Some help with a plot Options

[grahariel]

I've got a plot I'm going to introduce in my next session. Basically, it involves the theft of an artifact from a Wuxing research facility in Seattle. Wuxing has been analyzing and researching this artifact for the last five years. No one knows who stole it, and Wuxing isn't really sure what it does. Description wise, its a circular stone slab that's about the size of a table that sits some five people. It's got strange markings on it that don't really match anything from humanity's historical data, hell, even the Dragons aren't really sure what it does. Okay, now, the idea is that this person has it and is going to use it for something evil (big surprise there). Now, added to Wuxing, Ares and S-K are after it for their own purposes, the Wanabuchi-rengo hope to use it to win a gang war against the other rengos in Neo Tokyo, and a group of Native Americans from Tir Menagierie are looking for it because they're under the impression it might be an artifact they lost years ago (they don't know what Wuxing's thing actually looks like yet). I've got the motivations for the PCs set up already, but what I need help with is deciding what the main villain's plan is.

The villain I've got is a powerful mage whose sworn allegiance to a powerful intelligent Shedim. His plan is to use the slab in a blood magic ritual to open up a gateway into the deeper recesses of the astral plain to allow this powerful Shedim into this world to essentially either devour it or enslave it. (The mage may or may not be possessed by a servant spirit by the Shedim as insurance, I'm still debating on this, but it would explain his powerful abilities, please comment on this aspect at your discretion).

All in all, I want to know if this villanous plot works within the world, and if so, is there anything else I can use to spice it up, or is there something else other than a Shedim I can use. I've had this idea of having the guy put either enthralled bug spirits or blood spirits into the children of key government and corporate officials to lie dormant until a certain time when they'd be used in some kind of simultaneous attack, again want to know if something like this would be possible. And if so, is there a way to keep said spirits from being detected by the PCs when they're possessing a body?

Any feedback is greatly appreciated. I want to make this plot intriguing and plausible for my players.

[Whipstitch]

Sounds like you might want to do a forum search on "Horrors," a nasty breed of astral entity which are connected to the Earthdawn-Shadowrun metaplot.

Anyway though, such a plot is well within the bounds of SR metaphysics, although I think according to Street Magic that "master" Shedim are generally already capable of opening astral gateways for "lesser" Shedim. Still, that's hardly a big concern, since there's an awful, awful lot that metahumanity doesn't know about Shedim, powerful spirits or hell, even magic in general, and there's nothing wrong with throwing your players a curve ball now and again as long as you don't just say "rocks fall, everyone dies" when they find out that something isn't running pure corebook mook stats.

My big tips for running a campaign of this sort boil down to two prime directives:


1. Don't tip your hand when you don't have to. For example, what self-respecting dragon would admit to not knowing what something is when they could just choose not to comment at this time? Likewise, villainous motives have a funny way of being more believable the less you know about them. There's no law that says that even the villain needs to know exactly what he's getting into when playing with an ancient artifact.

2. Be fearless and fair. As I hinted at earlier, players generally won't call bullshit on you for putting in an entity that "breaks the rules" as long it doesn't seriously screw them over in a way they have little control over. For example, let's say this artifact gives the villain some form of teleportation. Now, as far as anyone in the Sixth world knows, legit physical teleportation has been and remains impossible. But whether that means you're a bad GM or the artifact is simply that rare and powerful depends on the finesse with which you handle such an unlikely situation. If you use such an ability to cause a total party kill they couldn't have really prevented, that's just mean. If someone calls you on it being impossible to begin with and you don't have any comeback, then that's also a problem. But if it just leads to the PCs being contacted by the Draco Foundation or the Benandanti and cooperating in an effort to locate a counter-artifact, then well, now you've got a campaign.

This post has been edited by Whipstitch: Feb 7 2011, 04:15 AM

[Glyph]

I tend to be wary of plots where the PCs are the only ones standing between humanity and a fate worse than death. If the PCs mess up, or are oblivious to a clue, or are simply unlucky - then too bad, game over. I mean, on the one hand, it is nice when PCs can actually affect the game world around them, but always remember that they aren't the only ones involved in a plot. If the bad guy's plans get too far along and the PCs don't have a clue, then maybe one of the other power-players that you mentioned could step in (purely out of self-interest) to stop this guy.

For the dormant spirits, I would do something like have a harder threshold to detect them. Making things more difficult but not impossible is usually better than GM fiat.

[grahariel]

Sounds good. I get what your saying about making the PCs the only thing between humanity's future and the whole Sauron gambit, and I don't want to do that either, which was why I put so many other players into the game as insurance and to spice things up. However, I'm gonna tell my players there's 3 ways I can run the plot, they'll choose whichever suits them better.

