Forgotten Realms + Call of Cthulhu = Fun

[I'm A Banana]

But I need some help. This seems like a good campaign idea for me, but I'll need some knowledgable people to help me put it together.

The scenerio: Something tentacled has just discovered Faerun. The tide of gibbering wickedness has begun to swell, finally impacting the PC's in the center of their peaceful lives...

I want this to be good.

I want this to be bloody.

I want everything to fall apart, and have it fall to the PC's to make a valiant attempt at restoring the status quo.

Just to let you guys now my group's history, no one has played in FR OR CoC, but they've got a bit of knowledge about FR from a few Drizzit novels (and not everyone has that). So I kinda hafta tackle the world from a "generic fantasy world" perspective...

Help me! As a reward, I'll....I dunno...take up a personal challenge or something.

 

[Numion]

It might be fun to tackle it from the angle that it's the result of magical experiment thats gone horribly wrong. In search for ultimate arcane power the Red Wizards, for example, have unleashed something undesirable to the world. Or maybe they have some control (or so they think) over the Cthulthoid monsters, and have begun spreading them through the enclaves. Maybe your players can encounter them that way; the enclaves are spread throughout the realms, so it's easy to use them.

Or maybe the Shades didn't come back alone from the Plane of Shadow. Or maybe they didn't come from that plane at all.

The realms canon is that some really powerful nasties were trapped under the anauroch desert. Maybe those nasties are in fact more sinister than the official history suggests? Shades may have just now unleashed something bad in their search for the Netherese artifacts in the desert.

Thats a few.. not too helpful on actually running the campaign, but a starting point, perhaps.

 

[green slime]

I'd have it be something outrageous...

You have to have all the usual Epic-heroes of Faerûn pass on, go mad, or simply disappear, while investigating certain unmentionable buildings with non-Euclidian geometry.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Good ideas, oh lords!

So...Red Wizards, Shades, Anauroch desert...all/most of the NPC's taken out of the picture..

How would I go about removing those big NPC's, if I went that route? Which ones could be squished by something sqaumous, and which ones would have to probably go mad first?

The desert setting seems tempting, but I'm not sure how dark an 'orrible a big expanse of sand could be...

Keep letting me know what you think...I want this to be fairly canonical, ideally, just so I have to make up as little as possible. Sorta....have the ingredients, now I need to mix 'em together.

 

[Qlippoth]

The desert setting seems tempting, but I'm not sure how dark an 'orrible a big expanse of sand could be...

http://www.dagonbytes.com/thelibrary/lovecraft/theshadowoutoftime.htm

 

[VorpalBunny]

Sounds very interesting, but since your group in unfamiliar with the Realms or Cthulhu I'd play it much more sinister and subsumed (at least at first). My $0.02:

• The mi-go have discovered Toril, and have begun strip-mining Faerûn's resources, and experimenting on its inhabitants.
  
• A new "religion" has sprung up in Waterdeep. They hold ceremonies outside the city where they summon blasphemous horrors and sacrifice innocents to their god. When the child of a Lord of Waterdeep is kidnapped for sacrifice, the PC's are called in to investigate. Eventually, they discover the Cult, but also discover that its roots grow deeper than Waterdeep...
  
• The PC's discover the Notebook Found in a Deserted House (as in the Robert Bloch story), and investigate the events in the notebook. As a result they have to contend with mad cultists, and a summoned Dark Young.
  
• While investigating ancient ruins, the PC's discover an old rotting book that contains "blasphemous secrets" and magic spells long forgotten...

 

[Katerek]

During the time of the avatar wars Ao cast the gods (lets call these guys the Interlopers) down to Toril. There were many supposed excuses. Here is the truth (maybe....)

Ao had been relaxing one day, like he is prone to do and noticed a shining pin prick of light in an area of the firmament that was normallly all dark. In his infinite curiosity, for he could remember creating no such thing, he went to explore it. When he looked through the hole in the sky, he was suddenly come upon by the urge to commit suicide. What he saw on the other side was just THAT bad. So Ao, in all his great and infinite wisdom caste his children to Toril so that he could do battle with the entropy he glimpsed on the other side.

That battle was brief. Ao lost and now resides insane, babbling in the heavens. The Great Old Ones have come through the portal and cultists on Toril are now starting to realize they are out there. The cultists have been waiting for untold time, for this was prophesized long ago. There ARE things beneath the desert, but they have been sleeping this whole time, but now they begin to stir.

The interlopers are only dimly aware of this, they prefer the ostrich effect.

_____________________

Secretly figure out your PC's sanity scores. Make it unhealable with spells. Read the Cthulu book very closely, everything you need is there. Then, make it an EVENT when Elmonster or one of the ohter baddies goes nuts! How WOULD the agents across Toril react if suddenly the magister lost her mind?

Maybe there are REASONS that the Red Wizards have completely changed their order. Just where was Zas Tam for so long on his last trip into the plane of shadow? Who IS that strange man in his court?

___________________

These are just ramblings, hope you can use something.

I have successfully merged the mythos and my own homebrew campaign and have never regretted it. Good luck to you!

 

[Sagrabah]

Here's what I would do and I might actually consider it since I run a Realms game. Take a good look at the Alienist Prc from Tome and Blood. It's a perfect segway into the idea of the Outer Limits where sanity is tested. Of course things there tend to be full of tentacled delight.

You could rationalize that the high powers of the Realms (most notably Elminster and friends) would go blindingly insane if they delved into these matters. Sort of along the lines that the more you know the more horrifying it seems. The old saftey in ignorance schtick.

Toss that into the mixing bowl and see what you think.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I LIKE IT!

The Red Wizards seem primed to be the first to fall, the initial realizers...knowledge being a bad thing, and them being Wizards and all...

Is Elminster the curious type? This stuff certainly isn't part of the Weave...how will they continue to affront Mystra?

Keep it going...it's beginning to gel...

 

[boxstop7]

Another potential avenue...

What if it's all a result of the latest installment of the "good natured magical experiments gone horribly wrong" from the Harpells in Longsaddle? They've always got the best of intentions, but they're all also slightly insane (to varying degrees, of course). Maybe all of this is just the aftermath of another Harpell experiment turned really, really awful.

~Box