Adventure seeds!

[Jason]

I am feeling inspired by the "Donate your NPCs" thread, and I was just thinking about how some of my favorite parts of the supplement books are the open-ended adventure seeds, so I thought I might start a thread for any who feel like sharing their own brief plot ideas. Here's one I ran as a one-shot right around Christmas:

A Symphonic Disturbance on 34th Street

A number of disturbances in the Symphony have attracted the attention of local celestials. The events seem localized around a certain “Mall Santa” who has even rational-thinking mundanes wondering whether he could be the real deal. The angels on the scene know better: “Santa” is probably either an angel, a demon, or an ethereal. Whoever it is, “Santa” may not even realize how much trouble he’s about to be in the middle of.

(Click for spoiler-text version of what was really going on in my game, and a couple alternate scenarios...)

Spoiler:  

What's Really Going On

“Santa” is actually a well-meaning Renegade, a former Shedite of Greed eager to prove himself as a potential Redemption candidate by embodying the very symbol of generosity. He’ll be pleased as punch to cop to his Christmas miracles for the first angels he meets. He possessed a homeless and friendless fellow who bore a striking resemblance to Santa, figuring he had a few days to bring some people cheer with the help of a guy who could hardly be left in worse shape than before.

Unfortunately, being raised Hellborn leaves one with an odd sense of what a “good deed” is. The Shedite has been making disturbances by using Songs on children, getting them to cheerfully confess their sins so their parents know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, and sending them off feeling more docile and obedient. Some digging will reveal that he actually got the idea from Krampus, an ethereal spirit who’s using the Shedite’s powers to satisfy his traditional urge to wreak mischief upon undisciplined children. Now, not only is the Shedite being pursued by the Game and under suspicion by any angels he meets, but the would-be founders of a new ethereal Santa Syndicate are gunning for his host -- unaware that the man in the red suit is actually human, and concerned he’s moving in on their cut on the holiday Essence.

After discovering the truth about “Santa,” the PCs face a few conundrums. How can they make sure the Shedite’s poor host doesn’t get killed at the hands of angry Santa spirits? Will they help the Shedite get Redeemed, or toss him back to the Game? And how big a priority is Krampus’ mischief when you’re dealing with all of the above?

Alternate Scenarios

The Windie Who Stole Christmas
“Santa” is a Servitor of Wind who’s planning on disappearing with all the spoiled rich kids’ presents after three days of miracles. He’ll give the swapped loot to poor kids, and teach the customers at Macy’s that Christmas is not about rampant consumerism, but about … well, who knows, but something else, anyway. Do the PCs want to foil this plot, join in, or take some other course of action?

The New God of Christmas
“Santa” is the real deal -- sort of. He’s an ethereal who is trying to establish himself as the God of Christmas, conceptualizing the holiday in secular (but entirely inclusive and sincerely good-hearted) terms. He knows that God and angels are real, but believes that more good can be done by putting aside the religious side of the holiday. It’s possible that the PCs might even learn (perhaps through an NPC serving Destiny or by a roll of 6 on the Malakite resonance) that his greatest potential is indeed to “save” Christmas (for someone, if not everyone). The PCs may need to decide whether he’s worth protecting from the other Santas, and whether to let him keep doing what he’s doing.

[Phoenix42]

Brill... I'll definitely be stealing that one from you, if I may (does that make me the GM who stole Christmas?) And speaking of Christmas, here's one that I originally had in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer round that also featured as a Christmas special, but fits nicely to IN:

Hosts of Christmas Past
The setting is originally in Europe, but can basically be anywhere. If outside Europe,

Spoiler:  

simply replace "Either ends of the Empire" with "Four Corners of the World". The adventure is best suited to a human campaign rather than celestials, but can probably be modified.

An eruption in the symphony brings the PCs on scene to a fight between two groups of human Soldiers, evidently using swords, guns and songs against each other in a fight among old Roman ruins (a museum with Roman art is fine, too), just a few days before Christmas. The combatants appear to be Roman assassins, and it appears that an ancient conflict has resurfaced. What looks like a reenactment convention gone wrong seems to be the resurfacing of an earlier evil, as both sides of the conflict appear to be supernaturally unaging; or are they undead..? Whoever the parties are, it seems an ancient problem has come to town, and the season seems to have something to do with it...

