#15: The Extraction Expedition or, Destination Excavation
Campaign concept, probably 3.5/Pathfinder.
So a couple of days ago I was reading about extractive industries, which translates to mining companies, and I got to wondering, what if some PCs went on a mining adventure?
Not a case of exploring a lost mine this time, though, oh no. You're looking for something extremely valuable under the ground, that's been thoroughly buried, in the middle of nowhere.
Some ideas for what it could be:
-Ancient history in the area speaks of a falling star, which fell from the sky and burned its way deep underground. Your king's astronomers believe that this 'falling star' was in fact a large meteor significantly consisting of Stellarium, a strange magical metal with incredible ability to absorb and store energy.
-An ancient divine artifact, a magical chalice that transforms any liquid that passes into it into a powerful all-healing elixir, is buried deep below the ground in the area. Once belonging to an ancient king who was blessed by the gods for his kindness, it was lost after a massive siege by undead hordes; now your party seeks to unearth it, whether to cure a supernatural curse on their homeland or merely to gain favour with the god who created it.
-A powerful immortal demon, imprisoned long ago when trying to kill it proved fruitless, is sending nightmares and curses and summoned monsters to torment innocents from afar. Seeing as the bindings that should prevent it from doing so have apparently weakened, the party is sent out to locate and excavate the source of its immortality, whether it be a phylactery or anchor or who knows what, and destroy it so that the demon can finally be killed.
Now, the question is, how does a group of PCs find something buried deep underground?
I looked through the usual divination spells on the Pathfinder SRD, I don't think any of them (even the high level ones) are suited to finding deep-underground artifacts...maybe that's why pirates buried their treasure, huh?
So, with no spell to divine the location of the treasure...the PCs will have to research one! Either develop an ultra-long range Locate Object/Commune With Nature spell that doesn't require you to be right on top of your target, or create a specialised Divination or Find the Path that isn't so affected by time/space constraints, or who-knows-what.
Then after that, there's actually excavating the way to the treasure.
This might be easily done if the PCs can acquire a delver (or a xorn), but without one of those, you'll need aggressive use of Move Earth, Stone Shape, Soften Earth & Stone...and an awful lot of shovels.
Actually, this could be a twist on a kingdom-building game.
Starting with your wagon train of a hundred people or so, you could recruit from surrounding villages and/or tribes, build forts to counteract invaders like gnoll bands and orc hordes, gather materials for arcane research, employ magical dowsing rods to try and narrow down a location, create massive dwarven machines to drill into the ground...
You know, new twist on the same old.
Campaign concept, probably 3.5/Pathfinder.
So a couple of days ago I was reading about extractive industries, which translates to mining companies, and I got to wondering, what if some PCs went on a mining adventure?
Not a case of exploring a lost mine this time, though, oh no. You're looking for something extremely valuable under the ground, that's been thoroughly buried, in the middle of nowhere.
Some ideas for what it could be:
-Ancient history in the area speaks of a falling star, which fell from the sky and burned its way deep underground. Your king's astronomers believe that this 'falling star' was in fact a large meteor significantly consisting of Stellarium, a strange magical metal with incredible ability to absorb and store energy.
-An ancient divine artifact, a magical chalice that transforms any liquid that passes into it into a powerful all-healing elixir, is buried deep below the ground in the area. Once belonging to an ancient king who was blessed by the gods for his kindness, it was lost after a massive siege by undead hordes; now your party seeks to unearth it, whether to cure a supernatural curse on their homeland or merely to gain favour with the god who created it.
-A powerful immortal demon, imprisoned long ago when trying to kill it proved fruitless, is sending nightmares and curses and summoned monsters to torment innocents from afar. Seeing as the bindings that should prevent it from doing so have apparently weakened, the party is sent out to locate and excavate the source of its immortality, whether it be a phylactery or anchor or who knows what, and destroy it so that the demon can finally be killed.
Now, the question is, how does a group of PCs find something buried deep underground?
I looked through the usual divination spells on the Pathfinder SRD, I don't think any of them (even the high level ones) are suited to finding deep-underground artifacts...maybe that's why pirates buried their treasure, huh?
So, with no spell to divine the location of the treasure...the PCs will have to research one! Either develop an ultra-long range Locate Object/Commune With Nature spell that doesn't require you to be right on top of your target, or create a specialised Divination or Find the Path that isn't so affected by time/space constraints, or who-knows-what.
Then after that, there's actually excavating the way to the treasure.
This might be easily done if the PCs can acquire a delver (or a xorn), but without one of those, you'll need aggressive use of Move Earth, Stone Shape, Soften Earth & Stone...and an awful lot of shovels.
Actually, this could be a twist on a kingdom-building game.
Starting with your wagon train of a hundred people or so, you could recruit from surrounding villages and/or tribes, build forts to counteract invaders like gnoll bands and orc hordes, gather materials for arcane research, employ magical dowsing rods to try and narrow down a location, create massive dwarven machines to drill into the ground...
You know, new twist on the same old.