Go to Part 1

The finale of Call of the Netherdeep is, of course, the Netherdeep. It culminates the sequence of excellent, varied dungeons that form the backbone of the campaign — the cerulean neon of Emerald Grotto, the gothic horror of Betrayers’ Rise, the ruined grandeur of Cael Morrow, and the haunted existential terror of the Netherdeep. It also continues the underwater theme which has marked Call from its beginning.

Like the other dungeons, the Netherdeep is filled to the brim with a flavorful key and great map. (Not just visually great, but great in its design.) So there will actually be very little for us to do here.

MEMORIES OF THE APOTHEON

The basic concept is that the Netherdeep is an extraplanar extrusion of a demigod’s traumatized mind. Alyxian the Apotheon’s memories are made manifest within the layrinths of the Netherdeep, and the PCs have the opportunity to interact with these memories and affect what his emotional perceptions of them are. The outcomes of these interactions — and what the PCs learn during them — will then shape the final confrontation with Alyxian, who appears in three different forms representing the different coping mechanisms he used in mortal life.

These toxic behaviors are made mythologically epic, and ultimately the PCs will need to literally and emotionally grapple with them.

The basic structure of this is built on two tracks:

Track 1 features experiences geographically keyed to the map, which the PCs discover by exploring the dungeon. These experiences are generally interactive.

Track 2 takes the form of twenty short visions drawn from moments in the Apotheon’s life. These are triggered by various stimuli or actions, and the idea is that the PCs will be able to “piece together the Apotheon’s whole story.”

This all works great.

There are two things I would do to juice this up.

First, as we’ve already discussed, you should pull some of the lore surrounding Alyxian’s biography back into the rest of the campaign so that (a) the PCs will be more invested in puzzling out the enigma and (b) major beats will land with more recognition and emotional significance.

At this point, though, all that work is done.

Second, the book recommends that the twenty Track 2 visions should be played out in a strictly linear order. I strongly recommend ignoring that advice: Having the visions appear out of order will force the players to puzzle out the underlying sequence, which will invest them more deeply into the narrative. This is Good Actually™.

Plus, the twenty visions are already on a conveniently numbered table. Just roll a d20.

RIVALS AT THE FINALE

The finale of Call of the Netherdeep is structured around the fundamental choice of how Alyxian should be handled: Should he be killed? Unleashed? Redeemed?

This is also the culmination of the Rivals and their relationship with the PCs. If you’ve been using the Principle of Opposition, as described in Running the Rivals, then this all-encompassing rivalry reaches its ultimate conclusion in a debate whose consequences are literally world-altering in their scope.

But, again, the work to set this up has been done. All you need to do is close the deal by playing the Rivals hard and true in these final moments. Really challenge the players and make them feel the momentous stakes of their choice by forcing them, through their Rivals, to justify and think about that choice and all of its implications (ethical, practical, and otherwise).

CONCLUSION

In short, if you’ve done your groundwork, then the Netherdeep will sing.

I’m hoping that you have a couple of take-aways from this series.

First, that Call of the Netherdeep is a good campaign. There’s a lot to love in what James J. Haeck, Matthew Mercer, Christopher Perkins, Makenzie De Armas, LaTia Jacquise, Cassanda Khaw, Sadie Lowry, Dan Dillon, and Taymoor Rehman have created.

Second, that the work required to turn Call of the Netherdeep from a good campaign to a great campaign is quite reasonable and well worth your time.

I’m not sure that I, personally, will ever have the chance to run Call of the Netherdeep. There’s just a lot of stuff competing for my limited gaming time right now, and no gap in the foreseeable future. But if you have the opportunity to do so, then I am quite jealous for you and your players.

Let me know how it goes!

ADDITIONAL READING
Review: Call of the Netherdeep
Call of the Netherdeep: Running Betrayers’ Rise
Call of the Netherdeep: Running the Rivals

COMPLETE PDF COLLECTION

Go to Part 1

As we’ve previously discussed, the core structure of this section of the campaign are the faction missions. Although each faction has a different set of missions, they all follow the same formula:

• Three faction missions in Ank’Harel, followed by three missions in Cael Morrow.
• During the second faction mission, the PCs’ loyalty to their faction will be tested. If they fail, they’ll be booted from the faction and “need” to find another faction to join and do faction missions for.
• The sixth mission is “enter the Netherdeep.”

Unfortunately, these faction missions are, by far, the weakest part of the campaign. They’re plagued by a cluster of problems.

First, there’s the scale mismatch between the design of the faction missions and the design of Cael Morrow. (We’ve already solved this with our pointcrawl remix of the sunken city.)

