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View Full Version : BBEG needs a Big Bad Evil Goal



root9125
2009-10-31, 12:47 AM
See title.

Players are level 7, D&D 3.5, BBEG is the head of a necromancer's guild that has just provoked an international war. Head of the "military" portion could not be happier.

But... Now I don't know what they're trying to do. They've ACCOMPLISHED the goal of obtaining tons upon tons of undead.

So... What happens now? What else do they want?

Kallisti
2009-10-31, 12:49 AM
Make zombies with create spawn and create the zombie apocalypse? Really, crazy guild of necromancers with army of undead soldiers is likely to thy their hands at World Domination.

Sstoopidtallkid
2009-10-31, 12:54 AM
Shock the players. They're fine as-is. Once they finish the war, and they're willing to pay reparations if that will stop it, their goals are basically to exile most of the peasants and replace all non-skilled and even semi-skilled labor with undead. Their goal is to turn themselves into a trade empire over the next 10 years, giving them massive money and luxury for all the elite. Even the middle class will be far better off under them than in neighboring nations, who also see economic gains because of the inflow of both labor(exiled peasants) and cheap exports from the undead nation.

Then see what the players do. They may still attack on the basis of "lolUndead", and if they don't, have their quest giver tell them they have to. His trade interests are threatened by this and he wants them stopped. If they don't, guide the players to running guard for the Necros against their former bosses.

Or you could just have the undead army conquor the world. That works too, I guess.

Jayngfet
2009-10-31, 12:54 AM
Shunting out the positive energy channeled by living beings and good clerics, in order to replace it with negative energy channeled by undead and evil clerics? using this they strengthen the connection to the negative energy plain, weaken the connection to the positive, and eventually merge the negative and material planes(or at least give a stronger connection). With this sort of negative energy around they can possibly make a kind of negative energy being/super undead, and use that to destroy and conquer everything?

Flickerdart
2009-10-31, 12:55 AM
The nice thing about having lots of infantry? They can hold a city rather than just take it (by nuking it into oblivion). Unintelligent undead can't really do that; a necromancer is much more tempted to kill and raise a city's population and move on. They'd have to ally with a regular warlord to police the conquered cities, and that's a whole slew of plot hooks.

dyslexicfaser
2009-10-31, 01:04 AM
Maybe he wants world peace, and the way he's chosen is to turn everyone into non-feuding, unintelligent undead - ruled by him.

Maybe he's a classist, and he wants to create a servitor/working class that will always be faithful - no need to worry about uprisings when you not only control your workers' thoughts, but that they don't actually have any thoughts except for yours.

Maybe he's a fetishist, and... well, never mind on that one. Gross.

streakster
2009-10-31, 01:12 AM
Deep, deep in the mountains, there's a lake. A small lake - in area, at least, though it is far deeper than it has any right to be. And the storms go around that little lake, rather than over, and the water is dark even on the brightest days.

The necromancer's guild knows what's sleeping at the bottom of that lake. And they're just hoping that the massive armies of zombies they've got can slow the thing down long enough for them to get to some other universe.

Because the thing in the lake is waking up...

arguskos
2009-10-31, 01:31 AM
Deep, deep in the mountains, there's a lake. A small lake - in area, at least, though it is far deeper than it has any right to be. And the storms go around that little lake, rather than over, and the water is dark even on the brightest days.

The necromancer's guild knows what's sleeping at the bottom of that lake. And they're just hoping that the massive armies of zombies they've got can slow the thing down long enough for them to get to some other universe.

Because the thing in the lake is waking up...
This applies to every campaign ever, by the way. I also totally approve of it at all times. :smallamused:

Hell, it's so applicable, it's in my SIGNATURE now! :smallbiggrin:

OracleofWuffing
2009-10-31, 01:39 AM
Zombie ladder to the moon.

Uh, from there? Pull the moon down to Earth, write your name on the moon, carve it into a blue canary and use it as the world's largest night-light, interfere with the way the waves work on Earth to make Zombie Mermaids so you control the waves directly, zombie catapult it into the sun to black it out, or anything in between those, really. Lots of things you can do with a moon.

dyslexicfaser
2009-10-31, 04:25 AM
Deep, deep in the mountains, there's a lake. A small lake - in area, at least, though it is far deeper than it has any right to be. And the storms go around that little lake, rather than over, and the water is dark even on the brightest days.

The necromancer's guild knows what's sleeping at the bottom of that lake. And they're just hoping that the massive armies of zombies they've got can slow the thing down long enough for them to get to some other universe.

Because the thing in the lake is waking up...

And hell, maybe the group will end up allying themselves with the necromancers to stop some greater evil.

Mind-trippy.

Dimers
2009-10-31, 10:53 AM
Revenge for past slights and insults, of course!

The zombies are to be used in a science experiment to disprove X or prove Y. Or maybe find a cure for death ... or a cure for zombification :smallbiggrin: ...

Launch a massive underwater campaign to locate and take over Ye Olde Hypermagical Sunken Isle. This puts off the problem of "why are they doing that" until later. If the necromancers march soon enough, you could shift away from them entirely for several game-months or game-years.

The necromancers' guild develops serious infighting and splits into several factions, each now trying to kill the others and take their stuff zombies. If it's not clear what the guild's goal was before, that could quite possibly be because it was in contention. Works fine with "revenge" if the necromancers want revenge on each other.

No matter what the necromancers had originally intended, The Spell Went Horribly Awry (TM), and suddenly all those zombies are now uncontrolled ... and enhanced ... and accompanied by demons/aliens. Heh heh heh.

They're trying to create the "zombie" portfolio for some diety. The zombies will count as worshippers for that diety simply by existing.

Needle in a haystack: the reason they created all these zombies is to hide one particular corpse so that the former owner can't be raised from the dead. The PCs probably shouldn't find that out until late, of course, so it's easy to combine that idea with others.

Random NPC
2009-10-31, 10:59 AM
Deep, deep in the mountains, there's a lake. A small lake - in area, at least, though it is far deeper than it has any right to be. And the storms go around that little lake, rather than over, and the water is dark even on the brightest days.

The necromancer's guild knows what's sleeping at the bottom of that lake. And they're just hoping that the massive armies of zombies they've got can slow the thing down long enough for them to get to some other universe.

Because the thing in the lake is waking up...
It's always awesome when the bad guy turns out to be the good guy that is trying to help the world from a huge greater evil by doing something relatively evil.

Dimers
2009-10-31, 11:00 AM
... replace all non-skilled and even semi-skilled labor with undead. Their goal is to turn themselves into a trade empire over the next 10 years, giving them massive money and luxury for all the elite. Even the middle class will be far better off under them ... Then see what the players do. They may still attack on the basis of "lolUndead" ...

Hey! Stay outta my head!

No, my idea had more to do with power generation (zombie treadmill power plants), but the point was still that the necromancers were trying to improve the lot of the remaining-alive citizenry. And that despite the altruistic or merely capitalistic intentions, other people would inevitably see the whole process as evil just because of the connection with undeath.