Defeating a god

[SebastianGH]

Hey everyone!

I've been a Strolen lurker for years now, delighted to see such a brilliant community and its ideas, and I've finally taken the step forward and logged in so as to pose a particular question.

My medieval fantasy campaign, which has been ongoing since 2006, at some point featured an apocalyptic event involving the release of an ancient god from an interplanar prison, not unlike a Cthulhu-mythos style deity. Picture dark, tentacle-filled monstrosity of infinite proportions eating at the world, that sort of thing. This meant the almost entire destruction of the world, with only a small land surviving due to the last interference of the rest of the pantheon's gods before they perished, leaving humanity to fend off the old god by themselves. And that's been the campaign up until now.

While most of the adventures have been set on different parties fighting the old god's champions, things have advanced to a point in which the evil deity is poised to finally engulf the remains of the world and wipe out all matter from existence. Thing is, I can't possibly picture a campaign storyline, set of adventures, or what have you, that might make a victory possible. The current PC party consists of a series of brothers and sisters whose ancestor was at some point a divine being, granting them particular powers and some supernatural capabilities, but I still can't find any way to make the final stages of the campaign interesting. How do you defeat an intangible, omnipresent god of almost infinite size, which wields enough power to snuff out the universe?


Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

[Forganthus]

You can't!  Lovecraftian elder god-things are pretty much infinite in scope and power (at least the way Howie wrote them).  That's what's so nice about them.

1) Get it to defeat itself.  If it's insane or mindless this might work.  Give it an auto-immune disease, so to speak.
2) Imprison yourself.  It'll be another 10,000 years before the first slimy tentacle breaches the shell, and you'll have time to prepare by then.  Force field, time acceleration, etc.
3) Run away!  Take all the survivors, flee the plane, and start a new world somewhere else.
4) Time travel to the time of the god's birth.  Shake a baby.
4.5) Time travel back and keep his prison from being opened in the first place.
5) Exploit some glitches.  Like an army of time travel paradox clones.  Homestuck's Lord English is an unbeatable boss, a bit like this.

Out of all of these, I like #3 the best.  I've used #4.5 in a campaign once, and the players had a lot of fun.

Best of luck, and let us know how you resolve this/how it goes.

[Mourngrymn]

Ok, well that is indeed an event that is nearly beyond the scope of a simple adventurer. Here is what I would recommend, but far be it form me to be the end all on Lovecraftian mythos...

I was in a long adventure/ campaign similar to what you speak of. A group of us having exceeded the highest levels possible and multiple members of the group (I think 12 of us at that point) had items that were either Legendary or Divine to some extent. Yet obviously we still could not defeat an Old One from being summoned so we traveled back in time (similar to what Forg mentions) and stopped the event from happening. However the campaign ended on a sticky high note. One of the party members grabbed the book that was being used to waken the Old One (similar to the Necronomicon) and began reading from it at the conclusion of the fight to stop the summoning. In order to stop this we had to trap him, and the book, in the same prison that the Old One was trapped so they are both trapped in the same prison with this book of ultimate evil/power. Always wanted to see what happened because of that.

So in conclusion, I recommend going back in time to stop the summoning but what you can do it have them travel back in time and make them the original group that imprisoned him to begin with, the characters ancestors could have in fact been them to begin with which is why they have similar abilities and powers. then realizing this, or perhaps not, have them travel forward in time to the point where the Being is released and have them stop it now confident that they can do it since they did it once before.

Just a thought.

[Strolen]

Another registered user created out of the primordial ooze that is the Horde. Glad you joined!

I am sarcastic to my first answers went the wrong direction:
Defeat him with unconditional love. Accept him for what it is and make him cry and go away in confusion.
Have your characters combine to create a super-being ala Voltron that has enough power to beat it back enough to allow the world safety for a few centuries.

Then I thought, if the players have a bloodline of power, perhaps that power comes, in part, from the previous pantheons. In that case, maybe the remnants of the destroyed gods still lurk (can a god truly be destroyed) and they have been pooling their power. In a climatic battle the players end up being destroyed, but at that moment the old gods each choose one as their champion and send their last bits of power to them as they are engulfed in the void. From the inside they get this power and are able to do something huge and heroic that severely weakens this evil.

Or start making their powers increase and new ones evolve at critical points in challenges that give them the power/knowledge to halt certain aspects of the creeping doom. Evil will at some point notice and taking an even more active role in trying to defeat them which grants them even bigger powers. If it is the end of the world then it might be fun to let them be uber powerful to give them a perceived chance at defeating the evil. Then let them sacrifice themselves and their power to save the world.

Then again, evil can win, the earth is engulfed, game over for humanity. Not all stories end happily.

I have never played a game that high powered, but if I did, I think I would cream myself if I got godlike powers and was able to use them, if even for a short time. All that power, the things I could do. Move the planet to a place that would force the evil to move on (who knows those books ), create a weapon from something in space that the creature seems to have always avoided. A dark comet or something holds its kryptonite and once they have appropriate powers they can notice this and harness it. Protecting humanity in a bubble of force as mentioned, they would have to stay there but they would be safe at least...for now. Perhaps it is limited to the outside of the planet, so they hollow it out and the survivors would have to become underground dwellers till the evil moved on.

I think you have the opportunity to go to crazy town and you should take advantage of it.

Sounds AWESOME!!

[EchoMirage]

Some more ideas:
*The dark god gnaws at the world, because it's hungry. Protect the world in a bubble of force for some time, and watch the monster starve to death. Build brave new world on its corpse.
*Symbiosis - what if its supposed to be so? By combining light and dark, a new world will be born, strange it may be.
*Mind-control or trick it into creating new universe. Move there.
*Have it chase its own tail (it's the tastiest thing in the universe!)

[Cheka Man]

Maybe being a god it needs prayers as a form of food? Destroy all members of it's cult and it might at least be weakened.
A magi-bomb big enough to destroy it?
Start a church of Mathom to at least slow the thing down.

[caesar193]

Or the beings that imprisoned the old god in the first place left behind some special weapons that can kill it. Or maybe they left some fail-safes that, when triggered, re-imprison it. In either case, having cultists try to get to where the weapon or fail-safe is hidden to destroy it would make it a challenge.

[Strolen]

http://strolen.com/viewing/Corrans_Flame

Might fit well into this idea I think!

[Pariah]

Seeing as it was imprisoned before, why not have them re-imprison it, and then set up a mystical order of monks to guard said prison to keep if from being re-opened any time in the foreseeable future?

[Aramax]

to defeat just such a monster in my world,have them go on an epic quest to build an artifact that the being will PLAY WITH,ignoring all other things

Make an illusion of a tatstier world that stays just out of arm er tentacle reach