One-Shot Campaign Log -- Prologue

After the last campaign petered out and died -- and then I moved out of state, so it's very dead -- I'm going to take another shot at writing these things up.

This is the log from a one-shot game -- 3rd edition D&D with some Pathfinder elements -- run for a group of six people, whose experience with D&D covered the spectrum between “memorized the Monster Manual in elementary school” to “sorry, Dungeons and what?” It was set in the same world as my past couple campaigns; I designed it with the meta-objective of making a change in the campaign world that I’d been wanting to implement for a while -- moving away from the default D&D pantheon. The following is the mission briefing and map the players were given:

That map shows the Duchy of Lysinka, one of the many tiny nations that comprise the Necrotic Bloc. It is the country to which you and your team have been sent. That last sentence introduces a few questions. “What is this team?” and “who sent us?” and “why here?”, for instance. So let’s back up a bit.

A couple hundred years ago, an unusual thing happened: a mortal -- a man of great power and ambition by the name of Maghestros -- ascended to godhood for the first time in millennia. This apparently heralded some sort of metaphysical shift, because previously unknown deities continued to appear. These “new gods” represented a significant departure from how the “old gods” operated: while the Old Gods had been distant, vast beings who spread themselves over many worlds and planes of existence, the New Gods reside here on Aern and walk upon the soil.

The churches of the Old Gods weren’t pleased with the sudden influx of competition, and tensions have been gradually mounting ever since the New Gods first began accumulating followers. Three years ago, the first blood was spilt in the Great Holy War, and the fighting has only intensified. You are followers of the New Gods, fighting the good fight -- but not on the front lines. You are trained in unorthodox warfare, and missions in enemy territory. You report to a high-ranking member of the Cult of Saurivuntyr by the name of Mother Malachite, but are generally allowed wide latitude and autonomy.

That brings us to Lysinka. Duke Thull, who rules the Duchy, has been slow to act and reluctant to go to war -- but that is clearly changing, and Lysinka is preparing its forces. They are expected to join the war within months, and they will not enter on your side. Duke Thull is a devout worshipper of Wee Jas, goddess of death & magic and one of the Old Gods; it is certain that when he enters the conflict, he will do so in her name.

While Lysinka is small, its capital city, Sepulndia, is one of the largest port cities in the Necrotic Bloc. It would be a powerful asset in the war, and cannot be allowed to fall fully into the hands of your enemies. Your job is to find some way -- any way -- of preventing this.The methods you employ are entirely up to you.

The characters they created -- whom I would hesitate to call “our heroes” -- are as follows. Note that this is the information they gave when I asked them to introduce themselves to the group (with some comments from me), which is why some of these descriptions are much shorter than others.

Ophie OOC, reading from the top of her character sheet: ... my gender is “not applicable”...
Marco OOC: I put that too!
Lyra OOC, five minutes later: “... and my character is genderfluid.”
GM: Okay, all of you gender-non-conforming types, can you give us your characters’ pronouns?
Lyra OOC: “They” is fine.
Ophie OOC: “Gnome”.
Harold OOC: Like “the gnome” or “that gnome”?
Marco OOC: My preferred pronoun is “your Majesty”. 

 Little (or possibly “Lil”) Marco:
A Neutral Evil elven sorcerer who worships Grandfather Kraken in his aspect as a merciless force of destruction. Marco has spent much of Marco’s life hopping from town to town because Marco tends to be strongly disliked, citing “destruction” as “my main interest, hobby, and lifestyle,” and admitting to a history of “arson and assault and stuff.” “Little Marco” is a “street name”, given by someone who is now “mysteriously dead” -- Marco’s real name is not revealed. For some reason -- possibly because, out of character, Marco’s player is the one who memorized the core rulebooks when she was in elementary school -- Marco ends up making a lot of the decisions for the group despite the fact that all Marco’s party members recognize Marco as being dangerously amoral. Marco’s player also wrote down “Kalamata olive” on the “skin” line of the character sheet, which I had to Google.

