Updates

I read the next chapter of Princes of the Apocalypse last night, so I just have the mechanics chapter left to read. It's lengthy, but I can skim or even skip stat-blocks, so it'll probably go fast. I've also been giving some more thought to my Cult of Undeath supercut, although I still haven't written anything for it yet. But, that's what the weekend will be for, and if it takes a couple of hours of work, well I have it. Tonight we're going out to see Spiderman and get dinner, but tomorrow, my wife is meeting one of her girlfriends for lunch, and I'm only doing a few errands like the weed-eater, maybe getting a haircut and a car wash. Those are literally all of my plans for the entire day other than getting this post done. And if for some reason I still don't finish it on Saturday, I have time on Sunday.

Anyway, one of the thoughts that I had was that I want to actually integrate some of the Freeport material into it, even though it's not the Curse of the Corsair Coast campaign. The initial module of the Return to Freeport campaign (or adventure path), "Curse of the Brine Witch" can very easily be adapted to not being in a seaside port town, and can take place anywhere. If I start Cult of Undeath in Bridgetown, it actually is a river-port city still after all, although it doesn't actually have to be. The brine witch will certainly not be briny since it's not on the coast of a salty sea, but that's OK. As nice as the Brine Witch is as a title, she also wasn't actually a witch either. So, if I start with a loose adaptation of that module, leading up to Anton von Lechfeld's suspicious death and funeral, and then starting with a loose adaptation of some haunted house (maybe "Shadows in Freeport" is a better one to adapt than "The Haunting of Harrowstone" anyway, honestly, but I'll have a look at some other potential haunted house modules that I have to see if any of them are better alternatives. "The Haunting" from the Call of Cthulhu book has a good reputation. I'll have to see if that's something I can use. If not, there's a lot to love about "The Skinsaw Murders" if it's truncated too.

I'm going to downplay the Strangers and the Grendling threats; I want them to be present, but I don't necessarily want a really robust "story" around them that the players would spend a lot of time delving in to. I'd rather that be more like creepy side stories or, especially in the case of the Grendlings, almost like a side effect of what's going on, rather than something that they really dig in to for its own sake. That means that I also have less work to do to to finish those legs of the campaign. 

Honestly, this is going to start looking a little bit less like a "formal" 5x5 front and more like just an outline for a campaign that has five threads in it, more or less weaved together, but with one of them clearly much more prominent and important than the others. 

Here's some more AI images, in the meantime. Audley Hardwicke was always meant to be a personal nemesis to an iconic character, Dominic Clevenger (and to a lesser extent his partner, Kimnor Rugova, and his brother Ragnar Clevenger.) But he's a great villain, so I'm going to find a way to use him one way or another. 

The AI really struggled with the idea that I wanted a boom shot of him walking along a dock, and constantly had him walking off the edge of a dock! Stupid AI. Anyway, other than that, the images were all pretty good.

I also have an updated AI illustration of the brine witch, which I'm now thinking of using. Ironically, Audley is shown in Port Liure above, my kind of counterpart to Freeport, while the brine witch will be set in Bridgetown.

And finally, speaking of Freeport, I asked Nano Banana 2 to change the main character of the main cover art to a male pirate. I'm never quite as happy with that AI as with the others, but the results aren't bad. Maybe I'll run them through Grok later and see if the results are less cartoony.

The original

First pass

More charismatic version

I just noticed that he has no expression at all in the last one. He needs to either be scowling determinedly, or smirking like a happy-go-lucky swashbuckler, but that deadpan face ain't it. 

Let's try one of each.

Lol. The first one is definitely better than the second.

Here's a slightly different take on it.