Ideas for Epic Quest

[Candide]

I'm going to start a new campaign soon and I was wanting some help. Though the game will be 1st level, I want them eventually to embark on an epic perilous quest. There is a great evil in the northeast and the world is a dark place . By epic I don't mean 21st level or higher. I was trying to think of something thats a fantasy staple. Sort of a LotR style something, but obviously not a ring to throw into the volcano. So I thought I'd ask for the collective knowledge of the boards.

If you need background info on my homebrew world here it is: Hundreds of years ago humans started appearing in the world. Elves and Dwarves already existed in their typical places. When the humans became the most promonent race, Elves taught them the ways of magic, and dwarves imparted the knowledge of technology(what would become firearms and more). Years went by as Humans used magic and technology. Eventually they created constructs, and the Elves were apprehensive about this. Then humans discovered steam technology and gunpowder weapons. They made machines to cut down forests for wood, and eventually created a living construct(like the Warforged). Religious groups of humans said this was a bad thing, that creating something like this was against the will of God. 13 years after the creation of the living constructs, the land was smitten(or smoted?) by God. High level clerics were transcended, Inventors as well as lots of mages and townfolk were killed.
At around this same year another deity like being was torn from the heavens and cast down to the earth. This was Izandor. He is known as the shadow in the east. He seeks to dominate all life, etc. After these two events, the sky became grey/black with a thin line of white along all of the horizon. It looks like it usually does right before a tornado. Tensions are mounting in the east, and their is talk of a great evil and war.

So, any ideas?

Also, I don't mean to offend anyone by using the name God. It isn't the actual christian concept, but is based off of him. This god is really alot like Bahamut in appearance.

 

[Particle_Man]

Stop the fallen god's followers from gathering the materials to make the biggest, baddest warforged evar (one infused with all sorts of divine power -- maybe even remote controlled by the god himself!). The party delays this creation but doesn't stop it, so then they finally have to take this (very) bad boy out. Doing so reduces the fallen god's power to manageable levels, so then they have to take out that god. Then they have to fix the sky.

 

[kolikeos]

the pcs somehow gain knowledge about some very powerful item, they wanna get it. but they're not alone, some evil 'loozers' want it too. if the bad guys get it, world's screwd, if the pcs get it, they can go ahead and kick those bad guy's asses!

i am running a game (although not epic level, i hate those epic rules) where the pcs need to find an artifact, to do that, they most follow the (not so understandable) instructions of a talking pebble. they most kill 3 very specific rats, located on the far ends of the cosmology and take their bones to the place where the artifact is hidden. only then they can get it, not without fighting some very powerful gaurdians, that is.

 

[Candide]

bump

 

[MerakSpielman]

The obvious quest is to Destroy the Fallen God.

But there needs to be a twist. Something the PCs won't expect.

Perhaps the Good God has a Plan for the world - a plan that calls for the world to begin (as it has), live and develop, and then, once it has reached its full spiritual potential, to die. Perhaps the Evil God was seeking to thwart this plan, so was cast down to Earth to share in its fate. Though he only really seeks to preserve his own life, the Evil God is, in his own dark way, trying to save the world.

 

[Style]

Izandor is the light of heaven itself and falls to earth when God falls into madness. God is unable to reconcile the thoughtless acts of his most favoured children (humans) with the divinity he used to create them. He cannot understand how he could have created something so vile and forgets how to love mortals. This frgments God, causing the Godmsite and giving birth to Izandor, who falls to earth.

God in heaven is now blind, robbed of his light. Izandor, god on the earth, seeks to set right what went wrong by eradicating humanity. In his shattered madness he believes that this will allow him to be whole again and return to the heavens. However, neither God nor Izandor have omniscience any more, and neither truly know how this will turn out. Your epic can play out with this as the backdrop or as the central tale.

Build tales centered around discovery at first - possibly the PCs are able to learn something that both God and Izandor have now forgotten - and about the nature of faith and the churches of the world. Present various competing factions, each trying to spin events to suit themselves. The churches would split loosely into those who embrace the new order and those who espouse the old. Wizardry and science would polarise or go underground. An age of religious darkness begins. Allow the PCs to align themselves with one faction or the other and your are ready to work your way towards an endgame. And what better endgame than deicide?

 

[I'm A Banana]

To find the land un-smoted by God, beyond the reach of the Shadow...to take their people from desolation into the promised land...

It starts out being someone else's quest; some great hero of their people decides to move the entire town based on the rumors they've heard. Gradually, their own incompetence and desparation is revealed, and the PC's need to accept leadership, and depose the former leader, without endangering their own people...and then there's the chance that this Promised Land is just a rumor, nothing more than the ravings of madmen...or that it's already occupied by folks that don't want to give it up....