Midnight in Shackled City
Mixing high and low fantasy from the Midnight Universe and Paizo's Shackled City Adventure Path in a struggle against unstoppable odds, a pantheon vying for domination amongst a volatile world. Utilizes all 3.5 supplements amidst deadly grandeur.
From a journal you find about the other continent tacked to certain billboards in the city of Cauldron:
The golem sits atop its perch, relegating to the cosmos all his innermost things. He was born in fire but his slow emergence marked his split form as unrelated. No one had anticipated that his undulous form would break apart, spreading the four clusters to the four corners of the earth. The icy sword lent an air of rerefaction to his piercing gaze, although the deep blackness enshrouded his forme with a blinding black effulgence. Effusively Barkon, lest his influence spread like a toxin, superceding all parts to have preceded him. The trade with the kingdoms, gearing up for war. The climate is unsettling. Storm arises from the water. With errant waves poking their heads out of the surface to fill their lungs. Perhaps you have military contracts and perhaps and perhaps they know where to discover the travel of planes. No accumulator sits by have withered lending a few coins between his legs. The enemy have their supply lines currently out and so the volcanoes flow to bat the path to no avail. The icy climes of the north led to movement sword gill dash upon the wrath in pentacles. The demon fin is the glazed with breath staring unbidden by the anvil, but the make is the snow. The slats ravel surrounding the north allows for the climbers to reall the pallisades outside the portcullis and often now being ride standard, reinforcements - the four frades of the city crawl Treops in the home, between touch and the unknown.
Rules included but fudgy.
The demon starts your party at level 6, having investigated some ruins your party is headed into the city when there is an appearance of fire elementals. You have 3000 gold to spend on items and 10,000gp of magic items, whether that's one or many is up to you. The golem is what you understand the demon to be, and it has wrecked Cauldron, forcing the inhabitants into a riot. You can hear the chaos accruing even as the fire elementals seek to bar your path. You will select one of the Greek Gods as your patron, and if you're a cleric or a druid, this becomes your school which you can assemble from the various specializations or just go with a plain old association, i.e. necromancy means Ares. You're travelling to the city to fulfill objectives of travel, having met your companions on the road or in the last town, but the map is that of Midnight's Aryth. You could dabble in a bit of States-esque history and say that you even journeyed across the sea to reach Cauldron, the alternate name for Baden's Bluff (Cauldron being from the Shackled City Adventure path, so the specifics of the city are purely those of Cauldron but positioned at Baden's Bluff).
Zeus waves his aegis and the prophet Tiresias taps his staff wanly upon the resounding floor. "The Delphic prophecy has yet to assemble itself like so many of the carpets of Klytemnestra," Tiresias mumbles. Iphigeneia has buried her father Creon, and Orestes meets her by the graveside. Word has it that their intervention in Zeus' affairs means the Dark God appeared out of nowhere in the pantheon as a result of Creon's death. When the sky is stained black or there is a comet soaring through it, sages of Baden's Bluff align their astrolabes to discover the parallax of the constellations of Zeus, desperately trying to bring into focus the events precipitating the rise of Izrador. Izrador is kind of like the Lord of Light, halflings on the Sea of Pelluria using sextants made of brass to solicit the wind for the proper direction.
Whisperings have it that the volcano is bound to erupt at some point, but why is anyone's guess. Some speculate that there is activity below the city, some kind of "alien" magic that is akin to the worship of Cthuloid entities, but just as a point of reference, seeing that the game is high fantasy. The idea is that the stars have some kind of firy nature to them that lends an air of elementalism to the research the party is bent on. The city awaits saviors who are willing to brave unbeatable odds (hence Midnight) to re-align the cosmos for the benefit of whatever gods he chooses to worship (and they will help you out in choice battles).
This message was last edited by the user at 08:10, Mon 03 July 2023.
