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Escaping the end of the world


Thot

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That's a campaign idea I have been nurturing for a few weeks now: At th end of the world, when Jagreen Lern's chaos hordes subjugate all of the Young Kingdoms to pave the way for the Lords Of Chaos, one rag-tag group of survivors from all over the Young Kingdoms, desperately fighting to stop the advance of the chaos forces, hold out in a fortress somewhere - with a sorcerer of some kind among them, who researches to try and open a portal to another world where  the survivors can flee before the inevitable victory of chaos.

 

Anyone ever done such a thing?

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I for one would love to play in a campaign like this! 

One question, however: would the players or characters know the world is doomed before the campaign begins? (Either through the players' own knowledge or through clues previously planted in the game.) 

If the PCs know (or suspect) the outcome, I think this would change their attitudes to scenarios presented by the GM. 

I would arrange things so they (willingly or not) aid Elric in retreiving the Horn of Fate, then have a WTF moment when they realise just what they've done. Then they have a mad scramble to escape the Young Kingdoms by whatever means they can contrive. After all, eternity in Ameeron is surely better than being reduced to the very stuff of Chaos. Or maybe not ;).

Colin

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Well, the players certainly would, being Stormbringer players. :) The characters might deduce it from the prevalence of chaos forces, and the sheer overwhelming number of chaos-doped enemies. The important thing here is: They need to absolutely hold off the enemy from storming the fortress (or city?) so that the sorcerer has enough time to research the necessary magic for opening that gate to another world.

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Probably, but I don't believe Tanelorn would be open (or even known) to the regular Young Kingdom denizen.

 

If the campaign runs smoothly, I might continue it in the new world they eventually escape to.

 

BTW, I think a city would be a good place to have this take place, with all attempting to save all the city's inhabitants. But which one would be best? Any suggestions?

Edited by Thot
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6 minutes ago, Thot said:

BTW, I think a city would be a good place to have this take place, with all attempting to save all the city's inhabitants. But which one would be best? Any suggestions?

Karlaak by the Weeping Waste is perhaps the obvious choice. Elric lives there with Zarozinia at the start of Stormbringer. It would be an interesting encounter with a "tall, moody albino whose name nobody caught."

Colin

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Couple thoughts about the escape.. they could be trying to activate a Vadhagh relic. Alternatively, perhaps they are invited to speak with The Grey Lords, perhaps due to the sorcerer's attempts at opening a portal. The party could be victim to a summoning from another plane, much like Erekosë or Corum. Maybe instead of the Grey Lords a faceless avatar of Mabelode appears. Mabelode is unhappy with Arioch and is searching for pets of his own.

 

As for where to put it, Lormyr was the first nation to rebel against Melniboné. Someplace there might be appropriate. You could also put it in The Pyramid of Law in Bakshaan or tie in the Grey Defenders in Rignorium. Whatever you end up doing, you've got a great starting point there. I admit that I remove any presence of the albino when I've run a YK game in the past. I started doing this when some potential players complained that there was no point playing the the YK because everything was going to be absorbed back into primal chaotic soup.

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Well, such a city should have a port - because that allows for a greater variety of people to conceivably look for shelter from Chaos there, and because it opens another way to leave the town. Which might be relevant, because:

I imagine the players would be among those who the sorcerer sends out during the twilight of the Young Kingdoms to find a few artifacts, spellbooks and ingredients he will need for his great spell. Possible quests would thus include:

 

  • Defense of The City. That would probably be adventure stuff mostly at the start (and end) of the campaign, where the players can make themselves known as useful people.

  • Get The Stuff. A spellbook of The Sorcerers from The Sorcerer's Isle; an amulet of Law found deep in the south in the Island of Ashaneloon, where Myshella once hid it; the Crown Of the Myyrrhn, which is deemed lost but, according to a traveller's journal, might be found in the ruins of chaos-pillaged Menii; a talon of a dragon to help tear down the interdimensional barrier to the sorcerer's destination.

  • Scout The New World. The Sorcerer might be able to open a portal big and durable enough to let everybody pass through. But is the destination a place where all could live?

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Re-reading the novel "Stormbringer": The Northwestern continent is not a choice, because the war that ends the world starts there, when Pan Tang and Dharijor try to conquer this part of the world, following the Dead God Darnizhaan's return.

Filkhar might be a good choice - it is far away from the initial war, and its biggest city of Raschil has a port by the Oldest Ocean. Given the purges that happen in Argimiliar after the Sack of Imryrr,  it is conceivable that a sorcerer might have fled here.

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And having re-read the novel Stormbringer, one thing is striking: Straasha, the elemental lord of water, is described as resignative. However, the other three elements are unaccounted for and are thus available as magical support for the players' faction! Maybe they would even join the effort, or at least it could be tried to convince them.

Hm. And the Beast Lords are unaccounted for, too.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well Tanelorn is Eternal, and  Oone the Dream Thief certainly survived, probably by way of the Moon Beam Roads.

However...

It is important to note  one feature of MM's Eternal Champion fiction:  all the worlds of the Multiverse are linked in the same cycle. So Chaos was resurgent across the Multiverse, as the Balance had to be reset cosmically.

So there's no 'save haven': any plane you flee too is going to be in the middle of its own apocalypse (the raise of the Madben horde, the Granbretanian conquest,  Hitler).

Now the inevitability of  total destruction in those other worlds might not  be as dire as the Young Kingdoms; but  there's no  place not ravaged by war and madness.  Of course that probably means great opportunity for meaty gaming conflict.

Edited by 1d8+DB
grammar
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Hmmm. An idea.

