This Sundered Land: A thousand years of peace and prosperity have passed since The Illithid War. The cataclysmic return of the City of Anryth, ruled by a far more powerful Asrexius, heralds a new Age, a darker Age. Natural and magical disasters abound as the Empire of the Hartland is ruthlessly attacked and whole cities are destroyed. A new enemy... or perhaps an old enemy... emerges from the shattered ruins of Avernia to decimate Ralkstag and Dandria. While all across the continent, foul creatures spew forth from long-forgotten ruins. The balance has now swung against Law as previously unknown or defeated enemies swarm the mainland to carve out a new home. Worst of all, something is stirring in the North...
TSL was the most open-ended campaign I'd run to date. Various factions' activities, if left unchecked may sweep up PCs in the process. Other plots would determining what the next campaign will be. One wonders, of course, what Tassrith is up to in the South...
I started using the 3rd Edition rules for this campaign.
Available Races: All.
This Sundered Land was a campaign that I started in 2001. It ran for about two and a half years before I ended it. The campaign started roughly 1,000 years after the end of The Illithid War campaign. The Free City of Anryth returned, ruled by Asrexius. The King Hereafter's armies conquered most of the northern and southern plains, part of the Empire of the Hartland, and part of the Freelands. The Freelands fell apart into a collection of warring states. Ralkstag's good, but weak, king was overthrown by one of his own family who seized the throne and became known as The Beast King. Dandria and Ralkstag began girding for war. And to top it off, I had some new, young gods and goddess introducing themselves.
Into the middle of this, I dropped the PCs.
Originally, I intended for most of the adventures of this campaign to take place in the Freelands. I was going to focus on Sylin Tak's rulership of Leddok and her long-running conflict with Asrexius. With the collection of PCs, I could then bring in elements from not only other countries' events, but also the breaking of the Vow of the Gods, so that the divine immortals could once again walk Avamor. Here are some of the plots and subplots. No, this isn't all of them. And as any players in this campaign will notice, I'm skipping over sizeable chunks of details. The next campaign I run in Avamor may make use of the others :)
A long time ago, I got really tired of the standard AD&D cosmology of astral, ethereal, elemental, upper, and lower planes. It was too rigid, too boring. Anybody who read the books knew how the multiverse worked. Throwing in alternate Prime Material Planes helped some, but it still felt like tacking on a sheaf of post-it notes to the basic design. That rigid structure meant that I had to follow a strict set of rules.
So a while back (just before the Dark Moon Rising campaign), I came up with the idea of a cluster multiverse. It actually came from making soap bubbles in my back yard on a particularly still and non-windy day. At the same time, I was reading a book about how galaxies are arranged, formed, and how their globular clusters behave. It suddenly struck me that I could do the same thing with the whole AD&D cosmology.
Here's what I set up: Each world, realm, or plane of existence is its own discrete sphere, floating in the ethereal plane. At one end of the ethereal plane we have primordial chaos, where planes are born and all the "normal" (and abnormal) rules of physics are just beginning to take effect on the proto-planes. At the other end of the ethereal plane we have the oldest planes, where the rules of physics are breaking down, and the old, dying planes are falling apart. As a plane is born, it (usually, though not always) forms a sphere and is cast out of the primal soup into the ether. There, it coalesces. Sometimes it gathers (even absorbs) other smaller planes, incorporating them into its makeup. Other times, it gathers a cluster of planes around it, and they begin orbiting each other. This gave me a lot more freedom to set up cosmology :).
When Asrexius faked the destruction of Anryth, what he actually did was lift the whole city out of the plane of Avamor, creating his own personal demi-plane. He then moved that demi-plane about, visiting those other realms that he wished. He witnessed, first-hand, the Illithid conquests of entire planes. He also witnessed, first-hand, the awakening of a few Tae-esh-naree who had survived the Avamorian gods' attempt to destroy them. Asrexius, of course, didn't like the idea of these old, decrepit, slimy, imaginationless creatures interfering with the natural development of HIS home plane. Asrexius turned his attention back to his long-neglected plane of birth. He saw that Avamor and its cluster of planes, had moved along quite nicely. But now the Avamorian cluster was in very close proximity to two other clusters - one of which had both Tae-esh-naree and Illithid battling within it. Soon, those three clusters would intersect, a natural enough event given the evolution of planes. Such intersections weaken planar barriers, both within clusters (allowing demons and devils to escape from their respective pits, for example) and between clusters. That meant that not only would new forms of life be unleashed on Avamor, but also that both the Illithid and Tae-esh-naree would have easy access to his home plane once more. His home plane, where the Gods had vowed no direct interference so that they wouldn't inadvertently destroy a young world. Once more, Asrexius turned his undead eyes to Avamor, to see if the plane of his birth was ready for such growing pains. What he found annoyed him.
All was becoming more peaceful. Sure, Bael and Set, among other gods, were slowly working their way up to a major eruption of evil. And if allowed to continue, they would make great gains. But the Illithid were once again turning their full attention to Avamor. And the Tae-esh-naree were coming from the other direction as well. The Empire of the Hartland in the northern hemisphere, and the Imperial Dragon, Tassrith, in the southern hemisphere had established an effective unilateral peace on Avamor. A peace that bred complacency, in Asrexius' view. So he had to do something to prepare the world for the coming trials. He already knew that, with the rise of these new gods, the Vow of the Gods would come to an end, and soon. He wanted to make sure that HIS world was ready. And the quickest way to do that was trial by fire.
So Asrexius sent his spies and agents in, stirred up tensions between a few countries (even Asrexius is not powerful enough to have a claw in all the plots of this campaign), came back with Anryth, and attacked. His goal was, quite simply, to start multiple wars (resulting in the deaths of a few hundred thousand beings - providing a nice supply of bodies for his own undead armies) so that the various races of Avamor would have lots of practice and be prepared when the Illithid and Tae-esh-naree finally moved on Avamor. It also meant that he could establish a strong enough power base so that, when the Illithid and/or the Tae-esh-naree came hunting for him, he could destroy them.
As you can see from this plotline, I was prepared for the campaign to hit Epic levels (20+ character levels) with a distinct possibility of the PCs going head-to-head with Asrexius, Tae-esh-naree, Illithid, and a host of other powerful opponents.
Well, the best laid plans will sometimes severely go astray, as did this campaign. A variety of events, both in the game and in real life, resulted in players leaving and an attempt at a fresh start with new characters while still keeping the same general campaign plot lines going. However, continued difficulties resulted in me canceling the game. It's not the first time I've had to end a campaign like this, and I doubt it will be the last.