ZEITGEIST Calliope’s Zeitgeist [WILL HAVE FULL SPOILERS FOR THE ADVENTURE PATH]

[DigitalCreepshowCalliope]

Howdy folks, long time lurker, first time poster. I’m currently almost done with the first act of Digging for Lies and we are having a great time!

My goal with every character is to connect them to existing characters or plot threads from the main story. Here’s the squad and their plot stuff.

Ophelia Dawkins: Half-Elf Mystic. A member of the Vekeshi Mystics. Morris Dawkins is her father, who she thinks hates mystics, including her deceased mother. I’m wondering how to have Dawkins/The Stag be more prominent outside of the reveal in the epilogue. Ophelia is also very gay and will flirt with every woman she sees. Will she find a love interest? Who knows?

Rosa Roseillini: Fire Genasi Gunsmith: Created from the effects of the Great Malice, Rosa lives in a weird Wild West fallout ass place in the Malice Lands. She also loves to collect weird guns and jojo’s bizarre adventures like contraptions. I will probably have stuff with her on the train in chapter 4.

Clover Klee: Human Skyseer. Son of a trader family from Drakr whose parents were killed by Grandis Komanov and her cult. Is a big capitalist boy who has a weird almost homoerotic relationship with Benedict Pemberton and hates Lorcan Kell for moral reasons (and also because Kell frequently goes after his Skyseer mentor) Also a descendant of Amielle Latimer to offer some fun interactions when she returns.

(This has nothing to do with Clover but his player knows that Harkover Lee is a dragon purely because he used the fact that Lee will be automatically teleported to his lair upon ‘death’ in Bonds of Forced Faith, so he rode a stone column like a surfboard, crushing the witch and her cauldron in one fell swoop and it was so cool I felt I had to reward him somehow)

Sol Machiavelli: Tabaxi Eschatalogist. A member of Grandis Komanov’s cult. (We love party discourse!) Also he’s the Ragman because his player keeps having to miss sessions and the party really wants the Ragman to be relevant. No idea what we’ll do with it but it’s funny.

Johnny ‘Bravo’: Human Docker. Half Risurian, Half Danoran whose parents were kidnapped by Leone Quital on the orders of Han Jierre (presumably on account of some melodramatic love triangle naughty word but I’m not sure) He thus hates both men with a burning passion. Also hates Lorcan Kell to a lesser degree on account of his treatment of Dockers. Sitcom-ass rivalry with Rock Rackus. Will probably be my monarch candidate come chapter 9. We accidentally made a character in Roll20 named Uvuto Jabop who we grew incredibly attached to. His current lore is a butcher/nigh club owner who is friends with Johnny. But I kinda want to make him Han Jierre’s brother. (as in Luc & Lya’s father)

Lukas Arkylas: Human(?) Spirit Medium. Best friend of William Miller and Kasavarina, who fought the clergy as they tried to find a cure for Lukas’ sick daughter. After inadvertently causing the Great Malice, Lukas killed his Eladrin wife and daughter in a fit of psychosis and attempted to hang himself from the guilt, before finding he was immortal (his neck is permanently broken) eventually ‘Liam’ now Nicodemus, met up with him and urged him to continue their ‘pilgrimage’. Founding the Obscurati together. (I’m trying to find a way to move the timeline in a way that allows Dala to be Liam’s biological daughter to continue the parallels between Lukas and Nicodemus) The thing that finally broke Lukas and Liam’s friendship was Nicodemus’s plan to get Launga killed. (Presumably NOT his daughter, or otherwise she’d be more relevant) Confronting him, Lukas had most of his memory sans the memories of his actual crimes erased and was tossed from Methia Tower. After his second death, Lukas wandered the planet for four decades until finally finding himself in Risur. The decision on what to do with the Eladrin Women on Ascetia will be entirely left to him, and I’ll ensure both in and out of universe that neither choice is ‘wrong’. It’ll be entirely be based on what Lukas thinks will be better redemption.

That’s my team of weirdos! I hope you enjoy them and if you have any ideas of where to take these plots do tell!

 

[FinnianWhitefir]

Very interesting. I'm prepping mine, which won't be for many months. We're playing in 13th Age which allows PCs to pick a "One Unique Thing" and one PC is set on "I was the one who struck the death blow on the Goddess". They lived a bunch of lives they don't remember, all infused with regret and sadness. This latest life they joined the Vekeshi and saw the death happen, saw themselves striking the blow, and finally understand why they are feeling that way. It might be very interesting for Ophelia to undergo the ritual and see Lukas in that fight. Hopefully not create too much drama between them, but I'm sure she wouldn't approve and they would need to talk about it.

Similar to Lukas, I'm trying to figure out if it would be too much to have them involved with the bad guys in a past life, because I don't see how someone wouldn't mention it or do something about it, so it feels like too much. I will need to think of how it could matter but not be a big deal, and I'll be very interested in how yours works out.

If Rosa worked for House Jierre, either inventing non-magical gadgets, or testing them, or finding weird stuff in the Malice Lands to send to them, it would give a good tie in to stuff. Maybe they got screwed over or that relationship went sour. Not sure if you would want them sympathetic to Danor or against it.

