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Let's Read Hells Rebels 3, Part 2
This is part of a series! Go to the project page to see all entries.
Let’s continue our reading of Dance of the Damned! I expect this to be the second of three posts for this adventure. In the last one, we covered two chapters of the book. Let’s aim for two more here.
Chapter 3: The Vyre Accord
Vyre is a city located in the same province as Kintargo. There’s a whole mini-guide on it attached to the book, but the only thing we really need to know is that it’s pretty much Fucked-Up Fantasy Venice.
Though technically part of Cheliax, Vyre is almost entirely independent. Cheliax tolerates this because the city is a prime vacation destination for Chelish elites. On the other hand, Vyre’s slice of coast makes for a shitty port, so they’re almost entirely reliant on nearby Kintargo for the sea trade that gets them most of their food and luxuries.
Vyre’s government is extremely self-interested, but Cheliax has good reasons to maintain good relations with them, and they have good reasons to maintain good relations with Kintargo. If Vyre backs the rebellion, they can exert pressure on those Chelish elites to back off from the province.
Allies and Information
Advance information on the city comes from two sources. Captain Sargaeta, whom the PCs befriended in Adventure 02, can tell them the basics, and give them a ride there on his ship. Molly Mayapple can provide them with extensive and invaluable advice on their actual goal in the city.
The PCs haven’t met Molly yet, but they should have recovered a bunch of documents belonging to her from the Lucky Bones. These are deeds for a set of waterfront warehouses, which were stolen by the extinct Gray Spiders decades ago. Even though Molly has since rebuilt her fortune (she owns a successful hotel), she’s still going to be extremely grateful when the PCs hand the deeds back to her, and will provide a lot of insider information and help. They can track her down from the information on the deeds.
The Basics
Vyre is ruled by five monarchs, each tasked with an aspect of government. The one they want to meet is Manticce Kaleeki, the Queen of Delights, who is in charge of the city’s economy and foreign relations. Vyre’s laws are simple yet baroque, creating an environment where non-lethal duels and eternal feuds are common, all sales are final, but prejudice of any sort is frowned upon. However, you can get away with anything if you follow the last and most important rule: don’t get caught.
The Queen of Delights is set to host a banquet in the near future, and that will be the PCs’ opportunity to talk to her. The GM determines how long the PCs have until the banquet. Most of this time is probably going to be spent looking for outfits, gifts, and information, but the GM can also introduce a few Vyre sidequests to spice things up.
The Banquet
The Banquet might be an entirely non-violent scene, but it’s as difficult to navigate as any dungeon. Vyre high-society etiquette is weird, and the Queen of Delights heaps even more weird on top of that because she’s basically Morticia Addams as a Tiefling in Fucked-Up Fantasy Venice.
Molly’s help is absolutely vital here. The book doesn’t even mention how the PCs get invited to the banquet, but I assume she’s instrumental in arranging invitations for them and for herself. She’s also an excellent source of information on the complex etiquette surrounding the event.
This starts with what to wear and what gifts to bring. Molly knows what the Queen likes, and PCs good at gathering information might learn about Manticce’s less well-known preferences.
There are nine other guests in the banquet aside from Molly and the PCs. We get personality notes for each one. Most are only sources of roleplaying color, but one of them will be important in the next adventure: Hei-fen, former guildmistress of the Gray Spiders. Tough it’s been decades since she escaped the destruction of that guild, she’s still a spiteful old wererat and is angry at the PCs for stealing “her home”. She’s here to size them up for future reprisal.
The other “special” guest, not counted among those nine, is the Queen’s long dead husband, whose skeleton adorns one of the table’s chairs. The correct move here is to not acknowledge poor Gomez in any way. To do so is considered crass.
While roleplaying should be first and foremost in this scene it also has a mechanical component. The banquet is effectivelly a long and colorful skill challenge. PCs get a number of starting “banquet points” depending on how they dress, what gifts they bring, and whether or not they participate in a standing ovation when the Queen appears (they should!). After that, each course in the banquet allows them several opportunities to learn more.
