Let our hands never falter, sparing evil the sword
Let our hearts never waiver, letting weakness take root
Let our march never end, lest the task be left undone
Champions, zealots, fools. All these words describe the followers of Heironeous; patron god of those blinded by duty and self righteousness. From the guards who rough up vagrants for the sake of social order, to the patriotic songs sung by soldiers on the way to invade a land they've never seen, to the teacher who’s convinced they can instruct through pain, because sparing the rod really does spoil the child.
It is a terrifying thing after all to be in the wrong, to have no easy answers, to be filled with doubt, and so the Archpaladin and his clergy intercede to provide the fearful populace with direction, with easy answers, and with scapegoats when necessary.
Adventure Hooks:
The party are asked by some troubled parents to look in on the local chapterhouse of the Invincible Vanguard, who took over for the town's royal garrison some years ago. A number of youths, bored of life in their sleepy little town decided to sign up with the Vanguard a few months past and have not been seen since. The Heironeian are cagey to say the least, but through their investigation the party might stumble across the same awful secret the kids did during their initiation, as well as their ultimate fate.
A beast rampages through the countryside, sowing fear, destruction, and rumour wherever it goes. Defeating it is no easy task, but one of the local lords is willing to pay a high price should the party bring him its head as proof. Imagine their surprise when a few days later a group of Heironeian paladins are paraded through the street carrying THEIR trophy aloft, claiming all the credit and with that same lord backing their claims. It seems the party has been part of a cruel PR stunt, however will they make this right?
A series of inexplicable mishaps and borderline disasters that plague a frontier village have come to a head with one of the Vindicator's itinerant preachers convinces the locals that devilry is the source of their woes, pointing the blacksmith's tiefling apprentice. It's up to the party to prevent the kid from getting strung up, and make the villagers see reason before there's an out and out witchhunt on their hands.
Setup: From the outside, with the perspective of history, it’s easy enough to see that there’s something wrong with faith of Heironeous, how their temples and icons venerate violence, whether it be martial glory or the suffering of martyrs that needed to be avenged. How their liturgy teaches the faithful that sympathy to outsiders, questions to authority, even the smallest of doubts are weaknesses to be overcome.
But the Heironeans are the ones fighting off the monsters encroaching on your village when the baron won’t pay for garrisons or adventurers, and it’s their priests who come to hand out food to the hungry and say there’s work the town over building their new fortress, and it’s their inquisitors who stand in the market square telling the crowd that all the awful things that happened these past few years is the fault of sinful, faithless rulers, and if only they could be led by righteous men (and it is always men) and expel the social parasites then truly this realm could be one beloved by the gods.
That’s the grift, the Heironeans seize on a crisis or a fear and offer to put your life on a better track, nevermind that it’s a permanent war footing where you and your family and neighbours are conscripted to roles based on how you’d be most useful, and disagreement amounts to insubordination.
Heironeans say they’re justified of course because evil is always out there, the one true evil, Hextor, the grotesque, six armed lord of bloodshed and suffering who wishes to make slaves or corpses of all the world and the heavens besides. He is jealous of Heironeous you see, his twin brother, who is propheciesed to be the only one who can defeat him. Hextor never rests, always spawning more evil in the world, and anyone could be his follower without even knowing it... all they’d need to do is work to subvert the will of the archpaladin and they’d be abetting the scourge. You don’t want to be an agent of evil do you? Then tithe to the church, enlist in the vanguard, obey your betters, marry early and within your kind and have more children to carry on the fight when you are too week, raise them up right, kneel when you are told, submit. Do all these things and the Vindicator will know you are good, and worth fighting for, and will forgive your mortal failings.
There is a deeper lore, behind even what the faithful or even most of their leaders know: that Heironeous and Hextor are the same being. Sometimes it is the monster wearing the golden hero like a mask, sometimes it is the bright and radiant warrior casting a most wicked shadow, sometimes it is simply that the god of war and slaughter has two faces, fair and foul, both righteous, both tyrannical, both hungering for blood.
The cult of Hextor is a secret order within the faith, membership offered only to those chosen by their god or those that see the worship of the archpaladin for what it really is: Violence for the sake of power, power for the sake of violence. They are secretive, deflecting rumours of their existence onto puppets and figureheads that they manipulate, going so far as to create false-cults to the Scourge to draw the faithful’s attention and ire. Any fault in the church can be blamed on Hextorian infiltration, any opponent that challenges them is but an agent of the Scourge.
