In one hell of a turn-around that I saw coming thanks to the character creation process for the prologue to my “The Rotten” campaign, my little group of evil player characters killed the entire leadership of the rebellion–and a huge chunk of the town besides–despite having landed in a situation they were incredibly lucky to escape from. You see, they’d decided to take up with the maligned Lord Besk, chief necromancer in charge of maintaining the barriers around this Haven (a city made safe from the undead creatures that walked the fading remnants of the material plane by those very barriers), because he and the city council he had wrapped around his finger were willing to pay them. This turn-around, necessary because their plan to slowly assassinate individual targets one at a time fell apart almost immediately due to bad rolls, was so complete and thorough that it instantly wrapped up our prologue and set the stage for the game that will take place in the shadow of the city they’d destroyed. And, you know, underneath the heel of the Great Lich they’d helped create since that’s what Besk was up to this whole time. That and somehow controlling the massive nightwalkers that had introduced The Rot to the world and were slowly draining everything of its life. Thanks to all that, I get to keep all their PCs around as generals and trusted lieutenants for Great Lich Besk and sprinkle them into the campaign in appropriate places! Sure, I’ve got a ton of work to get them from level one to whatever level the player characters will be ready for that kind of challenge, but there’s no denying how nice it is to have the later parts of the campaign already fleshed out.

Our session began with two of the members of the party already in flight. One was using all of his monk-granted speed to get away since he’d already exhausted most of his resources and all but the last few of his hit points. The other, the party’s Ranger, was steadily moving away while sending shot after shot back at the clustered rebels, trying to keep them busy healing each other, and the rebellion’s leader, a miracle-working paladin supposedly blessed by an unknown god (as all the known ones had turned away from what remained of the mortals on the material plane), busy reviving his teammates. It was really close for a moment there, but some well-timed invisibility and the party’s dedication to keep killing the allies that this unnamed champion (he had a name, they just never learned it since everyone talked about him like he was a BioWare protagonist) meant that those two were able to get away safely. The third player character, another Monk, was unable or unwilling to make that kind of escape. Their player was incredibly dedicated to keeping the pressure on the rebels and, unluckily for them, the most powerful enemy spellcaster was equally dedicated in their attempts to cast “Banishment” on said player character. It failed twice before finally succeeding the third time, only after the monk had racked up another few kills. It looked bad for this villainous PC as the rebels gathered around the spot they’d reappear and prepared themselves to absolutely stab the shit out of them, but one of the other players was prepared for this moment and had been acting swiftly to make sure he and his remaining companion would be ready for it.

You see, since I was interested in high drama and power plays rather than balance, I’d given my players ridiculously good stats to start and told them that they could have 1 Legendary magic item, 2 Very Rare magic items, 3 Rares, and then 4 Uncommons. The two monks spent their allowance on weapons, stat upgrades, or cool items that gave them ridiculous powers (such as the ability to deal extra necrotic damage and heal for the amount of damage dealt) while the Ranger bought a lot of that stuff, but also bought one little Legendary scroll that he and I had once talked about once upon a time but never had reason or opportunity to use: The Scroll of the Comet. This magic scroll, for those of you who are unfamiliar, summons a massive comet anywhere within a mile, that then falls to the earth and creates a crater that is fifty feet deep and a thousand feet in diameter, dealing an absolutely ludicrous amount of damage to anyone caught within that crater. Since the one monk had been banished and the other two villainous player characters had already fled the battlefield, the ranger used that scroll to summon the comet and instantly destroy, with no hope of revival, all of the rebellion’s leadership save the one being who had enough hit points to survive despite failing his saving throw: The Champion, who was a twentieth-level Paladin, with all the broken Player Character powers that conferred.

From there, as the party rushed back into range to fight this guy, doing their best to support their other ally (who’d popped back into reality fifty feet above the bottom of the crater, safe as can be, since they only poofed back into existence once the comet had struck), he systematically worked through that monk’s hit points and, despite their attempts to flee, was able to catch up to them and take them down, constantly following them at increasing speed as he activated abilities, cast spells, and absolutely unleashed everything he had against the villains who sought to lay low the good people of that Haven. Shortly after knocking out the first monk, he knocked out the second monk. Then, barely clinging to life, he turned his attention to the ranger just in time to get shot through the faceplate of his super magical armor and die. He did not depart alone, though, since the first of the monks to go down rolled only failures on their death saving throws and expired. The other monk, though, managed to stabilize with some lucky death saving throws and was brought back to consciousness by the ranger so the two of them could return to Lord Besk with their fallen companion.

Now, with the rebellion crushed, they had free reign to rest and wait while Lord Besk completed his ritual. They’d been promised by an intermediary that, once the unspecified ritual to deal with the rebellious agitators was complete, they would be given their reward and that their friend would return to their side, so they were content to wait. Unfortunately for almost everybody else, the ritual completed successfully, all of those who would not swear fealty to Lord Besk while living under the protection of his anti-undead necrotic dome were killed to fuel his ascent to Lichdom, and the player characters saw Lord Besk for the first time in two days as he descended out of a massive pillar of necrotic energy while the distant thumping of Nightwalkers grew closer. It looked initially like the reward they were promised would be of the eternal sort, but the Great Lich Besk assured his allies that he still had need of the living and offered them whatever riches they wanted from the Haven that was now under his control, anything within his power to grant that wasn’t covered by the riches, and a new, powerful and entirely self-possessed undead form for their fallen companion. So now the drunken Monk is unfortunately in charge of the Haven, going from one quickly abandoned disaster of an enterprise to another, the Frog Ranger now lives in and maintains a swamp created from the remains of the original Haven’s city (all the living people now live on top of the cliff, directly under Lord Besk’s somehow still fleshy thumb), and the ghostly monk now haunts that swamp, leading travelers to their deaths in deathless delight at the entrapment and suffering of others.

As far as villainous origins go, this one was a wild ride to play out. I’ve got a lot of good stuff to work with, as the players altered the environment and the world around this old Haven, so I’m excited to get into it with them with upcoming weekend. Or at least start getting into it with them. We still have Session 0 to do, to make their new characters and to make sure that the three PCs that they’ll be playing are up to surviving the harsh world in which they find themselves. I also still need to figure out the tenor of the campaign, see if they want to lean into the disaster stuff, go full tragedy, or just deal with a real meat grinder of a campaign as they essentially play low-level characters in a mid-to-high level area. I’ve got plenty of stuff already worked out to give them a chance at survival, but we’ve already seen that the dice rolls seem to take a particular delight in foiling all their plans, so there’s no telling where things will go from here. I’m just excited to see what kind of characters they come up with, drawing from a pool of survivors who left the Haven before Lord Besk’s ritual was able to complete. It’ll make for some fun storytelling, that’s for sure!