How to forge an evil nation? [Archive] - Wizards Community

How to forge an evil nation? [Archive] - Wizards Community

Post/Author/DateTime Post
Arthur_Pendragon
05-04-04, 11:07 PM Ok, for reference I'm both DM and a player in my upcoming evil vile high powered campaign. (See note on this in sig).

For much of the campaign (at least till 11th or so, we are starting at 3rd) Galen (my necromancer) will be hiding his nature (that he is a necromancer) as a necromancer in a setting that hunts necromancers universally and fears liches as everytime they appear in history they threaten to seemingly unstoppably plunge the world into evil and darkness. (For reference there have only been 5-6 in the world's entire history, the most famous one being a that last Emperor of the Empire (think like Rome) who claimed he was a god (he wansn't literally a god, just claimed to be one) and a holy war against him shattered the Empire into a bloody civil war that brought the famous empire to its knees and ended the empire (leave the ruins of the Imperial City filled with terrible undead)).

Anyway, I was figuring once he became a lich he would logically turn his attention to conqurering a land for himself. But:

a) how should I go about doing this?
b) how to deal with the holy crusade that will probably follow? (the armies would probably be a mixture of normal warriors, paladins, fighters, and clerics)
Grox
05-04-04, 11:23 PM I'm assuming that you want your lich to rule an evil "nation" of living creatures, and not just try to turn them all into mindless undead. I suppose your lich could try that too, I'm just don't think that counts as a "nation" in the political sense of "forging" it.

The big question concerns your game world. WHERE do you plan to make your base of operations? If there is lots of unexplored/uninhabited territory in your game world, then you have lots of choices. In fact, your status as a lich (who doesn't need sustenance, fresh water, shelter from temperature extremes, etc.) gives you MORE choices than your competitors would have. You could have foes with a far superior army who can't move against you because it'd be too expensive to keep their OWN army alive against the attrition of the Burning Desert, the Swamp of Pestilence, or whatever. You could even live underwater with no penalty, along with your undead minions.

If all the territory of your world is more or less claimed/governed, wherever you go will have indigenous inhabitants that will have to be converted, conscripted, conquered, driven out, or eliminated. I suppose the fact that a lich is very capable of using magic to disguise its appearance opens the door to the possibility of you killing the present ruler and replacing him, or just openly usurping power while pretending to be a garden-variety, flesh-and-blood evil wizard.
Arthur_Pendragon
05-05-04, 12:23 AM By the way, I should mention undead in this setting are never mindless, they are always the souls of the dead returned to their body unwillingly and are thus always intellegent and aware (their minds ussually have the major change in that they now feel a deep sense of obedience to their lord (the necromancer who animated them)).

Actually I had entertained the idea of having a base of operations out to sea (much of it underwater, not filled with water, underwater air domes, that could be filled with water if nessecary could be opened and allow the pressure of the deep ocean to pour in.)

However in terms of lands . . . that's tricker.

I had planned to the far south are lands that were once an old empire (think of like Ancient Rome), the lands north of that since the empires fall has slowly grown in population, and while there are a few cities, much of the regions are simply citadels or manor houses of nobles/knights with satalite villages.

I hadn't planned for it . . . but perhaps I could create a large region farther north that has been dominated by barbarian tribes, that could be a location to carve out a nation . . .

However that still leads to the problem of the forces of invading armies? And it is a land that is extremely inhospitable to armies, what about the lands ability to support a nation's population?
Thorak
05-05-04, 01:12 AM Why wait until you're a lich? Start now. Pick a nation, preferably one already being treated harshly/cruelly by it's leader, and 'save' it from it's oppressor. Then, take over as leader, because you're naturally brilliant and obviously better than the guy you killed. If anyone questions your necromantic abilities, point out condescendingly that "I only study the dark arts to better understand the enemy, but if you want the world to keep being dragged into horror by the rising Undead legions, feel free to have me killed and let some ignorant fool lead you instead."

