Re: Building a Campaign: Mirafar
And now presenting your inter-dimensional invaders.
Spawn of the Black Moon
Brief History of The Black Moon
The Black Moon is a massive, nearly spherical black rock well over 2 kilometers in diameter. It has hundreds of massive holes of various sizes where pale-purple flesh covers, acting as gates to whatever insane labyrinth exists within. The fact that such a massive mass of rock is capable of flight would be disturbing, if it weren't for the fact that in this fantasy world are other floating continents that are way bigger. Like the one Mirafar sits on.
The origin of the Black Moon before it's appearance is unknown. It is known it it existed before since was summoned, but beyond that, nothing is known. Who summoned it is also clouded mystery, even to the most powerful diviners. The only thing known was their hatred for the Kingdom of Mirafar was so strong, they were willing to summon something as terrible as The Black Moon to destroy it.
And destroy the kingdom it. Like the great shadow of oblivion it self, The Black Moon hovered over the capital and unleashed a flood of nightmarish creatures into the unprepared city. As the days passed, the great and terrible siege waged, heard below the floating continent, the other Kingdoms braced itself to face the unknown threat. It was believed that nothing could survive the slaughter that The Black Moon wrought, but as Mirafar was declared fallen, refugees and deserter of the once great army began to trickle out of the wilderness.
Then The Black Moon began to promotes it's own agenda. It had captured a many of nobles from Mirafar, and corrupted them into its own agents. These agents were sent to every Kingdom across the world, tasked with promoting the message that the Black Moon didn't kill everyone. It assimilated many people into its hive mind and gave them eternal life. It transformed those who embraced it into great and powerful immortals.
Countless centuries of stories, rumours, and experience will soul hungry dark gods allowed everyone to tell The Black Moon to go fuck itself. And it turned out the emissaries were not there to negotiate, there were actually assassins sent to throw the kingdoms into chaos. A few kings died, but the kingdoms resisted the initial attacks and braced for war.
The Black Moon sent armies of horrors everywhere. Kingdoms fell, warlords rose, bandits ran amok and did ensue, but after 10 years, the world banded together and fought the spawned armies to a stalemate. Only the active participation of The Black Moon itself could topple a Kingdom, and even then, a Kingdom's leadership and population could escape and continue the war effort.
It was another fifty years before a breakthrough in the war was achieved. Central to the war effort was the leadership of one Kingdom from a small floating island high above the world's vastest ocean. Ayoun City. The Black Moon decided to assault them directly, in and effort to ruin the world resistance. It proved an impossible task, even with it's massive black form blotting out the sun for weeks as it sieged the isolated city.
The Battle for Ayoun City was a distraction. As the battle waged on, The Black Moon diverted more of its resources into toppling it, giving other Exalted across the globe time to gather together, and cast the greatest spell ever conceived. The power to strip a god of it's salient powers and dominion.
Striped of it's potent powers, The Black Moon was weakened, it's most potent powers no longer functional. Without them, Ayoun City no only ruined its enemy's invading force in short order, but successfully assaulted The Black Moon itself. The assault failed, no survivors retuning from within its massive form, but it retreated for the first time, having failed to conquer a Kingdom.
Four decades later, the battles against the spawn of The Black Moon can be said to be going well. The armies are no longer invincible, their number dwindling noticeably with each passing year, and the active participation of The Black Moon itself no longer a death sentence to a Kingdom. Eradication of the inter-dimensional invader is now not only more than faint hope, but an objective foreseeable in the current generation's life time.
The Black Miasma
The most fearsome ability of The Black Moon was a thick black fog that surrounded it. This fog was entirely stationary, the wind being unable to affect it, but it was as fine as any mist, allowing beings to walk through it unhindered, besides the reduced visibility and the darkness beneath it. The Black Moon itself can feel everything within this miasma, granting it unparallelled awareness of everything going on within the miasma.
Additional, anyone who breathes it begins to hallucinate, seeing everything as much scarier than it really is, and becoming extremely confused. Exalted were immune to this effect, as were many strong willed or corrupted people being capable of resiting it's mental effects to a degree.
As The Black Moon crossed the world, it would erect dark spires which would emit this Miasma, extend it.
When The Black Moon was stripped of its powers, The Black Miasma became susceptible to the wind, and no longer provided the hive mind with incredible awareness. Additionally, the presence of Exalted now repels the miasma around them, granted a bubble of sanctuary that grows as they grow in power, allowing more soldiers to fight within it's dark shadow.
