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View Full Version : D&D 4E: So, your friend is now a star-spawn...



Lost Demiurge
2009-11-18, 09:53 AM
Long background explanation here. Bear with me…
So, I’m running an Arabian nights style game. It occasionally veers off into other directions, depending on where the PC’s decide to go. This is the first 4E game that 3/5’s of the party has ever played… They’re loving it so far.
Last night they were exploring an ancient palace, that was once the center of the ancient Changeling civilization. They learned how an Eladrin planar traveler found his way to the world when it was young, and fell in love with a primordial remembered only as “The Lady of Night”. They learned how the children of the two were changelings, and how they’d started to build a small empire, helping the primordials by hunting the ancient creatures of the Old Ones that remained on the world.

They learned how, long ago, a stone fell from the sky and landed near the lands of the Changelings. The Lady was away when it occurred, so the changelings assumed it to be a gift from her darkness. They took it into the temple far below the palace. But the high priestess saw that it was evil, and so attempted to destroy it by throwing it into the well of night.
When they drew it near to the pit, the stone opened its golden eye. And thus began the doom of the Changeling civilization.

For the stone was a fragment of Gibbeth, the star of flesh. Gibbeth was once all flesh, and all flesh was once Gibbeth. This had been so until the Lady of Night had rent Gibbeth with her wicked claws, tearing him asunder and stealing flesh for the creatures of the new world. But fragments survived the rending, and one had come to take revenge upon the Lady, and her children.


And so Gibbeth ate the high priestess, and the priestess became Gibbeth. And the high champion tried to free the priestess and failed, becoming of Gibbeth. And Gibbeth became all, and Gibbeth split off parts temporarily to recover more escaped flesh, and Gibbeth grew.

This history held a fair amount of resonance for our Changeling Assassin. In my setting, changelings are considered cursed outcasts and demon-tainted monsters. She was shocked to find that she had, y’know, cultural heritage. So she was busy recovering artifacts, and gung-ho for cleansing the place of Gibbeth’s foul influence. Which they’d been doing for the last few levels, cutting through gibbering creatures and warped Silent-Hill type monstrosities. Finally, though, they’d reached the final chamber.
The final chamber was a 30-40 roundish platform held suspended over a bottomless pit (The Well of Night), with three bridges branching off from it. The platform and parts of the bridges were coated in flesh and eyes, and in the center of it was a great stone with a golden eye, staring at the PC’s with cyclopean intensity. This was all that was left of Gibbeth.

The PC’s turn down its offer to Join him, and start kicking ass. They find out that Gibbeth can spawn large tentacles to beat up anyone standing on itself, and release stirges from pods on its underside. Not fun. Especially once the first tentacle hits, and knocks the fighter back a square.

Enemies with knockback capability. While the party was picking their way along narrow bridges above a bottomless pit. The PC’s got a lot more serious, fast.

While the fighter and ranger charged in, the sorceress and warlock hung back to provide fire support and pick off stirges. The Changeling assassin was hanging back too… She’d found a powerful staff, and was trying to activate its various functions. She had managed to create a wall of scorching light in the middle of the thing, but it still had another function that she was trying to crack with no luck.

Then a tentacle knocks her off the bridge. She fails the save, and goes over.
No worries. I planned for this.

I told her that she had two options. She could drop the staff and grab onto the bottom of the bridge… Effectively taking her out of the fight until someone could pull her up, but keeping her character alive.

Or, she could keep ahold of the staff with one hand and try to grab the bridge with the other. That’d be tricky, DC 20 acrobatics, but she could try.

She opts for the path of greed. Rolls a 1.

No problem. I have a houserule, you can use action points to reroll (Once per roll). She spends one.

Rolls another 1.

Down she goes into the bottomless pit. It isn’t actually bottomless, it just opens up in the cold void of space. So yeah, at this point I figure it’s time for her to make another character.

Then, a few rounds later, the fighter finishes using Tide of Iron to push the Gibbeth fragment off the platform before the tentacles can beat him down. The rock falls into the void.

I have an epiphany. I pull the Assassin’s player aside.

Me: “As you fall among the stars and your lungs start to give out from the pressure and lack of air, something hurtles past you. it’s the evil rock, and it opens its eye and looks at you as it goes past. Time freezes, and you *hear* it… But not with your ears.

