This is the third and final installment of out "Meet the Characters" series for my upcoming campaign, Of Gods and Dragons. In our first chapter, we met Brokk, the orc-demon fighter-warlock who has chosen a path of non-violence. Then we met Aurora, the Fae-powered spellcaster with a past mysterious even to her. Now it's time to meet our last character: Lethanin, a gnomish musician who can tap into magic with his musical instruments. Lethanin is being played by a longtime collaborator in my D&D world--they've played Ell in the Eastweald campaign and Ais in the mystery campaign in the past (and played a fascinating paladin in the campaign where I got to play Asp). Lethanin was a character who was still being developed when we sat down to do his intro session, so a large part of the session was in letting his player figure out exactly how his custom class works and what motivates and intrigues Lethanin. That's what an intro session is for, after all, and after getting our feet wet in this session, I'm looking forward to seeing how Lethanin fits in with the rest of the group and the campaign itself.
Relatively little about Lethanin was decided going into this session--only his hair and eye color (both silver) and the outline of his custom class. That class is worth delving into, especially since it's one of the most freeform approaches to D&D I've ever taken. Lethanin is a "Musician of the Spheres." To build this class, I modified the Bard base class with some features of the Wizard and the Rogue classes, so he's fundamentally a character who uses musical ability to create magical effects, also empowered by some focuses on spellcasting (and less on the Bard's more support-class structure) with some improved stealth and dexterity capabilities. But the Musician of the Spheres is nothing like a standard Bard. Bards choose from a fairly limited array of spells that mostly buff allies, but the Musician of the Spheres creates spells from intention and feeling rather than from a set list of abilities. The idea with this class, which is rather up to interpretation, was to suit his player's distinct style as a person. Lethanin's player is themself a talented multi-instrumentalist musician who enjoys dabbling in the abstract spaces in life which require interpretation. Together, they and I have done all sorts of creative work together that's utilized this kind of thinking, from playing together in a band to our art criticism and theory podcast. So the intention to create a very abstract and open-ended class was highly intentional, and the result is a class where the player declares an intended effect and describes a musical performance style, and the result of a Performance check determines how closely the actual effect matches the intention. For examples of how this works in practice, read on to see how Lethanin's spells work in the intro session.
I must again reiterate how unformed Lethanin was when we sat down to play--everything about the intro session was improvised based on a few simple questions about where in the gameworld Lethanin would choose to be and what sort of goals he might have in the moment. From the answers to those questions, I picked a piece of in-game lore that corresponded to Lethanin's interests and just ran with it. This means that the three intro sessions in this series were all radically different experiences. Brokk's player and I performed a roleplaying session through a messaging program (which allowed for a healthy amount of planning as we went) over the course of a few days; Aurora's player and I sat down for two lengthy in-person sessions I did a fair amount of planning for; Lethanin's was an entirely improvised video chat over the course of a few hours. To some DMs, this might seem like a flaw in that it means the characters are beginning on different levels. But for this campaign, I tailored the intro sessions to what worked best for each player. Brokk's player and I have often done mini-campaigns over text, and Brokk is a character he's worked with a lot; Aurora's player and I live together and were fleshing out our dynamic as a gaming unit and needed to cover a lot of backstory; Lethanin's player wanted a hand with the mechanics of setting up their character sheet and a blanker canvas to work with to figure out who the character really is. So the approaches all differed wildly, but the effect was that each player got what they needed to be ready to play.
So let's get into Lethanin's intro session. Lethanin's player decided their little gnome musician would likely be in the city of Torga at the start of the session, just generally exploring a big diverse city with some tension in it--Torga is marked by a divided government and lots of drama between criminals and law enforcement. So the session begins in Torga, where Lethanin is simply out and about looking for something to get interested in. (We established quickly that Lethanin is a somewhat passive character, looking for things to investigate rather than pursuing his own agenda.) Strolling around Torga, Lethanin sees a group of orcish beggars who seem to be up to something who are being hassled by a group of dwarven guards. The beggars argued that they were not breaking any laws, which the guards contested. They began to argue--the beggars said they weren't violating the letter of any law, while the guards claimed the spirit of the law was more important. Taking the side of the beggars, Lethanin played a tune on his viol that agitated people nearby to the point that a scuffle broke out. The scuffle distracted the guards from the beggars for long enough for the beggars to slip away, and Lethanin stealthily followed them through town to a tavern in the poorer districts.
