I just read Tad's Seventy Spires world idea, and it reminded me of an idea I'd had for a D&D campaign, ages ago. All things considered, it might actually work better as a MultiVerser adventure.
I called it the Towers of Tal'Mineas.
Tal'Mineas began his life as simply Min, a lowly Imp, one of the lowest of the low on the least layers of the Nine Hells. In all the vast Multiverse, though, his lucky day was, well, one Hell of a lucky day.
No one is quite sure why or how, but he happened to be in the right place at the right time, when the Negative Energy Plane, the Abyss, and the Nine Hells all happened to cross in a planar sort of way. Most creatures would hardly notice this, but Min was a servant of Orcus, and had rather a lot of Negative Energy in him to begin with. So when the three Planes crossed, he noticed. He saw the convergence.
And he dove in. Call it impulse, or suicidal tendency, but he did. And he was rewarded for it. All that energy flowing into him energized him. Invigorated him. He wanted more, and he got it. All he could ever need. It turned him from lowly old Min, to Tal'Mineas (as, in my world, Devil names get longer and slightly more complex the higher one's rank - the prefix 'Tal' indicates a Lord of the Pit, and both names capitalized indicates one of the Lords of the Nine Hells). But as quickly as it came, he felt his nigh-godlike power slipping away.
So he did something about it.
Enter our adventurers. A few days ago, this weird black rock popped up out of the ground. Nobody thought much of it at the time. It looked like a volcanic rock, and maybe it had come from somewhere, but there are no volcanos anywhere near here, so nobody worried. Until the grass started dying. And then the sheep. And then Old Farmer Gildenstern. Yeah, people noticed when the old man died.
Basically, the Towers are like nails Tal'Mineas is using to hold the planes in place, so his power won't drain away when the Convergence ends. The problem is that the Towers you see aren't the real Towers, and they aren't really there. Walking right into one puts you on the other side of it, because the Towers aren't really Towers, they're more like one singular Tower that exists in many places at once. You can't destroy that Tower by attempting to destroy the many Towers, though it is possible - though difficult - to push a Tower back out.
You have to find the actual, original location of the Tower (on the site of the Convergence on the first of the nine hells) and destroy it in order to stop the chaos they're wreaking everywhere else. Basically they radiate one of the energies of the three planes Tal'Mineas draws power from.
A Negative Plane tower kills everything around it in an ever-increasing radius, and raises the creatures it kills as undead.
An Abyssal tower radiates chaos - things randomly turn to gold, or water, or butterflies appear from nowhere, or Genghis Khan arrives and declares victory. Things aren't necessarily bad near an Abyssal tower, just weird.
A Hellish tower radiates evil and aggression. People in the vicinity of one will become increasingly short-tempered and violent, to the point of being almost randomly homicidal. (The influence of the Abyss on Tal'Mineas himself adds Chaos to what would be a Lawful Evil - and thus colder, less murderous - effect.)
These effects start small and get progressively worse as the towers get higher (Tal'Mineas driving the nails ever deeper).
This could be a nice cross-dimensional adventure as you bop from world to world gathering up information or whatever. You could have a group of versers (not a 'gather') but a group with each verser starting in a different dimension, and dealing with different towers.Could use a little detail on the worlds that each 'nail' is sunk into.The whole nails/tower thing is quite imaginative.One wonders if some other Lord of the Pit might be aggrieved at this newcomer. Or perhaps Michael the Archangel or Twilight, the angel who stands near the Left Hand of God might take an interest as well.
You could write this up as well in a collaborative novel with three writers, with each taking one of the tower types and one hero.
Let me address in order:
I could easily see this being a very LONG adventure for one (the original was intended to take a group of 6 D&D characters from level 1 into epic levels).
And yes, I could easily see doing this as a sort of blind collaboration - either in game or in a novel - with the Verses not necessarily realizing they're helping each other until afterwards.
I imagine the Nine Hells would be up in arms. In the world I wrote this for, the number of Pit Fiends is static: there are always exactly 100 Pit Fiends. When one is permanently destroyed, the next most worthy Tanar'ri is promoted to fill the gap. Tal'Mineas is number 101, and the lawful-evil outsiders would necessarily be rather peeved about that. Peeved enough to help some human chump they don't know from a hole in the wall attempt to do something about it? Probably not. Though they might manipulate you into doing something about it for them.
As for Michael and Twilight, I honestly don't know. I wasn't considering any Christian influences when I came up with the idea, so I didn't think to account for Michael the Archangel, but I imagine he would be all "oh hell no!" and try to do something about it.
The bigger problem I have with including him is... he's Michael. I mean, he's one of, what, three Angels who traded blows with Lucifer during the War and lived to tell about it? If The Archangel Michael showed up and was like "chill, I've got this," I'd be inclined to believe him. I wouldn't think there was much else for me to do, were I the Verser in that case. And if The Archangel Michael showed up and was like "what... the F*... is that?" I think I would outright panic, figuring anything he couldn't handle, I don't have a chance against.
And yeah, it might make a cool novel, but I realize I have neither the time nor the patience nor the wit to write a novel.
I don't know, Harry. Remember Gideon? The angel appeared. Gideon says, if God really cares about us, why doesn't He send a miracle to save us? The angel answers, Gideon, you're the miracle.
Of course, it depends on your player, but I've had a lot of versers in a lot of situations in which my notion is, God sent you to deal with it.
It's like that story of the atheist professor who announced to his class that he was going to prove God did not exist. He then looked at the ceiling and challenged, "God, if you're there, move me off this spot. You have five minutes." Four minutes went buy. One of the students, a marine on the G.I. Bill, suddenly walked to the front of the room and with one punch decked the professor, knocking him into the wall. Outraged, the professor said, "What was that about?" The marine answered, "God was a little busy, so He sent me."
Yeah, it's a goofy story, but I think in a lot of cases worlds like this are about God sending the verser to fix the problem. Sure, He could do everything Himself--but He prefers to apprentice others to the work.
--M. J. Young