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detrevnisisiht
2007-08-08, 07:43 PM
i am working on a campaign that takes a different approach to dnd.
basically two new deities have emerged,the Lord of Unending Law and the Creator of Everlasting Chaos. they are gods of devils and demons respectively.
thing is that all the other gods were so scared of these new deities(rank 20 with lots of strong minions)that they combined there strengths to separate the lower planes from the rest of the planes.

two cults to the deities have arisen (the PC are in one of them),and there goal is to sacrifice people in a ritual that works as a way to temporarily make a small gate to the lower plain of the cult to summon some demons/devils in hopes that they can soon rule all the planes.

i need help with the sacrificing mechanics as well as any fun ideas.
thanks in advance:smallbiggrin:

Inane-Fedaykin
2007-08-08, 07:50 PM
Check out the book of vile darkness.

PaladinFreak
2007-08-08, 07:52 PM
I'm not sure how that works, but, as said above, you should probably go to the BoVD

BardicDuelist
2007-08-08, 11:58 PM
BoVD, FC1 and FC2 will help quite a bit.

How does Asmodeous and co. fit in with there being a god for his followers?

Why do the demons follow a being of pure chaos, when they are pure chaos and it seems to go against their nature?

Remember that these two gods would be fighting each other as well as Law and Chaos do not do well together. Also, if they are LN and CN (which would be "pure" chaos and "pure" law, without bias to good and evil), they would have other followers. Even if they aren't, wouldn't some gods follow them as well if they see pure order or pure chaos as an ideal, no matter the consequences (thus dividing the LN and CN gods).

Remember that the archdevils disdain the gods and wish to become greater than them. Demons just hate everything (including each other).

earlblue
2007-08-09, 12:53 AM
Heh... you can take a page from lawyers and use fine prints.

Nowadays, fine prints have to be of at a certain font size in order for it to be legal (if I'm not wrong). However, in most DnD settings, Law is not as developed as the real world, and nobody says anything about having fine prints that are too small...

So, once (back in the good days of 2ed) I have an enterprising Devil (with a profession of Lawyer) who draws up contracts. These contracts have a border of what appeared to be a bold line, but if you magnify it, it reads: "Once signed, the soul is a property of XXX." printed over, and over again to form a bold line.

The contracts can be about anything... I used these for hiring workers to work in a coal mine. The game, of course, is for the players to find out who is gathering souls at a rapid pace, how they did it, and why... One of the players even sign one of these contracts...

To me, there is a difference between Sacrifice (I willingly or unwillingly but tricked into doing something for you) and Dedication (to use the infamous quote: "Blood and Souls for my Lord Arioch!"). Both are based on the idea that blood (and souls) have certain mystical powers that can be used towards some ends (raising demons/devil, opening gates, what nots). Most don't really care. Kill a virgin on an altar and they call it a sacrifice regardless of whether the virgin is willing or not.

And mass killing... is easy. Just take a page from terrorists. Use magical plagues, bombs, poison (have a lot of believers taking poison and dying at the same time. Give the players a lot of clues - information gathering sessions where the player(s) 'hear' news about someone buying in ALOT of poisonous stuff, or spell (and/or item creation) components that is traditionally linked to fire magic. Have the players encounter 'accidents' - a small bomb went off near them, and investigation reveals, etc, etc.

Let them come across 'sleeper' agents... people who are hynotized (sp?) into doing some terrible acts, activated by 'sending' spells telling them specific code words. You probably need a good player with psionics for this... but it is interesting to see how it turn out.

Sacrifices need not be to the death. At least, not apparently so. You can always use necromancy to bring them back (Help is always 'good'). You can have ghosts possessing the bodies. Bring confusion and hinder the PCs (or the enemy) from guessing what is happening. :smallbiggrin: Opening a gate is an endeavour you don't really want people to poke their nose into.

You can also use omens, dreams and many other plot hooks to give the players a sense of imminent doom... that always get the players moving.

Think out of the box. You can adapt alot of current happenings to games... and a good chance of catching your players unaware coz they never expect a modern day terrorists (using magic instead of technology) appearing in the game.

