Knitifine |
This is a bit of a question for a campaign I'm working on in a custom setting. I've never posted on the forum before so I apologize if this is the wrong place and hopefully a moderator can direct me/move the thread if it is.
Anyways, in the setting the gods have all died. They all died at the same time.* The Asuras who are made from divine mistakes are written to be hell bent on destroying religion and the faithful, but over time those things have entirely died out (with the closest things to religion being prominent philosophies and small cults devoted to strong-but-not-divine outsiders.)
What's a good purpose to give the Asura in this setting now that their main goal has been more or less accomplished?
*The gods died in a mortal war that happened a few decades before the adventure starts, due to investing their souls into the bodies of chosen mortals in various bids and plots to accomplish various goals (it was a whole other campaign worth of stuff). End result was all invested mortals died, and because of how the setting works the gods died along with them, having had their souls essentially fused into one that then went through the typical petitioner process and are now residing somewhere in the various planes.
Kalindlara Contributor |
chaoseffect |
"End result was all invested mortals died, and because of how the setting works the gods died along with them, having had their souls essentially fused into one that then went through the typical petitioner process and are now residing somewhere in the various planes."
I imagine they are busy hunting down those souls and destroying them as to stop any hope of a divine resurgence. Daemons, demons, devils, and any number of evil outsiders are probably quite interested that outcome too. The gods were once so high and mighty, but now, they are the same as any other soul and as such ripe for taking.
Kalindlara Contributor |
"End result was all invested mortals died, and because of how the setting works the gods died along with them, having had their souls essentially fused into one that then went through the typical petitioner process and are now residing somewhere in the various planes."
I imagine they are busy hunting down those souls and destroying them as to stop any hope of a divine resurgence.
Good catch!
Also, definitely this.
Java Man |
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So I don't have any better suggestions for the discussion at hand, just an endorsement for this forum. I once posed a similiar type of question on a different forum, and the only responses I got were variations of "but the books/ setting/ holy word of the game designers says that isn't so."
I appreciate the community here, that is all.
John Lynch 106 |
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I don't generally like "We are evil because we are evil. Mwahahaha" type badguys. I like ones who honest to god (no pun intended) believe they are working for the greater good. So my take might be slightly different then you intended so perhaps not that useful. But the ancilliary ideas might help give you something to latch onto.
The gods are typically remote entities who live in their domains in the various planes and send their servants beyond their own personal domain to do their bidding. For reasons of their own the gods decided to instead reincarnate themselves into the bodies of mortals and then proceeded to get wiped out. They've left their servants behind.
The gods are by no means all good. Some of them are neutral while others are outright evil. Presumably their servitors were of these appropriate alignments as well and so now with the gods finally dead, war erupted across the cosmos as the servants of the gods declared outright war, blaming various factions for the death of their masters. However whatever concord or pact saw them (typically) avoid the Material Plane, with the gods dead this was no longer in force. And so the demons and devils and all the other evil outsiders began marking out their own dominions on the material plane while the angels came in and similarly devoted to wiping out these outsiders, did so with little care for the mortals who died in the collateral damage. Without the gods to fuel their prayers, the clerics and paladins were unable to assist while the wizards were few and far between and died quickly (with it taking years for any new ones to be trained).
Step in the Asura. Seeing what the lackeys of the gods were doing they saw red and so they swooped in and began carving out safezones for the mortal races of the material plane. High level arcanists and high level priests knew that the Asura had always plotted the deaths of the gods and some might suspect they played a role in the divine war that occurred. However with the priests unable to provide the protection to their flock now that their god was dead, thyey quickly found the majority of the faithful abandoning them. While the wizards were too few to try be persuasive in the face of impending destruction from the divine wars taking between the servitors of the gods.
And so the people of the material plane flocked to the cities of the Asura and survived. In the present day the divine war has largely died out. The asuras were able to convince most of the divine servants to leave these safe zones alone with very persuasive but deadly force, however they chose not to get in the fighitng between the angels and devils directly, confident they would annihilate each other, and if not the asura would be at full strength to mop up the survivors.
