DM backed into a corner

[leegi0n]

Hey all,

I've come today to fish for some suggestions. I have a campaign that I'm trying to wrap up (within about 10-15 sessions). The story has been going for the better part of a year and a half. Finally, I'm to a staging point to put resolution out there and wrap it up. Unfortunately, I'm kind of empty as to what a good "memorable" ending would be. I have numerous options, as I've introduced numerous scenarios over the past 18 months. Drow have been a big part. Illithids have been a MAJOR part. I have a recurring Rakshasa that is the "mission giver" NPC, etc. Vampires have come into play, werewolves, etc.

so, to the point - I would like to see (given essential, basic story info) what you all think would be a good end. so here goes:

In a proverbial nutshell, the main story driving the group this entire time revolves around a young ranger/scout, herbal genius who's "aunt" was abducted many moons ago. Her "aunt" raised her in absence of her parents and was an apothecarian/herbalist. She disappeared, along with all magic users of the town when a necromancer and a horde of ogres invaded, under employment of some high level Illithids. The group found out at one point that many years ago, her "aunt" was involved in a child slavery ring - abducting and selling children for labor/experiments, etc. - and that is how she came to live with her. She has the impression that her real parents were murdered.

So, the underlying story behind all the adventures the PCs have encountered revolves around that character finding her aunt and finding out what happened to all of the magic users/alchemists, etc. from her hometown. The information that the group has gathered has led them to a notoriously "dark" continent/part of this homebrew world. Essentially, it's a Ravenloft with a different name. Supposedly her "aunt" is here. The Rakshasa gave her this information, in exchange for work. He also gave her a map of a portion of the underdark, where her "aunt" may be.

I don't care if it's a happy ending or not. The "aunt" could turn out to be part of something nasty. Alternatively, her and her talents being enslaved (along with MANY OTHER practitioners) by something, would be fair play if the past is true.

I prefer to involve Illithids/Drow/and the Rakshasha in some way. I am willing to go so far as to involve devils.

We have 8 PCs (bard, 2 scouts, 2 clerics, renegade drow, barbarian, psion) at approximately level 12, so the challenge would need to be
substantial.

That's where I am. I have a few ideas of my own, though none of them really jump out at me. I would like to see what you all think.

Thanks for wading through this.

[nedz]

Some twist ideas:
If you want a nasty twist you could make the Aunt a succubus who has been manipulating the Drow the whole time.
Or you could just have a succubus pretending to be the Aunt who has been manipulating the Drow the whole time. This would give you a double reveal when the PC works out that this isn't her Aunt, right at the end; after the first reveal of course.
Alternatively the Aunt was the Rakshasha in disguise, all along; but she had to keep her cover for some reason.

[leegi0n]

I really like the idea. What are your thoughts as to why a Succubus and/or a Rakshasa would have abducted or is participating in an event INVOLVING the abduction of magic users/alchemists/herbalists, etc.?

[ravagerofworlds]

The magical abductions... whoever is doing it, needs them for some reason. Is it because they all have a magical creation feat in common? Craft Wondrous Item... for say, a WMD of some kind?

You could have the climax be 24-ish... the bomb has already arrived and your favorite metropolis is going to be destroyed in a nuclear holocaust unless the heroes can get to it before the big bad guy can activate it. Maybe the Aunt can escape and reveal the plan, or some clue to the magical WMD's whereabouts, etc.

[TheTick]

If it's including alchemists and herbalists, make it more Scarecrow in Batman Begins - instead of just blowing up a city, it's about to be zombified en masse by a custom designed poison the kidnapped folks were being forced to develop. Heck, it leaves a campaign hook if they fail - the survivors warning the rest of the world or next town over about the large undead horde that's about to come their way.

[Clistenes]

All those spellcasters and herbalists could have been tricked into signing some deviously crafted hellish contract. A Night Hag alienist, renegade Pleasure Devil, Althoon or similar monster could have tricked them saying they wouldn't be sent to hell, tortured, killed or ethernally enslaved, only required to put their powers into her service for a short period of time.

The spellcasters signed a hell-crafted contract (once you sign it, you are magically compelled to fulfill it), received some boon (like new spells and forbidden knowledge, like how to use the souls of human victims to gain xp for crafting), but when the time came all were Dominated/Enthralled and forced to travel on their own to the Big Bad's lair, where they were turned (painlessly) into Brains in Jars (a non-undead version) and used as components of a magical contraction intended to pierce the walls of reality and allow the Elder Evils to access the mortal realm.

They are alive inside their jars, aren't suffering pain, haven't been sent to Hell, and once they aren't necessary anymore they will be sent back to their homes, so the Night Hag/Pleasure Devil/Althoon isn't breaking the letter of the contract (of course the world as it is will cease to be when the Elder Evils arrive, but that has nothing to do with the contract).

