My intent between Thanksgiving and Christmas was to revisit
the Dalek dungeon. I liked the drow Wizard and wanted to create an adventure to
lead into the final encounter. The story is shaping up well, though I’ve yet to
finish all of its parts. I made it modular with a variety of choices on how to
proceed that all led to the same finale.
While working on it, I asked Thomas what kind of magic item
to use in one part of the encounter. I wanted something big and important,
something unique. He suggested a palantÃr
and a light went off in my head. I’ve wanted to run two kinds of adventure
since reading The Lord of the Rings,
one involving a quest for the seven lost palantiri and the other to defeat the
Witch King of Angmar. When he made his suggestion, the two snapped together
perfectly. The artifact is one of the lost stones, and the Witch King is
desperate to have it. Unfortunately, the drow armies have long been battling
with the Witch King for dominance of the ice realm of Angmar. The drow Wizard
has been gathering supplies and support to combine with her alliance of Frost
Giants against the Witch King’s forces. While doing so, she became aware of the
lost stone and its attractive appeal to the Witch King and is eager to recover
it first and use it against him.
The encounter in this adventure can be resolved in a couple
of ways. Either the drow get away with the treasure and it serves as an ongoing
temptation to the party to continue searching for it, or the characters end up
with it, thwarting the drow’s plans, but with no idea of what they hold. I
don’t know yet what to make it, so it would require some activation to be
useful. In any event, the stone would require a quest of its own to research
and discover its powers. It would also be a lightning rod for attention from
the drow and the Witch King’s forces.
The Witch King is a Death Knight, with a following of undead
and similar shadow dwellers. He would be the focus of a future adventure, one
connected with researching the stones. For now, he is another big monster to be
concerned with. Perhaps he is associated with other kinds of giants and various
dragons as well as the undead.
There is a war going on in the background between these two
camps, well up in the mountains, but with constant trickle-down effects making
their way into the civilized world. There are parties looking for the stones
(or info on them), there are raiders seeking food, money, or slaves, and there
are fugitives of the war streaming down out of the hills looking for new lives
(giants, orcs, ogres, etc.,). The beauty of this is that their flight is likely
to drive others out ahead of them, so an adventuring party could encounter any
number of creatures in any setting.
It also makes sense to keep the big leaders alive for as
long as possible, so they can recur throughout a campaign arc. They are
constantly taken to the brink and driven away, only to resurface in a new way
with a new threat.
This is a long-term project in the main areas, but could
generate immediate casual encounters within the storyline. I like the idea of some unique magic items/artifacts. The trouble with the current system and magic items is that they're all the same, 1st level or 30th, only the attack bonuses increase. A vorpul used to be a unique and powerful item, as was a Holy Avenger, or a +5 Defender. It would be nice to reincorporate some of that element if possible.
My attempt at adding an artifact had mixed results. The build up worked great - I worked that sword into a couple adventures, then built a couple more around getting the thing... But once it was in play, I never quite worked out what was supposed to happen when someone got their hands on it, so just swiped the plot of the LOTR (toss it into the crack o' doom!). I tried to build an adventure round that, but we were running out of time - it all happened about the time we stopped playing, so I ended up skimping on the adventure and then running it in a pretty perfunctory way. Which is just as well, since I never liked that ending anyway... Still, that sword worked very nicely before that - as background, and motivation; the machine itself was very cool, and if we had been playing enough at the end to use it, might have proved to be an endless source of plot and adventure.
ReplyDeleteSo - it's a very productive idea. I think that's what we need, too - to have a couple background story lines we can tap into, that can be used to motivate specific encounters. More than one - an artifact, political machinations, external wars or rivalries (invasions by some monster or other) - they may or may not directly involve people, but if they give us reasons to bring in situations, NPCs, monsters - and give us ways to string encounters together, they are all to the good.
Anyway - I have to say, relics and whatnot might be more interesting before the artifact actually turns up. It kind of worked that way with Geronimo's sword, and that thing was a decidedly Artifactual object. The ones they have now seem very dull. You get some pretty nice enhancements, you get a daily power or two - they get better or worse depending on how well you fit the artifact... duly numbered of course... I don't know. It's all very codified, and none of them seem all that inspiring, in themselves. Someone needs to find that organ they had back in the old books - that was worth having!