We're still playing the campaign on and off on Monday nights! (We switch off games so I can get a break.)
So now the PCs are exploring the ruined city of Xam in the Qelong Valley.
Years ago powerful missiles fired by warring archmages battling on the other side of the mountains struck the city. The resulting magical damage lifted the city upon a hard to scale mesa and cut it off from the rest of the valley.
The magical energies unleashed on the city have formed a kind of "firestorm" of Chaos that has raged across the mesa for two decades now. Everything on the mesa is always in flux, with reality always shifting.
To help me create encounters for this kind of environment I took the runes and qualities of runes from Glorantha and built a series of random tables and slipped them into my Referee screen:
I roll on the tables and using the results as a springboard I cobble together things I could not otherwise have conceived of.
For example, the PCs had to fight and flee a giant centipede made from the flaming bodies of several hundred citizens of Xam. And later they found the ancient library of Xam wandering around on four legs. (One can seek shelter from the chaos of the ruined city by volunteering to become a book in the collection. You can then be read, your life story fixed and available for anyone to peruse.)
The PCs have traveled from 17th century Europe on the magical three masted ship they found in a lake in the Alps to an alternate earth where magic is much more prevalent in an effort to find Akkom. (The ship belonged to an Interdimensional Explorer who traveled to alternate earths. They need the Akkom because the King in Yellow has built a bridge from the world of Carcosa to their earth and is invading it with his army. He wants to use the people of earth as a terrible holocaust of sacrifice.)
Traveling through the chaotic, ever-shifting ruins of Xam they gathered rumors from survivors and heard tale of a wizard's tower to the north end of the mesa. They found the book that had once been the wizard's apprentice in the Wandering Library of Xam and discovered this tower possessed a rich supply of Xam the wizard had gathered over the years through a magical process.
This tower is, in fact, The Tower of the Stargazer. The wizard has been in communication with and studying Carcosa and the King in Yellow, helping him to attack this earth as well!
Thus I changed a few things: instead of the statue of the Medusa, it is a statue of the king in yellow. Instead of looking at the world of translucent blobs, the telescope looks upon the world of Carcosa. Instead of being ignited by gunpowder, the telescope is activated by igniting a pinch of Akkom, an so on. There are other clues I've added and altered throughout the tower tying it to my campaign and the interests of the PCs.
And yet... it is basically the same. And last night the Players found the chamber with the ghost and ended up playing a game of chess with the soul of one of the Players wagered in the game!
James, I want you to know that all five players sat transfixed and helping the player win the game against me! It went over great!
They have found the telescope, the library, and the treasure room and are now exploring all three. Soon they will figure out how to activate the telescope and the first of them will travel to Carcosa. The others will undoubtedly follow, carrying the powerful Akkom with them. They will then be able to see the bridge rising from beyond the horizon on its way to earth. The base of the bridge will be in the City of Carcosa.
My guess is they will carry the Akkom to the City of Carcosa and use it to create a terrible magical explosion, destroying the bridge and stopping the King in Yellow's attack.
I have no idea yet what the City of Carcosa will be like. But I can't wait to find out!
Last edited by CK! (2019-11-30 02:55:58)