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Yaeri 08-14-05, 09:53 AM

Warning: very long post. Ignore if you don’t have a lot of spare time :D X in the title marks threads that shouldn't be read by my players. We’re playing in the forgotten realms campaign setting of course. I’ve already DM’ed a campaign that will be a small building stone for this second campaign. Right now another DM is taking our characters through his campaign. So the characters will have played my campaign, then his and then they’ll play my second one. (This situation evolved because no one wanted to be fulltime dm, everyone wanted to play a character) I’m very satisfied with some of the things I’ve come up with so far. But there’s still holes, and some things may not exactly follow the rules. And maybe I’m so unmodest as to think others can use my brilliant ideas. :D I have the core books, manual of the planes, Libris Mortis, FRC book, races of faerün, underdark and faiths and pantheons. Biggest plothole: how to get the players to get many people to build shrines/temples to worship unknown deities. Campaign 1 (this one has already past but it has a place in the second one) I’ll describe campaign 1 as briefly as possible. A devil from the nine hells had found a weapon that could hold his essence. When he got summoned to a powerfull sorceress he gave her the weapon. She didn’t know he went inside of it instead of unsommoning. Slowly he started taking control of her. With her knowledge and the power granted to him by the weapon, he started creating more mindcontrolling weapons and spread them troughout the land. Who got such a weapon fell under his control and started making trouble. (To attract stronger heroes who would kill the wielder. Thus the weapon would end up in the hands of a more powerfull ‘servant’. And to create an atmosphere of war and a need for weapons. (Other weapon sources got destroyed by his minions) In the end the players went to the sorceress’ tower and killed her. (Underway there were heavier growing earthquakes.) Then they battled her weapon. When it got destroyed it exploded -red energy seeping from it- and then immediately imploded, creating a small vortex. All other enchanted weapons cracked, their energy seeping toward the growing vortex. Those energy streams pierced through the masonry of the tower, which started crumbling. The players had to jump through the vortex. They came in hell where they destroyed the weakened manifested devil. (they were trapped in the hells then but in the campaign the other dm is running they got out) Now what I’ve come up with for campaign 2 so far. I’ll write it how the players will experience the campaign. Because I think that gives a better view on how the experience will be. The long version, in the order the players will experience everything in Chapter one: Prophecy in glass A priest teleports to the players. He’s very exited . He sais he wants them to come with him because he wants to show them something and ask them something. They all teleport to a temple in (dunno location yet). He leads them to the upper floor where glass windows are lined against the wall. (Such glass windows with drawings in them. Dunno the word for it, sorry) He sais the temple is the second reproduction of an original temple, built by a prophet, someone who fortold the future. The temple was rebuilt after the fall of the netherese when it turned out he had forseen it. But later the temple losed credibility again and thus decayed. The priest and his fellow priests had the temple rebuilt during/after the time of troubles when it turned out that occurence once again was fortold in the prophecies. The drawings in the glass windows eacht depict one of the prophecies. The drawings of things past are accurate, because they already know what they were dealing about. The drawings of things to come are not so clear, because they don’t know exactly what they’ll be about yet, and they didn’t have the original prophecies, only the descriptions of the glass windows of the first reproduction of the temple. The priest brings them to a glass window (a little more than halfway the wall) where a green creature breaks free of shackles. At the bottom of the drawing a group of people stands, corresponding exactly at the configuration of the party of the players. He’ll ask whether they know who this creature might be or why this would be important to history. They don’t. They’ll leave the temple without being able to help the priest. I know what’s in the other glass windows of the future, although only the first of them holds significance to the players. So I’ll only mention that one: five creatures, four in the corners, one in the middle: corners: a beholder with his mouth sewn closed, a humanoid on whom arrows and spell rays deflect and swords break, a white light, a shadow with a face of agony with flames behind him , in the middle: a hooded figure, but there’s only darkness within the hood. Idea’s for other windows are welcome. (Important things that may happen in a distant future) If someone wants to know about mine I’ll post them, but as it is this post is already long enough. :) Chapter 2: Prophecy ends Palladin’s and Clerics leading an army ask the help of the players. (dunno exactly how to get them into this. Backup plan: they stumble upon the army. Big creature attacks. Players help fighting big creature. Paladins and clerics are impressed) They are going to attack a lich who has turned all the inhabitants of his city, and the region around it into undead. They want the players to go fetch a magic item (which one?) in the plain of bones (In a mission from the other dm, prior to