So, I've undertaken the horrid task of creating my own world as a setting for a new campaign. In the same vein as a player's guide, I'm attempting to craft a handout for my players disclosing some of the world's history. I've never considered myself much of a writer and this is the first bit of fiction I've penned in sometime. If your gm was attempting to introduce you to a world, would this interest you? Please keep in mind this is just a fragment and much more is to come...
One thousand years of unbroken peace conspired against the bulk of citizens toiling under the golden sun of Sylstorm. Prior to the bonds of serenity forged after the sprawling aftermath of the Corpse King’s dire invasion, the world tossed in a terrible time of tumult and chaos. Great nations warred and chained together mighty empires drenched in blood only to falter, collapsing into the dust of their own broken swords. Weary peasants struggled to raise their eyes, barely witnessing the passing of kings struck down by rivals and nations sundered. Warrior cultures dominated. Women swung blades alongside their men. Children sat astride horses, bows at the ready. Their accuracy was unquestioned. The world churned in a cauldron. Primal forests resounded with heathen battle cries. The gathered Elven host vied for control of the endless heartland, trailing the herds of bison sacred to their primitive religion. Storm wracked seas battered the stalwart coastal citadels of the Karhuul League as their sentries scanned the grey expanse for invaders from distant shores. In the frigid north, the barbarian hordes eked a brutal existence, raiding clan holds across the blasted steppes.
Waves of famine and drought, dislodged massive segments of population, sending horse cultures spilling into the myriad of free city-states rooted in the towering Myradon Mountains. A great wave of orcs and humans battered themselves against the ancient walls of those cities. Civilized islands of democracy and culture, many of these free cities fell to the advancing tide. Pyres fed with the corpses of thousands of citizens illuminated the skies. Rape, murder, and cannibalism reigned. Unending carnage swallowed thousands and gave birth to smoke, ash, and chaos. Drum beats echoed against the mountains. Drum beats sounded the march of the bloated, bloody legions. Drum beats drowned out the cries of widows and the orphaned. The world teetered perilously on the edge of a razor wire, a plump apple awaiting the finishing slice.
As the violence reached an unprecedented frenzy, a far greater threat emerged. Colossal stone portals, anchored into the bedrock of each continent, were long a source of scholarly musing. Carved from unknown quarries, composed of an impossibly strong stone, they silently watched generations pass. Dormant, sleeping giants, scholars deemed them harmless relics of an unknown elder race. Circular in shape, the portals dangled from massive chains moored soundly into alien frameworks. Runes etched deeply into their smooth surface glowed with a demonic blaze. Flickering between a fiery orange and the dark purple of churning seas, their bizarre illuminating light triggered numerous peoples to construct cities and temples within the cast of their unearthly glow. The debris of a staggering number of civilizations lined their bases. On the fringes of the Dust Empire, a shanty town of black market traders sprung up in an ashen valley clustered around the largest of these behemoths. Three hundred feet tall, it sported an opening two hundred feet in diameter. Screaming through this gaping maw armies emerged, lighting the world afire.
It began with the harmless whistle of the winter wind. Soft at first like the comforting murmur of a mother’s voice consoling a distraught babe, the noise surged swiftly. Gusts of ash laden air, poured through the bore of the portal. As the flow of tainted air amplified, the runes flickered and died. Darkness enveloped the valley. The hard case men inhabiting the ragged town below hastily sought shelter. Blasts of wind tore through alleyways. Those few brave or drunk enough to bear witness to the events that followed soon panicked. Some took their own lives. Others, paralyzed with fear, froze, eyes fixed on the horrors tasting the air of our world for the first time. A meager few stood and fought to the last.
