[plots] Modron problem

[der_kluge]

I need some ideas here.
(my players stay out)










Last week, my intrepid heroes rescued an avatar of a dead god (long story, don't ask). My plan was to have the avatar send them on quests to retrieve remnants of his dead god - divinity sparks, godsblood, and the like (for those familiar with Requiem for a God).

One of the places I had intended on sending them was a modron enclave. Now, as the story goes, when the god died (on the prime) it tore a rift in Mechanus, and a division of modrons got slapped into the prime, where they eaked out a meager existence building colossal gear-shaped fortresses in the mountains.

Now, the PCs are going to be asked to travel to this location. But what to do once they get there I'm still stumped with. I had toyed with the idea of having them meet the modrons - but they are all deactivated, and rusted over, and the place is just generally dead. But with some puzzle solving, and maybe some minor combat they could figure out which gear to turn, or which wrench to pull out, or which gear to replace, or whatever, to get the whole thing started again. How to do that and occupy the players for 4-5 hours and make it be fun and entertaining is what is challenging me.

I'm not opposed to some combat, but the PCs just went through a hellacious battle, so I wanted to try to make this next game a little on the light side. They just went up to 11th level.

Any ideas? I'll take anything.

 

[Jolly Giant]

I don't know exactly what they're expecting to find in that modron fortress, but whatever it is, it isn't there. To figure out what happened they must "restart" one or more of the modrons or some of machines. Yes, you pretty much said this yourself, I just thought I might help with an insentive for the PCs to spend some time in this place.

If none of your PCs have any ranks in Knowledge: Engineering, maybe they have to go find somebody who has to get the place up and running again?

I suppose this place holds a lot of iron constructions, right? I'm guess rust monsters is the most obvious choice for a "monster"-encounter then. Their CR is quite low for your PCs level, but you said you wanted this to be a "light" session. If you want to make the encounter tougher, have them meet a small pack of the rust monsters with increased HD.

If you've got the Draconomicon, you could substitute rust monsters with a rust dragon. They're normally found on the plane of Acheron, but a run-down modron settlement would make an excellent home for one of those utterly nasty dragons!

That's all I can think of for now, I'm afraid. Will post again if inspiration strikes me! Gotta say though, you're campaign sounds like a lot of fun! (I've read a few of your earlier threads, about the stag avatar and so on.) Got a storyhour somewhere?

 

[arwink]

Have the deactivated city over-run with something else. Nothing major or terribly either, but a race that's strong enough to be mildly challenging and at least annoying. Imagine trying to restart the modron city while small forces of goblins with giant-centerpede pets try to ambush the party at every turn. Kobolds may also work, particularly given that they are slightly mechanically minded due to their experience with traps. An entire adventure where traps are based around gears running loose accross the city, or rusting modrons being pushed from the tops of buildings, could be interesting.

Let some kind of positive-energy creature loose in the city to animate parts, giving the illusion that some parts of the city are still working.

You could sit a divinely infused modron in the centre of the city, cackling madly to itself. Depending on the nature and alignment of the dead divinity, you could easily have a modron struggling to cope with its base programing and the infused nature.

Have the city invaded by inter-planar scavengers that are slowly raiding modron parts for sale in sigil.

 

[FireLance]

Have them enter the city and realise that the laws of the universe have changed:

1. They are only allowed to travel and attack along the cardinal directions: North, South, East and West. It is impossible to move or attack diagonally.

2. When they interact with NPCs, they are only allowed to say a single word, e.g. "truth", "love", "courage", etc. Every NPC (maybe they are all modrons) is keyed to provide information in response to certain specific words, but not to others ("I cannot help you with that").

3. Every time they win a battle, a funny piece of music plays ("Hmmm Hmmm Hmmm Hmmmmmm").

4. All monsters carry their treasure around with them in chests.

In order to retrieve the object of their quest, the PCs have to find four cards and insert them into four slots in the correct order.

Have fun!

 

[der_kluge]

I don't know exactly what they're expecting to find in that modron fortress, but whatever it is, it isn't there. To figure out what happened they must "restart" one or more of the modrons or some of machines. Yes, you pretty much said this yourself, I just thought I might help with an insentive for the PCs to spend some time in this place.

If none of your PCs have any ranks in Knowledge: Engineering, maybe they have to go find somebody who has to get the place up and running again?

I suppose this place holds a lot of iron constructions, right? I'm guess rust monsters is the most obvious choice for a "monster"-encounter then. Their CR is quite low for your PCs level, but you said you wanted this to be a "light" session. If you want to make the encounter tougher, have them meet a small pack of the rust monsters with increased HD.

If you've got the Draconomicon, you could substitute rust monsters with a rust dragon. They're normally found on the plane of Acheron, but a run-down modron settlement would make an excellent home for one of those utterly nasty dragons!

That's all I can think of for now, I'm afraid. Will post again if inspiration strikes me! Gotta say though, you're campaign sounds like a lot of fun! (I've read a few of your earlier threads, about the stag avatar and so on.) Got a storyhour somewhere?

Rust dragon, huh? That sounds nasty. Not sure I want to buy Draconomicon for that, though, but I could probably work up something on my own. Wow. Not bad.

Yes, I do have a Story Hour. Check my sig, thanks for asking.

 

[der_kluge]

Looks like rust dragons are the old Planes of Law boxed set, which I have. Just have to convert that to 3.5 and I'm all set.

Keep the ideas coming, though, these are good. God, I love ENWorld!

 

[spyscribe]

Don't have anything terribly useful to add, but does this mean you aren't using your idea for the valley with the two rival modron hierarchies?

That was really cool.

 

[Creamsteak]

Come on man, ALL the modrons are deactivated? There isn't that ONE sitting down there that's all fueled up and has been driven insane by 10000 years of occupying it's own thoughts with how much of a genious it is?

I hate to steal from such a story-less game, but there is one act in the game Halo that fits the modron I have in mind. 343 Guilty Spark.

343 Guilty Spark was a highly intelligent thinker that maintained a facility that had been left untouched for over 100,000 years. During which time, his AI had over-thought itself (constantly developing new algorithms to do new actions, inevitably clogging it's memory with a (just look at the post below)). The least of this AI's problems was that it was convinced that it was an absolute genious for having thought up all these new algorithms. In the long run, he ends up leading the hero (heroes in this case) to a device that they believe is the key to what they want... when it fact it is just a massive weapon meant to destroy the mountain.

If nobody has played the damn game, I recommend calling the heroes "reclaimers" and have them pass by a group of long-dead "reclaimers" who just so happened to have been killed by the rust monsters or whatever other mooks you've got in mind. If they do know the game, change the word "reclaimers" to "engineers" or such.

 

[Dirigible]

a plutocracy of thoughts

A collection of thoughts whose merit is judged by how much money they have?

 

[Creamsteak]

Caught me using a word I don't know the meaning of, didn't you . Does Beurocracy work? If not, what word would make sense (it's a convoluted mess of self-destructive thoughts).