adventures

Adventures in Artheria

Note that, aside from the begining section, if your not a DM, don't read this. After the first few paragraphs it starts getting into sample adventures. Definitely read those first few paragraphs, though. (Note: Sample adventures may or not be added yet. I'll probly remove this text when I add them, though.)

What kind of adventures are to be had in Artheria?
Artheria works on many different themes, but all of those revolve around one central theme. That the players can change the world, become gods, destroy gods, found empires, save the world, destroy it, or even just have fun. And all without going into the incredibly high levels of Epic D&D games. But there are different ways of getting into this.

War of the Races: Many of the races have natural conflicts with each other. The easiest way to throw characters into a race war is simply have them accidentally start one, by being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Have a group with a Light Elf present at the assasination of an Orc leader, or one of the Free Cities leaders. The moment they spot the elf, they'll assume it was him, and then.. instant war. You could also have the players fight for one side or another of a war thats already in progress. simply have them unlucky enough to be in a town when its raided.... or seek to bring a peaceful end to a war in progress. Best ways to do that are simply to start a war in which two races in the party fight each other, so the party won't be biased.

Politics: Politics can form an interestig thing to base a campaign around, if your characters aren't into the wars and fighting so much. The objective of a campaign might be to win political power in a city, or to dethrone an evil king. Using propaganda, back-room deals, and negotiations would be the key to this campaign, with the only fighting involved being the occaisional assasination attempt or unruly thugs and thieves. Trying to get rid of a king can be hard; especially without letting him know that your doing it. And if he finds out, your group gets to be fugitives, with all the soldiers of a kingdom trying to kill them. This can be even more interesting if this king is possessed by Demons, such as in the Ashtar kingdom, or the later era other northern kingdoms.

Daemon War: This type of campaign will have more D&D-style elements; the enemy is, while a functioning and political group, possessed by evil, and thus killing them ceases to be a problem of morals, but simply a problem of them being able to tear through groups of infantry with ease, as well as lower level PCs. In a world like Artheria, where magic does nothing against damage resistance, and vorpal or elemental weapons are so rare as to be nonexistant, the Daemon Knights with their DR-providing armored skin pose a serious threat to the PCs, and require hefty magic to deal with. Then again, the Daemons also enslaved the kingdom of Ashtar, so fighting units of Ashtar troops is more than likely to come up. This war can either be fought in a defensive, hopeless way, and set in the era where the Daemons are taking over the northlands, or it can be set in a hopeful, vengeful way, as the people slowly fight back the daemons, and set in the era when they are forced back out.

Abomination Plague: One thing you might notice is the lack of Dragons in Artheria. Or of powerful magical monsters in general. Theres a reason for this. The only beasts out there not of a natural type are ones created by sorcerers, or dragged in by demons. But then, there are the Undead. The undead in Artheria aren't just zombies and skeletons, which, due to the lack of giant beasties, are almost always medium sized. The Abominations serve to make things interesting, as a single Abomination could annihilate an entire village if not stopped, and a pack of the mechanical abominations in a deep cave serve to pose a serious threat to any level of characters. Any campaign involving Abominations will undoubtedly end in a quest to find out where they come from; which will lead into the 'endless caves' of the Great Mountain into the great city at the center of the world. Where they go from there is up to the DM and the players, but anyone strong enough to reach this place can, without knowing it, pose a serious chance of destroying the world of Artheria by mistake, or tossing it into an apocalyptic holocaust.

Evil Cultists: One thing about all these cults is that some of them are pure evil, dedicated solely to chaos, destruction, and spreading about. Some of these are founded by sorcerers or Necromancers, living or dead, others by vampires, and all of them can pose a problem. Great ways to hook PCs into adventures like this are to have a player kidnapped for a ritual sacrifice, or have a town butchered by the cultists and the PCs pursue them back to their home. Things get complicated quickly when you have a powerful spirit working against the party; they can all acquire the Accursed template fairly quickly, with its normal benefits, and the increased damage from enemy cultist Holy Smite spells. Plus, when one cult is down, there are always lingering traces of the spirit to mess with the players, or other branches of the cult, or even different cults entirely that are allied to those the players defeated. Perhaps the adventures lead up a chain of lesser cults until they get to, at the end of the campaign, one whose high priest is about to become an Avatar, and his spirit ascend to god-hood. The players are forced to find some way to stop this, either by destroying so many cultists it weakens the spirit, or killing the High Priest.. which can result in a dramatic climactic scene as the High Priest turns into an Avatar, and the full power of an evil god is cast down upon the players.

Goooood Cultists: What if one of the players was the spirit, and the others were his cultists? Or if all the players worked for the same spirit? How much fun would the players have on a campaign to try and win favor of the people for thier spirit, and slowly work to try and have him ascended to god-hood? The campaign climaxing in a war with an evil cult as the player cultist slowly draws up to be powerful enough to become an Avatar, and the Spirit draws up enough power to make him one. This could have world-shaking consequences, with the introduction of a new god to the campaign setting; and after its over, you can promptly make a new campaign, based in a world where that spirit is the dominant one some years later, and his cult is slowly decaying towards evil.

Sample Setups

If your a player, don't read these. These are for the DM to use against you. Ehrm, I mean, for you to play in.

Plague of the Undead: (1st-5th level)
This adventure revolves around a Flow that has been slowly spreading, and has just recently crossed a nearby graveyard. The corpses began to rise in ever greater numbers, and roam the countryside. Now, the town is plagued by some two hundred skeletons and fifty zombies. Whats worse is that as the flow draws closer, those the undead slay begin to be animated as well.. how do we stop the Undead? And how to we get the Flow to stop expanding in this direction?

