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    Canonfire :: View topic - Age of Worms - Several Questions
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    Age of Worms - Several Questions
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    Apprentice Greytalker

    Joined: Aug 31, 2004
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    From: Charlotte, NC

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    Fri Jul 01, 2022 4:27 am  
    Age of Worms - Several Questions

    Hi All,

    I started running a campaign that I've always wanted to: Age of Worms! It's the Adventure Path from Dungeon. It involves Kyuss and goes from levels 1-20. If anyone has run it, I have some questions.

    First Question:

    I have a question about a character background that I want to do something interesting with. The Wizard starts his character with a family heirloom that has an unknown symbol on it that no one in his family knows about (his idea). They have taken it to scholars and no one knows what it is or what language it is in. It's what got his character curious about the world and to become a wizard. He eventually wants to know what it is.

    With that in mind, I'm trying to think of what it could be. I've got two ideas, but would love more. I could make it a glyph of a Wind Duke person. I don't like this idea as it pretty much ends with the first adventure and doesn't really do much beyond that.

    I could also have it as the symbol of the Order of the Storm. No one knows it because they did that whole ritual that took their memory away from people. This does lead to latter plot lines, but doesn't really mean much beyond maybe his family was part of it years ago? I also have another player who is a Warlock / Sorcerer of Storm magic that is going to be a descendant of those druids that Kyuss hunted down his people. So, would it take away from either to have both their stories tied to it? Or would it bind them together?

    Any other ideas? Maybe from the weird ancient civilization to the south? Not sure what to do with that, though.

    Second Question:

    I am using the old mine manager building from the Wormfood article in Dragon. The Whispering Cairn is on the property of an old mine that went belly up 50 years ago. The previous owner died 10 years ago. There are all sorts of rules for fixing it up, but nothing on how much to actually purchase it? I figure they want to buy the house and a little bit of the land around it. I'm not exactly doing a high gold campaign, but they will get some cash from the first adventure.

    I'm torn between 50gp and 200gp. It's an old house outside of town and there is no good mine on it. Thoughts?

    Third Question:

    What interesting plots and schemes did you manage to include in your Diamond Lake? What got the player's attention? Were they pulled in at Lvl 4 to work against Smenk? What did they do?

    Was there any fallout after the 2nd adventure? Did the players get the Garrison involved? If so, that could be the end of Dourstone. It might also bring Smenk down, but maybe not. The players start to get pulled out of Diamond Lake at this point, but I would be interested to hear what happened in other people's campaigns.


    Thanks for sticking through a long read! Any help is appreciated.
    Grandmaster Greytalker

    Joined: Jul 09, 2003
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    Fri Jul 01, 2022 11:54 am  
    Re: Age of Worms - Several Questions

    heychadwick wrote:
    ... Second Question:

    I am using the old mine manager building from the Wormfood article in Dragon. The Whispering Cairn is on the property of an old mine that went belly up 50 years ago. The previous owner died 10 years ago. There are all sorts of rules for fixing it up, but nothing on how much to actually purchase it? I figure they want to buy the house and a little bit of the land around it. I'm not exactly doing a high gold campaign, but they will get some cash from the first adventure.

    I'm torn between 50gp and 200gp. It's an old house outside of town and there is no good mine on it. Thoughts?...


    In Erik Mona's playtest for Age of Worms, the "abandoned mine office" A.K.A the "Guildhouse" got a lot of mention. From what I can tell, the PCs simply claimed it. I don't think it cost anything:

    https://paizo.com/people/Tyralandi/posts

    [the posts are usually in reverse order. just do a find function for "squatting" ]

    As an example, under 7 Reaping 595 CY, there is: "...I took my leave of them and headed back to the Guildhall, as Gar has taken to calling the abandoned mine office we’ve been squatting at."

    ...so if you want, they can have it for free, I think. Now, of course, some clever con artist could come along, claiming to be from the government, claiming that they need to pay a fee... Evil Grin
    Adept Greytalker

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    Sat Jul 02, 2022 10:22 am  

    I'm DMing this right now, using my own AD&D/OSRified Pathfinder 1st edition rules (which I call Greyhack). We started the campaign about a year ago and we're just starting the fourth adventure, Hall of Harsh Reflections.

