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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kalendraf" data-source="post: 1363568" data-attributes="member: 3433">Background infoThis is an OOC post.I'd first like to thank Shannon for starting this storyhour thread.  The campaign has been going on for several months now (since just before the time when 3.5 edition came out), and Shannon has recently joined our group.  For those interested, here are some details regarding this particular campaign.The world is homebrew.  It's using 3.5 rules (we made a wholesale switch after the 2nd adventure and haven't looke back).  It's like most fantasy worlds, but has a few distinct changes.  Most notable is that the arcane spellpool of this world has become Tainted.  Exactly how it occured remains a mystery, but apparently it was the result of same ancient ritual gone awry.  All arcane casters alive at that time died or became Tainted.  A tremendous war ensued with the surviving un-infected peoples barely winning against the army of Tainted ones.  Since then, the arcane magics have been dangerous to use, and items crafted with arcane magic often become cursed.  Arcane casters risk becoming infected by the Arcane Taint which leads to bizarre transformations, as well as turning them into conduits for raw and unpredictable energies.  For a long time, arcane casters, then called witches and warlocks, were actively hunted down for fear of the threat they posed to the rest of civilization.  The churches that survived the coming of the Taint gathered together and created an organization called the Witchhunters, and they charged this new order with the disposal of all arcane things: casters, books, magic items, etc.  Eventually, the witchhunters orders were changed to only allow them to hunt down Taint-infected casters, but some of them broke off from the original organization and continue to hunt spellcasters.  All arcane casters still live very secret lives, fearing that those splinter groups might find them.  Bards have been found to be largely immune to the taint, but that is another story.  The impact of the Arcane Taint has led to a few strong churches filling the void in the power structure.  Most governments answer to the church, and the churches have the strongest armies between their orders of Knights and the witchhunters which still answer their call.  In addition, with magic being viewed as dangerous and unpredictable, there aren't as many magical items found in this world.  Besides there being far fewer crafters, the witchhunters have destroyed many of the older items of power.Before the dwarf druid joined the group, there had been 6 primary PCs which are all currently 7th level: Sam (human monk), Gruck (half-orc fighter), Oskar (dwarf cleric), Linder (human bard), Narissa (elf sorceress), and Tarrick (human rogue).  Sadly, the player who runs Narissa is unable to continue play due to scheduling problems, so we are back at 6 PCs once again.The campaign has used a few published adventures alongside several home-made ones.  To date, the published adventures have included: Evil's Lesser Minions (by Pinwheel Games), Hobgoblin Outpost (Wizards of the Coast web enhancement), Witch of Serpent's Bridge (Dungeon Magazine) and The Magic Dump (by Monkey God Enterprises).  I often make small changes to the published adventures in order to fit them into the campaign.  In the most recent one (Magic Dump) I changed up a few of the primary location names as well as some of the NPC's titles.   In my version, Harwich is a city in the 4 lakes region which lies just to the north of the town of Cossor.  Edward is a noble in Cossor while Greeley is the Baron of Harwich.  These small but important changes allowed me to fit this adventure into my campaign without much difficulty.We try to play an average of 3 weeks out of 4, usually rotating hosting duties among the play group.  A typical session starts at 7pm on Tuesday nights and runs 3 to 4 hours.  All of us are professionals working in Rochester, MN.  Most of us are pretty hardcore gamers, playing a variety of games besides this such as Magic or various computer games.I hope you enjoy our story.</blockquote>

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