 

[DigitalCreepshowCalliope]

Very interesting. I'm prepping mine, which won't be for many months. We're playing in 13th Age which allows PCs to pick a "One Unique Thing" and one PC is set on "I was the one who struck the death blow on the Goddess". They lived a bunch of lives they don't remember, all infused with regret and sadness. This latest life they joined the Vekeshi and saw the death happen, saw themselves striking the blow, and finally understand why they are feeling that way. It might be very interesting for Ophelia to undergo the ritual and see Lukas in that fight. Hopefully not create too much drama between them, but I'm sure she wouldn't approve and they would need to talk about it.

Similar to Lukas, I'm trying to figure out if it would be too much to have them involved with the bad guys in a past life, because I don't see how someone wouldn't mention it or do something about it, so it feels like too much. I will need to think of how it could matter but not be a big deal, and I'll be very interested in how yours works out.

If Rosa worked for House Jierre, either inventing non-magical gadgets, or testing them, or finding weird stuff in the Malice Lands to send to them, it would give a good tie in to stuff. Maybe they got screwed over or that relationship went sour. Not sure if you would want them sympathetic to Danor or against it.

Thank you so much for your feedback!

I thought about the conflict with Lukas and Ophelia as well, but I felt the fact that Lukas didn’t directly or want to kill the goddess kinda nipped that in the bud.

The Rosa idea is being discussed with her player however!

 

[RangerWickett]

I'm trying to figure out if it would be too much to have them involved with the bad guys in a past life, because I don't see how someone wouldn't mention it or do something about it, s

The Ob is pretty compartmentalized, and most of its members are canny enough to maintain operational security, so if he'd worked with, say, Caius Bergeron before (maybe been the one to recruit him), when suddenly this deva shows up, Caius would have a moment of recognition, and he might probe him with the Ob line, "What if you woke up one day, and everyone agreed with you," just to get a sense of whether he might be able to recruit the new incarnation.

And then when Xambria is able to talk to the party lucidly later, right before Sijhen does his ritual against the RHC, she could say that she remembers the thing in her ate a memory in Caius's head about the PC, but decades ago.

Heck, maybe Lya Jierre thinks she recognizes him from when she was much younger, because not many devas come to Danor. She could consider him when they first meet and ask if he's ever been to Danor, then wave it off and get to business. Then at the end of the first adventure when she shows up again, she could ask whether it's rude to talk to a deva about past lives he might not remember, because she thinks she recalls the PC meeting with her father a few times, but she doesn't remember about what.

Then in adventure 4 if the party surveils the Ob meeting in Vendricce, if Nicodemus sees the PC, he calls out to him by name and gives him a respectful nod, saying they'll have to have a conversation another time.

In adventure 5, Sovereign Han Jierre, if asked about this, of course claims that he has no affiliations with any secret societies or whatever; the PC's past incarnation was just part of an archaeological program that Han was interested in.

He can have the conversation with Nic in adventure 7, and then in adventure 8 can encounter someone in a memory event outside Alais Primos (this is so far away it'd be hard to decide now who it is, maybe?). He could find out that he was studying the ruins of Methia, and maybe the past version of him was friends with a deva who was in the Alais Primos memory event, and who is still active in Methia. She came to the city as part of the 'maybe if we die here we die for good' cult. Not sure where that goes, but it's a lot of backstory hooks you could use.

 

[FinnianWhitefir]

I like it. Appreciate taking the time to write out some ideas. I'll ponder around things and will be curious how it goes for OP as I'll be a few months behind. If nothing else I really like the scene where the Courier has a little chat with the PCs and I build up that half of that is perhaps them recognizing this person who has been in and out of their world for 500 years. I would think they have used rituals similar to the Vekeshi to review and see the actual death of the Goddess, and they might recognize the person who struck the killing blow and very much want to feel them out and get a sense for where they are now. As part of the PC getting the same scene, I presented a dream-like write-up of what the PCs see in the memories, and even the scene a few days before where Someone saves the Elves who made it into the city given that the PC was there.

I'm in talks with the player on if the Goddess purposefully did something to them, or they absorbed the Goddesses power, or if they will eventually rebirth a Goddess of rebirth and motherhood and all that. I ran into this amazing quote "If the end of the world is upon you and you have a seed in your palm, plant the seed" and I like to think this Goddess/Young Elf looked upon a hateful but misguided human and realized that they were dead, but perhaps something good could sprout in this person.

I've presented vague non-spoiler ideas around it to my player, but a lot of that we just got to see where the story goes and if it makes sense for them to ascend, or if they bring her back, or if it's just some extra power implanted in them.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

I'm in talks with the player on if the Goddess purposefully did something to them, or they absorbed the Goddesses power, or if they will eventually rebirth a Goddess of rebirth and motherhood and all that. I ran into this amazing quote "If the end of the world is upon you and you have a seed in your palm, plant the seed" and I like to think this Goddess/Young Elf looked upon a hateful but misguided human and realized that they were dead, but perhaps something good could sprout in this person.

that would track with the fact they aren't vapour (since iirc the AP states everyone who was close to the goddess when she died was simply vapourized)