Campaign Overview
This, gentlemen, is my profound conviction: I believe that we are at this moment sleeping on a volcano. I am profoundly convinced of it.I was saying just now that this evil would sooner or later, I know not how or whence it will come, bring with it a most serious revolution: be assured that that is so.
-Alexis de Tocqueville This will be a campaign specifically built around systems in collapse and attempts to save or destroy them, taking inspiration from the European Revolutions of the 1800s and the Chinese periods of disunion. All of the major powers of Occidentia have something fundamentally wrong with them and are in danger of collapse. As players it will be your job to either repair them or serve them their just desserts. The first act will be pursuing a cult that has for years been a fairly benign series of communes spread across the central regions of the continent. They took in vulnerable people gave them food, employment, and a place in return for attending worship services. The only real peculiarity being that they believed an infant girl to be the incarnation of the obscure sky god Vermithrax. This girl has grown into adolescence and her prophetic decrees have become increasingly bizarre and concerning, culminating in cult members en masse selling all of their property and fleeing toward the Wild Lands. You will have to hunt down this cult and retrieve a person or persons dependent on your backstory. The second act will be focused on the legacy and conflicts of Daqin. Having acquired power and fame from your previous exploits you will be given some measure of power in dictating how the dominoes fall in Daqin's inevitable civil war. The third act is revolution. Having become movers and shakers in the world you will be plunged into conflict resulting from the horrors of Capetian slavery boiling over.
Here are some questions to consider for character creation. I do not need an itemized list, but just generally these are some things to consider.
-Alexis de Tocqueville This will be a campaign specifically built around systems in collapse and attempts to save or destroy them, taking inspiration from the European Revolutions of the 1800s and the Chinese periods of disunion. All of the major powers of Occidentia have something fundamentally wrong with them and are in danger of collapse. As players it will be your job to either repair them or serve them their just desserts. The first act will be pursuing a cult that has for years been a fairly benign series of communes spread across the central regions of the continent. They took in vulnerable people gave them food, employment, and a place in return for attending worship services. The only real peculiarity being that they believed an infant girl to be the incarnation of the obscure sky god Vermithrax. This girl has grown into adolescence and her prophetic decrees have become increasingly bizarre and concerning, culminating in cult members en masse selling all of their property and fleeing toward the Wild Lands. You will have to hunt down this cult and retrieve a person or persons dependent on your backstory. The second act will be focused on the legacy and conflicts of Daqin. Having acquired power and fame from your previous exploits you will be given some measure of power in dictating how the dominoes fall in Daqin's inevitable civil war. The third act is revolution. Having become movers and shakers in the world you will be plunged into conflict resulting from the horrors of Capetian slavery boiling over.
Here are some questions to consider for character creation. I do not need an itemized list, but just generally these are some things to consider.
- Why are you pursuing the cult? Is a member of your family involved and/or gone missing? Were you hired to bring back a missing person or treasure? Religious indignation?
- What would make you valuable to a team traveling cross country through violent lands?
- Do you have any personal investment in the political turmoil of the continent? If so how would you like that to integrate with the campaign's story?
- Do you know any of the other PCs from before the game start? If not how would you like to meet up with the party to get going in the game
Major Powers
Capetia- A nation based on Ancien Regime France immediately before the Revolution. The king is an absolute monarch and class divides have been calcified into a de facto caste system. Unlike real life they have no colonial empire to extract wealth from and instead enslave their own people through demonic possession. Additionally they still only have technology of the high middle ages with guns as a strange foreign innovation possessed only by the Legarans.Daqin- Based on China during the Spring and Autumn Period politically but with technology more akin to the late Han empire. For those less schooled in Chinese history this would be the Dynasty Warriors time period but the emperor is still an army under his direct command and thus isn't quite so able to steal by roving warlords. All of their noble houses are ruled by highly paranoid and magically powerful patriarchs thus causing the nation to stagnate and fall apart.
The Mithratic Knights- Crusaders from far off Legar intent on converting this continent to their religion and way of life. While the other nations will have some importance these are the big three whose fate must be decided by the party through parley or violence.
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