Spoiler:  

The background of this story in my campaign is slightly more complicated, so I have listed all the information; I apologise for the lengthy read. Of course GMs should free to fiddle with all the variables presented here, I know this is more like half an adventure than a plot hook, but it was kind of tricky to condense.

The one side (originally three strong, one dead, one wounded) is clearly losing, and is on the defensive, the other side (five or more strong, depending on the players) moves to attack the arriving party or otherwise deter them from the scene. Should the PCs reveal themselves to be angelic, the attackers withdraw, confused. If they show themselves to be demonic, the attackers commit all their efforts to destroying them. After the fight is over, the surviving defender introduces himself as Gaius Marcellus Aurelianus, a servitor of the Roman deity Sol Invictus.

Historically, Sol Invictus was the direct predecessor of Christianity in the later Roman Empire (3rd century and after, maybe even before then), and many features of his worship (monotheist God of Light, birthday celebrated on winter solstice, presents handed out amongst families) were taken over when Emperor Constantine introduced Christianity as a legitimate religion. His symbol was that of the sun crown upon the emperor's head, often depicted on coins.

In IN, Sol Invictus was also a plot planted by Gabriel specifically to enable the spread of Christianity through the Roman Empire. But like so many plots, it backfired. First, the Romans took over the Sol Invictus worship so devotely that Sol Invictus manifested as a true ethereal deity. Gabriel sussed this out with Sol Invictus by offering him a deal, working for heaven "undercover" in return for protection from the wrathful earlier Roman deities who took Sol's rise rather personally, including a later retirement plan and the promise that his name and works would live on, thus providing him with enough essence to live comfortably for most of eternity.

But then Uriel's followers began hounding Sol Invictus' church and his ethereal messengers with their crusades. The Archangel of Purity even created a specific order of soldiers, the Intercessors, to deal with the "heathens". As one by one both the ethereal and material power of the Sol Invictus cult crumbled, Gabriel was put on the spot. She could not openly intercede against Uriel, yet she needed to keep her promise to Sol, not to mention keeping the cult alive long enough for Christianity to take its place. Her solution was arms dealership: she supplied the servitors of Sol with enough artefacts to hold off the servitors of Uriel for the time being. The most powerful of these relics was the sun crown itself, which was capable of channeling the undiluted power of Fire, a fragment of Gabriel's essence - a show of how important the spreading of faith was to her. The exact powers of the artefact are up the individual GM, but suffice to say that it is powerful, and can utilise both songs and attunements of Gabriel; it has certainly preserved the youth of its "Roman" bearers, who are up to 1000 years old (the original Roman priests have passed away a long time ago, hunted down by the Intercessors; the bearers now are haphazardly continuing a tradition they only partly understand, but fervently believe in). But the more important part is that the crown contains a fragment of Gabriel herself, in her state prior to her descent into madness. In an extended function, the crown also has the power to fulfill beneficial desires for the righteous around the winter solstice, in other words, handing out Christmas presents. Of course, the crown, being made by Gabriel, may also have the option of punishing the wicked, with all the niceties a gm wishes to imbue. During this annual process, the otherwise powerfully defended crown is vulnerable, and what is more, a destruction of the Crown on Christmas would mean irreversibly destroying Gabriel's essence fragment.

The Sol servitors defended the crown long after Christianity had taken over, since Gabriel was soon too "distracted" to look after them and put them to rest. Though the more powerful uses of the crown have been lost over time, the more subtle effects have served to keep the Protectors, as they call themselves, alive over the centuries. Now, however, the crown has been stolen by the Intercessors, who are bent on destroying it.

Ironically, while the Protectors have no idea about the crown's true origins, and are more mystical than anything else, the Intercessors have gone from merely fanatical to purely evil. Following Uriel's departure centuries after both Christianity and Islam had gone somewhat astray, the Intercessors soon lost their way, and in time were taken over by Torq, a demon of Malphas, who, having put the pieces together, found the whole thing immensely funny. Masking himself as an "Angel of the Lord", he had the Intercessors hunting off and on for the Protectors - though to him it was more of a hobby than anything else. He has turned many of the loyal intercessors into Vampires (who feed on gold, since this was the primary material used for the artefacts Gabriel gave Sol). They are also all devout Catholics, leading monastic lives and engaging in self-flagellation.

