Many Shades of Darkness
November 8th, 2011
Hello everyone, and welcome to another exciting Grave Plots, where we bring you new plot hooks and adventure ideas each and every week. This week is Darkness Week here at Necromancers of the Northwest, and as such today we'll be talking about the dark. Darkness means a lot of things to a lot of different people: for some, the dark symbolizes something wicked, treacherous, and outright evil on a primal level; for others, it represents the unknown and the pathological fear of the things that might be hidden away from our eyes; for still others, the dark represents a very logical fear, as that’s where the dangerous predators of both nature and civilization wait eagerly to victimize the unwary.
While for many the darkness represents something negative, for my part I've always found that darkness offers a lot of benefits. For one, the darkness is somewhat easier on the eyes, which improves your ability to relax and influences the quality of sleep. The darkness also provides comfort and security to those who brave her mysterious realms to escape the judgment of light-bound society, and the dark can even make movies or books (provided the text is illuminated enough to be read) more enjoyable, particularly if they are meant to be frightening or suspenseful.
To the average player, however, darkness mostly represents a minor nuisance that he or she spends about 5 seconds figuring out how to best overcome, either selecting characters with darkvision, purchasing torches, or having the party wizard prepare to make use of his light cantrip. Despite this second-rate treatment by D&D players, there is still a lot to recommend making full use of darkness as an adventure writer. As I alluded to before, the darkness invokes strong and primal emotions in humans – whether positive or negative, there are few of us who don't have some kind of feeling about the inky blackness that subsumes the visual senses. Because of this, darkness can make for a powerful atmospheric tool that, when carefully evoked and used sparingly, can instill a sense of mystery and wonderment in your audience, as well as a sense of terror and/or excitement, to a variety of scenes in nearly any adventure. Darkness can also be used as a descriptor to enhance a scene where it isn't the main focus; for instance, say you had a quiet bar filled with a cast of secretive and dangerous characters – making the bar dark and only dimly lit by small candles can help sell a sense of mystique. Similarly, a romantic scene with one of the PCs and a princess on her balcony can be made to feel more intimate when enshrouded by the still blackness of night, the only light the soft silver glow of distant and half-obscured stars which cast intriguing shadows on the scene.
While darkness can be powerful and poetic tool in the adventure writer’s arsenal, actually making darkness the center player in an entire adventure is tricky business. For one thing, darkness would need to be a real challenge for the PCs to overcome, which is going to be something of a challenge. After all, the PCs can't really fight darkness. Ok, sure, a bunch of monsters could use darkness or its somewhat more effective cousin deeper darkness against the PCs, but that's not going to prove a real threat, and besides, the PCs aren't really facing down darkness but rather some monster who happens to wield that primal force as a weapon. Since the PCs likely have some means to deal with the simple presence of darkness (torches, magic spells, darkvision), trapping them in some dark cave where anything could be lurking probably just plain won’t work.
Forcing the issue isn't really a great idea either, since while you could create magical darkness that darkvision didn't work in and that no light could ever penetrate, if that's just coming out of nowhere it’s going to feel really far-fetched and kind of trite to your players, and then once you have them stumbling around in the dark you have to deal with the fact that this really means that you created an adventure where no one can see anything and the monsters all have concealment, or, in the absence of monsters, the PCs end up lost for a few hours. Your players will almost certainly be irritated that you’re making them put up with what's very likely a very boring adventure where they can't really figure out what’s going on, they blunder into traps and pits or trip over logs or whatever passes for hazards in this dark place. The dark’s mystery and wonder is reduced to mere sensory deprivation, and even that loses whatever literary value it might have had to the monotony of having to deal with pervasive and annoying darkness. So, if you can't have the PCs lost in the dark and you can’t have them fight the dark, how do you make it a central feature of your adventure? Well, I had to fudge the details a little bit, but I think I managed to create a plot idea where the PCs struggle against the dark, facing desperate odds.
Shadows Over Ottnus
The city of Ottnus is beset by a terrible monster and hope is quickly running out for the people who live there. When the first withered corpse was found, Father Iminov, the local priest, knew something was terribly wrong and it seemed as though there was less light in the world. Over time, the strange deaths became more frequent and he reached out to heroes all throughout the local province of Ordinnia; the PCs where some of the last to answer the call. The arriving heroes knew something was amiss right away, as parts of the town were literally darker than the rest, slightly dimming even torches or other such devices brought into those areas. Asking around confirmed that those places were near to ware the victims bodies were found.
All the adventurers, including the PCs, went to work seeking the cause of these mysterious deaths straightaway, and it was one of them, a knight by the name of Sir Cassus, who first discovered the creatures which plagued Ottnus. He reported that he and his squire were attacked by a horrendous living shadow, against whom their weapons were of little use, and the squire was lost in the battle against the creature. That wasn't the worst of it, however, as Cassus had been forced to watch as the shade of his long-time companion became one of the very abominations which had claimed his life. Eventually, Cassus managed to kill the shades, but he was sure that there were more, and if they could replenish their numbers by killing the townspeople, then the town, and indeed the world, might be doomed. Something had to be done to contain the problem and deal with the creatures before they got out of hand. It was then that the great wizards Harmando and Illusior raised a barrier around the town to ensure that no creature could enter or leave; this barrier would persist until the shadows were all dead.
At first the adventurers held the line against the shadows, protecting the townsfolk as best they could and killing the fiends whenever they found them. Over time, however, the shadows’ ability to replace their forces led them to overwhelm even the greatest of adventurers. Now, after a month of fighting, only the PCs remain, along with about half the villagers. Father Iminov's dying act was to invoke the power of the gods to protect his people from the shades, creating a magical barrier which surrounds every building in town and keeps the shades from entering and gaining any more numbers. Even with the townsfolk so protected, the problem has now become one of supplies, and if the shadows are not dealt with soon the people will starve to death, trapped by the barriers meant to keep them safe from harm. To make matters worse, these protective barriers, both around the town and encircling the buildings, appear to be weakening. Unless the shadows are destroyed soon, they may be able to feast on a vast new population to continue their horrible propagation.
Well, that’s all for this week’s Grave Plots. I hope you join me next week for more great plot hooks and adventure ideas.