D&D 5E Gothic Horror In The Rain

[Dragoslav]

First off, this is a great idea for a campaign setting.

I haven't quite figured out what caused the rain yet. Currently, I'm operating on the idea that it's a long-standing curse, but if anyone's got a really creative idea, I'd love to hear it. Other ideas I've discarded is that it's a mad composer who needs the rain to finish his grand masterpiece, or it was a defense mechanism by a wizard to allow him to fight invisible creatures.

1) Maybe 2) Definite maybe 3) No. I would discard any idea that boils down to "a wizard did it." I like the composer idea because it's a more uniquely Gothic premise, and with a campaign setting this unique, you want to make sure that the core secrets underlying your world aren't derivative.

Regarding the flooded dwarven ruins, as a player I would feel disappointed if there weren't a section requiring us to explore and, potentially, fight underwater. So definitely include some dark, flooded catacombs populated by carnivorous horrors.

Actually, playing off the ideas of a couple other posters, how about the cause was a brilliant composer who has sequestered himself away for 50 years, furiously writing and discarding various compositions. Any individual piece would have been a masterpiece, but nothing has satisfied the lofty vision that his mad genius demands of him. In a fit of mad desperation, he performed a ritual that created a connection to the elemental plane of water in order to create an endless rain over the area that would inspire him to create a composition the likes of which the world has never seen. Maybe his muse that inspired him to go to these lengths is some kind of shadow fey.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

1) agreed that this is an awesome setting

2) keep the musical composer

3) add his rival...and brother...a great architect and engineer.

They both sought the hand of one woman. One wanted to create a composition to win her heart by summing up his lover for her in music. The other created a fountain that produced notes at random as water splashed on little brass tines.*

She could not choose.

Her indecision led to their anger, their anger to her anguish, her anguish to her suidcide, her suicide to their madness...and an end to their rivalry.

The composer sought to create a tune- Orpheus-like- to coax her back to life. The engineer, a larger, more ordered version of his fountain that would play that tune until she returned.

But the machinery needed to play the composition was internally complex...as was the song. And a great deal of water was required to power the machinery and to play the notes.

Their combined wills made it happen**, but in doing so, opened up a portal to the Elemental plane of water...and which also pushed ajar the gates to the underworld...

No one knows the fate of the mad genius brothers, or if she returned, but it is clear that the portal to the elemental plane still remains open.

...and something came back from the dead.







* I've seen one in person...quite hypnotic

** there's your ritual

 

[MortalPlague]

You guys have come up with some amazing stuff!

I won't touch on everything just yet, but I wanted to thank you all for contributing. One of the best things about ENWorld is the shared creative consciousness; I can always count on some inspiration from the ideas here.


The Hungry Forest

I am definitely going to use this. The idea that the woods have grown and grown, encroaching on the town, stealing the sunlight, and hiding great carnivorous plants within makes me giddy. And shambling mounds are one of my favorite monsters. This will certainly see some use.


Wood-Drying Industry

I love the idea that this has become an industry. Probably there are wizards who have their apprentices use magic to dry out wood so people can keep fires going in their homes to ward away the cold. This means that someone also has to go into the forest and cut down trees, likely a hazardous endeavor. Which means the cost of dry wood is pretty high. Something the adventurers could exploit, if they're clever.


The Cause Of The Rain

@Quickleaf mentioned the Fey, and perhaps a human encroachment as a reason for the rain. That give me an idea. A delicious, devilish idea.

The local lord had a grown son who went for a swim in a small lake. One of the water fey who lived in the lake desired him as her consort, so she took him and drowned him. The lord was told that his son had drowned, and in his grief, he ordered his men to drain the lake, so that the body could be retrieved. Damming the rivers, they used dust of dryness to drink up the water, which murdered the water fey who had claimed the young man. But there was no body.

Mystified at the lack of a body, the lord concealed his son's disappearance (and the lake's draining). He began to believe that his son had faked his own death, and fled the county. The grief drove the lord mad, and he became reclusive, hiding away in his keep. And that very day, the water began to fall; a curse, wrought by the murdered water fey and their stolen consort, now undead and roaming the woods.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I love the idea that this has become an industry. Probably there are wizards who have their apprentices use magic to dry out wood so people can keep fires going in their homes to ward away the cold. This means that someone also has to go into the forest and cut down trees, likely a hazardous endeavor. Which means the cost of dry wood is pretty high. Something the adventurers could exploit, if they're clever.

