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#21 Arkenor

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Posted 13 December 2009 - 06:46 PM

That was an interesting story, but Vecna's background is well known. Last time I checked in on him he had escaped Ravenloft, came close to making the whole of existence explode, and is currently doing very nicely as a member of the Greyhawk pantheon over on Oerth.

During the period Baldur's Gate takes place, Vecna, who with the help of his patron, The Serpent, had scratched his way up to demigod status, has been imprisoned (along with Kas) within Ravenloft due to the events described in the adventure "Vecna Lives". He has a very thorough write-up in the Ravenloft sourcebook of that period. Later, his antics in Sigil (described in "Die Vecna Die!") where he tried his level best to become ruler of the multiverse, are often used to explain the rule changes between 2nd and 3rd ed.

Elminster would certainly not consider Vecna to be fictional. The guy is a menace of the highest order. And his life and empire are a matter of historical record on Oerth.

I can't find any record of Rhin or Qwill so I'm assuming you wrote that. It's very nice, but I don't understand why you need to bring Vecna into it at all. You're basically retconning Vecna, one of the most important and influential D&D characters of all time, into non-existance. If Vecna is a myth, and these items were born on some unknown world, then how are these even Greyhawk Artifacts in the first place?

Would it not be easier just to have your artifacts be their own thing, the Hand of Rhin and the eye of Qwill, and nothing to do with Vecna?



This post has been funded in part by the Please Don't Annoy Vecna Foundation.

Edited by Arkenor, 13 December 2009 - 07:23 PM.

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#22 jube

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Posted 14 December 2009 - 03:10 AM

That was an interesting story, but Vecna's background is well known. Last time I checked in on him he had escaped Ravenloft, came close to making the whole of existence explode, and is currently doing very nicely as a member of the Greyhawk pantheon over on Oerth.

During the period Baldur's Gate takes place, Vecna, who with the help of his patron, The Serpent, had scratched his way up to demigod status, has been imprisoned (along with Kas) within Ravenloft due to the events described in the adventure "Vecna Lives". He has a very thorough write-up in the Ravenloft sourcebook of that period. Later, his antics in Sigil (described in "Die Vecna Die!") where he tried his level best to become ruler of the multiverse, are often used to explain the rule changes between 2nd and 3rd ed.

Elminster would certainly not consider Vecna to be fictional. The guy is a menace of the highest order. And his life and empire are a matter of historical record on Oerth.

I can't find any record of Rhin or Qwill so I'm assuming you wrote that. It's very nice, but I don't understand why you need to bring Vecna into it at all. You're basically retconning Vecna, one of the most important and influential D&D characters of all time, into non-existance. If Vecna is a myth, and these items were born on some unknown world, then how are these even Greyhawk Artifacts in the first place?

Would it not be easier just to have your artifacts be their own thing, the Hand of Rhin and the eye of Qwill, and nothing to do with Vecna?



This post has been funded in part by the Please Don't Annoy Vecna Foundation.




??????????????????????????

Did not for one instance try to contend that Vecna does not exist !!!!!!!! Like you said he is alive and well doing great things in Oerth.

BUT

2nd Ed rules have "the eye and hand of Vecna" as playable artifacts, in fact its in the back of 2nd ed DM,s guide along with the story of vecnas downfall and the descriptions of the other artifacts.

So 2nd ed DMs guide says he is dead with his hand and eye doing the rounds in greyhawk: and a host of other info shows him alive and well, how can this be ?

( have included the grayhawk campaign book for others that want to do the background )


My story attempts to square the circle and explain the contradictions.

The " Hand and Eye of Vecna " as stated in the DMs guide were never native to Vecna in the first place, they were powerful artifacts he found, owned and called his own, and indeed deliberately propagated that lie. thus when he was stripped of them , although an inconvenience, he still survived.

The history of the hand and eye i created was the history BEFORE Vecna found them, indeed the effect of accelerated aging is the reason Vecna became a lich, why else would any right minded arch mage become a undead other than to gain immortality?

With your knowledge of Vecnas history would this proposed idea work ( ie finding items and calling his own etc,,, )

And as background i propose Greyhawk and Forgotten realms are on alternate Prime material planes, accessed through the astral, other alternates i propose could and do include many other genres. In my history i have made reference to DBZ, Many colored land ( by julian may ),Books of Corum ( Michael moorcock ),and the original Traveler Game. ( all of which made excellent P+P AD+D campaign settings! )

But the fact that there is this confusion means an urgent rewrite of the story to make Vecnas part in all this a LOT clearer :)

Edited by vilkacis, 14 December 2009 - 11:19 AM.


