The Chains of Kandria

Some times I run Dungeons and Dragons. Other times I write down things that happened.

[scroll-for-damage-blog]

Resurrection

The following is a short handout that I give to players after a Player Character dies.

They say the Hall of Stories holds a candle for everyone that is, ever was, and ever will be.

Some flames burn brilliantly, some dull; others burn out too soon.

People live, and they die.

It is not usual for mortals to decide whether someone has died too soon.

But it is possible.

First you need enough blessed metal to pay the ferryman thrice, once there and twice back.

Second you need a dead and willing spirit, and two candles.

One lit and burning strong, and the snuffed flame of the willing spirit.

Coax the strong flame across to reignite that which was lost.

The cost of undeath is life, be certain of this.

To rekindle a lost flame, you must be willing consume the life of another.

[scroll-for-damage-blog]

Today I killed someone.

I haven’t posted in a while now. There was Christmas, and family, and food, then a power outage, then New Year’s and another power outage. All times were good and well enjoyed, and today I got to run a session.

It was fun, it was a good session.

A Player’s Character died in combat against a Wendigo. A foe they had all openly acknowledged as dangerous.

It’s a fantastic group of individuals and friends that I have the privilege of running for though.

Though I had entirely forgotten the blunt impact a character death can have on a session and the group’s mood.

There was no anger, no fury at the outcome. Just a cold understanding.

That is how their story played out. It made sense. There was no way budge, fudge, shift, twist, or connive a way out of it. 

Not from me the DM, nor the players.

I showed the players a short handout that explains how I handle resurrection in my worlds, and reminded them that one of their retainers had the components and experience necessary to bring the dead back to this world.

The player calmly told me that their character’s spirit would be unwilling to return, and that was that.

The remaining party members hacked away at the Wendigo’s corporeal form, making short work of the twisted bone, wood, and blood that remained.

[scroll-for-damage-blog]

Sing softly sweet siren,  

So sailors still see straight.

Come closer cold craven,

‘Cause corpses can’t cry.

[scroll-for-damage-blog]

Careful Wishes

Oh man I should give the party a Monkey Paw.

That sounds like it would be a lot of fun.

It’s a shame that half the players in this group seem rather cautious about magical items and things like that. 

Recently they discovered a jar full of viscous purple liquid with the eye stalk of a beholder floating inside. The eye would twist and turn to follow your gaze no matter which way you tilted the jar.

It was going to be a simple item that would let the user cast Augury without needing it prepared. Just something fun.

Fenran noped out of it so hard though, and made the party give it away to someone who could safely deal with it.

To be fair they found it deep in the belly of the Keep on the Shadowfell, in the arena for the Kalarel boss fight. I can understand why they might feel a little uneasy about it.

[scroll-for-damage-blog]

Cohesive Design

Today was a good day, the weather was beautiful and not nearly as offensive as forecast. Then I came home, made coffee, and broke my coffee plunger. Now I feel a burning need to enjoy the rest of my day in spite of this setback.

There are two kinds of GMs when it comes to building worlds, and both approaches have their merits.

Bottom up world design in short is when the world is constructed piecemeal. This is how I usually approach it, there’s an overall theme sure but the places and people of the world are constructed as they’re needed. Not always on the spot, usually some time in advance. It’s easy enough to prepare the world in broad strokes and add detail when it’s needed.

Top down world design is a more complete and ‘finished’ approach. Much, if not all, of the world exists before the players dip their toes in the water. I have a healthy respect for GMs who build their worlds top down, it’s simply not something I have the patience for. I think this kind of world caters a lot more to eternally curious players, when the history of a place is mentioned the players know they can ask questions because there are defined answers.

I like top down world design, but I know it’s not for me. I feel I’m too chaotic, history would be revised again and again. I’m not sure the world would ever be ready to run, if that makes sense. I’d never hit that point where I’d be happy to say “Okay, let’s play some muck fothin’ D&D,” so instead I build from the bottom up.

Unfortunately this can lead to moments where the design of the world is perhaps too fluid, there are moments where I risk the verisimilitude of the world because of this approach. Thankfully most players are pretty happy to absorb the few moments where I start a session by saying “Okay I’ve changed an important thing,” and thankfully I’ve only needed to say it once to this particular group.

