Gods of the Fall - Session Prep - ... Into the Furnace

FINALLY!

What do we know about the Furnace? Well the book says that its all iron, covered in glowing red runes, predates the city by hundreds or more years, and then there's the inside. The inside is bigger than the outside, has numerous rooms, some of which seem to look out on other parts of the world, and occasionally the howling of a predator can be heard. Oh yeah, and sometimes those who go in never come out.

So there's a lot of potential to the Furnace, but it's potential that needs work to tease out and make usable.

The setup of the thing is that the PCs are looking to go in after a recent expedition that hasn't returned. They're already motivated so, in my book, the hard part is done. Unfortunately that's all I have at the moment.

I wrote this WAAAY before we finally played this, so I had a little more than the nothing I claim above. 

Also, look, return of post play notes! 

But ... there's that bit about a predator, and that other one about windows that look out on other places. Both are pretty good hooks and very interesting complications to the story. The party that disappeared could have run afoul of the predator ... or they could have exited the furnace to somewhere else. Honestly, I don't yet know which will be "right."

Lies! I totally have a plan. I just don't know if I can pull it off...

Let's think about that predator. Looking through the Gods of the Fall bestiary I fail to find something that feels a good fit. The "bigger on the inside" and "windows to elsewhere" aspects of the Furnace however have me thinking about weird dimensions. One of my favorite Numenera creatures is also a dimensional creature, the Abykos is just the right kind of predator, and easily modified to consume divine energy instead of energy from Numenera devices.

I accidentally revealed the Numenera connection during play last night. Not a big deal, but I can't help but wonder if any of my players caught on to the abykos' nature. Still, I think they're working so far as an interesting threat/denizen. We'll see how things play out in the end. 

As for the windows that look out on ... somewhere else. That's easy enough to hold in reserve. I have a few ideas. They could just look out on some other place, another part of the world, acting as a form of fast travel. Or they could look out on a different world entirely, that's more difficult because the players will need to get back eventually anyways. As a third option they could open out to another time, the future or the past, either could offer interesting story options.

Yeah, the windows were probably my favorite part last night. It was fun being able to make up scenery on the fly. The first couple were somewhat "normal" but I redeemed myself with a forest of trees that had membranes between the branches in place of leaves, "kinda like bat wings" as I described it. Afterwards I wondered where I dredged up such a weird image, and I kinda hope I get the chance to use it again. 

Most of this session was getting the character thoroughly confused and "lost". Due to a timely "bad idea" and a GMI I split the party which I think worked out. The talky player got his own interaction with the abykos folk and may have made a friend. Or not, we'll see how that works out. We ended the evening just after getting the group back together. So the next session will be a probably wrap up of this story (unless things go long as they sometimes do).