At this point, the populace should admire and respect you, all while knowing full well that you're a Necromancer. There will of course be some dissidents pointing out that you're a bleeping Necromancer, but they can be ignored with comments like the above to back you up.

Now, start increasing the laws and restrictions. Blame 'upsurgences in Dark Energies" and "increasing Undead influences". As well, found a new organization, publicly known as the 'Legion of Protection' or some such, supposedly to 'secretly watch over the people and do what must be done to protect Life and all those in it'. Recruit from the lowest of the low, criminals and other nasty sorts. Know Alignment, obviously, is useful. Try to stick with the Lawfully Evil types; Chaotics are harder to control and more likely to be found out. Pay them very, very well. And prefereably find some means to keep them from betraying you; if you can figure out a poison that will remain in their system permanently, killing them if they go 2 days without the antidote, that would work nicely. This hopefully removes any desire they might have to subvert you, by both making serving you profitable in the extreme and making betrayal far, far too expensive to consider.

Now you should have a fairly fanatically loyal secret police, a cowed population, and a good start to a new Evil Empire. At this point, start establishing laws prohibiting movement between villages save for approved moves, and limit approvals to those who can be trusted. This should stifle word-of-mouth, and you should already control every other source of information. Hire plenty of bards, or have secret police members take up the job, and have them tell entirely fictitious tales highlighting you and your servants as heroes in the battle against the horrors.

At this point, you can safely become a Lich at any time; nobody outside the palace can find out, and you control anyone who does. Even if word does get out to anywhere, it will be nigh impossible for word to spread, and you can obliterate the 'infected' area.

Fear, misinformation, and control. These are the three keys.
Arthur_Pendragon
05-05-04, 04:41 AM Very good suggestions! (As in wow that was some good stuff!)

However, I figure in the lower levels before lichdom our group would be moving about quite alot (in part to search out info on lichdom, in part for a number of other motives) so I thought it would be difficult to go though that at an early stage. . . hmmmm. . .

To take a step back a moment, let me look at the goal issues. Logically after obtaining his ultimate and very long term goal of lichdom, what would be the next step after finally securing that immortality and great power?

A question that has been a bit hard for me to answer.

Hmmm. . . let me see, taking a quick inventory of the character's issues:

a) hates the clergymen who roused peasantry to kill his harmless wizard father. (the actual clergymen who did this will by now have been long dead by Galen's hands). (Note: said clergymen was the spiritual leader of the community and servant of the major good religion of the setting, just very closeminded, filled with religious zealotry, and a need to control others).

b) learned from experince that "might makes right" since his father was killed by the clergymen and the peasants, therefore power = the right to: act as you wish, and to live your life as you desire.

c) After his father's death above clergymen forced him to live in the clergymen's household (constantly telling him how bad he is and how evil his father was). (Galen eventually fled, but ever since has felt the desire to be powerful so as to insure NOBODY EVER controls him and tells him what to do!)

d) The Clergymen (again the one above) posioned the minds of his village (metaphorically speaking) so that everyone hated him, and eventually even turned the only girl who showed him kindess against him (convinced her he was bad and evil).

For this reason one of the first things he does in the campaign is make said clergymen pay. . . painfully for all the emotional anguish he has caused.

So drawing from this . . . where should his character go after acheiving the power and immortality he always sought? Any suggestions on how to go about doing this?
MetalGod85
05-05-04, 07:01 AM Since your character obviously has distaste for the clergyman who set his village against him, why not try to take down the entire religion? Set up scandals to ruin the reputation of the faiths leaders. Seek out a particularly fringe sect of this faith, and convince them to lead a rebellion against the shamed leading church body. Use this chaos to destabilize the church and country, then when you step forward as a liche your enemies will not be as capable of stopping your take over.
Thorak
05-05-04, 07:42 AM To concentrate on the specific issues, and bearing no relation to my previous post;

Originally posted by Arthur_Pendragon
a) hates the clergymen who roused peasantry to kill his harmless wizard father. (the actual clergymen who did this will by now have been long dead by Galen's hands). (Note: said clergymen was the spiritual leader of the community and servant of the major good religion of the setting, just very closeminded, filled with religious zealotry, and a need to control others).

