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View Full Version : What Would a Necromancer Do?



Flickerdart
2009-01-16, 09:07 PM
My DMing style of "making stuff up as I go along" has left me somewhat (read: completely) lost as to how to continue my plot. This is a rather freeform PbP game...I do have a certain system of magic, as it were, in place, as well as other rules, as I am using RPs for building a setting. Anyways, on to the point.


The players apprehended a MBEG, who had a magic item that, as a side effect of its abilities, raises undead. They screwed up the non-specific ritual he was about to enact in order to control the raised army. As it is, the zombies will simply converge on to the item, tearing through anything in their way. However, before they could kill him, a BBEG showed up and demanded the item. The combined forces of the MBEG and the party managed to shoo him away, and then they decided to join up and protect the nearby town from the horde.

Except of course, the MBEG just pretended to so he could use one of their horses and not get killed by the arising zombie army. When they brought him back to the city, after having them tell the city guard that they're about to be invaded, he sent them off to find a way to control the item's power and possibly suppress it (as they couldn't just chuck it somewhere for fear of the BBEG taking it). Of course, he just sent them to another BBEG, a 100-years-dead wizard ghost who was the perpetrator of the plan in the first place. He nearly killed them before they managed to distract him with some other ghosts and escape.

Now, the MBEG's shtick is simple. He just wants the many powerful artifacts the second BBEG had on him before he died, and is willing to do some pretty immoral things to get them. He's not evil per se...just unscrupulous. They're some pretty sweet magic items, and it's a low-magic setting.

So now, the players are back in town, looking for the guy to tear his head off. The other BBEG had been disabled due to another party miles away blowing up a temple dedicated to a dark source of magic. Since he was just a guy before possessed by the BBEG, he's now lost and temporarily traveling with the party.

Problem is, with the BBEG neutralized, the other BBEG has to have some sort of motive for destroying the city beyond "I need new troops to go kill something elsewhere and you were closest" because the item can't let him control the horde anymore. But I want the threat of the undead to persist.

Thing is, the MBEG doesn't know that the BBEG that isn't his master is deposed. He sent the PCs to look for one of his master's powerful items, hoping that they'll get him what he wants without having to serve any longer. Win-win, except he didn't expect them to escape with their lives.

tl;dr - Ghost necromancer raised a horde to kill a town, but lost control of it due to the heroes, so now the army is going toward the MacGuffin that raised it, which is inside the town. The MBEG has the MacGuffin, but the players have good reason to kill him and toss the MacGuffin in a ditch somewhere, but then the town won't be attacked by the undead, and I want that to happen, because otherwise there isn't a plot.

So...why would the surviving BBEG want to raze the town? It's a nowhere place, and I don't have much setting around it yet. He's got no reason to hate the heroes except that they killed his corporeal body that he possessed. The town isn't responsible for his original death. He died before it was founded, even.

Assassin89
2009-01-16, 09:17 PM
The necromancer was buried in a graveyard where the town was built over.

Maybe a descendant of the one who originally killed the necromancer lives in the town and the necromancer wants revenge.

I know both of these sound cliched, but it could work.

PinkysBrain
2009-01-16, 09:19 PM
Why can't the MBEG simply hide the the thing in the town?

Flickerdart
2009-01-16, 09:27 PM
The necromancer was buried in a graveyard where the town was built over.

Maybe a descendant of the one who originally killed the necromancer lives in the town and the necromancer wants revenge.

I know both of these sound cliched, but it could work.
That part of the story had already been told to the PCs. The necromancer (who isn't really a necromancer, but it would take too long to explain) was killed by a bunch of bandits some ways north of the town, after which he possessed the bandit leader and killed everyone else there. The bandit leader's body was the one the PCs killed.


Why can't the MBEG simply hide the the thing in the town?
He can, but as things stand, it's useless to him and his master to do so, unless they wanted to destroy it. Which brings us back to the motive.

Vortling
2009-01-16, 09:30 PM
Does the item have to be useless to the MBEG? It doesn't even have to be useful in the same way it was before, perhaps there's another ritual that can be performed with it.

Ganurath
2009-01-16, 09:33 PM
Assuming necromancers are still spellcasters that get their power from lore, this individual may be a believer in the scientific method. As such, he may want to test out the capabilities of the undead in large scale combat. However, he wants to keep "casualties" on his part to a minimum, so a village would be the ideal target.

