DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 37A: Dominic Departs

They had an almost impossible number of possible courses to pursue. First, there were the Banewarrens. They had been hired by Jevicca to seal them and by Rehobath to retrieve the Sword of Crissa.

Agnarr raised the possibility of following up on Demassac Tovarian, assuming that Jevicca hadn’t already done so. They knew he was experimenting with chaositech.

“He might even be the one who supplied the items that let the bone rings into the Banewarrens,” Ranthir said.

Ah! Demassac Tovarian!

He’s one of those roads untraveled that almost always crop up here and there in any campaigns that aren’t purely episodic.

(Spoilers: The PCs never actually pursue the Demassac Tovarian lead. Well, I guess at least not yet. We’re still playing the campaign, so I guess it could happen. But it seems extremely unlikely at this point.)

Tovarian was one of the scenario nodes forming Act I of the campaign. The PCs first encountered a reference to him while investigating the Cran crime family in Session 8, but despite frequently mentioning the lead, they never actually pursued it. I actually primed the pump a bit by having a patron (Jevicca) offer to hire them to check out Tovarian’s operation, but in Session 15 they turned down the job because they were too busy with other stuff.

At that point, I figured the Tovarian scenario was dead, and so I was actually a little surprised when it came up during this Second Meeting of All Things – what the players’ called their mega-planning sessions. That’s also something that’s fairly common in campaigns like this: The players will reach back and pull on the most unexpected threads.

In this case, of course, the tugging still didn’t go anywhere.

There were other clues that would have also pointed to Tovarian, but the PCs either missed those clues (because they got captured by Malkeen Balacazar and never explored the smuggler caves thoroughly) or actually missed the entire adventure those clues were placed in. (I don’t think the Ennin Slavers have even been so much as mentioned; the PCs missed them entirely.)

In fact, there were a BUNCH of Act I scenarios that the PCs skipped past. (And which the players remain unaware of to this day.) Tovarian and the Ennin Slavers collectively had a bunch of clues pointing to things like the Swords of Ptolus, Jirraith, and the Pale Dogs. Because the PCs missed both Tovarian and the Ennin, that whole wing of the campaign kinda just fell away.

And that’s just fine.

I’ve previously mentioned that one of the GM’s biggest friends is a simple question asked at the end of every session: “What are you planning to do next time?”

It’s not foolproof, but it will save you from a lot of wasted prep. In this case, I knew how Tovarian and the Ennin and Jirraith and the Pale Dogs and the Swords of Ptolus all connected to each other because I’d prepped a revelation list. But because the PCs never got anywhere near most of those nodes, I never actually prepped the scenarios. So the only thing I “lost” were a few scribbled concept notes.

(Some of which I would eventually circle back to: The Ennin Slavers had connections to the Vladaams, and so they eventually got hooked in from the opposite direction.)

Of these scenarios, the one I spent the most time on was Demassac Tovarian, because there were a few points where I thought the PCs were going to be heading in that direction.

This work included a map of the alley where the House of Demassac Tovarian was located:

I also mapped the house itself (A1), but as you can see, I never actually finished keying it:

I never got as far as mapping the Undercity located beneath the alley, nor the Tomb of St. Thessina. In the case of the latter, I’m not even sure what my intentions were: The only thing preserved in my notes is the name.

I did have a general vibe in mind for Demassac’s demesne, which was largely inspired by the slightly surreal fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith. He possessed a dream sifter – a piece of powerful chaositech that he used to steal dreams from people. I had several strong images which were the touchstone and inspiration for the adventure, and a handful of these I’d worked up into preliminary room keys, like the Room of Endless Night:

A perpetual gloom shrouds the room. Thick shutters and inky drapes cover the walls and window. The light seems to twist and turn beyond the threshold of the room, casting only a strange phosphorescence that barely illuminates the contents of the room: In one corner of the room stands a heavy basalt statue of a squat, reptilian beast with a grotesque, horned head, stunted bat-like wings, and crooked claws. In another corner there is a sphere of black glass standing on a pedestal of black stone. In the center of the room, a large stone pool or basin is filled with water. Stretched across the top of the pool is a stone slab. The slab has been fitted with manacles.

And the Corridor of Lost Dreams:

This corridor, with a hall at one end of it, is shrouded in a perpetual gloom. Dozens of small glass spheres are suspended on nearly invisible wires here and there from the ceiling. Ghostly sounds of laughter and merrymaking float through the air. Sparks of multicolored light seem to dance through air, leaping sedately from one glass sphere to another.

