Fate of the Realms Session Six

 So after encountering the man smelling of rats they follow him to the Hall of Many Pillars before loosing him. It is as if he just mysteriously disappeared... So from there they decide to go to the north. They interestingly pretty much follow the same steps as the party in the fourth session, the main difference is that they avoid contact with the goblins and encounter some skeletons. They encounter the Hall of Heroes and the Bone Throne, but make no real interactions with them.

 They finally encounter the leader of the goblins who tells them that his room in off limits. They do manage to get him to answer a couple of questions, not that the answers are all that useful. They then encounter the main goblin group and decide to vamoose, which is about where we left off.

I honestly thought that the one player who had played in the previous session to mention something about how they were retracing his steps, but nothing.

Fate of the Realms Session Five

 Well reports of this campaign's death have been greatly exaggerated it seems. I had the party start off at the beginning of the dungeon again, with new information from their patron. Apparently, there was a teleport to the second level somewhere across the chasm. They traveled to the chasm only to be attacked by a few darkmantles on the rope bridge across the chasm. Then they encountered a dread- a rare undead creature consisting of two floating skeletal arms that emerged from a black pool of water contained in a corridor. Unfortunately, I forgot to use its frightful presence ability, but it was a somewhat difficult encounter anyway.

 Then they encountered a door that I forgot to set to secret... I explained what happened, but allowed them to make search checks. They failed. They went up the corridor and nearly fell into a pit concealed by darkness. After doing this they doubled back and a man smelling of rats came out of the secret door. They had a quick conversation and then he went past them heading, or so he said, back to the Yawning Portal. After this we finished up for the night.

 All in all a session where not a lot happened. I think I was a little rusty from not playing for a few weeks, but the players said it went well.

Fallen Elphame Introduction

 I have devised an sort of introduction for my new setting- now named Fallen Elphame. It is located on my Obsidian Portal website for the campaign.

"The continent known to those to the east as Elphame was once home to a highly technological society. This was nurtured by the gods themselves in a location known as the Halls of Knowledge. However, the goddess Lolth betrayed the Seldarine resulting in a war between the drow that she corrupted and the rest of the elves. This devastated the continent, reshaping the very land and even resulting in the creation of twisted new forms of life. Eventually the drow were cast out, but the ascension of the great war leader to the position of Overqueen resulted in a second schism where the wood or wild elves broke off from those that would eventually be known as the high elves and left Elphame for other continents.

A significant number of goblin slaves rose up against the drow, driving them further into the depths of the continent and beyond. These goblins took up the drow’s instruments of war and bent them for their own purposes. Thus began their wars against elvenkind. For.a time the high elves were able to resist, even though they eschewed the use of much of their knowledge. However a few thousand years ago the tide began to turn. The goblins mastered more and more technology and the elves lost more and more knowledge. Kingdoms fell and even the Overking was overthrown.

Once the goblins reached the eastern lands known as the Azure Havens the elves began to pursue a new strategy. They reached out to the lands of the humans and even their estranged cousins. They began to bring in armies of these people, promising them riches and even land taken from the goblins. The Azure Havens took some losses, but also managed some victories in the face of great odds. The tide may yet turn again if the goblins can finally be driven back. Also rumors persist that the Halls of Knowledge still exist and contain knowledge that could be used to counter the advanced technology of the goblins."

The Halls of Knowledge and the Azure Havens

 So I have been giving more thought to my Post-Apocalyptic Alfheim campaign and my megadungeon now has a name- The Halls of Knowledge. Or possibly Halls of Divine Knowledge. Also, I have decided that I will be saving the creation of this adventure for later and for now will be focusing on a simpler scenario to start the game. Here is some of the background I have been developing

The campaign will start off in the Azure Havens, a series of elven nations along the eastern coast of the continent. Specifically, one of their cities has been greatly expanded to accommodate traffic from the continent to the east, one more similar to medieval Europe. This is where many of the elves emigrated long, long ago due to a second, less destructive schism with those who wanted to follow the leader of the Great War as their Overking and those that did not. Essentially those that followed the Overking were high elves and those that did not are wood elves, though I am uncertain as to whether I will have a mechanical difference between the two.

 This city is a mix between the old elven city and newer, largely human architecture. There are large sections devoted to the armies coming from the lands of men. Much of this is devoted to kinds of entertainment that the elves would eschew... Not far from this city is a citadel that has been destroyed by the goblinoid horde and has yet to be reclaimed... partly because the ruins have been occupied by fell creatures, including some remaining goblinoids. To clear out this citadel will be an early goal of the campaign. I am considering even having a portal to the Halls of Knowledge in the ruins of the citadel.

 I have given some thought to the other races. The dwarves are also generally split into hill and mountain dwarves...  with "hill dwarves" being those on the outskirts of the dwarven hegemonies (there are seven, one for each of the dwarven forefathers, though some are more centralized/intact than others) and the "mountain dwarves" are those in the metropolitan heartland, including the subterranean homelands, each centralized aground a great "manor," that may or may not be still inhabited by its original denizens. Except on the elven continent are the duergar, who dug too greedily and too deep and disturbed eldritch beings which altered them. Part of the drow have been corrupted by these same eldritch creatures after being driven into the depths of the world by their goblinoid former servants (though some remain under the drow's aegis).