1. The "24" approach where they drop everything and focus solely on finding the artifact.

2. The Burn Notice approach where they still take jobs, but invest a bit of in-game time to investigating the main plot and doing a few plot missions to progress said plot a bit.

3. See number 2, except that any investigation is done in downtime, rather than in-game. As in, they tell me what their PC is going to do in between sessions, then I'll introduce the findings in-game and they might lead to a plot specific mission or just further questions that need to be looked into.

Once they make their choice I'll structure the plot around their expectation. It'd be way easier considering that the tendency for PCs to follow the GM's outlines is almost non-existent unless they choose to before hand.

Thanks for the feed back though. Please, keep it coming.

[hyzmarca]

Harlequin is going to be all over this, Ryan Mercury probably, too. And Lethe. Certainly Lethe. And that means that Ghostwalker will probably be involved, too.


This Shedim is going to be bringing a shitstorm of truly epic proportions down on himself and he most certainly knows it. This means that he's more than a simple Master Shedim, and has resources far beyond what such a being would normally have.

The artifact alone isn't enough, neither is the magician. A mortal magician vs Harlequin is like a JSDF laser tank vs Godzilla. If the mortal survives it is only because Harley was being generous.

This means that the Shedim has some tricks up his sleeve, some very powerful tricks that can neutralize the top three most magically powerful beings in the Sixth World and their agents.

First, give him a Name. Names are important. Names give a spirit power and the right name tells your players that they should run away really really fast. If any of your players are familiar with Earthdawn, I can give you some name suggestions that will make them shit in their pants.

Just for fun, make the corrupted magician a girl named Chantrel and call the Shedim Nemesis.


Next, screw the holding children hostage bit. This guy should have an extensive network of corrupted operatives, not just one agent. There are too many pieces that he has to move precisely in order to avoid getting murderized by Team Save-the-World-Again. The possess-the-children plan is far too blunt to accomplish the level of control he needs. Instead go with the standard power-for-loyalty routine. He trades spirit pacts and marked artifacts for promises of service, promises that are enforced by those same pacts and artifacts. The PCs should slowly gain an understanding of exactly how deep his infiltration goes.

The vast majority of the game should be moves and countermoves, not just investigation. The PCs may not know it, and the players may not know it, but they're working for Team Save-the-World-Again as pawns if nothing else. The Shedim wants to set up things so that his enemies cannot stop him. The good guys want to set up things so that they can stop him.

Just to make things interesting, give the PCs a chance to kill the corrupted magician. If they succeed have her show up again good as new no matter how she was disposed of. Even if she was cremated.

The endgame should be appropriately big and epic. It should start off with the PCs inside a mana barrier powerful enough to hold off Ghostwalker's astral form and his entire spirit army, who are pounding at the gates trying to get in. I'm talking elementals the size of the Chrysler building, here. Then you've got Dunkie's ghost getting into a fistfight with Cthulhu on the metaplanes. Meanwhile, the Shedim is holding his own agaisnt Harlequin, who is flagging, Frosty and Quicksilver are being swarmed by minions, and your PCs are left alone to somehow throw a spanner in the works while fighting a very powerful girl who literally cannot die no matter how much she wants to.
And then there is the inbound nuclear cruise missile, which explicitly will not stop the ritual but will kill most of the good guys, the PCs included. So they're on a deadline. The point is to disrupt any one of the villains defenses so that the good guys can win, and then get the hell out of dodge before they're nuked.

[grahariel]

Wow, didn't think about Harlequin and the others. Yeah, they would get involved. I mean, originally the artifact was just gonna be a maguffin for everyone to rally around, just something to hold the plot together. The only reason I started trying to give the thief a purpose was because it'd give the theft a bit more weight than just plot hook. Okay, so, is there any sort of evil thing one can do with an artifact that won't be on such a grand scale, but still be villainous? I'm talking villain of the week evil. Think the first few books of the Dresden Files (which you should read if you haven't) where the villains aren't Hitler or Sauron.

[hyzmarca]

You want something epic enough for 24, but not so epic that the big anti-horror players would care. Go with Dead Beat.

The villain wants to apotheosize into a totem. He is pretty sure that he has a way to do this, but it requires a blood magic ritual that will cause a rather massive amount of death. The entire population of Seattle, for example. It's bad, but its not world ending bad.

The artifact is itself morally neutral. It merely draws however much essence is needed from the surrounding metahuman population and converts it into Force for any spell, allowing to user to cast some truly impressive things. It can be used for good (as much good as can come from indiscriminate mass murder, anyway) or for ill. The villain intends to use it to power his become a god spell, which probably won't work but which does have such a high force requirement that millions will die if he's not stopped.

But a few million mortals dead is no skin off the backs of the IEs.