Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 910319" data-attributes="member: 172">Wow, there have been so many... where do I start.The main opposition that the PCs actually met in their last campaign was an alliance of wizards known as the Arcane Alliance, who are working to usher in mages as the new ruling class. I sort of initially intended them as a diversion to be overcome and defeated, but eventually they took on a life of their own and became pivotal in the campaign.The arcane alliance includes: <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Galea: She was the major operative that the players learned to hate. By the end, she was a wizard (conjurer) 7/Summoner 10. Her MO was to float nearby invisibly and summon creatures to attack the party. Galea has an interesting past. The was once a Galea who was an aspiring student of magic and a benevolent human being. She stumbled upon the arcane alliance, and they tried to recruit her. When they failed, they threw her into a mirror universe (along with her fiance) (see MotP for plane of mirrors) where they were slain by their mirror doubles. Galea's mirror double only found the arcane alliance to appealing, and became an agent. Galea was a longstanding villain of the party. Her mystery began to unravel when the party was confronted by a fuming duelist eager to avenge the honor of his "innocent" cousin Galea, who the party had "wrongly" attacked. This led them to venture into the plane of mirrors where they faced their own doubles and found the corpses of Galea and her fiance, Gavannon Alderheart. This, of course, revealed that Gavannon was also an evil mirror double... who replaced his real world version who was a major lord and general. The mirror version had become a blackguard. They eventually defeated him (but he'll be back as a death knight.) They tracked down Galea (which was a task in itself), and eventually took her to the court of thunder. Galea was reincarnated as a servant of the court of thunder. The party was satisfied with this outcome, but they may cross paths again.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Sarlac Blackgarden: Bloodless (see CCII) Wizard 15/ Archmage 3. Nominal leader of the Arcane Alliance. Sarlac is a twisted character, an immortal wizard who laments the fragility of human beauty. He makes it a habit to abduct beuatiful young maidens, and petrify them so that they can adorn his garden agelessly. The party found and ripped apart one of his towers, but never was able to defeat sarlacc.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Ashraf Basheer: The party has yet to meet him, Galea's mentor, who has a penchant for grafting devil-flesh to his skin. Wizard/Summoner/Acolyte of the Skin, though I forget exact levels.</li> </ul>Behind the scenes villains that these characters never met include Matron Zune (epic level drow cleric/necromancer/true necromancer devoted to the goddess of undeath) and Shiron (a sangrolu* elder vampire wizard... again epic level), pawns of the death goddess who is striving to usher in a new age of darkness.* - Sangrolu, or "blood lich", is a template applied to vampire spellcasters that remove some of the weaknesses of vampires and allow them to use blood they drain to empower their spells and use it in other frightening ways.Those were the big ones in my old campaign. My new lower level campaign has featured an enchanter and a god.The god is Rolish'kah (lifted from AEG's Evil... I just needed a name for a god of darkenss.) Rolish'kah is a demon god of darkness, with an abiding hatred for the living. The party stumbled upon his tomb, and infected themselves with "shadowspawn". Shadow spawn are scarily invulnerable versions of shadows that can merge with a living characters shadow. They go forth and slay at night. There is no mortal magic that can remove these beings, but if they are allowed to consume other lives until they grow strong enough, then they mature into shadow knights. This puts the PCs into a bind, as the only way to get rid of them is to allow them to kill. (Yes, I got this basic concept from a recent movie.)However, they appealed to the church of the goddess of light. The PCs were eventually freed, but at great cost... the goddess of light, disgusted with rolish'kah, confronted him and taunted him into killing her. However, this made Rolish'kah vunlerable under the terms of a divine compact, and a cabal of dark gods descended upon him and slew him, each taking a part of his power. The PCs know they were freed, but the cleric lost his spells...Yes, this is a kick off for my Requiem for a God campaign. The next BBEG will be Lorath, a priest of the goddess of light who the party has met before, distraught by the destruction of his goddess, eager to unleash a time of destruction. I haven't statted him out yet, but he will probably be something like a Sorcerer 4/Cleric 5/Mystic Theurge* 1/Disaffected 1.* - Actually, I am spinning my own deity specific, toned down versions of mystic theurges, one for each deity associated with magic.</blockquote>

Verification