Make nice with them. Then, when you do reach power, 'discover' some absolute horrors they've been perpetrating under your nose. This allows you to engage in a righteosly indignant crusade, wiping them all off the planet, with the support of everyone else. It's even better because obviously you approved of them before; I mean, they killed your father, and you still liked them, right? Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk.

b) learned from experince that "might makes right" since his father was killed by the clergymen and the peasants, therefore power = the right to: act as you wish, and to live your life as you desire.

Learn a new lesson. Popular support makes might. And since might makes right, if the people believe in you, however misguided they are and however deliberately that is, you're 'right'.

c) After his father's death above clergymen forced him to live in the clergymen's household (constantly telling him how bad he is and how evil his father was). (Galen eventually fled, but ever since has felt the desire to be powerful so as to insure NOBODY EVER controls him and tells him what to do!)

Again. Lie and cheat to get the people to love you, or at least fear something else and turn to you for protection. When everyone turns to you for help and protection, you're obviously the most powerful in the land.

d) The Clergymen (again the one above) posioned the minds of his village (metaphorically speaking) so that everyone hated him, and eventually even turned the only girl who showed him kindess against him (convinced her he was bad and evil).

I remind you of my solution to issue a). Turnabout is a wonderful thing. Poison the minds of the entire world against his order, making them appear to be evil and bad. Even if you don't kill all of them, you'll have shattered them completely.

For this reason one of the first things he does in the campaign is make said clergymen pay. . . painfully for all the emotional anguish he has caused.

So drawing from this . . . where should his character go after acheiving the power and immortality he always sought? Any suggestions on how to go about doing this?

Start small. Start devious. Your one advantage is your intellect; masses of people have power too. Use said intellect to convince the people to follow/need/worship you. At this point, with your combined inherent power and the power over the kingdom, you're nigh unstoppable. Not only are you a massive force to be reckoned with, any enemies also have to deal with your entire kingdom of willing slaves.

