An Oath

I received this in an email that our CEO sends out every week. This was the issue for New Years:

New Year's Resolutions

To your enemy, forgiveness
To an opponent, tolerance
To a friend, your heart
To a customer, service
To all, charity
To every child, a good example
To yourself, respect.


I would change that into an oath:

To my enemies, forgiveness
To my opponents, tolerance
To my friends, my heart
To my countrymen, my service
To all, charity
To every child, an example
To myself, respect.

Rath Quote

I was going through the Rakdos cards from Ravnica to find something inspiring for Radok the goblin's write-up when I came across this: "Rage, my servants. Our ancient power is renewed in blood." —Rakdos Sounds like something Rath could read from the Book of Rage.

Temple of Venkatesh 8

Just some notes to myself this time:

1- Make sure to use the halfblood archer from the Slayer's Guide as an encounter since you have a decent picture.

2- You can use the maps from the Fortress of the Yuan-Ti whole cloth or as guides for the large temple.

3- Klang from TaleSpin (For Whom the Bell Klangs) could be a human-headed abomination in charge of a group of purebloods who are seeking the Valley of the Sun (if you want to go with the option that the yuan-ti are looking for it as an offering to their god). As per the episode, he disguises his snake-body with robes and a cloak, allowing only his face and hands to show. However, his arms are fake; they are either grafts from another creature (demonic grafts from the Fiendish Codex sound good) or chaositech (if you want to bring a little Ptolus into the game). His movements are not natural for a walking creature so some hints may be dropped about his heritage that way (although with demon grafts the players might think something along those lines, which is good).

Temple of Venkatesh 7

More pictures!

I wanted to get across what I visualized with Venkatesh's headdress so I decided to Google image search some pictures of "aztec priest".

This was one of the first images and it is pretty much exactly what I was looking for:

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-images/Travel/Pix/gallery/2001/01/30/aztec_priest.gif

Each of those feathers would be replaced by a spine. Whether the skulls would be on the outside of the headdress or make up the head part of it is up for grabs. It would look suitably morbid either way.

Here is some jewelry and tattoos from Apocalypto, a movie I knew would have some inspirational material:

http://www.virginmedia.com/images/gruesome_apocalypto_431x300.jpg

Again with a large headdress, although not as peacock as the first one. I figure Venkatesh would have some of that jewelry hanging from his neck and armbands and tattoos or multicolored scale patterns on his body.

Here is another big headdress:

http://ra.2mcl.com/wp/movies/movies-Apocalypto-395.jpg

Without even trying, I duplicated his skin coloration by choosing coral snakes as the temple servants.

Temple of Venkatesh 6

Abominations serve within the temple itself as the priests. Venkatesh is, of course, the high priest.

The surrounding community is populated by halfbloods and a few purebloods not on a mission in foreign lands.

Slaves of all races are found within and around the temple. They perform menial labor and often serve as food.

The inner areas of the temple can only be safely accessed by abominations and snake-tailed halfbloods (though the halfbloods are not actually permitted there).

Most of the traps in the temple are poisoned so the yuan-ti can detect them with their detect poison psionic ability. Some traps, particularly those further in the temple, are not specifically to foil any yuan-ti who would overstep their bounds. The abomination priests know where these traps are and they are mostly the kind that trigger via stepping (rendering the snake-tailed yuan-ti immune).

The abomination temple acolytes are red, yellow, and black banded snakes like coral snakes. They always have black heads.

http://faqinfosite.com/snakesvipersdeadliestdeadlydangerousvenom/images/coral.jpg

The abomination priests are all black-scaled cobras with gold-lined hoods (the inside of their hoods, near the face, have golden scales). They also possess the indian cobra's curled design on their backs, again of gold scales.

http://www.naturephoto-cz.com/photos/sevcik/indian-cobra--naja-naja-2.jpg

I have not decided if Venkatesh has a hood. He is definitely black-scaled and he has the diamondback pattern down his back.

http://www.reptileknowledge.com/images/eastern-diamondback.jpg

I feel a hood would get in the way of, and detract from, the skull and spine headdress he wears. It is possible, however, for him to have a hood but keep it "tucked in" against his head and neck while wearing the headdress. Whether he has the hood or not, he definitely does not display it while wearing the headdress.

Book of Experimental Might II

This just came out tonight and I am giving it the once over. Two new feats intrigue me right from the start. 

Accept Attack - you allow an enemy to hit you (automatic hit, no attack roll) and in exchange you hit him automatically for max damage

Berserk Attack - you can subtract an amount from your armor class (up to your BAB or your total AC, whichever is less) and add it to your damage rolls

Since you are going to be hit automatically with Accept Attack, your AC does not matter for Berserk Attack. Plus, you get to attack people multiple times for automatic maximum damage for the low low price of some hit points (which you have more of thanks to BoXM health and grace rules). Combine this with the Stalwart Defense domain's basic power (extra hp equal to hit die + con mod) and you get one bad mofo.

