Waterdeep Merch
2015-01-03, 12:00 AM
I am certain that none of my players frequent these forums, hence my certainty that I may speak plainly about the setting that they are embarking on without fear of spoiling certain cosmic revelations. If I am mistaken, this is your warning to turn away immediately. Perhaps check the other homebrew forum instead.
I'll wait.
This is an original campaign world that I am about to take my players through, beginning on the 10th of this month. I've been working on the setting for months in preparation. My initial inspiration for the setting was the Dark Souls series. I'd love any and all feedback on how to make this campaign a memorable trip into the lost kingdom of Silma, the land literally abandoned by the gods.
As the campaign continues I will update this thread with tactical maps, custom rules, items and monsters, and whatever else is needed for others to run the same game. I will also narrate the doomed adventures of my players.
Chapter I: The Players' Preamble
It is the year 758 in the Black Age. The gwain country of Aiherenth, long engaged in a bloody war alongside her Turinastic allies against the oira nations following holy Calaventë már doctrine, has suffered an attempted civilian uprising that has led to brutal suppression by the gentry against the peasant class.
Between the thuggery of the nobility and the oncoming shadow of a massive Calaventist invasion on the horizon, many seek to escape Aiherenth and head to the eastern Sogodorian countries, neutral in this religious war. The borders with neighboring Xesta are treacherous, having fallen to Calaventist forces years ago and undergoing a horrific gwain pogrom.
There is another way to the east, but it is not easy. The passage in the north travels through the legendary, cursed kingdom of the gods, Silma. It is unnaturally cold regardless of season, and many caravans have disappeared looking for the lost city. Regardless of the danger, it is the only hope those seeking refuge in Sogodor have.
A caravan escaped the northern borders of Aiherenth in the early spring of 758. It travels now where many have died before them. Though the summer months have come, the weather has only turned colder and more inhospitable. A blizzard has overtaken them that shuts out all sight, howling with a deafening fury.
In the distance, the freezing refugees make out eerie lights. Rather than die to the endless fury of ice and snow, they move, ever closer.
They will be upon them soon.
As the players, you will be part of the caravan seeking Sogodor from Aiherenth. Though Aiherenth is a gwain country and notoriously intolerant to religions outside of Turinasticisim, the chaos of civil war and the fall of Xesta has left many others stranded in Aiherenth that would want out, be they oira or secretly practitioners of other faiths.
The gwain are the races of men, orcs, halflings and gnomes. The first two are the original Turinastics, believing they were made by the goddess Adral after mating with the oira before her death at the hand of the false god Glórim, making them the promised people destined to inherit the world under the last living goddess, Atta, mother of the oira and grandmother of the gwain.
Observant Turinastics believe that Adral had a twin sister named Esral that mated with Glórim's righteous brother Menel before they both took their own lives in memory of Adral, thus giving birth to the halflings and gnomes. Orthodox Turinastics, however, believe halflings and gnomes were made by Tura-Bosat, the king of hell, and thus are satha- monster-kin.
Many halflings and gnomes ascribe to their own religion, called the Covenant, that teaches that Menel and Esral are the only gods and that the others are false gods that have taken undue credit for the creation of all the other races. They do not believe themselves to be gwain like men and orcs, and instead call themselves the People and everyone else the Mockeries, creatures made through inbreeding of the People with demons on the eastern continents. While the Covenant takes pity on their warped cousins, they consider physical contact with them an abomination that requires ritual cleansing to prevent giving birth to further Mockeries.
The oira are the races of elves and dwarves, and they believe they came before the gwain. They predominantly believe in Calaventë már, which teaches that Glórim, Menel and Atta made the world and the heavens, and continue to watch them from the sun, stars and moon. They do not recognize any other gods, and consider Turinasticism particularly blasphemous. Most believe in an inherent superiority of oira over gwain, believing them to be slave races born from soot and moondust sent from the heavens expressly for them to rule over. There was an ancient exception for kingdom of Silma, a gwain country blessed by the goddess Atta.
Mostly apart from the other Calaventists, the drow and duergar are said to be cursed people, the original inhabitants of Silma in mythic days that were overcome with lust and mated with the gwain and were thus banished to never look upon Glórim again. Other Calaventists believe them to be promiscuous and prone to sin. The drow and duergar themselves live in the deep parts of the earth and believe in a radically different form of Calaventism. They proudly believe they themselves slew Glórim in the grips of a genocidal insanity rather than fight Menel and Atta, who would later die off over the centuries without Glórim's guidance. They're known as the Godslayer Cult, and believe that no god remains in the world.
