Adventure Intros and Plot Arc...

So I have these five temples set up - each one I figure is a prison of an Elder Elemental God (Water, Earth, Air, Fire, Darkness) and the temples are set up to be a giant pentagram. In the center of that pentagram is the temple of the Elder God of Chaos (very ToEE/Tharizdun-ish).

One of the things I've always hated about published adventures is the stupid plot that's supposed to get the characters to where the DM wants them to go. I just read an adventure in an old issue of Dungeon ("Beyond the Glittering Veil" - issue 31?). Anyway, people are disappearing and the PCs have to find out why. But my question is always - "What if they don't CARE that people are missing?"

I'd rather have cool settings and decide how to get the PCs there myself (maybe with some suggestions - like "People are going missing" or "In the dragon's hoard is a page, obviously from a diary, describing a wizard's trip to a shadow land beyond a glittering veil" or "the halfling thief just fell down a hole in the ground" or whatever - gimme options if I can't make it fit myself). In what I write, I have some pretty certain ideas of how I want MY party to get from place to place, but I could do the same thing with modules, I'd just have to jettison all the intro plot stuff. So I wonder if I should even put it in at all... I figure when Gygax ran his campaign players through Steading of the Hill Giant it probalby wasn't just as was given us in the module (though for the playtesters, yeah, maybe...).

All that aside, here's what I'm looking at trying to string together:

• Goblin House - introduces the PCs to the local worship of the Old Gods (rescue some...sigh...missing children - though I have the option of making the PCs the actual missing children who rebel against their goblin captors...)
• Grave Robbers - another kind of mystery (why have graves been disturbed - why was there an "unscheduled" eclipse of the moon) introduces PCs to the Wraithlord(s) and discovery of ancient ruins in the Jacob's Well graveyard area - possibly an ancient library should take them on their first foray into the Earth Temple (Mudpits)
• Darkness at Hope Cross - first encounter against an Avatar of the Old Gods, though still very weak - also one of the Old Ones (an ancient demonic creature servant of the Old Gods)
• Slavers (need a title?) will reveal that the forces of the Old Gods are more widespread and growing more powerful than was known before. PCs will seek to end a slaver ring but will discover that it's not just a simple stop the slavers, but the motives behind the slaver attacks are deeper (I could just retool the A series of AD&D modules perhaps).
• Tears of the Gods - minor artifacts that the PCs will have to locate and use to bring down the five temples (well, it's really six) - these items magnify magical power...
• Dwarven Hammer - this artifact will be needed to destroy the temples as well.
• Beneath the Wizard's Tower - set in Damoric's dungeons - not quite a "mad archmage" but a complicated and deep megadungeon - the PCs will be on a focused mission to recover something but if Damoric doesn't survive, the dungeons will become feral and fair game for plunder...
• The Three Part Map - the PCs will find two parts in previous adventures - the third part is the focus of this adventure - when they find it, they can find their way to the next adventure:
• The Quest for the Primordial Elements - this will be a plane spanning adventure to secure primordial fire, water, earth, air, and darkness so as to destroy the foci from the elemental temples.
• Temples of the Elements - except for the (not yet really remembered) sixth temple, the PCs will travel to the five temples and destroy the focus that holds each "pin" of the pentagram in place. Doing so releases an avatar of the Elemental God that they will have to fight, but if they defeat the five, they send them back to their planes in a very weakened state. HOWEVER:
• If all five Elemental temples are defeated, the Chaos Temple springs to new life, chaos begins to spread and the party will have to sack the temple (with its attendant factions and power struggles) and get to the deepest part which will be a gate to the plane of Chaos (which surrounds the Abyss/Hells) which is like a wild and unpredictable net and where lines cross are encounters. In this net are bits of...something...that can be used to force the Chaos God back into dormancy... (this resembles something like what I gathered EGG was going to do with the end of either T1-4 or GDQ)

That's it - those other things I mentioned in the adventures in the works lists previously posted on this blog are really intended to be optional/side quest/world revealing/etc. adventures, not directly related to the "Coming Darkness" theme/plot.

How/If the PCs enter them is a matter of campaign play, not scripting...I'm afraid the above is too scripted...What if they don't care about the rise of the old gods, etc? Oh well, guess you gotta know your players...

Once Upon a Time...

...WotC held a setting contest. Yeah, I threw my hat in the ring. I realize now that I didn't have a chance - not original enough, nor what they were looking for (judging from the winner - Eberron). Anyway, here's the entry - the Spirerealms:

Daen-Ral – the Spire Realms

1. Core Ethos Sentence.

Daen-Ral is a world of powerful magic and mighty heroes set against the backdrop of a rich history and varied cultures.

