[Midnight] Defeating the Shadow

[d20Dwarf]

I ran a Midnight one shot at GenCon this year that dealt with a major victory against the shadow. A group of dwarves left the besieged city of Calador in search of a weapon against Izrador. They found the weapon in an abadoned clanhold on the outskirts of the dwraven city that was destroyed.

The "weapon" turned out to be a book written by an ancient dwarven channeler that taught people how to commune with the spirit world and harness the divine magic of the ancestors.

Thus, I introduced Shamanic divine magic into world. The people of Midnight would be able to have Shamans who could weild the same magics as the legates and maybe wven oppose Izrador himself.

I loved it.

I am so peeved that I missed this game. I don't suppose you wrote up the adventure?

 

[Nightfall]

When it comes to Midnight, I listen and do what Wil tells me to do.

 

[Belen]

I am so peeved that I missed this game. I don't suppose you wrote up the adventure?

I did not write up anything formally, but I should be able to pull something together from my notes on it. I know that I had four encounters: Fell, Legate plus Orcs, Cave Troll, and Behir.

The adventure started off in the city of Calador. The heroes were summoned by the clan leaders and the Loremaster. The Loremaster had been studying the extensive tatoos on one of the PCs for years and finally divined the truth. The PC was the last living member of Clan Fodrin. The location of a secret weapon was found within his tatoos and the Loremaster thought that this was the real reason that Idenor has disappeared. The Shadow feared this weapon!

The PCs were shownthe way to a long forgotton road deep beneath Calador that would set them on the path towards Idenor. On their way, they were ordered to send word to some of the outlying clans from Calador that the city would soon fall to the shadow and that they should prepare to be under siege soon after the fall.

At the closest clanhold to Calador, the PCs discovered that it was already under siege and they fought a group of Fell who had been seeded in the roads around the clanhold to prevent escape or help from arriving. They dealt with the Fell and gave the news about the plight of Calador.

At this clanhold, they received information on which road they would need to continue their journey including news that the Cave Troll, Gorgas, guarded the road that they needed to take. They were warned that nothing could defeat Gorgas and that if they continued, then certain death would not be far behind.

After they left, they encountered the bones of dwarves and Orcs that littered the road. These bones only grew more numerous as they reached the home of Gorgas. A grew drum sounded in the deep for what seemed like a lieftime before they reached his cave. Gorgas waited for them and he beat a giant rock cauldron, waiting for them to arrive. The rock cauldron was filled with the blood of his victims and as he beat it, the blood dribbled over the sides. This was a very close battle and only one PC remained conscious at the end of it. They spent several days recovering.

Afterwards, they continued on the road until they reached an abandoned clanhold. Here, they encountered the clanless fighting a legate and his troops. The Legate has been sent to find a rumored party from Calador. They defeated the Legate and the clanless brought them to the defiled Hall of Heroes where they learned the location of the last road. The road would lead to a clanhold on the edges of Idenor where the secret weapon had been hidden before the end.

In that lasy clanhold, they encountered a Behir who was guarding the weapon. The behir had been among the creatures that had destroyed Idenor. The PCs fought bravely and two of them were eaten by the beast. In the end, they prevailed. Their channeler found the book and they discovered the knowledge of how to comunicate with their ancestors in order to harness their power to fight the shadow.

The ended the adventure determined to bring this knowledge to the armies of the Kurgan dwarves and with their channler learning the paths that would bring her divine power.

 

[Nightfall]

Bel,

Wow! That's some pretty sweet stuff. I liked it! Thanks for the insight.

 

[d20Dwarf]

I did not write up anything formally, but I should be able to pull something together from my notes on it. I know that I had four encounters: Fell, Legate plus Orcs, Cave Troll, and Behir.

Sweet, man, sounds awesome! I'm going to point some fellas this way that might want to yoink this for their campaigns!

 

[Nifelhein]

Pointed fella joining thread.

Since I think the whole discussion around the setting here is interesting i will be replying a little bit of everything in the thread, I just hope the authors still read it or I willl be kicking a dead horse...

To my mind, Midnight always cried out for a game-theory approach, viz. the following: (...)