Titles: The invincible, the vindicator, the archpaladin / the scourge, the herald of hells
Signs: Oddly serene visions of violence and pain, wounds or blood on the image or relics of martyrs or weapons of champions, prophetic nightmares about the victory of Hextor.
Symbols: A white hand or clapsed around a silver lightning bolt/ a black gauntlet clutched around six red arrows
Inspiration: Cruelty cloaked in the guise of righteousness is not an original concept but after writing about how d&d has weird habit of using a frankly childlike view of morality in order to justify its violence the same way that IRL hategroups do, I wanted to play around with the concept.
Likewise, I felt my campaigns needed a solid “badguy with the aesthetic of goodguy” villain and I was tired of using overzealous followers of the dawnfather or bahamut to fill out the roster. Specifically, rather than bad people in service to an ostensibly good god (who are objectively real in the setting and thus would try to oust the bad apples), I wanted to create an evil god that used the trappings of goodness to dupe average people into doing bad, the same way that has happened over and over again historically in our own world.
I ended up choosing Heironeous for this villain makeover because like a lot of other default d&d deities I find the base form of him painfully one note, he’s the paladin god of paladins and he has hero IN HIS NAME. That said, he has a twin brother Hextor, god of war and tyrants that serves as his dark mirror and there’s thematic meat in that... Merging the two into one god gives us this delicious setup where the theology of Heironeous creates the problem and sells the solution, benefiting no matter who wins in the supposed cosmic power struggle.
Villain: End Without Rest, Outer God of Ceaseless Apocalypse
How many times can a thing break before it can break no more?
The mummified corpse of a titanic dragon defies all laws of scale and destiny to sink its teeth into a bleeding sun, a fleet of ships like clockwork locusts stripmine a world for spare parts, angels gone feral parade down the road while scourging their flesh singing songs of the coming endtimes in a thousand witless tongues. All these things and more are the being known as “End without Rest”, an engine of destruction that wanders the multiverse without aim, a nomadic Armageddon looking to impose itself on the mythologies of other worlds.
End without Rest is a god for those who are convinced that final days are upon them, whether that be doom preaching madmen, the scions of crumbling empire, or religious fanatics convinced they alone will be saved. It is the impulse to ignore your own safety and the safety of others, and to instead heap all the good things of life upon a pyre and watch them burn. End without Rest senses these pyres like signal beacons, and descends on the arsonist’s innocent world to make good on all their fears.
Adventure Hooks:
Exploring the ruins of a now forgotten city leads the party into conflict with a series of strange, rust-covered automotons that seem to have been haunting the site since its fall. Pushing deeper, they find the machines defending the wreck of a long grounded astral ship, with the surrounding evidence pointing to the city’s inhabitants having died defending against an army of these constructs a thousand years ago.
A few generations ago, a charismatic priest found a book of prophecies, and took his followers out to the badlands where they could be safe from the cleansing fire that was about to destroy their homeland. The apocalypse is now overdue, and the priest’s followers have gone a bit squirly in the meantime, living off the land in pious austerity and attacking travellers and native inhabitants of the badlands for supplies. The most recent head of their congregation has decided to take a more active approach to prophecy, and has begun a series of grisly raids with the intent of triggering the endtimes by orchestrating his own omens.
The stars bleed, the horizon seems to burn, and the party have to run for cover as a falling star makes its way directly towards their camp. Returning to the smoking crater they find a Planetar angel gasping for life, heavenly light bleeding from innumerable battle wounds. With their last breath, they recount their battle with a fallen angel intent on beginning the end of the world by blowing a sacred horn. This plannetar gave its life to avert this crisis, and with their last ounce of strength to knock the horn from their foe’s hands and sent it crashing to earth. Now the party must race to find where the second “falling star” landed before their fallen adversary completes their final mission.
Background: The origins of End without Rest stand as a testament for what happens when gods and mortals meddle with the ineffable nature of fate. It begins with a petty war god watching as a world reached the predestined end of its mythology, it sun devoured by a great beast to usher in the final age of darkness and dissolution that would spell that realm’s end. This wargod was not the type to see a whole world full of people and weep at the futility of all, or rush in to try and set fate onto a different course.... she was the type to see something that could destroy pantheons and start thinking about how it could be weaponized.
