As mentioned elseplurk, this is a cosmic horror/cosmic mystery campaign, but lacking the "knowing the truth would destroy your humanity" notion that infests some of the genre.

It's set in Eberron, and involves a small group of unusual people who have been called out in the Draconic Prophecy.

Savaa, a huntress who lives in/near the small village of Ringbriar, is a perfectly ordinary person who really rather resents having been drawn onto the Dragon's conqueror board. ...she's also a tauric creature with the head and torso of a "Blue" (psionic goblin variant) and the lower body of a Blink dog.

I play Savaa!

She's basically the group's primary physical fighter, and an approximation of a psionic ranger via Nale-level build complication (for reasons that can only partly be explained this early; suffice it to say that part is because of the screwiness of 3.0/3.5 monster classes).

Juliona and Joherra, a pair of academic rivals from the Guild of Starlight and Shadows in Sharn, who are missing a piece of their history together; something happened to them while in the Mournland, and they don't know what... but now Joherra refers to Juliona as 'Mistress' and seems to not be entirely able to muster a will to act independently of Juliona...

Juliona is played by NekoIncardine and Joherra is played by firebenderjess (who is also the DM)

Savaa wound up as the party leader from the start, despite her reluctance to be involved... and despite having a Cha of 7. (Int 14, Wis 14, and realizing the group really didn't have the sense to be able to go on without her...)

SilverGrimalkin this post may be of interest

Also among the group is a very confused, initially-amnesiac kobold, whose existence is the result of a botched Reincarnation spell. The only initial clue to their identity, aside from what the druid told them, is the identification papers in their possession, identifying a male human named Stend Faldren.

ooohhhh

Yet while the portrait of Stend is familiar, they vaguely remember it being the face of someone who attacked them in the past; and while their current form feels strange and unfamiliar, not all the ways in which it does would make sense for being human, such as their feeling that they should have wings, or should be able to breathe underwater.

This kobold, who eventually takes on the name "Drekim" despite pushback from Savaa that it wasn't a serious name suggestion, is the party tank, and mechanically a Dragon Shaman (Red Dragon totem). ...and they seem to have inherited the Red Dragon's craving for treasure, which does lead to complications as they'd rather keep than sell the gems they find.

As far as why "Drekim" wasn't a serious name suggestion: the context in which it came up was something like, "We at least need to think of something better than Drekim". ...Drekim literally meaning "being" in Draconic, and colloquially meaning "hey you".

(Because that struck me as exactly the sort of quirk a real language would have.)

It was basically Savaa expressing frustration after a series of questionable suggestions on her part.

Spoilers on how this aspect of Drekim's identity arc...

...plays out

Worth noting also that Drekim is gender-questioning from the beginning, having discovered their new body is female and not sure how to square that with what little they remember of Stend's experiences or their own sense of not really being the same person as Stend.

Anyway, we do have some character bios (written at the very start of the campaign, so they don't account for any of the character development that's gone on) and the first 4 chapters of the campaign edited and posted on-line here: Whispers of Xoriat

Probably also worth mentioning the biggest point of Savaa's character development.

The profiles there also don't account for characters who joined the party later.

Also, if I mention the name Kethend? That's the name Drekim adopted after the big change outlined in the spoiler-paste.

Later party members are Sauriv (also played by me) and Amaryll (briefly played by Tazrael before it became clear that it he wasn't really comfortable with our group's style).

(Kethend is also gender-questioning, but leans more heavily female than Drekim's non-binary sense of identity, and so tends to go with she/her pronouns instead of they/them.)

Sauriv is a member who was assigned to accompany the party on a mission by the Brelish government to apprehend a rogue agent of the Dark Lanterns. They are a docent advisor created by the dragons and given to the giants of the Cul'sir Dominion; however, their unwelcome advice led to them being removed from their body and laying dormant for millenia.

They were discovered in recent times and attached to a life-size toy goat body, also from the Cul'sir Dominion, by a mad artificer in the employ of the King's Wands.

Technically Sauriv is a bard variant. ...But they have a Cha of 8. (See "could not convince the giants not to go through with the Cosmically Bad Idea".)