    First & Best Advice
    Visit the Paizo forum archives and look under Dungeon magazine for the Age of Worms forum. There are, I believe, 27 pages with about 50 threads a piece. Errata. Suggestions. Sidetracks. Clarifications by Mona, Jacobs, Buhlman, Baur, Vaughn etc. Invaluable. I'm been reading through it all on-and-off for the last year and I'm only about 1/3 of the way through.

    First Question
    My inclination would be to use the Order of the Storm as well, but specifically with some way of binding those two characters together. Maybe the family heirloom is the only way the Sorcerer of Storm player will ever learn their own heritage. Maybe they both could learn some kind of special ability that only functions in tandem (which would, however, suck if one of them died).

    The other option I can think of is could relate to the Necropolis (can't recall the specific name) in what is now the Bright Desert where Kyuss first learned to make his worm zombies. There's an article on Maldin's melkot site that delves into the history of Kyuss to a degree. The downside of this approach is the PCs will probably want to then go there and you'll have to develop the whole thing as a sidetrack.

    Second Question
    I got around the whole who-owns-this-property thing by having them visit the Cairn first and in the early rooms finding a dead body with the deed to the mine office on the body. I also decided that having the physical deed to a place = you own it. That solved that with a little trouble. Then I ran a sidetrek from the forums where the place had some lizard men in it when they first visited.

    Third Question
    Oh, man, there's so much here I could say. During the Whispering Cairn (a brilliant adventure, by the way, esp. if you're DM it mercilessly—really encourages player attention and creativity), the PCs were mainly trying to keep their adventuring on the sly as much as possible, to avoid tipping off the other adventuring party about what they were up to. There was a political thing afterwards when the Cult of the Green Lady (one of the PC's religion), outraged by Filge's desecration of the dead, occupied the observatory in a stand-off with the sheriff that was eventually resolved without violence.

    IMC Three Faces of Evil began in a different way, when during roleplay Theldrick (eating dinner at the Rusty Gar) actually managed to persuade/trick the party's cleric/savant to accompany him into the mines. The party had already been investigating the place and had the party dwarf hired on at the mine, so when the PCs realized their companion had gone in willingly/been abducted, they undertook an assault to rescue her.

    Smenk didn't become involved until the end, when he sent his thugs to bring the PCs in for a talk and try to muscle them into telling the town that, instead of being complicit, he'd actually sent them in to clean up Diamond Lake. Predictably, the PCs didn't bite and a gigantic melee broke out that ended up with Smenk dead, and the garrison all over the place.

    Appendix
    The weakest parts of the adventures as written are the hooks that link them together. On the forums someone disparaged the hooks as "Off to See the Wizard . . . " because every adventure keeps ending with little more information known and the current wizard telling the PCs to go find a different wizard. So i'd look at the connecting hooks pretty hard and try to anticipate better ways to motivate the PCs, knowing your group as you do.

    Second Appendix
    Did I mention that my PCs have named their adventuring company The Diamond Lake (rhymes with Rick) Weasels?—after an unfortunate critical hit on the party dwarf by the dire weasels in the Dourstone Mine.
    GreySage

    Joined: Aug 03, 2001
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    Sat Jul 02, 2022 11:17 am  

    edmundscott wrote:

    The other option I can think of is could relate to the Necropolis (can't recall the specific name) in what is now the Bright Desert where Kyuss first learned to make his worm zombies.


    The Necropolis of Unaagh, detailed in Rary the Traitor. I had a theory about Unaagh, the failed apotheosis of Kyuss, and the lich-god Mellifleur (from Monster Mythology) that I elaborated on here: http://www.canonfire.com/cf/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=921

    Giving a player character a mysterious symbol of Mellifleur might make some sense in an Age of Worms campaign, if Mellifleur is an ancient enemy of Kyuss.
    Adept Greytalker

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    Sun Jul 03, 2022 10:22 am  

    The Mellifleur stuff is great, Rasgon, and I plan to incorporate that into the Kyuss backstory for my campaign.

