NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zaruthustran" data-source="post: 6480323" data-attributes="member: 1457">Quick anecdote: I once ran a game based on the notion of an evil contained within rock. It was a one-shot Halloween adventure at a lonely abbey. The quick summary is that some of its stone was quarried from rock that contained a vampire. So: vampiric abbey.The not so quick story was that the vampire was challenged long ago by a magic user who had hunted and destroyed it many times, but the vampire kept reforming. So the hunter nailed it with Flesh to Stone, and then Stone to Mud. Since it wasn't reduced to zero HP it never turned to mist/couldn't reform. Ages later, that mud became rock, rock that was part of a sandstone quarry, and that specific stone was used as flooring in a store room at a small keep. That keep eventually became an abbey, and that store room eventually became a slaughterhouse for the abbey's sheep. Eventually, enough blood was spilled on the stone that it awakened some semblance of the vampire entity, and it mindlessly began spreading its presence throughout the castle (causing monks to slip and fall to their deaths, dropping chunks on pilgrims, etc.). By the time of the adventure, all the unexplained injuries and deaths caused the abbey to develop a reputation for being haunted. It was mostly abandoned. The PCs were trapped there by a storm and learned of possible lycanthrope attacks (the Red Herring). Through investigation and interviews, they discovered the cast of characters: a monk who was essentially the vampiric abbey's Renfield, the suspicious and slowly-being-corrupted head abbot, a family of very vulnerable innocents also trapped by the storm (and possible werewolves pulling the Sheep's Clothing trick to get inside the abbey), and a ghost hunter who came close to discovering the truth (but was murdered after dinner, with the PCs under suspicion as the culprits). Renfield's plan was to somehow get lycanthrope blood into the former slaughterhouse; his notion was that a generous dose of shapeshifter blood would let his master escape. So, the Red Herring had a bit of truth. Eventually they managed to extract the vampire via deduction and a precise application of Stone to Flesh and destroy it. And of course, that just sent the vamp whirling away in mist form to who-knows-where. Hurray for campaign villain!Anyway. Long story long: you can have a lot of fun with D&D's weird spells and geology. Have you read the description for the 3E spell Imprisonment?Fun twist: the "big evil" is actually a big good (like a Chosen One sort of thing, or somesuch) who used Imprisonment on self as a way to hide from world (even Wish can't extract) until time is right. Over time, a legend grew up about it an important and powerful figure trapped under the earth, and since it was so mysterious that figure over the years took on an evil reputation.</blockquote>

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