Tower of Glass II

[So-Keher]

yes, i agree w/ so-keher. also if you decide you like that tybalt, there should be some mysterious, inky colored doorway with a magic seal on it. also you might want to incorporate  different time streams like 1 hour passess in worl w/ New Edomm while 1 day passes in "this world". Just an idea i got from stargate atlantis but the timestream thing would probably be extremely difficul to manag to manage

That's a great idea. I don't think it would be too hard. All the dm would have to do is keep track of time in "this world" and then translate that into days (it is already the same number of hours) in New Edomm. I think it would help layers, in their mind, separate themselves from New Edomm and make "this world" more strange to them. Strange doors are always a plus.

[Tybalt]

Interesting. I like the time door idea too, I had been wondering about that but that is a solid approach.

A few thoughts on the cults.

1. I'd like the first cult, the one trying to control things, to actually be a sort of fringe outside of the struggling parties. I'd like it to have a post Order of the Golden Dawn/Illuminati feel to it, with perhaps more influence in the Weimar state than say in the growing Nazi party or among the actual Communists. Thoughts? I had also thought of the leader of the cult perhaps being a member of government in some fashion. This group believes that controlling the objects will lead to them having some kind of connection with God/powers of creation etc. They have 5 of eleven objects and known what three of them do.

2. The second cult might actually be just a group of cranks and professors and so on, typical Call of Cthulhu adventurer types. Perhaps with a paranoid ex Freikorps member as well. They have access to one object.

[LordVreeg]

This is getting really good.
[blockquote-Adenturous Tybalt]2. The second cult might actually be just a group of cranks and professors and so on, typical Call of Cthulhu adventurer types. Perhaps with a paranoid ex Freikorps member as well. They have access to one object. [/blockquote]
These guys were pretty much underground in '29', but they fit your bill really well for the second group.
The Thule Society (German: Thule-Gesellschaft), originally the Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum 'Study Group for Germanic Antiquity', was a German occultist and Völkisch group in Munich, named after a mythical northern country from Greek legend. The Society is notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which was later transformed by Adolf Hitler into the Nazi Party. Hitler, however, was never a member of the Thule Society. (from wikipedia)

[LordVreeg]

This is getting really good.
[blockquote-Adenturous Tybalt]2. The second cult might actually be just a group of cranks and professors and so on, typical Call of Cthulhu adventurer types. Perhaps with a paranoid ex Freikorps member as well. They have access to one object. [/blockquote]
These guys were pretty much underground in '29', but they fit your bill really well for the second group.
The Thule Society (German: Thule-Gesellschaft), originally the Studiengruppe für germanisches Altertum 'Study Group for Germanic Antiquity', was a German occultist and Völkisch group in Munich, named after a mythical northern country from Greek legend. The Society is notable chiefly as the organization that sponsored the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, which was later transformed by Adolf Hitler into the Nazi Party. Hitler, however, was never a member of the Thule Society. (from wikipedia)

[Tybalt]

A few thoughts of mine:

Cult #1.

The first cult, which we will call The Collectors, is made up largely of a small group of conservative rather normal seeming people--the leaders include a lawyer, a police inspector, a businessman, a religious scholar and a member of the legislature. They are leaders because they posess five of the items known to belong in the mysterious room. (an oil lamp, a cup, a wastepaper basket, a stone egg, a pair of spectacles and a key) This group has come to believe that they will have some way to contact God/the Divine and gain enormous blessing themselves should they collect all the items proper. The items are listed in a 'holy book' made from the fragments of ancient notes from something called The Codex Draco. There were originally sixteen items but five found their way one way or another back to the room and now are powerless and irremovable--somehow trying to take them (or anything else) out of the room is impossible, somehow the item will become lost and end up back there.

There is also a strange mirror in the room that shows it as apparently it ought to be--with all the items in it.

Three members of the group keep watch over the area--two are students, one is rotated on various pretexts. They keep tabs on who goes in and out, though very few people go in since it is a sort of memorial room.

