Help me out Veeky Forums...

Help me out Veeky Forums. The driving forcd of my campaign is that there is something in the world corrupting and destroying the beneficial works of a long gone necromancer. The something is of course a lich who was previously tje good necromancer.

My problem is creating the beneficial works he did in his past life. I was able to come up with a shrine that fueled a farming village to supernatural levels using the spirits of the dead, and a walled city that is protected from an unknown threat from the underdark by a zombie horde in its substructure, but i need more help in this

You know who can work a field 24/7 without stopping? Motherfucking skeletons, people just have to lean back and receive the harvest and send the skeletons out once again.

this

lich is basically spartacus freeing the slaves after regrets as he realises they anguish in eternal servitude.

A horde of rat skeletons prowling the sewers and pipes, eliminating living pests and blockages wherever they go.

An oracle that can bring enlightenment and mastery by channeling the knowledge of the dead spirits sealed within its deepest chambers.

A shrine where one can sacrifice a life in exchange for miraculous healing and longevity - it doesn't have to be people, even livestock works.

Army of undead holding off a bigger threat, like a horde of demons or orcish industrial dictatorship or some shit

The rat one may end up getting used, as I've already introduced a mutated talking rat into the campaign. He can take offense at the undead rat horde and ask the players to end their suffering

the oracle is kind of already in my setting, I gave the party an amulet that allows them to get yes or no questions from the dead.
it's answers are being manipulated by the lich

The shrine is a much better version of an idea that I'd previously had, so I'll definitely be stealing this

I'm unsure if I want to give the lich access to an army of undead. I'll think on this one

OH LOOK IT'S THIS THREAD AGAIN

YOU'RE SO FUCKING ORIGINAL OP WOW WHY CAN'T MORE PEOPLE THINK LIKE YOU

YOU
FUCKING
PISSANT
CHURL

oh great, then you can respond with any of the answers from any of those previous threads instead of wasting your precious time with a pointless comment

The shrine could require increasing amounts of blood to be spilled the greater the desired effect is. Cure a cold? Offer a chicken. Regrow a leg? Offer a few cows. Stave off death of old age? Steal the life of children...

Got desuarchive or suptg links to prove your point? We could use the data and ideas from them.

And the necrotic energy used in powering the shrine could mean that healing effects come with some kind of negative side effect. Perhaps memory loss correlating with the level of healing? Cure a cold? forget the past few days. Regrow a leg? lose a childhood memory. Stave off death? Lose a foundation memory that changes your entire personality.

There are giant, undead behemoths that roam the world. Bigger than a caravan, and armed with claws and teeth able to carve through homes and forests without pause; their paths can be marked by the damage they've wrought.

They're actually driver-controlled road makers; when 'the tiny path between Wherethefuckford and Bigtownshire' isn't big enough to support traffic, a fee to the streetmakers can get one of these beasts to carve a path between said locations, resulting in a fairly smooth dirt road, which can be cobbled or whatever else the town paid for. (Bridges are extra.) The necromancer's apprentices were charged with creating and upkeeping these constructs.

Naturally, the features that make these entities so good at handling wilderness work are also excellent at rampaging through towns and civilized areas, slaughtering everything in their path - unless, say, a group of adventurers stops them.

My setting has a fledgling rail system...perhaps undead giants were originally the workforce clearing their paths

This even if the skeletons (either made by the necromancer or by some sort of shrine/spell mumbo jumbo) are just unskilled labour. There is a lot of that in a medival setting.

Skeleton operated pumps
Skeletons hauling goods

Benevolent necromancer with an eye to uplifting society and creating an utopia is a little trite.

Don't think I've ever seen a setting where said necromancer (presumably assumed dead) is then trying to destroy the utopia he created.

I kinda fucking love the idea actually. I might fucking steal it.

OP here, thanks user I'm glad you think it's a cool idea!

What I'd like to know is what changed in the necromancer. Liches usually require nothing to continue; 5e liches may require souls, but nobody's going to miss a death(heh) row inmate, and the power keeping the kingdom active is greater than what may be caused by breaking it...

Demonic Possession?
State voted him out, and now he's pissed?

Local god-representative declared him evil, and exiled him or something dickish like that?

He's actually been preparing this kingdom to be the fuel for a mass sacrifice to attain godhood?

Ultimately, my questions as a player in this campaign would be:

1. Why?
2. Can we redeem/save the necromancer?

In my setting, it's the third option:

>Local god-representative declared him evil, and exiled him or something dickish like that

A large amount of the works the necromancer did were not publicly known, and he did them not for the glory but just to help. Think Johnny Appleseed, but instead of apples, it's skeletons, zombies, and souls. Only a small handful of his actions were large enough in scope and scale to be plainly evident to the public, but that small handful strong enough to raise concern in some that he was actually a Lich preparing some kind of grand scheme for power. As such, they struck first and without warning, and he escaped but mortally wounded. To save his own life, he does in fact become the Lich he was thought to be.

The combination of the corrupting nature of becoming a Lich, the solitude of death, and the anger he has over the reason he died leads to him deciding to flip the table so to speak.

while this wasn't the point of the thread, I'd of course take feedback on that as well.

I can see this campaign ending in three ways:
1. (Standard/Ignorant)
"Yay! We killed the lich! We're heroes now!"
2. (Redemption/Ethical)
"We killed the lich! Now, cleric, here's the reagents; cast Raise Dead and Atonement, please. Bard, prepare your arguments..."
3. (Damnation/Assistive)
"We heard about what happened. Can we join up?"

Things he could have done:
There were a number of haunted places in the world; the necromancer purged the worse, and convinced the others to move on, or else join the cause. This naturally means the lich has a force of undead, more savvy than usual, on his side.

The way I'd play it; he sees society become soft and petty, nobles manufacture issues and corruption is rife. The utopia slowly becomes a hollow dystopia like a medieval Wall-E. With the waning power he has in his magical half-life, he begins to alter the spells he set down all those centuries ago to sabotage and destroy that which he created.

Naturally all the PCs know is that their harmonious society is collapsing as the undead begin to act against their masters.

I like parts of this. I don't want the setting to be a utopia, but I do like the idea that he despises what has become of the world he'd worked to improve.
with the players I'm running, very likely to end in the first option, but my bard is very much the #2 style of player, and I can almost guarantee that he will at least bring this option up.

On your suggestion:
I'm still against the idea of him having an army of the undead, but perhaps the more intelligent undead that he's purged have been biding their time, and the Lich can indirectly manipulate these into actions that suit his goals?