Using An Elder Evil

[Dralnu]

I've been reading through the Elder Evils book and I'd like to weave one into my campaign. I'm having some difficulties with the concept in general though, as well as picking a suitable Eeeevil to use.

My general concern is: Why aren't the gods interfering? The EE's, for the most part, would bring about the end of the world. So, why aren't the deities stepping in? Or doing anything at all to help?

So far, the EE that I've been considering to use is Atropus. I really like the flavor of the EE. I like the Sign and the Big Bad. Very epic in scope. But there's so many holes here that I don't know how to fill:
So we start with Caira Xasten, who sets the entire Atropus apocalypse thing in motion. Her motive for destroying reality is because she's mad with grief over losing her lover and wants to get revenge on the gods. Okay, except... She's a level 10 urpriest and a level 20 NPC. So, wait a second, she's capable of casting a level 9 spell Apocalypse From the Sky, but she can't cast a Raise Dead? Seriously? Further, Atropus is well on its way to the world, so why does she need to cast the spell to "draw him" when he's already here? Shouldn't that happened in order to bring Atropus here in the first place, not when it's already hovering above the world?

We also have some pretty silly demon action going on. Why did Orcus decide to attack Demogorgon now? Is it some freakish coincidence that he decides to attack when Atropus is on its way? And why would he do such a thing in the first place when it guarantees that the devils would get a free invasion card to the Abyss, which immediately happens? Most importantly, how does this even fit with the story?

Next is Gorguth. Oh man, I love his flavor, but what the heck is he doing? He wants to end his existence, fine, but then why hasn't he just found a simpler method of killing himself? Other than that, he's cool in my book. He goes to the Material Plane to slaughter as much as he can to "speed up" Atropus or something like that I guess. I can't help but feel his existence and goal is weak or basically pointless, since Atropus is coming regardless at this point.

Finally is Atropus himself. You stop him by destroying his Aspect... why? Why does destroying his aspect cause him to literally rocket away from the planet with his tail between his legs? I think I'll just add some artifact on the moonlet's surface that the Aspect guards, and if you take that out then you defeat the EE.

I'm considering using other EE's too, like Pandorym. Has anyone used an EE in their setting? How'd it go?

[Gabe the Bard]

Caira might have tried to raise her lover from the dead, but he might not have responded. He could have been content in the afterlife, or maybe something else prevented him from returning (Atropus could be making Raise Dead spells go wonky). Either way, if Caira tried this and it failed, it gives her more reason to blame the gods since divine power didn't work for her.

The approach of Atropus may also drive powerful beings insane, so that they're incapable of halting its approach. This could explain why the gods are unable to stop him and why those demon lords are suddenly acting loony.

In my own campaign, I'm using Dendar the Night Serpent, a nightmare-eating elder evil from Champions of Ruin. A lesser deity is trying to release Dendar in order to paralyze the other gods with their own nightmares, and then consume their divine essence in their moment of weakness. The gods don't realize their peril because this lesser deity is hiding among dreamscapes in the Region of Dreams.

[Dylaer]

I've always seen Atropus as an anti-god. My ideas there is that Atropus makes the universe a sum of zero in terms of divine power - that is, the anti-divine power (so to speak) is the exact inversion of the power of the gods. So, to destroy Atropus would require the destruction of all the gods.

Caira - well, any person being brought back knows the alignment of the caster. Caira is NE, IIRC. Most normal people don't want to be raised by a neutral evil cleric, less so an ur-priest. And the apocalypse from the sky is to create enough death to awaken Atropus - until then it's just a giant head in space, but that much death allows Atropus to manifest totally.

If you read into the fluff, Orcus worships Atropus - being the demon prince of undead and all, that makes sense. Gorguth, well, he hates everything, and bringing Atropus is certainly a good way to get revenge.

As for the aspect's destruction making Atropus leave, I always rationalised that the aspect was Atropus' link to the material plane, and it's destruction causes Atropus to get pulled back to whatever place it came from.