Second, although the missions are structured to potentially prompt a faction-swap, there’s no clear way for the PCs to hook up with the other factions, because the only mechanism for that is “come to Ank’Harel with a researcher, “ which obviously doesn’t work after you’re already in Ank’Harel.

We’ve made a fair degree of progress on this by making the faction-based play more explicit in Bazzoxan. You can further capitalize on this by perpetuating their relationships with all three researchers: Question, Prolix, and Aloysia shouldn’t just vanish when the action moves to Ank’Harel. Even if the PCs ended up killing one of the researchers in Bazzoxan, how do the researcher’s friends and faction feel about that?

You can also leverage the Rivals here, particularly if they’ve joined one of the other factions. Whether the PCs split from their faction or not, the Rivals may approach and try to convert them to the choice they’ve made. (If the Rivals have been more closely allied to the PCs’ and their faction, then perhaps they fail a loyalty test or are successfully suborned by another faction.)

More than anything, simply establishing the factions and their agendas clearly before the PCs ever get to Ank’Harel will do a lot here. It will empower the PCs to proactively figure out how to contact other factions if the need arises.

The third problem is that the faction missions are extremely simplistic. Their barebones design is often very reminiscent of the similarly minimalist faction missions in Dragon Heist, but whereas the faction missions in Dragon Heist are B-plots that serve as contrapuntal beats to the main action, the Netherdeep faction missions are meant to be the backbone driving the campaign to its ultimate conclusion. It’s really not where you want threadbare, desultory material.

And the final problem with the faction missions is that most of them are just plain bad.

FIXING THE FACTION MISSIONS

To explain what I mean, consider “Hunt for the Truth” (p. 100), where the PCs are trying to identify a double agent in the Allegiance of All-Sight who they believe planted a stolen ring on their friend. They find two pieces of evidence:

1. An Insight check reveals that someone has a “guarded expression.”
2. This same person, a researcher in the ruidium-infested ruins of Cael Morrow, has a ruidium infection.

The adventure is then over, as the characters can “present their findings to Headmaster Gryz Alakritos.” But… what findings, exactly?

In the next faction mission, “The Double Agent,” the PCs need to track down a double agent and the PCs find two pieces of evidence:

1. An Insight check reveals the agent’s “true intentions and affiliation.”
2. This same person, a researcher in the ruidium-infested ruins of Cael Morrow, has a ruidium infection.

And if you feel as if the Matrix just glitched, I’m sorry to report that this is not the case: It’s the exact same set up, and the conclusion both times is, “Proof?! Sir, I made an INSIGHT check!”

There are eighteen faction missions in Call of the Netherdeep and I’m not going to break them all down. But you should definitely take a long, hard look at them. I don’t think there are any of the faction missions I would run as-is, and this whole section of the campaign probably needs to be torn down to the foundation, sifted for parts, and then rebuilt from the ground up.

DYNAMIC FACTION MISSIONS

My first instinct with the faction missions is to make them far more dynamic: Rather than a preprogrammed, linear series of fetch quests against a static backdrop, it would be far more interesting if the players’ actions were drastically shifting the balance of power in a back-and-forth struggle with the other factions.

A few things to think about:

Proactive Faction Encounters. Prep some strike teams and/or other proactive elements for the factions. These can become very versatile tools, which you can drop in at any time to complicate the PCs’ lives and create a sense that all of the factions are in constant motion.

Rival Activity. Invoke the Rivals. If you’re following the Principle of Opposition, then even if the Rivals have been working with the PCs up until this point, Ank’Harel will be the point where their disagreement with the PCs about what their goals should be (regarding Alyxian, the ruidium, or both) should really escalate. If it hasn’t happened already, this probably means that the Rivals will end up joining a different faction, becoming one of your proactive faction encounters and almost certainly the NPCs most likely to thwart the PCs’ faction goals.

You can add even more complexity to this idea if friendly Rivals reluctantly join the same faction as the PCs to begin with, but later heel turn as they realize they can’t support the faction’s goals. Alternatively, maybe the Rivals themselves are divided and will end up splitting up across multiple factions. (Maybe the PCs will, too!)

Tip: If you find your game riven with deep philosophical differences about what the “right” thing to do in this section of the campaign is… that’s fantastic! If the divisions between PCs become so great that it feels as if they’re only sticking together because it’s expected, you might explore the possibility of similarly splitting the Rivals and letting players whose characters leave a faction take on the roles of Rivals who stay in the faction. (At your discretion, you can do the inverse with the grouping of PCs + Rivals who join a different faction, following both groups while allowing everyone to continue playing.)

