Moments of Realization in Your Campaign

[Timeboxer]

Tonight, my players realized that several NPCs who had been obstructing them over the course of five real-time years were actually just one changeling in several guises.

Several years ago, my party and I realized at the very last minute that the nice rogue named Vance Gatzert who was traveling with us, but who mysteriously had been missing one eye and one hand, was in fact Vecna, and that it would be a poor idea to give him Vecna's hand and eye.

Any examples from your game?

 

[MortalPlague]

I love moments like that.

In my first ever 4th edition game, I was angling the campaign to have such a moment. You see, back in 3.5, we had a relatively new player carrying around the soul of his deceased true love in a gem, trying to build her a body. Well, he placed his bag of holding in a portable hole, and FWOOSH, off to the astral plane went the gem (and all his stuff).

My brilliant idea... make the gemstone the final villain for my 4th edition game.

You see, this gem had been floating in the astral sea for over a hundred years, and had gained a certain mad sentience. It had used mental compulsion to bend a Githzerai monastery to its will, and then they began to bore holes to the prime material plane to search for a suitable host. For more than anything, the gem wanted to take over a body much like its old one...

Unfortunately the game fell apart about halfway. I'd gotten to the point where the female PC was getting messages in her head, whispering to her to 'submit to the entity to gain great power', but they never quite found out just who or what was talking.

Sigh...