Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 zombiegleemax Jan 05, 2006 6:44:37	Inspired by this board, the clerical spell list and descriptions of the immortals demogorgon and maat, I've come up with an idea for a campaign after too many years away from playing mystara d&d I've been lurking on the board for a couple of years now, but haven't had the time to really get something going. Now i feel i have, so here goes. I would really like for everyone of you Mystara sages to check out my idea and give advice, ideas and so on, I want this campaign to special, since i need to get some older people (we are all around 30) rehooked on rpg'ing. The theme of the campaign is having or finding (re-finding) a purpose a meaning with your life. my idea atm is this. The PC's live in a small village just NW of fort nell in the foot hills of the mountains. the small village is build around a small mound. They PC's are all young and work and live with their families. their parents groom/educate them to take over their responsibilities in the village (one is the priest to maat, one is a miner , one is a hunter, one is a scribe. In reality the parents are guardians of the mound and the village families have been the guardians since demogorgon was emprisoned by maat, ixion and valerias. This is all hush hush though, since the best defense is keeping the secret. The mound is ofcourse in some way related to the binding magic that holds demigorgon. The kee-pers keep the mound safe and perform small yearly rituals to keep the bindings running. However, after so many hundreds of years of guarding the site, the responsibilities has taken on a mythic air. The guardians of today (the PC's parents/wardens) are just upholding the traditions be-cause thats what they've always done. One of the guardian families have even left the village many years ago. The guardians are: the shield (warrior/monk of some kind) - this guy is supposed to protect the village/mound from harm. the scribe (arcane magic user of some kind) - this guy has recorded the entire history of the village and every happening in a "secret" library underneath the temple to maat. Everything that anyone needs to know about whats really going on can be found here, but the knowledge has been fogotten even by the scribe himself. the sentinel (scout, druid, ranger, rogue) - this guy surveils the area around the mound, keeps it safe, relates to neighbours and so on. the keyholder (maat cleric) - The primary binding rituals are part of the clerics yearly rituals. today people (even the cleric) just do them as part of being a maat cleric, without really remembering their original significance. the invisible eye (rogue, spy thingy, this guy is the one that has disappeared) - originally the invi-sible eye was the guardians ears, eyes and arms abroad. the invisible eye travelled the lands in search of information about demogorgons followers, killing them if possible or reporting back to the scribe with useful information. It is meainly the disappearance of the invisible eye some 1-2 hundred years before that has started the decay of the binding and the traditions slow decline in to oblivion. So unbeknownst to the PCs, the missing guardian and the lack of his rituals has started to weaken the binding. As a result the bedrock that the binding is fastened in has started to seep of the essence of the Hated Mother herself. The primary defense of the binding mound - the secrecy of its location - has been compromised by time and the forgetfulness of their guardians. It is only a matter of time before her followers, who have eagerly looked for her prison for centu-ries, will catch the scent of their goddess. So the campaign will probably start as some kind of detective story where sinister things start to happen around the village. I haven't really figured it out yet, but somehow the PC's will find out what the village is really there for and understand that a guardian is missing. so adventures i can think of but havent decided on yet: weird stuff happens in and around the village. monsters roam the country side suddenly, more than the sentinel can handle. suspicious people suddenly show up at the village. a demogorgon cult attacks the village trying to take control of the site. maybe they succed, and the PC's are ordered to flee by their parents who finally understand the error of their ways. The PC's are ordered to go find the missing guardian and come back and retake the binding before its too late. To some extent the idea is that the characters should lose the binding, their homes and families to demogorgons followers, be cast out into the wilderness but somehow be aware that they must find the last guardian, find allies and come back and retake the binding stone before it is too late. This should then be the start of a "normal" rpg campaign with "normal" adventures, where the PC's struggle to survive in the harshness of the known world, but with the overarching story of finding a lost family and getting strong enough to reclaim their birthright (birthduty). ANY and ALL ideas are more than welcome. I haven't DMed for 10 years, so I'm really not sure about what to do and how to do it. Please, come with advice and ideas and criticism. lots of it. I plan on discussing the campaign with everyone who likes it to make it super good, when it finally starts.
