Today I’m going to talk about Jon’s campaign
Where to start? The characters? The Story? I think those are fine. I’ll move on to the mechanical aspects at a later time.
The setting is Ikorra, an island nation very similar to feudal Japan with minor modern elements, but you don’t see that as much. This place has civilization spread out sporadically but also has a sharp “Nature retaking the land” element. You see, similarly to other fantasy stories set within feudal Japan, this place has demons, and not the infernal end of days kind either, I’m talking floating lamps that steal your soul and 3 legged lightning wolves. These demons grow more powerful with age, and the oldest ones are called demon lords. Rightly so as they maintain dominion over certain untamed areas of Ikorra. Example, a demon introduced early during an expedition resembled a beautiful maiden bathing in an active volcano. That particular individual had dominion over a firelands-like area (for those not familiar with WoW, it’s like a string of active volcanoes, fire everywhere, magma erupting all over the place, lots of sulfur and ash) and the surrounding wildlife had adapted to suit those changes. Similarly there are 3 other such areas, a massive swamp, an area graced with eternal storms, and a vast cave network.
Anyway besides that there were apparently vast mountain chains but at some point in history those mountains began to float, not really sure why. Furthermore we (used to, more on that later) live on one such mountain as part of the Tang clan. The Tang is essentially an old world isolated clan who developed apart from regular Ikorran society. We didn’t obtain the same technologies such as firearms or have any use for sailing (being that we live over a rock. heh.) Anyway this clan studies demons because they’re an integral part of our society, and even work with them to learn more about them. See, sometime in history a true infernal died and his flesh scarred the world (all fancy lore) and the fauna became more like humans and some humans became more like animals. Starting to get a bigger picture? This area became a breeding ground for a race of human/animal hybrids. They exist in other parts of the world, but they’re the most “normal” here in Ikorra. They are different than humans, have miscellaneous buffs based on the core animal, one of either dog, cat, fox, reptile, bird, or rat. They have limitations, namely they can’t breed with each other, but they can with humans. That was a self-imposed restriction by the DM and is a major factor of the direction of the campaign. See, we’re trying to fix that breeding problem, because the current generation of the tang were all born hybrids.
This campaign revolves around us coming to term with that and developing the theory that hunting greater demons influences our development. Each time one of these stronger demons is slain in history, more diversity and change occurs in the following generation. This hasn’t been fully explored, but suffice to say there’s a magic amulet that can (maybe) solve all our problems. One of these Greater Demons heard pray tell of our amulet and decided to crash our floating rock alongside his accomplices, a yakuza group called the Aohebi (Ow-HAY-buy). I’ll talk about them in a future post, as they’re one of the 3 greater yakuza clans and that’s another long post.
Anyway. They end up trashing our humble little rock and we fall out of the sky. We make up our minds to hunt down the Aohebi since they’ve captured some of our relatives (along with our magic fix-everything amulet) we travel for a bit and arrive at the capital city of Ikorra, a beautiful pristine city with one hell of a facade. The Ikorrans care about you contributing to the civilization as a whole, and if you don’t contribute, that is you don’t work or join the military, you’re trash. You’re not people, you have no rights. This is conveyed by a homeless girl getting trampled by a passing horse and carriage, no one bats an eye. This led to our little clan’s quick anger, with our sense of morality. We get taken in by the local homeless community, and I discover the sweet sweet joy of larceny, but the government attacks our newfound home with impunity (While I’m conveniently out robbing the town, hehe) I end up buying a ride out of the city with nice clean clothes while the rest of the clan wanders in filth by foot. In hindsight, that paints me in a pretty negative light. Oh well. We move along and eventually come across our goal, the Aohebi, whom are being mind controlled by a greater demon. Through some complicated tomfoolery we manage to break the mind control and get all cozy with the Aohebi. Well, some of us. Mostly me, who is taking a liking to the criminal lifestyle. Anyway, you’re all caught up.
