Beyond the Wall

[ericpat]

I'm starting up a new game. The geography and history are based upon G.R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series.

Each of the characters will be a new recruit into the Night's Watch. I'm diverging from the books in a number of ways.

• Women are allowed to join - There are female players and it's just easier.
• All D&D classes are allowed - Again, it's easier for me to just allow all classes.
• Undead are frequently seen beyond the wall, but it's minor -- Skeletons/Zombies
• It take place several hundred years prior to the events in the books - Don't have to worry about continuity with the books.

I intent to run them through the free adventure "Frozen Whispers" for the first session. I'll probably tweak it a bit to fit the settings, but the meat of the adventure will probably be the same.

We've got four characters

• Boma - Ranger1
  [sblock]
  Boma is from a small back-woods village that at some point in its history received a blessing from the Children of the Forest. So long as a son or daughter of the village serves willingly at the Wall the village shall remain blessed.
  [/sblock]
• Tomas Whent - Maester (Archivist1)
  [sblock]
  Tomas was a minor son to a minor noble family, went to the OldTown for training to become a Maester, and while there began to delve into dark arts that caused a scandal. He agreed to go to the wall to save face for his family's sake.
  [/sblock]
• Sage - Spellthief1
  [sblock]
  Sage was a orphan who grew up in Flea Bottom. She was caught stealing and "volunteered" to go to the Wall. The strange thing is that while she's stolen plenty, she has no idea what she got caught with -- she hadn't stolen anything that night.
  [/sblock]
• Adian - Monk1
  [sblock]
  Adian was raised by a Vale innkeeper and his wife. Believing he was their son all along. One day he learned that his father was an Arryns, and that he was invited to live in the Eyrie. Instead he went to the Wall to volunteer.
  [/sblock]

I'm not looking for anything specifically(yet), but I love to spitball ideas around and hope to get something fun and interesting for the players.

Any plot hooks/complications for the characters, or interesting NPCs to serve alongside at the wall would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Greybar]

Eric - so clearly you're using some expanded material (I'll have to look up spellthief - is that PHB2?)

I'm guessing you're using Frostbite?

Straight rip of the books, but it makes sense that there would be roguish types coexisting with the undead things. What deals have they wrought to survive there, or are they dodging them day to day (or a beleagured holdout).

Hmm... this would be more appropriate as a campaign arc, but.
If the heroes (and Kingdoms south) are all human...
1) heroes find sign of a battle where undead were defeated, and the injured and dead of the opposing side dragged off.
2) following back will find a (hidden-ish) outpost of a strange or demihuman group, which in legend was considered evil and opposed to all humans. Whether they are a threat or an ally is something the heroes will have to determine (or report back to the Wall, perhaps, given their level)
3) subsequent adventures either develop the alliance or deal with the new threat.

Ideally the demihuman race would not be book-standard and thus strange to the players too. I'd envision them as appearing "evil" or bad-looking to build the fear of them being bad - particularly if the party has no easy access to "Detect Evil".

whatcha think?

 

[ericpat]

Eric - so clearly you're using some expanded material (I'll have to look up spellthief - is that PHB2?)

I'm guessing you're using Frostbite?

Straight rip of the books, but it makes sense that there would be roguish types coexisting with the undead things. What deals have they wrought to survive there, or are they dodging them day to day (or a beleagured holdout).

Hmm... this would be more appropriate as a campaign arc, but.
If the heroes (and Kingdoms south) are all human...
1) heroes find sign of a battle where undead were defeated, and the injured and dead of the opposing side dragged off.
2) following back will find a (hidden-ish) outpost of a strange or demihuman group, which in legend was considered evil and opposed to all humans. Whether they are a threat or an ally is something the heroes will have to determine (or report back to the Wall, perhaps, given their level)
3) subsequent adventures either develop the alliance or deal with the new threat.

Ideally the demihuman race would not be book-standard and thus strange to the players too. I'd envision them as appearing "evil" or bad-looking to build the fear of them being bad - particularly if the party has no easy access to "Detect Evil".

whatcha think?

The spellthief is from Complete Adventurer, but wizards has it detailed here

The arhivist class is also detailed on wizards site here

I do have the Frostburn and Libris Mortis supplements as well.

The heros are all human, but they were not limited to that, they just all chose human. As with the classes, I just figured it'd be easier to allow all the PHB races/classes and handwave that those races were represented in the kingdom.

I sort of figure that the 'Free Folk' are primarily the 'wood-sy' type classes/races, but Barb/Druid/Ranger are not really optimized for protection from undead...

