D&D 5E Need help with quests for creating life

dragonfriend7738 · Apr 21, 2019

So I'm playing in a small group to pass the time, and some random shenanigans just happened that have created a completely unexpected campaign hook that has my DM senses tingling, and the rest of the party is cool with me taking the reins for it.

Randomness: we fought a couple gargoyles, and ended up getting a critical success on a random loot table, and found a flawless diamond (a gargoyle heart, for fluff purposes.)

Later in the session, we encounter the ghost of a wizard who died decades prior, and whose keep is currently being used for nefarious purposes.

The party manages to convince the ghost to take residence in the diamond, so that the ghost wouldn't be bound to the decaying keep, and the party could share their experiences with the benevolent spirit.

Now for the campaign hook:

We have a couple options for the ghost:

1) keep it in a portable stone and continue about our adventures (bland.)

2) incorporate the gem into a suit of armor and have the wizard join our adventures a la Alphonse of FMA. (Eh.)

3)build a golem and have the spirit inhabit it (a few fetch quests here)

And 4) use this as an opportunity to create the first/prototype of the 'warforged' race (which doesn't exist in our game yet.)

I really like the last option. It allows for quests to find rare materials, find old friends of the wizards (old dwarves and elves who knew them when they were alive, ect) and create something new and world changing.

I have a couple ideas for quests, but would like suggestions.

For party strength info, we just reached level 5, and the party consists of a fighter/barbarian, a rogue, and a cleric.

Imaculata · Apr 21, 2019

Perhaps creating such a construct requires a rare metal only found in meteorites, but a dragon is guarding a crater left by such an object like a precious treasure.

Or perhaps a personal object of the wizard is required which is now in the possession of an old enemy of his. Perhaps the wizard has a some what checkered past, which can be introduced in this way. Perhaps there is a very good reason why the two wizards separated ways.

Radaceus · Apr 21, 2019

I like the idea of the first warforged, and that the warforged beget their sentience from a spirit of another being.
without going into the meat of how it is possible, that is each and every other DM's jurisdiction, and well, 'because...magic!' is a useful fail-safe....

I think combining options 3 and 4 make for a better long term campaign hook ( or side plot), in which your party quests for a means to create a golem, then to implant the spirit of the wizard via the gem into said construct, and as things progress the golem becomes 'self-aware' and evolves into the first warforged.

dragonfriend7738 · Apr 22, 2019

So, what I've got so far is two separate quests to get materials for the body: a crystal of pure mithral, which can only be found in the deep dark, next to an exceptionally potent Earth Node, and a deposit of adamant, which can only be found in the heart of a dormant volcano.

I would appreciate a suggestion for a material that would become the wooden 'muscles', the material that would become the 'veins', and a liquid that would become the 'blood' of this new construct.

I can make quests around the materials, I'm just looking for suggestions.

Radaceus · Apr 22, 2019

dragonfriend7738 said:
I would appreciate a suggestion for a material that would become the wooden 'muscles', the material that would become the 'veins', and a liquid that would become the 'blood' of this new construct.

Wooden muscles: must be flexible, so something like yew or bamboo. ( though I am not sure why it must be wood other than wanting to add that aspect for a living composite)
so in the living composite vein (hehe) of thought, following on to-
Veins; Bamboo shoots, or reeds
which also leads to-
Sinew; as above both could possibly use some type of root, lets call it 'tangleroot'( hell we can call it whatever we want, this is fantasy after all!)

Blood; Mercury, or quicksilver if you will

dragonfriend7738 · Apr 22, 2019

Radaceus said:
Wooden muscles: must be flexible, so something like yew or bamboo. ( though I am not sure why it must be wood other than wanting to add that aspect for a living composite)
so in the living composite vein (hehe) of thought, following on to-
Veins; Bamboo shoots, or reeds
which also leads to-
Sinew; as above both could possibly use some type of root, lets call it 'tangleroot'( hell we can call it whatever we want, this is fantasy after all!)

Blood; Mercury, or quicksilver if you will

I'm thinking the muscles should be wood because I'm trying to follow the current basis of Warforged.

Also, I want to keep the idea of mixing metal and nature that the Warforged is currently known for.

Imaculata · Apr 22, 2019

I use a rare type of fantasy wood in my campaign called Witch-wood. It is dark, flexible, only found in tropical regions, and only on specific islands. It is often used as a component for crafting magic wands.

TaranTheWanderer · Apr 22, 2019

In a game, we were searching the ‘blood of Martok’. It was adamantine that had to be melted down and only drugar had the means to smelt it. Martok was a dwarvish god. That might be too close to mythril though.

Other options are black dragon acid or wyvern poison. Those are going to be hard to harvest and I like the idea that the blood of a war forged is a corrosive liquid or molten steel.

Sinew: some kind of deadly slime. I like witch wood too. Hydraulics from an inevitable.

Veins: claws of twig blights, innards of a entity from mechanichus. Like an inevitable. The essence was f an earth elemental.

77IM · Apr 22, 2019

Wood: From an animated tree or a treant. There's a nice ethical dilemma for you. Maybe one will die of old age and donate its body to science? Maybe as they grow, they drop branches, and you can use those? Maybe they like getting "pruned" (it feels good, like a hair cut) and you can use those clippings?

Veins: Wood already has veins in it. But you might consider using, uh, veins, like from an animal. "Plastic" didn't exist back then, but you could also try rubber tubes, or rolled-up paper covered in tar, pitch, or some kind of natural lacquer. Isinglass is also a fantastic material for this; maybe in D&D times you need to get it from a specific sort of animal.

Blood: Oil.

Finally, to make the warforged truly alive, I'd suggest an infusion of positive energy directly from the Positive Energy Plane. That's a fun plane that doesn't get used enough in D&D. It spreads life and growth where-ever it goes, so you could have some fun side-effects if the stuff gets mishandled and spills.