Fishing for ideas: Outsiders in a Submerged-level game [No Law Talk, Please]

[bibliophile20]

So, my campaign is beginning to wrap up (near the end of the school year and all that) and I'm going for the big finish.  And, this scenario that we're currently in, the PCs... failed to reacquire a tome of Outsider lore.  There are reasons for this failure, some even valid (like being framed for murder).  

Thus, I'd like to end the campaign with a bang (or possibly a cookout *points to icon*), and I'm looking for suggestions.  Right now, I have a AWOL book of Outsider lore in the hands of a Black Councilor (indeterminate shapeshifter, but definitely not a skinwalker), a failed assignment from Rashid to retrieve that tome, and an entire innocent american city.

So... should I raid the Call Of Cthulhu books for ideas and monster stats?  Or maybe the tome details how to summon He-Walks-Before, He-Who-Walks-To-The-Left, and He-Who-Walks-To-The-Right, as well as He-Who-Walks-Behind?  Or, or, or... 

Thoughts? Suggestions?  (Oh, and please no Law talk, either First or Seventh.  Having those discussions in this thread would be like the disclaimers on firearm boxes that state that these are lethal weapons.)

[ways and means]

Are you planning on killing off your whole party with this? Though I don't think you can go wrong with thousands of slathering abomantation and 'he who walks behind', 'he who waits' and 'he who feasts'.

[devonapple]

Here are some potential directions:

Escalation: the big bad comes, and the players need to really pull a win out of their bag or ally themselves with someone powerful to pull it off. Taking debt from heavy supernatural hitters. Becoming NPCs if they opt to supercharge themselves.

Re-entrenchment: the opposition goes to ground with this resource and lays low for awhile, popping up later when your players can be more prepared. The "danger" is over for now, without having to escalate.

[Bruce Coulson]

Okay, what was the ultimate goal of the villain?  Why was he after this Tome?

If it was just to summon a particular Outsider and re-shape reality, then yeah, I'd check out CoC adventures, especially several of the 'end of the world' type adventures and consequences for failure.

If the villain had some bizarre idea of using Outsider power for their own use, then a climatic battle as the villain loses control of what he's called up, and one last-ditch chance to save the world (or at least the city).

[MijRai]

I'd do a single Outsider, one who is really tough. Magic Immune, a pile of Supernaturals, etc. Make him freaking scary, add in mental stress attacks to him, and let him loose somewhere in the city for the players to find and try to stop. Add humans warped by the Outsider before the players got there, poor souls tainted and corrupted and driven insane. Go from there.

[DFJunkie]

Personally I'd go whole hog.  If this is the last game in the campaign just have the Black Hat summon Great Cthulhu or one of the Great Old Ones, which starts tearing the city apart on both a physical and metaphysical level.  Then give the PCs an out: if they can recover the book and do whatever they can send the Outsider back where it belongs, otherwise the entire White Council will have to convene and maybe banish it before it tears our reality to shreds, but long after it's too late to save the city.

[devonapple]

How do folks feel about the Venators nuking a city in such an event?

[ways and means]

If the Venators didn't do it the Government probably would an army of unstoppable abomanations is something you want to contain and destroy. Then again I thought the Venators enemies where from inside creation rather than outsiders. Then if anything would wake the elder gods an incursion which threatens reality itself probably would.  

[Falar]

Or you could go for a dual-threat that you won't reveal as such until later on down the road.

Have a city-crushing horror summoned that your party will (hopefully) just barely defeat, but have that as smokescreen for your bad guys TRUE motivation. And have that motivation be something like the monster from Harry Connolly's Child of Fire.

(click to show/hide)

Basically, the main enemy/family had summoned an Outsider some time ago and enslaved in a special band/thing and used it for information and power. It spent a few generations breaking free. Then bad stuff started happening.

So, there you'd have a dual-threat with levels of import. First, the city-crushing horror which gives you a suitable finale vibe and the bad guy being Smarter Than That and using said finale as a set-up for bigger and worser things, for an added heaping of This Is What Happens When You Don't Do What Rashid Says.

Also: My brief summary of Child of Fire does it no justice. Read the book. It's awesome. Best stuff I've read this year.

[DFJunkie]

If you do decide to go full-blown city-crushing Old One don't reveal it to your players all in one go. 

If I ever do something like that the first sign that there's something wrong will be the unnaturally thick mist that rolls in, blotting out the sun at the same time that the communications infrastructure becomes completely unreliable due to all the magic and reality warping going on.

After that up the "reality isn't right any more" ante with the occasional failure of Euclidean geometry.  Maybe someone falls sideways and cracks themselves against a wall, or that right angle is no longer 90 degrees.

By the time a beloved but no longer useful NPC is suddenly dragged away by a tentacle thicker than a minivan the mood should be well and truly set.

[knnn]

I'm pretty sure that Outsiders can only be summoned by mortal magic, so even though a supernatural being has the tome, the PCs might still have a chance.

How about something like this:
- The summoning requires that the summoner sacrifice his/her soul in the process.

This means that the summoner cannot be the shapeshifter (it doesn't have a soul), and even worse, the poor sod he need to get to do the ritual must be powerful enough to pull it off while clueless enough to actually do the ritual.

Thus, your shapeshifter's plan is to somehow trick one of your wizard PCs to do the ritual.  One way to do this is to make it look like the ritual itself is a key component of something even bigger, and get the PCs to try the ritual first in order to cut him off (think Harry and the Erlking)

Then you get the satisfaction of seeing one (or more) of the PCs sacrificing his soul to stop "ultimate evil" from happening, only to realize that they are the ones who ultimately destroyed all of humanity.

 

[DFJunkie]

Personally I wouldn't end a campaign on a note like that, with one of the PCs making the ultimate sacrifice for nothing, though if that's the kind of thing other groups prefer by all means, have at it.  That's more of a second-act ending.

[stabbald]

One-Who-Twirls-His-Moustache-While-Tying-Damsels-To-Railroad-Tracks.

[ryanshowseason2]

Theres always Zalgo - He who waits behind the walls.

His abilities consist of being able to sprout tentacles from anything resembling a wall. Attack the entire city at once.

In my games I went with a more conceptual chaos kinda thing though when the doors to the outside broke. Heres a dramatic re telling.

"The doors bulge, chains burst and the locks fill with light and rattle against the door. It looks and sounds like a dozen battering rams are striking the door from the other side. As the final chains and locks melt and burst away a flash of light blinds everyone and then the room goes silent... The room is dim and the noise of the massive doors creaking open can be heard. They slowly open to reveal... nothing. A mundane janitor's closet is behind them."

The party later finds out that billions of pure mortals have contracted outsider sponsored magic. Simple disputes soon turn into eldritch battles involving innocents around them. Two siblings fighting level an apartment complex, a 2nd grader turns his classmates and teachers into mutant abominations at a whim. A schizo hobo looks at people screams and they explode.

Self destruction kinda theme through outsiders.

[Tedronai]

I'm pretty sure that Outsiders can only be summoned by mortal magic, so even though a supernatural being has the tome, the PCs might still have a chance.

How about something like this:
- The summoning requires that the summoner sacrifice his/her soul in the process.

This means that the summoner cannot be the shapeshifter (it doesn't have a soul), and even worse, the poor sod he need to get to do the ritual must be powerful enough to pull it off while clueless enough to actually do the ritual.

An 'indeterminate shapeshifter' can quite easily be a mortal.  Think Billy and the Alphas on the small scale, Listens-to-Wind (who went toe-to-toe with Shagnasty) at the top end, and potentially focused practitioners anywhere in between.