Blue lights coursed along the inner ring of the portal. Caressing the surface of the stone for a flicker of moments, the lights then converged and with an ominous silence tore through the fabric of reality. A rift opened. An angry gash, the light pulsated with the rhythm of a dying heart, straining to pump. The rift spread, filling the entire diameter of the portal. On the other side, a world filled with a sickly green haze watched consumed with jealousy. Boiling forth, creatures, contorted and twisted, disgorged themselves from the newly formed hole in Sylstorm’s reality. This mass of abominations spewed mightily onto the valley floor. Uncontained, they descended into the shanty town ingesting all before them. This town had a reputation for breeding scarred, independent souls, quick with a blade. They plunged their swords within the bellies of the beasts ravaging their home. Black blood spattered the ashy ground. Blades rose again and again to hew the enemy until they were dull, choked with sinew and bone. Nonetheless the tested cut-throats fell as they lived, one by one. Their foes were legion. Feral swaths of beasts tore down the ramshackle buildings. The inhabitants were devoured in an orgy of devastation.
The Dust Empire succumbed within weeks. Her proud cities were laid to ruin. A great blight spread from the portal’s sustained festering fissure. Threatening the slew of parasitic states clinging to the edges of the Dust Empire’s mass, the otherworldly army poised itself for further conquest. Those beleaguered frontier territories marshaled their outnumbered forces. Fleeing refugees ignited stories depicting the horrors to come. Panic welled.
In glimpses of the few survivors’ tales, a profile of the enemy was gleaned. The enemy was undead, yet an intelligent green light burned in their hollow eye sockets. Foot soldiers comprised the bulk of the invading force. Encased in suits of dusky, bile stained black armor, they expertly wielded curved tulwars dripping with foul poisons. Strips of flesh remained, bonding dried chunks of muscle and withered tissue fast to yellowed bone. Leathery skin stretched taunt across body cavities, straining to hold in place corrupted, once vital, organs. A vile, oily, black fluid circulated lethargically through what masqueraded for their heart. Great undead beasts lumbered behind.
Hey dude, you'll find lots of readers and critics here.
But the first thing you need to do is post something like this with clear paragraph breaks. People need some white space when they're looking at a monitor - one blank line between block paragraphs should do it.
Indented paragraphs work well enough when text is divided in columns or when pages are not too wide, but I'm on a widescreen monitor and looking at your text makes my eyes throb. Up until it made my eyes throb it was pretty vivid and I was into it.
You still have thirty minutes to go back and edit in some white spaces if you catch this right away. (59 minutes is the edit window I think)
So, undead with glowing green eyes invade the world. This sounds remarkably like something I saw in the first Heavy Metal movie.
Which does not make it bad exactly, but I'd like to know a little more about the current world. What do people do when they're not being invaded by glowing green undead? What to the glowing green undead do when they're not invading?
It might be interesting to play depending on DMing style. It sounds a lot like the worlds from Heavy Metal and Bakshi's Wizards.
all fancied up with spaces for you...I lost my internet connection moments after I posted so I never had the chance to see the actual post. Sorry!
One thousand years of unbroken peace conspired against the bulk of citizens toiling under the golden sun of Sylstorm. Prior to the bonds of serenity christened after the sprawling aftermath of the Corpse King’s dire invasion, the world tossed in a terrible time of tumult and chaos. Great nations warred and chained together mighty empires drenched in blood only to falter, collapsing into the dust of their own broken swords. Weary peasants struggled to raise their eyes, barely witnessing the passing of kings struck down by rivals and nations sundered. Warrior cultures dominated. Women swung blades alongside their men. Children sat astride horses, composite bows at the ready. Their accuracy was unquestioned. The world churned in a cauldron. Primal forests resounded with heathen battle cries. The gathered Elven host vied for control of the endless heartland, trailing the herds of bison sacred to their primitive religion. Storm wracked seas battered the stalwart coastal citadels of the Karhuul League as their sentries scanned the grey expanse for invaders from distant shores. In the frigid north, the barbarian hordes eked a brutal existence, raiding clan holds across the blasted steppes.
Waves of famine and drought, dislodged massive segments of population, sending horse cultures spilling into the myriad of free city-states rooted in the towering Myradon Mountains. A great wave of orcs and humans battered themselves against the ancient walls of those cities. Civilized islands of democracy and culture, many of these free cities fell to the advancing tide. Pyres fed with the corpses of thousands of citizens illuminated the skies. Rape, murder, and cannibalism reigned. Unending carnage swallowed thousands and gave birth to smoke, ash, and chaos. Drum beats echoed against the mountains. Drum beats sounded the march of the bloated, bloody legions. Drum beats drowned out the cries of widows and the orphaned. The world teetered perilously on the edge of a razor wire, a plump apple awaiting the finishing slice.
