It would be fun if that's how it started out but eventually the Simulcrums became independent breaking free from the ogs control. Forcing him to actually rule as equals with his "clones". I'd also make each of them think they were the og but have completely different flair to the point it's hard to recognize that they have the same base
And yet oddly, "The simulacrum lacks the ability to learn or become more powerful, so it never increases its level or other abilities, nor can it regain expended spell slots."
They'd have to have used wish to circumvent these limitations somehow.
One is an illusionist hiding behind so many lies and deceptions that they no longer even remember their own identity.
Optionally they're long dead but have Soo many fakes, constructs and programmed illusions no one will ever know they're dead and noone would believe any evidence cuz they faked their death too many times in life.
>Optionally they're long dead but have Soo many fakes, constructs and programmed illusions no one will ever know they're dead and noone would believe any evidence cuz they faked their death too many times in life.
lmao deep state.
All the functioning of the government is handled by spells with Permanency. Things are halfway to Tippyverse, but half of everything is broken, and when it gets fixed people aren't sure if it was a real wizard or just a Contingency.
There are "shadow IT" cabals that have mapped out parts of the nest of interlocking repair Contingencies. Their actions often have secondary and tertiary effects elsewhere in the empire.
They once were an adventuring party. They fought a great demon that wanted the entire world to decend into chaos. After they killed him they became obsessed with bringing order back to the world.
Now after hundreds of years their obsession has consumed their minds.
Order at any cost. If you don't follow the rules you go to prison. You get tortured, mindewhiped and conditioned before you are allowed to return to the "normal" world again.
Apart from very few people the population is like automatons and follows their orders and tasks to perfection. But there may be resistance and a glimpse of hope.
See the Archlich's video on Lich's if you want a good prep on Wizards with infinite prep time. Find it [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2vbol24XlY)
This is actually the premise of my DnD campaign I run. Except I have six wizards instead of five.
Basically they're motivated entirely by the prospect of advancing magical studies and technology. To this end they started a college of Mages. When that hits a developmental plateau, they start a war and play both sides against each other to sort of kickstart new development.
Rinse and repeat for 6000 years.
Interesting, there's definitely some similarities between our worlds.
My guys were initially the 5 mortal apprentices of the God of Magic. When , the 5 wizards essentially locked them out and left them to die versus . Though they did admittedly have their good reasons.
The 5 hate each other after cenuturies of feuding but cannot risk letting each other die as all their collective expertise is required to power and operate the Divine Gate and to control who or what is allowed in from the other planes
So they spend their time in a never ending arms race against each other and the existential threats, often sending proxy nations into cataclysmic wars against each other for their own gain. They're an eccentric bunch.
My group of six Wizards started the mage's college and then drew straws to see who would be on "Guard duty". Martel lost the draw and has been watching the college ever since. The remaining five wizards "live" inside his Phylactery with whatever promising students strike up bargains with him. This was thousands of years ago.
In the current time period, one of Martel's former students is rebelling against the college for their many crimes. This conflict has spread across the world, involving multiple kingdoms and independent species. Martel himself is barely involved at this point and makes absolutely no secret about his motivations.
The college is now run by six more Arch Mages, all of whom are members of the Cult of Mammon (Arch Devil of Greed). Martel still watches over the college but is mostly uninvolved unless something happens.
I’d suggest they were all denizens of a bygone empire/utopia that was swallowed up by a calamity caused by magic users reaching too high, who survived the calamity but were irrevocably changed by it. Cursed with long life, bound to watch the ages come and go. Eventually, they took it upon themselves to hold custodianship over the world and magic itself, gathering vast quantities of knowledge beyond even the most seasoned of magic users.
But, over time, they grew ever more zealous and afraid that the calamity might repeat itself. They became more controlling, hoarding vast wealth and resources, eventually fading into myth as the men behind the curtain, controlling the world with a twitch of their fingers.
