An artefact of Law

[Inconsequenti-AL]

A campaign building thread! Nearly finished...

I'm racking my braincell for a suitable apocalyptic artefact:

This McGuffin is to be strongly Lawful. It has been warded and secured by a Yuan-Ti cult. They've been using regular rituals to keep it contained - most likely involving human sacrifice. My plan is that the PCs will discover and butcher these evil creatures. Unwittingly unleashing the thingamyjiger in the process.

This thing should appeal strongly to Lawful types - specifically Devils, Modrons and Archons - all of whom the PCs will have had some dealings with. If it unleashes biblical style plagues and catastrophes, then so much the better.

What form it takes doesn't matter, but it would be good if it was something the PCs could interact with.

Any ideas or help would be much appreciated!

 

[arwink]

It's an anchor stone - one of the four stones that keeps the world aligned within the planes and balanced between the four opposing philosophies (good, evil, law, chaos). If the stone is freed, then the world starts drifting along the lawful access - governments become more oppressive and structured, the notion of free will starts to die out, people start forming into hivemind-like communities, etc until the stone is somerecovered and replaced.

Like all the anchor stones, this is forged out of the heart and soul of a dead god, and has some form of sentience and ability to communicate with others.

 

[Tessarael]

This thing should appeal strongly to Lawful types - specifically Devils, Modrons and Archons - all of whom the PCs will have had some dealings with. If it unleashes biblical style plagues and catastrophes, then so much the better.

The Stone of Law.

On one side are chiseled laws (x characters maximum, scrolls up as laws are added). On the other side in a small font are listed perpetrators who have violated the law. A Mind Blank will protect against the stone's divination powers. It is capable of beating a Nondetection spell of up to DC 35.

If you want to make things worse, with the laws are specified the punishments. The punishments automatically happen to anyone within a 100 mile (or 1,000 mile) radius who commits a crime.

Example laws:

1. Treason. Hung, drawn and quartered.
2. Murder. Hanging.
3. Failing to pay a debt. Gibbet at crossroads.
4. Stealing. Right hand amputated.
5. Rape. Castration.
6. Adultery. Stoning.
7. Trespass. Banishment.
8. Blasphemy. Excommunication (or tongue removal).
9. Assault. 20 lashes.
10. Breaking the peace. 100 gold piece fine.

Laws could be enforced by Inevitables, or automatic (save vs. Fort DC 25).

In particular, the PCs may find taking the stone difficult, as the punishments on the stone may affect the PCs as they try to get the stone (theft, murder, etc.).

To make it worse, make it apply retroactively. i.e. Anyone entering the radius who has committed such a crime is punished.

The Yuan-Ti rulers may have controlled it by specifying laws that are acceptable to them. Or maybe it isn't activated if it hasn't see the light of day for a year ... so maybe the PCs breaking into the last part of the Yuan-Ti temple will cause it to see sunlight and laws to start being enforced ...

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

It's an anchor stone - one of the four stones that keeps the world aligned within the planes and balanced between the four opposing philosophies (good, evil, law, chaos). If the stone is freed, then the world starts drifting along the lawful access - governments become more oppressive and structured, the notion of free will starts to die out, people start forming into hivemind-like communities, etc until the stone is somerecovered and replaced.

Like all the anchor stones, this is forged out of the heart and soul of a dead god, and has some form of sentience and ability to communicate with others.

That rock. Consider it yoinked.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

arwink
That's an incredibly good idea! So good, that I think I'm going to steal it as is.

The sliding towards lawfulness strikes me as a particularly unpleasant kind of 'apocalypse'. The hivemind sounds like lots of fun... going to give the feel of the area around the stone an Invasion of the Bodysnatchers vibe.

Really like the source for it. Inspires me to use the corpse of the dead god as the location for the final resolution of the issue... floating through the void. Can't recall whose idea that was, but it's a great one. Wanted to find somewhere to use that ever since I read it.


Tessarael
Another good one there... I think that device has Modron written all over it. I'm going to lower the saves somewhat and give it to one of the senior modrons. Some sort of mechanical device may be in keeping with them.


Thanks very much!

 

[arwink]

arwinkReally like the source for it. Inspires me to use the corpse of the dead god as the location for the final resolution of the issue... floating through the void. Can't recall whose idea that was, but it's a great one. Wanted to find somewhere to use that ever since I read it.

It's from planescape, but the best use of it I've seen is in the early parts of Piratecat's storyhour (the stuff in the download, rather than what's posted on the board) where the PC's wander through the corpse of a dead nature god. Has some nice extrapolation of what happens when those weilding nature-magic walk through the corpse of a god with a similar focus.

Which, when you really think about it, gives you all sorts of nasty ideas about what would happen should the PC's wander into the gods corpse with the stone that contains a fragment of its soul...

 

[Piratecat]

And I stole it from (contact.)

 

[TDRandall]

Oh well, looks like the issue is settled for Inconsequenti-al, but my suggestion (building off Modrons and the gears of Mechanus especially) would have been some sort of pendulum clock counting down to a (supposedly) inevitable apocalypse at "midnight" (or 6:00, or whenever). Just put the pendulum and maybe the hands on the inside surface of the (unbreakable) clock so it can't be stopped. I'd make it large enough to be BARELY portable, so that it doesn't go treking around the countryside with the PCs, but they are able to take it back to their manor (or wherever).

The clock is set to 5 or 10 "minutes" before the apocalyptic time, but each "minute" on the clock actually corresponds to a day, week, month, or even year in the campaign world. (Amount depends on how much time you actually want to give them until doomsday - will they need 5 campaign years to be sufficient level to even hope to influence the event?). Each "minute" on the clock also releases a new and increasingly difficult terror/disaster upon the campaign world until it's finally "THE BIG ONE".

The Yaun-Ti would be especially interested since their prophecies show an alignment of this apocalyptic event to the fall of their race. They did, however, discover that by bathing the face of the clock that it caused it to temporarily slow down (or even stops it) for some length of time. (Human blood may work the best, but any kind of sentient blood will do the trick for a time ... pinning them in a dilemma and likely enticing them down the path of evil when they realize -- especially if they still have levels to gain before the event but are low on time!) Whether the time it is slowed down is a month, week, half a day, a day, depends on how much sacrificing you actually want to be going on in the area.

 

[green slime]

Of course there should be a parallel artifact for chaos: The Pit of Amorphous Chaos.

This inspires as to how both function:

In the presence of the pit, items and beasts are created and destroyed at random, wind and weather is various and contrary, and those entering the area are affected as if by confusion.

The Stone of Law would be the opposite: Nothing is destroyed or killed in its presence, the weather and wind are constant never changing, trees do not sway in the wind, leaves do not fall, branches do not break. Those entering the area become obsessed with a single thought, a single action, a single deed which must be performed to perfection.

Whoch also lends a thought as to how to destroy these two artifacts: they must be merged together.