Therise;17030847 wrote:
Personally, I think it sounds great. I always loved the Age of Worms and Kyuss especially. I really don't have too much problem with the Spellplague (Aebir, on the other hand...) but I do like this as an alternative.
Now, if only I could get my creative juices flowing in a "Worm that Walks" multiclass-only class.... Hmm.
-The Age of Worms thing was when Jergal was revealed to be all evil and plotting, right?
Yeah, the FR adaptation used Jergal instead of Kyuss. I loved the whole idea behind that.
-What is the, more or less, story of that? I've never seen it, read it, any of that.
Well, basically, the idea is that Jergal has had a very long-term plan in the works (of which he magically suppressed even his own memory) that will lead to massive death and destruction in the Realms, perhaps even the End of Everything - and it's tied into the spread of otherplanar worms (related to him, actually) that infect people and turn them into undead (all wormed up, you get the idea). A zombie or other undead type that has these worms can make special attacks that cause worms to fly off themselves and burrow into the victim's flesh, quickly turning them into undead as well. But more than that, a cult dedicated to Jergal launches several other efforts that could turn Waterdeep (I think) into a haven of undead with a spreading-out effect in a way that would eventually turn the whole world into an undead-o-rama rather like Ravenloft. It becomes epic after 9 module-type adventures or so, and the ultimate conflict is with Jergal himself who has regained his (suppressed) memories.
That's it in a nutshell, but my description above hardly does the AP any justice. It's really an excellent epic AP, which fired up tons of old-timer DnD players who remember things like the original giants series, and the original drow/underdark series.
I'm seeing this as a launching point that would in fact be better than the Spellplague, and would be epic and far-reaching enough that could believably lead to the deaths of many deities and the merging of others - to get me to the "state" that 4E Realms is in (without said Spellplague).
-Well, now, at least, I know why it's called 'Age of Worms'. Thank you. I always figured it was a misspelling of 'Wyrms'.
Heh, nope. They're actually fairly tiny greenish worms that infest a corpse. Bigger than maggots, smaller than centipedes. In theory, they are related to Jergal's "home" dimension, as he is "revealed" to be an insectoid-like interloper deity from loooooong long ago.
That's the thing they made up solely for this to fit FR, anyway, as the replacement to the deity Kyuss (and several other things of Greyhawk lore). I liked the concept.
18DELTA :coolcthul
http://paizo.com/dungeon/products/issues/ageOfWorms
18DELTA :coolcthul
There's also a "prep" for the DM, called the Age of Worms Overload, which is free. It maps out the general plan for the adventure path and is here:
http://paizo.com/dungeon/resources
It also has Realms-fitting changes that indicate the things I mentioned about Jergal, giving his general plan and the like. Individual and more detailed FR bits for each module are tied to the free downloads for each individual copy of Dungeon, though, in that series of issues.
The Realms conversion focuses on Daggerford and Waterdeep for the first few adventures.
The answer is: I couldn't.
And I must admit, albeit exposing my massive biases towards the undead, that this sounds much more interesting way of doing things than the spellplague.
I plan on running this adventure path after my current epic campaign is complete as it is pretty interesting. I think I am going to mix in the rod of seven parts adventure from 2ed (the parts that are not terrible anyway).
I think it would be an excellent way to change the realms instead of the spellplague if you are looking for an alternative. However, that would mean that the adventurers plotting to stop Kyuss (Jergal), would have to fail in the last leg of the adventure.