Cromweld died, but wouldn't lie down.

[Lughart]

So Cromweld thought the undead tree was just a dead tree, and decided to run past it to cast burning hands on the wight. The undead tree takes its attack of opportunity, grapples the sorcerer, and subdues him pretty quickly.

Turns out the trees create their wight minions by planting undead saplings in their victims heads.

The party destroys the tree, and send Ignace, the NPC ranger, out of the cursed village with Cromwelds lifeless body, befoire they continue their quest.

Well outside of the village, Cromweld wakes up with a slight headache, and a little grey plant growing from his scalp. After a few hours, he dies.

The rest of the party kills the blighter, rescues the cleric, and burns the village to the ground to stop the spread of undeath.

Cromweld wakes up as a wight. Luckily, the bad guys are dead, so he retains his free will.

***

Cromwelds player thinks being a wight is pretty rad, and since he is the lowest level character in the party it's not really overpowered. I don't generally enforce alignement change in instances like these, so he can certainly stay Neutral if he plays his character right.

However.

The party has a Lawful Good cleric who harbor no love for the undead.

So I need some help. How do i keep both characters in play? The cleric's player has no intention of ruining anyones character, but the whole group is dedicated enough to roleplaying that just ignoring the problem would be a big bump in everyones suspension of disbelief.

The cleric has a superior who could act as the voice of reason if i can come up with something reasonable. The other players are also willing to help keep the peace if any ideas should arise, but no one has any idea how to justify leaving an undead alone.

The cleric worships a Lawful Neutral deity, with no particular rules for or against the creation of undead.

Any suggestions?

 

[Psychotic Jim]

First of all, that's a pretty epic storyline there; your game sounds like fun. It also sounds like you've already identified one possibly valuble tool- that NPC cleric. His defense for the wight PC will likely be based on his religion's ethos; though the god's stance on undead seems vague enough to warrant several interpretations. What are the god and religion like? What's their central dogma?

 

[Lughart]

The cleric worships the Red Knight, a Forgotten Realms deity of planning and strategy. The religion is centred around war and places great symbolic value in chess. Clerics of the Red Knight act as tacticians, military commanders and diplomats, depending on the situation.

The religions centre focus is on foresight and efficiency. Learn to know your opponent before attacking, allways have a contingency plan etc. While Terjon, the PC, is the nice and normal kind of cleric, many members of the organization would consider using undead or devils or whatever a neccesary compromise if the outcome was beneficial.

In a nutshell, the Red Knight supports both good and evil clerics. However, this doesn't solve the problem entirely. Terjon has recently discovered that some of his colleagues are diabolists, and this has shaken his faith pretty hard.

So i thought, either he converts to another religion, which would be a shame, or he comes to terms with the fact that his god is a deity of law, not good. Theres just so much room for bad endings in these scenarios, and i want to nudge him towards keeping the peace.

 

[Sigurd]

Give the Cleric a vision from the Red knight saying that 'he is to support this 'piece' because it has a part to play'.

 

[jefgorbach]

Seems a big factor in the solution would be WHY the cleric has issues with the undead given his deity doesn't particularly care one way or the other.

IOW while he might look questioningly upon his one-time friend and ally's new condition as a corrupt mockery of live whose recipients are no longer subject to conversion (no longer having souls), he might with time recognize and accept his friend's continued intelligent freewill and neutral outlook means he doesnt comply with the stereotype and thus is the exception which makes the rule?

 

[Hand of Evil]

Agree with Sigurd, the cleric should be visited and told that there is a bigger picture. What that is; how long has this tree been seeding the world? Where are all those seedlings and can you always be sure you would know one when you see it? We are talking Pod People here, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

What the player could be is a detector.

I would create steps for the trees to follow:

• Plant seeds
• Germinate
• Morph NPC into wight minions
• Wight minions modify enviroment
• Enviroment starts produce the undead trees
• Trees become woods
• Wood become forest
• Forest becomes portal to the home plane of the trees

 

[Psychotic Jim]

The cleric worships the Red Knight, a Forgotten Realms deity of planning and strategy. The religion is centred around war and places great symbolic value in chess. Clerics of the Red Knight act as tacticians, military commanders and diplomats, depending on the situation.

The religions centre focus is on foresight and efficiency. Learn to know your opponent before attacking, allways have a contingency plan etc. While Terjon, the PC, is the nice and normal kind of cleric, many members of the organization would consider using undead or devils or whatever a neccesary compromise if the outcome was beneficial.

In a nutshell, the Red Knight supports both good and evil clerics. However, this doesn't solve the problem entirely. Terjon has recently discovered that some of his colleagues are diabolists, and this has shaken his faith pretty hard.

So i thought, either he converts to another religion, which would be a shame, or he comes to terms with the fact that his god is a deity of law, not good. Theres just so much room for bad endings in these scenarios, and i want to nudge him towards keeping the peace.

Okay, so it almost seems like the Terjon's issues with the wight Cromfeld is almost a symptom of the larger crisis of faith your cleric PC might be having here. The diabolists in his faith might make him less inclined to listen to possibly questionable proposals on the part of your voice of reason clergy NPC, unless this NPC was seen as trustworthy and/or condemned the diabolists.

Any message of strategic importance regarding the wight PC will address a number of issues here. I'll give some ideas. First, any argument in favor of the wight's strategic importance will likely need to highlight his usefulness to do good deeds. For example, the previous undead tree "detector" idea, undead also have a lot of immunities to status issues (poison, energy drain, etc). Using him this way, he could prevent a lot of innocent deaths.

It might also be essential to point out the differences here the diabolists associating with fiends and you keeping the wight around. First of all, the former is a willing choice and was not done under duress. The latter is making the most of a really bad situation and may be a temporary solution (see discussion on this below) rather than a long term one.

If Terjon is LG, he may be interested in reforming the undead creature, especially since being turned into a wight was not a choice on the part of Cromfeld. Perhaps keeping the wight along will only be a temporary solution until Cromfeld can be restored to life (reincarnation/resurrection?). Or perhaps you could put the party on a quest to turn him into a Deathless (positive energy aligned equivalent of undead who tend to be good aligned).

As for the Terjon's general crisis of faith, what are his options of dealing with the situation of the evil within the faith’s ranks? Can he argue for a purge of its ranks or go on an inquisition? Maybe Terjon could argue to the senior clergy that the diabolists are more trouble than they’re worth. Talk with your player and see what works for both of you regarding his character and the story's development.

 

[Lughart]

Great stuff. I could make a version of the deathless template balanced to be PC friendly.

As for Terjons crisis of faith, he's not in a position to make demands, but confessing his findings to a superior could make the diabolists targets for an inquisitional inquiry. Or he could investigate it himself, which would be a great way to solve all my problems if Cromweld proves essential to the investigation.

Sigurd - I allready had to solve one difficult situation by deux ex machina, so I'd like to wait a bit before i do it again.

Hand of Evil - Thats pretty much exactly how the undead trees procreate, ecxept the portal bit. Maybe I'll use that at a higher level.

 

[Psychotic Jim]

Btw, once you work things out, would you mind posting how it all went down? This story seems interesting enough I've got to hear how it turns out.