#23 jube

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Posted 14 December 2009 - 03:52 AM

Gosh, I finally read the entire thing ^_^ That's really something you have there, but one question, are those names in the story real FR guys?? Phoenix, Ballor, Jack?? I know that the AoM gods are known from the FR wiki :P

But I gotta hand it to ya, that story has 2010, Matrix and Dragonball all rolled into one neat package :lol:

Thus why not create a new BG2 spell Plane Shift, basically copy the teleport spell and modify to bring party to astral plane, which would be a custom area from which they could get to the artifacts and other very high lvl adventures.

Well, all I can say is, that spell seems to be only meant for this quest, but it can be seriously expanded :devil: (like optional dungeon maps or more of these "what-really-happened" areas :woot:)

Imbalancing you say?? Well, how bout these areas give NO XP?? :devil: (hey, since they're "astral" you won't have any memories of what happened when you return ... other than the swanky new Vecna hand :P)

PS: How do you explain the Robe of Vecna btw?? Machines don't usually use robes :P especially a sentient "the Machine"-type machine like the 'Great Machine" (which is what Vecna is afaict :P)

PS2: And what about this?? :P Wikipedia entry on Vecna (check history)

Cheers,
Lol



Dude you totally read my mind, the spell i intend is a version of Planeshift, but that only takes you to the astral.
Planeshift unlike the Astral spell, Planeshift transfers the caster bodily to the appropriate plane thus no silver cord and no problems with bringing things back.
The astral will be a load of custom areas all very barren ( as in the D+D rules ) and all having some very nasty encounters ( one would only ever encounter extremely powerful beings capable of dimension travel) and some having gates to adventures, one of which would be the vecna quest. Blindly Planeshifting to the astral and wandering about would be certain death, a astral map would be needed, was going to put that on demigorgans corpse in WatchersKeep.
Maybe other people might write some other extremely high lv adventures among the planes to put as other exits from the astral but i am not holding breath :)

Thanks for the vecna link am going through it now

#24 vilkacis

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Posted 14 December 2009 - 11:19 AM

copyrighted.jpg

...yeah, except no. I can't find that on WotC's free downloads page, so I'm pretty sure it's illegal.

#25 jube

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Posted 14 December 2009 - 02:09 PM

copyrighted.jpg

...yeah, except no. I can't find that on WotC's free downloads page, so I'm pretty sure it's illegal.


Ahh sorry had no idea how to check whats legal or not, thought since this stuff was last published in the early 90s and would be amazed if it was ever to be re-printed, that we were on fairly safe ground, but hey best be safe than sorry !

#26 jube

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Posted 14 December 2009 - 03:14 PM

ok here is history re-write, will not bother posting whole lot again just the edit


....................... hand drove Sasaran's father to murder his son as he lay sleeping in his crib. All these kingdoms, all these futures, the hand of Vecna laid waste."

But some greater scholars ( Elminster for one ! ) have asked questions of this tale, questions such as "why did Vecna become a lich", "how did this ,admittedly powerful, undead mage gain the ability to dominate a huge kingdom and inspire enough fear in the greater and lesser gods to keep it! " and " Given that many of the pieces of Vecna before his ascension are artifacts ( including the First Digit (right thumb), Second Digit (right index finger), Third Digit (right middle finger), Last Digit (right pinky finger), Incisors (a pair of inappropriately named fang-like canines), Molar, Scalp, Skin, Heart, Foot (left), and Right Eye ) Why does Vecna the lesser God always appear without a Eye and Hand.

The answer is both simple and complex. Vecna was born as a human, centuries ago as a member of the untouchable caste in the Flan city of Fleeth on Oerth. He was initially trained by his mother, Mazzel, in the art of magic, before she was executed by the government of Fleeth for practicing witchcraft. Vowing revenge, Vecna eventually assumed a mastery of the dark arts achieved by no mortal before or since. Some say this achievement was due to direct tutelage by Mok'slyk the Serpent, believed to be the personification of arcane magic itself. And it was the serpent himself who showed his pupil the complex astral path that led to the secret location of the hand and eye, after battles with demigods daemons and worse! they were his and like all the previous owners he cut of his own hand, gouged out his own eye and fitted the alien things. It was not two years hence before he realized he had aged 15, and that his life was being inexorably and quickly eaten away by his new acquisitions, his only answer was immortality, and the only sure method of that was becoming a Lich, which again with the serpents help he did.

