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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Skyscraper" data-source="post: 3329529" data-attributes="member: 48518">General OverviewThe adventures take place in a world called Perin. About 2500 years ago, a terrible battle shook the world that ended with The Lord of Darkness (a creature beyond the gods' control incarnating all that is vile and evil) and the Surpeme Being (a creature also beyond the gods, that was formed when the 5 holders of the Swords of Destiny were merged into this Supreme Creature, essentially incarnating all that is life, including hope itself) met in a final combat that ended by the destruction of both creatures.(That was my previous campaign, and that was also 10 years of role playing summarized into a single sentence there  ).Anyway, my new campaign takes place 2500 years later after that. However, the battle between the Lord of Darkness and the Supreme Being had repercutions on the world. Indeed, during that fateful confrontation between the Lord of Darkness and the Supreme Being, all creatures throughout the worlds, the multiverses and all planes, had their eyes and attention on that supernatural confrontation (they saw it through their hearts). In seeing the essence of Life and Evil in their purest form, all these beings for a moment - short as a breath but might have been as long as eternity - forgot about everything, their entire minds were absorbed by the two beings and the battle of the essence of reality itself. They even forgot about the gods' existence. And consequently, like a living being suddenly deprived of oxygen, the gods deprived of faith and prayers, of belief, ceased to exist.The Supreme Creature did not think it could defeat the Lord of Darkness, so it killed itself at a chosen moment, freeing a tremendous amount of positive energy that he channelled towards the Lord of Darkness. The latter, understanding it was doomed, managed to also commit suicide, but he died on his own terms. Indeed, in doing so he exploded, sending 66 shards of darkness on the world, the dead remnants of his former self. Thus were created the 66 Axis Stones, that constituted his vengeance in the form of portals from the mortal realm to many realms that are evil or chaotic: the Abyss, Hell, etc... The Supreme Creature, however, seeing the creation of these Axis Stones, countered the move by creating 8 Axis Keys, that could lock and control the Axis Stones, thus closing the portals and preventing the millions and millions of immortal creatures from the evil and chaotic outer planes from flooding the prime material plane. Of course, all of this took place in a fraction of a second, in what would be a fraction of a thought for a mortal being - since these Supreme Creature and Lord of Darkness dudes are not your regular creatures. Zap! All was done. I'll skip the devastation that occurred when those two creatures killed each other, but i'll say that there remained a region in the world that came to be called the Zone, in which all 66 Axis Stones landed.The Zone is an elongated valley about 200 miles long by 75 miles wide, a warm sandy area with small trees and tough underbrush that can live under the hot sun.Fast forwardig a number of years: there followed a period of chaos in the world for the next millenium, as the absence of the old gods left a spiritual emptiness. Some para-religious groups appeared, including one that survived through it all to remain rather powerful, although a bit freaky: the Zealots. None of these groups had clerics able to channel divine magic.Also, the Zone where the 66 Axis Stones remained, showed weird and evil transformations over the years. Indeed, although the portals were closed, they weren't exactly evil-tight, pardon my language. Some of the essence of the evil and chaotic outer planes seeped through the portals. No creature could pass, but the essence of evil and chaos transformed the area near the portals, and thus many plants and animals living in the area were transformed into evil versions of themselves (dire and/or fiendish animals for the purpose of the game - as for plants, well there are the acid fungus, poisonous vines, and so on). 2500 years later, the Axis Stones' origin is unknown by most.About 1000 years after the old gods disappeared, there appeared new gods (about half the pantheon provided in the PHB), formed by the essence of thoughts itself, i.e. the people's despair combined with the magical capacity of the world, formed gods, beings that are made of a combination of the thoughts and faiths, that are incarnations of ideals and morales, that are truly the sum of their believers, past and present. These gods were created at an event now referred to as Zaccharia's sacrifice, a powerful Zealot that managed to open a channel to the outer planes to allow divine energy to cross over.However, unbeknownst to most, these new gods are becoming corrupted by the corrupted nature of mortal beings... but i won't get into that now. Also unbeknownst to most, some of the old gods have survived in a greatly enfeebled stated, in the plane of the Gruths. Some of old groups such as the Zealots refuse to recognize the new gods, and their fanatical approach towards the situation is quite extremist - but they're not entirely wrong either.The campaign begins as the PCs are thrown into a battle between two opposing groups that both try to put their hands on the Axis Keys - the very existence of which being otherwise mostly unknown throughout the world.The first of these groups are dark elves (leading other meanies). Now this strikes everyone