Elder Evils: Coinciding Apocalypses

[Xuldarinar]

I've been reading elder evils recently, and a thought came to mind. What if in a campaign. more than one elder evil was approaching at once, possibly even having their arrivals being simultaneous. How would a campaign play out, and would it even be sane to try to throw those at players?


Also, a thought for a campaign: Atropus and Ragnorra are both approaching the world. For what ever reason, Ragnorra plows into the side of Atropus, forcing it to orbit the world rather than colliding. Their arrivals delaying the end of the world from the hands of the other. Ragnorra, attempting to consume Atropus and remake him in her image, while Atropus is attempting to eliminate the corrupted embodiment of positive energy now on his surface. What would happen from here? What level of signs would be active, and how would twisted life and restless dead interact?

[Larkas]

I know this doesn't help you directly, but you could look at these excerpts from Tippy's Terrifically Terrible Trial for inspiration:

Has anyone else thought about just how utterly screwed the world that has all of the elder evils active at the same time really is?

Plagues of undead, an unnatural fecundity to all life that causes people to mutate into abberations, -strange- weather, snakes and worms everywhere, people going berserk all over the place, the sun going dark while icy monsters roam free looking for people to "convert," divine casters and conjurers all finding themselves cut-off from the planes they draw their power from, and two large-ish celestial objects on a collision course. Makes Athas (the world of Dark Sun) look like an amusement park, don't it.

Why not?

The destruction of the Hulks drops one of the defenses around Pandorym who's greater sign messes up the binding on Father Llymic (and thus starts to free him) who's greater sign (turning off the sun) causes enough chaos to make the Leviathan's awakening possible and the deaths caused by those continent spanning storms are enough to attract Atropus while such a concentration of negative energy is enough to attract Ragnorra, the occurrence of so many disasters in short order and the inability of the gods to stop (or even predict) them causes greatly increased worship in Sertrous. The earthquakes caused by Ragnorra's impact caused enough damage to Edwin Tolstoff's prison to free him and he thus goes to free Kyuss. Zargon is also freed from the earthquakes and is wandering around killing stuff.

[GreenSerpent]

Atropos + Ragnorra = major chaos. An entity that produces surges of twisted positive energy and an entity that reanimates the dead?

[Arcanist]

I know this doesn't help you directly, but you could look at these excerpts from Tippy's Terrifically Terrible Trial for inspiration:

Bonus points if you can make it all take place on the world of Athas

It's hot, it's raining, there are snakes, worms and zombies everywhere, my god! Why isn't everyone just dead yet? I mean I can even imagine adding in the module for Dregoth Ascension (An Epic level Module mind you). As a result of the Elder Evils awakening, the Undead Sorcerer-King of Guistenal, decides to try and ascend to Godhood in a veiled attempt to save his dying world.

Needless to say at this point, the world is beyond dead since certain Elder Evil signs remain even after their respective Elder Evil's leave (Father Lymric's sign destroys crops and entire towns, villages and cities and Zargon returns in an unknown number of days [1-1*n days] to resume his rampage). God forbid, certain Elder Evils encounter each other (It is presumed that Kyuss, Zargon and the aspect of Sertrous will start to travel the world if they are not stopped in their prison... My money is on Kyuss... 18th level Sorcerer casting).

[Larkas]

Bonus points if you can make it all take place on the world of Athas

It's hot, it's raining, there are snakes, worms and zombies everywhere, my god! Why isn't everyone just dead yet? I mean I can even imagine adding in the module for Dregoth Ascension (An Epic level Module mind you). As a result of the Elder Evils awakening, the Undead Sorcerer-King of Guistenal, decides to try and ascend to Godhood in a veiled attempt to save his dying world.

That... Would be an interesting campaign, to say the least.

[ArqArturo]

Bonus points if you can make it all take place on the world of Athas

Isn't that a bit of Overkill (as in, 'that's too much dakka')?.

[Arcanist]

That... Would be an interesting campaign, to say the least.

It sounds fairly difficult to say the least. You can either let Dregoth save the world, but he becomes a God and generally makes things worse (probably) or you fight to save the world encountering Dregoth's templars across the world as you try and save your world while preventing him from gathering materials for his Godhood spell.

From the looks of this, the campaign would take characters from 1 to 40 (this is mostly just using Dregoth Ascension as a baseline and not assuming for making the Elder Evils actually scale up from 1-40 rather than 1-20)

Isn't that a bit of Overkill (as in, 'that's too much dakka')?.

Yes, it is overkill, but I believe that is the point of the entire campaign The world is supposed to be dying and nothing short of the characters are supposed to be able to do this. Oddly enough Epic Spellcasting would be okay in this kind of campaign since Pandorym blocks out chain gating, healing is incredibly difficult because Clerics can no longer gain spells because of Dregoth and Ragnorra are both preventing them and overpowering them to actually harm people. This isn't just your normal D&D campaign, this is D&D on Dante Must Die mode

[ArqArturo]

Reminds me, in a way, of a campaign setting in which I wanted to combine the next things. This wa sa 3.5 game, btw:

1.- It was gonna be set in Erador (The Midnight campaign world)
2.- Books to use: Libris Mortis, Book of Vile Darkness, Heroes of Horror. Plus the splatbooks of Midnight.
3.- I was gonna use the Madness Mechanics of Call of Cthulhu, and the Taint Mechanic from Heroes of Horror.