As the violence reached an unprecedented frenzy, a far greater threat emerged. Colossal stone portals, anchored into the bedrock of each continent, were long a source of scholarly musing. Carved from unknown quarries, composed of an impossibly strong stone, they silently watched generations pass. Dormant, sleeping giants, scholars deemed them harmless relics of an unknown elder race. Circular in shape, the portals dangled from massive chains moored soundly into alien frameworks. Runes etched deeply into their smooth surface glowed with a demonic blaze. Flickering between a fiery orange and the dark purple of churning seas, their bizarre illuminating light triggered numerous peoples to construct cities and temples within the cast of their unearthly glow. The debris of a staggering number of civilizations lined their bases. On the fringes of the Dust Empire, a shanty town of black market traders sprung up in an ashen valley clustered around the largest of these behemoths. Three hundred feet tall, it sported an opening two hundred feet in diameter. Screaming through this gaping maw armies emerged, lighting the world afire.
It began with the harmless whistle of the winter wind. Soft at first like the comforting murmur of a mother’s voice consoling a distraught babe, the noise surged swiftly. Gusts of ash laden air, poured through the bore of the portal. As the flow of tainted air amplified, the runes flickered and died. Darkness enveloped the valley. The hard case men inhabiting the ragged town below hastily sought shelter. Blasts of wind tore through alleyways. Those few brave or drunk enough to bear witness to the events that followed soon panicked. Some took their own lives. Others, paralyzed with fear, froze, eyes fixed on the horrors tasting the air of our world for the first time. A meager few stood and fought to the last.
Blue lights coursed along the inner ring of the portal. Caressing the surface of the stone for a flicker of moments, the lights then converged and with an ominous silence tore through the fabric of reality. A rift opened. An angry gash, the light pulsated with the rhythm of a dying heart, straining to pump. The rift spread, filling the entire diameter of the portal. On the other side, a world filled with a sickly green haze watched consumed with jealousy. Boiling forth, creatures, contorted and twisted, disgorged themselves from the newly formed hole in Sylstorm’s reality. This mass of abominations spewed mightily onto the valley floor. Uncontained, they descended into the shanty town ingesting all before them. This town had a reputation for breeding scarred, independent souls, quick with a blade. They plunged their swords within the bellies of the beasts ravaging their home. Black blood spattered the ashy ground. Blades rose again and again to hew the enemy until they were dull, choked with sinew and bone. Nonetheless the tested cut-throats fell as they lived, one by one. Their foes were legion. Feral swaths of beasts tore down the ramshackle buildings. The inhabitants were devoured in an orgy of devastation.
The Dust Empire succumbed within weeks. Her proud cities were laid to ruin. A great blight spread from the portal’s sustained festering fissure. Threatening the slew of parasitic states clinging to the edges of the Dust Empire’s mass, the otherworldly army poised itself for further conquest. Those beleaguered frontier territories marshaled their outnumbered forces. Fleeing refugees ignited stories depicting the horrors to come. Panic welled.
In glimpses of the few survivors’ tales, a profile of the enemy was gleaned. The enemy was undead, yet an intelligent green light burned in their hollow eye sockets. Foot soldiers comprised the bulk of the invading force. Encased in suits of dusky, bile stained black armor, they expertly wielded curved tulwars dripping with foul poisons. Strips of flesh remained, bonding dried chunks of muscle and withered tissue fast to yellowed bone. Leathery skin stretched taunt across body cavities, straining to hold in place corrupted, once vital, organs. A vile, oily, black fluid circulated lethargically through what masqueraded for their heart. Great undead beasts lumbered behind.
So, undead with glowing green eyes invade the world. This sounds remarkably like something I saw in the first Heavy Metal movie.