[Techsmart]

I've been reading through the Elder Evils book and I'd like to weave one into my campaign. I'm having some difficulties with the concept in general though, as well as picking a suitable Eeeevil to use.

My general concern is: Why aren't the gods interfering? The EE's, for the most part, would bring about the end of the world. So, why aren't the deities stepping in? Or doing anything at all to help?

So far, the EE that I've been considering to use is Atropus. I really like the flavor of the EE. I like the Sign and the Big Bad. Very epic in scope. But there's so many holes here that I don't know how to fill:
So we start with Caira Xasten, who sets the entire Atropus apocalypse thing in motion. Her motive for destroying reality is because she's mad with grief over losing her lover and wants to get revenge on the gods. Okay, except... She's a level 10 urpriest and a level 20 NPC. So, wait a second, she's capable of casting a level 9 spell Apocalypse From the Sky, but she can't cast a Raise Dead? Seriously? Further, Atropus is well on its way to the world, so why does she need to cast the spell to "draw him" when he's already here? Shouldn't that happened in order to bring Atropus here in the first place, not when it's already hovering above the world?

We also have some pretty silly demon action going on. Why did Orcus decide to attack Demogorgon now? Is it some freakish coincidence that he decides to attack when Atropus is on its way? And why would he do such a thing in the first place when it guarantees that the devils would get a free invasion card to the Abyss, which immediately happens? Most importantly, how does this even fit with the story?

Next is Gorguth. Oh man, I love his flavor, but what the heck is he doing? He wants to end his existence, fine, but then why hasn't he just found a simpler method of killing himself? Other than that, he's cool in my book. He goes to the Material Plane to slaughter as much as he can to "speed up" Atropus or something like that I guess. I can't help but feel his existence and goal is weak or basically pointless, since Atropus is coming regardless at this point.

Finally is Atropus himself. You stop him by destroying his Aspect... why? Why does destroying his aspect cause him to literally rocket away from the planet with his tail between his legs? I think I'll just add some artifact on the moonlet's surface that the Aspect guards, and if you take that out then you defeat the EE.

I'm considering using other EE's too, like Pandorym. Has anyone used an EE in their setting? How'd it go?

The dieties do not directly going in because its not that they are saving THE world, they would be saving A world. Now, depending on how your fluff describes why exactly the gods don't interfere on a day-to-day basis, you could be saying "Pelor ruined this (insert fluff reason) to save one world." Don't forget, your world may be the only one in the campaign, but the dnd universe has many "worlds" that the gods have to watch over simultaneously. As my DM put it: the gods are like gardentenders, as the worlds are flowers. If one flower dies, the tender will probably not do much to stop that. If it is the tender's favorite, he may go through the extra steps, but that's beyond the point.
Elder evils usually only threaten a small number of worlds at any one time.
Also, the deities are doing something to help, they are letting PCs exist.
For the reasons for the EE's actions, I usually consider that "DM free space," where wizards says "don't be so lazy, make a reason." Although, it could be just as easily "We are lazy and are goin to publish this... PLOT HOLES DON'T EXIST."

[AlexTheGreat]

So, wait a second, she's capable of casting a level 9 spell Apocalypse From the Sky, but she can't cast a Raise Dead? Seriously?
Don't you think that it's likely that she became an Ur-Priest LONG after her lover died? I mean, she started hating the gods AFTER he died, so she wasn't an Ur-Priest back then.


Further, Atropus is well on its way to the world, so why does she need to cast the spell to "draw him" when he's already here?
No. He's not already here. He's still very far away. She needs to draw his attention with a massacre.


not when it's already hovering above the world?
If it's hovering above the world then why does no-one notice? If you did read this handbook, you should have noticed that coming of EEs is preceded by signs and wierd (often dangerious) phenomena. Undead starting to randomly get out of their graves is one of them.


Is it some freakish coincidence that he decides to attack when Atropus is on its way?
I don't remember exactly what is written in the book, but I think that it is a coincidence. Atropus is "drifting" in the "cosmos" of the material plane on which the players are living. It's a different plane then Abyss or Hell and I don't know if Atropus has any influence on other planes (if he does then Orcuses army would benefit from his presence).


