CoC+Iron Council+DnD

[Stormborn]

Because I have more campaign ideas than I know what to do with (warning :spoliers for Iron Council by China Mieville):

Idea Part One:

In IC a man who seems to be a bum but is inactuallity an insane sorcerer of the enemy state Tesh goes around drawning spirals as graffitii in random places. A symbol taken up by the revolution as a sign of the people.

Only problem is they aren't just weird doddles...they are parts of a spell that is drawing some unspeakable doom on the city.

Idea Part two:

In the CoCd20 write up for Hastur, the King in Yellow, the Unspeakable One it mentions that the oldest mention of the name is for a place, not a being, and that the being may just be a minfestation of this place.

So here is my campaign idea for the day:

In any random major city, Sharn/Rome/Waterdeep/London, a Cult of the Yellow Sign is drawin their occult symbols through out the city in what appears to be random fashion. The sign is actually intended to draw the attention of an alien city inhabited by an evil chaotic god. Those who swear the Unspeakable Oath are transformed into mindflayers, who then rule the cult and direct its work in this realm. Should the cult succed the alien god city will merge with the material city creating a nightmare realm of unspeakable creatures and abominations. Meanwhile the agents of the cult are equipped with mindflayer grafts or Chaositech (from Monte Cook) and are spreading slow havok around the city, designed to distract from the seemingly harmless lurkers in the street who spread the strange yellow sing wherever they go. However, the horrific creatures manifesting across the city, the madness, and the wild spell effects might give a clue that something more is going on. Unless of course everyone is distracted by a war started by cultist in another city/kingdom.

Hopefully the PCs will save the day before the Unspeakable City manifests, if not its going to get nasty really quick, with the PCs or their replacements as a desperate band of survivalists tryign to take down the King in Yellow.

Run this either as straight DnD with some Sanity checks thrown in or Grim Tales, maybe the Psychic Handbook by GR thrown in.

 

[Krieg]

I like the way you think!

 

[Stormborn]

The next step is trying to figure out how to appraoch such a campaign. Urban based obviously, but what level? The players are going to have a stronger attachement to the place if the PCs start at first level in the city. So early stages of the game may have nothing to do with the real campaing. On the other hand, the PCs may deal with the plots of a rogue Alienist and the beginings of the cult in their area. What they wouldn't know is that there were cells all over the city, some opperating more succesfully than others, so while their victory in one place is great it doesn't stop the over all chain of events.

The sign would need to begin to show up sporadically early, but not be widespread for some time.

Hmmm
Levels 1-3: Urban Adventuring 101 (using prepublished stuff maybe to get into the setting)
Levels 4-6: The Alienist Adventure
Level 7-9: Have you seen the Yellow Sign?
Levels 10-12: Mindflayers Revealed!
Levels 13+: Guess What's Coming For Dinner

I love mindflayers, but it takes a medium range party to actually deal with them directly. especially if they are working in concert.

Not that this is going anywhere, but any thoughts? Encounters, NPCs, etc?

 

[Turanil]

Great idea!

I too have more campaign ideas than I know what to do with. The day when I will actually run a Grim Tales campaign, I will use Warhammer for setting (World of Warhammer encyclopedia, without WFRPG rules), the races from Relic and Ritual: Excalibur to add more flavor to the bland elves, dwarves, and orcs, and I am figuring to lastly add Call of Cthulhu d20 for a somewhat different kind of Chaos. This should spare me writing a whole homebrew.

Another idea, discussed on another thread: d20 Modern in contemporary world for a CoC d20 campaign, where FX Urban Arcana is replaced by Lovecraft's Dreamland...