2. Who are the heroes?

Calamor the Undying – Lord High Speaker of the Exiles (elves) who justly rules the secretive race and dabbles in the affairs of the world.

Ahrzan – king of the Dwarvanna (dwarves) of Crystalspur who tenuously holds on to his throne…

Talandan Griffonspire – Baron of the Griffonspire Barony – ally of Calamor, Mercenary leader, member of the Seekers

The Seekers – a shadow group with their own agenda but generally promoting the cause of good (end justifies the means…)

The Knights of the Crescent Moon – protectors of the Southlands – little known for the past 800 years (also keepers of the

Foci – those items which cause the Spires to become functional…see below)

The Sisters of Mercy – a priestesshood of a goddess of Mercy who act as traveling Judges throughout the Midlands. They are far more trusted than government officials and even worshippers of gods of Justice.

3. What do they do?

The Seekers have sought to keep Daen-Ral in peace and isolated from the threat of the Magelands of the Old World (Daen-Ral is a continent only discovered and colonized about 1000 prior to game present – the Old Continent [Baroth] is home of powerful wizards who war against one another). The Knights of the Crescent Moon have lived a very isolationist existence – until recently. The Sisters of Mercy bring order to the villages (though they come into conflict with the Kingsmen in the kingdom of Hamlin and with the Holy Order of Kensath in the Western Republic, both of the latter groups performing the same function but with a lesser degree of trust from the local people).

4. Threats, Conflicts, Villains

The main power, and the main danger, to the world are the eleven Spires. These are natural magic focusing spires of rock that dot the continent, though most of them are “dark” (non-functioning). Those that function are being employed by the Seekers to protect Daen-Ral. The Spires require several artifacts (Foci) to become functional (including the Crowns of Power), most of which are lost or hidden.

The primary evil threat in the world is a Firstfallen Exile named Barash, the Sleeping Demon who resides (legend has it) in Demonspire in the Southern Wastes.

Other conflicts include a political/religious stronghold (the Western Republic) in constant conflict with the other nations of the Midlands (not usually open warfare, but that is always a possibility). The Dwarvanna and the Knights of the Crescent Moon are both very isolationist. The Exiles are not terribly welcoming of others, either, though their capital city (Caranta) is the artistic and economic center of the continent.

5. Nature of Magic

Magic in the world of Daen-Ral is relatively uncommon (downright scarce in the Western Republic for religious reasons). The source of magic on Daen-Ral is Fae (Spirit). Magic using beings (mages, clerics, demons, etc.) draw their power from Fae, either their own or that of some other being. Everything that breathes has Fae. Magic users draw on Fae to cast their spells. Clerics do the same, though they are focusing the Spirit (Fae) of the god they worship (as well as their own). The system is internally consistent yet open-ended allowing various expressions of magic use (such as Runic, for example).

6. What’s new? What’s different?

The races: Exiles are not traditional elves – they are descendants of angelic beings punished by the Creator God for an ancient rebellion. Few of the Firstfallen still live – most of the Exiles are the product of the union of Firstfallen and human beings. Each succeeding generation has a shorter lifespan than the previous one (even if the product of Exile/Exile union)…

Dwarvanna (gnomes and halflings would be sub-races of the Dwarvanna) are much like traditional dwarves.

Note that the Demi-human races and the Humanoid (Godless) races have as mixed and varied cultures as the human races.

There’s the Spires – very powerful and mysterious centers of Fae that, when focused, can become world devastating weapons – but also world-uniting tools of peace.

There’s the religious systems – the Godless (who actually worship demons), the Exiles who have forsaken religion (though some of the Firstfallen are worshipped as gods), the religious conflict of the Western Alliance and the other nations of the Midlands.

There’s the Old World (Baroth or the Magelands) where magical wars rage.

Geography – Southlands (desert and grasslands), Midlands (temperate – the human kingdoms), the Great Caylite Forest (Exiles) in the North, the Frontier (the home of a majority of the Godless) in the East and the Northlands.

Eversnow Mountain – an ancient place with tombs (Whitestone Hall) and Fortresses (Chalias Zhanithee and Dragon’s Deep). Tsorgoth’s River Canyon. The Barrier Mountain Range (and the Great Barrier Crossing).

Streaking Through the Sky

So what happens when a comet hits the atmosphere? It burns up, hopefully, though I think I want something of it to hit the ground - not much, but enough to collapse a mountain and create a giant crater.

In Well's book, when the green comet hits the atmosphere a green fog envelops everyone and they fall asleep (creating chaos as bus drivers et al also fall asleep - anybody ever forced to watch that terrible evangelistic movie Thief In The Night in the 70s? or the almost as terrible Left Behind? Yeah, sounds like that...). Anyway, the green fog changes the air and when everybody wakes up they have a utopian mindset - a world war immediately ceases, the main character's difficult romance is easily sorted out, etc.

