An Example of a Story Emerging from Play Part 4

As I mentioned in my last session report, I have been meditating upon the McGuffin that the party managed to get off of the Death Cult's altar — how is it going to help the Winter King? When pressed as to what it looked like, the first thing that came to mind was the Hand of Vecna. Therefore, it looks like a hand carved from ebony or some other black material. Since the McGuffin is a hand, I began to wonder what would happen if the Winter King amputated his own hand and replaced with the McGuffin?

My answer is largely based upon Christian anthropology (something that, unfortunately, I find many are shockingly ignorant of). Therefore, some preamble is necessary. Humanity is created in the image and likeness of God (Gen 1:26). Subsequently, it has been revealed that God is a Trinitarian being (Father, Son and Holy Spirit). The technical theological formula to describe the Trinity is three hypostasis (roughly translated as persons) in one ousia (which can be translated as nature or essence). Therefore, we — humanity — are a plethora of hypostasis in one ousia.

The implication of this reality is that what happens to an individual hypostasis (person), affects humanity as a whole through our shared ousia (nature/essense). This is why Christ's salvific work on earth is so effective — when He took on our nature by uniting his person to our humanity, His crucifixion and resurrection affects all of us. Our very nature and relationship with God was radically altered.

Since the Winter King knew of and had in his possession this Black Hand McGuffin centuries ago (as a member/leader of the Death Cult), there has to be a reason he did not take advantage of its magical properties when he could have all those years ago. The answer is based on the idea of ousia and is also the reason that the Winter King is willing to use the Black Hand McGuffin now. If and when he replaces his own hand with the Black Hand, his very nature will be irrevocably altered — he will cease being an elf.

Herein, though, is the way he intends so save the rest of the elves. By radically altering his ousia, his particular hypostasis will cease to affect the ousia of the rest of elven-kind.

I must admit that I know virtually nothing about the Eberron setting (I had left the hobby by the time it became the latest and greatest D&D setting); however, I cannot escape the art that accompanied it. One concept represented in these images that I find extremely intriguing is that of the Warforged — a magical elemental/construct as a character race.

I am considering the possibility of transforming the Winter King into something akin to this basic concept. There are several intriguing possibilities and consequences of this choice:

• While the source of the contagion may be neutralized, there are still members of the Winter Court in various states of infection. The Winter King (with the help of the PCs?) might have to hunt them down and offer them a choice: death or lose their "elfness" and become a sentient construct like him.
• Once the WInter King learns how to transform elves into sentient constructs, he may very well have a means by which to finally free the Winter Queen. She would likely insist that every elf who chose to have their souls bound to a bane weapon be given the choice to become a sentient construct (including and possibly starting with Hornet).
• As a result of all of this, the Winter Court will be heavily depleted and without a king for the first time in eons if not in all of history. There are very likely to be widespread political implications (will the PCs care/get involved?)
• There will be a new PC race-as-class available for players, the abilities of which I am still trying to hammer out. My rough draft includes a base AC7 (equivalent of +2 AC for you AAC junkies), the inability to be healed by divine magic, but the ability to burn equivalent arcane spell levels for healing (2 spell levels for every CLW equivalent?). This last as well as the arcane nature and knowledge of the original sentient constructs suggests that there will be at least a limited amount of arcane spell casting ability.
• Some working names (all of which will likely be used): Banes, Living Swords and Melltithians.

All that remains to see is whether or nor the PCs manage to get the Black Hand back to the Winter King...

An Example of a Story Emerging from Play Part 3

When Hamlen died and the party wanted to investigate ways of getting him raised, the party demonstrated a considerable amount of anti-elf prejudice. This afforded me an opportunity to explore the ways of the elves (what they think about bane weapons, etc.) and thus scratch an itch for Ahkmed's player. One way I intended to do this was have the Winter Queen bound to a bane weapon and the Winter King obsessed with finding a way to get her out.

