Laravin's Folly Act I

Spoilers ahead! Proceed at your own risk.

See Act 1 plans for a brief summary.

Session 1

Opens with Gavin and the Theridiae showing up again, with a message for the party in general and Thaladin and Miro in specific: there's an elven military detatchment en route from Volundir, and they'd better not be here when it arrives.

He offers to take them onwards, as he's already got a commission from an existing passenger to take them out to the last known oasis, the Pyxis Oasis. This passenger is Cedric, a lone knight of Lathandar who used up all his savings to by passage in the hope of picking up Laravin's trail. He tells the party about Laravin's past as a knight of Lathandar a hundred or so years ago.

Assuming they take him up, they end up out at the oasis. They can see Laravin's hope very faintly in the distance - it looks like a glowing turqouise/aquamarine skyline with an exceptionally tall central building. Any attempt to reach it lands them back at the Oasis. This requires a crystal ball of planar seeing to get through.

Said crystal ball is inside a long-buried temple, with walls covered in Heiroglyphs and no lighting whatsoever. It was put there by Laravin when the temple wasn't buried, and guarded by Gaheris, one of his party. Getting to the ball requires first entering the temple, down some stairs which have fallen into the abyss, leaving a ~100ft long chasm in its place. There are a few places on the wall which are standable but they need to be seen through the dark.

After that, they need to get past the lock incongruously overlaid on the big obvious main door. This lock requires three medallion pieces, which form a complete medallion of the knights of Lathandar. They are each in a trial room, and each have a different trial.

  • Trial of wit: A puzzle or riddle of some kind.
    • This is going to be something like the following: The players are given a ring of twelve tuning forks (matching the circle of fifths) and a bunch of chord names ($C$, $B\flat m$, $Eb^{ 13 }$ )
  • Trial of might: A fight.
  • Trial of agility: Light six torches in twelve seconds in a room with no floor, but strung up with a ton of ropes.

The corpse of Gaheris is puppeted by the Arbiter when they try and get the ball. Gaheris is placed in the middle of the temple, in center stage of an amphitheater-type room. There are three statues of long-dead gods in the room, which can be knocked over; there are also quicksand puddles around the place to get stuck in.

Enemies

For the trial of might, three level 5 enemies:

  • x2 living statues
  • x1 divine warden of nethys
    • This is reflavoured as a divine warden of Lathander, summoned by Laravin when he was here. It wears armour strikingly similar to Cedric's.
  • The fight takes place in a more or less boring arena, but with a large (7-hex) pillar in the middle.

For the final fight, a level seven enemy and two level 3 enemies.

  • Gaheris himself is a bound knight of Lathandar, willingly serving into undeath. His stat block is that of a Deathless Heirophant.
  • The two lackeys are summoned by Gaheris on his first turn; they are long-dead servants of Lathandar, drawn back into temporary service. They are Deathless Acolytes.

Session 2

Depending on what gets done in session one, this could start with finishing off the temple section and obtaining the crystal ball.

... Yeah this one'll be finishing off. The players just wrapped up a mimic fight, with the remaining two rooms being the combat trial and the puzzle.

The last chest in the mimic room contains a emerald grasshopper and 200 gold.

After they defeat Gaheris and pick up the crystal ball, it kind of sucks them in and they end up back on the sands, next to the oasis, where Cedric is waiting.

The idea for the walls of Laravin's Hope is a kind of

Session 3

... steampunk-crystal aesthetic; think lots of rock, lots of glowy crystal, lots of metal, and lots of pipework, cogs, steam, gizmos, and the like. The walls themselves are kind of like huge rock crater walls - it almost looks like the city crashlanded there.

Now the PCs have the crystal orb, looking through it at Laravin's hope 'demists' it. They feel a change in the air, some kind of magic being dispelled, and they just need to continue on to Laravin's Hope. Upon reaching the walls, they look as described above. Some options they have:

  • Climb the walls. May seem attractive given their new grashopper toy, but it's a really tall wall (at least 1000ft, though it does seem to become flatter higher up). They face high winds (penalty to all acrobatics), and a number of traps on the wall itself, along with it just being baseline eerily smooth. Traps include:
    • treacherous scree (only on the upper levels, may cause players to fall down the wall)
    • steam vents - pipes sticking out of the walls blasting steam occasionally. Can also blow the PCs off the wall.
    • a severe hailstorm also blasts the players very soon afterwards. It's magically induced, and can be disabled.
    • Once at the top, they then need to get down - though this is fairly easily achieved with the grasshopper and some ingenuity. It's another 1000ft drop though, and they're standing on an overhang, so climbing down isn't really an option.
  • If the PCs elect to take the other option, they can enter through a number of openings in the wall - jammed vent fans, smaller pipes, cracks and crevices, and perhaps even a secret door. If they find one, it's a free pass into the city.
    • this results in them traversing the inside of the walls. This is narrow, less than five foot tunnels the whole way, and more than a few traps:
    • These are more or less laid out in sequence - draw out a map tomorrow

Notes on traps:

  • They can be detected by me rolling a perception check on behalf of each player and seeing if they notice it.
  • They can be disabled by any means appropriate, but usually a thievery disable a device for gizmos and nature or survival for environmental effets.

Once inside the city, Tal and Cedric both get another vision. This time, it's clearer, with the spire of stars falling down, and a half second of the arbiter's face popping up at the end.

I imagine the players will want to go shopping, and they can, more or less. Their outsiderness is remarked upon but it's not that unusual, they're just new. They notice the large amount of guards, all carrying spears, wearing a very wide variety of armour but wearing the same crest on the chest or wherever appropriate.

Notes from the session:

  • Some details about the city - see here for the appropriate details
  • Cedric is running around desperately trying to find Percival Laravin, with no luck yet. He's dived in far beyond his ability and the PCs eventually run into him trying to 1v1 a powerful demon.
  • The PCs have obtained passage up the first two levels of the city, and as of the end of it, just reunited with Cedric in the undercity.
  • They have also learned of Theodore, a high-ranking guard who may be able to get them up to the higher levels.