I'm going to be DMing a new 3.5 campaign soon and I've been brainstorming long-term campaign planning. In looking for an overarching theme I hit upon fungi, in large part because they have a negative connotation and can be expected to be found both above and below ground. This naturally caused me to reread the Zuggtmoy article in Dragon 337, and the campaign started taking shape in my mind as a fight against her as the archvillain.
I've got some pros and cons to doing this, and would like some feedback about it.
First, on the pro side, Zuggtmoy is a nostalgia name for D&D grognards, as she appeared in Temple of Elemental Evil and got a lot of references in the intervening years. However, she never really got as much play as other evil fiends and gods like Orcus, Vecna, Grazzt et. al., so she's not quite as stale and obvious as some of them might be.
However, it has been noted before that campaigns featuring an archfiend/god as the "final boss" have, at this point, kind of been done to death. This was the structure of the Against the Giants - Descent into the Depths - Queen of Spiders 1E series of modules, and the Age of Worms and Savage Tide adventure paths.
Finally, its possible that Zuggtmoy may not be considered seriously enough to rate as a campaign-ending boss. Her retroactive continuity at this point is that she was duped by Tharizdun and imprisoned by mortals not once but twice, and her last official appearance in a published adventure she had been morphed into an inanimate object (the altar in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil.
Does anyone have feedback on this? Does a campaign centered on fighting Zuggtmoy sound like a yawner? Is she sufficiently badass enough to be taken seriously?
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If playing in the World of Greyhawk, maybe you could advance the timeline a decade or two, then use the recent magical, deific, and demonic upheavals caused by the Shackled City, Age of Worms, and Savage Tide storylines to cause a weakening of Zuggtmoy’s bonds, allowing her a chance to begin subverting the energies sent to Ol’ Tharizdun for her own benefit. At first, your players could be investigating the old and dusty cults of Zuggtmoy, then assume once again they are really fighting Tharizdun, just to discover at the end it really is Zuggtmoy reborn that they must contend with. Plus, should Iuz have failed in his Return to Castle Greyhawk plotting, he might just be more than eager to restore his girlfriend to this world to help him get revenge once more upon the lands that have so long opposed him. Who knows, maybe somehow Zuggtmoy got a tiny piece of the energy released with Demogorgon's death from STAP that has advanced here a few dice from her listings in the Book of Vile Darkness and/or the Fiendish Codex I.
Just a thought
If playing in the World of Greyhawk, maybe you could advance the timeline a decade or two, then use the recent magical, deific, and demonic upheavals caused by the Shackled City, Age of Worms, and Savage Tide storylines to cause a weakening of Zuggtmoy’s bonds...
Good feedback. I hadn't thought of Z turning the tables on Tharizdun, which actually makes sense... since many of the worshippers of Elemental Evil don't know who or what they are actually revering it is plausible that Zuggy could redivert their worship back to her. However, I consider Elemental Evil to be a literally ungodly mess, what with Zuggtmoy, Tharizdun, and all four evil Archomentals muddying the waters. I found it confusing just reading RttToEE, I don't know how players were supposed to sort that mess out.
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Sorry for the delay, work always seems to interfere with life and the post is a bit long.
What do you think about this for a brief work up on the temple, and how it would work in an updated game context? I’m currently using Zuggtmoy in my campaign, though she remains a pawn antagonist, for a much greater evil. She and Tharizdun have always held a soft spot for me, the first real BBEG’s I ever confronted.
For the Temple of Elemental Evil hierarchy, each elemental temple pays service to the Archomentals, as intermediaries for the different aspects of Zuggtmoy, and Tharizdun, in the guise of the Elder Elemental Evil. The Archomentals encourage the infighting amongst the groups to better solidify their positions within the stronger cults of Zuggtmoy and Tharizdun. The Archomentals care little for which particular power they serve, they are content to accept what power comes their way, and perfect their particular form of elemental mayhem. Consider it a MSRP for doing business, they get x amount of power for each worshipper they have, plus a bonus for those eleveated to the higher levels. The rest goes on to Zuggtmoy and Tharizdun.
