Dakkareth said:
Please bore us
.
John Q. Mayhem said:
I, also, wish to be bored.
Well, okay then. I was trying to go the way of Inigo Montoya ("Let me explain. No, there is too much, let me sum up."), because, well, the illustrate the connections this makes possible, there is quite a bit of backstory that needs to be explained. But you asked for it.
I like to sort my various background elements into distinct elements for my own purposes, so if you don't mind, I'll take this opportunity to do so.
I had originally considered making four psuedo-elemental realms and have the players visit each one and have some unique challenges in each. But the more I thought about it, I thought that might be a bit too much of a guides tour and decided I didn't want to make their experience with each elemental elf subrace to follow the same pattern. Further, the background material on elemental elves refer to them as being religions splinter sects rather than whole races to their own. So, I sort of decided to given them temples or shrines that were somewhat near to each other and served as sort of a focus of the game. The shrines or temples would then have portals to other realms that inhabited by the elemental elves. If the plot took me to those places, I could develop them further.
We'll call that "element 1 - The Shrines of the Elemental Elves"
element 2 - The Dryad of the Great Tree
Prielghari is the tree-goddess of the wood elves in
Bow & Blade. In my mind I sort of assocated her with the great tree in
Book of the Righteous -- which I associated with the Spirit Tree in
The Shaman's Handbook, which I associated with the world ash/Ygdrassil from Nordic Myth and a planar pathway in Planescape.
I don't like random coincidences, so in my mind I try to play up coincidences that seem too unlikely so they become a self-consistent whole. Some of you may know where I am going with this: in essence, I decided that all the above are essentially one and the same. Yggdrassil, the World Ash, the Spirit Tree from which druids draw their power, are all one and the same. Prielghari is not exactly one and the same, but an aspect of the tree. Essentially, she is the divine equivalent of a Dryad. And like a dryad, her health and the health of the tree are intertwined. (This concept accidentally becomes an anchor point to a later point in the plot.)
element 3- The origin of elves and rituals of transformation
I picked up the idea from a post over on RPGnet that the elves were once godlike beings, and are now fragments of what they once were... but through various rituals, elves can return a fraction of their former glory. This original form, I decided, was the LeShay (which gives me room to link back to this plot point in epic level play, but for the time being, I think I will try to plant the idea in the player's mind that they are long gone.) And it only makes sense, to use Book of the Righteous as a backdrop, to make the LeShay one of the Div.
element 3.1 -
The means by which the elemental elves became what they are today is by this ritual which regrasps an element of their former glory.
element 3.2 -
This ritual is not strictly "vertical". It can be used to transform different sorts of elves into one another, such as transforming elemental elves into one another, or transforming surface elves into drow. This point was the genesis of the "evil plan" -- some villain somewhere is trying to steal the knowledge of the ritual from the elemental elves to transform elves into dark elves.
This point was the genesis for this whole campaign arc, but at this point, I had no way to relate it to my ongoing "chaos" plotline. That would soon change...
element 4 - the diaspora
I have had no less than 3 elemental elf PCs in my games that have been orphans who knew little of their past. That was fine with me, since it saved me writing them into the background of my game world (then, only my material campaign world). But as I started chewing on the idea of the Wind Elf PC's background and assembling a random generator to make NPC concepts on the fly, I decided: this, too, was no fluke. Something happened to the elemental elves that access to their homelands was blocked off, and those elemental elves travelling throughout the planes lost knowledge of where they came from. But how? That lead me straight to the next plot point.
element 5 - posion portals
element 6 - the rebellion
I had sort of decided earlier that the elemental elves lives in one or more disparate demiplanes. And as mentioned above, they would be tied to the shrines via portals. If the aforementioned drow character was seeking secrets of the transformation ritual, (s)he might try to do it by corrupting the elven enclaves.
(It also occured to me that though I think
Bow & Blade is a great book, being a player oriented book, I get little chance to use some of the cool stuff therein. So I thought it would be cool if the elemental elves had a reason to act against the PCs.)
Those elves that catch on might raise up arms against her dupes. So battles might occur, and the rebels might be forced to retreat and regroup. But she wants to kill off the rebellion.
But how?
Refer back to element 4. A preponderance of elemental elves who do not know where they came from. In
Portals & Planes, it discusses how some portals might have transformative effects on those who wander through.
So, I figured, she or someone she has access too might be able to place a ward on the portal that clouds the minds of those that wander through. All the sudden, my diaspora was explained.
element 5.1 - I also thought it would be cool to link in element 3.2 here. The drow in question would also want to motivate the elemental elves and do as much damage as possible to the rebels that escape the mind blanking ability of the portals. To kill two birds with one stone, she poisons the portals coming the other direction and infuses it with a primitive version of her transformation ritual that transforms elves passing through the portal into drow.
Then, say she has some actual drow cohorts in the area that do some sniping of their own to inflame the natives and force them into a rampage to kill drow... drow that are returning members of the rebellion, who appear to have slain their fellows and taken their stuff...
(Of course, this promises to be an interesting plot complication for the party's wind elves, and the first sign in their travels that
something is not quite right
This is where I was stuck. I had lots of elements in place to make for an interesting game, but no way to pull them together and make for an interesting game. I was looking for some activities for the players to do, tying everything back together, yet making each shrine distinct. Further, I still had nothing in mind that would make for a compelling character story for the wind elf character.
element 7 - Glacial Inferno, re-imagined - this is a fire themed dungeon adventure. I liked this map when it appeared as a map of mystery many moons ago, and I figured I could tweak this adventure to become the "fire elf temple", by replacing the fire mages with
initiates of the ashen path from
Bow & Blade.
