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View Full Version : Ritual of Perversion: 7 sins, 7 victims, 7 demons. Need Ideas



MonkeySage
2018-10-18, 10:38 PM
So, this new campaign I'm working on revolves around 7 artifacts called the Saints Tears. Each Tear, essentially a white crystal, contains the essence of a half-dead demon lord, and by activating them she is able to regenerate. They also contain the essence of one of that demon lord's direct progeny.

The Tears are activated by blood. Ritual of Sealing ripped the Demon Lord apart, and contained her essence to keep her from regenerating- this ritual was activated by the blood of seven saints, representing seven virtues.

To activate them again and regenerate the Demon Lord, seven rituals of perversion have to be performed, one on each Tear individually. Each tear that's activated makes the demon lord just a little bit more substantial, a little bit stronger until she's fully regenerated.

Each Ritual of Perversion is a reversal of the virtue that the Tear represents, in all representing the 7 deadly sins. They require the blood of a sacrifice that embodies that particular sin.

When a ritual of perversion is completed, the primary caster ascends to demonhood- they become a child of the demon lord herself, and also embody that sin. This isn't as simple as "Marilith represents Pride" because these are unique demons.

The ritual requires that the given Tear be anointed with the right blood, and the Tears are not easy to obtain- they're all hidden in ancient Gauntlets not intended to be navigated or passed through. The demon lord just throws cultists at the gauntlets until someone gets through to the end- she does not care about the lives of her followers. The players would have to survive them.

So, hasty explanation done, I need ideas on:

How should I represent the sins of each victim?

How should I go about creating these unique demons?

How do I go about creating occult rituals like those in the Occult Adventures book of Pathfinder? How might each ritual be different?

JeenLeen
2018-10-19, 11:59 AM
A few questions.

How dark are you willing for the rituals to be?

Does the person doing the unsealing (who becomes a child of the demon lord) have to know the purpose of the act? Could someone be tricked into doing it? Would becoming adopted as a 'demon prince' alter their morality and viewpoint such that, even if they were tricked, they are now happy with the outcome?

What do you mean by the Tear must be anointed with the "right blood"? Does it have to be the blood of someone associated with a Virtue? Do you have to corrupt someone use their blood, or could it be done just by the caster/ritualist alone (perhaps with unwilling sacrifices)?
Also, I take it each Tear is also aligned to a certain Sin. That is, the Ritual of Pride can only work on one Tear. Trying it on another one doesn't do anything.

---

I think answer to the above would help us shape our answers. Sadly, I don't own the Pathfinder book you refer to, so I can't use that guidance.

One idea for Gluttony.
Find a poor but overall good group that works together to survive, even if everyone is hungry. Perhaps some poor monks, or a poor village, or an orphanage in a big city having trouble feeding its kids. Give them food to satisfy them until they become reliant, but then cut the supply, so that bickering and infighting forms as there's food but not enough. Where hunger before united them, let it now divide. When one of them first kills someone they loved, lest that person get their food, let that blood anoint the Tear.

Aidan305
2018-10-19, 01:06 PM
From what you're saying, I believe that more important than the ritual, is the victim of the ritual. Given that the rituals all serve the same purpose, each one doesn't need to be distinct and can follow similar patterns with only minor variance.

Since the nature of the imprisonment is through virtue, each of the victims should have once been an embodiment of a virtue, who have fallen to a sin, perhaps groomed to be so by the cult in a manner similar to that suggested above by JeenLeen.

As an example:
A Diligent clerk working for the local rulers, known and praised for his exacting care in the enacting of his duties. The cult has over time led him down a path of sloth. Perhaps it's not so important that the merchant is able to get an appointment. The figures in that ledger don't need to be double-checked. Slowly, over time, the area becomes less pleasant because the minor tasks that need to get done are being ignored and passed over because they're not important. The corruption of this individual becomes a corrupting influence on the land as virtue turns to sin. Sloth has been seeping in. Eventually, the local lords issue a pardon to someone doomed to be hung for something they didn't do, but the clerk isn't bothered to write it up and send it. The man dies, but the clerk no longer believes, as he once did, that this is in any way important. He has reached the point where he believes that this innocent life isn't worth making the effort for. Diligence has been corrupted to Sloth, and the way is cleared for the man to be sacrificed by the cult.


