I got a bit carried away with this illustration, I think. 6 worlds, 5 different astronomical backgrounds, 7 lightning bolts. You might not be able to see everything that’s going on at this small scale – but click on the image to behold its’ full 1280 x 1280-pixel energy.

Because I was able push the latest mega-update to the Blogdex out a day earlier than expected, I’ve had time to work on this article for the January Blog Carnival.

I love a good, provocative turn of phrase, a coupling of words that stimulates the creative juices, tantalizes the imagination, and makes you think of things that had never occurred to you before. This month’s Blog Carnival, hosted by In My Campaign, is built around just such a phrase – “Divine Worlds” (well, technically, it’s “Divine Worldbuilding”, but…).

What could this mean? My imagination’s been firing whenever I give it room to fire up ever since I heard it.

Well, the “Worlds” could be literal, or figurative, or even metaphoric. And the “Divine” could indicate a property of the worlds in question, or possession/ownership of them, or the creation of them, or just a relationship between them – one that might be just perception or might have some basis in fact, or might be complete fiction. By my count, that’s 18 combinations.

Well, I’m not going to explore all of those possibilities, for the main reason that my imagination has been obsessing about just a couple of them.

Interpretation I:

The Gods created the planes of existence either directly or indirectly so that each being could find a place to dwell that reflected and suited their nature. Now, for some unknown reason, they are secretly making a whole lot more, a discovery that has been made by accident. The PCs are sent to investigate, as have a number of equivalent groups from other planes.

Why might a whole bunch of new worlds be needed?

Interpretation Ia:

Possibility #1 – there’s something wrong with the old ones. Perhaps they are flawed in design and about to break down – the sort of thing that happens when you build in haste. But the Gods discovered the problem too late, and not all the new worlds will be ready in time; people may have to get used to strange new neighbors.

And, if not everyone can be saved because the new worlds aren’t finished, it will naturally occur to those who are not to be chosen to take someone else’s place – by force if necessary.

Let’s further surmise that the world-building process increases the capacity of the new worlds with every passing moment. All hope will not be lost until the existing worlds actually break down completely.

That means that the odds of your being chosen to survive will increase with every one of your neighbors that you eliminate. And, since the Gods will logically choose their followers and adherents first, the more pious someone is, the bigger the threat they pose to your survival.

This is a recipe for genocidal warfare internal to each plane of existence.

Of course, just because an environment isn’t perfect doesn’t mean that you can’t survive there, at least long enough. So this is also a recipe for inter-planar warfare of an equally-genocidal nature, and an almost-complete breakdown of all societies in existence.

Of course, the more gentle and enlightened, the more the citizens will have expectations, and the faster they will break down. Or, to phrase it slightly differently, the more authoritarian the society, the more it will resist collapse through the use of force and intimidation when compared with a more gentle social structure.

That means that the more violent societies will be the last to be able to field whole armies, against an opposition that has largely gone to pieces, socially, with everything to gain by doing so and nothing to lose.

Small wonder that the gods would have tried to keep all this quiet for as long as (in-)humanly possible.

This is obviously the outline for a campaign in three phases. In the first phase, the PCs discover what is going on, encounter other groups making similar investigations, some of which will be friendly and some hostile, some knowing more than the PCs, and some less. This lays the groundwork for the campaign trilogy, and it is also where it is most vulnerable in terms of believability. A number of questions remain unanswered, and concrete answers would be needed.

1. How were the new worlds discovered, and by whom (from the PCs perspective?
2. What is the creation process?
3. Why would the Gods not intervene to prevent the discovery?
4. What are the early signs of the imminent breakdown?

Question three can at least be answered relatively easily – the creation process might be taking all the Gods’ efforts. Anything less will reduce the number that can be saved. But that answer holds further implications – virtually all clerical magic stops working as soon as the Gods discover the situation and begin world-creating. That would get noticed in a hurry.

Most religious groups would initially look for blame within themselves. Perhaps they had done something to offend the Gods, or failed to do something, or failed to stop something being done. Hardliners and reformers would crawl out of the woodwork, only to be confronted by Progressives who argue that the faithful were not so much abandoned as “left behind”. The religious and theological upheaval would be a small taste of what was to come.