While the group appears quite normal and conservative, holding down steady jobs and going to church and so on in fact they can be dangerous if provoked or if they felt someone was trying to rob them of an item or withold one, or ask too many questions. They have contacts among some rather dangerous and violent people and will not hesitate to call in favours. Furthermore several of them are willing enough to do personal violence if it comes to that. The one thing they are truly wary about is that the vampires hang out in the area. They don't know why and the creatures seem capricious and dangerous, so they try to avoid them and try not to show too much interest in their actual goals.

Group # 2:
The Watchers (as I'm calling them so far) are really more of a slowly gathering collection of people from various walks of life who have either been freaked out by an encounter with the room or else contact with the first cult. They have come to believe that monsters walk the night and that an evil cult is attempting to do some sort of weird horrific ritual. One thing that the Watchers know is that whatever goes into the room and has the door shut upon it ends up either as part of the room if it belongs there or else disappears.


A few thoughts about the era:

I MAY still try the Weimar Republic thing or something like it, but I wanted to suggest that I have a few very good ideas (I think) on how to make the modern era more like a journey into Hell than anything else. Still working on that but we'll see. If it ends up seeming silly then I'll try something else.

[Tybalt]

One thing I am definitely doing: the evil spriggans as a plot foil. Spriggans are warrior-servants of the elves, though in the current New Edom game few of them remain. They were never tractable servants and now are kept carefully away from human lands lest they prejudice the volatile humans. Spriggans tend to be good cunning fighters but are capable of great cruelty and malice if not held in check. Several were taken through the initial gate. However unlike the elvish guardians they did not lose their memories or get traumatized--they just broke free and began doing evil things as usual. Till rather recently they were resigned to doing bizarre and nasty stuff that kept up their sense of fae magic (they have all by now gone fully unseelie) but then they found out about the Order of the Collectors. Now what they want more than anything is to try to go back. They have begun to slowly try to take over the Order to steal what they have and learn about the other items.

The pcs are unlikely to be able to make an alliance with them--the Spriggans will be entirely suspicious of them and are the kind of creatures to stab first and ask questions later when in doubt. Because of their size changing abilities they have hiding places that are very difficult to get to. They have also been building constructs and using fae magics to build a small army of followers.

[Tybalt]

I've purchased a background area--the thought of doing work on in effect ANOTHER campaign made me feel tired, since I have to get ready for school and a job change in the fall. So instead I went and bought a Call of Cthulhu supplement, since Chaosium does great settings with full casts of NPCs. The one I got is called Goatswood and is set in the Severn Valley in the UK.

[Tybalt]

The Adventure (So Far...please let me know what you think)

The Book of the Dragon

This is the key to the Tower. It is a mechanical type book which has a number of metal picture plates in a movable frame. They flip over if moved to the very edge and depressed--sometimes the metal plates are totally blank. All pictures are etched onto a strange metal coloured like bronze but feeling hard as steel. There are three essential pieces to the book--the cover which enables the rest to be transported and which actually locks the rest into place, the frame is actually a series of wheels and discs contained in a hollow foldable rectangle, and two layers of picture plates that are delicately hinged and must be fitted into the frame.

The main pictures in it are:
1. A series of geometric shapes, starting with a line, a square, a cube, and a cube within a cube.  related to: a person kneeling down.
2. Another Series: A person kneeling down; a person walking; a person running, a person moving all limbs at once.
3. Another Series: squiggly lines going up; squiggly lines going horizontal; staggered lines horizontal (related to a person running)
4. Another Series: a circle; two circles overlapping; three circles overlapping; four circles overlapping.(related to a person walking)
5. A candle gradually dwindling. The candle has a single dash like mark placed on it at regular intervals.
6. The Tower: this has a series of pictures:

- A single door open, related to a picture of a naked man with empty hands raised. (basically symbolically signifying that a person who comes without hostility and in need can enter the tower--they don't have to be naked or totally unarmed) However there is only one room shown. This is the healing room in the Tower. Once entering it people fall into a deep sleep, waking refreshed. If they entered during a time of danger the Tower will only release them once an immediate danger outside it has passed. They have no sense of the passage of time and in fact enter a period of suspended animation.