Which does not make it bad exactly, but I'd like to know a little more about the current world. What do people do when they're not being invaded by glowing green undead? What to the glowing green undead do when they're not invading?
It might be interesting to play depending on DMing style. It sounds a lot like the worlds from Heavy Metal and Bakshi's Wizards.
The undead are actually not going to be the major enemy for the campaign. They simply serve as a focal point to galvanize the various populations together against a common enemy. After the undead are defeated, there is a thousand years of peace during which time all of these warring cultures go soft and weaken. When a new threat emerges, no one has the armies or skill to face that threat. Introduce the PC's. I'm toying with the idea of the PC's being reincarnated heroes from that thousand year old war with the undead, complete with broken memories and emotional scars. What do you think?
|
Don't make it mandatory for your Players to read this intro.
It's good for you to have this background so you know what's what -- but until your Players have a vested interest into their PCs within this world they may not be motiated to read it.
Offer it to them and say they can read it if they want but they won't have to read it to understand the beginning of the game.
It's also very, very important for you to design the first adventure in the campaign without any necessary-reading on the Players' part.
They'll have access to this knowledge so when, during the course of the opening adventure they become interested and want the answers to some of their questions, they can pull out their intro and give it a read.
-W. E. Ray
I think the thousand years of peace is a bit more unbelievable than the stargates and the undead, personally.
Molech is right--the grand dramatic sweep is fine and dandy for your personal backstory, but for the characters living today? Not so much.
Giving everyone PTSD from past lives mucks things up a lot more, and makes the thousand years of peace even more unbelievable.
If you want to do the "ancient heroes" thing, I suggest you go the "seven sleepers" route and have some of the PCs be veterans of the old last war put in suspended animation against the day that nasty stuff pop up again. Or at least have that be the option for a couple PCs. Maybe some of the others can be reincarnated, but you'd need a special quest or artifact to unlock the old memories.
So a thousand years ago the world was beset by a foe that almost wiped out everyone leaving the survivors' to pick up the pieces of their shattered societies and took several centuries before the world even began to recover what it lost.
However precious little is remembered of either that ancient apocalypse or the era that came before it, this has resulted in several organisations some created by the various nations and empires of the current age and even some funded privately to discover what actually happened and to regain the lost arts of that bygone era.
Many settlements were built upon the ruins of the previous era and this has brought alot of attention and prosperity to those built on such sites however there are empires involved who aren't as generaous with their resources and see such sites as theirs for the taking meaning this era has its fair share of wars and power hungry maniacs let alone mercenaries and evil organisations.
And thus this brings you to your players, why are they here?
Are they locals seeking employment or have a desire to find out and explore the remains of these ruins or do they have a more personal reason to get involved after all those heroes who helped stop that ancient apocalypse may still exist.
|
The world sounds interesting enough but some comments concerning your writing...
1. If the undead are not the main threat you are focusing on them too much in your introduction. It took me three readings to figure out the undead were the threat of the past. If, as you say, the undead were what brought nations together in the past then focus on the unity of the effort more than the danger of the threat.
2. A good rule of thumb for both speaking and writing is that 'brevity is the soul of wit.' You are trying too hard to make it epic and are thus going past epic almost into the realm of farce. See what you can do to tone down the style of the piece.
3. Your time references are confusing. (see #1 above) You might want to juggle around the way you introduce the timeline. Perhaps start with the opening of the portals, describe the unity of the nations and then conclude with the thousand years of peace.
What if nobody knows what created that army of the undead?
For example that portal didn't so much as open up a portal to a world long consumed by the undead but released a virulent force that consumed the locals turning them into undead as it adapted the stronger ones to serve as its generals and the peace was the result of that force being sealed away when it lost control over its generals rather than it was defeated so at some point someone releases it causing the previous apocalypse to potentially happen again except the only information that can be found on it requires the reanimation of its generals of whom one may reveal the info they need but inr eturn for resealing it again that general has had time to escape custody leading to another campaign sort of how the manga version of record of lodoss war ended.
Perhaps you should start with where the players begin and avoid the ancient background history.
What characters do your players want to run?
Once you know that then look at how they encounter each other for the first time.