When this campaign began, it was an experiment. I had no idea if a bunch of 3.5 players would be at all interested in playing the game in an old school style using a retrocloned ruleset. I therefore was not particularly interested in spending a lot of time creating a sandbox. I therefore placed Lost Colonies on one of the maps from the Wilderlands by Judges Guild. It has served me very well — it is sketchy enough to allow me to make the world my own but filled with enough detail to fire the imagination.

One of the few places where elves are dominant on the map I chose to use had a little blurb about the locals being very interested in finding out why undead were coming out of the ocean. I figured that the Winter King's obsession had gotten so bad that his own experiments were the reason for the undead incursion against his own kind.

About this time I had also picked up Frog God Games' Hex Crawl Chronicles: Valley of the Hawks. I have to admit, I have been hesitant to pick up anything they've done because I was never much impressed by any Necromancer Games product other than some of their Judges Guild conversions. Since the Hex Crawl Chronicles seemed to ape those conversions, however, I decided to pick this up (well worth the money, by the way).

Therein, the elves of the valley were divided between Summer and Winter courts. What inspired me, however, was that all of the Winter Elves were wights. This got me thinking about the life-cycle of the elf.

If one assumes that an elf's lifespan is measured in centuries and that they have something akin to a vegan diet (where fruits, leaves, saps etc. can be harvested without killing the source) than death would be virtually unknown culturally and mythically. Since it would be such a rare occurrence (as opposed to its daily presence in human life), there wold be no real need to explain it or incorporate it into the cultural/mythic landscape.

Elves are mortal, however. This mortality manifests as an inability to extract nutrients from food commonly consumed by elves. Thus, as the elf grows older, their diet becomes more and more exotic (possibly giving rise to the elven adventurer). When the diet of an elf results in the death of another creature (as in meat), they become a member of the Winter Court. Thus, the Summer Court is almost entirely made up of younger elves and the Winter Court is almost entirely made up of older elves.

Eventually, the elven system can no longer gain sustenance from food. This would be the natural end of the life cycle; however, since elves do not intimately know or understand death (outside of battle) they tend to fear it. Thus, they have spent centuries figuring out ways to cheat it. For example, many in the Winter Court have willingly become wights — they feed on the very life essence of other beings.

More importantly, the Bane weapons were one of these ways to cheat death. Elves of a certain age willingly had their souls tied to these weapons in an attempt to bring peace to the races in a kind of magical detente. Unfortunately, separated from their bodies, the elves went into a kind of torpor. The only way to wake was to find someone willing to give up their own will and allow the elf to act in and through the wielder of the weapon (as Ahkmed has done). In addition, the dwarves abused the bane weapons and brought corruption and death to the races instead of peace.

The Winter King is the oldest living elf. He has cheated death over and over again in a myriad of ways — including some that are truly heinous. He has made and broken deals with demons. He has killed innocents by the thousands. He is unwilling to die until he frees the Winter Queen from her torpor.

As a result of my players' interpretation of events, his latest cheat has had the unintended consequence of infecting others in the Winter court. While he is somewhat content to live as a half-shadow, he fears that once the Winter Court succumbs, it will affect elven kind as a whole. Currently, he is racing against time to find a way to work around this affliction. He has yet to find a cure.

An Example of a Story Emerging from Play Part 2

When I began my campaign, I had not strictly defined what any of the demi-human races were like (and had no real interest in doing so). Thus, when the first player to create a dwarf asked me what dwarves in my world were like, I told him to tell me. Because he balked at the idea, I started brainstorming ideas. The one he was most interested in was James' Dwimmermount dwarf. Though this was the genesis of dwarves in my campaign, Lost Colony dwarves differ from Dwimmermount dwarves in significant ways (they are neuters, for example) — not through my doing, but rather for things said and done by dwarf players in the campaign.

When my party found out that dwarf reproduction involved building a dwarf with the possibility of coming out with a gnome, they were intensely interested in getting a gnome for the group. They even planned to fund Ahkmed in the creation of said gnome — keep shelling out 10,000gp until a gnome came out. It was then decided that it was traditional for Dwarves only to have one son.

