BARGAINS WITH DEATH
What have you used in your games?
So far only one PC, the bard, has died in my campaign, and now he has to sing the praises of Death to every town he visits. He’s become oddly gung-ho about this, and picked up the wicked-old compendium class “The Walking Dead” as follow-through.
I’ve also had one PC who died. They came back as an avatar of Death (hungry dead/vampire from Number Appearing) and eventually killed a rival god in Death’s name.
Only Thomas Roberts can tell the tale of Ibn (correct spelling?)
Ibn is dead, long live The legend of his curse.
I had a PC die, the player rolled a new character, and in the same session had to roll for Last Breath again. He lucked out on an 8 and now in order to stay alive, he must end one worthy life per day or be taken back into the void.
A bard died in a one shot. He carried the horn of a very large beast as musical instrument. Death demanded that he find the whole beast and kill it, since it’s a kind of creature long forgotten and Death is tired of taking just men and other common races. It gave the bard one year and one day to accomplish the task.
I had the ranger promise hades he would destroy Zeuses lightning bolt once the party had found it. (They were all looking for it)
The thief lost his fingers. Death now laughs at his attempts at sleight of hand from beyond the grave.
In hindsight, I wish I had not done this because now we have to have ridiculous discussions about what is and isn’t possible without fingers.
Turns out, in a fantasy world, almost anything can somehow be possible without fingers.
I played Dahlia, a Cleric of the Reformed Church of Death, which was kind of a weird jibe on the Protestant Reformation- anyway, there used to be this human sacrifice death cult, which was purged in a huge war, but there’s still this city built of the bones of the god of death, with all these sacrifice ziggurats, and a kindler gentler death church that preaches the sanctity of human suffering and enduring one’s lot in life.
While exploring the catacombs of the city and trying to tell which feuding factions in the church were trying to bring back the old ways, Dahlia fell to 0 hit points, and got a 7-9 on the roll.
She sees Death, her god. And he tells her to bring back the old ways.
Massive shift in the scope of the campaign. Dahlia ends up meeting up with a Death Cult she was supposed to investigate and joins them, then meets with her superior, the Bishop, and after a heated discussion, kills him and reanimates his corpse and tasks it to herald the return of the Death God.
After some discussion, the party splits irrevocably- Tain, the fighter, general who led the fight against the original death cult, refuses to wield the artifact sword of Death. After some OOC discussion, Dahlia, and one other character, Kark, Abram’s Druid stay behind and become NPCs, and the rest of the leaves the city to continue on the game.
Several levels later, they return to the city, where Dahlia is now High Priestess and is mobilizing the city for war, and Kark is her right hand man and enforcer. They are the end bosses of the campaign, after a mighty crazy battle with three undead skeletons, bluffing our way past a death spirit, and Dahlia and Kark using all their considerable powers against us.
Thanks to Sabe Jones for running such a great game! Truly a memorable experience.
I am running a game that started with all the characters dying and moving on to The Hall of Adventurers ( kind of a Valhalla /limbo/purgatory). My idea is when the characters reach level ten they will be judged to see if they are worthy to ascend to the realms beyond.
The thief has met death several times (an old hag in a filthy alley where he died on his home world) In dreams and in Last Breath rolls. Each character meets their own version of death. Since he plays a charming ladies man who loves his wine and good times the first thing he gave up was his “Jua De Vie” in the form of losing his love of carousing. He handed over his special goblet as a token. The next time he met her he offered his services to assist he in acquiring a few special souls.
It has been fun playing out these death scenes. The players like it as well. I’m not too sure what will happen if they fail the last breath roll though. Such a great idea to make dying a fun part of a game like that.
“Joi de vivre.” It’s French.
Thanks for the correction:)
No problem. I was worried that I sounded a bit abrupt and jerkish there.
Nope my player uses the term and I guessed at the spelling. It is good to have the correct spelling. I was just lazy and didn’t look it up.
Last night he was scheming to steal it back. Another adventure inspired by player ideas, I love how easy this game is to GM sometimes.