The "Oh crap, I just realized" moment...
- Thread starter shilsen
- Start date
Jürgen Hubert
First Post
I live for those moments...
Voadam
Legend
In ours the party paladin started with a few levels in fighter a rod of lordly might and a back story of amnesia and being cared for by a foster father who found him unconscious in a river nursed him back to health and led him to St. Cuthbert and the path of paladin.
The campaign started with him going after an undead necromancer/theurge conducting a massive summoning ritual using the dead bones of a Saint servitor of Cuthbert's as power components. The paladin disrupts the ritual causing it to go wild and my eldritch knight gets summoned from a different world (converting him from 2e to 3e). We then are beset by the necromancer's swarm of spectre minions and energy drained until I use a rod of thunder and lightning to blow up a rod of wonder blasting everything, with the paladin and my familiar the only ones left standing. My familiar grabs the lab notes of the necromancer and the paladin calls his horse to drag me to be raised.
Turns out the necromancer was trying to summon a great villain to break into the Banewarrens (extradimensional dungeon prison of powerful evil things) to get a corrupted artefact called the Sword of Lies. We find out the warrens has been opened and go adventuring. The paladin takes on a quest to restore the Sword to its former good holy self, Truth, as part of his prestige class requirements. I also find out the necromancer is a vampire meaning he will reform and we will have to deal with him again eventually.
We eventually regain the Sword and he bears the evil thing taking the negative level and suffering its curse (everything he says comes out as lies that detriment good and he detects as evil and he gets some false perceptions). We find out it was corrupted by a black dragon who later ascended plunging it into his own heart.
I do more research after we seal the Banewarrens and discover where I believe the necromancer has a base and is likely to be based on ley line ritual notes from his lab book. It is the site where his dragon god either died or ascended and it looks like he is trying to raise it.
I send a dream message to the paladin and walk in on his dream as an evil dragon lord tyrant bearing his rod of lordly might. When I talk to him I get a garbled account of his slaying his mentor who was a werewolf and I hear about the amnesia for the first time. He also has a dream about burying the sword in a house sized dragon heart and the corruption being burned away. He believes this is a vision from his god, I'm not so sure.
As we assault the necromancer's lair more disturbing things arise, the paladin's words come out in draconic more often and he keeps unconsciouly speaking familiarly with villains telling them they are poor servants unworthy of the God, outraged over a slain green dragon the necromancer has animated, etc. With the Sword's curse it is tough to figure out what is real or not and whether the Sword is taking him over or not. I find out the name the paladin is now using and do a little more research on the sly and find out it is of an evil dragon lord champion of the dragon god who disappeared years ago.
So then it clicks. The original ritual was successful. It was to summon the old lord champion to break into the Banewarrens and recover the unholy artefact of the dragon god which would be used in a ritual to restore the god in undeath using the dragon's mummified heart. The ritual used wish power which drew me in to aid him in recovering the sword and bringing it back to the necromancer as he could not do it alone.
What the necromancer did not know was that the lord had gone through amnesia and converted to paladinism, so he was no longer an ally, and bringing back the Sword was the path to restoring it. At least that was my hope and why I kept going with the paladin instead of trying to take him out.
The campaign started with him going after an undead necromancer/theurge conducting a massive summoning ritual using the dead bones of a Saint servitor of Cuthbert's as power components. The paladin disrupts the ritual causing it to go wild and my eldritch knight gets summoned from a different world (converting him from 2e to 3e). We then are beset by the necromancer's swarm of spectre minions and energy drained until I use a rod of thunder and lightning to blow up a rod of wonder blasting everything, with the paladin and my familiar the only ones left standing. My familiar grabs the lab notes of the necromancer and the paladin calls his horse to drag me to be raised.
Turns out the necromancer was trying to summon a great villain to break into the Banewarrens (extradimensional dungeon prison of powerful evil things) to get a corrupted artefact called the Sword of Lies. We find out the warrens has been opened and go adventuring. The paladin takes on a quest to restore the Sword to its former good holy self, Truth, as part of his prestige class requirements. I also find out the necromancer is a vampire meaning he will reform and we will have to deal with him again eventually.