After things had settled down somewhat, internally, the next group to blame would lie outside the congregation. Mages in particular would be targets, since their working of magic without faith undermines the credibility of the faith. Sorcerers can at least be described as possessing “a gift from the gods”.

As was the case when Lolth was apparently killed in the backstory of my Fumanor: The Last Deity campaigns, some high-ranking churchmen would organize the use of mummery to keep the faithful convinced that they had not been abandoned. The Drow, of course, had a downtrodden group of male mages and illusionists to assist in this deception. I’m quite sure that when everyone else started blaming mages, some religious authorities would offer them sanctuary – conditionally.

The last thing that religious leaders would want or tolerate, under these circumstances, would be anyone attempting to blame them. Some sort of Inquisition, a secret police, would be urgently formed. Perhaps certain “Holy relics” can act as a power source in the gods’ stead – such would make dandy symbols of office, and permit the Inquisition to defuse some of the worst skeptics: “You see? The Gods are still there, still answering our prayers. No need to spread Heresy. So you had better shut up, if you know what’s good for you. You won’t get another warning.” Rogues and other sneaks would naturally gravitate into this service as well.

At the same time, the church would start recruiting small, elite, armies to act as bodyguards for the church leaders, and as muscle to prevent any other church pointing the finger at this congregation as the source of all woes.

That means that the churches would already have the core of a decent Adventuring Party ready-made. Cleric-Inquisitor, Rogue, Wizard, and one or two Prime Meat-shields.

But you can go further. Having such groups on hand, a prudent church would seek to use them as investigators to find out what the real problem was and end all this speculation. They would train the best of the best, equip them as well as they possibly could (under the circumstances), fill them in on the truth behind the catastrophic breakdown of the faith (as described in the campaign background), and send them out to investigate. Their mission: fix the problem if you can, but above all else, find answers and return with them.

So that’s our PCs, sorted (in fact, the group bears an uncanny resemblance to the group assembled in Fumanor: Seeds Of Empire)!

The PCs can then investigate the failure of the Gods to “perform on cue” and eventually discover the world-building, and the reasons behind it (the imminent breakdown of the current planes of existence). Of course, other groups are also making the same discoveries. Phase I of the campaign would more or less end with a lecture from one or more of the Gods on the importance of secrecy, and the anarchic collapse that is coming. But, no matter what the PCs decide to do with the information they’ve obtained, the word will get out – someone will report back to their superiors, who will realize that the residents of their plane are to be partially sacrificed to enable some of the residents of some other plane to survive, and the word would leak.

Phase II of the campaign starts with the rise of anarchy and civil war – more or less everywhere. This breakdown was already the trend, as phase I made clear. The PCs find themselves in the thick of it, discovering plots and sabotaging armies and cutting supply lines and backstabbing allies who were about to back-stab them, and deciding whether or not to go along with war crimes (read: commit acts of genocide as ordered by their superiors – some will, some won’t). If the PCs won’t, that means they have to turf out the current leadership and lead a morality-based revolution of their own.

And all the while, in the background, the signs and portents and side-effects of the progressing breakdown of the plane of existence itself would add urgency and perhaps a touch of surrealism to this dystopian vision.

Phase II would end with the arrival of the first planar invasion force.

As stated earlier, this would be from a martial world, a society in which force compels obedience. A lawfully-aligned society, in other words, and probably an evil one, to boot. Right away, that points to the Devils, but that seems too obvious to me (besides, I have bigger fish for them to fry a little later). But whoever this group are, they won’t be the last.

It would be as though you were this isolated group having your own little war with a neighboring tribe when World War II washed over the top of you without warning. Until then, only the most learned of your people even suspected that their might be other tribes out there.

Phase III forces the PCs to look at the bigger picture, and places them in position to make decisive differences in that bigger picture. They won’t achieve that by main force, but by diplomacy and intrigue and subterfuge and alliances and the gathering of intelligence. Which dominoes will they push over, and which ones will they glue down – and will that be enough to keep them standing? Especially when the table on which they have been placed is experiencing it’s own instabilities – reality is continuing to break down, remember!

