Let Me Tell You About My Paladin
Murat's Campaign Outlines: III. SCIONS OF SUCCESSION
SCIONS OF THE SUCCESSION
After the Great Deluge (aka the Cataclysm of Water), the world of Cronus was ruled by mighty dragons until their great schism and the War of the Winds (aka the Cataclysm of Air), in which Tiamat led the evil dragons against Bahamut in his palace behind the East Wind. This ended the reign of the dragons, giving rise to the Age of Giants, which itself ended in the great earthquakes of the Worldbreaking (the Cataclysm of Earth), ending the reign of the giants and shattering the continents into their current shapes. The current Age, wherein the smaller mortal ages rule, has been prophesied to have a destined ending in the Cataclysm of Fire, sometimes called the Final Holocaust, and none know who or what – if anything – will rule after it.
Millennia ago, in a time of ancient empires, a cabal of powerful arcanists of numerous different humanoid species banded together with a common purpose: to create the successor race that would survive the Final Holocaust and rule the world in its aftermath. These wizards began long-term cross-breeding and magical transformation experiments to create the Inheritors. Over many generations, their experiments gave birth to many of the strange monsters like owlbears that are known today. By magic and selective breeding, generation after generation of spellcaster incorporated their own progeny in their experiments, until finally their descendants transcended their original diverse races and became a new species unto themselves – the strange, shapeshifting race now known as the Zern (see Monster Manual IV).
Though few realize it, the handful of Zern continue their forebear’s experiments today on a grand scale, using transformation magic to twist species and enchantments to arrange unlikely liaisons. Rather than fearing the coming Holocaust, they anticipate it eagerly – for they are certain that they shall be the race to survive and dominate the new Age to come. The Zern do not seek individual immortality, seeing it as an evolutionary dead end leading to stagnance; rather, they constantly seek to improve their next generation prior to individual death on their path to racial perfection.
Although the Zern consider themselves to be the most successful results of their ancestors’ experimentation, numerous “inferior” results – what they view as failed experiments – remain. These include such races as the changelings, shifters, and skulks, but most especially the mongrelfolk. The Zern view mongrelfolk as enormous potential – although the vast majority of specimens are considered failures, among the mongrelfolk every once in a while a “sport” is born with a unique combination of genes that the Zern take note of and incorporate into their next generation. Wherever mongrelfolk congregate in numbers, one or two Zern are always nearby, secretly noting their development and keeping an eye on each new birth.
The PCs in this campaign first inhabit a city with a sizable mongrelfolk ghetto. The mongrelfolk are looked down upon by the city’s other inhabitants – predominantly humans and elves – and are forced by prejudice and oppression to take menial jobs the other inhabitants don’t want. The early campaign is primarily urban, but later becomes more varied as the players become aware of the Zern and their machinations.
Early game (level 1-6): A beautiful half-elf missionary in the mongrelfolk ghetto recruits the players to hunt down the “Sewer Snatcher,” an unknown agency that is causing the disappearance of sewer workers. As almost all the sewer workers are mongrelfolk, the human authorities are indifferent to the disappearances, and fear and resentment is building in the ghetto. The missionary hopes to defuse matters by having outsiders intervene on the mongrelfolk’s behalf. After a decent amount of sewer crawling the PCs learn that the Snatcher is a group of human ruffians capturing the mongrels for experimentation by a mysterious old human wizard. The PCs break up the band and rescue the mongrelfolk, but the wizard escapes (without the PCs ever learning that the wizard was in fact a Zern).
The PCs gain grudging acceptance by the mongrelfolk community and continue to be embroiled with their race relation struggle. They deal with a rabble-rousing half-dragon human encouraging empowerment “by any means necessary” and a beatific old mongrelfolk preaching peaceful coexistence, and uncover conspiracies by human authorities to discredit both. The players must rescue a surprisingly attractive, exotic female mongrelfolk from an evil human nobleman who is holding her against her will. Ultimately plague breaks out in the mongrelfolk ghetto and the whole district is placed on lockdown as a quarantine measure, with the PCs stuck on the inside and having to deal with angry mongrelfolk mobs and arrogant human troops cordoning them in.