We eventually regain the Sword and he bears the evil thing taking the negative level and suffering its curse (everything he says comes out as lies that detriment good and he detects as evil and he gets some false perceptions). We find out it was corrupted by a black dragon who later ascended plunging it into his own heart.
I do more research after we seal the Banewarrens and discover where I believe the necromancer has a base and is likely to be based on ley line ritual notes from his lab book. It is the site where his dragon god either died or ascended and it looks like he is trying to raise it.
I send a dream message to the paladin and walk in on his dream as an evil dragon lord tyrant bearing his rod of lordly might. When I talk to him I get a garbled account of his slaying his mentor who was a werewolf and I hear about the amnesia for the first time. He also has a dream about burying the sword in a house sized dragon heart and the corruption being burned away. He believes this is a vision from his god, I'm not so sure.
As we assault the necromancer's lair more disturbing things arise, the paladin's words come out in draconic more often and he keeps unconsciouly speaking familiarly with villains telling them they are poor servants unworthy of the God, outraged over a slain green dragon the necromancer has animated, etc. With the Sword's curse it is tough to figure out what is real or not and whether the Sword is taking him over or not. I find out the name the paladin is now using and do a little more research on the sly and find out it is of an evil dragon lord champion of the dragon god who disappeared years ago.
So then it clicks. The original ritual was successful. It was to summon the old lord champion to break into the Banewarrens and recover the unholy artefact of the dragon god which would be used in a ritual to restore the god in undeath using the dragon's mummified heart. The ritual used wish power which drew me in to aid him in recovering the sword and bringing it back to the necromancer as he could not do it alone.
What the necromancer did not know was that the lord had gone through amnesia and converted to paladinism, so he was no longer an ally, and bringing back the Sword was the path to restoring it. At least that was my hope and why I kept going with the paladin instead of trying to take him out.
Thornir Alekeg
Albatross!
This all just makes me sad 
If I don't coax it out of them or use the free flowing talk of my players, they never figure out any of the larger stories and meta-plots running. I'm sure part of it is the infrequency of our gaming sessions, but a major part is that they just are not very into trying to understand the deeper story that may be happening (although they are more than happy to rip into me if they feel like I am being overly blunt or am railroading).
If I don't coax it out of them or use the free flowing talk of my players, they never figure out any of the larger stories and meta-plots running. I'm sure part of it is the infrequency of our gaming sessions, but a major part is that they just are not very into trying to understand the deeper story that may be happening (although they are more than happy to rip into me if they feel like I am being overly blunt or am railroading).
Percivellian
First Post
First off, congrats Shilsen, that's a great feeling.
I've only very recently (as in the current campaign I'm running) been fairly successful in getting players to realize hints had been dropping since session #1. Thing was, at one point, I didn't think I could get any more obvious, but it kept sliding right under their noses. It wasn't a very layered, complex thing, but it was hilarious to watch them stand about cluelessly about this one thing session after session. They were supposed to intercept this emissary who they discovered was dropping off a shipment of this rare, magic enhancing ore. They had stolen the orders from the mine it was from. They knew which day it would be arriving, where it was traveling from, and that it would be arriving by cart. Before they had stolen the orders, they met a single cart coming from the mine where the ore originated, and its driver had told them where he was heading, which happened to be where the orders said the emissary was heading...
Still no lightbulbs. Then, to make things worse, they met the same cart and driver at the destination a week or so later, and he was parked very suspiciously on some random side road. They talked to him... no lightbulbs, and left him there. Then they went back to speak with this noble, and during the conversation with him I tried to drop some final hints without flat out saying it, just hoping they would figure it out themselves before it was too late. Well, finally the light came on, and they 'graciously' responded with groans and "I hate yous." After a few moments of them lamenting their obliviousness, and some grinning on my part, they ran back to the cart, and found and killed the emissary hiding in the back. Sadly, the delivery had already been made.
