Major Story Villain and PC Interest

[thesilentx]

Hey guys and gals, I need some help.

I have a major Villain sprouting up in my campaign who I am having issues with certain motivations and how she will go about accomplishing her goals.

Some Backstory:
This woman, Cassandra is a high level wizard (figure level 18, but no immediate access to spells higher than 5th for in game reasons). Her husband is a high level druid (the exact same limitations as Cassandra). The two of them hired the PC's to escort and protect their daughter on her way to the capitol for her rites of initiation into the empire's noble ranks. On the way, the PC's were ambushed and the daughter was kidnapped. Now, Cassandra and Geoffrey are going insane trying to locate her daughter. Eventually they will discover that she is dead. Cassandra wracked by grief starts trying to use her great arcane power to find a way to resurrect her. Geoffrey, on the other hand, is about preserving the circle of life, and while he mourns her loss, will not tamper with the great cosmic forces involved in trying to bringing the dead back to life.

Where I'm going with this:
I want Cassandra to be a major villain for the PC's, but I'm having issues with how to get the PCs interested. I have a source that Cassandra can tap to cast higher level spells, but it will threaten the fabric of reality.

So, does anyone know of any way via a spell to have someone who has been dead for a while to come back to life as an undead? Preferably it would happen in a monkey's paw fashion where, even when she comes back, the daughter isn't whole, so Cassandra snaps.

I could throw rituals and sacrificing rules into the mix, but I want to save that as a last resort.

[Uncle Pine]

Cassandra could blame the PCs for her daughter's death and divide her time between trying to locate her daughter (and subsequently reanimate her as a zombie/skeleton/whatever) and blasting the PCs to death. What's funny is that Cassandra is right: the PCs are in fact responsible for her daughter's death (as they were supposed to protect her)!
The lesson is: if a high level wizard asks for a service in exchange for currency, think about what could appen if you fail to perform the request. If you don't like the consequences, politely decline and look for another plot hook. :smallwink:

EDIT: I just remembered you were also asking for a spell Cassandra could use to "resurrect" her daughter: Animate Dead should suffice.

[Shining Wrath]

I think what you want is for Cassandra to locate her daughter's body and then
1) Make a zombie of the corpse using Animate Dead
2) Later, give the zombie a mind using Awaken Undead - Wizard 7, Spell Compendium


This spell grants intelligence to mindless undead such as skeletons and zombies. Undead creatures with Intelligence scores are unaffected. A mindless undead gains an Intelligence score of 1d6+4, subject to the limitation that an undead cannot be more intelligent than is typical of a living creature of the same kind. A dog skeleton simply has Intelligence 2 (no roll needed), while an orc skeleton makes the die roll but can't have more than Intelligence 8. (See MM 290 for information on skills and feats the creature gains.)

Cassandra researches a spell she thinks will restore her daughter's mind to her body - Awaken Undead - but instead gets a mockery of intelligence (INT 5 to 8). This pushes her even further over the edge, going into darker and darker places trying to find the spell that will actually work.

This attracts the attention of which evil god of death, devil, or demon you think suits your fluff, and of course Cassandra winds up getting less than she bargained for and being corrupted into ZOMG ULTIMATE EVIL BBEG because there's nothing like a grief-stricken parent who thinks they are smarter than the forces they are dealing with to be a perfect pawn for someone like Nerull or Asmodeus.

[thesilentx]

The original party tasked with escorting the Cassandra's daughter, is all dead, so I need a plot hook for the newer party. I was thinking something where entire towns of people are disappearing because Cassandra is sacrificing them to a deity for knowledge, but I am looking for something slightly more subtle. Something awesome would be if the party actually sides with her, thinking it's totally alright to do this, and then going against Cassandra's husband, only to find out Cassandra is going about things slightly more evil than imagined and the party has a, "Oh crap, we killed/stopped the wrong one" moment.

[Trasilor]

The original party tasked with escorting the Cassandra's daughter, is all dead, so I need a plot hook for the newer party. I was thinking something where entire towns of people are disappearing because Cassandra is sacrificing them to a deity for knowledge, but I am looking for something slightly more subtle. Something awesome would be if the party actually sides with her, thinking it's totally alright to do this, and then going against Cassandra's husband, only to find out Cassandra is going about things slightly more evil than imagined and the party has a, "Oh crap, we killed/stopped the wrong one" moment.