The climax of Phase III is when the PCs, in the middle of a critical situation, are suddenly evacuated by the Gods to their new home, they are amongst the lucky ones. And facing a whole new set of invasions – why attempt to conquer a burning building when you can go for the real prize, the brand-new home that’s almost finished, over on the far side of town?

Of course, this means going up against the Gods themselves, a prospect that would scare off most of the “weaker” groups. But not the Lords of Hades and Princes of the Abyss (or is that the other way around? never mind). Suddenly, the stakes are raised yet again, and the bigger picture shown to be just part of an even more sweeping landscape.

There would be strong temptation to make this a whole fourth phase of the campaign. I would strongly resist that urge, simply because there is too great a similarity between this and what’s already happened in Phase III. Instead, make this the epic climax of Phase III – in which the PCs start to plan and create the structure of society that will emerge after the breakdown. They should be prepared to throw existing assumptions out the window, making sacrifices and hard choices to get there. Perhaps the Elvish Forests can be largely preserved – but only on one of the outer planes – though a number of permanent bridges can be erected between there and the forests of New Earth. Perhaps the price of achieving all this is that the Dwarfish Tunnels have to go – but some of the Dwarfish populace can be saved, residing aboard vast ships made of enchanted Elven timber that sail the void between the worlds.

Again, there are two options that the GM should choose between – either the emergence of Devils and Demons is an inevitability (however changed their circumstances might be in the new cosmology), or the PCs will have to discover that there is a necessity to their existence – which means that the GM will have to have figured one out in the first place.

Personally, I would plan speculatively on the latter, and keep the former in my back pocket as a fallback to be employed if I couldn’t devise a sufficiently compelling reason. And my thoughts would probably start along the lines of the existing devils and demons being redeemable, however unlikely that might be – something that could not be guaranteed about their inevitable replacements. This takes the GMs conflict and makes it part of the fabric of the game world – the PCs either preserve (some of) the Devils They Know, or take the chance that what arises in their place will be even worse.

And, of course, the Epic Finale is the final collapse of the old reality and the PCs and their fellow Saved desperately holding off the doomed invaders from the old.

This, to me, is an outline for a campaign that would be always intended to go Epic. It starts big, with all theology blighted by Iconoclasm and Heresy and Schisms, with attendant social upheaval, and only gets bigger from there. Part II, in retrospect, is a bit of a “calm before the storm” compared with the grandiosity of the revelations of Part I and the inter-planar scope of Part III – but it’s deeply personal, which should raise the intensity enough that the PCs won’t initially notice.

Interpretation Ib:

All of that was built on one possible answer to the initial question posed, but that’s not the only way things could go.

Possibility #2: It’s a Divinely-generational thing. The current Gods are aware that their time is running out, and they need to start building up replacements. The problem is that for whatever reason, the current crop are barren – perhaps they are consuming too much of their vital essences catering to the needs and whims of clerics (and fighting off the privations of those who would do them harm, like Devils and Demons). So they are building this enormous divine Power Pack, which they will colonize with a handful of the ignorant, who they will Convert. In these (unstable, temporary) Paradises – one new plane and subject populace per Deity – populations of the newly-faithful should boom.

That in turn will give the Gods a temporary boost, sufficient that they can create their heirs. Of necessity, these new faithful will be sacrificed in the process – but because they have been raised to expect that, it’s a sacrifice they will make, willingly. Ultimately, to claim their own divinity, the children will need to overthrow and usurp their parents’ power, just as their parents had to do long ago (this is starting to remind me of the Greek Gods and the Titans).

How would you raise and educate a new generation of Gods? Tell you what, I’ll get back to that in a moment.

There are all sorts of directions I could take this concept in, in terms of a campaign. I could have the PCs be the younger deities without the players knowing it, for example. Or they might be residents of the “Sacrificial Lambs” who are starting to question the blind loyalty to the Gods of their parents, as young people often do. Or they could be from the “Old World” and curious about what the Gods are up to. Personally, I think I could have the most fun with the first answer, but your mileage might vary.

So you’re a PC in this campaign. You wake up one morning in a strange place, with no memory of who you are beyond your name, and a minimal amount of practical expertise of some sort – a first level character with amnesia. Your mission is to make your way in the world, to survive and prosper, and to ultimately regain your memories.

Nor are you the only one – there are three or four others, perhaps more, all in the same place and same situation.