Post-Apocalyptic Alfheim

 Well while I do want to continue that campaign, my Fate of the Realms campaign is facing difficulties. Therefore I have given some thought into future campaigns I would like to run. In particular, one I call "Post-Apocalyptic Alfheim" seems most promising. Basically its a setting that is many, many years after the war between the elves and drow, except in this world it took on apocalyptic levels due to the presence of advanced technology. 

The advanced technology the elves had came directly from their gods, which is kind of meant to have taught them and other gods not to do that sort of thing. Possibly even having led them to curtail the advancements of other settings. Now the goblins and orcs have used leftover advanced technology to conquer much of the elven continent, leading to the elves importing adventurers and mercenaries from other lands to defeat the goblinoid hordes.

 I am giving some thought to a megadungeon to go with the setting, but am considering delaying that due to the sheer scale of building a megadungeon along with the complications added by the atypical setting. One idea I had was an elven arcology. Another was a large science facility like Half-Life's Black Mesa or Fallout's Big MT. One complication with this is a difficulty in deciding where to begin with this project. So I am considering starting off with some smaller adventures. I still could use some help with deciding what that smaller adventure should be like.

Fate of the Realms: Session Four

Well, we've had some... chaos. Some players have left, others have joined. So last session we had the group start off back at the beginning of the dungeon. They decided to explore the north, where the goblins of the Sluggard tribe inhabit. They explored the regions around their lair. They discovered a group of goblins that, unbeknownst to them where spying on the Sluggards. They still managed to pass them by peaceably. Then they encountered some ghouls, that they quickly dispatched, though the Dagger of Savras, our mage-hunting ranger was exposed to ghoul fever.

After that they discovered a long corridor filled with statues of warriors. In this corridor they encountered orcs that they decided to allow to pass uncontested. They found a large room with a bejeweled statue of bones. They decided to leave it alone. They then discovered more barricades of the Greyhawk Construction Company, so decided to go south.  However, they soon found a room that had a trapped door. They did trigger the trap, avoiding being hit with a clever maneuver, but then managed to disable it. In the room they found a chest of gold and silver. Then they did a little more exploring of some confusing corridors, but heard some fighting to the south. At about that point we decided to wrap up for the night.

 I find the players to be very cautious. At first they didn't want to open doors at all. They are also very task oriented. They want to find that runestone and are less interest in incidental treasure. 

Fate of the Realms: Sessions One and Two

 So, we started the campaign and the first session was a bit chaotic. I must admit that "roleplay" isn't my forte, but I was perhaps anxious that day. So I decided to play that up with the NPC patron- a wizard named Qia Lien, secretly a chronomancer from the time of 5e. I didn't describe her as being from Kara Tur, but perhaps I should with that name. I had to cut the session short, but before that we got the initial meeting and objective of the adventure down. The PCs have to seek out a Runestone that Halaster was using to try to forestall an upcoming disaster. One character was able to get a bit of an indication of the secrets surrounding the wizard.

 So in the second session they descended into Undermountain.  They almost immediately encountered a lesser caryatid column (actually a modified animated object) in a antimagic field in a hall full of pillars. This... was a slog. It was a slog the first time even without the antimagic field (I forgot about that in the first attempt at this campaign). I'm not running it a third time, but if I did, then it would not include this encounter. The encounter as written in the module (Expedition to Undermountain), would have probably been even worse, with an actual caryatid column. Honestly, if you ever want to run Undermountain in 3e other modules featuring the megadungeon may be better.

  After the exploration of some corridors north of the hall of pillars. They found a barricade with "Greyhawk Construction Company" on it. Bypassing it they encountered a recently constructed brick wall. Confounded by this they withdrew.

Soon afterwards they encountered some goblins. Seeing them to not be immediately hostile they parlayed. The goblins explained that this was their territory and that the PCs could obtain a token in exchange for gold. The PCs reacted by claiming that by destroying the lesser caryatid column. The goblins agreed and they got the token. They then returned to the hall of pillars to rest. 

Fate of the Realms A Forgotten Realms campaign

Fate of the Realms is my newest D&D campaign, using 3.5 with the Trailblazer rules. Trailblazer is something of an overhaul of the 3.5 system, but more compatible with it than Pathfinder. The basic premise of the campaign is that a Chronomancer travels back in time from about one century in the future and seeks to prevent the Spellplague from ever happening. She recruits our heroes for the task, actually knowing them from the future. Unfortunately, she doesn't actually know exactly what started the Spellplague, though she knows it was triggered by Mystra's death at the hands of Cyric.

Therefore she has our heroes enter Undermountain shortly after the death of Halaster Blackcloak,who also sought to avert the coming disaster though he did not know the exact nature of the threat. Their goal is a Runestone that may allow the Chronomancer to forestall or even outright prevent the Spellplague. Unfortunately, I experienced a mass defection of players so I've had to restart, with the first game of the restarted campaign being this Saturday.