Topic: Creativity needed - Essaence Demons vs Unlife

[Walt]

Hi there,

I need some creativity input. We are playing in a in realtime pretty old campaign and I lost the overview about the roots and concept of one character. Perhabs one of you comes up with a goog hint for me.

The basic idea of the character was an apprentice fire magician in Tanara who had to observe how his master was killed. And than the well know story of hate and revenge and so on. This was his 1th level start.  Nevertheless, he was unaware that his master was a demonologist and he was supposed to be demon fudder at the initation rite.

So nowadays we are speaking of a level 10+ fire magician who through the full story got some help in critical situation by this strong firedemon Avnas (http://www.fromoldbooks.org/Mathers-Goetia/pages/058-Seal-of-Amy/) The character tried to cross an Essaence flow, was nearly atomized by the strong energy, and escaped only by fully tapping into the power of Avnas, becoming in the process a servant of this demon.

Nevertheless I don´t want to lose this intersting PC in my campaign so I need a cover story to direct the Essaence demon Avnas vs some big Unlife player in Jaiman. For sire could be Logarlis an option, but that´s perhabs a little bit to straight forwarded.
Has somebody some input, idea for me? Thanks!

[markc]

I am not an expert in SW material but in general could not other demons (major/minor) also be after/conspiring against Avnas? It is often said that it is easy to spot your enemies amongst your enemies but it is hard to spot a friend who is also an enemy. Or something like that.
What about someone/some way to break the servant hood or the pact with the demon?
What about the PC becoming possessed by someone/something else so that entity is not in the pact with the demon? (maybe mini-campaign in which the now possessed magician gathers people to break his bonds)


MDC   

[Voriig Kye]

Just in case non-GM's are reading, I will post my ideas in a spoiler box.

(click to show/hide)

Many in the Jerak Ahrenreth are demonologists, and there are many inner rivalries that you could play with.
Maybe your demon is also in service of some high ranking member who wants to thwart the power of some promising adherent. In that way the character needn't face the big baddies immediately, but just some pawns that happen to be evil.
Also, if the player is in Jaiman, the Xa-Ar books has 2 hooks you might be interested in:
1) The demon/god Xilkot could be related somehow to Avnas, as a demonic ally or as an enemy to be faced.
2) The plots related to the Iron Wind would give you an excuse to run many of the interesting ideas in the book. Avnas could be interested in acquiring/using the Orb of the Unlife, or the Iron Wind might be searching for powerful demonic sources like Avnas as fuel for the Orb, in which case the character could be on the run/looking for allies in The Winter Light or the Cult of the Blue Dragon.

[Walt]

I would like to share a brilliant idea of Voriig Kye:

(click to show/hide)

Another twist you can add is interaction with Clerics of Valris, goddess of knowledge. Are they enemies? Natural allies? It would be fun if an NPC Valris priest/paladin were to form a party with your PC and try to recover some tome together.

I really like the idea of Clerics of Valris working together with an Essaence Demon lord to secure (or destroy) knowledge which otherwise could strenghten the Powers of Unlife. This could range from securing spellbooks of binding demons to a joint attack on Sidar as center of learning of the Unlife forces.

Thanks a lot Voriig!

[metallion]

It's not hard to have demons oppose unlife.  Essence demons typically serve more powerful essence demons, until you're dealing with Singular demons.  When they serve someone who isn't an Essence demon, there's typically compulsory magic or some sort of alliance in play, and that goes for serving the Unlife as much as anyone else.