Bay 12 Games Forum
Finally... => Creative Projects => Topic started by: Hanslanda on October 27, 2013, 11:11:39 pm
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So, I have been plagued with the idea of a DnD 3.5 Level 20/20 Wizard/Cleric being Imprisoned in a time when magic was real, and being freed millennia later when magic was a dead idea, no mages or clerics existed, and the world had progressed technologically to a point similar to the current year. 'Fantastic' races were merely myths and legends, mostly put down to be sightings of various currently living creatures in odd circumstances, and people believe magic is merely sleight-of-hand and trickery.
So, we'll begin with a 'How it Happened' exposition. The near-godlike caster was imprisoned by a foe of frightful power deep beneath the earth, in stasis for all time. He was forgotten swiftly, and wars raged on across the world, races fought and died for the same bloodied ground until only Humans remained. Magic died as it was bred out of the race, and the Gods withered and rotted on their thrones without belief to sustain them.
Soon, humans, in all their cunning, began inventing curious devices and instruments to tame the world and bring it to heel, to make themselves the masters of their world. Their technology became near magical in ability, able to transmit information anywhere in the world at the speed of light, able to carry a man faster than the fastest horse for days at a time, able to slay from over the horizon with pinpoint accuracy.
One day, a team of archaeologists find a lost temple to a forgotten god. Inside this temple, they find a scroll written in a language no man has read in millennia. One of their linguists decipher this text, and read it aloud... With a flash, this caster appears in their midst, still partway through a spell to bring ruin upon his enemy. He stops in his action, and surveys these strange men with their curious language and odd clothing. They babble excitedly and confusedly at the appearance of this arcane man in his long, beautiful robes. He waves his hand, and powerful energies seem to warp and twist the very air at his fingertips.
"What year is it?" He asks, his tone curious but authoritative. The words come out clipped and almost mechanically, like he doesn't know exactly what he's saying but he knows to say it.
"It is the year two-thousand and twelve on the Gregorian Calendar in the Common Era." One man says, diplomatically.
"Well, I've only been out for a few years then. What country is this and where might I meet with an authority figure? Kraldor the Vengeful is a terribly powerful creature, and he must be defeated."
"Er. This is the country of England, part of the United Kingdoms. We haven't a king but we have a queen."
"Wait. What is this Gregorian Calendar? It is still the Common Era of Elves, is it not? Was I out centuries?"
"Ahem, what? Elves? The Gregorian Calendar is centered at the end of the BCE, typically considered to end when Jesus Christ died on his cross. I don't... I don't know anything about any elves, mister... Ah, Mister what?"
"I am Avarail, Last Mage of the Corend Empire and High Priest of Pelor, the Sun God." The mage took a curt bow, and asked, "Who is Jesus Christ? Why was he crucified? How do you not know anything about elves? Are you a peasant? Surely you must be a mage of some sort, you freed me from my magical prison easily enough."
The archaeologists conferred for a minute, then turned back to the mage. One stepped forward, the same spokesman as before, and said, "Ah, mister Avarail, it is commonly believed that elves are not real. Nor are goblins or kobolds or any other such mystical creatures of legend. We are not peasants, we are scientists, of a sort. England did away with the feudal system a long time ago. None of us are mages of any sort, though I can do a few card tricks."
The mage narrowed his eyes, and eyed the men carefully. He wove his hands through the air again, casting a minor divination, and said, "Surely there are mages somewhere nearby that I might confer with? And what is a scientist?"
The man eyed him back, openly amused, "Mister Avarail, mages aren't real. Although that neat trick you're doing with the light at your fingers is fascinating, magic isn't real. Scientists are... People dedicated to learning how and why the world works the ways it does. There are many types of scientist. We are archaeologists, concerned with how people of the past lived."
Avarail was blank faced again, and cast another spell swiftly. A small eye appeared above him in the air, and darted out of the room like a shot. For a long few minutes, he was utterly silent, as were the stunned archaeologists. Then, he straightened, a curious look on his face, and said, "Once more, tell me what year it is."
"It is two thousand and twelve CE."
