GuJiaXian
Explorer
I love H.P. Lovecraft. I’ve always loved his unique blend of psychological horror and eldritch monsters from beyond time. His influences on modern roleplaying are obvious. For example, take D&D’s Farplane, with its myriad aberrations and such. Still, it’s always bothered me that even with as cool as Cthulhu is, true madness-inspired D&D aberration monstrosities still boil down to things with tentacles. Even the alien intelligences of Rifts are just big blobs of flesh with lots of eyes and tentacles.
So, I started thinking about what would truly be alien. It wouldn’t be anything like us (it wouldn’t be a bipedal monster with tentacles). It would have to be so beyond our realm of understanding as to be truly and utterly alien—something that could really drive people insane as they understood, in some small way, what this thing was.
So, I’ve come up with the bare bones of a campaign idea I’m going to be running my group through (we’re running Pathfinder, but that doesn’t directly influence the basic scope and plot). Here’s what I’ve come up with so far, and I’m open to feedback and suggestions.
After a number of more usual low-level adventures (spanning a few sessions), the party begins encountering people who’ve had their memories wiped. At first they might just think it’s the odd case of amnesia, but they come to understand that these people knew something—at this point it’s not known what—and somehow something or someone wiped away their memories.
Various dire portents would hint that something bad is going to happen, so the party would be motivated to figure out what these people have forgotten. They might try divination magic, or perhaps even curative magic (that affects the mind). Ultimately, I see them being forced to turn to the one race that truly understands the powers of the mind and how to manipulate thought and memory: the illithid.
The party then ventures down into the underdark on a quest to contact an illithid (and somehow keep their brains safely in their skulls in the process) and see just what’s going on. More adventure ensues, and the party finally finds out the key to unlocking these erased memories. They rush back to the surface world (perhaps pursued by their erstwhile illithid “allies”) and perform the cure on one of the amnesiac victims.
They find out that the victim knew about the imminent advent of a terrible force from beyond the veil of reality—a primal force from unknown dimensions and planes. They also end up with a name and description of the person that wiped the victim’s memory.
They party tracks down the memory-eraser as they hear rumors of an army of alien aberrations gathering. They catch up to the memory-eraser and engage in battle. They defeat him, and as he lies dying, he claims that they’ve doomed the world. He claims that his work was all that stood between sanity and nightmares unending. Then he dies.
The party then gathers an army to fight the invading army of aberrations/farspawn creatures. There is a series of skirmishes, which escalate into battles. This all finally cumulates with a massive battle between the armies raised by the PCs and the nightmare hordes of the invaders.
Finally, the battle is won. The PCs and their armies rejoice, but their celebration is cut short. It turns out that this has been the BBEG’s plan all along. The true villain, the primeval power from beyond time and reality, is actually a sentient idea. By causing the war, this force was able to spread and manifest in the world. Now, with the veils of reality already weakened by the mass death and destruction and because everyone is thinking about this sentient idea, it is able to manifest bodily on the Prime Material.
Still weakened from having just fought the final battle of a war, the PCs and the wounded remnants of their armies now must fight the true final battle, against this sentient idea’s incarnate form.
So, that's the bare bones concept. It seems to me that a sentient idea or concept is truly and genuinely alien. Thoughts? Is this a campaign you'd want to play in? Do you have ideas about how to tweak or flesh it out?
So, I started thinking about what would truly be alien. It wouldn’t be anything like us (it wouldn’t be a bipedal monster with tentacles). It would have to be so beyond our realm of understanding as to be truly and utterly alien—something that could really drive people insane as they understood, in some small way, what this thing was.
So, I’ve come up with the bare bones of a campaign idea I’m going to be running my group through (we’re running Pathfinder, but that doesn’t directly influence the basic scope and plot). Here’s what I’ve come up with so far, and I’m open to feedback and suggestions.
After a number of more usual low-level adventures (spanning a few sessions), the party begins encountering people who’ve had their memories wiped. At first they might just think it’s the odd case of amnesia, but they come to understand that these people knew something—at this point it’s not known what—and somehow something or someone wiped away their memories.
Various dire portents would hint that something bad is going to happen, so the party would be motivated to figure out what these people have forgotten. They might try divination magic, or perhaps even curative magic (that affects the mind). Ultimately, I see them being forced to turn to the one race that truly understands the powers of the mind and how to manipulate thought and memory: the illithid.
The party then ventures down into the underdark on a quest to contact an illithid (and somehow keep their brains safely in their skulls in the process) and see just what’s going on. More adventure ensues, and the party finally finds out the key to unlocking these erased memories. They rush back to the surface world (perhaps pursued by their erstwhile illithid “allies”) and perform the cure on one of the amnesiac victims.
They find out that the victim knew about the imminent advent of a terrible force from beyond the veil of reality—a primal force from unknown dimensions and planes. They also end up with a name and description of the person that wiped the victim’s memory.
They party tracks down the memory-eraser as they hear rumors of an army of alien aberrations gathering. They catch up to the memory-eraser and engage in battle. They defeat him, and as he lies dying, he claims that they’ve doomed the world. He claims that his work was all that stood between sanity and nightmares unending. Then he dies.
The party then gathers an army to fight the invading army of aberrations/farspawn creatures. There is a series of skirmishes, which escalate into battles. This all finally cumulates with a massive battle between the armies raised by the PCs and the nightmare hordes of the invaders.
Finally, the battle is won. The PCs and their armies rejoice, but their celebration is cut short. It turns out that this has been the BBEG’s plan all along. The true villain, the primeval power from beyond time and reality, is actually a sentient idea. By causing the war, this force was able to spread and manifest in the world. Now, with the veils of reality already weakened by the mass death and destruction and because everyone is thinking about this sentient idea, it is able to manifest bodily on the Prime Material.
Still weakened from having just fought the final battle of a war, the PCs and the wounded remnants of their armies now must fight the true final battle, against this sentient idea’s incarnate form.
So, that's the bare bones concept. It seems to me that a sentient idea or concept is truly and genuinely alien. Thoughts? Is this a campaign you'd want to play in? Do you have ideas about how to tweak or flesh it out?
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