End without Rest is the result of all her efforts: The body of an apocalyptic dragon, mummified from its long time in the void, pulled from the dead realms and reawakened with a supernova burning in its belly. Around this monstrosity she set a legion of constructs to maintain, defend, and reign the beast, answerable only to her. She wielded her new weapon with glee and with pride, carving out an empire of worlds that bowed to hear in fear of the apocaylpse she could bring down on them... until she fucked up and brought it down on herself instead.
With its master consumed and her divine fire burning in its furnace of a heart, there was nothing to stop End without Rest from growing, of reaching the critical mass of its own godhood, of moving from world to world ending them based on instinct alone. This process has repeated so long that the remnants of other apocalypses have got swept up in the apocalypse engine’s wake: routed legions of the endtimes pledging themselves to its service, orphaned harbingers following it in hopes of finding meaning after their task is complete.
Titles: The Apocalypse Engine, Suneater, the unready end
Signs: Confused visions of the enditmes, animals going feral, objects rusting breaking or unraveling before they should.
Symbols: The Jaws of a beast (often black, often skeletal) closing around a red sun. Iron locusts
Out of curiosity, how do you think one could spin a Good aligned blood religious organization. Like blood rituals are an easy clue for some scary evil necromancy etc, but I was still stuck on the idea of a religious order that heavily relies on blood magic for, I don’t know, fertility or life based magic? In which maybe the shedding of blood is more akin to blood donorship, or something where the real blessing is not in blood shed itself but celebrating the body’s ability to heal?
Deity:Sekhmet, Lady of Life and Slaughter
When the heat of your blood feels like the scorching presence of the sun, whether in anger or in fever or in passion, you will know she is with you. Greet her with a smile, and dig your teeth into your foes.
Setup: As with their patron, the cult of Sekhmet has taken many forms throughout history, ranging from healers to generals to blood-mad killers. The lion headed goddess herself was said to have been created as a judgement upon the world, a scourge against mortals for their disobedience towards the gods. As her priests tell it, Sekhmet was too fit for her purpose and would have driven the mortals to extinction, had the gods ( or some clever hero) not intervened and tricked her into drinking a lakes worth of booze adulterated to look like blood.
Drunk enough to see reason ( and deciding she liked beer way more than she liked the taste of human flesh), Sekhmet relented, going on to become a protector and distributor of justice. It’s this incongruity of a “tame” apocalypse god that characterizes her worship to this day: Sure her breath is the killing heat of the desert and her displeasure manifests as plague, but that’s all the more reason to keep the goddess happy through cheer and good works. Sure in her time the Lioness devoured whole cities and cut down armies with sword and claw, but who’d dwell on awful things like those when we could throw a festival and get sloshed instead?
Sekhmet’s doctrine is a sort of benign nihilism that appeals to those who have seen the very worst the world has to offer, soldiers, survivors, and the dishonored who know that the “goodness” of the world is a thin veneer over an abyss of unremitting horror, yet choose to try and make it better regardless. They embrace the dichotomy of a slaughter god that has chosen peace, adorning themselves with weapons, fangs, and blood-invoking paint while going about their lives as healers, hosts, and peacekeepers. Though the majority of folk regarded these bloodied acolytes with wariness, those that know the cult of Sekhmet know there are fewer truer allies to call upon in a crisis.
Adventure Hooks:
While exploring the city, the party comes across the steps of a small temple laden with gold and other offerings, shadowed door open but seemingly unoccupied. Within they find the vivacious priestess Meryet, who’s otherwise pristine white robes are stained crimson around the edges, and who’s laugh is so deep and rich it makes their skin prickle in delight. She explains that the offerings are left by those who’ve received healing at this temple, an open display of their thanks and an invitation to those who would work in the service of the lioness. Meryet exalts the party to partake in divine slaughter: beasts, bandits, the unjust, anyone and anything who would improve the world should their blood run out upon the sand. She hints at wondrous rewards should the party wield their weapons in Sekhmet’s name, as the goddess observes all good works and would see them duly rewarded.
Plague has broken out in a settlement, followed shortly after by a series of grisly murders that are at first thought to be the result of attacks of a bloodthirsty animal. The apprentice of the local healer has gone half mad with loss and secondhand fever as the lady of slaughter whispers to him of those that are to blame. When night falls and his blood boils, he transforms into a great lion, hunting those who let the poor languish in squalor, or those who broke quarantine to see to their own amusements. He remains mostly unaware of these transformations, save for the grim satisfaction he takes every time he hears of a new victim.