The Cult of Zuggtmoy is the store-front organization for the real Cult of Tharizdun, though most of the worshippers don’t know this. The leaders believe any word of an active cult of Tharizdun would be met with stronger opposition than would the old and twice beaten fungus demon, so the powers that be for much of the campaign tend to portray themselves as active Zuggies rather than openly display their real desire to see Tharizdun return. They are content to funnel power to Tharizdun via their special altars and an active and hopeful congregation dedicated to Zuggtmoy, oblivious to the reality of the situation. They themselves are deluded by madness and duped by the recent actions of Zuggtmoy.
Tharizdun, during the time of the SCAP, AoE and STAP’s suffered setbacks as the mystical backlash of having so many powerful evil beings destroyed actually gave the forces of good a brief resurgence in power, strengthening the bonds of his prison, and weakening his hold over his followers and his artifacts, which includes the altar prison of Zuggtmoy. This gave Zuggtmoy the opportunity to begin funneling bits of the worshippers’ energies into her self, such that she has returned to some measure of strength and power, albeit still trapped in her limbo prison within the altar of Tharizdun. As the campaign progresses, she reaches out to some of her “worshippers” who really do believe in her, elevating them to positions of power within Tharizdun’s hierarchy, taking control once more, all the while playing the crazed followers of Tharizdun as dupes.
The climax to the campaign could be the release of Zuggtmoy from the altar-prison, the usurping of Shothragot as the new herald of Zuggtmoy on Oerth, or a devious plan by Zuggtmoy to actually free Tharizdun’s energies but not his person from the Black Cyst and use those powers to elevate herself from mere demonhood to actual divinity.
MWAHAHAHAHA!!!! GO THRAZIDUN!! ESCAPE FROM YOUR PRISON IN THE CENTER OF THE SUN AND CONSUME THE UNIVERSE!!!!
ahem.
With Zuggtmoy as a BBEG, you could abandon the TOEE altogether and set her up as a minor demon lord exiled from the abyss. Over millenia, her powers have grown as, unseen, her fungoid tendrils have spread just below the surface of the earth, poisoning the food supplies of the lands around her lair. The first encounter the PCs have with her could involve meeting a village of fungal creatures (its an actual template from Green Ronin's Advanced Beastiary) in their spawning season, when they seek living creatures to kill and infect with their spores. From there, they could investigate underdark tunnels lined with phosphorescent fungi and filled with mushroom-eating derugar in an acid-trip berserker frenzy. If you want to inject the game with a sense of urgency, have one of the PCs start growing spore-filled athlete's foot type sores that resist healing and fill his brain with thoughts of returning to the cool, moist earth. (At a certain point, he may no longer gain sustenance from normal food, and have to start eating decaying plant matter as the fungi invade his organs.)
Giant mushroom caps, filled with pockets of hydrogen gas, float unseen in the clouds, infecting the rain with their seed. Tumbleweeds drift through towns, lashing out tendrils at anything that moves, infecting them with a fungus that sloughs off their skin in a matter of minutes, creating infectious undead and spawning various small monsters from the discarded skin, now a growth medium. Intelligent monsters with the ability to send out root systems, abandon their bodies, and grow new ones at a moment's notice. Fungi that lay just below the surface, full of acid ready to explode on the unlucky person who trods upon their bloated bodies. Seafaring fungi, cocooned in salt-crystal shells, land on the hulls of ships and rot them away. Assassins who use various powders and spores to take control of their victims fungi-eaten minds. Full-body replacement, a human body made of plant matter and controlled by an alien intelligence. Sinkholes develop where the subterranean fungi have started eating at the earth that contains them below ground. Overnight, mushrooms grow from every surface in the town, including the people.
Etc, etc. I think Zuggtmoy as a BBEG is a great choice, as you can go for a slow, infectious approach to world domination, and also she's not overdone at all.
Also, if you want her to rate as a game-ending boss, send minions packed full o' hps and spores at the party. When they meet the big Zug a few encounters later, won't they be suprised when the "dust" in their armor starts to animate against them, and all their weapons grow new wielders!
As far as cool factor goes, though, I can't help there. Its up to you and how well you know your players to come up with something that'll raise the hair on the back of their necks and put their dice hands in kill position.
