The Etherthreat

[WizarDru]

What was it? How long did it last? Who defeated it and who was behind it?

Why did some people hate it so?


I'd never heard of it before today, but apparently it dominated some adventures in the RPGA's Living Greyhawk material? I'm assuming it was some big world-threatening meta-event...but I'm curious for details. The only thing I know of is that some folks clearly didn't like it.

Anyone familiar with it and could share details?

 

[diaglo]

was this where the RPGA unleashed a horde of ethreal filchers?

all the items given out were taken back. and everyone started at square 1 again.

 

[WizarDru]

was this where the RPGA unleashed a horde of ethreal filchers?

all the items given out were taken back. and everyone started at square 1 again.

I have no idea if you're being serious or not.

All I know is I saw some mention of it on the Greyhawk list, and when I googled it, all I could find was someone on the Perrenland site having been involved in defeating it, whatever it was.

 

[diaglo]

I have no idea if you're being serious or not.

All I know is I saw some mention of it on the Greyhawk list, and when I googled it, all I could find was someone on the Perrenland site having been involved in defeating it, whatever it was.

just wild speculation on my part.

i don't pay attention to the RPGA much.

 

[heirodule]

In Escape From Tenh (COR2-11) Ethercreatures (wierd bugs, including variant umber hulks) rampaged out of nowhere to decimate the Duchy of Tenh (already in bad shape from Iuz and Stonefists)

They ate everything in their path, and they spit stuff at you that made pieces of you vanish on to the ethereal plane. You had to escape from Tenh in the adventure where the ethercreatures arrived.

Then you went back in Into the Dying Lands (COR2-13) to do some reconnoitering, and help a guy who lost someone, IIRC. You might have seen a 'ropey' looking leader type off in a distance if you were lucky.

In Isle of Woe (core special), the The Isles of Woe resurfaced, and it was revealed that the caretakers of the Isles let the ethers out ages ago, and they had knowledge of how to put them back. the Codex of the Infinite Planes was involved.

In Dust of a Dead World (core special), you could also travel to another world that had been wiped out by the ethers, except for some thri-kreen who held on tenaciously. There you could attack an ethergaunt leader if you were playing high-level. They tended to be pushovers.

In Return to the Isles (COR3-02), you went into a secret chamber in the Isles and recovered a sword and hands of Yagrax, which would direct you to Yagrax's tomb.

In Sepulcher of the Wizard King (COR3-10) You went to Yagrax's tomb to recover the lost spirit of Yagrax, who could successfully use the codex (anyone else would become insane) to banish the ethers. Yagrax's tomb was guarded by metal people who used to live on the isle of woe and now were metal people.

In Endgame (COR3-12) Yagrax took over an NPC and lead you through different planar realms until you got to a place where you coult let Yagrax banish the ethers using the codex. Then Iuz' forces show up and take the codex away. (a bit railroady?)

I thought it was a good bit of fun. Combat intensive. The ethers were interesting. The ethergauts tended to be pushovers. The Isle of Woe scenario was released as a home play megasceario and was alot of fun.

Controversies: the plots were a bit railroady. But not all.

The ethers were supposed to be a flanaess-spanning threat and I belive that some regional traids resigned rather than put up with forcing ether threats into regional scenarios.

I continue to wonder if it was a reconfiguring of the plotlines Erik Mona had been working on in LG with the Lost City of Darkash Anam, which is supposed to have a tower inhabited by insectoids. His plots seem to have been abandoned, though my PCs carry along certed books from his scenarios.

Echo (COR2-08) was related but not an actual part of the series. I think some deleted text from that mod (in the copy I got anyway) implied that the destruction of the Zochal freed the ether creatures from their prison. Echo was widely regarded as a bad trend in LG, as Stephen Radney McFarland took over at that point, the mod seemed to be based on the ideas from Sonic the Hedgehog (you leaped on platforms in varying elemental environment), and you could lose your PC for no apparent reason. SRM was also credited with making LG do away with 'roleplaying' xp and telling players that D&D expected them to min-max, and that profession and craft skills were expected to be useless.

 

[Erik Mona]

I continue to wonder if it was a reconfiguring of the plotlines Erik Mona had been working on in LG with the Lost City of Darkash Anam, which is supposed to have a tower inhabited by insectoids. His plots seem to have been abandoned, though my PCs carry along certed books from his scenarios.

Be still my heart.

I didn't have anything to do with the "Ether Threat" storyline except perhaps inspire it with the creation of the Ethergaunts, which were my "drow candidate" for the Fiend Folio. They were designed at about the same time, and served the need the LG campaign administration had for a dimensional threat meant to shake up events.

The Dar-Kesh Anam stuff was never really tied into any specific plots, being instead strands left for potential future development. I'm thrilled that anyone even remembers those threads, as I put some time into them both in my own adventures for the campaign and in the late, lamented Living Greyhawk Journal.

It would be cool to bring up Molaho Khem and the Lost City again some time. If only I had a good place to do it...