Avarail's control slipped a bit, and his mouth crept open a fraction as he came to realize the enormity of what the man was saying. He swiftly regained control, and smiled kindly at the men. "You men are... Scientists. Men of reason, who do not believe in magic or the supernatural. Curious. And the year is two thousand and twelve. I have been trapped for fifteen thousand years."
The archaeologists scoffed, and the leader said, "Nonsense. Human civilization did not EXIST fifteen thousand years ago."
Avarail got a bright gleam in his eye, and said, "Take me to your 'civilization'. Show me your cities."
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As this conversation was taking place, a strange thing was happening worldwide. Whole cities and populations suddenly... Changed. Some became lithe, short humanoids with pointed ears, elves of legend. Others shrank to half their height in an instantaneous transformation, becoming vile looking little goblins or somewhat demonic kobolds. Yet others became brutish and strong, green skinned Orcs. Animals of every shape and color changed to new forms. Minotaurs roamed cow fields, Wyverns sprang from tiny geckos and lizards, simple earthworms became vast monsters with acid spit and deadly stinger tails, while yet others were becoming less easily classified creatures.
Deep within the realm of the dead, things stirred. Skeletons and rotting corpses dug themselves up, walking the land of the living once more with malicious intent. Under the sea, fish became whole new races of sentient beings, organizing themselves with their newfound intelligence within hours into vast civilizations. Ghosts and wraiths swept the halls of mausoleums, and some fresh corpses woke up as drinkers of blood.
Within a day, the world was an entirely different place, with a whole host of ancient, forgotten dangers to contend with alongside the modern, mundane dangers.
I'll get into the rest of the setting soon, but for now, this is the beginning.
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I was expecting the wizard to lightning bolt one of them.
Must have been lawful.
Also, why didn't he just take the Mystic Theruge prestige class?
Although putting aside my annoying twit side, this sounds totally awesome.
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Heh, the resurgence of magic and magical species reminded me of the description given of the Shadowrun setting me and my friends are playing in. Very nice read, very interesting setting as well! I shall be keeping an eye on this. c:
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I was expecting the wizard to lightning bolt one of them.
Must have been lawful.
Also, why didn't he just take the Mystic Theruge prestige class?
Although putting aside my annoying twit side, this sounds totally awesome.
I'm not a good caster player, therefore I'm not going to optimize the ONE mage in the setting into a godlike monster. Because he's ALREADY a godlike monster compared to pretty much any normal human, even one with heavy machine guns and rocket launchers. And the wizard is Chaotic Good. We could have alternate settings for each alignment, because each one would have different effects. :P
Heh, the resurgence of magic and magical species reminded me of the description given of the Shadowrun setting me and my friends are playing in. Very nice read, very interesting setting as well! I shall be keeping an eye on this. c:
Yes, it's quite like Shadowrun, but I was thinking how it would work would be more like directly taking D20 Modern classes and everything straight into a world filled with dragons and stuff. Not to mention, suddenly EVERYONE in the world has a goblin/elf/sahuagin/yuan-ti neighbors, and they KNOW their neighbors are not human and their neighbors are very definitively no longer human, especially where appetite, alignment, and desires go. Most people would go from normal food/chaotic or lawful neutral/money or whatever, to dead people flesh/CE/ULTIMATE POWAH or what have you.
Basically, there's only the one wizard/cleric in the whole entire world. Magic EXISTS and can be harnessed, but no one can ever come anywhere close to the mastery of it as the ancient mage. Magic bullets for your assault rifle? Totally possible to acquire, although exceptionally difficult and time consuming to create OR find. With the right rituals and such, you can create magic items, but they've been forgotten by all but a very few.
Another issue with the resurgence of magic is that it somewhat acts like an EMP. Technology hasn't failed and won't ever really 'FAIL' completely, but your cellphone probably will not work anywhere near a minotaur. Note that I'm referring to electronics and such. Mechanical devices like guns and older vehicles would be fine. This whole 'magic' thing has interested a great many scientific minds, so experiments and such would be underway to test it quite quickly. I would put the actual setting at about 10-20 years AFTER the mage awakened, to give time for monstrous races to form plots and such, and for baseline humans and non-evil races to figure out how to civilization again.
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Sounds like every single country would spontaneously burst into flames and civil wars.
