All Of The Crap

Alright, for those not in the know, I've been using the Fabula Ultima TTRPG system to run some collaborative stories set in my main fantasy setting, Midgaheim. It's a really fun system that fits my setting pretty damn well and is fun to run, and it allows me to play TTRPGs with my friends AND develop my fantasy setting in one swoop. I consider these campaigns more or less canon to Midgaheim - at least, in the sense that a first draft of one of my novels would also be more or less canon. Like, there might be some things I'd tweak or refine (especially given the improvised nature of dialogue in a TTRPG setting), but in broad strokes, these are canon events in Midgaheim.

And in the case of Currents of War, the third of these campaigns I've started and the second to finish, some of those canon events are pretty important, because Currents of War focuses on the Fourth Goblin War, an event that had a huge impact on characters in both Wizard School Mysteries and my upcoming book Maude and Mordi. It's kind of a big deal!

So, key exposition for those in need: the Goblin Wars are loosely inspired by the Crusades, and sell themselves on the flimsy premise that they're about saving normal humans from evil goblins and other boogeymen, but in fact are really just excuses for the upper class to send knights out to loot everything in their path, human and goblin alike, and thereby increase the wealth of those already in power.

The First Goblin War is the closest to a legitimate conflict, but even then it wasn't really a war against goblins - it was a war against an evil wizard who, among the many creatures he'd bribed or press-ganged into his service, happened to force a lot of goblins into fighting on his behalf. Rather than recognize them as victims of the conflict, subsequent generations blamed them entirely for it, hence Goblin Wars - attempts to drive out goblins societies that ultimately just further reinforce the desperate conditions that made them easy to force into servitude in the first place.

Or, in other words, the Fourth Goblin War is the result of the ruling class twisting historical events to convince normal folk to hate an already oppressed minority group enough that they allow the ruling class to send armed soldiers into city streets, which results in said soldiers wreaking havoc on everyone, since the real goal was to exert pressure on everyone below the ruling class to steal their shit.

...I was not trying to make this topical when I started this campaign a year ago, I swear.

Anyway, that's a lot of preamble, I suppose, so let's make it simpler: a bunch of assholes are rampaging around the countryside terrorizing common folk under the pretense of driving out evil goblins, and the goblins in question aren't evil to begin with. Our heroes are a ragtag group of weirdos who try to get people with decency and sense to stand against the assholes, uniting humans, goblins, and tons of other weirdos together against a literal army of bigots. Things get more complicated than that, of course, but that's enough to actually get to...

The Player Characters

Our first hero is Art Baker, played by @dinosaurana. Art is a phantom, i.e. a free-roaming corporeal ghost, and he is specifically the phantom of a soldier who died in the Third Goblin War. In life, Art was a carpenter who was forcibly drafted into the army, tried to survive the experience with his morals in tact, and died for his troubles. With his last breath he hoped that there would never be another one of these pointless wars, and well, some dumbasses went and made a fourth one, so he rose from the dead to try and stop it.

Art's player decided to do a Mrs. Columbo bit during the game, frequently bringing up his wife from way back when and building a mythos around her. By the end we established that she was (and still is) a very powerful witch, who, like most spellcasters, lives a lot longer than is normal for humans, and ages at a much slower rate.

Needless to say, Art had a lot of tragedy built into his character concept, and I exploited that on more than a few occasions, because I am evil.

Given that the whole premise of the campaign was "we gotta stop the goblin war," it only made sense for at least one of our PCs to be a Goblin, and @cerothenull helpfully provided that by playing one named Duck (goblins like to name themselves after birds, you see). Duck used to live in Fairyland as part of the Unseelie Court, but was exiled when she and her friends tried to steal from a Seelie noble, got caught, and embarassed their boss. Worse, the fairy she stole from placed a curse on her, and Duck has had trouble finding a home and friends ever since. While understandably jaded and cynical, she had a great deal of empathy for the plight of others, which proved incredibly important as the campaign wore on.

Our token human was provided by my friend Cene, who played Flavien Pascal, a merchant who wants to prove himself as a true hustler and king of commerce. Flavien was very much a greedy, money-grubbing fellow throughout the game, but he combined it with a genuine entrepreneurial spirit, a decent moral compass, and a pretty good reason to want to prove himself.

See, Flavien grew up with a single mother, who claimed his father was Sir George Garston II, the most famous and prolific dragonslayer currently living as of this campaign's time period. Being the bastard son of a world-famous hero gives you pretty big shoes to fill, and it doesn't help that George Garston II is a bit of a dick - and, you know, the leader of the Fourth Goblin War's goblinslayer army. Flavien's daddy issues got brought up a lot, is my point.

Despite their name, the Goblin Wars don't just target goblins, but any and all exiled fairies that the armies can find, including orks like Grugyan here (played by @scatha5). Poor Grugyan was trying to retire from a life of combat when the Fourth Goblin War came to his doorstep, and begrudgingly picked up his old axe to try and stop it.

Of course, there was more than just the threat to his life that got him out the door. As we slowly revealed over the campaign, Grugyan himself once was part of an army that was just as bloodthristy and cruel as the goblinslayers, and his attempt to retire to a peaceful life was made out of disgust with the things he had done in the past. Throughout the whole campaign, Grugyan was torn from his desire to protect others with the skills he had, and his hope that he would never backslide into the callous, cold-hearted warrior he has once been.

Our final PC was Monchere, played by @shadyserpent269. A roughly-horse-sized dragon with a scavenger lifestyle, Monchere carried several jars in which he pickled corpses for flavor. He also was once a human dragonslayer who apprenticed for, oh, hey, George Garston the II! But he was cursed to take on a dragon shape for his crimes against dragon-kind, and more or less decided to commit to the bit, fully embracing life as a dragon instead of trying to become a man again.

you're conditioning them to act hyper, the sugar isn't doing it

and then he gets yanked directly out of that nexus and despite that the fact that he spent, again, two hundred years in a situation that was sort of a rock tumbler for the human soul, there’s still a pebble left in there. and it’s a pebble that can be grown if placed in the right environment and provided with a support network.

so i think it becomes interesting because it really does i think force you to start thinking about the limits of free will even on as basic a level as the human personality. i think the fact that he becomes such a different character based on player choice, that his end morality is so hugely dependent on player choice, is uhhh. a big part of what the devs were going for probably.

it makes a lot of people really uncomfortable to acknowledge some bad people would be good people if literally nothing changed except they had a good support network and different circumstances. especially because it means the opposite is also true. which is even more uncomfortable.

reblog this post if your account is a trans safe space or owned by a trans person!