--Erik

PS: The main "plot" I was working on in LG was the "Absolute Power" series that began in "River of Blood," continued in "As He Lay Dying," and which was touched upon again in some material I wrote for the "Return to the Ghost Tower of Inverness" adventure. I was able to follow through on some of those ideas in Dungeon, notably in the "Maure Castle" issue (Dungeon #112). The metal triangles known as "octychs" in LG were in fact meant to fit into the star design engraved on the floor of Maure Castle's area 1, which was revealed as a multi-planar gate way back in "Mordenkainen's Fantastic Adventure." The saga was to be a quest to reassemble the lore of Suel Power Magic from the scattered lore of Slerotin's apprentices, with quests to find octychs leading to mini-quests assigned to demiplanes connected to the eight-pointed star design. Notably, that star design appears in the Living Greyhawk logo as well as the official symbol of the organization known as the Seekers, which has appeared throughout the Living Greyhawk Journal and Dungeon magazine.

 

[qstor]

It would be cool to bring up Molaho Khem and the Lost City again some time. If only I had a good place to do it...

--Erik

A Living Greyhawk module?

Mike

 

[Jason Bulmahn]

In Escape From Tenh (COR2-11) Ethercreatures (wierd bugs, including variant umber hulks) rampaged out of nowhere to decimate the Duchy of Tenh (already in bad shape from Iuz and Stonefists)

They ate everything in their path, and they spit stuff at you that made pieces of you vanish on to the ethereal plane. You had to escape from Tenh in the adventure where the ethercreatures arrived.

Then you went back in Into the Dying Lands (COR2-13) to do some reconnoitering, and help a guy who lost someone, IIRC. You might have seen a 'ropey' looking leader type off in a distance if you were lucky.

In Isle of Woe (core special), the The Isles of Woe resurfaced, and it was revealed that the caretakers of the Isles let the ethers out ages ago, and they had knowledge of how to put them back. the Codex of the Infinite Planes was involved.

In Dust of a Dead World (core special), you could also travel to another world that had been wiped out by the ethers, except for some thri-kreen who held on tenaciously. There you could attack an ethergaunt leader if you were playing high-level. They tended to be pushovers.

In Return to the Isles (COR3-02), you went into a secret chamber in the Isles and recovered a sword and hands of Yagrax, which would direct you to Yagrax's tomb.

In Sepulcher of the Wizard King (COR3-10) You went to Yagrax's tomb to recover the lost spirit of Yagrax, who could successfully use the codex (anyone else would become insane) to banish the ethers. Yagrax's tomb was guarded by metal people who used to live on the isle of woe and now were metal people.

In Endgame (COR3-12) Yagrax took over an NPC and lead you through different planar realms until you got to a place where you coult let Yagrax banish the ethers using the codex. Then Iuz' forces show up and take the codex away. (a bit railroady?)

I thought it was a good bit of fun. Combat intensive. The ethers were interesting. The ethergauts tended to be pushovers. The Isle of Woe scenario was released as a home play megasceario and was alot of fun.

Controversies: the plots were a bit railroady. But not all.

The ethers were supposed to be a flanaess-spanning threat and I belive that some regional traids resigned rather than put up with forcing ether threats into regional scenarios.

I continue to wonder if it was a reconfiguring of the plotlines Erik Mona had been working on in LG with the Lost City of Darkash Anam, which is supposed to have a tower inhabited by insectoids. His plots seem to have been abandoned, though my PCs carry along certed books from his scenarios.

Echo (COR2-08) was related but not an actual part of the series. I think some deleted text from that mod (in the copy I got anyway) implied that the destruction of the Zochal freed the ether creatures from their prison. Echo was widely regarded as a bad trend in LG, as Stephen Radney McFarland took over at that point, the mod seemed to be based on the ideas from Sonic the Hedgehog (you leaped on platforms in varying elemental environment), and you could lose your PC for no apparent reason. SRM was also credited with making LG do away with 'roleplaying' xp and telling players that D&D expected them to min-max, and that profession and craft skills were expected to be useless.

This is a pretty good recap, but let me take a moment to correct a few bits.

Isle of Woe came first and in it, at Origins, one of the tables accidentally destroyed the already weakened prison of the ethers, as they were locked away on a demiplane.

By the end, it was revealed that Iuz has learned of this threat, and had engineered the return of the Isles of Woe, and weakened the prison. He also suspected that with their return, adventurers would flood that place and inadvertantly release the ethers. Iuz also knew that the Codex was the only way to reimprison the ethers. Since the artifact was hidden from his divinations, he knew that someone would find it to reimprison them. It would be much easier to find the codex once it had already been found. This allowed him to get his hands on the powerful artifact.

All in all, the adventure arc was pretty well recieved. No one resigned over it, but there was some grumbling, and some triads did not use the arc at all (as was their choice, no one was forced to). There are certainly things I would have done differently today, but it was a lot of fun.

Jason Bulmahn
Ex-Circle Guy, One of a few Ether Architects

 

[WizarDru]

Interesting Stuff, that. Thanks for the info, all.

 

[Barendd Nobeard]

As an RPGA player, I really enjoyed the Ether Threat modules themselves. I played all of them except one (which meant that, despite successfully completeing six out of seven mods, my PC was not allowed to get one of the rewards at the end of the last module--that "penalty" was sort of silly).

I absolutely hated the "shoe-horn ether encounters into *every* regional mod" part of the "Ether Threat" era. In some mods, it worked out really well. In other mods, the required ether encounter was so badly shoe-horned in as to be laughable. And after a couple of them, it just got very repetitive and boring.

But the little stones (which gave some minor bonus to hitting ether creatures) were great. They eventually hatched into ether creatures themselves. It was funny to see people's faces when the stones they had been collectcing suddenly became worse than useless.