The Little Wooden Boat

So we had a brainstorming session in the OYT community chat and I think I finally came up with something. And, of course, it is obvious.

Contraserrene once again is brilliant and creative at the drop of a hat, although this time it was not his idea I stole.

The main sail of the model ship will contain hidden markings that serve as the key to the map. The map consists of the knotholes and other wood patterns on the hull of the ship. Some fine filigree along the ship's railing serves as a coordinate system that is detailed on the sail. So, you decipher the sail, discover the markings on the boat, and match them up to find the sunken ship.

Of course, it is not so easy. Because the valley is no longer flooded, you have to look up to find the islands and landmarks that were visible from the sailing ship.

The actual construction of the cipher will come later.

Perhaps the mast, maidenhead, or the pole that juts out from the hull above the maidenhead is detachable and bears a key on the hidden side. This key opens the chests in the sunken ship and disables the traps on them.

Names I stole from Disney Cartoons

1. Officer Parolski
2. Fritter A. Way Lending Services
3. Captain Juan Tumeni

The early episodes of DuckTales are a good source for punny names.

Temple of Venkatesh 5

So, if I want to combine the yuan-ti temple idea with some of the DuckTales ideas, I need to brainstorm a bit.

The point of the sunken ship in DuckTales was to get the party interested in finding the further riches of the Valley of the Golden Sun. But the yuan-ti temple is not a golden paradise waiting to be found. It is an active temple inhabited by a cult of yuan-ti and fueled with human sacrifice.

Did some of the yuan-ti pureblood agents plant the sunken ship solely as a ruse to lure adventurers to the temple? If so, the yuan-ti would be prepared for their arrival. The party would likely be captured and have to escape. That is all well and good, but I imagined an ignorant population of yuan-ti being infiltrated by the investigating PCs, not the other way around.

If the sunken ship was not planted, how does it lead the PCs to the temple? It could be that while searching for the two halves of the map, the bearer of the second half (not the high priest of the coin) was abducted by the yuan-ti. But this implies that the ship was only recently sunk if the PCs' investigation of him lead to the temple.

Perhaps the map-bearer was headed on another adventure that passed by the area of the temple. He was trying to finance an expedition back to the Valley (or just heading to his homeland to put one together) and befell an accident. The PCs then stumble across the machinations of the yuan-ti. But this seems rather haphazard. Even if the map was subsequently found by an adventurer who was then abducted by the yuan-ti, although that is the best choice so far as it directly ties into the yuan-ti "problem" of raiding the countryside for human sacrifices.

I doubt that the yuan-ti happened to build their temple next to the Valley of the Golden Sun but it does now make some sense that they would seek out such a rich and majestic temple as one made from solid gold to welcome their god into this world.

My initial plan was to have the sunken ship contain half the map and cut out the coin priest. However, what if the coin priest was replaced by the yuan-ti. Venkatesh possesses some item or knowledge that is necessary to find the Valley of the Golden Sun. He is either using it for an alternate purpose that fits with his plans (the key to the Valley is also the key to the dimensional gate that will allow his god to enter our world) or he is planning to find and loot the Valley himself (he wants to offer up an incredible tribute to his god when he arrives and the gold of the valley is fitting).

Temple of Venkatesh 4

When I decided to work on the temple, I thought I would do some research. I found a book on Aztec sacrifices at Wowio. It is only 10 pages long (an excerpt or short essay from a larger work) but it gave me a few concrete ideas.

Aztec temples are shaped like stepped pyramids (rather than the smooth pyramid we are familiar with in Egypt). I knew they had stairs on the exterior but I found out that while some temples had one set of stairs up the entire length of the western side (the kind I was picturing in my mind, minus the western detail), most temples alternated their staircases at each level. So the stairs on the ground level went up the western side and then you would have to walk around the edge of the pyramid to the eastern side for the next set of stairs and so on. This allowed for a much longer procession than the single set of stairs and was especially grand when the processors went up two-by-two and split to walk around each side of the temple to the next set of stairs.

Adopting this layout of alternating staircases pushes the PCs through each level of the temple (no climbing straight to the top). And, because it is a yuan-ti temple, the stairs will be moulded ramps. I want the temple to be 5 levels tall at least and the edges of the two lowest levels will be wide enough for full-scale combat.

