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View Full Version : Don't raise any more devils than you can put down: A campaign idea



atemu1234
2014-07-15, 12:36 PM
I've got a group of PCs who are in a bit of a bind, but first, the situation.

One of the PCs died in combat (this was the party druid, who acted both as a healer and when wild-shaped was quite powerful) with a powerful demon. The rest of the party was headed for a TPK without my intervention, so I did some quick thinking. Remembering Fiendish Codex, I said that the druid was looking down at the battle from about thirty meters. Standing beside him was a man, well-dressed, wearing a top-hat, with two short devil horns. Apart from that, he looks quite ordinary. He offers the player a chance to live (come back to life) and save his friends, albeit at the cost of his soul. He said he'd collect in six months (revealing himself to be a homebrewed archdevil of mine). The player then had a choice: sell his soul and save his friends, or go on to a nice, peaceful afterlife.

He chose to sell his soul. No one in the party recognized that he'd sold his soul (he passed himself off as having been "barely paralyzed" by the demon), save for the party cleric. The cleric didn't contradict him, however, but when he got a moment alone, he pointed this out to the druid. They hatched a plan. In order to get the druid's soul back, or at least bargain for it, the cleric summoned a devil, servant of the archdevil, bound in a holy cage. They began to parlay, but through a series of unfortunate and unlikely circumstances, the devil escaped. Now, what should it be doing to make a good adventure?

Falcon X
2014-07-15, 01:05 PM
Er... good luck. This is a tough situation, because fiendish contracts are binding.

A few ideas:
1. Offer to give the archdevil a stronger or better soul than your own, or do some other task that is worth it to him. Note: agree to the exchange beforehand, and get it in writing, and read the fineprint VERY carefully.
Of course, this will be a pretty evil route. The character will never be the same morally.
- Maybe he would take some twisted pleasure in requiring you to be a Blighter.
2. Find blackmail or other dirt on the archdemon. Perhaps he is planning to overthrow a higher-up. Make friends with a fiendish lawyer and have him get the information to higher authorities. Get EVERYTHING in writing when bartering for your soul.

As for the released, lesser devil:
3. The archdevil wouldn't trade his used toilet paper for an underling's life. That is... unless that underling holds a very specific secret, or a very specific power, that the archdevil finds valuable.
- Whatever that very specific power or information is should become the focus of the plot. It could involve discovering the secret yourself and holding it against the archdevil. It could involve making an alliance with another archdevil and gaining the lesser fiend's power for yourself.
It could be acquiring the services of, or becoming an Illithid Savant, Hellbreaker, Ur-Priest, Hellbreaker, Spellthief or other such class that can steal abilities from others. Find the devil, take the power, use it for your own advantage.
4. If the lesser fiend is terrorizing the countryside, or manipulating evil from the shadows, it's your job to stop it.

In conclusion: Stop the creature from terrorizing the world, take whatever it has that makes it valuable to the archfiend, use that as leverage against him.