From Day One, it becomes clear that you are being persecuted by the Gods. If you make a minor mistake, you are punished mercilessly. If you fail to learn a lesson quickly enough, you are punished mercilessly. If you fail to stand up for yourself, you are punished mercilessly. If you do stand up for yourself when in the wrong, you are punished mercilessly. And there are endless opportunities to do all these things that come out of the woodwork whenever you even look in a given direction.

And yet, from time to time, there are random acts of kindness, and goodwill, and charity. And, should your life ever truly be threatened, some sort of miraculous intervention will “just happen” to take place. You are a divine plaything, a favorite toy. Or so it seems.

At night, your dreams are of living in paradise, of standing in judgment over others, of being the deciding factor in life-and-death situations, and of never quite measuring up to the expectations of your parents, who you can never quite picture. Strangely, you seem to learn (i.e. gain XP) from these experiences (mini-adventures), no matter how fanciful or bereft of context they might be.

Some of your number fall, or despair, or just give up and settle down to an ordinary life, or repeatedly fail an important lesson, or demonstrate abject stupidity (from which nothing, not even Divine Intervention, can save you). One or two become cold and cruel, or yield to temptation – not petty stuff, serious.

Eventually, there are only the PCs and one or two others from the original group left, and they have achieved skill and power enough that if they work together, they could conceivably bring down a Deity (probably a minor one). That night, their dreams reveal who their parents were, and who they really are, and that they were raised in luxury and wanting for nothing, only to be turfed out on your ears one morning and your memories erased.

Everything that you have experienced since has taught you (1) to be resentful of the treatment you have received at their hands (you were right, this is personal); (2) to believe that you can do a better and fairer job; and, (3) taught you the necessary skills to perform the tasks of a Deity. Or rule a kingdom. Or run a major business.

Under those circumstances, you would be fully expected to show up to lay claim to your birthright – by force, if necessary. Which it will be. Once you’ve started taking over from one God, you can’t stop there, because the old guard will stick together to oppose you. So you overthrow the Gods, and appoint yourselves in their place.

Only then do you learn the whole truth – that all this was done deliberately, to prepare you to take over and compel you to do so when the opportunity arose. And only then do you learn of the uncounted numbers of faithful who were sacrificed ruthlessly to bring you into existence – the final revelation that transforms the old Gods into villains.

“Any shortfall in your numbers will eventually be filled in the natural way of such things, until the demands on your time and attention are all being met. And then, one day, you too shall become barren and find your potency waning, and will have to prepare a new generation.” is the final advice of your parents, discovered after this moment of revelation, inscribed onto a memorial to the faithful who made this ultimate sacrifice. “Having orchestrated this act of barbarity, we are no longer deserving of being the Gods of the faithful of this existence. And so we do this, knowing that it will set in motion a sequence of events in which we will be judged and found wanting, and punished accordingly. And we do this, willingly.”

But the campaign isn’t necessarily over at this point. For the Gods to have reached this point, they must have become aware that they were letting little things slip, and little things sometimes grow into big things. There is, quite frankly, a considerable mess to clean up. Let them go wild with divine might and authority, reordering the material worlds into paradises. Starting with what to do with those children of the Gods who didn’t measure up. The PCs have been raised to sit in the Big Chairs, it’s only fair for them to have the “fun” of doing so for a while.

For how long? Well, I mentioned that one or two NPCs had survived, and suggested that some had turned cruel and heartless; the implication is that at least one of the NPCs falls into this category, and will begin scheming to take the ultimate power all for himself. He starts by killing the other NPC Deity, or coming close to it, before the deed is discovered. Once the PCs sort out this mess, the campaign can end.

But that’s not the only way all this could go. The PCs might discover the truth BEFORE deciding what to do about their parents, and BEFORE the ultimate sacrifice has to be made – giving them the choice of sacrificing someone ELSE, instead. Or flat-out refusing – prompting the Gods to start committing atrocities that the PCs can’t stand for. The whole purpose of this campaign is for the PCs to challenge and overthrow the Gods themselves – with the willing connivance behind the scenes, of those Gods.

