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Screensize: 640 x 480 800 x 600 1024 x 768 1280 x 1024 UserName: Password: Format Mode: Basic  Help  Prompt  Format: Font Andale Mono Arial Arial Black Book Antiqua Century Gothic Comic Sans MS Courier New Georgia Impact Lucida Console Script MT Bold Stencil Tahoma Times New Roman Trebuchet MS Verdana   Size 1 2 3 4 5 6   Color Black Red Yellow Pink Green Orange Purple Blue Beige Brown Teal Navy Maroon LimeGreen Message: * HTML is OFF * Forum Code is ON Smilies [quote][i]Originally posted by tauster[/i] [br]Has anyone used the "Little Gods" described on p.71-72 in the 2E accessory FR13 "The Anauroch"? i stumbled over their description when i did a little "desert-research" and immediately wanted to incorporate one of them in the story-arc. i have some rough ideas how to do it, but i´m still in the stage of idea-mining before i describe the overall background, here´s a quote from FR13. i hope it is not too extensive for provoking the visitation of [i]Him Who Wields The Angry Staff[/i]! [:H] [i]Under these “great gods,” who are not actively worshipped (and so take little interest in Anauroch) are the “spirits of the earth,” or “little gods.” These gods the Bedine have daily dealings with: they are the spirits that the Bedine believe to inhabit every place or feature of the desert. The Bedine worship these demi-gods (largely by the sacrifice of camels or treasure), and they are very real, if seldom seen. Every oasis except those recently created by the Zhentarim, or as yet undiscovered by the Bedine has its Place Spirit, as do most other major desert features. (...) Some Spirits can project a single manifestation. It can do two things at once, but can’t leave the place of power. If it is destroyed, the spirit needs a full year to create another. (...) Rituals to, and commandments of, these deities vary from one to another-but most Bedine know “the rules,” and no place spirit will act vengefully against an intruder who is wholly ignorant of what is right or expected; blasphemy lies only in wilfully and deliberately flouting the wishes of a spirit. Every Place Spirit can temporarily imbue any being in their territory with spell ability, granting them any spell of 5th level or less (one spell per being, per day). (...) Through direct contact between the chosen being and a Place Spirit’s manifestation or focal point (e.g. the being steps into the pool, or touches a certain standing stone), a spirit can also manifest its powers as follows: once a day, it can grant the limited wish of another being; twice a day, it can heal or raise dead (i.e. it can use one power twice, or use both of them once each); and it can also cast one of the following spells, once each day: regenerate, reincarnate, restoration, or resurrection. In addition, all Place Spirits can by mental contact (within their place of power) guide beings to water, communicate its absence or hide it, and can turn water to poison or make it melt away from the body of a being trying to touch it. If they can appear as a manifestation, the manifestation can always at will emit effects equal to a rod of terror (described in the DMG) or a repulsion spell. All Place Spirits also have an attack power related to their territory (the spirit of a mountain can hurl rocks or shake the entire mountain to cause climbers to fall off; the spirit of an oasis can cause all creatures there to be alert and hostile to an unfavored being, or cause trees to fall on the being), and so on. These spirits are not given Legends & Lore format descriptions here because they are weak, retiring, and lack clergy; they are of most use to Bedine trying to resist outlanders. [/i] it seems that though the Place Spirits are divine, they are well below even the weakest "conventional" demigods. that´s great for the purposes of game balance, since they can be used as unexpected helper in need for the first time the pc´s meet them and hard-to-reach (because locally bound in the middle of the desert) allies after that. background: i´m running a solo-campaign (time: 1370) that currently takes the pc (a doomguide of kelemvor) through the anauroch, chasing an ancient vampire that was freed from an "dungeon" were he was imprisoned since the fall of netheril. the vampire can move by day, as the sun does not bother him anymore. the two vampire hunters (the doomguide (level 9) and his companion, a youth who lost his father to a vamp and is now on his way to become a paladin of kelemvor, are several days behind him and already discovered several atrocities their prey has done: farms at the southeastern outskirts of the desert where all living beings were slaughtered and sucked dry. the only thing they could do (and [i]had to do[/i], according to their gods creed) was