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Message: <blockquote data-quote="plecostomus" data-source="post: 9850827" data-attributes="member: 7040041">My group is coming up on the end of The Lost City. I am very curious as to how they will feel about this module's non-ending. Today one of my players provided me with some lovely art of how she thinks it's going to end:[ATTACH=full]428605[/ATTACH]A prophetic work really, since escaping Zargon involves flattering him and giving him gifts.One of my other players thinks the party will find some McGuffin that lets them defeat Zargon. Alas, no such thing in this module...I'm not completely convinced the party won't just leave when they finally open the doors on Level 5. But they have been extremely torn up about actually trying to do that. They got all the way up to the turnstiles and grabbed on, then talked themselves out of it. Their main fear seems to be that if they just open the exit, Zargon will come to punish them (like a videogame final boss interruption), or Zargon will escape into the wider world.I did have a NPC posted outside the secret level who let them know she is going to sneak down to investigate Zargon. But they've wasted quite a bit of her time at this point, so I think she's going to depart on her mission. That torturous choice to either escape the ziggurat or peek at Zargon will be theirs without further dialogue from me.For anyone unfamiliar with The Lost City, the dungeon is ruled by Zargon the Returner, a CR 17 elder evil. The player characters are Level 4 when they meet him. They can do absolutely nothing to stop his reign of terror.There are 2 ways to encounter Zargon on the secret level. One is as a sacrifice scenario that the party has to escape, and the second is a social encounter where they find his lair and he toys with them a bit and takes some of their treasure before letting them go. When I say the module has a non-ending, that's what I mean. The only answer to the ziggurat is to escape the ziggurat.I think after their work with the 3 factions and many of the NPCs living here, my players have set themselves up for long-term success. They can return to the ziggurat later and will probably have some help to take Zargon down. But there's no short-term victory where Zargon is concerned. And there is nothing resembling a "boss fight" at the end of this dungeon. We'll see what they say about that.</blockquote>

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