And as a suggestion for how the rituals might work:
They take him away to a specially prepared location, dimly lit by flickering torches and chain him to the ground in a circle of runes, carefully painted from the blood of innocents (repeating of a theme - destruction of innocence, corruption of a virtue). The stink of burning incense fills the air. The robed and hooded priest begins the ritual with a recitation of the victims name and deeds, punctuating each with a deep ring of a chime. (Multiple senses in the description -sight, sound, smell) He makes clear how this person has fallen to sin - how it has consumed them as all virtue must invariably be corrupted by sin. At the height of the ritual, the priest lowers their hood to reveal the tear which has been embedded in their forehead. The priest brings out a sharp blade and steps towards the sinner. They force his head back, baring his throat; and intoning the words "By the blood of the virtuous, the master was chained" they draw the dagger across. As the victim lies dying on the ground the priest brushes their hand across the cut. Then, raising their hand towards they face they intone "By the blood of the sinful, he will be free." and touch their bloodied hand to the jewel.

Assuming all goes well, ritual completed, metamorphosis begins, demon lord is one step closer to freedom.

Hope this helps give you a few ideas.

Nifft
2018-10-19, 01:19 PM
^ I like the idea of focusing on the victim of the ritual.

Maybe each of the seven victims must be falling or must have fallen from goodness due to that particular sin?

So to find the target for the Lust ritual, the PCs would need to research which powerful members of society have been corrupted by that vice -- and that's something the powerful NPCs have deliberately concealed, for damn good reasons.


Heh. The investigation into which members of society have fallen into sin might disrupt society more than the actual demon-lord stuff.

noob
2018-10-19, 01:46 PM
The conclusion as usual would be that the world would be on fire and the demon lord unable to revive because there is nobody which can fall from grace because everyone which could have been burned by adventurers(there is a thing called collateral damage and usually it is heavy with adventurers).
At the same time would the demon lord care anymore about that failure?
The world would have become just like another layer of the abyss.
Except the people promoted to the status of demon lord to replace him would be a group of four somehow good aligned adventurers.

MonkeySage
2018-10-19, 03:41 PM
A few questions.

How dark are you willing for the rituals to be?

Does the person doing the unsealing (who becomes a child of the demon lord) have to know the purpose of the act? Could someone be tricked into doing it? Would becoming adopted as a 'demon prince' alter their morality and viewpoint such that, even if they were tricked, they are now happy with the outcome?

What do you mean by the Tear must be anointed with the "right blood"? Does it have to be the blood of someone associated with a Virtue? Do you have to corrupt someone use their blood, or could it be done just by the caster/ritualist alone (perhaps with unwilling sacrifices)?
Also, I take it each Tear is also aligned to a certain Sin. That is, the Ritual of Pride can only work on one Tear. Trying it on another one doesn't do anything.



I'm used to horror games, and my players seem fine with the campaigns going dark.

The Primary Caster of the ritual most likely knows what they're doing and why, since these rituals were devised by the Demon Lady's own suicidally devoted cult. Most likely, the Primary Caster already has a moral code close to a demon.

The Sacrifice... well, I like the idea that the sacrifice is a virtuous person who fell to sin- a Temperate person who fell to Gluttony (and actually really enjoy the idea you presented for Gluttony).

You're right, too, that each Tear is aligned to a particular Virtue, and the Ritual of Wrath won't work on the Tear of Chastity.

Mastikator
2018-10-19, 03:55 PM
Maybe causing a particularly virtuous person to fall is a part of the ritual. Maybe HOW you cause them to fall is a part of the ritual.

Maybe the sacrifice isn't their lives but their virtue, at the end victim becomes the champion of the demon.

Anymage
2018-10-19, 04:16 PM
You can delay putting stats on both the ascended demons and the mechanics of the rituals. The rituals should be entirely plot devices, while the demons should have stats of either "you lose", or at best "come back when you're much higher level, and I'll nail the stats down then".

Tears can be a three level challenge, so it's okay making each step quite difficult on its own. The players only ruin everything forever if they flub twenty one distinct steps, so you can afford to make each individual one challenging. You can focus on just the gem quests for now, and possibly follow things up depending on how the PCs do. Since there's a limit to how far out you can plan around PC actions.

As for the steps themselves, I think you have a pretty solid mix of action types. Preventing the corruption is more of a tricky freeform roleplaying thing, the other two are pretty easy to crunch out;


Like you said, there are dungeon crawls to gather tears ahead of the cultists. Basic dungeon crawl, with maybe holy themed imagery and puzzles depending on one's religion skill. Some you win, some you lose, and if the PCs are doing really well at least one tear has to be stolen from wherever they wind up stockpiling all of them. But this is a simple game of managing resources and time, so you can successfully complete these and move on faster than the cultists can.
I really like the idea that rituals involve finding someone who embodies a certain virtue, and corrupting them to a relevant vice in order to make them an effective sacrifice. Although in some cases, they can be the one inflicting the sacrifice. If an originally chaste person murders someone else in the throes of depraved passion, the victim's blood should totally count even if they weren't the corruption target. For either wrath, greed, or pride, this lets one of the PCs serve as a corruption target. If you've ever seen Se7en, you were probably already planning this out.
Finally enacting the ritual is a chance for the PCs to rush in and do their heroing on any tears the PCs might have missed before. Again, at least one should involve the cultists trying to egg the PCs on to be the one shedding the actual blood. Don't worry too much about the exact details here. If the PCs are able to get through, it's unlikely that they walk in at the exact instant that the knife falls. You can get away with creepy cultist halloweenish imagery for when the PCs engage, and gory murder scene imagery if the PCs don't get there on time.