The party are fortunate enough to be in town in time for a grand celebration, and end up running into a small congregation of Sekhmet’s devoted who are distributing pomegranate beer to the revelers as an offering to their goddess. The congregation is led by a retired mercenary who has plenty of stories to tell should the party be willing to listen over a drink, and might give them several leads on dungeons or other opportunities in the region. Shortly after they return from such an excursion, they find that the congregation has been censured and the mercenary jailed, on charges of tricking festival goers into consuming human blood. The faithful reach out to the party to investigate on their behalf, eventually pointing them in the direction of a power hungry high priest of a much more significant temple who wishes to use the “degeneracy” of Sekhmet’s followers to shoulder out other faiths in the region and secure a religious hegemony.
Titles: The Lioness, she of the golden eyes and bloody tongue, the prowling doom, the life-savoring
Signs: Blood flowing like water, scorching solar heat, the calls of lionesses, scattered riches fangs and fruit
Symbols: A golden lion with a red chin/lower jaw, A solar disk stained in blood or with claws, a pomegranate being cut by a knife
A god of fire and void, meteor king of conquest, plumiting downwards to its next victim (bonus points if its a blue like a commet)
Deity: Mnyull, the Revelation Tyrant
Fasinating stuff my friend, my latest translation of old imperial accounts reveal a previously unknown confession from the rogue general Paldermot. As you well know, current historical narratives have the general sacking the capital city in a failed attempt to seize power from the Tribunes, but if this text is to be believed the Tribunes captured Paldermot and dispersed his rebel legion before he ever entered the city. It goes on to say, in a transcription of Paldermot's own words that he had "Followed a star" to the "seat of a new imperium", and claimed that the star had promised great allies to aid him in his conquest. The text is unquestionably authentic , but it throws our entire understanding of events into question; If Paldermot was captured in the midst of his rebellion, who or what destroyed the capital and turned the surrounding countryside into a crater?
Setup: Hurdling across the void of the astral sea, the meteoric god Mnyull brings ruin wherever he goes, the embodiment of unrelenting invasion at the hands of an inexorable foe. Unlike other gods which present themselves in abstract forms felt across the multiverse Mnyull prefers to exist as an incarnated singular being, a towering construct built around the mummified yet undying body of his current mortal avatar.
This living reliquary leads an army of crusading zealots scattered throughout the multiverse known as the starry horde, followers and adherents of its former vessels who believe that by serving the Revelation Tyrant, they continue the legacy of their particular heaven-chosen liege. It is important to note then that Mnyull and his followers do not adhere to any one ideology as they hold the act of conquest itself sacred, whatever form that conquest takes. Like a shooting star the tyrant god is constantly on the move, dragging his followers into one conflict after another before retiring to a palatial demiplane of rock and ice for decades or centuries at a time to rule those realms where his cult has taken hold.
It is for this reason that some theologians have considered classifying Mnyull as an outergod, those divine beings considered actively hostile to the stability of realities they interact with. Debate rages in those lofty circles however as the hostility the Revelation Tyrant represents usually takes the form of “ Invade them with an alien army before or after hitting their world with a big rock or series of big rocks”. While the scholar dither, Mnyull bides his time, growing ever closer to some innocent world that has no idea of the disaster that is about to strike it.
Hooks:
The Party’s homeland is struck by the invasion force of a kingdom that fell to Mnyull’s influence generations ago. While more traditional warfare occupies the early adventures of the campaign, they begin to uncover hints of lore about their enemy’s newly arisen (and apparently immortal) theocratic leader along with the strange monument she’s building. Just as it seems they might have an upper hand against the invaders, their enemies deploy new and terrifying weapons and otherworldy allies, sourced from the portal they’ve just finished building.
Sometimes Mnyull decides to feed his urge for conquest by invading a random plane, riding a chunk of astral rock through its firmament and establishing a kingdom wherever he lands. The Revelation Tyrant is not a creature of foresight however, and on his most recent outing ended up impacting into one of that plane’s moons. Refusing to give up he’s carved out a realm among the strange creatures that live among the palid rocks of that blasted planetoid, and now sets his sites upon the verdant world below.