The first is a knowledge skill test to identify the dish in question and how to eat it (probably Area Knowledge, Current Affairs or Savoir-Faire in GURPS). Careful PCs can just wait for one of the other guests to start eating and skip the skill test, but succeeding shows they know what they’re doing and earns them a point.
The second is a series of tests to actually eat the course, which varies with each dish. There’s no way to skip this one, though the PCs doesn’t need to succeed at them all to earn a point. If they do, they earn extra. If they fail badly enough or just decide to forgo rolling and eat the thing wrong on purpose, they lose points.
The third is a social skill test to do well in the conversation that accompanies that dish. This would likely be Fast-Talk, Diplomacy or even Public Speaking in GURPS, modified by what the players actually say. Success makes them come off as smooth operators and earns points. Failure loses points and leaves them embarrassed. Again careful characters can just keep quiet and skip this part, but it earns them nothing.
The dishes range from the merely bizarre to the horrific:
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We start with quicksoup, a bowl of boiling hot soup accompanied by a water bowl containing five small live fish and a set of peculiar utensils. This requires tests involving manual dexterity to properly poach the fish in the soup and eat them. Probably plain DX modified by Manual Dexterity in GURPS, though I’d also let a daring PC test Surgery instead.
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Next is Galtan Squash, which looks like a severed head but is just a carved pumpkin full of extremely spicy red soup. This is a straight-up Fortitude save/HT roll to endure the spice. A bad enough failure leaves your face swollen and penalizes your talky rolls for the rest of the feast! I’d probably let it be modified by Resistant to Poison and other advantages that include it.
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Then you get the Unseen Feast, meat pies made from the flesh of an invisible stalker. I’m pretty sure invisible stalkers are sapient, which makes this the most horrific dish of the lot. It’s quite possible some PCs will refuse to eat this one on moral grounds. Those who decide to forge ahead need to be fast and perceptive. They have to eat the invisible meat before it turns visible and loses its flavor. PCs who can see invisibility can pass this one automatically, though it’s considered crass to cast a spell for it while at the table. Others must succeed at a difficult Perception check, which I guess I would modify for Acute Smell/Taste.
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Finally, you get Sweetfats With Honey Sauce for dessert. Sweetfats are candied spiders - this is an Underdark dish. The most difficult thing here is opening the honey sauce container, which is a mundane replica of a Hellraiser-style puzzle box. Time to break out the Thaumathology and Hidden Lore (Demons) skills, though I guess Traps or Lockpicking might also work.
Whether Vyre allies with the Silver Ravens or not depends entirely on how many banquet points the characters manage to get. They need at least 20. A party of 5 who arrives properly dressed will start out with 10, and might get a few more from bringing optimal gifts. Even so, they will still need to take active part in at least some of the banquet in order to succeed at the mission. I’d probably give them a sign that they succeeded once they get enough points.
If the party succeeds, the Queen might invite the individual who gained them the most points for an intimate night. Ties go to the prettiest or most charismatic PC, and if they’re still tied she invites all of the tied PCs. If the party has more than 30 points and the propositioned PC(s) accept Manticce’s invitation, she will also offer the group her personal alliance, providing extra mechanical boosts to the strategic rebellion layer.
Notes and Impressions
This part is very different than what you would expect from a standard dungeon fantasy adventure. It can be really fun for PCs who like role-playing, so even in a condensed approach I’d recommend keeping it. If you want to make the Unseen Feast part less objectionable, you could perhaps say the “meat” is gelatinous cube jelly, which is almost as hard to see and doesn’t come from something sapient. And if you don’t want to feature sexual themes at all in the adventure, you could remove Manticce’s invitation at the end and just say that the party gets her personal support if they get more than 30 points.