So, that would be the kind of contrivance used by a game company seeking to reboot their game setting (Time of Troubles with Forgotten Realms from 1e to 2e, Grehawk Wars as well, probably others...didn't really keep track) but I don't want to have the "everyone falls asleeep for three hours and wakes up to a whole new world" happen on my world.

But it does have to affect it. Apart from the ecological and geographical changes that would come, what else? What if it NEVER hits the atmosphere (if, for example, the PCs decide they want to try to stop it and they succeed?). If some cultures would worship the comet - let's say as the spurned lover of the sun - then how would they respond if the comet went away? Or, if it seemed to head toward the sun? Hmmm....

Like a thousand other things, this'll be percolating in the background (I don't think in straight lines, so this blog is the perfect place for me to throw out my disorganized thoughts - with the hope of one day organizing them...).

In the Days of the Comet

Now, I KNEW that someone would have beaten me to the punch, but I didn't think it would go back as far as H.G. Wells.

Oh well, good company to be in with...

Here's a link to the full text:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3797/3797.txt

And a link to the Wikipedia entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Days_of_the_Comet

Still checking on things like "War of the Burning Sky" (Burning Sky would have been a great descriptor of the setting...sigh) and a few others...there are a number of stories, books, etc. set on planets with binary stars...

Making the Setting Unique - The Red Comet

Okay, I whined once about the lack of orginality in this campaign world. I have at least one little twist which has almost certainly been done before, but I haven't experienced it (I'll check after I post so as to not be too depressed by how much this idea has been done before...)

Anyway, the thing is that there's a comet caught in the sun's (or probably the planet's) orbit - so it appears as a bit of a "second sun" (at night) or whatever in the sky (I'm wanting it to be pretty big and red...). Anyway, it's on an unsteady orbit around the sun, and eventually it will collide with the planet. It's already causing all kind of chaotic effects to magic and even to the natural order of things. I'm thinking that the comet will be the reason that the barrier between Daen-Ral and the Old Lands is beginning to crumble. The comet is also the harbinger of the awakening of the Old Gods - the elemental gods of chaos and (generally) evil.

So there would be cults dedicated to the worship of the Comet - there would be seers/astrologers who realize that the comet is going to eventually crash into the planet (in relatively short order, I'm thinking - short meaning something like 10-25 years). There would be those who would try to stop it, those who would want to encourage it (especially the worshippers of the gods of chaos). Most would ignore it. How long has it been in the sky? A generation? A hundred generations? Longer is better, since those who claim the sky is falling would be seen as crazies, even though it really is. I have some images of the beginning of Independence Day (when people are trying to welcome the aliens) or all the craziness in the movie Contact.

Questions:

How long has it been there?

How long til it crashes?

Can it be stopped?

What caused it to now begin to turn toward the planet?

What will be the effects of the comet crashing into the planet?

How is it affecting magic?

How is it affecting the tides, techtonics, atmosphere?

What groups/cults/whatever have sprung up and why? What are their goals? How do they cooperate with or oppose one another? What does the church have to say? The Old Gods? The Druids?

EDIT: the comet will fill the NIGHT sky - brighter than the full moon, but not nearly as bright as day - or maybe as bright as the full moon - and that way there would be double shadows as they would be on the opposite parts of the sky...hmmm..... It could mess with thieves' abilities to a degree...

Would darkness seen doubly dark if there are two sources of light?

What if the comet is "killing off" the Elves and has driven the Dwarves deeper underground?

Or...well, how WILL it affect the races & creatures?

How will monsters be affected?

NOTE image was found online...no idea who the copyright holder is....

Missing Map Stuff

Well, I had a comment on my last post (woo-hoo) asking me how I did the map (see comments, last post, to see my answer...heh). But that caused me to look at the map a little more closely - and I realize that I'm missing some stuff...like a whole region of hills/low mountains...

That was a first digial pass at the Midlands. I think I might break out the chart paper and the colored pencils and try something a little less...pixelated. In all my spare time, of course...

On a related note, I found an early world map (Daen-Ral...not real world...heh) in a file labeled "Geographical Information" that I think dates from college (about 1990 or so). My general world concept hasn't changed much (geographically, that is) - and I was reminded of some areas that I had started to flesh out - so I'll have to revisit that world map, make just a couple minor adjustments to the newer maps...

On a somewhat tangental note - I have a whole lot of backstory for the "Old World" of sorcerous wars and bizarre, magic infected creatures and geography - but I don't have ANY idea what the shape of the land is... Have to think about that a little more.

Midlands Map Mostly Finished

I doubt I'll do much more than do a layer of towns, cities and other features, but here's Daen-Ral's Midlands map. I tried to emulate the MERP style a little...