Nearly one thousand years later his Vecna, now a ruler of a great and terrible empire (in the Sheldomar Valley, centered near the modern-day Rushmoors), laid siege to the city of Fleeth with an army of arcane spellcasters and undead. On the verge of conquering Fleeth, the officials of the city came before him to beg for mercy. They offered up the entire city and her wealth if only Vecna would spare the lives of her citizens. When Vecna was not satisfied, the officials offered their own lives. Vecna gave one of their number, Artau, and his family, over to his lieutenant, Kas, who spent the entire day torturing and murdering them before the other officials. Still unsatisfied, Vecna slaughtered all within the city, and had their heads stacked before the officials, with those of their family members prominent. Vecna then granted his mercy, granting the officials leave to depart, and promising them his protection for the rest of their lives.

At his empire's height, Vecna was betrayed and destroyed by his most trusted lieutenant, a vampire called Kas the Bloody-Handed, using a magical sword that Vecna himself had crafted for him, Kas struck of the hand while Vecna laid dormant and the eye too was removed before Vecna could fully wake. In the battle that followed the hand and eye were once again set adrift among the outer planes. Many years later when Vecna had returned to ascend to demi-godhood he learned the final legacy of having owned the items, no matter what he did, regeneration, wishing, etc etc etc he could not regain his left Eye and hand, something which was trivial with all the other bits that were cut off him !

To understand the history of the hand before Vecna we must start at the beginning with a understanding of the planes and the nature of Gods.

The multiverse you stand in is complex beast.................

#27 Lollorian

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Posted 14 December 2009 - 04:49 PM

The " Hand and Eye of Vecna " as stated in the DMs guide were never native to Vecna in the first place, they were powerful artifacts he found, owned and called his own, and indeed deliberately propagated that lie. thus when he was stripped of them , although an inconvenience, he still survived.

Nice workaround :naughty: (but I wanted robo-Vecna :crying:)

I read the edited version and would like to (sheepishly :P) point out that it'd be better if you alter the words to your own (direct copy-pasting never does any good ... buuuut it's a wiki, so maybe it works ^_^)

Now, what I'm interested in this mod, isn't the items (there're plenty of imba stuff out there ... so many stuff, so few inventory slots :crying:), but the new spell seems to be a thing to watch out for ;) Consider this, if you ever get into copyright hassles (:P) just rename the items, and call the mod "Astral Traveler Mod" :lol: (then make it such that the spell can only be cast once in each chapter of the game, BGII+ToB only. And each time you cast it, something random happens :o ... One of them being these 2 items)

they were his and like all the previous owners he cut of his own hand, gouged out his own eye and fitted the alien things

... all the previous owners?? :rolleyes: I need them in my party :lol:

Cheers,
Lol

Edited by Lollorian, 14 December 2009 - 04:54 PM.

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#28 jube

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Posted 15 December 2009 - 02:04 AM

Damn was hoping the cut and paste would slip by !!! :) But yea point taken will do something about it.

Mods going well, done the spell and successfully teleported party to my custom .ARE ( which is Astral plane ) just got to build some more areas, copy some cool monsters and away we go !

#29 Miloch

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Posted 15 December 2009 - 10:32 PM

I agree that you should put the story into your own words, customise it a bit as to how it concerns (or came to concern) Toril (the FR world) and abridge it a bit - we don't really need to know about all the planes, and that isn't really common knowledge anyway (probably carefully guarded by the few who know about it, nevermind it's all in the DMG <_<). And then maybe put all that in a "book" item - surely it would be too much for the item description, and by the time you found the item(s) you might know a lot of it anyhow. Indeed, the book, or similar lesser items might provide clues as to the whereabouts of the actual artifacts.

Also, I believe there's an Eye of Vecna in Planescape: Torment. So you'd have to explain how it got there, or to Toril from the Planescape world if it takes place earlier (not sure of the chronology). As for the 2nd ed. DMG, I only see the Hand of Vecna detailed in it (somewhere in the middle under "Sample Artifacts"). Also it doesn't say anything (that I see) about them being body parts other than Vecna's originally.

I think I would prefer using the actual Vecna artifacts rather than cloned versions under different names. Because they would be, essentially, just that. Vecna is at least somewhat known on Toril, as the Robe of Vecna shows (whether it was his actual robe is a matter of debate). A lot of your story is quite different, and could make for good material. But I think you're throwing a bit much in there... what with Greek and Norse myths, Traveller, Julian May, Michael Moorcock (both great authors btw, but DBZ should be right out of any fantasy PnP campaign :P). Plus, if you try to tie in all the elements of a far-spanning story like that in a mod, well the mod will take forever. Hence why it makes sense to abridge it a bit.

Also, it seems there is an actual Head of Vecna adventure (sort of) - might make a cool mod adaptation :).

