An Irresponsible Oath

This is sort of a DnD / PnP RPG campaign prompt:

When you all were children, you were playing in an forgotten shrine you found in the forest.  Through your play, you accidentally freed a demon from where it was sealed by speaking.  Laughing, it flew away to do harm unto the world.

For reasons best known to the minds of 10-year-olds, you all swore an oath to never tell anyone else about the demon or about releasing it.  You even followed the stories and bound it in blood with the help of a small knife.

And lo, it worked - one of you tried to tell your mom about what happened, but, as described to the rest of the group, the words wouldn't come out of your mouth.


It is now over a decade later, and you are all adults, starying careers.  Freeing the demon is long since forgotten by most of you - it flew away and never came back.

Except... a messenger brings a report of a growing darkness to the north, and when you try to share the gossip with a friend... the words don't come out of your mouth.

It's the same demon.

You're older now.  You understand responsibility.  You gather your friends, the only ones you can speak to about the demon.  You all released the demon unto the world.  Isn't it your responsiblity to try and do something about it?

A Pit Fiend (For DnD).

In DnD, there are devils and demons - both of them are the native denizens of the lower planes, both are incredibly powerful, and both of them generally are kept down below. Demons live on the Infinite Layers of the Abyss, and are raveningly mad, cruel, and full of destructive rage. Devils live in the Nine Hells of Baator, and are a plotting, scheming sort, hungering for power - they follow a strict hierarchy, and always keep their word, but the hierarchy is flexible if you can use plots and power-plays to increase your standing, and while devils always keep to their word... well, the literal meaning of their words can be surprisingly flexible. (The obvious moralizing is that making a deal with a devil is always going to be in the devil's favor as much as possible, any you only thought you were getting a good deal.)

But here's an interesting little difference. Demons are evil in nature, because they want to cause death, agony, perversion, and destruction. However, devils are evil in practice because they seek power by lawyering death, agony, perversion, and destruction.

Each and every devil desires to some day rise to the top, beat down the demons and angels and take control all of existence. Demons, on the other hand, are incapable of ruling, and therefore do not desire that sort of power (instead, they are power).

This leaves a bit of a loop-hole, and loop-holes make for interesting possibilities, and interesting possibilities make for characters. What if a power-hungry devil decides that love and kindness always seem to win against cruelty and enslavement, and decides that the practice of seeking power is more effective by building bonds of trust, admiration, and love, rather than bonds of fear, intimidation, and more fear.

Which produces a power-hungry devil that does good for selfish reasons.

I envision that a civilization in a DnD world is ruled by a benevolent-acting devil (Shalamshi) who provides free healing, devilish sorcery truly with no strings attached, and is understanding about deals... and basically is turning his civilization into a small utopia filled with people who truly, utterly think that the mystery figure behind it all is a good person. Armies of fanatics for self-defense, and an offense of conversion. Hopefully expanding until the whole material realm willingly accepts Shalamshi's rulership.

So for the Player Characters (PCs) who realize what is going on... what do you do? Do you kill the power-hungry devil, and make the world a worse place? Does intention outweigh action? Or do they fall in line, defending and expanding Shalamshi's no-strings-attached utopia? If they believe that Shalamshi will someday betray his vision, and turn his utopia into a dystopia? If so... when do you stop the goodness before it turns to evil? Should you stop it while things are good, since by the time things go bad, there will be nothing that can be done?

PCs have power in DnD - partly because the PCs have unlimited growth potential, but also plot armor in that they generally can win against anything they fight. However, with power comes responsibility - potentially responsibility for civilizations or even realms of existence. DnD therefore poses an opportunity to ask players, "You can do what you want, but what do you want to do?"

In my opinion, DnD isn't about players trying to win, but players trying to figure out what constitutes winning. Like what to do about an evil who does only good.

DnD Child Plot Thing

Crossposting is love.

This is from this thread, on my second post in the thread.

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Since you were asking for more ideas, here is one: The PCs are in a village, and every night, very strange things are happening. Toy-like monsters appear out of thin air, attacks by tall shadowy figures, darkness is strongly increased (limiting PC sight is oh-so-fun), monsters are always lurking in the shadows (permanent total concealment, melee out of shadow, but as long as the shadow is lit, the monster isn't there), etc. Eventually, the PCs track it down to be the nightmares of a psychic girl, and have to solve why she is having nightmares (or kill her, I suppose - I'm pretty sure my group would do that, and justify it as good, too).

I'm using toy-like monsters (based on toys seen in the shadows, tall shadowy figures (adults), and un-see-able monsters in the darkness (fear of the unseen) as generic childhood fears, but throw in whatever ones you think are appropriate. Clues leading them to suspect the child could include seeing illusionary mirrors attached to walls where the PCs can see the child in a dark room, repeating "I'm a monster, I'm a monster, I'm a monster" in the dark - perhaps with another figure behind. This is working the child abuse angle, of course - perhaps a parent who thinks the child's powers are unnatural, and turns their fear of the child into hate for the child. But clues are probably easily disturbing bits, particularly when bringing light near them (or taking an active perception check on them - looking too closely) makes them disappear.

Big bad is... adult abuser, the angry child (in the fully real world)? Perhaps if they kill the abusive person (parent?) the next night they fight the child's horrible perceptions of the people who killed her abuser - twisted NPC version of themselves. (This assumes that the child is very much attached and dependent on the person who was abusing them, and/or had been brainwashed to fear strangers/outsiders.)

Perhaps the fact that ending the abuse still left an extremely dangerous unhinged psychic will cause the PCs to kill the child? I would hope most groups would recognize that it is a choice, and don't feel the justification that "I was just carrying out the plot, killing the enemies."

Actually, I hope they go outside the gamer's box to heal the child, however difficult that might be. That might lead to them protecting the child from authorities that want to destroy--or use--the child.

I kinda like the whole idea...

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I thought I should save this particular plot-line here. This is the sort of thing I prefer for DnD, but for stories too, in some ways.