I'm already looking at the end of the Age of Worms adventure path closing in on my gaming group, and while I'd like to jump into the next adventure path, I've been toying with the idea of an epic epilogue for the players to try.
One of the ideas that's been in the forefront for me has been having the Age of Worms be a millenia-devised conspiracy between the demon lords--or archdevils, maybe--that was used as a cover for another prophecy. The idea is that the fiends circulated the Age of Worms prophecy to get everyone girded up for an apocalypse of sorts, only to find themselves distracted from other signs of the true end times to come...at the hand of the demon lords! It would allow me to put my Fiendish Codex to use on that front.
Another idea concerns none other than Iuz, but more specifically his empire. With Redhand now under the control of good-aligned PCs, Iuz takes advantage of the political instability, and goes to war. The PCs must deal with sustaining the struggling nation, while warding off attacks from their neighbors and more.
I'd love to hear if any other DMs have had the same thought, and what theirs were.
I was also thinking of making the pcs fight Iuz, a war of epic proportions, but I'm not sure if the pcs can handle that..
Iuz is crafty enough not to take on a party of PCs that just took out another demigod in direct fashion. I'm planning to do an ongoing play by post involving the PCs rebuilding Redhand and dealing with the very complicated politics of the Bandit Kingdoms and the region around the Nyr Dyv. Not everything can be won on the battlefield, and this would be primarily an intrigue campaign, with an occasional chance to run an epic level adventure, or perhaps a short war. I was thinking it might be fun to run two sets of PCs--the old epic ones and a new set (starting at low level) that does missions for the old PCs appropriate to their level.
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Since the Age of Worms Campaign for my gaming group is taking place in the same world as several other campaigns, I'm likely going to be taking this campaign epic as well so that my players can finally finish the "big story" of my campaign world. In the beginning it will be them attempting to rebuild and stabalize the economically and militarily crippled Redhand. The lack of a real standing army (or even city guard for that matter) will likely cause the area to fall into anarchy for a time and it will be up to the PCs to take out the big threats while building an infrastructure that can handle the day to day threats.
Eventually this instability will attract interest from the "Empire" as my players call it. Its a lawful neutral, continent spanning, millenia-old nation, which due to the work of PCs in previous campaigns lost much of its former northern territories (including the Free City, Redhand, and the other "Bandit Provinces"). Seeing the fall of a powerful ruler, they will approach my PCs with an offer of economic help and a legion of soldiers to help quell the internal troubles. Of course this is just the prelude for them setting up their own puppet regime so they can eventually reconquer the territory. However, it will be interesting to see if my PCs are able to balance accepting Imperial help while not becoming dependent on it. If they reject the offer then the Empire can do a number of things with the cash and soldiers that would likely make my PCs' lives equally difficult.
Finally, once they finally bring order to their new kingdom (or Imperial Province) they can finally start to fight the enemy they have been seeing hints of for several campaigns. In its long imprisonment Tharizdun has manipulated the lives of many in order to bring about its eventual freedom, and with the weaking of the magical barriers caused by a god touching foot on material plane soil it can finally begin. All my PCs from all my campaigns will have to fight against this one.
I was flipping through issue #135, and stumbled across a paragraph on pgs 80-81:
"(After) Kyuss' monolith melts away in a wash of writhing green worms...the melting spreads with shocking speed through the rest of the Spire...When they reach the ziggurat, the worms continue feeding down through the core, creating a 100-foot-wide pit into the earth...to a depth of 600 feet before branching out, eating away at the stone and spontaneously creating a tangled warren of caverns...in time Kyuss' remaining taint takes root in the caves. This complex comes to be known as the Pit of Worms, and becomes an infamous and deadly dungeon to test the mettle of adventurers throughout the world."
After reading this portion of the aftermath of Kyuss' fall, I've decided to consider another epilogue option.
The threat of Kyuss' progeny goes into a brief period of dormancy, but in time, the same horrific threats sprout forth from the Pit of Worms. The adventurers return to quell Kyuss' legacy once and for all.
After traversing the deadly--and surprisingly structured--Pit, they come face to face with the unholy heir to Kyuss and Lashonna's machinations: an atropol (Epic Level Handbook), the child of the aforementioned villians.
A bit more of a standard dungeon, but the atropol seems the natural follow up to a campaign of this nature. Plus, I got the idea after thinking about the black monolith. Anyone who's seen 2001 probably made the same association I did. I looked at the atropol as a kind of unholy, undead "Starchild" from the end of the film.
Ooohh, Atropal...
I actually had the pleasure of running one of those things in an Epic game. Keeping it from getting free could be an Epic adventure akin to Champion's belt, with its freedom resulting in thousands of undead created by its horrific level-drain aura. (I think its like, -8 levels to stand in 100' radius, or something sick like that,)
I'm happy, because with the Dungeon of Worms, I have connectivity to my homebrewed Darkrunners of the Underdark Campaign. Strangely enough, before I had even heard of the Age of Worms path, one of my subplots featured the rise of an insectoid god known as the Devourer. I was orignally thinking Obox-Ob (can't spell demon names), but the fragments of Kyuss's deific remains could be the spawn of more underdark adventure. (As if assaulting Mind Flayer prisons and inflitrating Drow cities wasn't enough.. :)