While enjoying a trip to the local archives and observatory, the party are interrupted by agents of the starry horde, looking to plunder the vaults looking for information regarding great weapons created to break worlds known only as “The Anvils”. Predating even the Revelation Tyrant’s earliest memory, Mnyull once used his divine will to steer these ancient tools towards ever more destructive ends, until a coalition of forgotten heroes toppled him from his throne for fear he would turn the weapons upon them.
Background: None can say where Mnyull first emerged, but planear scholars have charted the tyrant god’s course across world after world and have noticed a self perpetuating cycle: Some would be warlord sees a silvery star or comet and it awakens in them a desire for conquest, though more often than not they would have began life as someone who already exerted authority over others. Strange powers and allies allow these conquerors to amass a fanatical following and become a true threat to the powers of that age, leading to a climatic confrontation where they are either killed, or rise to claim a throne and immortality. A harsh and “glorious” reign begins, and the ruler demands the construction of great monuments which will serve as portals in Mnyull’s next conquest. Should the Revelation Tyrant lack a body at the moment, one of these ascendant rulers becomes his next vessel, feverishly instructing their underlings how thier body is to be mutilated and interred in preparation for their apotheosis. When the reliquary is built around them, Mnyull’s silver-blue light strikes them full force, their soul igniting to serve as the perpetual fuel for the tyrant god’s engine.
Titles: The Tyrant’s Star, All-conquering Meteor King, Khan of the Starry Horde, Imperitor-Celestium. Along with any other titles inherited from his innumerable vessels.
Signs: A silver-blue comet or star blazing in the sky, Meteor Showers that produce snowfall without clouds, Ecstatic Visions of victory and conquest, weaponry shining silver
Symbols: The arc of a Comet above a Crown, Chariot, or Other sign of Lordship.
Followers: Warmongers of all kinds, be they authoritarians or Rebels. Mnyull has also accumulated followers across the astral sea, so numerous entities which range the cosmos looking for battle are drawn into his service voluntarily or by indoctrination.
Hear me, young warrior. There is no glory in slaughter, no honor in conquest, and no such thing as a just war. These childish indulgences should be put down when we first pick up the sword. Instead there is only a chance, a chance to do the right thing when the opportunity presents itself, a chance to make the world a better place than we found it, a chance to spare the innocent their scars by bearing them ourselves. Follow if you see the truth in my words, if you don’t: well, you found your way up this mountain, I’m sure you’ll be able to see yourself down.
Setup: It is the rare wargod that acknowledges that war, and violence in general, is by and large a necessary evil, a burden to be taken up by the brave and the desperate and put down again when their is no more need for it. This is the true valor spoken of by the faithful of Tyr, a unique coalition of hardened warriors, pacifists, and fighters by necessity.
Tyr offers strength to those who must defend themselves in the most dire of circumstance, and a path of peace and redemption for those who’s lives have been stained by blood. Eschewing temples and a formalized priesthood, Tyr’s most faithful are itinerant healers, veteran commanders, or holders of ancient vigils, all of whom seek to safeguard peace, defend the innocent, and hasten the end of conflict. Shrines to the marred god are often constructed alongside battlefield memorials, or are simple stone cairns in the center of villages where weapons can be stored for times of necessity.
As a mythological figure, Tyr is often cast as an aging warrior who’s body bears many long healed wounds, most notably the amputation of his sword hand. Many sagas can be told about the adventures of a younger, more foolhearty Tyr which highlight the warrior’s many hardwon lessons, leading up to his sacrifice of his hand in an attempt to stop an apocalyptic event (though sources debate on which one).
Adventure Hooks:
To avert their own apocalyptic event, the party is told to seek a relic of Tyr that just so happens to be in the possession of a semi-retired adventurer. Said oldtimer happens to be a bit of an isolationist coot, and wants test the party’s character by seeing how they manage in the harsh environment he’s chosen to sequester himself in. If they force the issue, they’ll likely have to duel one of the greatest swordsmen of the age in a blizzard, but if they cooperate, they’ll have made an ally for life and gain a mentor in the process.
Now in possession of a cursed enchanted blade that drives them to glory and danger, the party hears tell of a shrine to Tyr that collects such objects in the hopes of purifying them. Said shrine happens to be in the depths of some haunted moorlands, the site of a vast and ancient battle that still draws scavengers and specters to this day.