There’s just enough of Demassac that came into existence that I do sometimes think of him and wonder what might have been, and perhaps some day I will return to this strange alley of madmen, dark technomancy, and strange visions. But for the moment, much like the fleeting dreams Demassac fights so hard to preserve, he has tripped along merrily into a lost realm of imagination.

Campaign Journal: Session 37B – Running the Campaign: No, But…
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Go to Table of Contents

Just like the other sections of the campaign described in Part 2 and Part 3, the Hekaton investigation is ultimately organized around a revelation list, although it may be useful to think of it in separate parts.

SETTING THE STAGE

Even before the PCs get directly involved with the Kraken Society, you’ll almost certainly want to set the stage with some key revelations:

• Storm Court is no longer in charge of the other giants
• King Hekaton is Missing / Queen Neri is Missing
• Serissa is acting as Regent of the Storm Court
• Optional: Storm Giant Raids (if these are happening)
• Optional: Mirran and Nym are opposed to Serissa’s regency

Basically, you want the PCs to know that the storm giants are in a state of crisis and confusion — and, importantly, who King Hekaton and Queen Neri are — so that when the PCs start encountering Hekaton-related revelations while investigating the Kraken Society they’ll immediately recognize the significance of what they’ve found.

Several of the clues we set up in Part 3D can serve double duty here, but you’ll want to make sure these revelation lists are fully stocked. It probably wouldn’t hurt for some/all of these to be seeded fairly early in the campaign.

STRUCTURAL REVELATIONS: THE KRAKEN SOCIETY

The core structural revelations are the ones we’ve already discussed — e.g., point-crawl accessible nodes → Involved nodes → Purple Rocks → the Morkoth. These are the leads that will take the PCs through the various Kraken Society nodes. The exact breakdown of this revelation list will depend on the options you’ve chosen.

In addition to the standard revelation list (i.e., the leads pointing to a node from other nodes), I would also make a list of pointcrawl-acccessible nodes for easy reference. “Encountered on Pointcrawl” is, of course, a legitimate vector pointing to a node and can also be included on the node’s revelation list, satisfying one of the three clues for the Three Clue Rule.

You’ll also want to include any leads from the Three City hooks or faction missions pointing to Kraken Society nodes. It can be useful to sketch these out ahead of time, but keep in mind that you don’t need to fully flesh out the faction missions until you know which (if any) of the factions your group is getting involved with. If you want to do this systematically, include a Kraken Society lead in each of the Three Cities and for each of the factions.

Friendly factions can, of course, give the PCs direct leads to Kraken Society nodes as missions, but missions can also point to the Kraken Society indirectly — i.e., the PCs are given a mission to do X, which is unrelated to the Kraken Society, but doing so will tangentially bring them into contact with the Society. (An easy example of this is, “go do X, which is coincidentally in the same location as a pointcrawl-accessible Society node, thus triggering the Kraken Society encounter.”)

Along similar lines, even enemy factions can deliver Kraken Society leads: The PCs target the faction, and discover that faction’s Kraken Society-related intelligence (e.g., “Why are the Zhentarim so interested in the activities of Lord Drylund of Yartar?”).

CORE CONCEPT REVELATIONS: WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING?

In addition to just moving from one Kraken Society node to another, there are several key concepts that the PCs should be learning so that they can figure out what’s really going on:

• The Kraken Society kidnapped Hekaton.
• Hekaton is on the Morkoth.
• How to locate the Morkoth.

You’ll likely want to make sure that the clues for “the Kraken Society kidnapped Hekaton” are seeded into the entry point nodes for the Kraken Society: Learning this will give the PCs a very specific goal for continuing their investigation of the Society. Without establishing a goal like this, the only thing motivating the PCs to continue investigating the Society will be simple curiosity. This can work, but it tends to be less reliable and less compelling. (Of course, it’s also quite possible that the PCs — or perhaps their factions — will end up providing their own anti-Kraken Society motivators.)

THE IYMRITH CONSPIRACY

Strictly speaking, the PCs can probably end up rescuing King Hekaton from the Kraken Society without ever figuring out the deeper conspiracy involving Iymrith, Mirran, and Nym. But ideally they’ll figure out this deeper truth, so we should set up a revelation list:

• The Kraken Society is collaborating with someone in the Storm Court.
• The Kraken Society’s collaborator is Iymrith.
• Mirran & Nym are conspiring with Iymrith.
• Iymrith is actually a blue dragon.
• Optional: The location of Iymrith’s lair.