The Other Faction Face. If the PCs are in one faction and the Rivals are in another, it’s possible the third faction will just become a minor player in the campaign. Alternatively, you can give that faction a notable NPC who frequently interacts with the PCs and becomes the “face” of that faction. The appropriate Bazzoxan researcher is probably an easy choice here if they’re available.

Competing for Goals. In framing your faction missions, don’t think only in terms of “what are the PCs trying to do.” Instead, think in terms of something that multiple factions are trying to simultaneously achieve. Once you’ve done that, you can put the opposition in the field and actively play them in competition with the PCs.

Progress clocks may be a good mechanism for tracking how each faction (including the PCs) are doing in the pursuit of their goals. Countdown timers can be used to similar effect (e.g., the PCs need to recover a ruidium artifact before the thieves use it). You may also want to take a peek at scenario structures like Race to the Prize or McGuffin Keep-Away.

You can also increase the dynamic quality of the missions by putting multiple goals into play at the same time. This immediately adds interest by forcing the PCs to choose what goals they’re going to prioritize.

Tip: As you’re looking to strip-mine the faction missions from the book, make sure to look at the faction missions being pursued by the other factions and ask questions like, “What would it look like if the PCs were trying to STOP this from happening?” Also think about how these might flow into the background events of the campaign and how the PCs might become aware of them, creating the sense (and reality!) that stuff is happening in the campaign world even when the players aren’t there to see it.

ANK’HAREL MISSIONS: STAKES & REVELATIONS

The two-phase approach used by the book — of a set of missions taking place in Ank’Harel and then a set of missions focused on Cael Morrow — is probably a good one to retain.

This first phase of the faction missions is about:

• Learning new lore and/or reinforcing or expanding lore they’ve already had a chance to obtain. (This includes stuff like additional Alyxian lore, along with: Where is the ruidium coming from? Where is the entrance to Cael Morrow? What are the goals of the various factions?)
• Testing the PCs’ loyalty to their faction / determining what faction (and goals) they’re ultimately going to pursue.
• Gaining entrance to Cael Morrow.

You’ll want to start by setting up your revelation lists for this phase, and then you can just break the clues down into the missions opportunistically.

During play, seize opportunities to challenge the PCs’ ideology and the goals they’ve chosen. This can take the form of philosophical debates from the Rivals, and so forth, but is also about asking the big question through action: What are you willing to do to achieve your goals? When you see the costs of achieving your goals, is that a price you’re willing to pay?

In terms of gaining entrance to Cael Morrow, I see three primary approaches:

Controlling the Entrance. This is initially the Allegiance of All-Sight. If the PCs have joined the Allegiance, then they simply need to prove their loyalty/value in order to get an access badge. If the PCs are a member of a different faction, then viable entrance strategies would include (a) seizing control of the entrance and/or (b) forming an alliance with the faction who DOES control the entrance (most likely due to some sort of “enemy of my enemy” thing).

Even if the PCs aren’t challenging control of the entrance, consider having one of the other factions do it. (This can also occur during the Cael Morrow phase of the faction missions.)

Sneaking In. I suspect framing this as a straight-up heist scenario is probably the most powerful way to go. One interesting twist on the typical heist scenario here is that it would probably be beneficial for the PCs to figure out a way of accessing Cael Morrow that can be used repeatedly (where a typical heist usually only requires a single break-in).

Find an Alternative Entrance. In the book, the only known entrance to Cael Morrow is through the Maw of Cael Morrow. But it’s a giant underground cave. It’s quite possible that there are other entrances, perhaps leading to daring heist or McGuffin-chase as factions try to get their hands on a journal or map. Or maybe the PCs stumble across the entrance while investigating an anomalous surface outcropping of ruidium.

Note that you can also mix and match here: Maybe the PCs need to sneak in, because they’ve found lore indicating the location of a secret exit from the ruins (and so they need to be in the ruins to track it down and figure out where it leads to on the surface). Or they need to sneak in and install some sort of ruidium-charged teleportation circle so that their faction can teleport into the sunken city.

CAEL MORROW MISSIONS: TERRITORIAL CONTROL

Once the PCs are in Cael Morrow, their mission agendas will include stuff like:

• Epsionage (spy on enemy factions, identify moles, etc.)
• Investigate a known location
• Seek a rumored location (the shrine, the rift, the aboleth’s lair, etc.)
• Retrieve an artifact (or sample of ruidium)
• Eliminate threats (killing monsters, etc.)