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Arthur_Pendragon 05-04-04, 11:07 PM	Ok, for reference I'm both DM and a player in my upcoming evil vile high powered campaign. (See note on this in sig). For much of the campaign (at least till 11th or so, we are starting at 3rd) Galen (my necromancer) will be hiding his nature (that he is a necromancer) as a necromancer in a setting that hunts necromancers universally and fears liches as everytime they appear in history they threaten to seemingly unstoppably plunge the world into evil and darkness. (For reference there have only been 5-6 in the world's entire history, the most famous one being a that last Emperor of the Empire (think like Rome) who claimed he was a god (he wansn't literally a god, just claimed to be one) and a holy war against him shattered the Empire into a bloody civil war that brought the famous empire to its knees and ended the empire (leave the ruins of the Imperial City filled with terrible undead)). Anyway, I was figuring once he became a lich he would logically turn his attention to conqurering a land for himself. But: a) how should I go about doing this? b) how to deal with the holy crusade that will probably follow? (the armies would probably be a mixture of normal warriors, paladins, fighters, and clerics)
Grox 05-04-04, 11:23 PM	I'm assuming that you want your lich to rule an evil "nation" of living creatures, and not just try to turn them all into mindless undead. I suppose your lich could try that too, I'm just don't think that counts as a "nation" in the political sense of "forging" it. The big question concerns your game world. WHERE do you plan to make your base of operations? If there is lots of unexplored/uninhabited territory in your game world, then you have lots of choices. In fact, your status as a lich (who doesn't need sustenance, fresh water, shelter from temperature extremes, etc.) gives you MORE choices than your competitors would have. You could have foes with a far superior army who can't move against you because it'd be too expensive to keep their OWN army alive against the attrition of the Burning Desert, the Swamp of Pestilence, or whatever. You could even live underwater with no penalty, along with your undead minions. If all the territory of your world is more or less claimed/governed, wherever you go will have indigenous inhabitants that will have to be converted, conscripted, conquered, driven out, or eliminated. I suppose the fact that a lich is very capable of using magic to disguise its appearance opens the door to the possibility of you killing the present ruler and replacing him, or just openly usurping power while pretending to be a garden-variety, flesh-and-blood evil wizard.
Arthur_Pendragon 05-05-04, 12:23 AM	By the way, I should mention undead in this setting are never mindless, they are always the souls of the dead returned to their body unwillingly and are thus always intellegent and aware (their minds ussually have the major change in that they now feel a deep sense of obedience to their lord (the necromancer who animated them)). Actually I had entertained the idea of having a base of operations out to sea (much of it underwater, not filled with water, underwater air domes, that could be filled with water if nessecary could be opened and allow the pressure of the deep ocean to pour in.) However in terms of lands . . . that's tricker. I had planned to the far south are lands that were once an old empire (think of like Ancient Rome), the lands north of that since the empires fall has slowly grown in population, and while there are a few cities, much of the regions are simply citadels or manor houses of nobles/knights with satalite villages. I hadn't planned for it . . . but perhaps I could create a large region farther north that has been dominated by barbarian tribes, that could be a location to carve out a nation . . . However that still leads to the problem of the forces of invading armies? And it is a land that is extremely inhospitable to armies, what about the lands ability to support a nation's population?
Thorak 05-05-04, 01:12 AM	Why wait until you're a lich? Start now. Pick a nation, preferably one already being treated harshly/cruelly by it's leader, and 'save' it from it's oppressor. Then, take over as leader, because you're naturally brilliant and obviously better than the guy you killed. If anyone questions your necromantic abilities, point out condescendingly that "I only study the dark arts to better understand the enemy, but if you want the world to keep being dragged into horror by the rising Undead legions, feel free to have me killed and let some ignorant fool lead you instead." At this point, the populace should admire and respect you, all while knowing full well that you're a Necromancer. There will of course be some dissidents pointing out that you're a bleeping Necromancer, but they can be ignored with comments like the above to back you up. Now, start increasing the laws and restrictions. Blame 'upsurgences in Dark Energies" and "increasing Undead influences". As well, found a new organization, publicly known as the 'Legion of Protection' or some such, supposedly to 'secretly watch over the people and do what must be done to protect Life and all those in it'. Recruit from the lowest of the low, criminals and other nasty sorts. Know Alignment, obviously, is useful. Try to stick with the Lawfully Evil types; Chaotics are harder to control and more likely to be found out. Pay them very, very well. And prefereably find some means to keep them from betraying you; if you can figure out a poison that will remain in their system permanently, killing them if they go 2 days without the antidote, that would work nicely. This hopefully removes any desire they might have to subvert you, by both making serving you profitable in the extreme and making betrayal far, far too expensive to consider. Now you should have a fairly fanatically loyal secret police, a cowed population, and a good start to a new Evil Empire. At this point, start establishing laws prohibiting movement between villages save for approved moves, and limit approvals to those who can be trusted. This should stifle word-of-mouth, and you should already control every other source of information. Hire plenty of bards, or have secret police members take up the job, and have them tell entirely fictitious tales highlighting you and your servants as heroes in the battle against the horrors. At this point, you can safely become a Lich at any time; nobody outside the palace can find out, and you control anyone who does. Even if word does get out to anywhere, it will be nigh impossible for word to spread, and you can obliterate the 'infected' area. Fear, misinformation, and control. These are the three keys.
