Lamentations of the Flame Princess - Thulian Echoes [LFP0039_oef_2014].pdf

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Thulian Echoes
by Zzarchov Kowolski
THULIAN ECHOES
Thulian Echoes
Contents
Contents
Introduction
The Book
Hooks
Mechanics
Tags or Keywords
Chapter 1. The Characters (Pre-Gen)
Chapter 2. Landing on the shores of Thule
Chapter 3. The Lair
Chapter 4. Journey to the Inner Sun
Chapter 5. The Ultimate Abyss
Chapter 6. Epilogue
This page
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Introduction
So I thought I should probably write an introduction to this adventure because it functions a bit
differently. While it is a location based adventure, it is also a time based adventure. It doesn’t involve
time travel or anything difficult along those lines, but the passage of time is very important to this
adventure being used to its fullest.
The adventure happens in two parts. First is what happens when the players stumble upon, buy,
loot or otherwise acquire a book and then read it. I want to stress first and foremost this book is not
magical in any way; it is a journal. It is specifically the journal of another band of adventures from
over a thousand years ago who went to explore a location based adventure. The players are then
handed a batch of pre-generated characters and get to play through the events in the journal. Note
they are not the same characters transported into the minds of past denizens or any such thing, this
is a pure game mechanic based on the assumption it would be more fun to play through the previ-
ous ill-fated expedition than listen to the Referee drone on and on about it. This is also important
because the location is a pure death trap dungeon that will mercilessly chew up people in cruel ways
they often cannot predict until someone has already been killed. This would make for a terrible
game on its own, but this is the point of the journal. The players can see what killed these ancient
adventurers and then plan their own expedition with the proper tools to succeed where these past
adventurers failed. With the right tools for the job it should be easy! And don’t fret if players think
they are terribly clever by say, stashing all the treasure in one easy to recover space buried under an
X. That is the point, let them be smug, because many of the small actions these other adventurers
took a thousand plus years ago have far reaching consequences that will screw up the “easy job” the
modern PCs had lined up.
Useful Reading
(who are we kidding, useful Wikipedia checking):
The Siege of Jerusalem
The Journey to the Center of the Earth
Vril: The Power of the Coming Race
The Shaver Mysteries
“Dagon”
At the Mountains of Madness
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The Book
The book itself has a soft leather cover which is
an obvious replacement given the brittle pages
within. The book itself dates back to the 2nd
century AD. Contained within is the tale of a
band of adventurers from that era who were
investigating a rumour about a wizard who is
considered half folk legend: a Greek who lived
in Damascus named Xenophon. Some hundred
years prior, before fleeing to far off Thule, the
wizard had been involved in a heist of a vast
fortune of silver in the ensuing chaos when
Titus sacked Jerusalem. Often interpreted as a
metaphor for money that “magically” disap-
peared into the pockets of dishonest legion-
naires, these adventurers believed it was a literal
truth, and it appears they had tracked down
the wizard through the hellish Pict countryside
and sailed to the desolate isle he had for some
reason departed to. They anticipated the dif-
ficult part of their journey was largely done and
it was time to load up their boat and return to
Byzantium, or maybe even Rome itself. What
these people consider Thule appears to be a tiny
island to the south of Iceland not currently on
any existing maps.
Hooks
The nice thing about this adventure is the hook
is easy. The PCs find an old book, or are ap-
proached by someone looking to hire treasure
hunters to retrieve the valuables described
within. It is like a pirate treasure map, if you
can’t find a way for the characters to find a
book, and they aren’t interested in even reading
about getting treasure, they probably aren’t ad-
venturers and you should play something else.
Mechanics
The fact that these alternate adventurers are in
the past means there is a bit of a “metagame” el-
ement that I personally think you should just be
upfront about with your players, and who gives
a crap if they find a way to “game” the system.
That is the point, have fun with it and enjoy it
when the players turn to face the camera after
breaking the fourth wall. That is going to hap-
pen no matter what with this set up.
It also means you can’t bring in new characters
after the pre-generated characters die. This
can be a game problem when someone dies
in the first room and the next two sessions
“in the past” involves them sitting there with
their thumb up their keister. This is where the
concept of “lucky breaks” comes in (and stop
groaning as this only occurs in “flashback”
mode). Count the number of players at the
table, and place this many poker chips in the
centre. These are “lucky breaks”.
A player can take one of the tokens from the
centre of the table after they die to have a “lucky
break” and in fact just be knocked out and ig-
nored for the encounter, waking back up at half
hit points with a second wind. If this seems like
narrativist bullshit, just remember you are actu-
ally playing the story your characters are reading
in a book so it might just be narrativist bullshit.
Maybe the whole thing is lies written by cultists
trying to lure the PCs to their Icelandic murder
coven. That is an actual possibility, but don’t tell
the players.
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If all the tokens are removed from the centre of
the table, the next death by any player character
ends the journal entries. The “historical” play
stops and we cut back to our modern heroes
reading the book in some two-bit tavern.
Likewise if the “historical” party ever loses the
book or it is about to be destroyed, the entries
automatically cease. If the historical party
actually manages through sheer player skill to
escape the island with treasure, the journal will
describe how as they approached the north end
of Scotland, a storm came and they were going
to try to take shelter in a secluded inlet. The en-
tries stop, but should the players go to that inlet
(there is a map) they will find the untouched
sunken ship if they dig around at low tide. They
will reap a bounty of treasure as reward for their
clever play (unless it is still just the fiction cre-
ated by a murder coven of course).
Tags or Keywords:
One thing you will notice frequently in the
adventure are bolded words that represent ‘tags’
or ‘keywords’. These are just short-hand ways
to refer to conditions that are occurring due to
the players mucking around with things. For
example, if the historical PCs buried goblin eggs
on the island, then the adventure might list the
GOBLINS! Keyword as shorthand to indicate
that in the future the island may be infested
with goblins. This on its own is neither a time
saver nor easier to remember; it is mainly useful
when talking about the intersecting influence of
multiple ‘tags’. For example, if the island has the
GOBLINS! Tag and LOST GRAIL KNIGHTS
tag then there might be a complicated logic
path to say that the Lost Grail Knights arrive
and clear out the goblins, unless the FERAL
HOGS tag is also in effect, in which case the
goblins had hog cavalry and thus could over-
power the grail knights. That is the type of situ-
ation where the tags become useful shorthand.
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