Got your soul!

[Rechan]

What are some things that can happen to a dead soul in the Shadowfell?

I'm planning an adventure where the PCs have to go retrieve a soul from the Shadowfell. It's an important person who just died and the retrieval is time sensitive.

So what I'm trying to think of are "What happened to the soul?" It would be more interesting if said soul was interrupted on their way to the Raven Queen's place of judgment (in this situation, I'm saying the RQ basically acts like Osiris or Hades or other afterlife Judge, she's also responsible for souls going where they are owed). Thing is I don't have the SHadowfell book.

The adventure I have in mind should only be a few sessions, so no long spanning thing, but neither should it be a single session jaunt.

The adventure itself will involve following the supposed path that the soul took, discovering it was interrupted, then tracking it down, rescuing it, bringing it back - all the while dealing with the inhabitants of the Shadowfell.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Collected by a demon or devil? That's part of the lore, sometimes souls run afoul of one or the other of those beasties. Perhaps the guy had incurred a debt and someone is after collecting it. Maybe GETTING the soul isn't the hard part, but avoiding the tax man is (and this could even be agents of the RQ).

You could have various plot twists as well. Maybe the guy doesn't really want to come back. Or he's not really what he seems, maybe the threat is really the guy they're retrieving. Could also be a moral dilemma. Perhaps whatever debt he owes is just, and returning him to life is going to involve thwarting justice.

Finding the right soul might also be tricky. The party stumbles into a 'village of dead souls' and none of them are really all that clear on who they were in life. Maybe sorting that out requires talking to the 'mayor'. He's got a book that has the accounting of who's who, but he's not all that eager to help. Of course not all the inhabitants are exactly what they seem...

 

[Arctic Wolf]

You could make it involve a person called * The Dread Emperor*, I think he is mentioned in the Shadowfell book but his stats are in the old book of vile darkness. Say that the soul got caught in an item and The Dread Emperor got a hold of this item containing the soul and has it in his fortress. Now that I'm thinking about this though, it might be longer than a few sessions but you could always shorten it. Hope this gives you some ideas!

 

[frankthedm]

What are some things that can happen to a dead soul in the Shadowfell?

Shadowfel is a way station, not a final destination.

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Cosmology)
The Shadowfell is the land of the dead, where the spirits of the deceased linger for a time in a dark reflection of their previous lives before silently fading beyond all ken.

So you have a non specific time limit built into the cosmology and not even gods know where souls really go after that.

 

[Rechan]

Shadowfel is a way station, not a final destination.So you have a non specific time limit built into the cosmology and not even gods know where souls really go after that.

Sure, I've been conceputlizing that for the dead, the Shadowfell is a metaphorical road to judgment. But my question is 'what are some stuff that could happen to a soul on the way down the road'. Since it's an adventure, said soul isn't just going to break down on the side of the road and waste away.

Hence said soul has been claimed by something that eats souls, or it's been enslaved, or snared in something, etc etc. Said soul wasting away is one of two reasons why there's a time-sensitive nature to said adventure, but it's a threat of failure.

The adventure's premise is someone crucial to a kingdom's survival just got assassinated and (because Raise dead isn't working for Plot Reasons) the PCs are tasked with retrieving the soul back before it leaves the Shadowfell. And the adventure is the complications. Sort of the supernatural equivalent of "We've lost a man behind enemy lines, we need you to go get him out."

I plan to adapt the adventure so that a group could retrieve a just-killed PC's soul from the Shadowfell.

 

[Redshirt]

If you go with the Shadowfell is a place to reflect on your life, than I can easily see a soul getting trapped in a recreation of some event in its past. In this Bizzaro memory the soul is unable or unwilling to accept the guilt/blame of that event and is reliving it over and over again.

Throw in some creature manipulating the soul so it can feed on the guilt or something.

Man, I need to use that in my game.

 

[LurkAway]

The last half of this thread has some ideas.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Right. I think to get substantially more specific it would be useful to know for instance the level range of whatever we'd be talking about. Are these PCs newly minted heroes, veterans of many adventures setting out on a new chapter (IE low paragon/high heroic), or mighty warriors of legend taking on ultimate fate (epic)?

For a low level heroic party I'd be more inclined to go almost strictly with a sort of metaphysical challenge. There are certainly low-level undead and other creepy monsters that can figure in it, but most of the canon Shadowfel threats are going to be beyond them. So the 'village of people that have lost their memory' or some sort of setup where the soul is trapped by its guilt and relives the same day over and over kind of thing would work well. It will be more focused on the story and the players working it out.

