House Collins Retrospective
This past Monday, we finished the House Collins Chapter of the Road to Redemption Arc. House Collins features a story involving a hedonistic culture that praises the very base desires of society. Underlying the clean streets, fresh farm food, and a seemingly natural posterior was several dark secrets that became known to the party as time passed. First thing I presented was the use of necromancy, a small but seemingly important foreshadow about the disrespect of human life that the culture showed. The concept was simple, why should death prevent someone from still being useful if the soul has moved passed to the next life?
The next idea was the concept of The Amusement War, stolen from Red Seas Under Red Skies by Scott Lynch. The underlying idea was that the culture applauded the concept of people being effectively tortured. When the party had a look at the culture, they saw only a small part of the community celebrating this and used it as a representation of the culture at large. We also had some meta symbolism that featuring the two most powerful men sitting across from each other overlooking this game. The King sat on his iron throne, representing his men and physical strength while Davik sat on his gold throne representing his money and influence. The party would need both aspects to be able to succeed in their objective.
Over the next few episodes, the party finds out secrets from both of these figures. Davik was using his money to fund a virus that will turn people into Lycanthropes featuring some easter eggs for the party from the previous story arc. Davik is implementing this virus on his own people to set up his own power structure and the question lies is if the people he affects were willing or not in his scheme. The lycan virus is something I wanted to set up as a playable race and storyline for future campaigns and therefore needed to be implemented in the story lore.
For the King, we realize he was using his status to develop laws to be able to harvest blood. Blood is an alchemical ingredient that can be used to create magical items. In lore, this started roughly fifteen years prior with a purge of any none tiefling. The blood was then used to give the King immense power and started leading his Kingdom through fear. Some of these humans and elves escaped and started a resistance that was there to help out newborn babies but they simply did not have the firepower to be able to plan an effective coup. When the first coup failed most of the community fell back into submission. This particular storyline was designed to have two parallels. One being Nazi Germany against the Jews and the second being our current state of affairs with the government having much more firepower than the civilians they protect. It was interesting playing into those two themes. This was also inspired in part by Fullmetal Alchemist and the use of the philosopher’s stone.
As we go further into the campaign, we will get the opportunity to explore new themes, new ideas, and subtle Veggietales references. Join us every Monday night at 9pm at twitch.tv/pwrlvlpodcasts.
