Theopetros

The name I am going with for the world is Theopetros. For those who are Greek geeks, you might notice that means God Stone. Most of the games I run in this world take place sometime after the previous game. That wasn’t the case for the first game I ran. I hadn’t planned out the world history yet, and I was winging it. The most important part of that game was the chance of player ascension. During the game they began finding strange stones. After testing out what these stones might be, they discovered that each stone contained divine essence. Using this essence eventually led to the players ascending to godhood. These stones became known as Deity Stones, and are the reason for the name of the world.   I only had two players in the game. Their characters were an Elf named Valic, and a half-dwarf named Calus. During the course of the game I introduced elements that would become staples of the campaign world later. The first was the Deity Stones. The second was a pesudodragon that had somehow grown to the size of a great wyrm. This pseudodragon was named Pierken. He was the original pseudodragon created when the gods were creating different species. This game is now known as the War of the Stones. After the War of the Stones I stepped back into the history of my world. The next campaign took place many years earlier, and told the origin of the Deity Stones. The players found themselves in a world run by demons. The gods were dead, and the material plane was under the control of a being known as the Demon Lord. The Demon Lord had locked the material plane off from the rest of the multiverse. Celestials and other agents of good were extremely rare. Most people never got any kind of advanced training, the training needed to advance in a character class. Any such training was provided by demons, and only provided to those who had proven themselves. The players started off with NPC class levels, and had to work to earn core class levels. The party had to walk the dangerous path of tricking the demonic forces into training them, while they were secretly working for the celestial resistance. The party consisted of Calvin McDriven (a human warrior trying to become a paladin), Kara & Sara (twin warrior sisters), Lyle Lightfinger (A halfling sneak who had adopted Calvin and the Sisters), and Allistar Marsch (a budding wizard). The heroes eventually rose up to defeat the Demon Lord. In the process they destroyed the giant gemstone known as the Seal. The Seal was used to power the magic that locked the material plane away from the rest of the planes. The power within the Seal came from the souls of defeated gods that the Demon Lord had killed. In addition to the god souls, the seal also contained the souls of thousands of celestials and others who had been enemies of the Demon Lord during his reign. When the Seal was destroyed, the shards of broken crystal buried themselves all over the world. These shards became the deity stones of the previous campaign. I ran one more campaign that took place between the fight with the Demon Lord and the War of the Stones. This campaign revealed the eventual fate of the heroes from the Demon Lord’s reign. Calvin the paladin became the first new god in my world. Since that point my campaigns have progressed forward in the world's history. Each new game fleshing out different parts of the world.