r/abomination_vaults

So, there was a strong pacing to the book so far until I reached Floor 5, 6 and 7, I do understand that its where the party will see the forces of Belcorra, but still I knew it was going to be months of combat and little bit of progress story wise, so I took a page out of the Abominations Vault Expanded ideas, where the Arena was active and running, so this is what I did.

In context, it has only been 100 years after Belcorra "died" and everything getting "activated" has been a couple of months, but who got the short shaft of the stick was Urevian that has been stuck there for 100 years, it has plot holes and so on, but this is what I came though by having my notepad, a pen and 5 hours in the airport.

TL; DR:

Each floor became a scene to select how they wanted to proceed in a social or combat way (I did had a list of the NPCs like the Yldaris drow and in case they attempted to fight anyone in these places ready, also in each "tour" I would highlight cool areas that each map had):

Floor 5 (Arena / Combat): They fight off a champion of Floor 6
Floor 6 (Laboratory / Speedrun method): They have to chop off stats and would strengthen a mutant army
Floor 7 (Prison / Moral choice ) Exchange one soul not one will miss for the health and benefits of many and avoiding a bloodbath

Quick changes:

Floor 4 has a elevator that goes to Floor 5, but in this floor there is a hub area for the Darklands where various caves converge, most of them leading to The Wrapped Beer tavern.

The Wrapped Beer:

This place is a place for entertainment mostly, Darklands creatures like goblinoids, mycoids, trolls and so on were placed here, the players would arrive to a scene where the Shadow Malice band is playing and the Drider bouncer is expecting another band to show up to play, at that moment the PCs arrive and can put a name to their band and start performing.

Here they have 3 characters that represent a faction.

Kradek (Arena): Chafkhem and most of his followers are devoted to Szuriel, kinda a deity of war that opposes Asmodeus, they are training the army of Belcorra, yes, but they only care about glory by its own strength and spilling blood in the arena. Chafkhem and other followers were foreshadowed earlier, watching the party fight and taking notes, so he wants to meet them, Kradek is a gladiator type of character that will offer the party to part-take in glory of battle in the arena (and access to floor 8), he will lead the party to Chafkhem and in that small tour I just described and gave a general area theme of Floor 5 as training grounds and arena to test out the fighting skills.

Arena and laboratory drama:

Chafkhem wants the party to fight in the arena against the secret champion of Jafaki, technically, Jafaki and Chafkhem have an agreement, whoever send their best champion to fight and their champion wins, they get to decide how the army is going to be composed off, good old fashion fighting or with mutations and abominations, they said that when they were ready, they would send their champions as the ultimatum of whose ideology is right.

So Chafkehm and Jafaki assistants are always taking notes of the battles in the arenas, where they fight warriors against abominations to see how they can improve the power of their army, but since Jafaki is always improving their creatures to defeat the people of Chafkhem, he needed someone Jafaki has never seen do battle to face whatever is his strongest champion, so the PCs are the perfect match for it, if they won, they would show that the real way to build the Belcorra army would be though this type of individuals and not mutations.

Vesh (Laboratory) is a hooded seugathi who is always looking for a prime subject to bring to Jafaki to experiment on, when it sees the PCs he is fascinated by them and wants a sample of them, so he offers to be escorted to the laboratories, he gives them a token that allows them to be escorted to Jafaki, who is obsessed with doing "evolution" on "perfect" creatures, working under Belcorra he was given ample of equipment and creatures to experiment on, more loyal to Belcorra, he is loyal to his obsession given by his neothelid master.

So for the laboratory floor I went for the Fallout 1 F.E.V mutant base vibes, all type of creatures the players has seen so far, but mutated or mutilated with tubes and so on to be "enhanced" but all of them were fleshwarping and unstable creatures when it came down to mutations.