The Midnight sourcebooks, OTOH, clearly state that the PCs will be able to achieve only minor victories and will never achieve a serious or lasting defeat of the Shadow or its minions. That theme is hammered into the reader over and over again. Because of this, I think that a DM who allows the PCs to beat Izrador can genuinely surprise the PCs by allowing them to achieve an unlikely victory in the Midnight setting. Because they don't know that they may be allowed to triumph, the triumph can become all the sweeter.

In short, I'd certainly allow the PCs to achieve victory, but I'd never tell them it were possible. In fact, I don't think I'd much like a campaign in which victory were impossible; that's even lamer, IMHO, than a campaign in which victory were guaranteed.

That said, I think you have to structure the campaign so that a victory by force of arms is not possible. I am reminded of Midnight's chief literary inspiration:

"Was there ever any hope, Gandalf?"
"There never was much hope. Just a fool's hope."

"We cannot achieve victory by force of arms."

Actually the greatest problem i have with the sourcebooks is that they ry so hard they actually end up making DMs buy the evil can't be beaten thing, and since i am used to players that do not buy books at all and do not read material even if i hand it to them, I doubt they would be without hope, they haven't read the book, and they know I am all about hope whe it comes to Midnight.

In the midnight book doesn't it say that Izrador's power grows through his temples and a special light or somthing in them? I always imagined that taking out the temples was the best way to really limit the god's powers.

Izrador is but a shadow of his former self (no pun intended), when the Sundering happened his soul and body got separated, his body now lies dedstroyed in the depths of the deep scar it left on the world, Izrdor is still a god a thus immortal, but he can't act all by his own and his ways of interacting with the world are not unlimited, he is not omniscient and can never be at two places at a time. The black mirrors are the way he found to get more power to himself, by draining the magic of the world to himself, and ultimately, to return to the celestial realms and claim his vengeance. Destroying a mirror severs the link Izrador had and causes a backlash effect where large part of the energy the mirror drained is released aroudn the area it was, to the shadow this is both painfula nd a delay, to the world it is much like a nuke.

It is one way to delay his plan, but the mirrors are numerous and many of them are hidden or too well protected to make it a possibility for campaigns.

Destroying the mirrors is a pretty nasty choice, especially since they are normally erected within large communities. Yes, you can hurt the Shadow this way, but do you really want to kill off hundreds or thousands of people while doing so? Sure, many of them will die sooner or later under the influence of the Shadow anyway - but do you really want their deaths on your conscience?

You are right, the mirror might not be a great threat to high level PCs and those with good saves, but it is lethal to th population as a whole, the damage is enough to send even some PCs to the after life, specially the ones that ahd to fight to get to the mirror in the first place... not to say getting out may be an issue of facing instantly risen fell and lost souls as well, and they wouldn't be too happy with you causing them that.

They are damned when you destroy that mirror, too - the spirits of the dead are trapped in this plane, remember? They might even come back soon as undead.

But if you hadn't destroyed the mirror, they might have lived for years or decades more, maybe even raised a new generation of children.


I mean, if I were in the situation, I'd probably smash the mirrors, too, if I knew what they were for. But it is not an easy choice to make, especially for good-aligned characters.

Well, not quite damned, no, in 2nd edition they have made a great job on adding quality material to the setting and there comes the notion of the Trapped Spirits and the Eternal, alognside a little more cosmology for the world as well, the souls of all natural beings return to the flow of life of the world itself, so no damnation to their souls, the outsiders and elementals that die in the world, on the other hand, they are trapped and thus cannot be sent home, this may mean they cannot be truly killed, since attacks by itself wouldn't be able to destroy one's soul, and thus they linger on, being able to perceive and interact with somethingt hat closely ties itself to their essence or purpose, elementals may animate bits of the earth, water, ice, pr whatever it is tghat they would be tied to, deemons and devils, as well as celestials, may possess human and fey (the demihumans and not they fey type of monsters) bodies, this makes things a little harder on celestials too.