By expanding Cael Morrow into a pointcrawl, we’ve probably also given ourselves the breathing room to let the PCs figure out their own goals and pursue them (instead of just completing homework assignments). Think about how you can feed them:

• Information about what the other factions are doing (clues and tracks left in Cael Morrow, captured correspondence, and other such clues).
• Cross-references between pointcrawl locations (e.g., a magical map that survived the city’s fall, notes from another research team, etc.) so that the PCs can set exploration goals.

What I think will help with a lot of this and add a lot of dynamism to this phase of the campaign is adding a layer of territorial control to your pointcrawl map. This means tracking both which locations each faction currently knows about, as well as which faction is currently in “control” of each location (if any).

Faction control should have a tangible effect on the pointcrawl:

• Add a base camp to the location.
• Add a research team that’s investigating the site.
• Add a patrol that’s regularly passing through that area.
• Give the faction access to resources (ruidium, magic items, etc.) that can be gained from the location.

And so forth.

This gives a very simple hook for framing faction missions (e.g., “we need you to eliminate the Cobalt Soul’s security patrol”) and also a clear mechanism for the PCs to have a meaningful effect on the current state of affairs in Cael Morrow (e.g., they take out a security patrol and that means the Cobalt Soul loses control of a key location).

The vibe you’re aiming for here is one part Le Carre spy drama, one part magical Hunt for Red October, one part Ten Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and one part Bone Wars (but the dinosaur bones are also military weapons tech). Things should feel claustrophobic, enigmatic, and terrifying.

Go to Part 9: Netherdeep Wrap

Go to Part 1

The next stage of Call of the Netherdeep are the faction missions: Each faction has a series of six missions which start in Ank’harel, take the PCs into the sunken city of Cael Morrow, and eventually lead them into the Netherdeep. But we’re going to skip ahead to Cael Morrow itself, because — as the setting for half of the faction missions — we really need to get it straightened out before we can meaningfully work on the missions.

(Ank’harel itself is just fine, except for the fact that locations weren’t keyed to the map for some reason. So you’ll want to do that.)

This is, unfortunately, where your remix of the campaign is going to start getting harder. The key thing here is that:

1. Cael Morrow is a vast sunken city; but
2. The mapped section of Cael Morrow designed for the PCs to actually explore is a very, very tiny archaeological site (barely a few hundred feet across).

And the elephant in the room is that all the faction missions are written as if they were set in the entire, vast city of Cael Morrow, despite the fact that, in reality, they’re only set in the tiny, tiny archaeological site.

For example, in one mission the archaeological dig leader is concerned because one of his researchers has been missing for three days and he has no idea where she might be.

Where is she?

Two hundred feet away, straight down a linear corridor.

On a broader level, all the faction missions set in Cael Morrow are framed the same way:

Seven days after the end of their last mission, the characters are invited to meet Aradrine…

Seven days after the PCs successfully complete mission 4, Aradrine invites them…

Seven days after they successfully complete mission 5, Aradrine briefs the characters on their next assignment…

All three sets of factions are set up in the same way: The PCs do a short mission, then a full week passes, and then they’re given another mission.

But this is never going to actually happen because (a) the PCs have nothing else to do between missions and (b) the entirety of Cael Morrow consists of only seventeen keyed locations, so even if they haven’t fully explored the entire site during their first mission to the sunken city (which is quite plausible), they’ll certainly have done so before they get their next mission.

So you’ve got a couple choices here.

OPTION #1: REWRITE THE FACTION MISSIONS

The problem with Cael Morrow isn’t, necessarily, that it’s set up as a tiny archaeological expedition in the midst of a vast sunken city. The problem is that everything else in the campaign — the NPCs, the faction missions, the lore — is designed as if this wasn’t the case.

So your first option is to leave Cael Morrow more or less exactly the way it is and simply redesign the faction missions from the ground up to reflect the actual reality of the sunken city. Unfortunately, this almost certainly means more or less completely throwing out the faction missions as they exist and redoing them from scratch. (On the other hand, this may not actually be a terrible idea in any case, for reasons that we’ll discuss below.)

OPTION #2: REMIX CAEL MORROW

The other option, of course, is to do the opposite: Remix Cael Morrow so that the archaeological expedition — and the PCs’ explorations — encompass the entire sunken city. You’ll still need to make at least some tweaks to the faction missions, but you can hew much closer to the original structure of the campaign.

The trick, of course, is that you probably don’t want Cael Morrow to be a megadungeon with hundreds and hundreds of areas for the PCs to explore. (You could do that, but it would be a lot of prep, a lot of playing time, and almost certainly a huge, pace-killing distraction from the primary thrust of the campaign.)

The solution is probably an underwater pointcrawl. So let’s take a closer look at that option.