O'BeQuiet UWannabe.

detrevnisisiht
2007-08-09, 09:23 AM
o sorry for the huge mix up.:smalleek: the gods aren't working together they are trying to kill each other. and the PCs are part of the devil cult(by majority vote).they are trying to summon more devils than the other cult summons demons. they are going to end the endless war between demons and devils.

and on a side not the devil gods first act was to kill the archdevils proclaiming that they were merely working in his absence.

detrevnisisiht
2007-08-10, 11:44 PM
i still need help

BardicDuelist
2007-08-11, 03:03 AM
I could help more if I understood your cosmology better. My knowledge of devils in D&D comes from the Fiendish Codex 2 (you can find most of the fluff on wikipedia). Since you say that the god of law had the archdevils working in his absence (and this was accepted by devils), then the history of hell is probably different from a typical D&D cosmology. If you could explain this more, I could offer more help.

(Having Asmodeus, or annother archdevil, becoming this God and just claiming to be a different entity who had himself killed would be pretty sweet and then require far less reworking, IMO).

Look up the Pact Primevil. How did this work in your Cosmology? Did it evein exist?

detrevnisisiht
2007-08-11, 10:30 AM
well the demon god had already been there since before time began. the devil god was a normal devil who was surprisingly smart, when the devils were good they all had a minor amount of divine power in them, when they finally relinquished it when the pact was signed, this devil had an unknown artifact that absorbed most of the power effectively giving him a divine rank of 5. from then on whenever a soul came into hell he took their divine spark he did this for countless eons unknown to the other devils until he rivaled the demon god when they started fighting the gods felt the enormous power that seemed large enough to be a threat to themselves. so they banded together once more and sealed them away in a demiplane. every year they would make the bonds again and this went on until the gods forgot why they did it. they gradually put less and less of there power into it until the bonds finally broke.

detrevnisisiht
2007-08-11, 10:40 AM
when the devil god arrived in hell he went to Asmodeus and said that he was not meant to rule. Asmodeus was outraged at this and he drew Punishment (which is intelligent)and went to strike down the devil god. The weapon stopped itself and flew into the gods hands. proclaiming that he was more fit to rule.yet at this point the other archdevils had arrived and they all attacked. the god slew them all without suffering any injury. so the rest of the devils readily followed him.

BardicDuelist
2007-08-11, 02:57 PM
Allright, well sacrifical mechanics are in BoVD and are not OGL so unless you homebrew somthing, I can't help much there.

As far as campaign ideas, have the PCs try to corrupt people in power (and with them then entire kingdoms). You can accomplish this by starting small and working your way up to the person in power (start with a guard, then his captain, then the major domo, then the advisor, then the king, or somthing like that) the corruption of the kingdom would give the devils more power.

Ofcourse, placing them on a battlefield works well too. You might even have the devils award them with the half-fiend template (and since the entire party has it, the LA won't really matter, just make the encounters 1 or 2 CRs higher).

Maybe the PCs have to try and enlist Mind Flayers (who are LE) to aid them, but the mind flayers betray them (wanting to rule instead of the devil god), and so they have to fight them (and the people whom the enslaves).

Since your NPCs are working on an epic scale, the PCs should only be a small part of their plan until higher levels. Even then, they should be the hands of gods rather than the decision makers. To keep PC freedom, give an objective and let them decide how it should be done. Remind the PCs that freedom is somthing they gave up when they started serving devils however, and that somtimes they have to follow orders.

Ending the Blood War should be a VERY high level task (several levels beyond 20), so be prepared to have varied tasks and encounters (searching for artifacts, sacrifices, corruption), otherwise a campaign that long could get very boring.

detrevnisisiht
2007-08-11, 03:29 PM
yea the ending is going to be that most of the gods are killed and demons are eradicated. its going to be high up in the epic lvls

and i was thinking of having them come in to a large city and slowly corrupt it. or at least weaken the defenses so the killing can start

well BardicDuelist thanks for the help. you no i figured something like this would get a little more input by other people (or at least more people telling me what a stupid idea this is:smallsmile: )