Psion
Adventurer
Hey all!
I was looking at dropping bits of Requiem for a God in my game, and was kicking a few ideas around. I was also looking for ways to involve my players meaningfully in stuff in Plot & Poison, and some of the ideas I was kicking around in my head sort of led me in the direction of involving the Drow.
First when I considered how to involve the death of a deity in my campaign, I considered which deities had been or might be killed. This is a short list:
Whew! Well, there is it. I am looking for any other angles/devious ideas on this, such as commentary on any of the above.
I am also looking for ways to tie the drow in stronger so as to use plot & poison more. The drow already have some involvement in the local campaign region. It's an isolated island that the drow can only access by an ancient underground gate. Most of the local drow are minority/outcast clans, and some do have ambitions in the surface world in their various bids for power.
What I was sort of thinking is that the players might accidentally draw their interest to the other deities. The players might join the Memento Mori in seeking out the remnants of Paralite. However, they capture and/or kill the memento mori NPC and through him or his stuff discover things about other divine remnants. One of the desperate drow houses launches some mad plan in a bid to gain power.
Ideas?
I was looking at dropping bits of Requiem for a God in my game, and was kicking a few ideas around. I was also looking for ways to involve my players meaningfully in stuff in Plot & Poison, and some of the ideas I was kicking around in my head sort of led me in the direction of involving the Drow.
First when I considered how to involve the death of a deity in my campaign, I considered which deities had been or might be killed. This is a short list:
- Paralite - Paralite is already part of the history of my campaign. Basically, he was a charismatic drow/cambion who ascended to godhood and made a mad bid for power. He was slain by an adventuring party on his "home" plane.
Paralite is significant in the campaign because he basically reshaped drow worship systems and started a civil war. He drew many drow to his worship, and after he was slain, his former followers could not exactly return to the worship of the spider queen. This led to many drow following a great variety of deities. Essentially, I marginalized the spider queen in my game.
Since I had already killed a deity in my game, he was one of the more obvious choices, though he was of low enough power (divine power 5) and his death was long enough ago that his death site will probably no longer harbor many remnants.
Still, his existence may be an essential linking point in my game. I want the drow to get involved in the game, and perhaps requiring the players to travel though drow controlled territory would be a chance to do that.
- Balaam An ancient deity I spent little time detailing, he was supposed to be a very old deity of secrets and trickery whose more humanoid children have taken over his portfoios. If I do anything with him, it will be mostly for background flavor. I never said that he died, but is an immediate candidate for the "faded and forgotten" method of destruction.
- Elmarion Elmarion was one of the first of my campaign deities I considered slaying due to a) dispensibility, b) story potential, and c) convenience of being the victim of the event. She is a deity of light and magic and has aspects worshipped by both the elves and a human culture.
In 2e, I attributed the heightening of magic in the world and the existence of channelers (from S&P) to Elmarion as a "gift" to the world. In 3e, I sort of translated channelers to sorcerers.
There were other events in the world that led to greater prevalence of magic (the surging of the ley lines, the falling of a meteor that brought wild magic, etc.) that I didn't attribute to her, but I might retroactively assign to her.
As to why, in my game world, the actions of the divine are limited by a divine compact that most divinities are signatories to. The compact limits the interference of deities in the world and limits their ability to act against one another. One of the essential aspects of the compact is that if you break the compact, you lose its protection. Some deities have flaunted this aspect of the compact and live to tell, though. (For example, Selna, the goddess of the moon and fate, destroyed all lycanthropes on the world and nothing happened to her.)
Now, what I am thinking is that if I attribute these swings in the power of magic to Elmarion, it would explain why she would be a viable target: the fact that she meddles so overtly in the world made her a target of evil deities either a) eager to steal her power or b) eager to avenge past grudges.
- Undertermined Evil God (???) - I just LOVE the idea Monte puts forth in the book of a cabal of evil deities descending on one of their own to gain power. I just have to throw this in.
But how? I pretty much only define evil deities that I use, and I am not too eager to dispense with most of those (Idan, god of tyranny; Shintar, god of famine and cold; Loviatar, goddess of pain and disease; Nocticula, patroness of witches; Arimesan, god of bloodlust and beasts.) That being the case, I may want to create a little know evil deity who gets pulled into this mess or borrow one from a supplement (like AEG's Evil or Undead).
Okay, here I am up against my own divine compact again. I'm thinking that these evil deities wouldn't trust each other as far as they could throw them, so one is not likely to voluntarily lose compact protection.
So there are some possibilities here. Perhaps the evil deities act in concert against Elmarion, but one is only tricked into thinking that she is without the compact's protection, and the evil deities set him up to do this act and then turn upon him. It'd have to be a pretty good ruse to trick a deity, though.
Other possibilities include that Idan's recent actions (like bringing in artifacts from another world) stripped him of his protection, and a deity seeks to take him down and take his power, but Idan proves to be too much to handle. This doesn't really explain why the rest of the deities don't try to take out Idan, other than perhaps they fear him, so this is plan B.
Plan C is that Idan is the deity taken out. This seems obvious, but due to his role in the campaign, I am not fond of the idea. If I entertain this idea at all, I would probably work it from the angle of ressurecting the deity later.
Whew! Well, there is it. I am looking for any other angles/devious ideas on this, such as commentary on any of the above.
I am also looking for ways to tie the drow in stronger so as to use plot & poison more. The drow already have some involvement in the local campaign region. It's an isolated island that the drow can only access by an ancient underground gate. Most of the local drow are minority/outcast clans, and some do have ambitions in the surface world in their various bids for power.
What I was sort of thinking is that the players might accidentally draw their interest to the other deities. The players might join the Memento Mori in seeking out the remnants of Paralite. However, they capture and/or kill the memento mori NPC and through him or his stuff discover things about other divine remnants. One of the desperate drow houses launches some mad plan in a bid to gain power.
Ideas?