I'll see you in Hell

[Ranting Fool]

Hi guys before I start ranting just a quick *Spoiler Alert* Voidling, Wraith, Cloud. Read no further as it'll spoil all the fun :smallbiggrin:

Right so awhile ago an NPC the players quite liked (A Silver Dragon who liked hanging out and being all wise and sage-like) was slain in a vile and evil manner and his soul was taken to Hell via Evil ritual and sacrifice (Soul used to bargain ect ect)

Now the PC's are a lot more powerful and are thinking about ways they can get the Dragon's soul back (since he can't be rez'ed with his soul trapped away, if he can by RAW without using Wish then just pretend he can't :smalltongue: )

The PC's have a meeting coming up in a few weeks (after some searching and bribery) with a man/creature/thing who has the ability to contact other planes and the dead and may well know how they can go about locating and saving the Dragon's soul.....

So how would you handle this.
They'll be level 16-17 by that time.

A: Quest for info/find item to locate WHERE in the Hells it is, plane shift and battle X big Devil for it.

B: Locate and commune with which ever Devil has the soul and make a deal (Mostly good players so I doubt they would want to do a straight deal)

C: Locate and commune with OTHER powerful outsider and do a deal for said outsider to get the release of said soul (Doesn't have to be Devil, could be minion of a God of Death or some such)

Even after Soul is free they still have to Res the Dragon, though they are fine if the Dragon wants to stay dead (just not trapped and tormented in Hell)

Suggestions welcome :smallbiggrin: oh and if option A is suicide... well that's PC's for ya:smallbiggrin:

[Coidzor]

Thinuan weapon to slay the dragon + a gem to place the soul inside takes care of getting it into a form which could be sold.

I believe Frank and K came up with a planar metropolis built around the trade of souls in their Tome series (Tome of Necromancy (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=34248)) called Finality.

Finality as a location or any planar metropolis, even Sigil(possibly? doublecheck on that one, actually) could serve as a place to go to find out the crude way if they can't just use divinations to find out where the soul is and who has it.

[Big Fau]

A: Quest for info/find item to locate WHERE in the Hells it is, plane shift and battle X big Devil for it.

Avernus, Dis, or Cania. The first is the most appropriate, as it is Tiamat's home (thus the ritual would likely have sent the dragon's soul to her).


B: Locate and commune with which ever Devil has the soul and make a deal (Mostly good players so I doubt they would want to do a straight deal)

Scrying on the Dragon's soul would be easier.


C: Locate and commune with OTHER powerful outsider and do a deal for said outsider to get the release of said soul (Doesn't have to be Devil, could be minion of a God of Death or some such)

Even after Soul is free they still have to Res the Dragon, though they are fine if the Dragon wants to stay dead (just not trapped and tormented in Hell)

Suggestions welcome :smallbiggrin: oh and if option A is suicide... well that's PC's for ya:smallbiggrin:

Realistically, this would be the easiest way. There are several high-ranking deities who could kotow the Baatezu into just surrendering the soul, and the quest would be to convince one of these deities to do so. Bahamut would be the most likely to do it if the Dragon was influential enough, on the condition that the party performs a few skirmishes against Tiamat's forces in Avernus (Layer 1 of Baator). The party would act as a distraction for a couple of Bahamut's Avatars to stage a raid on Tiamat's domain, and the two are already deadlocked in a war anyway.

The Lord of the First (Bal IIRC) may try to intervene in order to keep Tiamat on his side. The players may have to deal with him too unless they stage a demonic incursion (the Blood War takes priority over local politics for him, since he's the only thing standing between the Demons and the rest of Baator). A trip to the Abyss to pay a visit to Demogorgon/Orcus may be worth the party's time, in order to incite the demons into lashing out again.

Another way to do it is to contact the Inevitables if the Devils have the soul (instead of Tiamat). They "legally" cannot steal souls via ritual sacrifice; only ones who made a Faustian pact. The Silver Dragon would be protected by the Pact Primeval, and the Inevitables would try to enforce it. The Baatezu aren't too keen to fight the Inevitables, especially not if the party can get a Celestial host to back the rescue (or if the party stages a Demonic invasion of Baator like above, or all three at once). The constructs replace themselves too fast for the Devils to keep up (it takes 99 years for a Devil to respawn if slain outside of Baator, and they don't respawn at all if slain inside it). A Celestial/Inevitable/Demonic ultimatum would be a scary thing for Baator to stare down, and Asmodeus himself may intervene and force the devil responsible to just surrender the soul in order to spare Baator's very existence if two or more of those forces are present.

And then there's the option of going above the Devils' heads to his superiors. A cleverly-worded deal with a Pit Fiend or one of the Nine would be capable of releasing the Dragon's soul, although the party may not like the terms they'd have to agree to (then breaking that deal once the Dragon is safe and sound would become the focus of the plot, and if they fail they could become Hellbred in order to stave off their ultimate fate).

[ArcturusV]

Another odd option that came to me, and would possibly be a way to run this plot if you don't necessarily want to deal with frontal assaults on Hell or the like (Because honestly that should be TPK or turn into NPC vs NPC show.)... quest for Flesh. I was thinking that Clone, as the spell, doesn't actually worry about Trapped Souls and such in it's resurrection. Unless I'm forgetting something. So it might be a legit path with only one real obstical to it. The need for a cubic inch of flesh taken from the living body of the subject. Which could turn into a classic adventure to find someone who might have had some.

Unless you let shenanigans like "Well flesh doesn't have a listed GP price so I can pull it for free out of my spell component pouch". Because NO. Priceless =/ cheap and worthless.

So trying to track down rumors and such on a grand quest to find some bit of the dragon still alive in order to make a clone to save its soul... why not? Maybe in it's younger days some badass Red Dragon fought it, ripped off an arm, and keeps it preserved as a trophy in some makeshift shrine to Tiamat in his cave. Maybe a mad wizard ripped off a bit of the dragon for his own ends, and now you have to find this insane, paranoid bastard to steal back the ingredient he plans to use for some foul magics.

Who knows? Options. Might be a problem with it. But if mounting a charge into Hell for a TPK or "Watch all the NPCs solve your problems" isn't to your liking...

[Tim Proctor]

I would find out who the keeper is (Tiamaat, etc.), find an enemy of Tiamaat that is evil (Nargul or whoever), capture a high priest of Nargul and make a pact with Tiamaat for a soul exchange. Religion check should give that information.

If it is Tiamaat specifically I'd seek out the Dragonborn and Bahamut for assistance in capturing and making the exchange. In any circumstance I'd look for an ally in the quest.

[Ranting Fool]

Thanks guys lots of good ideas :smallbiggrin:

The Dragon was devoted to Bahamut and there is a Knight of Bahamut in the party so having them use the contact to speak to one of Bahamut's Dragons and be given a quest to go capture soul of big evil thing in exchange for the Silver Dragon seems to be the best way forward (Within the existing story anyway)

Once again the playground has come through for me :smallbiggrin: Cheers