I like it.
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This started out with great potential for the first half but then fell flat on it's face into a steaming pile of cliche's on the second. Shame.
I could come with ideas for fixing it, but none that fit the style you seem to be going for.
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I'm not sure what you're referring to, and regardless, I don't care about your personal opinion. I've had this whole setting in my mind now for over a month, and your lack of passion for it matters not a whit. Oh, I see. You wanted some godlike mage to be running around in the modern age without monsters or anything like that. Well, that's really, really easy to do, but it's shit for a setting. Absolute shit. There's only ONE person in the world with magic, and he's an epic level cleric/wizard, meaning he's got all the world-breaking bullshit of both classes and none of the traditional weaknesses. (e.g. Lack of real 'damage' spells for clerics, mages lack healing) Granted, that's WONDERFUL for one person.
Put any halfway competent player in charge of the wizard and he'll just murder-stomp the everloving shit out of anything that opposes him. Booooring. No, my idea isn't any more original, but it's got some pros. You can have a party of people doing something, whether it's protecting their small town from the suddenly voracious neighboring tribes of [insert monster race here], or hunting down a serious threat to a nation like that new Red Dragon that suddenly appeared in the Rockies, or even investigating a series of disappearances in the region to find out that some asshole scientist is kidnapping people and performing magitek experiments on them. Or even try to gain an audience with the horrifyingly powerful Cleric/Mage that now sits atop the revised hierarchy of power in the world.
I'm not writing a STORY, though the introduction may point to otherwise, I'm trying to infodump all my ideas for this setting. Pardon me if I seem rude or anything, but you either misconstrued my intentions or want something from this that I don't want from it.
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And along with all the new threats you could have them fight, there are still the national and normal corporate enemies to fight.
I like it.
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Oh fiddlesticks I forgot I have to not be an asshole towards people I don't know. Sorry, my bad. :(
Really, I *do* like the idea, I just think you can do better.
But yea obliviously you'd need suitable adversaries... also the way you described him arrogant and with impossible boss stats I kinda assumed he'd be the main *villain* not the player character.
Here are some possible better alternatives than the shadowrun-style people being transformed into things:
- Some kind of rift opens to a place where there were always those things, presumably the past
- The wizard while very powerful, is superstitious and arrogant and stupid, while technology is awesome and every organization highly competent.
- He starts doing the stomping, but soon someone manages to reverse engineer the magic and make magitech that has huge advantages over casting manually. Think stelth aircraft enhanced with invisibility, animate object, and spewing a thousand Magic Missiles per second from machine guns.
- Some eldrich abdomination is coming and he cant fight it personaly for some reason, so he has to rapidly train people and integrate magic so that the natives can stop it.
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I kinda want to see what happens when criminals get a hold of this stuff, both for magical drugs and potential sleaze factor.
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This is an interesting idea though I don't see the reasoning that him waking up would suddenly re-magic the world. It doesn't sound like magic went away, people just stopped using it. You need to work that out if you want the setting to be taken more seriously. An example could be that the two guys where fighting over the source of magic and when the one got stasis-ed he managed to drag it with him in hopes of the spell quickly failing form lack of magic but, afterwards magic just slowly got used up until the only place it existed was deep down where he was and the scientists fooling with stuff caused the last bit to be completely used up and thats what caused the stasis to fail. With the stasis failing not only was the epic guy freed but the source of magic as well and thus the world suddenly got zapped with millenniums worth of pent up magic which caused all the previously magical stuff to return to their original state. I have a few other things I could point out but this one mattered enough to me that I felt I had to point it out.
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This is an interesting idea though I don't see the reasoning that him waking up would suddenly re-magic the world.
Well magic could have went away, but now that he is awake there is now a source of magic for the world... a powerful wizard.
Or magic was sealed away and his awakening means the seal was broken.
You need to work that out if you want the setting to be taken more seriously.
It is clearly not meant to be taken seriously given that the Wizard outright contradicts human history and mythology.
Heck I thought the twist was that he was actually from another dimension altogether that is some sort of videogame dungeons and dragons world.
