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View Full Version : The Star-Touched of Depredations and Despair



un_known
2010-05-23, 01:55 AM
So I’ve got a horror campaign going on at the moment with some friends and they like it, their about mid Paragon tier now. With this group of friends it’s been the first successful campaign they have gotten into. We had to actually get rid of players that just sat there and argued about rules the entire time to get through anything. So back to what I was saying. It is horror themed and is centrally around a small town which they arrived at via a merchant caravan before their employer died from addiction to Corpse Grass and became a Nighthaunt.

The main thing is that they have discovered that this town exists on a layline of supernatural activity and it actually rests inside a crater created by something that fell to the world thousands of years before the Dawn Wars. The creature that fell was a shard of a star known only as ‘The Star of Depredation and Despair’. Long before the Dawn War it is said that the very stars waged war against each other and that all was in utter chaos till the Primordial’s came and chained them in their ever presently glowing starry forms.

The group has recently found an abandoned observatory which contained a Mad Scientists laboratory. After nosing around for awhile they found the ‘dead’ mad scientist wasn’t exactly ‘dead’. He was very much alive as a Brain in a Jar with his minions working to build him a body of flesh and metal. After they defeated him they found that as they left a glowing light came from the cellar beneath the Observatory part.

Upon entering they found a massive room in which a three dimensional star map of cosmos was activated and in the center was a massive meteor rock and strange whisperings which became apparent the closer they got. They presumed that this was what the Brain in the Jar was referencing as the enigmatic voice which drove him mad.

So as they watch they see a group of Cultists prostrate themselves around the meteorite and one of them begins to hack at it with a pick-axe. The stone glows from the crack and the cultists are transformed into ‘Starry Monstrosities’ and from the rock rose a glowing ‘Entity’. The entity couldn’t get away from the rock as it was still tied into it via a sort of umbilical chord. The ground around it began to twist and became like the star map around it until the star map stretched to the roof of the building and kept going down. Somewhere along the way spectral bridges formed towards the center of the room and my group surged forwards to attack.

The Starry Monstrosities provided great melee coverage for the ‘Entity’ as it tried to pull itself free from the meteorite. It failed to pull itself free before the group reached it and in one last attempt if tried to tear itself from the stone and instead knocked one of my players off the astral bridges.

He had the choice to save herself (Playing a female character) by doing a DC 19 Acrobatics check and using one of the floating corpses of the Starry Monstrosities to bounce off of she could get back to the top. She failed.

The Starry Monstrosity she used to bounce off of wasn’t exactly as stable as she thought and she fell right through it.

Shortly after this the Dwarven Runepriest along with the Human Paladin of Ioun were able to smash the meteorite and scatter its remnants into the shadows via ‘Tome of Shadows’ whom the evil Runepriest had attained during the earlier parts of his Paragon tier. The ground returned to normal and the astral map stopped working its generator still unknown to the characters. The Runepriest pilfered a book from the one remaining corpse of a Starry Monstrosity the book was a shoddy copy of an Elder Text (Type of ancient book that was written by Ancient Eladrin on various arcane texts. This one is pertaining to the astral movement of the star Allabar, The Opener of Ways.)

We all went for a break at this point and I pulled the guy (Playing a female character) who fell off the ledge to the side. I told him:

“The cold vast expanses of space rush past you and here as you fall you witness the passage of Allabar cross a space next to a star that glows sickly like spiritual fire. As Allabar passes it within your mind echoes a voice: ‘Hear me mortal you can have life. For this world and all others like it shall one day fall to the eternal passage of time. Soon you shall fall like it if you stay here longer for even this universe has its end. But you might not die yet; I can give you life. I can return you to the place from whence you came but at a price. Join me; let my mind become part with you.’”

He/She chose to join and so the character returned and was found sleeping in the inn. When she woke up she found that her skin at night time swirled with pulsing lights. Whenever it is pure dark there is always a dim light source in the group now.

I need ideas for how to go on from where he/she falls down the path of the Star of Depredations and Despair. For now he/she is a Star-Touched creature.

The Glyphstone
2010-05-23, 01:29 PM
What's the Pact Boon for a Star Pact Warlock? Maybe get the benefits of that boon 1/encounter?

un_known
2010-05-23, 01:55 PM
Yeah I've thought about that but I'm really trying to figure out how to create a good sort of feat/power tree for the person. Since as they progress down the path of corruption by 'The Star of Depredation & Despair' they become more and more like its avatar.

The Glyphstone
2010-05-23, 02:04 PM
Make them a custom Paragon path?

demidracolich
2010-05-23, 02:10 PM
Also a custom epic destiny where the character finally becomes one with the avatar.

un_known
2010-05-23, 02:30 PM
Yeah I'm thinking of going with a custom epic destiny and their paragon path is already changing.

I've changed his race to Fey(Star-Touched/Cosmic) and in the end he will be an Avatar of Despair. But I need some ideas on what types of spells/abilities to give him. At the moment I'm just going with basic things to make him stand out from the others and other Cosmic related stuff. Main key things in this star-touched person is his feats/spells I'm tryign to make about despair, cosmic magic, and depredation.

The Glyphstone
2010-05-23, 02:51 PM
Gaze of Despair
Encounter Power
You stare at an enemy, striking them with the despair and depredations of the infinite cosmos and shattering their feeble resistance.
Attack vs. Will
Hit: 1d8 per tier +Cha psychic damage. Target suffers -1 to non-AC defenses (save ends).



Or just refluff all his existing powers into star/despair themed...but for us to help with that, we need to know things like his class and what powers he's already chosen.

un_known
2010-05-24, 08:05 PM
Kay so the character was prior to the infusion:
Race: Goliath
Gender: Female
Class: Seeker
Paragon: Death Arrow

I don't have the list of spells at the moment but that should give you an idea of what I could do.

Fallbot
2010-05-25, 07:17 AM
Wasn't there a thread a few months ago about exactly the same thing happening to a tiefling? I tried to find it but my google-fu is weak. It might have something useful in if anyone can find it.