Pathfinder in the Mists

[Ryan Naylor]

Sea Spawn
Mucous cloud (Ex): The sea spawn master is surrounded by a cloud of mucous.

I assume the mucous cloud is only functional underwater?

And did you base your Sea Spawn Minion rules off of the module Wake of the Watcher? I'm running my players through that right now...they hated those little things.

Yes and yes.

[Ryan Naylor]

Vampyre

Just a question, considering their lack of special abilities, did you consider making Vampyres defined by their class levels, rather than giving them racial hit dice? If so, what made you choose?

As monstrous humanoids, they should have at least some racial Hit Dice.

Mainly though, it was Tristen ApBlanc - the vampyre CR and the human + ghost template CR are the same, so it means he has the same CR in day and night forms.

[Ryan Naylor]

the module Wake of the Watcher? I'm running my players through that right now...they hated those little things.

Is it in a Ravenloft game? If so, is the mood fun? I'm hesitating to program it in my RL campaign.

Joël

Mine was, and although I altered a lot of it (the mi-go were illithids, for example), my players had a blast.

[Mortavius]

the module Wake of the Watcher? I'm running my players through that right now...they hated those little things.

Is it in a Ravenloft game? If so, is the mood fun? I'm hesitating to program it in my RL campaign.

Joël

It's not specifically, though as Ryan said I'm sure many folks have adapted it. Wake of the Watcher is the 4th of 6 modules in the Carrion Crown adventure path for Pathfinder. The whole path is based on horror, and there's a module devoted to each different horror monster(s). As I said, my group seems to really be enjoying it, enough so that we've played from the start and they still want to keep going. Got a game planned tonight as a matter of fact.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

Inza Magdova Kulchevich (Sithicus)

Female Vistani (Vatraska) Rogue 4/Witch 6

Are you aware of the Rog6/Wiz8 stats for Inza in the Dragon #351 article by Jim Lowder ?

Ravenloft: The Shadows of Sithicus, by James Lowder - The World Serpent Inn does open in Ravenloft, though always randomly, and only for a night (and even then, darklords can never enter). This article covers Sithicus in the wake of Lord Soth, covering the various locations in the domain, as well as the Guilt of Sithicus effect. Three adventure ideas are given, and are followed by full stats for the new darklord of the domain, Inza. Sidebars cover a random domain table to determine where the World Serpent Inn appears for a night (oddly, the Burning Peaks are listed here), the Blessed Knight (the idealized good Lord Soth who remains in Sithicus), and a lesser artifact: the memory mirror.
--from a thread on ENWorld

[It is missing in the Drawing room Dragon index for Ravenloft articles btw...]

Yeah, the Dragon index in the drawing room is quite out of date. A more up-to-date index is here:
http://fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/Cat ... n_Magazine
(I'll have to put a link there from the drawing Room list)

but even the Mistipedia list doesn't have that one. Odd that it slipped through, especially since I have the issue in question. I'll have to add it.

(FWIW, her 2e writeup, also by Lowder, was in Dragon 258's "Land of Spectres", where she was a dual-class 3rd level Thief, 5th level wizard)

[Nemesio]

Its great to finally have stats for the Darklords of the Scattered Lotus archipelago, after waiting years and years, and years...

[Ryan Naylor]

Any further thoughts on them, the domains, ...?

[Nemesio]

I definitely have thoughts. I'm just not a writer by nature, so it takes me a while to find words for what I'm trying to get across... Conversing via writing is a wonderful thing though, so I'm trying to discipline myself more... In person I never shut up, so I guess writing must be my happy medium.

I would love to see your take on the Shujin of the Six Islands of the Sun, since PCs are more likely to deal with them than their father, IMO... As you know, I tried filling in some details on them further back in my own thread...

This is definitely a subject that interests me, seeing how so little has been done in general with the eastern themed domains... In fact, it could use its own thread... I've seen the subject discussed on here multiple times but it keeps getting put on the back burner when it comes to Quoth the Raven, etc...

...So far I have only browsed over what you've got on, but I'll back to you with more feedback after I take a closer look...

Thanks again for always striving to make sure that the Mists of Ravenloft never dissipate...

[Rogold Gildenman]

Master Naylor, am I correct in the belief that you were responsible for the 'Children of the Night' article on the Black Duke, that knight-nightmare Fiend of Nova Vaasa?

[Mortavius]

Any further thoughts on them, the domains, ...?

I enjoyed reading the domains Ryan.

I've never run a game in Rokushima Taiyoo or I'Cath myself. It makes sense to put them together in a cluster. And I think the addition of the other domain, as well as making the Poison Sea itself a domain are good ideas.

I can see the Poison Sea as being very eerie...but other than the hazard of crashing on the rocks, there's not much happening there. I understand that you're trying not to tread on the shoes of the other seas in Ravenloft, and I think that's good. But I think unless the PC's are trying to defeat the Dragon, it would be eerie...and then get boring.

I like the Land of Spiders. I don't know much about the history of Asian countries in real life, so if I wanted to do this justice I'd have to do some research. But I enjoyed reading about the domain. I like the Darklord who's trying to not grow old...has he thought of just becoming undead? I also like the Great Wall present there.

[Ryan Naylor]

Master Naylor, am I correct in the belief that you were responsible for the 'Children of the Night' article on the Black Duke, that knight-nightmare Fiend of Nova Vaasa?

I am, yes. I also edited CotN: D and wrote the introduction.

[Ryan Naylor]

Any further thoughts on them, the domains, ...?

