An Eberron Campaign Plan (long)

I am posting this mainly on the WotC boards, but they are having some serious problems and more ideas are just about always better. So, here are a few posts from that site cross posted over here.

I am planning a campaign that should start in January and I want to do something... different. Something I've never done before. Before you go on, there will be spoilers regarding the Shadow's of the Last War adventure. Not many, but consider yourself warned if you care about such things.

I plan to start the campaign in the Spring of 994 YK. A small band of infiltrators has been requisitioned to steal into a secure Cannith laboratory in the town of Whitehearth. At the same time though, a small force of Emerald Claw soldiers attacks the town and begins to plunder it of all manner of valuables.

During this havok the PCs may notice that there is a strange mist gathering about their ankles. Very thin, but as the conflict rages on (hopefully managing to get the feel of a race between the Claw and the PCs to get into the Cannith Lab first and get the Glazed Macguffin) it thickens and drifts higher and higher. By the time the chill of the mist is about their knees things should get pretty freaked out. Hopefully the PCs haven't gotten into the lab by the time the Mist is thickening about their waist, because I would hate to miss thier faces when I describe a rolling wall of the stuff a hundred feet high rushing towards them. Moments before the Wall hits the PCs there is a scream of metal and the heads of the metal hydra lift above the town and begin to spray superheated glass over the entire town as a last ditch effort to protect the lab above all else. The last thing the PCs will feel is a blast of scalding heat and then the chill of the Mist as it rolls over them.

Fast forward to a time where the PCs start moving again. Encased in glass they can barely move, but they strain and try to free themselves from their prison. They encounter another band of adventurers trying to break into the (now ruined) Cannith Lab and are mistaken for glass zombies. A few rounds of combat go by. The other party's cleric cannot turn them (naturaly) and this causes some concern, but eventually the other group will notice something odd.

"What the... these zombies are BLEEDING!"

The lacerations from struggling against the sharp glass is taking its toll on the PCs, but if they try to surrender and plead for aid I will certainly spare them. Even if they don't, the good and just priest of the whatever I feel like will try to subdue them to find out what is going on. A wizard will cast shatter to free them from the glass and the PCs will get a few rounds of parley before the Emerald Claw strikes again.

Violence ensues.

When the combat clears, the PCs will be alone again after the other party is slain as well as the Emerald Claw squad. With minor prompting they should be willing enough to head into the Lab and complete their mission and head out of the Mournlands with appropriate horror at what has happened to this once beautiful land in the space of what seems like minutes to them.

Then some other adventures happen... things occur and other such bits of a campaign take place. Eventually they discover something.

They cannot die.

You heard me.

Cannot die.

Oh, they still fall to the ground at -1 and to all appearances are dead at -10 (save for Deathwatch spells... they make the caster's head hurt), but instead they simply start healing at a normal rate. After a day of complete rest (and you can't get much more restful than a death like coma) they get twice thier hitpoints back and probably come to conciousness again. They just can't actually manage to cross over into Dolurrh.

Once they figure this out, I hope my grin will be suitably unnerving. The Mournlands have touched them. Changed them in strange and uncertain ways. I'll figure out more between now and then, but for now let me say that there WILL be a penalty for dying.

Taint rules are all well and good for short forays into the places where taint dwells, but for an extended campaign of it? Nah. Wasting away right away is a bit much to expect, but surely there is SOMEthing to be done... lets see...

HEY! Madness rules in the Wheel of Time book will work nicely! Every level the PCs gain will net them a d6 of variant taint that will chisel away at their minds and slowly twist their bodies. Every time they die they will get 2d6. As the rating gets higher the madness is harder and harder to keep in check.

Maybe I can roll on a homebrewed table to see if ghosts show up around the body when it comes back from "death" or a nalfeshee or marut shows up to bedevil the party and try to drag the hapless adventurer back to Dolurrh (where he won't fade away, but instead gain madness at an increased rate. One per hour or something).

The campaign will go from a standard D&D type game to a race against time to find cures for their deteriorating condition.
The Twelve may have a ritual that binds them together and makes their will to fight this curse stronger when they are together. Buying them more time, but still not enough.
They may have to navagate the Byzantine politics of the Church of the Silver Flame to speak with the Keeper in hopes that the Flame will purify them (it probably won't. the evil that germinates within them is too great).
They may be hunted by Ashbound or even Gatekeeper Druids who have found out about them and want them destroyed.
The Emerald Claw would certainly want to capture them and find out if the powers of the Mist may be harnessed for their nefarious ends.
Perhaps they will find out that they are now living seeds of another Mournland and when the curse finally takes its course another blasted waste will arise.
Perhaps the only way to stop the curse from taking full effect... is to find a way to die.

(cont)

Well, as a whole the Dead Grey Mists are the manifestation of the Dark Powers that have taken root in Eberron. Yes, those are capital letters and yes they are the same Dark Powers of Ravenloft. They have been twisted and decreased in power since the Great Planar Cataclysm (read, the switch from 2nd to 3rd edition) but they are still potent forces unknowable to mortal minds. The Lord of Blades is probably the Dark Lord of this particular area, but he may be a misunderstood hero. I am not certain yet.

