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SilverLeaf167
2011-11-19, 06:10 AM
Arvi, if you're reading this, just stop stalking my account right now. :smallannoyed:



I've got an idea for the next campaign I'm DMing, and I'd like to hear what you think about it. After running a couple unsuccessful, really short, very niche campaigns, I'm planning on this being a fairly "standard" or "generic" setting.

Anyway, at some time fairly early in the campaign, the PCs are doing a fairly standard dungeon crawl in the ruins of an ancient city (built by a currently extinct, primeval race). At the end they find some mysterious runes of an ancient language carved on a wall (in addition to some other loot, perhaps an artifact vital at the end of the campaign). The runes, if translated, are a cryptic hint, something like "The Heavens shall not destroy Man, They shall only offer the means".

The PCs (or practically anyone else in the world) don't know it, but every couple millennia the gods decide to test their creations' morale and skill. They discreetly offer a random person the secrets of a devastating Epic spell, purging large areas of civilization (exact details to be thought out later). So far, no civilization created by the gods has been capable of either resisting the urge to use this great power or stopping it from being used. The gods just let the world destroy itself and then create it again, hoping that this one would be more successful. One of those now-extinct civilizations managed to leave behind this message found by the PCs.

If the PCs ask people for advice regarding this odd prophecy, most people will just tell them to forget about it, because there's plenty of meaningless gibberish to be found in ancient tomes and ruins.


Later on in the campaign, the PCs somehow find out that someone is already in the middle of researching this deadly spell. At that point, their top priority would probably be finding out the more exact details about or reaching the person with the spell. If it does manage to get cast (there will be multiple voluntary human sacrifices and a fairly long casting time required at every location it is used at), the PCs will have to either devastate the organization itself, stop further castings from being successful, or even somehow convince the gods to stop this madness.

What do you think? I'd like some help with establishing the somewhat vague parts of the plan (details of the spell, prophecy, BBEG etc.), but any constructive critique or additional ideas would be appreciated.

motionmatrix
2011-11-19, 08:51 AM
One hole in your story: what if a/the pc's would rather either take the spell for themselves or just outright not care about it?

If I was a pc, I might spend my time trying to level asap so I can plane shift when it comes, for example.

I would make it personal before you really make it about the spell. Let them find the ruins, and get some info before anything happens. When they get back to their village, city, etc it is devastated, or completely abandoned.

Unknown to them, it was the same organization that is trying to do the spell. Perhaps they need souls, or blood, or some such thing. Now the pc's have emotional ties to victims for this spell. Plus, the players will be pissed they can't buy or sell anything, no jobs, etc because town is gone to hell.

You lead them by quietly pushing them through emotional walls into wanting to either destroy the spell or the organization, if not both.

SilverLeaf167
2011-11-19, 09:11 AM
Yeah, good idea. Even though my players are the kind who unknowingly railroad themselves, this would add a nice layer of depth to the plot.

Whybird
2011-11-19, 11:13 AM
It's a nice idea for a plot, but I think you need to do more work into making the players realise that the prophecy they find is important. As it stands there's not an awful lot of motivation for the players not to dismiss the prophecy as just random writing on the wall of a temple, and be utterly blindsided by the nuke-spell when it shows up.

My recommendation:

(1) Make it clear that a lot of people want to know what the prophecy is. The person who employed them to seek out the ruins hires them with the deal "you can keep whatever treasure you find so long as you bring me back the prophecy". Some sort of magical CIA working for the court wizard pick the PCs up because they want to know what it says, too.

(2) Make a clearer link between the prophecy and the nuke-spell. Maybe it's the same spell every time, and the ancients include the name of it in their prophecy. Then when they hear that someone is researching <name of spell> they know that it's a big deal they need to do something about.

(3) To make it a more complicated plot point than "You need to wipe this evil organisation out before they finish their research", why not have it so that rather than making it available by research it's just dumped into the mind of a complete random? Then additional options open up for the party: do they try to get him on their side? Silence him? Get to him before the bad guys do? You could even have it so that if anybody who knows the spell dies, the spell gets copied into the minds of the last two people whose eyes he looked into / the two people closest to him / something like that (and this is the only way to learn the spell). That way, just killing the target isn't a solution to the players' problems.

The other thing I'd suggest is that the players should be able to learn the spell. If they then start wandering around wrecking ****: well, fine. It's not going to be long until other characters start learning the spell so that they can stop the players, and the campaign ends with an oncoming magical armageddon.

SilverLeaf167
2011-11-19, 11:26 AM
It's a nice idea for a plot, but I think you need to do more work into making the players realise that the prophecy they find is important. As it stands there's not an awful lot of motivation for the players not to dismiss the prophecy as just random writing on the wall of a temple, and be utterly blindsided by the nuke-spell when it shows up.