I enjoyed reading the domains Ryan.

I've never run a game in Rokushima Taiyoo or I'Cath myself. It makes sense to put them together in a cluster. And I think the addition of the other domain, as well as making the Poison Sea itself a domain are good ideas.

I can see the Poison Sea as being very eerie...but other than the hazard of crashing on the rocks, there's not much happening there. I understand that you're trying not to tread on the shoes of the other seas in Ravenloft, and I think that's good. But I think unless the PC's are trying to defeat the Dragon, it would be eerie...and then get boring.

Thank you.

Poison Sea: Well, the water itself is potentially poisonous (or at least noxious), so that's another threat.

First of all, I don't really mind domains that are one-trick ponies. With all due respect to the FoS Gaz, there's just not a lot you can do with Monette, or Keening, or Demise (for that matter, there's not a huge range of things you can do with the Sea of Sorrows or the Drowning Deeps - they're mostly just ways to get from domain to domain). And I'm absolutely fine with that. There are 75 canon domains and a billion non-canon ones - not every one has to proffer a wealth of adventure opportunities. In most campaigns I've seen, there are a couple of domains where a number of adventures occur, and a couple of domains where one occurs, and you never see or hear about the innumerable others. Sometimes, it's fun to have a domain where all you have to do is confront and kill the darklord.

Having said that, there's no reason why Yuhaehan is only suitable for killing. Even as a villain, you can have him rear out of the sea to extort treasure from passing ships. You can have a battle of wits (a la Bilbo and Smaug in the book of the Hobbit - the old trope of sucking up to an angry dragon to avoid it killing you). You can raid its underwater lair for its hoard while trying not to awaken it, or while hoping it doesn't come home.

Yuhaehan could be a benefactor. It has no reason to like the shujin, for example, and probably particularly not Tsien Chang. If you're opposing them, you could seek out the dragon for help, or advice, or magical items. It can cast plane shift on others, so you can use it to get from domain to domain if you can convince it to help you.

It can also cast alter self, so it can appear in human form as well as dragon form.

I also think the eeriness of the Poison Sea is a good opportunity for the uncanny horror of modern Korean and Japanese film. Given the entire land is cursed, I can see eerie curses attaching themselves to ships that pass through (a la the Ring or the Grudge, for example). While I don't think there should be sea zombies or sahuagin, you could quite easily justify incorporeal undead, particularly gestalts formed of the splintered psyches of whole villages crying out in pain and fear as they were cast beneath the waves (a caller in darkness perhaps? Haunts? Nothing that has actual human form, but is more along the lines of malevolent energy, that may or may not be intelligent).

What about glowing lights sometimes spotted beneath the waves? They could be will o' the deep (to rejuvenate an otherwise pretty obscure monster - for that matter, a will o' sea would be right at home here) or something even worse.

You also have the fish of the Poison Sea. Even if they're not traditional sea monsters, there are a lot of reasonably mundane fish you can attack PCs with - crocodiles, sharks, king crabs, sea cats, dinosaurs maybe, giant turtles, animate seaweed etc etc.

And you can also have adventures raiding the sunken villages. They could have magic, loot, even technology, that would be of interest to traders. There's an entire civilisation down there, so close to the surface you can more or less see it. If only the water wasn't poisonous, and full of horrors...

[Ryan Naylor]

Any further thoughts on them, the domains, ...?

I like the Land of Spiders. I don't know much about the history of Asian countries in real life, so if I wanted to do this justice I'd have to do some research. But I enjoyed reading about the domain. I like the Darklord who's trying to not grow old...has he thought of just becoming undead? I also like the Great Wall present there.

I can think of a number of reasons why you wouldn't want to seek immortality in a mouldering slab of fly-bait, but you raise a good point.

A common theme across the Scattered Lotus domains so far does seem to be a lack of corporeal undead - incorporeal dead, demons, oni, etc yes, liches and ancient dead, less so. There are penanggalan, jiang-shi and kuei-jin, but (the first two especially) are not the sorts of things you'd actually want to be - eastern undead tend to be pretty monstrous and unpleasant. Ke Le also can't become a penanggalan, because he's the wrong sex. Perhaps, even though his wandering has done a good job of seeding kuei-jin across the rest of Ravenloft, Mayonaka is one of the only ones in the cluster. Ancient dead is hard to do yourself - it requires veneration from others, and he probably doesn't trust his family enough, or have a public enough profile, to follow through with it.

So I think you could mount a reasonable argument that he is unaware of "Western" immortal life undead, and has no interest in "Eastern" strains. Undeath is not for everyone - Meredoth, for example, is similar, as is Hazlik.

Perhaps his honour and the importance of his family to him also prevents him from becoming undead. He doesn't want to rule forever - he wants to make sure he lives to see his enemies vanquished, and set up a strong doan with an heir he is proud of.

[Mortavius]

That all makes good sense.

Thank you for elaborating on both the Poison Sea and Ke Le. The highest compliment I can pay your work Ryan, is that after reading it, it makes me want to run a game in that setting, and that's something that neither Rokushima Taiyoo or I'Cath ever did for me.

[The Giamarga]

We need hopping vampires!

A great resource/addition for a quasi japanese eastern horror is the Kaidan setting line which can be inserted into RL quite easily and even if you don't want to insert it whole cloth, the line features a lot of material that you can pillage. (Such as the Haunts books.)

@Ryan: have you checked out any Kaidan products? I'd be interested in your opinion of them. They have an excellent free adventure available: Frozen Wind