RangerWickett
Legend
I'm running a campaign where I let the players have a lot of leeway. I figure it's a big world; I can afford to give the PCs freedom to screw around. So when they went into the ogre city Hastruar, which lies on the dessicated shore of a dry lake bed covered in the bones of thousands of beasts sacrificed to open a well to the Abyss, and proceeded to defeat the commander of the ogre warriors in ritual combat, I let them become the new commanders of the army. So far they haven't incited a mutiny.
When we converted from 3e to 4e, I let them keep a handful of iconic abilities, so the brawling fighter can levitate and snatch souls, and the wizard can stoneshape and pluck his eye out of its socket, letting the thing scurry about using its nerve endings as legs. (It was a 3e warlock power; if you ended the spell prematurely or your eye got squished, you took damage and it would take a while for it to regrow.)
The PCs were looking for a way to close the pit to the Abyss that has drained the city's lake (and which occasionally spawns demons), and the wizard got impatient with trying to discreetly ask the ogres what they knew about the portal without letting on that they want to close the ogres' greatest source of power. So he walks to the edge of the infinite chasm, straps himself to a big rock so he won't fall in, then pulls out his right eye and tosses it down the hole.
Catches me completely off guard. I'd figured the PCs were firmly aware that death awaited them if they ever fell down the Howling Well, the Maelstrom, the Portal to the Infinite Layers of the Abyss. They'd spoken to a demon who described it as "falling for eternity, until finally you stop." So I'm put on the spot, but I want to make this good, and hint at some of the stuff I've got planned for later in the campaign.
I begin to describe falling, down through miles of the world's crust, past dark searing orange walls of magma, and then on deeper, impossibly deeper, into an impenetrable darkness until finally you think you must have gone blind. But then you see bodies tumbling past you in the great distance. Massive shelves of stone jut out from barely visible walls, littered with bodies that have dashed themselves against the plateaus, or impaled themselves upon rocky spires, and metal plinths, and jagged bones.
A titanic claw clad in scales like writhing masses of cockroaches swipes across the black expanse and snatches a man as he plummets beside you; his mute screams resonate in your mind though you know you have no ears to hear them. Your eye sees more than should be possible, more than should be endured. Drifting spheres of rusted iron lit by flickering lightning storms across which battle inhuman legions armored in the flesh of the damned. Layers of countless worlds flashing past you, entire planes of tempest-driven ice, seeping rivers of lava, plunging waterfalls of tormented souls, impenetrable webs within which lurk and scurry creatures with envious emerald eyes, and always beneath you the gray haze of bottomless infinity.
"So," the player says, "when do I black out? The spell should end when I stop concentrating on it. How long does this go on?"
Forever, I answer. You just threw your eye into the Abyss. It will not let you have it back. Until the day you die or until you track it down and retrieve it, you will always have one eye falling past madness and horror no living soul should ever witness.
"Yes!" says the player. "Awesome!"
When we converted from 3e to 4e, I let them keep a handful of iconic abilities, so the brawling fighter can levitate and snatch souls, and the wizard can stoneshape and pluck his eye out of its socket, letting the thing scurry about using its nerve endings as legs. (It was a 3e warlock power; if you ended the spell prematurely or your eye got squished, you took damage and it would take a while for it to regrow.)
The PCs were looking for a way to close the pit to the Abyss that has drained the city's lake (and which occasionally spawns demons), and the wizard got impatient with trying to discreetly ask the ogres what they knew about the portal without letting on that they want to close the ogres' greatest source of power. So he walks to the edge of the infinite chasm, straps himself to a big rock so he won't fall in, then pulls out his right eye and tosses it down the hole.
Catches me completely off guard. I'd figured the PCs were firmly aware that death awaited them if they ever fell down the Howling Well, the Maelstrom, the Portal to the Infinite Layers of the Abyss. They'd spoken to a demon who described it as "falling for eternity, until finally you stop." So I'm put on the spot, but I want to make this good, and hint at some of the stuff I've got planned for later in the campaign.
I begin to describe falling, down through miles of the world's crust, past dark searing orange walls of magma, and then on deeper, impossibly deeper, into an impenetrable darkness until finally you think you must have gone blind. But then you see bodies tumbling past you in the great distance. Massive shelves of stone jut out from barely visible walls, littered with bodies that have dashed themselves against the plateaus, or impaled themselves upon rocky spires, and metal plinths, and jagged bones.
A titanic claw clad in scales like writhing masses of cockroaches swipes across the black expanse and snatches a man as he plummets beside you; his mute screams resonate in your mind though you know you have no ears to hear them. Your eye sees more than should be possible, more than should be endured. Drifting spheres of rusted iron lit by flickering lightning storms across which battle inhuman legions armored in the flesh of the damned. Layers of countless worlds flashing past you, entire planes of tempest-driven ice, seeping rivers of lava, plunging waterfalls of tormented souls, impenetrable webs within which lurk and scurry creatures with envious emerald eyes, and always beneath you the gray haze of bottomless infinity.
"So," the player says, "when do I black out? The spell should end when I stop concentrating on it. How long does this go on?"
Forever, I answer. You just threw your eye into the Abyss. It will not let you have it back. Until the day you die or until you track it down and retrieve it, you will always have one eye falling past madness and horror no living soul should ever witness.
"Yes!" says the player. "Awesome!"