Besides the more organized religions, many tribes and nomads called Elementalists exist that worship an aspect of nature, believing the world itself to be the only truly holy thing and gods to be a construct of tyrants for control. They war constantly, with themselves and others, but consider it an honorable tribute to the subtle and fierce interplay of the elements they represent. A conquered people are expected to take up the aspect of nature of the victors, and to accept their new place in nature gladly. A person who does not is considered an animal not of the earth, and may be culled.
There are several cults dedicated to Tura-Bosat hidden in the dark corners of the world, the king of hell that appears in many religions. He is said to be the father of all monsters and dragons, the satha, and is sometimes known as the Tyrant. There are many smaller cults that follow the Twin Shadows, two gods that are said to watch the affairs of mortals from afar and remain mostly unknown to all but the most worthy. The Twin Shadows cults are often mistaken for Tura-Bosat cults, and are usually destroyed without mercy.
Silma is a mythical city said to have been built by the gods themselves in nearly every religion. It was said that Glórim lived here amongst the elves and dwarves. Over 4,000 years ago, at the end of the Mythic Age, the city vanished into legend until it was rediscovered less than two millennia ago by the Ceolfre Dynasty, gwain men who were said to trace their lineage directly to the goddess Atta, who served as their god queen.
Under the Ceolfre Dynasty, Silma had become the most powerful nation in the world, and even the neighboring Calaventists did not dare move against a Turinastic kingdom that had the direct protection of one of their major goddesses. Their empire controlled the known world for many centuries before the Black Year occurred.
On the dawning of the Black Age, there was a worldwide catastrophe that greatly shortened days, caused the weather around the world to become deadly unpredictable, and saw a tremendous rise in the number of satha. Once the Black Year had finished and the days became normal and the sky normalized, entire nations of monsters and dragons had sprouted into existence and waged war with the other countries. Some time during the Black Year, Silma had been completely lost, its territories impossible to navigate due to lingering weather anomalies, and the remaining nations were ill-equipped to deal with the sudden rise of satha. The gwain and oira nations that came into being after the first few centuries of terror were much diminished from before the Black Age began.
While the various peoples of the world have mostly recovered, satha remain a serious threat everywhere, a great deal of historic knowledge has been lost and Silma remains unseen by outside eyes to this day.
Chapter II: Homebrew Rules
All of the races and classes in the PHB are legal with two exceptions- the dragonborn and tieflings may not be played, as they are considered satha by the other intelligent races and would be attacked on sight more often than not.
All alignments are legal, though no player may intentionally cause serious harm to other players or the caravan they are with, or make arbitrarily unintelligent decisions based on 'alignment'. Chaotic evil in particular will be under close scrutiny, and may be subject to change.
We are using the honor and sanity abilities as outlined in the DMG. Honor will have many perks but is considered purely optional unless you are playing a paladin. If you want to have an honor score, you must have three core tenants that must be approved by the DM. Failure to uphold these tenants will drop your honor score. Any honor score that falls below 6 will simply cease to be, and will not be earned back over the course of the campaign. A paladin that loses his honor will become an oathbreaker, permanently. Atonement is simply not possible in Silma.
Short rests will last 5 minutes. Long rests will restore all lost hit dice. However, your hit points will not restore during any rest without the use of restoratives, magic, or those same hit dice.
Critical hits and dropping to 0 hit points will incur a Constitution test. Failure will result in a permanent injury as outlined in the DMG.
We will be using the speed factor variant rules for initiative. Each player will be expected to keep track of their own changing initiative and respond when I call for the count they act on in combat. Failure to respond in a timely manner will result in the turn being lost. No amount of arguing will change this.
We are using the flanking and marking variant rules.
Any caster may use the spell point variant if they wish. They will decide whether they are using this variant at character creation, and cannot change their mind later. Not even if they multiclass into a new casting class.
Multiclassing and feats are available.
The variant human is allowed.
The Gish class I made is allowed.
We will be rolling for stats at 4d6 drop the lowest. If you aren't playing a variant human or a half-elf, I will allow two 5d6 drop the two lowest rolls. The half elf may have one 5d6-2 roll. The variant human can suck it up, you get a free feat.
Resurrection is extremely rare. Prepare multiple characters, they're all part of the caravan.
We are using a physical map and miniatures in a standard tile-based grid for tactical combat.