An undead warrior haunted by a lifetime of misdeeds stumbles into town, repeatedly denied the rest of any afterlife. Taking hostages, he demands that the party take his blade to the local shrine of Tyr (up in the rocky highlands) and make offerings for him so that the god will relive him of his burdens. After a hard trek to the shrine, the hermit who keeps vigil there points out that Tyr would never take such a dishonorable soul into his service. Blessing the blade with the power to slay undead, the hermit sends the party back to defeat the drauger and become champions of their village, planting a seed of valor that might one day grow into legend.
Titles: The Marred god, Warden of Peace, Foremost among the Valorous
Signs: Clusters of old weapons buried in the earth, cold wind, things that have been broken and remade.
Symbols: A broken sword, or one buried midway up the blade. Tollstones ( large granite standing stones that have a cylindrical hole or bowlshape carved into thier top. used to collect offerings, markers for fallen warriors)
I want you to know I read your posts like the morning paper on my way to work- I love your writing and your material's tone and prose aligns a lot with the stuff I write! Wanted to request something to do with dead/forgotten deities- I've been thinking about a dead sun god from when people used to have a "principal sky deity" that has fallen out of favor, and what implications that might have.
Dungeon: The Empyreal Tombs
Setup: Phaetamir was an ancient god light and conquest, who rode out each day on his great solar chariot to survey his empire and encourage his devoted to acts of glory. To hear his priests speak of it, the empire of the faithful would push ever outward towards all horizons, just as the rays of the sun illuminated all corners of the world.
Needless to say, Phaetamir and his followers made a lot of enemies, and it was perhaps inevitable that someone would seek reprisal against them on a deific scale. The sungod's doom eventually came out of the desert, when great spirits of storm and dust knocked Phaetamir from his chariot and quenched his fire beneath an endless tide of sand, dousing his light and burring his capital forever.
Though centuries past and its players all but forgotten, the ghost of this calamity lives on in the shadowfell by way of a nightmarish labyrinth known by delvers of the dark realms as "The Empyreal Tombs". Resembling nothing so much as a city-sized monument to the sungod collapsing in on itself, the tombs are a quite literal metaphor of Phaetamir and his faithful being crushed by the weight of their own hubris.
Adventure Hooks:
As a dread domain there is no one entrance to the Empyreal Tombs, as crossing over the barrier into the shadowfell may be deceptively simple: A party seeking shelter from a sandstorm in a long abandoned temple may find themselves trapped in winding passages after the floor collapses. A historian researching ancient cultures may be riven with dreams of burning while being buried alive, and pull the party in as they try to help. A trapped chest may open filling the chamber with impossible sand, leaving the party to dig them selves free only to discover their environment has changed drastically.
Innumerable dangers fill the tombs, ranging from subterranain dust storms and crumbling architecture to paniced specters of those who lived in Phaetamir's capital screaming as they're stuck beneith rubble. Trying to help these pitiful souls only has them cling on to their supposed rescuer as the walls or ceiling begin to squeeze in, making every potential cry for help bait for a grisly death. While innumerable shadowfell monsters have made their homes in these halls, perhaps the worst are the echoes of Phaetamir's most famous warriors, literally burning with their desire to conquer and driven on by feral zeal.
In the deepest level of the tombs where the heat is sweltering and the air ripples like a marriage, there is a cenotaph: a great slab of stone that acts as both altar and grave marker to Phaetamir, massive so as to contain enough room to write all of the god's many victories. The stone lays upon the body of Phaemtamir crushing him for eternity, allowing his impossible heat and occasional to escape through the thin crack as his spirit pushes against its weight. Those that would seek to remove the altar or plunder the treasures that lay heaped upon it in offerings will have to contend with Diavadess, a formless demon of shadow that was destined to wrestle with Phaetamir at the end of time to decide the empire's ultimate fate. Denied its apocalypse, Diavadess merely waits.
The Cult of the Hidden Sun is known to appropriate Phaetamir's iconography and long abandoned sites of worship, seeking to tap into a shared cultural history spread across the breadth of the now fallen empire. The cult is not above hurling non-believers into the Empyreal Tombs, or in using its winding passageways as transport between their hidden places.
The outbreak of war is much like a birth of a child; when it wants to happen, it’ll happen, whether you were ready for it or not.
- Brenna of Windspoke, Diplomat
Setup: After years of political tension, an invasion fleet heading for the kingdom’s capital was blown disastrously off course, half wrecking itself upon a beach of a town more than a province or two away. With their element of surprise completely ruined, the invaders have decided to make use of this impromptu beachhead and take the local fortress for themselves.