Higher level adventures can be more focused on monsters and broader themes. Take a look at Banderhobs in MM3. You could easily base something around that fluff for instance.

So, a soul can be 'stuck for its own reasons' and freeing might involve some interaction with either things conjured up by the soul itself or perhaps some agent of the RQ. It could simply be waylaid and held hostage by any of a vast array of monsters. It could be captured by a demon or devil, which consume souls or otherwise use their 'power'. It could be at Letherna and about to go on to oblivion.

Here's one. Suppose there is some force (call it Orcus) that is gathering souls. His minions go out and round them up and march them to some location where they get turned into goat chow. The PCs could need to determine this is the soul's predicament (find witnesses that saw it happen, etc). Then they'd have to track down the enemy squad that took it, maybe find out the soul is being held at some entrepot (collection point 666). Maybe this camp is too strong to attack, so the PCs have to somehow infiltrate, find out when and where soul #614825 is being shipped out, plan an ambush, etc. You can work in needing to hire local guides, scouting out the land, incidental encounters of bad and good sorts, etc. I could see breaking this storyline down into say 3 session with 3-5 encounters per session where 2-3 are combat and you have 1-2 RP/SC situations per session.

 

[Rechan]

Right. I think to get substantially more specific it would be useful to know for instance the level range of whatever we'd be talking about.

I'm planning this as a mini-campaign - so it's adjustable. But I'm thinking somewhere around level 6-8. I've never run (or played) paragon and would like to avoid that. Among other things, having them in Heroic enforces the danger of the place and how they should move under the radar and avoid open battle. There'd be touring the creepy local landscape/what happens to souls after death and how vulnerable you are in the journey/RPing with inhabitants, then hunting down the soul, extraction, and then fleeing to the exit point. I like the idea of the PCs running from a RQ agent trying to retrieve the soul once they free it/run for the exit.

The adventure background is that the Prophesized Chosen One - the General of the kingdom who has the silver bullet power to wipe out the oncoming army of monsters - was just assassinated, and the assassin has prevented the Raise Dead ritual from working. But they can Raise him if they grab the soul and put it in manually. Without the General and his power, the Kingdom is doomed. The PCs are the General's commanding officers and the most qualified to rescue the soul and complete the Prophecy.

It could simply be waylaid and held hostage by any of a vast array of monsters. It could be captured by a demon or devil, which consume souls or otherwise use their 'power'.

You can work in needing to hire local guides, scouting out the land, incidental encounters of bad and good sorts, etc.

These are things I was thinking, and your idea is roughly what I had in mind. Demons could work. Devils can't take souls that don't belong to them - if someone made a deal with a devil, they can collect them personally, and typical evil souls can wind up in Hell anyways. But a Devil can't touch a Good Soul for the same reason they can't touch holy water. Hence why devils are all about corrupting the living.

Another idea is that some Shadowfell locals are either trying to recruit or change the souls of Powerful mortals so they can stage a takeover of the area.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, sounds good. There are a few things that PCs are going to be likely to run into in the Shadowfel that they'll have to deal with:

1) Environment - The place is dark and grim. Life is possible there, but despair and madness are in the air so to speak. Gloomwrought uses the concept of a 'despair deck' to give that feeling. PCs can become paranoid, depressed, or even slightly mad. Success can breed confidence and magic might sustain you, but stay long enough and eventually only the very toughest minds are going to keep it together.

2) Terrain - There are areas which are simply hostile to life. Darklands for instance are murky areas where the pall of death is so thick that living things find it difficult to survive at all. Characters entering such an area would not be able to stay long. These areas are unstable and might appear or disappear, and some regions are simply permanent darklands, areas any sane person avoids. Necromantic seepage is another danger, a black 'fluid' which can issue forth, collect in pools etc. Exposure is nasty. There obviously could be other similar things.

3) Inhabitants - The living, the dead, the undead, cultists, demons, nightwalkers, death giants, dark ones, and the servants of the RQ.

Survival itself is thus a trial. You could profitably work some survival challenges into the adventure. Perhaps the party will have to traverse a darkland, cross or avoid areas of necromantic seepage, etc. More ordinary challenges can exist as well. Characters will need food and water, and possibly shelter as well.

In your level range you could have some weak demons as direct opponents. Vampires would work pretty well too. Dark Ones could be another useful monster, maybe as an enemy, maybe not. Your main bad guy could easily be some sort of free-willed undead (and doesn't really have to show up in the story).