I'm not quite sure whether his isolation could be a blessing in disguise as it could allow him to build up a new powerbase without the knowledge of the other gods.
Can Cyric - in your game - still communicate with his clergy or is their silence?
If his clergy ever were to device a plan that could effectively free him what would it take?
he will become the god of insanity.
he can still talk with his clergy, he just cant send avatars and his faithful cant go to his domain either dead or living
-Cyric is "imprisoned", but has complete access to his followers, communicating with them and granting them spells and all that. So, effectively, nothing has changed. In truth, the Cyricists are actually doing better now, than in the past.
Because nobody expects them to be any threat? Or because Cyric cannot do anything other than act through his clergy?
18DELTA (Plotting to free my Master Cyric) :P
18DELTA (Chosen of Cyric) :P
In my game we freed him. Gond had the key like with Kezef the Hound's leash.
That's quite a good idea.
Since Cyric is the deity that I'm most fascinated about and the one I use most frequently I'm interested in hearing how others have incorporated his isolation in The Supreme Throne and his clergy into their games.
I haven’t touched on this yet in my 4E Realms campaign, partly because I use Cyric a lot in my other 3.5 Realms game.
However, your question intrigues me so I’ll share some ideas on what I’m thinking for my game.
Can Cyric - in your game - still communicate with his clergy or is their silence?
In my game, he cannot. Further, whatever divine minions or servants he has are cast adrift and scattered, each seemingly left to its own whims, but some are mysteriously compelled to masquerade as Cyric by answering the fervent prayers of his mortal worshippers.
In so doing, they leave mysterious revelations in the minds of these followers, whether in their dreams or through drug induced visions.
If his clergy ever were to devise a plan that could effectively free him what would it take?
This is a long read, but it’s worth it.
Here’s my take on his mad master plan:
I think it would take not just one act of strife, but several monumental acts near simultaneously to fill Cyric with enough power to break out of the confines of his divine prison in the Supreme Throne.
What I envision happening is this: Strifeleaders and Cyricists will -at the direction of Cyric’s divine minions- gather and attempt to abduct and slay the high priests of each of the major gods of the Realms, by means of ritual sacrifice (this act is the gist of the visions I talked about earlier).
These sacrificial murders would be both mad parody and tribute of Cyric’s slaying of Mystra.
The idea for this came to me while thinking about the implications of how clerics are able to cast spells in 4th Edition D&D. Per the class description, Clerics no longer receive power or the means to cast directly from a deity on a daily basis. Instead, it is through ritual ordination that a cleric receives the power to cast.
I figure the first clerics post-Spellplague were ordained directly by their deities (something the Player’s Handbook allows). This ordainment seeded each cleric with just enough divine power to be able to perform their own ordination of other worthy followers to make more clerics of that deity.
So these first clerics (most of them high priests by now) did just that, and so parceled out the divine power within them to each new cleric. These next generations of clerics nurtured the portion of divine power they (perhaps unknowingly) carried and grew it as they themselves grew in power (read: as they gained levels), to the point where they too could ordain other clerics.
The trick is that this would do two things. One, create a link of sorts from each ordained cleric all the way back to the first. Two, cause the initial seed of divine power to grow and multiply.
Now if you were to perform a group ritual that corrupted that link at its root and caused the divine power to flow back to its source (i.e. the first priest), you could isolate that massed divine power in a single individual and then sever the link entirely by sacrificing the high priest.
This could theoretically allow a ritual caster to kill the ability of all the clerics down the line to cast spells and use their other divine powers.
Such an event multiplied over the casting population of each major deity would in my opinion cause considerable chaos, not to mention give Cyric a giddy, strife-filled boost.
This is what the devout of Cyric intend to do by means of their ritual. But they also want to capture the divine seed each high priest would end up carrying and transfer it to a summoned divine minion (the same vision-sending minions we talked about earlier) as part of the ritual sacrifice.
From there, the minions carry the divinely empowered souls back to the Supreme Throne where they consume them and merge with the massed divine power, then merge with each other, then fling themselves as a divinely empowered and unified whole like a gargantuan hammer against the walls of Cyric’s prison.
That plus all the strife going on in the Realms should be enough to empower Cyric to break the chains that bind him and breach the walls of his prison to set himself free.
I think Cyric would view it as madly ironic that the very power of the deities that imprisoned him should became the means to set him free.
And there you go!
