This story comes from a homebrew campaign I played a few years back, but one I’ll never forget. It started with our characters studing at a school for adventurers, to get official licenses and such. The party members I could remember were a Ranger, a Bard, a Druid, and my character, Alistar Chainbreaker a Tiefling necromancer with a minor in Fire spells. Alistar was the son of the Arch-Devil Baalzebul, a Tiefling with bronze skin and black hair who wanted to succeed his father as arch devil, hence why he was at the adventurer academy. The trouble began the night before the final exam. Alistar decided to go to the seniors party to look for potential partners he could team up with since the final exam would be a monster hunt and being a wizard he wasn’t exactly built for solo combat (not yet anyway). That’s when he met a girl. She was hidden by a cloak but the two of them hit it off and decided to crash the party with a little prank. They got up close to a stage where a group of dancers were preforming and used create bonfire and control flames to make a fire wraith to scare everyone then flee with the crowd. before Alistar and his partner in crime split up to rest before finals, she asked if Alistar wanted to summon a devil for a little extra power before finals. Figuring he could use what help he could get, Alistar agreed and together they summoned a devil. But it wasn’t just any devil. the girl had drawn the summoning circle for none other then Asmodeus, Arch-Devil of the Nineth circle and ruler of all devilkind. See turns out this girl, who introduced herself as Azrael, was Asmodeus’ daughter and asked dear old dad to draw up a contract to marry her and Alistar. The contract stated that Alistar would marry Azrael, and serve Asmodeus when asked. In exchange, Alistar would be granted a boon of his choice. Now if I was playing just about anyone else, I might have turned them down and booked it out of there. But for Alistar, this was a contract without ANY downsides. Sure he would have to do whatever Asmodeus wanted and marry a girl he barely knows, but 1. Alistar is half devil and already one of Asmodeus’ citizens. He would have to do as his king commands anyway. And 2. by marrying Azrael, Alistar would get exactly what he wanted, status akin to an Arch-Devil as the prince of hell. After giving some thought to what kind of boon he would ask for, Alistar settled on asking for spells that would grant him dominion over spectral undead, specters, ghosts, etc. With the contract complete and Alistar one level into warlock, He rested and prepared for finals.
Part 2, The sound of complete and utter betrayal.
It was near the end of the campaign. The party had ventured to the depths of the elemental plane of water to retrieve the settings equivalent of the mind stone known as the spear of oblivion. We had just returned to the underwater city of the merfolk having slain the Sliver queen who threatened to slaughter them all and the merfolk finally told us the location of the spear and had prepared a feast in our honor. This was when the party made a fatal mistake… they left the warlock alone. See Alistar wasn’t just on this quest to stop the BBEG from getting his hands on an infinity stone. Alistar was under orders from Asmodeus to retrieve the spear for him, and once he had it, to kill his party members. By this point Alistar had a sizable army of specters he had raised from the cemeteries of the merfolk (the DM gave me a homebrewed version of animate dead that made a specter instead of a skeleton or zombie) so Alistar simply commanded one of his specters to carry him and dash all the way to the tomb where the spear was held. Specters has a speed of 50ft, so by dashing Alistar gained roughly a 3 day head start on the rest of the party. When Alistar arrived he opened his bag of holding and let out the 50 or so undead (1 skeleton, one giant zombie crocodile, one giant zombie ape and 47+/- specters) and set about clearing the tomb. After reaching the antechamber Alistar was greeted by the ghost of the former king of the merfolk who held the spear of oblivion in his hand. he explained that though the spear possessed great power over the mind, it would try to turn that power on anyone who held it. In metagame terms, this meant Alistar needed to make a DC 30 Wisdom save or the spear would use Dominate monster on Alistar. Not one to back down from a challenge or break warlock pacts, Alistar reached out for the spear. Now here’s where it gets interesting. See pact of the fiend warlocks get an ability called “Dark One’s own luck” that lets them add a d10 to their ability checks and saving throws so even though my total was 28, thanks to that d10 I managed to bring that up to a 36. The DM ruled that since I got 5 higher then the roll, Alistar didn’t just resist the spear, he DOMINATED it! Spear in hand Alistar opened a portal back to the nine hells commanding his undead to wait for the party outside the tomb as he returned to give the good news to Asmodeus. When the party finally arrived at the tomb Alistar was ready for them, using gaze of two minds to speak through one of his specters (yeah it doesn’t normally work that way but the DM allowed it since this would be my last moments controlling Alistar as a PC) Speaking words I will never forget. “DARKNESS FALLS ACROSS THE LAND. AND THE MIDNIGHT HOUR IS CLOSE AT HAND. AND WHOSOEVER SHALL BE FOUND. WITHOUT THE SENSE TO KNEEL DOWN. MUST STAND AND FACE THE HOUNDS OF HELL. AND ROT! INSIDE A CORPSES SHELL!” Opening 2 portals to Avernus allowing armies from the blood war to reinforce Alistar’s own undead host.
And with that, I handed Alistar’s character sheet to the DM and pulled out my new character who would help the party fight the horde before them. The campaign ended shortly after that but Alistar would return in my own campaigns as well as the DM who ran that one as the prince of hell.
[zombify_post]
This same thing kind of happened in a recent Curse of Strahd campaign I played. My character (who started out as a Chaotic Good cleric) ended up turning fairly evil after dabbling with Asmodeus and a few occult relics. My character (and a Tiefling sorcerer) ended up going full psycho in the end and after defeating Strahd took of Barovia to rule for infernal eternity. Mwhahahha! >:-)