While perhaps not the first setting or tool one may think of when dwelling on how they wish to tell a story and bring/drag people through a campaign with roleplaying at the forefront, the following occurred to an innocent(not) party of adventures in an MMO that has yet, despite many's cries that such is upon it with nearly every action, has yet to keel over and die.
It began with this party, a group of deceased knights organized into a military unit, being called upon by a settlement in the cold lands of the north. While at first they saw nothing out of the ordinary, aside from odd glances from the living, it was soon discovered by them that by nightfall, the town came under siege by bands of howling, undead wolf creatures. With their nature being tied to the party's kind, they had been called upon to aid the village.
Following the trail left by the creatures to an abandoned old castle, the party came across a number of pages from a tome on raising the dead, one that had signs of having once been among their own but that now found itself in a breather's hands. Trailing behind them was a shadowy figure, who escaped upon being discovered, leaving behind two of the creatures from earlier to cover her retreat, named 'Mr. Hugs' and 'Mr. Snuggles'.
Weeks later the party would be called upon again for a similar situation, this time a small camp plagued by undead raptors that swarmed at random. Fighting back the raptors, the party followed them into the forests, and finally to a small clearing. Once there, the party stumbled upon a woman, likely in her early twenties.
Despite her apparent age, the woman acted with the energy of a child, and had a personality to match. Bouncing around eagerly, she treated her undead monstrosities like pets, even having a rotting gryphon which she had dubbed 'Fluffy'. Upon their arrival, she trapped the group in a ring of fire, but prevented them from reaching her by summoning a line of fire down the center of the circle. While her pets leaped from the outside in to attack the party, one member approached the girl, kneeling down and pulling a storybook from her things.
As the woman-child warlock enclosed the undead storytelling woman in a circle of fire all her own, trapping her even more than her companions, the others fought off the undead beasts, which were soon enough joined by a hulking T-Rex. The girl, though, was enthralled by the tale, and paid the others no mind. The T-Rex met its end when someone allowed themselves to be eaten, detonating something from within the beast, and exiting unharmed. Angered at the loss of her pets, the woman stomped her feet, pouted, and fled on her rotting gryphon.
As she fled, her thoughts drifted to the woman who had read her a bedtime story, and whether or not she could control her the way she controlled her 'pets'. Of course, that was not how she saw such. To her it was a matter of 'waking' up something that was 'sleeping', not reviving something once decided as a slave of sorts.
Following an investigation into the woman's origins, the group discovered that she had come from a town to the south, that was covered in gloom. Her father had been a drunk, and her mother a person whose mind had long since broken. Both were long since in the ground. The woman had gone to live off on her own, discovering an abandoned tower, choosing to live there, practicing mastering the fire-based magic. That was until her only companion, her faithful dog, was killed by wolves.
The group would go weeks without meeting the warlock, until she sent a message, summoning the storytelling soldier to meet with her again. Once she arrived, the soldier found herself blocked inside by magic, while her companions were stuck outside trying to find a way in. Once they had managed to do so, they found that the warlock had managed to do as she planned. The storytelling soldier believed herself to be the warlock's mother, and the warlock her younger child that needed to be defended from the undead monstrosities that were threatening her now.
After much fighting, facing off against their own friend and the bones of a long dead dragon, magically brought back together and given life, the heroes of our tale emerged triumphant and freed their friend. The warlock was spared from being killed, instead being handed over to people who would hopefully help her recover mentally, and also learn to control her abilities, as was insisted by a merciful member of the group.
Time would pass, and the group would fully recover from such quickly, while the warlock would do her best to learn proper magic training. This was, of course, just one of this particular group of the damned's many tales. But those are another story.
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