Game: To Build a God a Coffin. A Homebrew D&D 5e campaign

Group Type: Online (Audio & VTT via Roll20)

Experience: New/ A Few Years/ Veteran (All welcome. But experience preferred.)

Schedule: Fridays, weekly. 6:00 PM PST/PDT 

Roles Sought: 2 Players

Game Style: Character-Driven Narratives. Arc-focused milestone leveling. Roleplay & Combat focused. 

Where: Roll20 for maps, D&D Beyond for character sheets/rolls, and Discord for voice (Audio Only)

Cost: $15 per session via startplaying.games

Intended Length: Levels 1 - 14 (Group is currently Level 9)

Links: Roll20 Listing & StartPlaying.Games Link

To Build a God a Coffin

"Summer has come to The Heartlands of Kelvastra.

An expansive valley of small counties and land claims, surrounded by thick forests and towering cliffsides, the breadbasket of the Kelvastran empire and the center of farmlands and villages that keep the Empire afloat during times of conflict. And with the Lucde Alliance already trying for another push out of their cursed lands and across the Empire's borders, the High Queen Calmorea is once again leaning on the hardworking laborers of the Heartlands to feed her Royal Navy and the war effort.

But something has been stalking the fertile lands of the valley. In its wake, rotted crops, burnt villages, and bodies of the unfortunate lay bloating in the sun. While rumors of midnight raids by Lucdite scouts destroying farmlands run rampant in the hamlets and villages in the valley, the Heartland Copper Gazette runs another story:

News of a fanatical cult devoted to a woman forsaken by the Wheel has arrived on the summer breeze, bringing fallow and the stench of rot with them. With claims that she is a Forgotten God and this is the effect of her divine will upon the world.

Yet, with no definitive proof of their existence, the people of the Heartlands can't rely on the Monarchy to strengthen the paltry forces of village militias and guards with reinforcements from The Captial City of Illvastre.

Maybe you came here to investigate yourself. Maybe you just got wrapped up in the whole thing. Maybe you lost someone important and want revenge. No matter your reason, you're here now.

Welcome to the Heartlands.

What kind of coffin do you build for a God?"

Now that we have that spiel out of the way, hello weary traveler. I’m Scott. (he/him)

I’m running a paid homebrew campaign set in a homebrew world about trying to save the countryside from a mysterious and elusive cult following a “forgotten god” around the rolling hills and fields of the breadbasket valley of a kingdom on the brink of another war.

The world has its own pantheon, kingdoms, and terminology that is constantly being updated as I continue campaigns and stories. Does the idea of a Dwarven God of Tobacco, who's taking the world’s longest “dad nap”, catch your fancy? How about living on continents made from the remains of the leviathans who tamed the wild magic of the world? How about having a ten-day week or a spider deity of magic who is, to quote some players, “a nightmare to look at”? How about an absolutely caked-up Goddess of Secrets that hands out blessings and curses to you in the same breath for just looking at her?

Well then, come to The Seas of Erund! We have those things and more!

Our game listing page here on Roll20 lists out our Rules & Guidelines, explains our Character Building & House Rules, and has a Player Application Survey Link, as well as a short introduction to me, your Dungeon Master.

My tables are safe and inclusive spaces. I’ve been running online games for six years now and playing TTRPGS for an “oh god you’re old” amount of time. If you’re interested in my credentials, DMing style, and what my current players say about me, check out my DM profile on startplaying.games here: DM Profile

Our Current Party 

Benjicott Bright - Half-Elf Wizard - School of Necromancy

A young disgraced doctor from the city of Illvastre, Benjicott turned his former medical teacher in to the authorities for his practices of Necromancy, only to be pulled into it himself. He now searches for Maria, his former instructor's daughter, who fled to the Heartlands to continue her father's work. Benjicott has notes on duplicartirial coupling, a necromancy one-trick spell to tying a dead soul to a living vessel. It may unlock the secrets to the second dull heartbeat he's felt in conjunction with his own.

Granny Ursula Spritesplatterer - Human Fighter/Warlock - Purple Dragon Knight/Undead Patron

Resident "healer" and grandmother to the group, Granny is the granddaughter of a former village healer, and sister to the current one, from a small village out in the frozen mountains of Temmar. While she isn't always completely aware of what is happening, she's devoted herself to taking care of the group and easing tensions within and outside of her companions. Now, Granny is plagued by dreams of a Dullahan, an ancient boogeyman story from Temmar, and visions of a black tree that bears severed heads as fruit. She travels with her dwarven partner in crime, a brewer named Boskoi. She also can lift two men by their heads; one in each arm. 

