Turn One Year 1433 of the Aenian Calendar: Month 1Well every Lich King has to start somewhere. You have your rundown tower, a mysterious lake with an underwater temple at the bottom holding something ancient and nasty, and an obligation to provide worker skeletons to the village of Sander’s Vale at some point.
And now we should talk about Influence and Dominion.
Dominion is the power to shape and mold creation to fit your desires, and how you as a Lich King can exert your will on the world. It is how you can raise and control large armies of undead, build a massive citadel, and forge artifacts.
You acquire Dominion through worship from your cult, and from succeeding on quests and adventures.
Dominion is permanently spent when used, as are its effects unless destroyed through enemy action.
Influence is the companion to Dominion, representing the character’s personal attention and energy spent maintaining a desired outcome. It can be used much the same way, though when withdrawn whatever it was maintaining will collapse. Your influence is equal to your character’s level +1.
As you may be able to tell, this system is pretty freeform and rewards creativity. I will provide suggestions, though I make no attempt to guarantee their effectiveness or optimization. And let me know if you have any questions or want me to review the difficulty of a suggestion.
You start with 2 Influence and 0 Dominion.
Scope Cost
Village: 1– Villages, a few square miles, 1,000 people
City: 2– Major city, ten miles square, 100,000 people
Region: 4– Province, a thousand square miles, 1 million
Nation: 8– An entire kingdom, 100 million people
Realm :16– The whole world, Billions of people
The base scale cost is then multiplied by the difficulty/feasiblity: Plausible X1, Improbable X2 and Impossible X4.
Plausible changes are those that do not violate the laws of nature, is reasonable and could conceivable happen. For the Lich King: raising basic skeletons is a plausible feat.
Implausible changes require bending the rules of nature, and would not really be expected to happen without some sort of intervention. This also includes using resources not locally available. For the Lich King, raising elite undead warriors or legonaries would be an implausible feat, or gathering together a large amount of bodies where there wer none.
Impossible changes are simply inconceivable that they could happen with no intervention, including magical effects or materials, revolutionizing a societies structure, and creating new races. For a Lich King, creating Death Knights able to wield dark powers of their own would be an Impossible Feat.
You can also be opposed by enemies (or those simply resistant to change) that multiply the cost of working on them.
Population ( living): None
Population (dead): One
Cult Status: Non-existant
Economy: Dead. A goat path connects you to somewhat better traveled dirt path.
Wealth: You have a few coins laying about.
Military: Pretty much just you.
Grandeur: Tower is two stories tall and crumbling. It impresses the occasional peasant.
Name: Magnimian the Unholy
Level: 1
Appearance: Pale cold flesh, blood but does not circulate.
Attributes
Attribute: Score/+Modifier/Check
Strength:15/ +1/ 6
Dexterity:16/ +2/ 5
Constitution:16/ +2/ 5
Wisdom:16/ +2/ 5
Intelligence:15/ +1/ 6
Charisma:16/ +2/ 5
(Lich King boosts Constitution to 16)
(Truth boosts Wisdom to 16)
Saving Throws
Hardiness:15-2=13
Evasion:15-2=13
Spirit:15-2=13
Hit Points: 10/10
Armor:Robes (Natural AC of 3-2=1
Weapons:
Resources
Effort: 2/2 (Example 2/2 if you are not using any, ½ if you are currently spending 1 Effort)
Influence: 2/2
Dominion: 0
Wealth:0
Facts
-You are a Lich King in Truth.
-You have Seen the Truth and it is broken.
Words:
-Lich King( Natural AC of 3, no need for food/sleep/breath, Constitution Boost)
-Truth (Gain Truthsense, always believed to be telling the truth, Wisdom Boost)
-Underworld (Gain Spaitial awareness, no need for air/food/water, invulnerable defense against harm from stone, earth, or environmental hazards underground.)
Greater Gifts:
A Heart Apart: You possess a phylactery, excised heart, or other locus for your life, one which can be destroyed by ordinary violence. Unless this phylactery is destroyed, you cannot be permanently killed, and will regenerate from death in 24 hours from your largest remaining fragment. If the phylactery is destroyed, you can remake it, but it will not become effective for six months. You are instantly aware of any destruction of your phylactery, and while you can hide it or guard it, you cannot enchant it specifically to be protected from harm.
Lesser Gifts:
Ageless Erudition:
Commit Effort for the scene to know any fact or piece of knowledge, or pass an intellectual attribute check, that a ingenius mortal sage could conceivably do or know.
Dread Lord
Lesser foe undead in your presence are absolutely obedient to your commands and cannot intentionally harm you. Commands you give them will be obeyed with human intelligence and necro-suicidal devotion until they are out of your presence for at least 24 hours, after which they revert to their usual behaviors. You may attempt to likewise enslave an undead worthy foe as an Action, but the target gets a save versus Spirit to become immune to the gift for the scene.
