Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jfdlsjfd" data-source="post: 9553174" data-attributes="member: 42856">The villain is a Wizard-King (suggested BBEG on your list) who rules over the mainland empire. Several years ago, he compelled the rulers of your free island (contained settings) to choose between being eradicated by his magic or give him what he wants. Each years, he wants 20 healthy young males and females sent to him so he can turn them into larvae and bargain them for demonic power. He could sacrifice his own people, but he has common sense, and know that being evil to your own people tend the favor the emergence of heroes to dethrone you -- he's taxing them a lot to ensure his lavish lifestyle and the well-being of his armies, but he isn't taxing them to the point they'd have nothing to lose. He needs innocent souls, so he can't just empty the kingdom's creason. So he's an efficient and rational evil Overlord, who was read the Evil Overlord list. On the other hand, he administrate his kingom from a well-known seat of power, his palace, which is well defended, but where access is possible if controlled like in a forbidden city organization (includes a large metropolis).He has taken measures to block several spells that would allow scry-and-die, like instant transportation or planeshift (maybe he Wished them away) so the setting can stay contained even at higher levels.Your PCs are related to one of the drafted person that was to be sent to be sacrificed or to someone who volunteered to replace a draftee (hatred as a motivator). They know they can't do anything at level 1. They also know they gaining a level will be a measurable increase in their power but can be detected -- beware if the BBEG has some plans to make a yearly divination to locate people above level 15 and preemptively remove them from the roster of potential enemies, so the players might want to first find the way to dissimulate their power growth.Due to his rather tolerable rule over his army, he's actual quite loved by his soldiers (has influence on top on raw power) and is a threat that can affect things the PC like.  Legion XXII might not have the power to stop the heroes, but it could easily level a town on the hero's island where lived NPCs they were connected to. And they can't be everywhere at the same time (due to the aforementionned lack of high speed transportation). One of the strength of you BBEG will be logistics, not simply higher magic -- though it's quite possible that he made proviso in his wish to allow quick transportation for him.The yearly sacrifices give the hero a time pressure. How many innocent will have to die because you took 214 days of downtime to create an Enspelled Hammer of Fireballs? Was it worth it? Winning in five years isn't the same as winning in two years: that's 120 more of your friends that will spend eternity in perpetual torment. I hope this hammer will be worth it.Have the levelling be happening using the same idea of turning souls into larvae. Levelling is something that exist in the game, not unlike the above-mentionned highlander series. People can reach a pinnacle of power by learning (use milestone levelling to reflect their progression over the first five levels), then you need to feed on life energy through "worship" and become popular heroes (level 5 to 10) but they can't become world heroes because it would be visible to the Evil Overlord. So at some point, they can only progress by absorbing the life energy of someone who's more powerful than you. Sure, there might be monster, but they'd need to be researched, because they are not readily available as random monsters, or defeating key NPCs in the Evil empire's main cities -- at this point, the characters will have little interest in removing lower-level garrison captain, only the cadre of generals around the BBEG has enough levels to grant them enough energy to cultivate their qi further/gain a level. But removing them one by one is certain to alert the BBEG that foul play is happening... So maybe they can't just try to reach level 20 and should settle for facing the BBEG at an earlier level?For added surprise in the final fight, the Evil Overlord used the larvae to appease a demonic creature that would erupt and kill everything, so when they finally think they removed the overlord, will they accept the same deal?</blockquote>

Verification