The party IS connected to the Mournland in strange and mysterious ways. They can probably heal normally in there (which would freak any guide out immensily) and one option they might persue is that if they can dissapate the Dead Grey Mists somehow then their curse may be lifted. This would involve finding out what the Mists actually ARE though in order to act against them and would probably take a trip to Argonnessen to find the heirs of Vvaraak to teach them an Incantation to bring back to the Gatekeepers so that the Dark Powers would be sealed away in their own private Idaho again. I mean Demi Plane.

The Mournlands would continue to be a frightening place and probably any difference would be impossible to dicern, but the actual looming threat of more Mournlands happening would be gone. Rather Call of Cthulu ish. The world is saved, but nobody notices. The DemiPlane of Dread would be back in business, but also back to having to steal people away rather than affect a Prime World directly.

One idea I am toying about with is that very few of the bodies in the Mournlands are actually dead. They are just in stasis and the PCs were the only ones to break free of that stasis and wander about. If any other bodies were removed from the Mournlands they would start getting up and walking about. Of course, without the good fortune of BEING PCs the curse would take root faster in them. In the course of a few weeks there will be cases of people breathing out Dead Grey Mist as they slowly go mad (can't wait till I can describe one of the PCs as doing this as a sign of the curse advancing). Then little pockets of Mournlands appear like cancerous blights on the world.

Maybe the Lords of Dust will get involved at that point. They want to go back to ruling the world after all and they are NOT going to let some upstart demiplane be King of the Hill! Mmmmm... allied rakshasas!

I think I will be looking at three Acts for the campaign starting about 8th level. I like mid level campaigns best. About four sessions or so an Act (give or take naturally). That should make for a nicely paced story that doesn't get too bogged down in itself. Of course, if the players have any side quests they jaunt off to then all the better, but for this endevor I am thinking more along the lines of a movie rather than a series.

Act one will be the discovery of the curse and the general concequences there of. This will include the introductory scenario in the first post, a few adventures here and there and the inevitable first ressurection. I imagine there will be a series of rather foolish events as PCs try to test the boundries of their "immortality" and find that each time they die they become a little more damned. Once this is fully realized there will be plenty of room for

Act Two. This will be the actual quest to find a cure. A few relatively minor step and fetch events should go by with some descriptive scenes of magical experimentation before the final clue is revealed. I really want to get SOME use out of my Rathess Exalted book, so I think I will tone the magical technology down a few notches and use it for Haka'torvak. There will be much daring dealings with blackscale lizardfolk and negotiations with the Cold Sun tribes and I dare say a Poison Dusk assasin that may well be the nemisis for the rest of the game.
So long as they avoid the notice of the Dragon (they would have no hope of taking the wyrm on at 10th level or so) they should have access to a Grand Orrery that would allow fairly detailed divinations. A withered Cold Sun shaman may have to be taken to the site to use the ancient device.

Then we go into Act Three which I speak vaguely of in my previous post.
They will need to find a way to get to Syrania. I think that Syrania may well be coterminous for this event. No, wait. Remote. But if they manage to highjack an airship in Sharn, circle it high enough to cross over the planar barrier that (for the sake of the plot) exists at the highest reach of the manifest zone all the while avoiding Lyrandar interceptors and airborne Sharn militia then they will cross over into the Azure Sky.

Then there is the issue of finding the Angel's Graveyard, for which I intend to use Monte Cook's "Curnorost, Realm of Dead Angels" from Beyond Countless Doorways. Something I summerized here a while ago. To find the Great Cathedral that has the Celestial Grail (for lack of better terms) would be a strange undertaking, but no less than managing to get back to the prime and hop over to another plane with a goblet that you can't spill. I won't tell them about the uses of a Glove of Storing, but I hope they figure out that one might be handy.

Then to head over to Dolurrh. A slight adventure there, lightly dusted (HAH!) with encounters with the deadly assasin from the Poison Dusk tribe whos rakshasa masters want the curse to run its course. Perhaps a lone Lord of Dust (some one who bet on the other side of the office pool) will appear to the party at night with cryptic hints and a strange artifact that could help them avoid scaled death.

Dolurrh itself will be a simple excercise in will and fortitude. A Marut here, a nalfeshee there for color, but the main drive will be keeping the party safe from the overwhelming apathy of the plane. Once they get to the Judge of the Dead (should he be jackal headed? I can't decide) they must plead their case with eloquence and skill. Or just simple desperation. It all depends. Add one last encounter with the trailing assasin (probably raised from the dead as a revenant or something at this point) and allow the party to die, sip from the cup of purification and pass into the Great Unknown.

That seems to be the basic skeleton of the campaign. I haven't decided on any other bits as yet since that will be mainly the decision of the players and me reacting to their actions. Who will they go to for help? What payment will these parties demand? Would they DARE go to the Hags for assistance?


Those are some of the better bits (IE all I could snage before the boards shut down again). Maybe not very wellput together, but you can get the idea. Shame I had the impulse to do this right before running off to work.

Thanks for reading and anybody who chooses to help out, thanks for that too!

Dude, thanks for the tip, but I can read regular font just fine. Making it freaky huge doesn't make your idea any better than just typing it out normally.