Incarnum Lost-A-pacolypse! [Help with a one-shot please^^]

[Red_Dog]

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen ^^ Recently after burning thru few hours on another soulknife thread[I REALLY should stop doing that], some individuals brought up Incarnum... Long story short, after borrowing a book from a friend and than going thru SneakyTheLost guides and few threads... I tripped over someone's idea to make an Incarnum-based Zombie Apocalypse. I decided to totally steal this idea and run a oneshot session with that exact premise! ^^

However as always, cool ideas require time investment and accumulate few issues... I hope someone can help me out here ^^

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The fluff questions/confirmation=> As far as I can tell a simple plot hook would sound something like that "Archeological expedition discovers a Wellspring or perhaps an old "corrupted Wellspring"(is there such a thing?). Due to some badly done blastwork, instead of unearthing it carefully, they blow it up and "spill" incarnum[is it visible when not shapen or not on positive plane?O_o was reading mostly mechanics] all over the water pumping station[d&d has basic machinery, should be fine] which intern poisons most of the towns people." After few dozens normally disturbed individuals fall
Does this sound good? believable? Bad? poorly though thru?
Alternative ideas?

Mechanics Questions=> Every Zombie Apocalypse needs Infection Mechanic. I was thinking, that every time PCs fail a Will save vs any effect, they have to roll a separate save or gain "lost points", gain 2-3 and you're done.
Furthermore, I was looking to push magic away as magic complicates things, so these are the books I was going to use.
Incarnum[for feats for players only], PHBI&II, Complete Warrior, Adventurer & Scoundrel.
IMO I can make quite a pre-gen few PC types that would do ok, but feel constantly threatened[that's the idea, its zombie apocalypse after all]
The level of characters would be 3-4[not sure yet].
Level of an average "Zombie" would be 1-2w/Template? Would 2 be too much?
Other monsters, I though would just be few more powerful NPCs w/ lost template like an Army/Police and etc. Very few of Incarnum monsters appealed to me.

Now on to=>
The Player's side questions=> What is the best role for PCs to be in such campaign? I can think of two.
=>Get out of town alive. A rag tag band that starts in some house and must make there way out. This would definitively limit them to lvl3
=>A "special mercenary unit" hired to retrieve some stuff out of the city, or perhaps has a muggufin that they must plant somewhere to solve this problem. This would make them 4-5lvl bracket.
=>Same as above, but instead they are all that left from a massive cleaning taskforce and want to escape alive.

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So... anyone interested in landing me a hand here? ^^

Thnx for reading regardless! ^^

P.S. Keep in mind, while I speack in semi-modern terms that usual D&D often doesn't see use for, I have made "shock-troopers-w/-crossbows" before with moderate success and use magic similarly to what one uses technology and still had a feel of "D&D" so that's all good ^^

[Bonzai]

I actually did something like that in a Realms campaign I designed after the Magic of the Incarnum book came out. I wanted to play with the system and expose players to it.

Initial Premise

Converting Incarnum into the Realms: Souls are the provence of their patron diety. It could be said that soul energy is what gives the gods their power. Each diety collects unto them the souls of those who encompass their moral alignment and are champions of their causes. Incarnum users can tap into that wellspring of souls, and draw power and guidance from it. For example, a dwarven Soulborn devoted to Moradin, would channel the soul energy of thousands of generations of Dwarves. Craftsmen, protectors, and those who embody the principles of law and good.

Setting: First I created a town. Desmond's Dale is a small town in North Eastern Impiltur. Located on a major tradeway between Damara.and Impiltur's western border. Little more than a way station, it prospers through trade, and outfitting trade caravans passing through. It is one year after the Rage of Dragons. Impiltur's forces have taken major blow from fighting Dragons, and aside from small garison along the borders and trade roads, the bulk of their forces are in the south, fighting Zhent incursions along the coastline.

Plot: Cyric remembers well the indignity he suffered at the hands of Mystra during the Time of Troubles. She was able to completely cut off he and his followers from the weave, leaving him in a very vulnerable possition. Though forbidden from doing so again by AO, Cyric is a paranoid god. What if she were to do it again? Or... what if something happened to the weave?:smallamused: So Cyric began searching for an alternate source of power for he and his followers. After many years of searching, his followers found something.

In an ancient Narfellian ruin just North of the Giantspire mountains, they found a crystal. This crystal was infused with Chaotic Evil incarnum energies. The priests of Cyric consicrated it in the name of their diety. They discovered a ritual where they could infuse people with incarnum power and tap into the Cyric's pool of soul energy. Most subjects were overwelmed... For to channel the Soul energy of Cyric, was to expose ones mind to the worst murderers, liars, and madmen who ever lived. All clamoring at once within yout head. Those that could not withstand it had their minds destroyed and bodies twisted, becoming The Lost. Only the strongest willed and most fanatical could withstand the ritual. The few survivors formed a new order... The Ebon Dawn.

