-
NOW LIVE! Into the Woods--new character species, eerie monsters, and haunting villains to populate the woodlands of your D&D games.
If I combine the Dark Sun and Ravenloft settings, I get...
- Thread starter lmpjr007
- Start date
Herobizkit
Adventurer
... What a horrible night to have a curse ... (and for those in the know, you know you're making the text sound effect in your heads).
Herobizkit
Adventurer
I love it. Throw some d20 modern in there and you've got a winner.
pneumatik
The 8th Evil Sage
Once Athas was green and lush. Unintelligent monsters and conscious evil kept life from being too easy, but the rich land and seas provided life's necessities. With few concerns, the sentient races were generally at peace with each other. They mastered the power of their own minds, and used their psionic prowess to make their lives better.
Then Rajaat came. He traveled from city to city, town to town, teaching the new phenomenon of magic to any who would learn. He kept his past a secret, and with the passing of ages even less is known now. The truth is that he was a horrible mutant. his heavy robes, now considered to be the standard dress for any wizard, were simply to hide his deformations. Tired of constant ridicule, he removed himself from all society. After centuries of work in the Lonely Tower, developed a basis for magic, a way to use the energy outside of us to work wonders.
As Rajaat traveled, he collected disciples. These powerful wizards worked with him to further develop and explore magic. To outsiders, Rajaat chose these disciples because of their keen intellect and quick grasp of the complexities of magic. The truth is that they, like him, were black-hearted and wanted nothing more than to impose their will on Athas.
Rajaat told his disciples the true secret of magic, that it is powered by the life force of other creatures and plants. This is the same energy used by psionics, but a psion uses their own energy willingly while magic steals it and uses it forcefully. Magic weakens the life that powers it, the land and water that supports that life, even the souls of those whose power it steals.
As magic spread, the world became darker. No longer did the land and the sea willingly give up their resources. Strange mists arose where large amounts of magic was used, dimming and even blocking the sun. Wars broke out, some of domination and others of survival. Now Rajaat saw that it was time to complete his plan of world domination. He would use his great magics to empower his disciples, and together they would conquer the world.
Rajaat took his disciples to the Lonely Tower. More than just magically constructed, the tower was designed to gather and focus life energy, empowering and facilitating the working of magic. Rajaat had built the tower to help him develop and explore the rules of magic. His centuries of experimentation left the surrounding land blasted and barren of life, and an unnatural mist wreathed the tower's base.
Observing that magic drained energy from the land and the sea, Rajaat knew that there was another source of energy he could not yet tap: the sun. He and his disciples worked to rectify this situation, and their solution was the Obsidian Lens. Opaque to normal light, the lens was placed at the very top of the Lonely Tower. It focused the same energy from the sun that allowed plants to grow and life to flourish, and made it available to wizards casting spells beneath it.
Rajaat and his disciples used that power to change each of the disciples into something greater, something monstrous. The spell was only supposed to grant them greater power, making them unmatchable in magic and invincible in battle. And it did, but at the cost of turning them into inhuman undead monsters. Still humanoid, their limbs and snout were elongated and their unliving flesh was protected by hard scales. Tied to the Obsidian Lens, they gained the ability to channel magical energy much more efficiently through the use of obsidian spheres they ingested. They named their new form Dragon.
Now unstoppable, Rajaat and his disciples waged war on the world. Their army grew as many cities and kingdoms chose surrender over destruction. The forces of good fought valiantly, but their refusal to use magic weakened them too much. Slowly, Rajaat and his disciples ground down all resistance.
But all was not well in Rajaat's camp. His disciples became suspicious of his motives. They saw signs in his words and actions that he did not intend to share the world with them once it was conquered. But what could they do? Rajaat was truly the master of all magic. What could they do that he could not counter?
Desperate for a solution, one of their number, Borys, stole off to the Lonely Tower. He used the Obsidian Lens to continue his Dragon transformation. Borys drew so much energy from the sun that it turned from white-yellow to dull red. Abandoning his humanity, he transformed into a colossal beast of war, a true Dragon.
Borys gathered his fellow disciples, and together they attacked Rajaat. The fight was tremendous and reshaped Athas itself. Never before or since has such magics been used. In the end, Rajaat was defeated but not destroyed. The disciples created a dimensionless pocket-plane called the black and locked Rajaat in it, holding his defeated form in stasis - they hoped.
