I woke up this morning and said to myself: "you know what, Fuel, you're not getting enough gaming time in. you'd better pull yourself together, or the pathfinder community might kick you out and take back your magic decoder ring."
after consulting with myself for, oh, at least 30 seconds i decided i'd fabricate a campaign based on the idea that the Eidions were secretly plotting to take over the world, and that summoners were actually their unwitting pawns (Int 7 is just a con. real Eidions are Int 25 at least. they're just acting dumb). then i thought: "hey, you always wanted to do something with the horrors of the far realms, why not have that as the origins of the eidions and throw some nasty chaosy stuff at the players later?" "Great idea!" i congradulated myself, dislocating an arm as i tried to pat myself on the back.
so now i've got an overarching plan, all i need are some decoys to keep the players running around as they level up to take on the big bads, some confusing subplots to muddy the waters and stop them instantly working it all out, and enough foreshadowing rumours to give them a bit of a hint.
so off the bat i've got some Kobolds for them to chase around at first level. first encounters are going to be with kobold fodder, who's role is to die while observers get an idea of the party's abilities. then they get tracked back to the warcamp, which has some decent loot and more walking experi... i mean, valient kobold warriors. no bosses as yet. so they've delbt with the threat, time to celebrate!, but wait, whats this map and these strange symbols? it looks like the kobolds have a lair nearby.
at this point it starts to actually get hard as they encounter a low-level version of tucker's kobolds. not enough to kill them, but certainly enough to keep them on their toes. then... the posessed shaman leading the tribe. think tenticals, mutations, that sort of jazz.
all well and good, and a nice little hack and slash adventure to get them in the mood, but my questions are these:
how would you advise me to proceed, monster wise?
how should i forshadow the lovecraftian horror that's coming?
and how to i convey the truely alien nature of their foes.
i'll also take any other ideas and advice you throw my way. thanks in advance!
For role playing fun I would give that kobold shaman a wand of bestow curse(insanity). Want to make a party jumpy drive a character nuts. Sounds like you want to go more abomination than anything else so I'd keep running with the possessed critters. A possessed village could be a great lead in as well.
Jak the Looney Alchemist wrote: For role playing fun I would give that kobold shaman a wand of bestow curse(insanity). Want to make a party jumpy drive a character nuts. Sounds like you want to go more abomination than anything else so I'd keep running with the possessed critters. A possessed village could be a great lead in as well. I DM a Legacy of Fire Adventure Path game, where I heavily upped the Rovagug involvement and gave Rovagug a healthy dose of lovecraftian evil. If you are interested in this, I have a campaign log in the Legacy of Fire part of the forums (http://paizo.com/forums/dmtz3oy1?Alternative-to-Moldspeaker ).
After this shameless plug, lets look at your stuff. One thing you should look into are insanity rules. There are quite some rules that tacle this, from the Call of Cthulhu D20 book to the pathfinder version (can't remeber where this was located, but I read about this somewhere).
Monsterwise you should go down the aberration road. But don't just throw them down your players throat, most aberrations are cool boss-type monsters, ranging from evil master minds to the kind of unnatural and forgotten horror, that you would expect in a Lovecraft story. I really like Mindflayers, even though they don't exist on Golarion, but maybe we can cook something up with them? Mindflayers are intelligent, alien, tentacled, rotten evil and don't care about humanity beyond a good meal. Perfect?
If I recall the Mindflayers have had a very advanced civilisation in the far future, until their slaves, the ancestors of the Githyanki and Githerai, rebelled and overthrow them, so that they needed to flee to the past, a mere shadow of their former selfs. This we can work with. How about, that the Eidolons are the minds of the Mindflayers send through time and space, to find a suitable world to enslave? How about, in one of the later adventures, when the players know that something is going about with the Eidolons, that they somehow capture a group of them and reverse it, thereby inhabiting the bodies of the Mindflayers in the far realm and witness firsthand the horrors that awaits their world, should they fail? And after returning they discover, that the Mindflayers minds inhabited THEIR bodies and did some unspeakable things ....
Another thing to look into might be the last book for 3.5 published, Elder Evils. It details some ten big bad world-destroyer endbosses around which a campaign can be build, maybe one of them strikes your fancy.
Or the far realm entities trying to invade our world are sort of a hive mind and have already tainted one of the lesser races, like orcs. So what first looks like just another orc incursion is actually an invasion of an entire other kind. And while the defenders of the world where distracted with the orcs, the peasants got infected ... or the natural world, turning the tainted beasts of nature in their most twisted form against them.
this is just one jumble of ideas I am throwing your way, I hope that something of it is inspiring you :)
@Akumamajin
the insanity rules you're refering to got two runs, first in unearthed arcana then in heros of horror. very cool, but i'd rather not have the players tracking sanity for this campaign. maybe next time, though...
i'm thinking of throwing Kaorti at the players if i can find the book they're in (only got the ecology artical for now, oh well.) those things are seriously nasty. also going to use psudonatural template from complete arcane.
i will check out elder evils, thanks for the tip.
