Today, I am admittedly busy, distracted, and unable to sit down and do something deep with worldbuilding. I decided to tie together a couple of loose threads that have cropped up between a few of my recent Legends of Akeroth streams. It's still worldbuilding, technically! These are some threads that were starting to form loosely during my playing on stream, and now I'm taking the time to clean up my notes and tie things together with stronger knots.
Back in Week 2's post, I wrote about a historical disaster. At the time, I theorized it might be possible that my campaign's villain could have been involved with it. I have decided that no, he was not involved.
However, what was involved was a tome with a powerful magic gem embedded into its cover. I have currently declared this to be a Mana Gem, since LoA's stretch goals that have been unlocked includes rules regarding Mana Gems. These are planned to be similar to materia in Final Fantasy games, where you can embed them into weapons. Whether or not this gem will remain a Mana Gem depends on what the rules and lore are when they come out, but I can easily say it wasn't a Mana Gem if my idea doesn't align with canon. Instead, I can say that it was thought to have been one, but is either weaker or more powerful than a real Mana Gem.
This tome was created during a livestream "workshop" where I used roll tables and prompt cards to create a Legends of Akeroth character and a oneshot plot hook. This tome was being protected by the Galiodor Institute of Magic, a school in New Erwick. I named it by rolling 3d10 for a random flower out of my flower language book, which has each entry numbered. The result was #397, Galium Odoratum, which turned out to be super fitting because one of its "potential powers" is protection. It was like the dice knew!
This school was protecting the tome, but it is no longer there—it's been stolen by a recently retired faculty member, who sold or delivered it to a mysterious faction. The characters in my campaign don't know that last bit yet, but the oneshot's main character, who I'll be playing as, is a student at the school. They and some of the current faculty know that it was stolen by the retiree, but they don't have evidence to prove it. Because the school was in charge of the tome's protection, the government of New Erwick has decided that this massive failure means the school should be shut down. The faculty would either be branded as criminals and go to trial, or have their reputation ruined forever. The oneshot's main character, Elodan, will be infiltrating the retiree's manor (as a dungeon) in search of evidence to prove that it was this person that is the real thief. Assuming the oneshot goes well, Elodan will become a new guild Waymate in my main campaign, which puts them into contact with Kadlen.
In my main campaign, my character Kadlen and two guild members are at the ruins of a monastery. I had already used prompt cards to determine that it was destroyed by an enemy, and by a storm. I have since decided that it was destroyed by a creature of legendary size that could create storms, the same faction that has had a couple of references in past sessions and prequel game had a hand in this happening. The theft of the tome artifact now has me thinking: what if this faction is the same one that has the tome? What if they destroyed the monastery in search of another artifact or relic? It would also make sense as to why they raided that dungeon in the prequel game, leaving nothing behind, and there was evidence of magic in the form of a mural that was infused with magic to prolong its longevity.
And on top of that, this monastery was attacked only a couple of years ago. In a flash, I had remembered that Kadlen's previous party that he was a member of was killed by a "fiery behemoth" and a couple of years ago.
Storm-creating giant creature? Fiery giant creature? Same time frame? Seems very suspicious!!
It's pretty exciting to start having the main villain of my campaign start to slowly form, and in away that feels very connected to the world and the events that have happened in it. Having him connected to the incident that killed Kadlen's previous party would definitely put him in the "bad guy" zone. But what is the motive for collecting artifacts and relics? What is the problem that this villain seeks to solve, and is willing to go through these lengths to accomplish it? I look forward to finding that out.
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