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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Templetroll" data-source="post: 3222298" data-attributes="member: 2201">I did that by having the Emperor, an ancient lich who had ruled the Empire that covered most of the world with armies fully outfitted in magic gear, etc.  That empire collapsed due to a drop in the level of maig in the world to "only 9th level spells" which was an idea gotten from the 1e DMG.   This gave me a reason for magic items to be scattered all over the place in oddly fortified underground defense installations.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Anyway, the Emperor had a spell that would send out a storm cloud from his ruined city and a lightning bolt would crash down and zap the character of an absent player.  There would be a small pile of smoking dust left!  (first time I did it, one player looked at the other and said, "Is he dead?" the reply was, "I don't know but I'll gather the ash.")  The character would appear in the throne room and the Emperor would begin to questiont them about themselves.  I didn't have an ingame reason when I started this but I developed the idea that the Emperor was going to meet a group of adventurers in the future and this was his way to try and locate those foes while they were developing and try to alter his past by interfering slightly in their present and future!A couple players started to track who was summoned and who wasn't, and they found that some folks were not even noticed by the Emperor!  This was due to the players always being at the game, like my wife, but ingame was due to the character dieing without having an effect that would harm the Emperor or not yet being "that person" that would oppose the emperor in the future.  My wife's character wasn't noticed until she had to be away the one day, and that was after the character had become a lycanthrope.  That was why the Emperor 'noticed' the character suddenly.Another player pointed out that the Emperor was my standin in the game.  The description I used was kinda like what I looked like and he sat on a throne overseeing the world he considered his own.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />   DM chair to the max!Funny things that occured, there was a unicorn horn in the dinning hall at the Emperor's.  He put it there so that the people he summoned could verify that the food was not poisoned.  One PC took the horn and demanded to know where the unicorn was!  The Emperor sent her to the dungeons where a unicorn the size of a clydesdale was chained up.  The PC was in a cell across the hall was just not able to reach the horn to the wounded stump on the creature.  When the pc was sent back to the party they still had the horn, and they took on the goal of trying to free that unicorn and get the horn back to it.  They had a +2 spear that could detect poison in the meantime.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />   A different character, a dwarf, asked if there was a workshop and ended up building traps for the Emperor!  I let him draw up whatever he wanted to build and was going to use them if a party ever decided to try and attack the ruined Imperial Palace.</blockquote>

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