I am currently running two mystara campaigns. both in norwold (one of them is as "norwold only" campaign, the other one with short trips to different countries) I´ve been running a lot of Norwold adventures since i started, so my Norwold campaign is steeped in legends about the heroes of old (and new) eras. Almost all these heroes are of course earlier playergroups, so my older players recognise their former characters (with much joy, i might add) and it gives my campaign a lot of "life" and evolution.
It is easy for me to make up a lot of legends myself but i think it would give a nice feel to my campaign if the stories i used actually was from or about other mystaragroups and the toils they´ve been through. I am of course not only looking for norwold material only. A local legend or story in a far away country is going to work just as good.
So please write your "warstories" at this thread (possibly with dates and year marked), if nothing else to share your former adventureideas, or discuss settings.Of course i´ll respect if any of you wont have your characternames or stories appear in my campaign, but never the less i think it would be fun to sit down at this thread and share in the adventures we´ve had.
What do you think? Are you game ;)
So if you think you can still use war stories of this kind I'd be happy to post them.
In the Malpheggi swamp some Lizardmen discovered a tomb that was older than Nithia and refered to the Temple of the Frog. They somehow began learning about technollogy and began to rise in status abov etheir own chiefs. They eventuall siezed control of all the Lizardmen in the Malpheggi Swamp and tried to invade Darokin. My players lead the assault and forced them back with help from Darokinian military and some help from the Five Shires. The Lizardmen were too far in their invasion from the swamps so they ended up traveling south and stealing ships from Athenos which they had already taken and wwsa using as a base. They sailed out into the Sea of Dread and vanished.
Of course they didn't really. My players ened up through their adventures traaveling in Davania and discovered at one point that the the Lizardmen of Malpheggi had developed a great empire in the South east Davania. They had enslaved or recruited nearly every humanoid or reptile in the continent to swell their ranks as big as the Thyatian armies and then they had several artifacts from the days of Blackmoor they had learned to duplicate and armed their soldiers with guns and so on.
We stopped playing soon after their discovery so it's an open ended story I geuss.
I'm using this in my mod but with a twist. A Draconian of high ranking and intelligence somehow stumbled on a portal from Krynn and entered Mystara through it before realizing it was a one way portal. He searched for a a few years and discovered ancient temples of Lizardmen under the desert of Ylaruam. Then he found a former Templ of the Frog and the story continues pretty much the same after that. They could always have fled to somewhere else if you don't like the Davania trip. I let my players presume an Immortal was protecting them on their ships, since Lizardmen are poor sailors.
Not sure if Lizardmen could survive the cold in Norwald, but maybe not so far north? Another road trip for your players?
The PCs then tracked down Morbideious just as was about to complete the spell of release. They fought and defeated him, and were then teleported by the dying wizard to the extra-diamensional prison of the Demon in his final act of revenge.
The PCs fought the Demon from the small floating isles of rock, and managed to defeat him before he unleashed his final, ultimate attack.
Upon defeating him however, the PCs were flung to the far-future, where machines reigned supreme, and were in the final phases of eradicating all organic life on the planet. The PCs fought threw hoards of the Machine Men and their Sheen minions, without the use of magic, since by this time magic no longer existed on Mystaria.
The PCs managed to survive long enough to hook up with a group of rag-tag survivors, who had managed to construct a time portal(technological in nature) which they intended to use to travel back in time and stop the machine invasion by preventing magic from dissappearing in the past.
The PCs were sent back instead, to the modern Mystaria campaign(shortly after Wrath of the Immortals). There they traveled to Glantri and discovered that a force called the Radiance was responsible for the decline of magic in the world. They PCs conspired against Prince Mcgregor and other wizards of Glantri, eventually managing to remove the undead prince from power. But the PCs soon found that not only did this do little to curb the problem, but many wizards of Glathri had access and knowledge privy to the Radiance(they discovered the Brotherhood of the Radiance secret craft of magic). The PC wizard managed to get herself the leadership of Mcgregor's principality, and proceded to reveil the secret of the Radiance, and that its continued use would mean the end of all magic on Mystaria. Horrified, Glantri then moved into Civil War, with the practical wizards how disired to save their passion(magic) fighting against the Wizards who were addicted to the Radiance.
