“Wait,” you might ask, “are you still doing this?”. Yes, I am! I have been doing it since shortly after the last time I talked about it, off and on, but I haven’t posted anything else here in the blog for entirely personal reasons that I should overcome any day now.

And we’re going to start with a little correction here, because over the course of my play, I’ve looked at the timelines a bit closer and the details for the Knight of the Deep origin don’t make sense as written.

The PC arrives at Kintargo at the start of Adventure 01, which is supposed to last at least eight weeks or so given the pace at which the “strategic” rebellion turns move.

However, the aquatic elves that origin is concerned with rescuing are only captured in the final stretch of Adventure 02. Here’s the timeline as written in the adventure:

  • The elves arrive in town maybe a week or two before the day of their capture. This would be in the middle of Adventure 02.

  • They are seeking Shensen’s help with their problems back home. When they fail to find her, they spend some time exploring the waters around Kintargo before being captured by the aboleth’s minions.

  • The day of their capture is “fuzzy” - it’s the day before the PCs first enter the adventure’s final dungeon. Once they do, the GM is supposed to track their condition over time.

  • The elves might starve before being rescued, and if they’re still alive after two weeks they’re taken back home to be dominated by the aboleth.

If we take the Knight’s current background as written, it would mean the elves have been captured before Adventure 01. If we want the PC to have any chance at all to rescue the elven scouts, we either have to make the Lucky Bones delve the very first thing the PCs do after the riot, or we have to change the background.

Doing the former is actually no trouble in Dungeon Fantasy. Starting delvers are already strong enough to tackle the place, you just might need to put some magic weapons within easy reach in the first level. If that’s what you want, just have Laria Longroad point them to the place directly instead of the Wasp Nest.

Since I have already played through the Wasp Nest storyline on my own and I don’t want to restart the game all the way from the beginning, though, I’m going to change the background.

Instead of being sent to rescue the scouts, the Knight will be sent in to seek Shensen’s aid. This gives them a stronger reason to stick with the rebellion, and a better clue of which path to follow in pursuit of their goals.

The scouts still go to Kintargo in Adventure 02, but this time they do so to find the Knight, who has been taking much longer than anticipated to return with Shensen.

Rules-wise, the only thing that changes is that the optional Obsession to find Aava becomes an Obsession to find Shensen, worth the same number of points.

I’ve also changed the description of the theme in the original post.

PC Origin: Knight of the Deep

You come from one of the subaquatic communities off the coast of Ravounel, where you enjoy an heroic reputation. You recently went to visit your friend Aava in the coastal village of Acisazi, only to find the village suffering under a strange malaise. The village’s elder told you this was caused by a curse that was beyond her power to break, and begged you to seek the aid of Shensen, a powerful bard and priest of Sarenrae who lived in the city of Kintargo. You accepted.

You arrive at this land-lubber town to find it embroiled in a lot more trouble than you thought possible. Shensen is nowhere to be found. You suspect she vanished into the prisons of the despotic Barzilai Thrune, and your queries have led you to the Aria Park protest. You suspect you might need to bloody this human despot’s nose to fulfill your mission, and that’s just fine with you.

Prerequisites: You must belong to a species capable of breathing underwater! Dungeon Fantasy 3: The Next Level contains two possible choices here: the Sea Elf and the Water-Infused. From this blog, you might also pick the [Argonian][2] or perhaps a Warforged who has been modified to be hydrodynamic and Amphibious. And of course we also have a whole article about the [Denizens of the Sea][5] that also contains a few usable ancestries.

This theme is open to any profession, but martial types should probably keep in mind the rules for [underwater combat for fish-people][3].

Benefits: The people of Acisazi know and trust you, and Aava is your good friend (or even a relative if you’re also a sea elf).

You can add Swimming, Aquabatics and Survival (Undersea) to your template as optional skills, and should probably put some points in them during character creation.

Drawbacks: Add Obsession (find Shensen) (12) {-5} to your template as an optional disadvantage. It’s what you already want to do anyway, but like the Last Archivist’s Obsession it might drive you to unwise actions.