They are also Drekim's mount. ...the character concept might have been a little bit inspired by KITT from Knight Rider.

Fortunately, Bardic Sage changes things from pure Cha to a split Int/Cha casting stat, allowing Sauriv to still cast spells at all. I primarily picked it because it would allow for proper spending on two things: acrobatic skills exploiting the fact that they have a goat body, and Knowledge skills because they're a knowledgeable advisor.

They can still use bardic music, by way of a built-in music box.

Indeed; see "toy".

They do have to deal with the fact that this body has no hands, though... and that the beings around that resemble the body they once had are clearly sapient creatures of their own that deserve their own lives, so they're kind of stuck with this one.

Being able to exploit a goat's acrobatics is nice, but.

...Also of note: Drekim/Kethend is the closest thing to a group face we have.

Yeah. Kethend and Juliona are tied for highest Cha, but Drekim actually has good boosts to social skills, including the Beguiling Influence invocation.

...pretend I was actually consistent with names there

Juliona kind of has to play face in some of the places where being an uncommon race is stigmatized, though.

(Or even just not being a local, in the case of Sharn.)

Kethend/Drekim is actually pretty familiar with Sharn as Stend's party has spent a fair amount of time there... but not only is Stend actually from Wroat rather than Sharn, most people would tend to assume from appearance alone that Kethend/Drekim is a Droaamite immigrant.

(One of the lower-key arcs with Drekim was their slow transition from a perspective of Human privilege to actually starting to get how nasty some aspects of city life can be for some people.)

But yeah, the campaign's been nicely varied, too. Everything from dungeon-crawling to uncovering intrigue to IC shopping to mental time travel to a cross-country chase to seizing the means of production to logistics-heavy downtime to the upcoming war sequence.

Kushu may focus more on the character arcs, but there's been plenty of doing to go with all the being, too.

Which... can be an oddly hard balance to find, all told.

On the doing front, I note that Drekim is very much a classic hero-type who sometimes needs the others to rein them in when doing the typically-heroic thing would not be smart.

And Savaa started out as a True Neutral practical-minded sort, though has drifted more heroic over time.

Thanks mainly to the influence of the rest of the party, but also the bit of character development I linked above.

Laughs at that description of putting the wererats in charge of the formerly vampire-run slaughterhouse exploiting them.

They're also not fond of killing despite being an adventurer. They've progressed a bit from the early campaign, when they were too squeamish to slice open a fiendspawn's neck, but it still bothers them if something makes them angry enough to want to kill.

Yeah, just generally the group wound up deciding early on (over Savaa's initial grumbling) to generally avoid actually killing sapients.

firebenderjess Hey, whether it's figurative blood-sucking capitalists or literal blood-sucking capitalists...

But yeah, the part of the campaign logs that are already edited and published include a "rescue the missing villagers" quest, a typical lowbie dungeon crawl with plot exposition at the bottom, dealing with legal entanglements at the nearest proper city, and investigating a rash of theft/vandalism incidents that led to capturing a terrorist.

And that's basically just the introductory section of the campaign.

There are also a series of "recap logs" that aren't published, which entail several cases of us editing parts of the log which were more recent at the time.

(Well, not published on the log page. They are on the Web, just not linked anywhere meant for public consumption.)

It's cool that you publish it though.

I'd love to play in a game like that someday.

We do have room for at least one more player, if you'd be cool with starting at mid-levels. (Alternately, I'm willing to run short-run campaigns for people who are looking for that. Just, nothing so long and involved as WoX until that's done.)

And if you're cool with being dumped into the middle of something with multiple OOC years of lore, and can deal with our playstyle, and don't mind being thrown into a series of large-scale battles in media res when what the party honestly needs is a face.

lol

Would I play over Discord or something?

And so you'd need a diplomat type?

I also don't mind starting at higher level either.

Or coming in in the middle.

This is played out in Roll20 with Plurk being where the OOC discussion happens.

