Campaign created Monday, June 16, 2008 05:40:41 PM by Shadowsoul

No vacancies.

In a world devastated by near apocalyptic wars and wild magic there is but one hope. New Dawn, an army of the heroic, the redeemed and the desperate, has arisen to free the world from evil. The players take the role of New Dawn's elite agents hunting monsters and villains through the wastes.

No vacancies.

There was no single cause of this catastrophe unless one lays all the blame on the preceding conflict The Mage Wars. This terrible war shook the civilised world to its very core and so excited the flow of magic that for many years afterwards sorcery would be a more unstable and destructive art and the channels it tapped were often darker than before.

In the final days of the Mage Wars the two mightiest wizards of the era faced off and destroyed one another in a cataclysmic duel that rocked the very land itself and shattered the ultimate expressions of magic The Great Barriers. These were mystical bindings that had been kept in place for centuries and were used to keep the various forces of evil quiescent. With their failure many horrors were unleashed upon the world. Varakus Bane, Master of Life-in-Death, marched his rotting hordes out of the island continent that had been his home and prison for many millennia. The Bloodlords, Kings among Vampires, stirred in their ancient tombs and came forth once again. The Beast-Masters slipped their bonds and unleashed a flood of tainted werelings upon the kingdoms of man. And even the fearsome hordes of the barbaric Yonsai left the blasted archipelago to which they had been banished and sailed the seas on demon winds to bring destruction to the lands of civilised races.

The land already groaned beneath the reality-warping effects of the Mage Wars and its peoples were divided and fractious. Mystical conflagrations, storms and earthquakes moved ahead of the invaders and warring factions tried to take advantage of the chaos. As mighty magical forces battled once again the fabric of the world itself was torn and demons poured in or were invited by ambitious mages; beasts both mundane and legendary were tainted by the unleashed powers of magic and went incurably berserk while the ever opportunistic Trollkin roamed the land seemingly at will.

One by one the civilised nations of the world fell.

It seemed that this was the final showdown between Good and Evil and Good lost. However the armies of Evil did not win as such. The goodly peoples put up a tremendous fight and of course the various invading factions had no interest in cooperating; in the end no army retained enough power to claim any kind of victory. The Trickster God is known to have survived the final conflict and some wonder if his hand was in the various factional disputes that destroyed the forces of darkness even as they tore the kingdoms of the world to shreds.

Bane's body was destroyed by holy relics and mighty rituals were enacted to shatter his very soul and prevent his resurrection. But the assassins were a cabal of powerful vampires who had sacked a grand temple in order to gain the items they needed. Those Lords of the Night that survived the battle with Bane then fell to fighting murderously over his body with its precious and oh so powerful blood. The legions of the undead dissolved into turmoil, some wandered aimlessly, others were commanded by lesser necromancers with smaller ambitions. And with all the world to fight over the Blood-Lords found that their old alliances were far weaker than they had once been.

The Yonsai were more or less wiped off the face of the planet by warriors desperately fighting to save their homelands and monsters who wanted those lands for themselves. Those few tattered remnants that remained found that their blood-hungry deity spoke to them no more; even gods perished in this war to end all wars.

And the Beast-Masters had never claimed to be in control of their wereling offspring to begin with. Nor were the werekind, scattered and without strategy, any more successful at surviving the chaos than anyone else.

Although the bodycount was not as high as in a standard PA Earth setting the combination of magical disasters, incredibly bloody wars, mystical plagues and general famine and chaos served to destroy most of the population.

The great villains and heroes of the age mostly contrived to kill each other off and in the end there were no victors, only survivors picking through the rubble.

And so with the melodramatic intro over we come to the present day and the point of all this.

Almost a hundred years has passed since the final great battle of that apocalyptic age ended. The world lies in ruins, humanity and other sentient races huddle together in paranoid little villages and hideaways while monsters of all kinds stalk through the wilderness. The powers of magic grant some people weird gifts and turn others into bizarre mutants. Some savants have carved new technologies out of the magical wilderness while others desperately preserve older practices. New creatures wander out of the wasteland. And of course there are still sorcerers, vampires, werelings and other dangerous beings stalking the land.

However, the campaign itself focuses on a new hope, (if you will forgive the Star Warsism). A visionary leader has cobbled together a group of allies who intend to roll back the darkness bit by bit and restore peace to the wounded land; their working title is New Dawn. This group have their headquarters in a secluded valley attended by an order of nature worshippers who survived the final wars. They also include a group of mage-artificers and the only Order Militant of the old gods to make it to the present day.

New Dawn is recruiting an army with which to redeem the land and to this end they will accept anyone who sincerely wishes to help or who at least is not planning on betraying them; even monsters such as vampires are accepted into the fold so long as they restrain their darker impulses. On the flipside of this generosity is the vengeance of the Templars of the Order Militant against those who betray New Dawn and the magical tracker amulets issued to all agents that monitor the spiritual state of their wearers, (basically a kind of alignment alarm).

The PCs would take the role of newly recruited agents who have been gathered together into a team and dispatched to further the cause of New Dawn. Since they would probably be playing beings of considerable power the points level would be around 250.

Although the focus would be on battling evil there would be quite a lot of dealing with internal tensions and the justifiable paranoia of most NPCs the party meets. Why should the villagers trust a Werewolf after all? For that matter why should the Templar accompanying the Were trust him enough to refrain from smiting him out of hand?

There are other aspects of this world and other character options but for the moment the possible list includes.

Just about any kind of mage you can think of.

Mutants. Both X-Men style and grizzly PA style.

Extremely talented norms. Basically warriors, assassins, diplomats etc with high characteristics and/or super-skills.

Psychics.

Vampires.

Shapeshifters. (Werelings).

Demon-tainted or Demonkin.

Undead.

Priests.

Holy Knights.

Artificers and inventors using mystical technology.

Inhuman races of various kinds.

For more information look at the 'A New Dawn: Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy' thread on the Hero Forums.