okay uh the minecraft end poem was WAY too heavily and comforting and life changing for eight year old me to be reading and comprehending after killing a giant dragon in a video game and its been years and it still makes me cry
“and the universe said you are not alone
and the universe said you are not separate from every other thing
and the universe said you are the universe tasting itself, talking to itself, reading its own code
and the universe said I love you because you are love.
And the game was over and the player woke up from the dream. And the player began a new dream. And the player dreamed again, dreamed better. And the player was the universe. And the player was love.
This is both amazing and profoundly irritating – the exact writing equivalent of that thing artists do – you know, how they’ll mess up anything that’s on expensive paper and planned in every single detail but get them doodling during a boring lesson and suddenly they’re Michel-bloody-angelo.
The beginning of a campaign is, in my humble opinion, the hardest part to write. There are numerous cliché openings that you can use, such as the typical “You’re in a tavern, and a dark stranger tells you about (insert McGuffin here).”
These familiar plot prompts (or “plompts” for short and stupid) are fine for beginners players or DMs. But if any of your participants have been around the writer’s block at least once, they’ll want something a bit more creative. Something that immediately grabs their attention and invests them in the plot.
Think outside the box on this. You’ll need some intimidating but ultimately simple components to get things kicked off.
1. The World
Landmasses, cities, towns, organized societies, and a pantheon of deities. You can write your own or use one of the many that have already been written.
2. The Prompt
What brings these characters together? Are they just meeting? Or have they known each other already? If so, talk with your players to establish the pre-existing bonds and backstories. If you’re having trouble with this, feel free to message me. I’ve got a billion ideas I don’t have the time to use.
3. The Accord
What keeps this group together? Experienced players will usually take care of this themselves (unless they’re just antagonizing you), but first-timers may need a push. In that case, give them a good reason to stick around. I consider this the most difficult part, and it’s something I still occasionally struggle with, so don’t be upset if you do too.
The trail leads him deep within a network of caves. It’s exactly the sort of lair Kravitz would expect of a lich; damp walls, dim lighting, unstable structure. The type of thing that could collapse at any moment, and if Kravitz weren’t so preoccupied staying completely silent there would be a metaphor, there, about rocks and the sorts of creatures that live deep below them.
The lich is draped in a red robe, a rickety chest beside it, the sparse beginnings of a workshop constructed around it. Beside it is a pod of green fluid that sets Kravitz’s reconstructed skin crawling when he looks too closely at it; and inside, someone growing.
Necromancy, of the highest degree. This scene alone would be enough to damn this lich’s soul, to say nothing of the twenty-four times he’s died.
“Barry J. Bluejeans,” Kravitz says, and the lich jumps. “It’s time for you to come with me, I’m afraid.”
The lich…doesn’t scream. Doesn’t turn, spitting and furious, to claw at him. Instead, its shoulders slump, and it sighs – a remarkably human sound for something that gave up its humanity long ago.
“Well, shit,” says a deep voice not unlike Kravitz’s own. It turns to face him, and the light inside the hood of its robe is stable. It flickers at him, sure, in a shape not unlike a face, but there is nothing of the ungodly turmoil that pervades every other lich Kravitz has ever met.
Interesting.
“I was hoping there wouldn’t be Reapers here. Guess that was too high of hopes for a plane like this,” it mutters bitterly, and flicks its wrist. Kravitz raises his scythe to block the oncoming blow, but no spell bounces off the reinforced steel; instead, from the chest raise a pair of blue jeans.
“Fitting,” Kravitz drawls. “I’m afraid those won’t help you much in the Astral Plane, my man. Poor fashion sense is hardly an excuse for necromancy.”
“I can’t come with you,” it says, and it has the nerve to sound almost sad. As if a sense of apology could wipe away the twenty-four times it has died and failed to appear in the Astral Plane. “There’s something I have to do before I give up. Look, I don’t – I don’t want to fight you.”
Temples are built for gods. Knowing this a farmer builds a small temple to see what kind of god turns up.
Arepo built a temple in his field, a humble thing, some stones stacked up to make a cairn, and two days later a god moved in.
“Hope you’re a harvest god,” Arepo said, and set up an altar and burnt two stalks of wheat. “It’d be nice, you know.” He looked down at the ash smeared on the stone, the rocks all laid askew, and coughed and scratched his head. “I know it’s not much,” he said, his straw hat in his hands. “But – I’ll do what I can. It’d be nice to think there’s a god looking after me.”
The next day he left a pair of figs, the day after that he spent ten minutes of his morning seated by the temple in prayer. On the third day, the god spoke up.
“You should go to a temple in the city,” the god said. Its voice was like the rustling of the wheat, like the squeaks of fieldmice running through the grass. “A real temple. A good one. Get some real gods to bless you. I’m no one much myself, but I might be able to put in a good word?” It plucked a leaf from a tree and sighed. “I mean, not to be rude. I like this temple. It’s cozy enough. The worship’s been nice. But you can’t honestly believe that any of this is going to bring you anything.”