What a shame then, that the party is IN that fortress on unrelated business, and are now being pressed into its defense, the first of many skirmishes they’ll have with this impromptu adversary.
Challenges and Complications:
With no time to study the terrain and develop a siege plan, the enemy commander is forced to use blunt-force tactics to establish her beachhead, landing as many troops as she can a few miles up the coast from the fortress and sending ships to blockade the harbor. Even disorganized and recently disembarked, her force is more than enough to overwhelm the local garrison, and the players can expect successive waves of increasingly dangers foes as she manages to unpack more and more of her warships’ holds.
Disaster of disaster, the king’s brother was visiting when the invaders made land, and with the blockade closing in and troops mustering on the beach there are increasingly few opportunities to get him to safety lest he become a hostage. His young son is missing however, brought along to gain some valuable political experience and run off to play with some of the other castle children when politics got to boring for him not to sit still. The Royal guest won’t leave until his son is returned, possibly requiring the party to search the castle and town to find his whereabouts.
As much help as she would have been in the coming battle, the town’s wizard has left several days ago to ride the winds of the massive storm and see how much lightning she could bottle. If the party can make it past the wards that guard her sanctum, as well as the guardians summoned in its defense, they may be able to find a few tools useful for the upcoming siege.
Adventure Hooks:
The Unexpected Invasion can make a great starting adventure for a campaign focusing on epic battles, forging a cast of castle servants and unexpected guests into their kingdom’s defenders and giving them the first bitter taste of war. After the castle falls ( and it will fall, for our party are not yet heroes with the strength to defend it) the characters are taken as captives. Months later, laboring in the hastily constructed enemy shipyards, the party goes through the motions of their captivity while counting the hours till the other captives’ plan for an escape is set into motion. A chance for things to go awry arises however when they overhear that a missive containing vital enemy intelligence has made its way to the head of the camp, something that could give the kingdom’s other defenders a fighting chance against this foe. Do they stick to the plan, or risk it all to strike back against their foe?
With the keep taken and their surprise attack on the capital thoroughly derailed, the invaders disembark and begin launching attacks into the kingdom’s heartland, ceasing towns and treasure, and knocking the monarch’s bannermen off the board before they can ever muster their forces. This leaves the kingdom a patchwork wilderness of battlefields and holdouts, a breeding ground for ghouls, bandits, and deserters that the party must cross if they are to seek allies.
Periodically throughout their adventures in this wartorn land, the party will meet with an old woman who picks over the battlefields of the dead, seemingly perfectly comfortable as she fills her pack with bloodied spoils and pries rings from rot-bloated fingers. She refers to herself as Nana Nemain, and will cheerfully dole out directions and cryptic advice while she goes about her grisly work. In fact Nana Nemain is an aspect of the goddess Morrigan: spirit of war, death, magic and fate, who has taken an interest in the party’s doings and just how they’ll affect the outcome of this blunder born war. If the party heed her unsettling advice, things will turn out well for them, but if they scorn her humble scavenger persona she’ll likely turn to outright mocking them over time.
that by my hand fate may be changed and order overturned/
And I praise you for the gift of mortality/
that anything stuck might die so long as the strike is true/
And I praise you for the benediction of wounds/
that we may drink of our hated enemy’s blood before we end/ ..
- Hymm to Miaephon, ninth canticle
Setup: They say you can’t teach an old god new tricks, but for the bloodsplattered patron of violence, “ Stab it till it dies” has been the only trick needed to carry this warlike deity from the dawn age and into the modern era.
The Spear god has no ideology, no ethos, no precepts, only a litany of those slain by his intercession and the tributes paid to him my grateful petitioners. In this way Miaephon’s worship is far simpler than other deities: Ask the Bloody One to make something dead, and if the god hears you a way to that death shall be opened. Sometimes it manifests as a confluence of events that brings about the target’s downfall, othertimes a blessed fervor that fills petitioner with an immortal battlerage, heedless of wounds until their foe is defeated. The simplest of these blessings sees a needed weapon placed in the hands of the unarmed, while the greatest involves Miaephon hurling a spear from heaven, impaling the target before the prayer is even over. All these blessings can be turned against the petitioner should Miaephon find fault with them, and so only those surest in their devotion and fury call upon the Spear god by name.