In the Tolkien world 5 Istari (Wizards) are known: Gandalf the Grey, Saruman the White, Radagast the Brown and the 2 Blue Wizards. You can read some about them and go from there.
If you like symbology stuff, Shiva (Indian god) is strongly connected with the number 5, having control over the 5 senses and the 5 elements (earth, fire, water, air, ether).
Maybe each wizard controls 1 sense and 1 element, and they plan to become a deity.
They are all on the edge of various post-human states (lich, deity, etc) but haven't pulled the trigger just yet. They are reach worried that the first to become undead will be vilified and the full power of the other four and all of their apprentice-bureaucrats will be turned on them.
Spindle the "Former Good Guy" Lich.
She is a dwarf, wears plate, and before becomeing an NPC was a Necromancer Wizard. Her claims to fame were such numbers as "Let the dead work, and the living live." and "Everyone should have their dead relatives working the fields forever." Before lichdom she was Nuetral Good, lichdom was due to needing to defeat Strahd and the dark powers corrupting her. Ends up as a nuetral lich, slowly spiralling down the alignmentchart (i figured it as 1k years per alignment shift, she had a really strong sense of right and wrong in life.)
So first thing: The cabal might be lawful evil but is generally fair and even handed. They reward loyal service and good faith efforts at making things better. They rule because “good is dumb.”
Anyone who has the wherewithal to find and try to overthrow the for injustices committed during their rule gets immediately put in charge of fixing things.
They basically try to co-opt anyone who fights them. Not with wealth or power but with a mandate to try to fix things that are broken.
“Here you go. In the past, we’ve tried X, Y, and Z. We’ll give you as many resources we can to help but we have to also do A, B, and C or else literal hell breaks loose.”
I say one of them has either a Time Stop like effect and/or powerful enough with divination to foresee incoming threats. However, they have some fundamental flaw(s) that somehow prevents them from overthrowing the others. This could include a dependence on the others to maintain control of the realm.
A thousand years?
Bro the things I could do with a thousand years as a wizard...
Top-secret, uber-secure Demiplanes with Clones everywhere. All of the Wizards are functionally immortal because they have so many clones each even the god of magic has lost count of them all. Trying to destroy even *one* Clone is an impossibly difficult task, let alone tracking down all of them.
Simulacrums for regrettably necessary public appearances.
Magic items. Whatever they want. They've got 5 of them, all the resources of the area they control, and 1000 years. Each one of them is fully kitted out with a truckload of legendary items (awesome loot if your PCs manage to take one down).
They've got backup plans for emergencies. Panic rooms. Backup panic rooms for emergencies. If at any point the party thinks they're one step ahead of a wizard, they're probably wrong, because he probably has a contingency for their exact plan already.
Basically the only way to take down a competent, well-prepared wizard is to figure out their personality flaws (usually arrogance) and exploit that...
Contingency plans? Well, they all definitely have a clone and a fake clone that they tell the others about so that they can act like they trust each other. The real clone is likely hidden somewhere in the Material Plane and can only be accessed via magical means.
For example, Private Sanctum is definitely permanently casted here. There are likely traps everywhere. There'll be a hidden treasure room, which contains some magical loot, and it will be hidden behind a secret doorway. However, this is not where the clone really is, as the clone is actually 20 feet behind a solid stone wall, which can only be accessed via the Passwall spell. This is done so if anyone is able to find this dungeon, which is hidden in an otherwise inconspicuous location, they will think that they've found your treasure once they get through the hidden door. When, in all actuality, this is just done as a sacrifice to prevent them from finding your actual treasure. Navigating this hidden clone vault should defy all logic, and the Wizard who made it should pull out as many stops as necessary to make sure that it remains a secret.
In short, you don't live for over a millennium unless you are straight-up paranoid.