MonkeySage
2018-10-20, 01:02 AM
Chances are very good that my players won't successfully stop all rituals, and I don't expect them too. It would be fine if they did, but that wouldn't be a very interesting campaign. This is the purpose of the lesser demonic princes- in lieu of facing the Demon Lord Herself, they should provide a satisfying but not overwhelming challenge for my players. Defeating one of the princes should be sufficient to award them their first Mythic Tier.

Having said that, I'm not so much worried about stats here as I am the imagination aspect.

In order of power, the Prince of Sloth would be the weakest prince, albeit one of the more intelligent of the bunch. The Prince of Pride is the strongest- probably clever in a more military general kind of way.

I could easily make the Prince of Sloth look like a bigger badder Dretch, but I'd like to convey intelligence and a degree of sophistication in his appearance, without undermining the fact he represents the sin of sloth. Not sure how to do that.

Pride is much easier: He looks like a giant with the head of a lion and skin like magma. His mane is made of fire, and he wears a fine set of armor. He wields a massive great axe.

As for the others, I'm at a loss.

noob
2018-10-20, 03:32 AM
The prince of Wrath could be anything muscular or big or maybe even a crowd of angry people since crowds can be angrier than individuals(Then use a mob with a dozen of templates on top of it in the latter case: a supersonic mob that poisions, burns, melts and freeze people it runs over could be quite deadly).
The prince of envy could always look like the person looking at it: people involuntary desire themselves to be at the place of the prince of envy is because they instinctively envy the prince of envy.(you could even make the prince of envy do an extra turn for each people which see or fight it with suped up versions of the stats of that individual(free metamagics for casters, doubled damage for damage dealing people and so on) and people hit their version of envy reducing the total life of their image and all the images must die at the same turn(so as long as there is one ally of envy that can see envy it can not die) or all the images refresh so of course envy might probably spam summons)

ATHATH
2018-10-20, 04:13 AM
The Primary Caster of the ritual most likely knows what they're doing and why, since these rituals were devised by the Demon Lady's own suicidally devoted cult. Most likely, the Primary Caster already has a moral code close to a demon.
What if, after beating up the cultists performing a tear ritual, a PLAYER decides to do/does the ritual instead? After all, they only need to stop one tear ritual to keep the demon lord from returning... why not get some neato demon abilities? After all, the horrific deeds needed to set up the ritual have already been done, and it would be such a waste if that politician was corrupted to greed for nothing... Plus, the sacrificed victim is probably Evil anyway (due to their corruption), and that makes killing them in cold blood for a reward okay, right? I mean, the party is already doing that for a living.

ATHATH
2018-10-20, 04:19 AM
The lust demon focusing on addiction might be a fun twist.

Maybe let it empower people, charming them in the process? Or maybe when the buff ends, the target takes a load of damage (the lust demon can will this to not happen if it so wishes), so the buffed people would basically have a gun to their heads. Throw some innocents who have been buffed up into being challenging combatants at the PCs if the lust demon has time to prepare before fighting the PCs (preferably not in person).

Seto
2018-10-20, 05:56 AM
Might be slightly off-topic, but just a question regarding your campaign plans: is stopping a single ritual sufficient to halt the Demon Lord's plans? Does he really need all seven? If so, you risk either anticlimax (if the whole plan is over as soon as they stop one ritual) or discouraging your players (if they're powerless to stop every single ritual).

Maybe that's already your plan, but how about making the Demon Lord regenerate partially depending on how many rituals have been completed? That way you can buff or nerf him as needed, the players get to see how their actions impact the plot and you still have a climax.

MonkeySage
2018-10-20, 11:11 AM
Stopping one or two rituals may not be enough to prevent her from returning. The only way to guarantee she will not come back is to stop all 7, but even one gets her a tentacle in the door. The rituals make her more substantial, they make her stronger and thus, make her cult stronger. They will never stop hunting the tears down until the cult is eradicated.