The fell and the lost are those souls that get tied to the world, that want to linger, they may or not come back in their own bodies, they are something close to intelligent zombies, going mindless once they are unable to feed for periods of time. The Lost are ghosts, created out of the souls that could not make their passing, they linger to the world but were also unable to animate a corpse for themselves. The mechanics are changed as well.

In 1st edition we had the all souls are locked and without a place to go though.

This would be the perfect setting for an 'evil' campaign. The Players can play evil characters, but not evil characters who belong to the Shadow. They are still rebels (the Shadow isn't their kind of evil, or they want to replace it). A great way to make a party of strange bedfellows who wouldn't normally work together. The greater evil gets them to work together long enough to do some damage. Then causing the death of many people in one stroke is just a small detail.

In Midnight evil and good are even less of an issue, it more of a matter of who you stand against, being evil and fighting the shadow is as likely to make you a hero as fighting it and being good is, the difference is what you would be willing to do and sacrifice to get to victory...

I would say alignment in midnight is closer to Shadow aligned, neutral, collaborator (shadow or resistance), resistance (or insurgence) and that is it, there isn't much else to it.

Wow... just had a great idea... or at least, I think it's great.

Rather than the mythology as described, have Izrador be the "God who should not have been" - and who took out the Norse pantheon. You can do all of this great "the world is ending, freezing rivers, burning forests" stuff... but the Giants and few surviving Asgardians know that something has gone terribly wrong. Just enough of the Norse gods survive in order to be able to bring about Ragnarök - and that's the one thing Izrador still fears.

It actually is a good one, you would have some adaptations to do, giants in midnight are both rare and deeply corrupted (though I did see a plot once that had a clan of giants that escaped the shadow) this is a new approach to how an epic campaign could happen in Midnight, btw.

I wonder how many "good" characters might eventually fall to evil (or at least non-Good) after seeing success after success result in little or no change. The desire to cause some change - a true and lasting change - might grow so great that the characters might fall into a "the ends justify the means" mindset - with the destruction, banishment, or at least reduction of the power of the Shadow and its minions being the "ends" rather than the freedom / aid of those subjugated (which might have been the original "ends" of the party). It could end up being an interesting group with an interesting future. They might succeed - only to realize after the fact that their success, their first great and lasting success, has caused more turmoil and trouble than the Shadow had caused . . . .

What if they succeed in somehow reducing the Shadow's power greatly, slay its major priests, champions, etc, create discord amongst its minions so that they fall amongst each other - decimating themselves, and finally manage to seal or otherwise contain (or at least reduce in power to such an extent that it is no longer as menacing or able to effect all that much) the Shadow. And then all those that died rise as hordes of undead: zombies, ghouls, wraiths, shadows, etc. The deities are still beyond reach, so Turning is arguably not available, and now the word is facing something akin to Dawn of the Dead or some such. Or perhaps the people do not return as zombies or wraiths but instead are still trapped ghosts. Suddenly most of the population on the world are dwarves, elves, or ghosts (mostly of humans or orcs, I imagine).

It could be interesting, I think . . . .

Well, you will hardly be a hero on all places when it comes to Midnight, what is good for the elves may conflict with what is good for the humans, and i am not speaking of getting the shadow out, but what is done in the attempt to get there. There is plenty of space for this kind of tragic tales in midnight too, though i would never do it too often.

Sowing discord among the shadow's ranks is uneceessary too, they have plenty of it, what would be needed is either sprak that or enhance it a bit, then watch things happen in less than good ways to the shadow, Fury of Shadow, which i consider the bet book in the line has a line of events for the ultimate assualt on Erethor (the forest of the elves) and guess what, there is enough in fighting there to make this ultimate assualt be just another one...

Honestly having children is the last thing anyone on Midnight should do. By having a child you damn an innocent soul to eternal suffering. Its an act of unspeakable evil.

If you want a bleak it up farther option assume that becuse the barrier is up and souls can't leave they can enter either. Every life becomes more precious as there will be no new ones ever --

JMO but Midnight is just too hopeless an RPG for me -- now If I had a fools chance of hitting back and winning-- maybe --

There is no knowledge of the barrier itself because theren't much knowledge available from what the world was before the sundering, even who the gods were is barely known and of those there are info they have but names and few portfolios, so there is no knowledge of damnation, and as I said before, 2nd edition made this incoherence go away (because it was a rather common complain on 1st edition, the sundering was ages ago, there would be a great issue if souls were limited or something tlike that).