Now, how to select the village. Why this group of self-righteous mercenaries seems to be taking an interest in the safety of this village, the same squad of meddlers that prevented the undead from being controlled. As a necromancer that values balance, it is only fitting that I take away their sense of control in the near to immediate future. They disrupt my influence over the dead, I disrupt their influence over the living. Oh, I do hope this won't lead to a slippery spiral of revenge. Those get tedious fast.

Flickerdart
2009-01-16, 09:35 PM
Does the item have to be useless to the MBEG? It doesn't even have to be useful in the same way it was before, perhaps there's another ritual that can be performed with it.
Well, as it stands, it's drawing an undead army at it, and it can't be turned off. He's not suicidal. It is heavily implied that he doesn't know of any way to stop it. I suppose he could have been lying, but...eh.

Ganurath, I like that. I like that a lot. Very evil, certainly in his character (he was one of the last refugees from a hellish death storm because he was studying it, and bandits capped him on the way from it).

PinkysBrain
2009-01-16, 09:36 PM
He can, but as things stand, it's useless to him and his master to do so
Except for having whole bunch of magical compasses out there which can lead one of the most dangerous forces in the world (a party of PCs) straight to him.

Flickerdart
2009-01-16, 09:38 PM
Except for having whole bunch of magical compasses out there which can show one of the most dangerous forces in the world (a party of PCs) straight to him.Eh? I'm confused.

PinkysBrain
2009-01-16, 09:46 PM
As long as the has the item all the PCs have to do to follow him is nab one of the zombies.

Ganurath
2009-01-16, 10:00 PM
Thought: He wants to control the undead. Well, their current behavior pattern is simple enough: Violently follow the MacGuffin. So long as he can stay ahead of the undead, he can control them. This could not only be a test of the undead, but a test of the improvised control system. Adversity into advantage, as Chandra would say.

Maerok
2009-01-16, 11:08 PM
As mentioned, he could have been buried there.

The crypt itself was trapped and magically sealed by a group of adventurers that moved on long ago. Eventually a town was founded over it all Poltergeist-like (real-estate these days...).

His body is still there along with a few items that didn't make it into ghostdom with him; there's either the locket of his long-lost love who drove him mad when she died or possessing his own body enacts some kind of necromantic superconduit under the right conditions.

He needs the MacGuffin because it is specifically sealed against him so he needs more brute force than just possessing a commoner with a sturdy hammer. Therefore, undead masses.

Why did he choose now to perform all these evil deeds? Equinox once every 1000 years, duh.

zakk2to2
2009-01-16, 11:17 PM
as it stands in the description the party has with them a person formaly possesed by a very powerfull force of evil that ie the one BBEG. this person was probably in the other BBEG's way and would be again if he came back. this degenerates from there into a simple thing. the BBEG thats still around does not want the other to come back so kill the former host and hope he cant take another. yes the BBEG knows it might not work but there is nothing to lose and everything to gain.

party + former BBEG = current BBEG attacking part

Jothki
2009-01-16, 11:47 PM
Does the plot actually depend on the town being razed?

I would think that once the MBEG realizes that the party that he had sent off to die has managed to survive, his response would be to hide or flee, in order to buy himself time to figure out how to control the item and/or come up with a good excuse for why a party of adventurers showed up on his master's doorstep. The party would then need to track him down rather then risking an army of zombies leaving a trail of destruction in his path.

Flickerdart
2009-01-17, 11:37 AM
Does the plot actually depend on the town being razed?

I would think that once the MBEG realizes that the party that he had sent off to die has managed to survive, his response would be to hide or flee, in order to buy himself time to figure out how to control the item and/or come up with a good excuse for why a party of adventurers showed up on his master's doorstep. The party would then need to track him down rather then risking an army of zombies leaving a trail of destruction in his path.
Yeah, I think that's what I'll do. Because, see, the players accidentally set fire to a circus that camped outside the gates, and all the performers are dead. Guards (newbie guards, because the experienced ones are at another gate where the main army will be coming from) rushed to put it out. But the corpses will also be rising under the influence of the MacGuffin, and so the MBEG is going to give the party a choice: fight him in their weakened state, or go help the guards that are under attack from on-fire zombies. They can still go after him, of course, but even the assassin of the party is more Good than anything else.