Aside from cohesive world design a crafty GM should probably pay some heed to cohesive adventure design, or maybe story design is a better word. I don’t want to say c a m p a i g n design because it doesn’t sit well with me calling them campaigns, I don’t know why I just don’t like it.

Like sugar in coffee or wearing shoes without socks, there’s nothing inherently wrong with it. People who do it aren’t bad people. I just don’t like it.

One thing I wish I had done differently so far is the choice of minions for our first villain, Kalarel the Vile. It’s an old module that I’ve run a few times. Kalarel is a nice villain; they’re obviously evil but still manageable for a low level party.

For a low level adventure the stakes feel pretty high, which is nice. Failure to stop Kalarel’s plans mean he tears a hole between our world and the Shadowfell, pulling forth ravenous demons to realise his goal of bringing the material world to its knees.

During the adventure our fair heroes encountered a pair of his undying lieutenants - this time I called them Karst and Agatio - they met each other a few times, including in the final fight. Other than these two wights, the party dealt with a small band of hobgoblins and goblins who had signed on with Kalarel. In isolation this is pretty fine and fair enough, hobgoblins aren’t unusual low level baddies.

The issue is something I only saw after the fact, something I only realised when I considered the general roadmap for the story. One of the potential world-shaking events that I have in the bag is a hobgoblin invasion. I think hobgoblins are freakin’ neato, if that wasn’t clear already. Usually I run them as sort of neutral parties; hobgoblin legions exist and they have their territories, though they mostly mind their own business.

I tend to run hobgoblins as less war-like and thirsty for conquest than they’re depicted in the lunchbox lore, but I’ve always idly wondered how the players would respond to a war with such an adversary.

What I wish I had done was simply have Kalarel’s minions be a collection of undead saps and human cultists. I guess I’m afraid of a hobgoblin overload, because before the invasion starts I feel there’s a need for a bit of set-up and introduction of the major players involved.

Reading back through this feels like I really lost the thread I was following along the way. I had another point I wanted to write about, but I fear I’ve rambled on for a long while already.

[scroll-for-damage-blog]

Lost Souls

Smoke stained skies in an afternoon haze, treading lazy ways through these summertime days.

I can’t help but think of dragons and their ilk when looking up at the sunburnt curtains draping today’s sunset.

Dragons are cool. That’s pretty undeniable. A sentiment it feels safe to assume a great many people share, they wouldn’t have been explored in so many different ways otherwise.

Heck. You don’t even really ever need to explain what D&D even is to someone. It’s a game, and in this game there are dungeons and dragons. Two for one, fantastic deal.

Shadowrun: Dragonfall spoilers ahead.

The game is old, sure, but I only played through it a few weeks ago at a friend’s suggestion. I fell in love with the world they paint in Shadowrun, and more than that I fell in love with Feuerschwinge. Not like that though, don’t make this weird.

As the plot unfolds it becomes apparent that the Shadowrunners are being hunted by the Feuerschwinge, or agents of her at least. She had wreaked untold havoc on the world shortly after the Awakening in 2012, four months later an experimental weapon was put into play that finally brought her down. 

Feuerschwinge did not die, though her spirit - or her astral form, or presence, or whatever you want to call it - was torn from her physical body. The dragon herself crash landed, and her forcibly freed spirit slipped into the vessel of a young woman. 

This new reality slowly drove the human Feuerschwinge insane; well it at least unhinged her more than she already was, I’m not sure she was ever playing with a full deck.

The dragon that was left behind was still an absolutely fearsome beast.

But it was just that. A beast.

For me it was a fantastic moment in the story meeting Feuerschwinge and slowly coming to understand that the beast the Shadowrunners had felt right to fear for so long wasn’t the threat. She was threatening, but not the threat. Not by any measure.

It felt real and sensible. Both for the world and for the story being told.

I want to steal that more bestial iteration of dragons and slot it into the story we’ll spin in our D&D game. Not just because I think it’s neat - it is pretty dang cool though - but because I think it makes sense in the logic of the world.