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I do enjoy the sound of this, though it sounds a tad odd that the awakening of this one guy would instantly make the world remagicked. Maybe - just a suggestion - as the Wizzerd moves about the world, people within a certain radius of him (say a mile) would do the aforementioned transformation into the creatures? That'd create more opportunity for conflict.
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Hmm. It's all good food for thought. My reasoning, somewhat, was that with the gods withered from no one believing in them, suddenly having an incredibly powerful believer appear would revitalize them (Not to how they were before obviously, but they'd be in much better shape than they were.) I don't differentiate divine and arcane magic too much, so the gods having power again would mean magic was flowing through the world much more than it had been.
Let's pretend for a moment magic is a river. In the past, it was a wide, steady river, with many little streams and creeks coming off of it. Over time, the flow of the river was redirected and changed and strangled, until magic nowadays is nothing more than a tiny trickle, which accounts for the shamans and witch doctors of small tribes and such. When the mage is reawakened, a new wellspring is opened, and suddenly the magic is a (small but still more impressive than it was) flood, washing over things that have not felt the touch of magic in millennia. It's not really the mage himself, but the method of imprisoning him. By the 'logic' of this, if the mage could find MORE imprisoned creatures, he could increase the overall flow of magic in the world by leaps and bounds. The Imprisonment spell locks the person beneath the earth in a small pocket of wibbly wobbly timey-wimey-ness, and when they get reintroduced into the world, so does the little pocket of magic they were trapped in. And since it's such a powerful spell, it's got a lot of power to spread throughout the world.
I'm not sure, I thought I'd thought about it pretty carefully, but perhaps I was looking in the wrong direction. I was more thinking of how the races would interact and what the world would be like after the whole event, and not how the event would work. I could just say, "It's magic dammit" but that's a cop out. :P
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Actually, with the river analogy, normally a river carves out a certain path, which is why rivers don't, you know, shoot out randomly.
With the lack of flow for so long, the riverbeds would have dried up and the paths would have disappeared, so having the magic flow again would carve out new paths, different from the old one.
Maybe this would cause magic to work in a new, more chaotic way at first until the flow has been running for a while to re-stabilize itself, which might explain the massive racial shifts and other transgressions that spawn from the event.
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Presumably a cleric's power comes from that cleric's deity, correct?
If we've established that the gods are dead, where does Avarail's clerical power come from? Unless his (all?) god(s) come back now that there's someone who knows they were real, he shouldn't have a source of power.
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Some dnd settings allow Clerics with:
1) Without a deity
2) With a dead deity
3) With a fake deity
4) Powered by themselves (usually divine/profane beings are like that)
1 and 3 started to occur during the Eberron setting mostly as a way to make the existence of the gods more of a mystery. Since whether or not the gods exist was meant to be a mystery in that setting and having clerics who could cast spells without a deity helped that mystery.
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Presumably a cleric's power comes from that cleric's deity, correct?
If we've established that the gods are dead, where does Avarail's clerical power come from? Unless his (all?) god(s) come back now that there's someone who knows they were real, he shouldn't have a source of power.
They weren't dead, just rotting and withered, with little power left. With the sudden surge of magic and the presence of someone who knows they exist, it rejuvenated them a bit, but they're still weak. Weak enough that you could probably kill their avatars with cruise missiles, if their guidance and warhead systems managed to not freak out on proximity to magic.
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One idea I have concerning the global transformation would be, if the entity trapping him would be powerful enough to entomb him for so long, wouldn't said entity also be able to add a contingency to the release spell or some other sort of trap that's designed to spread chaos through the world, just in case someone wakes him, and it goes a bit weird because of the time passed?
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PTW. Hans this is your story/worldbuild/info dump and I think this is awesome.
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One idea I have concerning the global transformation would be, if the entity trapping him would be powerful enough to entomb him for so long, wouldn't said entity also be able to add a contingency to the release spell or some other sort of trap that's designed to spread chaos through the world, just in case someone wakes him, and it goes a bit weird because of the time passed?