    What I'm still developing/brainstorming is Kyuss' hijacking of these older doom prophecies to his own purposes to bring about The Age of Worms and therefore rule.

    There's something, believe it or not, not quite epic enough about the finalè I want to massage a little but am not quite sure how to do so: to wit, what are the real stakes for Oerth if the PCs fail? just more undead running around but everything else about the same? that doesn't seem sufficient, to me.

    For the threat of Kyuss to be the real world-ending-threat the campaign intends, his success would have to somehow endanger or cripple Beory herself. As Mona alludes (via prophecy to Tyralandi Scrimm, played by James Jacobs in the Paizo house playtest), the threat is to the cycle of life and death itself.

    So my unanswered questions are—
    a) how is it possible that any demigod could accomplish this, given Berry's power?
    b) what is really behind these prophecies hijacked by Kyuss to fuel his own power? (One possible answer to the latter might just be, in typical Gygaxian fashion ala Tharizdun's prison, every process must have somewhere within it a means of subversion and concluding it, even something as powerful as the cycle of life and death).

    (Anyway, I hope I'm not hijacking this thread into the too-philosophical and should probably start another one, etc.)
    Apprentice Greytalker

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    Thu Jul 07, 2022 8:08 am  

    I don't mind the hijack and I appreciate the answers!

    Does anyone know if it's been listed with some of the events to prophesize the beginning of the age of worms is? I'd love to work that more into the campaign.
    GreySage

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    Fri Jul 08, 2022 11:41 am  

    heychadwick wrote:
    I don't mind the hijack and I appreciate the answers!

    Does anyone know if it's been listed with some of the events to prophesize the beginning of the age of worms is? I'd love to work that more into the campaign.


    Https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2gi66?Age-of-Worms-Prophecies-Index
    https://the-age-of-worms.obsidianportal.com/wikis/fourteen-prophecies
    https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2hha3?New-Age-of-Worms-Prophecies
    GreySage

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    Fri Jul 08, 2022 11:52 am  

    edmundscott wrote:


    There's something, believe it or not, not quite epic enough about the finalè I want to massage a little but am not quite sure how to do so: to wit, what are the real stakes for Oerth if the PCs fail? just more undead running around but everything else about the same? that doesn't seem sufficient, to me.



    My idea was that the Age of Worms ultimately meant the summoning of Atropus, the undead moon from Elder Evils.

    And for an idea of what that would mean, look at what happened to Gnibile in Greyspace, a gas giant inhabited by nothing but undead.

    If you read Kiaransalee's backstory in Demihuman Deities, Kiaransalee was once the queen of another world until she overwhelmed it with undead in pursuit of vengeance. In my telling, her world of Threnody was once vibrant and full of life, and now it's Gnibile, a world of undead and toxic storms. Perhaps she summoned Atropus to help bring this about.

    Greyspace claims that Oerth once had a second sun that vanished in the distant past, creating the asteroid field known as the Grinder from a shattered world. This could be what Atropus is. The meteorite in the Pits of Azak-Zil carries an undead curse, and may have originated as part of the Grinder tainted by Atropus' aura.
    Apprentice Greytalker

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    Wed Jul 20, 2022 4:41 am  

    rasgon wrote:

    Https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2gi66?Age-of-Worms-Prophecies-Index
    https://the-age-of-worms.obsidianportal.com/wikis/fourteen-prophecies
    https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2hha3?New-Age-of-Worms-Prophecies


    Much thanks!!! I really appreciate this. Yes, a lot seems to be based on previous Dungeon adventures, which I can understand they do. I'll have to get some from my old campaign and a few of the ideas listed. I really do appreciate the links!

    I've read more on the final adventures and gotten a better idea where everything is heading. I will use the player's idea of having an amulet he isn't sure where it came from to be tied to the Wind Dukes. The Dukes left people to watch for the evil that eventually became the Order of the Storm. I'll have the wizard's family be descendants of them, as well as the Storm Sorcerer player.

    I'm still not sure yet how to handle the fallout from The Three Faces of Evil. I guess I'll play it by ear. I guess it depends on what is found and how things are handled. Also, how the players want to try to spin things.

    Thanks everyone!
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