Middle game (level 7-12) : The PCs unmask the mastermind of the plague, who turns out to be the same Zern masquerading as a human who had ruled the Sewer Snatchers. The mongrelfolk girl they rescued returns, and it is revealed that she is pregnant; when the child is born, it is a surprisingly perfect-seeming human baby. The baby, however, is kidnapped and taken away, and the PCs are sent off to rescue it as they had the mother before. This ultimately leads them to the Creche of Perfection, a dungeon ruled by a Zern mastermind where numerous experiments and their twisted mutant results are kept.
Endgame (level 13-18): The kidnapped child is revealed to be one of the Scions of Succession, superbeings believed by some Zern to be the apotheosis of their experimentation. The Scions are being groomed by the Zern to precipitate the Cataclysm of Fire and rule the world after its inceptions. After millennia of experimentation the Zerns now face what they believe to be a deadline for the coming Holocaust and are rushing to complete their preparations. They transport the Scions into the Atrium of Eternity, a dungeon with strange temporal properties presided over by Chronotyryns. Therein the PCs see visions of the coming Holocaust and encounter unexpected opposition—a group claiming to be the PC’s own as-yet unborn offspring. These offspring are fauning, subservient slaves of the future Scions, who have incredible mind-dominating as well as shapeshifting powers. The PCs fight their own children and then the adult Scions. Upon victory the PCs are left the present-day infant Scions, which are taken by the beatific mongrelfolk leader to be raised to avert rather than precipitate the Holocaust.
After the Great Deluge (aka the Cataclysm of Water), the world of Cronus was ruled by mighty dragons until their great schism and the War of the Winds (aka the Cataclysm of Air), in which Tiamat led the evil dragons against Bahamut in his palace behind the East Wind. This ended the reign of the dragons, giving rise to the Age of Giants, which itself ended in the great earthquakes of the Worldbreaking (the Cataclysm of Earth), ending the reign of the giants and shattering the continents into their current shapes. The current Age, wherein the smaller mortal ages rule, has been prophesied to have a destined ending in the Cataclysm of Fire, sometimes called the Final Holocaust, and none know who or what – if anything – will rule after it.
Millennia ago, in a time of ancient empires, a cabal of powerful arcanists of numerous different humanoid species banded together with a common purpose: to create the successor race that would survive the Final Holocaust and rule the world in its aftermath. These wizards began long-term cross-breeding and magical transformation experiments to create the Inheritors. Over many generations, their experiments gave birth to many of the strange monsters like owlbears that are known today. By magic and selective breeding, generation after generation of spellcaster incorporated their own progeny in their experiments, until finally their descendants transcended their original diverse races and became a new species unto themselves – the strange, shapeshifting race now known as the Zern (see Monster Manual IV).
Though few realize it, the handful of Zern continue their forebear’s experiments today on a grand scale, using transformation magic to twist species and enchantments to arrange unlikely liaisons. Rather than fearing the coming Holocaust, they anticipate it eagerly – for they are certain that they shall be the race to survive and dominate the new Age to come. The Zern do not seek individual immortality, seeing it as an evolutionary dead end leading to stagnance; rather, they constantly seek to improve their next generation prior to individual death on their path to racial perfection.
Although the Zern consider themselves to be the most successful results of their ancestors’ experimentation, numerous “inferior” results – what they view as failed experiments – remain. These include such races as the changelings, shifters, and skulks, but most especially the mongrelfolk. The Zern view mongrelfolk as enormous potential – although the vast majority of specimens are considered failures, among the mongrelfolk every once in a while a “sport” is born with a unique combination of genes that the Zern take note of and incorporate into their next generation. Wherever mongrelfolk congregate in numbers, one or two Zern are always nearby, secretly noting their development and keeping an eye on each new birth.
The PCs in this campaign first inhabit a city with a sizable mongrelfolk ghetto. The mongrelfolk are looked down upon by the city’s other inhabitants – predominantly humans and elves – and are forced by prejudice and oppression to take menial jobs the other inhabitants don’t want. The early campaign is primarily urban, but later becomes more varied as the players become aware of the Zern and their machinations.