To complicate matters, Ethengar then invaded from the east, adding a third problem to the mix.
As this was all going on, the PCs covertly discovered the Orb of Rad, and intended on stealing it away and hiding it in a secret location in the Hollow World. However, the plot thickened further when Bel, lord of the first of the Nine Hells of Baator(who had on accasion tormented the PCs during some side adventures in the past) was discovered to be the main culprit behind the decline of magic in Mystara, as the PCs found several powerful Baatezu devils guarding the Orb, all of which were agents of Bel. Bel was absorbing the Orbs power. With a complete lack of regard for what would happen to Mystaria.
The PCs were pretty high in level at this point, so they defeated the devils with ease, then hopped threw a portal to the Hells of Baator to confront Bel directly.(This was an excuse to use my Planescape material). They managed to defeat Bel on Baator, but before killing him, Bel managed to planeshift back to Mystaria with the intent on fully absorbing the Orb's power. Bel absorbed about 10 Rads worth of power before the PCs arrived and stoped the extange process. Bel's body had become mutated due to the power of the Radiance. The PC priest invoked a Quest spell from his Immortal, sending both Bel and the Orb to Mystaria's ancient past. As the spell took effect, Bel mutated further, and to the PC's horror, they recognized Bel's new form as the demon they had defeat so long ago!
Now the PCs were caught in a paradox, and in their new quest, which was to correct their mistake by using time travel once again, they discovered a new enemy, the Order of Chronomancers, whos task was to preserve the Timestream, no matter how dark a place it led. The Chronomancers had from the beginning taken notice of the PCs exploits threwout time, and had orcestrated the entire Paradox as a means of preserving the future.
And then my campaign ended unfortunately.
Speaking of lizard men: IMC, a small tribe of lizard men became the first followers of Benekander. Here's what happened... I was running the first part of WotI, with the lightning zombies and the shield and everything. Long story short, I'd moved the ruins to Blackheart in Alphatia.
So the PCs recover the shield, and talk to Rheddrian, who eventually gets around to wanting to be released. Naturally (and I always thought this was a weak point in the adventure), none of the PCs want to take his place. They eventually encounter some lizard men in a swampy area in southern Alphatia and charm one of them into doing the swap. They talk with Rheddrian some more, and then everyone goes on there way. Rheddrian, meanwhile, stays with the lizard men (since these other guys obviously weren't trustworthy ;) ) while he figures out what's up with his powers, the shield, etc.
Meanwhile the lizard men have both a major artifact and budding Immortal staying with them, so they're doing pretty well. When the war starts, Rheddrian realizes what's happening among the Immortals and leaves to do his thing, but not before Benekander makes contact with some of the lizard men shamans and begins an actual priesthood. And thus the lizard cult of Benekander was born!
The true irony, of course, is the stupendous opportunity that the PCs passed up by being selfish dinks. So it goes...
One of my players that joined into my campaign after it started created an elf character to play. Not having played with us before, he created his character's personality and away we went. Long story short, his charcter didn't fit with the group we had and questions like "why would my elf continue on with these guys, he's too nice to be around them" became relevant.
So he told me he'd like to have his elf retired and play an evil monk (one of the party members is evil and was battleing demon possession with two more being from Vestland and having violent tendencies in "soft" Darokin). What suddenly came to mind was an Atruaghin warrior! But they don't have monestaries or monks. What I envisioned was what I've seen in some movies where North American Indians wield two tomahawks and display tremendous skill at fighting; like their own martial art.
The Atruaghin Monk is quite similar to the standard monk (my game is 3rd Ed) with slightly druidic tendencies. Their cloister is the great outdoors and personal perfection comes with one’s harmony to nature as well as to one’s inner spirit. I altered their weapon list and some other small details. It's working pretty well and my player is really happy with this character. And as for the "evil" part, I told him that when dealing with his own people his alignment is nuetral, but when it comes to any other his alignment shifts to evil.
I hope to post some adventures and wait to here of some from you guys.
P.S. Sword, that was a geat story!