THE CAEL MORROW POINTCRAWL

If you’re unfamiliar with pointcrawls, you may want to check out the Pointcrawls series. The short version is that you’ll create a node map of locations that are connected with paths. The locations are the “points” of the pointcrawl and, during play, the PCs in a location can choose one of the paths connected to that location and follow it to another location.

The scale of a pointcrawl can vary from a local neighborhood to a small kingdom to an interstellar empire. Similarly, you key to each point can vary from a single landmark (e.g., a sunken statue) to a mini-dungeon (e.g., a small building) to a large dungeon (e.g., the Netherdeep). (Or planets or entire solar systems, although that’s probably more than we’ll need at the moment.)

Our pointmap here, obviously, would encompass the entirety of Cael Morrow. That’s the entire point of the exercise, after all. (Pun intended.) Cael Morrow was a massive metropolis, and its ruins now lie “in a vast underground cistern.” Structurally, our goals are:

• To increase the amount of time the PCs need to spend exploring Cael Morrow, so that they can’t knock the whole thing off in a single afternoon.
• Make the sunken city feel large enough that plot hooks like “somebody is lost down here, rescue them” or “an enemy faction has snuck into the city, hunt them down” make sense.
• Ideally, give the PCs the opportunity to actually explore the ruins and discover things people haven’t seen in centuries.

TRAVEL INTERVAL: The first thing we’ll want to do, therefore, is set the standard travel interval for the Cael Morrow pointcrawl to be large enough that it would take days to explore all of our keyed locations. (And, in practice, it will take even more with the PCs backtracking, getting lost, returning to base, and so forth.) Depending on exactly what your final pointmap looks like, I’d recommend at least a 1 hour as your base interval, possibly even 2 hours.

(Remember that, as needed, you can indicate that certain routes require multiple intervals.)

KEYSTONES: In Call of the Netherdeep (p. 122), the Allegiance of All-Sight has installed magical keystones which create “thick magical barriers of shimmering, light blue force around certain areas of Cael Morrow” which “have forced the water out of those areas, leaving behind dry, air-filled chambers and hallways.”

We’ll take that concept and, rather than having all the keystones create a single air-pocket, we’ll have them installed around specific buildings or small complexes that have archaeological or logistical significance to them. Each of these air-domed buildings, of course, is a location on our pointmap; and if the PCs get briefed by the Allegiance of All-Sight (or steal their survey charts) they can get access to the routes used between these locations (i.e., a chunk of the pointmap).

PATH TYPES: Off-hand, I can think of three different path types we might find in Cael Morrow.

• Keyway. The Allegiance of All-Sight may have used keystones to create traversable “roads” through the sunken city. This seems rather expensive at long distances, but would also considerably speed up travel (so they might be used to connect a few key hubs). The existence of keyways also opens up the possibility of a faction mission to either (a) install the stones necessary for a new keyway (speeding travel to a new section of the pointmap) or (b) disable one of the keyways.
• Flared. Some paths might be more clearly marked by the Allegiance. (Or, similarly, hidden signs used by other factions?) Might be cool to use some sort of bioluminescent technique.
• Sunken Paths. These just represent “standard” travel through the cold, dark waters of Cael Morrow. Unlike flared or marked paths, these might require some form of navigation check to avoid becoming lost while following them.

Having hidden paths, particularly those leading to sites which have not been discovered/identified by the factions, also seems appropriate. As the PCs push beyond the current excavations of the Allegiance, it makes sense that they’ll have to poke around the ruins.

DEEP DECONSTRUCTION

You can get started by simply grabbing the various rooms and buildings from Chapter 5 of Call of the Netherdeep and spreading them out across the ruins. (So, for example, the Allegiance Base Camp is not directly next to the Royal Guest House.)

I suspect you’ll want to flesh out your pointmap with additional locations. This doesn’t have to be a huge undertaking. Take your cue from the locations you’ve already got: New buildings don’t need to be more than one or two or a few rooms. And you can mix in a number of locations which are just singular points of interest (e.g., a statue or mural or strange artifact lying amidst the ruins).

As you’re expanding your pointcrawl, seize the opportunity to lock in more campaign lore.

You’ll want to give particular thought to the location of the Rift to the Netherdeep. My impulse is that this should basically be as far away from the Allegiance Base Camp as possible on your pointmap. The other thing to consider is: Who knows where the Rift is? The Allegiance, certainly, but is it limited to only certain members of the Allegiance or is it a secret kept by only a few? Should you add defensive measures around the Rift? (Would the PCs be asked to assist in those?)