Their victory was not without cost. Rajaat was so powerful that even in a plane without time he still attempted escape. Every year Borys sacrifices 1,00 souls in a ritual to keep him imprisoned. He collects his sacrifices from the holdings of each of the disciples. To this day he devotes his life to monitoring Rajaat's prison, leaving only to collect his levy from each disciple once a year.
And Borys was the lucky one of the disciples. The ritual that turned them into Dragons also bound the disciples to Rajaat. During the fight, Rajaat used this connection in an attempt to even the odds. He used the connection to bind the disciples to different areas of land on Athas. He had to be quick, so he bound them each to the domain he had already given them, simply strengthening the connection.
The spell worked, but not quickly enough. After the fight, as each disciple left, they found themselves always returning to their domain. If they used magic to travel, they appeared in their domain. If they traveled mundanely, the everpresent mists enveloped them. When it cleared, they were back in their domain. Only Borys, who unwittingly broke his connection to Rajaat when he completed his transformation alone, was free.
That took longer to write than I thought. If I have time I'll come back and extrapolate more, but that's the core of any Ravenloft/Dark Sun combination that I'd run. I'd derive the whole campaign from that.
Then Rajaat came. He traveled from city to city, town to town, teaching the new phenomenon of magic to any who would learn. He kept his past a secret, and with the passing of ages even less is known now. The truth is that he was a horrible mutant. his heavy robes, now considered to be the standard dress for any wizard, were simply to hide his deformations. Tired of constant ridicule, he removed himself from all society. After centuries of work in the Lonely Tower, developed a basis for magic, a way to use the energy outside of us to work wonders.
As Rajaat traveled, he collected disciples. These powerful wizards worked with him to further develop and explore magic. To outsiders, Rajaat chose these disciples because of their keen intellect and quick grasp of the complexities of magic. The truth is that they, like him, were black-hearted and wanted nothing more than to impose their will on Athas.
Rajaat told his disciples the true secret of magic, that it is powered by the life force of other creatures and plants. This is the same energy used by psionics, but a psion uses their own energy willingly while magic steals it and uses it forcefully. Magic weakens the life that powers it, the land and water that supports that life, even the souls of those whose power it steals.
As magic spread, the world became darker. No longer did the land and the sea willingly give up their resources. Strange mists arose where large amounts of magic was used, dimming and even blocking the sun. Wars broke out, some of domination and others of survival. Now Rajaat saw that it was time to complete his plan of world domination. He would use his great magics to empower his disciples, and together they would conquer the world.
Rajaat took his disciples to the Lonely Tower. More than just magically constructed, the tower was designed to gather and focus life energy, empowering and facilitating the working of magic. Rajaat had built the tower to help him develop and explore the rules of magic. His centuries of experimentation left the surrounding land blasted and barren of life, and an unnatural mist wreathed the tower's base.
Observing that magic drained energy from the land and the sea, Rajaat knew that there was another source of energy he could not yet tap: the sun. He and his disciples worked to rectify this situation, and their solution was the Obsidian Lens. Opaque to normal light, the lens was placed at the very top of the Lonely Tower. It focused the same energy from the sun that allowed plants to grow and life to flourish, and made it available to wizards casting spells beneath it.
Rajaat and his disciples used that power to change each of the disciples into something greater, something monstrous. The spell was only supposed to grant them greater power, making them unmatchable in magic and invincible in battle. And it did, but at the cost of turning them into inhuman undead monsters. Still humanoid, their limbs and snout were elongated and their unliving flesh was protected by hard scales. Tied to the Obsidian Lens, they gained the ability to channel magical energy much more efficiently through the use of obsidian spheres they ingested. They named their new form Dragon.
Now unstoppable, Rajaat and his disciples waged war on the world. Their army grew as many cities and kingdoms chose surrender over destruction. The forces of good fought valiantly, but their refusal to use magic weakened them too much. Slowly, Rajaat and his disciples ground down all resistance.
But all was not well in Rajaat's camp. His disciples became suspicious of his motives. They saw signs in his words and actions that he did not intend to share the world with them once it was conquered. But what could they do? Rajaat was truly the master of all magic. What could they do that he could not counter?
