PDA

View Full Version : Brainstorming a Devil's War Effort [3.5]



Rhiannon87
2009-04-04, 08:17 PM
So, I'm working on this homebrew campaign that I'll be sending my party through. The campaign is built around the idea that there is an exiled devil who is preparing to make war on the Lords of Hell, he's using a powerful wizard to help him with the war, and the wizard is in turn using the party to help him collect some things they need. (Ah, delegation.) My problem is coming up with things to have them find. I figure I need three or four major things to go find. So far, I have three.

1. They're going to be sent to the site of an ancient demon-vs-devil war to hunt for leftover weapons. Relatively easy, probably the first one they'll do.

2. They're also going to be asked to hunt down a very special weapon (an intelligent halberd with a gift for tactics) that's ended up in a local dungeon.

3. They're going to be given the general task of capturing any devils/demons they might encounter. The wizard is going to tell them he's studying the nature of evil and wants to bring some pure, inherently evil creatures back to his tower (FOR SCIENCE!); in truth, he's using a magical device to convert the outsiders to the service of the devil who is planning this war.

And that's it. I'd like one or two other major things for them to go find. They're also going to have sidequests, run-ins with local powers who are trying to figure out what's going on, general mystery hijinks stuff. I was thinking about having them locate a resource of some kind, adamantine or diamonds or something, but that feels kind of video-gamey and pretty boring to me. Any other ideas from the Playground?

JeminiZero
2009-04-04, 09:34 PM
You could get the devil or wizard to ally with mindflayers, who promise them the Emerald Legion (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101587). The PCs then have to run around collecting the bits and pieces (Capture trolls etc) required to construct the legion.

Myrmex
2009-04-05, 01:12 PM
The Devil, if he's going to assault Hell, is going to need souls to fuel his epic spells and power his infernal war machines. So he should get the PCs embroiled in some wars whose only purpose is to generate souls for him to capture (denizens of the lower planes routinely capture souls to sell).

Ideally, he'd get a big thing going between a couple backwater Chaotic Evil nations, so no Solars descend to investigate where their souls are going or keeping Hextor from getting cheesed off.

This has the added benefit of keeping the devil's motives hidden while moving them forward.

Other quests:
Send the PCs to the demiplane of slime, domain of the avatar of Jubilex, demon lord of oozes. His avatar is an old man that answers questions; perhaps the Devil needs to learn of a secret entrance into Dis that was exploited by Obyrinths in ages past.

The wizard needs a couple of wishes, so he sends you to the cloud castle of a noble djinn that you have to capture in a special iron flask.

The devil is looking to recruit apostates of Hextor, a splinter religion of LE devils and cultists. In order to do so, the PCs must recapture their two towers, currently being held by cultists of Nerull/Erythnul.

As the Devil's goals grow to fruition, he needs to create diversions to prevent drawing too much attention to himself as he goes about constructing hidden portals on the lower layers of Hell and caching weapons. To do this, he needs to manipulate the upper planes into launching raids on important devil controlled outposts on the material plane. An alliance with a demon lord could also work; perhaps Orcus wants his old minion back, Doresain the Ghoul King, who is currently under the Gnoll Prince's dominion. So the PCs would have to recapture a layer of the Abyss for Orcus. Orcus controls many powerful liches, and would make a valuable ally- perhaps the devil could use him through the wizard, and the wizard would use you as proxies.

Looting dragon hoards for gold and prizes could always work, or dwarf caches. An alternative to going to "X material world location and capturing Y good" would be traveling to the demi-planes of high level casters and looting those. Perhaps Saronius the Snakelord has recently died, and the PCs must rush to loot his demiplane of sunken jungle ruins and grotesque serpent shrines before an adventuring party of yuan-ti cultists do the same.

Buried deep beneath the ruins of a destroyed church of Cuthburt is a piece of Anathema, the dark tome of forbidden lore. Said to have been first penned by Asmodeus himself, the tome was fractured in his fall from heaven, and the pieces left scattered throughout the planes. The fragments passed from one powerful individual to another, each adding to the documents they found. Vecna was said to have added much about undeath, while Boccob penned an entire chapter about the curious ice magic of the Immoth. Obox-ob, the former prince of demons, left a prolific amount of information on both Tanari and Baatzu, his greatest enemies. It would be a great boon to any would be planar power.

Narmoth
2009-04-05, 03:29 PM
Well, Night Hags collect souls and sell them to devils. The wizard could send you on raids against them.
Still, you would soon want to have evil spell components from the BoVD, which are kind of obviously evil (unicorn horn, angel blood and so on)
I'd prose that the wizard would want to make a hellish engine (golem/monster thing from Fiendish Codex II) and have them gather some of the parts.
The devil would also gain greatly if they could conquer an evil city on the prime material, and turn the souls over to that particular devil

Rhiannon87
2009-04-05, 10:39 PM
Thanks for the ideas thus far! The issue of collecting souls actually isn't a problem (there's something else going on that'll get PLENTY of souls without the party's help), and I'm trying to avoid obviously evil quests (as the party is good-aligned. The poor dupes.). But there's some good ideas here, stuff I can play with. The idea of starting a war is a good one... I might be able to do something with that. :smallbiggrin:

VelvetThunder
2009-04-06, 12:55 AM
You could have the PC's sent to aquire Good, Holy, Anti Demon stuff. Since the Devil cannot approach a temple of Pelor per say with it being evil, You could have the PC's as middle men.

crazedloon
2009-04-06, 01:08 AM
an interesting game hook a dm I played with used for a similar campaign had the group going on a quest to obtain a potent poison capable of effecting the normally poison immune devils and demons. This would unbalance the war since hell does not have these tactics available and they are not normally expecting such tactics

Kaiyanwang
2009-04-06, 01:45 AM
Another Idea could be recruit Yugoloths as mercenary troops to support the devil. Since even Yugoloths are fiends, you could link it to the soul gathering (they need a reward, and I don't think is money).

The ally recruiting concept itself could lead to a lot of quests..

krossbow
2009-04-06, 01:56 AM
The head of vecna, retrieved from the hoard of the might gazeebo.