SPOILER ALERT !!!

I am preparing to run Damned Cities, volume 2 of the Haarlock Legacy, and I find myself needing to do a lot of reorganizing.

First of all, I am going to use this adventure as the first one in the Haarlock minicampaign, to be followed by House of Dust and Ash and then Tattered Fates. But Damned Cities is a bit of a nightmare in structure: things are written in no particular linear order in the book and I find I need to make a flowchart of events to guide the players through this investigation. And page back and forth through the book to find the information I need, spread out over the sections detailing the Dramatis Personae and the section on the 13 mirror fragments etc.

Also, there seem to be a lot of spoilers and dead give aways. If you run the adventure as is, they will find the body of a Risen very early in the story. This tips them off right away that the murderer is not natural. Also, the fact that it is about mirror fragments is very matter-of-factly divulged to them. I feel they have to do nothing special for the clues to just fall into their laps, they just need to be at a certain locale and a conventient npc will come up and spill the beans.

Does anyone have the same experience?

What did you do to restructure Damned Cities?

Hi Laughing God!

first of all, congratulations for putting things in the "right" order (DC first!).

While I have not started to play the modul, I have the following suggestions to ale your worries.

An early corpse :
Well, if you dislike this "early-on", how about simply leaving it out? It is not that much of a problem. However, the crime scene and the description of eye-wittnesses (if anyone tells anything!) will likely point toward something strange. As soon as they get the Info about Juvinal Praetor and the word "Warp Dabbler" they will be about daemon-hosts, undead and stuff. ...but since Praetor is dead, they might be scurring.

Shards of Information:
Well, how about the followinig? Bal Gray received the "friendship gift" wrapped in the red clothes. He took it, but did not open it. The "Friends of Bal Grey" can tell that he despised witchcraft and simply chose one of Juvinals priced items just to hurt him personaly. Anyway, he took it home still wrapped into this red piece of cloth. This way, the information will not be available until the pc get somebody who knowed what was Praetor´s gift.
Options:

• The Mandato might know (through a snitch that was part of Juvinals crew)
• The Rag-Kings might now (the rag-baron who negotiated the peace-talkings might still be alive and might know. This functions on the basis
  that the "gift" was part of a "fine" that was arranged for. Bal chose this item because he knowed it would hurt the warp dabbler.
• A friend of Bal Grey might know. The problem could be that said "friend" is actually in the Custody of the Enforcers and would thereby need to be
  either interrogated ... or "bought free".

By the way, a thing one really should make a seperate sheet from are the "already occured" murders from p.28 (Callisto; Mam´sel Zamura Rolart; Legate Senh-Ar Dole; Viscount Hiram Sur´Seculo; ). And most importantly: how and what the pc can learn about them.

Sokken and Juvinal Praetor aren´t mentioned here. They ARE part of the list, but since the book covers them one does not need much further work.

For the others, only Callisto belongs to the Undertow, the rest are either noble or wealthy. Having them pinned down on one sheet and generating a little "Investigation success table" should not be to much of an effort. I would suggest to have to different charts. One for the "underbelly", one for the "regular" society.

yeah I did that ... and added some info that smart pcs can glean from investigating the four deaths that have already occured: talking to the relatives of Seculo, going through the police reports on the legate money-lender, and doing an autopsy on Mam'sel Zamura. They can also witness the crime scenes of these murders, or what's left of them. The legate's appartment is slowly being refurbished, with grey paint covering the gore-splattered walls, and buckets and plastic sheets against the rain that leaks in everywhere. Mam'sel's house stands empty and forlorn, boarded up, looted by the Undertow and shunned by everyone else, the crime scene thoroughly contaminated.

I've also made some clues interdependent. Only if the pcs manage to get through the meeting with the Rag Court without any hostility, they will learn from them the fate of Sokken and gain the lead to Yantra.

I added an extra scene for the 13th fragment: it is in the care of the Pontifex, but fashioned into a large stained glass window - whose colours seems to write eerily sometimes, they learn from preacher Quenas Stiles when they find the Pontifex' dead body. Stiles, ofcourse, is the 'last faithful man' they will meet in the alternative futures of Dead Stars.