As for playstyle, I'm very used to like homebrew stuff and house rules so I'd have to see how it goes

How confident are you in your 3.5 skill and your Eberron knowledge? Our last attempted new player struggled because 1) he couldn't suss out what his character should and shouldn't know and 2) he was used to groups that played more fast and loose with the rules when we expected, say, a buffer to understand the stacking rules.

The biggest house rule thing is that we use partial-gestalt.

But also, non-standard/monster races are fully permitted, and in fact some sort of weirdness is outright encouraged.

nice on the monster races

Yeah. That's actually something that for most of the characters came up as a consequence of the whole mental time travel thing. (Sauriv, being the one PC who actually is not prophecied to be part of this but decided to involve themself anyway, just got theirs through more mad science.)

(If you want to play something with a high base ECL, I allow racial classes and LA buy off.)

I don't remember Eberron. Don't think I've played in it before.

(In fact, I created Savaa's racial class.)

SilverGrimalkin: Heh, oh boy, are you ready for us to gush at you for hours about Eberron?

lol

It's a 'magitek steampunk' sort of setting, that ditches the 'conveniently recognizable evil races' thing that was so popular in 3.5 and earlier in favor of 'any sapient mortal can be of any alignment, only immortal incarnations of concepts have strict alignment associations'.

I mean, I might have had aspects of it?

And instead of stream engines/normal industrialization, it's actually focused on actually applying the consequences of D&D magic existing.

I've homebrewed a few magical trinkets based on low level spells that see common use among the moderately well off.

It was originally marketed as "pulp-noir", which some people insisted was an oxymoron. To which I say no, that's a range.

Remember the sealing wax with a baked in Erase spell that goes off if anyone other than the person the letter was meant for broke the seal?

What do you mean by applying the. onsequences? Sorry, sometimes I have trouble understanding things. It's not like I'm uneducated, I have a BA but like, sometimes I need explaining.

yeah.

SilverGrimalkin: As in, asking "what if all these spells actually existed"?

Basically, instead of assuming magic is hoarded by 20th level wizards in imposing towers, level 0-3 spells are considered to be in common use to better people's lives in a lot of the ways that industrialization did IRL.

And building from there.

So, say, instead of steam engines? They have Elemental powered trains propelled by magically generated wind.

oooh!

Have a nasty tumble and sprain something? Just pop on over to the local potion brewer for a bottle of Cure Minor. Maybe Cure Light if you're really banged up.

kind of reminds me of FFXVI with how people who couldn't use magic would use crystals for things like lighting fireplaces, creating water, etc.

Instead of oil burning lanterns, city streets are lit with Everburning Torches or stones that glow like lightbulbs.

So like, forgive me for evoking this hated analogy but like Harry Potter world?

Harry Potter world if the wizards and muggles weren't strictly segregated.

Most people don't have much if any talent for magic, but enough people are capable of learning a few modest spells that low level magical effects are a common aspect of society.

There's even a "magewright" NPC class for people who just know a noncombat spell or two.

To round out the DMG's set.

Kinda like how most people couldn't cut it as mechanical engineers, but enough are competent at the basics that anyone can go to the store and buy useful machines.

One major aspect of Eberron is that it's built in part on 3.x having permissive magic item creation rules. The Artificer class originates from Eberron, and unlike later editions' versions, the 3.5 version is actually centered on making real magic items.

Also, one noteworthy aspect of Eberron is that divine magic is not actually provably known to come from gods (even though that's widely believed). Anyone with strong enough faith in something might develop a talent for divine magic, and heretical clerics don't lose their powers.

Likewise, you can't just go to the Outer Planes to visit the gods. ...Also, Eberron has its own set of planes.

The "Xoriat" in Whispers of Xoriat is actually one of those planes, Eberron's version of the Far Realm.

The "main" continent of the setting, Khorvaire, only just recently came out of a major war (a succession war that snowballed into more) lasting around a hundred years, ending only when one country blew up and that scared everyone to the negotiating table. Out of desperate hope, this is called the "Last War".

Yeah, the "Mournland" mentioned earlier in regards to Juliona and Joherra? That's the remains of the country that blew up. ...it's not a good place for living things.

(Also, Joherra is originally from said country.)

