7/23/2019 The Jackal's Curse

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A kingdom in another plane of existence has opened a portal through to the Prime

Material plane and has begun attacking the PCs’ homeland with odd desert creatures and

new forms of magic.The aggressor kingdom needs to conquer a new plane because their plane is nothing but a

desolate wasteland.

The denizens of this plane are an odd, new race. They were once human, but the pollutionof the land, coupled with living centuries in the desert wastes, have mutated them.

Long ago, the rulers of the (now) desert kingdom commissioned the greatest mages in the

last to construct an artifact capable of renewing the land.

The land had been stripped of its resources through careless deforestation and magical pollution from warfare.

They hoped the artifact would be capable of giving them new areas of farmland, which

they would use to reinvigorate their kingdom and propel them to dominance over thewhole land.

When the artifact was completed, a ritual casting was scheduled, through which the

artifact would be operated.

Learning of the upcoming ritual through spies, a rival kingdom secretly polluted some ofthe ritualistic material, poisoning the whole process.

When the ritual was completed, using the sabotaged materials, the artifact went haywire.

The sabotage had unexpected results, though, that affected more than just the targetkingdom.

Rather than replenishing the land, the artifact devastated it, turning the entire world into a

huge desert.Hundreds of years later, the now united kingdoms on the desert plane have found a way

to open a portal to a neighboring dimension and send the power of the artifact through the

gate.This turns the target plane into a desert, not unlike their own, but only temporarily.

With this temporary desert, the aggressor plane can send their desert specialist troops and

creatures through the portal to invade the other plane.They have been preparing their people in the art of war for centuries, anticipating a time

when they would find a new world to conquer. Unfortunately for the PCs, after all this

time, theirs was the first inhabitable world to be found.

They have been slowly taking over the entire world, enslaving the populations of thelands they conquer.

When the desert recedes, the land goes back to normal, and the enemy uses the enslaved

 population to prepare the way for the entire population of the other plane to come throughthe portal and inhabit the conquered lands.

Enemy soldiers wear animal masks, with different masks representing different character

classes. They also wear jet black, form fitting body armor.When the enemy soldiers die, their bodies disappear, reappearing in their own place. As

such, nobody knows anything about these enemies, not even what they look like under

their masks and armor.

Enter the PCs - The PCs are soldiers in their kingdom’s elite guard. They’re one of thelast units remaining, the rest having already been defeated in battle.

They’ve been fighting a losing battle with the alien desert creatures, and they have yet to

find a way to counteract their desert terrain advantages.

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At the last bastion of civilization, the PCs and the regular army troops fight a battle to

save the capitol of their kingdom.

After a fruitless struggle, the PCs retreat to their nation’s last refuge, a floating fortressmiles in the sky.

The enemy has attempted to fight them there, but the fortress’ anti-air defenses have been

able to hold them off so far. Without the power of their land troops, the enemy needs torethink their strategy if they’re going to capture the flying fortress.

In the fortress, the most powerful wizard in the realm shows the PCs the portal to the

desert realm he has managed to open.

Being the last, best hope of their kingdom, the PCs go through the portal searching for away to defeat the enemy in their homeland and send their troops back to where they came

from.

The PCs must navigate their way through the desert land and learn the history of the land.The PCs can make friends among the desert nomads, who have no love for the current

government.

They hear legends of an artifact that has the power to negate all types of magic.

They must track down this artifact and use it to destroy the desert artifact, saving theirland.

As a side effect, the destruction of the desert artifact will also release the land of their

enemy from the desert curse, reverting the land back to the way it was before the artifactwas used in the first place.