Gnomes and Mind Flayers...IN SPACE
Oct 6, 2017 20:30:53 GMT
joatmoniac, lasersniper, and 1 more like this
Post by DM Exitium on Oct 6, 2017 20:30:53 GMT
World Building Premise: A Fantasy Futuristic World setting in my homebrew setting of Ragnogov
Following the events of our previous campaign where I retired their level 20 characters, the world is peaceful, larger than before having retained some mass and energy from the Elemental Planes during the Age of Planar Fusion.
My players decided that the characters who had not ascended to God-hood would True Polymorph into Ancient Dragons and rule the material Plane as a Council of Dragons.
Plot Hook Seeded in previous campaign: It's 150 years later after their previous campaign, and in that previous campaign I had hinted at what led to the gnomes extinction and their leaving the Planet. I heavily implied that leaving the "Planet" of Ragnogov and leaving the "Material Plane" of Ragnogov are 2 very different things. eg) all of the stars and space are part of the material plane, while the meta-physical planes like the Feywilds, Elemental and Godly planes are separated.
-In any case, the history books hinted at gnomes building an airship that could fly away into the night sky. "There they did battle with Kraken-headed creatures" whose cunning rivaled even that of the ingenious gnomes. This info lay simmering.....until NOW!
ENCOUNTER 0 and 1: Character Building and Intro Night
Their new level 1 characters are attending a massive Fantasy Conference, or Olympics world-level event. My DM notes outlining the event shown below, but the 2nd keynote demonstration on day 5 sets up the underlying plot for the entire campaign:
They also recently got the full World Map (made using Inkarnate) revealed where the first of the 2 following maps was the previous known world (to them) and the 2nd photo is now the mapped, full world.
Zoomed out for the Full World Map (Yes there is a lot of water. But during the Planar Fusion of last campaign, they never really balanced the Plane of Water, only visiting Fire, Air and Earth. Thus, the Plane of Water left the greatest Impact on the material world once the planes re-separated):
So my players love exploration. And now that they have felt like they 100% filled in the map and explored the meta-physical with their previous characters, that little mystery remains in Ragnogov.....they forgot the history lessons of the Gnomes vanishing into the Night Sky and the Kraken-headed horrors that hunted them.
On the Conference Outline above, the 1st Keynote Demonstration involved the Council of Dragons revealing a 2-way permanent Gate system installed in all the peaceful and Council Protected major cities of the World, such that travel will be cheaper and more streamlined than ever before! Airships, galleys and beast companions are travel methods of the past! And there was much rejoicing.
The 2nd Keynote Demonstration was much more grim....A sense of horror and mystery similar to the discovering of The Flood in the first halo game. Skip to ~2m if you want to watch the video
Conference attendee's and those watching from home on their Scrying Screens were shown some disturbing footage.
(Parents rest assured, the footage had a Maturity enchantment on it such that younglings, hatchlings and children would not be able to see any of the violent footage)
-It involved a platoon of dwarf and orcish soldiers approaching a smoking, metallic tower that had left a massive crater in the ground when it fell from the sky.
-Amid the smoke, shapes began to move. Some on disproportionate 4 legs, some on 6, and many on 2 legs. The many-legged creatures only resembled the folded jelly a soldier might find in the skull of a dead enemy. But these things had legs, crawled, and were hostile. It was hard to tell through the thick smoke.
-The worst of the imagery came at the end, when a breeze drew back the smoke like a curtain on a soldier entangled by a 2-legged kraken-headed creature. Its purple head and tentacles were enveloping the head of the orcish soldier.
-There was a scream.
-A loud crack, like bone.
-A slurping noise. And the orc lay dead.
-Then a strange moaning or growling from the kraken-headed creature as it stepped towards the poor soldier whose memories were feeding the Scrying Screen.
-The Scrying Screen then went black.
This was followed by an announcement to join the Military if you are a warrior, artificer, clergy, or practitioner of the Arcane arts, for the Council needs the help of all the able-bodied and able-minded. It had a very WW2 propaganda feel to the announcement. And a successful perception check would have granted the players the knowledge that the Memorae just seen was dated nearly 50 years ago. So this conflict is just being made public to the world at large, but has been ongoing? The world is Fantastically steampunk and Arcana Futuristic with all the comforts of today's world and more!
This is the setting of the stage for the new campaign, and the finished re-homebrewing of my setting Ragnogov! And thus the new campaign titled: Gnomes and Mind Flayers....IN SPACE!!!
Following the events of our previous campaign where I retired their level 20 characters, the world is peaceful, larger than before having retained some mass and energy from the Elemental Planes during the Age of Planar Fusion.
My players decided that the characters who had not ascended to God-hood would True Polymorph into Ancient Dragons and rule the material Plane as a Council of Dragons.
Plot Hook Seeded in previous campaign: It's 150 years later after their previous campaign, and in that previous campaign I had hinted at what led to the gnomes extinction and their leaving the Planet. I heavily implied that leaving the "Planet" of Ragnogov and leaving the "Material Plane" of Ragnogov are 2 very different things. eg) all of the stars and space are part of the material plane, while the meta-physical planes like the Feywilds, Elemental and Godly planes are separated.
-In any case, the history books hinted at gnomes building an airship that could fly away into the night sky. "There they did battle with Kraken-headed creatures" whose cunning rivaled even that of the ingenious gnomes. This info lay simmering.....until NOW!
ENCOUNTER 0 and 1: Character Building and Intro Night
Their new level 1 characters are attending a massive Fantasy Conference, or Olympics world-level event. My DM notes outlining the event shown below, but the 2nd keynote demonstration on day 5 sets up the underlying plot for the entire campaign:
They also recently got the full World Map (made using Inkarnate) revealed where the first of the 2 following maps was the previous known world (to them) and the 2nd photo is now the mapped, full world.
Zoomed out for the Full World Map (Yes there is a lot of water. But during the Planar Fusion of last campaign, they never really balanced the Plane of Water, only visiting Fire, Air and Earth. Thus, the Plane of Water left the greatest Impact on the material world once the planes re-separated):
So my players love exploration. And now that they have felt like they 100% filled in the map and explored the meta-physical with their previous characters, that little mystery remains in Ragnogov.....they forgot the history lessons of the Gnomes vanishing into the Night Sky and the Kraken-headed horrors that hunted them.
On the Conference Outline above, the 1st Keynote Demonstration involved the Council of Dragons revealing a 2-way permanent Gate system installed in all the peaceful and Council Protected major cities of the World, such that travel will be cheaper and more streamlined than ever before! Airships, galleys and beast companions are travel methods of the past! And there was much rejoicing.
The 2nd Keynote Demonstration was much more grim....A sense of horror and mystery similar to the discovering of The Flood in the first halo game. Skip to ~2m if you want to watch the video
Conference attendee's and those watching from home on their Scrying Screens were shown some disturbing footage.
(Parents rest assured, the footage had a Maturity enchantment on it such that younglings, hatchlings and children would not be able to see any of the violent footage)
-It involved a platoon of dwarf and orcish soldiers approaching a smoking, metallic tower that had left a massive crater in the ground when it fell from the sky.
-Amid the smoke, shapes began to move. Some on disproportionate 4 legs, some on 6, and many on 2 legs. The many-legged creatures only resembled the folded jelly a soldier might find in the skull of a dead enemy. But these things had legs, crawled, and were hostile. It was hard to tell through the thick smoke.
-The worst of the imagery came at the end, when a breeze drew back the smoke like a curtain on a soldier entangled by a 2-legged kraken-headed creature. Its purple head and tentacles were enveloping the head of the orcish soldier.
-There was a scream.
-A loud crack, like bone.
-A slurping noise. And the orc lay dead.
-Then a strange moaning or growling from the kraken-headed creature as it stepped towards the poor soldier whose memories were feeding the Scrying Screen.
-The Scrying Screen then went black.
This was followed by an announcement to join the Military if you are a warrior, artificer, clergy, or practitioner of the Arcane arts, for the Council needs the help of all the able-bodied and able-minded. It had a very WW2 propaganda feel to the announcement. And a successful perception check would have granted the players the knowledge that the Memorae just seen was dated nearly 50 years ago. So this conflict is just being made public to the world at large, but has been ongoing? The world is Fantastically steampunk and Arcana Futuristic with all the comforts of today's world and more!
This is the setting of the stage for the new campaign, and the finished re-homebrewing of my setting Ragnogov! And thus the new campaign titled: Gnomes and Mind Flayers....IN SPACE!!!
that's where they land and no one knows! Hence, world wide RANDOM ENCOUNTERS! Dun Dun DUN!! But they are still just testing the strength of the world before devouring en masse. I'm going to start the players questioning the security of the oceans when they hear rumors of Kuo-Toa worshiping new Gods that are not the Council of Dragons....