Oh yes, on the planes front, one thing they deliberately did in the setting's design was get rid of the whole idea of alignment-based afterlives baked into the Great Wheel.

Everybody goes to the same place, Dolurrh, where spirits slowly fade away by an unknown mechanism. Most of the setting's religions in some way try to explain away or promise some form of escape from Dolurrh.

(This has led to some exploration of the lives of post-war refugees, sine Joherra's family lived in a slum that had basically been an internment camp late in the war before being opened up after the peace treaty.)

(The party recently discovered the concerning detail that a cult has taken root there, growing from people's cynicism and lost faith in the world.)

Though considering it's the third cult we've run into, and this one isn't actively trying to kill us? Yeah, that's a definite For Later issue.

Another major element of the setting is the Dragonmarked Houses. Basically hereditary international megacorps built around groups of families with a tendency to manifest tattoos with magical powers.

Just maybe using Compulsions in an aggressive recruitment tactic...

(We've got both the Cult of Tiamat and the Cult of Thoon after us, it's kind of a mess.)

Before the Last War, when the Kingdom of Galifar nominally ruled the whole continent, it was powerful enough to have some regulations to keep the Dragonmarked Houses in check. ...It's unclear what'll happen now that there's a whole bunch of smaller countries instead.

(This cult, meanwhile, seems to be a lower key 'instills some really unhealthy thoughts in its members and potentially uses that to exploit them' thing, rather than an outright 'kidnapping and murder' cult.)

Notably, the Dragonmarked Houses are kind of a "recent" (within the last couple millenia) phenomenon. Dragonmarks have appeared on land formations since time immemorial, but them showing up on mortals is new-ish, and probably freaking the dragons out somewhat.

Originally, such marks were only of particular interest to dragons, as they used them to try to figure out passages of the Prophecy, which is basically a giant, global, fluid, interlocking set of if-then statements. The sort of thing one actually needs a thousand-year lifespan to make sense of.

The ones on mortals, though? They cast spell-likes. (or paraspells as in-universe arcane scholars would term them)

...and can be enhanced with certain magic items, as well

So yeah, having a particular kind of mark only show up in your extended family is kind of natural monopoly fodder.

And it's possible to create rituals and magic items that require a dragonmarked user, too, further cementing those monopolies.

And subtly enhance the person's mundane capabilities. (A small bonus to a thematically appropriate skill.)

...Honestly, there's a bit of parallel with FFXI's recent history and Eberron's, in that both do the "we came out of a massive war and now we're in an age of adventurers" thing.

Though FFXI's Crystal War was a few decades ago, while Eberron's Last War only ended two years ago.

So most people still strongly remember living through the war.

(i.e. you don't have a younger generation born after the war among the adventurers)

Eberron does do the kitchen-sink thing that many D&D settings do, but tends to put its own unique twists on things. "The slogan ultimately became, If it exists in D&D, then it has a place in Eberron... though it may not be the place you expect."

(Notably, Kumei/Reicoco, my primary FFXI character, was a bit unusual in having to worry about her younger self being around in WotG, since she's a little older than some adventurers...)

The slogan ultimately became, "If[...]", even.

For one example of a twist, orcs may be assumed by the ignorant to be savages, but they actually literally saved the world once. The original druidic sect, the Gatekeepers, was founded via a black dragon teaching orcs.

They were heavily responsible for stopping the last daelkyr invasion. The main goal of the war sequence we're going to be taking part of when WoX comes out of hiatus is to replace an ancient seal of theirs that's failing.

Note that dragons are no exception to the 'mortals don't have fixed alignments' thing. There are canonical good chromatics and evil metallics in the actual setting books.

(And the bronze dragon taken down by Stend's party in Drekim's backstory would probably best be described as unaligned, in the sense of not having reached enough maturity to have come into her own sense of morality before she was killed.)

(Heck, she wasn't even introduced to the concept of communication really...)

(...it's also possible there was something off about her mental development, as she never actually figured out how to communicate before she died, when I think lore-wise most dragons hatch knowing how to speak draconic? She didn't even realize she could speak with animals, which is a bronze trait.)