They will find the Pontifex dead and the window shattered, the shards tossed about as if the killer(s) was/were searching for something, giving them the clue that they want a piece of glass/mirror. If they present this information to Eupheme Tassel or the Rag Court, they will learn that Bal Grey, Callisto etc also had such mirror fragments.

This way they have to gather the clues together themselves instead of just having them mentioned by npcs they meet.

The Laughing God said:

Excellent! Especially the "tie in" with the later event of DeadStars.

While your were posting this, I was writting up my ideas for "Investigations of the early murders" and put them up:

http://rapidshare.com/files/435234570/DC_TheEarlyVictims.pdf

Since you already do have your own, they will not be of too much use to you. But they offer an alternative method of getting the leads for Yantra (and thereby Sokken). I added some more rumours in the "info" given to the pc as well.

Cool!

I am also changing the trigger events. Somehow the death of the Justiciary (in the Clockwork Court) seems way more significant and terrifying to the populace than just staging the turmoil level to the second tier. The death of the city's ruler should crank it up all the way to the third level: mayhem (riots in the street, looting etc).

So I am using the death of the Pontifex as the trigger event to get to turmoil stage 2, and will kill off Xabius Khan next. and then the Justiciary.

The Laughing God said:

I am also changing the trigger events. Somehow the death of the Justiciary (in the Clockwork Court) seems way more significant and terrifying to the populace than just staging the turmoil level to the second tier. The death of the city's ruler should crank it up all the way to the third level: mayhem (riots in the street, looting etc).

So I am using the death of the Pontifex as the trigger event to get to turmoil stage 2, and will kill off Xabius Khan next. and then the Justiciary.

Sounds like a good idea. But I would not kill the Enforcer General before the Justiciary.

As far as I see it, killing him AFTERWARD is part of the plan. As the city is as war, the resources of the Enforcer are spread thin. In addition, is much easier for Skarmen go toe-to-toe with the Enforcer general during this turmoil. Since Khan is even better protected then the ruling council (he saves his own hide!) he needs to bring a little army to bear. Doing so outside of the "cover" of a full fledged riot going on, this would raise to many attention and might backfire as the PDF might reign in.

Under the circumstance of the final riout, so, this might either go unnoticed or the PDF might already be bound elsewhere.

True, true! Will have Xabius killed last. Ofcourse by then the pcs will have a fragment of their own, probably Tassel's, meaning they will draw the attention of the Risen as the city seethes in turmoil and tears itself apart ....

Btw .. what happens if a psyker does psyniscience on the Arbitrator Marshal or the ones in his thrall?

wouldn't he find out rightaway that they are under daemonic control, thus ruining the adventure?

The Laughing God said:

The Marshal himself is under the effects of the "Mask of Seeminig" (see his description and p 243 in the core rules), so all attempts will be -30. In addition, always make such roles in secret. Since this is an adventure breaker, I would not be above fudging this dice role.

I had the PCs never meet Skarmen except in the Folly, where the lingering warp taint would mask any attempt by the psyker do find any taint on him.

The exception is of course the Clockwork Court, but Skarmen disappears so quickly after the combat the psyker had no chance.

As for the initial investigation, I think the PCs actually discovered things mostly on their own in my game, or by actively seeking out certain NPCs to get information. For example, I never had to force the Rag Court encounter it happened by itself as the party's scum tried to contact them. This made him even feel connected to them (just as the arbitrator connected to the Arbites) and made him feel bad when the Enforcer did crackdowns on them in Stage 2. I even had them kill off Tiber in a Miller's Crossing inspired scene where mandato in plainclothes executes any undertow that surrenders and the enforcers laugh, only to recieve alot of gunfire from the undertow left inside.

They even specifically searched for other places the Risen may have been at the Clockwork Court, which led to the Eupheme Tassel encounter and alot more information that I decided to parcel out as she needed time to translate the old granfathers records.

I can't really think of any useful information the acolytes did not have to work to get, no freebies except of course the mission briefing.

