atemu1234
2014-09-15, 07:38 AM
I, for the most part, throughout my entire D&D career, have DMed. Not to say I've never been a player, I've just always preferred to DM. Therein I am dreadfully lacking in player verstehen, and would like your opinion on a homebrewed campaign setting.
The premise of the setting is that the players are trying to find a magic item known as the Scythe of Agnorra, which is hidden in the lowest layer of the abyss. They are holy warriors that worship Agnorra, the elf-maid who closed the last and greatest natural portal to the abyss. I've made it so each layer of the abyss should match up decently to each player's level, and there are a few things about it that should be known.
For one, this campaign setting is supposed to be high-mortality. It uses the taint and depravity systems in order to form a few more challenges (simply being in the abyss is guaranteed to leave the players with a good portion of it, so I've homebrewed a magic item that acts as a holy symbol and as a way to siphon taint, though it's still going to be fun watching them lose themselves) and if they die and transform into a CE demon of a CR equal to their character level if they reach max taint, at which point they become an NPC under my control, and attack their former teammates.
For another, this cosmology is solely the Abyss and the Prime Material (if I accidentally refer to the Abyss as hell, forgive me). There are no celestials, and they cannot be summoned (summoning magic no longer has an alignment component but can only summon demons). I debated removing alignment too, but I'd like to have a set difference in the characters.
Now, for the storyline.
Throughout history, the Prime Material has been plagued with demons appearing through natural gates that occur at random, though some scholars have purported that they may be a result of inborn chaos or the abyss attempting to break through. A few thousand years ago (about 5-10 elf generations) an Elf-Maid named Agnorra was crowned queen in an attempt to bring stability over the land. Under her rule, however, disaster struck. The appearance of gates reached a peak, and it seemed like the world would end. In an unknown magical ritual she created a powerful, major artifact known as the Scythe of Agnorra (treated as a +5 Vorpal Scythe, of course) that can cut through the connections between planes, closing gates, even natural ones. She led a great crusade, slaying demons and closing thousands of natural gates. Unfortunately, in the last gate, a gate to the lowest layer of the abyss, she was dragged into it by abominations and had no choice to close it from the inside.
Since then, she has come to be worshipped as a deity. Those devoted with her hunt demons and those that worship them, up to and including their own scholars. They kill the tainted (they see it as a mercy, as they will inevitably transform into demons or horribly die anyway), and those that are willfully tainted or simply don't want to die hide on the outskirts of society.
The last queen had three daughters (triplets) and one was born tainted, a rarity and a tragedy. She paid thousands of clerics to attempt to cure her, but it failed, until one day, a theurge (see the Book of Fiends (Green Ronin)) came and offered a cure. By fusing her with a demon, he made her immune to the taint's negative effects. She then argued with her mother for the tainted's right to be cured (though few non-tainted viewed this as a cure, rather an affliction to fight another affliction), and, not knowing her own strength, killed her mother. Her youngest sister than killed her other, older sister and blamed the formerly tainted sister. Her youngest sister now rules and there is a civil war between the tainted and untainted.
The players are holy warriors sent into the abyss to find the scythe and use it, under the church's guidance, to close all connections between the abyss and the prime material, allowing the youngest daughter to crush the tainted forevermore.
What do you think?
The premise of the setting is that the players are trying to find a magic item known as the Scythe of Agnorra, which is hidden in the lowest layer of the abyss. They are holy warriors that worship Agnorra, the elf-maid who closed the last and greatest natural portal to the abyss. I've made it so each layer of the abyss should match up decently to each player's level, and there are a few things about it that should be known.
For one, this campaign setting is supposed to be high-mortality. It uses the taint and depravity systems in order to form a few more challenges (simply being in the abyss is guaranteed to leave the players with a good portion of it, so I've homebrewed a magic item that acts as a holy symbol and as a way to siphon taint, though it's still going to be fun watching them lose themselves) and if they die and transform into a CE demon of a CR equal to their character level if they reach max taint, at which point they become an NPC under my control, and attack their former teammates.
For another, this cosmology is solely the Abyss and the Prime Material (if I accidentally refer to the Abyss as hell, forgive me). There are no celestials, and they cannot be summoned (summoning magic no longer has an alignment component but can only summon demons). I debated removing alignment too, but I'd like to have a set difference in the characters.
Now, for the storyline.
Throughout history, the Prime Material has been plagued with demons appearing through natural gates that occur at random, though some scholars have purported that they may be a result of inborn chaos or the abyss attempting to break through. A few thousand years ago (about 5-10 elf generations) an Elf-Maid named Agnorra was crowned queen in an attempt to bring stability over the land. Under her rule, however, disaster struck. The appearance of gates reached a peak, and it seemed like the world would end. In an unknown magical ritual she created a powerful, major artifact known as the Scythe of Agnorra (treated as a +5 Vorpal Scythe, of course) that can cut through the connections between planes, closing gates, even natural ones. She led a great crusade, slaying demons and closing thousands of natural gates. Unfortunately, in the last gate, a gate to the lowest layer of the abyss, she was dragged into it by abominations and had no choice to close it from the inside.
Since then, she has come to be worshipped as a deity. Those devoted with her hunt demons and those that worship them, up to and including their own scholars. They kill the tainted (they see it as a mercy, as they will inevitably transform into demons or horribly die anyway), and those that are willfully tainted or simply don't want to die hide on the outskirts of society.
The last queen had three daughters (triplets) and one was born tainted, a rarity and a tragedy. She paid thousands of clerics to attempt to cure her, but it failed, until one day, a theurge (see the Book of Fiends (Green Ronin)) came and offered a cure. By fusing her with a demon, he made her immune to the taint's negative effects. She then argued with her mother for the tainted's right to be cured (though few non-tainted viewed this as a cure, rather an affliction to fight another affliction), and, not knowing her own strength, killed her mother. Her youngest sister than killed her other, older sister and blamed the formerly tainted sister. Her youngest sister now rules and there is a civil war between the tainted and untainted.
The players are holy warriors sent into the abyss to find the scythe and use it, under the church's guidance, to close all connections between the abyss and the prime material, allowing the youngest daughter to crush the tainted forevermore.
What do you think?