“This is more than I was expecting when I built it,” Arepo said, laying down his scythe and lowering himself to the ground. “Tell me, what sort of god are you anyway?”
“I’m of the fallen leaves,” it said. “The worms that churn beneath the earth. The boundary of forest and of field. The first hint of frost before the first snow falls. The skin of an apple as it yields beneath your teeth. I’m a god of a dozen different nothings, scraps that lead to rot, momentary glimpses. A change in the air, and then it’s gone.”
The god heaved another sigh. “There’s no point in worship in that, not like War, or the Harvest, or the Storm. Save your prayers for the things beyond your control, good farmer. You’re so tiny in the world. So vulnerable. Best to pray to a greater thing than me.”
Arepo plucked a stalk of wheat and flattened it between his teeth. “I like this sort of worship fine,” he said. “So if you don’t mind, I think I’ll continue.”
“Do what you will,” said the god, and withdrew deeper into the stones. “But don’t say I never warned you otherwise.”
Arepo would say a prayer before the morning’s work, and he and the god contemplated the trees in silence. Days passed like that, and weeks, and then the Storm rolled in, black and bold and blustering. It flooded Arepo’s fields, shook the tiles from his roof, smote his olive tree and set it to cinder. The next day, Arepo and his sons walked among the wheat, salvaging what they could. The little temple had been strewn across the field, and so when the work was done for the day, Arepo gathered the stones and pieced them back together.
“Useless work,” the god whispered, but came creeping back inside the temple regardless. “There wasn’t a thing I could do to spare you this.”
“We’ll be fine,” Arepo said. “The storm’s blown over. We’ll rebuild. Don’t have much of an offering for today,” he said, and laid down some ruined wheat, “but I think I’ll shore up this thing’s foundations tomorrow, how about that?”
The god rattled around in the temple and sighed.
A year passed, and then another. The temple had layered walls of stones, a roof of woven twigs. Arepo’s neighbors chuckled as they passed it. Some of their children left fruit and flowers. And then the Harvest failed, the gods withdrew their bounty. In Arepo’s field the wheat sprouted thin and brittle. People wailed and tore their robes, slaughtered lambs and spilled their blood, looked upon the ground with haunted eyes and went to bed hungry. Arepo came and sat by the temple, the flowers wilted now, the fruit shriveled nubs, Arepo’s ribs showing through his chest, his hands still shaking, and murmured out a prayer.
“There is nothing here for you,” said the god, hudding in the dark. “There is nothing I can do. There is nothing to be done.” It shivered, and spat out its words. “What is this temple but another burden to you?”
“We -” Arepo said, and his voice wavered. “So it’s a lean year,” he said. “We’ve gone through this before, we’ll get through this again. So we’re hungry,” he said. “We’ve still got each other, don’t we? And a lot of people prayed to other gods, but it didn’t protect them from this. No,” he said, and shook his head, and laid down some shriveled weeds on the altar. “No, I think I like our arrangement fine.”
“There will come worse,” said the god, from the hollows of the stone. “And there will be nothing I can do to save you.”
The years passed. Arepo rested a wrinkled hand upon the temple of stone and some days spent an hour there, lost in contemplation with the god.
And one fateful day, from across the wine-dark seas, came War.
Arepo came stumbling to his temple now, his hand pressed against his gut, anointing the holy site with his blood. Behind him, his wheat fields burned, and the bones burned black in them. He came crawling on his knees to a temple of hewed stone, and the god rushed out to meet him.
“I could not save them,” said the god, its voice a low wail. “I am sorry. I am sorry. I am so so sorry.” The leaves fell burning from the trees, a soft slow rain of ash. “I have done nothing! All these years, and I have done nothing for you!”
“Shush,” Arepo said, tasting his own blood, his vision blurring. He propped himself up against the temple, forehead pressed against the stone in prayer. “Tell me,” he mumbled. “Tell me again. What sort of god are you?”
“I -” said the god, and reached out, cradling Arepo’s head, and closed its eyes and spoke.
“I’m of the fallen leaves,” it said, and conjured up the image of them. “The worms that churn beneath the
earth. The boundary of forest and of field. The first hint of frost
before the first snow falls. The skin of an apple as it yields beneath
your teeth.” Arepo’s lips parted in a smile.
“I am the god of a dozen different nothings,” it said. “The petals in bloom that lead to
rot, the momentary glimpses. A change in the air -” Its voice broke, and it wept. “Before it’s gone.”
“Beautiful,” Arepo said, his blood staining the stones, seeping into the earth. “All of them. They were all so beautiful.”
And as the fields burned and the smoke blotted out the sun, as men were trodden in the press and bloody War raged on, as the heavens let loose their wrath upon the earth, Arepo the sower lay down in his humble temple, his head sheltered by the stones, and returned home to his god.
Sora found the temple with the bones within it, the roof falling in upon them.
“Oh, poor god,” she said, “With no-one to bury your last priest.” Then she paused, because she was from far away. “Or is this how the dead are honored here?” The god roused from its contemplation.