My recommendation:

(1) Make it clear that a lot of people want to know what the prophecy is. The person who employed them to seek out the ruins hires them with the deal "you can keep whatever treasure you find so long as you bring me back the prophecy". Some sort of magical CIA working for the court wizard pick the PCs up because they want to know what it says, too.

(2) Make a clearer link between the prophecy and the nuke-spell. Maybe it's the same spell every time, and the ancients include the name of it in their prophecy. Then when they hear that someone is researching <name of spell> they know that it's a big deal they need to do something about.

(3) To make it a more complicated plot point than "You need to wipe this evil organisation out before they finish their research", why not have it so that rather than making it available by research it's just dumped into the mind of a complete random? Then additional options open up for the party: do they try to get him on their side? Silence him? Get to him before the bad guys do? You could even have it so that if anybody who knows the spell dies, the spell gets copied into the minds of the last two people whose eyes he looked into / the two people closest to him / something like that (and this is the only way to learn the spell). That way, just killing the target isn't a solution to the players' problems.

The other thing I'd suggest is that the players should be able to learn the spell. If they then start wandering around wrecking ****: well, fine. It's not going to be long until other characters start learning the spell so that they can stop the players, and the campaign ends with an oncoming magical armageddon.
1. I'm planning on having them do some other adventuring between finding the prophecy and finding the spell. Knowing the people I play with, putting too much emphasis on the importance of the prophecy would probably make them wonder why they're just doing other stuff rather than finding out more, and I really want to save the actual relevation of the spell for later.

2. I already planned on the spell being the same every time. I'll probably include the name somehow.

3. As I think I mentioned, the whole spell is the gods' test of mankind's morality, or at least capability to stop such a disaster from happening. To randomize this "test" as much as possible, they ARE indeed giving some random person the otherwise unobtainable secret, knowledge of which is required to make the spell work. I don't think that any kind of "spreading" of the secret would really work, because then the "test" would become far too erratic and hard to control. It's not like the gods are actually trying to destroy the world... they're just experimenting whether the world is capable of NOT destroying itself.

motionmatrix
2011-11-19, 01:28 PM
Ooohhh I really like Whybird's ideas!

It made me take it a step further: the spell is broken into several pieces. A number of people are born with a piece of it in every blank generation so it can be put together (this is the doing of the gods and how they naturally "birth" the spell each time, so technically it is not direct divine intervention, allowing the experiment to continue).

The pieces are in people from different races, blah blah. might even give them some power, or perhaps just the propensity to be better, and become something.

Have an important npc for the players, who has been in their lives for many sessions be one of the piece holders.

SilverLeaf167
2011-11-19, 01:30 PM
Great idea, motionmatrix!
That also gives me a good excuse to not make the piece holders pushovers in combat. :smalltongue:

Now, the big question is, what exactly should the spell actually do? It has to be something capable of clearing entire worlds of all life, without leaving any obvious signs other than some ruins here and there.

Iceforge
2011-11-19, 01:53 PM
Just a quick opinion, but simply naming the spell "The Means of the Heavens" would tie it strongly to the suggested prophecy.

I think what the spell does should not be known until it is cast.

Most of the suggestions so far have been good, but I think some of them ruin the feell I got from your initial post, which is that the spell itself is a test.

If the spell is copied on out into other people or present in each and every generation until someone uses it to destroy the world, then it is not really a test, but rather a timed bomb that will go off at one point or another.

I think it should be a multi-options spell, that once cast, the caster is faced with several choises for him or her alone.

The decisions on these choises can lead to the destruction of all current life, and that result should not be too obvious.

For instance, maybe the caster is given 3 options: All Devils, All Demons or the love of his/her life.
Whichever he chooses will be instantly destroyed in a wrath of the Gods.
To the commoner, it seems fairly absurd to pick the last option, but taking the Blood War into consideration, killing either all devils or all demons will lead to the surviving party travelling across the planes and destroying all life, upon which the Gods hit their big reset button.

Or the caster is imbued with power beyond even the most powerful of beings, only Gods are able to resist the power of the caster, who can kill merely by desiring someone to be dead.
And then he gets the ability that the moment he sees someone, he will instantly know of every single bad thing that person has done or felt the desire to do if even for an instant, which would basicly fill him with hatred of every person he encounters from that moment onward.

kieza
2011-11-19, 06:10 PM
This is oddly similar to what's going on in the "secret knowledge" parts of my campaign setting: The gods are actually just sufficiently advanced beings (In this universe, sufficiently advanced magic and technology are indistinguishable from godhood.) who survived a devastating civil war. Due to the nature of the weapons employed in the war, only a handful of these godlike beings survived, and they're sterile. Since they aren't immortal, just ageless, they're slowly but surely being killed off by the Great Enemy native to the Far Realms. They know that they won't last forever, so they're now trying to create successors by terraforming every planet they can find and seeding them with life. By putting various seed races in situations designed to artificially accelerate their cultural development, they hope that at least one will become a suitable replacement before the last "god" is killed.

