Encounter: The Flight of Ajatar (Promotional Price)
In my Dominium campaign (http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaign/dominium), the Middle Kingdoms players have been dealing with a villain named Ajatar since day one. In classic villain form, he has remained just out of reach. They’ve never actually met him face to face. He’s a bit of a cliché — a vizier to the king who has usurped the throne. He cursed the former ruler and exiled him in a form that makes him unrecognizable to his subjects. Of course a few of the more loyal subjects are suspicious of the vizier, and are keeping an eye on a poor, blind vagrant who wandered into town recently, spouting nonsense.
Suffice to say that the heroic PCs have found a way to break the vizier’s curse (of course the blind vagrant was the deposed king!), steal the artifact that was the villain’s primary power source, and chase him from the throne. As the kingdom settles back to normal, the villain has fled, muttering curses against the interfering PCs, and the king has been restored to his throne.
The villain plots his revenge and gathers the remnants of his forces to hunt the PCs. The PCs are well aware that he escaped, and so they’re eager to catch him before he musters enough of an army to cause further trouble. The hunt is on!
When the PCs run him to ground, he has holed up in a labyrinthine tangle of caves that he’s sharing with a band of trolls. The repulsive creatures are serving as guards, but they’re not particularly intelligent. The PCs have tricked the trolls and have fought their way to the heart of the maze. Beyond the hastily constructed door lurks their nemesis, they’re finally ready to confront him and put an end to his foul schemes.
The following heroic-tier encounter is based on what I’ve described above. A recurring villain is a great motivator for players, and gets their blood boiling when they can finally do some damage directly to someone who has been a sharp and persistent thorn in their side. Feel free to use this encounter in your own game.
Input from a customer
Submitted by anarkeith on Thu, 02/11/2010 - 20:02.I got the following input from a friend of mine about the encounter. It's great input, and I'll definitely keeps these points in mind for future encounter/modules. Thanks!
Minor comments about the content (from Mike):
* Lots of different terms used for Ajatar -- nemesis, vizier, villain. I'm a fan of using the most specific term instead of a broader term. (Ajatar is a vizier, but not all viziers are Ajatar.) Example: "The minions of the villain have their own objectives" could be rewritten as "Ajatar's minions have their own objectives..."
* Map p. 2. I wouldn't mind a little more detail for the map, such as a compass rose and perhaps the overall width and length for the module. The compass rose helps clear up possible confusion over direction (e.g., On the wall opposite the door is a stairway that starts
along the left wall and rises to the right). This works for the DM, but if the DM is explaining it to PCs the DM has to translate... "Not my right, your right." Sure, it's arbitrary -- but most maps use the top as north anyway, so might as well go along with the convention. As for dimensions, I don't need every room measured out (especially as the room cards are prebuilt, removing the need for measurement) but it gives a bit more flavor as to overall size involved. Minor layout issue: the map is crowding the text column on the left. Perhaps centering the map in its text column would give it a bit more freedom.
* Objectives and tactics, p. 3. I found it a bit tricky to follow Ajatar's timings and actions. If there was a mini-table describing the actions or choices, that would make it easier for a DM to parse quickly during the adventure. Please keep the explanatory paras to go into detail about who does what to whom.
* Key to symbols used p. 4. Minor page layout problem as the keys aren't on the next page where they are used. Looks like there's enough room at the top of p. 5 for smaller icon versions in a legend.