“His name was Arepo,” it said, “He was a sower.”
Sora startled, a little, because she had never before heard the voice of a god. “How can I honor him?” She asked.
“Bury him,” the god said, “Beneath my altar.”
“All right,” Sora said, and went to fetch her shovel.
“Wait,” the god said when she got back and began collecting the bones from among the broken twigs and fallen leaves. She laid them out on a roll of undyed wool, the only cloth she had. “Wait,” the god said, “I cannot do anything for you. I am not a god of anything useful.”
Sora sat back on her heels and looked at the altar to listen to the god.
“When the Storm came and destroyed his wheat, I could not save it,” the god said, “When the Harvest failed and he was hungry, I could not feed him. When War came,” the god’s voice faltered. “When War came, I could not protect him. He came bleeding from the battle to die in my arms.” Sora looked down again at the bones.
“I think you are the god of something very useful,” she said.
“What?” the god asked.
Sora carefully lifted the skull onto the cloth. “You are the god of Arepo.”
Ages later, a book of words and meaning can be found among the dust of a quiet temple. It is opened upon a page, one particular entry illuminated by the fickle light of the morning sun.
The faded text reads:
A•re•po
noun
a word used to describe a dozen different nothings, momentary glimpses, a change in the air that soon disappears
ex: the fallen leaves, the worms that churn beneath the earth, the boundary of forest and of field, the first hint of frost before the first snow falls, the skin of an apple as it yields beneath your teeth
The soft sunlight shifts, moving on, and the passage is gone.
“I have come to understand that although place-words are being lost, they are also being created. Nature is dynamic, and so is language. Loanwords from Chinese, Urdu, Korean, Portuguese and Yiddish are right now being used to describe the landscapes of Britain and Ireland; portmanteaus and neologisms are constantly in manufacture. As I travelled I met new words as well as salvaging old ones: a painter in the Hebrides who used landskein to refer to the braid of blue horizon lines in hill country on a hazy day; a five-year-old girl who concoted honeyfur to describe the soft seeds of grasses held in the fingers. When Clare and Hopkins could not find words for natural phenomena, they just made them up: sutering for the cranky action of a rising heron (Clare), wolfsnow for a dangerous sea-blizzard, and slogger for the sucking sound made by waves against a ship’s side (both Hopkins). John Constable invented the verb to sky, meaning ‘to lie on one’s back and study the clouds’. We have forgotten 10,000 words for our landscapes, but we will make 10,000 more, given time.”
ESTABLISH A PROTAGONIST… Who are we? A squirrel? The sun? A red blood cell? America?
2. Need (but they want something)
SOMETHING AIN’T QUITE RIGHT… Something is wrong, the world is out of balance. This is the reason why a story is going to take place. The “you” from (1) is an alcoholic. There’s a dead body on the floor. A motorcycle gang rolls into town.
3. Go (they enter an unfamiliar situation)
CROSSING THE THRESHOLD… For (1) and (2), the “you” was in a certain situation, and now that situation changes. A hiker heads into the woods. Pearl Harbor’s been bombed. A mafia boss enters therapy.
4. Search (adapt to it)
THE ROAD OF TRIALS… Adapting, experimenting, getting shit together, being broken down. A detective questions suspects. A cowboy gathers his posse. A cheerleader takes a nerd shopping.
5. Find (find what they wanted)
MEETING WITH THE GODDESS… Whether it was the direct, conscious goal or not, the “need” from (2) is fulfilled. We found the princess. The suspect gives the location of the meth lab. A nerd achieves popularity.
6. Take (pay its price)
MEET YOUR MAKER… The hardest part (both for the characters and for anyone trying to describe it). On one hand, the price of the journey. The shark eats the boat. Jesus is crucified. The nice old man has a stroke. On the other hand, a goal achieved that we never even knew we had. The shark now has an oxygen tank in his mouth. Jesus is dead- oh, I get it, flesh doesn’t matter. The nice old man had a stroke, but before he died, he wanted you to take this belt buckle. Now go win that rodeo.
7. Return (and go back to where they started)
BRINGING IT HOME… It’s not a journey if you never come back. The car chase. The big rescue. Coming home to your girlfriend with a rose. Leaping off the roof as the skyscraper explodes.
8. Change (now capable of change)
MASTER OF BOTH WORLDS… The “you” from (1) is in charge of their situation again, but has now become a situation-changer. Life will never be the same. The Death Star is blown up. The couple is in love. Dr. Bloom’s Time Belt is completed. Lorraine Bracco heads into the jungle with Sean Connery to “find some of those ants.”
The party hears pained growls coming from the forest along with several grunts and laughing. At the source of these sounds is a group of hunters stabbing at a cornered bear cub.
•If the party helps the bear it reveals itself to be a child druid who is just discovering how to use his magic.
•If the party helps the hunters they thank the party and as they go to skin the bear it shifts back into the child it actually is.
•If the party keeps walking and ignores it they hear a few more laughs, a loud howl, and then horrified screams followed by a group of hunters running out of the forest.
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