[nedz]

I really like the idea. What are your thoughts as to why a Succubus and/or a Rakshasa would have abducted or is participating in an event INVOLVING the abduction of magic users/alchemists/herbalists, etc.?

Tricky, I don't know all that much about your setting or the campaign so far really.
Some possibilities:

It could be a prophesy type thing where they were sweeping up all of the usual suspects, but they always turned out to be not be "The one".

Or it is a prophesy, but its so ambiguous that they misinterpreted it that way.

It could be a sacrifice type thing involving an artefact/relic/ritual which needs to consume some some individuals.

Maybe the succubus needs to consume a certain number of said individuals to advance within the infernal realm.

Better perhaps is that it involves an infernal contract which the succubus signed and has to deliver on. Bonus points here for having the party find the document; the legalise should be infernally complex, of course.

As to the Rakshasa, well possibly pretty much the same except that it was tricked into a deal and this was the price. Or it sells them into slavery ?

[Razanir]

Some twist ideas:
If you want a nasty twist you could make the Aunt a succubus who has been manipulating the Drow the whole time.
Or you could just have a succubus pretending to be the Aunt who has been manipulating the Drow the whole time. This would give you a double reveal when the PC works out that this isn't her Aunt, right at the end; after the first reveal of course.
Alternatively the Aunt was the Rakshasha in disguise, all along; but she had to keep her cover for some reason.

Or all of the above. The "aunt" turns out be a succubus manipulating the drow. Then shortly before the end, find out the succubus was only pretending to be the aunt. Then when they're shocked at that, in a social scene to wrap up the plot, have the rakshasha reveal "him"self to be the aunt in disguise, for whatever reason she may have had

[nedz]

Cool,
These ideas all revolve around the shape changing abilities of Succubi and Rakshasa, as well as their bluff skills. My only concern is that the PCs may have had a chance to detect any and all of these shenanigans in the past ?

[rweird]

Cool,
These ideas all revolve around the shape changing abilities of Succubi and Rakshasa, as well as their bluff skills. My only concern is that the PCs may have had a chance to detect any and all of these shenanigans in the past ?

Giving them high enough bluff would work, maybe the succubus is a bard >7 or Beguiler >6 would mean she has access to Glibness, bard may be better because it is charisma based and the succubus would have charisma in the 30s in not 40s, meaning her bluff is pretty much unbeatable.

Rakshasa's have sorcerer casting, giving him more levels in at least 2 levels in PrC bard, maybe more sorcerer/PrC bard would mean he'd also have Glibness, and a +10 bonus for reading thoughts, + cha, also putting it really high. Unless one of them is maxing sense motive, has a good wis, and lucky rolls compared to there unlucky ones, they'll be virtually undecoverable. If they met the Rakshasa at lower levels and he earned there trust, if they want to believe him, he'd have an even better bluff.

[Sith_Happens]

All those spellcasters and herbalists could have been tricked into signing some deviously crafted hellish contract. A Night Hag alienist, renegade Pleasure Devil, Althoon or similar monster could have tricked them saying they wouldn't be sent to hell, tortured, killed or ethernally enslaved, only required to put their powers into her service for a short period of time.

The spellcasters signed a hell-crafted contract (once you sign it, you are magically compelled to fulfill it), received some boon (like new spells and forbidden knowledge, like how to use the souls of human victims to gain xp for crafting), but when the time came all were Dominated/Enthralled and forced to travel on their own to the Big Bad's lair, where they were turned (painlessly) into Brains in Jars (a non-undead version) and used as components of a magical contraction intended to pierce the walls of reality and allow the Elder Evils to access the mortal realm.

They are alive inside their jars, aren't suffering pain, haven't been sent to Hell, and once they aren't necessary anymore they will be sent back to their homes, so the Night Hag/Pleasure Devil/Althoon isn't breaking the letter of the contract (of course the world as it is will cease to be when the Elder Evils arrive, but that has nothing to do with the contract).

This. Do this.

[Saskia]

Well, how dark exactly do you want to go? Child slavery and experimentation is twisted but you've got a lot more options.

The Book of Vile Darkness has provisions for using souls as an alternate cost to experience for magic items and spells with XP components. You could easily say that for evil items the souls of ignorant and thus innocent children are worth more than adult souls, since fiendish powers love few things more than corruption of the innocent. How more corrupting could it be for your eternal peace to be robbed so you could be used to infuse some diabolical device meant to wreak havoc on a cosmic scale?

Ideally you would draw everything together. Evil conspiracies are the domain of the devils, and there's not much reason to suspect that devils and mind flayers couldn't work together if they had similar goals. The drow who worship at the alter of their CE goddess would not work with devils though, and they clash violently with illithids anyway.