Oh, another feature of Eberron, which a number of people don't quite seem to understand: unlike the Forgotten Realms, there's no timeline advancement, metaplot, or making the events of tie-in media canon.

(Though ideas from tie-in media may make it back into the game setting's lore.)

It's basically deliberately trying to avoid the "Elminster problem".

(This of course drives the kinds of people who buy TTRPG books for the metaplot instead of to play in the setting nuts, but we're here to play, darn it.
)

Oh, also worth bringing up: Eberron has detectives.

They're called "inquisitives", but detectives they are. (Likewise, Eberron has newspapers called "chronicles").

Mm. In fact, House Medani is well-known for providing such services.

As is House Tharashk.

Mm. We've got Tharashk investigating some things for us in WoX.

(The main reason I bring it up is because I've literally had someone sign up to be a detective in an Eberron campaign I ran, not do detective things, and when things ultimately went south she literally said to my face that "D&D doesn't have detectives!")

Notably, I've also been very slowly speccing Sauriv into having some detective abilities... though if the new party face was more of a Agatha Christie-style profiler sort of detective, that would obviate the need for them to spread themself so thin.

They could end up as more of a secondary detective, like Kethend would end up as more of a secondary face if we got a face.

Oh, and back on the gushing-about-Eberron thing: Eberron introduced the changeling (doppelganger lite), kalashtar (human lineages merged with good-aligned rebel psionic nightmare demons), shifter (people with a touch of beastliness who can change subtly to gain a new or enhanced trait briefly), and warforged (sapient living golems built for the Last War).

If you dig a little, there's also the so-called "daelkyr half-blood" -- people corrupted by aberrant forces in the womb, born alongside a symbiote. I would be surprised if we never run into one.

Anyway, as far as combat roles, we have a physical DPS (Savaa does best charging with a lance, but often is stuck having to use a bow instead), a tank (Kethend can take a lot of hits and protect allies decently), a magical DPS (Joherra is an Erudite primarily, a sort of psionic wizard, so can nuke and debuff and such), and a healer/support (Joherra).

Oh, and a hybrid mount-for-the-tank and enchanter (Sauriv).

So there isn't a strong need for a specific combat role, if you think you can deal with a campaign this complex. Just go for something with decent skill points that you think is cool, pretty much.

(Basically, you can narrow your search to include classes with various Cha skills as class skills and to exclude all 2+Int classes — unless you find a variant that's more than 2+Int, anyway,)

Juliona is the Erudite, to correct the above

Joherra is an Archivist primarily

Yeah.

To be more detailed... Savaa's build currently is Monstrous Humanoid 6/Lurk 1//Scout 2/Psychic Warrior 2.
Sauriv's is a much more straightforward Bardic Sage 6//Beguiler 3, with +1 LA they're ready to buy off (since Jess is more lenient than RAW about when LA buyoffs are permitted) once the party actually has a night's sleep.

(And yes, "partial gestalt" basically translates to "we have subjobs". )

One notable difference between the official gestalt rules and how we're doing things is that the skill points are additive, not best-of like everything else. At least partly because of the fact that the subjobs were added later, but almost certainly also partly because it was abundantly clear that this is a skill-point-hungry party.

And also because gestalt grants more class skills and basically gives the character a secondary noncombat role that doesn't always overlap in important skills.

Bringing in a new PC now would likely mean answering the question "which of the various NPCs who recently came to this little village being overrun by aberrations and obyriths brought you along?"

Though, there are also options for more...unusual origins, especially if you want to play a race that I've cast as an 'unnatural' presence in Eberron (including ones I've given the Extraplanar subtype), or likely to originate from a continent other than Khorvaire.

Mm, no reason you couldn't just be benign Xoriat-spawn under the circumstances...

Yep!

This would be a prime opportunity to introduce a PC with the Aberration type.

(I would, however, advise thinking carefully about logistics if you want to play something with a gruesome diet.)

If you'd rather play something native, though... I know that off the top of my head Miinharath and Indigo (an odd couple who run a restaurant in a nearby town) came to help, and could've brought someone else along.

