Cidarune

[cinaed]

Since June I have been running a new homebrew 5e campaign for four players! I wrapped up my first campaign, a fusion of Lost Mines of Phandelver/Tyranny of Dragons after four years in February and while I loved those players as friends, we were not a particularly good match for D&D.

But three of the players are from my Friday night game and the last is one of the player's brothers, and we've been having a good time! We play every other week because I have learned my lesson on trying to run a weekly game. They started at level 3 and leveled up to level 4 last month.

Millennia ago the old gods of Cidarune died through deceit and betrayal, though the stories vary on exactly how. An adventuring party stepped forward to take their place so that the world could survive, but the Lost Triumvirate’s deaths ravaged the world in what became known as the Cataclysm.

All that remains after the first gods’ death-throes is what have been rebuilt by the survivors upon the handful of island nations and within the seven countries on the Vashegaran continent, with most of the Vashegarian shoreline inaccessible by ship due to shifting rocky shores, sea monsters, and whirlpools.

Only one small nation has unfettered access to the sea: Basadore. 

Basadore keeps its control over the sea trade due to an almost impassable mountain range surrounding it and with support from its communities of dwarves, firbolgs, humans, and wood elves. Recently the reigning queen of Basadore further bolstered her nation’s defenses by marrying a pirate king and bringing his fleet into her navy. Despite his death during an assassination attempt on the queen shortly before their only child’s birth, the queen’s navy remains strong and devoted.

However, now as the crown princess' twenty-first birthday has passed, all is not well in Basadore. The princess was supposed to start meeting with suitors, and has instead hidden herself away.

Each PC has found themselves either as a guest or working at a welcome banquet for one of the princess’ prospective suitors in the capitol city of Clearpass. With the princess in hiding, however, the banquet threatens to be awkward at best and a political disaster at worst. When this banquet inevitably goes awry, the PCs will will learn royal secrets and be offered a quest that has ramifications for the entire world of Cidarune.


 

• Skavis Jraak (He/Him): "plain and simple" human tailor who runs a shop in the country of Uscana and currently in Clearpass to present several clothes to the Uscanan ambassador, managed to hide his draconic sorcerer abilities quite well for a while and is tight-lipped about why he left his homeland Sheina two decades ago
• Xihal Lunareyes (He/Him): a nervous halfling who is visiting his cousin who runs a curios shop in the city (and who maybe has a life debt to the thieves' guild) after running away from home from one of the underground Svartheim cities (a city mostly of drow, duergar elves, deep gomes), a druid/phantom rogue currently troubled by the fact that in their latest fight he could hear the voice of an old associate mocking him when he knows for a fact she's dead
• Bagheera Pylon (He/Him): a young tabaxi with a temper and a deep hatred of pirates after living his entire life on the archipelago, has already clashed with the admiral of the navy and the queen's right hand person, in Clearpass with some of his family, the Pylons being the trading family in the archipelago with a tradition of adopting useful people in, a bladesinger wizard who's also looking for his missing sister
• Monet Rosethorn (She/Her): an energetic dhamphir who has confided her secret with the rest of the party and adores romance, her mother is a member of the Sheinan Assembly and her father runs the famous Rosethorn wineries, she's a recent graduate of military academy and came to Clearpass to be moral support for the new, anxiety-prone Sheinan ambassador who is a friend of her mother, a death cleric/echo knight whose shadow in their last fight seemed to have an unsettling personality of its own

So far the PCs have:

• Saved the queen from a coup by a duke of a neighboring country and kept his son from being executed by having him give up all claims to his title and his homeland
• Gone on a quest to find a magical artifact in the nearby mountains the queen and her admiral desperately need
• Found more than they bargained for in the mountains including a cursed hag who had kidnapped two local boys and cursed a failed adventurer into being her werewolf bodyguard
• Killed the hag, cured the werewolf of being a werewolf, and learned that one of the boys is a divine soul sorcerer and a hidden descendant of Luce, one of the Founders of the Faiths for the new pantheon and the man who began the temple to the deity of arcana and knowledge
• Also found a bunch of magical artifacts including the one the queen wants and an ancient journal that looks to be as old as the Cataclysm
• Presented the artifact that combined a permanent Nondetection spell and an extended Disguise Self spell to the queen and uncovered the secret that the crown princess turned into a tiefling overnight, had a tense argument with the queen and the admiral on what to do with this secret but were invited to the ceremony in which the duke's son will become a ward of the queen
• Bargained with the Copper Chain, the prominent thieves' guild for the continent, to enchant the ancient journal so that it wouldn't age any further and be immune to damage, and got suspicious after the two Copper Chain members were strange and contradictory and coaxed them into discovering the fate of a missing wizard in a nearby city, the last god-kin/descendant of Errden, the Living Pantheon's god of life, death, fate and the grave and the god Monet and her family worship
• Read the journal and discovered it was written by Serune, the Founder of the Faith for Sky Fullf of Stars, goddess of forge and light, and her wife when she was mortal, the journal ended with Serune being hunted down and murdered, as the Sky-chosen have been for as long as anyone can remember--- their temples are essentially fortresses but most of them get attacked and destroyed every few decades and no one knows why

So! Something weird is happening, between the princess becoming a tiefling overnight and descendants of the gods and the Founders either in hiding or going missing. It's up to the party to find out more.

Next session is the ceremony for the duke's son and getting more details about this missing wizard from the Copper Chain before they head off to the city where he disappeared. I am looking forward to it!