You're a villain. How would you change the world? Contest with prizes. (Spoilers for ZEITGEIST)

In the ZEITGEIST adventure path, a villainous organization is deciding just how it wants to change the world. We're asking EN World to help us make that decision. If you're playing ZEITGEIST, you should probably get out of this thread.

Everyone else, vote for whichever faction's plan appeals to you most. One member of each of the five main factions will win a free PDF copy of our ZEITGEIST Act One compilation, which combines the first five adventures of the campaign. Also, we'll choose one person who we feel best contributed to the event and reward them with a hardcover version of the book when it's ready. (Estimated delivery date January 2014.)

Finally, after our ZEITGEIST Kickstarter project finishes on July 15th, we'll hold an additional secret vote open only to Kickstarter backers and to EN World community supporters.

You can vote for up to three factions, and the results of this vote will be reflected in the ZEITGEIST adventure path. Join us, and decide the fate of the world!

Oh, also, a few notes.

Basically, the plan is to perform a ritual that will alter the nature of reality. So you should choose which New World Order most appeals to you, plus perhaps vote for one or two of the minor factions that you'd like to add on.

The first five factions are the major power groups among the villains. Factions marked with an asterisk (*) are minor factions that can easily be included in one of the major groups' plans. Factions marked with two asterisks (**) are fringe and radical ideas no one is publicly admitting to.

If you want more details behind the villainous conspiracy and their plans, please see our discussion thread.

I lean to Watch Makers / Nationalist / War Mongers, they keep the rest of the world in a state of war, while keeping their nation supreme.

Panarchist/Sky League/Materialists

Panarchist - These guys have the right balance of good intentions and bad methodology, with the right level of presumption built in. This is the group I'd expect Watchmen's Ozymandius to be in, and that's the metric I'd personally use for determining what's what.

Sky League - Because then I'd have a reason to insist on the presence of Flying Whales. Because /Flying Whales/.

Materialists - They just strike me as the right level of malignant. Not 'end the world' crazy, but a major, world-changing goal no less. Amorals sit here too, but I'd be more interested in seeing the fallout if the Materialists succeeding.

I'm devious.

First I will make a Celestial Bureaucracy. After a few years of celestrial rule I would spark a Panarchist rebellion based on the people's resentment of a Angels telling the mortals how to live their lives. With a vague whisper and promise of unlimited superpowers, I will grant superpowers to random (mostly embittered) individuals knowing that few among the empowered will find themselves wanting to become the new overlords of creations. Then I will assassinate the hero of the empowered and the Celestrial hero igniting a war. As a result of the battles between the "Celestrials" and the "Empowered", mundanes will be force to decide who they want to lord over them. Meanwhile I would initiate a Weapon-Monger agenda and begin building Angel-killing and Super-Power nullification weapons, knowing that some mortals will choose to eliminate both the Divine and Empowered alike, causing a perpetual arms race.

I dig it. Please prepare your villainous monologue for when the heroes bust in to thwart your devious plan while celestials and empowereds battle on the fields outside your palace.

Your non-flying palace, though, since you didn't vote Sky League.

Miller's Pyre. This conspiracy has the chance to change the world for the better, and I love the idea that a desire to do good is at the heart of it all, justifying short-term acts of evil for the long-term prosperity of all sentient beings. (But there is a delicious contradiction inherent in a vote for Miller's Pyre, which I will explain at the end of my post.)

The doctrine of Miller's Pyre is that all evil stems from the capacity of sentient races to 'dehumanise' (for want of a better term) large sections of the population - whether that be a different race, nationality or subclass; in war or at peace. Miller's Pyre does not seek to hardwire 'goodness' which removes freewill, but simply to cause individuals to feel the pain they inflict more sharply. It makes no judgements beyond that, and does not try to predict what challenges the world will face in the furture.

This choice is the most benign choice - the only one that hands free will back to the people, and does not focus power in the hands of the individual. Every other potentially benign choice - Parnarchists, Colossus - assumes an essential goodness in humanity (I use the term to cover all sentient races) which history has proved does not exist.

For those who like the idea that their players will be confronted with an essentially benign conspiracy, which has gone badly - and accidentally - wrong, and whose authors must be confronted with the wickedness of their means, not their ends, this is the only choice. It is the most original precisely because it is unquestionably good, whereas the flawed wisdom and logic of other seemingly benign choices would not take long at all to pick out, thereby avoiding a juicy moral dilemma.

The other, lesser choices are much less important, but insofar as most interfere with my primary choice in some way, I'm going with Sky League because, well... why not? And Humble Hook, because I'd rather we did nothing that something nefarious.

I would like to choose aegis if it was possible to achieve with our spare plane. It might even be feasible for Miller's Pyre to ally with Sky League and Aegis together if the right combination can be found.

A vote for Miller's Pyre is a vote for moral complexity; a vote for juicy dilemmas of the kind that give players nightmares. So from a metagaming perspective it is not a vote for 'goodness' at all! In fact, I would go so far as to argue that the cruellest and most wicked DMs would vote this way if only to torment their PCs.

The sound of a cane rapping on the stone floor of the assembly hall draws your attention to a tall and slender man. His dark hair is pulled back into a long ponytail, revealing the lengths of the pointed ears which mark him as a high elf. He wears a finely-cut red suit with a white cravat. He leans forward on his mithral cane and peers through his spectacles at the assembled conspirators.

"My brethren," he begins, "my name is Leyander Colt and I speak on behalf Lady Kasvarina Varal in her absence. I needn't remind you that our people are a long-lived race, and many of us alive today still remember the pain and death caused by the Great Malice centuries ago. An entire race of people brought to its knees by a single horrific act spurred by xenophobia and intolerance. With the power we will soon command, one of our goals should be to make sure nothing so devastating ever happens to anybody in this world again. And the key to achieving this is to eliminate the baseless fears and misunderstandings of the myriad peoples of Lanjyr."

Leyander taps his cane again as he continues. "You have heard the members of other factions speak of their own plans to change the world: industrialize nature's bounty, grant godlike powers either to the elite or to the laymen, even eliminate free will entirely. We know not what horrific consequences such drastic changes to our cosmology might render. Better, then, to take a gentle hand with our ministrations. I say to you, we need not shake the very core of the multiverse to find peace in our time. All we need is to allow everybody to clearly see the viewpoints of one another, to truly understand where a person is coming from. Elf, human, beggar, king, Danoran, Risuri--in the end, we are none of us so different from one another.

"Empathy. Expression. Logic. With just a few subtle changes, we can eliminate the need for fighting, the desire for war. Word and thoughts will win the day, not guns and magic. And within our plans, there is still room for expansion--to bolster our defenses against potential extraplanar incursions, or to allow extra enjoyment of our newfound propensity for expression. Perhaps even the opportunity to bring easy flight to the landbound peoples of the world. When the time comes to vote, I urge you to consider the tenets espoused by Miller's Pyre."

Leyander grins and inclines his head. "I would be happy to debate any of you further on the merits of our vision for the future."

Vote for Miller's Pyre!

@ltclnlbrain: Thanks for writing out such an eloquent representation of the doctrine of the Miller's Pyre faction. I wondered if I would have the time to render it in narrative/oratorical form if no one else did it. By the way - did you vote for the faction already? I didn't see the % increase, so I'm assuming you must have chosen before I did.

[MENTION=79141]gideonpepys[/MENTION]: Yes, I voted for it with the Aegis sub-goal. Now I just hope we can convince others to lean in that direction as well.