Interpretation II:

Some worlds are Divine, others are not. There is a Spiritual Cosmology in addition to the Secular one that most planar travelers see, the details of which are a closely-guarded secret shared by the different Churches and Faiths.

This ordering of the heavens binds planes together and interconnects them in ways only the most theologically-wise can comprehend, even dimly. Much that is strange and mysterious to the secular world – like souls, and travel to the afterlife when you die, and the relationships between Gods and Demons and Devils, can only be explained correctly by taking these spiritual channels into account.

And sometimes, the Gods act in mysterious ways because of the imperatives implicit in this spiritual reality.

What might such an interlinking permit?

Why not a direct communications link to the souls of the faithful – so that when a member of the faithful says that they hear God speaking to their very soul, they are being literal and not figurative.

It could also provide the pathway along which the soul proceeds to judgment after death. Of course, like all courts, this one is a little backed up, so there is a limited window to recapture or intercept the soul, either fueling Necromantic magics, or returning the individual to pseudo-life as an Undead. Indeed, if the departed had sufficiently strong motivation, he might break off the path and make his own way “cross-country” to return as a ghost.

Judgment implies that not everyone gets into the final reward. Rejects may be sent back for another try, or have a punishment conferred for a period of time before they are paroled, from which state they may eventually earn their way into heaven by helping others, or they may be condemned to eternal punishment in the service of a Demon or Devil.

This unlocks a whole new perspective on those – races, for want of a better term. I spoke earlier of the need for a Necessity for their existence – well there is one example; the Devil Lords and Demon Princes are of the Gods, and punishing those sent to serve as their underlings simply harnesses their antisocial proclivities for the general welfare of all, while giving them someone to exercise their worst tendencies against. They LIKE being cruel, and torturing others – this satisfies them while bettering society as a whole. And, should the supply of new victims ever run low, they can always pay a visit (or send underlings to do so) to the “mortal world” to stir things up with a temptation or two. It’s what you call your basic “win-win”.

So far, not a whole lot has changed in terms of the surroundings and trappings of a typical game – but there’s a different context, and a slightly different flavor.

The key point to emerge so far is this: that the gods are sometimes compelled to do things that seem cruel or capricious for reasons that surpass mortal understanding – whether they want to, or not.

That seems a fertile ground that a campaign could grow from – because inevitably, there will come a day when a God will say, “I will not! There must be a better way!”

The instruments charged with divining and executing that better way? The PCs, of course.

In a way, this gets them to the tail end of the previous idea without their having to earn their “reward” – and with none of the power that is required to solve problems without a lot of hard work. It’s a justification for throwing the PCs neck-deep into problems of the GMs devising for which they are hopelessly unprepared and expecting them to be able to muddle through, anyway – a sort of James Bond in D&D – “In their majesties’ divine service”.

But the time will come when they have to pay the piper for all this fun – they are getting a hair slower, or want to raise a family of their own, or simply want to settle down and enjoy life, or soon will, in the eyes of the Deity or Deities to whom they answer, and they know too much.

And there’s only ever been one answer to people who know too much, and it’s not very satisfying for the people in that position. Suddenly, we go from being 007 to being Jason Bourne….

So, there you have it: three campaigns (and a few variations) built around just TWO of the sixteen possible interpretations of the phrase “Divine Worlds”. There are sure to be at least fourteen more…

Bonus: Interpretation III

This article was done, and done early – or so I thought. But this morning, in the shower (where I often have some of my best ideas), a fourth interpretation grabbed my attention. So here it is.

This campaign idea uses the term in the possessive sense – these are the worlds that are subject (at least nominally) to the Gods’ will. There may or may not be others that are not so subject, such as Hades. But lately, the mortal inhabitants of those worlds have been growing more and more secular in their beliefs, treating the Gods and their intercession as though it were their right to command. Quite frankly, it’s not on, and the Gods have decided to go all Biblical on their asses and remind them just who’s in charge around here.

As always happens when the Gods decide to let themselves get ticked off at something, they drew lots to choose one who would be the messenger that explained what was happening, and why, to the mortals. This time around, that “honor” went to Alice, the goddess of field mice and lesser creatures, the meekest and most innocuous of the Gods, who absolutely detests confrontations and argument of any kind.

