Through some shenanigans involving her skull, a botched soul-binding experiment, and all the accumulated necromantic power of the Museum’s exhibits (all those corpses in one place work wonders) Oddom Girdergrove returns. Not the current, possibly-resurrected one – the
original one, who waged a worldwide war of annihilation on the living and succeeded in other branches of the multiversal tree.
General plot events:- Supercharged as a side-effect of her resurrection, Oddom promptly decides it’s time for Great War 2: Apocalypse Boogaloo and starts running around Orid Xem, resurrecting armies of corpses and intelligent undead in preparation for her attack. Goblin pits are found empty and their corpse-chambers picked clean, while long-abandoned battlefields become disturbed as dead soldiers are called back from their rest.
- The Abyssal Cult strikes a bargain with Oddom as she begins to gather power: her knowledge and expertise of necromancy as one of the first and finest of their kind, in exchange for command of their armies of thralls and Experiments. Oddom retakes her tower in the west of the Realm to serve as a rallying point for their armies, while the Abyssal Cult seizes control of Silverthrone and turns it into a death factory, producing new thralls and Experiments from the mortal populace.
- Assuming death by old age leaves behind a body, the Gloryages and their friends may get resurrected during all this; as intelligent undead if they’re lucky, as mindless drones if they’re not, and as intelligent undead enslaved to Oddom by spells if they’re *really* unlucky.
- One POV character during this could be a previous or new human adventurer who’s returned to the Realm to lead a guerrilla resistance movement against the Cult, or to try and evacuate the survivors of the Blight and Cult to safer lands in the north.
- The Intelligent Undead Howling Freaks created by Maloy start running amok somewhere in the middle of all this, kidnapping travellers, trying to convert new spouses, and generally causing problems for the Confederacy.
- An army of angry ghosts rise up from the dead in Swordgleamed, ranging from victims of the Howling Freak nest there to the original bandit inhabitants. Large amounts of Fun result for anyone nearby as the spectral army decides to do some avengeance on anyone silly enough to get in their way.
- The Army of the Living reforms as the crisis really starts to brew, with the Realm of Silver guerilla movements, Dwarven/Elven forces, and the other human Kingdoms all uniting in an effort to stop Orid Xem’s oldest threat. Depending on how things are and whether they come under attack, the Goblin Hordes may join in with them or hang back and circle like vultures, waiting for the two powers to cripple each other before moving in to feast on the remains. (Maloy's angels may or may not also join in here.)
This eventually culminates in the big final battle with the undead – the Reborn Army of the Living versus the Undead Legion. While the regular mooks take each other down, the adventurers fight through Oddom’s elite forces (intelligent undead, Experiments, and a few former protagonists/evil NPCs) to confront the necromancer herself and end this once and for all. (Or they fail horribly, Oddom and her praetorians wipe them out, and Orid Xem is scoured of all life but the dead. Y'know, really go for the cheerful ending.)
Pros:
- Nicely dovetails with how Oddom and the Great War shaped the pre-Adventurer Orid Xem; we already know she could’ve succeeded in other worlds running on the same seed, so we could plunder a couple of those timelines for ideas as well.
- Intelligent undead loyal to Oddom and given equipment would be fairly strong, particularly if she learns more than the original necromancer secrets. Paralyzing, mist-raising skeletal berserkers clad in steel with a violent hatred of the living, anyone?
Cons:
- Since a lot of high-tier adventurers are some variant of undead or necromancer, the main intended threat of this scenario (undead swarms locked at No Quarter) is going to run into issues when engaged. Also no clue how we’d get Necromancer Experiments/Intelligent Undead to be loyal to Oddom in gameplay, shy of mass chargenning them in one party then abusing the "kill-resurrect-talk them down" trick.
- A proper undead army would require a good deal of preparation, both on resurrecting enough undead, getting them equipped, and making them loyal to Oddom. We can probably get around some of this with DFHack's tricks (create-item and force-equip in particular) but it'll still take some time.
- In fairness, I think the Abyssal Cult is getting a bit stale as an antagonist after several consecutive turns (on my part, admittedly) with them more or less in the centre role. Still got to write those turns up (me and my procrastination :<), but I think it still stands as a point.
Author
Topic: Museum III, adventure succession game (DF 0.47.05) (Read 421340 times)