Put the premise of 2023's Oppenheimer into the body-horror genre and add the apocalypse: welcome to this homebrew campaign! Trifling with the afterlife created a world where the dead have nowhere to go, and have nothing to separate them from the living. Desperate to survive, kingdoms across the realm have consolidated into single capitals, each self-sufficiently sustaining whole populations—until resources run low.
Enter a character-driven tale teetering along political tensions, espionage, social status, omnipresent threats, and above all, control over your body!
For this campaign, I’m looking for a party of
5 to 6 people (
8 people maximum) interested in a continental, discovery-focused narrative. Meeting times for sessions will depend on everyone’s availability and pre-existing commitments. Discord will be used for whole-group and direct messaging. Our initial sessions will be for deep-dives into the story and worldbuilding, then for party composition and character creations; personal backstories will be developed separately, though prompts and helpful considerations will be released!
This campaign uses
Foundry vtt, but no costs or fees are required otherwise.
This will be a horror- and dark-fantasy-based campaign that relies heavily on consequence and conflict. Obviously, death has a substantial role in this story, so players should not expect to get comfortable for too long. That said, I’m not a DM too fond of permanently killing off PCs on a whim, so let this be of some comfort!
Your characters will enter the campaign through the urban and inner-city settings, where you will get a taste of the apocalyptic, survivalist lifestyle common throughout the realm. The story will begin in one of the six major capitals, each with their own agendas and allegiances and rivalries (all of which I will delineate in our initial sessions). Major themes include espionage and political conflicts (often turning into militaristic endeavors and advances), not to mention the overarching thread of escaping an afterlife spillover!
Below are some concepts and terms worth familiarizing your character with:
The Recrudescence—the day when the afterlife entered the material plane. The exact date is unknown, but most of the realm learned of the afterlife spillover by the end of the summer season.
The Shared Sea—the body of water connecting all parts of the realm. The landmass can be visualized as a giant horseshoe or a ring, the middle of which is all water/ocean (hence, the ‘Shared’ Sea).
The Storm—principal and largest (and most feared) cluster of afterlife spirits; most easily depicted as a colossal hurricane bouncing from city to city along the Shared Sea.
Wandering Spirits—souls/spirits that once belonged to a deceased creature, now searching for a new host (i.e., the body of a living creature);—includes both the souls within Storm and individual or grouped Displaced.
Displaced—wandering spirits not part of the Storm. Displaced spirits and the activity thereof attract other Displaced, hence why people are afraid of drawing any attention.
Jumpscares—In the event that a creature dies, other adjacent creatures may undergo a jumpscare, during which their spirits (of the living creatures) eject from their host bodies as if being displaced. Jumpscares do not result from displacement, but rather from the death of a host body. For example, if a character kills one creature in a group, the rest of that group may experience jumpscares and have their spirits ejected.
Every living creature has the capacity for one soul (without amalgamating, turning malignant, or ascending). A displaced can steal your body and eject your original soul, which in turn becomes displaced. Finally, wandering spirits cannot linger in place or around the creatures whose bodies they failed to assimilate!
If any of this interests you, visit the interest form below to (a) get a more thorough view of what this campaign seeks and (b) further indicate your interest in this grandiose adventure!
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