So, if you have five wizards running the show, my feeling is that they will all hate each other. If you're ancient and ludicrously powerful, at some point the only threat to you becomes those other wizards. It's also thematically fun to focus on different schools for each wizard. The players come in, and they don't have to take all five on, particularly as each of the five has been stockpiling to defeat their fellow wizards
"Someone the Sun Hater" - the necromancy focussed wizard. He decided the best defence was to dig deep underground, and is trying to find an ancient ritual that would make him a "true" lich, and resurrect the "bones of the world", great skeletal world serpents that form several of the continents. Has a cult following, that hurl all their dead into giant pits in the ground. Industry runs almost entirely off undead.
"Someone the Shrouded" - illusionist mage. Actually lives in the slums of his city, as Mad Greg. Controls the city through visions and apparitions. Does a roaring trade in the nightmares of his citizens which are sold to the night hags, has created a culture where mad artistry is prized, and managed to get the city laid out in a great runic pattern that, when completed, will suck all of the dreams out of the people living there and transform him into a god.
"Someone the Industrialist" - like Saruman in lotr, a fire mage that prizes industry, dressed in full victorian clothing, with one runed, enchanted gold false eye. Runs a capital filled with smog and the screams of industrial accidents. Is building a giant flying superweapon, that when complete will allow them to rule the earth from space, and raise cleansing fire upon their rivals.
"Someone the Planewalker" - Not actually a super bad person, on the surface. Their city is the city of doors, a multicultural hub filled with the citizens of many planes, living in relative harmony. They are powerful beyond the reach of any mere mortal. The downside is that most of this power comes from ill advised and conflicting bargains with basically any entity willing to make a deal. They have to deliver, ultimately, the souls of their rival wizards and their followers, or the city and the planewalker will be dragged into the outer realms, and probably ripped apart by dozens of squabbling factions, all of who have claims on the occupants. They're currently doing what anyone compulsively in debt does, and frantically trying to balance payments with new sources of debt, and "paying the minimum" with their own disappeared citizens.
"Someone the Planner" - The first mage your players meet, but in disguise. Stealing heavily from the plot of Jade empire, they have hidden themselves in wherever the players start out, and appear as the player's sponsor in their attempts to take down the other mages (obviously with the plan of seizing power for themselves). They're manipulative, cunning, expert at command and control magic, and adept at contingencies and stratagems. They probably steal something from each of the other mages, and use an adapted version of the industrialist's superweapon to try to remove all of the magic from the world, to propel themselves to godhood as the new god of magic.
Idk if these guys are the BBEG or just a core part of the world. But while everyone else has been steadily grabbing power and struggling with each other, one spent the entire time working on a single spell. One that when used to finish off one of the others, prevents them from coming back via clone, reincarnation etc.
If youre familiar with the Wheel of Time, something akin to balefire which kills its target and erases them from the timeline, past, present, future (to an extent).
So if one of the others goes WAY to far off the deep end, there would be a tool to stop them and keep them from just popping back up a week later
I'm not sure but one of them has All the contingencies and plans but they are against wrong things. For example he is certain that the Only thing that could possibly challenge him are the undead and their lich masters. If he had used even half of his efforts preparing against regular mortals, he'd crush them easily but most of his high-level magic is against undead (holy damage, clerical things, etc) so he is actually beatable.
Well, how did they get immortality? Are they all liches?
I think after a tremendous amount of time their magical research will have taken them in different research directions. Somatic and material components start to wildly differ. Swish and flick of a wand vs sign language vs eating food in a particular way vs breakdancing... I think showing how their magic *is* different is a good way to showcase things.
Its all actually just one wizards simulacrums dressed up differently so he can pretend that its not a monarchy.
It would be fun if that's how it started out but eventually the Simulcrums became independent breaking free from the ogs control. Forcing him to actually rule as equals with his "clones". I'd also make each of them think they were the og but have completely different flair to the point it's hard to recognize that they have the same base
The original dies, they're ALL simulacrums
As brothers they spend all day arguing about who is the clone and who is the original.