And why would he do such a thing in the first place when it guarantees that the devils would get a free invasion card to the Abyss, which immediately happens?
There's nothing paricularly strange about that. An everyday ocurrence in the Lower Planes, they fight constantly.


Most importantly, how does this even fit with the story?
That's just background. you can use it how you like.


Finally is Atropus himself. You stop him by destroying his Aspect... why? Why does destroying his aspect cause him to literally rocket away from the planet with his tail between his legs? I think I'll just add some artifact on the moonlet's surface that the Aspect guards, and if you take that out then you defeat the EE.
Because when his aspect is destroyed, Atropus gets scared and just runs away.

[Tvtyrant]

One of the things about the EEs is that they are meant to act as Epic type threats within E20. This means that their fluff (god slaying abominations) is juxtaposed by their crunch (killable threats). You can always scale them up so that gods fighting them would be at risk, but doing so means your party would have to be well into Epic to kill them.

[NineThePuma]

Every Elder Evil has this aura that COMPLETELY prevents divine divinations to work on them.

I would reckon that this extends to a Deity's divinations, and possibly even their literal ability to detect them.

The Deities know something bad is happening, but they have no idea what the cause is.

[NichG]

You could do a complicated thing where Caira's Raise Dead attempts were blocked by an evil god who saw the potential for her grief turning into world-destroying insanity and wanted to take advantage of a vulnerability when the good gods inevitably were forced to personally take care of the problem. The evil god somehow got his hands on the soul and refuses to release it. Caira however blames the gods in general, etc, etc.

Or even worse, her lover's soul was mishandled in some way and was thereby permanently destroyed beyond even the power of the gods (became a petitioner and was killed off-plane, for example).

[Dralnu]

Thanks for the suggestions! I've decided to use Atropus as the capstone of an epic campaign that starts this tuesday. With the advice here, I'm adding a couple things to the general idea.

Atropus:
Anti-Deity, like anti-matter is to matter. Creator of all deities, looking to unmake all he has done and thus find his own end as well. The first "vestige," this being is so powerful that he has willed a small portion of his essence into the physical realm (the moonlet). Destroying his Aspect would sever his only tie to the physical realm and banish him for good. Not only is he immune to divinations from divine sources, he's straight-up immune to any deity (his offsprings), period.

Caira:
I want to change her around. I want her to become a powerful leader of an important good-aligned church. She's fooled the entire organization, including the PCs, into believing she is a champion of good. This gives her access to everything she needs and lets her use the goodies around her as patsies. She has deals with evil organizations and uses them covertly to misdirect her opponents, and at some point will even stage an assassination attempt on herself to further prove her innocence. The PCs brings her the artifact she needs for her spell and only realize their mistake at the end.

Background motivation, she still blames the gods for the death of her husband. I want to explore it a bit further though. I want her to be responsible (either directly or indirectly) for her husband's death, but unable to come to terms with that truth, and any attempts to raise him from the dead have failed because either 1) he sees that she's evil and doesn't want to return 2) he's currently a bodak (aka Gorguth)

For stats, I'm thinking Bard 10 / Urpriest 10, gets all the "cleric" stuff she needs while Bard shores in the rest of her deception needs -- glibness, UMD, whatever.

Orcus:
This archdemon is a big fan of Atropus. Somehow, Atropus' coming empowers him. I'm not sure how yet. But yeah, he gets empowered and invades... I dunno, still not sure how to make this part of the story work.

Gorguth:
Would like him to be Caira's husband. She inadvertently brought this fate on him. They don't know each other anymore, but both have individually decided to bring Atropus to the world via a massacre. Gorguth comes with his army, and Caira sets up the apocalypse spell, so the PCs can't stop both at once. Not sure if I still want him to betray Orcus and whathaveyou.


What do you guys think?

