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Shadow Vault
You are going about your business, engrossed in some routine task of your daily life. What happens next is matter of perspective. Earthquakes, tidal waves, or gales of incredible force appear without warning, ruining your immediate surroundings and sweeping away the unlucky. You escape instant death by a hair, it seems, and attempt to find something bolted down to hold onto while the world rips itself apart. Your search is short-lived, however, for all of sudden you feel yourself floating, weightless, and your stomach jumps to your throat. You begin to fall. The formerly solid earth is translucent as you clutch at it, to no avail. After only a few seconds, the sun's light is gone and you plummet into a void. It is only a few more seconds before you notice the acceleration of your descent increasing dramatically. You fight as hard as you can to drag air into your lungs and resist the G-forces, but soon the pressure becomes too great and you lose consciousness.
Everyone rolls a d20. They wake up in order highest to lowest. The first person wakes up. You can barely see, a faint red glow comes from a strange red moss which grows thinly through cracks in the floor. Your hands and feet are bound (weapons, if any, lie just in sight but out of reach) to a pillar of cold stone. Suddenly, you becomes aware of another person. Someone behind you is clearly struggling against something and calling out. Round 1.
There is inhuman grunting and growling. You hear fists bouncing off tough hide. Ping. Round 2.
There is the sound of dragging, a grunt, and then a scream that slowly disappears into the depths. Ping. Round 3.
There is another grunt. Ping. The sound of the scream fades before there is any sound of impact. Round 4.
As soon as the Primal Spirit sees that they are awake, roll initiative. If it gets a turn, the first thing it does (Quick Action) is bellow and call for help. Roll a d4. That is the number of rounds until reinforcements (2d3 Primal Spirits, all melee 2d3 AP 2) arrive. Remember that it turns to black mist when it dies. They also try to Grapple and drag players into the pits.
The PCs were given two huge clues as to which way to go- the ping direction and the locus of enemy reinforcements. How quickly they cross the bridge and how much they have to fight is up to them. Once they gather on the lift, the threat from below is gone unless they go back down that way.
There is a fight at the top of the lift. Primal Spirits throwing rocks from cover. Rocks are thrown hard and have a stat line of 20/60 1d4 AP 3. Once the fight is over, there is a round or two of peace before the scrabbling starts again from beyond the door. In 1d4 turns, more enemies climb up.
They can attempt to jump across the crashed pillar or break through the door. Jump is Earth check at Area DC (Air as DEM or <= +5 makes roll easy) but the handle is broken. The door has 10 HP and is a Hard roll. Complication- enemies keep climbing and gather on the other side of the door. Once the big boy comes up though, they scatter.
Once they make it to the lift they are transported down again. There are stairs up and down. There is a door barring each way. The top one is decorated, but not ostentatious, and open, the bottom is elaborate and locked. The bottom door is covered in symbols and patterns. The most prominent are (Lore check) the three element symbols surrounding the Fire symbol in the center. The door has no visible lock or handle.
If a player is killed here, they meet the Shadow and their soul has the choice of whether to stay and haunt (help) the party or to pass on.
They are in the Shadow's Lair in the bay outside the Earth City. They come up through secret doors to empty Census Office dead drops and find a rowboat. They are many miles from a different port of call with no food or water (they are in the ocean). They found water in the Shadow Dungeon, but no food. The apes dissolve into black mist when they are killed.
How is this place important to this story? There are five levels to this dungeon. The characters start in the middle. They cannot go down now. The door has three element locks. Only someone with +10 in a modifier may open one of the locks. They must come to this place much later to open that door and learn how to wield the Fire element to destroy Malvern. Malvern has learned to make unique Elixirs for himself. They require murder, but now he can take these and become essentially impregnable. They require Fire to destroy him. What about Lightning? What is a lich in this game? As long as his soul is not destroyed, he will regenerate. How can something the party does in the spirit world lead to Malvern becoming a lich?
The little camp is next to the door. There are old, brown bloodstains on the ground, but it is unclear what happened because the camp is intact. A powerful seer gained some insight into what was going on and killed himself using a powerful and lost ritual which hid him from the Shadow's sight. He left his shaman tome behind the spirit wall so only those with the proper skills could get past the guardians and exit. The tome appears unaffected by time. His soul lives on in the spirit world, though it is trapped within the bounds of the vault. The Seer saves anyone who dies and gives them the option of leaving with the party or staying behind with him and serving the Shadow. He had hoped to find a way to free all the souls here, but discovered that it was impossible (Jon Brown, it was too soon) and now languishes here. Kadmin is his name. Is he despondent or insane? Did he keep his cool or not? They see him casually destroy a primal spirit that manifests, using a manipulation that will become known as Kadmin's Bolt, which somehow weaves all the elements together into one bolt, something that is impossible now.
