Gah, the forum just ate a long post, so I'm trying again *sigh*
I'm running a Jade Regent game and my players will soon hit level 3. Which means the Bladebound Magus will get his Black Blade then too, and I need some ideas on how to give it to him. (If one of my players is reading this. Leave now)
I consider "Poof, here it is" or "Oh how convinient, an intelligent weapon in the backpack of this random encounter" to be rather lame.
I had a few ideas already, but all of them have the problem that I'm either not sure on how to get them to work, or they don't really seem that great.
- Since it's an intelligent weapon, I figured it might get possessed by the soul of something the weapon killed. Like they have a fight with a weird magical creature or outsider or fey, and when the magus' blade strikes the killing blow (fudging combat a bit so it happens like that) some black goo crawls up the blade and bonds with it. But why would a creature that just tried to kill you now work with you and have your alignemnt all of a sudden (magus is NG)? And why would you want to keep it around.
- They happen upon an old (or not so old) battlefield, still haunted by the spirits of the soldiers that died here. One of the proposes a deal, if they perform a ritual to free the other ghosts so they can pass on to the afterlife, he'll serve them, by binding him to the blade. Problem is that the party is Good, and would most likely try to free him too instead of "enslaving" him.
- The character's ancestors are from the Land of the Linnorm Kings, and the place the group is headed is basicly at the border between that and Varisia. The blade is inhabited by the spirit of an ancestor, or maybe an amalgamation of many ancestors, and the closer he gets to his ancient homeland the stronger the spirits get too. Till they finally can make contact.
While I guess I can work with that last one, and probably will if I don't find something better, I'm still not really happy with it.
So if you have any ideas, even if they're a bit absurd, or did something like this yourself, throw them in here.
Have it manifest in his chest and burst out, all blood and gore, but no harm.
Maybe start with the blade talking to him, like a voice in his head. Then he starts to feel a pressure in his chest, etc. You could mess with him a bit if he doesn't suspect it's the blade. Could be fun.
both of those last two ideas sound pretty awesome, particularly the battlefield one (they posses their old weapon for the magus to wield, they chose the magus because they have similar styles, whatever) maybe throw in a sidequest to guide the ghost to it's body to get the weapon off the corpse, etc.
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Have a BBEG wield it against the party against its will. After it's freed it bonds with the magus as its new master. You could combine this with it being the soul of someone killed by the BBEG in the past, if you want to have a human soul behind the intelligence.
The magus may try and free the soul, but that doesn't mean he'll ever find a means to. :)
In my campaign world a city that was two days travel away was destroyed by a meteor (actually the weapons of a god were kicked down from the heavens onto the city). Not long after the team had to dodge falling debris from the city and the black blade landed between the feet of the party magus. Later he finds out that the quest of the blade is to destroy its opposite (which was wielded by a demon).
Just a thought.
It could be a weapon locked away by the being it was crafted to destroy, seeing as how he couldn't destroy it himself. Later the Magus could find the locker after already having found the 'key'.
I would treat it like a paladin's quest for a holy avenger, or at least how I invision one. Here is the quick and dirty (this is similar to your ancestors idea). Have the character be contact via dreams and have clues to the swords where abouts within. The closer you get you could have more frequent dreams, if the player goes to far a stray or doesn't make anything of the dreams/clues make them more obvious. Once the player is on track throw some enconters at the group fitting the theme you created. At the climax have a test of character along with a BBEG to get the sword.
My 2cp
I like the idea of dreaming about the blade as they get closer to it, perhaps a history thereof if you go the ancestral route, and how/where it got hid or entombed, so it can be found at/near the level up.
Anybody else think of The Sword of Fighting from Journeyquest?
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"BBEG" suggestions + 3rd Level Characters...
Lol yeap... that Lizardman fighter lvl 4 sure was the very epitome of evil!
Just some basic suggestion, you could just have the sword contain the soul of a NG samurai who used to serve the Royal family of Minkai. The swords aren't fully awaken to begin with, so it wouldn't necessarily remember everything about it's former life. Have the sword's compulsion be either, an obsessive, perhaps reckless, need to destroy Onis. Or a slightly overprotective need to constantly defend the, "heir" to the throne of Minkai. Maybe sometimes putting it's wielder/owner in danger to do so, or embarrassing it's wielder by crying wolf where no danger might otherwise exist. Of course have the sword be good natured about it, but remember they don't really start out all that intelligent.
I dunno those are probably bad ideas... lol =/
Imagine the following:
The magus lights a fire and puts some herbs (not expensive ones just random stuff) on it to create smoke.
He then starts meditating and forms the smoke into a blade.
At first this blade looks rather crude. It's final form not yet found.
Over the course of the next few days (if you can't afford downtime make it quicker) it constantly reshapes slightly into various kinds of weapons until after 1d4+1 days in a final ritual akin to the first (fire and smoke) the magus shapes the blade into it's final form.
If used until then I'd make it already work, the idea should not be to punish the player after all.
I say, combine two of the ideas.
The party comes across an old battlefield, where the Magus PC comes across either the sword or ghost of one of his ancestors who fought in the battle. Go on from there.
Thanks everyone so far for your ideas, some great stuff in there.
But about BBEG ideas: As I said, they're turning 3. The first BBEG they'll meet is after they've leveled up and when they kill him they'll be level 4 most likely.
It would be great if I could wait that long, because it would open many possibilities, also from a RP perspective, considering how the story of the AP is planned, but it would be unfair to deny the group the levelup just because I have this planned. Or to deny the magus his blade at the right level.