Campaign IX Prep Sheet

Trilogy Conclusion

This campaign is meant to wrap up a sort of soft trilogy consisting of Campaigns II (The Black Dawn), IV (The Haunted City), and now IX (The Chrysalis of Divinity) which largely centres on matters of metaphysics and the natures of your characters in the world. Without wanting to say too much, each campaign in this trilogy is meant to represent a further step towards apotheosis, with this campaign meant to be when your characters finally achieve it or else reject their ascension. This may well be the last campaign to feature Kharsenyc, at least in a significant role, as he did still feature in Campaign VI while not playing a major or important part. If you pay close enough attention, this campaign will elucidate (at least partially) some of the questions or mysteries you may have from previous campaigns, such as: "What happened to Luana Vieira and the Black Dawn, and what's the deal with that red star?", "What is Ladocs?", "What the hell is/are Haegarith-Shal and the ^han_dƨ besides meta stand-ins for the GM and the players?", "Who is Kharsenyc anyway?", "Why can't I play a dwarf in this campaign?", "What are Fleshless?", and "What are Dynitians?" As for this campaign in particular, the setting theme is meant to be sort of a trip along the silk road, through places reminiscent of ancient India, China, Mongolia, and Tibet.

Resting Rework

Yes, the system for resting is being reworked yet again. Rather than distinguishing short and long rests by the time it takes to complete them, a rest takes 8 hours, regardless. In order to gain the benefits of a rest, a character must be actually resting for at least 6 of those 8 hours, and is able to perform light activity (sewing, whittling, watching, etc.) for the other 2. (This does mean everyone in a party of 4 can complete a rest overnight with each member taking watch for 2 hours. No more than 1 random event will occur over a rest, and if one does, whose watch it will be during will be determined randomly). Rests will work thus: upon completion of a rest, a character can spend Rest Dice (replacing Hit Dice). Rest Dice are a d10, regardless of class, and a character has a number of Rest Dice equal to their total level. During a rest, Rest Dice are used to:

Recover Hit Points equal to the number rolled on the die.
Recover Mana Points equal to Xd10 + X × Willpower score per die, where X is 1 from first to third level, 2 from fourth to seventh level, and 4 from ninth to tenth level.

Characters with Mana Points recover half of their Mana Points on a rest, along with any additional they recovered by spending Rest Dice. Any per rest abilities are replenished upon completion of a rest. If a character has any levels of exhaustion, 1 Rest Die must be spent to remove 1 level of exhaustion during their rest. Some abilities will require you spend Rest Dice to replenish them. Mood can be used to gain more Rest Dice over a rest, granting 2 Rest Dice per Mood spent. Rest Dice fully replenish following a rest, but only if the character ate adequately the previous day.

Extra Rest Dice

During the course of a day, your character may do things that grant them extra Rest Dice for them to spend on their next rest. These extra Rest Dice are considered a separate pool to their normal Rest Dice, and are not limited in amount. Extra Rest Dice must be spent during the next rest from when they were acquired, or else they disappear. While there may be several ways to gain extra Rest Dice, the most consistent will be food and accommodations. Eating a large meal from a nice establishment, or sleeping in luxury quarters, while more expensive than the bare minimum to survive, each will grant an extra Rest Die.

Scene Setting

At his birth, man was a vessel, empty, yearning for sustenance. And when the gods set out to craft reality, refracting it from their own image, a spark was lit in the heart of man, a soul. The brittle vessel may crack and decay, but this spark would live on through the endless cycle of death and rebirth as new man is forged from the dust of the old. Man is the carrier of this fire, so much that it’s become inseparable from him. Yet in the near times, a curse has descended upon man. Like pulling a babe from his mother’s breast, it pulls away man’s soul and leaves him empty and starving. In the end, it drives men mad, into little more than violent beasts incapable of reason. Some think the curse heralds the end times, as all are slowly left naught but maddened carrion vessels. Some offer sacrifices to the gods for protection, or release for the afflicted. Neighbour turns against neighbour and amongst the paranoia it can be hard to tell the cursed from the not, save for the black eyes that brand the totally empty. In the Mahanjat, the accursed are rounded up and sent north high into the mountains, to live out the rest of their days in seclusion. You are such poor, afflicted souls, inmates high on a snowy peak at the roof of the world in a great stone prison called Chartan. In this place, the accursed are held and tortured, test subjects to unravel the mystery of the curse, or perhaps just playthings for your cruel and sadistic masters. Most here don’t last long, often dying before the curse is even able to work its whole course.

Starting Equipment and the Curse

Starting Equipment

Your character has managed to conceal an object from the guards in their cell. Perhaps they smuggled it with them to Chartan, or scavenged it here. Roll on the table below, rolling a d20 and adding the result from a d10 determining how long they have been imprisoned (in months), to determine the trinket the character has.

d20+d10	Trinket
2-7	Nothing
8-11	A thick piece of straw that can be used as a whistle
12-15	A small pouch of sand that can be thrown to blind an enemy
16-18	A small pewter figurine in the shape of an animal worth 2 sp
19-21	A loose brick that can be used as an improvised weapon (1d3 crushing)
22-24	A gold coin bearing the likeness of the previous Mahanjat king
25-27	A sharp piece of flint that can be used as a dagger
28-30	A rusty set of thieves’ tools

Besides this trinket, your character has some ragged clothes and nothing else.

The Curse

Your character is afflicted with a mysterious curse which has been afflicting the lands for a bit less than a generation, at least so far as you can tell. They start with their curse at level 1, but certain things throughout the campaign can cause it to progress further, or reverse its progression. The table below gives the effects of the various levels of the curse.

Curse Level	Effects
1	Nothing
2	Nothing
3	You gain a −1 vulnerability to necrotic, psychic, and radiant damage. Your number of maximum Rest Dice increases by 1.
4	Your armour class decreases by −1. Your to-hit bonus increases by +1 Gain a +5 bonus to saves against Fear.
5	You are unaffected by being Flanked, but suffer a −2 to your Armour Class and saving throws when not Flanked.
6	You need to eat twice as much and healing received is halved. Your to-hit bonus increases by a further +1, and your attacks deal an additional +1 damage.
7	You gain a −2 vulnerability to all damage types. You heal 1d10 Hit Points when you kill an intelligent creature, or 1d4 Hit Points when you kill an unintelligent creature. Your sclera turn black, granting you Darkvision if you do not already have it.
8	Complete loss of control; character becomes uncontrollable and violent. A player can no longer play a character at curse level 8.

There are multiple ways to increase or decrease your curse level, but the most common way to progress it will likely be going unconscious. If a character reaches 0 Hit Points, they must make a Willpower saving throw of DC 19 − ½ × their current curse level (for example, a character at curse level 3 must make a DC 17 Willpower save; one at curse level 6 must make a DC 16 Willpower save), or else increase their curse level by one. This roll cannot be affected by Mood.