Mando Knight
2018-10-20, 09:29 PM
One idea for Gluttony.
Find a poor but overall good group that works together to survive, even if everyone is hungry. Perhaps some poor monks, or a poor village, or an orphanage in a big city having trouble feeding its kids. Give them food to satisfy them until they become reliant, but then cut the supply, so that bickering and infighting forms as there's food but not enough. Where hunger before united them, let it now divide. When one of them first kills someone they loved, lest that person get their food, let that blood anoint the Tear.

That would more classically fit within Envy, desiring what another has (or might obtain), and wanting to deny them of it. Gluttony is generally considered to be the over-consumption itself.

So, a probably more fitting ritual for assumption into the form of a glutton-demon would be perhaps enticing victims with rich banquets (either first starving them to increase their hunger, or simply fattening them like livestock), then cannibalizing them in a ritualistically over-the-top fashion.

JeenLeen
2018-10-20, 10:38 PM
I thought of something, when thinking of adopting this idea for a campaign of my own.

There's the 7 Tears and their history, risk of the Demon Lord being revived, and such, but the PCs don't know about it, beyond just ancient history that some time long ago a demon war happened. Normal fantasy background.

The PCs hear that a group has broken into and stolen a rare crystal from an ancient temple, bypassing its wards somehow. The temple guard were decimated in the attempt, and the local soldiers are occupied with a barbarian tribe attacking or orcs or goblins or something, so the church/government asks the PCs to help.

The PCs investigate, find a lead on the cult, and track them down as they are preparing someone for corruption. Have it set up so they almost certainly will stop it and get the Tear. Either from a cultist they interrogate, a cult leader doing his villain rant before the fight starts, or notes left by the cult, the PCs learn of the Seven Tears. They also learn that the cult has political connections (aka, some reason not to try to get the higher-ups to do the fight), but don't learn enough to know who. The current hostilies in the wild are probably in part to keep the cult free via distracting the guard.

So, the quest for the Tears start. Through some contacts (such as the high priest whose Tear was just stolen, or backstory allies), they learn the location of a few other Tears. Maybe also learn something of the different Demon Princes. The players can choose which Tear to seek, prioritizing which Prince they most want to keep from rising.

I think having 7 missions of "find the Tear" would get boring, for the DM & the players. So let's say they have leads on 3 Tears (for 4 total, since 1 already done in the first mission.) Beating the cultists to the 1st Tear is pretty easy, beating them to the 2nd one is really hard (since the PCs were busy on the first one first), and the 3rd Tear is almost guaranteed to fall to the cultist before the PCs can get there, unless the PCs/players think of something really ingenious. (Of course, award creativity on the player's part.)

Now you've got the attention of some bigwigs. Political agents working with/blackmailed by the cult/corrupted by the cult are targeting the PCs. At the same time, some good nobles & clergy are more willing to help after more holy treasures have been stolen. Thus, the info on the last 3 Tears is revealed.

Note that the political angle gives another way the PCs can act, beyond dungeon-crawling. Unmask the corruption, perhaps ruin a Ritual by discovering who has been corrupted.

You have a bit of a repeat on the mission. But perhaps find out one of the Tears was stolen long ago and what's there is a fake--which explains why the cult didn't try for it. Maybe one Demon Prince was revived long ago. A weak one, but willing to work slow and intelligently. Is the Prince of Sloth behind everything, revived almost by accident? Perhaps the order defending the Tear slowly got slothful, eventually letting thieves steal the Tear. The thieves couldn't escape, but security was so lax they managed to just hide inside the temple. The guards wound up getting in a fight with other guards, trying to save face, and the blood from the fight anointed the Tear. The Demon Prince of Sloth was freed, from the blood shed by the slothful trying to cover up their sin. And that's how the cult started (or, well, started in earnest. Probably recruited small demonic cults over time.)

You could add a timer, for both the PCs and villains. Maybe the Tears can only be corrupted every <whatever time period>. And the Demon Lord can only try to wiggle through into earth via her Princes every <broader time period.> Both are drawing near. The demon of Sloth fears what will happen if his master finds only him free -- for one, she'll drain him of too much power to fuel herself. He's safer if she feeds on all the Princes.

This also means the PCs can partially win just by messing up the villains' plans. But the villains do have most corruption-targets mostly corrupt, at least. After all, Sloth has been planning this. BUT, when the time comes, the Demon Prince is freed. (Well, unless the PCs stop all the other Rites and manage to kill Sloth first. Keep that an option.)

How strong the Demon Lord is should be reflective of how many Princes are free. I'm reminded a bit of Saga Frontier 2's final boss, where you can defeat sub-bosses in the final dungeon to limit its possible attacks. But, well, stats can be figured out later.

---

Anyway, wanted to share the above.

ATHATH
2018-10-21, 01:34 AM
Good idea(s), JeenLeen.