Gibbeth: “Space is an illusion, time is a window, death is a doorway. Flesh is the only certainty… I can send you back, but you must first let a part of me into yourself. Choose NOW.”

She chose “Yes”.

And so it was that when the party left the ruins, they found her outside, in a deep sleep, with melting frost covering her.

When she woke up, they found that her eyes had turned from white to gold.
Yep, she’s essentially been tainted by the star-spawn, Gibbeth.

Oddly enough, they didn’t put it together right away, so I think we’ll start dropping hints over the next few sessions. I’ve already come up with the idea of her having a vastly increased appetite for meat. What else is good, hintwise? Both subtle and non-subtle are all right in my book, figure we’ll start light and ramp them up as it goes.

Aron Times
2009-11-18, 09:57 AM
Awesome story, bad formatting. You need to add spaces between paragraphs.

dsmiles
2009-11-18, 10:02 AM
Awesome story.

Maybe giving her some interesting non-game-altering abilities?
Like...increased ability to eat said meat? (As in she can eat more and not gain weight or get full.)
Or, maybe...taking on more star-spawn-like traits? (Such as a feeling, just a feeling mind you, of your lifeforce leaving you when she is close-by.)
I'm sure that given more time, I could come up with something more interesting, but these should get you pointed in the right direction.

Asbestos
2009-11-18, 10:06 AM
A homebrewed feat path? Or, let her MC into a spellscarred, plenty of the powers are bizzare and Far Realmy as is the bonus from the entry feat.

Pharaoh's Fist
2009-11-18, 10:23 AM
Animals sense that there's something not right about her.

FoE
2009-11-18, 11:34 AM
Gibbeth is the green star-spawn, correct? (I don't have my MM2 in front of me.)

As time goes on, her body begins constantly transforming as though several beings were trying to inhabit the same vessel. What's more, anyone who looks at her sees something completely different, as though they can regard only a small piece of the greater whole.

As well, she becomes a magnet for abberations and starlocks.

Mando Knight
2009-11-18, 11:43 AM
Star Pact Warlock multiclass, then possibly the Radiant One Epic Destiny. (Dragon 366, though strangely missing in the Compendium and Character Builder...)

Yakk
2009-11-18, 12:03 PM
So, here is what I'd do mechanically:
The character is now a Hybrid Assassin (Dex sub Cha) | Warlock (star) (Cha)

Attribute points and possibly feats have been moved around.

Maybe a MC spellscar thrown in for good measure (or do a power-swap by fiat).

Her Ki focus has been replaced with something ... aberrant. Just make up a magic item.

jiriku
2009-11-18, 12:09 PM
Inevitably, this will all end very badly (http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-610).

Lost Demiurge
2009-11-18, 12:51 PM
Awesome story.

Maybe giving her some interesting non-game-altering abilities?
Like...increased ability to eat said meat? (As in she can eat more and not gain weight or get full.)
Or, maybe...taking on more star-spawn-like traits? (Such as a feeling, just a feeling mind you, of your lifeforce leaving you when she is close-by.)
I'm sure that given more time, I could come up with something more interesting, but these should get you pointed in the right direction.

Heh, actually she can already eat all the meat she wants and never gain weight, I just didn't mention it.

More star-spawn traits are what I'm looking at now...

EDIT: I like the "animals shy away" bit. And the "ever-shifting visage" idea. And the suggestion for a home-brewed feat path. Think I'll whip something up there, and the more she chooses to progress down Gibbeth's spiral of flesh, the more monstrous she'll become.

Yakk and Mando, that's a couple of interesting ideas, but I don't think I'll go that route. To me, warlocks are folks who have managed to use their willpower and/or cunning to get a fair-or-better deal from their patron. She didn't. She basically surrendered, in exchange for living. That, and I'm pretty sure the player doesn't want to multi-class.

And yes, Jiriku, this will end badly, very badly. Surrendering to cosmic horrors is BAD, M'kay?

If she tries to ignore it or seeks redemption or a cure, then she'll only be consumed into a crawling mass of flesh after the campaign's over.

If she takes the homebrew feats or follows Gibbeth's occasional whispered suggestions, then she'll pop at some point prior to the end of the campaign.

This'll be exceptionally interesting when they run into the star-cultists in the southern city...