So what could demons want that mind flayers want? Well, in general nothing. But what if it were a band or legion of dissident devils bearing such a powerful grudge for an ancient defeat at the hands of celestials, led by Talisid or some other mighty celestial leader, that they were willing to sacrifice everything to destroy that enemy? What if they were willing to risk the Nine Hells if it meant their enemies would pay?

Everybody knows that the mind flayers want their mysterious master in their own realm. The things we know for sure are that the mind flayers want Thoon, whatever it is, and what the mind flayers want generally doesn't bode well for anybody else. This offers a lot of ways to interpret Thoon of course, either as a mysterious meta-planar magic that increases their psychic powers (or just psionic powers in general), alters their morphology, makes non-illithids more susceptible to mind control, or maybe you could go the boring route and say it's some Lovecraftian horror from beyond the veil, but the flayers themselves are already going that route so it seems like an unimaginative cop-out to just make a +6 illithid god instead of the run-of-the-mill masterwork/+1 varieties. Maybe the existence of things like Thoon hulks and such are the results of experiments performed in the service of the search for Thoon; maybe they figured it out, but they don't have the equipment or resources to fully draw Thoon into the cosmos and reap its benefits.

So this legion's leaders make a pact with mind flayers, using their deceptive knack to run rings of child slavery. Slavers probably wouldn't be evil enough or stupid enough to sell their slaves as fuel in a massive "craft wonderous item doomsday device" project, so they deceive where they must, and for the rest they get night hags and other evil denizens of the material plane to gather anybody they can. Children and paladins and such are of course better, but on a project of this scale you've got to take what you can get.

As the device nears completion, clashes between drow and illithids become more common and more violent, until the drow are driven out of the underdark in some places for fear of newfound illithid vigor in their cause. Dwarven scouts find entire drow cities silent, but littered with the corpses and parts of corpses of those who fought back. The mind flayers become more aggressive against the dwarves, too, who are eventually pushed back to their deepest citadels. In some places flayers begin to come along when they send their dominated minions to pour onto the surface and abduct entire villages, and in their desperation to finish the project they may even leave any dead behind rather than waste time. This could give some drow reason to cooperate with people they would otherwise despise, though naturally the majority would rather die than side with elves or dwarves.

As the device (or devices, whatever) becomes more complete, the flayers might gain new powers, regardless what you decide Thoon is or if you decide at all. Since the biggest threat to a mind flayer is action economy, maybe they get to roll initiative twice, taking double the normal actions.

[Edit for great justice and clarity] Anyway whatever it was, Thoon itself would have to be bigtime bad, maybe similar to an elder evil or an elder evil itself, the book has provisions for creating your own. Maybe making it another Lovecraftian monster isn't overboard so much as just keeping with a theme. It would have to be distinct from mindflayers, but very powerful if it was an entity that could be defeated rather than a magical substance or new energy type in the vein of positive/energy or something. In any case, if it could only be driven back and the device destroyed that offers a much more compelling ending and denouement than "the stalwart heroes destroyed the machine and killed the evil." Happy endings where the evil is forever destroyed are never as impactful as what you know is only a temporary victory meant for another generation to fight off again.

You could also work in The Adversary from Dawn of the Overmind pretty easily, which could make things interesting. I think the aunt being something more than what she seems (succubus, erinye, hag, etc) is a bit cliche; the innocuous parent/grandparent figure being actually evil is one thing, but I think it would be much more impactful if the evil aunt was just a pawn rather than BBEG material.

I don't do grimdark much so maybe that's stupid, but it's probably how I would go from there.

[Rejakor]

They beat up some illithids and some drow as well as a vampire strike team (make this one big, confusing fight) with the drow and illithids saying things like 'stop! You don't know what you're doing, you fools! ARGH WE'LL EAT YOU' when they blow up the big purple lightning machines that people are strapped into.

Eventually, after Epic Battlez, they make it into the tower control room that the 'aunt' is trapped in. She's strapped in and something weird is being done to her. As they've infiltrated this drow fortress-city (centred on an underdark planar rift, and some 40,000 inhabitants focused on protecting and supporting the work of the illithid scientists and drow magicians in the compound/fort that the PCs have broken into - the whole city is under attack by various forces at this point), they've seen various signs of horror - torture, enslavement, all that sort of dark horrible stuff.

But when they break in and free the aunt, slaughtering the tower controllers, it's revealed.. the 'aunt' doesn't seem to recognize the scout herbalist niece girl(who KNOWS that this is 'her' aunt, but she still feels something is odd). And a quick detect magic/mind probe later, possibly with the words of a dying drow 'you fools... you blind fools...' later, they realize the shocking truth; The 'aunt' wasn't mindwiped - she never knew the 'niece' character. The scout/ranger was mindcontrolled from the very start of the adventure. Or rather, had her memories tampered with.