The players will award each other inspiration as per the guidelines for doing such in the DMG. The exception is whoever buys pizza or beer, they get inspiration from me.
I'll wait.
This is an original campaign world that I am about to take my players through, beginning on the 10th of this month. I've been working on the setting for months in preparation. My initial inspiration for the setting was the Dark Souls series. I'd love any and all feedback on how to make this campaign a memorable trip into the lost kingdom of Silma, the land literally abandoned by the gods.
As the campaign continues I will update this thread with tactical maps, custom rules, items and monsters, and whatever else is needed for others to run the same game. I will also narrate the doomed adventures of my players.
Chapter I: The Players' Preamble
It is the year 758 in the Black Age. The gwain country of Aiherenth, long engaged in a bloody war alongside her Turinastic allies against the oira nations following holy Calaventë már doctrine, has suffered an attempted civilian uprising that has led to brutal suppression by the gentry against the peasant class.
Between the thuggery of the nobility and the oncoming shadow of a massive Calaventist invasion on the horizon, many seek to escape Aiherenth and head to the eastern Sogodorian countries, neutral in this religious war. The borders with neighboring Xesta are treacherous, having fallen to Calaventist forces years ago and undergoing a horrific gwain pogrom.
There is another way to the east, but it is not easy. The passage in the north travels through the legendary, cursed kingdom of the gods, Silma. It is unnaturally cold regardless of season, and many caravans have disappeared looking for the lost city. Regardless of the danger, it is the only hope those seeking refuge in Sogodor have.
A caravan escaped the northern borders of Aiherenth in the early spring of 758. It travels now where many have died before them. Though the summer months have come, the weather has only turned colder and more inhospitable. A blizzard has overtaken them that shuts out all sight, howling with a deafening fury.
In the distance, the freezing refugees make out eerie lights. Rather than die to the endless fury of ice and snow, they move, ever closer.
They will be upon them soon.
As the players, you will be part of the caravan seeking Sogodor from Aiherenth. Though Aiherenth is a gwain country and notoriously intolerant to religions outside of Turinasticisim, the chaos of civil war and the fall of Xesta has left many others stranded in Aiherenth that would want out, be they oira or secretly practitioners of other faiths.
The gwain are the races of men, orcs, halflings and gnomes. The first two are the original Turinastics, believing they were made by the goddess Adral after mating with the oira before her death at the hand of the false god Glórim, making them the promised people destined to inherit the world under the last living goddess, Atta, mother of the oira and grandmother of the gwain.
Observant Turinastics believe that Adral had a twin sister named Esral that mated with Glórim's righteous brother Menel before they both took their own lives in memory of Adral, thus giving birth to the halflings and gnomes. Orthodox Turinastics, however, believe halflings and gnomes were made by Tura-Bosat, the king of hell, and thus are satha- monster-kin.
Many halflings and gnomes ascribe to their own religion, called the Covenant, that teaches that Menel and Esral are the only gods and that the others are false gods that have taken undue credit for the creation of all the other races. They do not believe themselves to be gwain like men and orcs, and instead call themselves the People and everyone else the Mockeries, creatures made through inbreeding of the People with demons on the eastern continents. While the Covenant takes pity on their warped cousins, they consider physical contact with them an abomination that requires ritual cleansing to prevent giving birth to further Mockeries.
The oira are the races of elves and dwarves, and they believe they came before the gwain. They predominantly believe in Calaventë már, which teaches that Glórim, Menel and Atta made the world and the heavens, and continue to watch them from the sun, stars and moon. They do not recognize any other gods, and consider Turinasticism particularly blasphemous. Most believe in an inherent superiority of oira over gwain, believing them to be slave races born from soot and moondust sent from the heavens expressly for them to rule over. There was an ancient exception for kingdom of Silma, a gwain country blessed by the goddess Atta.
Mostly apart from the other Calaventists, the drow and duergar are said to be cursed people, the original inhabitants of Silma in mythic days that were overcome with lust and mated with the gwain and were thus banished to never look upon Glórim again. Other Calaventists believe them to be promiscuous and prone to sin. The drow and duergar themselves live in the deep parts of the earth and believe in a radically different form of Calaventism. They proudly believe they themselves slew Glórim in the grips of a genocidal insanity rather than fight Menel and Atta, who would later die off over the centuries without Glórim's guidance. They're known as the Godslayer Cult, and believe that no god remains in the world.