Borer Beneath:
You can pass through unworked stone or earth as if it were empty space. If you wish, you leave behind a self-supporting tunnel with a diameter slightly wider than you are tall; as an Instant action, you can withdraw your support of any such tunnel you have made and let the natural environment collapse it.
Treasures of the Earth
Commit Effort to intuitively sense the location of any metals, gemstones, water, or other substances found below the earth within a radius of 100 feet per character level. You can conjure up to your character level in Wealth points of these things each day. These Wealth points
are not considered natural for purposes of fueling theotechnology or
other magics. Water or other non-precious substances are limited to
a ten-foot cube per level per day.
You have Actions equal to your Influence, which is currently 2, and then 1 Adventure Action, which you can use to go on quests or pursue your own goals. You can also hire advisors who can take additional actions per their category.
Cult: Well its not so much dead, as it hasn’t really started yet.-No Cult leader
-Got To Start Somewhere: Spend some time thinking and writing down what you want your cult to be. Maybe you just want an easy going cult that is very chill and all about personal development, or maybe you want something a little more demanding, make them really earn their place by your side! Either way its better to start now. 1 Action
Diplomacy: Ehh maybe its okay no one knows about you yet -No Councilor
- Send a letter to the Necromancer’s Guild: Well, you have to announce and register yourself eventually. They are not huge fans of Liches, but you may get some interest from them. 1 Action
-Introduce Yourself: Go around introducing yourself to the neighboring villages! Get the lay of the land and see what is happening in your neck of the wood.1 Action
Military: Your tireless legions of undead need to start somewhere! -No General
-Raise Skeleton Regiment: They aren’t much, just moldy skeletons dredged from the lake and armed with whatever junk you had lying around. But they will have to do! Raise 1,000 skeletons to start your military! 1 Action, 1 Dominion/Influence
-Raise Skeleton Army: Begin your horde! It might take awhile to gather all the corpses, but you can already raise a concerning amount of skeletons! They may be as capable as an average peasant, but quantity is a quality all of its own. Raise up to 100,000 skeletons, will raise more as you acquire more. 1 Action, 2 Dominion/Influence
-Raise Elite Skeleton Guard: Sometime you actually do need quality. Raise and equip an honor guard of Skeleton warriors, garbed in the finest funerary gear of a dozen cultures. 1000 elite warrior undead. 1 Action, 2 Dominion/Influence
Economy: The sinews of war is coin, which is good because your skeletons lack the regular kind-No steward
-And They Call it a Mine: Using your Underworld gifts, locate and build a mine nearby. Will attract economic interest. Staff will primarily be undead laborers you scrounge up, but eventually humans can come and work as overseers. Lich King’s choice on what it is mining. 1 Action, 1 Dominion/Influence (will need to keep maintaining influence lest the mine dry up.)
-The Lich King’s Road: Begin building a safe trade route to your tower. Patrolled by your military and occasionally you, this will make coming your Tower much easier. 1 Action, 1 Dominion/Influence
Defenses/Construction: Well hopefully we will have some laborers to help build these. Your back isn't made for work like this. -Build a Wall:Just a simple wall around your tower. 1 Action.
-Expand your Tower: Add another story per level. 1 Action.
-Improve Defenses of your Phylactry. Use your cunning and powers to hide it far underground, surronded by devious traps and defenses you can muster. 1 Action/ 1 Dominion/Influence
Special/Quests:-Adventure! Track down the Firebrand Friar Gerus and return village priestess’s niece to her home. 1 Adventure Action
-Laboring Bones: Provide the village of Sander’s Vale with laboring skeletons to work their fields, and in return retrain the farmers into differently skilled laborers. They will probably be willing to wait for a few months before expecting any progress though. 1 Action, (1 Dominion/Influence if you need to recruit skeletons for the work)
-Recruit an Advisor! Track down a candidate and recruit them to your cause. Candidates will probably pop up in the course of your adventures, but you can speed the process along if you like. 1 Adventure Action.
Oh boy, there are a lot of options up there! Feel free to take those options and toss them if you want, it will only slightly hurt my feelings. Those are more suggestions, and you could do whatever you want by adding details or doing something else entirely.
Just keep in mind, regular actions should just get a paragraph or two of attention. Adventure Actions are the ones that might take up multiple posts. Actions can also take multiple turns if you go big enough, or in the case of the 100,000 size skelly army, to find enough bodies to fill your ranks.
As always, feel free to ask questions or point out something I missed.
Formatting is a work in progress, of course.
Author
Topic: Lich King: Stone and Bone (SG) (Read 10226 times)