While the players have to contend with an ancient feud between deluded but honorable Roman soldier-priests of a long-gone religion on the one hand and murderous Christian vampires on the other, there are more troubling things on the horizon. Astute servitors of Gabriel will want to retrieve the fragment of Gabriel's old self in the hope that it will bring back portions of her sanity. Servitors of Dominic meanwhile will try to get hold of the crown and the soldiers to show that Gabriel has been undermining the cause of heaven even earlier than previously thought. At the same time, Belial has no interest in a rejuvenated Gabriel out to get him, and will dispatch his guys to "handle" the situation. Malphas meanwhile thinks the whole thing is just perfect.

The crown protected the Intercessors from detection when in their hideout; however, once a year, in the week before Christmas, the crown must be ritually taken to the ends of the Empire, symbolising the extent of the power of the Sun and the power of the Emperor (Marcellus will readily explain this). As can be expected of mystical buzz like that, it has no relevance whatsoever for the power of the crown, but is just a religious ritual without supernatural effects - though it did allow the Intercessors to track them down and steal the artefact. However, he also explains that after its world tour, on Christmas, the crown unfolds its full powers, and that this power in the wrong hands could well mean disaster (the fact that this actually means presents should be left as a nice surprise for the players).

While the players have a wide variety of possibilities, most will centre on retrieving the crown. In my favourite version, with a nice group, if they actually fend off all the interested parties and then return the crown to its rightful owners, they are rewarded by being given their heart's desire for Christmas, bathed in somewhat citchy warm light. Also, the overjoyed Marcellus leaves them double-sided coins with the sigil of Sol Invictus, luck token relics in their own right. Of course, depending on the inclination of group and gm, this could go any way you please...

Enjoy!

[Jason]

That is some deliciously thought-through back story there.

I figured I would restrain myself from posting more seeds until somebody else posted. So here is another!

Playthings

I designed this as a one-shot to introduce some players to ethereal PCs. The PCs are a group of dream spirits born from the imaginations of a group of children who played with their toys together years ago. As the children grew up and left their toys behind, the spirits remained close -- after all, their Images all involve being close companions -- and settled down in a safe domain in the Marches. When one of them goes missing, apparently in search of the now grown-up child he fears may be in trouble, the others must go to the corporeal realm and back again in search of their missing friends.

Each of the PCs has a Soul Link back to the child who played with the toy of it as a kid. The pre-gen characters I made include Blankie, a Primal Spirit of Security; Lucky, a yellow rabbit trickster spirit; Carr, a variant of the Tail Pipe Gobot spirit, created from a kid who had no idea what a Gobot was;
"Holmes," the embodiment of a girl's dollhouse. The missing character is Fuzzo, a spirit of Information and Family, based on a puppet from a children's educational TV show.

Spoiler:  

One possible avenue: A decent portion of the game may be just in watching the PCs try to navigate through the mundane world with comical results.

For a somewhat darker approach, when the PCs track their missing friend by following their Soul Links back to the now-grown children, they'll find that Fuzzo's "kid" is actually in a coma. Now they must go back to the Marches, into the coma victim's vast and tormented dreamscape. There, they discover that this was all actually a trap for Fuzzo, laid by another version of Fuzzo who consumed him in Assumption combat. The PCs have to decide whether they regard this other Fuzzo as their friend's killer or as the the friend himself, as he does, after all, have a bit of the old, kinder Fuzzo left in him...

[cptbutton]

And idea I had a while back, which I was reminded of by the recent "In Nomine, minus the angels" thread.

The Lockout

One day all angels and demons find themselves cut off from Heaven and Hell. Trying to ascend just doesn't work, you stay where you are, even at Tethers. Invoking Superiors or other forms of communication with the Celestial Realm gets no answer. No one comes down. Dominic isn't showing up for his usual inspections.

No one on the Corporeal or Etheral planes knows what happened. Or if they do, they aren't saying.

Angels and demons who lose their last vessel don't come back, not even the Malakites.

In the Marches, climbing the towers just leaves you on an endless staircase. The Celestials at the bases of the towers don't know anything more than all the rest of the Celestials.

Has Heaven invaded Hell, or vice versa?
Have the Etheral Gods pulled off some sort of coup?
Is there some sort of metaphysical bad weather between the planes?
Was the Celestial plane destroyed?
Has God abandoned 2/3 of creation?


You could vessel kill someone and them send them lot of Essence to see if Limbo is working as usual. Assuming you can find a volunteer.

If Eli is walking the Earth, maybe he would know something. If you can find him. Or invoke him.