campaign 1, they killed a necromancer whose entire legion of undead ‘died’ when he got killed. I wondered what happened to the remains of that big army so I suppose there must be this vast plain filled with bones and undead flesh. And yes, the army was huge.) Anyways, they have to get the item, sneak it into the city and activate it in a certain room there, to pacify/destroy all the undead and the lich. When they get there however, the ‘lich’ is waiting in an ambush, many undead archers have their arrows aimed at the hearts of the players. Knowing my players in the beginning of the conversation they’ll say something like “yes we know who you are! You’re the one that turned this city in undead.” So I can let him say: “hahaha, how ironic… No,… you did that!” I’ll prolly end that session with that cliffhanger. The lich explains he’s not a lich. He’s the magus of the city and he nor any others are undead, they’re unliving. A great leak of negative energy into the prime material has cursed them in their current state. (The players will already have felt a drain in their hp after entering the region of the city) He sais that the devil’s drain of energy on the nine hells (he drained energy from there to put in the other weapons) weakened the boundaries between the planes (in general) and the prime material. When he suddenly got sucked back after destruction of the weapon that housed him, all the energy got sucked back and caused a lot of friction with the boundaries of the planes. A tear ruptured in the boundary of the negative energy plane and thus… The earthquakes were from the rupture. The players bring this info to the paladins and clerics. They believe the players but not the magus. Their divinations tell them the magus is lying, and their wizard sais there’s no such thing as friction between planes and such nonsense. They want the players to pretend they believe the lich and activate the artifact. The players go back to the Magus who can convince them by letting them talk with other unliving, who are indeed unliving, (they are sentient). He wants them to tell the pals/clers they activated the item, whilst they didn’t. He’ll hide with all the unliving in the city and surprise the invading army, force them to negotiation with weapons aimed at them. Another unliving: prince … will afterwards talk to the players. He’ll say the magus is planning something differently, he’ll let the invaders enter all the way deep into the city and just wait till they all succumb to the negative energy and become unliving. The prince would have rather they (unliving) all die than causing their fate upon others. He’ll come with the players to talk to the pals/clers. When they arrive the army has already left for the city. The prince teleports himself and the party back immediately. They kill the magus or something, and warn the invading army. I don’t know yet whether those invaders will survive or not. Afterwards they’ll overhear some unliving talking about “why liying against the party? Shouldn’t we tell them the truth? They helped us.” Then they’ll talk about how ‘the inevitable’ didn’t want that and how they shouldn’t listen to them. The players will force the info out the unliving or overhear some more, so they’ll learn this ‘the inevitable’ is in a certain room in the palace. They may also learn from them that ‘the inevitable’ is a powerful creature that broke free from the negative energy plane when the borders weakened, pulling negative energy with him in his wake, thus creating the leak. (That's a big part of the truth behind the cause of the leak) They’ll go meet him (I hope!) A ghostly figure made of green energy is sitting at a small table. Small fading and reapearing lights are in the place of his eyes. Floating tendrils of a green ectoplasm like substance hang from his back and against the walls. There seems to be some hint as to forms of clothing or armour in his shape. Many white/greenish lights make out his teeth. His hands are big with large nails. He’s putting down cards on the table. The party will either talk to him or go look at the cards first. He’ll say something like: “You arrived at exactly the right moment. I expected nothing less.” The pictures on the cards will picture things past: The inevitable creating the weapon from campaign 1; him placing it somewhere, him being grabbed by others and locked up in the negative energy plane, the devil finding the weapon , power being drained from ‘the inevitable’s’ prison, him breaking through, the city of unliving coming into existence, the party walking through the door, and last card he put down (but not the last in the pile) him battling the party. He sais they shouldn’t worry about him, that they should worry about the ones who put him there. He also sais he’s seen everything that has to come, that’s what he is. He knows they’ll fight. But first he sais that the card with them on it is theirs, it’s their card. Then he attacks. He will avoid every single blow they make at him. Sometimes he’ll LET himself be hit but that’ll seem to heal him instead. Until suddenly they start seeing small parts of the future. They see themselves making their blows before it happens. They see their misses, and can thus adjust their blows so they hit and harm him. Likewise if they change a forseen hit into a miss he’ll be harmed. Eventually he’ll fall on his knees. The player at turn will see him/herself decapitating ‘the inevitable’. If the player shows mercy instead, the inevitable grins and dies, his energy rupturing and dissipating. Chapter 3: Card The players will have only one clue: the card. If one of the players casts detect magic on it, she’ll see