I reasoned that any son created after the first would have a very high chance of being a Knocker (a Chaotic Dwarf). I also reasoned that it had not always been that way. This tragic story was suggested by Mr. Raggi's module The Hammers of the God. It also suggested an origin for elfin maids bound to magical weapons.

One of the hammers of The Hammers of the God is a bane weapon — it is designed to be better against a specific kind of creature. There were also murals within the module that suggested that all of the various races of the earth had cooperated in making bane weapons in order to assure peace. This peace was destroyed by the dwarves (thus, giving a nice reason for there to be antipathy between the two races).

I figured that the dwarves (under the leadership of Mär-Rune from Raggi's module) started stealing all of the bane weapons in order to make war on all of the other races. The war that ensued so tainted the dwarven race, that they can no longer make more than one son without having that taint becoming manifest in their offspring. This war also sowed the seeds for the creation of the Sons of Cyn — but that is for another day.

Unfortunately, my players decided not to pursue the clues I had laid for them to find The Hammers — but the dungeon and all of this information has been placed into my campaign and awaits exploration.

An Example of a Story Emerging from Play Part I

This series of posts has its genesis in selfishness, I must admit. I am approaching a major story point in my Lost Colonies campaign that has the potential of world-changing consequences. This story point, however, is not entirely my own — it is something that has emerged from play rather than something I had planned or even imagined. Therefore, I want to put down in writing my thoughts about it in order to help me hammer out some details and see whether or not I have something workable and comprehensible; however, I also think that it might be useful for others interested to see how (at least for me) small things that come up in play develop into story-lines that affect entire campaigns and campaign worlds.

As with many things that I do when I run a game, this whole thing started with a roll on a random table — specifically, the presence of a simple (boring) short sword +1. In order to give it more character, I told the party that it had the word "Hornet" engraved on the blade in Elvish (with Sting from The Hobbit strongly in mind).

Given that the goblins in The Hobbit did not much care for the Elvish blades used by the protagonists of Tolkien's tale, I figured they wouldn't much care for Hornet either. I reasoned that goblins were particularly hated by the sword itself, which would force its wielder to attack goblins within 30' or so unless a save vs. spells was made.

This came up a couple of times during play. When Ahkmed the Dwarf (the wielder of Hornet) tried to use any weapon but Hornet, I added another twist — the sword was getting jealous and would appear in Ahkmed's hand unless he made a save vs. spells.

Ahkmed's player was new to the world of RPGs, with mine being only his second ever campaign. The veteran players had a lot of fun at his expense, as this was his first experience with a "cursed" item. Interestingly, it was really only those veteran players who wanted to get rid of the sword — Ahkmed's player was having fun being Hornet's wielder.

This was all pretty much copacetic until, after "giving his will" to Hornet in order to find a goblin in hiding, Ahkmed killed a goblin the party had worked very hard to capture (and thus interrogate). At this point, the sword was seen as more of a hindrance than a help.

Given that the sword now had some kind of entity to which someone could give their will to (and given the history of special swords from older editions of the game), Hornet definitely would not want to be parted from Ahkmed. Therefore, I reasoned that she (because Hornet was now a she in my mind) would need to offer something to Ahkmed in order to keep her around.

What resulted was the idea of a female elf somehow bound to the sword had been awakened by Ahkmed when he gave his will to the sword. As a result, she was now able to offer him help by acting in and through him. Thus, Ahkmed could gain certain elf-like abilities as long as he remained tied to the sword. Ahkmed gleefully agreed and Hornet became a quiet NPC in the party.

At this point, however, I had no idea how or why there was an elfin maid bound to a magical sword or what that meant for other magical swords/weapons — something Ahkmed's player was definitely interested in finding out more about. In the meantime, he busied himself collecting as many elfin accouterments as possible.