Let Me Tell You About My Paladin
Murat's Campaign Outlines: I. THE WEAPONS OF ARMAGGEDDON
I’m gearing up to start a new campaign in D&D 3.5. I’ve come up with several possible campaigns I’d like to run with my homebrew world, Cronus, but can’t fully decide which one to go with and flesh out. Since none of my players frequent the Dire Café, I’ve decided to write up a campaign outline for each one and run them out for your commentary and suggestions. Each campaign integrates modified versions of published materials to some extent. Here is the first one:
THE WEAPONS OF ARMAGGEDON
Before time as we know it began, before the current world was created, there was the Cosmic Interregnum when the Elder Gods of former creations were driven off to the Far Realms by the Younger Gods we know today. The newer deities were aided in this task by their first and greatest creations, the titans, glorious and perfect beings created from the raw stuff of chaos, with strength that rivaled the gods’ own. The titans were armed with the Weapons of Armaggeddon, artifact weapons of godslayin sized for Gargantuan wielders. The young gods had needed the power of the titans to wrest control of the universe from their elders, but were uneasy that their creations had power rivaling their own and experience in fighting and slaying deities. The titans, who had been led to believe that they would be given control of the new world once the young deities had triumphed, were dismayed to learn that they were instead going to be “retired” and banished to Limbo. Dominance of the new creation would be given instead to a plethora of mortal races created far weaker and more flawed than they. The titans rebelled against the young gods, a development the cunning gods were not particularly surprised by and had, in fact, counted on. The energies released by the battles of the Creation Wars fueled the genesis of the new world, and as each titan fell the gods reclaimed its body and used it as a building block of the newly forming universe. The greatest of the fallen titans were reworked into stars and planets, and the greatest of all, Cronus, was made into the world itself, which still bears his name.
At the end of the Creation Wars all of the Great Titans had been slain, and only a handful of the weakest of their kind survived. Although the remaining titans were still more powerful than nearly any of the new world’s more recent creations, they were puny compared to their fallen kin. The Younger Gods, their strength spent from aeons of waging war and creation, deemed the surviving titans not a sufficient threat to warrant the effort it would take to exterminate them all. An armistice was entered, and the titans that pledged to cease hostilities were spared, while the few holdouts who refused to submit were imprisoned in various great prisons scattered around the world that had once been their leader, Cronus.
After the world had been formed and filled with its first native life, unreasoning plants and beasts, the gods decided it was time to create the first of the sentient species. The honor was granted to Vashara, the Goddess of Creation, who had first thought up the scheme to betray the titans and recycle them into the new world. Vashara reasoned that the titans was the young gods’ greatest design, and used it as the template for the First Race: humans. But these new beings would be smaller in scale, weaker and more flawed, and thus more easily controlled by the might of the gods. But clever Vashara made her first, and most dreadful, mistake. Reasoning that it was the titans’ awareness of good and evil that had made them feel unfairly treated by the gods and had driven them to start a rebellion they knew they had little chance of winning, Vashara decided to make her humans entirely without conscience or a sense of fairness. She mistakenly thought that this would make them more pliable; faced with the overwhelming superior force of the gods, the mortals would pragmatically submit to any demand the gods made without the qualms or reservations creatures with a conscience would face. And so she made her prototype, the first human, Vasharan, and was shocked by the result.
No sooner than Vasharan had opened his eyes for the first time than he had lashed out at his creator. Lacking any sense of gratitude or willingness to belong to something greater than himself, he perceived his creator for what she was: the first and greatest obstacle he had to overcome to establish his own dominion over all. And it was then that Vashara, who for all her cunning and ruthlessness did understand good from evil, for the first time realized the magnitude of her own crimes, from the ill use of the titans to the creation of this abomination. Although her human was incapable of hurting her physically, his blow struck her to core of her conscience. She wept uncontrollably, and such were her tears that they filled the oceans to overflowing and drowned the world in the Great Deluge, killing the first human and expunging her crime. Vashara then turned her back, still weeping unconsolably, and abandoned the new universe she had architected to flee into the Far Realms she had helped exile the Elder Gods to. What happened to her after that none know.
The remaining gods, having learned from Vashara’s mistake, created first the dragons and then most of the other races known today, each with a sense of good and evil; individually and as cultures, each decided its own course and chose to do good or evil as their consciences saw fit. Finally, recognizing that the design of the titans was still their greatest work, the gods once again recreated humans in the image of the titans, but this time granting them a sense of right and wrong.
