Flames of the Phoenix

Any attempt at gaming this summer is still on hiatus, but today I had an interesting idea of how phoenixes might fit into my campaign. The result is a bit of lore as well as a new toy for the players to get their hands on.

The Lore: Phoenixes are capable of taking on three separate forms. The first is a large bird of prey with scarlet feathers. This more traditional form has healing properties in both its feathers and tears but they are rarely given up easily.

The second form is a humanoid appearance with tanned skin and bright red, feathery hair.

Its most destructive form is of pure fire and light. This can theoretically be in any shape but often forms something resembling its human or bird shapes.

In either of its physical forms a phoenix can manipulate and produce flame and is capable of learning other types of spells as well. It can remain in its human or bird shapes indefinitely but taking on its firey form can burn up its supply of magical energy unless it takes time to rest.

Symbolizing destruction, death, rebirth, and life, phoenixes are notoriously difficult to kill. If one is hit with a fatal blow (or even dies of old age or starvation) its body erupts in fire and light. This engulfs its surroundings and often any foes responsible for the phoenix's death. After its body burns up, the remains restore themselves in a new body. This carries the phoenix's consciousness and the most of its personality, but the physical form is all new and resembles someone different (much like Doctor Who style regeneration).

The only known instance of a true phoenix death was in a near vacuum. Without oxygen, the creature was unable to produce its death fires. If the old body is not burned up, it is theorized a new one cannot take its place. Phoenix fire seems capable of burning the oxygen molecules in water however, making drowning a less likely option.

The Toy: Enchanters have been able to capture the life restoring phoenix fire in certain pieces of jewelry such as pendants. If someone wearing one of these is about to die, the pendant activates, wreathing the person and their nearby surroundings in flames.

The individual's body is cremated while they are still alive (this is understandably unpleasant) but then is restored with the same mind in a new body (just like a phoenix).

It is said no one ever willing goes through this process twice. The trauma of being burned alive stays with them in their new life. They live deathly afraid of all forms of fire and would almost always choose death over that experience again.

Villainous

Kiel over at the awesome Dungeons & Donuts blog came up with a pretty interesting villain questionnaire. He said it was more D&D focused but I found it fairly system agnostic which is good because that's not what I've been running recently.

My campaign has a couple of villains I'm fairly proud of. Many of them more of a threat and possible more interesting than the guy I talk about below, but he's coming up sooner so I've thought about it more recently.

1. What's her/his name?

Nicholas R. Nero

2. What's her/his race and class?

He's a human CEO of the Nero Corporation. A New York based company with ties in all sorts of black market magic. He's also a Wanderer, a wizard with time and space magic who collects realities to use as weapons.

3. What, if anything, inspired you to create said villain?

I knew I wanted a power hungry corporation for the players to deal with. I wanted the leader to represent everything about the corporation: ambitious, strange magic, eccentric, and a little sadistic.

4. What was her/his main goal? Did she/he accomplish it?

To awaken a group of extra-dimensional titans called the Slumberers. But that's really just a side effect of summoning  and attempting to enslave Eschaton

5. What in their history made them pursue "evil"?

Most people look at everything the worlds have to offer and are filled with awe, Nero looked at it all and got greedy.

6. What was their relationship like with the PCs?

They've yet to actually meet him but he's going to be their opposition. Probably for a while too since he's much more powerful than they are. It could be interesting though if they manage to kill him.

7. What, if any, was one of their fiendish plots that stands out in your mind? Also, how did the PCs overcome it?

Again this hasn't happened yet, but the players are planning to break into his corporations main headquarters while they are having a fancy masquerade party. He's going to turn the building itself into a Slumberer while they are in it.

8. How did your villain dress/talk/present themselves?

Nero is well dressed, but flashy and kind of tacky. He's so full of himself and fairly crazy that his fashion sense is a bit extreme. Think like a brightly colored suite and wearing a lot of rings. He speaks loudly and moves with purpose

9. What was your villain's greatest secret or weakness?

There are definitely ways to exploit his insanity and his magic is rather unstable. The players can find ways to make it all backfire if they seek them out.

10. If applicable, how did your villain die?

The players blow stuff up a lot so that seems likely.

Season 2 and stuff I plan to do

So break is winding down and I'll be getting back to school soon. This means a lot of things but one of the things I'm looking forward to is picking up with the gaming group I've set up there.

We left off on a pretty epic, holiday-themed adventure. It kind of served as a season finale episode and I was pretty happy with it.

But now we're coming back so I thought I would list some things I want to introduce or move forward with. I find it nice to have some clear goals to keep campaign momentum going.

