Campaign overview: PCs begin as gladiator slaves in Draj, they escape and find work with a caravan traveling to Makla, from there they hope to make their way to the free city. In Makla they're hired to investigate something (undecided as to what, possibilities include: ruins, raiders, strange sights or sounds, or defiling). During their investigation they discover an army, "The Dread Reach of Dregoth" led by a genocidal Dray, has been raised and trained in secret in a cave complex within the mountains and is preparing to strike at the table lands, hopefully since the characters are all good or neutral aligned this will be enough to set them on a path to thwart the evil warlords machinations.
Thats the basics, now I need to fill in some details, specifically villians. The leader of the "Dread Reach" is the one on whom I've done the most work and I'll start with him, but I also need to develop some lieutenants and undervillians to challenge the PCs as they combat the Reach, so ideas in that respect would be helpful as well.
XXXXXX XXXXXXX Leader of the Dread Reach of Dregoth (I still need a name)
He is an exile from New Guistenal, cast out by the Templars of Dregoth, for percvieved crimes against the will of the Undead dragon king. He has never question this judgment and feels rejected by his God and is now motivated by his feelings of rejection and inadequacy. His goal therefore is to prove himself worthy of Dregoths favor. He plans to do this by carrying out a Genocidal campaign against the races of the tablelands. The feeling I want him to inspire in the PCs is a mixture of abject terror mixed with reslove.
In order to achieve this goal the primary need of my villain is a powerful army, this leaves me with the question of how did he obtain it. Since the villain is exiled from New Guistenal, he won't be able to raise an army of Dray. Therefore his army will be composed of other races, races he considers infinitely inferior to himself, therefore his genocidal endgame strategy includes the deaths of his own army, but not before he's used them up. How then does he gather these troops to him and engender them to follow his commands? He lies, threatens and makes empty promises. This requires that he be charismatic and a strategic thinker.
I think this army isn't his first attempt to Curry the undead dragons favor, just his most grand. His first plan centered around Dregoth's belief that dragons were the perfect form, my villain therefore sought to be more dragon like and undertook years of study into psionics and magic, which culminated in a ritual whereby he traveled to the gray and bound the soul of a drake to his own. Mechanically speaking that means he has the Half-Drake template. After the ritual XXXXXXXX still questioned if this would be enough to impress his king and devised and set in motion his current plan.
The villain is decidedly two faced. On the one hand he is a master manipulator who uses others to achieve his goals, but on the other he revels in the glory of slaughtering his opponents with his bare claws. He has therefore worked to advance his aims in both capacities. While he garnered influence to assemble his army he also took a behind the scenes role in the politics of the tablelands, using sabotage and trickery to pit the city-states against one another, or prevent villaiges of the wastes from banding together.
At his disposal the Villain has his army, a genious intellect, masterful deception and interaction skills, his lieutenants (who also don't know the true aims of thier leader), and the skills and powers of a high level Wilder (or possibly Wilder/Cleric)
Thats what I have so far. Notable holes include a name or title, the composition and elements of his army, his boundries (aka what he won't do to achieve his goals), appearence and visual quirks, how he treats his minions, and finalizing his character sheet.
Here's what I have penciled out so far on his character sheet:
Dray Half-Drake Wilder X or Wilder X/Cleric X.
Str, 18, Dex 10, Con 12, Int 18, Wis 10, Cha 20 (after racial adjustments but before level increases)
Attack: +X Melee, Claw 1d4+4
Full Attack: +X/+X/+(X-5) Claw/Claw/Bite 1d4+4/1d4+4/1d6+4
AC: ??? (10+7 Natural Armor+??? Enchanted Full Plate+??? Enchanted Shield+misc)
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Suggestions:
- You might think about chaging the army to a cult, composed of those new adepts that the preachers of Dregoth's faith have engendered across the Tablelands. (See the Revised Box Set for details on that.)
- The leader does not need to be a manifester and a specllcaster, he can just be one. Obtaining the half-drake template in the fashion you described would only require travel to the Gray and maybe a pact with a powerful denizen of the realm to obtain the soul of a newly dead drake. This is mostly fluff and does not require an actual mechanic, since its for an NPC.
- If he's a cleric...a cleric of what? Fire or earth? Dregoth would have frowned upon both.
- If he's a cleric, make him into a fire cleric and a half-fire drake. Possibly add the Gray-touched template to him, to express that he was profoundly touched by the plane and its denizens when he traveled there. If you're unhappy about the accumulating LA, don't worry, its an NPC. You can diminish it by getting rid of magic/psionic items or by inflicting situational penalties or by having him confront the PCs after he has lost part of his hps.
