DM Notes – C01.S01.08
In this scene, which takes place a full tenday after the partys arrival at Treyvigg Monastery, will focus on Joloobo the Troll Hunter.
I am a little afeared to send him out into the Vale of Soxolone on his own. But Yisi and Valea spend their days in training and whats a Troll Hunter to do…
He will take on a troll that far outclasses him… so he will have to do something to even the odds. Or… I can drag out the encounter – perhaps as party is chasing after sharpfangs into the vale…
So then, this scene, Joloobo is hunting the fire troll, and finds clues, but not the troll. He will have to find some other trouble. Perhaps the female peryton? Or something more… nefarious. A Rusalka in a small lake… (CR3 rather than 8)
In this scene/sequence, Joloobo finds a crevasse on the far side of the vale. The sides of the narrow crack were scarred black, like something squeezed though while aflame.
Joloobo should also have his first contact with the deep gnomes working under the mountain. Perhaps not actual contact… but he sees 2 or 3 of them enter a small shack set up against the cliff wall in the back of the “backyard”. The do not exit again. Joloobo takes note, assumes the shed leads into the mountains but does not give it more thought than that
Also… Elder Ysthorn… at some point… offers to teach Joloobo some advanced tracking skills. He was, once upon a long time ago, a Tomb Guardian and was highly trained as a ranger. He can teach Joloobo in the Vale of Soxolone [Give extra survival prof and favored terrains]
When I Get Stuck
This happens often. I can be on track and think I know where I’m going and what will happen, and then I get stuck. In this scene, I got stuck trying to create something for Joloobo – the Rabbit Fur Sash. I don’t need to define it now, the character cannot use it until he gets it identified by someone with the skill, unless he realizes it is magic and risks attuning to it without knowing what it is or what it does. Now I cannot decide what happens next… does Joloobo keep exploring? There should be a combat encounter in the old mines… but what kind? I cannot decide… perhaps because I don’t know why this abandoned mining area is here… Why did I create it? To give a Fire Troll egress to the Vale – and I did that so Joloobo would have a sidequest while Yisi and Valea are training. Why is a Fire Troll here if the Small Teeth are not active volcanoes?
Perhaps the mining area opens into an old lair of the thieves guild [fingers]? Perhaps mining efforts were spreading through this area and inadvertantly opened into a section of the “Chapterhouse” – old hideout of the thieves guild and lair of Sharpfangs. When Sharpfangs escapes, she will try to reach her lair…
But what of this area now? And why a fire troll? It is a sidequest – so no need to tie it to Sharpfangs or anything else…maybe someone, a cult, is trying to raise the City of Xander?
Lost Xandar: Two miles east of Kossuth’s Eyes is the site of the last known volcanic eruption in these parts. During the time of the Korrunhel Dynasty of Tethyr, its King Matamid as a vassal of the Shoon Empire, but he dreamed of empire building. He wanted his children and heirs to rule the rich lands between the Forest of Tethir and the Small Teeth as a new part of Tethyr. At this site, now marked only by small pine trees on the slopes and foothills, a new capital city was built for Matamids son from the fourth year of the dynasty until its completion in the next to last year of Matamids reign (233 to 250 DR). When the city was complete, the aging king named it Xandar, for his son, and it became a second capital after the Tethyrians capital at Zazesspur. On a state visit there in the tenth year of his reign (260 DR), King Xandar died in an unexpected volcanic eruption of lava and boiling mud that engulfed and buried the 10-year-old city and all its people under thick rock. Local folk know that many riches of the city of Xandar, including the royal prince himself and his jewelry, lie under the topsoil and thick rock, but few want to destroy their farms and grazing land for what they might find beneath it. (Its almost impossible to get through the rock, besides.) A few have dug down anyway, using magic, and found many buried homes and skeletons but precious little gold or other valuables. Historians and sages would like to examine the ruins, but uncovering them is a real problem.
Or maybe something completely different…
Now I know…
Joloobo cannot exit that room. There is a field which allows one-way travel.
Yisi and Valea will look for Joloobo in the morning, and will go into the vale to find him. Meet the river ghast lady (ratulin?) who pretends to have whatever the players need – including information about Joloobo’s whereabouts. Play her like a cold reader – in fact that is maybe the monster… a cold reader. Like ratulin, resides in water
Play that out somehow..