The top of Aztec temples contained two towers up to 50 feet tall that housed, at their peaks, idols of the god or gods to whom the temple was dedicated. Before these two towers was the large stone altar upon which the sacrifices were made. And flanking the sacrificial stone were braziers that were never allowed to die out. Because the Aztecs had so many temples (most not nearly as grand as the one I am making), their cities glowed at night from the many exposed fires at the tops of the temples.

Following the sacrifice, the body was relinquished to a special warrior who would prepare the meat for a meal to be held within and around the temple. There is no problem with yuan-ti eating the human bodies after sacrifice, so a gruesome kitchen is in order. The bones, particularly the skulls, were then kept in special buildings (more below).

Finally, the scale at which the Aztecs performed their sacrifices was enormous. It was rumored that 70,000 people were sacrificed at the opening dedication of a temple in 1492 in a ceremony that lasted for days. While this number may be exaggerated, a Spanish priest who came to the new world counted 139,000 skulls in one of those special buildings near a large Aztec temple. No one can say how long it took to accumulate them, but the general rule is 1 skull per person.

Here I draw from the Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic. In the early 16th century, a monk gathered up the bones of plague victims and those who died in the Hussite war and brought them together in the Sedlec Ossuary. Some time later, an artist was commissioned to use the bones to decorate the ossuary and to fashion them into pieces of art. The masterpiece was a chandelier containing every bone of the human body. There is also the Skull Chapel in Poland (Kudowa-Zdroj, Kaplica Czaszek), where the entire room is covered in skulls and bones with an altar (this time a Catholic altar) at the far end (thankfully the altar and crucifix are standard, rather than bones).

The yuan-ti have an ancillary building specifically for holding the skulls (and maybe other bones) of their sacrifices. I am not yet sure whether the entire building is constructed from the bones of their victims or if it is simply covered with them (and then whether inside or both inside and outside). There would no doubt be a nefarious altar inside as well as the standard evil necromancer yuan-ti and guardians who animate from the very bone-covered walls and ceiling to attack. I do not think I would go so far as to have the entire building animate as one giant skeletal abomination unless I made the entire building out of bone (with no actual wood, stone, or other walls and ceiling underneath).

Temple of Venkatesh 3

I am watching Duck Tales on YouTube these days. I think the opening episodes of the series would make for an interesting series of adventures.

A mysterious old man breaks the Beagle Boys out of jail. In return, he wants them to break into Scrooge's money bin and steal a model ship.

The model ship is actually an ingenious map leading to a sunken ship filled with gold from the Valley of the Golden Sun. The twist is that the ship sank miles inland after sailing over flooded plains during a horrific monsoon season. Following the map proves difficult because it was made using the flooded landscape instead of the dry, desert landscape that normally exists.

The design of the coins in the treasure is familiar only to a few sages who study ancient history. They know the design is from the Valley of the Golden Sun and that the last known appearance of such coins was in a remote mountain village. Traveling to the village reveals that the descendant of one of crewman on the sunken ship lords over the locals thanks to his possession of the Golden Sun coins (revered as religious artifacts by the people there).

This "high priest of the golden sun" possesses his ancestor's half of the map leading to the Valley of the Golden Sun. In the show, he commands the people because he possesses the sole Golden Sun coin until Scrooge shows up with a single coin from the sunken ship. Since two "high priests" are now present, the people follow either one's commands. The high priest demands Scrooge's coin in return for his ancestor's half of the map.

The other half of the map was taken by another of the crewmen from the sunken ship. He decided to leave the remote mountain village and set sail on the open ocean. The currents lead him far south to a frozen tundra. There, he met an ice people who horde all the colored objects they find. His map was confiscated to be put on display in their museum and he was thrown into a prison cell and left to die. Scrooge and company showed up and managed to abscond with the second half of the map.

The map showed the location of the Valley of the Golden Sun. They arrived on a wide caldera ringed with humongous golden disks hanging on the inner lip. Far down below, an ancient, vine covered temple made of solid gold still stood undisturbed. Making their way inside, they were faced with three doors. Behind the first was an endless expanse of golden coins. Behind the second was a similarly endless expanse of gold dust. And behind the third was a solid wall of gold bricks. Opening all three doors, however, trigged a trap that would ultimately destroy the temple.

The volcano below the temple was filled not with magma but with liquid, molten gold. Upon triggering the trap, the golden disks lining the caldera's lip hinged out and reflected the sunlight into the temple and down into the molten gold. The magnified energy of the sunlight caused the liquid gold to boil over as the temple began to crumble. Finally, the caldera fell in on itself, burying the temple and everything else beneath hundreds of feet of rock and earth.


Working from that general outline could be a way to engage players in the Temple of Venkatesh.

Temple of Venkatesh 2

So the big challenge for me is that I have some coolness planned for at the temple but I need to figure out how I am going to get my players there.