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#30 jube

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Posted 16 December 2009 - 01:51 PM

I agree that you should put the story into your own words, customise it a bit as to how it concerns (or came to concern) Toril (the FR world) and abridge it a bit - we don't really need to know about all the planes, and that isn't really common knowledge anyway (probably carefully guarded by the few who know about it, nevermind it's all in the DMG <_<). And then maybe put all that in a "book" item - surely it would be too much for the item description, and by the time you found the item(s) you might know a lot of it anyhow. Indeed, the book, or similar lesser items might provide clues as to the whereabouts of the actual artifacts.

Also, I believe there's an Eye of Vecna in Planescape: Torment. So you'd have to explain how it got there, or to Toril from the Planescape world if it takes place earlier (not sure of the chronology). As for the 2nd ed. DMG, I only see the Hand of Vecna detailed in it (somewhere in the middle under "Sample Artifacts"). Also it doesn't say anything (that I see) about them being body parts other than Vecna's originally.

I think I would prefer using the actual Vecna artifacts rather than cloned versions under different names. Because they would be, essentially, just that. Vecna is at least somewhat known on Toril, as the Robe of Vecna shows (whether it was his actual robe is a matter of debate). A lot of your story is quite different, and could make for good material. But I think you're throwing a bit much in there... what with Greek and Norse myths, Traveller, Julian May, Michael Moorcock (both great authors btw, but DBZ should be right out of any fantasy PnP campaign :P). Plus, if you try to tie in all the elements of a far-spanning story like that in a mod, well the mod will take forever. Hence why it makes sense to abridge it a bit.

Also, it seems there is an actual Head of Vecna adventure (sort of) - might make a cool mod adaptation :).



I Think all of that is very wise and if you dont mind i will apply your plot ideas directly, split the story into scrolls and books with some vital pieces of information ( the astral map to the items ) being sub quests.
Will tie in planescape and pray the timelines fit, if not am in trouble, they cant be 2 places at once-
Have Finished the Planeshift spell that is the heart of the quest, have patched the scroll into ribard and the scroll seller at Waks promonade. Am putting it in this post for people to have fun with, it wont be a completed quest for another week.
Maybe a moderator could inform me weather to put all updates at head of post or leave them scattered?
Not intending to put all the elements of the history into the quest, but the creatures one meets in the astral plane will by definition make a BW Tactics encounter look easy.

Am looking at the head of Vecna, damn right will use it if author wills and or non existant.

Thanks for the ideas BTW :)

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#31 Miloch

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Posted 17 December 2009 - 04:20 AM

I Think all of that is very wise and if you dont mind i will apply your plot ideas directly, split the story into scrolls and books with some vital pieces of information ( the astral map to the items ) being sub quests.

I don't mind but in the case of the WtC stuff (even if it's freely downloadable) you probably want to change names/places a bit just to be safe. In this case, it was an actual player campaign that they've "adventurised" so I'd have to LMAO if anyone objected to making a non-commerical mod of it :D.

Maybe a moderator could inform me weather to put all updates at head of post or leave them scattered?

I guess the "proper" way to do it is upload your minimod in the downloads section (any registered forum user can do that I think) and when you update it, just provide that link and a short change history (here is an example).

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#32 vilkacis

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Posted 17 December 2009 - 05:20 AM

It's really your choice if you want to put it up in the download manager or just keep it attached in a post, but having it in the downloads section as well will probably get you a bigger audience.

Even if you're happy with the thread you're using now, I'd definitely recommend updating the first post with the latest version so people don't have to dig through the entire topic to get at them.

#33 jube

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Posted 27 December 2009 - 03:09 PM

Hi all

Well 2 days late but have posted the Quest version beta ( at start of the post ) and will put it in downloads when iron out some of the bugs.

4 new "Astral" areas with appropriately terrifying monsters finally leading to the Artifacts proper
One hell of a fight ( using tactics, SCS2 scripts )

For testers,

Buy the scroll of Planeshift from store, cast then follow only path to big pile of bones, somewhere is container with astral map spell. cast to get to final fight, items are on loths body, cast Planeshift again to get home

#34 jube

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Posted 05 January 2010 - 01:42 AM

V10

The first finished and checked version

" Something evil is being born in the Astral Plane, Dark powers gather to revive an evil the Gods themselves fear, do you have the will and power to become involved and not end up dust? "

There is a cowled figure in the council of six building that requires you attention, only attend 25th Lv +.

Or if you miss him other signs will surely find you

At the end of the quest true Greyhawk Artifacts await whatever survivors remain

Please install a up to date version of teleport first,
Checked and developed on BWP
Unpack the RAR into your BG2 directory, run, follow the prompts etc, a standard WeiDU install



Since this now works will be interested in hearing from play testers, since i have a feeling the quest is just too hard, the artifacts are the same at the end, but given the quest i think i can now say they are well within game balance.