Pile On This: Undead are Taking Over. What happens?
Written by Johnn
Filed in Campaign Creation, D&D 4e, Johnn, NPCs & Villains & Monsters, The Carnus Campaign (D&D 4e) on Jan.28, 2009
Help! In my Carnus D&D 4E campaign the PCs failed to stop a permanent rift to the Shadowfell opening. Now undead are pouring out like hallelujahs at a Pelor rave. So, what are the consequences? Got any ideas?
Here are a few I’ve thought of:
- Wildlife flee in the path of undead. Most animals will sense the danger and make haste. They won’t migrate or permanently move out though. Not yet, at least. This means I can use fleeing flocks, herds, and swarms to add creepy drama, create sudden danger, or warn the PCs that something nasty is coming.
- Shake up the ecosystem. The new danger will dislodge powerful creatures from their lairs and territories. This gives me a good way to bump the PCs up against critters too powerful for them. If the characters choose wisely they can avoid conflict. I’ll leave it up to them.
- Disease. Where the undead travel or congregate I can introduce interesting diseases to the region and to afflict PCs with.
- Patches of mist and darkness and magical evil. The rift might be warping reality a bit, which is slowly spreading. This is an opportunity to make combats interesting with various hazards.
- Villages are freaking out. Garlic and silver sells out at the markets. Churches fill up. Con men start selling false blessings and protections.
So, have any other ideas?
January 28th, 2009 at 9:00 pm
In our uncanny coincidence department I have an adventure filler (just add maps) for this kind of thing – a market populated by zombies and worse caused by tinkering with the Shadowfell.
Take a look here.
Other additional stuff you might want to throw in…
Non-undead Shadowfell types (shadar-kai, dark creepers, shadow hounds) scouting new neighbours, in particular shadow hounds with their aura of night and eerie howling. These may be viewed from afar if your party are too low-level to face the peril.
Shifts in the weather, cold winds that blow forth clouds from the rift that make daylight like torchlight and which cluster together to make a leaden rain that darkens colours and turns white things faintly grey. Over time, exposure turns things darker and darker.
Trees begin to shed healthy leaves in a mockery of autumn but then begin to gnarl, forming strange growths. Think Dutch Elm disease or strange pale and bloated mushrooms in the undergrowth. Why let the adventurers have all the diseased fun?
Ravenloft 2E/3E and Heroes of Horror may be a good place to start; for visuals you can look at Durer’s woodcuts about the plague…
satyre’s last blog post..motives & motivation
January 28th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
First thing I wonder is how everyone is going to react to the PCs, not the undead :)
Maybe the Undead get organized, and not all of them want wanton destruction, but they’re too easily lumped in with the majority invaders.
Also, creatures in the Shadowfell may once have been loved ones or hated enemies thought gone forever. And now they’re back.
Dave T. Game’s last blog post..YouTube Tuesday: The Shadow of Dr. Manhattan Edition
January 28th, 2009 at 9:43 pm
Sounds awesome!
Couple of options:
1.) Design a series of encounters, 3-6 that start @ Party level, and progress upward +1 per encounter, as the group plows through the hordes to return to the rift. Then just give them another chance :)
2.) Design a skill challenge abstracting such things as gathering a peasant army, killing the horde leaders, and finally destroying the rift itself.
3.) Just say “sometime there are no do-overs” and scrap the original campaign plan. Now they have to clean up THEIR mess…oh, and their patrons and allies aren’t too happy about it either – they could even be made outlaws!
I high;y reccommend the 3E elder Evils sourcebook if you want to be truly epic. The crunch was pretty light, but the fluff! Oh the fluff was truly terrific.
Being an overly complicated type of DM, I would probably roll all three up into a big ball of gamey-wamey and let them dig their own graves…not that they will actually need them, mind you :)
Donny_the_DM’s last blog post..There’s a RITE way, and there’s a Wrong way…
January 28th, 2009 at 9:56 pm
Graveyards begin spewing up their own dead and sacred ground becomes harder to find.
Death cults claim the event as their prophecies foretold and take the opportunity to rise up, causing rebellions and upending established order.
The gods that govern the dead might be a wee bit po’d at the sudden exflux from their realms, also the avatars of the anti-undead suddenly find themselves swamped. Clerics discover that their turning powers are suddenly ramped up or damped down, depending…
The land dies around the rift and the dying continues outward from the rift point at a steady rate. Hope the rift didn’t open in the breadbasket of the world, or there’s gonna be starvation.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
Great ideas! Thanks C Rader. I especially like the death cult “I told you so” angle.
January 28th, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Probably more migration to cities-big stone walls might be the best defense, at least against mindless dead. Given the likely lack of space for nearby surrounding villages, there is the potential for conflict between city and village dwellers…though, granted, this depends on the size and nature of the undead.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:06 pm
Everything else that happens when a natural disaster occurs: refugees, looters, government overreaction/underreaction, opportunistic evildoers taking advantage of the chaos to further their own ends, blame flying left and right, etc.