In the tavern, a group of four Daltoners come in and start raising a fuss--they were upset that a local academic was spreading the idea that all the racial groups on the continent are descended from one common ancestor rather than divinely created. The Daltoners claim that this belief was racist, and they argue that the idea was being used to tarnish their place in the world as the supreme group. Lethanin, in an effort to stir them up, plays the national anthem of the Daltoner military extremely poorly. Half of the Daltoners take this as the insult it was meant to be, but the others mistake it for support for their argument. To drive home his point, Lethanin plays a song about Daltoners being nothing but country fools with excellent musicianship, which causes the Daltoners to become furious. They menace him at his table, looming over him. Lethanin talks circles around them, being evasive when they oppose him directly; they eventually challenge him to say something straightforward. In response, he suggests that only a small mind is afraid of complexity. The Daltoners threaten to break Lethanin's viol, at which point he plays a calming song to soothe them and make them forget why they even threatened him in the first place.
Let's pause for a second to delve into the Magician of the Spheres class. Lethanin intended to pacify the Daltoners and to make them forget why they would threaten him. First, Lethanin's player described a type of song--something soothing and lilting which could ease their anger but also confuse them a bit. This song's music matches the effect, which is a bit of flavor that Lethanin's player and I deliberately built into the class. It doesn't necessarily have an effect on the outcome of the spell, but it does help to show the way that Lethanin's magic would actually function. Then, Lethanin has to roll a Performance check for the spell. In the above example with the agitating spell, Lethanin's player rolled very well--a 25--which meant the spell occurred exactly as intended. But in the case of the pacifying and forgetting spell, they only rolled a 15, which means that spell generally works, but not on a complete success level. So the Daltoners were in fact pacified into not outright attacking Lethanin or breaking his viol, but they didn't forget why they were harassing Lethanin in the first place. As a result, Lethanin is safe for the moment but still has the Daltoners unhappy with him. The Daltoners leave Lethanin alone, suggesting that he join them in opposing the academic, who they identify as Calies Tasselman at the nearby Spellbound bookstore. On the way out of the tavern, Lethanin plays a warbly tune to induce clumsiness on the Daltoners, causing them to spill their drinks on the people at the table they've gathered around, which in turn makes another fight break out.
Lethanin goes to Spellbound, where he finds a book about the science of music that provides a guide on how to create musical instruments from scratch. He buys the book from the shopkeeper, a nervous one-armed man who says his shop was recently attacked. Lethanin asks about speaking to Tasselman but is evasive about why, and the shopkeeper grows more nervous, suspecting that Lethanin is up to something. Eventually, Lethanin mentions being a fellow academic of sorts, and the shopkeeper goes to bring Tasselman down to meet him. When Tasselman arrives, Lethanin is again evasive about his intentions (something that Lethanin normally does--he avoids saying what he means directly, or perhaps doesn't have direct intentions in the first place), and Tasselman acknowledges that he and the shopkeeper are anxious given the fact that they've been attacked recently over Tasselman's studies. [Out of game, Tasselman and his studies are a significant part of the D&D podcast I did many years ago now, in which Tasselman was a major NPC who dispensed information to the player characters.] Lethanin says that he means no harm and is simply interested in Tasselman's research, at which point Tasselman takes him upstairs to his study.
Upstairs, Lethanin is shown a small study where Tasselman lives and researches. Tasselman's work includes a roughly-drawn diagram of the idea he proposes--that all people in Evanoch share a common ancestor. Further, Tasselman contends that humans, elves, and orcs are brethren in the genetic tree and that halflings are an offshoot of elves; he also believes that dwarves descend from an alternate route on the family tree and that gnomes are an offshoot of dwarves. Lethanin comments that better quality drawings will be necessary for the theory to catch on. Lethanin looks further, learning more about Tasselman's ideas, and notices a strange orb made up glittering gemstones. The orb displays the shape of Evanoch on one side and a massive shape on the opposite side; the gemstones display types of land--garnets for mountains, emeralds for forests, sapphires for oceans, rubies for volcanic islands, and so forth. Lethanin questions Tasselman about the orb, which Tasselman calls a globe, suggesting that the world is not flat but rather a huge sphere like the globe. Lethanin asks Tasselman where it came from, as it is obviously of exquisite craftsmanship and is unspeakably expensive, and Tasselman says it appeared when he was praying to Boccob, the deity of knowledge. Lethanin speaks to Boccob aloud, asking if Boccob is listening, and Lethanin's vision grows blurry when looking at anything but the globe. Curious, Lethanin plays his shawm, trying to focus his magic into the globe, and the globe spins. Lethanin alters his playing to be very complex and structured, and the globe slows to a stop, rotating so that Torga is precisely in front of him. Lethanin asks Tasselman if it is possible to help the academic, and Tasselman replies that protecting the shop would be ideal if Lethanin is capable of it.
