In the Ravenloft thread I mentioned that I don't like the Forgotten Realms very much. I don't hate it, I just find it kind of boring. So when I'm playing computer games set there, I spice things up by pretending my character is from a more interesting world and is just passing through.
For instance, in the single player Neverwinter Nights, I made a fighter specializing in katana and pretended he was a samurai that had been cast out of Rokugan. Since the game isn't world-spanning, there's no problem pretending the bits of the Realms we see and Rokugan are on the same planet and only separated in space. It let me pretend my character had a little more background, but didn't add that much to the game.
When I finally got Shadows of Udrentide a while ago, I decided to play a character from Mystara. Specifically, a Shadow Elf. I made a half-elf Rogue named "Megan Ximenaga", gave her silver-gray skin, set "Subrace" to "Shadow Elf", deity to "Rafiel" and made up a character background: Megan's mother was from the City of the Stars, and her father was a captured human. They fell in love and she helped him escape and exiled herself to the human world above. She always missed her homeland, though, and she secretly taught Megan the Way of Rafiel and told her stories about the distant caverns. Now that Megan's parents are dead, she has decided to find the clan she heard so much about, but she has no idea where the caverns actually are. I figured this background wouldn't interact too much with the game, and I'd have to pretend either the Shadow Elves are very well hidden or Megan's parents wandered to a very distant land, but it made the character a little more interesting to play.
Little did I know that this background actually works beautifully with the plot of Shadows of Udrentide.
The game opens with the PC serving as an "apprentice adventurer" to a wizard in the remote village of Hillsfar. This wizard is training students in generic adventuring skills. The students' motives vary: some are openly after power, some want to become treasure hunters, while others want to do good deeds and help people. I decided that Megan came here because although her father was a retired adventurer, he had settled down into a quiet life so she wasn't yet prepared for the arduous journey she expects to find her homeland.
Hillsfar is attacked by kobolds (yeah, not very menacing) who manage to poison the wizard and steal four dangerous artifacts he was hiding in order to keep them out of evil hands. The dying wizard charges the PC, his most promising student, to find out who is behind the theft and return the artifacts. Megan would go along with this - while her main goal is to find rumours of the Shadow Elves, she has made friends in Hillsfar and likes her mentor, so she would want to avenge the destruction and make sure she doesn't leave them facing a threat when she starts her own quest.
The PC can choose one other student to go with them. Megan chooses a half-orc Barbarian/Sorceror named Xanos. They make a great team: Xanos is arrogant, greedy and openly plans to build up his own power to become a world conqueror. He's not completely cardboard, though - there are occasional hints that he's not really after power for its own sake, he has some deeper trauma and is trying to get into a position where nobody else can have power over him. Megan seems like his opposite - she is decent,generally friendly but somewhat reserved, and cares little for personal gain. She only wants enough to be sure she has the resources she needs. However, she was brought up to be secretive and not trust society: her mother constantly whispered to her, "You are not like these people. You are only living here briefly - one day, you'll go back to your own kind, deep underground. Trust in Rafiel - Rafiel will guide you. His Way may seem cruel and dark to outsiders, but it is the only Way. Follow the Way, and Rafiel will guide you." So she is less perturbed by Xanos's megalomania than others - he shows on the surface what she feels inside: outcast. Creature of the underworld. Follower of a dark path, but a misunderstood one.
Megan and Xanos set out to follow the fleeing kobolds. Before leaving Hillsfar, they encounter a caravan of halfling gypsies who are recovering from the attack. The halflings say that they will soon leave the mountains for a hard but profitable journey to distant lands across the desert, and Megan obtains a promise to hire on as a caravan guard. She is thinking ahead - joining the caravan seems like a good way to learn more about the world, and travel further afield if she cannot find her people in this region. However, the Halflings are still recovering from their wounds, so she has plenty of time to continue her current quest before they leave.
The halflings have a fortune teller who offers to look into Megan's future. Megan believes in the value of omens - after all, her mother has told her that Rafiel guides the path of the wanders. Perhaps He will reveal Himself through this halfling, or perhaps He expects her to follow whatever sign is set before her, no matter its source - or perhaps this is nothing, but in that case it will waste only time. The gypsy shows her a vision of the enemy who seeks the four evil artifacts, but it is confusing and dim: all she can make out is that the enemy appears Elvish. Cursed Elves! Megan's mother told her many times that she lives on the surface only thanks to the love of her human father, but the bulk of her people are confined below ground thanks to the oppression of the surface elves. This is the first time Megan has run afoul of elves, and it is uncertain whether the omen is even valid, but her prejudices lead her to assume the worst.