Early game (level 1-6): A beautiful half-elf missionary in the mongrelfolk ghetto recruits the players to hunt down the “Sewer Snatcher,” an unknown agency that is causing the disappearance of sewer workers. As almost all the sewer workers are mongrelfolk, the human authorities are indifferent to the disappearances, and fear and resentment is building in the ghetto. The missionary hopes to defuse matters by having outsiders intervene on the mongrelfolk’s behalf. After a decent amount of sewer crawling the PCs learn that the Snatcher is a group of human ruffians capturing the mongrels for experimentation by a mysterious old human wizard. The PCs break up the band and rescue the mongrelfolk, but the wizard escapes (without the PCs ever learning that the wizard was in fact a Zern).
The PCs gain grudging acceptance by the mongrelfolk community and continue to be embroiled with their race relation struggle. They deal with a rabble-rousing half-dragon human encouraging empowerment “by any means necessary” and a beatific old mongrelfolk preaching peaceful coexistence, and uncover conspiracies by human authorities to discredit both. The players must rescue a surprisingly attractive, exotic female mongrelfolk from an evil human nobleman who is holding her against her will. Ultimately plague breaks out in the mongrelfolk ghetto and the whole district is placed on lockdown as a quarantine measure, with the PCs stuck on the inside and having to deal with angry mongrelfolk mobs and arrogant human troops cordoning them in.
Middle game (level 7-12) : The PCs unmask the mastermind of the plague, who turns out to be the same Zern masquerading as a human who had ruled the Sewer Snatchers. The mongrelfolk girl they rescued returns, and it is revealed that she is pregnant; when the child is born, it is a surprisingly perfect-seeming human baby. The baby, however, is kidnapped and taken away, and the PCs are sent off to rescue it as they had the mother before. This ultimately leads them to the Creche of Perfection, a dungeon ruled by a Zern mastermind where numerous experiments and their twisted mutant results are kept.
Endgame (level 13-18): The kidnapped child is revealed to be one of the Scions of Succession, superbeings believed by some Zern to be the apotheosis of their experimentation. The Scions are being groomed by the Zern to precipitate the Cataclysm of Fire and rule the world after its inceptions. After millennia of experimentation the Zerns now face what they believe to be a deadline for the coming Holocaust and are rushing to complete their preparations. They transport the Scions into the Atrium of Eternity, a dungeon with strange temporal properties presided over by Chronotyryns. Therein the PCs see visions of the coming Holocaust and encounter unexpected opposition—a group claiming to be the PC’s own as-yet unborn offspring. These offspring are fauning, subservient slaves of the future Scions, who have incredible mind-dominating as well as shapeshifting powers. The PCs fight their own children and then the adult Scions. Upon victory the PCs are left the present-day infant Scions, which are taken by the beatific mongrelfolk leader to be raised to avert rather than precipitate the Holocaust.
Add a Comment
5 Comments
-
Comment by Berin Kinsman on October 18, 2008 at 2:07pm - Yes. Thanks, G. Blame anything that does or doesn't come out of my mouth at the moment on vicodin.
-
Comment by Sir Golgotha, KEoPS on October 18, 2008 at 12:24pm - Eloi are the non-Morlocks. Asimov's The Naked Sun has humans living very much apart from one another, interacting only via robots and holographic 'viewing'.
-
Comment by Berin Kinsman on October 18, 2008 at 10:08am
-
I had an idea once of doing a Metropolis/Time Machine mashup. Basically, the far future of Wells' Time Machine is the future of Metropolis. The workers of the undercity became the Morlocks, the tower dwellers became the whatsernames. Set it mid-point, so the Metropolis workers were more devolved and the tower dwellers were more decadent and effeet. I wanted to throw in a concept from one of the later Asimov Foundation/Robot novels (I don't remember which one) where the tower dwellers all lived alone and did not interact directly with each other, having robots as servants and company and go-betweens. Very aloof. The player characters would be "ground level" people, between the subhuman workers and the elite ruling class.
It was the mention of the underground people as "mongrelfolk" that sent this train of thought down the track.
-
Comment by Berin Kinsman on October 18, 2008 at 8:32am
- Reminds me of Metropolis. I like it.
-
Comment by Murat, Esq. on October 12, 2008 at 9:00pm - I've got one more D&D campaign idea but it's set in Greyhawk, not Cronus. But I'm leaving that one simmer in my subconscious.
About
Badge
© 2009 Created by Berin Kinsman on Ning. Create Your Own Social Network
You need to be a member of The Dire Cafe to add comments!
Join this social network