Adventure Hooks:
Weapons thrown from the bloody one’s own hand are said to possess fantastical properties, and are sought out as artifacts of war by those who wish to utilize the god’s power without risking his ire. Long thought to be nothing more than a ruin, an ancient and monolithic spire is revealed to be one of Miaephon’s first spears, thrown during the dawn age to skewer some titanic creature too large for words and buried into the earth ever since. Excavation shows that the spear is in fact sunk so deep that its gouged a fissure deep into the earth, possibly all the way to the underdark and so an expedition is launched into the world below in an attempt to recover the weapon’s deadly head.
After she was beheaded for treason, the family of duchess Imeadia were exiled to an estate by the sea, there to live out their days in polite exile under guard by mercy of the crown. The Youngest of Imeadia’s sons has escaped however, a boy of no more than 14 who slaughtered seven guards and half as many servants on the way out and was last seen in the company of man bearing a truly frightening tally of scars. This man is the former lord Volco, a priest of Miaephon who came into the wargod’s service after a brutal bloodfued saw his clan exterminated. Volco possesses a knife blessed by the bloody one to grant the bearer unearthly skill in battle, able to blind foes to his passage and fling his own wounds at victims across a room or across provinces. Volco now seeks to train the young Imeadia boy in the weapon’s use as he was trained long ago, a new link in a chain of pain and vengeance that stretches back generations.
While his cult has fallen out of fashion in the modern era, Miaephon was once revered by those ancient empires that sought to expand their holdings through the veneration of the spear, pouncing upon their neighbors and pressing the survivors into thralldom. One of these empires was the Warrior Republic of Knossa, which had expanded from one of many warring citystates to a cultural hegemony poised to strike out and conquer much of the continent. On the eve of their great campaign however, a curse befell them, transforming their disciplined legions into hordes of minotaurs, which tore apart the empire in a single night and transformed the Knossan homeland into what it is today: The Savage Coast. Now Little more than Ruins, beasts, and encroaching wilderness, Miaephon sends his followers into the savage coast as a form of brutal pilgrimage, hoping to retrieve relics from the overgrown temples that once resounded with his praises.
Background: In some mythologies, when mortals first walked the earth they were forced to cower in the shadow of titans, great beasts as calamitous in their disinterest as they were in their hungering and tyrannical scrutiny. Miaephon was the first to answer the mortal’s prayers beyond their creators, falling upon the world as a storm of spears that tore the titans from the heavens and pinned them to the earth, leaving them dead or vivisected, and opening the way for mortal kind to dominate the coming eras. Few canonized pantheons acknowledge this event as anything more than apocrypha, holding the blood drenched deity at arm’s length in favor of more reasonable and respectable battlegods. Miaephon doesn’t care, and intervenes across the planes wherever he is called, heedless of where his worship might have spread, or from whom the call might originate.
Miaephon also shares a strange tie with the demon lord Baphomet, as though both are gods of violence and overwhelming strength, The Bloody One’s desire for instantaneous murder clashes with the glee displayed by the Demon Lord of Slaughter. Baphomet transforms those most deserving of Miaephon’s gifts into senseless killing machines, and Miaephon provides weapons unrequested to those opposing the Bull-headed king’s machinations. Still, one would have expected the speargod to have ended this conflict by now, as drawnout fudes are far outside his precept.
The reason for this is that Miaephon has been a captive by Baphomet for some time, after the Bloody one attempted to slay the Demon-Lord after interceding on one of his worshiper’s behalf. Always hungry for a challenge, Baphomet has kept the Lord of Unerring Death as a sparring partner and sometimes champion, bringing the god out to “roughhouse” when the demon is bored, or throwing him into his great arena to watch as the god deals death to everything the demon god of savagery can throw at him. When Miaephon displeases him, baphomet transforms him into a guided spear and tosses him into his great vault of riches, another toy forgotten in the pile until his boredom gets the better of him. Freeing Miaephon from this state may be a decisive step in the demonlord’s eventual destruction, and could earn the party a powerful ally beyond their wildest dreams.
Titles: The Speargod, The Bloody-One, First-to-Awnser, the Lord of unerring Death
Signs: A preponderance of spears, weapons dripping blood, unprovoked rage, battle madness, sudden and unexpected slaughter.
Symbols: Spearheads, downward Chevrons, impaled bodies, clusters of weapons.