Are they living in the same settlement and their first adventure involves digging into the ruins of a long abandoned settlement looking for artefacts and grimoires dealing with the past eventually deciding where they want to go.
If your players gave you a background history you could have it come involved in the game say one player has lost his family and during the first adventure learns one siblings has been enslaved in an empire and his/her parents were slain trying to protect them which they find out because one of the foes they fight recognise their fighting/arcane style or inherited looks and use it to try and intimidate and as you know intimidation in 4e is very poor so it seriously backfires and gives you a reason why that pc will stay with the party as they continue to adventure.
Perhaps this background you discussed above should be left until it becomes relevant say when they find what you consider a milestone in the campaign they locate an ancient ruin and find themselves fighting off serious rivals before reaching their goal and are cheated of their find when one of their rivals' is actually backed by an empire who use their overwhelming might to seal their victory but in the process they ignore something that eventually proves more important.
So what is the current state of the world your game is going to be based in?
I think the thousand years of peace is a bit more unbelievable than the stargates and the undead, personally.
Molech is right--the grand dramatic sweep is fine and dandy for your personal backstory, but for the characters living today? Not so much.
Giving everyone PTSD from past lives mucks things up a lot more, and makes the thousand years of peace even more unbelievable.
If you want to do the "ancient heroes" thing, I suggest you go the "seven sleepers" route and have some of the PCs be veterans of the old last war put in suspended animation against the day that nasty stuff pop up again. Or at least have that be the option for a couple PCs. Maybe some of the others can be reincarnated, but you'd need a special quest or artifact to unlock the old memories.
Out of curiosity, where does the "seven sleepers" reference originate from?
Sorry for the confusion...this is only the beginning of a longer introduction. Before I slipped off the deep end and started flailing away at the keyboard I wanted to get a little bit of feedback and direction..... The reason for the undead and why I started to focus on those events is I want the player characters to have some sort of link to the past. Because an unnaturally long period of peace followed the undead invasion, the populations of the world have grown soft. Now a new invasion begins...haven't quite decided on the enemy....(any ideas?) and the nations of the day are too weak and decadent to counter it. Contrast that to a thousand years ago when the world was populated with dozens of warrior cultures that embraced bloodshed.... The PC's are living in these soft...fat of the land times.... I wanted to have a reason that would explain why they have retained some of that heroic spirit/ability that has left most of the world. I wanted the reason to not be mundane.... too complicated, you think? My players prefer to take leadership roles (they're not ones for dungeon crawls), and I had imagined them marshalling defenses, training the populace, searching for ancient weapons, helping to evacuate the helpless, leading strike teams....so on and so forth...
after all those heroes who helped stop that ancient apocalypse may still exist.
What would be your reason to have them still exist? How would you incorporate that into the game? Thanks for your help by the way!
|
|
Now a new invasion begins...haven't quite decided on the enemy....(any ideas?)
Formians. i.e. an extraplanar insectoid invasion, intent on colonizing wide swathes of land - namely the whole planet. They're not inherently evil but they cannot be easily negotiated with and they are disdainful of less organized races.
Out of curiosity, where does the "seven sleepers" reference originate from?
Popular motif from medieval Christianity--martyrs, knights, etc. go to sleep in a cave until such time as they're awoken when they're needed.
Just do a search on "seven sleepers" and you'll find all sorts of references to the motif. It's related to the one called the "king in the mountain" as well.
In a D&D world, this is easily done with a Temporal Stasis spell, and conceivably would be done if there were a number of young warriors who might be needed later but not now.
Maybe the problem is your personal timeline- you have put a lot of time and energy into creating a galvanizing story about the fall of the Dust Empire, so why not set the campaign just after the fall? A thousand years of peace is fine, but from reading this intro, I want to play in the era that lead up to it. Maybe you should create two different times of play for your world, kind of like pre- and post- Cataclysm in Dragonlance.
I disagree with the brevity bit- your language is a bit flowery and could use some editing perhaps, but I found it interesting. Keep on truckin.
This world set up doesn't appeal to me personally - Apocalyptic scenarios kinda turn me off.