- IIRC the half-drake template has some woopass Str and Cha bonuses, so if you get rid of either the manifester or spellcaster class you can concentrate the bonuses in a few stats. Thus I suggest making the guy something like a fighter/cleric, with very high Str, Cha, and Wis. A good tyrant always needs a high strength score; it helps to be able to beat the muls and half-giants in your army.
I considered the Grey touched template, but with the Half-Drake template his HD are already fairly low for his CR, and more templates won't help that, but otherwise the whole undead taint thing is very Dregoth.
The army as a cult I like, and will use.
As for classes my first impression was to make him a templar, but as an exile out of favor with Dregoth it raised all kinds of ex templar questions I'd just as soon not deal with. I was thinking a magma cleric, but you're right about that not being very Dregoth.
Ex-templar would have been cool but would have resulted in the NPC having virtually no working class features. Mmm, now that I think of it, with the right fluff the character might not be considered "rogue" by Dregoth, just by the Kragmorta authorities.
ToA says: "However, young drakes have been captured and used in vile breeding experiments by more than one deranged mage, and there also exist devout elemental clerics who seek union with these beings under the aegis of mighty magics. Their half-drake offspring are often revered as prophets or seers amongst the element’s worshippers on Athas."
I'd say, at a fundamental level, that becoming a half-drake - intentionnaly or not - would be frowned upon by Dregoth and his religion/society who see only the Dray form as acceptable. As such I propose the idea that the cleric of magma did not seek out the half-drake template but instead accidentaly received it from a high templar of Dregoth, as part of experiments involving harnessing the power fo the local river of molten rock's magma drakes. The character was a volunteer lieutenant in the army. Of course the experiment went wrong and actually sullied the pure dray form with that of the drake (instead of just giving him magma-related abilities), after which the character was rejected by the dray around him and forced to flee to the surface to save his life, but he never lost faith in Dregoth. He later pursued his half-drake nature and thus became a magma cleric. He loathes what he is because Dregoth has decreed so, but he loves Dregoth, and as such will further the plans of Dregoth even while on the surface and self-exiled.
I suggest making the character a fighter 5/templar knight 2, or just a fighter 5, and then have him take the half-magma drake template, then become cleric (magma).
Many years later, the mother on her death bed tells her son the truth about the identity of his father which leads him on a journey to the Dread Lords’s city. Once there, he introduces himself to his father who accepts him as his son. Mon Adderath shows his son the wonders of New Giustenal and teaches him the ways of his god Dregoth. After bonding with his father for many months, the son of Adderath decides that he is ready to receive the ultimate blessing of becoming a dray in hopes of gaining more of his father's affection and approval.
When the day comes for the son of Adderath to under go the transformation something goes horribly wrong with the process. The child becomes twisted and deformed due to inheriting part of whatever it is that makes Mon Adderath immune to the effects of the dray transformation. Horrified and ashamed of what his son has become, Mon banishes him from New Giustenal for the same reasons that Dregoth had banished the 1st generation dray over several millennia before (irony anyone?).
Hurt, betrayed, and slightly insane, the now deformed son of Adderath wandered the caverns beneath the ruins of Gisutenal for many weeks till he comes across the Groaning City. There, he explores the city and finds some ancient texts (maybe rhulisti lore left over from the Blue Age) which detail how to alter ones shape (i.e your half-drake idea).
This is all I have for you now. Use it or not. Its all good
If I remember correctly Dregoth created the Dray to be dragon like because he saw the dragon as the perfect creature, so becoming more dragon like would make a Dray more accepted. Unless I've totally missed something.
Not sure if there's some consensus on this - official or otherwise - but the concept of an athasian dragon is not directly linked to the Monster Manual's dragon subtype; drakes and maybe another creature or two share that subtype as well.
When Dregoth invents the dray, its to change his people into his own image, that of an athasian dragon, not that of the dragon subtype. To be half-drake is to be related to drakes, not athasian dragons. That's my interpretation, why I suggested the half-drake template be the result of magical experiments on elemental magma and a captured magma drake, in the hope of harnessing the beast's power, not infusing part of the very beast itself into a dray, which would be an abomination in the eyes of xenophobic dray.
I think I've settled on Fighter 2/Magma Cleric 3/Warpriest 5, for a total CR of 13 (After accounting for Race and Template), which is right around the level I think the PCs will be able to challenge him. Of course the purpose of this thread is less about mechanical concerns and more about thematic issues and plot.
So in hopes to turn the thread back in that direction, what do you think an army raised by a genocidal xenophobe cut off from his own people would look like?
I've already detirmined that his soldiers only have value insofar as they're a means to an end, but how does he go about getting people he doesn't give a steaming Kank crap about to willingly pledge they're lives to his cult? For that matter why would any non-Dray, willingly worship Dregoth?