And what about the other factions? How much do they know when the PCs first arrive in Ank’Harel? And what actions will they take (or ask the PCs to take) to find out?

Obviously the PCs can also just explore the ruins until they find the Rift for themselves. Although there will likely be those who try to stop them from doing so.

CAEL MORROW ENCOUNTER TABLE

I would recommend creating an encounter table for your pointcrawl. There are a number of cool monsters already keyed to the ruins that you can use here, but try to push your thinking beyond combat: Think weird magical effects emanating from the Netherdeep. Encounters with the Rivals. Archaeological teams moving through the ruins. And so forth.

Cael Morrow really doesn’t need to turn into a combat slog. There are strange dangers down here, of course, but keeping the focus on the enigmas of these dark depths will probably give you bigger payoffs.

ACCESSING CAEL MORROW

A final thing to consider is how difficult it should be to access Cael Morrow in the first place. In the campaign as written, a big deal is made out of the PCs needing to get an Allegiance of All Sight badge that gives them permission to access the site, but there’s no meaningful security enforcing that. (There’s like a half dozen people down there that can theoretically summon a handful of CR 1 and CR 3 security guards that the PCs can easily curb stomp.)

My gut says that it should be tougher than that, particularly since so many of the faction missions (which we’ll talk about in just a moment) are aimed at gaining access. This might include:

• Redesigning the Allegiance Base Camp to be more supportive of heist-style hijinks.
• Giving some thought to what the Allegiance’s security response will be if they detect a breach.
• Potentially adding roving security patrols within the ruins (either immediately or in response to the security response being increased).

Alternatively, maybe you go the other way and just accept that it’s trivial to access Cael Morrow and the badges just don’t matter. Maybe get rid of the badge concept entirely. Or maybe the real security perimeter is around the Netherdeep Rift.

The right answer here will almost certainly become clear to you as you start dialing in your pointcrawl and the Ank’Harel section of the campaign in general.

Go to Part 8: Faction Missions in Ank’Harel

Go to Part 1

I’ve already provided a detailed breakdown of how you can prep and run the Betrayers’ Rise dungeon to best effect in Call of the Netherdeep: Running Betrayers’ Rise. You can just check out that article to provide the spine for this section of the campaign.

But here are a few extra things to think about.

RIVALS

Where are the Rivals and what are they doing? If they aren’t working with the PCs, you might consider having them enter the dungeon after the PCs and begin exploring. (Maybe they’re there to help; maybe hinder. Maybe working with another researcher. Having the Rivals and PCs end up in a proxy fight for the researchers they’ve been independently hired by is certainly a viable option here.)

LORE OF ALYXIAN

The prayer site and even the iconography around that site are a great opportunity for injecting more Lore of Alyxian into the campaign. Take a peek through your revelation lists and see what clues you can lay down here.

TOROG’S COMMANDMENTS

As a bonus, here’s a hyper-specific tip. In Area R13, there’s a puzzle. The designers include a hint which can be accessed with a relevant check:

Hints. A character who makes a successful DC 14 Intelligence (Religion) check recalls one of Torog’s commandments: “Seek and exalt places where no light touches.” If they aren’t sure what that means, a character can guess that the darkened passages of the labyrinth are related to this commandment by making a successful DC 10 Wisdom (Insight) check.

This is okay as far as it goes, but in my experience it’s more effective to have information like this in a different room. And it turns out that there’s a statue of Torog over in Area R12:

A beam of light from above illuminates a statue in the middle of the room. The statue, made of pale marble, is shaped like a man on his knees, arms pinioned behind his back, trussed up in chains that cut into his skin. Hooks line the corners of the figure’s mouth, pulling his lips away from his teeth, and smaller barbs encircle his eyes, holding the eyelids open.

So what you can do is either (a) have the players make the DC 14 Intelligence (Religion) check in Area R12 to recall Torog’s commandment, or (b) actually just inscribe the commandment onto the statue.

The point is that it now requires the PCs to actually put information from two different areas to solve the puzzle. That’s a more satisfying experience than, “Oh, you’re struggling? Make a check and I’ll give you a hint.” And connecting information in a dungeon like this makes the dungeon more dynamic and interesting. Even having stuff just a couple rooms away makes the place feel like a total environment, rather than a sequence of isolated rooms. As a result, it also encourages exploration and strategic thinking.