- Characters climb up the stairs, seeing dim light, real light, as they ascend. They immediately see the Shadow Fog door and the camp with a very old blood stain on it. They may rest here. Anyone with Occult Element Science may make a Hard DEM roll to find traces of a shaman's ritual circle. If they fail to find it now, Shamwow finds it automatically once he has the tome
- False Wall is a Spirit Wall, but they cannot bypass it yet
- There are five tables, one for each character. The tables are empty and nothing happens until someone touches the items on the last table. Each character is transported to a room at random and is trapped there until they solve their haiku riddle. Characters who are finished may get randomly transported each round to a character who has not solved their riddle yet to help if the character requests help. If a player fails, they temporarily lose a point of the element modifier corresponding to their wrong guess
- Behind the false wall is the first sigil or note of the Dream Riff. Playing it causes reality to flex and the two worlds to overlap visibly, almost like double vision, but otherwise has no effect. The other two sigils are only visible in the spirit world. Also, there is Kadmin's Tome. Shamwow can discover his name and the transition ritual inside of it, however almost all the pages are blank
- The Dream Riff allows someone to be in the spirit and physical worlds at the same time. That's the only way to open the way out: pulling the lever in both worlds at once
- 50% chance of a random encounter whenever Shamwow transitions worlds due to the opening of the portal. He finds the Seer's shamanic tome in the Riff Room whose pages will fill in as he follows the path to the Seer's soul. Only the first page is filled in and allows him to take himself and one other into the spirit world
- Shamwow sees Kadmin in the spirit world, but he ignores them and mutter to himself as if mad
- Specials: 1) If a player examines their dominant element in both the material and spirit realms they get a permanent +1 to that modifier. Must pass a Hard check both times, they get to add their DEM to the roll 2) If the player with the human riddle places their hand on the table instead of the sword, they get a vision of the marching Ergon, the Monk, and Baird- Mass Effect style.
Quests for each character:
- The Seer for Shamwow
- The Dream Riff for Excelsior. Meet Survivor Jones in the Scar. The Dream Riff right now lets someone be in the spirit and material world at the same time. Eventually it allows her to summon legendary spirits to aid them
- A mysterious coin for MckFlickens. He can use it to enter a secret room in the Scar and get access to the family emergency planar cache. Prickens has left him something. The coin does nothing here, but as soon as he exits into the real world, he feels a gentle tug in the direction of the Scar
- Fridge meets Pyrrohs in the Scar
- Willie hears of the great Earth Sage Logan. Let him see Earth sigils which lead him somewhere
Enemies:
Primal Spirits of Humanity.
- Normal ones, larger combat forms, ranged ones that throw rocks.
- They are not natural creatures. Their faces are oddly human.
- They vanish into an inky mist when defeated. They can only be permanently killed with Fire (think the light of the Sun).
d4 Primal Spirits appear every round. 1 HP and half damage (same AP) because of the light filtering in. Let players roll to perceive this. To defeat the elemental, all its limbs must be blown off and head hit within the number of rounds allotted. The elemental is not dead, however, just chased away for now. Roll to see if characters perceive this.
- When the elemental takes damage, roll a d4. It retreats after that many rounds. It has several abilities linked to its limbs and head. Knocking off those pieces reduces its power. Roll at the beginning of each turn so the party knows what will happen.
Head: Anchors all its limbs in the ground and vomits rocks. Creates difficult terrain. Failing an Earth or Air save knocks player prone and Immobilizes them until they pass the save.
Left Arm: Reaches into the ground and comes out with a boulder to hurl. +5 to hit with Maul damage profile (AP8 2d3ADV) and Earth/Air save or fly 10 ft back.
Right Arm: Reaches into the ground and the hand comes up under a character, crushing them for 1d4 dmg/turn bypassing DR. Must make an Earth/Air save to escape.
Legs: Stomp: Smashes foot into the ground, throwing adjacent characters back and/or targeting an adjacent character and trying to smash them. +5 to hit with Maul damage profile and Earth/Air save or fly 10 ft back and knocked prone.
- It can sink into solid matter and disappear. The characters only have d4 rounds to defeat it before it disappears and returns d4 rounds later fully healed with all its limbs. Ground shakes one round before he explodes out of the surface.
- If Earth damage is done to it, regenerate a limb each time.
- They do not truly defeat it, it is only dismembered and they can choose to destroy it later with Fire or leave it be/befriend it.
Riddles:
Send answer just to the GM. "/w gm" and to whisper to a player is "/w [User Name]"
Items on table: chunk of rock, glass of water, lump of metal, a sword, hollow glass sphere swirling with smoke. The sword does not appear to the PC with the human riddle unless they ask for help, then it appears. They can still get the vision, but they now have the sword and so are very likely to not do that.
Earth
Heat hastens my stride
But stillness is my kind fate
To breathe me is death
Air
Whorls swift and fickle
All creatures heed my summons
A sailor's rowed curse
Water
Peace above hides depth
Without me, no connection
Pebbles change the world
Tralaticon
Contain, Ward, Cycle
The truest double-edged sword
God's own molten sin
Humans
Fire gives life and death
Made of all, but missing one
Hand pressed to God's throat