 

So there's an interstitial ('Middlemarch') world, primitive and probably largely unformed, that has been ignored by the Lords of Law and Chaos.

A number of refugees, from different worlds, have gathered there, and are trying to survive under  far from ideal conditions.

Among them are some fanatical followers of Law and Chaos, who are looking to resume the war that brought them here.

Of course the danger is that at some point the Lords of the Higher Worlds might notice this little pocket universe and decide to subjugate it.

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The Bronze Grimoire had  a spell called 'Candle Stripling' to see what great fate awaited the target

There was a throwaway comment along the lines of 'x years there will be no result as the child will be dead'

If you are able to run a long enough campaign (or have a light hand with flashbacks) the PCs might be the only people who Candle Stripling reveals Any kind of future for

Rule Zero: Don't be on fire

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  • 5 months later...

Depends how many times you want to run the End of the World scenario. It lacks finality if you repeat it again with the same characters.

That said, Moorcock himself did imagine a kind of spiral time where the end is also the beginning (see Stormbringer and also the Dancers at the End of Time). I reckon only a Champion of the Balance could survive more than one iteration of the End Times though.

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  • 1 month later...

Oh man! Make it meddlesome. Ballo the Jester is manipulating them to some ridiculous end. Or Tap into the Dancers at the End of Time. Lord Jagged is a trouble maker and could have a ton of unimportant purposes to mess with the PCs. My own preference would be to eventually either dump them into a psychedelic spy drama with Cornelius or throw them into some other Moorcock dystopian future. The Iceworld with the land whales or the huge metal city that moves across land.

Alternatively, maybe it's Morphail studying them. The Morphail Effect is something like 'There is no travel back in time. You go forward until it loops around again."

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  • 3 months later...

Almost a year after I first posted the idea here, it has sort of inspired me again recently.

I believe it would be nice if the new world had some minor similarities to pre-collapse young kingdoms... not too much, of course, but a central sea with galley-friendly waters and a few island-empires would be a good start, with the occasional uninhabited island, maybe for the refugees to rebuild their own nations on a much smaller scale.

Cosmologically, I'd imagine the destination world to be in a strategically unimportant multidimensional location. You can (relatively) easily get there, but it is very hard to leave, even for gods, and thus, they try to avoid it altogether. Consequently, control of this plane is just not important to the lords of law and chaos.

As a result of all this, supernatural powers of various types do work here, chaos-tainted magic from the Young Kingdoms being only one of them, with the twist that summoned demons , once called to this plane, cannot leave (which makes summoning them a lot more dangerous). Summoning Young-Kingdom-origin entities such as beast lords, plant lords and elementals would depend on how many the refugees brought with them.

Using all kinds of BRP magic systems (and perhaps from other game systems as well), each from a different source world and with a limited number of disciples, could possibly give this world a lot more weirdness and mystery, I believe.

 

 

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Just as an aside, in the one big campaign of Stormbringer I've been involved in, the characters all ended up dying in the Sacking of the Dreaming City... a fitting end for a group of not so nice warriors of the Balance. 

Stormbringer! - Exploring the worlds of the Eternal Champion at http://www.stormbringerrpg.com

Unbound Publishing - Bringing back the fear - http://www.unboundbook.org

DCtRPG.info - Supporting Dark Conspiracy across the decades - http://www.darkconspiracytherpg.com

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Well, I like to have survivors in my campaigns.

Further thought: Wouldn't it be nice to have a few Pan Tangians (who refused to fight for the lords of Chaos when it became apparent what that would do to themselves) use the same route?  And possibly a few other groups, such as a small group of surviving  Melnibonéans, a ragtag fleet of Purple Towns merchants, Vilmirian civilians, led by a priest of law... the players may even be the agency that spreads the knowledge of the required spell... in exchange for some of the required ingredients.

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After reading this thread I thought why not have Stormbringer characters escape the end of the world by taking the moonbeam roads to The Southern Reaches of Magic World? It would save time on any rules conversion as the rules are very similar.  

"Foolish is the king who does not have a personal wizard, and lamentable is the ruler who trusts the wrong mage"

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7 minutes ago, Stoatbringer said:

After reading this thread I thought why not have Stormbringer characters escape the end of the world by taking the moonbeam roads to The Southern Reaches of Magic World? It would save time on any rules conversion as the rules are very similar.  

Couldn't escaping characters end up in any BRP-based world? Imagine a group of barely-sane Pan Tangians ending up in the Chronicles of Future Earth setting, for example. Perhaps they would be chased by a group of Lawful PCs intent on stopping the Pan Tangians spreading their own particular brand of Chaos in a new world.

Colin

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On 10.4.2018 at 1:22 PM, colinabrett said:

Couldn't escaping characters end up in any BRP-based world? [...]

Actually I am rather disappointed that Magic World's Southern Marches are not this, with groups of refugees from a "world that was consumed by chaos", and other vague references to the old Stormbringer.

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1 hour ago, Thot said:

Actually I am rather disappointed that Magic World's Southern Marches are not this, with groups of refugees from a "world that was consumed by chaos", and other vague references to the old Stormbringer.

Chaosium no longer had a licenses for that IP and part of the intent of Magic World was to present the excellent and well regarded rule set without any of the legacy IP issues.

Cheers,

Nick

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2 hours ago, Thot said:

Actually I am rather disappointed that Magic World's Southern Marches are not this, with groups of refugees from a "world that was consumed by chaos", and other vague references to the old Stormbringer.

So why not run your own Magic World style game where refugees come from a "world that was consumed by chaos"? You are the GM. 

Edited by Stoatbringer
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"Foolish is the king who does not have a personal wizard, and lamentable is the ruler who trusts the wrong mage"

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