Anyone out there playing the AoW as an evil group?
We're playing the campaign as a group of drow who became drawn into the plot after the descration of a shrine to Lloth by the Ebon Triad. Our Ilharessen (priestess) leader is under strict instructions to root out and foil the machinations of anything that would disturb the balance of power of the existing evil gods. Coupled with a view that the unleashing of an undead plague on the world would be as destructive and unwelcome to the drow as to any living creature, it gives us sufficient raison d'etre to be involved.
Of course playing as drow has created some ‘interesting’ interactions with the local communities. As fate would have it we were looking for an isolated place to stay in Diamond Lake and chose Dourstone's home. We weren’t welcome guests but after our house call we left their bodies on display and the house open and the hidden shrine to the Ebon triad to be discovered by the locals. We then entered a lodge occupied by elves living by the lakeside, killed them all, took their bodies out in boats and sank the lot. We left a false written proclamation on the entrance to their lodge stating that they had killed the dwarves for their heinous, dark blasphemous worship and then had left the polluted and morally bankrupt town of Diamond Lake for ever.
Our D.M has reasoned that the major players in the plotline like Alustan deal with us because divine guidance has revealed that ‘creatures once fallen from grace‘ will be central to defeating the goals of the Ebon triad. It’s an uneasy alliance at times but we’re damn effective against most of the opponents we’ve faced to date. We had a tough time against the Ooze demon beneath the arena though, that old damage reduction/good was a real problem.
Of course being in the Free City was awkward, we had to spend most of our time in the sewers until we met Eligos in the story-line. Our entry into the Champions Belt contest was a real novelty for the contest, “Oloth Rein” or “Darkness Falls” in common parlance was our name. After we won the contest we had 1000 silver coins specially minted and then distributed around to keep the name of the ‘dark heroes’ alive in the city.
Anway, we’re back in the Whispering Cairns (Wind Duke tombs?) and the challenge is really ramping up… be interesting to know if there are other neutral/evil groups playing the campaign.
Would you mind telling me why an evil group should go through the all the modules of the adventure path and for what reason?
If I would have evil plans in mind I would seek to align myself with the various factions (Ebon Triad, Raknian, whoever) and would try to get the best out of the alliance. Maybe and after total world domination one or two kingdoms would then fall to my hands...
Would you mind telling me why an evil group should go through the all the modules of the adventure path and for what reason?
If I would have evil plans in mind I would seek to align myself with the various factions (Ebon Triad, Raknian, whoever) and would try to get the best out of the alliance. Maybe and after total world domination one or two kingdoms would then fall to my hands...
Read my opening paragraph maybe? Lloth speaks, we listen.
Also the rewards in terms of treasure and items make our involvement worthwhile. We care naught for the notion of 'heroic good-deed doing' in the adventure path but we will tackle any enemy that stands in our way, and that includes taking down the forces behind the Age of Worms.
Our original party for AoW started with one evil, two neutral, and one good aligned characters. Before a TPK in the Champions Belt module, the two neutrals became evil during the course of play. It was a blast (fun to play, I should say), but the party was plotting against each other on a more frequent basis, and I saw the end of the road coming.
Pitchblade finished the Dirty Faced Killers before the Dirty Faced Killers killed themselves.
I don't know how it would have turned out in the end - it would have been interesting. In our game, the players were motivated by greed and power - especially considering their starting point as indentured servants to Ragnolin.
Spikadelia, it sounds like your group has one of the few "evil party" conceptions that would have the cohesion to follow through with a quest of this sort. There must be lots of jockeying for advantage and power among the PCs though! I hope you don't all TRUST each other--that would be most un-drow-like. Tell us more about your group's composition and interactions!
Very cool, and it sounds like your players know how to play it. Let us know how it works out.
Okay Peruhain here's the composition and a bit of back-story to the group. We are playing with a party of six characters, our D.M has bumped the CR of most of the encounters to compensate.
The party composition is as follows:
Lenix 8th lvl NE Drow Cleric of Lloth
Gordak 8th lvl LE Drow Wizard (specialising in demonology)
Blackthorn 8th lvl NE Drow Druid (dire bat animal companion)
Belao Kaern 8th lvl CE Drow Sorcereress (2nd lvl shadowcrafter)
Raven 7th lvl CN Tiefling Rogue
Y’shiru Sess 10th lvl LE Human Fighter
So far two PC's have fallen by the wayside, the first was a half drow lycanthrope who fled the party. We sacrificed a party member, a drow assassin who failed in an attempt to steal a magic item from another character. This was our curtain raiser act at the Champions Belt: we all emerged into the arena, staked out our drugged former comrade, then diemboweled him and released a box containing tiny carnivorous spiders into his flayed guts. The "Banquet of Lloth" brought the house down. That kind of punishment keeps party discipline intact.