#2 zombiegleemax Jan 05, 2006 7:22:49	Try this: Due to the invisible-eye constant searching, also the Demogorgon cult became hidden and cloaked. The disappearance of this guardian didn't persuade the cultists to act freely in Demogorgon's name, because they think the guardian could be still hidden around, awaiting for an explicit move of the cultists in order to defeat them (if this is true or not it's your choiche; anyway I think it should be the most logical behaviour for a cult that has temporary lost his Immortal patron and has been persecuted for so many centuries). The disappearance of the eye, anyway, gave the cultist the opportunity to do some quiet investigations about the possible place of Demogorgon's exile. Some time ago they discovered that this place should be somewhere near Fort Nell. They don't know exactly were, so they infiltrated in Fort Nell's garrison men and waited for some explicit sign of Demogorgon's presence. In particular, the commander of Fort Nell garrison should be a secret Demogorgon's follower, as many of the most important officials (even the fort's cleric or mage, maybe the highest level charachters in the surroundings, can be cultists). During their patrols around the countryside, they constantly search for some unquestionable "sign" of their patron. When they eventually find such a sign (maybe due to some PC or NPC questionable action around the mound) they seize the village, with the excuse "to eradicate a dangerous cult of fanatics" or something similar, leading the PCs to leave the village. At first they don't know why Fort Nell's guards persecute them, nor they will find help from the authorities and nearby villages. Everybody (even the PCs) think that guards are just doing their job (and their duty), even when they hire a group of worker from the sourroundings in order to remove the mound... Many common soldiers should not be aware of cultist's plan: they obey their commander's order (until they make sense to them) but eventually some of them may simpatize with villagers and PC and give them some help/clues about the true nature of the officials/cultists. Other important clues may come from some prisoners in Fort Nell's dungeon (people who knew too much and were imprisoned: what about the PCs themselves being imprisoned?), from the "eye" or its descendants (if they are still alive), from some other guardian/omen of Maat, Ixion and Valerias (maybe weak and unable to act due to cultists interference), or from some of the guardians who managed to escape in the wilderness and tells the PCs about the "old silly legends" of the village. Moreover, the cultists may not be limited just to guards and officials. Once they found the right place, they may call from support from other regions. Even these new cultists are cloaked and have false identities (what about a circus arriving in the area sometime after the beginning of the works on the mound? This would be an excellent method to hide dangerous monsters/animals/powerful characters from the eyes of the guardians and common people). PCs should understand the evil plot and defeat the cultists before they become too numerous and strong for them... This is what I suggest. I hope you will find some useful hints for your campaign... ;)
#3 zombiegleemax Jan 05, 2006 8:03:14	bloody amazing ideas cropping up here...I really like both the circus and the idea that the cult could infiltrate fort and use it as a screen for all their work! keep it coming! it rockks!!! :D One of my other ideas was having a temple for some small deity for travellers and merchants (based in selenica) be a front for the demogorgon cult. They use their shrines (that attract travellers) to gather clues and information as to the whereabouts of demogorgons prison. If they supspected the village near fort nell, a logical step would be to infiltrate the fort and use it as a powerbase to take control of the village area. this all fits great!
#4 spellweaver Jan 05, 2006 12:00:51	Sounds like quite an interesting campaign there! Lots of evil and epic quests. A few coments: - If the scribe has a library full of all knowledge ever recorded about the Demogorgon's defeat and final resting place it seems odd that he or indeed anyone in the village would forget the importance of their pledge and duty. Every father would teach his son these things. Might I suggest that the Scribe's forefather has lost the secret password to enter the library or some such, making it plausible that the PC Scribe knows the supposed location of an important library but never achieved enough power to dispel the magical traps and enter it and so it has been for generations? Less (magical) knowledge was handed down every generation until the present day Scribe is just a punsy shadow of the original protectors of the mound. - If I was one of the PC's I'd first go to the largest temple of Valerias, Ixion or Maat and explain everything. Even submit to a Detect Lies spell if necessary. Secondly, I'd contact the law/Magistrate in e.g. Selenica or Corunglain and have them investigate. Surely the report of slaughtered villagers will not go uninvestigated? So, you'll need to have some quick answeres ready. Why won't the temples and the Law help the PCs? Have they been falsely accused of entropy-worshipping themselves and had to go underground? Or are the Immortals expecting them to live up to their ancestral responsibilities without assistance, even at the possible cost of unleashing Demogorgon if they fail, simply because the Immortals believe that the PCs have a destiny to fulfill? (Imagine their faces when the Patriarch of Selenica says to them: "I'm terribly sorry, but Ixion has denied me and my knights the right to intervene in this affair. He mentioned something about 'untested metal'...?" :evillaugh ) :-) Jesper