Alice is small and shy, in charge of many small creatures – birds and butterflies and field mice. Nothing so nasty – her turn of phrase – as the insects or spiders, they have their own icky God looking after them. Nothing so big and impressive as a bull – though cows usually fall within her domain. Nothing so useful as Dogs or Cats, either. But Mice and Rabbits and Squirrels and Butterflies and Lambs and the like, yes.

Any miracle that she wishes to work has to manifest through one of these creatures, but she doesn’t do very much of that sort of thing. Fortunately, she’s resourceful and creative, even if she is so darned nice that you’d never imagine her causing trouble for anyone – she’s more likely to hide in the corner.

To help her, she has been given a number of Apostles to advise her, spread the word, and function as her agents – the PCs and some NPCs. There should be a kobold, a human, an elf, a dwarf, a halfling, a gnome, a lizard man, and an orc or bugbear or something of the sort. First come, first served – and character class is up to the character.

When these are gathered – and they start off scattered only for the Goddess to gather them all together at the start of the campaign – and compare notes, they will find that they are all exactly the same age, relatively speaking.

As soon as they are gathered, the rest of the Gods get down to business, inflicting punishments and plagues and the like, even while Alice is explaining things to her chosen – perhaps the term would more accurately be rendered, “bequeathed” – Disciples. These are the cast-offs of the other Gods, the subjects they are most comfortable doing without, the representatives of their races they didn’t want – except in the case of one or two of the more muscular Gods, who wanted to show off, and one or two of the more serious gods, who, well, took the task seriously. So the Elf and one of the more exotic choices are elite representatives of their races, but any players choosing those races won’t get told that until after they choose.

The Elf gets to roll two extra dice during stat generation and can distribute the resulting points to any of their primary stats. The other “elite” member gets to roll one extra die for each stat but can’t swap the points around.

Unknown to any of the players, there’s a hidden “extra” stat – call it “Divine Muscle” if you like. This is their power to cause miracles when they want to – it’s equal to 150 less the total of their six primary stats. Alice is meek and humble, remember, and empowers other such people disproportionately. Each of these points may be traded in for a clerical spell level at will – but once used, they are lost until the end of the adventure, and even then, 1d6 of the points are lost permanently. So the characters will start off with huge Divine Muscle but lose it as they grow more capable themselves.

But every miracle has to be centered around one of the creatures subject to Alice (including the Apostles – buff spells will work). And each adventure is convincing another cynical and obstinate population to reform their ways.

The first targets will be relatively easy. Then they will get more difficult and complicated. The GM should get creative. Along the way, the PCs will encounter those who would promise one thing and do another, and those who couldn’t tell the truth if it lay down beside them, and the corrupt, and the evil, and yes, those who feel threatened and would do them harm, and those who smell an opportunity and try to take advantage of the situation. The most obdurate and stubborn and complicated races will come last – when the PCs are most experienced, but at the same time, when they are at their weakest in Divine Power. On top of that, each population will have been subjected to one or more plagues or punishments, agonies that only the Apostles can heal with their Miracles – very selectively – and each will have it’s own internal theological issue for the Apostles to solve. That might be Iconoclasm, or Heretical beliefs, or theological corruption, or believing their own race to be superior, or secularity, or pig-headed stubbornness (Elves and/or Dwarves, I’m looking at you for that one).

The Kobolds should be fairly easy – they’re easily intimidated and used to bowing to authority. Orcs won’t be much harder; they aren’t easy to intimidate, but again have a very hierarchical structure that they obey implicitly. Halflings tend to be simple folk, but getting them to actually do something might be a problem. Gnomes are too clever by half, and way too cynical, and probably too difficult to follow the Halflings directly; you might need to insert a couple of easier targets from amongst the more exotic and difficult races. From there, things should only get more exotic for a while – the Giants and the four Elemental Planes, for example – then the Elves/Dwarves, then the Dragons, and finally and most complicated, contradictory, stubborn, willful, deceptive and treacherous of them all, Humans.

This is a campaign that would work well for youngsters, with the problems becoming more difficult as they mature over the course of a few years – which would work as a once-a-month deal. If your players are older, start by emphasizing the light comedy embedded into the concept and let things become grimmer and more serious as the campaign unfolds.

And that’s what I thought of in the shower.