Marco, starting character description: “My name’s Little Marco, and I’m a Gemini.”
[Marco’s player explains the above]
Marco, ending character description: “And I’m a space sorcerer. I’m not going to explain that, and I don’t have to tell you any more about me.”

Gwyneth the Moonbringer:
A kobold wizard -- one of a tribe of brass-scaled kobolds whose ancestors came to the region as refugees some three hundred years ago. She’s small even for a kobold, and always felt socially isolated among her tribe. When she became an adult, she moved to the big city of Sepulndia, where she was amazed by the varied cultures and ideas; at this time, she converted from her previous faith to the Cult of Byfona. Gwyneth is “always ready to meet new friends and chase new experiences”… which is probably why the campaign essentially starts with her falling in with a bad crowd. Her alignment is somewhat unclear, but she’s basically a good person.

Brother Harold the Hole-Digger and Heart-Breaker:
A Lawful Good dwarven cleric of Arraou from Grosmund, a dwarven city down the coast. He left home to fight for his chosen deity and “make a better Necrotic Bloc”. It becomes clear over the course of the game that he is of the “hear no evil, see no evil” school of Lawful Good, studiously ignoring everything his companions do that might offend his moral sensibilities.

Ophie:
A gnome ranger. The gnome’s character sheet specifies that the gnome has orange eyes, “bark brown” hair, and olive skin. The gnome is a worshipper of the Leper, and grew up in the insular fishing village of Crimpwood. Ophie, unlike that gnome’s fellow gnomes, is not content to ignore the goings-on outside the gnomish community, and has been adventuring around the region for some time.

Lyra:
Lyra has “no last name, because I have no need for one”, worships Byfona, and is a Chaotic Neutral half-elf bard and a genderfluid werewolf. (Just typing that sentence right there, I thought that if Lyra lived on Earth, they would probably spend a lot of time on Tumblr.) Their human mother worked on the docks in the port town of Cobsey when their elven father passed through, impregnated her, and left without bothering to warn her he was afflicted with lycanthropy.

Lyra’s mother tried to hide that Lyra was different, but they didn’t fit in very well anyway due to being half-elf and “having no visible gender characteristics.” (It’s later decided that Lyra’s elven blood makes them look like an androgynous teenager, since a thirty-year-old half-elf probably looks pretty young.) Lyra tried unsuccessfully to disguise themself, but ended up an outcast in the town who spent a lot of time “out by the river singing to the moon”. Eventually, they had an accidental werewolf moment and Lyra was driven out of Cobsey. They spent the next few years swindling their way through different towns and trying on different identities.

Lyra: I was the priest-queen of Shersl for two years, until the lizardfolk began to question whether I was actually divinely favored and I got chased out of town.

Lyra finally ended up in Sepulndia and realized they could just be a stranger to everyone and be whoever they wanted to be. They made a living through singing, and got together a band of musicians who stole and performed until they had enough money to open their own theater. Some years later, followers of Hextor torched the place because they thought Lyra and their companions were degenerates. At this point, Lyra’s primary motivation is to destroy the Hextorian religion. They also end up making a lot of the party’s decisions, which explains a lot about where the game ended up going, now that I think about it.

Silence:
Silence is a ghoul rogue who worships Qualme. His relationship with his god is somewhat fraught -- Qualme being a Lawful Neutral god who thinks the dead ought to stay dead, and Silence being both undead and Chaotic Good. If he has any crises of faith, though, he doesn’t say anything -- he doesn’t really talk about his religion. Despite his hunger for the flesh of the living, Silence wants to be good -- but he admits that he tends to “kinda fuck up sometimes.” For some inexplicable reason -- I’m going to guess either Frankensteinian sewing project or botched Polymorph spell -- Silence has some subtly feline features.

Marco OOC: It’s pronounced “          ”.

For anyone who's interested, you can find information about the setting here, information about the pantheon of New Gods here, and a bigger version of the map here.