This is the thread where we coordinate the Ruins of Azlant campaign being undertaken by the newly-formed group D&D4, which is comprised of players and characters that made their brief debuts in the other groups and campaigns (namely, D&D1, D&D2, and D&D3). All these characters split off from their original groups, for various reasons, shortly after the commencement of their original campaigns, so their players need to think of some backstory as to why and how they split, and how they ended up in the Andoran capital of Armas, where Ruins of Azlant begins. Later on, we will post these backstories in this thread. dan's and Jameson's characters both split from the same group, D&D1, so we're assuming they travelled together, otherwise it would be too much of a coincidence for them to have ended up on the same ship a few weeks later. schaden and Beak travelled alone, so they need their own backstories. DM these to me on Discord, and we'll discuss them in due course. They are not absolutely necessary to start playing tomorrow. We can take our time crafting them. Note that dan and I have already crafted the BEGINNINGS of these backstories in the various campaigns all your characters left, because we had to give something to the remaining characters to explain why you vanished, so take a look at the stream of the first session of your old campaign after you left to see what we said. In my two campaigns, Rise of the Runelords and Curse of the Crimson Throne, I include these explanations in the initial text blocks of the session, but in dan's campaign, War for the Crown, the explanation comes a bit later in the session. More specifically,
dan and Jameson, go to 10:16 in this stream:
dndbattlegrounds.net Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords - Burnt Offerings 2 with recoil
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kqMjhi ... PWcT9Qpixx
schaden go to 4:20 in this stream:
dndbattlegrounds.net Pathfinder: Curse of the Crimson Throne - Edge of Anarchy 2 with Ciaróg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F94hX8 ... PWcT9Qpixx
And Beak go to 1:12:32 in this stream:
dndbattlegrounds.net Pathfinder: War for the Crown - Crownfall 3 with ChevRage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nzTzOX ... PWcT9Qpixx
It's like being in high school and being given a couple of sentences and told to craft a story starting with them. So go ahead and do that. We don't need anything too elaborate, we need something simple and brief and ideally flavorful that highlights some of your characters' abilities and motivations.
INTRODUCTION
You have been selected for a very important expedition to the lost continent of Azlant! After hearing of the expedition, you applied for adventure, and those responsible for organizing the expedition selected you to join other colonists to stake claim to an island named Ancorato in the Arcadian Ocean.
The Ruins of Azlant campaign begins with your characters standing on the deck of a ship after a long voyage to a newly founded colony called Talmandor's Bounty on an island in what is left of Azlant. The journey from Almas in Andoran to the island of Ancorato has taken six weeks aboard a ship called the Peregrine, and you and the other player characters have had a chance to get to know some of the other colonists.
While the destruction of Azlant was a defining moment for the Inner Sea region, many people who live there these days know little of the ancient Azlanti. Some don't believe the tales unearthed after millennia of burial and regard them as myth. Those nonbelievers can't imagine a world so rich in magic that it was ubiquitous in Azlanti society, with everyday citizens benefiting from the culture's deep interest in magic and science.
Now is your chance to not only establish a foothold in this fabled and broken land, but also to potentially uncover valuable lost lore once held by one of history's most powerful and enigmatic cultures.
The Ruins of Azlant Player's Guide, unlike all other Paizo Player's Guides we've used so far, doesn't spoil anything, so I am not going to be pulling passages from it as with the other campaigns: you are free to read the whole thing yourselves. It's a mere 16 pages, and you don't even need all of the material in it right away, so you should be able to read the relevant portions before the start of the game tomorrow. If not, we can always delay the start until everyone has read what needs to be read. Most pressing are the first few pages giving you an introduction to the campaign, and then page nine onwards introduces the new campaign traits you have to choose from. Pick one, and post your choice in the D&D4 Discord channel so I can add it to your characters. This is in addition to whatever traits you had from your previous campaigns, which you keep.
The PDF is here: https://the-eye.eu/public/Books/rpg.rem ... 0Guide.pdf
Download it and save it in your D&D folder for reference throughout the campaign. (Players from other groups are free to save and read this as well. It constitutes content that is unlocked for the entire overworld.)
If you have a Paizo account, you can get it directly from Paizo and added to your account: https://paizo.com/products/btpy9uir?Pat ... yers-Guide
Player's Guides are released for free, so you aren't pirating anything.