Lethanin goes downstairs and plays the bagpipes, trying to craft a spell that would repel people with negative intentions from the bookstore. But the roll for the spell's effect was not terribly high, and the four Daltoners who Lethanin had encountered in the tavern earlier come to the shop to hassle Tasselman. Lethanin offers to help find the Daltoners books in an attempt to insult them, implying that they know very little and need education. The Daltoners threaten Lethanin and Tasselman, at which point Lethanin plays a quick tune on the bagpipe, which successfully created the effect of the Daltoners growing uncontrollably itchy. The Daltoners scratch themselves feverishly and inquire if Lethanin is responsible for the effect, and Lethanin is again evasive in answering. After some back-and-forth in which Lethanin is unwilling to answer directly, the Daltoners commit to fighting him. But before they can act, Lethanin plays an uncomfortable-sounding song on the bagpipes which, with a critical success, results in each of the Daltoners soiling themselves. Embarrassed, all of the Daltoners simultaneously make excuses about needing to leave and stumble out the door. Grateful, the shopkeeper give Lethanin back the cost of the book on the science of music.
Lethanin talks more to Tasselman, asking about the origins of the proposed common ancestor of all people. Tasselman proposes that all modern people come from a single group which came to Evanoch from the large continent on the other side of the globe. Lethanin probes for more information, learning that Tasselman believes they either arrived by boat (explaining why most societies exist near or on coastlines) or via tunneling directly through the globe itself, arriving in different places in the Underdark. Lethanin asks if there were large questions left unanswered by Tasselman's theory, and Tasselman notes that the existence of racial deities does raise questions--why should an elven god or gnomish god exist if all people are descended from a common ancestor? Lethanin decides to follow his musical intuition, searching the bookstore for other helpful texts and ideas. He finds a book that he feels vibrates on a musical level, a record of sightings of dragons across recorded history. [In this setting, dragons are occasionally sighted but not a confirmed phenomenon, not unlike UFO sightings in the real world.] Lethanin takes note of a few key facts: dragons of particular colors seem to be sighted in the same geographical regions (red dragons near dwarven territories, for instance, or black dragons near elven lands), and the last sighting of a copper dragon (which was several thousand years ago) involved the dragon apparently being wounded. Lethanin goes back upstairs and pores over Tasselman's research without asking permission and sketches the globe for his own notes. Intrigued by Tasselman's ideas and the way he was drawn to the book about dragons, Lethanin decides to leave Torga and go to the site of the last report about the copper dragon: the Liggen Forest. He packs and prepares before setting out for Ringsdale, a city at the southernmost tip of the Liggen Forest, and journeys until he arrives at the industrial city a few days later.
We ended our intro session there. There is again a large divide between the ending point of the intro sessions. Brokk ended up with a tighter connection to his allies and a way to keep living a quiet life. Aurora ended up with an ugly reminder of her past and an established system of friends and allies. Lethanin gathered a handful of important ideas and set off for a new area where he might further investigate those ideas. Together, we have a network of themes and plot points that should allow this campaign to get off on a strong foot. With Lethanin in particular, the establishing of ideas about gods and dragons will be a great foot in the door with this campaign's namesake, and I'm very eager to see how he responds when gods and dragons become more than an academic interest.
Next time I update this series, it will be with the first session of play! In the time it's taken to get the characters ready to go, I've pretty drastically revised my plan for beginning the main story, and I truly can't wait to see how it all goes and what the characters do to get started. Now comes the hard work of a DM--getting schedules to mesh, playing the role of organizer, and generally attending to logistical details. But soon, we'll be rolling dice and pitting the players and their characters against something more fun: the biggest and most complicated NPCs my world holds. I hope you enjoy the journey along with us.
Until next time, folks! As always, happy gaming!
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