#5 zombiegleemax Jan 06, 2006 3:58:59	- If the scribe has a library full of all knowledge ever recorded about the Demogorgon's defeat and final resting place it seems odd that he or indeed anyone in the village would forget the importance of their pledge and duty. Every father would teach his son these things. Might I suggest that the Scribe's forefather has lost the secret password to enter the library or some such, making it plausible that the PC Scribe knows the supposed location of an important library but never achieved enough power to dispel the magical traps and enter it and so it has been for generations? Less (magical) knowledge was handed down every generation until the present day Scribe is just a punsy shadow of the original protectors of the mound. I kinda like the theme that the guardians - who are after all only "human" (or demi-human at least!) - Slowly forgets what it is they are really guarding. Generation upon generation has lived the same place, done the same things, but nothing has really happened. They haven't experienced anything that stresses the importance of what they are doing. The Shield has turned to mining the mine and living there with his family. There hasn't really been any use for his/her shield for the last xxx years. The Sentinel hunts, and keeps the countryside safe, but not from evil followers of demigorgon, just the stray goblin and the odd predator, as every village hunter would do. The Keyholder worships Maat as he has always done, but there is nothing in his everyday life that has him remember why his church is situated at the mound, and why his yearly mound ritual is really there. The problem with the scribe and the annals I thought about for a while. I sorta imagined that the secret library beneath the church holds so many books from so many years with so much useless information that this has been enough for the scribe to forget that the reason why he wrote down the happenings in the village was actually to remember what they where there for. Now he just juts down every single little thing every day. The weather, visitors, births, deaths, journeys, harvests, loans, produce, etc. etc, all kinds of common events. Of course you could sorta say that it's actually ALSO the slow corruption of demogorgon that has led to the forgetfullness of the guardians. I also like the idea that you need some kind of power to access the library information aswell. So I imagine that the library when the campaign starts is a small vault appr. 20'x40' and filled with tomes of information from the last couple of hundreds of years. Its a mess, and the scribe just writes down everyday things and puts it down here, because its tradition, no one really reads it anymore, except maybe the PC scribe? However there is this old door, now hidden behind books that have not been opened since they where finished, magically sealed, that holds the entrance to the older library, the library from before the forgetfulness. The scribe of today has not the power to open the door, maybe he doesn't even know about it (maybe he just thinks its a door to another room filled with useless annals. The really important tomes from the first days are here, forgotten but carrying the information needed to understand the past. Another idea could be that the invisible eye (who has disappeared) somehow is necessarry to open the door to the secret library? - If I was one of the PC's I'd first go to the largest temple of Valerias, Ixion or Maat and explain everything. Even submit to a Detect Lies spell if necessary. Secondly, I'd contact the law/Magistrate in e.g. Selenica or Corunglain and have them investigate. Surely the report of slaughtered villagers will not go uninvestigated? So, you'll need to have some quick answeres ready. Why won't the temples and the Law help the PCs? Have they been falsely accused of entropy-worshipping themselves and had to go underground? Or are the Immortals expecting them to live up to their ancestral responsibilities without assistance, even at the possible cost of unleashing Demogorgon if they fail, simply because the Immortals believe that the PCs have a destiny to fulfill? (Imagine their faces when the Patriarch of Selenica says to them: "I'm terribly sorry, but Ixion has denied me and my knights the right to intervene in this affair. He mentioned something about 'untested metal'...?" :evillaugh ) I like the idea that the new fort nell commander is a cultist. He will make sure that the cult attack is written down (even staged ? ) as a humanoid raid. The countryside north of nell is humanoid lands anyway, and he can't really guarantee the security of villages "so far" north of the fort, since its way too dangerous territory. About help from the good temples / immortals. The idea is that the only reason why demogorgon has been kept emprisoned in a secret place for so long is that the good immortals left the guarding to the 4 watchers. Only through this ancient magic could the binding be kept safe and secret for such a long time. Only because the good immortals did NOT become involved often, could the prison be kept secure (and most importantly hidden from other entropic immortals). So from an immortals perspective, this weakening that has started was just "to be expected" of mortals. They have held for a loong loong time. Now the only real chance to keep demogorgon emprisoned is for the watchers themselves to get a grip. The good immortals can't take to much of an interest in these specific people, because it would blow the cover. So maybe instead they spend some of their time laying out a smoke screen for the other entropic immortals, so that they don't take too much notice when their cultists attack the binding. This of course is all based on the fact the immortals in D&D aren't omniscient. A battle of information and disinformation rages in the heavens, while the mortal followers battle it out beneath. This explanation also makes it possible to have the good temples "ignore" the watchers, if they come for help. The gods simply send them away, perhaps with a pad on the shoulder and a tiny lead, but nothing more.