If the Kandrians really did tear their world from its proper place in the Weave and the Great Wheel then that would have some incredibly far reaching consequences.

Maybe the dragons were ripped in half like Feuerschwinge was.

Maybe the dragons in human vessels have slowly forgotten who they really are.

Maybe our fair heroes have already met a dragon.

[scroll-for-damage-blog]

A Forgetting World

Today I mindlessly left my phone in a cupboard somewhere while I went about my business. It was nice to discover it later and see notifications letting me know I was missed, but I think it would have been nicer to be there for the calls.

I think one of the more burning questions that needs an answer when building a world for D&D is ‘How did everything get here?’, and what the question is really asking is ‘How did all these dope magical items end up existing’.

It’s a fair enough question, but the answer is kind of incidental and something smarter people have answered in more eloquent discussions. In short the answer almost demands to be that the people of now exist in a new cycle of a world that’s seen many lives. Ruins of an ancient and more learned people dot the landscape, hidden within are dangers and treasures in equal measure.

That’s a pretty reasonable answer, and I don’t think too many players are upset if you simply make mention of a long dead empire and have that be that.

I know for at least one of the players - and for me too - this simple explanation is not going to be enough. A powerful nation collapsed, an entire people gone, a shared identity wholly forgotten. 

Why? 

How?

This slow burn curiosity was baked into the very concept of Fenran’s character. A man whose Faustian desire for knowledge saw the loss of his own eyes in a misbegotten ritual to commune with what he believed to be a formless celestial power.

I’m trying to keep these posts short and sweet, so my full answer to ‘Why did the Kandrian Empire collapse?’ will probably be the subject of another post. 

To keep it mysterious and digestible for now I imagine the collapse as the result of a rejection of the gods, and an attempt to remove - or at least distance - Lyria from the Great Wheel. 

The Kandrians were successful, if you can call it that, and as a result they have sundered their world’s connection to the Weave.

Picture a house where the residents have decided that electricity is just a tool of the corporate overlords to control our lives, then in trying to stick it to the man they’ve gone around punching holes in walls and ripping the wires out. Yeah, take that you fascist pigs!

Or a patient in hospital hooked up to an IV drip system that’s keeping them steady who decides that they’re better off without it all and has yanked free the needles in their arms.

Lyria isn’t dead, even if the Kandrians definitely are.

The world isn’t dead, but it is dying.

It’s forgetting who it was, or what it was.

[scroll-for-damage-blog]

Where? House?

I put too much honey in my tea this morning, but if that’s the worst thing that happens today then it’s going to be a beautiful day.

Anyway. The players, after a short intro adventure, now work as one of the Chains of Kandria. The short story is that the Chains are groups of mercenaries that work as sort of privateers.

They have the benefit of using the Whirligig Delivery Service’s airships to travel around, and have the support of the Company. In game terms they’ll soon benefit from the Company as their Group Patron (see Eberron: Rising from the Last War p64) as well as batter’s choice of jobs that they take from the various departments in Cloudhorn.

One of our warehouses near Rouen has been destroyed.

A survivor spun some silly story to me about a Lycan.

I don’t believe it, but I do need answers.

And I need to know if it’s safe for us to organise some grunts to be sent out and reclaim the warehouse.

Here’s the job Sirrah ended up taking. Which is actually something else worth mentioning. They had to nominate a leader, naturally Chance suggested flipping a coin; and that’s how the group ended up with an 11 year old elf girl as their team leader.

SO.

Being who they are, the players have latched on to the mention of a Lycan. Which is fair enough, it’s like Chekhov’s Gun. If there’s no Lycan in the adventure - even if there’s no Lycan just because they miss it - then the players will be rightfully confused.

They’ve wondered aloud what kind of Lycan it could be, they reason that it’s probably a werewolf or wereboar. Werebears, according to them, keep to their own selves; and wererats are more common in cities which is also fair.

One player feels they have cracked the case.

They have triumphantly announced that soon the Tavern Hoppers will engage in glorious combat with...

A DEADLY WEREHOUSE!

[scroll-for-damage-blog]

The Crew.

