Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil

[Scrivener of Doom]

Thanks for the update, [MENTION=386]LostSoul[/MENTION]. I really like the description of the battle with Hedrack.

Lots of lore is rarely a constraint on those running games. It's great for inspiring adventures and games. The problem comes when you want to write official products... at that point, fitting things into lore becomes a lot more tricky.

Cheers!

Very true. And without a good setting bible that job is made all the more difficult, as was the case with the Forgotten Realms. Also, the Realms suffered a lot from, "Look, we have this bright and shiny new campaign world! Let's stick this adventure with characters named Tom, Dick and Harry in there!" It's even harder to keep track of the sub-standard official products....

 

[LostSoul]

This campaign is still active - our group floats between different campaigns & games all the time, but we tend to leave the others on the back burner.

The PCs defeated the Triad with at least one PC death and another lost to the Deck of Many Things. One PC went to save the lost PC's soul from The Void, which ended up in the Great Kingdom - in Tar Hill. Gathered the Crystal of Ebon Flame from that place. The other PCs got involved in the Greyhawk Wars and helped to save Furyondy with some of the agents of the Circle of Eight. (They also uncovered Rary's treachery.)

I am planning to create an "epic" dungeon - not epic level, but something that answers some of the whys of Greyhawk. Why do souls have power? Where do the gods get their power from? Why, given a multiverse of infinite Prime Material Plane planets, do gods care about Greyhawk? Why did Iuz start the Greyhawk Wars?

Time-travel and planar travel will be included. Hopefully the time-travel part will make sense! (Time-travel in part to counter some PC's movement-related abilities.) I'd like the Codex of Infinite Planes to take part as well.

The basic idea is that the gods - who were once mortals - found some way to "trap" souls in Greyhawk and force them into the outer planes. They tap that positive energy and use it to power their abilities and use it to further their agendas - thus becoming "Gods". Positive energy needs to be met with negative energy, thus powering undead and a lot of the Evil spells. The dungeon will contain this "soul trap" and the connections to the higher planes, which the PCs can do with as they please. Destroying the soul trap will mean no more Divine spells, no more undead, and limited Arcane power (I assume at least some of it is pulled from the positive material plane). I am not sure what the PCs will do.

Alignment will play a big part here, though it'll be tricky to get it right.

 

[pemerton]

I'd like the Codex of Infinite Planes to take part as well.

Do you have anything particular in mind? Or just because it's cool name for an item?

 

[LostSoul]

Do you have anything particular in mind? Or just because it's cool name for an item?

It was part of the module - something I added on. That's the only reason. Well, that and I think it's a cool artifact.

I was thinking it'd be one of the few ways to get to the final place, since the gods don't want anyone there and have probably locked it up pretty well (some kind of astral & etheral wards and guardians, and divine magic wouldn't help unless you could convince your god in person or through Commune).

Running high-level D&D is difficult: If I say that "they have to get the Codex" then the players aren't really... well, playing; but if I don't, and instead let them come up with all sorts of crazy plans that may or may not work, then I have to create a lot of content that probably won't ever get used. Oh well!

 

[pemerton]

I think it's a cool artifact.

Agreed. I've looked at whether I might be able to drop it into my 4e game.