BUT I have seen that plot before and am certain mroe than one has used it. I am not going to say it is for you, but it isn't anywhere hopeless for me, neither it is about not making major changes, just that how that is achieved is different in midnight and standard fantasy.

If I ever ran a Midnight campaign and wanted the heroes to beat Izrador I would have them find a super-powerful artifact that could send them back in time to when the big Good vs. Evil battle happened and let them duke it out then.

I have seen that before as well.

Apparently, the history of Dawnforge is that

Spoiler

it comes AFTER Midnight, where the Gods go to Defcon 5 and pretty much magically nuke the planet just to stop Izrador. Then they have to recreate everything, since magical nukage is hard on fragile mortals, like everyone else but Izrador (and even he ends up a mere "shadow" of his former self).

I have seen ties of Midnight with Dawnforge in more than one occasion, even changing seats at which came first, in both cases it can easily be done, as far as making this kind of thing can be easily done, that is.

That sounds like some really excellent gaming to me. But remember, folks - d20/D&D is only for hack-n-slash, you can't possibly have deeper stories or 'real' roleplay in there at all...

I still feel the loss of rolleyes around here...

Well, if you go back to the primary inspiration material, Midnight is very similar to Middle Earth after the Battle of Unnumbered Tears, where Morgoth defeated the elven hosts along with their human and dwarf allies. He then set about destroying the three (IIRC) elven nations that remained, while flooding the rest of the land with orcs and those humans who'd turned to darkness. Very similar to Midnight, with the good guys under siege and much of the land occupied by the only god that seems able to act openly.

That era ended when Earindil contacted the Valar and begged them to intervene on behalf of the few remaining men and elves. They ended their self-imposed exile and launched the War of Wrath, where they stomped all over Morgoth's forces and bound him up until the end of time. Then one of his lieutenants, Sauron, eventually took over the big bad guy role, and that lead to the Lord of the Rings a few thousand years later.

It's not quite the same in Midnight, since Izrador is apparently almost as strong as the rest of the gods put together. You'd have to decide how accurate those ancient myths are, and work out why exactly the gods haven't already intervened on behalf of the good folk trapped with Izrador. In the Silmarillion, it was because of the bad blood between the Valar and Feanor's sons, in Midnight it could be any number of reasons. Resolve that, and maybe the gods are willing to suit up for round two with Izrador.

You can also go the mirror route, though in the long run breaking all those mirrors is just a temporary solution. Another possibility might be somehow redeeming Izrador - maybe somehow transforming him into a dualistic deity. Or finding some kind of escape to another world for the last few elves, dwarves, and humans. Lots of options, enough so that every campaign can end differently.

That is actualy much closer to how Midnight is, when things are bad and all that you don't see much hope and not much of a future, but when things are in the past, it seems like just one age of the world... one that could have lingered, but didn't, that is how i see Midnight myself.

Izrador is not as powerfula s the other gods out together, the veil is an act of desperation of a dying god, he turned the power used to slay him into a barrier upon the world, he lsot his body and is now much weaker than eh ever was, if the old gods would return to Aryth, they would make short work of him. But they must be there, must be willing to help and well, I ahve seen a plot where Izrador was actually the greater good, with his fall he was corrupted and what lies beyond are only the evil gods... cruel.

And to BelemUmeria:

What stats have you used for the dave troll, btw? Also, i think that oplot is interesting and the adventure must have been a good one as well, I am not much into the kind of discovery myself, but I like it anyway, congrats on the game, I hope those who gamed with you there enjoyed it.

 

[Yair]

Since this is apparently about all things Midnight: I'm considering an Iron Heroes/Midnight crossover. I'm sure I'm not the first one - can anyone point me to the right place?

My current thoughts are to play with Iron Heroes rules for the PCs, without heroic paths or arcanists. I'll basically only use Midnight as background, not drawing on its mechanics except for opponents (such as legates).