confronted to them has truly out of the ordinary, because the dark elves are but myths, a legendary race that is believed to never have existed by half, and to be extinct and long dead by the other half. The truth of the matter is that they were working for the Lord of Darkness 2500 years ago, and they were expelled from the prime material plane to a prison in Hell when the Axis Stones were created. They believe (falsely) that the other "good" mortal races and/or the Supreme Creature (their creation) are responsible for this, when in fact their intricate tie to the Lord of Darkness is what banned them from the Prime.The second of these groups is a cult called the Lost Souls. The background of this cult relies on the fact that, when the gods disappeared and the outer planes were locked up, mortals souls from dead mortals were no longer allowed to reach the outer planes, and were in fact stranded on the Astral plane. At first, the souls simply wandered aimlessly, until eventually these lifeless beings began to have some form of consciouness. Long story short: in their irrational minds incapable of understanding what happened, they're pissed off at mortals who they deem responsible for their condition, and they want something else than eternal wandering in an empty plane for themselves. They believe that they can take control of the Prime and possess bodies, that every Lost Soul can find and conquer a host for itself, essentially taking control of it and killing the recipient soul. When the host body dies, the Lost Soul can finally find eternal rest in its proper plane. This belief stems from a happenstance: at one point, through a momentaneous magical planar rift that occurred between the Astral and Prime planes, one lost soul managed to travel back to the prime and possess a mortal. Then, through its bond with other lost souls, this possessed mortal found a way to get some other souls to possess other mortals. However, the possession process is very long and tedious, and after a while, some mortals became aware of this. The cult of the Lost Souls is consequently led by mortals possessed by the Lost Souls, although it includes also (and mainly) non-possessed mortals that believe these lost souls to be linked to the ancient gods.One of the first and few organizations that became aware of the possession were the dark elves, in their hellish prison, where a few of their own were successfully possessed. Being where they are, they are very alert to anything supernatural and the term "unbelievable" has disappeared from their vocabulary generations ago. By studying the possessed individuals through magical means, they also became aware that travelling back to the Prime was possible if control of the Axis Keys was gained. So they decided to send a party there, to take control of the Axis Keys to (1) let all the dark elves out of their hellish prison, and (2) prevent the Lost Souls from possessing all mortals (including the dark elves). Moving their entire society would lead to them attracting the attention of powerful devils, so they instead sent out 12 groups each comprising 20 of their strongest warriors, clerics, mages, rogues, monks, to find a way through the planes, and back to the material plane, to take control of the Axis Keys, control the Axis Stones to open a portal to their hellish prison, and get them out of there. (Note: the dark elves are not a large society anymore, but they have been strengthened through millenia surviving in a hostile plane where evil immortals rule - so we're talking about tough SOBs here. Additional abilities are added to the basic dark elf template as far as game mechanics are concerned, in the form of arcane tatoos on the elves' bodies that provide increased attributes, toughness feat, SR (i like the SR to be explained) and a few other things on top). Also, through obligation of survival, they've become a race capable of relying on itself a lot, a lot less inclined towards back-stabbing, albeit much more ruthless.Of the 12 dark elf groups, a single one made it back all the way through, travelling through different planes over years of displacement, with all its members surviving. All other groups perished in their attempts. Once on Perin, initially accompanied by a large pack of hell hounds, several subdued dragons and devils (who have, unsurprisingly, their own agenda...) , worked to find some local allies on this soft world, and managed to rekindle some of the old alliances, especially from races that had fallen to a very low status pursuant to the Lord of Darkness' defeat - orcs and lizard folk on top of that list.That's the gist of my campaign's situation as it stood when the campaign started. The PCs happened to all be at the wrong place at the right time  : Hamlyn, one of the towns that is part of the Crown of the Zone, the region that is located around the valley of the Zone and protects the world from it, got attacked burnt down in part by a highly organized raid led by the dark elves, and comprising lizard folk and minotaurs. The PCs were all captured and were given to the lizard folk as payment for their services (i.e. they were intended to become slaves). They managed to escape their captors and started investigating what had happened at the village, to find out that one large mehnir-like stone (an axis key) had been recuperated in the village. Following some initially far-from-obvious leads, they went on the trail of the dark elves and found out about the Lost Souls. And some other groups that have learned about the Axis Stones and Keys too.Sky</blockquote>

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