Heading west to the Sacred Lands and Sundom
Despite the return to familiar, HZD-canon territory, the story progression here is new, and potentially the longest in the module. It is a main quest, intended to take characters up to maximum level (or similar), and to provide a Final Battle with the Big Bad, with a clean point to end the campaign.
Fair warning for canon purists! As this story is Skyline’s attempt to tie up the loose threads from HZD, it will almost assuredly be strongly contradicted by the plot of Forbidden West. YMMV.
Story elements
This story is a traditional main quest: the party continues to investigate and confront small challenges, leading to bigger problems which then need to be addressed, until the biggest problem is found at the root of it all.
The high points are:
- The party learns of a mountain village which has “disappeared”.
- It’s something of a trek to get there, and the weather seems to fight against them.
- While stealthing around to avoid attracting the attention of a mountaintop covered in Stormbirds, the party finds Cauldron ALPHA.
- ALPHA, the very first cauldron brought online, is home to an instance of AETHER, the first Subordinate Function created and brought online.
- AETHER, originally immune to takeovers by other AIs but now beginning to falter, sends the party to the Meridian Spire to confront a corrupted MINERVA, who holds the (crypto) keys to AETHER’s survival.
- The party has to figure out how to get into the Spire, despite the teeming guardians from every tribe, trying to ensure the Spire can’t be misused again.
- Findings at the Spire point to a cold backup facility for GAIA Prime, GAIA Dual, located in the ruins of Las Vegas, now deep in Tenakth territory.
- Once the party gets inside, they learn the facility came online automatically when GAIA fell, though it has been struggling to restore power due to human encroachment and (unintentional) damage.
- The party can recover pristine backups of GAIA and each Subordinate Function, carrying them out in holostorage backpacks.
- Restoring GAIA requires first restoring enough of the Subordinate Functions, though the party discovers they must sever communications for each facility or risk it falling to the AI virus.
- Once the party gets fed up with their work getting corrupted, they track down the source of the signal to a giant solar farm and facility in the desert outside of Yuma, AZ.
- The source of the AI virus is revealed to be another AI: an “upload” Ted Faro made of his own cognitive patterns, named simply FARO, intended to tear down GAIA to ensure humanity would truly start over.
- Boss Mode Kaiju Battle decides the fate of humanity.
A reoccurring theme is the asymmetry of power: the party needs to get into or out of some place, or into or out of someone else’s shadow, and has to figure out how to do it with their limited resources. While it’s easy enough to take down a small army of machines one at a time while sneaking into a cauldron, there are ramifications for trying the same thing with Meridian, or the Tenakth territory. This should encourage the party to try different approaches, and rely on the different strengths of party members.
Another reoccurring theme is “one step forward, two steps back”. Sometimes doing the right thing, or achieving the best possible outcome, still leads to setbacks. Severing the communications of AI instances in cauldrons may keep them from getting corrupted by the virus, but it also shines a harsh light on the weaknesses of one AI acting without the support of the others. Shutting down the AI presence in an area might slow the spread of corrupted machines, but it might also have negative ecological and other effects on the lives of the people living there.
Keeping the pace
This storyline is meant to be a slow burn. Its ending obviates or short-circuits a number of the plot points of the other storylines. If your party wants to be completionist about discovering every little thing, you should try to steer them off to side quests revealing the other stories before making too much progress here.
This story contains a number of “pause points”, where the party needs to travel, or there’s no hard time constraint between two tasks, etc. These points can be used to deflect the party aside for a while before returning.
Or, if the party wants to just main quest and skip all the sides, that’s fine, too. Just remember to scale down the encounters toward the end to match the party’s progression.
Along the way
As this storyline takes the party through every canon territory, has them interact with every canon tribe, and deals with the fallout of some canon story points, there’s plenty of opportunity for embellishing the world of Skyline. Throw anything and everything at the party to keep their spirits up: fetch/gather quests, escort/delivery quests, kill/defend quests, deal chains, herding missions, rescues, etc. Have them meet new and interesting people who subvert their expectations. Take on some temporary NPC party members and set up long-term allies while other sour into sworn enemies.
The big bad
This crown changes heads a few times.
Stormbirds: These machines have typical machine motivations: they are trying to accomplish their ecological tasks, and need to scare off or deal with the encroaching humans.
AETHER: While this AI is not overtly hostile to the party, its limiting directives make it difficult to work with for a time. The party will need to decide whether they trust what it says, and how much help they want to offer.
Rogue AI: Lore-loving players will likely assume this is HADES or HEPHAESTUS, until it is revealed to be a corrupted MINERVA. This AI wants to corrupt AETHER, or at least its production facilities, to further evolve the weapons capabilities of Stormbirds and other aerial machines. Human settlements are so much easier to assault from above, after all. MINERVA, once freed, wants to either be shut down for good, or to help connect all uncorrupted AIs in something resembling their original configuration.
The Spire’s Armor: Not an enemy, but definitely something to be overcome. This group is concerned the Spire will be misused by another AI, another cult, another mad Sun King, etc. A group of adventurers not accompanied by the Seeker does not immediately inspire the trust necessary to start mucking about with the Spire’s internals.
The Tenakth: Depending on party composition and deeds, the party may have some positive reputation with some Tenakth clans. However, the constant in-fighting of the tribe makes such clout tenuous at best. While each Tenakth has their own motivations, there’s a common thread of doing what it takes to ensure survival, success, and perhaps even dominance.
GAIA: The mother AI was not created to believe the Subordinate Functions could ever act as independent AIs. As much as GAIA’s prime directive is to preserve and nurture the planet, we already know the AI will take aggressive, destructive action when necessary. It will take some convincing and hand-holding before GAIA is ready to work together, instead of trying to wrest control back to the way things were before.
FARO: This AI is anxiety and irrational decision-making personified. It is focused on ensuring humanity does not carry forward the mistakes of its past. Each step which takes humanity too close to that line must be corrected and punished, so it can’t be taken again. The AI would rather see the human race fall into oblivion, and the earth start over with a new species millions of years from now, than continue down the wrong path.
Set pieces
This storyline drafts in the slipstream of HZD. It takes the events of the canon story, and the people affected by them, and extrapolates where they might have gone next. The people and places will be very familiar, to a point, but with some additional color and detail.