Necropolitans, episode 090: Poring through the big book of necromancy

The party sits around a campfire and chats about what the hell they're doing, in Episode 090: Poring through the big book of necromancy.

This session was partly needed because players were feeling a bit worn out IRL, and partly because the campaign has hurled a lot of Stuff at them over the past few years and they kept losing track of the various interesting items they'd acquired and possible plot hooks they could look into.

The things at the end... well, as I've mentioned before, canonically the Jistkans created golem armies powered by bound outsiders. Also, while the campaign setting offers Rachikan as a place to explore, the actual published material on Rachikan covers a brief dungeon crawl through a small area that's been excavated which is now inhabited by morlocks, and there is essentially no information at all about what adventurers might find if they decide to explore the entire underground city. There was a possibility of the players deciding to do that, and at that time I did not feel like creating an entire ancient city for them and then working out how it might have changed over the intervening thousands of years.

So I had their poking around instead disturb some of the legions of fiendish engines that were still loose in the depths of the city, and had a large number of them appear in the distance as an indicator that they should consider this part of the campaign arc closed (at least for now!). The large number was necessary because Pathfinder players will naturally assume that some hostile creatures approaching might be intended as a winnable fight. For the token I used artwork of Chaos Daemon Engines from Warhammer 40K, notably the Forgefiend and Venomcrawler.

Of the things the players reel off for their to-do list, they have still not as yet ever worked out why I introduced the sword of thunder and lightning in the game. Well... okay, originally I introduced it because it sounded cool. Then someone mentioned it was associated with Hei Feng, a god of storms, and assumed I had some ulterior motive. Ironically that inspired me with a reason it was there and a big campaign-setting-relevant thing that they sort of lost interest in. These things happen.

Okay Shim, so why was it there?

I'm so glad you asked.

A priest of Hei Feng came to the ruins of Rachikan to work out what the heck had caused Aroden, the missing god of humanity, to descend to the planet and explore the ruined city some time before his disappearance. Hei Feng's servants are interested because Aroden's disappearance coincides with the appearance of the storm to end all storms, the Eye of Abendego.

I have answers for all these things, I promise. The bit linking Aroden to the Eye of Abendego is official canon. The bit about Aroden visiting Rachikan is my own change for this campaign.

Anyway, the priest of Hei Feng didn't make it out of the ruins. If they return the sword to one of his temples, the PCs might learn something useful.

Direct Links

1. RSS feed for all episodes
2. Episode 001: Character Generation
3. Master list of episodes
4. Episode 007: Screaming blue murder from his waist (start of Castaways)
5. Episode 023: Everyone knows that mummy octopi are not scared of cooking (start of Nautical Shenanigans)
6. Episode 027: The crumpling noise you can hear was Book 2 (start of Nameless Ancients)
7. Episode 049: Mint Ice Cream (start of Trouble in Cheliax)
8. Episode 067: Or we'll come and eat you and your children (start of Road to Rachikan)
9. Episode 074: Give me a butter knife and about three days (start of City in the Deep)
10. Episode 088: I don’t want to try and explain why I’m covered in grease (start of Iris flashback)