Eve of Death

[Sleepwalker]

Greetings

I'm making an undead campaign but before I develop the story too far i have a couple of questions:

Is the campaign name cheesy? The campaign doesn't really have anything to do with an "eve" or event. I just couldn't figure out a good name.

I would like the protagonist to not be able to recruit spirits of any sort even though he will become a powerful necromancer. The reason for this is because i find them tactically dull. Dull because the have pretty uniform defense and high movement over most terrains and after playing Descent into Darkness and Invasion From the Unknown I've experienced that they become quite powerful and you can take on most opposition with them.

So i need a plausible explanation to why they can't be recruited. The reason I came up with is that the protagonist despises and fears them. He could have been born with some sort of taint that makes shadows want to take his soul, so he wouldn't want to have them around. I have some plot ideas around this. But the question is; do anyone think this sounds good or do you have another idea?

Any input would be appreciated.

[Mica]

Well, who cares about the name? Really IMO it doesn't matter, so long as it relates to the campaign somehow. Eve of Death pretty much says "Undead campaign!" or "Kill someone important!" to me.

[Turuk]

If you look through the user-made content on the add-on server, you will find that cheesy names are not as uncommon as you might think. Also, it does not have to be particularly flashy or unique, or even convey more beyond a vague idea of what your campaign is about. People will just think oh, Eve of Death, that is Sleepwalker's undead campaign.

As to the storyline, there seems to be nothing wrong with the reason you stated. Fearing them is always a good one, or you could claim that despite being a necromancer, immaterial creatures do not seem strong enough to him, so he needs something solid like ghouls or skeletons in his army, and not ghosts and other ethereal beings flitting about. Really, as long as you give it a reasonable enough explanation, anything can be worked into a campaign. Though I would avoid aliens.

[docrock]

for the name, i don't actually think it is too cheesy. it's something simple one can remember. and that is ok. like stated, people will think

oh, Eve of Death, that is Sleepwalker's undead campaign

a reason to not recruit ghosts, well, we're talking undead. so it has to be something mean imho. like our necro-hero fearing their revenge for something VERY terrible he has done to the spirit world before. let's assume in his struggle for power he first tried to bind them to his will. he failed, and so maybe decided to threaten them and cast a horrible firestorm on the ethereal plane, doing much more destruction than he intended and actually ripping the structure of the spiritual world itself.

edit: and i just love undead campaigns big time.

[Orcish Shyde]

We don't know the exact details of how ghosts are bound to the material realm in Wesnoth. He might simply live in an area where he physically cannot get his hands on one of the components needed to summon a ghost no matter how hard he searches.

Alternately, he's heard all the horror stories of what happens to a dark mage who loses control of a ghost, and doesn't feel confident that he can take that risk under any circumstances.

[jani]

I don't see any problem in that you can not recruit ghost (i think they are little too good too.)
And name is good too. Can you tell when is first release coming and how many scenarious were you planning to do?

[Sleepwalker]

Thanks for the replies guys.


OK "Eve of Death" it will be then, thanks.


I don't think i gave enough info about the protagonist or his situation though. Roughly the story I have going is that in the beginning he's an apprentice in a necromancer city society in the uncharted lands east of wesnoth. It has both a living and undead population but has managed to stay secret from wesnoth. This will be around the time of the Eastern Invasion campaign, but you are not part of Mal Ravanals forces.

The protagonist is not necessarily evil (not in the beginning of the campaign anyway) but has been influenced by the society he was born into. This led me to the idea that he could be afraid of spirits considering the strong possibility of experiencing any psychological trauma growing up among corpses, spirits and other monstrosities.

Or... the other possibility could be that hes afraid of them because his mother was impregnated during his fathers transformation to a lich which gave him a taint of death, drawing beings from the shadow plane to him that, uh, want to drag him down to their world or something... But that might be a bit too "strong" for BfW.


Docrock- Casting a spell that would rip apart the spirit world sounds like something only a very powerful mage could do and this campaign starts out with him only being level 1 after all.

Turuk- Hmm yeah that he think they are weak might be what he tells everybody else that his reason for not using spirits are. Hope that sentence made sense.

Orcish Shyde- Your second suggestion might be something but i feel it should be something stronger because his masters drill him pretty hard.

Jani- Well the story isn't finished but i think i will be at least 10 scenarios, probably more, and alpha release will come once i have made a bunch of scenarios. Working on the third atm.


Maybe I'm over-analyzing this...

[Ledtim]

Another idea for not using ghosts:
If the protagonist-necromancer is NotEvil, he could consider the process involved in enslaving a soul to create a ghost abominable. He could consider the creation of zombies or skeletons more acceptable since they use dead husks that the soul left behind.

Although then you'd need a reason for why ghouls are a-ok, since they are supposedly created from still-living people...

Just throwing some ideas out there.

[beetlenaut]

Ghosts are awfully weak against the right enemies. There are lots of units with fire or arcane ranged that destroy them in a hurry. You could have the mage wary of letting them get too powerful, and only allow them to go up to level 2.

Keep in mind that not using ghosts will make the undead tactically less interesting. You should do something to compensate for that.

[jani]

when are you gouing to release first version?

[Orcish Shyde]

Although then you'd need a reason for why ghouls are a-ok, since they are supposedly created from still-living people...

The creation of ghouls is kept a secret in Wesnoth fluff; the only hint other than the menus we have is that Darken Volk claimed ghouls were (something like, I'm not playing DiD just to get a forum post correct) "evil men, changed so their evil shows on the outside". I hesitate to oversimplify psychology but Volk could well be telling the gospel truth here; trying to make a ghoul from someone who doesn't deserve it could well result in just a useless corpse.

[AI]

DM and the old ghoul description say that cannibals become ghouls when they die.

[Orcish Shyde]

DM and the old ghoul description say that cannibals become ghouls when they die.

DM?
Also, if that's the case, where is Malin finding all those dead cannibals in DiD? It's not like they can be that common inside Wesnoth's borders.

[Turuk]

DM = Delfador's Memoirs

Brought to you by Wesnoth 1.5.x Building a better game, one version at a time.