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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ralts Bloodthorne" data-source="post: 427758" data-attributes="member: 6390">On trackAll right.Three things.#1-I apologize for the contraversy my post stirred up when I tried to post more things that can be considered evil for the characters to fight.#2-Don't bring Desert Storm into it, and don't say it wasn't war.  I was there, it sure looked like a war to me.  Saying stuff like that is like trolling for me, and I want to aviod getting into a urination competition with someone over what I saw, and what they may have experienced or judged after the fact.#3-I will give everyone here an enemy from my campaign, an enemy that has the characters blurring the lines between good and evil during thier fights.  During the latter part of the 2nd Age of Shtar, a power group arose.  Using ancient and horrible magics, they awoke horrors of war, and using those, and fell necromancy, political maneuvering (including assassination) and threats, they soon (by the end of the Second Age) ruled over the ENTIRE WORLD!  That's right, from the Elven Forests of the Sunkissed Mountains to the Lolth's Voice Caverns of the Drow.  Until the Fourth Age, when a rebellion began, these vastly powerful beings held ALL of the power in that rule.  Iron was outlawed, steel a forgotten art, and magical power eliminated.  Let me give a few examples of things that happened in the campaign, and things that still go on in Lich King held Terroritories.  Outsiders are military leaders and enforcers, incorpreal undead serve as the spy orginization, mindless undead as slave labor, corpreal undead as the secret police.  Monsters have more than citizenship, some of them are considered elite.  It is not uncommon for hundreds of slaves to die each day, only to be brought back into shambling unlife to continue working.  Demons have sucked the life force from children to heal the favored of a general or local lord, reducing that child, and all of it's potential into a pile of ashes.  One of the PC's was raped in the campaign.  Despite numerous chances to escape, he insisted on fighting, and getting captured.  (This is based off of the life of Alexander the Great, specifically what happened to his father's lover)  As a mark of distain, the local militai captain turned the PC over to the stableboys, who raped him repeatedly, then had him crucified outside of town as a message, after breaking his legs.  The PC's got involved flirting with barmaids and other trivial stuff, instead of hurrying off to save the children kidnapped, so when they got over the hill, they got the unique pleasure of watching the (Anti-Paladin) Blackguard/Death Knight lifted from his grave by the necromancer, and returned to life.  How?  By the necromancer slitting the throat of each child and spilling the blood on the ground where the fiend (Known as the Butcher of the Buttercup Range) had been dismembered by the PC's and buried.  In rebel held territory, it is not uncommon for a delayed blast fireball, set by a mage who had long since escaped, to explode, injuring PC's, and forcing them to expend magic and psionics to save more innocents, and then track the rogue mage in hopes of busting up the terrorist cell.  On the other hand, I've played impartial moderator as the PC's kidnapped and tortured the information they needed out of one of the evil lords.  I personally may not approve, but they save thousands of innocents.  The war has been going on for ONE HUNDRED FIFTY YEARS in this campaign, nearly 20 IRL, more than one PC has snapped, mentally, from hours of magical and mundane bombardment, from protracted sieges, from psychic dueling with the forces of the Lich Kings, or the brutal rulers that have sprung up in contested lands due to a power vacuum.  Out of the 2.5 million members of the Armies of Light that went into Black Eye Pass, less than 30,000 escaped, and those who survived the Battle of the Stacked Skulls, never, ever forgot it.  More than once, a ravaging ghost has had to been put down from a deceased veteran of one of the horrible wars that have ravaged the face of Shtar.  The hospitals are full of those invalided by the war, mentally or physically.  The magical flow can inflict Arcane Burn that fries out the mind or the body.  The party has tracked, found, and slain horrible creations of the Lich Kings and thier minions that are designed to do nothing more than spread pain, misery and fear.  What soldier wants to be on the front lines, knowing that a Child-Stalker is loose, and has not been caught?  A Child-Stalker is a creature that slithers into the rooms of sleeping children, then kisses them, blowing into thier mouth, inflating thier lungs, and in such a way, crushing thier heart so it cannot beat.  The child dies, and the Child-Stalker sucks away the blood and leaves behind a dried and dessicated husk for the parent(s) to find in the morning.  If your PC's wouldn't want to track down such a creature, you need to seriously consider if they are heroes, or callous thugs with cool powers who can take what they want.  The Lich Kings COMPLETELY exterminated the Red-Rock Kobolds, a completely different species, and Gray Elves, Deep Gnomes, and Merpeople are extinct.  Gone.  Kaput.  Slain and left behind, slaughtered and raised as undead allies, or slaughtered and used as spirit fuel for the armies of the Lich Kings.  My world is in a state of flux, with where the PC's can make a real difference.  They can help bring it out of madness, despair, and try to get rid of the boot on thier neck, or condemn everyone to worse than death.  That's why I consider my game heroic, and why I wondered how you guys handled some of those same issues.</blockquote>

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