Seven Deadly Sins #5: Greed

I'm A Banana · Dec 6, 2003

Continuing the theme of having you guys give me ideas...

For those just joining us, my current campaign revovles around the seven deadly sins. At each stop, the plane-hopping PC's find a celestial that has fallen to the sin, and go through the redemption of the celestial. Most recently, they attacked a tower of Wrath, and gave Justice to an angry celestial who went on a little rampage...

Next up on the list is Greed, and I need a bit of help in thinking of how the PC's will be challenged here....

1) The related information: Greed's color is yellow, and the animal is the frog/toad. The more these can be worked into the villains here the better...

2) What plane should this be on? I'm thinking Acheron or Baator or similar, with the wealth and opulence being involved, though it could be interesting to even take this one to the Upper Planes...Bytopia, pehraps, with it's mercantilism?

3) The contrary virtue to Greed is Charity, giving of yourself to others freely.

4) How did the celestial fall to greed? How can greed seem to be in the best interests? It's important that this fall is something the PC's can choose between...greed should seem like a rational choice in the matter....and how should Charity be represented to counteract it?

Thanks for the ideas in advance! I'm looking forward to seeing what you can give me.

I'm A Banana · Dec 7, 2003

Is there anyone?

ConnorSB · Dec 7, 2003

oh man, will I have to do all the work again?

How about a celestial accountant, one of the catalogers of the soul, who started taking a cut off the top, stealing a bit of every soul that went down in his books, until he outright began stealing the souls from heaven, funneling them into his own retreat, where he hordes the souls of innocent people, adding to his power.

The number of souls he owns would determine his power level or possibly his defences. with all the souls he stole behind him, he is really hard to kill. so to defeat him the players have to somehow make him give up the souls, a sort of forced charity, before they can kill the celestial.

The celestial of course would look like some sort of toad, and the souls he has swallowed, and are raging inside his gullet (you can see thier sick glow throuhg his translucent skin.) His mooks would probably be slaad, which he is paying in souls, and he would have some sort of soul sucking breath weapon, or a "croak of the forlorn", where he actually destroys a soul, releasing crazy painful energy to everyone around him. Maybe he has a thrall of cultists who he eats (they wear yellow), and every time he takes thier souls, the power released harms those around him (like the pcs) and heals him. Imagine this: as they fihgt him, the frog-angel-demon shoots his tongue out, grabs a screaming victim from the throng of cultists, and eats it. The victim's body turns to radience, which the frog also eats. As the victim's soul is swallowed, there is a magical backlash which explodes outward, hurting the PCs. but the toad has only gained in strenght, growing larger and meaner...

ConnorSB · Dec 7, 2003

Oh, and how did Wrath work out? The bear mean enough for 'em?

BrooklynKnight · Dec 7, 2003

|hijack| ITS PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME! |/hijack|

Altalazar · Dec 7, 2003

ConnorSB said:
oh man, will I have to do all the work again?

How about a celestial accountant, one of the catalogers of the soul, who started taking a cut off the top, stealing a bit of every soul that went down in his books, until he outright began stealing the souls from heaven, funneling them into his own retreat, where he hordes the souls of innocent people, adding to his power.

The number of souls he owns would determine his power level or possibly his defences. with all the souls he stole behind him, he is really hard to kill. so to defeat him the players have to somehow make him give up the souls, a sort of forced charity, before they can kill the celestial.

The celestial of course would look like some sort of toad, and the souls he has swallowed, and are raging inside his gullet (you can see thier sick glow throuhg his translucent skin.) His mooks would probably be slaad, which he is paying in souls, and he would have some sort of soul sucking breath weapon, or a "croak of the forlorn", where he actually destroys a soul, releasing crazy painful energy to everyone around him. Maybe he has a thrall of cultists who he eats (they wear yellow), and every time he takes thier souls, the power released harms those around him (like the pcs) and heals him. Imagine this: as they fihgt him, the frog-angel-demon shoots his tongue out, grabs a screaming victim from the throng of cultists, and eats it. The victim's body turns to radience, which the frog also eats. As the victim's soul is swallowed, there is a magical backlash which explodes outward, hurting the PCs. but the toad has only gained in strenght, growing larger and meaner...

Oh man, you leave out the obvious charity choice here - the PCs freely give up THEIR souls to save and free all of the taken ones. After that, their bodies become automotons, which are then vulnerable to possession from demons, who then take over their bodies. In the meanwhile, the character's souls are gone... hmm... and if you believe in reincarnation, they are all reborn as superior beings becaues of their sacrifice - so they start off with new characters with good stats, but 1st level, and then the BBEG are their former bodies which are off rampaging the lands, and which they will eventually have to deal with... or is that too twisted?

Pramas · Dec 7, 2003

Sounds like you should pick up the Book of Fiends when it comes out. Our version of Gehenna is based on the seven deadly sins and features lots of daemons that tie into the idea. Those lust daemons are foul too.

Ridley's Cohort · Dec 7, 2003

How about a celestial who chose the path of greed out of dedication to his ideals? He is a being of action, and wants to amass more power because he does the most Good with it.

Of course this obession with power over the eons slowly becomes a matter of hording wealth and power. He has less and less time to actually do any Good with the amassed wealth. He needs to protect his horde from Evil who might want to steal it! Yes! That is even better, the celestial now sees himself as hording power and wealth in an effort to keep it out of the hands of evil...

This could be twisted into an interesting warning to greedy heroic players.

I'm A Banana · Dec 8, 2003

Wrath worked out great. I gave the ursine the half-fiend template, so it was a bit less than challenging....but giving it the power to absorb every point of damage as bonus hit points until doused with Justice (the boiling water outside the castle) made sure that it had a while after they figured it out. Of course, it didn't help that they had a frenzied berserker hitting it for 90-some points of damage each round, granting it more and more hp...that thing took a couple RL hours to wittle down, and the party was suffering by the end, even though it only dealt about 2d4+10 points of damage per blow (after Blasphemey, this was painfull...

)

I'm eager to see the Book of Fiends, but my campaign may be over by then...only a few left.

As for the ideas for Greed so far, I'm lovin' 'em. I like that he's greedy for souls, and he devours them to gain power, and having the PC's sacrifice to show the celestial Charity (though having them re-start characters would be a bit harsh...but I can mess with 'em enough to hurt.

). I like the concept that he was originally hoarding this power for good deeds, to make sure he could fight off evil when it comes...it'll be the first Celestial they meet who truly thinks he's fighting the good fight...mwahahahahahahahaa.

Castellan · Dec 8, 2003

Is there a chance you could either (a) provide links to other discussions about this campaign, or (b) provide a run-down on the campaign at some point? This sounds like a really good concept, and I might be in the market to blatantly steal some of these ideas for a future campaign with my group.