backwards. Like when the party had to save Bela the Gypsy (the character who bit Lawrence Talbot at the start of the classic Wolfman movie) from being used by the bad guys to start a Lycanthropy outbreak. Others involved the mad doctor working on his flesh golem (he needed divine lightning to bring it to life, the arcane stuff wasn't doing the job.) Turned out his "house servant" was a vampire, running the whole town.

Anyway, I'm thinking a gauntlet of sorts. Ra is the Egyptian "gatherer of souls", who escorts them down the Nile each night to the place of judgment. That means that, from the time the body is prepared until Zula's soul is beyond reach is limited. They have until sunset.

Traversing the Plane of Shadows to reach another plane takes 1D4 hours, by the book, so I can play with a built-in deadline if I like.

Anyway, I could use some ideas for this, not just monsters (though they would be an integral part), but the scenes themselves. Halloween theme.

 

[Dandu]

Perhaps this gauntlet should consist of a tournament of champions who have their own friends and loved ones whose souls they want saved. The group which reaches the end of the gauntlet and conquered both monster and champion alike gets to have the soul they were after released, while all losers are cosigned to the Shadow Realm.

We could call this tournament the Shadow Games.

 

[Herobizkit]

There's always the Wild Hunt. Perhaps with the Problem Child's lost soul as the prey...?

"Seeing the Wild Hunt was thought to presage some catastrophe such as war or plague, or at best the death of the one who witnessed it. Mortals getting in the path of or following the Hunt could be kidnapped and brought to the land of the dead."

Egyptian hunting deities:
Neith, goddess of war and the hunt
Pakhet, a lioness huntress deity, whom the Greeks associated with Artemis

On a personal note, were I the DM of that group, I would hold my ground on not giving the Kid his character back. If you do, it could be completely against what the other DM's want, plus it might also reinforces the Kid's belief that, if he whines enough, he'll eventually get what wants.

I made this very mistake in my youth. A friend's "power character" was swallowed whole by a Remorhaz; back in the 2e days, that meant that the character was irrevocably gone and "not even a wish could bring him back." There were general sighs of relief. A few days later, I had his next character simply pray for him to come back, and he did, much to the dismay of the other players. To this day, nearly 30 years later, I still get ribbed about it at least once a year. :3

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

If I wanted to do a Pictish horror session, I'd look to R.E. Howard's Worms of the Earth short story. Absolutely bone-chilling and horrific.

 

[Greenfield]

There's always the Wild Hunt. Perhaps with the Problem Child's lost soul as the prey...?

"Seeing the Wild Hunt was thought to presage some catastrophe such as war or plague, or at best the death of the one who witnessed it. Mortals getting in the path of or following the Hunt could be kidnapped and brought to the land of the dead."

Egyptian hunting deities:
Neith, goddess of war and the hunt
Pakhet, a lioness huntress deity, whom the Greeks associated with Artemis

In our world the Wild Hunt is specific to the Celtic lands. On the nights of the Hunter's Moon (full moon), the Hunt sweeps up all who have dies and takes them to Tor, the gateway to the land of the dead.

Vandos is the Master of the Hunt, and wears the horned crown. Arwyn is the keeper of Tor.

The Egyptian gatherer of souls is Ra, who rides the chariot of the sun. Each day he gathers all who are ready to pass on (i.e. their bodies have been prepared) as he flies by. At sunset he lands his chariot at the edge of the Nile, where he and the departed board the great golden barge that he pilots down to the Palace of Two Truths. He has to fight his way past Apophis, the great serpent of destruction, and protect the fallen from the Children of Sobek, the crocodile god.

His character was a priestess of a non-historical deity called Taiia. We've sort of placed he in central/southern Africa, but there are no tales of her afterlife transition, nor if her faith even has such a thing. Nothing to work with there.

The character switched to the Egyptian pantheon, which is closer, geographically, to where the character died. I may have to work with that.

On a personal note, were I the DM of that group, I would hold my ground on not giving the Kid his character back. If you do, it could be completely against what the other DM's want, plus it might also reinforces the Kid's belief that, if he whines enough, he'll eventually get what wants.

I made this very mistake in my youth. A friend's "power character" was swallowed whole by a Remorhaz; back in the 2e days, that meant that the character was irrevocably gone and "not even a wish could bring him back." There were general sighs of relief. A few days later, I had his next character simply pray for him to come back, and he did, much to the dismay of the other players. To this day, nearly 30 years later, I still get ribbed about it at least once a year. :3

I won't deny his character the chance to come back, since every other character has had that opportunity. "Fair" is always a hard concept, but "even-handed" is more or less a requirement for a DM.

I've also advised him of an alternate back story that ties the two characters together without them being siblings, and a way for him to have followed/found us that fits more organically into the story.

Whether he accepts any of that is up to him. He could decide he wants to play the new character,in which case it's done.

As far as my Halloween adventure is concerned, it doesn't matter whether he wants the old character back or not. It's the effort that will be the foundation of the tale, regardless of how it turns out.

Besides, the party is 10th level, pushing 11th. It's time they got out and made a name for themselves, and the trip to Death's Door is one of those things that legends are made of.

But you've given me a good idea.

Regardless of religious tradition, the Sluagh (hounds of the hunt) we use are based on Shadow Mastiff, from the Monster Manual. Nasty things whose home is the Plane of Shadows. Just CR 5, but a real threat when they come in a pack, with surprise.

So that gives us one nightmare aspect, the element of the chase, the unseen enemy always waiting for a chance to strike.

Next we have Shadow Egypt. This would be a sort of reversal, since the Egypt on the Plane of Shadow might appear to be grander than the real thing. In our world, Egypt is besieged by Persia on the one border, and by the forces of a Bantu empire on the other. It's lost land and power, making it a "shadow of it's former self." So we have a strange and twisted setting, an empire with ghostly armies. Not undead, just the armies that were or might be.

Their opponent will literally be the ghost of an ancient empire.

We have the element of time pressure: They have to reach the right place on the Nile before sunset, in a world where you can't see the sun. If they don't make it then, well, they've quite literally missed the boat.

Now, I'd like to incorporate into that the conflict between Taiia, the PC's former patron goddess, and Ra, head of the Egyptian pantheon. Her Divine rank is higher than his (highest in Deities and Demigods, in fact), but he's on his home soil.

So how to send them? And how not to have my character included? (DM's character always sits the game out.)

Okay, the trip isn't via Shadow Walk. It's a case of Dream travel. I'll invent a religious ritual, part of a Raise or Res ceremony at the temple. My character, being an Elf, doesn't sleep, so he can't go. His job, and that of our NPC, will be to stand guard over the others as they leave their bodies. Once it begins they'll be given sacred wine, laced with the appropriate ritual herbs. They'll "wake up" in a grander version of the temple. (How many nightmares include realizing that you're naked in a public place" ) But because the Egyptians believe that you can "take it with you", I'll either skip that part, or their possessions will be there and available.

From there they'll have their job cut out for them.

Should I have Taiia in the dream as an Aspect, directing the Shadow Mastiff, as a force opposing the Jackals of Anubis? (In Egyptian mythology, the jackals serve Anubis as guardians of the dead, to protect them from the terrors of death.)

And, unlike the Egyptians, Taiia has no problem involving undead.

I think I have something.

Thoughts? Commentary? Advice?