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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nightson" data-source="post: 4105663" data-attributes="member: 61515">When you talk about the world being ruled by undead I picture the remaining survivors holed up in areas where the natural terrain makes it difficult for the zombie hordes to get to.  There are basically no characters above level ten or so left at all, they died attempting to stop the initial undead invasion.  The enclaves can communicate with magic and they try to make sure that none of them ever fall but they're being destroyed at the rough rate on one per month.Outside the world is ruled over be the intelligent undead, liches especially will have carved out sizable kingdoms where they control large numbers of undead.  The only reason all of the undead haven't gone and eliminated all the remaining survivors is that they've begun waging war against each other.The ultimate cause of the undead invasion is a gigantic portal to the negative energy plane that was opened up on the site of the former capital of the big ancient empire.  The energy from the portal is what sustains the legions upon legions of lesser undead, the extra negative energy flooding the plain does have a fortunate side effect because it messes up attempts to scry on living creatures, destruction of the portal will cause the lesser undead created during the zombie invasion to begin to decompose and they'll all die within a week.  The destruction of the portal can either be the climax of the campaign or you could have the undead force launch a gigantic attack on the remaining survivors and make that the climatic battle.If I were plotting it I would have the characters do some undefined stuff and the enclaves would get stronger, none of them would fall and the PCs could visit most all of them, giving them some emotional significance, during this time you can establish a recurring villian.  A lich would make the most sense to me, but you could do a vampire or a dark cleric or whatever  you like so long as it's something intelligent that can gain in power.  At around the point you think the PCs are high enough in level for the finale you set things up for the climax which can take two routes.1) If the climax will be the destruction of the portal.  Hopefully the PCs will have established one of the enclaves as their base or at least have a favorite one.  If they have, then destroy it.  The portal has gotten bigger and it's effects are stronger and if the PCs don't head off to destroy it right now all of the other enclaves will fall soon.  Destroying the big portal will involve the final fight with the recurring villain, the PCs will close the portal and it'll be good.2) If the climax is a big battle between the forces of undeath.  It's mostly as above except that the PCs favorite enclave survives the attack.  They go to destroy the portal because it's getting stronger, they fight through all the lower monsters, they get to the big chamber where the portal is, the place you would naturally expect the big villain to be, and there's no one there.  They get jumpy of course but they destroy the portal.  A few moments after they do, they hear a sinister laughter, a magic recording device left by the big bad laughs at them and basically says that he's going to destroy all the remaining enclaves while the PCs are busy destroying the portal and that they're already too late, and that the PCs have made it all possible because the destruction of the portal has temporarily flooded all the undead with strength and burnt out (temporarily) the ability of good clerics to turn undead.  If delivered right this should make your players blood curdle.  The final battle is them hurrying back to the enclaves to fight off legions of undead.  The ultimate goal is to find and destroy the big bad who's leading all the hordes, when he dies the army mostly falls apart.Well, I had some fun with that. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />  I hope some of that is useful should you decide to use it.  Good luck.</blockquote>

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