The Mind Worm
Key to The Black Moon's strategy was a tiny worm like creature with a mouth of razors, no larger than an earth worm. Every drone of The Black Moon would house several of these creatures, and would sometimes spit them at people. The worm would then burrow into them, painfully finding it's way to their brain. Then the person would have to either choose to embrace The Black Moon and become a terrible servant of it, or become a soulless zombie, a fully corrupted slave in either sense.
Now the mind worm is merely a nuisance, capable of no more harm than a bug bite. They also shrivel when salted, and many demons claim they taste good with marmalade. Most of everyone that was corrupted by mind worms is now free of the hive, though most are likely still in the great expanses of miasma.
That said, The Black Moon has other ways of corrupting people and adding to it's numbers.
Zombies of The Black Moon
The sad fate people that resit The Black Moon's will when they become corrupted by it. What distinguishes them from other kinds of zombies is the fact sometimes one of their arms has some sort of metallic tube or two instead of a hand. Occasionally, the zombie will aim the appendage at a foe, and with a load crack, fire off a hard, bony projectile. Some zombies fire several of these 'bullets' in rapid succession, while others can fire a blast of tiny pellets. Still others have incredible range with these projectiles, though their accuracy is dubious at best.
These boom sticks are superior to any common soldiers ranged weapons, and it is recommended that soldiers specifically remove these enhanced zombies first with ranged attacks, as they are horrifically deadly at close range.
Soldiers of The Black Moon
A less common sight within the ranks of The Black Moon's spawn is a person that has accepted the hive mind and joined with it. Before The Black Moon lost it's great power, these traitorous creatures were individually a force to be reckoned with. They were extremely strong, had an though carapace, could shape shift their limbs into any weapon they desired (including the boom sticks they can use to much greater effectiveness), annoyingly would heal their wounds right before your eyes, and were totally without pain nor fear. They were terrible enough to give Exalted pause, though enough determination and judicious application of superior numbers could slay them with minimal loss..
Now these traitorous scum are brought down back to a sane level. No longer able to morph and regenerate at an astounding rate, and the boost in power removed, these former super soldiers are more manageable by conventional troops. They still can morph their limbs, but not fast enough to change their tactics in combat. They can still regenerate, but it now take hours to recover from near death, as opposed to minutes. They also feel pain, now, though they are still without fear.
A common variant of the foot soldier, is a strider, who instead has four long legs they use to easily run at great speeds. Their arms are most often long barbed lances they use to stab from their great hight, or a couple of boom sticks that fire multiple 'bullets' in rapid succession.
Mutant Spawn
More fearsome than the enhanced humans The Black Moon absorbs are the monster it creates from the combined imaginations of its hive mind. They've had a variety of forms over the century, ranging from floating masses of tendrils, to massive armoured insectoid hulks springing huge boom sticks instead of arms, to packs of running jaws lined with dagger length teeth. These monster could change the tide of battles, and were a daunting task to defeat for even the mightiest Exalted Warriors.
Like the corrupted humans, they used to be able to morph and heal in a blink of an eye. Now their forms are set when they are created, though they are still difficult to contend with.
Intelligence Report
Mirafar was the most well defended city of its age. The King's Palace was sounded by a mighty wall and powerful magical enchantments, and could only be reached by fighting through the city, or by air. A second wall was built ages ago around what is now the inner city, and lesser wall divide the the whole city up into sections. To demonstrate his raw arcane power, four centuries ago The Lich King of Mirafar created a single, massive obsidian wall which now surrounds the outer city with one spell. This wall is a single slab that run from the edge of the continent, around the city's limits, and back to the edge of the continent. It has three holes in it that are the gates to three of the sections int the outer city.
The Capital of the Mirafar Kingdom had two Black Spires that spew the Black Miasma, as well as one in the mountains to the south.
General Edward Duke, of the World Combined Resistance Forces lead a suitably large army into Mirafar on orders from the leaders to retake the fallen kingdom from The Black Moon. He met minimal resistance, mostly in the form of zombies and wildlife corrupter by powerful magic, and lost far too few troops to even be considered glorious combat. Within sight of the walls of the Capital, he was ordered to fortify his position and await further orders, instead of beginning incursions and sieging the city as originally ordered.
Some flying form of Black Moon Spawn can occasionally be seen flying above, most likely scouts.