Re: Ruined Gates of Varos
Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2021 1:27 pm
I had written a player's intro/GM's intro, presented below, assuming that Varos was "just" an adventurer.
Seems we have three choices:
1. Wizard leader of adventuring party who wished to avoid death and corrupted himself, or
2. King who wished to avoid death, corrupted by his wizard advisor, or
3. Wizard-King who wished to avoid death and corrupted himself.
Before we move on here, let's everyone vote for your preference, and throw in a little campaign speechifying if you want.
Player's Intro (Boxed Text)
This place was good, once. Varos was a hero of the kingdom, and of the people, a wizard of renown who traveled in the company of a great warrior and a priestess of the Forgotten Goddess. He built a tower, and when the space within it proved too limited, a dungeon was built beneath.
But what foes could not destroy, time erased. The warrior passed first, and was interred within Varos' dungeon. The priestess left, or so the stories say, and in time even the tower fell. What became of Varos no one knows, though many strange and contradictory tales are told.
GM's Intro
Varos refused to let time defeat him as it had the others, and in his zeal to defeat death he strayed from goodness, becoming first amoral and then properly evil. He would not allow even the god of the underworld to defeat him! He descended into his dungeon to research the secrets of death and undeath, and the world forgot him except as a seldom-retold cautionary tale for young wizards.
Unable to learn the secrets of becoming a lich, he instead became a zombraire. In time his flesh rotted away completely, as always happens to such creatures, leaving him a skeletaire as well as quite mad. Still he fruitlessly studies in the hope that he can somehow restore himself.
Seems we have three choices:
1. Wizard leader of adventuring party who wished to avoid death and corrupted himself, or
2. King who wished to avoid death, corrupted by his wizard advisor, or
3. Wizard-King who wished to avoid death and corrupted himself.
Before we move on here, let's everyone vote for your preference, and throw in a little campaign speechifying if you want.
Player's Intro (Boxed Text)
This place was good, once. Varos was a hero of the kingdom, and of the people, a wizard of renown who traveled in the company of a great warrior and a priestess of the Forgotten Goddess. He built a tower, and when the space within it proved too limited, a dungeon was built beneath.
But what foes could not destroy, time erased. The warrior passed first, and was interred within Varos' dungeon. The priestess left, or so the stories say, and in time even the tower fell. What became of Varos no one knows, though many strange and contradictory tales are told.
GM's Intro
Varos refused to let time defeat him as it had the others, and in his zeal to defeat death he strayed from goodness, becoming first amoral and then properly evil. He would not allow even the god of the underworld to defeat him! He descended into his dungeon to research the secrets of death and undeath, and the world forgot him except as a seldom-retold cautionary tale for young wizards.
Unable to learn the secrets of becoming a lich, he instead became a zombraire. In time his flesh rotted away completely, as always happens to such creatures, leaving him a skeletaire as well as quite mad. Still he fruitlessly studies in the hope that he can somehow restore himself.