I'm with some of the other posters in that, your players do not need to know all of the background of their world. In fact, they may NOT know it. How was this history preserved? How was it passed down if everything was destroyed? Maybe a side-line of your game is that the players are discovering just how their world was formed.
I have found that players (as a whole) really don't care about world background and creation. They just want to play. Writer DM's (like myself) love the creation stuff, but players just want to create their characters and have an adventure.
If you want players to buy into your world creation scenario, you have to do this slowly, a little bit at a time. Or as the Wicked Witch said, "These things must be done delicately..."
I like the idea of "slumbering giants" - that opens the door to many, many possibilities. Runic beings have a special place in my gaming heart. Perhaps this is where you adventure begins - the characters stumble upon one of these beings or tablets of stone that declare a prophecy and the game goes from there.
One more thing - undead with glowing green eyes - an immediate turn off for me. IMO, the gaming world, comic books, movies, TV, is SATURATED with zombies and undead. It's old and overdone and when I see it, I just turn away.
Good luck with your game.
-g-
after all those heroes who helped stop that ancient apocalypse may still exist.What would be your reason to have them still exist? How would you incorporate that into the game? Thanks for your help by the way!
Say one of the general's was decapitated but their head interred where it could be questioned at length and over the intervening centuries this questioning allowed the creation of one of the present day's most powerfulest empires since they have access to knowledge that allows them to animate the dead and even knowledge of that ancient time such as where certain storehouses of knowledge were forgotten.
Another possibility is that they couldn't kill the generals only imprison them so one could be held underwater where running water keeps them trapped and helpless another held within a volcano where their remains cannot reassemble unless removed from its location to one where it can access water enough to restore itself.
However another idea is that the previous war was won by the intervention of another race say the elves who are long thought immortal but actually live so long because their home lies within another plane where time stands still but have to travel outside since they can't bear children where time prevents them being conceived.
The apocalypse on this world meant their future was threatened so they intervened creating an order of knights bearing a weapon that not only sealed away such immortal monsters but eventually they found a way to seal the original portal and teach the lesser races to fight back.
Perhaps the question I should ask is where do you plan on starting your campaign?
Will it be in a border settlement that has been suffering raids or just has a ruin nearby that has caught the attention of their young and other travellers who search the interior for adventure and information on the past?
Could it be that whilst there a portal opens releasing one of the guardians of the past who warns them of a coming tragedy and flees as say elements of the empire arrive to try and capture this ancient hero who recognises them as those who have attacked and destroyed one of the ancient repositories sacking it for the wealth of knowledge and power within releasing the enemy the hero warns the PCs about so the hero flees rather than be captured telling the PCs to warn their people before its too late only the empire needing a base nearby to hunt down the hero seizes their home settlement requiring the PCs to either work alongside their captors or fight against them fleeing into the wilds as their enemy is too strong for them now...
I think I'm going too far so whats your opinion?
Perhaps the question I should ask is where do you plan on starting your campaign
So far we have five players. One of the characters is going to be of a noble bloodline, one of the human households. Then there are two elves and two humans. At this point I am debating beginning the campaign at a lonely outpost on the fringe of the human empire. This will be some sort of outlying stead under the protection of the noble character's family. The outpost will be in a heavily wooded area bordering elven lands facilitating why the human and elven characters will be friendly.
so what about something like this...... I'm going to combine together a few of your ideas...
"The apocalypse on this world meant their future was threatened so they intervened creating an order of knights bearing a weapon that not only sealed away such immortal monsters but eventually they found a way to seal the original portal"
These weapons still exists but they've been hidden, the warriors trained in their knowledge put into stasis alongside the cache of weapons. The presence of this armory has long been lost to those alive in the current era.