As is said earlier in the module: The point is not to make it hard for the acolytes, the point is to make them believe they have to work hard to get the information and solve the mystery. If everything falls into their lap by scripted events they will get bored and be mostly concerned about the combats.

BTW I suggest using Horde rules for the "drunken rioters" unscripted encounters, just make sure they have primitive weapons or they will one shot rank 4 acolytes easily - but this is a good way to handle large mobs and make acolytes in heavy armor fear for their lives. I didn't really bother myself since my acolytes are rank 8 and had been through really tough Risen encounters just before, but I did describe the situation and basically "fast forward" past the minor stuff until the climactic showdown.

Good luck!

Friend of the Dork said:

Yeah I was thinking along the same lines. The Mask of Seeming helps too. The Risen too are quite not-so-subtly rendered foolproof against investigating acolytes: they can jam pict-recorders and transmittors, they walk in an illusion so no one recognizes them for what they are, and the arbites have their minds foggy and clouded by the Daemon

Friend of the Dork said:

I wrote the scene like that too ... Tassel will need some time to decipher the secrets before she can inform the acolytes. Also, if they fail to get a fragment from the Lady Amorite, they might receive one from Tassel, so they will always end up with one.

The Laughing God said:

Yep yep. In fact though I sorta regret having them get Tassel's shard, because it was so easy. Also, they got the one from Amorite easily as zombies with AB 2 cannot outrun someone with AB 6 (or 3 for that matter). Despite them walking through fire to get away the PCs could just run outside and make sure the zombies don't get away.

Friend of the Dork said:

Remember that important elements of the story always travel at The Speed Of Plot (Joss Whedon stated this to be the speed of Serenity). Of course the zombies, or at least the shards, can make it out if the story needs it. Maybe they will use the service tunnels that the PCs didn't know about, maybe they will close a blastdoor behind them, maybe they can climb the walls, maybe they have assistants in a hovercar that they can throw the shard to, maybe they have the "improved sprint" talent.

This inspired a funny idea. I believe I'll let Skarmen put the shards from Tassel and Irandi into an envelope and send them to himself using the regular postal service of the quorum administration. That will even give an interesting paper trail for the players to investigate, and seems to be a sufficiently cocky way to smugle out large suspicious pieces of glass. I could even let the package be delivered (but not opened) the next day, while the acolytes are in Skarmens office talking to him. I have the feeling I've subconsciously stolen this plot from a film or a book. Does anyone recognise it?

Does anyone know where I can find the psychic power Suggestion?

Both Skarmen and the Mirror Daemon have it, but I can't find its description anywhere, so far.

Thanks!

The Laughing God said:

Disciples of the Dark Gods page 28

Never mind this post. Found the answer to my own question

Mellon said:

The speed of plot only works if you have the plot beforehand (also I thought it was Michael Strazcynski of B5 who said it). In the case of an RPG, anything can happen and that's the beauty of it, even the GM will be surprised sometimes. Maybe the players come up with a solution the GM don't expect. I kinda like to roll with it rather than arbitrarily make up some excuse for why it doesen't work.

None of those suggestions for zombie getaway are part of the module, also it does not say the acolytes can't or should not get it.

Most of those don't work against my acolytes anyway, except maybe the magical blast door from nowhere connecting to the sewers. But that's very lame and I have always hated it when NPCs have automatically escaped by closing a door behind them (never mind the time it take to do so).

The hovercar could have worked, but that implies someone else than the zombies are up to this as they probably can't drive. Even so there is no guarantee that would work, the acolytes could have seen the car of already there, or run outside faster than the zombies and gotten to the arriving hovercar before them. Maybe if Skarmen teleported himself inside using his Sorcery and got the shard from one of the zombies without the acolytes seeing it, but again it would have to be planned beforehand.

One idea the acolytes actually had when they got the first fragment (from tassel) was to leave the planet altogether with it ... more later.

btw do we know more of the Mirror Daemon? What kind of entity is it and where does it come from?

I know it is also called the Shade Daemon (next to its stats block) or the Beggar of Truth and I recall seeing somewhere a daemon called the Shade of Misrule?