- A single door open with a room beyond the first one that seems to have a series of lines leading up to where it stands in the middle of the wall. (representing rungs on a fixed ladder) This is the second room and is detailed below. It will be noticed that whenever the book is configured to feature pictures from the series 1-5 and their related pictures that the picture with the single door and the room beyond the first is also in it.

- A door beyond the second door. Note that this is an entirely separate picture. If the book is moved to configure to this as the centerpiece the candle is down to the end and the rest of the pictures are blank.

What Does it All Mean?

The Tower really only has three main rooms. One is a rest haven and entry hall. One is a guard room. One is the prize--the room containing the secrets of the tower.

Essentially the plates 1-5 are clues about how to survive a series of traps and strange events taking place in the second room. Basically a person who is well balanced--both thoughtful and capable of action--can survive.

There is a false impression that the second room is hundreds--perhaps thousands--of identical glass rooms, each with four doors in it. In fact however they are all the same room.

In some rooms time is distorted--in others gravity--in others space. This creates confusion but is also at times dangerous--too much lingering and the Tower begins to attack. It will do the following attacks:
1. The squiggly lines going up and down: these represent a time attack--wavering light approaches. If the pcs do not flee the room they are swallowed up and withered by age, dying swiftly.
2. The squiggly lines going horizontally represent time confusion--events that have already happened might be repeated--people who were thought dead might reappear with no knowledge of how they died.
3. The line leading to square and cube and so on is a particularly violent atttack--the more people move the more permutations of the line's dimensions appear, as gradually whirling sharp edged glass that attacks with the strength of a golem. It cannot really be harmed, the only way to deal with it when it appears is to be perfectly still until it vanishes again.
4. Staggered lines horizontally. The room appears to change so that it starts to close in on itself like a collapsing Escher print. Remaining in the room means being crushed by the collapse of matter.
5. The circles overlapping: it will seem when this happens that every door opened leads to a room where something awful has happened--this shows possibilities of failure. The trick is not to give up but keep moving. Once each door has been tried then there will be a new possibility. Giving up means that there is an increasing possibility of an awful end.
(note: examples of these might include: seeing one's own body having died of dehydration/old age; seeing one's death due to one of the Tower attacks mentioned above, etc)

The candle represents time spent--it shows roughly six hours and 18 minutes. Once this happens then the room appears to be collapsing in on itself--all other rooms that can be seen are falling apart into what looks like swirling chaos. Whatever room a character is in however at this time will remain still though it begins to shudder. A single door is unlike the other possibilities--it shows a black void. If this is entered then the Third Room is achieved.

The Third Room

This is a much larger space, also made of glass, which has a glassy-steel like wavery perfectly circular pool in the middle. By the pool rests a great crystal dragon, a rather serpentine creature whose scales jingle softly, which has a head resembling that of a birdlike reptile with wise dark eyes. This is the guardian of the Tower.

The guardian if attacked is a very dangerous opponent--both psionic and great wyrm. Furthermore it has some measure of control over the abilities of the Tower and can invoke at will the defenses mentioned above.

(more to come)

[Atlantis]

so, effectively, you would need a very smart wizard, a dextrous rogue/ranger/ whatever, and many meatshields to get to the last room and defeat the guardian. Plus some psionic character/thing to defend against the great worm's psionic abilities. plus im guessing that there would be more defenses in the final room if the creaters didnt want anyone getting through. Couldnt a wizard just teleport past all of that? Maybe you should actually put the second and third rooms on different worlds than the main room so there is actually three towers.

[Tybalt]

I think I understand what you mean--what I would like to go with is rather that the different rooms are set to different times so that it amounts to the same thing, do you think that would work?

[Atlantis]

yes it is basically the same only it works better seeing as what i suggested allowed you to use some magic to do it but with this, what would happen if someone used timestop? are they different timestreams or alternate dimensions? or do they rotate through they tower from existing to nonexistent evry so often but you must get through one room, so they rotate to they second room but you would heve to use some spell to prevent yourself from being rotated out of existence with the first room then teleport from being suspended in time and space to the entrance of the second room and so on.

[Tybalt]

I have to admit that I haven't thought of it...I'm going to have to seriously think about the implications of your questions.