Just as a precaution, if any of my players from my Erendar campaign are reading this, they should take this opportunity to visit another thread.
Now, I’m interested in taking planar conflict to a different level in my campaign. Previously, there’s been some invasions and assassinations, mostly minor in the larger picture of things. I’d like to set up a more important difficulty, as well as causing the players to make some tough choices.
(Important notes:
*The party is mostly 17th level, approaching 18th.
*IMC, powerful outsiders usually don’t walk around fighting, they try to corrupt other planes to their allegiances. Or convert them, whichever sounds better to their alignment.
*Formians have a locked in hive mind, with a single “personality”, embodied in the Scion Queen Mother. Until now, they live exclusively on Mechanus.
*I think I got the idea of freed formians from a story hour on these boards. No offense is intended if this is close to your plotline.)
I’m going to have the characters hear word of odd events in the desert – animals disappearing. This will probably remind them of one of their earlier adventures, where a small group of formians had gone rogue and killed some people near the same area. When they go to investigate, they’ll find a full hive of formians have arrived and are settling in. The formians will not initiate violence, however. I’m guessing the party will start a fight with the first formians they see, but when they kill the workers easily, they might hold back on later violence and look for a cause. If they manage to get to the formian hive queen without a pitched battle, she will even talk to them a little bit, if only to tell them to speak with the Scion Queen Mother on Mechanus.
If they kill the entire hive, there’s some other events that should point them toward the Scion Queen Mother anyway.
The Queen Mother can tell them, if they’re convincing about their desire to help, that she’s trying to create an escape route for the formians because Mechanus is slowly falling victim to chaotic forces. Apparently, a plague is infecting formian workers and warriors, causing them to go insane and break from the hivemind. She’s willing to deal a little bit, but she won’t put off a potential move to the Material Plane as long as the plague is ongoing.
The PCs will be taken to see some of the “mad” formians so they know the signs to watch for. Each one is slightly touched by chaos in a physical sense, just enough to be different from the hive’s exact duplicates. Different colors, patches of hair or fur, short, tall, etc. When the PCs see them, the formians will begin pleading to be rescued. I’d like the PCs to be confronted with the choice between freedom and perfect unity.
But freedom has a price.
The plague is being caused by one of the slaadi lords, who has developed a spell that cuts off formians from the hive mind. (This is loosely based on the chain of chaos spell from DotF.) That’s all it does-the madness is based on the perception of the hivemind. However, formians who are cut off from the hive mind die within about a year. The formians who are “free” accept this price. The ones still in the hive mind, of course, have no will to choose or not. The “mad” formians want all formians to be free, even though it will mean their death. To the hive mind, this is purest madness.
From here, I’ve got some ideas. I’m trying to develop a way to cause a choice between chaos and law, but with some serious impact each way. I’m kind of stuck on ideas as to the consequences of a choice between law (eliminating the slaad lord) and chaos (letting the plague run its course so that the formians are “freed”). Ideally, I don’t want it to seem slanted toward either side.
Thanks to everyone who stuck with this all the way, and if you have any ideas or comments about future directions this could go, I’d appreciate it.
Now, I’m interested in taking planar conflict to a different level in my campaign. Previously, there’s been some invasions and assassinations, mostly minor in the larger picture of things. I’d like to set up a more important difficulty, as well as causing the players to make some tough choices.
(Important notes:
*The party is mostly 17th level, approaching 18th.
*IMC, powerful outsiders usually don’t walk around fighting, they try to corrupt other planes to their allegiances. Or convert them, whichever sounds better to their alignment.
*Formians have a locked in hive mind, with a single “personality”, embodied in the Scion Queen Mother. Until now, they live exclusively on Mechanus.
*I think I got the idea of freed formians from a story hour on these boards. No offense is intended if this is close to your plotline.)
I’m going to have the characters hear word of odd events in the desert – animals disappearing. This will probably remind them of one of their earlier adventures, where a small group of formians had gone rogue and killed some people near the same area. When they go to investigate, they’ll find a full hive of formians have arrived and are settling in. The formians will not initiate violence, however. I’m guessing the party will start a fight with the first formians they see, but when they kill the workers easily, they might hold back on later violence and look for a cause. If they manage to get to the formian hive queen without a pitched battle, she will even talk to them a little bit, if only to tell them to speak with the Scion Queen Mother on Mechanus.
If they kill the entire hive, there’s some other events that should point them toward the Scion Queen Mother anyway.
The Queen Mother can tell them, if they’re convincing about their desire to help, that she’s trying to create an escape route for the formians because Mechanus is slowly falling victim to chaotic forces. Apparently, a plague is infecting formian workers and warriors, causing them to go insane and break from the hivemind. She’s willing to deal a little bit, but she won’t put off a potential move to the Material Plane as long as the plague is ongoing.
The PCs will be taken to see some of the “mad” formians so they know the signs to watch for. Each one is slightly touched by chaos in a physical sense, just enough to be different from the hive’s exact duplicates. Different colors, patches of hair or fur, short, tall, etc. When the PCs see them, the formians will begin pleading to be rescued. I’d like the PCs to be confronted with the choice between freedom and perfect unity.
But freedom has a price.
The plague is being caused by one of the slaadi lords, who has developed a spell that cuts off formians from the hive mind. (This is loosely based on the chain of chaos spell from DotF.) That’s all it does-the madness is based on the perception of the hivemind. However, formians who are cut off from the hive mind die within about a year. The formians who are “free” accept this price. The ones still in the hive mind, of course, have no will to choose or not. The “mad” formians want all formians to be free, even though it will mean their death. To the hive mind, this is purest madness.
From here, I’ve got some ideas. I’m trying to develop a way to cause a choice between chaos and law, but with some serious impact each way. I’m kind of stuck on ideas as to the consequences of a choice between law (eliminating the slaad lord) and chaos (letting the plague run its course so that the formians are “freed”). Ideally, I don’t want it to seem slanted toward either side.
Thanks to everyone who stuck with this all the way, and if you have any ideas or comments about future directions this could go, I’d appreciate it.