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I've got a soft spot for Zuggtmoy. Okay, the 3.x incarnation, but still, she could do really well in a campaign focusing on the horrors of slowly spreading infection and corruption, sudden outbreaks, body horror, etc.
You could have some sort of infectious spread originating from Zuggtmoy's cult that slowly turns people into another type of creature altogether, changing their mindset to something alien. While they themselves may be infectious, they could possibly be largely non-evil and might even have bits of their previous personalities intact. So you have a dangerous bunch of people that the PCs could be stuck trying to protect non-infected people while trying to find a way to prevent the infected from being slaughtered wholesale by the inevitable crusade to stop the spread. Druids could actually get a focus here as they're forced to confront an abrubtly changing ecology that needs to find a new balance if anything is going to survive at all.
Goofy as it is, I'd recommend the movie Matango as an example of mind-altering, transmutative fungus that could be disastrous if introduced into non-isolated ecology(or as an illicit drug in cities).
I also just realized I completely missed the TOEE angle and most of the above is inapplicable.
Might I recommend the Seeds of Sehan campaign arc (Dungeons 145-147)? With a little modification to make it more Abyssal (and shroomy) and less Far Realmsy, of course. And perhaps Root of Evil (Dungeon 122), but with a giant mushroom instead of a tree?
All really good suggestions, and I would likly incorporate some of them, but I've already got an outline of the adventures I'd like to run and at which levels, to about level 13. The movie Matango (which I saw as a child under the English name "Attack of the Mushroom People") and the fungoid creature template from Advanced Bestiary is part of what drew me to the fungus theme in the first place. My real concern is whether the basic premise seems lame.
Here is an outline of minimum CRs for fungus-themed or related critters in 3.5:
1: Shrieker, Fetid Fungus, Myconid workers
2: Bogun
3: Phycomid, Violet Fungus, Phantom Fungus, Gas Spore
4: Myconid guard, Otyugh
5: Basidirond, Udoroot, Ascomoid
6: Shambling Mound, Myconid leader, Rot Reaver
7: Myconid sovereign
8: Burrow Root
9-11: --
12: Vathugu, Necrothane Rot Reaver
13: Red Sundew
14: Rukarazyll
I think the premise sounds fine. Even if the players get snarky about the bad guys, having a fight with a lesser BBEG where they nearly get their asses handed to them will make them think twice about cracking jokes- after all, this is a demon lord we're talking about! It reminds me of a saying in my group: "Everyone knows the white dragon only as 'the weakest of the dragons,' but they forget one thing: it's still a damn dragon!"
Anyway, you can expand the list by including some fungus-themed oozes (perhaps just changing the description of the normal oozes to sound more fungus like). Then again, you may not want to invade Juiblex's turf that much.
If you want to establish Zuggtmoy's badass credentials, have her enslave Jubliex and use him as the "obvious" evil the PCs are fighting against at first. Hell, they could enlist the help of some of Zuggtmoy's minions to fight him, knowing of their "rivalry". Of course, doing that just advances her agenda in some behind-the-scenes way.
How about a fungus covered dracolich that breaths a cloud of disease causing spores.
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Tweak the Myconid concept to make them scary fungus people who kidnap humanoids and infest them with spores, turning them into shambling food sources for their young (who sometimes retain creepy distorted facial qualities, and voices, of the people that died to make them, and perhaps the occasional memory...).
The smallest ones would have their 'alarm' spores, which wouldn't just raise the alarm, but also have a fear-inducing quality on those who scare them, and provide limited concealment in quantity. (Multiple clouds at once would just up the DC to avoid being shaken or up the duration for fresh exposures, not actually stack the fears up to panicked!)
The larger ones might have stunning pollen clouds that cause a brief nauseated / sickened condition.
The ruler would be the one who has the mind control pollen and the breeder pollen, allowing it to enslave other people temporarily, and turn the corpses of those they kill into 'zombies.' When the 'zombie' dies, the corpse splits open and a new Myconid spawn crawls out (with some of the facial / vocal / etc. qualities of the host it grew in).
