Welcome to our Campaign Coffee. This series of posts, which will be interspersed with regular Monday Coffee posts, aims to look back at roleplaying game campaigns that have shaped the Cosmoneiron into its current state. We will discuss the plots and characters, but also how they influenced the development of the Twin Worlds. I hope you enjoy these. Happy Monday!
This is Part 2 of the summary of the Crown of Fates campaign, and how it inspired the Twin Worlds. As discussed in Part 1 (which you can find here), several concepts related to the cosmos of the Twin Worlds started being developed as part of this campaign. However, as more concepts were introduced, it became more important for me to keep track of them in a way that would build on what had already been discussed, without creating contradictions wherever possible. So I started keeping a running, living document on the Twin Worlds, with different pages on each of the concepts or ideas that were becoming part of the cosmos. This file eventually became so long and unwieldy that it spurred my idea to build a personal wiki to collect and hyperlink the information; the end result, three iterations later, is my current wiki which runs on a MediaWiki engine and uses the XAMPP server. You can find more information on wikis for world-building here.
In the campaign, the defeat of Koradrane Quinom led to an organic break in storytelling. This gave me the chance to develop a new story arc, and its implications would change the Twin Worlds forever even as they were created.
The new story arc began a few months after Bradal. Gabrief and Mephiston had established their homes and were developing their holdings, coming to enjoy the Twin Worlds and the people they had met thus far. While they wanted to return to their reality, they were also becoming more familiar with this new world. They were eventually invited to join a Thielith, a once-in-a-generation tournament held by the Thelalorn and the Iranorn to witness the skill of heroes. In reality, although they didn't immediately understand it, the tournament was also a way to keep tabs on powerful potential threats on the part of the Ledhrorn who, remembering their own betrayal of their "parents", were concerned about being deposed themselves.
The tournament was a chance to have some low-stakes fun for the players, but it also introduced some additional new characters. Foremost among them was a farmer called Mort, who met Mephiston and, struck by his words and his conviction, chose to convert to his deity, becoming Mephiston's first disciple. Returning faces were also seen as Faelar revealed himself to have survived Bradal, cast adrift across dimensions until, incongruously, he found one he seemed to have created subconsciously himself, and returned to Ibrin by himself, unaware that Ainiel had disappeared too. And, worst of all, Koradrane Quinom showed himself again, seeking to revenge himself on the wyldervay. Unfortunately for him, this put him square in their sights, and they killed him during the battle royale for his crimes against the people of Bradal. This wouldn't be the end of the kenolater by a long shot, but it did set the stage for his evolution.
The Thielith itself was interrupted by the appearance of three titanic creatures. These misshapen monsters were revealed to be Aathorn, faulty attempts at demigodhood locked in mindless bodies full of rage. Nevertheless, Aathorn were known to fight each other, not ally with each other, and their rampage slaughtered many on the field. The wyldervay succeeded in defeating the Aathorn, temporarily killing two of them and transforming the third one back into her original form, a feat previously deemed impossible. The blood of the Aathorn and of the slain mingled in the nearby lake, permanently changing its waters. The lake would thereafter be known as the Lake of Blood, and it would be the seat of horrors.
In the wake of the attack, Mephiston trained Mort until he became a knight himself, taking on the name Eriman Calandor to symbolize his new identity. Shortly afterwards, Gabrief, Mephiston and Faelar were summoned by Hethner. The golden-skinned demigod clandestinely revealed to them that the Ledhrorn were not the original creators of the world, but their descendants: the true gods, the Trienorn, slumbered to keep a horrifying threat from awakening and destroying the world.
He admitted that the Ledhrorn had betrayed the Trienorn, leaving them locked in slumber when they could have awakened them all along, using a horn they had been given for just that purpose. While the Ledhrorn believed the return of the Trienorn would spell their doom, Hethner knew more than most of them. He explained the creation of the Lake of Blood and the alliance of the Aathorn were signs that the Lady of Souls was awakening. If she was awakening, then the Trienorn must be awakened, or all would be lost.
He told the wyldervay that he and his peers had hid the Horn at the end of a metaphysical path, the Path of Carmad, that snaked through different Planes before opening the way to Tresis, an artificial pocket world created by the Ledhrorn to hold "problematic" material (such as copies of books that referred to the Trienorn's existence, or the Horn itself). The Path was articulated along seven Archways, which only aligned every 10,000 years. Whether by coincidence or fate, the Archways would align soon, and the wyldervay had a chance to recover the Horn before it was too late.
Gabrief, Mephiston and Faelar accepted the charge, alongside some of their allies such as Eriman. Hethner showed them the First Archway, and through it, they entered a realm known as Enu. It was a Plane of vast grasslands where a civilization of humanoid lizards eternally fought seasonal attacks of hordes of human cannibals. The wyldervay found themselves allied with the lizard folk, and there, they encountered a mage and a sneak who had learned just enough of the cosmogony of the Twin Worlds to clandestinely enter the First Archway. These were Val'Sham and Anthony, two characters played by two new players at the table, and they would join the wyldervay shortly after, as they promised the lord of the lizardfolk they would provide help in the coming battle.
Before that battle, Faelar had a strange encounter. While providing what help he could to the wounded of the last battle, he saw a woman dressed in black, with skin the color of ash and hair as white as snow, walking among the wounded. He thought she was Death, unaware yet of her true identity, and he had a conversation with her, finding her surprisingly kind and sorrowful. He begged to her to let the wounded lizard folk survive, and moved by his statements, she healed them before disappearing.
The next day, in the great battle, the wyldervay helped the lizard folk secure victory, but not without a cost. A new ramification of the Reflection had revealed itself: whenever someone traveled to a new Plane, their Reflection would also do so. While Faelar, Gabrief and Mephiston had no Reflections, he Reflections of their companions were on Enu too, and fighting for the Vashar. The deaths of most of them led to the deaths of most of their close allies, including Eriman. Val'Sham was also mortally wounded, but Mephiston's healing prevented his demise. Alas, with his Reflection dead, Val'Sham did not fully return to life, and found himself trapped into undeath, horrifying his companions.
In the wake of the battle, the wyldervay traveled to Akanaigas, the capital city of the lizard folk, where they fought an enormous primal wolf guarding the Second Archway, before entering it and finding themselves in Sisteri.
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