Storyline Help?

[OracleSyndrome]

Hey, everyone!

I'm fairly new to PF, but have been playing D&D for about 7-9 years on and off with very little DM experience.

I'll be running a new campaign with a few friends soon using the map/races/ethnicities from Chronicles, but with a twist....

This is the general setting:
Heaven has fallen, Hell has risen and chaos is beginning to spread throughout the land. In the aftermath of the Fall/Rise, the majority of major cities and massively populated areas were destroyed my bands of demons/devils looking for bases to set up and mortals to enslave. Angels set up camps where they try to conscript Material Plane beings into their service for their heavenly purposes. Essentially, angels and demons have set up shop on the Material Plane, with no way to get back to their respective planes. The demons have towers that push through the ground (one way trip) and basically rush the mortal lands with hundreds of demons that strip the land.

Most of the races have banded together with their own kind in small enclaves where the angels and demons haven't found them since their advance is pretty slow. Tribal law holds as the law of the land for the most part, spare the few larger settled areas that survived/have been rebuilt.

But, the problem is..... What kind of story line could I use to keep my characters engaged? I'm thinking a major quest to destroy the angels and the demons to reclaim the entire land, but that would get old quick.
I also have an adventure arc that will have them search for a Sorcerer's Guild that can decipher a summoning circle inscribed in the lower chambers of a surviving citadel, which will bring forth a beast of some sort to buffer the players from destroying a particular devil.

Sorry about the long post, but I had to get the whole idea across somehow.

Any thoughts on ideas for story arcs or critiques of the setting?

Thanks for reading!

[Michael Johnson 66]

Did the outer planes (heaven & hell) actually merge with the material plane, or is it just that outsiders have invaded/been banished to it?

If the former, a quest for an artifact or a lost uber-spell that returns the outer planes to where they belong in the cosmology might work.

If the latter, a quest for an artifact or uber-spell that banishes all outsiders simultaneously (a la Greyhawk's flight of fiends) maybe?

Or a quest to convince the outsiders of an unrelated outer plane (maybe titans?) or inner plane (greater elementals?) to help defeat the warring angels and fiends?

[Smerg]

You could do a story if following the angel side of the struggle to find the 'chosen' pure souls that are to be claimed by heaven.

This gives you an almost infinite McGuffin for the players to search for and retrieve. It also gives you plenty of places to store the adventure goal allowing you to send your players to almost any type of story line.

If the 'chosen' soul is in a regular community then it becomes a secret mission to slip into the community (that distrusts strangers), locate the soul, convince the soul to come with them, and avoid the demons from finding out and killing/capturing the soul.

If the 'chosen' soul has been captured then it is a rescue mission to free the soul.

It can be guard missions when several pure souls are being transported to a central area for the angels to bring back to 'heaven'.

It can be intradiction missions to stop the demons from getting their hands on a soul or transporting a soul.

It can be spy missions on the demons to determine what they are up to.

It can be accidental missions where the players are planning a break or rest and 'happen' to discover a soul in their area and have to work to transport the soul away without the demons being alerted.

All this time, the players will be told that the souls are important for the 'big plan' and the 'ultimate solution'.

The souls can be of all sorts of races and possibly even of several magical races (or animals).

You can even cause moral dilemas for the players if they find that a baby or a young child is a pure soul. Are they willing to seperate the child from the parents? The parents not being pure souls are not allowed in to 'heaven'.

You can choose a pure soul that belongs to a hated enemey or favoured enemey for a player in the group and have them grapple with knowing their enemey is going to 'heaven' but they won't be admitted themselves.

Anyways, I hope this gives you some ideas of how this campaign could run.

Good luck with the adventuring.

[OracleSyndrome]

Michael Johnson 66 wrote:

Did the outer planes (heaven & hell) actually merge with the material plane, or is it just that outsiders have invaded/been banished to it?

If the former, a quest for an artifact or a lost uber-spell that returns the outer planes to where they belong in the cosmology might work.

If the latter, a quest for an artifact or uber-spell that banishes all outsiders simultaneously (a la Greyhawk's flight of fiends) maybe?

Or a quest to convince the outsiders of an unrelated outer plane (maybe titans?) or inner plane (greater elementals?) to help defeat the warring angels and fiends?

I was thinking that the angels were banished while the demons are invading but both have only one-way portals into the Material world.

I really like that idea of finding the unrelated plane dwellers and convincing them to help. Thanks so much! I think I'll incorporate that somehow.

[OracleSyndrome]

Smerg wrote:

You could do a story if following the angel side of the struggle to find the 'chosen' pure souls that are to be claimed by heaven.

This gives you an almost infinite McGuffin for the players to search for and retrieve. It also gives you plenty of places to store the adventure goal allowing you to send your players to almost any type of story line.

If the 'chosen' soul is in a regular community then it becomes a secret mission to slip into the community (that distrusts strangers), locate the soul, convince the soul to come with them, and avoid the demons from finding out and killing/capturing the soul.

If the 'chosen' soul has been captured then it is a rescue mission to free the soul.

It can be guard missions when several pure souls are being transported to a central area for the angels to bring back to 'heaven'.

It can be intradiction missions to stop the demons from getting their hands on a soul or transporting a soul.

It can be spy missions on the demons to determine what they are up to.

It can be accidental missions where the players are planning a break or rest and 'happen' to discover a soul in their area and have to work to transport the soul away without the demons being alerted.

All this time, the players will be told that the souls are important for the 'big plan' and the 'ultimate solution'.

The souls can be of all sorts of races and possibly even of several magical races (or animals).

You can even cause moral dilemas for the players if they find that a baby or a young child is a pure soul. Are they willing to seperate the child from the parents? The parents not being pure souls are not allowed in to 'heaven'.

You can choose a pure soul that belongs to a hated enemey or favoured enemey for a player in the group and have them grapple with knowing their enemey is going to 'heaven' but they won't be admitted themselves.

Anyways, I hope this gives you some ideas of how this campaign could run.

Good luck with the adventuring.

Thanks, so much!

Those are amazing ideas! I think I can incorporate that somehow.
Maybe, the angels have conscripted mortal clerics and artificers (Eberron) to create The Holy Machine to essentially let one angel go back per Pure Soul found. Inversely, the devils could use these souls in their own machine to effectively slay contingents of angels (Soul Cannon). This does leave a lot of room for adventuring and story lines!

Thanks, again!

[Michael Johnson 66]

OracleSyndrome wrote:

I was thinking that the angels were banished while the demons are invading but both have only one-way portals into the Material world.
I really like that idea of finding the unrelated plane dwellers and convincing them to help. Thanks so much! I think I'll incorporate that somehow.

Glad to be helpful! I once designed an epic campaign with similar themes, in which titans conquered the material plane and set up kingdoms, enslaving the mortal races. The PCs were epic-level adventurers from an alternate prime material plane, drawn by the gods of the enslaved mortals into the titan-ruled world to aid the underground resistance (mortals) in taking back their world. Anyway, good luck!