I could be cheesy and just have the temple be the entire adventure. The PCs head into the jungle and arrive at the temple after a little wandering. They sneak around, duck inside, make a ruckus, fight Venkatesh, banish the anathema, and then go home.

But I want to be a little bit more involved than that. I want the PCs to find out about the yuan-ti through their machinations in the human world and then go investigate the temple. Basically I want this to play out like 90% of the modules I read. The PCs get involved in plot X, find out about plot Y while resolving X, and then resolve plot Y. I have no idea why this is the formula but why mess with it?

Just wanted to get my goal more clearly stated than in the last post. I need a string of events that bring the PCs to the temple without railroading and without being too obvious yet without being too hidden (at least as they go along; I never want to bring about the feeling of "we're done, what next?" until they destroy the temple).

Yuan-Ti Temple of Venkatesh

I am going to try something here. I want to make an adventure that culminates in discovering and destroying a yuan-ti temple. I am going to document my thoughts and progress here. And, because I know how I want the adventure to end (the temple), I am going to work backwards from there.

The highest ranking bad guy is a yuan-ti anathema (from Fiend Folio), though at CR 18 I doubt I will use it as written but, instead, utilize the idea. The anathema is a 25ft long giant snake body with a humanlike torso, two arms, and six snakes instead of a head. They are incredibly potent psionicists and very evil to boot. In my adventure, the anathema is worshiped as an incarnation of the god Merrshaulk.

Because of the tremendous power that could be attributable to the anathema, I am not sure if it is already present in the temple and being served by the yuan-ti worshipers or if, like in Red Hand of Doom, it is being summoned to this plane and the PCs arrive just in time for its incarnation.

Regardless, the actual big bad guy of the adventure is the high priest of the temple, a massive half-black dragon yuan-ti abomination with class levels (likely cleric but maybe some fighter-type levels thrown in). He wields a huge sword (either a great sword or falchion) and his symbol of office is a wide headdress made from the spines and skulls of his victims arranged peacock-style. Because of his size, the headdress is not unwieldy in normal wear (although it would be difficult to fight in it). This abomination has long been in my villain repertoire but he did not have a name yet. I am calling him Venkatesh (which is actually the name of a colorectal doctor where I live).

The rest of the temple is filled with the more exotic and snakelike yuan-ti cult members. The cultists that can pass for human are often lurking in the human world, accomplishing their leader's goals there. Some human stock are kept as slaves and sacrifices (perhaps even serving as food; have to check what yuan-ti eat).

The temple is going to be designed for snakelike creatures with architecture foreign to legs. When I first thought about this, I thought I was being clever in imagining ramps (with molded curves) and poles, both smooth and "branched", to serve in place of stairways. Then I read their Monster Manual entry and found out both were listed there. My legacy of independently having the same ideas as others lives on.

Another idea I had was to sprinkle traps throughout the temple that activate when stepped on. The yuan-ti, having snake bodies, would slither over the ground without setting off the trap (the snake's weight is distributed over the length of the body on the ground, so it neither pushes directly down on that one particular flagstone like a foot would nor does it exert a body weight's pressure while on the plate like a foot would). Intruders, however, would. This allows me to add traps that affect the players without breaking verisimilitude by leaving players wondering how the yuan-ti get anything done while avoiding all the traps.

That is it for now.

The Feast of St. Stephanie

A quick idea: a cleric who saved a town from destruction became a local hero. He took up residence nearby and served as their special protector for many years. One day, he joined a band of adventurers on a quest against a lich. When he returned, he was a woman (thanks to a curse) and she remained so for the rest of her life. Each year, on the anniversary of her return to town, all the residents dress in opposite clothing.

The Eve of Burning Devils

In the Northern provinces, citizens maintain a long-standing tradition, called the Eve of Burning Devils. This archaic holiday is so ancient that nobody remembers where or why it started, but most believe that the ceremony started when a group of devils were chased out of town. During the holiday, local citizens run through the crowded streets carrying flaming barrels of tar, which they relay to randomly selected runners. The runners plow through the streets, pushing onlookers aside to clear a path. Still, it is a great honor to be chosen as a runner and hopefuls clamor toward the flaming barrels, anxious to be chosen to partake in the ritual. The ritual ends when the last runners clear the village and roll their tar barrels into the nearby lake.

Adventure Hook: As the adventurers watch, the last tar bearer clears the city, but arrows fired from a nearby copse of willow trees kill her before she can reach the lake. In the eerie light of the swiftly spreading fire, a two-headed giant in chainmail lifts a heavy fist and screams, “Tonight the devils are with ye!” -------------- This would be a peasant festival in Aelonia. The two-headed giant has company, either actual demons or a group of monsters and cultists.