• Their Modern Fantasy adventure is heading to New York City, one of the most diverse cities in the world. I'd like the magic their to reflect that. There should be magic from all kinds of cultures.
• A few places in the city should reflect this magic taking hold. This can get weird, strange gravity, mutations, people talking backwards, whatever. Everything's strange but no one notices. It's a dark secret people sweep under the rug. Like stereotypical New Yorkers when most normal people see something strange they ignore it and keep on about their business.
• The player's are investigating a dark and mysterious business called the Nero Corporation. I should make ways for them to infiltrate the place. Something like a fancy party filled with intrigue, masks, and assassins.
• I kind of want the players to get betrayed, arrested, and taken down by someone with no visible powers but can exploit their weaknesses. Maybe all at once? hmm...
• There's a drug called Läesh they've run into before. It has varying effects, one of which is boosting the crap out of supernatural abilities at a cost. There should be something with this in the bad parts of New York, or the good parts.
• One of the players has a weeping angel trapped in his visual cortex so that's gotta change. Maybe he can make a deal with it?
• Another player has a burning hole of the apocalypse in her brain. This has to do with the Nero Corporation as well so that can probably come up then.
• Maybe something with New York's art scene?
• All the players just got new powers which they still need to pick.
• I might be getting a new player, she wants to be a belly-dancing Gypsy pirate which sounds like it could be the coolest thing ever.
• One of the players wants someone from her past to show up. She's an experienced treasure hunter and ship sinker (siren) so maybe something like from Indiana Jones where they are allies/rivals/enemies all simultaneously for the same artifact.
• One of the players has family in New York, they are not on good terms, something about stolen technology.
• I think some sort of fish king might show up demanding the fish-person in the party be his bride.
• The mad scientist should show up again.

Okay that is a lot. More than I expected I guess, I've got some planning to do. But I'd love to here your thoughts.

The apocalypse is something you can fight (and it should be)

She was in space. The stars swirled around her in a galactic spiral, but they were funneling away. All away. There she saw a void in the universe, consuming the energy and life around it. She looked at the void and could feel its intelligence and its stare. It burned a place within her mind where her own insignificance merged with its contempt.  Her mind fell back to the earth, but she could still feel the thing in the darker parts of her thoughts. It was the end, the limit, a living apocalypse, and its hunger was coming...

This is sort of a novelized version of what happened to one of my players last game. She used her mind control powers to try and figure out where the villain was getting his orders and all of a sudden her mind was whisked away to a dark corner of space and within the gaze of Eschaton the Devourer, though she doesn't know that's who he is. As far as the player's are concerned she met some kind of Sauron-eye, black hole thing.

They're not that far off really. Eschaton is definitely a lot like those things and also like Azathoth from Lovecraftian works, Galactus from marvel, and Korrok from "John Dies at the End".

Basically I wanted something that could be "a living apocalypse" and one day had a stress induced dream very similar the narrative in italics. It's sort of like a giant space funnel with stars, nebulae, planets and whatever all draining out of the universe.

I wasn't going to introduce Eschaton that session and hadn't had a real plan for him. But the villain the players were fighting had a lab and a whole bunch of chimera monsters. He was a former zoo keeper so after the players defeated him they wanted to know where his funding came from to have this incredible mad science lab.

A reasonable question, but of course I hadn't prepared for this. I had already thought of this Eschaton thing so it worked out that even though he's a sentient void of all matter, he also controls some kind of wealth that is being deposited into this villains bank account. How this actually works the players aren't sure but it will probably be through a corporation Eschaton psychically controls.

Here's what's going with him: As sentient destruction, Eschaton's lifespan lasts eons. He feeds on massive quantities of energy and matter to survive and as long he feeds he can survive indefinitely. But there's only so much energy and mass left in the universe. He knows this and has calculated that he won't be able to survive for much longer (relative to him, this could be thousands of years).

So he psychically scoured the universe for an answer to his food shortage and found the Earth. Bathed in mystical energies and essentially serving as a crossroads for a multitude of other dimensions, the Earth is Eschaton's answer. By feeding on it, he can gain access to other universes and thus other food.

But the Earth is far away, really far away. So far, his destruction won't be able to reach it before he dies of starvation. Earth is fortunately filled with summoning rituals that can magically bring him closer. So that means he needs folks on the planet to complete these rituals. Using his god-like telepathy, he can communicate and even possess people on Earth. But due to the distance and arrangements of certain planetary bodies he can only do this on certain occasions. Think of this as light from the sun, sometimes the moon or the earth itself prevents the light from reaching you, telepathic energy can act like this when used on a cosmic scale.

Eschaton will possess and persuade key people on the Earth to help forward his arrival. The rituals they perform often attract a lot of attention and general make their surroundings more weird or magical such as cursing towns or releasing hell spawn.

He's already burned in one player's mind, but I think these rituals will likely attract the other player's attention. If they interfere then they will attract the Apocalypse's attention, and that's good because I think that can make for a good story. But we will have to wait and see.