[Tvtyrant]

Every Elder Evil has this aura that COMPLETELY prevents divine divinations to work on them.

I would reckon that this extends to a Deity's divinations, and possibly even their literal ability to detect them.

The Deities know something bad is happening, but they have no idea what the cause is.

And their Solars? Does it stop the Solars from seeing them? Because if I was Zeus and one of my planets/spheres suddenly started going through a major problem and I couldn't locate it I would send an angel down to go see what is up. If its a big deal it can just plane shift back, and if not it can either deal with it or leave it alone based on size of problem.

[NecroRick]

From my perspective the whole summon the gods to do your bidding is very much at the DMs discretion. If you throw a low level party up against an npc that can legitimately cast Gate, then they're pretty much by definition screwed.

Against a low level party something more akin to a 7th or 8th level npc is going to be more appropriate... but no way by RAW can they cast anything remotely like Gate.

So maybe when the PCs turn up the cultist is trying to bring his elder god through the portal, but for whatever reason the god can't fit through... the obvious solution is to dispatch the npc before he can complete whatever ritual he is doing, a less obvious somlution is to say "holy carp! is guy can summon gods at level 7???? I wanna join his prestige class!!!!"

but just because there's a portal, doesn't mean the cultist is the one who made it.

[Tvtyrant]

Thanks for the suggestions! I've decided to use Atropus as the capstone of an epic campaign that starts this tuesday. With the advice here, I'm adding a couple things to the general idea.

Atropus:
Anti-Deity, like anti-matter is to matter. Creator of all deities, looking to unmake all he has done and thus find his own end as well. The first "vestige," this being is so powerful that he has willed a small portion of his essence into the physical realm (the moonlet). Destroying his Aspect would sever his only tie to the physical realm and banish him for good. Not only is he immune to divinations from divine sources, he's straight-up immune to any deity (his offsprings), period.

Caira:
I want to change her around. I want her to become a powerful leader of an important good-aligned church. She's fooled the entire organization, including the PCs, into believing she is a champion of good. This gives her access to everything she needs and lets her use the goodies around her as patsies. She has deals with evil organizations and uses them covertly to misdirect her opponents, and at some point will even stage an assassination attempt on herself to further prove her innocence. The PCs brings her the artifact she needs for her spell and only realize their mistake at the end.

Background motivation, she still blames the gods for the death of her husband. I want to explore it a bit further though. I want her to be responsible (either directly or indirectly) for her husband's death, but unable to come to terms with that truth, and any attempts to raise him from the dead have failed because either 1) he sees that she's evil and doesn't want to return 2) he's currently a bodak (aka Gorguth)

For stats, I'm thinking Bard 10 / Urpriest 10, gets all the "cleric" stuff she needs while Bard shores in the rest of her deception needs -- glibness, UMD, whatever.

Orcus:
This archdemon is a big fan of Atropus. Somehow, Atropus' coming empowers him. I'm not sure how yet. But yeah, he gets empowered and invades... I dunno, still not sure how to make this part of the story work.

Gorguth:
Would like him to be Caira's husband. She inadvertently brought this fate on him. They don't know each other anymore, but both have individually decided to bring Atropus to the world via a massacre. Gorguth comes with his army, and Caira sets up the apocalypse spell, so the PCs can't stop both at once. Not sure if I still want him to betray Orcus and whathaveyou.


What do you guys think?

Having Gorguth be Caira's husband only makes sense if he is 1. Undead now or 2. moved up from a petitioner to a sub-demon lord very quickly. Both would be interesting, but why wouldn't she have rezzed him if she is an Ur-priest?

[Dralnu]

Having Gorguth be Caira's husband only makes sense if he is 1. Undead now or 2. moved up from a petitioner to a sub-demon lord very quickly. Both would be interesting, but why wouldn't she have rezzed him if she is an Ur-priest?

Actually, Gorguth is a Bodak (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/bodak.htm), so he is an undead. From what I understand, you cannot rez an undead until that undead is destroyed, not even with true resurrection (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/trueResurrection.htm). So Caira's lover died, she blamed the gods for his death, she became an ur-priest and mastered one of the most powerful resurrection spells in existence, only to have it fail miserably. At this point she snaps and goes for the Atropus route.

