To celebrate my mage going epic, I figured I'd share a little bit about the campaign and one of the possibly more important overarching threads with this character and mine your heads for some possibilities on how to investigate some more...
I'll section it out so if you want to skip straight to the story crunchy bits (which I hope you'll find worthwhile), feel free to do so, I've marked it nicely for you.
The Game Itself: Heavily house-ruled campaign with experience substantially slowed so as not to blast off into high levels and a more realistic parity with the scale of our enemies. Information given by divinations are so very stingily given
The Setting: (An *extremely* abbreviated overview), a world shattered by a major war (which we took part in) with an ever-present possibility of a return to that state of affairs. The world itself is fairly small. There are *no* dominant races with only one bastion of humanity still standing (same for the dwarves). Elves are broken as a major race although they may have hidden enclaves hidden within all those trees. The other demihumans for the most part are wracked with wars of their own, (goblins, gnolls, etc) Halflings have banded together with the gnomes and are nominally cordial with the dwarves etc. etc. Im sure you're all familiar with the warp weft and weave of politics and diplomacy heavy campaigns.
There are of course major traitors and enemies from all races, none have complete unity after all.
Additional to this is the secret war wizards are engaged in with the outrageously powerful fel forces that were manipulating this world into conflict and their minions (necromancers, warlocks, daemon traffickers and their ilk). The effects of their manipulations are subtle (think ravenloft).
There are quite a few epic NPCs in the place (good bad and shades of grey). No Elminster to save your butts in our little world, the party is a major catalyst for events at this point.
Looking back over this, I realize how woefully inadequate and incomplete this description is, which will probably get everyone to have the wrong idea, but what the heck, maybe I can flesh it out in a story hour...
****MY SIDEPLOT****
Promised I'd mark it out for you
The interesting thing about Serienna (the character) is she's not from around here... or is it that she is? She's temporally displaced (or is that misplaced? Maybe she's right where she's supposed to be...)
She was never one for history as a young girl and apprentice wizard, before something of a magical cataclysm erupted and she found herself, in someplace unrecognizable. Well it turned out to be the 'present' of the campaign.
From her time period there had been a disaster some centuries before her birth which reshaped the landscape, most history before that time was lost, with only dark tales about some extraordinarily powerful dark being rising up and casting the world in darkness (which is never quite explained if its a blotting of the sun or just a metaphor for evil). She comes from something of the dark age of her period from a village ruled by a petty feudal warlord etc.
There had been a magical cataclysm some millenia prior to the campaign itself, but knowledge of that time and the following centuries had been lost as well. ( We need to supply ourselves with ruins after all). She knew just enough about the world when she 'arrived' to recognize its the same world and not 'somewhere else' but there is no history synching up for her.
But is she from the distant past?
Maybe...
There have been hints, rumors, and portents, however that a time of darkness may well be coming. Perhaps... perhaps she is from the future...
Too bad she wasn't a little bit more world savvy or she might have figured it out by now.
__
I'll skip the specifics but here is a bit of what we surmised from in-game, clues, and meta-gaming.
Despite what it may seem (upcoming darkness), it really *does not* imply she's from a time past that because these sorts of things have been happening all too often in the campaign, and a new BBEG can still be independant of that. However it is the theory we're leaning on.
However we also have reason to believe that it may be my character herself who 'goes to the darkside' at some point as she gets more powerful (she just hit 21), and she herself may be the evil. It would be even more delicious irony if she herself goes evil, effectively destroys the world (somehow) etc and creates the world she'll eventually be born in.
It won't be another member of the party.
Then again the way prophecy works in this campaign is that its no one person who is absolutely destined for a result, but any number of people can meet the requirements. In effect whoever completes a prophecy becomes its inheritor. There are definitely other potentials (quite a few of our enemies are substantially more powerful than us. This campaign has seen us constantly overmatched from day 1, requiring alot of planning and brainpower to surmount our obstacles)
One member of the party is either her ancestor or descendant (leaning on ancestor). We're not sure who and this discovery came from a rather embarassing incident involving a planar rift, a disintegration cone, and alot of dead party members
________________________________________________
So we're between stories at this point and we're taking some 'in-game' downtime to pursue our various agendas. With this quickly becoming a temporal rather than a conjectural concern (we suspect since we're finally moving into epic), where would you go from here with an old beloved and newly minted epic wizard?