Imprisonment doesn't exactly work like that. You're pretty much sealed beneath the earth for eternity until/unless someone casts Freedom right where you're imprisoned. I imagine it could have come later as a contingency. "If Avarail manages to escape Imprisonment, cast [X] at [Y]." But we'd have to sort of work within the limits of DnD magic, and there aren't exactly any spells I know of that can cause havoc across an entire continent by default. Maybe some advanced evil rituals could, or something. Maybe the b-
The badguy has a contingency resurrection based on Avarail's Imprisonment. o.O This is a glorious idea. Let me think about this some more. One spellcaster and magic coming back is bad enough, it upsets the entire balance of power in the world. But one good and one evil godlike casters alongside the reemergence of magic and the sudden appearance of monster races? Oh boy, this just became an awesome setting.
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The badguy has a contingency resurrection based on Avarail's Imprisonment. o.O This is a glorious idea. Let me think about this some more. One spellcaster and magic coming back is bad enough, it upsets the entire balance of power in the world. But one good and one evil godlike casters alongside the reemergence of magic and the sudden appearance of monster races? Oh boy, this just became an awesome setting.
Bay12 to the rescue!
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Still thinking about it pretty heavily, but basically it would go something like this:
Avarail is freed from his prison. The contingency goes off, and his foe is resurrected. While Avarail is getting a guided tour of one of the largest cities on Earth by some very knowledgeable folks, Kraldor the Vengeful is probably alone on a plain, confused, disoriented, and very, very angry. Avarail meets with a world leader while Kraldor is busy sending out divinations to figure out his current situation. While the UN is being called in an emergency situation to deal with 'Holy fuck, monsters everywhere.', Kraldor is torturing and interrogating some poor folks to figure out what exactly the hell is going on. Once he realizes what exactly is up, he's going to go to the nearest world leader he can find, or perhaps the least reputable. Or maybe the most powerful. And he's going to either try to convince them to do as he wishes, manipulate them into it, or straight up control their mind.
And then things would get complicated. If the setting itself is set twenty or so years after the reemergence, then both factions would be fairly entrenched and engaged in massive warfare with one another. Any time Kraldor or Avarail deigned to take the field, whole armies might be wiped out in minutes. Which would make it rather interesting for any adventuring mercenary that decided to get involved in one particular side or the other. Not to mention they might get high enough within a certain group to meet Kraldor or Avarail, both of whom have incredibly powerful divinations at their disposal, including stuff like Detect Thoughts. Hmmm.
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If we already have a bad guy, why do we need monster races beyond the golems an summons he make?
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If we already have a bad guy, why do we need monster races beyond the golems an summons he make?
Every evil overlord needs some ugly little minions and Golems and permanent summons take time and energy that could be better used elsewhere.
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I mean narratively. We dont need any more monstrous things arising than what is deliberately caused by the one bad guy.
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Because magic bro. Just go with the flow. Of the magic. In the world. That was built.
It's how world building works man. Is there really any point to a slime when it comes to the Dragon Hunter series? No. But it's part of the world.
And so are moogles. but then they were actually a thing. And lots of other things. Like every non-important creature in an RPG ever that's just there to grind. They're there because THE WORLD, MAN.
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Because magic bro. Just go with the flow. Of the magic. In the world. That was built.
It's how world building works man. Is there really any point to a slime when it comes to the Dragon Hunter series? No. But it's part of the world.
And so are moogles. but then they were actually a thing. And lots of other things. Like every non-important creature in an RPG ever that's just there to grind. They're there because THE WORLD, MAN.
Partially this. I mean, we could make up a detailed explanation for why monster races came back, but I feel that would just give people more to pick apart. But when it's because of magic... It's because of magic. Magic doesn't make sense.
And partially because of the grinding thing. Do the heroes want to be fighting *GASP* MORE HUMANS? YET AGAIN? LIKE EVERY SINGLE OTHER ENCOUNTER IN THE ENTIRE CAMPAIGN? EXCEPT FOR THAT ONE TIME THE BAD GUY SUMMONED A GARGOYLE?!
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Personally, I'd advise not making the return of magic that easy- Maybe have him fart around in the modern bit for a while until he can figure out why it went away, and have it come back a bit at a time. Or maybe not. Also, the dialogue at the start could use a bit more work- It's a little cliched. Especially with how scientists insist there's no magic when a dude just appeared in front of them out of thin air and is waving his hands doing magic. Regardless, it looks interesting.