Have Cassandra hire the PCs to retrieve her daughter (I assume teleport is not available or she would have used that instead of an inept group of guards). Have her seam slightly off, like offering extra gold for every pair of goblin ears the PCs bring her - to prevent goblins from ever doing this again (advocating genocide).

Have the PCs collect a few MacGuffins which involve more and more morally questionable acts. At some point, introduce the husband as the 'Villian' out to stop the PCs.

While an Awakened Undead works, I think it would be more interesting if she is trying to turn her daughter into an awakened golem (I know no spell exists - but you're the DM :smallamused:).

Cassandra is not actually evil, rather she is consumed with guilt. In her mind, she is not evil and she justifies all her actions as necessary or part of a greater good - maybe the girl was important beyond being a wizard's daughter.

By the way, what level are the PCs and what level do you expect them to end?

[Harlot]

The original party tasked with escorting the Cassandra's daughter, is all dead, so I need a plot hook for the newer party. I was thinking something where entire towns of people are disappearing because Cassandra is sacrificing them to a deity for knowledge, but I am looking for something slightly more subtle. Something awesome would be if the party actually sides with her, thinking it's totally alright to do this, and then going against Cassandra's husband, only to find out Cassandra is going about things slightly more evil than imagined and the party has a, "Oh crap, we killed/stopped the wrong one" moment.

One idea:
Make it personal: The sister/friend/wife of a character is among Cassandras victims, going missing.
Now the party starts searching for their relative and come across Cassandra who is smart enough to 'play it nice' i.e. tells them the touching story of her own child going missing and offers them 'what little help I can.' So she sends them here and there on missions asking them to find magic items or odd spell-components or other stuff that 'will help her help them locate their relative'. So they go about helping her with her mission believing she will help them in return.
At some point someone will start questioning some of the quests. That someone could be Geoffrey, starting to suspect his wife is having a breakdown and starting to look into her operations and whereabouts.
So Geoffrey approaches the group, discreetly, asks them about the missions and eventually points out that what they're doing cannot possibly lead to anything good, and that those mission seems like preparations for this-and-this ritual.
(If you need something more like a kick in the guts, they could stuble upon Cassandra sacrificing someone or just some of her notes or papers written in code (puzzles, yeah!) that describes a sacrifice or something like that. And oh, their relative is dead and all clues point to Cassandra, but not directly.
Anyway, after the wake-up call, the group have to choose sides, which will be a no-brainer.

Now necromancy is not necessarily evil, mind you, but you can make a world/environment/society in which it is. In that case, Cassandra and raised zombiedaughter will flee, Cassandra will demand more victims for more dark rituals to restore her daughter mentally as well, and Geoffrey who does not approve of this end for his beloved daughter, will ask the group to haunt Cassandra down and kill them both, so that his daughter may find peace.

/Harlot

[thesilentx]

Trasilor: Why did you think of the idea of a golem? Also, They are level 6 running through Red Hand of Doom, but I plan to set them on this "Adventure path" around level 12, and have them finish at anywhere between 15 and 18.

Harlot: That might work, she could learn of the spell, and not trusting it's source, starts using other people to see if it works. However, because she didn't know the people in real life, so it's a futile effort as she can't tell if the people's personalities are changing or if they were like this before being killed.

[Shining Wrath]

Cassandra hires the PCs to be bodyguards for her daughter, who is to superficial examination a mentally handicapped girl rather than an awakened zombie - permanent illusions help with the disguise, and Cassandra is wizard enough to pull that off. The daughter has one or more servants, loyal to Cassandra, who 'bathe" and otherwise tend to the daughter and help maintain the disguise.

Cassandra's story to the PCs is that Geoffrey is arrogant and wants to kill the daughter because she's "not perfect".

As the PCs protect the zombie from various threats, they discover that a lot of people other than Geoffrey seem to want this girl dead - and then they discover that Cassandra is doing evil trying to "cure" the daughter, and people who know what Cassandra is up to are trying to kill Cassandra, or the daughter, or both, to put a stop to one or more of:

ritual sacrifices
summoning of demons & devils
deals with vampire wizards to exchange captive Paladins for dark knowledge
experiments upon commoners who have the bad luck to resemble the daughter
Cassandra is progressing towards becoming a lich so that she'll have all the time she needs to restore her daughter
creation of more awakened zombies so her daughter can have "friends"