Arthur_Pendragon 05-05-04, 04:41 AM	Very good suggestions! (As in wow that was some good stuff!) However, I figure in the lower levels before lichdom our group would be moving about quite alot (in part to search out info on lichdom, in part for a number of other motives) so I thought it would be difficult to go though that at an early stage. . . hmmmm. . . To take a step back a moment, let me look at the goal issues. Logically after obtaining his ultimate and very long term goal of lichdom, what would be the next step after finally securing that immortality and great power? A question that has been a bit hard for me to answer. Hmmm. . . let me see, taking a quick inventory of the character's issues: a) hates the clergymen who roused peasantry to kill his harmless wizard father. (the actual clergymen who did this will by now have been long dead by Galen's hands). (Note: said clergymen was the spiritual leader of the community and servant of the major good religion of the setting, just very closeminded, filled with religious zealotry, and a need to control others). b) learned from experince that "might makes right" since his father was killed by the clergymen and the peasants, therefore power = the right to: act as you wish, and to live your life as you desire. c) After his father's death above clergymen forced him to live in the clergymen's household (constantly telling him how bad he is and how evil his father was). (Galen eventually fled, but ever since has felt the desire to be powerful so as to insure NOBODY EVER controls him and tells him what to do!) d) The Clergymen (again the one above) posioned the minds of his village (metaphorically speaking) so that everyone hated him, and eventually even turned the only girl who showed him kindess against him (convinced her he was bad and evil). For this reason one of the first things he does in the campaign is make said clergymen pay. . . painfully for all the emotional anguish he has caused. So drawing from this . . . where should his character go after acheiving the power and immortality he always sought? Any suggestions on how to go about doing this?
MetalGod85 05-05-04, 07:01 AM	Since your character obviously has distaste for the clergyman who set his village against him, why not try to take down the entire religion? Set up scandals to ruin the reputation of the faiths leaders. Seek out a particularly fringe sect of this faith, and convince them to lead a rebellion against the shamed leading church body. Use this chaos to destabilize the church and country, then when you step forward as a liche your enemies will not be as capable of stopping your take over.
Thorak 05-05-04, 07:42 AM	To concentrate on the specific issues, and bearing no relation to my previous post; Originally posted by Arthur_Pendragon a) hates the clergymen who roused peasantry to kill his harmless wizard father. (the actual clergymen who did this will by now have been long dead by Galen's hands). (Note: said clergymen was the spiritual leader of the community and servant of the major good religion of the setting, just very closeminded, filled with religious zealotry, and a need to control others). Make nice with them. Then, when you do reach power, 'discover' some absolute horrors they've been perpetrating under your nose. This allows you to engage in a righteosly indignant crusade, wiping them all off the planet, with the support of everyone else. It's even better because obviously you approved of them before; I mean, they killed your father, and you still liked them, right? Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk. b) learned from experince that "might makes right" since his father was killed by the clergymen and the peasants, therefore power = the right to: act as you wish, and to live your life as you desire. Learn a new lesson. Popular support makes might. And since might makes right, if the people believe in you, however misguided they are and however deliberately that is, you're 'right'. c) After his father's death above clergymen forced him to live in the clergymen's household (constantly telling him how bad he is and how evil his father was). (Galen eventually fled, but ever since has felt the desire to be powerful so as to insure NOBODY EVER controls him and tells him what to do!) Again. Lie and cheat to get the people to love you, or at least fear something else and turn to you for protection. When everyone turns to you for help and protection, you're obviously the most powerful in the land. d) The Clergymen (again the one above) posioned the minds of his village (metaphorically speaking) so that everyone hated him, and eventually even turned the only girl who showed him kindess against him (convinced her he was bad and evil). I remind you of my solution to issue a). Turnabout is a wonderful thing. Poison the minds of the entire world against his order, making them appear to be evil and bad. Even if you don't kill all of them, you'll have shattered them completely. For this reason one of the first things he does in the campaign is make said clergymen pay. . . painfully for all the emotional anguish he has caused. So drawing from this . . . where should his character go after acheiving the power and immortality he always sought? Any suggestions on how to go about doing this? Start small. Start devious. Your one advantage is your intellect; masses of people have power too. Use said intellect to convince the people to follow/need/worship you. At this point, with your combined inherent power and the power over the kingdom, you're nigh unstoppable. Not only are you a massive force to be reckoned with, any enemies also have to deal with your entire kingdom of willing slaves.