I'm thinking about having Dancing Lights spells shaped like neon-signs reading "BBEG & Co.'s hideout here!" Heh.
I've only very recently (as in the current campaign I'm running) been fairly successful in getting players to realize hints had been dropping since session #1. Thing was, at one point, I didn't think I could get any more obvious, but it kept sliding right under their noses. It wasn't a very layered, complex thing, but it was hilarious to watch them stand about cluelessly about this one thing session after session. They were supposed to intercept this emissary who they discovered was dropping off a shipment of this rare, magic enhancing ore. They had stolen the orders from the mine it was from. They knew which day it would be arriving, where it was traveling from, and that it would be arriving by cart. Before they had stolen the orders, they met a single cart coming from the mine where the ore originated, and its driver had told them where he was heading, which happened to be where the orders said the emissary was heading...
Still no lightbulbs. Then, to make things worse, they met the same cart and driver at the destination a week or so later, and he was parked very suspiciously on some random side road. They talked to him... no lightbulbs, and left him there. Then they went back to speak with this noble, and during the conversation with him I tried to drop some final hints without flat out saying it, just hoping they would figure it out themselves before it was too late. Well, finally the light came on, and they 'graciously' responded with groans and "I hate yous." After a few moments of them lamenting their obliviousness, and some grinning on my part, they ran back to the cart, and found and killed the emissary hiding in the back. Sadly, the delivery had already been made.
I'm thinking about having Dancing Lights spells shaped like neon-signs reading "BBEG & Co.'s hideout here!" Heh.
shilsen
Adventurer
True. I think that's one of the best motivations one can have. As soon as the PCs actually see that some of their past actions have repercussions, they start wondering about all of their actions, even the ones which haven't had an explicit result yet. And then they start seeing potentiality (sometimes where there isn't anydeltadave said:
) and runnign around trying to both find out as much as they can and deal with all the dire things they think they've discovered. Which often leads to way more story options and situations that are even worse than I was planning, of course ![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
shilsen said:
So let m,e get this straight....they flayed the warforged for bits of it's body? I'm SURE the Lord of the Blades would LOVE to hear about that..... Hacking apart a sentient creature for personal gain....kind of like chopping up an elf and eating it raw while letting other people know exactly what you're up to...
Rel
Liquid Awesome
Congrats, shilsen. I too love when those moments happen.
And I'm starting to think that I've trained this bunch of players to look for clues pretty well. I'm also running an Eberron campaign (mine is set largely in Sharn) and the intrigues the PC's have found themselves involved in have them constantly looking for clues into the motivations and machinations of the groups they're rubbing up against.
A small moment of triumph happened when one of the players mentioned a minor plot thread that I didn't even understand when he mentioned a government official that had possible ties to a criminal organization. Then I recalled that I placed an article about this guy into an issue of the Sharn Inquisitive newspaper*. The player read the article, remembered it and was connecting dots with events in the campaign! That made me proud of the effort I'd made to add such a prop to the game.
*What I did was to take a standard "Newsletter Template" for Word and modify it into the front page of this newspaper. It shows the date, two major headlines and a few little "Also in this Issue" blurbs. I'll attach a copy here if anybody is interested.
And I'm starting to think that I've trained this bunch of players to look for clues pretty well. I'm also running an Eberron campaign (mine is set largely in Sharn) and the intrigues the PC's have found themselves involved in have them constantly looking for clues into the motivations and machinations of the groups they're rubbing up against.
A small moment of triumph happened when one of the players mentioned a minor plot thread that I didn't even understand when he mentioned a government official that had possible ties to a criminal organization. Then I recalled that I placed an article about this guy into an issue of the Sharn Inquisitive newspaper*. The player read the article, remembered it and was connecting dots with events in the campaign! That made me proud of the effort I'd made to add such a prop to the game.
*What I did was to take a standard "Newsletter Template" for Word and modify it into the front page of this newspaper. It shows the date, two major headlines and a few little "Also in this Issue" blurbs. I'll attach a copy here if anybody is interested.
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