It’s likely a lot of clues on this list will be pulling double duty (i.e., a clue that indicates that Iymrith is conspiring with the Kraken Society AND that the Kraken Society know she’s really dragon). The clues in Part 3D, once again, include several more clues that are pulling double duty for these revelations. Also remember that clues pointing to these revelations can also be seeded into the Storm Court itself.

One structural note here is that any clue pointing to “the Kraken Society’s collaborator is Iymrith” will almost certainly also reveal that “that Kraken Society is collaborating with someone in the Storm Court,” but the latter is listed as a separate revelation because — while it’s not strictly necessary — it’s probably more effective to establish the mystery of “Who is the collaborator?!” before providing the clues that resolve the mystery.

In other words, you want three distinct clues for “Kraken Society is collaborating with someone in the Storm Court” that don’t overlap with “their collaborator is Iymrith,” and you’ll want to seed those clues into “earlier” nodes. (For example, maybe “there’s a collaborator” clues can be found in the pointcrawl-accessible nodes, but “it’s Iymrith” clues can only be found in nodes that can only be reached by investigating the pointcrawl-accessible nodes.)

Since node-based scenarios are, obviously, nonlinear, it’s still quite possible that the PCs will learn Iymrith is the collaborator at the same time they learn there IS a collaborator. They might also learn, from other vectors, that Mirran, Nym, and Iymrith are all collaborating together before they learn that they’re working for the Kraken Society and/or are involved in Hekaton’s disappearance! That’s just fine. Our goal isn’t to lock things down. We’re just seeding our clues in the most effective way possible.

The final thing to consider here is designing a proactive node for Iymrith and/or the sisters. In other words, if/when Iymrith learns of the PCs’ efforts, what action might she take to oppose them? Some or all of them might choose intervene directly. Or, alternatively, send agents who can be tracked back to them. In addition to being a fun encounter, this is obviously also a perfect opportunity to include some Iymrith Conspiracy clues.

Go to Part 5: The Final Act

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 36D: Crypt of Webs

“Maybe it’s a magic box. Maybe our memories are trapped inside,” Ranthir said, only half-joking. “We just open the box and we get our memories back.”

But wishing the box open wouldn’t make it happen…

… unless they’d been over-looking the solution.

“What about the key from Pythoness House?” Tor asked. “The one that can open any lock?”

“Would that work?” Tee asked. “There were no moving parts in the lock.”

Ranthir shrugged. “I don’t know. It might.”

This moment from earlier in Session 36 – where the PCs abruptly realize, completely out of the blue and more than a dozen sessions after getting the all-key, exactly WHY they were looking for the all-key in the first place – is the one of those moments that would feel completely “wrong” in a film or book. After a hundred pages, the detective just suddenly realizes something for no reason? Just because? That feels forced and unsatisfying.

Authors, therefore, feel compelled to offer some explanation for what prompted the character’s sudden insight or new idea: Another character will say something innocuous, but it has a double meaning that ignites a light bulb! Or a beam of a light falls on something that jars their memory. Or a burnt out neon sign transforms its meaning. Or, if all else fails, a montage of flashbacks reveals the hidden pattern.

At the game table, though, these moments feel completely natural and are often deeply satisfying. Because they are, of course, really happening, in a way that the events of a novel or film can never be.

On the other hand, you might be looking at this and thinking: “Hang on… They found the all-key in Session 23 on June 7^th, and then they just… didn’t do anything with it until Session 36 on January 24^th? And the campaign just stalled for seven months?”

Well, no. The campaign didn’t stall. As you can see from the campaign journals, lots and lots and lots of stuff was happening. But this can be difficult to wrap your head around if you’re used to prepping and running linear scenarios and campaigns. In those campaigns, if the PCs don’t trigger the next scene or scenario in the sequence, then the whole campaign runs into a brick wall.

What we have in this case is a meta-scenario that’s running alongside the primary campaign structure. One of the great about meta-scenarios like this is that you can just let them simmer — often for very long spans of the time — while the main line(s) of the campaign continue apace.

But you can get similar results from any non-linear campaign structure: For example, in a hexcrawl the clues pointing the PCs to Siren’s Cove can be ignored for almost any length of time while the players are exploring any number of the other hexes available to them. Similarly, in a node-based campaign, the hook to a scenario can lie dormant while the PCs are busy engaging with the other options they have.

In some cases, these lengthy delays will be entirely due to the decisions the players are making: They know those clues point to Siren’s Cove and they could choose to go there at any time, but they were simply more interested in the Fane of Pandemonium and, while they were trapped within the Fane, the situation in Bluewood has turned into a crisis that they need to deal with immediately.