[Honest Tiefling]

Aren't Bodaks made from people who have been "destroyed by the touch of absolute evil. "? Not sure how many people pay any attention to that, but might be cool to work into how he died, became an undead and also got separated from wifey.

[Grendus]

Perhaps the meteor was a fragment of Atropus, shattered thousands of years ago. She blames the gods out of misplaced anger, believing that they're refusing to let her husband back (she had no divine power at the time, and I doubt the gods would answer a Commune spell from an Ur-Priest without a damn good reason, if she ever even thought to ask). Meanwhile, because of his contact with an artifact of congealed evil incarnate, her husband was transformed into a Bodak and entered into the service of Orcus, and eventually Atropus.

Caira's attempts to call Atropus made him aware of the material plane, but unable to pinpoint it, so he called his servant Gorguth to increase the slaughter while he sent 'scouting beacons' - like those little moons - to hopefully pick up a stronger signal. Defeating the aspect of Atropus blinds him to the material plane once again (like breaking the antenna off a radio), keeping the world safe for just a little bit longer.

[Dralnu]

Perhaps the meteor was a fragment of Atropus, shattered thousands of years ago. She blames the gods out of misplaced anger, believing that they're refusing to let her husband back (she had no divine power at the time, and I doubt the gods would answer a Commune spell from an Ur-Priest without a damn good reason, if she ever even thought to ask). Meanwhile, because of his contact with an artifact of congealed evil incarnate, her husband was transformed into a Bodak and entered into the service of Orcus, and eventually Atropus.

Caira's attempts to call Atropus made him aware of the material plane, but unable to pinpoint it, so he called his servant Gorguth to increase the slaughter while he sent 'scouting beacons' - like those little moons - to hopefully pick up a stronger signal. Defeating the aspect of Atropus blinds him to the material plane once again (like breaking the antenna off a radio), keeping the world safe for just a little bit longer.

That's an awesome tie-in. I'll definitely use this, thanks!

So, with what I've got so far, possible Timeline:

EL 1-3: Not exactly sure what to do here, but PCs could be on a mission, inadvertently uncover the book of vile darkness in some underground lair, and it falls into the hands of the High Priestess of Pelor (Caira). The crazy ur-priest vows to "destroy" the book, aka reads up on Atropus.

EL 4: Thinking about doing Sons of Gruumsh here. Possible tie-in.

EL 6+: Caira has begun an elaborate summoning ritual to make Atropus aware of the world. The signs begin. Nature itself is aware of the threat. On the other side of the continent, the Tarrasque awakens and goes on a rampage leading directly towards Caira's church at the heart of a metropolis, though the path is hardly obvious at first. Nature's unconscious defense mechanism is also leaving a wake of destruction and the greatest heroes are unable to stop it.

Caira enlist's the party's aid in trying to stop the Tarrasque, instructing them to gather components from different locations that she can use to put it back to sleep. In reality, these are the components that she needs for her Apocalypse from the Sky spell.

EL 10+: As the PCs return some of the components to Caira, her church is besieged by cultists who steal the book of vile darkness. However, these cultists are working under orders of a mysterious leader, who is actually Caira herself.

While the PCs attempt to retrieve the book, the cultists use it to open a Gate for Gorguth and his army. The PCs also learn about "Atropus" and find out that the only way they can find more information about the birther of the gods is from something that has lived before deities existed -- aboleths.

EL 12+: PCs learn about Atropus from the aboleths while defeating the cultists and closing the gate.

EL 15+: PCs must deal with Gorguth's army, Caira is revealed to be the mastermind.

EL 18+: PCs must stop the Tarrasque from destroying a city, Gorguth's army from destroying another metropolis, and Caira's apocalypse from the sky spell. Can they stop it all? Hint: nope.

EL 20: PCs vs. Atropus. FIGHT!