So I'm working on the outline of my next campaign in my homebrew world, and I want to run a low-magic setting with these basic ideas:
World Overview
~1,000 years ago: Karsus's Folly and The Spellplague happens, but in my world this causes magic to vanish from the world once the Spellplague settles. Something something the Gods don't trust mortals with magic any more so they stop imbuing their followers with divine magic, and Mystra or her revived incarnation seals the Material Plane off from the Weave to prevent it from happening again.
Present Day: magic has returned. About 5 years ago, people regained the ability to cast spells, with divine casters receiving power first and arcane casters discovering their abilities shortly after. Casters in the general population are are few and far between, and the power of magic is highly limited. At the same time, long-dormant magical items began to "reawaken", although in diminished states compared to their fabled power. This is all the players know.
Why is magic back: The Gods returned the power of magic to their followers in anticipation of a great impending danger to the Material Plane. The impending danger is a cult of Karsus going around the world and "unsealing" the Weave. This is the campaign's endgame.
Major Plot
I'm drawing heavily on the idea of Karsus's fate of being turned to stone and embedded in the earth, left as a sentient/magical boulder that can reach out and grant power to followers, your standard Warlock/Cult Patron stuff. So the basic idea of the campaign is that Karsus, driven mad by his failure and his fate, is providing his cultists with information on how to unseal the Weave through ritual magic at crucial anchor points around the world, with the ultimate goal of resurrecting him when access to the Weave is fully restored. At that point he will once again attempt the spell that caused the Spellplague in the first place, learning from his mistake and picking a different Deity as his target so as to not cause such catastrophic unintended consequences. His ultimate goal is to ascend to Godhood and restore the Empire that was lost due to his mistakes. The unsealing of the Weave will correspond with the party leveling up, allowing me to control the level of magic in the world (at any given time, the most powerful spellcaster is 1-3 levels ahead of the party), and explaining how they can continue to cast higher level spells.
My Questions
Which God would he target and how? My inclination says the God of Time for the power to roll back the clock, but I'm open to suggestions.
What would you include in the rituals for unsealing the weave as components?
How would you poke holes in the premise? Help me seal up the logic of what I'm planning.
An idea for the rituals would be destroying high-level magic items at the weak points. If the characters do really well in the fight, they could obtain the magic items. You did say that epic magic items are only partially back to their full power, so it wouldn't be too imbalancing if done right.
How can the characters "beat" Karsus? It is nigh impossible for a party to beat a god unless they somehow become gods themselves. If they are trying to stop Karsus from becoming a god, the fightable BBEG could be Karsus's main cult leader, who could be an Archmage or something similar
The party could win in a number of ways. If they do really well they could possibly prevent the cult from resurrecting Karsus at all. Barring that, I'm intending for Karsus to return and become a Lich, basically having his cultists prepare everything he needs to do so and then sacrificing one of their own to provide his first body and a soul for the phylactery. At that point he'll need some time to gather the remaining components for the big ritual, giving me a few chances to have him interact with the party, potentially die, and still return before they figure out where his phylactery is. I think their last chance for success would be interrupting the ritual itself, which takes 6 hours. I hope to provide the party with enough info for them to figure out where and when he'll do it, giving them time to potentially interrupt it and force the final showdown. Of course, a million things could go wrong along the way, but that's where the fun lives, isn't it?
Unrelated to my previous post, but what monsters are you thinking about using for this? Cultists will be a major part of it, but fighting only humanoids seems kind of boring (maybe not for the players, but running only one type of monster is boring for a DM)
I was thinking you could throw in some demons or devils, or aberrations, because the "fabric of reality is weakening".
So it's still early days, but I'm planning a few things. I want them to be introduced to the cultists early, somewhere in levels 1-5, and I'm almost hoping that the party forgets about the cult after that, thinking that they've taken care of the problem as they wrap up level 5. Then I'm really trying to find a way of spending the majority of levels 5-10 doing a mix of personal stories related to their characters backstories, all while borrowing very heavily from Storm King's Thunder as the main plot using some politics of the Giants' world to exert pressures on the city that the campaign takes place in and draw the party into that conflict. Then, as the SKT material wraps up between levels 10 and 12, I'm hoping to reintroduce the cult through one of the components of Karsus's ritual, the gizzard of an ancient dragon. I'm thinking this could tie in to Iymrith somehow, with the party finding themselves potentially aligned with cult temporarily to slay the dragon.