I haven't given a whole lot of thought into who/what exactly is creating the undead in the first place, but it shouldn't factor too heavily in the near future.

I'm open to suggestions as to how the wildlings are coping with the very real danger of the undead rampaging the coutryside.

 

[Greybar]

Hmm... there should be things for the Spellthief and Archivist to use their special class abilities on.

Well, like I (at least meant to) say in the previous post, there are two possibilities for the wildlings: cooperation or opposition. Okay, maybe three: hiding.

Perhaps the wildlings are huddled around an ancient holy site which helps protect them. I see in the archivist writeup that they tend to seek out lost holy texts to learn spells from, so maybe Tomas has a clue that can start them in the right direction. Maybe the holy site has some massive aura effect that makes it hard for the undead to approach, but the site is starting to wane and the wildlings will need help from the heroes to recharge it or escape to a safer place. And that holy site might have clues that point towards the bigger campaign arc of where the undead are coming from.

 

[ericpat]

Hmm... there should be things for the Spellthief and Archivist to use their special class abilities on.

Absolutely. I intent to try to include things for each of the characters to shine. Especially the spellthief since undead are immune to sneak attacks.

That was one of the reasons I chose that WotC free adventure to start with. It's set appropriately (cold mountains), but it has no undead. Just animals/humanoids and Fey.

Plus, I think I want to lay the groundwork early for there being other forces at work beyond the wall that aren't undead and the fey seemed to make the most sense, to me anyways, I'm open to new ideas.

Well, like I (at least meant to) say in the previous post, there are two possibilities for the wildlings: cooperation or opposition. Okay, maybe three: hiding.

Perhaps the wildlings are huddled around an ancient holy site which helps protect them. I see in the archivist writeup that they tend to seek out lost holy texts to learn spells from, so maybe Tomas has a clue that can start them in the right direction. Maybe the holy site has some massive aura effect that makes it hard for the undead to approach, but the site is starting to wane and the wildlings will need help from the heroes to recharge it or escape to a safer place. And that holy site might have clues that point towards the bigger campaign arc of where the undead are coming from.

This idea gave me a inspiration.

Perhaps the lands beyond the wall have pockets of slightly-positive and slightly-negative energy. Not huge, but enough to be noticeable. Perhaps this minor positive energy naturally collects around the small villages/hamlets/etc the wildlings live in, or vice versa and when they chose to live in these places with natural positive-energy ambiance those communities thrived.

I'm thinking very very minor influence, such that an intelligent undead (vamp, lich, etc) wouldn't have any troubles operating in such an area, but it would "itch" while in the effect. Maybe something terribly minor like a -2 circumstance on concentration checks.

Similarly there are minorly-negative areas that would affect the PCs that way.

I think what I need short-term is ideas for other folks to be serving with the PCs. I don't need to stat anyone out (I don't think) but personalities / backgrounds would be good.

I've got the Ranger in charge being a Crannogmen but I haven't filled in much of him beyond that.

 

[Greybar]

Depending on how fantastic you want, you could hit the Manual of the Planes for ideas.

One simple balance - in the "positive" areas the healing of living creatures gains +1 per level of healing spell, or when doing overnight healing they heal as if one level/HD higher. In the negative areas, undead self-heal overnight like living creatures do, and living creatures don't. Not exactly mirrored effects, but simple to adjudicate and won't impact combat like a +/- to hit/damage would, and yet would be noticable the first time they rest or heal to clue them in.

That also would give the undead more longevity, since they wouldn't simply degrade without an intelligent spellcasting undead to give them negative-energy healing.

 

[ericpat]

Depending on how fantastic you want, you could hit the Manual of the Planes for ideas.

One simple balance - in the "positive" areas the healing of living creatures gains +1 per level of healing spell, or when doing overnight healing they heal as if one level/HD higher. In the negative areas, undead self-heal overnight like living creatures do, and living creatures don't. Not exactly mirrored effects, but simple to adjudicate and won't impact combat like a +/- to hit/damage would, and yet would be noticable the first time they rest or heal to clue them in.

That also would give the undead more longevity, since they wouldn't simply degrade without an intelligent spellcasting undead to give them negative-energy healing.

That's a much better idea than my lame "itchy feeling"

I cracked open the MotP for a quick check on minor pos/neg influence, and your suggestions are better in scale with what I'm looking for. A very subtle but noticeable (especially to undead) effect.

Thanks for the assistance.