The Death Cult Campaign
Jan 24, 2017 21:42:27 GMT -5
Crimhthan The Great, mormonyoyoman, and 1 more like this
Post by Deleted on Jan 24, 2017 21:42:27 GMT -5
(Admin note, this member lost access to his email and had to delete and re-create account - while I corrected his post count and karma I will have to edit his older posts for him and the older posts show deleted member but should not)
I will begin this starter thread with background information on how this campaign started. I have deleted the real world names that we use freely in our campaign.
The campaign arose after we had been playing for many years and like anyone else we listen to the news. A number of years ago a real world murdering death cult came into the news more prominently. This death cult has waged war against the entire world for nearly 14 centuries. As we were past the age of military enlistment we wanted to do something beyond our support for those fighting and for those being killed by this death cult. So we created this campaign.
The real world death cult has conquered an entire continent and portions of others and in doing so has killed over 650 million people* (270,000,000 on that one continent alone) and have enslaved 100's of millions of people (a practice they continue to this very day. They have made eunuchs of the men and sex slaves of the women and children by the 100's of millions for nearly 14 centuries. That enslavement, especially the sex slavery of women and children continues to this very day. The death cult considers even the converts among the enslaved peoples to be nothing but slaves, their possessions. Their racism is among the most extreme on earth, but it is matched by another large group that may someday figure in the campaign. The death cult practices cruelty on a level that is beyond imagination to the uninformed. These people for their entire history have also practiced every perversion known to mankind.
So for this campaign, we first rolled history back 1400 years. On the continent that would be conquered in the future of our world, there was one kingdom that endured into the 20th century as the lone bloodied survivors, but that kingdom is now mostly dead, falling to the death cult (and to be fair, these people were no saints either). But on the world of our campaign, this kingdom was over 100 times bigger on a massive plateau sitting a mile above sea level. There are only two ways off this plateau, as only two spots present anything other than a sheer mile high cliff. One spot leads down to the main part of the continent following an enormous river that flows from the plateau. At the opposite end of the plateau along the side where it meets the ocean another enormous river leads down to the ocean. This plateau is blessed with abundance rainfall and is very fertile.
The action takes place 700 years after the rollback point, and the original D&D technology and magic assumptions apply and every invasion of the attempt of the plateau has been turned back, usually at a great cost in lives. The plateau has an anomaly that is present nowhere else in the world. An area of a little over 100,000 square miles (about 2.5%) of the plateau has randomly occurring openings into another world that constantly open and close, they never seem to open and close in the same place twice. Brave volunteers have survived to come back, but they are a minority and of those that survive only a few bring back anything of value, but that value can be immense and some things have lead to advantages in the war against the death cult. This kingdom is focused on growing more powerful so that someday they may march off the plateau and put an end to the death cult that rules the entire world outside the plateau. The plateau is the only place in the world where any freedom exists, the only place there is no slavery, the only place that women have any freedom to be anything other than a sex slave and a laborer.
The players are members of those brave volunteers who travel into that other world and face monsters worse than anything that they ever imagined for the hope of bringing back treasure and magic to help defeat the death cult and to grow in power beyond anything that exists in there own world and comeback with the fruits of their labor. They strive to create beachhead in the other world so that greater numbers can be made the beneficiaries of the power inherent in the other world. One of the things that has resulted from this magic is to make childbirth much safer and because of that their population is now growing much faster and in a few years will greatly increase the number of fighting men they can field. Alongside this the growing ability to heal many wounds that previously would have killed most who suffered them has also been of great benefit.
The evidence points to another great civilization that existed in the other world and may or may not still exist somewhere in the other world.
This then is The Death Cult Campaign!
*To put this in perspective here are the numbers for four of the most evil people who ever walked the earth.
Hitler is directly responsible for the death of 11 million noncombatants and about 42,000,000 additional combatants and noncombatants.
Hirohito is directly responsible for the death of about 40,000,000 combatants and noncombatants.
Stalin is directly responsible for the death of over 50,000,000 people excluding the wartime deaths included above.
Mao Zedong is directly responsible for the death of 45,000,000 of his own people during just the 4 years of the "Great Leap Forward", plus an additional 27,000,000 from 1949-1975. Or about 72,000,000 total.