Initial Encounter:
The PCs need to reach the village somehow. The best two options are for them to have some other reason to go there, or for a cultist's spirit to tell him to go. Either way, before they reach the village, they encounter a pack of moldy old undead. Make the pack have about one zombie(2HD) and two skeletons(1HD) per party member, and have about half of them attack from either side of the path, in the bushes, after the players already approached the group that was walking the path. Unless the players have encountered alot of undead before, they should find both he fact they were there, and that there were so many, unusual. This might make them hurry to get to the village faster. (Note: If the players are 1st level, make it simply one skeleton per player. Use the full encounter for 5th level or above, use a skeleton and a zombie for 3rd level characters.)

The Village:
At the village, the players must hide to avoid roving mobs of 30+ zombies and skeletons. If they are forced to fight, they will likely be slain, or forced to flee. Make them make a diplomacy check, DC:15, or use some form of compulsion magic, to convince one of the villagers to unbar their doors and let the players in. All buildings are boarded up in the town, even the unoccupied ones, so it will take a good bit of effort to smash down a door and then re-bar it to be safe.

The tale, and the woman
If they manage to get into an occupied building, it won't be hard to convince the occupants to tell them whats going on. The players learn of the slowly expanding flow, and that the undead were formed when it expanded near a graveyard. If the players get into an unnoccupied building, have a journal lying next to a bed in the bedroom, with the most recent entries telling the story of the flow and the undead. If the players manage to run out of the village, have them pursued by a mob of zombies. If they managed to defeat the mob of zombies in the village, have all of the other undead (120+) in the village come homing in on thier position. You want them to get into contact with someone who knows the info. About 3 hours after the players find shelter, have them hear a scream. Outside, a young woman in tattered clothing will be running from zombies. She'll come up and bang on the players door, begging to be let in. If they don't let her in, the zombies tear her apart. If they do, the players are forced to kill at least two zombies to bar the door shut again. The woman is pretty vital to the game; if they don't let her in, they'll need to find someone else to tell them about the Dark Elf, and without the Dark Elf, the flow will keep expanding. The woman is the wife of a dark elf necromancer who lives outside town because he didn't want his experiments to harm the townsfolk. The woman was on the way to get him to help when the zombies attacked her. She'll want the players to escort her back to the Necromancer. If they don't want to do it, and they don't go to the necromancer, they can still kill the undead, but the flow will keep expanding unless a Necromancer gets involved.

Killing the Undead; no Necromancer
If the players decide not to help the woman, then she'll leave. If they try to stop her, she'll attempt to escape. If she escapes, she'll be slain by undead on the way back to her husband. But any way, if the necromancer doesn't get involved, they need to kill the undead themselves.
There are a hundred and fifty undead in the village itself, and another hundred outside the village wandering in packs. 90 of them are zombies; 50 of those at the village, 40 outside the village. The players will need to devise a tactic to kill the zombies, that won't result in burning their house down or allowing the zombies to tear them apart. Undead resistance to cold, poison, and slashing/piercing attacks certainly sets a damper on the easier ways to do this, so let the players be creative in how they kill them. Or let them die trying, of course.

The Necromancer's home, the Abomination
If they reach the necromancer's home, they find a large number of shattered skeletons and zombies.. They probably fought a pack or two to get there. But as they step towards the porch, an Abomination formed from some dozens of meshed-together Zombies will try to kill them. It will have 20 HD, but an AC of only 12, and the normal combat statistics of a pack of 10 zombies for attacking. It also has fast healing: 2. It moves as fast as a normal zombie, and can get up to 3 attacks per round against anyone close to it, for an overall max of 10 attacks if it has 4 enemies in contact. While its a challenge, its not a threat for a group of smart players. When they kill it, or if they lure it away or get into the house without it, they get to meet the necromancer.
The Necromancer is a 10th level Dark Elf.. necromancer. He created the Abomination that rests outside, and ordered it to attack anything but him or his wife, as an undead can't distinguish between a person and another undead. If they explain the situation, he helps. If they try to kill him, then they most likely end up dead, or the Necromancer and his wife do. In this case, go back to 'Killing the Undead, no Necromancer', and they'll need a new way to kill them.

Killing the Undead; With Necromancer
The Necromancer makes it alot easier to deal with the undead. He has enough power to destroy about 120 undead singlehandedly, roughly 5 at a time. When they return to the village, the Necromancer aids them in destroying the undead. If hes been told about the Flow, the Necromancer will then rest for a while, and ask the players to come with him to the flow.

Scene at the Flow
The Necromancer has the Flow Manipulation feat, which is whats used to create flow, or to use it to draw power from one. In this case, its used to force the flow back. The Necromancer can do nothing but concentrate on the flow while he does this, and it will take six hours; he will need the PCs to defend him. Any Undead not previously slain will converge on the spot; if less than 10 are left, create 4d6 extra so that this poses a challenge. The undead will wait until they have enough gathered to pose a threat, and then charge the PCs. No more than 12 will attack at a time, but multiple waves may be forthcoming. After the 6 hours is up, the Necromancer collapses, exhausted, and the flow begins to slowly ebb backwards.

Lead-ins:
This adventure could be a lead-in to a campaign involving expanding flows accross the realms, as well as one involving an army of undead, or simply the great city at the center of the world.