But Vashara’s error was not completely expunged by her Deluge as the gods had thought. Millennia later, newborn demons sought out and found the remains of Vasharan. The demons resurrected him and created others from his flesh, and the sociopathic race of the Vasharan slowly multiplied, plotting and scheming against the deities while hiding from them amidst their conscience-bearing cousins. The Vasharan remain committed to the destruction of the gods. But they know they themselves lack the power to accomplish this. They need allies, mighty allies, perhaps ones that had rebelled against the gods before…
This campaign revolves around a conspiracy of Vasharan to liberate the rebel titans and re-ignite the Creation War. As it progresses the players gradually are introduced to the story above from snippets of information here and there, with an aim to foil the plan. Although the titans have a legitimate grievance, such a war would almost certainly destroy the current world regardless of which side won or lost. The surviving titans, who unlike the Vasharan do have a sense of right and wrong, are divided by the situation. Some have truly renounced the war as a time that has passed and would preserve the mortal races. Others are bitter and resentful and would gladly see their “inferiors” annihilated for even a chance to get revenge for the trick the gods played on them. Ultimately, the players’ success will depend upon diplomacy as well as combat, for it will be necessary to sway some of the titans to their side in order to succeed.
Early game (level 1-7): Standard adventuring from a metropolitan urban base. Various bands of monsters are making attacks, and a pattern soon emerges: the monsters are attacking temples and other religious institutions. They kill the clergy, desecrate the temples, and make off with rare holy scriptures. On investigating the PCs find that the bands are being directed by human instigators (actually Vasharan), who make off with holy records. It is discovered that most of the stolen texts refer to the Creation War and information about the titans.
Middle game (level 8-12): The players follow leads to the holy city of Aurantium, The City of All Gods, and get involved in internecine political machinations between the Prelatarchs of various gods. They run afoul of the shadowy figure of The Apostate, a powerful huecuva cleric ruling the hidden, undead-infested catacombs under the city. The Apostate sought to steal godhood from his patron deity and was cursed to undeath when he failed. Ultimately the player characters petition to gain access to the extremely well guarded Archive of Heresies, where the suppressed texts of the churches are kept. Upon gaining access they finally learn the full story of Vashara’s plan to betray the titans and the creation of the Vasharan, and clues to the locations of the prisons of the titan holdouts.
Endgame (level 13-18): The players race the Vasharan and their agents to various prisons of the titans, seeking to prevent their release. In the midst of this Vasharan agents approach free titans with overtures to join their cause. The titans are divided and call a conclave to decide what to do. Aware that the PCs are trying to block the release of their imprisoned brethren, a powerful titan captures them and brings them to the conclave to explain their actions and make an appeal to the free titans, along with those of Vasharan agents. The outcome will determine how many titan allies they can make. Regardless, at least a few of the titans decide to back the Vasharan and go to release the most powerful of their imprisoned comrades from the Lost Oubliette and finally collect their deicidal weapons, the Weapons of Armaggeddon, from the Armory of Armaggeddon, resulting in a final battle involving conflicting Titans, Vasharans, and various powerful monsters.
THE WEAPONS OF ARMAGGEDON
Before time as we know it began, before the current world was created, there was the Cosmic Interregnum when the Elder Gods of former creations were driven off to the Far Realms by the Younger Gods we know today. The newer deities were aided in this task by their first and greatest creations, the titans, glorious and perfect beings created from the raw stuff of chaos, with strength that rivaled the gods’ own. The titans were armed with the Weapons of Armaggeddon, artifact weapons of godslayin sized for Gargantuan wielders. The young gods had needed the power of the titans to wrest control of the universe from their elders, but were uneasy that their creations had power rivaling their own and experience in fighting and slaying deities. The titans, who had been led to believe that they would be given control of the new world once the young deities had triumphed, were dismayed to learn that they were instead going to be “retired” and banished to Limbo. Dominance of the new creation would be given instead to a plethora of mortal races created far weaker and more flawed than they. The titans rebelled against the young gods, a development the cunning gods were not particularly surprised by and had, in fact, counted on. The energies released by the battles of the Creation Wars fueled the genesis of the new world, and as each titan fell the gods reclaimed its body and used it as a building block of the newly forming universe. The greatest of the fallen titans were reworked into stars and planets, and the greatest of all, Cronus, was made into the world itself, which still bears his name.
At the end of the Creation Wars all of the Great Titans had been slain, and only a handful of the weakest of their kind survived. Although the remaining titans were still more powerful than nearly any of the new world’s more recent creations, they were puny compared to their fallen kin. The Younger Gods, their strength spent from aeons of waging war and creation, deemed the surviving titans not a sufficient threat to warrant the effort it would take to exterminate them all. An armistice was entered, and the titans that pledged to cease hostilities were spared, while the few holdouts who refused to submit were imprisoned in various great prisons scattered around the world that had once been their leader, Cronus.
After the world had been formed and filled with its first native life, unreasoning plants and beasts, the gods decided it was time to create the first of the sentient species. The honor was granted to Vashara, the Goddess of Creation, who had first thought up the scheme to betray the titans and recycle them into the new world. Vashara reasoned that the titans was the young gods’ greatest design, and used it as the template for the First Race: humans. But these new beings would be smaller in scale, weaker and more flawed, and thus more easily controlled by the might of the gods. But clever Vashara made her first, and most dreadful, mistake. Reasoning that it was the titans’ awareness of good and evil that had made them feel unfairly treated by the gods and had driven them to start a rebellion they knew they had little chance of winning, Vashara decided to make her humans entirely without conscience or a sense of fairness. She mistakenly thought that this would make them more pliable; faced with the overwhelming superior force of the gods, the mortals would pragmatically submit to any demand the gods made without the qualms or reservations creatures with a conscience would face. And so she made her prototype, the first human, Vasharan, and was shocked by the result.