The downside when using GURPS is that if your PCs are overly focused on dungeon delving they might not have the skills necessary to cause a good impression here. In this case I suggest being generous: if none of the delvers has the most appropriate skill, ask for a roll on the closest skill one of them does have, or perhaps even roll against DX or IQ. That said, characters who followed the tips from the Player’s Guide or who used earned points to become a bit sneakier and more social shouldn’t have too much trouble covering their bases.
Part 4: Breaking the Menador Gap
The Menador Gap is a mountain pass in the mountains separating Ravounel from central Cheliax. It’s the only viable route for marching an army through those mountains, so it must be closed. The PCs start the adventure at level 7, and the book says they should be level 8 before tackling this chapter.
The gap is protected by a fortress named Menador Keep. It used to be an old dwarf fort, but is now occupied by Chelish military. Rexus, who studied those old Silver Raven documents extensively, can tell the PCs that there’s a dwarven self-destruct mechanism deep within the bowels of the fort. The PCs’ goal here is to get to that mechanism, activate it, and get out. This will demolish the fort in a way that ensures the pass is completely closed.
It’s theoretically possible to demolish the fort from a distance using spells like Earthquake, but a) this might not block the pass completely and b) it will bury all the sweet loot located inside the fortress.
Dungeon: Menador Gap
The fortress itself has two above-ground floors and an underground level. Its ground floor contains a courtyard with two large gates on either side, which blocks the mountain pass. Inside the building are a large number of guard posts, utility/storage rooms, and a couple of monster pens.
The fort is defended by a garrison of 23 soldiers, commanded by Lucien Thrune, a wyvern-riding cavalier. He also has a bound erinyes devil with him, and a very unhappy bound jann servant. Another devil acts as a stationary sentry at the entrance to the treasury. The soldiers are weak individually, but dangerous in large groups. They wear mail and are armed with halberds and crossbows, favoring ranged attacks over melee.
The best way to handle this might be as a Metal Gear-like stealth mission. The PCs are very likely to have the necessary magic to turn the whole party invisible and levitate them for a short time. Clever PCs might find the entrnce to the wyvern’s stable down on the cliffside and enter through there, bypassing a lot of the security measures on the surface. The same technique might allow them to land atop the fort’s battlements and begin from there, bypassing the courtyard kill box. Even if they immediately go loud and begin a frontal assault, they’ll begin doing that from a hugely advantageous position.
The third-best option is for them to disguise themselves as someone authorized to cross the Gap and ride into the courtyard, from which they can force their way into the fort. It’s less than ideal because they can be targetted by crossbow and ballista fire from the battlements.
Starting an overt assault will sound a general alert and have every soldier converge on the party’s position. It’s easier to deal with them piecemeal, though that might require magic to prevent the sounds of fighting from spilling out. Stealth might also allow the party to fight the “elites” (Lucien, his wyvern, the devils) while they’re alone and isolated. The jann servant, Zorumar, is a potential ally here. He can’t do anything against his master directly, but he can give all sorts of information about enemy locations and the layout of the fort, including all secret doors. Killing Lucien will set Zorumar free, and he will return in the future to gift the party with magic items in thanks.
There’s a secret door in the fort’s armory leading to the ancient dwarven mechanism in the “basement” level. The only one of its current inhabitants who knows about this is Zorumar. The device, called the Anvil of Unmaking, is protected by ancient guardians and traps, some of which can be bypassed by proper prayers to the dwarf god Torag and by diplomacy. Activating the contraption will cause it to completely destroy the fortress in 10 minutes. The PCs have that long to run away and get clear. Also the tremors and rumbling will definitely put every remaining enemy in the place on high alert, if they weren’t already.
Loot-wise, the most valuable places to hit here are the treasury (obviously), the war room, and Lucien Thrune’s person. Lucien has a sweet flaming sword, lots of bling, and the key to the treasury chest. The treasury has a bunch of magical gear and the fort’s payroll. And the war room has an extremely valuable dagger lying around next to a pile of important strategic documents full of classified Chelish military info.