January 28th, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Bummer. Obviously there would be heroes, somewhere, looking for ways to battle the undead swarms without using their swords and holy symbols like dumb grunts. They’d need a way to permanently reverse the damage your lazy PCs have caused.
This could involve a race to specific artifacts or long-lost rituals that may hold the power to help. You could involve the PCs by requiring their presence at the ritual—alive or dead—to fuel the process that may wipe out the rift or defeat huge numbers of the undead.
I’d also expect any extraplanar creatures, or other NPCs of great means, to flee the material plane and treat it as a giant quarantine zone. In your campaign this could mean the disappearance of many a king, queen, princess, or duke, leaving whole regions scrambling in political turmoil…
Jeeze… your PCs really pooched this one. I’d probably retire to Mechanus and open a pie shop. ;)
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January 28th, 2009 at 11:23 pm
C Rader’s ideas are great ones.
I’d also play this a bit like a “twist” in Mouse Guard: instead of being a simple failure, now their next opportunity to end it (or reverse it) is all the tougher, but still do-able. Since it’s a rift in the Shadowfell, what if the PCs had to scour the Feywild for an artifact type of item that could be used to stop it? Reversing it… well, the penalty for failure is dealing with (or living with) the aftermath that the undead hordes have caused; viz., disease and possible fatalities of those they know; the rise of cults; the faithful of Pelor and other good gods becoming detached from those churches, weakening them; the PCs being treated unfavourably by most people; etc.
I don’t think I’d allow it to be reversed and the damage they’ve caused to be absolved. I’d have reminders of their failure exist in the world for quite a few months after they stop it (if they find a way to). That’s called a consequence. :)
Rafe’s last blog post..The Three "R"s of Session Planning
January 28th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Perhaps reveal that the PC’s were manipulated into opening this portal (save a few egos) by a powerful undead leader, like a lich or death knight or something along those lines.
Maybe the effort to fix the problem (if that is your intent) brings in powerful beings well above their current pay grade and they are tasked with some small time job (that of course becomes pivotal, since PC’s are the center of the world). Perhaps they are the only hope of the world, and need to research and implement a solution themselves.
If you are not concerned with ‘fixing’ it, maybe the region can reach stability, with nations on the border of the event establishing a NATO-like relationship and keeping the undead beat back. PC’s can take part, or go on quests into the zone to retrieve valuables and the like.
I think this sort of thing sounds awesome, and is a great hook to get players involved, if they are into that sort of thing.
Jay
Jay’s last blog post..1/24 Actual Play: Scooby Doo
January 29th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
I would go with an idea that World of Warcraft did really well in several places, where they represented something like an undead presence with a physical scar on the land. The long rotting path through the Blood Elf lands was the best example, it even cleaved through their capitol city splitting it into an abandoned side and the still used side.
Perhaps instead of the undead pouring out from the rift and sowing chaos as fast as possible, maybe they’re actually interested in setting up a home base in the material plane so that they can keep the rift safe for future use. The entire immediate area could become a necrotic, rotting, dead zone that’s dangerous to go into. Their impact outside of this zone would be minimal for a long time, to “play it safe” but also to provide bigger contrast between the rift area and everything else.
Bartoneus’s last blog post..YouTube Tuesday: The Shadow of Dr. Manhattan Edition
January 29th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
I started to write a reply and then realised that what I had to say was so extensive that it deserved a full blog post of its own, which you should have seen just above this one before moving to the comments section of this post.
January 30th, 2009 at 1:53 am
We played last night and I’m just catching up on comments now. Thanks for all the awesome ideas everyone! What a great pile-on. I’m going to sort through all the comments and plan, then I’ll post how things go.
January 30th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Ouch, it always hurts when an unplanned campaign change occurs, although it is pretty awesome at the same time. You can add tons of new things without having to realistically explain them… just blame it on the change.
February 5th, 2009 at 5:53 pm
One useful counter-tactic might involve Golems. It would also be interesting to see how the Warforged fare against the undead. How would they react if they could be killed and then raised as undead?
Something from a different system, if you don’t mind: White Wolf’s “Promethean: the Created” offers several interesting ideas. I’ve always thought that it would be a fascinating horror campaign in which the Prometheans have made an uneasy truce with the mortals in order to fight off the undead, since it seems logical that the Prometheans can’t be affected by the zombie infection (or parasite or curse or what-have-you).
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:05 am
WoTC’s Heroes of Horror has great ideas for adding a strong horror flavor to a campaign. I used it recently for module that covered a significant part of my ongoing campaign, and it worked out really well.
February 22nd, 2009 at 11:15 am
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