Woke up from another nightmare about what happened in our D&D game. 😰
I’ve got to write about it, maybe I can get some more sleep if I do.
Fungal foresters: nothing, just living there
Party: carefully passing through, not hurting anyone, on a mission to rescue someone
Fungal foresters: does nothing
Party: weeks later, sends a small army to “harvest” the fungal forest
Fungal foresters: defeats the army
Party: sends themselves, gets near-TPK’d, sends a big army + a djinn and a dao, routs the fungal foresters, wishes the party members back to life. RIP fungal foresters.
Fungal foresters (from heaven): WTF guys we just wanted to live here
Party: we only wanted to defend ourselves–
…from a cave eight caves down from them (over a hundred guards, nine glyphs of warding, down a chasm, and over a river) from mushroom people who were dedicated to only stay there and mind their ecology. All for the glorious glory of the League of the Pantheon (and access to valuable lichen).
And you tell me over and over and over again my friend that you don’t believe we’re on the eve of some kinda sad things. I could see why they wanted to roll up new chars for a break from this.
This has been a journey through the heart of darkness for these characters, exploring the dehumanizing policies of the League of the Pantheon and a worldview where enlightened beings (followers of the laws of the Loregiver—specifically the League’s interpretation of those laws) are the ones who matter. The party leader was from Nog, caught by slavers as a child, carried off to Hilm, “rescued” by Pantheon clerics who brought him up as a fanatical missionary, sent to the island al-Dabab to save true Pantheon believers (from everyone else).
And at first actually did end up doing a lot of good, displacing the slaver cult of Set and trying to figure out ways to keep the local Geeba and Skreel populations fed. But in the end a dehumanizing “we are the chosen people” ideology is always gonna have a pretty darn dangling other shoe.