burying the corpses and blessing them - which of course delayed them even more. the vampire runs straight into the desert towards the scimitar spires, as visions the soon-to-be-paladin repeatedly receives show... and that´s what happened so far. before stumbling over the "little gods", i planned a short encounter where the vampire flouts his hunters and mysteriously escapes them by means of magic (possibly some old items of netherese make). he does not, however, know of the visions that will set his persecutors on his trail again. i planned to use some of the encounters from skip williams´ article "All Adrift on the Dune Sea" (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031208x): [i]"Not Exactly a Thorn in His Paw"[/i], where the pc´s meet a wounded androsphinx (that will tell them some basic knowledge about the desert) and [i]"A Taste of Desert Hospitality"[/i], where i planned to let the lamias be dupes of the zhentarim. the zhents were somehow involved in the liberation of the vampire and will pop up soon after that again. after that, the two of them will travel to a village at the southeastern edge between the anauroch and the desertsmouth mtns. i wrote up the village of [i]Kala Moja, "the whispering water"[/i] with [i]Tel Badir[/i] (p.55) in mind, only half as large. i may post that writeup sometime in the future but atm i don´t have time to translate it. in short, it is a small village where the zhentarim are in control. they operate a small smaragd mine (where drugged slaves work), have a minor trading outpost that fell into unimportance when the plans of creating oasises instead of conquering them started. otherwise they rule with an iron fist but just not hard enough to provoke open resistance. infiltration, spying and occasional dissapearances of local "rebels" do the rest. the village is a place where inconvenient yet useful underlings can be temporally "promoted away" without outright murder, accidents or dissapearances. after the vampire escaped his hunters, they will find him here. or better: they will, through the paladins visions, know that he is [i]somewhere[/i] in Kalam Moja. that leaves them with only one choice: exploring the village and talking with its townsfolk. much roleplaying potential there... that´s what i have by and large. thanks to all scribes who have not lost their patience as yet and made it through my ramblings! [;)] here are my first thoughts of how to integrate the [i]little gods[/i] into the story: when the hunters finally encounter the vampire in the desert, the location will be a centuries-long hidden crypt under an oasis. i will use the [i]critical threat[/i] from dungeon #99: [i]the colossal crypt[/i]. there the vampire recovers an old netherese artifact and attacks the pcs with it. the effect will be that every spell the doomguide casts will drain some of his life energy (damage of 1w3 hp per spell level, 2e rules apply), as the artifact somehow corrupts the link between the cleric and his god. such magicks were banned by the gods long ago, so the vampire has transgressed a "line in the sand" that was set in the old ages. the gods are not pleased, especially kelemvor. he contacts the Place Spirit of the Crypt, whose task it was to guard the artifact(1). Kelemvor asks the Little God for help, in part to "atone" for it´s failure. ... and what next? i am stuck here, so i ask you for further ideas, and for poking holes in the story-arc: do you find logical (or otherwise) flaws i oversaw? - how can that particular Place Spirit of the crypt be described? what is its charackter, how does he speak? what´s his manifestiations? his powers? one idea: he may animate one (or several, or all) of the statues in the crypt (see the picture on p.16) and perhaps the huge one on p.17. - is the following idea too farfetched? [i]kelemvor frees the spirit from the crypt, allowing him to roam the world freely- as long as he is on the hunt for the lost artifact.[/i] that leaves us with a near-divine being, hunting after a "mere" ancient vampire. not much room for a level 9 doomguide and his loyal paladin... [:(!] but that turn in the story-arc might happen much later, when the next chapter opens: the two pc´s travel to the high ice, entangled in the story of [i]The Cavern in the High Ice[/i] (http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=fr/pg20020612x)... (1) concerning the question of how the vampire was able to defeat a near-divine being: highlevel pc´s do similar things all the time, so an ancient vampire should have a fair chance. this one was just lucky and succeeded...[;)][}:)]. again, thanks to all who made it through my ramblings. and btw: a happy new year to all of you! tauster [/quote]   Check here to include your profile signature. Check here to subscribe to this topic.