All of these total to 215,000,000 people compared to the 650,000,000 killed by the death cult over a 1400 year period (most of which was before the advent of modern mass killing methods).
I will begin this starter thread with background information on how this campaign started. I have deleted the real world names that we use freely in our campaign.
The campaign arose after we had been playing for many years and like anyone else we listen to the news. A number of years ago a real world murdering death cult came into the news more prominently. This death cult has waged war against the entire world for nearly 14 centuries. As we were past the age of military enlistment we wanted to do something beyond our support for those fighting and for those being killed by this death cult. So we created this campaign.
The real world death cult has conquered an entire continent and portions of others and in doing so has killed over 650 million people* (270,000,000 on that one continent alone) and have enslaved 100's of millions of people (a practice they continue to this very day. They have made eunuchs of the men and sex slaves of the women and children by the 100's of millions for nearly 14 centuries. That enslavement, especially the sex slavery of women and children continues to this very day. The death cult considers even the converts among the enslaved peoples to be nothing but slaves, their possessions. Their racism is among the most extreme on earth, but it is matched by another large group that may someday figure in the campaign. The death cult practices cruelty on a level that is beyond imagination to the uninformed. These people for their entire history have also practiced every perversion known to mankind.
So for this campaign, we first rolled history back 1400 years. On the continent that would be conquered in the future of our world, there was one kingdom that endured into the 20th century as the lone bloodied survivors, but that kingdom is now mostly dead, falling to the death cult (and to be fair, these people were no saints either). But on the world of our campaign, this kingdom was over 100 times bigger on a massive plateau sitting a mile above sea level. There are only two ways off this plateau, as only two spots present anything other than a sheer mile high cliff. One spot leads down to the main part of the continent following an enormous river that flows from the plateau. At the opposite end of the plateau along the side where it meets the ocean another enormous river leads down to the ocean. This plateau is blessed with abundance rainfall and is very fertile.
The action takes place 700 years after the rollback point, and the original D&D technology and magic assumptions apply and every invasion of the attempt of the plateau has been turned back, usually at a great cost in lives. The plateau has an anomaly that is present nowhere else in the world. An area of a little over 100,000 square miles (about 2.5%) of the plateau has randomly occurring openings into another world that constantly open and close, they never seem to open and close in the same place twice. Brave volunteers have survived to come back, but they are a minority and of those that survive only a few bring back anything of value, but that value can be immense and some things have lead to advantages in the war against the death cult. This kingdom is focused on growing more powerful so that someday they may march off the plateau and put an end to the death cult that rules the entire world outside the plateau. The plateau is the only place in the world where any freedom exists, the only place there is no slavery, the only place that women have any freedom to be anything other than a sex slave and a laborer.
The players are members of those brave volunteers who travel into that other world and face monsters worse than anything that they ever imagined for the hope of bringing back treasure and magic to help defeat the death cult and to grow in power beyond anything that exists in there own world and comeback with the fruits of their labor. They strive to create beachhead in the other world so that greater numbers can be made the beneficiaries of the power inherent in the other world. One of the things that has resulted from this magic is to make childbirth much safer and because of that their population is now growing much faster and in a few years will greatly increase the number of fighting men they can field. Alongside this the growing ability to heal many wounds that previously would have killed most who suffered them has also been of great benefit.
The evidence points to another great civilization that existed in the other world and may or may not still exist somewhere in the other world.
This then is The Death Cult Campaign!
*To put this in perspective here are the numbers for four of the most evil people who ever walked the earth.
Hitler is directly responsible for the death of 11 million noncombatants and about 42,000,000 additional combatants and noncombatants.
Hirohito is directly responsible for the death of about 40,000,000 combatants and noncombatants.
Stalin is directly responsible for the death of over 50,000,000 people excluding the wartime deaths included above.
Mao Zedong is directly responsible for the death of 45,000,000 of his own people during just the 4 years of the "Great Leap Forward", plus an additional 27,000,000 from 1949-1975. Or about 72,000,000 total.
All of these total to 215,000,000 people compared to the 650,000,000 killed by the death cult over a 1400 year period (most of which was before the advent of modern mass killing methods).