Notes and Impressions
A good old tactical espionage action romp, with the potential to turn into a wonderfully chaotic battle if the PCs trip the alarm. It’s likely to be the most time-consuming scene in the entire adventure, and could conceivably take more than one session to resolve.
I suggest playing the enemies with a modicum of intelligence here, but remember that raising the alarm is not an automatic action. If a single guard spots the PCs, the rest of the fortress won’t automatically know they’re there. An alarm must be raised, which takes time and is susceptible to disruption from the PCs.
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Let's Read Neverwinter: Oghma Domain
Oghma is the Forgotten Realms god of knowledge, occupying the same conceptual slot as Ioun does on the default 4e setting. His purview includes knowledge, inspiration, and discovery. His followers believe that to serve him is to serve the truth.
The stats for this domain can also be used for priests of the god Gond, which I think is an artificer god?
Mechanics
Oghma’s powers focus on boosting allies’ skill checks by granting them bonuses or rerolls, and on penalizing enemy attacks and saves. Its main distinction from other domains is that its attack powers focus on doing psychic damage instead of Radiant, though one of your at-wills still does radiant and thunder damage.
The old character optimization forums rate this domain as pretty good, though they say it takes until the mid-Paragon tier to really get going: its level 11 feature makes that radiant and thunder at-will immobilize on a hit, and its level 16 one makes your Healing Word grant the target a free basic attack. You should still be able to do just fine in a standard Heroic-only Neverwinter campaign, though.
As you might expect, this theme combos well with the Oghma’s Faithful. The domain’s first-level feature lets you use Wisdom to make Int-based skill checks, and the skill-boosting abilities from the theme will let you easily become the party’s encyclopedia.
Impressions
I don’t have much to say about this domain that hasn’t been said above already. Oghma isn’t a particularly exciting FR deity to me, though this campaign does give his clerics some pretty nice hooks. The domain’s powers could easily be used for priests of Ioun in a campaign in the core setting.
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Let's Read Neverwinter: Corellon Domain
In the default 4e setting, Corellon is the universal god of spring, beauty and the arts, and also the patron of arcane magic. In Forgotten Realms, his original setting, he is the head of the elven pantheon. His portfolion includes all of the above plus nature, war, and most other things elves care about. All of his worshippers are elves or eladrin.
Warpriests of Corellon are known as Fey Wardens, and take it as their holy mission to both protect elves and their culture, and also promote and spread the greatness of that culture. I don’t think he wants non-elves to worship him, he just wants non-elves to know elves are better than them.
The stats for this domain can also be used for priests of other elven gods.
Mechanics
Most other Warpriest domains are melee-only, but Corellon’s weapon powers can be used with either melee or ranged weapons. This means the theme is designed to take advantage of the racial weapon proficiencies elves and eladrin get, and is particularly suited to moon or sun elves who replace Eladrin Education with Elf Weapon Proficiency. They get proficiency with both the long sword and the long bow.
In addition to its ranged attack emphasis, the domain’s powers also focus on granting extra mobility to the cleric’s allies, with a secondary focus on making enemies easier to hit by either nullifying cover or granting allies combat advantage.
The old character optimization forums say this is the domain that relies on Constitution the least, so players are free to put those points on Dexterity instead, particularly if they plan on favoring ranged combat or wearing light armor.
I’m not going to cover all of the powers in detail here, but I think the domain’s two at-wills are fun. Both are melee or ranged weapon attacks using Wisdom vs. AC and dealing 1W + Wis mod damage. Blessing of the Wild lets the cleric or an ally within 5 squares shift 1 square as a free action, and Graceful Switch lets them stow a weapon and draw another as a free action before making the attack. The latter also deals force and radiant damage, so the cleric is never without something that can put the hurt on incorporeal undead.
Impressions
I really like the mechanical aspect of this domain, though I’m not a big fan of the “elves are better than everyone else” mentality in its lore. It’s quite easy to remove, though.
This domain’s powers would be very well suited to a core deity like Avandra, with their flexibility and focus on mobility.