@Jak the Looney Alchemist
Throwing insanity spells at them will be happening later, but it's a little bit cruel at first level. when they're high enough level that they won't feel i'm cheating and resent me... then they're fair game. like the posessed village idea, should make for a nice homecoming for a pc with a background *evil cackle*
There are insanity rules for Pathfinder in the Gamemastery Guide. I recommend giving them a look. They're pretty good.
|
1 person marked this as a favorite.
|
Just a few thoughts:
As the Eidolons get ready to invade, they need the way opened first. And that means making the material plane more like the Far Realms.
The PCs run into all sorts of people who are very upset that the natural order seems to be breaking down. Druids see twisted leylines and warped weather patterns. Clerics get garbled messages from their gods. Wizards noticed that the stars seem to be shifting in the sky. All the people who normally consider themselves In The Know want to know what's going on, and they're willing to hire adventurers to investigate on their behalves.
Summoners notice that their Eidolons are getting stronger. This seems like a good thing... until an angry one turns and eats its summoner. If news of this gets out, the other summoners will be VERY nervous... but nervous enough to give up their greatest resource? After all, THEY never abused their Eidolons like that one must have.
Creatures from the Far Realms start wandering into 'Reality'. Not all of them are world-breaking abominations - some are simply grotesquely WRONG analogues of mundane life-forms, bits of whispered gibberish it's impossible to stop thinking of, places where everything is tinged with abnormal colors, and similar. And some are dangerous: Carnivorous shades of blue, angry free-floating spells, regions of fractured space.
At Ground Zero of the invasion, it should look like a cross between an M. C. Escher drawing, a Terry Gilliam cartoon, and the ninth circle of Hell, as the 'normal' physical laws start breaking down altogether. It'll take a decent chunk of the party's magic just to avoid inhaling poison air, falling off the ground, and/or having their armor turn into angry bees.
A few possibilities . . .
There was one group of mind flayers in a DnD suppliment that were an offshoot who'd been warped by the far realm. Their worldship ran into and got corrupted by a being there before being sent back. So you could have something like that pulling the strings behind all the various plots the players thwart.
level 1
Kobold leader had more funds than their type of creature should have.
level 2
Orc Chieftan had a note urging them to kill a group of interfering druids
level 3
the leader of a human village had an unsent note informing their master that the corruption of his followers was progressing well
level 4
a mysterious being fights the party trying to rescue a far realm being
All these little hints that there's something bigger out there pulling the strings.
If your far realms are preparing an invasion then the gods/demons are going to stop it. Imagine the parties concern when they find out the person who'd hired and instructed them during their earlier levels against this "threat" is some poor soul possesed by a demon. Imagine the confusion if after discovering this and destroying it they then have an obviously good divine being show up and tell them to continue doing what it was paying them for.
As things get closer have more chaotic beings attack the party, not just tentacles, mutations and the like but beings like the teratomorph (although obviously not that given its DND and a CR16) who warp reality itself.
Don't forget your good old run of the mill omen seas becoming boiling hot, stars falling from the sky or burning with an unnatural flame, animals being born with two heads.
Similarly you don't want the enemy knowing your plan so early on have various real prophets or people able to see the future getting "glimpses" of pain, suffering, death and becoming so afraid they either run or invest in massive defenses, wards, guards, dogs, closing up shop etc. At mid-levels have these prophets killed off by the very things they trusted. One could be torn apart by their dogs, another stabbed by their son or daughter, yet another one murdered by a city guard. Those who can talk afterwards mention feeling cold and not knowing why they did it.
As for ground zero I'm picturing a sort of cross between through the looking glass and the DND description. Inside the barrier you've millions of dimensions in the space of a millimeter warping and shifting those who perceive it. Their head sees a vast sweeping snowfield, burning desert, windswept ocean and howling void all in the same place, their body feels like its on fire and their feet seem to be hooves walking in different dirrections. Meanwhile outside all you see is a shifting gray/black dome filled with madmen.
I would start the campaign WITH the big idea. Don't 'get to it' in a year.
So, gnome high cleric casts planar ally to get help with his kobold issue. For whatever reason (summoning magics are becoming less reliable!) he gets the PCs in his thaumaturgic circle.
So, he negotiates with them, and sends them after the kobolds. It's not really going to be much of a choice, the PCs HAVE to obey.
Run the kobolds as planned, but have one of the kobolds be a summoner. Have it's summons go awry, possibly pseudonatural, or something unexpected.
Don't forget the strange/weird/dangerous cults devoted to Far Realms powers. Perhaps a coastal town where the citizens are slowly becoming aquatic abberations, but need 'normal' women to breed with; you know, something Lovecraftian.
Master Arminas
One of the fluffier bits of fluff in the Summoner character description is the spiritual bond between Summoner and Eidion. I think it's almost a given that you pick your most over the top roleplayer and encourage her to play a Summoner. Oh, the angst!
|
