My New Homebrew Setting

 When I started playing D&D in 2015, I jumped into the deep end, starting off as a DM. It would actually be a couple years before I ever played, like, as a player character. Outside of the game, I'm a fantasy writer, so it was pretty natural to me that I'd come up with a homebrew setting, rather than using the Forgotten Realms or other established D&D worlds.

That first campaign was set on my homebrew world, and it's one that I have every intention of returning to in the future. Right now I'm in the middle of my epic Ravnica campaign, which is intended to take players to level 20 and even let them do stuff at 20! But Sarkon, that homebrew world, is meant to be my default.

But...

So, over the past few years I've become one of those masochistic madmen who actually enjoys FromSoft's punishing "Souls" games - you might notice that the last several posts on this blog are all about Elden Ring, their new open-world variation on the formula (which I think is a masterpiece).

Difficult in terms of gameplay, but also deeply obscure in terms of lore (and, maybe not so wonderfully, in game mechanics,) the worlds of FromSoft's action-RPG nightmares (literally in the case of Bloodborne) operate on a bizarre logic that invites you to question the morality of your goals. The first Dark Souls, for example, allowed you to either continue the Age of Fire by linking the flame, sacrificing yourself in place of the old patriarchal deity Lord Gwyn, or to embrace darkness and begin the Dark Age of Humanity. That latter one seems bad, right? But later games (Dark Souls III in particular) suggest that maybe artificially extending the Age of Fire has only led to greater suffering.

With Elden Ring, the developers have created a new world (with the aid of George R. R. Martin) that introduces new concepts. It setting, the Lands Between, is a realm filled with demigods and the home of the primary deity, Queen Marika. The eponymous Elden Ring has been shattered, and the very logic of existence seems to have become flawed.

The Lands Between, where Elden Ring is set, thus feel less like a physical world inhabited by regular people than it does a kind of metaphysical plane - the realm of gods (which, frankly, also applies to Dark Souls' Lordran and Lothric - and maybe Drangleic, though I never played the second one).

Thus, we return to D&D.

See, I'm fascinated by Planescape as a campaign setting for D&D. The "outer planes" in D&D are the realms of the gods, and in most campaigns, their influence is only really felt through the actions of divine spellcasters and perhaps some scheme hatched off there. Sometimes players will make a brief journey to the outer planes to acquire some important relic or such.

Planescape, though, imagines these places - the D&D equivalents of heaven and hell (but rather than two there are at least seventeen) - as places where people do live their lives, and where adventure can be undertaken.

But Planescape encourages a very different approach to adventures. In most settings, for example, fiends (devils, demons, etc.,) are basically kill-on-sight, but in realms where fiends and celestials meet, you're kind of a dick if you just attack someone only because they're evil. Planescape mostly centers around the city of Sigil - a nexus where outer-planar beings can meet and trade or socialize. Sigil, not that dissimilar to Ravnica, is dominated by several factions, which each represent very strongly-held philosophical positions taken to extremes.

Because the Outer Planes (which include Sigil and the Outlands, which is the True Neutral plane) are metaphysical places, philosophy and ideas can actually transform the land itself.

So, why did I bring up Elden Ring? Because I think the metaphysical approach to the world shares some ideas with Planescape, and thus I think it's a good inspiration for a general vibe and aesthetic.

Ok, enough preamble:

I've been working on a new campaign setting. It's connected to, but distinct from, Planescape. My reasoning is partially that I just like making my own thing, but also that I'd like to have some freedom to futz with the metaphysics of it without declaring Planescape's version "invalid" at my table.

Thus, we have Escadia: the Shattered Heaven.

Escadia is a realm that was once a promontory that jutted from Mount Celestia. It was the realm of a god who is now known only as The Sovereign That Was . Eons ago, Escadia was sundered from the mountain in an event known as the Severance, and now, it drifts in crumbled, broken pieces across the Astral Sea, now something of a demiplane within that catch-all realm. Not only was the realm thrown into chaos, but The Sovereign That Was has disappeared, and while everyone remembers that there was a god who ruled Escadia, no one can remember anything about them.

Now, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, they're all characterized by a world that has totally broken, where the number of people you can trust not to immediately kill you is a distinct minority. Escadia is not quite like that, or at least it doesn't have to be. Playing more toward D&D's typical rhythms, there are towns and cities in Escadia where players can find shelter and get along all right.

But, I also reserve the right to run a campaign in which things are absolutely fucked.

There are three major factions within Escadia (at least for now,) and each has its own sub-factions and groups with their own agendas. The Arideem are celestials who believe that the most important goal for anyone in Escadia is to restore the realm to Mount Celestia. Among these, some believe that the return of the Sovereign That Was will accomplish this, or at least make it a lot easier. Some are pursuing other means. While the Arideem are mostly friendly, the fervor with which they pursue this goal might lead certain members to dangerous, mad methods.

One of the keys to the setting as a metaphysical one is that the Arideem, despite being inherently lawful good celestials, are no longer in the plane of pure lawful goodness, and as such, they are not infallibly lawful or good as they once were.

Next, we have the Sagrex, which is a less centralized affiliation of various philosophical factions, including many visitors from the Prime Material Plane. The Sagrex generally try to keep the Arideem running Escadia, but different lodges within the Sagrex have different ambitions for Escadia. In general, many of these lodge factions consider the return to Celestia as impossible or not worth it, and intend for Escadia to just become its own thing - or even to reconstruct it as a world of the Prime Material Plane.

Finally, we have the Dyam. These interplanar traders, run largely by genies, have little investment in Escadia's ultimate fate, but instead seek to extract valuable resources from the land and strike it rich on the metaphysical goods that can be found in a fragment of heaven. The Dyam have helped to bring creatures and beings from all over the multiverse, using their clout to maintain a semblance of order in the crumbling realm, which has allowed them to coexist with the Arideem.

Basically, I think you could do this as a more traditional D&D campaign with a lot of inter- (and intra-) faction intrigue, as well as lot of whimsical "we're not in Kansas anymore" kinds of adventures, but it Escadia were presented as being in total chaos, each of these factions could have their own really sinister and iconic foes for the party to fight against, seeking a difficult solution to a metaphysical problem.

I liked mysteries, and I think the nature of the Severance and the whereabouts (and identity) of The Sovereign That Was could be fun things to delve into in a campaign.