Fortuna Caeca Est

Changes and additions to Turn of Fortune's Wheel

Ayleth, Venrie, Wake, get out! Spoilers!


Introduction

Turn of Fortune's Wheel is so riddled with problems it's not even funny. Not to mention I don't want it to be funny-- I want it to be an adventure! So I've decided to be a little bit conceited and rewrite large swathes of it. Those changes are outlined here, so if you're one of my players, get out! Leave! You'll only ruin it for yourself.


Setting

These changes aren't here to replace any flaws in the original, but rather to make other changes possible and also give the setting a bit of identity (aren't we over the multiverse trope by now?).


To begin with, we do away with the concept of a multiverse. The game is set in a sphere, which is a crystalline structure physically hovering in an endless, largely empty void. The sphere contains the cosmos, which are all the planes and the space in between. The empty space within the sphere is the Astral sea (or Astral plane to less educated scholars). Floating within the sea are a number of planes, most importantly the Material plane, its echoes the Shadowfell and Feywild, the Elemental plane, the sixteen Outer planes, and the Outlands. The Material is the largest of the planes and sits as a disk at the great circle of the sphere. Its echoes constantly intersect it down various lines, as if a disk were set wobbling in zero gravity (you will quickly find that these places cannot physically exist in normal space). The disk of the Material has a hole in the centre, where sits the torus that is the Outlands. The Outlands constantly rotate, connecting with each of the Outer planes as they do so. The Outer planes are spheres which rotate against the Outlands torus, constantly passing through the Material and its echoes as they go. The Elemental plane sits as a torus entirely enveloping the Material. Since the Elemental and Outlands have no direct contact, the Material plane is more suffuse with elemental energy while the Outlands are more suffuse with planar.

Other spheres may of course operate differently, but the one described above (henceforth referred to only as "the sphere") is the setting of this adventure and many others. It was created by Primus, a sentient machine which forms the core of the Outer plane Mechanus. Primus, and the whole of Mechanus itself, is a machine designed to perpetuate its own existence. The entire thing is dedicated to creating a copy of Primus, a time machine, and a new sphere. The new sphere's intial conditions are tailored to avoid mistakes that Primus detects with his army of modrons. Every 289 years, mechanical servants of Primus issue forth across the sphere to analyse every detail of its workings and broadcast their findings back to Primus. He then takes that data and uses it to alter the contents of the new sphere as he sees fit. One day, far in the future, he will send the sphere and himself back in time. This is the origin of the sphere.


Plot

This section will see updates as the plot unfolds.


Little needs to change about how the beginning of the story happens. In my game, the characters all died at once to the vargouille curse. Shemeshka is intended to be a far more major character in this telling of the story, meaning the details of the yugoloth section have been changed significantly. As it happened, Shemeshka told the characters that a rival information broker sent the yugoloths after R04M, and that they should follow their trail as they chase him and kill them if they catch up. This is a lie: Shemeshka sent the yugoloths herself, but knows them to be incompetent. She delights in the chance to use a group of powerful and memory-less adventurers to do the task instead, but she needs them to find the mosiac mimir, so she hopes that they'll kill and loot the yugoloths to solve both her problems at once.

Why does she care about R04M at all? Because he's the only way she can release the corrupted modrons. Gzemnid's realm is utterly sealed, but R04M can still send signals to the modrons. Shemeshka wants to use that connection to hack X01 remotely and cause him to march them back into Sigil.

To reiterate, Shemeshka's plan is to release the misinformed modrons, skewing Primus' perception of the sphere and thus altering its own initial conditions. The ensuing chaos will create an environment where she stands to profit enormously by selling weapons and information to warring planar forces. In a later confrontation, she'll even try to persuade the party to work with her, creating a cosmos where forces of good reign supreme (she'll just take her cut selling to those forces!).

My party was kept at level 5 for this section, making direct combat with the yugoloths impossible. They killed the tieflings and escaped from Thlaarsh and the mezzoloths with the castle, leaving the three cronies available as recurring villains. They'll keep popping up to remind the party of Shemeshka's influence and let them discover how they were lied to.

Three extra levels of story will be added to the end of the adventure, where the party travels to Mechanus to confront Primus himself. It's here that the returning-to-life glitch will be explained. Primus will argue that their continued existence constitutes a paradox, citing a time they died and attempting to write them out of history. Each time he does so, he'll stop time and Renesnuprah will transport a character back to the scene of a death. They'll have to perform their own resurrection, with Rene facilitating communication between them and the rest of the party and giving advice on how to avoid a paradox. Because their souls are still trapped by Shemeshka at this time, the resurrected versions of themselves are permuted and uncertain. Additionally, Shemeshka herself catches on and tries to stop the time-travel duplicates.


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