Jafaki (acting as the Master from Fallout 1) for X or Y reason thinks that having a sample out of 1 PC is enough to stabilize the mutagens for his creations, so he is asking for 2 fingers from 1 hand and 2 fingers from the foot, causing a whooping -1 Dex and also offering them a "augmentation" as a payment (I would have to homebrew something) and in exchange he would offer passage to Floor 8 too.

If they agreed to it, Jafaki creations would be perfected and could fuse monsters and the mutant army would triumph over the arena, upping their numbers and making the Belcorra army out of Frankenstein monsters.

Then we have Silas (Prison), he would be interested in taking the players to Urevian, who would act out as Hades from the Hercules movie, a guy who is just fed up with the waiting on Belcorra and wants to leave now, so Silias gives the players a black chalk that when you write down the sigil of Asmodeus, it opens a pathway to Urevian to talk about the offer he has.

The hell prison

Urevian was the funniest one to RP, here in the quick tour of this area while they were seeing the portal, they could see a army of devils / demons begin built, a force to be reckon with worthy to attack something bigger than Otari.

However in Urevian contract he was expected to lead the charge against Otari as a testing ground of Belcorra army, he needed a X amount of units to be able to do that, however he was also had to give units to Jafaki to experiment on as part of the contract, since he thought it was going to be a quick and easy one to get the Rajani soul, he agreed, Belcorra died and now he was stuck on a endless loop of not reaching enough units because he had to give more units to Jafaki to experiment on, two steps forward and 1 step back and had to wait until Becorra can give the greenlight to act but that hasn't happened yet.

The bargain context:

Regardless of how they got to Floor 8, I promised them that when they reached 8th Floor, they would gain 2 levels (Chafkhem would have given them gp to match and a few magic items, Jafaki would be a aberration type of feature and quick and easy access to Floor 8)

But Urevian was different, he treated the PCs well and offered this: 1 extra level in the form of past souls experiences of people who did deals with him that they didn't complete (instead of gaining 2 levels, they would gain 3), 500 gp each in the forms of ruby's, Belcorra weakness theory and a small horde unit to fight against the outpost in the floor below.

What did the players had to do?

Just invite Carman Rajani to have a duel with Urevian with the cooperative sword. They didn't have to sign a contract, the moment he got the Rajani soul, he would "drop" by mistake all the items that were offer by, so it not doing a "contract" with the devil, they would need to drag Rajani into the fight, since he is aching to do a redemption, he would save everyone bloodbath since he could die in battle and avoid the infernal forces invasion and he would die a hero.

They talked about this for like an hour.

Urevian always justified what every the players came up with, the blood in theory would not be on their hands and even if he broke off Belcorra, he would still need the soul of Rajani to fulfill his end of his contract to other entity that wanted the Rajani soul.

They got ported near Otari, walked to the Rajani house where him and his daughter were having a heartwarming dinner after Carman has tried time and time again to do redemption for the things he done.

They tell him in front of his daughter (because she wont leave his side, since he is everything he got) of the whole situation, Rajani wants to fight for honor / valor / redemption, the daughter wants to stop him (I did say as meta-game that he could be persuaded to run and hide magically)

But the plan continued, they escorted Rajani to Urevian, the daughter spit in their faces, did 1d4 of damage per hit in a small round of combat and obviously couldn't hit the PCs and just left her crying in her own house.

Urevian then had a duel against Rajani in the arena, it was only descripted who uneven was that fight, that if it was a combat, Urevian would spend his 3 turns just slowly walking towards Rajani while Carman would be throwing everything at Urevian.

When he reached Rajani, he just tortured the guy (and also broadcasted this to every resident of Otari, including his daughter in the dream realm because of Ysondkhelir), for 100 minutes, 1 minute per year stuck here, so he did things that went beyond the torture that a mortal could take, the players went "oh fuck" real quickly.

Afterwards the infernal army would collapse, Urevian would leave this place and leave in the PCs rooms the "gifts "and a quick access to Floor 8.