| Cranefist |
Starting a new game next week for what is turning out to be a group of heroic sounding PCs.
This is set in the Points of Light campaign setting, the first one called, "Wild Land."
Scripture Pilgrims from Bright Empire
The Paladin's god, Delaquain - The Goddess of Honor and Justice, has a temple in the capitol city of Falacrine, where at least some of your characters should be from. Being the former center of the human world, characters from anywhere can end up in Falacrine.
A civil war between the followers of Delaquain and Sarrath - God of War and Order, weakened the empire and lead to the eventual destruction of the city of Falacrine by a barbarian horde. A large part of the population fled to the mountains and survived. They returned and have been rebuilding the city for the last 10 years.
During the rebuilding of the temple of Delaquain, a scroll was miraculously uncovered, intact. The scroll, which contains the complete teachings of the goddess in one epic poem, also possesses the power to cast the spell Miracle. The high priest, on his death bed from injuries sustained during the shattering of the empire, believes he was kept alive by the goddess to perform one last task: to make a copy of the scroll. Shortly after completing the scroll, the high priest died. One scroll is to be kept in Falacrine to be used by the next King's Priest to intercede on the cities' behalf either in the crowning of a new emperor and the avoidance of another civil war, or in the defense of the city should the horde return.
The second scroll is to be sent west, to the far reaches of the empire, to aid the people there and to reestablish the empire's reach should that be Delaquain's wish. The priests of Falacrine divined that one of the empires greatest heroes, Pilus Prior Mithika, is still alive and in the western reaches of the empire but are unable to divine his exact location.
Your party has been assembled by the preists of Delaquain to carry the scroll to the western reaches of the empire, into lands splintered by demi-human hordes, fleeing mercenaries, free towns and other strange people, to find Captain Mithika so that he can help to reunite the empire - or so the priests hope.
| Cranefist |
The necromancer took the body of Oran Blackhat into the church basement to raise him. The old man stood up, his magical two handed sword seated on the table beside him, his arms and legs shackled to the floor (the church came with those). For two days the necromancer taunted the old man with the promise of unholy resurrection or threatened him with a path back to hell, hoping to obtain the location of the Blackhat treasure and the keys to enter its resting place, having known that the unholy could not pass its threshold. Oran taunted back, "you foolishly released my son from his tomb, and now he has escaped you. release me as well and I'll put a leash on him."
The next day, the necromancer was rattled to his core when he became aware that something was breaking his spells and returning the dead to the earth - flashes of holy light and positive plane energy seemed bright as the sun to him - and rattled him to his core. Not having obtained the knowledge he sought from Oran, and fearing he was out of time, he gathered his things and prepared to flee.
Then, as he readied himself to vanish up the chimney when the doors to the chapel opened. Oran laughed, "pathetic - look at where your machinations have left us. I had nearly crawled back to the gates of hell, and now I will return to its deepest pits when the priests return. You will watch my son surpass you in power, if the men who seek you do not end you first."
And then... nothing happened. The priests retreated. The necromancer, laughing with glee, gained knowledge from Oran of the location of the crypt and treasure, though even Oran didn't actually know how one such as himself could pass the wards. The necromancer returned the old devil back to hell, but only just beyond its gate, and before his pursuers could return with power from the morning sun, he burned the city, destroyed the remnants of his rituals and all those who might rise under the Blackhat's influence alone, and returned towards home, only to uncover another crisis awaiting his attention.
The Blackhat treasure, according to the necromancer, may hold the key to containing the son. According to the priestess at the temple above, the treasure includes a box holding the souls of the most perverse evil dead from their family, protected from the wrath of hell fire, but sealed away from the living people of the earth.
Will the necromancer seal away another soul or use those inside for his own evil purposes?