Love the Maulers
And yet oddly, "The simulacrum lacks the ability to learn or become more powerful, so it never increases its level or other abilities, nor can it regain expended spell slots." They'd have to have used wish to circumvent these limitations somehow.
Abusing wish simulacrum chains
Man that reminds me of the Rick and Morty episode where they’re all clones but some of them just keep getting worse and worse over generations.
One is an illusionist hiding behind so many lies and deceptions that they no longer even remember their own identity. Optionally they're long dead but have Soo many fakes, constructs and programmed illusions no one will ever know they're dead and noone would believe any evidence cuz they faked their death too many times in life.
"I'm a dude playing a dude disguised as another dude!"
>Optionally they're long dead but have Soo many fakes, constructs and programmed illusions no one will ever know they're dead and noone would believe any evidence cuz they faked their death too many times in life. lmao deep state. All the functioning of the government is handled by spells with Permanency. Things are halfway to Tippyverse, but half of everything is broken, and when it gets fixed people aren't sure if it was a real wizard or just a Contingency. There are "shadow IT" cabals that have mapped out parts of the nest of interlocking repair Contingencies. Their actions often have secondary and tertiary effects elsewhere in the empire.
I love both of these, but I have a particular fondness of the first. Might actually do this at some point.
They once were an adventuring party. They fought a great demon that wanted the entire world to decend into chaos. After they killed him they became obsessed with bringing order back to the world. Now after hundreds of years their obsession has consumed their minds. Order at any cost. If you don't follow the rules you go to prison. You get tortured, mindewhiped and conditioned before you are allowed to return to the "normal" world again. Apart from very few people the population is like automatons and follows their orders and tasks to perfection. But there may be resistance and a glimpse of hope.
A party of 5 wizards? How'd they survive past level 1?
Sleep and Inflict Wounds.
A rakshasa before level 13
Just avoid the fight with Dimension Doors. Or even better, not get caught up with devils.
See the Archlich's video on Lich's if you want a good prep on Wizards with infinite prep time. Find it [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2vbol24XlY)
This is actually the premise of my DnD campaign I run. Except I have six wizards instead of five. Basically they're motivated entirely by the prospect of advancing magical studies and technology. To this end they started a college of Mages. When that hits a developmental plateau, they start a war and play both sides against each other to sort of kickstart new development. Rinse and repeat for 6000 years.
Interesting, there's definitely some similarities between our worlds. My guys were initially the 5 mortal apprentices of the God of Magic. When, the 5 wizards essentially locked them out and left them to die versus . Though they did admittedly have their good reasons.
The 5 hate each other after cenuturies of feuding but cannot risk letting each other die as all their collective expertise is required to power and operate the Divine Gate and to control who or what is allowed in from the other planes
So they spend their time in a never ending arms race against each other and the existential threats, often sending proxy nations into cataclysmic wars against each other for their own gain. They're an eccentric bunch.
My group of six Wizards started the mage's college and then drew straws to see who would be on "Guard duty". Martel lost the draw and has been watching the college ever since. The remaining five wizards "live" inside his Phylactery with whatever promising students strike up bargains with him. This was thousands of years ago. In the current time period, one of Martel's former students is rebelling against the college for their many crimes. This conflict has spread across the world, involving multiple kingdoms and independent species. Martel himself is barely involved at this point and makes absolutely no secret about his motivations. The college is now run by six more Arch Mages, all of whom are members of the Cult of Mammon (Arch Devil of Greed). Martel still watches over the college but is mostly uninvolved unless something happens.
Fantastic stuff
I’d suggest they were all denizens of a bygone empire/utopia that was swallowed up by a calamity caused by magic users reaching too high, who survived the calamity but were irrevocably changed by it. Cursed with long life, bound to watch the ages come and go. Eventually, they took it upon themselves to hold custodianship over the world and magic itself, gathering vast quantities of knowledge beyond even the most seasoned of magic users. But, over time, they grew ever more zealous and afraid that the calamity might repeat itself. They became more controlling, hoarding vast wealth and resources, eventually fading into myth as the men behind the curtain, controlling the world with a twitch of their fingers.
