Help with a story element?

[MonkeySage]

Alright, at some background: in my setting, many thousands of years before the current era, a massive community of wizards had built a floating continent, which was destroyed in the war between the eladrin and pale night. In an effort to preserve the culture and knowledge that they'd built up over millenia, one wizard(using an epic spell) transported an entire library to another plane(either ethereal or astral, haven't decided). In exchange, he lost his physical body, and now cannot wander more than a mile beyond the hole he created when he cast his spell. He's been in this state for over 10000 years, and still guards his library. The party are going to eventually need to visit this library to learn the history behind the above stated war.

This wizard is a member of a now extinct elven race, a sort of precursor to the modern elven races, but I'm wondering... since he lost his body, should i just count him as incorporeal or as an actual ghost? Considering his epic level, I don't think I want the party to fight him.

Also, criticism is always welcome. If there are any cliches that you think might make it hard for players to enjoy the encounter, please point them out.

[Stux]

He is an epic level wizard. There is no way the party can touch him. It doesn't really matter whether he is actually a ghost or just incorporeal, he is going to have some ridonkulous defensive spells up at all times.

[Zanos]

You could use an unbodied, which are specifically former humanoids who's bodies have been cast off. XPH 215, but I think they might be SRD too. That's mechanically a bit complex though, and it might be easier to just throw the Ghost template on some base elf-race. One of the +int elf races would probably make the most sense as a wizard.

Your party trying to fight him should be irrelevant. If they aren't smart enough in or out character to figure out they shouldn't try to brute force this dude, they deserve to die.

[MonkeySage]

I guess... Anything else? Since this is early, everything is still subject to change, whatever helps create a better story...





(I seem to come here a lot for ideas, though never have contributed my own thoughts to anyone else's posts, startin to feel bad about that, lol.)

[ArcturusV]

Probably want a reason why he's in this state. I mean... presuming somewhat standard DnD cosmology, if he "lost his body" in creating this extradimensional archive, why didn't his soul pass on to whatever afterlife was waiting to gobble up that epic wizard? Depending on the optimization of your setting, why didn't some Contingent Reincarnate, or Clone spell activate? Yes, it's mechanical things, but mechanical things that lead to story answers.

Was the elf from some time before Necromancy existed so s/he didn't have a Clone? No druids in their society to work on a Contingent Reincarnate? I mean you have epic level wizard here, so you can't really go with the excuse of "no one was smart enough/powerful enough to do it". Needs to be a reason beyond that.

Did his epic spell, to create the archive, require some artifact material component that trapped his soul there and dusted his body? If so, what is the artifact? What powers did it have beyond just this, as I presume the device wasn't forged just for the specific purposes of this Archive. It might be twisted and corrupted beyond it's original intent and suggest another possible plotline to use if your players feel like delving into it.

[MonkeySage]

I was thinking that him being bound to the library would either be a direct result of the spell, or(assuming he's a ghost) that he considered it his duty to safe guard the knowledge that his civilization had accumulated, and so now simply can't leave until someone else takes his place(or something along those lines). I haven't worked out the rest yet, but it's nice that you've brought light to these plot holes so I can.

The library itself already existed at the time, and he was just moving it to another plane to protect it from the destruction the rest of the continent was facing. Either he knew the destruction was coming and developed the spell in response, just didn't have time to work out all the kinks, or already knew the spell, and the spell just wasn't powerful enough to save his entire civilization.

I actually do like the artifact idea..

[ArcturusV]

Interestingly enough, if you do go with the idea that he already knew this spell, it begs the question: Why? Why did he research an epic spell that would take some (presumably large) building/complex into another dimension?

There's reason you can touch on. For example he was about to try to create some utopian retirement for himself. Or perhaps that there was some need to do this like... they were locked in a struggle with extraplanar beings and he developed it to put strongholds/frontline bases in the enemy's realm to take the fight to them? That might suggest how the 'flaw' came in by the way. It was designed to be a long ritual with several mages working together to throw a fortress into the heart of hell or something. Cataclysm strikes back home and he tries to 'rush' it. Even a somewhat mechanical basis for it in things like Maho (Using your Con instead of spell levels for metamagic, his quickened version of the transport drained his Con to zero).