"Could it be that whilst there a portal opens releasing one of the guardians of the past who warns them of a coming tragedy and flees as say elements of the empire arrive to try and capture this ancient hero who recognizes them as those who have attacked and destroyed one of the ancient repositories sacking it for the wealth of knowledge"
The player characters go hunting....whatever player characters do before they are heroes....stumble across the ruins of an ancient library. An advance force from the new invasion is already at the library, searching the ruins for hints as to the location of the secret cache of weapons mentioned above - one of a few things that can actually stop the new invasion force. Player characters battle the scouting force. Keep in mind the world has been locked in peace for what seems like an eternity. Foreign invaders would be a pretty revolutionary event. Perhaps they hurriedly bring the news back to the provincial capital where they are denounced as liars and braggarts. They I can press on from there with the player characters trying to discover why the invaders were there.....possibly go into the whole guardian of the past showing up to warn them.....
I like the talking head bit, but I am personally turned off by kryptonite caveats. Maybe there should be veins of ore that can be used to create weapons that get past their DR(a la iron in Dark Sun), but weapons that destroy them completely is a bit much for me. Still, it's your world, find a way to make it work.
The writing is so epic that it may be over the top for some people - editing might help but I think some people might tune it out.
Maybe you could include some kind of timeline for it that summarizes it or puts it into everyman's perspective so that the tune-outs still have something to reference before starting. That would also help clear up the problem of conceptualizing the age based on an epic style intro.
Also, I think the transition to the paragraph where you describe the portal opening fell flat, because in the transition you spilled all the beans "set the world afire", rather than just twigging my interest in the following paragraph(s). This is also one of the problems with people figuring out the order of events.
Lots of good comments in here.
Satisfied?
:)
So, undead with glowing green eyes invade the world. This sounds remarkably like something I saw in the first Heavy Metal movie.
Loc-Nar much?
Loc-Nar much?
"Leggo, b&@%@! It's my sacred Loc-Nar!"
So far we have five players. One of the characters is going to be of a noble bloodline, one of the human households. Then there are two elves and two humans. At this point I am debating beginning the campaign at a lonely outpost on the fringe of the human empire. This will be some sort of outlying stead under the protection of the noble character's family. The outpost will be in a heavily wooded area bordering elven lands facilitating why the human and elven characters will be friendly.Perhaps the question I should ask is where do you plan on starting your campaign
Hmm perhaps this inherited duty isn't considered an honour any more but rather a punishment since it takes the nobles away from where all of the action is from their point of view so perhaps they don't know why they have to stay at this place only that they were ordered to by their elder and their crazy old seneschal of the place is the only one who knows anything about why they have to stay there.
[quote=]so what about something like this...... I'm going to combine together a few of your ideas...
"The apocalypse on this world meant their future was threatened so they intervened creating an order of knights bearing a weapon that not only sealed away such immortal monsters but eventually they found a way to seal the original portal"
These weapons still exists but they've been hidden, the warriors trained in their knowledge put into stasis alongside the cache of weapons. The presence of this armory has long been lost to those alive in the current era.
How about once the war was over the portal sealer was dismantled since it could reopen the portal in the wrong hands?
So make the sleepers not human for example they could be warforged so the initial reaction between them could lead to a fight until the place is invaded and the sleepers awaken to battle the intruders with the seneschal leading the PCs to safety only to be killed revealing the empire has seized their homeland under the guise of an alliance against a rival unaware that its all a ruse (They won't realise that last part since the other nobles would have to see whats really going on with their own eyes rather than believe someone considered a black sheep of a noble family who their "allies" have accused of betraying their nation.[quote=]"Could it be that whilst there a portal opens releasing one of the guardians of the past who warns them of a coming tragedy and flees as say elements of the empire arrive to try and capture this ancient hero who recognizes them as those who have attacked and destroyed one of the ancient repositories sacking it for the wealth of knowledge"
The player characters go hunting....whatever player characters do before they are heroes....stumble across the ruins of an ancient library. An advance force from the new invasion is already at the library, searching the ruins for hints as to the location of the secret cache of weapons mentioned above - one of a few things that can actually stop the new invasion force. Player characters battle the scouting force. Keep in mind the world has been locked in peace for what seems like an eternity. Foreign invaders would be a pretty...
Thats an idea what if in boredom and having his retinue and those friends willing to come along into so-called exile decide to explore their new home and in the process discover there's more to whats going on.