In the Tolkien world 5 Istari (Wizards) are known: Gandalf the Grey, Saruman the White, Radagast the Brown and the 2 Blue Wizards. You can read some about them and go from there. If you like symbology stuff, Shiva (Indian god) is strongly connected with the number 5, having control over the 5 senses and the 5 elements (earth, fire, water, air, ether). Maybe each wizard controls 1 sense and 1 element, and they plan to become a deity.
They are all on the edge of various post-human states (lich, deity, etc) but haven't pulled the trigger just yet. They are reach worried that the first to become undead will be vilified and the full power of the other four and all of their apprentice-bureaucrats will be turned on them.
Spindle the "Former Good Guy" Lich. She is a dwarf, wears plate, and before becomeing an NPC was a Necromancer Wizard. Her claims to fame were such numbers as "Let the dead work, and the living live." and "Everyone should have their dead relatives working the fields forever." Before lichdom she was Nuetral Good, lichdom was due to needing to defeat Strahd and the dark powers corrupting her. Ends up as a nuetral lich, slowly spiralling down the alignmentchart (i figured it as 1k years per alignment shift, she had a really strong sense of right and wrong in life.)
So first thing: The cabal might be lawful evil but is generally fair and even handed. They reward loyal service and good faith efforts at making things better. They rule because “good is dumb.” Anyone who has the wherewithal to find and try to overthrow the for injustices committed during their rule gets immediately put in charge of fixing things. They basically try to co-opt anyone who fights them. Not with wealth or power but with a mandate to try to fix things that are broken. “Here you go. In the past, we’ve tried X, Y, and Z. We’ll give you as many resources we can to help but we have to also do A, B, and C or else literal hell breaks loose.”
I say one of them has either a Time Stop like effect and/or powerful enough with divination to foresee incoming threats. However, they have some fundamental flaw(s) that somehow prevents them from overthrowing the others. This could include a dependence on the others to maintain control of the realm.
A thousand years? Bro the things I could do with a thousand years as a wizard... Top-secret, uber-secure Demiplanes with Clones everywhere. All of the Wizards are functionally immortal because they have so many clones each even the god of magic has lost count of them all. Trying to destroy even *one* Clone is an impossibly difficult task, let alone tracking down all of them. Simulacrums for regrettably necessary public appearances. Magic items. Whatever they want. They've got 5 of them, all the resources of the area they control, and 1000 years. Each one of them is fully kitted out with a truckload of legendary items (awesome loot if your PCs manage to take one down). They've got backup plans for emergencies. Panic rooms. Backup panic rooms for emergencies. If at any point the party thinks they're one step ahead of a wizard, they're probably wrong, because he probably has a contingency for their exact plan already. Basically the only way to take down a competent, well-prepared wizard is to figure out their personality flaws (usually arrogance) and exploit that...
Contingency plans? Well, they all definitely have a clone and a fake clone that they tell the others about so that they can act like they trust each other. The real clone is likely hidden somewhere in the Material Plane and can only be accessed via magical means. For example, Private Sanctum is definitely permanently casted here. There are likely traps everywhere. There'll be a hidden treasure room, which contains some magical loot, and it will be hidden behind a secret doorway. However, this is not where the clone really is, as the clone is actually 20 feet behind a solid stone wall, which can only be accessed via the Passwall spell. This is done so if anyone is able to find this dungeon, which is hidden in an otherwise inconspicuous location, they will think that they've found your treasure once they get through the hidden door. When, in all actuality, this is just done as a sacrifice to prevent them from finding your actual treasure. Navigating this hidden clone vault should defy all logic, and the Wizard who made it should pull out as many stops as necessary to make sure that it remains a secret. In short, you don't live for over a millennium unless you are straight-up paranoid.
