Dark Fantasy Plot #2
In a great empire, every year a certain number of newborn slave children are sacrificed to the water god, placed in baskets and sent down a treacherous river that leads to a monser's lair. One of these against all odds floats through a maze like lagoon and ends up at the temple where the water priests live. They decide the baby must be chosen by the god and raise him (or her) as one of them.
Years later, there's an uprising among the slaves, who have taken up the worship of their own ancestral god once again. City after city falls to them until there's only the Imperial City at the center of a lake. Being the highest ranking priest left at the temple, you're sent to summon the water god to fight in the defense of the Emperor. But on the way there, a strange messenger approaches you from one of the groups of liberated slaves, and says that if you kill the water monster, you'll prove you're the chosen one of THEIR much more powerful god and can join them in taking the city with victory guaranteed. The choice is which side do you take?
It should be obvious where I got the first part of the idea for this, but of course depending on who's writing it it can go a lot of ways.