And a reporter NPC of mine, Diab Kearne, went there ahead of the party to report on it, and could've brought someone to protect her.

report on the situation, even.

Jess may know of other NPCs who could've pulled you in.

Also, aside from the Xoriat manifest zone (think someplace "close" to another place regardless or almost regardless of where in its astral orbit it is) that's coming unsealed, this village also has places manifest to Thelanis. So if you want to play something fey, that is also a convenient option.

("close" to another plane, even.)

If you did want to play someone from the actual village, you'd need an explanation for why you've been gone for the last few months and only just came back recently.

It's very much a backwater, though, to the point that I'm pretty sure that the only significant Dragonmarked House presence would be a House Vadalis ranch (TL;DR, a house with power over animals that breed them).

And a two-digit potulation.

population, even.

But yeah, whatever direction one might want to come at adding a new party member from — combat role, noncombat role, what they are, who they are and why they're in the middle of this warzone we;re just entering now — we should be able to accomodate.

accommodate, even.

Nelri might have hired some help; that's how Stend ended up there, after all.

(Nelri being the local druid, one of the Gatekeepers.)

Also, if you actually want to play a Gatekeeper druid, it's possible you could be one of Bulak's group we just haven't been directly introduced to yet.

Though Druid doesn't default to being good at being at social skills. That being said, we use a third-party background subsystem from early PF1, which was clearly based on d20 Modern's Occupation subsystem.

Backgrounds & Occupations – d20PFSRD

Takes a little backporting sometimes since 3.5 and PF1 skills differ slightly, but.

As far as combat role, we're well-rounded, so just go with what you think is cool.

Gatekeeper options also include Ranger, Totemist, Spirit Shaman, and basically anything else that has 'protector of primal nature' vibes.

(Heck, I'd even allow a Gatekeeper Paladin.)

(Maybe there's someone out there who believes Eberron Herself is calling brave warriors to defend the very concept of natural life.)

(Not to mention that there are naturey Cleric domains.)

Suffice it to say, there are all kinds of options for the kind of character one might want to play in this. I still think we need a new face first and foremost, but.

...Still, if all this seems too overwhelming to deal with? I don't blame you. It's kind of a lot. Just would be nice to have some clear communication on that front, if so.

thank you for explaining/sharing all of this though. It's very interesting. idk if I'd have time to join especially since I'm trying to work full time in corporate. gotta get the job first though.

nods.

Incidentally, on the topic of Xoriat-spawn that'd be perfectly playable, one of Keith Baker's DM's Guild supplements briefly describes some not-quite-right halfling-like beings called the Varr as one of the saner examples of what one can find in the irrational realm.

The entire description:
"The Varr are kind, generous, telepathic halflings. But they're not quite like their Eberron cousins — they have compound eyes, barbed tongues, and they spit acid on food to digest it."

...So if you went the creature-of-Xoriat route, that'd pretty much be the ground floor of weird.

And it's about π^3 + 557i floors up from there. (I mean, it's Xoriat...)

I haven't statted those yet, but it has been on the agenda.

On the specific point of time, while we're still on hiatus right now, when we're running this we've most recently been running it on Fridays starting around 17:30 Pacific / 20:30 Eastern and running for an average of around 4-5 hours or so, I think? End times can vary a bit both based on where natural stopping points occur and when people are getting tired.

We sometimes throw in extra sessions to get in scenes that don't involve everyone, just to save the main session time for full-group content; typically that ends up being some combination of Jess, Pteryx and myself. Side-scenes probably won't come up as much in the current battle scenario, but can be common during downtime.

(e.g. the "date" scene where Drekim and Althea practice flying, or Kethend and Sauriv's discussion about cities, rulership, and the nature of dragons)

We've basically been able to go on for as long as we have because we're all actually onboard with having to reschedule when scheduling issues shift. We've had game day officially be on a lot of different days in the past.

Mm. Most recently Monday has been our typical make-up day if people can't do Friday.

Yeah, rain dates are things we try to have too, as far as keeping momentum.

Can't always manage it, but it does help when we can