Now, the seed races don't know this. On the planet of my campaign setting, the gods took the approach of leaving various artifacts around to stimulate intellectual development; the idea was that finding these installations would make people curious and lead them to investigate how they worked, hopefully jump-starting their knowledge of magic and technology. Unfortunately, while this approach might have worked, the curators left behind by the gods went through an ideological schism, and the dominant faction has deviated from the plan. Some of these artifacts have been discovered, but the usurpers have engineered things so that most of them are the ones with military applications, and this has led to mortals developing extremely destructive military technology before they have the wisdom to use it safely.

The growing level of militarism in the world is starting to upset the loyalist curators (who are worried that the mortals will blow themselves up, or even worse, figure out how to reach other inhabited worlds and blow them up), and if they ever regain contact with the gods, it's likely that they'll scrap this world so that they can reuse it. Everyone left on the planet will be rounded up, sterilized, and permitted to live out the rest of their natural lives in comfort and safety, and the gods will then destroy any trace of civilization and introduce new seed races. On the other hand, if the loyalists don't do something, the usurpers will let the mortals destroy themselves and then use the survivors as shock troops when they move openly against the gods.

Basically, the only hope for the world is that someone figures out the origin of these artifacts (unlikely, because most scholars think they're left over from some ancient empire), works out the political situation among the curators (dangerous, because the loyalists are near unreachable and the usurpers will kill anyone who gets close to their facilities), and manages to create a lasting peace before the loyalists can phone home (difficult, because of the 500+ years of hot and cold wars coloring people's judgement). In short, it's a job for adventurers. And even if they win, they will eventually have to come to terms with the fact that they drastically misunderstand the nature of divinity, that much of their history and culture has been deliberately constructed for one purpose or another, and that they are an insignificant speck compared to the thousands of other inhabited worlds out there. And eldritch abominations are killing off the gods one by one so that they can eventually conquer the universe and remake it in their own image, that's not a nice thought either.

Gahrer
2011-11-20, 01:00 PM
Now, the big question is, what exactly should the spell actually do? It has to be something capable of clearing entire worlds of all life, without leaving any obvious signs other than some ruins here and there.

To cause massive destruction without leaving trails you could have the spell simply planeshift people and objects to some secret plane, creating a massive, secret graveyard filled with the rubble of many civilisations.

To make it creepier, you could make the spell a massive mind-control spell that compells every people to destroy their own civilisation carefully, perhaps over the span of several years or decades. They could dismantle the cities building by building, destroy and grind the rubble and rearrange the landscape to remove all traces of agriculture. During all this the population will commit suicide a few persons at a time, starting with the the least able, and carefully destroy the bodies until nothing remains.

Edit: Spelling

SilverLeaf167
2011-11-20, 01:03 PM
To cause massive destruction without leaving trails you could have the spell simply planeshift people and objects to some secret plane, creating a massive, secret graveyard filled with the rubble of many civilisations.

To make it creepier, you could make the spell a massive mind-control spell that compells every people to destroy their own civilisation carefully, perhaps over the span of several years or decades. They could dismantle the cities building by building, destroy and grind the rubble and rearrange the landscape to remove all traces of agriculture. During all this the population will commit suicide a few persons at a time, starting the the least able, and carefully destroy the bodies until nothing remains.
The second idea would be good otherwise, but then there wouldn't really be any ruins in the first place. :/

The first would work, if I take out the part about removing objects.

Gahrer
2011-11-20, 02:20 PM
Good point. Maybe they had to finish the dismantling on a strict timelimit? (For some reason.) Maybe some people were unaffected by the spell and tried to preserve something in order to warn future generations?

kieza
2011-11-20, 02:47 PM
Maybe people don't kill themselves off, but die of some disease, and they didn't quite finish dismantling their civilization before they all died out. Or, maybe they just missed a bit.

motionmatrix
2011-12-02, 07:34 PM
My take: the spell summons a black cloud, and I don't mean black, I mean devoid of anything, empty space. Only an ever growing buzzing sound that starts at the lowest possible volume is heard. The edges of the empty space slowly begin to move and shift; a blur that almost hurts the eyes if stared for long.

Slowly, those closest to the epicenter realize that it is a flying cloud of black locusts, the only thing making it possible to realize it is when they are close enough that you can make out the shape. And by then it is too late.

This plague will eat through anything, except that which the gods, in their infinite wisdom, had already decreed untouchable.

Since this plague is really made by the gods in the first place, the locusts know what to do.

Did I mention that each locust also emits a dimensional lock and an antimagic field? Really hard to deal with them, since they are not made of matter.