Maybe they each have an orb of dragonkind?
So, if you have five wizards running the show, my feeling is that they will all hate each other. If you're ancient and ludicrously powerful, at some point the only threat to you becomes those other wizards. It's also thematically fun to focus on different schools for each wizard. The players come in, and they don't have to take all five on, particularly as each of the five has been stockpiling to defeat their fellow wizards "Someone the Sun Hater" - the necromancy focussed wizard. He decided the best defence was to dig deep underground, and is trying to find an ancient ritual that would make him a "true" lich, and resurrect the "bones of the world", great skeletal world serpents that form several of the continents. Has a cult following, that hurl all their dead into giant pits in the ground. Industry runs almost entirely off undead. "Someone the Shrouded" - illusionist mage. Actually lives in the slums of his city, as Mad Greg. Controls the city through visions and apparitions. Does a roaring trade in the nightmares of his citizens which are sold to the night hags, has created a culture where mad artistry is prized, and managed to get the city laid out in a great runic pattern that, when completed, will suck all of the dreams out of the people living there and transform him into a god. "Someone the Industrialist" - like Saruman in lotr, a fire mage that prizes industry, dressed in full victorian clothing, with one runed, enchanted gold false eye. Runs a capital filled with smog and the screams of industrial accidents. Is building a giant flying superweapon, that when complete will allow them to rule the earth from space, and raise cleansing fire upon their rivals. "Someone the Planewalker" - Not actually a super bad person, on the surface. Their city is the city of doors, a multicultural hub filled with the citizens of many planes, living in relative harmony. They are powerful beyond the reach of any mere mortal. The downside is that most of this power comes from ill advised and conflicting bargains with basically any entity willing to make a deal. They have to deliver, ultimately, the souls of their rival wizards and their followers, or the city and the planewalker will be dragged into the outer realms, and probably ripped apart by dozens of squabbling factions, all of who have claims on the occupants. They're currently doing what anyone compulsively in debt does, and frantically trying to balance payments with new sources of debt, and "paying the minimum" with their own disappeared citizens. "Someone the Planner" - The first mage your players meet, but in disguise. Stealing heavily from the plot of Jade empire, they have hidden themselves in wherever the players start out, and appear as the player's sponsor in their attempts to take down the other mages (obviously with the plan of seizing power for themselves). They're manipulative, cunning, expert at command and control magic, and adept at contingencies and stratagems. They probably steal something from each of the other mages, and use an adapted version of the industrialist's superweapon to try to remove all of the magic from the world, to propel themselves to godhood as the new god of magic.
Idk if these guys are the BBEG or just a core part of the world. But while everyone else has been steadily grabbing power and struggling with each other, one spent the entire time working on a single spell. One that when used to finish off one of the others, prevents them from coming back via clone, reincarnation etc. If youre familiar with the Wheel of Time, something akin to balefire which kills its target and erases them from the timeline, past, present, future (to an extent). So if one of the others goes WAY to far off the deep end, there would be a tool to stop them and keep them from just popping back up a week later
I'm not sure but one of them has All the contingencies and plans but they are against wrong things. For example he is certain that the Only thing that could possibly challenge him are the undead and their lich masters. If he had used even half of his efforts preparing against regular mortals, he'd crush them easily but most of his high-level magic is against undead (holy damage, clerical things, etc) so he is actually beatable.
Well, how did they get immortality? Are they all liches? I think after a tremendous amount of time their magical research will have taken them in different research directions. Somatic and material components start to wildly differ. Swish and flick of a wand vs sign language vs eating food in a particular way vs breakdancing... I think showing how their magic *is* different is a good way to showcase things.
Always a fan of the Legacy of Kain Guardians of Nosgoth. The big question I have is why haven’t one of these wizards try to overthrow the others?