#6 graywolf-elm Jan 10, 2006 14:48:36	I like your ideas for a kernel for a campaign, it leaves the door open for all kinds of adventures: (This has some flavor of the Age of Worms adventure path that just came out. If you are not up for all the work of building your own, you may consider working that story line into your campaign, changing the gods' names, locations, etc.) -finding the way for each of the guardians. (this may be helped by finding the lost book in the old library) What the hunter is supposed to do, what the shield, and the town are really there for, and convincing them all, that the need is real. -re-discovering the ancient library and lore of why this is all here, and the sacrifice each family made to live here and keep it up. -Maybe a book of lore way in the back of the re-discovered library, which at the time, was what everyone knew about the ritual and why it was all here, so, books were stored in front of it over the years, that book, will explain much. -rooting out possible corruption at fort knell -rooting out possible corruption in town. -cleaning out sewers of creatures that have been turned, by the leaking evil underground. -fighting off creatures that are drawn to the essence of evil coming from the mound. -looking for the lost ritual to re-seal the leaking internment site -entering the internment site to seal and do battle with all in the catacombs/ritual tomb emplaced within. GW
#7 zombiegleemax Jan 11, 2006 3:38:01	great ideas. I have just started the campaign with a couple of friends. They play the scribe and the sentinel. Hopefully a couple of other friends who are abroad at the moment will step in and take over the keyholder and shield roles. I've introduced the new Captain of the fort as the players journeyed to the fort to alert the garrison of goblin presence in the area. Its late autumn, and my current idea is that the Fort Captain (the main cultist in the area) has drawn back the patrols from the area around the PC's village to allow a band of goblins to raid the area. The next "assault" on the village will be covert though. The cult HQ in Selenica has hired to thugs to sabotage the village granary just before winter sets in, in the hope that the villagers will have to leave. The thugs are two rogues (a hafling and a man). The man will dress up as a merchant and travel to the village with a wagon with some barrels of conserved foods (fish, dried berries, etc.) He will sell them pretty cheap. In one of the barrels the halfling rogue will be hidden under a false bottom! They hope that the villagers will buy the cheap food and roll the barrels into the granary. Late the same night the halfling will pop out and destroy the stored foods, and set fire to the place.
#8 graywolf-elm Jan 11, 2006 10:06:59	That is a wicked plot. Are you leaving hints, or clues for the players to thwart the raid on the warehouse? Or is it just going to happen? Sounds like an oppurtunity for the party to use some of those rarely used skills in the game. GW
#9 zombiegleemax Jan 12, 2006 2:20:16	Well, the beginning of the campaign has already seeded suspicion in the village. Goblin scouts have been spotted near the village and the new Captain of the nearby Fort has turned down a plea for help, with the excuse that there are already patrols out there and the goblin scouts must've been the odd stragglers. In reality the Captain is keeping his patrols away from the village on purpose! He is of course an undercover cultist trying to clear the village area without awakening suspicions. The cult has also sent agents north contacting a nearby goblin clan, telling them that the village will be more or less unprotected the entire winter. Right now the PC's are trying to both get help from the fort and patrolling the area around the village to find out whether there are more goblins than the few they have encountered. Winter is closing fast. To be honest, I'm not sure whether the village is gonna hold out through the winter or not. Whether the village falls or holds isn't so important, it's gonna be some amazong adventures in either case. (i hope). Defending the village from a goblin attack, with unknown saboteurs on the inside can never end without casualties. The question is how many and what will they do after the attack? leave for the big city or try to survive? and what will the cult do next.