 

[Nifelhein]

Yair, if you will be using the whole Iron heroes lot I doubt you will have much trtouble, just keep in mind that the saves progression in iron heroes are much different and if you won't allow magic in any form other than the legates, then you will probably have to tweak those a bit to make their spells able to penetrate the character's increased save bonuses.

You are not the first one but so far none made a document logging what they use and how, there are two thrads on AtS recently that touch that subject, the first you can find here and the second one here (youa ren't SilentShadow, or are you?).

I doubt you wil have much trouble as you plan to do nthings though, the Iron heroes rules are sound by themselves. You should worry a bit that astiraxes are going to be fairly useless since there won't be any magic or magical items at all and thatlegates might need some changes, fairly small though.

Hope it helps.

 

[Yair]

Yair, if you will be using the whole Iron heroes lot I doubt you will have much trtouble, just keep in mind that the saves progression in iron heroes are much different and if you won't allow magic in any form other than the legates, then you will probably have to tweak those a bit to make their spells able to penetrate the character's increased save bonuses.

You are not the first one but so far none made a document logging what they use and how, there are two thrads on AtS recently that touch that subject, the first you can find here and the second one here (youa ren't SilentShadow, or are you?).

I doubt you wil have much trouble as you plan to do nthings though, the Iron heroes rules are sound by themselves. You should worry a bit that astiraxes are going to be fairly useless since there won't be any magic or magical items at all and thatlegates might need some changes, fairly small though.

Hope it helps.

Thanks. No, I'm not SilentShadow

I plan to have legates (and in general the Shadow) use standard D&D magic, including magic items, so I think the save DCs won't be a problem, right? The PCs may choose to wield their weapons/magic items; if they do so, they will be spotted by the astiraxes and indeed incur the attention of the shadow.

What I'm not sure about is what magic to give to the elves, if any. I suspect I will simply maintain IH rules in that too, using (a slightly modified) Dread Sorcerer. I won't be giving them magic items, these will remain the privy of Divine magic - hence, of Izrador plus a few divine antiquities. In this way, the IH characters can proceed without magic items as the IH rules assume without the worry of them obtaining the elves' items, while the Shadow's forces have access to magic items allowing me to use standard D&D if desired.

It's a work in progress.

 

[Nifelhein]

Thanks. No, I'm not SilentShadow

Then you are not th only one going into that crossover lately.

I plan to have legates (and in general the Shadow) use standard D&D magic, including magic items, so I think the save DCs won't be a problem, right? The PCs may choose to wield their weapons/magic items; if they do so, they will be spotted by the astiraxes and indeed incur the attention of the shadow.

Well, even with the possibility of having magic the end result is that they often do not have that much, and even when there is magical items, the character is usually of some importance, like a commander, a legate or something like that. I think it would have to be calle upon on a case by case basis, but giving the NPCs the save progression from iron Heroes wouldn't be a probalem, it is the DCs of spells and abilities as well as save boosting items that you have to be wary of. Not that you can jsut never have an item grant that kind of bonus anyway.

What I'm not sure about is what magic to give to the elves, if any. I suspect I will simply maintain IH rules in that too, using (a slightly modified) Dread Sorcerer. I won't be giving them magic items, these will remain the privy of Divine magic - hence, of Izrador plus a few divine antiquities. In this way, the IH characters can proceed without magic items as the IH rules assume without the worry of them obtaining the elves' items, while the Shadow's forces have access to magic items allowing me to use standard D&D if desired.

It's a work in progress.

You can make the elves have some innate abilities, like casting mage hand of once per day qithou any trouble, in fact they do have that already, to their spellcasting abilities you only have to say that while channeled magic (thus the standard from IH) cannot create anything permanent, while the power of a god and the forces of the world can, one under direct intention and the other spontaneously (covenant items and old relics).

This would allow magic to be available to the characters and have a more free form to it and still it would let the DM, you, have a simpler system for magic (the legate's) and be the one with access to magic items.

You also have the potential to never use any item that may break the flow of the game and all of them could grant taint if used by a non-shadow aligned creature, or soemthing like that.