Goodman Games

I had this vague idea for an adventure I want to share since I'll probably never get to use it myself.

In the war of the terrestrial gods vs the lunar gods, the lunar gods were gaining significant ground until Oniukh, the orcish god of evil/murder/torture/slow agonizing death, found an effective way to kill lunar gods. Oniukh was so effective, in fact, that the lunar gods were forced to gang up on him and destroy him. They injured him grievously, but failed to kill him. To preserve his life, Oniukh transferred his much-weakened essence into a mech run by his orcish followers (it's a manpower mech, so possessing the mech itself is pointless...Oniukh possessed all the slaves that run it instead). Oniukh-the-mech is now wandering the plains committing atrocious acts of evil trying to build up his power enough to regain his place in the heavens and carry on the war against the lunar gods.

Meanwhile, the lunar gods are going all out trying to finish off Oniukh while he's down. Lunar dragons and other monsters in the area have stepped up their activities, causing death and destruction wherever they go.

Enter the PCs. They are asked to stop the evil mech or the rampaging lunar monsters, or just happen upon one or the other, or whatever other hook you want to use to get them involved. They learn quickly, through dealings with priests of Oniukh or Oniukh himself (via slaves) what the story is. Oniukh says it will take him centuries to regain his power this way, but there is a way he can gain it back faster and go back to protecting the planet. If good people [the PCs] find [Artifact of Goodness] and use it to torture [Good Person] to death in Oniukh's name, he will be instantly restored to his old power. If restoring the best slayer of lunar gods to the heavens isn't enough, Oniukh will destroy the local rampaging nest of monsters personally before going, and grant each PC a boon.

It can be done with a party of any alignment, but it has the most impact with a good-aligned party. Basically, the point of this adventure is to make the characters choose which is more important to them: the battle of lunar vs. terrestrial, or the battle of good vs evil.

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Dieter Zimmerman
[[Faceless Minion of the Dark Master]]

Holy cow, Dieter -- I missed this post earlier, but it's a brilliant idea. In my just-revived DragonMech campaign, I had slowly been setting up a gnoll cult as the Big Bad: worshippers of Yeenoghu who have been secretly working to aid the lunar gods' efforts on Highpoint. Gnolls - baying at the moon - lunar agents, right?

But what if the truth is that the cult is actually working against the lunar gods? When the lunar gods came to this cosmos, they kicked Yeenoghu off his seat of influence, and his followers are desperately seeking ways to restore his power.

Replace Oniukh and orcs with Yeenoghu and gnolls, and this could work. It'd be a great way to mess with my players' expectations and nothing that's happened in the campaign so far would contradict it; it could even fit together perfectly.

Thanks!

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DCC, DragonMech, Etherscope editor
Writer: "Madness at the Mutilated Oak," DCC #48: The Adventure Continues;
DCC #52: Chronicle of the Fiend

"It really is the height of pessimism to have a hat lined with chain mail." --Mrs. Peel