No sooner than Vasharan had opened his eyes for the first time than he had lashed out at his creator. Lacking any sense of gratitude or willingness to belong to something greater than himself, he perceived his creator for what she was: the first and greatest obstacle he had to overcome to establish his own dominion over all. And it was then that Vashara, who for all her cunning and ruthlessness did understand good from evil, for the first time realized the magnitude of her own crimes, from the ill use of the titans to the creation of this abomination. Although her human was incapable of hurting her physically, his blow struck her to core of her conscience. She wept uncontrollably, and such were her tears that they filled the oceans to overflowing and drowned the world in the Great Deluge, killing the first human and expunging her crime. Vashara then turned her back, still weeping unconsolably, and abandoned the new universe she had architected to flee into the Far Realms she had helped exile the Elder Gods to. What happened to her after that none know.
The remaining gods, having learned from Vashara’s mistake, created first the dragons and then most of the other races known today, each with a sense of good and evil; individually and as cultures, each decided its own course and chose to do good or evil as their consciences saw fit. Finally, recognizing that the design of the titans was still their greatest work, the gods once again recreated humans in the image of the titans, but this time granting them a sense of right and wrong.
But Vashara’s error was not completely expunged by her Deluge as the gods had thought. Millennia later, newborn demons sought out and found the remains of Vasharan. The demons resurrected him and created others from his flesh, and the sociopathic race of the Vasharan slowly multiplied, plotting and scheming against the deities while hiding from them amidst their conscience-bearing cousins. The Vasharan remain committed to the destruction of the gods. But they know they themselves lack the power to accomplish this. They need allies, mighty allies, perhaps ones that had rebelled against the gods before…
This campaign revolves around a conspiracy of Vasharan to liberate the rebel titans and re-ignite the Creation War. As it progresses the players gradually are introduced to the story above from snippets of information here and there, with an aim to foil the plan. Although the titans have a legitimate grievance, such a war would almost certainly destroy the current world regardless of which side won or lost. The surviving titans, who unlike the Vasharan do have a sense of right and wrong, are divided by the situation. Some have truly renounced the war as a time that has passed and would preserve the mortal races. Others are bitter and resentful and would gladly see their “inferiors” annihilated for even a chance to get revenge for the trick the gods played on them. Ultimately, the players’ success will depend upon diplomacy as well as combat, for it will be necessary to sway some of the titans to their side in order to succeed.
Early game (level 1-7): Standard adventuring from a metropolitan urban base. Various bands of monsters are making attacks, and a pattern soon emerges: the monsters are attacking temples and other religious institutions. They kill the clergy, desecrate the temples, and make off with rare holy scriptures. On investigating the PCs find that the bands are being directed by human instigators (actually Vasharan), who make off with holy records. It is discovered that most of the stolen texts refer to the Creation War and information about the titans.
Middle game (level 8-12): The players follow leads to the holy city of Aurantium, The City of All Gods, and get involved in internecine political machinations between the Prelatarchs of various gods. They run afoul of the shadowy figure of The Apostate, a powerful huecuva cleric ruling the hidden, undead-infested catacombs under the city. The Apostate sought to steal godhood from his patron deity and was cursed to undeath when he failed. Ultimately the player characters petition to gain access to the extremely well guarded Archive of Heresies, where the suppressed texts of the churches are kept. Upon gaining access they finally learn the full story of Vashara’s plan to betray the titans and the creation of the Vasharan, and clues to the locations of the prisons of the titan holdouts.
Endgame (level 13-18): The players race the Vasharan and their agents to various prisons of the titans, seeking to prevent their release. In the midst of this Vasharan agents approach free titans with overtures to join their cause. The titans are divided and call a conclave to decide what to do. Aware that the PCs are trying to block the release of their imprisoned brethren, a powerful titan captures them and brings them to the conclave to explain their actions and make an appeal to the free titans, along with those of Vasharan agents. The outcome will determine how many titan allies they can make. Regardless, at least a few of the titans decide to back the Vasharan and go to release the most powerful of their imprisoned comrades from the Lost Oubliette and finally collect their deicidal weapons, the Weapons of Armaggeddon, from the Armory of Armaggeddon, resulting in a final battle involving conflicting Titans, Vasharans, and various powerful monsters.
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Comment by Murat, Esq. on October 19, 2008 at 6:13pm - About 2 years with 2-3 3-hour sesions each month.
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Comment by Berin Kinsman on October 18, 2008 at 8:19am - That sounds pretty cool. I think the hard part for me would be keeping thr group together long enough to reach endgame. What sort of real-world time span do you envision for this campaign? Two years? Three?
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