My friends and I ended a Dungeons and Dragons campaign recently that lasted a year and eight months. I've heard of games that have been going since the 70's, or it seems like three to five years is more of a norm, but barely two is fine by me. After all, it was my very first time as the dungeon master, my first time creating a world for others to explore and ruin. Not to say they ruined my fun, but that ruining some islands was literally the plot! The stream is still catching up to real life, so it'll probably end there in April, and by then we'll be uploading new episodes from the new campaign. Check out a D8 With Fate!
The story involved three (originally five, but the other two dropped out early) anti-heroes who made wishes with a devilish genie. In payment for their wishes to be guaranteed granted, anyone who makes a wish to this genie must do a task he sets, or risk the opposite of their wish coming true (like if you wish another back to life, then you die; if you wish for lots of money, then you remain poor no matter what you do forever). The unknown, even random task he assigns is what gives him his name, the Gambler; the wisher is gambling by not knowing what they'll have to do.
For the setting (using DnD rules more as a guide than requirement), I created a world of ultra-rich bored nobles, inspired by Red Rising and The Hunger Games. Four islands, held up by magic, once a haven to a persecuted elven population, now a Rapture-like (Bioshock) country of body experimentation, slavery, weird orgies, odd drugs, changing the color of fruit just for fun... all because they didn't know what to do with their time. The slaves were humans and half-elves; virtually no other races were present. Not everything was even-keel for the nobles though in their lives: the royal family had a kind of control over them. Slaves were kept in line with a geas on earrings they had to wear (inspired by the zoomans of Steven Universe), but nobles and soldiers were kept under a geas of their own (which I hinted at several times but never fully explored). For example, the soldiers (who were barely trained since there was no real combat) could never lie, and it was expected that no citizen ever practice magic against another.
So our anti-heroes, two humans from outside the islands and one elf from within, with their three different wishes, were tasked with killing the guardian beasts that held up these four islands and bring their essences back to one of the princesses. This was Shadow of the Colossus, Pokemon: The Movie 2000, and Final Fantasy X wrapped up together. The fact that the island country was called Brys was another signal to its fate. I was inspired from the very beginning by Debussy's La Catedrale Engloutie (The Sunken Cathedral), an imagining of the French-Celtic legend of Ys, a kind of Atlantis story. I lived in a town in Bretagne called St. Brieuc for a few months teaching English, so Br-Ys = Brys haha.
Mailaia, one of the humans, an inexperienced religious soldier, wished back to life the only enemy soldier she'd killed, a young boy. Throughout the campaign, learning a lot of people on Brys would die for this one to live, she became more hardened and actually learned to lie and have fun with disguises, thanks to Faye. Faye, the elf, was bored with life and wished for excitement. Though she professed to not care for the slaves, she actually did the most work in freeing people wherever they went. By the end of the game, as the Gambler had no idea how to grant her excitement, and because Faye was the first person to ever ask him to be her patron as a warlock, he proposed that she become a genie herself, which she accepted. The other human, Marcon, a rake and gambler himself, had lost his family's fortune (inspiration from War and Peace) and wished for it back. He had the hardest time in this DnD adventure, being the most fearful and out of his element, but in the end he got the fortune back tenfold and even gave up the bottle he'd been reliant on.
Ultimately, it was a tale of "be careful what you wish for," but also restoring balance. Mailaia's god believed there was too much magic gathered at that site, holding those islands up. Even though she was angry with Mailaia for making a wish to a genie, she did agree this was a good act, to sink the islands. It was a story of people that need to return to a better way, having gotten so far from a moral center (inspiration from Princess Mononoke, Hyperion cantos, WALL-E, real life...). By the end, the king and surviving princess agreed to lead the elves away from the uber-rich life back to what they once had with nature and sun and moon worship. Mailaia (religious zealot, not allowing herself any fun or thoughts) and Marcon (party boy) too had been living at extremes, and they each found a more middle way.
My next campaign is also about balance restoration, involving a land where magic has almost disappeared. I will write about that some other time, because I once again want to share something about living. I did another tahara last night, which is the Jewish ritual body washing and funeral preparation for a person. This lady was only 33 years old; everyone else I've done in my 12 times has been at least 60 (and I thought that 60s was young the one time I did that). It was the hardest tahara I've done so far, seeing her young skin instead of wrinkled, knowing she was just a year younger than me. We never know how they died, but I could see that she had lived a little by the tattoos on her (yes, generally frowned on in Jewish tradition, but that's maybe changing at least among non-Orthodox).
Anyway, all this to say, nothing is guaranteed! And also, let's stop being ashamed to say our age in western cultures! It annoys me so much when people act afraid of saying their own age; you should be glad/proud that you made it so far! At least age is a sign of pride in eastern cultures (and it's important to know in addressing hierarchy like in China and Japan). So as I've written before, I must continue to create while I have the time. It's kind of the reason I continue to do tahara, to remind me to be active and live now. With this last one, the lady being almost my age, it's even more so a reason to live. Yeah, the old ladies have some impact on me, but nothing like this young lady last night.
So I will go forth, continue to act, draw, create worlds in DnD and soon as an author, and generally live! But I'd still like to do so without accruing too much more debt....
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