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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 9641027" data-attributes="member: 2629">They hear about a giant shipwreck.  They discover that there is a Kraken in the area.  They learn that the Locathah that plague the shores are under the control of the Kraken and that it resides in the shipwreck.  They discover interesting / powerful magics and learn that they came from the shipwreck.  An important NPC tries to hire them to search the shipwreck for treasure.  A few threats they deal with over the campaign have hints in their lair that they came from the shipwreck.If they travel there they discover the "shipwreck" is just the part of a flying city that crashed into the sea that remains above the waves.  It is a significantly sized dungeon to explore.  The key features of it are:1.) They are essentially caged in the city as the Kraken is out there if they reveal their presence too prominently.  Thunderwave would be a bad decision, but you're not calling in the Kraken just because you roll a 13 on a stealth roll.  This is intended to create decision moments where the PCs have to debate whether to do something the fast and noisy way or slow and quieter.  2.) It is mostly submerged, so there is a lot of underwater combats that are designed to make them think differently.  However, many areas are magically protected and maintained and not submerged.  Further, there are areas filled with antigravity, a section that takes place in 4 dimensions (which I stole from a friend DM back in the 1980s when I was a teenager ... it is interesting for the right players, but I think the wrong group would just find it an impossible riddle that could bog down the game), and areas devoted to beings that remain trapped within it. 3.) The city belonged to a powerful Archmage of old and contained his collections of the bizarre from across the realms.  Many of the threats in the "New Lands" this ship are near arrived there when this city crashed and they escaped.  Others remain bound to the city and can't leave their zones.  4.) The thing crashed about 1000 years ago.  As such, it contains a lot of information within it about the parts of the storyline that grow out of events from the past.  Like Babylon 5, there is a time loop element (although my time travel rules are different) and this would allow the players to get some information about the time loop element.  5.) The "gem" piece of information within it is something that is not essential to the storyline for the campaign - but reveals a major secret of my setting that, if known, changes how players and PCs see some of the key conflicts in the game.  To draw a parallel, it is like discovering the Illuminati exist in the Marvel 616 comics universe and that they had a hand in many major events.  It is that level of secret - but very different in nature.  I do not reveal the details of this secret to the players during the wrap up - only that there were huge secrets to be found there that change how they'd see the world.</blockquote>

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