Ranni Loofollue - Deep Gnome Ranger/Rogue - Beast Master

Young Ranni and her panther companion, Foot-Foot, are the last survivors of an attack on her village by a horde of undead beasts. Convinced this was the work of  a rumored necromancer in the Southern Heartlands by the name of Luigi, Ranni joined a passing caravan as a guide to earn  her way deeper into the heartlands. When the caravan was raided by The Cult of Blood Upon The Fields, she and the other members of The Wagon's Rest Group were forced to flee on foot to escape capture or slaughter. Now knowing that Luigi had nothing to do with the slaughter of her village, she works to counteract the cult that is working to rot the Heartlands from the inside out.

The Story So Far:

Chapter 1: The Moathouse

The group all join up with a caravan heading into the Southern Heartlands under the leadership of Lareth the Beautiful. One night, the caravan is raided by strange figures in burlap robes with a strange symbol on the chest: a blood-red hand over a series of vertical lines. The group is forced to flee with nothing more than their meager belongings into the woods to escape death or capture.

They stumble upon a lone farmstead and quickly surmise this strange order has taken it over. Once liberated, the lone prisoner of the farm introduces himself as Horatius Deerhart, a writer for the Heartlands Copper Gazette and member of the Order of Keepers. He reveals this cult, The Blood Upon The Fields, has been kidnapping people in this part of the Heartlands. They took the family that resided here and were set to return for him this evening. They are attacked by the cult, led by a woman named Ripper, who flees when the fight goes south.

The group finds the nearby stronghold of the cult, an ancient moathouse on a rancid polluted part of the river. Beneath it, they encounter a group of Gnolls forced to work for the leader of this fortress, who stole their Paths; a map dictating the routes and ancient pathways their tribe has always walked. The group resolves to slay the leader of this cult stronghold and return the path to the gnolls.

Surprise, the leader of this sect is none other than Lareth the Beautiful, who has been kidnapping members of his caravans into the Heartlands for the last few months. The group slays him, frees several prisoners, and finds a scrap of an ancient journal mentioning a goddess of the old ways: Aergetta, She Who Bleeds For The Fields.

Chapter 2: The Shade Beneath The Rose

The group travels with Horatius Deerhart to the nearby town of Four Crossing, to warn the populace of the Cult. Horatius strikes up a deal with the group; if they continue to face the cult, he'll pay them to write about their exploits for the Heartland Copper Gazette.

The group finds evidence of grave robbers in the area belonging to the Cult, and follows their tracks to another submerged ruin. There they encounter an evil Druid named Anabraxius constructing golems out of rotted wheat and cultivating deadly mushrooms. While Anabraxius flees, the group stops his operations and earns the trust of the Mayor of Four Crossing: Sir Tolwan Yon Vantzon-Estenbergh.

Sir Tolwan invites the group to accompany him on an expedition to the ruins of a manor that belongs to his family. The group agrees and travels to Roseroot Manor. There, they find the manor mostly intact, but with a massive tree growing out of the center of it and the second floor choked by roots. The house seemingly responds to their actions, with a banshee patrolling the grounds, and a mystery surrounding the disappearance of the family that once lived at the manor.

After following a series of clues left by the last lady of the house (who is the aforementioned banshee) the group finds out that the Followers of Aergetta struck a deal with the Patriarch of the Varanis house: if they provided shelter for the group, the family would be entrusted with a fae caretaker and comfort, until the return of an entity named "Ergotta".

Rather than sacrifice a portion of their crops to this entity, The Shaded Beneath The Rose, the family began to feed it servants and laborers, to maximize profits. The entity grew dark and crazed and had now been starving for the better part of a century.

The group decides to venture into the Caretaker's grove and put an end to the curse of Roseroot Manor, which turns out to be a massive rose bush. The manor begins to crumble after the caretaker's death, and the group flees. Benjicott emerges with a tiny five-legged spider in the shape of a rose.

Chapter 3: Wagon's Rest

The group makes their way from Four Crossing to their intended destination of Wagon's Rest. The town turns out to be a wretched hive of scum and villainy, where five crime families are at a tentative peace. They meet the mayor, spotting the massive Dragonborn washing off the symbol of the cult that has been graffitied onto Town Hall.

They agree to investigate which family is allied with the cult and vandalizing the town. They accept a job from a member of the Marrowfields to recover a shipment of mead that went missing on the way to Wagon's Rest. The group finds this, along with a shipment of stolen bolts of fabric that belong to the Dogwood family. They accept another job from the Marrowfields to plant these stolen goods in a Dogwood warehouse and burn it down, framing a different family: The McCrays.