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Let's Read Neverwinter: Warpriest Domains Introduction
Before we launch into talking about domains, let’s talk about warpriests. “Warpriest” is the official name for the Essentials version of the Cleric class.
Classic PHB Clerics (also known as “Templars” post-Essentials) had a set of Strength-based melee weapon powers and another of Wisdom-based ranged implement powers. They were generally discouraged from mixing-and-matching, and over time the community decided that the Wisdom-based “laser cleric” build was the better of the two, particularly when you only had the core. There were certain levels that had no Strength powers in them, a situation that would only be remedied in supplements.
Warpriests are another attempt at a melee cleric - all of their attack abilities are are Wisdom-based weapon powers. Warpriest Domains are the solution found by Essential’s designers to reduce the number of decisions a player must make in order to play a cleric. Your pick one at character creation, and that determines not only all of your level 1 powers but also most of the encounter powers and features you get at higher levels all the way to the end of epic tier. They’re practically ready-made builds.
Technically, some of these belong to your paragon path, but Warpriests are in effect limited to a single choice there, which continues to provide powers from your chosen domain. Someone who is really into character optimization might pick a path from another source, but you can just stick to the default Devout Warpriest path and still be pretty effective.
Heroes of the Fallen Lands, the book that introduced Warpriests, also introduced the Sun and Storm domains. Heroes of Shadow added the Death domain for spooky clerics, and Dragon 392 included the Earth domain.
The Neverwinter campaign setting gives us four more domains, doubling the amount available in the game at the time of its publication. These are all dedicated to specific FR gods, but they can be used for similar deities from this or other settings. Though the Neverwinter campaign focuses on the heroic tier, the domains presented here include powers for the full 30 levels of a character’s career.
I’m going to talk about each domain in very general terms, as it would take an age to go through every power in detail. We’ll cover one domain per post, and they should each be fairly short.
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Let's Read Neverwinter: Elf and Eladrin Racial Variants
When I introduced eladrin in my readings of the Monster Manual, I wrote that I loved that 4e decided to make a more obvious split between the “fey magician” and “woodsy archer” archetypes for elves, because previous attempts were usually a bit muddled and tended to vary too much between settings.
Well, Forgotten Realms was one of these previous attempts, since it had sun, moon, wood, and wild elves. From reading this book, I know now that these elf types form a spectrum from “more fey” to “more woodsy”, but I didn’t know this before looking it up. Other settings like Greyhawk and Dragonlance have their own proprietary classifications.
The story of elves in FR as told by this book is similar to the generic version: they arrived from the Feywild at the dawn of time as a single people and split into three separate ones over the following centuries: sun elves, moon elves, and those who would become the drow. After the war that originated the drow, some of the survivors decided to go back to nature and became wood and wild elves.
For our purposes here, Sun and Moon Elves are eladrin racial variants, while Wood and Wild Elves are elf racial variants.
Moon Elves
Moon Elves are the friendlier sort of eladrin. Their cultural wanderlust means they roamed further than their cousins and took longer to build stationary empires, but also established good relations with most of the other peoples of the world. While some of them became more isolationist after the Spellplague, you can still find moon elves living in many “mortal” kingdoms and communities. They consider themselves citizens of their nation first, and moon elves second.
With the Feywild in conjunction with the world, many moon elves have also moved over there to explore the plane anew.
Typical moon elf PCs are curious, open-minded, and bold, believing that magic can be found anywhere and good deeds should not be hidden.
They can choose to replace their skill bonuses to Arcana and History with Insight and Streetwise, and to replace the Eladrin Education feature with Elven Weapon Proficiency (longbow and shortbow).
For background picks, they can choose between the Diplomacy and Streetwise skills, and the Chondathan, Damaran, and Untheric languages. All are different human languages, I think.
