A lot of this is in limbo until the 4e eberron campaign guide comes out, but I'd like to garner some inspiration here all the same.
setting: medievalish
background: man make warforged to defeat his enemy. enemy, defeated. warforged turn on man. man now on the way to being pretty much defeated...
the players would be "terminator killers" (or, "terminator terminators"...:D ). A short low level campaign could be:
1) protect a small settlement/important npc from warforged attack
2) attack important warforged "factory"
3) spy mission on a new type of warforged being built
4) steal warforged technology/magic (i dunno, say, a time travel device)
5) find out that warforged have gone back in time to kill PCs parents. PCs use said time travel device to go back to the world pre-apocalyspe. their mission; stop PCs parents from being killed [aka operation: save sarah connor]...
6) oh yeah, and if the players want, re-write history by taking out skyne- i mean, the warforged creators... END campaign.
granted, your players may groan at this, but if you add in enough of your own touches then it shouldnt be too bad
as for monsters, warforged & golems are the obvious choice, but you could also re-skin undead (or class undead as cyborg-zombies
, use abberant creatures (reskin as mutants from judgement day) etc... allow any race, but if a pc is going to be a warforged he needs to look like a human...maybe austrian... might run for governor one day... oh, forget it
.Skynetious. Minor god, just came into being. Evil alingment.
Skynetious will be destroyed in the future, but cultests send his main followers, warforged, back in time to destroy the ones who eventually kill him, the PCs.
The PC's have just started adventuring and don't know why these metalic being are attacking them. How can they find out more about them? What is their purpose? How can they stop this creature from ruleing California?:D
But seriously, how does that sound?
just skimmed through mm1 looking at the different constructs that were in it, and came up with the following list:
Eidolon, Lev 13 controller (leader), p101
Golem (Flesh) Level 12 elite Brute, p142
Golem (stone) level 17, elite brute, p 142
Guardian (shield) level 14 solider, p149
Guardian (battle) level 17 controller, p149
Helmed horror, level 13 soldier, p155
Helmed horror (greater) level 18 elite solider, p155
Homunculus, variety, p156
Warforged (soldier) lev 4 soldier, p261,
Warforged (captain) lev 6 solider, p261
most of these look like they're in the lower side of paragon level, so you might want to start your players at level 10ish as the only low level contsrcuts i could find were the homunculus and the warforged... there might be more in the mm2 and eberron campaign guide, but i dont own either of these...
Plus Undead Hordes from the future trying to stamp out the living sounds awesome. :P
s'funny, i thought the same after my last post and have subbed the warforged for the undead. i'm putting together a short campaign from lev 15 - 20, in which the BBEG in the end will be a blackfire dracolich.
there are SO many decent high paragon level undead creatures, much more interesting that constructs
Should I have the medieval equivalent of 'skynet' which would be a fiercely intelligent non-human entity with the ability to, perhaps, control magic items and effects remotely? (a fantasy equivalent of skynet infiltrating and controlling technology) or should I play off of the lord of blades thing?
My first thought: the "master" is a long-dead giant/demon/dragon from ancient Xen'drik, who imprinted his will upon the creation templates that House Cannith copied to make Creation Forges. Essentially, each Warforged produced from a certain forge (or set of forges) is a distributed processor, a shard fragment for this uber-mind, and someday in the future, they will come together and reawaken the giant/demon/dragon.
Does this mean we have to eliminate all warforged? Hunt down and destroy all forges? What does this mean for 'forged PCs? And how do you tell the "good" ones from the "bad" ones...
Through his visions, Calendar sees the rise of the Becoming God, but only if a certain path is followed - and he sees the challenge to the Becoming God posed by certain mortals in the world. In order to ensure the birth of his god, he targets these people for assassination.
***
In this scenario, the end result is much like in the Terminator franchise - constructs come to kill people before they cause trouble for their master - but the mechanisms and flavor are uniquely Eberron.
Heroic tier PCs could face LoB agents, just to make them hate warforged, and discover when entering Paragon tier that there's a time/space manifest zone within the Mournland that the Warforged from the future use to boost up the LoB's troops. Their misson could be to open more Time Travel Manifest Zones here and there across the Five Nations. Epic could be battling 'Skynet' in the Future to prevent any warforged to travel back to Eberron. Their 30th level adventure could be set in the Future or the Past by destroying/sealing the Time Travel Manifest Zones, thus being trapped out of the Present aka removed from play.
Rekko