jdnd/ideas/After-Crow.md

I need some help brainstorming ideas for a planescape campaign. The situation is convoluted, bear with me:

Rennick is a man with an unusual ability: he can predict random events (quite limited). This ability has made him a person of interest for many people with many different agendas - including Tymora, goddess of Luck. The PCs are working for Tymora, and they have been tasked with finding and questioning Rennick.

Another group that had an interest in Rennick is the Sign of One. In my campaign, the Signers believe the universe is just a dream. As for whose dream, they believe in the "grandmaster theory." A master painter will often sketch out a painting, and do a little work, then turn it over to his journeymen, who will finish the painting. The journeymen will sometimes even delegate further, to their apprentices. The master takes credit, but the painting is actually the work of many people. The grandmaster theory is that the universe is just like the painting: the grandmaster has sketched out the rough outlines, but we're all contributing to varying degrees.

The Sign of One employ a team of "seekers" whose job is to try to find the grandmaster and the masters. The seekers are curious about Rennick: they theorize that he isn't predicting random events, so much as actually dreaming them up. Is he a master?

Yet another person who has an interest in Rennick was a murderous wizard name Crow, who is convinced that Rennick is an oracle. Crow has the ability to steal peoples powers, and he thinks he can drain Rennick's life to acquire the powers of an oracle. Rennick went into hiding to evade Crow. Now the PCs have defeated Crow, so it's safe for Rennick to come out of hiding. However, there's a catch.

In order to hide from Crow, Rennick decided the safest place was a demiplane. Demiplanes are great hiding places for two reasons: first, a divination spell asking "where's Rennick" will just tell you, "in a demiplane that doesn't have a name." That's super not-helpful. Second: to plane shift to a plane, you need a tuning fork. Nobody has a tuning fork for a demiplane. So: demiplanes are good hiding places, if your opponent is a powerful wizard.

Rennick lives in the City of Sigil, which has portals to many planes and probably many demiplanes. However, when Crow attacked, Rennick didn't have time to do a lot of research. He had to flee to the one demiplane he knew about off the top of his head.

You see, about two weeks before Crow's attack, the Signer-Seekers brough Rennick to the hall of speakers, where he was examined by factol Darius. Darius concluded that despite Rennick's special ability, he's no master. However, Darius confided in Rennick: morale is low among the seekers. They've been searching for masters for years, and have found nothing. Darius asked Rennick to pretend, to put on a good show, in order to boost morale among the seekers. Darius explained that this would involve submitting to a testing procedure, in which Rennick would be placed into a "visualization chamber" designed to test his ability to imagine things. The visualization chamber is actually a demiplane that causes people's unconscious imaginations to manifest. When Darius offered, Rennick was curious, but in the end he decided that he simply didn't have time. Darius let him go.

However, when Crow attacked and almost captured Rennick, Rennick escaped and fled to the Signers. He took Darius up on her offer, on the condition that he be placed into the visualization chamber immediately. He knew Crow would not be able to find him there. He submitted to testing, but when the testing was over, he refused to leave the chamber. The signers tried to remove him, but luckily for Rennick, the manifestations of his imagination defended him.

This strategy worked: Rennick managed to barricade himself in the chamber for several weeks, aided by the figments of his own imagination, and in the meantime, Crow failed to locate Rennick, and now Crow has been defeated.

At some point, Rennick unintentionally imagined an army of himself fighting off an army of signers. This was a huge mistake. There are now hundreds of Rennick clones in the chamber. They know everything that Rennick knows, including the fact that they are figments of the real Rennick's imagination. They know that if they leave the chamber, they cease existing, and they know that if the real Rennick leaves, they cease existing. They're protecting Rennick from being extricated from the chamber, which is what Rennick originally wanted. But now that Crow's dead, the clones still aren't going to let him leave.

The PCs know that Rennick is somewhere in the basement of the hall of speakers, and they know that they need to talk to factol Darius.

OK, so here's what's missing from this picture:

• What are the original figments that helped protect Rennick, in the beginning, before the clones manifested?

• What figments of the PCs imaginations will manifest, now that they're in the chamber?

• What kind of mini-adventure is going to take place inside the chamber? I should note that the chamber is as big as it needs to be.