Go to Part 7: Cael Morrow

Go to Part 1

As the PCs arrive in Bazzoxan, we come to what I consider the core structure of Call of the Netherdeep. It works like this:

• In Ank’harel there are three factions — the Allegiance of Allsight, the Consortium of Vermilion Dreams, and the Library of the Cobalt Soul.
• Each faction has a specific ruidium agenda regarding ruidium. (The Allegiance wants to use it to become arms dealers; the Consortium wants to monopolize it for arcane research; the Library wants it destroyed.)
• Each faction has sent a researcher to Bazzoxan — Prolix Yusaf (Allegiance), Aloysia Telfin Consortium), and Question (Library).
• The PCs should arrive in Bazzoxan and befriend a researcher (or more than one).
• The PCs will follow the researcher(s) back to Ank’harel and join a faction (or more than one, although that probably won’t remain tenable given the factions’ mutually contradictory goals).
• The PCs will then perform faction missions, which lead them to Cael Morrow and then the Netherdeep.

Conceptually, this is a very elegant structure: You can see how the PCs are allowed to make one-on-one connections with NPCs which are then used to (a) draw them across the world to another continent and (b) pull them into more complicated alliances and politics which nevertheless remain meaningful to them because of the personal connections they’ve made. And at every step of the way — researchers, factions, missions — the tripartite structure gives ample opportunity to inject the Rivals and have them challenge the PCs (both ideologically and otherwise).

In practical terms, unfortunately, someone decided to cripple this structure right out of the gate in Bazzoxan by larding it with railroads and badly preprogrammed cutscenes. There are a number of smaller head-scratchers, but there are two major culprits.

First, all three researchers are hidden behind weird cutscene-triggers. To meet Prolix, for example, the PCs need to:

• Randomly decide to check out the crematorium.
• Talk to the crematorium workers.
• Agree to help them load corpses into the furnace.

Shortly thereafter, Prolix will come rushing up.

The sequences for meeting Question and Aloysia are no less convoluted (with the trigger for the latter actually being hidden inside Question’s scene like a Matryoshka doll).

Note: All of this actually makes perfect sense if you imagine Call of the Netherdeep as a video game in which the players are expected to click on every NPC to receive their preprogrammed dialogue. Unfortunately, this is both (a) undesirable and (b) doesn’t actually work in a tabletop roleplaying game. (You can’t actually click on every single patron in the tavern until you randomly click on Question.)

Second, at the end of the Betrayers’ Rise dungeon, there’s a railroaded cutscene in which Aloysia shows up with the Rivals, attacks the PCs, and tries to steal the Jewel of Three Prayers.

This sequence is broken in so many ways that it’s actually difficult to enumerate all of them — it assumes the Rivals aren’t working with the PCs; it assumes the PCs didn’t agree to work with Aloysia when she proposed doing that earlier in the adventure; it assumes the PCs have the Jewel; etc. — but the biggest problem is that it completely breaks the core structure of the campaign.

By force-framing a scene in which Aloysia becomes a maniacal, monologuing villain, the adventure collapses the PCs’ choices: The Consortium of Vermilion Dreams has just attacked them and (possibly) robbed them. Even if they had the opportunity to join the Consortium they almost certainly wouldn’t, and it’s rather unlikely they will have the opportunity, because Aloysia is their only contact with the Consortium and she’s either their enemy or she’s dead.

(Bizarrely, the book nevertheless acts as if joining the Consortium is just as likely in Ank’harel as joining the other two factions.)

In any case, we’re going to take all of this stuff, scrunch it up in a ball, and throw it away.

PREPPING THE RESEARCHERS

Our goal, basically, is to switch everything from preprogrammed railroads and cutscenes to active play. We could honestly just wing it, but we’ll probably get better results if we create some clean prep that’s designed for flexible play at the table.

The first thing we’ll want to do is prep our three researchers — Prolix, Question, and Aloysia — using universal NPC roleplaying templates. It’ll make them a lot easier to pick up and play, while simultaneously giving us an opportunity to clearly wash away all of the nonsense and other detritus.

When designing the Key Info for each researcher consider:

• How do they point the PCs towards the Cyst of Avandra? This might be directly or through another researcher (see below), but their most immediate function is to point the PCs towards the right location in Betrayers’ Rise.
• Make sure to include their faction’s ruidium agenda. (Even if they don’t just spell everything out, you’ll want to start hinting at these dynamics… which will also get the players thinking about it and forming opinions.)
• What unique Lore of Alyxian do they have to offer? Each researcher makes an excellent vector for this (based on both what they learned in Ank’harel and what they’ve learned since coming to Betrayers’ Rise).
• What offer will they make to invite friendly/allied PCs back to Ank’harel after they’ve completed their business in Bazzoxan?