Desperate for a solution, one of their number, Borys, stole off to the Lonely Tower. He used the Obsidian Lens to continue his Dragon transformation. Borys drew so much energy from the sun that it turned from white-yellow to dull red. Abandoning his humanity, he transformed into a colossal beast of war, a true Dragon.
Borys gathered his fellow disciples, and together they attacked Rajaat. The fight was tremendous and reshaped Athas itself. Never before or since has such magics been used. In the end, Rajaat was defeated but not destroyed. The disciples created a dimensionless pocket-plane called the black and locked Rajaat in it, holding his defeated form in stasis - they hoped.
Their victory was not without cost. Rajaat was so powerful that even in a plane without time he still attempted escape. Every year Borys sacrifices 1,00 souls in a ritual to keep him imprisoned. He collects his sacrifices from the holdings of each of the disciples. To this day he devotes his life to monitoring Rajaat's prison, leaving only to collect his levy from each disciple once a year.
And Borys was the lucky one of the disciples. The ritual that turned them into Dragons also bound the disciples to Rajaat. During the fight, Rajaat used this connection in an attempt to even the odds. He used the connection to bind the disciples to different areas of land on Athas. He had to be quick, so he bound them each to the domain he had already given them, simply strengthening the connection.
The spell worked, but not quickly enough. After the fight, as each disciple left, they found themselves always returning to their domain. If they used magic to travel, they appeared in their domain. If they traveled mundanely, the everpresent mists enveloped them. When it cleared, they were back in their domain. Only Borys, who unwittingly broke his connection to Rajaat when he completed his transformation alone, was free.
That took longer to write than I thought. If I have time I'll come back and extrapolate more, but that's the core of any Ravenloft/Dark Sun combination that I'd run. I'd derive the whole campaign from that.
There are all kinds of ways to go with this.
1) Thri-Kreen: Why not? They're in the original Dark Sun, after all, and do exist in the XPH alongside the 1/2Giant and Dromite. Want to tweek them? Change their special attack to a scorpion-like sting.
2) Thorn Fey: Take elves and give them some kind of plant template, like the Woodling. Add in a bit of Spiker, and you have Elves who are part Cactus.
3) Warforged: given their construction, they'd make ideal desert war constructs...and "clockwork" critters fit in with Ravenloft. An additional tweek- lift a page from Dr Who's Cybermen & Daleks- they're not actually constructs, but some kind of creation into which psionically active brains have been housed (make them natural psionics, drop a couple of their immunities).
4) Take some kind of corporeal undead like Wights or Ghouls and make them living critters. Transform their energy drain attacks into moisture drain attacks.
5) Horned Lizard Men/Kobolds. Add a special attack- "Squirt Blood from Eye" (Ex), works like a Daze cantrip, usable at will (requires a Fort save by PC for each use over 3). Reduce their natural claw/bite attacks to minimal, give them natural armor with spikes.
6) Other possible Lizard Man/Kobold tweeks: poisonous bite (Ex) like Gila Monsters; SLA: Expeditious Retreat like a Goanna.
7) I'd consider tweeking the 1/2 Giant a bit to add in some elemental type features, a la the Stonechild and/or the Earth Genasi.
8) Add some kind of S Bat humanoid, possibly in place of Rat humanoids, or even Halflings.
Remathilis
Legend
Last edited:
lmpjr007
Explorer
Well if you are interested, I am really getting into more detail on this whole idea and where it is going on my blog: In The Mind of a Mad Man. You can specifical see all the Obsidian Twilight focused material here on my blog: Obsidian Twilight.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Herobizkit
Adventurer
*applause*
Ravenloft always translated to Castlevania in my head -- too bad none of my old players felt that way.
lmpjr007
Explorer
We have officially signed our first writer to the Obsidian Twilight Patron Project and it is Neal Bailey. Neal has worked with me on several projects including the Race Creation Cookbook and the Prestige Class Cookbook. Neal has a lot experience of understanding the "math part" of game design to keep balance in playability. I have total faith in Neal's abilities and think he will be agreat addition to the Obsidian Twilight Patron Project. We also have another writer "signed" but that one is a BIG SURPRISE so you are going to have to wait on it. Talk to you later...
Similar Threads