The Ebon Dawn's mandate was simple. Expand their power base, and to undermine and destroy as many of the followers of Mystra and Azuth as they could. First they created alliances with many of the Hobgobblin tribes in the Giantspire mountains. Then they set out through a pass in the Giantspires, and began to raid villiages in North Eastern Impiltur, enslaving the populations, and forcing them to undergo the ritual. With an ever growing army of Lost and hobgoblins, it was the hope of the Ebon Dawn to take advantage of Impiltur's weakened state and over throw it.

Synopsis
The players all roll up lvl ones, and all happen to be staying at the only inn in town, The Galloping Maiden. The inn is buzzing with gossip about villiages in the east being raised by hobgobblins. While not unheard of, it was far more wide spread and aggressive than usual.They role play introductions, hit it off, and decide to grab a bottle of wine and play chess at the fountain in the main square. Thier pleasant evening is spoiled by screams, and they find that the villiage is under attack.

The players repell the threat, then get a little more information about the villiages, and learn that the towns head cleric had gone to investigate several weeks earlier. The villiage is attacked again, and with greater numbers. They repell it, help organize some defences, and then go and investigate. They find a town that had been raised, and peculiarly, the temples to Mystra and Kelvemor were vandilized. Eventually they find the source of the local incursion, and encounter their first Ebon Dawn member. A vicious fight ensues, and the party is victorious.

They return to town and are ambushed by another Ebon Dawn member and some more Lost. They fortify the town, and repell a few more attacks. They learn of a Seer who lives in the mountains, and decide to ask him if he can unravle the mystery behind these attacks. They set out, and encounter another Ebon Dawn member recruiting more hobgoblins. They stop it, and learn a bit more about their, realizing that a full scale invasion is on the way. The path to the Seer is treacherous, and they lose two party members along the way. The reach the seer, and he explains the nature of Incarnum, and of the powers they will face. He also gives them each a crystal, consecrated with the symbol of their dieties. They also are introduced to the replacement PC's who replace those who were lost. The Seer also teleports them back to town.

They decide to head to the local garrison and request aid. They find it under siege by an army of lost and hobgoblins. They manage to kill the leadership which allows for the garrison to break the siege. The town gets re-inforcements, and the Party now knows that things are much bigger than they realized and that the war is well underway. They repell a major attack, and back track and eventually find the pass through the mountains and find a fort held by the Ebon Dawn. The Party captures is, holds it until reinforcements can come and have effectively cut off the Ebon Dawn army (which was fighting the Impiltur army in the South) from getting any further re-inforcements. They find the Ebon Dawns stronghold, clear it out, and discover the crystal. They also find a crystal identical to the ones the Seer gave them, but with the symbol of Cyric upon it. They remove it, and perform the ritual (was simple to figure out what to do), and the player on the altar had to make a will save as his mind was flooded by incarnum energy. He succeeded and was awarded with the shape soulmeld feat for free, and got a soulmeld appropriate to their diety. For example, the Monk devoted to Bane got the mauling gauntlet meld. The mystic theurge devoted to Mystra got the soulcaster amulet, etc...

The party makes it's way back to Impiltur, and learns that thanks in large part to their aid the Ebon Dawn had been defeated, though the leader escaped apprehension. The party is welcomed back to the capital, lauded as heroes of the realm, and are richly rewarded for their endevors. My players are enjoying the campaign, so we decide to continue it.

Second half of the campaign takes place as the party re-unites a year latter. There are some new members as well some members retiring with new responsibilities. The new party has learned through their research that there are other crystals like the one they discovered. One for each of the alignments. They decide to embark upon a quest to find them all. It turns out that the Crystals are nodes upon geomantic ley lines that streach across the entirety of Faerun, roughly forming an 8 pointed star. Along the way the Seer appears and points them in the right direction, and the Ebon Dawn plague them, seeking revenge and trying to regain their crystal. Each node found, further improves their incarnum ability (essentia, binds, etc..). Each node is found in the ruins of some ancient civiliazation that may pre-date mankind entirely.

Once all the crystal nodes are found, they follow it to the center of the leylines, and find a temple with the largest crystal yet. They also encountered former party members and NPCs they had met along the way. There they also encounter the Seer, and discover that he is in fact Savras. He forsaw the destruction of the weave, and his own death. He felt that mankind could not be left defenceless, so he saught to re-awaken an ancient and more primitive form of magic.. Incarnum. The players and NPC's went through one final ritual that pitted them against the vestigil reminants of long dead incarnum gods that matched their particular alignment. They were tested in many ways, and once they passed them all, they had one more will save to make as the Diety granted them it's power. They passed each got a divine rank of 0, with the Incarnum domain along with their alignement. Savras then charged them to go out into the world and bring back Incarnum magic into the world, to defend against the upcoming spell plague.

At this point the campaign ended after several years, and the party was about lvl 24. At least one of the player characters ascended a bit further, and now some characters in our current campaign worship her. :smallbiggrin: