Post by donosaur on Jan 12, 2016 4:48:56 GMT
So I'm running my first campaign using the 5e starter set as a starting point and my plan is to use the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide and the 4e Neverwinter Campaign setting book to create a customized Neverwinter campaign. The Spellplague is thankfully over, but the events of the Sundering haven't taken place yet. The party will face thief guilds, the machinations of Dagult Neverember, and a single aboleth sleeping under the city. They'll then move on to dangers lurking in Neverwinter Woods and beyond, dealing with a hobgoblin warlord they accidentally helped into power, and the Netherese raising Xinlenal and going to war with Neverwinter and Myth Drannor. But I'm here to discuss what I want them to do at a epic, cosmos-saving tier.
In their backstories, two of my players included exposure to cursed, evil books, so I decided these books needed to be part of a set, a set that when reunited can set free an incredible, forgotten evil. One player had their hand permanently burned by a book, the other is playing a narcoleptic gnome, and so I decided that each book should have an attendant curse, but also a power. I then needed an ultimate evil to be bound by these books, and after lots of searching for something canonical I stumbled upon Voidmazix the Forgotten God. PERFECT. Well except for the name, I'm going to shorten it to just The Void. Here's what I came up with:
The Void is the overdeity in opposition to Ao, who created everything, including time itself. Void wants all of that to go away, existence pains it. All of the other gods realized the danger of having a malevolent overdeity of entropy lurking around, and locked it in a timeless prison in Carcer. Problem solved, right?
Well the void IS a deity, and therefore...it has an angel. One angel, known as Cran the Bestower. Cran acts for the void, and wanders the prime material, where he hands out a series of black bound books to the fallen or dark races. These books each grant arcane knowledge and secrets to their holders, as well as a Power of Passing that grants them the ability to pass through certain barriers. The tomes are:
I have a couple other ideas if I need more tomes, but I think this is more than enough to pace throughout the campaign.
Anyone who reads one of the tomes begins to believe that by uniting them, they can achieve their greatest dreams. Evil-aligned creatures are too selfish to see that they are being manipulated. If a creature reads the tome and realizes that it will bring about the end of the world, Cran will begin stalking them, first as an old man who wipes their memories, then as a horrifying Planar warrior who shatters their minds or their bodies, or blasts them into oblivion if they fight back. In this form he is known as Cran the Chasm.
The void also has actual worshippers who know what he represents. These are utter nihilists who present no real danger to the party, but can help them fully understand the terror that the void represents. They have a revered "sacred one" who has been "gifted" by Cran the bestower: a poor, feeble-minded vegetable whose mind was shattered by the black angel.
The power of passing in each book corresponds to an aspect of the seal that holds Void, the Forgotten God, at bay in its prison. Thus, if any one mortal holds the power of all the tomes and completes the ritual contained in their final verses, they will punch through the veil of existence itself and allow the Void to surge through them like a portal. They will remain trapped in this tortuous state, experiencing all of existence being scrambled and wiped away while their consciousness spreads infinitely forward and backward in time, until the Void has finished unmaking existence, at which point they will finally be erased themselves. Of course, since they experience eternity in that moment, there will be no actual relief. They experience an eternity of agony and guilt in the few moments it takes for the void to devour everything.
There is resistance, however: The Pact of Silence is a group that has existed since the first paladin challenged Cran and was annihilated as a result. Those savvy to the true nature of the tomes create elaborate magical wards within which they discuss their findings and plans, then use charms or meditative rituals to suppress their memories. They condition themselves to recover these memories upon sight of a trigger object (think totems from Inception). They keep these hidden until they are safe inside a warding ring. Outside the rings they know they have a mission and know they posses secret knowledge, but they lack any knowledge of what's truly in the Black Tomes. This keeps them safe from Cran's senses.
The tomes are magical artifacts and cannot be destroyed by mundane means. Each book possesses the power to destroy one of the others; but this leaves a gap, because how do you destroy the last book? In fact, this is also a trap, since once the well meaning heroes have gotten the books all in one place to destroy them, someone from history holding the tome of time will appear to complete the black ritual and usher the void out of Carcer. If/when this happens, everything will be destroyed in the order it was created, with time being the last thing to be undone. A hero can take the tome of time and travel back to just before the black ritual occurred, using the tome of time to destroy the fifth tome, then close the portal with the tome of time and themselves inside it. The final black tome will be forgotten forever, permanently preventing the black ritual from happening, but that character will cease to exist in all of history.
So that's the story aspect. In play, I want the tomes to be distributed across the whole campaign. One of the characters has already encountered a book but lost it, and another has had a tome for a while but is about to get rid of it without knowing what it is. The drow have a group dedicated to getting all 5 known tomes, and they'll be the primary antagonist on this front with a rogue Red Wizard and a Tiefling PC's long-lost sister rounding out the ranks. I'll spread adventures and villains throughout the campaign so there's a growing sense of mystery and intrigue about these tomes, and I'll start dropping hints about unaccounted for period of time where Cran has wiped their memories. Our monk will actually be a past member of the Pact of Silence who wiped his memory too deeply and forgot he was ever a member (he has a very low INT score, this is why). It will all build to a battle with Cran in his full horrifying angelic glory, either with Planetar or Solar stats depending on what they can handle. It will end with someone paying the ultimate price, the erasure of their character for the greater good, followed by the end of the campaign.
What do you think? I think it works well as a story building on Forgotten Realms lore without relying utterly on familiar enemies and concepts that my players might be used to. If you like it, it could easily be lifted and transposed into any other sort of campaign or pantheon, since it relies on a forgotten god. The theme of "creation vs entropy" is, IMO, more sophisticated than "good vs evil" or "light vs dark." Why is something better than nothing, really? Cran will repeatedly ask why the party fights what is inevitable, and why they fear the void when one they are gone, they will feel no pain. And in the end, will a character be willing to vanish into the void of history in order to save an existence they'll never be part of again?
That being said, I have no idea how well my players will take to it and how well it will play out in the course of play. It's a lot of set up behind the scenes, so I get to alter things on the fly without them knowing. If I can pull off the slow build of mystery, I'll be happy. I'd love to hear your thoughts, tips, suggestions, etc.
In their backstories, two of my players included exposure to cursed, evil books, so I decided these books needed to be part of a set, a set that when reunited can set free an incredible, forgotten evil. One player had their hand permanently burned by a book, the other is playing a narcoleptic gnome, and so I decided that each book should have an attendant curse, but also a power. I then needed an ultimate evil to be bound by these books, and after lots of searching for something canonical I stumbled upon Voidmazix the Forgotten God. PERFECT. Well except for the name, I'm going to shorten it to just The Void. Here's what I came up with:
The Void is the overdeity in opposition to Ao, who created everything, including time itself. Void wants all of that to go away, existence pains it. All of the other gods realized the danger of having a malevolent overdeity of entropy lurking around, and locked it in a timeless prison in Carcer. Problem solved, right?
Well the void IS a deity, and therefore...it has an angel. One angel, known as Cran the Bestower. Cran acts for the void, and wanders the prime material, where he hands out a series of black bound books to the fallen or dark races. These books each grant arcane knowledge and secrets to their holders, as well as a Power of Passing that grants them the ability to pass through certain barriers. The tomes are:
- The Tome of Burning Poison, given to the drow, grants mastery of poison and ability to pass through the ethereal plane, but starts to kill the body if not handled carefully.
- The Tome of Deathly Slumber, given to the deep gnome, grants the ability to travel the astral plane in dreams, curses the holder with narcolepsy
- The Tome of Cold Earth, given to the duergar, grants subterranean navigation prowess and the ability to merge through stone, curses the holder to hate the sun
- The Tome of Devouring Flame, given to humans who would become a race of Tieflings, makes the holder fire proof and able to pass through abyssal planes, taints them with fiendish blood
- The Tome of Dying Light, given to Shadovar, lets the holder pass through the Shadowfell but curses the holder to become a shade
- The Tome of Forgotten Eons, which is literally forgotten about, and lost in the past. No one knows where or when it exists, but it allows one to travel through time to the moment when the other tomes are reunited. Its curse is that anyone who uses it will be forgotten forever.
I have a couple other ideas if I need more tomes, but I think this is more than enough to pace throughout the campaign.
Anyone who reads one of the tomes begins to believe that by uniting them, they can achieve their greatest dreams. Evil-aligned creatures are too selfish to see that they are being manipulated. If a creature reads the tome and realizes that it will bring about the end of the world, Cran will begin stalking them, first as an old man who wipes their memories, then as a horrifying Planar warrior who shatters their minds or their bodies, or blasts them into oblivion if they fight back. In this form he is known as Cran the Chasm.
The void also has actual worshippers who know what he represents. These are utter nihilists who present no real danger to the party, but can help them fully understand the terror that the void represents. They have a revered "sacred one" who has been "gifted" by Cran the bestower: a poor, feeble-minded vegetable whose mind was shattered by the black angel.
The power of passing in each book corresponds to an aspect of the seal that holds Void, the Forgotten God, at bay in its prison. Thus, if any one mortal holds the power of all the tomes and completes the ritual contained in their final verses, they will punch through the veil of existence itself and allow the Void to surge through them like a portal. They will remain trapped in this tortuous state, experiencing all of existence being scrambled and wiped away while their consciousness spreads infinitely forward and backward in time, until the Void has finished unmaking existence, at which point they will finally be erased themselves. Of course, since they experience eternity in that moment, there will be no actual relief. They experience an eternity of agony and guilt in the few moments it takes for the void to devour everything.
There is resistance, however: The Pact of Silence is a group that has existed since the first paladin challenged Cran and was annihilated as a result. Those savvy to the true nature of the tomes create elaborate magical wards within which they discuss their findings and plans, then use charms or meditative rituals to suppress their memories. They condition themselves to recover these memories upon sight of a trigger object (think totems from Inception). They keep these hidden until they are safe inside a warding ring. Outside the rings they know they have a mission and know they posses secret knowledge, but they lack any knowledge of what's truly in the Black Tomes. This keeps them safe from Cran's senses.
The tomes are magical artifacts and cannot be destroyed by mundane means. Each book possesses the power to destroy one of the others; but this leaves a gap, because how do you destroy the last book? In fact, this is also a trap, since once the well meaning heroes have gotten the books all in one place to destroy them, someone from history holding the tome of time will appear to complete the black ritual and usher the void out of Carcer. If/when this happens, everything will be destroyed in the order it was created, with time being the last thing to be undone. A hero can take the tome of time and travel back to just before the black ritual occurred, using the tome of time to destroy the fifth tome, then close the portal with the tome of time and themselves inside it. The final black tome will be forgotten forever, permanently preventing the black ritual from happening, but that character will cease to exist in all of history.
So that's the story aspect. In play, I want the tomes to be distributed across the whole campaign. One of the characters has already encountered a book but lost it, and another has had a tome for a while but is about to get rid of it without knowing what it is. The drow have a group dedicated to getting all 5 known tomes, and they'll be the primary antagonist on this front with a rogue Red Wizard and a Tiefling PC's long-lost sister rounding out the ranks. I'll spread adventures and villains throughout the campaign so there's a growing sense of mystery and intrigue about these tomes, and I'll start dropping hints about unaccounted for period of time where Cran has wiped their memories. Our monk will actually be a past member of the Pact of Silence who wiped his memory too deeply and forgot he was ever a member (he has a very low INT score, this is why). It will all build to a battle with Cran in his full horrifying angelic glory, either with Planetar or Solar stats depending on what they can handle. It will end with someone paying the ultimate price, the erasure of their character for the greater good, followed by the end of the campaign.
What do you think? I think it works well as a story building on Forgotten Realms lore without relying utterly on familiar enemies and concepts that my players might be used to. If you like it, it could easily be lifted and transposed into any other sort of campaign or pantheon, since it relies on a forgotten god. The theme of "creation vs entropy" is, IMO, more sophisticated than "good vs evil" or "light vs dark." Why is something better than nothing, really? Cran will repeatedly ask why the party fights what is inevitable, and why they fear the void when one they are gone, they will feel no pain. And in the end, will a character be willing to vanish into the void of history in order to save an existence they'll never be part of again?
That being said, I have no idea how well my players will take to it and how well it will play out in the course of play. It's a lot of set up behind the scenes, so I get to alter things on the fly without them knowing. If I can pull off the slow build of mystery, I'll be happy. I'd love to hear your thoughts, tips, suggestions, etc.