The group finds a slaughter inside the warehouse; along with some demons. The group escapes with their lives, but not without being spotted leaving the scene of the crime.

The group investigates rumors of a necromancer working out of a place called "The Blue Alley", which turns out to be a sanctum disguised as an alleyway in the part of town under the control of The Shepherd Family. Within, the group finds the journal of a wizard who worked with wanted necromancer Luigi and notes about a strange process called duplicartirial coupling.

To spend some time outside of the town while their latest escapade is being investigated, the group accepts a job from a cobbler and member of the Pledge Family to disrupt a cattle rustling ring.

They play a bit of "fake prisoner" when news gets out the rustlers are working for the McCray family, who are searching for the party. The plan backfires when they find out the rustlers have a member of the cult on their side, Ripper. She calls in the cult who flood the bandit encampment with poisonous vapor that turns all the bandits into the undead.

The group meets two more faces of the cult: a crazed woman who speaks in hushed whispers and commands the dead, and an armored dullahan.

While the group retrieves their fake prisoner, the dullahan beheads a member of the group. The party barely escapes with the rest of their lives, and the corpse of their ally.

Chapter 4: Luigi

Following the notes of the Journal of the Blue Alley, the group makes contact with The Shepherds and asks to meet their Matriarch, as she's been rumored to have returned from the dead twice. Blindfolded, the group arrives at her manor and accepts a job to liberate a mine from the McCrays in exchange for raising their slain companion.

The group finds the mine now under the control the The Blood Upon The Fields and makes their way through the ranks via violence. They discover the failed attempts inside at raising intelligent undead, cast-offs of the necromancer Luigi. In an inner sanctum, they come face to face with Ripper again. She kills another member of their group before being defeated by the remaining members.

They free a gnome wizard who offers to help raise their fallen companions, revealing himself to be Luigi. He uses duplicartirial coupling, a quick-fix necromancy spell once developed by Maria and Dr. White, Benjicottt's former teacher, to raise their fallen companion by tying his soul to the ranger, Ranni.

The group discovers Luigi is a one-trick pony and not the mastermind necromancer they thought he was. They allow him to flee the Heartlands in exchange for reviving their other fallen party member.

Chapter 5: The Group Commits a Murder

Once back in town, the group is attacked at their Inn by members of the McCray family. The inn is subsequently lit on fire and then explodes. The group flees Wagon's Rest to stay in the woods but is tracked down by the members of the McCray family the next day.

Nel'hazzar McCray, tiefling patriarch and former bandit partner to a member of our heroes offers the group to come work for him and let bygones be bygones. He knows they're on the good side of the Mayor and wants them to investigate his sudden strange behaviors. The group agrees to search his home/town hall that night while the Mayor is out.

There, they discover the town is built over a subterranean network of bug tunnels that contain a powerful Fey named Melchior, The Fly On The Wall Who Sees All. The town has been allied with this Fey for centuries, providing them with supernatural guidance in times of hardship. But his champion, the mayor, has not met his expectations and duties.

Melchior offers the group a lucrative deal: He will answer whatever questions they have if one of them becomes his champion by slaying the current champion. The group accepts, with Benjicott offering to become Melchior's Champion.

The group informs Nel'hazzar about their findings but attempts to threaten his life during negotiations about actually killing the Mayor. The group accepts his offer of payment and heads out to take care of Mayor Daggerfall.

The Mayor and massive bugs under his control nearly kill the group, forcing them to stay in the mayor's safehouse to rest up. The McCrays show up, now allied with the cult and the Pledge family, and attempt to surround the group.

The group, once again, barely escapes with their lives.

Now on the run again and forced to camp out in the woods the next day, the group witnesses a massive red dragon fly overhead and land in Wagon's Rest. Benjicott recognizes the dragon from stories he's read, Baleburner, The Corpse Fire: a mercenary red dragon that works with the most powerful entities in the Heartlands, often by forcing them to hire him. With an ancient red dragon now their greatest threat, the group entertains the idea of fleeing out of the Heartlands.

After coming to various revelations, the group decides to follow clues on a map they retrieved from the Shepherd Mines and head south to investigate a point of interest in the nearby Badlands.

6: The Ravening Horde

The group encounters hardships on the way down the badlands. Food becomes scarce as the vegetation dries up. Even hunting doesn't prove fruitful. However, the group does discover something strange in the middle of a canyon: a ship.

A massive, overgrown airship named The Cloud Burster. While using it for shelter, a member of the group sees a strange symbol carved into the wall of the cargo hold that chills her to the bone. She also finds herself unable to describe it or even mention it to the rest of the party.