CROSS-INTERACTIONS

Next, we want to start lightly tugging the PCs into the faction politics and maybe even prompt them to start thinking about their allegiances. To do this, we’ll want to give each researcher an agenda vis-à-vis the others:

• Aloysia will attempt to eavesdrop on conversations between the PCs and other scholars. (And can be caught doing so by attentive PCs.) She might also ask the PCs to distract Prolix so that she can slip away and so something without his prying eyes.
• Prolix may tell the PCs that he’s been sent primarily to spy on Aloysia. And we can strengthen this by having Prolix ask them to break into Aloysia’s room and steal her notes.
• Question suspects that one of the other Ank’harel researchers has stolen one of his sketchbooks. She’d like the PCs to recover it.

Other options you might consider could include hiring the PCs to:

• Accompany them on an expedition into Betrayers’ Rise.
• Retrieve ruidium samples for them.
• Assassinate another researcher. (My gut says it’s probably better to limit things to light intrigue at this point, but if it feels right to ramp up the stakes and/or escalate someone into being a villain in the players’ eyes, go for it.)

Any offers that the PCs don’t take up, of course, it’s fully possible that the Rivals might do instead.

LOCATION TRIGGERS

Instead of hard-coded cutscenes, you’ll want to look for opportunities to introduce the researchers flexibly as the PCs explore Bazzoxan. You might find it useful to prep a short list of options for each researcher (but, again, avoid actually doing half-page scripts or anything like that).

Prolix might be at the crematorium. But he’s also at the inn. Or studying a sacrifice engine.

Question is at the inn. Or leaving an offering at the Wall of the Unforgotten (she’s made, and lost, friends here). Or studying carvings at Betrayers’ Rise.

Aloysia is at the inn. Or demanding soldiers from Verin to escort her into Betrayers’ Rise. Or getting a puncture wound treated at the infirmary (she was helping in the fight against the gibbering mouthers, CotN, p. 50).

Rather than keying these to the researchers, I would still jot these down as 1-2 sentence notes in each location key. When the PCs go to a particular location, you’ll have those options right at your fingertips.

CHECK OUR WORK

With everything we’ve done, we should be covered here, but treat each researcher as a revelation and make sure you’re satisfying the Three Clue Rule.

If, as we’ve previously discussed, you’ve got “look for local researchers” set up as the default action for the PCs to take when the arrive in Bazzoxan, this should largely take care of itself, as the PCs can simply ask around town and almost anyone can point them in the direction of one, two, or all three researchers. (“I actually just Question over at the Wall of the Unforgotten.”)

Of course, the researchers are also their own proactive nodes: When in doubt, or if you’ve got a researcher who has been MIA so far for some reason, just have one of them show up. You can easily justify that happening almost anywhere.

MAKE AN ENEMY

I mentioned above that befriending a researcher is an essential element in the core structure of Call of the Netherdeep. Although it’s not essential, you may find that it’s highly effective to focus on the opposite — to pay attention to which researcher(s) the PCs have made their enemy.

(And to do the same — both friends and enemies — for the Rivals.)

In fact, if you have the PCs interacting with the researchers and the researchers all have active objectives in conflict with each other, this will likely happen quite naturally. You just need to make sure that you lean into it: If the choices the PCs are making are big, meaningful choices, then the blowback from those choices should also be big and meaningful (and it should be quite difficult to walk the tightrope of somehow keeping everyone happy… or at least duped).

The beauty of it, of course, is that ANY of the researchers might end up being this enemy. Because you’re not predetermining it or forcing it, it’s the players who are responsible for the consequences.

To seal the deal, having some sort of big finale in Bazzoxan featuring a confrontation with this enemy is probably desirable. You can concoct a custom scheme for each researcher or play it by ear to see what makes the most sense, but it’s probably just fine if we draw inspiration from the book here: The enemy researcher tries to steal the Jewel from the PCs.

A few things to think about:

• Where do they do it? (This will depend, at least in part, on what the NPC knows about the PCs’ location and intentions.)
• How do they do it? (Broadly speaking you’re probably choosing between an open assault or a stealthy heist. If the latter, make sure you slather plenty of evidence around so that the PCs know exactly who did it.)
• What allies can they call upon? (The Rivals may or may not be available, but there are a lot of other NPCs in Bazzoxan. Some of the researchers have access to teleportation and might even return to Ank’harel and bring back a strike team from their faction.)
• How does the guilty party flee to Ank’harel ASAP? (Assuming they survive the attempt.)

You may discover, depending on how things play out, that it’s more natural to let the PCs travel to Ank’harel and then run this confrontation as one of their first experiences there. Nothing wrong with that. The point is, after all, to be actively playing in response to what the PCs are doing.

Go to Part 6: Betrayers’ Rise