I've been thinking about this for a while but to my shame I never actually thought of bringing this up on the forum until just now! So I'll try not to write an entire mini-novel about this, but the gist of it is that I've got a long-running RPG group of friends that I've run several games over what's coming up on a decade now, but we just recently started playing Pathfinder 1st Edition. I'm about to wrap up the Rise of the Runelords campaign, which is the first published campaign in the Pathfinder setting of Golarion. Anyone who's played the Kingmaker or Wrath of the Righteous CRPG games will be somewhat familiar with the setting. However, given the fact that Pathfinder's creators really went for the kitchen sink approach to their setting, including everything from Cthulhu to spaceships and androids to Narnia-esque accidental travel between Golarion and "real" Earth, I've done a bit of homebrewing in our group's setting. We plan to play more campaigns and each one will share the same universe, so to speak, and events and characters from campaigns they've played will influence what comes after. Other than changing some of the copyright-friendly elements back to what they were in D&D (Like making the Drow worshippers of Lolth instead of generic demon cultists, using Bahamut instead of Apsu, and having Mindflayers and Beholders exist in this setting), one of the things I've added is hints of lore regarding the Warhammer Lizardmen existing (or having existed) in the setting. Rise of the Runelords has a heavy focus on learning about the ancient past as powerful evil wizards who went into hibernation/magical exile 10,000 years ago are now starting to reawaken. The players in their adventures have come across a couple old ruins and references in ancient texts about how the world used to be ruled by a Lizardmen civilization (which was also a thing in D&D's Forgotten Realms setting) that has long since disappeared after a massive, world-altering catastrophe. The players have shown great interest in learning more about these ancient civilizations and perhaps harnessing some of their magical knowledge. We are going to play a different Pathfinder campaign with different characters next, but after that they plan on returning to their Rise of the Runelords characters to do some high-level adventuring, and in particular traveling to the lost continent of Sarusan. In the Pathfinder setting, the world map is vaguely based on the real Earth, but a bit more vaguely than Warhammer Fantasy's was. But you still have what essentially amounts to Europe with Africa/Middle Eastern countries below it on the map, North and South America to the West (called Arcadia) and Asian-themed countries to the East. The very vague equivalent of Australia on Golarion is an island called Sarusan. The only official lore about it is that it's a secluded place where few people ever go. People who have landed on it's shores have either never returned, or have awakened back on their ships days, weeks, or months later with no memory of what happened. However, people who have sailed close enough to get a look at it say that they've seen massive megafauna, including many creatures believed to be extinct in the rest of the world. It's said to be a diverse land containing dense jungles, expansive plains and harsh deserts. The seas around Sarusan are extremely dangerous and filled with constant storms and monsters. My players are very excited by the mystery of this land and really want to go there with their high-level characters in a future game. Needless to say, this sounds like the perfect place to use as the last bastion of the Children of the Old Ones! With this unexplored country having no real official lore, it's tailor-made to use in homebrew adventures and I'm hoping to come up with a fun, high-level campaign that would essentially be the equivalent of traveling to Lustria in the Warhammer setting! I know that there are some TTRPG fans here and I'd love to hear if anyone has any fun ideas or suggestions on what would be some fun campaign hooks for a place like this. If you want I can give my own headcanon lore about the Lizardmen in this RPG setting but this post is already huge so I'll put it in a reply if anyone's interested!
The Lustria source book for WFRP would be a good source of ideas. Sargava: The Lost Colony, Pathfinder Chronicles: Heart of the Jungle and Planeshift: Ixalan might be useful for generating ideas too. Tomb Of Annihilation too!
All very good ideas! I have the Lustria sourcebook so that's definitely going to be a good source of information. The Sargava book looks good too, I'll have to try and track it down! What I'm mainly looking for would be fun ideas for plot hooks for the players or just fun scenarios or interactions. My general idea is that the continent of Sarusan is very close to how Lustria is portrayed in Warhammer. So the Lizardmen rule the jungles, there are Amazons who (usually) coexist with them, and Human colonists who settled there before it ended up being closed off. In Pathfinder there is a big event in the past that I'm wanting to tie into the old Lizardmen story. It's called Earthfall which is basically where the Aboleths tried to destroy the surface world by summoning a giant meteor but it was stopped. In this campaign setting it was actually the Slann who stopped it by moving Saursan out of the way and redirecting it into the ocean where it used to be. This resulted in a massive, magical maelstrom permanently whirling where it hit and the meteor also destroyed Azlant since the people there refused to listen to the Slann's warnings. But while this was happening, agents of the Demon Lords (since no Chaos gods in this setting) sabotaged some of the geomantic pylons they were using to power the rituals moving Sarusan and the meteor which caused a rift to open to the Abyss, similar to the Worldwound in Wrath of the Righteous, which caused a ton of demons to pour out and attack immediately after the meteor crisis was over. The Slann managed to seal it but doing so, combined with the effort required to stop Earthfall, is what caused most of them to need to go into deep meditation/hibernation and is why they haven't really done anything major in the setting since then. Also, in this setting the reason the Old Ones (except Sotek) disappeared is because they went to war with the Great Old Ones (Cthulhu and Co. who are already included in the Pathfinder setting) and are the reason the Eldritch Horrors (tm) are mostly barred from this reality. The reason that people lose their memory after leaving Saursan is because the Slann put a spell that mindwipes people after they leave the continent in order to keep their existence secret and help prevent explorers from bringing conquering armies that the Lizardmen would have to deal with while the Slann were in a vulnerable state. Since this is going to be a high-level game, I want to come up with something epic for my players to get involved in! Maybe they need to find a way to reawaken some Slann to stop the Abyssal rift from reopening? Maybe they need to find some Old One artifacts to help with a ritual to stop an evil god from awakening? I think it would be fun to have a reason to ally/work with the Lizardmen.
First thought that comes to mind is ripping of Tomb of Annihilation except instead of Accerak being behind it, there's a rogue Slann. Or maybe the whole thing is a ridiculously convoluted test to find adventurers who are strong and devious enough to fight the Demon Lords.
The memories... i really liked it. Both ideas are really solid. Which one is better depends a lot on the kind of players you are going to master.
That could definitely be fun! I've never actually run that module but I know the plot. Their goals are mostly the same as we know, stop Chaos (demons) and try to decipher the Great Plan. However the Pathfinder setting has a lot more races and gods involved, so they're a bit more like the AoS Seraphon in that they are more willing to work with groups they've deemed a part of the Plan. In their current location on Sarusan it's similar to Lustria in that they tolerate the Amazons and Human colonists but anyone who encroaches on their territory is in trouble.