Ep 28 - Journeys Through the Radiant Dump Stat

[@stephenlucas8836]

A plot hook for the Radiant Citadel hub: its a bastion of hope, giving people a good reason to fight tooth-and-nail for it, but it makes it a prime target for hags (especially Night Hags that live in the ethereal plane) because that kind of thing offends them (and for funzies). It takes only one Speaker to deactivate all the Jewels and isolate Citadel, and only they or their successor can reactivate them. You just need some typical hag/fiend persuasion. The Dawn Incarnates could retract Speaker membership, but that is unprecedented. The replacement Speaker must also live long enough to get elected and pass the Incarnates' trials (while not being another hag stooge). It's the party's job to destroy the Coven's hidden agents and curses before the ethereal cyclone consumes the Radiant Citadel. Also, in "The Fiend of Hollow Mine" and "Between Tangled Roots" chapters, there is mention of foreign "you fill in the blank" nations that had invaded the member civilizations in the past. Suppose they are anything like the Forgotten Realms nation of Thay (or any other FR ruling body that is not a tiny good-aligned dictatorship). In that case, they want that slice of that Radiant Citadel trade no matter the violence, unnatural, immoral, or unethical methods it takes to get a monopoly, even if this will probably result in getting invaded by the angels of Akharin Sangar or destroying the Citadel out of pettiness.

[@stephenlucas8836]

People say Gygax's 1e dnd was only dungeon delving, but I hear a lot of stories like from the Wandering DMs channel or talks about Ed Greenwood's home games about How encounters can be so dangerous that talking is the best and only solution (unless your a murder-hobo with a deathwish) (you here complaints from time to time about sections in particular modules were players & DMs wished there was an option to talk their way out of a clearly avoidable and annoying fights like the pirates encounter or the sewer dungeon in the first chapter of Decent into Avernus). It's a forgotten art of having a party encounter a beholder or adult Dragon at lv 5 and must negotiate to survive the encounter. Also supposed how much hope you have for humanity, as a repeated theme in Ed Greenwood and Armoured Core games is how dangerous merchants with money are when it comes to eliminating someone they think could possibly interfere with their bottom line.