Decided against it because that game would last very little .

[Phelix-Mu]

It sounds fairly difficult to say the least. You can either let Dregoth save the world, but he becomes a God and generally makes things worse (probably) or you fight to save the world encountering Dregoth's templars across the world as you try and save your world while preventing him from gathering materials for his Godhood spell.

From the looks of this, the campaign would take characters from 1 to 40 (this is mostly just using Dregoth Ascension as a baseline and not assuming for making the Elder Evils actually scale up from 1-40 rather than 1-20)

Not too sure about the Athas angle, but you could port the Godhood-push by some BBEG npc into pretty much any world.

Furthermore, it would be very interesting to dovetail this with a low-level survivalist/zombie apocalypse setup (though maybe sans zombies). The world is so far gone that the PCs are among the few at this point, perhaps gathering survivors under their banner, perhaps slaughtering people and taking their crap in a bid to gather enough kit to survive.

I love pushing the morality v survival conflict, even from early levels, and an apocalyptic setting, rife with chaos, throws a lot of otherwise ho-hum moral issues into stark contrast (like save the maiden; in a normal setting, saying no is often an option...in this world, if you aren't going to save her, you might as well kill her). As the players pick their path of morality and gain power, the DM can have them approached by various other factions looking to gather resources and talent. Oh, quite a tangled web. Throw in a little Pelor, the Burning Hate, and maybe a touch of the inevitables launching a scorched earth campaign on the Prime.

Oh my. *shivers* Where's my notebook...

[Alleran]

This isn't just your normal D&D campaign, this is D&D on Dante Must Die mode

Make sure one of the McGuffins they need is in the Tomb of Horrors (1E style). Which they need to complete while the signs are at full strength. Yes, all of them.

Proceed to laugh maniacally at your players.

[ArqArturo]

Make sure one of the McGuffins they need is in the Tomb of Horrors (1E style). Which they need to complete while the signs are at full strength. Yes, all of them.

Proceed to laugh maniacally at your players.

Nice idea XD.

[Arcanist]

Furthermore, it would be very interesting to dovetail this with a low-level survivalist/zombie apocalypse setup (though maybe sans zombies). The world is so far gone that the PCs are among the few at this point, perhaps gathering survivors under their banner, perhaps slaughtering people and taking their crap in a bid to gather enough kit to survive.

The great thing about Athas is that it is inherently an apocalypse setting. Think Fallout meets Conan, add some Dragons, Psionics and stir lightly I personally feel that setting your campaign up to be PCs Vs Sorcerer-Kings is like making the central plot point to a Ravenloft campaign to be killing all the Darklords (doomed to fail).

I've been contemplating running a game for my home group to play in Athas using elements from Spelljammer and adding in Father Lymric's variant sign (stopping the rotation of the Earth).

I love pushing the morality v survival conflict, even from early levels, and an apocalyptic setting, rife with chaos, throws a lot of otherwise ho-hum moral issues into stark contrast (like save the maiden; in a normal setting, saying no is often an option...in this world, if you aren't going to save her, you might as well kill her). As the players pick their path of morality and gain power, the DM can have them approached by various other factions looking to gather resources and talent. Oh, quite a tangled web. Throw in a little Pelor, the Burning Hate, and maybe a touch of the inevitables launching a scorched earth campaign on the Prime.

If you're going to dump morality out the window, what do you intend to do with the Paladin class? I mean I know it's not in Athas, but just out of curiousity

Oh my. *shivers* Where's my notebook...

If you're gonna do it, make a campaign Journal

Make sure one of the McGuffins they need is in the Tomb of Horrors (1E style). Which they need to complete while the signs are at full strength. Yes, all of them.

Proceed to laugh maniacally at your players.

So we're all in a collective agreement, right? Alleran is never allowed to DM... Or at minimum use this... THIS!

[Phelix-Mu]

If you're going to dump morality out the window, what do you intend to do with the Paladin class? I mean I know it's not in Athas, but just out of curiousity

I wouldn't dump morality. I would just have it be front and center in the campaign world. Either stand up for being good and go all the way, or throw it to the wind and start ganking people over half-spoiled rations. In an apocalyptic setting, especially with the cults and possible Pelorites cutting a swathe through the blighted landscape, there is little hope for good in the world. The players could have their characters take it upon themselves to champion goodness, take the high road and all. Indeed, a paladin would be forced to do so (though I'd be particularly lenient here, possibly even providing a celestial emissary to provide atonement, as the paladin probably is the last of his order and good-aligned clerics probably all died trying to defend the commoners in the first waves of the onslaught.

I'd avoid Athas and probably set it on a world with the core cosmology. Athas is nice, but everyone there is already pretty diehard; spitting in their face again is kind of sad, and there are even less people worth defending there, taking some of the steam out of the moral pressure-cooker. Otherwise, I'm a big fan of Athas (maybe too big a fan to drop a whole book full of Elder Evils on it...). That way I could jazz up the world-changing/doom-and-gloom aspect for any group of characters, as opposed to Athas, which fewer people are familiar with (and it's already pretty blighted/barren...less dramatic contrast). Just personal preference.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Isn't that a bit of Overkill (as in, 'that's too much dakka')?.

Too much Dakka?! Blasphemy!

Say it with me now; "there is no overkill. There is only open fire and 'I need to reload.'"