the following (detect magic is described by seeing small shimmering aura’s around magic objects): She’ll be almost blinded by white light. Where the card was lying, a small cube of pure white energy is now standing. Symbols of white light whirl around it in a pillar. In the distance large heads with glowing eyes are mumbling. The heads will have undetailed features. (this description is just what's 'seen' with detect magic) If they take it to a wizard to let it be identified, the wizard learns something can be done with it. He ‘activates’ the card, turning it into the cube from the ‘detect magic vision’. He’ll also stupefiedly tell he’s never seen an object with such a humongous magical aura around it. He has no idea what it does and it shouldn’t be able to exist. (it seems to defy mystra’s ban). There are writings on the cube. Those’ll have to be studies by the use of ancient libraries, leading them to an ancient city that’s far underwater somewhere by now. When they go to that underwater city, they’ll eventually reach a flooded hall which they can activate, (with the cube) so the ceiling shifts away and the ‘room’ gets raised above the sea level. They will be standing on the floor, right above sea level, a small pillar with a square shape in it before them, and behind that half a circular wall with stone faces in it. (Stone faces wall and their purpose inspired by/stolen from final fantasy 9) When they place the ancient cube on the pedestal, heavy organ music resonates from within the stone wall, and one by one the stone heads activate, their eyes lighting up, sliding forward, telling their story, sliding back, eyes fading out, the next head moves forward, eyes start glowing, etc… Some heads will be broken and thus some parts of the story will be missing. The information they give is stored in the cube. They were built by an ancient civilisation that is long gone. They tell of beings more powerful than the gods, invulnerable creatures with godlike powers. The gods could not control them and feared their enormous powers. Five of these creatures in particular were feared: the quiet observer, the immortal one, the transcendent one, the forsaken one and the ageless stranger (those namings are stolen from respectively: ‘olympos’, Planescape torment, PT again, can’t remember maybe nowhere, and the dark tower books from stephen king) These creatures never became deities, they came into existence because they got worshipped en masse indirectly, and as long as they got such 'worship', they were indestructible. For example: the immortal one gets fueled by the desire of so many mortals to become everliving; the transcendent one gets fueled by the desire of so many beings for power, for being more, for gaining power beyond the gods. The inevitable was a special case. He was at once very dangerous, because he is forseeing itself, being able to look endlessly into the future, but he was also vital to the deities abiltiy to look into the future. These creatures couldn’t be destroyed, but they could be locked up. Remaining chapters: Still needing a lot of help with It’ll turn down to this: ‘the inevitable’ KNEW he was going to be locked up by the gods, to safekeep the power he granted them and seeers in general, and because they knew he had hidden a key (the cube) somewhere, something which could potentially lead to informing mortals about the existence of the godlike creatures and creating stronger worship for them, thus making them even more powerful. He knew this, so he created the weapon and put it exactly where he knew the devil was going to find it. He created the weapon so, that it would drain negative energy, from exactly the barrier that would make up his future prison thus weakening it so he could brake free. (The weapon used the negative energy to subdue the minds of the people who got controlled by the weapons) He knew the party would meet him, and that if they should kill him, the deities would be unable to look into the future, so they would be staring at a blank wall and be clueless as to what would be unfolding. Problem was he could forsee their every move so they couldn’t hurt him. If he borrowed them a bit of his power however, just so they could see a tiny bit into the future, they’d have the opportunity to act opposed to the ‘prediction’ and thus harm the fortelling, = harming ‘the inevitable’. Now what I have to get the PC’s to learn is that in order to end this stalemate, they have to free these beings and make them known to the people, and make them get worshipped as true deities, so Ao would make them true deities, thus ‘devolving’ them to deity-status, and making them less harmless. And that’s the part where it’s still very cloudy. I’m thinking the BBEG will be the ageless stranger, he’s the antagonist, the thing good (especially paladins) need to place themselves against, the thing they need to battle. This creature will just want total mindless destruction I’m guessing, and may cause trouble when it’s freed. Maybe it’s the last one to be freed and then it’s a race against time, to deitify him before he can cause harm. Whatcha think? Idea’s suggestion? I’m most interested in incorporating as much from the forgotten realms itself into it. So that it’s really part of the world. For example, which deities exactly knew of all this? Who are the deities that locked these beings up? Nice prisons for those other beings? I know some things may bend plausibility or what’s exactly possible, but my players will be lenient towards that if it makes a good campaign. Thanks. You’ve read it all. Go get a cup of coffee. Let your eyes rest for a while. I hope it was worth your time. :D