This has interesting repercussions for bards and other would-be musicians.

...and anything made over a wood-burning or wood-charcoal fire- IOW, many metals & alloys.

 

[RaistMagus]

Regarding the reason for raining. A person of note, who could be a local hero/benefactor, a local villain/dictator/evil wizard or even a stranger passing through, and who could have been practicing healing magic, was wrongly accused and killed/executed with the consent of the community. Since the day of his/her death it hasn't stopped raining. People remember that day as, say, "the day when the wizard died" and they hold yearly ritual/festivities/offerings to atone to whomever they believe they have wronged. This person was the offspring of a god and a mortal and the rain is the tears of his godly parent.

As for the impact of the constant rain on the ecosystem, imho it doesn't have to be perfectly realistic in a fantasy fiction rpg setting. Bedtime stories and fairy tales never made perfect sense anyway : ) Moreover, if the rain stems from a curse, it may be a part of the curse not to alter dramatically the ecosystem so that people can get on with their lives and be "tortured" by the rain at the same time.

 

[MortalPlague]

This has interesting repercussions for bards and other would-be musicians.

I like where you're going with this.

@RaistMagus, welcome to ENWorld! You're absolutely right that the rain doesn't need to be completely realistic, but I want it to have an impact on the game. I want the game to be different, both in-game and thematically, because of the eternal downpour.

 

[Minicol]

I love your ideas, keep going

 

[Nytmare]

We had about 8 or 9 levels of non stop rain when I ran my version of the Banewarrens.

For those who don't know the story:

Spoiler

an ancient party of heroes scoured every corner of the planes in an attempt to gather up and seal away every evil artifact in existence. The end result was that that many evil artifacts all in one place ended up corrupting the head of the group and basically turned him into an evil god, armed with the worst and most powerful toys imaginable. The friends turned against him, killed him (maybe?), sealed up what they now referred to as the "Bane Warrrens", and everything was fine for a hundred bazillion years till our intrepid adventurers came along and innocently started looting the place.

In my game, when the warrens first became unsealed, and as each new series of vaults were opened, the world (or more to the point the titaness of the earth) responded by trying to damn up and then clean away what was basically an open, festering, cancerous, wound in her side. One of these responses was an ever more powerful storm that started as a steady rain, but for months raged as a near hurricane that battered the city.

For your story, I'm having trouble imagining that the world wouldn't be rotting out from underneath people. I'd imagine that an area that has been bombarded with non stop rain for a decade would be well on it's way to giving up. I'm originally from an area of New Jersey that butts right up against a pine forest that stretches for like 3 or 4 states. There's (google says was) a man made lake right up against Great Adventure that had huge, swampy stretch that was usually just at or above water level. I was there on and off every summer about 10 to 20 years after the lake had been filled, and that area was a huge morass of stinking, knee deep mud and almost entirely dead trees in various states of falling over, getting tangled up in each others branches, and rotting away to nothing.

Is the sun still shining? Do people even remember what it looks like?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I was born in New Orleans and used to live in Tacoma. Many things on those areas had a...mossyness..due to the precipitation & humidity.

Perhaps, as a nod to realism, the rain is centered over one particular area- a whole region or kingdom, but still bounded. In that way, it would be like Europe in Mary Gentle's Ash stories.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash:_A_Secret_History

That would at least allow for the import of food, dry wood, metal, and building materials & tools as opposed to making everyone dependent on magic and extreme skill.

Still expensive, but not borderline impossible.

 

[MortalPlague]

For your story, I'm having trouble imagining that the world wouldn't be rotting out from underneath people.

I'm hoping to address that with the dwarf ruins that the water empties into. There will still be plenty of mud, however, and the river flows much higher than it used to.

Is the sun still shining? Do people even remember what it looks like?

I'm looking forward to this one. The sun does shine, but always behind clouds. People have not seen it in ten years. It'll be great to play up the wistfulness, mixing with the despair of people who long to see the sun again.

Perhaps, as a nod to realism, the rain is centered over one particular area- a whole region or kingdom, but still bounded. In that way, it would be like Europe in Mary Gentle's Ash stories.

The plan is that the rain stretches for about a week's travel in all directions. So it's not impossible, but the voracious forest makes travel difficult except in large convoys. I'll probably have a merchant who comes twice a year with an armed caravan to sell goods (at a huge profit, naturally).