Balrog, some very nice stuff there, I like the feel muchly. It's interesting that we both chose to use Hel(a) as the chief antagonist. She's just too cool to die...
Yeah, looking over the portfolios of Deities and Demigods (both the new 3rd Edition and the old 1st Edition volume) I thought of all the evil Deities, Hel(a) had the most promise. Her cult was described as harboring resentment against all other cults of the other Deities, and Hel(a) herself plotted against the entire pantheon for her confinement in Niflheim. Sounds like a nice bitter stew to me!
It sounds like you have alot more leeway as far as your campaign background and plot goes, since Hel(a) is the only one left. Plenty of room for your own brush-strokes there. I took pretty much the opposite approach, I definitely have a lazy campaign going as far as the amount of actual homebrewed material. My over-arcing plot is mine of course, but I have used many parts of different published adventures to get things going. For example, I started with the PDF adventure the Wizards Amulet from Necromancer Games to get the PCs introduced, and then followed that up with the Crucible of Freya. Just couldnt pass up that one, as it both a decent module and has a very appropriate feel for my campaign. from there I have mixed and matched homebrewed material, Dungeon adventures, and other published materials.
I found that the Tomb of Abysthor made a very nice dungeon exploration and the old Gods in that module translated nicely into fading Gods in my campaign. MUIR became Sif, with some slight alignment changes and other cosmetic changes. THYR became Forseti, also with some slight alignment changes. It has worked out well so far. As both of them are from an older breed of more warlike Deities, they represent a dying world, and their worship is dying out as newer younger Gods of commerce and trade are becoming more popular( the Elemental Gods).
I really like the sound and feel of your campaign. Yggdrasil being replanted is a very cool idea, and sounds rather like a rebirth of the world.
I guess the impetus of my campaign idea was that I wanted to have a world that had a somewhat primitive aspect to it, with regard to the weather and elements having command of most of the world. Mortal races have had to adapt to the more extreme regions, and this has made for some very extreme cultures in my campaign. But the melting pot in the center of it all is supposed to represent the old world, a somewhat normal and busy typical high fantasy setting. That is where the bulk of the campaign so far takes place.
The concept of the four elements combining in one world I incorporated from The Death Gate Cycle by Weis and Hickman. I really loved the premise behind that series, and decided to include that idea in my campaign. Instead of the world being sundered from an apocalypse designed by powerful mortals, the world is nearly sundered by Ragnarok, and the surviving world is changed and marked by the influx of primordial Elemental magic. In the chaos of the Elemental magic and the dying of many of the old deities, new deities arise and take their places in the new order. A new order with a very delicate balance.