Besides the more organized religions, many tribes and nomads called Elementalists exist that worship an aspect of nature, believing the world itself to be the only truly holy thing and gods to be a construct of tyrants for control. They war constantly, with themselves and others, but consider it an honorable tribute to the subtle and fierce interplay of the elements they represent. A conquered people are expected to take up the aspect of nature of the victors, and to accept their new place in nature gladly. A person who does not is considered an animal not of the earth, and may be culled.
There are several cults dedicated to Tura-Bosat hidden in the dark corners of the world, the king of hell that appears in many religions. He is said to be the father of all monsters and dragons, the satha, and is sometimes known as the Tyrant. There are many smaller cults that follow the Twin Shadows, two gods that are said to watch the affairs of mortals from afar and remain mostly unknown to all but the most worthy. The Twin Shadows cults are often mistaken for Tura-Bosat cults, and are usually destroyed without mercy.
Silma is a mythical city said to have been built by the gods themselves in nearly every religion. It was said that Glórim lived here amongst the elves and dwarves. Over 4,000 years ago, at the end of the Mythic Age, the city vanished into legend until it was rediscovered less than two millennia ago by the Ceolfre Dynasty, gwain men who were said to trace their lineage directly to the goddess Atta, who served as their god queen.
Under the Ceolfre Dynasty, Silma had become the most powerful nation in the world, and even the neighboring Calaventists did not dare move against a Turinastic kingdom that had the direct protection of one of their major goddesses. Their empire controlled the known world for many centuries before the Black Year occurred.
On the dawning of the Black Age, there was a worldwide catastrophe that greatly shortened days, caused the weather around the world to become deadly unpredictable, and saw a tremendous rise in the number of satha. Once the Black Year had finished and the days became normal and the sky normalized, entire nations of monsters and dragons had sprouted into existence and waged war with the other countries. Some time during the Black Year, Silma had been completely lost, its territories impossible to navigate due to lingering weather anomalies, and the remaining nations were ill-equipped to deal with the sudden rise of satha. The gwain and oira nations that came into being after the first few centuries of terror were much diminished from before the Black Age began.
While the various peoples of the world have mostly recovered, satha remain a serious threat everywhere, a great deal of historic knowledge has been lost and Silma remains unseen by outside eyes to this day.
Chapter II: Homebrew Rules
All of the races and classes in the PHB are legal with two exceptions- the dragonborn and tieflings may not be played, as they are considered satha by the other intelligent races and would be attacked on sight more often than not.
All alignments are legal, though no player may intentionally cause serious harm to other players or the caravan they are with, or make arbitrarily unintelligent decisions based on 'alignment'. Chaotic evil in particular will be under close scrutiny, and may be subject to change.
We are using the honor and sanity abilities as outlined in the DMG. Honor will have many perks but is considered purely optional unless you are playing a paladin. If you want to have an honor score, you must have three core tenants that must be approved by the DM. Failure to uphold these tenants will drop your honor score. Any honor score that falls below 6 will simply cease to be, and will not be earned back over the course of the campaign. A paladin that loses his honor will become an oathbreaker, permanently. Atonement is simply not possible in Silma.
Short rests will last 5 minutes. Long rests will restore all lost hit dice. However, your hit points will not restore during any rest without the use of restoratives, magic, or those same hit dice.
Critical hits and dropping to 0 hit points will incur a Constitution test. Failure will result in a permanent injury as outlined in the DMG.
We will be using the speed factor variant rules for initiative. Each player will be expected to keep track of their own changing initiative and respond when I call for the count they act on in combat. Failure to respond in a timely manner will result in the turn being lost. No amount of arguing will change this.
We are using the flanking and marking variant rules.
Any caster may use the spell point variant if they wish. They will decide whether they are using this variant at character creation, and cannot change their mind later. Not even if they multiclass into a new casting class.
Multiclassing and feats are available.
The variant human is allowed.
The Gish class I made is allowed.
We will be rolling for stats at 4d6 drop the lowest. If you aren't playing a variant human or a half-elf, I will allow two 5d6 drop the two lowest rolls. The half elf may have one 5d6-2 roll. The variant human can suck it up, you get a free feat.
Resurrection is extremely rare. Prepare multiple characters, they're all part of the caravan.
We are using a physical map and miniatures in a standard tile-based grid for tactical combat.
The players will award each other inspiration as per the guidelines for doing such in the DMG. The exception is whoever buys pizza or beer, they get inspiration from me.