Megan and Xanos track the kobolds through the wilderness, and come upon a battlefield - a group of gnolls ambushed them and stole one of the artifacts. A group of kobolds fled northward, and some of the others escaped and took refuge in a nearby ruin. Megan and Xanos follow, and discover a buried Elven tomb. Historical markers list the history of this place: it was once a great underground Elven city, but those who lived here turned to evil. In the end, it was destroyed in a civil war as some of the corrupted Elves repented of their evil ways. It is now the burial place of the honoured dead, Elves who perished fighting their own evil and through this sacrifice redeemed themselves.
Megan is intrigued. The Elves buried here do not seem at all like those she has heard stories about: they live under stone and were oppressed by evil. They hold many similarities to the Shadow Elves, but none of the details fit. There are no histories of the founding of this city, only its fall - were these Elves driven here by their greedy kin who wished to hoard all the forests? Or did they find their own affinity for stone? Megan meets the shades of the tomb guardians, and they have pale skin and hair - there is little resemblance beyond the Elvish features. She decides the similarities are mere coincidence, but still she feels a kinship with those buried here, and wanders the haunted halls without fear, to Xanos's amazement. When the guardians ask her to clear out the kobolds and other creatures who have infested the tomb, she helps them willingly.
Although Megan is not afraid of the tomb's guardians, she is having trouble battling the more mundane threats in the aea, so she takes two levels of Ranger. This gives her extra hit points and fighting skills, and will help her in travelling the wilderness, which she expects to do a lot of. (It makes sense for her to gain this now, since she has just been doing a lot of tracking and fighting.) Although she has no quarrel with the people who lived here, they are long dead and their history makes it clear they were exceptional: she still believes that Surface Elves in general are the Shadow Elves' enemies, and that they are behind the theft she is investigating, so she takes Elf as her Favoured Enemy.
Megan and Xanos slaughter the kobolds who have taken refuge here and recover one of the artifacts, a mummy's hand. They discover that one of the kobolds has escaped with another, a tower figurine. The third artifact, a black mask, was taken northward by the second group of kobolds that fled the battle, and the fourth, a dragon's tooth, is in the hands of the gnolls.
Leaving the tomb, they track down the escaped kobold, who is hiding in the forest nearby but no longer has the figurine. He reveals that the kobolds serve a white dragon living in the mountains to the north, and that he serves as the dragon's jester. He ran away because he made a terrible fumble and broke the tower statue! He is afraid that the dragon will eat him for his error, so he has hidden the statue somewhere nobody but he can find it. He will give it to you if you travel north and kill the dragon for him, or at least persuade it to release him from its service.
Megan tries to trick the location out of the kobold, but its paranoia has made it too cagey. So she and Xanos travel north into the mountains, and eventually find their way down through the kobold caves into the dragon's lair. The dragon speaks with them instead of eating them immediately, and reveals that the raid on Hillsfar was planned in concert with a mysterious sorceress who had visited it, who was interested only in the tower and allowed the dragon to keep the other three artifacts in return for its help. The sorceress was, indeed, an elf - but it "smelled different" somehow. The dragon is now annoyed - the sorceress broke their deal by having her gnoll minions attack the kobolds to try to steal all the artifacts, and the one artifact that was returned succesfully - a mask - is useless, as the dragon cannot awaken its power. It offers a deal: find and slay the sorceress, and bring proof of her death, and the dragon will grant one favour.
Show
(I tried this conversation several times by reloading the game, and it seems like you can get it to either give you the mask, or release the kobold, which presumably makes the kobold give you the tower, but not both.)
Shhh... don't wake me up, I'm still dreaming...
There are also some Mystara communities (or were) but they're inactive or just slow. I played on a Mystara server (Australia based, it's a persistent world under, IIRC, roleplay on gamespy), but aside from some elements of Karameikos the designers based it on, doesn't really have much of a Mystaran feel to it. Plus you see characters running around from all sorts of other game worlds.
I would love to sit down and create a Mystara module for NWN- have started the planning stages for several, in fact- but it gets so overwhelming to me, that I always end up giving up (creating areas and doing all the scripting is just a pain to me- but then, I always plan big. I should probably try something small, first.)
I would love to sit down and create a Mystara module for NWN- have started the planning stages for several, in fact- but it gets so overwhelming to me, that I always end up giving up (creating areas and doing all the scripting is just a pain to me- but then, I always plan big. I should probably try something small, first.)
Ditto. I'd like to do this too, but I keep bouncing off the creation of simple modules - too much of a learning curve.
It's like the old saying - lots of people who say they want to be a writer don't actually want to write, they want to have written.
I'll probably check it out as soon as I finish the Eye of the Beholder mod I'm currently playing. With any luck, I might be near epic level.