You might have seen my recent thread about the GM driving roleplaying. In the midst of this, I figured that some fire elves who weren't part of the same rebellion were visiting the shrine that is the gateway to the temple, and express their disdain for the wind elf (this event would have to be staged before the wind elf gets transformed) for "failing to come to their aid when the initiates took over the temple. This encounter is a bit of foreshadowing, and if the PCs pay attention, what is now a potentially threatening encounter can turn the NPC into a potential ally when the details present themselves.
element 8 - the fossegrim
Okay, this is where things all come together. In prep for spicing up the fire temple, I was reading a variety of monster books, including the
Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary. The first thing that caught my attention was the "black bones" template, which would make a great "corrupted fire elf cleric" villain.
But then, I saw they had a fossegrim template. When I saw Wizards take on the Fossegrim, I saw a creature with little campaign potential (not to mention that Dennis Cramer's artwork put me off... one more testament to my attitude that art can play an important role in the utility of a game book.)
But this one was different. It was not a fey. It was undead. A benign undead creature that was drawn to the site of a waterfall after it's death.
So far so good. Perhaps I would make the entry to the water temple behind a waterfall, and I would make the fossegrim a guardian at its entry. Neat. Plus I like undead templates because they make for interesting challenges. Double neat.
But wait, there is more. Fossegrim are often bards in life. For some reason, that little factoid made all the difference. The creature went from a typical guardian to a plot central creature. Because, you see, wind elves are often bards and have bard as a favored class.
Do you see where this is going? I didn't have an idea for what happened to the Wind Elf PC's parents, and now I had one that not only made sense considering her background, but played an important role in the campaign. One of her parents had fallen as part of the rebellion, but returned to protect the water temple as a fossegrim. The fossegrim was probably a wildsinger or foclucan lyrist, or something similar.
But the implications are deeper:
The drow elf corruptor would try to manipulate creatures into getting what she wants, parts of the ritual stored in the water temple. So the PCs may be duped into going to the water temple, to discover an undead creature that KNOWS the wind elf druid.
Further, this gave me a chance to tie in one of my favorite creatures. I liked the elemental wierds in MMII. If such a creature existed within the water temple (and why not?), then anyone who knew of that would assume that the fossegrim was the oracle-like water wierd within. Of course, that would lead the elven dupes to the assumption that the water oracle was defending the temple, which might lead them to making false assumptions about handling it.
So, perhaps the "corrupted" wind elves trick the party into going into the water temple, not knowing that this elf (possibly a drow elf; I'm not certain when that poisoned portal will come into play) among them is really the daughter of the elf who became the fossegrim, who, after some tense interplay, might reveal to the party what is really going on, and set the party about solving the real problem.
element 9 - dark elves
element 10 - the corrupter
element 11 - the divine dryad and the hidden plan
I was still, at this point ambivalent about the identity of the dark elf corrupter and how (s)he would go about living in an elf community.
Dark elves in my prime campaign world are a fractured species. In an old campaign I ran (that started in 1e!), a charismatic demigod pulled many worshippers away from the spider queen and started a civil war. He was evenutally defeated, but it left the dark elves in disarray. Of course, evil goddesses do not make a habit of forgiving and forgetting, and most of these rebels turned to one of a variety of patrons. This left me pretty free to insert whatever patron I wanted for this corrupter that I had created. But to this point, my assumption was that the corruptor was merely looking for a way to create more dark elf followers for her faction.
The first question I had was how did such a creature evade all detections to secret herself in the society of one of the elemental elves? Though it seems obvious now, the answer only occured to me recently: the same means she used to convert individual elves to dark elves could be use to convert herself into an elemental elf. So it was written, so it was done.
That left a troubling inconsistency for me to deal with. All the times I have used this "basic transformation" so far, I have not assumed it changed the fundamental character of the transformed elf. So why would she care if they were transformed: they would just be drow elves that hate her instead of elemental elves that hate her?
Okay, not an element, but one set peice I pictured in my head was that as a climax, the PC's final battle might involve having the goddess' physical aspect, a glowing being, being imprisoned and tapped for power. This thought lay dormant right about now.
Another mini-element I had in my head was that the elemental elves were only able to complete their transformation as a race by using their goddess as a sort of divine "anchor point", something she did willingly.
So, it occured to me that to realize this set-peice, the drow corruptor wishes not to make the elemental elves into drow elves to make them her servants, but rather, to corrupt her goddess. She knows that the elves are linked to her goddess, and if she corrupts that link, she can supplant her place as the essence of the tree with that of her own deity, if she modifies the ritual correctly. Okay, but who is this divine being.
And into that slot fell the last puzzle peice. The drow corruptor worships one of the chaos lords/far realms divinities. By supplanting the essence of the goddess with a corrupt being from outer dimensions, the forces of chaos and corruption suddenly have a huge living abberation that touches dozens of planes across reality. What better venue to launch an assault on reality from. All of the sudden, I have my linkage back to my central campaign theme, the corrupting forces of chaos from beyond.
As a side note, I settled on the corruptor being a
Soultamer legendary class from
Path of Faith. The soutamer is not unlike the Emperor from star wars. She corrupts other clerics/divine spellcasters to worship of her own deity, through an insidious brainwashing process. I had planned on having the PC wind elf druid go through this process, both as a final roleplaying tidbit, and as a means of exposing her to the ugly truth in the hopes that, once rescued, the party will learn of the truth behind the corruption and set them about solving it.
There are a few pieces to be tidied up -- more details about the current situation with the temples and parts of the ritual, and role that they play. But overall, I think I have the major pieces in place now.