Your players, assuming they are high level since they are dealing with world ending situations, will have a few rounds at best to remove themselves from the area, if not the plane itself.

If they stay, the whole world has days at best.

If they do not stay, well, the game takes a completely different tone, traveling the planes, destroyers of kin.

Or the planet is engulfed in a dimensional lock effect, if you do not want to give them the chance to escape at all.

Nameless Ghost
2011-12-02, 08:13 PM
Give the PCs multiple opportunities to encounter the enemy group before the main storyline begins. This could even be something as benign as a wizardly researcher the PCs are acquainted with is interest in ancient spells as part of his backstory. Perhaps the PCs are even asked to gather some miscellaneous items that are needed for the ritual.

Of course, there's always the option of the PCs running into some of the BBEG's minions at some point, but not being able to determine exactly what it is they're after right away.

Have the BBEG slowly develop the spell, and start testing the spell (via a mook or assorted other remote-casting tricks) to 'perfect' it. A city blowing up is certain to alert PCs that something's wrong, as well as making the urgency of their goal clear, specially if it continues to happen with worse results each time.

Also, if such a spell is known to exist in the campaign world, multiple groups will desire to obtain it. If the gods as a whole are united in the 'reset' policy, then each religion will likely have similar, if differing myths related to it. This could be an indicator to the PCs that it is more than legend.

But in turn, this ensures that more than one organisation could have the knowledge of the spell's existence - not to mention traitorous minions of the BBEG seeking to take it for their own, etc.

Some ideas for groups might include a neutral or good-aligned religion seeking to prevent the spell from destroying everything, a chaotic evil spellcaster wanting to use the spell to smite his enemies, or a lawful evil tyrant desiring the power for world domination. Obviously, few of these groups are likely to know the full repercussions of the use of the 'Means' as a destructive spell. In turn, this gives the PCs multiple options and potential alliances - not to mention their own goals.

With competing groups in an arms race to research/obtain the spell first, the PCs have a range of different encounters and enemies to run into as they fight to disrupt some groups via subterfuge or by racing them to exotic material components. And those groups will be fighting one another in the background too. It's very possible to add a whole new dimension to the idea beyond your standard 'BBEG seeks godspell to destroy the world' plot.

SilverLeaf167
2012-01-21, 06:36 AM
I finally got an idea that fits with the "test" the gods are performing. It even incorporates the campaign mythology a bit better, now that I finally developed it.

In the mythology, unlike in most settings, there is no Sun God. Instead, it is said (but not confirmed; most of the mythological details in the setting are just a matter of belief) that the sun is in fact an egg of kinds, from which a new god will be born when time is ripe.
The thing is, when the evil ritual or whatever is completed and maintained, the sun will crack and burst, revealing a gigantic monster of pure light: it's practically the brightest light source in the world now that the sun is gone. The creature goes on a rampage, devouring those with any sins in their past or sinful desires in their mind. Naturally, that's pretty much anyone. The PCs will have to find and defeat the ritualists and perhaps destroy some McGuffin before it's too late, while the abomination is distracted by a certain epic character the PCs will have met multiple times during the campaign and whom they have helped gather some artifacts that he requires for the battle (I've plotted out the character in detail, my PCs will probably love and hate him at the same time: he used to be a normal adventuring Factotum, until he betrayed his party for a spell of agelessness. He has been hanging around the world for a couple millennia, either saving it from relatively minor threats or just hanging around doing nothing on his gigantic flying ship. In the face of a beast like this he simply won't be able to resist the temptation to wade into a grapple :smallwink:).

When the PCs end the ritual, the beast will disappear into a portal, taking the epic hero and a couple cube miles of land along with itself. The world has been saved, technically... but now comes the part where the gods would normally have created a new world with some tweaks included. Instead, a new campaign begins (or this one continues) in a post-apocalyptic setting with no sun and a gigantic rift of emptiness in the middle of the continent.

What do you think?

Morghen
2012-01-21, 07:50 AM
This plague will eat through anything, except that which the gods, in their infinite wisdom, had already decreed untouchable.I'll add to this:

One of the gods thinks the whole process is ridiculous and the PCs find scattered bits here and there that have been protected (or loaded with clues/gear?) by the traitorous god.

SilverLeaf167
2012-01-21, 08:04 AM
Well, given that not all the gods agree perfectly (the gods of Rage and Undeath are basically traitors who were originally given birth to do entirely different things), it's very possible, actually even likely, that they would do something to sabotage the process or at least change the results. Let's say the ruins where they find the first hint are full of undead, and... Ta-da! A clear link to the traitorous God of Undeath!

Still, after thinking of the epic character, I've become kind of set on the idea of having some huge beast for him to fight. :smallconfused:
So I guess that I'm actually kind of looking for more detailed ideas for that Sunbeast plot of mine.