malice / madness

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• A group of mages so powerful they realized they could transcend mortal worries and become legends. They then pass on their magical knowledge to a select few they deem worthy. To normal mortals they seem like mythical creatures, like cloaked Death, the four hoursmen, or angels. While they seem as though they could be divine creatures, they’re just extremely powerful mages (near level 20, or mythic levels) in a lower magic setting. This is from my first thoughts about who the Wild Hunt could be, and just a guess/cool idea for NPCs for a world. It can be an unexplained phenomena to the world, until you learn the truth that it’s just men with masks and magic. Kind of a smoke and mirrors thing, but still very deadly.
• When fighting the first member of the Wild Hunt, they first run through a large hall and open portals that spew out these ice hounds. It’s not really a unique idea, but it made me think of utilizing ‘monster spawners’ to distract/block the PCs when they come across the Big Bad Evil Guy. It can also be an excuse for why the level 20 necromancer didn’t kill the party of level 1s. He was there to get some artifact/info/etc, and just opened a bunch of portals for zombies to flow out of so he didn’t have to deal with them.
• Simple riddle idea: There’s an inscription for what order to activate items in to open a door. In the Witcher, it describes what braziers to light by describing an order based on what the statues were holding. Example, “First come the trumpet player, next is his neighbor, third is accompanied by his hunting hound, and the forth bangs his drum.” You can come up with a set of statues or pictures that you can then vaguely describe the order of and the PCs have to activate something under each in a specific order.
• Powerful hags acting as sudo-benevolent, sudo-deities is fucking genius. This seems like it could work really, really well for a starting area. You’ve got a bunch of level 1 characters in some backwater town. They hear about how the folk there revere the “Ladies of the Wood” or something vague like that. The people seem alright, but eventually the PCs uncover the fucked up shit that the townsfolk do with sacrifices to appease these gods (like cutting off their ear or send their children to them–presumably to be sacrificed and/or eaten). The more you can get your PCs to help the hags before they realize how terrible they are the better…or maybe even better if the PCs realize they need the hags help and must assist them in some way. It undoubtly will make them feel better when they’re finally a high enough level to come back and wipe the floor with the hags…but they will have to deal with the moral dilemma of what that could do to the townsfolk when they lose the hag’s “protection”.
• Trail of sweets is perfect and creepy. This fits perfect with the hags, but just the idea of something sweet or innocent that most people are tricked into believing is real…and then realize it’s nothing but dirt and worms is fucking creepy.
• The Witcher has reminded me that even in a medium fantasy setting, common magical creatures like griffins and cockatrice would wreak havoc on the common folk. And I like the idea of the dead easily coming back to life. Most of the time I feel like undead in D&D only rise due to dark magics or places that have been tainted by great evil…but a setting where the dead can randomly rise is much scarier, much darker. It makes the need for priests and proper burial more real, something that the players can respect more. If you want a darker, grittier, or more ‘realistic’ game, I think these are great ways to achieve it.
• A lamp that you can use to see ghosts can have a lot of decent plot uses. In the game most of the ghosts you see are basically frozen in a scene near their death. You can use it as a way to show your PCs events of the past from ghosts that might still linger in an area. It reminds me of the plasmid-induced ghost memories from the original Bioshock, you could suddenly experience a ghostly image doing it’s make up in the mirror and notice in the corner of the scene something move and get a glimpse of the monster that attacked there.
• More encounters where the monsters/enemies come to the PCs. The whole premise of the Witcher really facilitates this. He tracks a creature, and often (especially with the ones like ghosts) prepares a ritual or action that will make the ghost be summoned to that location so that he can deal with it. If your PCs are in the habit of tracking down dangerous creatures, you can easily work in a way that they could summon or call the creature at a specific time. For example, the woman’s ghost always appears at midnight, but they’ve found that if they burn the woman’s prized possession in life, it’ll guarantee that it’ll be summoned to your location when the clock strikes midnight. Similarly, I liked the idea of protecting the villagers from waves of undead that are summoned during their yearly ritual to help those that died to move on.
• So far, I HATE the witch hunters in this game. Since the start they’ve seemed like douchebags (I assume that’s the point), but it did make me think of an idea that I plan to flesh out later. Paladin Fraternities. If you’re running a sillier game, you can have something like Alpha Sigma Pi, Holy Fraternity of Pelor. These paladins act like college frat boys with the addition of also acting holier than though. I like this idea, because it can also lead to rivals and even enemies with other Paladin fraternities, meaning that two Paladins of the same god could hate each other. I think it could lead to some interesting relationships, and provide an easy ‘good’ faction to hate.
• And, of course, Witchers! The easiest inspiration to pull from the game is that a faction of monster hunters can exist in your world. They would consist of people trained in a specific way (you can even say magically altered if you want to homebrew some magical mutations). I think the easiest thing to do is just make it an order of Eldritch Knights, warriors that train body and mind to slay foul creatures. It would make them more interesting if they are an order similar to the Crows from Game of Thrones or the Grey Wardens from Dragon Age, a faction that’s neutral in allegiance to the kingdom’s of man and consists of people from each nation (criminals and runaways being an easy choice for who makes up the order, but it might make more sense for it to be orphans, as they’d have more time to train from a young age).

Look, I don’t know if I’m going to have a career after this but fuck that! - John Boyega