Remixing Spelljammer: Light of Xaryxis

As mentioned on a previous post - I have been running Light of Xaryxis adapted to the wild randomness and sometimes paranoid tactical noses of my players. Just running them along the 'suddenly, neogi' path of the adventure would not fly so it has been fun so far collaging the set pieces and encounters from the adventure into a new structure which gives the players better motivations. It is beneficial to me also as some challenges and encounters get tripped where I would have hand-waved things along by instinct - so it makes things a bit more unpredictable and interesting. I have been a big fan of the Alexandrian remixes so I thought I would write up these mid-point notes.

What I did was:
Read through Light of Xaryxis (LoX) and rework the framing of the campaign.
Adapt the adventure by breaking it up into 'plot chunks' which could be separated.
Created a system for all the action to happen in.
Dropped the various plot chunks into places that made sense.

On the read-through I spotted the major plot points and tried to wrap the whole thing more coherently so it would stand up to players poking at it. My primary concern with the original version is that it has a bunch of railroad elements that I had very little confidence my players would follow. In particular, my players high background level of planar knowledge means that if I gave them a ship and set them out on the astral sea to look for allies they could skitter off in all sorts of (reasonable) directions so to make my life somewhat easier I reworked the whole thing into a fight over a specific crystal sphere but tried to keep all the plot beats otherwise.

To adapt the adventure I blocked out the various encounters and tagged them to locations in system. This gave the players options of what to go after - for instance they found themselves with the choice to go investigate the Lucent Edict or search for Gargenhale, later to go chase down Xaryxian agents in allied areas or head on to try and bring other allies on board.

I generated a system using AD&D Spelljammer crystal sphere creation rules - got something fairly big and interesting. After dicing it up I went planet by planet and used Worlds Without Number to create the inhabitants. I tweaked everyone present to try and use everyone from Boo's Astral Menagerie - using Sussurans for lizardfolk, Astral elves, etc.

To finish we ended up with:
0. The Snuffed Star – the guttering remains of a star
1. Gorondirs Throne – small, with a fiery moon that makes it habitable, dwelling of the Sussurans
2. Mystra’s Mirror - small, flat waterworld
3. Hrungirs Roar - titanic air world with a fiery moon and a habitable earthen moebius-strip, seat of the local astral elves
4. The Great Belt - chain of asteroids within an extended atmosphere
5. Obsidian Depths - vast water world, inhabited only by great beasts
6. Fanthirs Ruin – enormous earth world, once populated by dwarves, now a mindflayer hold
7. The Ring Sea – water belt with rocky clusters and a great moon within it
8. Tears of Joy – tiny warm water world

I reworked our starting hook to be a crew of privateers given a letter of marque by the githyanki to go find out why their agent (Commodore Krux) had gone quiet. Chapter #1 I skipped entirely.

Assigning the encounters in the first part:
- Started as a slow build - Dark Star jumped them and they found mysterious star seeds aboard, along with orders to seek Xedalli (another mystery). Guts of Chapter #2, less the mutiny.
- Proceeding in system they found things colder - evidence of attempted star-seed deployment some time ago. Pure travel mechanics, giving the system layout.
- Arriving where they were sent to find Krux they learn that this place overthrew the Xaryxians but since then it has been getting colder. Parts of Chapter #4

At that point we hit the meat of the campaign - the party are aware that the Xaryxians are about and up to no good, and want to alert everyone in the system and build a coalition to face down the Xaryxians. All the plot elements at this point were tied to bringing some part of the factions out there onboard. So far, they have managed to wrangle a bunch of the factions on board and are beginning to talk about the showdown with the Xaryxians.

The major difference to the book plot, which I knew would happen, is that the players have been gathering ships - every ship combat leads to a captured ship; as has been the case in pretty much every 5e Spelljammer ship combat I have gamed out. It is much simpler to kill the crew than batter the ship to wreckage so now the players have their starting ship, the Star Moth from Chapter #2, the Nightspider (a.k.a. Deathspider) from Chapter #4, and another Star Moth they hunted down and ambushed. They still cannot confront the Xaryxians head on, but they are a raiding squadron not a desperate bunch of adventurers.

Below is Topolah's notes on the state of play and remaining to-do's. There are three major naval powers and two land powers - the party needs all the naval or two of them and all the land powers to see off the Xaryxians.

* The mind-flayers were a big one, requiring first the salvage of the Lucent Edict to get an invitation to talk and then winning the gladatorial contests at Vocath's to bring them on-side. (Chapters #3 & #8)
* The prow-knights are a swing-faction I dropped in as an accelerator; if the party gets everyone else, they join in, otherwise they won't risk their own necks.
* The guilders of the great belt have been brought on-side through all the encounters of chapter 4 with Krux, Topolah, fighting astral elves, Hastain and such to tear out the Xaryxian agents in the great belt. (Rest of chapter #4, chapters #5, #6 and 'meeting Xedalli' of Chapter #7)
* The vampirates and Gargenhale are on-side but were so badly chewed up by the Xaryxians chasing after Xedalli and the initial fights with the Star of Hope that they are not much of a fighting force anymore. (chapter #6)

At time of writing the party need to get one more faction on-side and then face down the Xaryxians. I will do a wrap up once that is done. So far we have broadly worked through the book, zig-zagging through the content but generally getting it done. The players have also at times gone off on significant tangents like a session where they took advantage of their captured Star Moth and Neogi ships to stage a Xaryxian-on-Neogi battle and draw in Xaryxian ships - which they then ambushed.