I have more coffee, and for today I have nothing but time to burn.

I guess before anything else is said it makes sense to introduce the heroes.

This is their story after all.

As I mentioned in my first post I had each of them come up with a place in the world. I can say now that I like this approach, the world - Lyria - felt a little bit more tangible and real before we even started playing.

I’ll try to express it through their snapshot bios, and maybe another time I’ll sit down to colour each region a little bit more.

So. For now, and for a while, our fair heroes are:

Aratir Thagall - Half-Orc Barbarian

It’s tough being a mongrel. The humans call you half-breed, and so do the orcs. Not quite a man without a country, but definitely a man without a people.

Aratir hails from the West Marches, a collection of squabbling humanocentric kingdoms. Like many of the current generation of non-humans coming of age saw a realisation that the grass is greener on the other side, and this was all the reason he needed to get out.

Chance - Tiefling Sorceror

The Sahar Noran desert is a harsh mistress, and so is Beshaba. Kh’arya, a secluded hamlet hidden far enough from prying eyes; a place of worship for the goddess of misfortune.

Born with the antlers and tail of a deer, Chance belongs to The Scions who are devout followers of Beshaba. Chance runs against the norm; where Beshaba demands mischief and Tymora nurtures good fortune, Chance is the coin that landed on its side.

Fenran - Human Warlock

The long dead Kandrian Empire sought to preserve its knowledge, across the continent several Great Libraries were constructed. Towering fortresses ensconced the precious texts within.

Fenran was born in one such fortress library, deep in the Venglades, and his appetite for knowledge was monstrous. A short stint in the outside world to study a tower that was apparently growing and young Fenran has been swept up by the thrill of adventure.

Lyssa Buckhew - Human Monk

The Northern Borders are a wild, and untamed place. At least they are now. Flip a coin to see how you’ll die; heads is Owlbear, tails is bandit attack. Just kidding, throw the coin in the river, it was an Ankheg.

Well, for Lyssa at least the coin turned up tails. Traveling dwarves returning to a nearby clan-hold at the very least stopped the massacre before everyone died. Lyssa’s new guardians taught strength and pride, but did not mince words. She would describe herself as gentle and caring, and sometimes she’d even be able to express it.

Sirrah of Xyrsandoral - Elf Druid

Born on a Blood Moon, the peoples of the Venglades all agree in hushed whispers behind closed doors that this is an ill omen.

“Only Hags are born on a Blood Moon.”

For 10 years her parents hid this fact, a child of noble blood born on a Blood Moon would be cause for a riot. After 10 years they had nothing but regret for ignoring the whispers, and feared her growing power.

I tried to pare these snapshots down, I didn’t want to get too carried away with any one of them.

Hopefully the characters can be expressed through future snippets and writings, and I know I’ll be writing more about the regions at some point.

On another note, part of me wonders idly about formatting and how readable this all is.

The rest of me wonders how many people other than myself will ever really read all this anyway.

[scroll-for-damage-blog]

Airships, man.

6am and I’m wide awake, I guess now is as good a time as any to start this.

Maybe it will help me be more creative with my writing, my plans, my world.

I don’t know.

Maybe I just don’t want to forget some of the silly business the players get up to.

It had been about a year since I last ran D&D, maybe less but I guess it doesn’t matter too much.

A friend of mine talked to me often about Critical Role, and how one day he hoped to play. I mentioned in passing that I used to run games and it took off from there.

This was probably four months ago at this point. A few players have come and gone, but the ones who have stuck with it are starting to feel more safe in their skin. I think that’s the best part of running D&D, at least it is for me.

I didn’t give the players too much information about the world, the most I gave them is that it would be a mostly human-dominated world and that there would be airships. I think I called them whirligigs because that word is fun to say and I’m not a very serious person.

What I tried was something I wish I had tried earlier. Instead of backstories for their characters, I asked the players to come up with details about where they were born.

Make up a hamlet, town, city, or even a kingdom. Tell me what it’s like to grow up there.

I was going to scribble down short bios for each of the Player Characters here too, but then I’d probably ramble on forever.

I’m out of coffee anyway.