;)
I'd have to wonder what Gond was doing with that leash
-It was the key to the leash, actually, I believe. He also had the key to the prisons that the Shadevari were in. The guy has a lot of stuff.
Hello Belegan,
I haven’t touched on this yet in my 4E Realms campaign, partly because I use Cyric a lot in my other 3.5 Realms game.
However, your question intrigues me so I’ll share some ideas on what I’m thinking for my game.
In my game, he cannot. Further, whatever divine minions or servants he has are cast adrift and scattered, each seemingly left to its own whims, but some are mysteriously compelled to masquerade as Cyric by answering the fervent prayers of his mortal worshippers.
In so doing, they leave mysterious revelations in the minds of these followers, whether in their dreams or through drug induced visions.
This is a long read, but it’s worth it.
Here’s my take on his mad master plan:
I think it would take not just one act of strife, but several monumental acts near simultaneously to fill Cyric with enough power to break out of the confines of his divine prison in the Supreme Throne.
What I envision happening is this: Strifeleaders and Cyricists will -at the direction of Cyric’s divine minions- gather and attempt to abduct and slay the high priests of each of the major gods of the Realms, by means of ritual sacrifice (this act is the gist of the visions I talked about earlier).
These sacrificial murders would be both mad parody and tribute of Cyric’s slaying of Mystra.
The idea for this came to me while thinking about the implications of how clerics are able to cast spells in 4th Edition D&D. Per the class description, Clerics no longer receive power or the means to cast directly from a deity on a daily basis. Instead, it is through ritual ordination that a cleric receives the power to cast.
I figure the first clerics post-Spellplague were ordained directly by their deities (something the Player’s Handbook allows). This ordainment seeded each cleric with just enough divine power to be able to perform their own ordination of other worthy followers to make more clerics of that deity.
So these first clerics (most of them high priests by now) did just that, and so parceled out the divine power within them to each new cleric. These next generations of clerics nurtured the portion of divine power they (perhaps unknowingly) carried and grew it as they themselves grew in power (read: as they gained levels), to the point where they too could ordain other clerics.
The trick is that this would do two things. One, create a link of sorts from each ordained cleric all the way back to the first. Two, cause the initial seed of divine power to grow and multiply.
Now if you were to perform a group ritual that corrupted that link at its root and caused the divine power to flow back to its source (i.e. the first priest), you could isolate that massed divine power in a single individual and then sever the link entirely by sacrificing the high priest.
This could theoretically allow a ritual caster to kill the ability of all the clerics down the line to cast spells and use their other divine powers.
Such an event multiplied over the casting population of each major deity would in my opinion cause considerable chaos, not to mention give Cyric a giddy, strife-filled boost.
This is what the devout of Cyric intend to do by means of their ritual. But they also want to capture the divine seed each high priest would end up carrying and transfer it to a summoned divine minion (the same vision-sending minions we talked about earlier) as part of the ritual sacrifice.
From there, the minions carry the divinely empowered souls back to the Supreme Throne where they consume them and merge with the massed divine power, then merge with each other, then fling themselves as a divinely empowered and unified whole like a gargantuan hammer against the walls of Cyric’s prison.
That plus all the strife going on in the Realms should be enough to empower Cyric to break the chains that bind him and breach the walls of his prison to set himself free.
I think Cyric would view it as madly ironic that the very power of the deities that imprisoned him should became the means to set him free.
And there you go!
;)
Thank you Mr_Miscellany,
this is the kind of post that I was hoping for
I must say that you have given it some thought and I can see the basis of your theory, but as far as I would think the divine power that originated from the first priest should with it's spreading also have attached itself to "newer" priests?
To think that the entire divine power of is harboured in one person and that the killing of this one individual would be the undoing of that entire deity's following is not what I think designers had in mind, and it would not be the way I would run it in my campaign.
It is however an interesting concept, and the idea of a number of high-ranking murders performed more or less simuntaneusly would bring chaos and strife to a degree that would enhance Cyric's power to porportions that would enable him to break free is good.
I cannot however help think that the other gods would just imprison him again, once he is free - unless Ao somehow intervenes.
On a sidenote if Cyric cannot communicate with his clergy, then how are they even aware of what has happend to him. Of course did would know that something has happend since he has fallen silent, but would they be able to find out what has really happend?
On another sidenote what would you do differently in creating a cleric of Cyric (from 3.5 to 4) since there is no Channel Divinity feat for evil deities?
Once again thanks for a great post, it has certainly given me inspiration for my campaign.