The Curse of Artaith (a 3.5 Campaign Journal)

[curious-puzzle]

Puzzle, dude (and players!), this has been an awesome read! You guys are solidly amongst the legendary campaign logs for sure.
....I don't suppose you guys are planning to tackle the 'aftermath of Artaith' anytime soon? The epic foreshadowing in the epilogues is just too good.
And I may be slightly late to the party but any chance you could PM me the character backstories?

Thanks Onos! And the idea of doing up stats and balanced challenges for epic levels makes me twitch - so if we did, wouldn't be for quite a while. Had my fill of prepping and running high-level stuff for a little bit.

And it may not be a PM, but have a shiny Link

Questions I have? Lots, but that's not very helpful... a lot of the bosses seem to be linked to hidden locations (quite dark souls esc) so I'll ask primarily about those to start.

The Gravefields
The Stone Prison
Haron's folly (this one seems to have been referenced in spotters epilogue)
The dragonlands
The summerland

In addition Rhamiels behavior if released and the Personification of Genocide were both particularly intriguing...

All right - some bullet points on these bits and pieces so I don't fall into overly dramatic descriptions :P

The Gravefields: This was where Hollows from multiple nations were imprisoned/banished/hurled at the beginning of the Curse. As the Curse spread faster and faster, the giant oubliette/tomb quickly outgrew any attempt to build it securely, and degenerated into more of a walled-off mini-nation. Leaving mindless and soulless constructs to continue building further downwards and upwards, it ended up a a necropolis to nearly rival Logos in size.

Why would have the party wanted to go here other than for the sake of exploring? There was some truly ancient treasures and magics hidden under the tides of Hollows. Also, some of the most ancient Hollows slumbered here, still held together by will. Any clever ideas to communicate or compel could resulted in some extremely juicy info about the nature of the Curse and its beginnings.

Also, if the party had been more intrigued by the remaining pantheon of Artaith, this would have been a place to aid Uthra (goddess of death). Destroying the ancient Hollows and sealing the portals to Sheol (the plane of the dead) that they exploited would have been a major sidequest for sure.

The Boss area of the Gravefields would have been the First Hollow. I didn't have any stats or anything like that, but the core of the idea was a lot like Manus, Father of the Abyss. He was going to be a Super-undead, probably starting with a Death giant and going from there.

The Stone Prison: A mysterious fortress ruled by a coven of powerful Medusae. Before the time of the Curse they were content to collect individuals that caught their interest, or to imprison others for exorbitant sums- as the Curse overwhelmed everything, they became a haven of sorts for those willing to pay. For the low price of everything that you valued, the Medusae would turn you to stone, to wait the Curse out. Or until the world ended, whichever came first.

This was going to be the major source of new player characters if anyone met a permanent end, rather than "you randomly run into a level 15 hero that hadn't been doing anything until this precise moment." It also could have been a way of rescuing/saving innocents from the dangers of the end of the world - can't go Hollow and fade away if you're frozen in stone, as well as all those already locked way. That was an option if the party made bargains/peace with the Medusae - or if they slaughtered them all, was an option after finding a mass cure to petrification. Once the sky went dark, though, a group of particularly nasty daemons attacked the prison, killed/corrupted the medusae, and methodically decapitated every statue in the place (and then spread the heads all over).

The boss of this area was going to be a tuned-up blackstone gigant, which in a normal game I'd be terrified of it just ruining an unprepared party. ALSO! I had evil plans that if everyone got petrified, they'd eventually wake up who knows how much later into a super-dark "last fleeting embers" world where everything was somehow WORSE, and some time-travel/ dimension breaking would have been needed to try and recover.

Haron's folly/Haronfast: A super-northern near-polar city, Haronfast was meant to be a sanctuary from the Curse. Unfortunately, the inhabitants of the frozen north were not kind, and any who traveled there vanished in the snow.

This would have been a "we have to look for more survivors to band everyone together" location. Getting there would have been a big part of the danger - it's wwaayyy north (and an excuse to use the Frostburn book). Traversing the tundra and icy landscape would have involved fighting off nasty fae and other frozen baddies as well as surviving the weather. If they reached the city, the party would have discovered the entire city magically frozen in ice and time. Somehow freeing the city would mean an entire city of higher-than average level Uncursed NPCs suddenly on the PCs side.

The boss of this area would have been (at least one) Wendigos, possibly combined with a Pathfinder Whisperer. Isolation, madness, and high-speed aerial abductions!

Dragonlands: An untamed continent ruled by savage and insane dragons, squatting amongst the ruins of their primordial empire.

This was still a "broad strokes" area, but this was more an option if the party liked exploring and killing monsters more than following silly prophecies. This would have been my excuse to have more dragon fights, shamelessly crib stuff from Eberron's Xen'drik, and find some sweet loot piles.

As for a boss of an entire continent...eeh, would have been more of a series of increasingly nasty dragons (and ruins with still angry protectors). Eventually there would have been some truly ancient and still intelligent dragons, where suddenly the party would stop monster hunting and start being hunted.

The Summerlands: The plane of the mercurial Fey, a world of untamed beauty and unmatched cruelty. Very much an "optional level", exploring the Summerlands (which was easier to access through places of wild nature) would have resulted in skirmishes with crazy tribal elves, lethal riddle-duels with bridge-trolls, and the "salvation" of escaping the curse by becoming a plaything for the Sidhe.

I'm very much a fan of the "Fey are super scary and powerful, but you can protect yourself by figuring out and following their rules." Me being a big fan of Jim Butcher and Patrick Rothfuss would have definitely shown up here.

As for a boss...probably something involving Ragewalkers, cause they're awesome.

Rhamiel's behavior if freed? Well, if the party had made the really bad decision of freeing him from the Anathemic Lances and then just leaving...they would have released the utterly insane remnant of an already unbalanced deity of excess and passion upon Artaith. Rhamiel would have immediately started slouching his way towards concentrations of still-sane survivors, spreading a Plague of Mad Beasts in his wake.

So adding some shakes of eldritch-werebeasts, 28 days later, and madness to an already crappy place. Best options were leaving Rhamiel locked up to be leeched off of, or finding a way to mercy-kill him.

The Personification of Genocide (or the other name I liked, the Council of Murder) were the trio of Obscisidaemons that the party briefly fought with before the Beast (that they escaped from and ended up teleporting directly to the Beast). More a Mini-boss encounter, I just thought they were cool and creepy, and they would have been a nasty fight.