Peculiar Places: Mourngate, The Final Justice
In the matter of the Forces of Creation v. Dorian Gray, we the members of the jury find the defendant, Dorian Gray, not wicked. -Verdict given at the trial of the great hedonist Dorian Gray
On the cusp between this world and the next there is a great, sprawling city known as Mourngate. It is here where all souls go to be judged and sent off to their final rest, and sometimes loved ones come here to be with their recently departed.
Most of the time, the cases are swift. A being called The Arbiter judges the soul as wicked, pure or conflicted. The wicked are sent off to the hells, the pure to paradise, and the conflicted to purgatory, where they will not have the fruits of paradise but nor will they suffer the tortures of damnation. Though this process is swift, the sheer bulk of souls waiting to be judged means that it can take a long time for your turn.
The Arbiter’s judgment is not final, though; any may appeal for a trial, with all the trappings. If the appealer can convince an angel of their plight, the angel will represent him in court. Otherwise, they’ll usually have to work out a deal with a demon to represent them. In return for getting them off of an eternity of punishment under someone else, the appealer might agree to only a few thousand years of punishment under the demon representing him before going to purgatory.
Encounters with Mourngate
A celestial messenger contacts the PCs, asking them to come testify against a villain who they killed.
The PCs must help a recently-deceased friend find counsel for his trial.
A PC cannot be raised because he’s been deemed wicked. He has been granted an appeal, and he and the rest of the PCs must work to clear his name.
A variation on a classic, it is interesting. I like the bit about the actual functioning of the court, demons acting as representatives and opportunities for players to get involved.
Sorry I didn’t respond to your comment earlier, I’ve been busy at work. I may or may not get the blog back into swing in the next few months, I’d like to spend my game-energies running the campaign first.
Keep up the good work!
Phased Weasel’s last blog post..Using Consumables
You know, it’s funny enough, I actually care more about my blog than the campaign I’m currently running… That says more about the campaign than anything, though… Really not into it. Just running it to pass the time til 4th edition…
You want to help me brainstorm? I don’t want to use my blog, because my players know about it.
I’m running a game involving the planes currently. I’m not a big fan of an ordered set of planes, that tends to become canon and boring. Instead, my cosmology is a series of interconnecting planes. None are “the” plane of anything as such, they are just different. Not all connect, most are unknown, and they can move.
I want to introduce a subplot involving a new plane. This plane was created by the intersection sometime in the campaign’s recent past of something like the classical planes of Shadow and Mechanus. My inspiration was this picture, a steampunk Vader:
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=105258&d=1180113534
In the game, I realized it as a combination of Shadow and Kolyarut. There’s a new faction, shadowy constructs with traits of law, construct, and shadow. They are expanding slowly, but are not interested in simply invading other planes for conquest. They do, however, make raids for building supplies and that’s how the players have met the smaller shadowy machines.
I have no idea where to go with it, though. How to bring my players into meaningful contact and conflict with the carefully laid plans of a shadow kolyarut, as a running subplot in an existing campaign arc?
Phased Weasel’s last blog post..Using Consumables
I’m emailing you at the address you used to register on this site, seems like a better place to talk about that.