Sighting a strange light effect on a canyon ridge, the group decides to investigate, especially after Granny has frightening dreams about the Dullahan calling out to her as his newfound murderous obsession.

The lights turn out to be part of a ritual being held by The Blood Upon the Fields with the intent of weakening the barrier between the material plane and a sickly plane of the feywild known as the Shadowfell. It succeeds in summoning strange massive wolves made out of inky darkness, with multiple eyes and jaws.
The group discovers the symbol that was on the ship inscribed here too, but all of them see it as a different symbol. It leaves them cursed, feeling as though they are being hunted. Granny recalls stories about a force from the Shadowfell called "The Ravening Horde", a tainted massive trampling of feywild predator animals that consumed everything in their path. The group realizes this is why they haven't seen any animals since entering the badlands.

They've all been eaten.

The group descends beneath the ruins on the canyon ledge and encounters more massive beasts of the Raven Horde within an ancient Dwarven Redoubt that fell the last time the Horde showed up. it now serves as a prison to the leaders of the Ravening Horde, and a trapped group of Lucdite deserters. They strike a deal with the leader of the deserters, Lady Morianna Vitre, to work together to escape. The group finds the way out of the redoubt via a series of underground rivers that lead from a lake, but free a dangerous member of the Ravening Horde in the process.

However, they also retrieve the Redoubt's treasure hoard. The group escapes the tunnels and returns to the airship after finding out Morianna served in the Lucde Naval forces and can potentially pilot their airship. The group jury rigs the ship to fly until they can replace the arcane engine by employing an artificer friend.

They contact their artificer friend, Denton Tolpuddle, and arrange to meet him in Deep Vale.

Chapter 6: The Council of Eyes

Denton rebuilds an arcane engine for the ship, but when the group arrives in Deep Vale to meet him, find a village ravaged by time and completely deserted. Not to mention the wild magic surges that are causing the area to look... wrong. Denton fesses up that something stole the arcane engine and damaged it in the process, causing wild magic to go "buck wild" in Deep Vale.

The group confronts the thieves, a Nilbog, and his group of goblinoid circus performers, and retrieve the arcane engine. Denton sets out to install it in the ship while the group investigates what happened to Deep Vale.

Investigations turn out that the town was rotted from the inside out, and that most of the unstable structures still standing are filled with dangerous, poisonous mold. After some magical investigation, the group concludes this was done by some sort of ritual to accelerate decay in the town. The group also discovers a blood-soaked wrapped bundle that turns out to be a bleeding black branch of the tree Granny has been seeing in her dreams. Most of the group can't look at the branch without screaming.

With no further clues to go on, the group decides to head to the nearby Elven City of Lelhanor for assistance and to speak with Dr. Benjicott's mother. Once there, the group is subjected to a rigorous entrance interrogation and only allowed partial access to the city by the highly militarized Council of Eyes.

And that is where we are now...

Two seats are still open for our session zero on November 12th.

To Build a God a Coffin has a second listing now, slated for Friday Evenings 6:00 PM PST/PDT.

We have four seats open for our Session Zero on Friday, February 3rd.

I am VERY interested in this but I’ve never actually played DND. My discord is AngelsCreed44112#9059 if you want to get a hold of me?

Hey also interested in Playing if you have room

We still have seats available for our Session Zero on Friday, February 3rd.

We still have three seats available for our Session Zero on Friday, February 3rd.

We still have two seats available for our Session Zero on Friday, February 3rd.

We still have 2 seats available for our Session Zero on Friday, February 3rd.

We still have seats available for this campaign and our Session Zero on Friday, February 3rd.

We still have seats available for this campaign and our Session Zero on Friday, February 3rd.

We currently have two seats left for this campaign and our Session Zero on Friday, February 3rd.

We currently have two seats left for this campaign and our Session Zero on Friday, February 3rd.

Anyone is welcome to join! Always happy to get more people involved in TTRPGs! 

The Campaign is planned to be from levels 1- 12. Not sure about the timeframe of sessions, but hopefully about a year at most.

Due to scheduling issues, a player has left our campaign and we are seeking a replacement. 

The party is now level 5 and consists of:

A Deep Gnome Haunted One Beastmaster Ranger

A Reborn Criminal College of Eloquence Bard

A Changeling Bounty Hunter Hexblade Warlock

A Human Doctor School of Necromancy Wizard

We still have an opening for our next session on Friday, June 9th.

We still have an opening for tonight's session, June 9th.

We still have an opening for our next session on Friday, June 16th.