Having the Myconids, traditionally depicted as the 'nice guys' of the Underdark, recast as demon-worshipping creatures that use the bodies of enslaved humanoids as hosts for their fungal offspring, a la Aliens, could totally mess with the experienced D&D player. Due to their plant-like nature, they'd be immune to crits and sneak attack (to the frustration of rogues), some spells (those that affect humanoids in particular) and they would enter combat surrounded with clouds of pollen that, at the minimum, give them concealment (for line of sight spells and melee / ranged attacks) in a way that is superior even to Drow darkness (since the pollen clouds can't be dispelled, nor overcome with any special vision, other than their own Myconid 'eyes' which are, naturally, immune to the irritating stuff.
The leader could have levels of Sorcerer or Druid (perhaps even having some sort of fungal-infested creature, like a bear, statistically, as a Companion?), and the upper ranks could have levels of Adept (with spore-infested bats as Familiars, scouting out their territory?).
Having them function as a kind of hive-mind could also be an interesting variant, and would make them immune to flanking, and most mind-affecting spells, as well. The leader might be a powerful spellcaster, as the head of the hive-mind 'garden,' but get weaker (and stupider, losing Int, Cha and caster levels), the more of the lower ranked ones are killed! He might even have a Shield Other type effect active, that allows him to share damage with his flunkies and appear practically unkillable, until he runs out of flunkies to sponge up the damage...
Some sort of fungus-infected template seems like a no-brainer for minions, and a spellcaster in service to Zug-Zug might Summon fungus-host creatures instead of Celestial or Fiendish ones.
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Muchrooms feed off detrius and waste. Likewise, their demon master Zuggtmoy fuels her plans off of whatever random elements come her way. And that includes the PC's, whom she manipulates into providing her the means of freedom.
Zuggtmoy is not an idiot. Once the party starts interfering with her plans, and once direct confrontation proves inadequate, she should enact a plan to remove them.
As the party gets to be fairly high level, her "captured" agents should drop hint that Tharizdun is the real villain of the piece, and that he's much closer to returning from the Void than anyone thinks.
That will send the PC's scurrying, off to beat up the wrong mad cultists, and possibly interfering with the Great Quiet Gulf's plans.
And if her agents were to point the heroes towards one of those gates which everybody over 1500 years old realizes *must* be kept closed, she can then surreptitiously alert some other godlings, and have a host of serious extraplanar muscle intervene with prejudice against the PCs.
She's not as overwhelmig as Demogorgon. She's not as powerful as a revived runelord. She sits quietly in the dark, planning.
Muchrooms feed off detrius and waste. Likewise, their demon master Zuggtmoy fuels her plans off of whatever random elements come her way.
I just got an image of a vast battlefield after the war is over, full of corpses... wonderful, fungus-nurturing corpses. I'm thinking there needs to be some intrigue here that leads to war between two or more kingdoms, all for the sole purpose of providing corpses as a breeding/spawning ground for fungal minions! This could also serve as the low-level phase of the game, keeping the party interacting with mainly common races and the like. Thus, they aren't tipped off by a fungus theme getting introduced too early, or tired of it by the end of the game (in the way everyone was tired of the color green and the word "worm" by the end of AoW).
Perhaps an orcish horde forms in the wilderness, directed (overtly or covertly) by druids who are (unbeknownst to them) recieving their vision-directions from Zuggtmoy? It could be anything; orcs are just a classic standby.
And for some reason... I also got an image of formians being involved, perhaps as allies of the PCs? I have no clue why that would be. Can anyone think of a reason or a fungus/ant natural (adversarial?) relationship that would pit these entities against each other? Gods know formians don't see a lot of play, so it would probably be a "fresh" element to the campaign!
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And for some reason... I also got an image of formians being involved, perhaps as allies of the PCs? I have no clue why that would be. Can anyone think of a reason or a fungus/ant natural (adversarial?) relationship that would pit these entities against each other? Gods know formians don't see a lot of play, so it would probably be a "fresh" element to the campaign!
Leaf-cutter ants feed off of fungus they cultivate in their warrens, it's possible that a group of Formians might have been tainted and corrupted by fungus that has put them under the thrall of Zuggtmoy.
If not Formians, an older version like Aspis, perhaps.
Or just plain old Giant Ants, but in hive-mind swarms...