Brainstorm – why the lightning walls of the empire’s capital went out and where is the fucking immortal emperor?
Lately, I felt like my campaign is having a minor existential crisis – the characters got almost too powerful to touch, they’ve destroyed their enemies and accomplished most of their goals, and now they mostly just strolling around in undead hedonism and doing mad experiments. It’s fun, but not like it used to be.
So, naturally, I’ve initiated the end of the world:
In the end of last session they heard the news – the capital is down, the Emperor is missing, and the highest ranking persona in the Empire is on his way to duskvol with his pleasure cruise for a pre-arranged festival.
I’m delighted to say it worked like dark magic – they immediately decided to steal said person’s soul, replace it with their dead slide’s soul, and TAKE OVER THE SHATTERED WORLD. I love my players.
NOW: can you tell me, dear scoundrels, WHY did it happened? I don’t know, and most of the rumors I’ve invented on the spot don’t make any sense.
So…
What happened to the capital? Where is the Emperor? How come the Last Cardinal and his pleasure cruise escaped the fall?
The cardinal is demon and destroyed (him or his goon) the barrier. His demon lover (a Léviathan) ate the emperor (and he is still alive, Jonah style).
And now he intend to do the same with doskvol giving it to demons and ghost alike.
Piece by tiny piece, discover this in play. Disclaim decision making authority to the players. Play to find out. Etc.
Not to sound like a broken AW record, but nothing you (or we) come up with will be as cool at your table as what you and your players collaboratively create. Don’t push your metaplot.
Did you say that they want to swap out the Immortal Emperor’s soul with their slide’s? How do you know that the Emperor hasn’t survived enought attempts on his life that he can give a score on originality before he those the crew into a crematorium. Also how do you know if he isn’t a vampire himself with a soul that can’t get unbound from his body?
To the actual questions, maybe it’s Skurlock’s scheme, and blowing up the capital was the last straw that broke the camel’s back, now the Emperor is going to personally ripe Skurlock a new one. Maybe there was an earthquake caused by the Leviathans still sealed away breaking their seals. Maybe the Emperor foresaw the end of the world and decided to greet it on a pleasure cruise after the capital collapsed. Maybe the Demon Prince Ixis really messed up the capital. Maybe the Emperor decided that for the upcoming disaster his skin and pleasure cruise are more valuable than the capital.
J Stein look, I’m a big believer in improvising EVERYTHING and rolling with whatever mad ideas my players got, to the point I’ve once shocked my players by pulling out a notebook and checking the name of a randomly generated demon, because it meant I’ve PLANED. But to get the creative process going I need some raw ideas floating around to throw at my players and let them work their dark magic. That where you lovely civizens of the internet come in – a wild brainstorm to ignite the process. I doubt any of the ideas would be used as the actual ‘official’ plot, but I would love to hear what people have to say.
Gorinich Serpant the Emperor is missing, as are everyone in the capital beside a Cardinal and his cruise. The players what to steal the Cardinal’s soul, not the Emperor’s.
The ghost field opens divergences in the temporal dimension of the celestial sphere. The cardinals arrive and say “what Immortal Emperor? He’s been dead for several centuries and replaced by a ruling council… you speak blasphemy”, so they send in the draconian Inquisition. Now they have another Faction to deal with 🙂
Roe Portal It feels like I didn’t understand your response, or you didn’t respond mine, or both? In case I was unclear in my original comment (as happens) rather than just failing to understand you (also, a thing):
I don’t mean to say that you should be improvising, although that’s a fair reading of my comment. I mean, in more concrete terms: build up a bank of hints, images, and suggestive circumstances and innuendo, to fertilize the player’s imaginations, and then let play be an opportunity for them to seize on things and snowball via (their) improvisation. I think “disclaim authority; ask questions” are fair routes for a GM to improvise, but I tend to think it’s more important for a GM to be very prepared with their battery of images and other inspirational tid-bits, in order to allow the players to improvise creatively.
e.g., players walking into a random city and having it made up on the spot by them or the DM counts as improvisation, but, it’s not what I recommend. I do, however, recommend prepping, “oh, this city on the map is all about rot and corruption,” so as to tie into some existing plot line about rot, and then when the players arrive, “So, you guys traded rumors with merchants on the way here. Which rumor made the biggest impression on you of this being a really corrupt city?”
The latter requires more fore-thought and prep (because you’re trying to figure out what is needed to build thematically on what’s going on in the game), without deciding on stuff yourself. The key difference ultimately being that the stuff you think up and give the players tends to be a lot less engaging to them than the stuff they build up, together.
Does that read differently than my original post? Is it at all more helpful?
J Stein yes and yes, It sounds like a very good advise, I’ll try to grok it a little and see how the course you suggesting differ from my usual approach. I think the key ingredient I’m missing is actively asking questions that let the players shape the world and the narrative, and building atop their answers.
A leviathan breached under the palace. Yeah, now they’ve started tunneling through earth as well as the ocean. The only hope is to choose a path–figure out how to bind that which cannot die, or make a seperate peace and have a city that is owned by one or more leviathans who protect it from the others.