Sun Elf
Sun Elves are assholes. They consider themselves superior to everyone else, even other elves. To many of them the Spellplague proved that even the non-elven gods are inferior to the elven ones, since the latter emerged mostly unscathed and the former very much didn’t. Some of them welcome their renewed connection to the Feywild, while others view the “core eladrin” newcomers from that plane as yet another inferior species.
Sun elf characters are typically patient, aloof, and incredibly racist. I think their lore in previous editions even has them engaging in genocidal plans? Even if I’m misremembering that bit I would probably still not allow sun elf PCs.
They can choose to replace their Arcana/History skill bonuses with Bluff/Insight, Eladrin Weapon Proficiency with the same Elf Weapon Proficiency moon elves get, and Eladrin Education with Wizard Implement Proficiency. This lets them use wands, orbs and staffs with implement powers from any class.
Their background picks are the Arcana, Bluff, History and Insight skills, or the Draconic language.
Wild Elf
Wild Elves are also assholes. They are described as being as xenophobic as sun elves, and even more isolationist. Their culture is all about living as close to nature as possible and venerating the primal spirits, which they believe is how the common ancestors to all elves lived in ancient times. According to them everyone else is Doing it Wrong, even other elves.
Wild elf characters are typically respectful of nature and the spirits, nomadic in honor of the wanderlust Corellon gave their people, and incredibly racist.
They can replace Elven Accuracy with Subtle Step, which lets them shift their speed once per encounter as a move action. This is very useful considering elves ignore forest-themed difficult terrain. They can also replace Group Awareness with Wild Elf Weapon Proficiency (javelin, spear, longspear).
Their associated background skills are Nature, Perception, and Stealth.
Wood Elves
Wood Elves are the most similar to core elves. They have friendly relations with other peoples, and while they also live close to nature they are not nomadic.
Typical wood elves are protective of their forest homes, but also careful and compassionate. A wood elf might let a trespasser go by if that trespass is not doing any actual harm, whereas a wild elf would kill them on principle.
They can replace Elven Accuracy with Sense Threat, which lets them roll Perception for initiative and give all allies with a lower initiative than them a +2 bonus to their own rolls.
Okay, let me stop for a moment here. This feels amazingly overpowered. The power itself is described in “natural language” not much different from the paraphrased paragraph above, so we don’t know if it’s a power or just a passive ability. In this case, though, there is no difference - you only ever roll Initiative once per fight, so an encounter power like this would get used every fight anyway.
Elf rangers, rogues and fey warlocks simply must train Perception and get this ability. With their ancestry bonuses to Wisdom and Perception, this ensures they will almost always go first, and give +2 Initiative to the entire rest of the party too. Clerics care a bit less about going first, but that Initiative bonus to all allies would still make this power nearly mandatory from a mechanics perspective. You’re more or less getting an entire warlord class feature for free.
OK, going back to their other ability: they can replace Group Awareness with Reactive Stealth, which lets them roll Stealth to hide at the same time they roll Initiative, if they have cover or concealment. Another “mandatory” pick for stealthy strikers, and better than the equivalent utility power from the Bregan Spy since you get it at level 1.
Wood elf background picks are the Diplomacy, Insight and Nature skills, and the Chondathan, Damaran, Dwarven, Giant and Goblin languages.
Impressions
Someone among this book’s authors really likes wood elves. They’re basically 100% core book elves in outlook and narrative role, but their alternate features are by far the most powerful in this entry. Making Sense Threat into a Daily power would bring it to within barely acceptable bounds, though it would still be quite a bit stronger than the similar ability we saw for Oghma’s Faithful.
Wild and Sun Elves also have a couple of interesting abilities in Subtle Step and Wizard Implement Proficiency respectively. The rest of these variant abilities are more or less equivalent to what they replace. Moon elves are the only variant here that could become proficient in both longbows and longswords regardless of class, since they can have the two proficiency traits at the same time.
Lore-wise, I would again probably not allow players to play Sun or Wild elves as written, because those two variants are racist assholes. I would still let them take their replacement features if they so wanted, while being some other type of elf or eladrin.
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