We managed to avoid the arena rules about not killing opponents who have surrendered. In the first combat we'd subtly cast "suggestion" earlier on a barbarian and got him to finish off the elf leader who'd dropped his weapon in front of us, he was so suprised hehe. We subsequently killed the barbarian of course. We enjoyed that... a lot.
We subsequently aquired a tiefling rogue in the free city, be interesting to see how long he lasts? The human fighter is a fomer child slave, who survived and grew up in the Menzoberran. He eventually proved his worth to House Duskryn and was trained in Z'ress Athalak (force of arms fighting style), he aquired the lowest rank of the warrior caste and worships Selvetarm. He has a fanatical dedication to protecting the cleric of the group and has unquestioning obedience.
The cleric and wizard are husband and wife, he is completely under her thumb. Belao the sorceress has seduced the druid into letting her ride his dire bat most of the time in combat which is mighty useful. We avoid being seen publicly as much as possible, always using disguise and alter self where we have to go among the "surface filth".
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We have yet to start our game as one of my players is in the National Guard and got called away for firefighting duty, but our group is what I've taken to calling "neutral creepy". It's kinda like evil lite or evil curious, 'cept they don't really think of what they do as evil. They are as follows:
LN male human scout 1: One of maybe three non-evil members of his family. His older brother, the virtuous one, got cut down about ten years ago, while his youngest sold their sister to the Emporium as a prostitute and was sent to forced labor in the mines for some combination of assault/muder/arson charges (I don't have his notes handy, or I'd try to be more specific). Oh, and something or other about his parents being slave traders.
LN male shifter knight 1: My player came up with a cool backstory as to how a group of shifters could appear in Greyhawk, so I let him do it. The whole tribe of them descend from the bloodline of a sorcerer devoted to Wee Jas and a lycanthrope, and after a few generations lost most of their lycanthropic heritage. They live as fisherfolk and farmers on a small island in the Nyr Dyv, and all devoutly follow Wee Jas. His sister, who will be played as a cohort, will be going into true necromancer (fight fire with fire, I suppose). He was inspired to become a knight from a youth spent reading the diary of a Knight of Holy Shielding who had washed up half-dead on the island about a hundred years ago, and will primarily be his own cohort's meat shield. Wierd, huh?
CN female human warlock: Raised in a cult of Tharizdun, saved by a pair of married adventurers in her late childhood. Probably would have turned out kinda normal until her foster parents were killed by some drunken miners setting fire to their Diamond Lake home. Went totally nuts and now believes the gods of the Ebon Triad talk to her directly, and have sent her on a mission to destroy the "greater evil". Definitely the closest thing to "evil curious" as my group gets, so far.
Yes, there's only three of them. I've been playtesting the combats by myself to check for potential TPK moments, and with some tweaking, they should be able to survive until the knight's sister finishes her training in Greyhawk--about the time of the start of Adventure 3. Until then, I'm keeping hope (and them) alive via Action Points and the hit point reserve optional rule from Unearthed Arcana. I'll let anyone who cares know how they fare, both morally and physically--it should prove interesting.
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The party composition is as follows:
Lenix 8th lvl NE Drow Cleric of Lloth
Gordak 8th lvl LE Drow Wizard (specialising in demonology)
Blackthorn 8th lvl NE Drow Druid (dire bat animal companion)
Belao Kaern 8th lvl CE Drow Sorcereress (2nd lvl shadowcrafter)
Raven 7th lvl CN Tiefling Rogue
Y’shiru Sess 10th lvl LE Human Fighter
Coolest. Party. Ever.
I love it when I discover other people who can make evil games WORK! Many of my players have a hard time being 'evil' without just killing everything in sight and being unecessarily mean and nasty. If evil is to survive, it must be subtle and effective. I played an evil elven fighter/blackguard of Loviatar in Faerun alongside a CG human sorcerer and managed to make it to level 12 before he even realized that I was truly evil. By that point, he was so utterly terrified of my battle prowess that he stayed in my good graces and I rewarded him by keeping him alive on our adventures. I was really just in it for the money and items, he was the one doing the 'noble quests' for this person and that person. I was essentially hired muscle and I took more than a fair share of the loot as 'payment'. Hehe.
(For those of you who don't like the notion of evil surface elves, he was outcast from traditional elven society for his greed and lived in exile for almost a century before he discovered civilization and gravitated first to Ilmater, the god of suffering. When the priests demanded that he leave behind what few belongings he had left and adopt a life of poverty to atone for his sins, he grew furious and stormed out. Eventually, through some library research, he discovered Loviatar, the goddess of pain and misery. He felt he had suffered enough and it was time to visit that pain upon others.)