In other cases, though — like the current session — the players literally haven’t solved the mystery yet: They haven’t figured out how to decipher the map to Siren’s Cove. They don’t make the connection that “M.R.” are the initials of Montgomery Rosemount. They haven’t realized the all-key can unlock the box.

Those are the times when you can get the big payoff — that ultimate moment where they decipher the map, abruptly discover who the mystery “M.R.” is, or open the box that’s tantalized them for months or years — by just being willing to give your players the space to struggle for a while.

And what is the payoff?

It’s that little thrill you feel in knowing that if you HADN’T figured it out, the GM was never going to give it to you. It’s the tingling little frisson that runs up the spine when you discover that your actions in the game truly matter. There’s no script and you’re certainly not following it. The good stuff happened because YOU made it happen, and if you don’t want the bad stuff to happen, you’re going to have to try a little harder.

I said that this moment works in an RPG because it’s really happening, and that’s also the root of what makes the payoff so satisfying.

What can make these payoffs feel HUGE for the players is literally the anticipation: They’d been wondering what was inside this box for nearly two years at this point!

Of course, I’d figured that the pay-off for that wait would have come when they snagged the all-key… but it didn’t. They didn’t make the connection. And I really wanted to see that payoff. I’d been waiting for it, too! It was so tempting — and so easy! — to say something like, “Do y’all have any locks you haven’t been able to open?” or, “Do you remember that box your woke up with?” Or maybe I could have had them make an Intelligence check to see if one of them had the idea to use the all-key on the sealed box? (Ugh.)

But I didn’t succumb to that temptation, and the payoff was even better for it. Because it was worth the wait. And because it was their reward. They’d earned it. I hadn’t stuck my nose in and undermined their moment.

Of course, not every instance of “missing the obvious” will burn low for multiple sessions. Often the payoff comes a lot quicker. For example, at the end of this same session the PCs went looking for Alchestrin’s Tomb:

It was only a couple of hours before dusk and the sun was already low in the sky, but they felt they had already wasted enough time. They headed to the Necropolis, aware that they would need to finish their work there before darkness fell.

Once they had reached Darklock Hill, Dominic used his connection with the gods to fixate upon Alchestrin’s sigil and locate its nearest occurrence. He led them to a crudely built crypt with thick walls built from heavy stone slabs. Elestra recognized that these slabs were, in fact, repurposed stone sarsens. Several of them had the distinctive – yet heavily worn – sigil of Alchestrin worked into them.

This scenario was designed to be deliberately deceptive: Someone had scavenged the sarsens from the stone circle above Alchestrin’s Tomb and used them to build their own tomb nearby. So somebody looking for the tomb would likely spot Alchestrin’s sigil on the false tomb instead, become confused, and go on a little mini-dungeoncrawl.

At the actual table, though, I was surprised when Elestra made a point of specifically examining the sigils. I don’t remember exactly what skill check I called for, but she rolled well and would clearly recognize that the sigils were carved into stone sarsens that had been repurposed for the walls of this tomb.

At this point, I figured the jig was up: If the sarsens weren’t originally part of this tomb, then obviously this tomb couldn’t be Alchestrin’s Tomb.

But then the players… just didn’t see it. They missed the obvious.

It was only later, as more and more stuff about the false crypt didn’t add up, that Ranthir suddenly realized the importance of what Elestra had seen and doubled back to check his hypothesis.

“I think I have the answer,” Ranthir said, coming back down the stairs from above. “The stones on which Alchestrin’s sigil is marked are stone sarsens – originally designed as part of a stone circle. They must have been scavenged to build the walls of this crypt.”

Now, in this case I could have been tempted to fudge Elestra’s original check so that she wouldn’t learn that the walls were repurposed sarsens.

Or, after she made that check, I could have been tempted to spell it out and make the connection for her: “No, no. I said they were repurposed sarsens from a stone circle! So the sigil doesn’t belong to this crypt, but to wherever those stone sarsens came from!”

But how much more satisfying was it for the players to not only (a) finally make that conclusion for themselves, but also (b) realize that they’d had the solution the whole time and could have avoided the whole fiasco!

This wasn’t something that I had, as the GM, had done to them. I hadn’t pulled a fast one. I hadn’t cheated. And so the outcome was infinitely more satisfying on every level.

(And, of course, if it had all played out differently, that would have been okay, too. That is, after all, the whole point.)

Campaign Journal: Session 37A – Running the Campaign: The Adventure Not Taken
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index