Religion is outlawed, not that anyone bothers with that sutff anymore. A few personality cults pop up every now and then, but the Asura and their military forces (insert reflavoured arcane paladin class here) are quick to enforce the law and stamp out these cults. Leaving the overcrowded cities is forbidden as the land is wasteland filled with monsters. Food is mined under the city in underground mushroom mines (the kind used by dwarves before the war broke out). Life isn't the best. There are no freedoms. Nobility has been abolished with those nobles who refused to accept their new status executed. But war no longer exists and everyone has enough (bland) food to eat and water to drink.
There are some foolish enough to leave the safety of the cities. They're called adventurers. And rumours are circulating that a new personality cult has arisen. However unlike the regular cults, this one seems to be able to cure the sick and heal the dying. This might mean the return of the gods. Or it could just be yet another hoax (insert a divine warlock class that gains their power from divine vestiges).
Ronnie K |
This is a bit of a question for a campaign I'm working on in a custom setting. I've never posted on the forum before so I apologize if this is the wrong place and hopefully a moderator can direct me/move the thread if it is.
Anyways, in the setting the gods have all died. They all died at the same time.* The Asuras who are made from divine mistakes are written to be hell bent on destroying religion and the faithful, but over time those things have entirely died out (with the closest things to religion being prominent philosophies and small cults devoted to strong-but-not-divine outsiders.)
What's a good purpose to give the Asura in this setting now that their main goal has been more or less accomplished?
*The gods died in a mortal war that happened a few decades before the adventure starts, due to investing their souls into the bodies of chosen mortals in various bids and plots to accomplish various goals (it was a whole other campaign worth of stuff). End result was all invested mortals died, and because of how the setting works the gods died along with them, having had their souls essentially fused into one that then went through the typical petitioner process and are now residing somewhere in the various planes.
I think this is an awesome hook. The Asuras' goal has been met and they no longer have 'gods?' What comes next is CORRUPTION! The Asuras now see themselves as gods and begin to build small but hell bent cults to themselves. Things are worse than ever! The destruction of the gods was pale compared to the division the rise to power of the new gods causes!
Knitifine |
All of these are great suggestions, thank you. I got some good ideas, though I'll probably mix and match. To verify some campaign specific information I didn't think was relevant.
I don't generally like "We are evil because we are evil. Mwahahaha" type badguys. I like ones who honest to god (no pun intended) believe they are working for the greater good.
The outsiders in my games do not possess alignment subtypes so they can end up any alignment. The grouping of alignment generally comes down from the most influential of their kind (Asura Rajas for Asura) keeping their philosophies the dominate ones among their people, plus the fact that most outsiders are born from mortal souls that fit the alignment ahead of time (Not that that alignment can't change just like a mortal's can).
Without the gods to fuel their prayers, the clerics and paladins were unable to assist while the wizards were few and far between and died quickly (with it taking years for any new ones to be trained).
I actually did put some thought into magic power sources. Suffice to say that arcane magic has never been known (outside of Rakshasas) where the PCs are going to be playing, Divine Magic didn't fade in an instant when the god's died, but the ability to grant it to others did, so as the last paladins and priests died of old age/were cleaned but by Asura who weren't celebrating the death of the gods. Psychic magic (Occult Adventures) is the primary means of magic in the setting.
lemeres |
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The Asura would be at war with the freed Thanatotic Titans, warring over who gets to rule in the power vacuum.
The Thanatotic Titans were the children of the gods banished to the abyss because of their crimes. As such, they would probably not be part of this 'incarnating as vulnerable mortals' thing. So they most likely survived...and believe that all of creation is their birthright.
So you now have the asura against th very kind of personalities that they hate the most- those who believe their divine power gives them carte blanche to do as they please, and they are more than willing to abuse this power for their whims.
So this means you are going to have asura versus demodands- the twisted mistakes of the gods facing off against the wretched aped mockeries of creation. Those that were once whole, but now they are broken reflections of their former selves versus those that revel in their incomplete nature, and have always viewed it as the thing that gives them the priviledge to rule over the creations of the gods.