I'll section it out so if you want to skip straight to the story crunchy bits (which I hope you'll find worthwhile), feel free to do so, I've marked it nicely for you.
The Game Itself: Heavily house-ruled campaign with experience substantially slowed so as not to blast off into high levels and a more realistic parity with the scale of our enemies. Information given by divinations are so very stingily given
The Setting: (An *extremely* abbreviated overview), a world shattered by a major war (which we took part in) with an ever-present possibility of a return to that state of affairs. The world itself is fairly small. There are *no* dominant races with only one bastion of humanity still standing (same for the dwarves). Elves are broken as a major race although they may have hidden enclaves hidden within all those trees. The other demihumans for the most part are wracked with wars of their own, (goblins, gnolls, etc) Halflings have banded together with the gnomes and are nominally cordial with the dwarves etc. etc. Im sure you're all familiar with the warp weft and weave of politics and diplomacy heavy campaigns.
There are of course major traitors and enemies from all races, none have complete unity after all.
Additional to this is the secret war wizards are engaged in with the outrageously powerful fel forces that were manipulating this world into conflict and their minions (necromancers, warlocks, daemon traffickers and their ilk). The effects of their manipulations are subtle (think ravenloft).
There are quite a few epic NPCs in the place (good bad and shades of grey). No Elminster to save your butts in our little world, the party is a major catalyst for events at this point.
Looking back over this, I realize how woefully inadequate and incomplete this description is, which will probably get everyone to have the wrong idea, but what the heck, maybe I can flesh it out in a story hour...
****MY SIDEPLOT****
Promised I'd mark it out for you
The interesting thing about Serienna (the character) is she's not from around here... or is it that she is? She's temporally displaced (or is that misplaced? Maybe she's right where she's supposed to be...)
She was never one for history as a young girl and apprentice wizard, before something of a magical cataclysm erupted and she found herself, in someplace unrecognizable. Well it turned out to be the 'present' of the campaign.
From her time period there had been a disaster some centuries before her birth which reshaped the landscape, most history before that time was lost, with only dark tales about some extraordinarily powerful dark being rising up and casting the world in darkness (which is never quite explained if its a blotting of the sun or just a metaphor for evil). She comes from something of the dark age of her period from a village ruled by a petty feudal warlord etc.
There had been a magical cataclysm some millenia prior to the campaign itself, but knowledge of that time and the following centuries had been lost as well. ( We need to supply ourselves with ruins after all). She knew just enough about the world when she 'arrived' to recognize its the same world and not 'somewhere else' but there is no history synching up for her.
But is she from the distant past?
Maybe...
There have been hints, rumors, and portents, however that a time of darkness may well be coming. Perhaps... perhaps she is from the future...
Too bad she wasn't a little bit more world savvy or she might have figured it out by now.
__
I'll skip the specifics but here is a bit of what we surmised from in-game, clues, and meta-gaming.
Despite what it may seem (upcoming darkness), it really *does not* imply she's from a time past that because these sorts of things have been happening all too often in the campaign, and a new BBEG can still be independant of that. However it is the theory we're leaning on.
However we also have reason to believe that it may be my character herself who 'goes to the darkside' at some point as she gets more powerful (she just hit 21), and she herself may be the evil. It would be even more delicious irony if she herself goes evil, effectively destroys the world (somehow) etc and creates the world she'll eventually be born in.
It won't be another member of the party.
Then again the way prophecy works in this campaign is that its no one person who is absolutely destined for a result, but any number of people can meet the requirements. In effect whoever completes a prophecy becomes its inheritor. There are definitely other potentials (quite a few of our enemies are substantially more powerful than us. This campaign has seen us constantly overmatched from day 1, requiring alot of planning and brainpower to surmount our obstacles)
One member of the party is either her ancestor or descendant (leaning on ancestor). We're not sure who and this discovery came from a rather embarassing incident involving a planar rift, a disintegration cone, and alot of dead party members
________________________________________________
So we're between stories at this point and we're taking some 'in-game' downtime to pursue our various agendas. With this quickly becoming a temporal rather than a conjectural concern (we suspect since we're finally moving into epic), where would you go from here with an old beloved and newly minted epic wizard?