After that, yes, it could be a great time to throw in a demon/devil incursion as they try to figure out why reality is falling apart, and as they make their way to the sources of the planar rifts they find evidence of the cult's doing, ultimately tying back to the endgame.
All of that said, I'm a bit of an overbuilder when it comes to world creation because I really like the party to have the freedom to blow up my story, so all this planning could be for nothing of course, but it's nice to have a Plan A anyway
So I'm working on the outline of my next campaign in my homebrew world, and I want to run a low-magic setting with these basic ideas:
World Overview
Major Plot
I'm drawing heavily on the idea of Karsus's fate of being turned to stone and embedded in the earth, left as a sentient/magical boulder that can reach out and grant power to followers, your standard Warlock/Cult Patron stuff. So the basic idea of the campaign is that Karsus, driven mad by his failure and his fate, is providing his cultists with information on how to unseal the Weave through ritual magic at crucial anchor points around the world, with the ultimate goal of resurrecting him when access to the Weave is fully restored. At that point he will once again attempt the spell that caused the Spellplague in the first place, learning from his mistake and picking a different Deity as his target so as to not cause such catastrophic unintended consequences. His ultimate goal is to ascend to Godhood and restore the Empire that was lost due to his mistakes. The unsealing of the Weave will correspond with the party leveling up, allowing me to control the level of magic in the world (at any given time, the most powerful spellcaster is 1-3 levels ahead of the party), and explaining how they can continue to cast higher level spells.
My Questions
"To die would be an awfully big adventure"
An idea for the rituals would be destroying high-level magic items at the weak points. If the characters do really well in the fight, they could obtain the magic items. You did say that epic magic items are only partially back to their full power, so it wouldn't be too imbalancing if done right.
How can the characters "beat" Karsus? It is nigh impossible for a party to beat a god unless they somehow become gods themselves. If they are trying to stop Karsus from becoming a god, the fightable BBEG could be Karsus's main cult leader, who could be an Archmage or something similar
I love that idea for components.
The party could win in a number of ways. If they do really well they could possibly prevent the cult from resurrecting Karsus at all. Barring that, I'm intending for Karsus to return and become a Lich, basically having his cultists prepare everything he needs to do so and then sacrificing one of their own to provide his first body and a soul for the phylactery. At that point he'll need some time to gather the remaining components for the big ritual, giving me a few chances to have him interact with the party, potentially die, and still return before they figure out where his phylactery is. I think their last chance for success would be interrupting the ritual itself, which takes 6 hours. I hope to provide the party with enough info for them to figure out where and when he'll do it, giving them time to potentially interrupt it and force the final showdown. Of course, a million things could go wrong along the way, but that's where the fun lives, isn't it?
"To die would be an awfully big adventure"
Unrelated to my previous post, but what monsters are you thinking about using for this? Cultists will be a major part of it, but fighting only humanoids seems kind of boring (maybe not for the players, but running only one type of monster is boring for a DM)
I was thinking you could throw in some demons or devils, or aberrations, because the "fabric of reality is weakening".
So it's still early days, but I'm planning a few things. I want them to be introduced to the cultists early, somewhere in levels 1-5, and I'm almost hoping that the party forgets about the cult after that, thinking that they've taken care of the problem as they wrap up level 5. Then I'm really trying to find a way of spending the majority of levels 5-10 doing a mix of personal stories related to their characters backstories, all while borrowing very heavily from Storm King's Thunder as the main plot using some politics of the Giants' world to exert pressures on the city that the campaign takes place in and draw the party into that conflict. Then, as the SKT material wraps up between levels 10 and 12, I'm hoping to reintroduce the cult through one of the components of Karsus's ritual, the gizzard of an ancient dragon. I'm thinking this could tie in to Iymrith somehow, with the party finding themselves potentially aligned with cult temporarily to slay the dragon.
After that, yes, it could be a great time to throw in a demon/devil incursion as they try to figure out why reality is falling apart, and as they make their way to the sources of the planar rifts they find evidence of the cult's doing, ultimately tying back to the endgame.
All of that said, I'm a bit of an overbuilder when it comes to world creation because I really like the party to have the freedom to blow up my story, so all this planning could be for nothing of course, but it's nice to have a Plan A anyway
"To die would be an awfully big adventure"