Dyllan
2009-04-07, 12:54 PM
Okay, technically the world is captive and the gods can't get in. A bit of campaign background, which spans multiple campaigns.
A few thousand years ago, the heroes (PCs) ran through Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. They were victorious, but Tharzidun's prison was weakened, so they went on another quest to find the pieces to an artifact that was capable of imprisoning a god. After succeeding in imprisoning Tharzidun once again, the artifact was split into pieces, and three heroes were granted the gift of immortality and took the pieces to separate planes of their choosing. Even the gods could not know where this artifact was located, for fear of it being used in inter-god conflicts. They didn't destroy it, because they were afraid of Tharzidun again trying to escape.
Well, Iuz got in on this a bit, and placed magical tracers on each of the heroes without their knowledge. He managed to track them down and recover the artifact, eventually. Iuz, of course, wasn't content with just imprisoning one diety. So, he placed the prison around the material plane of Grayhawk (or at least, my heavily modified version), trapping himself in and all other dieties out. He was suddenly the only god.
A few hundred years pass, and he consolidates power. Eventually, he is slain by intrepid heroes (one was an ex-PC, but all were run as NPCs, and the players haven't learned this whole story yet). Now there are no gods.
Flash forward about another thousand years, and we have present day. There are some rare relics of divine magic - magic items left over from the gods, but religions are mostly without teeth. No magic, no miracles, nothing but blind faith and hope. Diseases wiped out the populations of many a large city, without any magic to cure it, leaving many ruins. What remains is no longer a world dominated by humans, but a hodge-podge of all races, including many monstrous races, inhabiting cities and living together in peace or war.
Now the party is about to learn the truth of Iuz, and the sealing of the gods... and perhaps the PCs are actually ready to accept that the gods may have once existed (they've seen a bit of evidence by now). Their ultimate goal will be to break the prison and allow the gods to return. But the question is, how?
I figure that whatever the cult was doing in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil to free Tharzidun should work to free Grayhawk, except they can't contact any elemental planes to enlist the aid of the elemental princes. Also, exactly how that ritual was supposed to work was vague, at best. I need to outline what was being done then, so the party can research it and find a way to adapt it to their own situation.
Any suggestions?
A few thousand years ago, the heroes (PCs) ran through Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. They were victorious, but Tharzidun's prison was weakened, so they went on another quest to find the pieces to an artifact that was capable of imprisoning a god. After succeeding in imprisoning Tharzidun once again, the artifact was split into pieces, and three heroes were granted the gift of immortality and took the pieces to separate planes of their choosing. Even the gods could not know where this artifact was located, for fear of it being used in inter-god conflicts. They didn't destroy it, because they were afraid of Tharzidun again trying to escape.
Well, Iuz got in on this a bit, and placed magical tracers on each of the heroes without their knowledge. He managed to track them down and recover the artifact, eventually. Iuz, of course, wasn't content with just imprisoning one diety. So, he placed the prison around the material plane of Grayhawk (or at least, my heavily modified version), trapping himself in and all other dieties out. He was suddenly the only god.
A few hundred years pass, and he consolidates power. Eventually, he is slain by intrepid heroes (one was an ex-PC, but all were run as NPCs, and the players haven't learned this whole story yet). Now there are no gods.
Flash forward about another thousand years, and we have present day. There are some rare relics of divine magic - magic items left over from the gods, but religions are mostly without teeth. No magic, no miracles, nothing but blind faith and hope. Diseases wiped out the populations of many a large city, without any magic to cure it, leaving many ruins. What remains is no longer a world dominated by humans, but a hodge-podge of all races, including many monstrous races, inhabiting cities and living together in peace or war.
Now the party is about to learn the truth of Iuz, and the sealing of the gods... and perhaps the PCs are actually ready to accept that the gods may have once existed (they've seen a bit of evidence by now). Their ultimate goal will be to break the prison and allow the gods to return. But the question is, how?
I figure that whatever the cult was doing in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil to free Tharzidun should work to free Grayhawk, except they can't contact any elemental planes to enlist the aid of the elemental princes. Also, exactly how that ritual was supposed to work was vague, at best. I need to outline what was being done then, so the party can research it and find a way to adapt it to their own situation.
Any suggestions?