A cult of 'The End', who prophesy that an end will come that will change everything forever and remove the meaning that constricts the world and open it to true enlightenment, led by the Rakshasa who reveals himself as an Incubus Sorcerer, not acting on orders from the demons, but rather to 'create his own destiny'. He's insanely powerful, but dismisses the party as ants when they meet him shortly after uncovering the truth - he sees them as no threat to his plans - which is to stop the drow fortress, which is the headquarters of the 'Order of the Path', another evil group but one that feels that the destiny of the material world should not be allowed to be destroyed, from closing the rift that only opens once every 10,000 years.

The 'aunt' is one of the last members of the bloodline that possesses the necessary genemarkers for the ritual that closes the portal - although the Order of the Path were trying to use their sorcerous science to close the portal not just for 10,000 years but forever.

And the niece is not of that bloodline. She has no connection to the 'aunt' at all - her entire history is a lie (not actually true, some of her memories of being a ranger etc are true, just the aunt's insertion into it is a lie).

At this point the party should be reeling as they recall the various times they've had close calls and you can point out how the hand of the Blind Vision (those who feel that those who think should become one with the far realms) was in the background ensuring their success.

Hopefully this makes them angry.

Then the party needs to aid the Order of the Path in retaking the Portal Rift Control Centre, as the time of the conjunction is coming REAL FAST. And vampires, werewolves, and other 'easily controlled' creatures as well as mortals and demons and the occasional elder monstrosity (design them yourself, don't just use the psuedonatural template - make them monstrously tough and with fear-auras and wisdom draining touch/auras - SAN damage in DnD!) slipping through the quickly opening rift are guarding it/destroying the fortress and the machines.

It should be kind of a 'race against time' thing as if too many machines are destroyed, if they don't get the controls secure, if the enemy succeed in calling forth the realm of chaos itself, well, that's it. For everyone.

Forever.


And then the 'aunt' gets killed. Or sucked through a portal to the far realms, screaming, (which should still emotionally affect the 'niece' as her memories still FEEL real). So crap be now screwed to hell, as they NEEDED her blood to close the portal.

And then, after the Rakshasa shows up raving and yelling that the party will never succeed(with minions, and battle is joined, illithid scientist (make there be one surviving guy and make him really absent-minded) and drow and maybe a few other concerned parties, and the party, versus the incubus and vampires and werewolves and some undead people the party was friends with (he harvested them after they waved goodbye to the party) and demons and a really tough single shoggoth), during say the first round of combat, have the niece suddenly feels something tugging her towards the capstone of the ceremony (where the blooded one spills their blood and their life seals the portal) and the Incubus suddenly looks at her and SCREAMS in rage and she knows that he's made a mistake (and obviously at this point joins the dots). And she will probably try to get to the capstone at this point (the battle looks relatively like it will go in the Incubus' favour (although not so much that the party instantly gets killed)) and the Incubus will try to stop her with a spell or physically, and the party helps her get there, and then she touches the capstone and .....

She either dies, or she hears the voice of her 'aunt' thanking her for letting her raise her (even though she's not real), and that 'part' of her dies, the false memories fading to reveal [something chosen by the player] [either a real family killed by the incubus, or an orphan found by him and rewritten to play a part], and a lingering sense of bitter sadness that even the false memories of someone she loved has been taken away.


And then, ~fin~.

The rift is closed forever (or is it?).

The Incubus dies trying to stop the scout from touching the capstone (or escapes).

And the Order of the Path is shattered, but holds to it's promise to keep the rift closed.

And yeah, end. A bunch of patsies who nearly ended the world but came good.


(And the twist ending was, by the way, that by accident the Incubus had picked someone from the bloodline that could close the rift gate to be the aunt's 'niece' - so with his own 'cleverness' he essentially screwed himself.)

EDIT: Oh, and if the aunt dies, she has to die hardcore (like, soul-eaten by the incubus hardcore), so they don't just rez her.

If you wanted, another way around this is to say that planar disruption from the portal opening is stopping ALL interplanar action - so soul-retrieving = lol no. This is also a good way to stop the party just teleporting around. (Although the whole inner compound/rift area should be warded against that regardless).

[leegi0n]

Cool,
These ideas all revolve around the shape changing abilities of Succubi and Rakshasa, as well as their bluff skills. My only concern is that the PCs may have had a chance to detect any and all of these shenanigans in the past ?

Right. ..and they are SMART, SMART gamers so yeah, it would be cheap if I tried to pull that over their eyes.


REJAKOR - your idea = complete and wholesome goodness and I am going to work it in, in parts. Thank you for the time on that. Thank all of you for putting in on this.