The Gods Are Dead

(Quick note, don't try and read this one on mobile. Sorry!)

An excerpt from Corvarus I, a popular stage play among the lower-class denizens of Corvarus City.

Hush now, human. I'm telling a story.

---

ACT III

Scene 2

SETTING:                      In the ruins of the old city, at the

                              edge of the Verdant Pit.

AT RISE:                      DUKE CORVARUS lies amid broken 

                              cobblestones, breathing heavily. His 

                              finery is torn and bloodied, and the 

                              stolen witch's sword rests out of 

                              reach. FATHER stalks toward him, 

                              black smoke pouring from his wounds.

FATHER

There, there, good duke. Rest now. All is as it should be.

CORVARUS

             (Crawling toward the sword)

No, as long as the old gods still hold the throne, nothing is--

             (FATHER extends a finger toward CORVARUS,

             who cries out as his arm bends backward 

             and breaks.)

FATHER

I and my pantheon will always rule this city. The witch is dead, and her spells are broken -- you can no more resist my magic than could any of the other so-called revolutionaries.

CORVARUS

             (Struggling to his feet and hefting the 

             sword awkwardly in his off-hand)

And what is left of the pantheon, Father? How many of your kind could stand against the tide of humanity? We will rise again, and we will keep fighting until none of you survive.

FATHER

Well aren't you just delightfully defiant. But I know you, Corvarus. You're no hero, whatever your companions might have thought. You wouldn't even join this fight until we had already taken everything from you. A miscalculation on the part of It That Covets, to be sure. But what does that say about you?

CORVARUS

It says I have nothing to lose.

FATHER

Yes, duke. And is that what a hero is? One who enters the fray only when he must? Your brother has been fighting from the beginning. He gave up his fortune, his family, and eventually his life to stand against us. What have you given?

CORVARUS

Dianne... My children...

FATHER

No. They were taken from you. You were unwilling to make the sacrifice until It That Covets made it for you. And duke, there isn't a thing wrong with that. Some of us just aren't cut out for legends.

CORVARUS

             (Circling around FATHER, away from the 

             Pit)

You're wrong. I took the sword. When everyone else what too scared or too good, I made the hard call and took the sword.

FATHER

And what did that get you? In the end, I'm still standing, and you're running out of blood to shed. Well I'll tell you what, Corvarus. I can give it all back. Calling a mortal back from the void is an easy feat to one such as myself.

CORVARUS

What?

FATHER

Yes. You could have your family again. I could give you your old seat on the council. Come, duke. Let us put an end to this foolishness.

             (FATHER extends an open hand to CORVARUS,

             who takes a few hesitant steps toward him, 

             sword dragging in the dust. Suddenly, 

             CORVARUS lunges forward, swinging wildly 

             with the sword. The blow fails to connect, 

             but FATHER steps backward, stumbling at the 

             lip of the Pit. CORVARUS drops the sword and 

             shoves his foe off balance, and for a moment 

             is holding FATHER over the edge with his 

             good hand.)

CORVARUS

No one gets to cheat death, Father. Not even gods live forever.

             (CORVARUS releases FATHER, who flails  

             into the pit.)

(BLACKOUT)

(END OF SCENE)

If the players ever meet a true god, it should seem like an utterly foreign being.

How it fits into a game

Dead gods are just oh-so good for a tabletop roleplaying game. It leaves  a lot of great questions that could lead to a lot of great adventures. Who or what killed them, and how? Is their killer still around? Are they worshiped or reviled, ruling the world or hiding from it?

Do people still worship the old gods? Was their fall a good thing or a bad thing? Could they be brought back? Do any of their servants still exist?

Here's what I would do (and might, eventually). Most people hate the old gods, though they are at this point a distant memory. But a select few, lead by one of the Stygian beings that still remain in the world, want to call them back from the Verdant Pit, where the divine corpses were flung at the end of the Immortal Age.

Somehow the players find out about this, but can't go to the authorities. They have to find a way to slay the Stygian (which is what I've just decided to call the angels of the old gods) and put an end to the threat. They might seek the hidden knowledge of the truth behind the legend of Emperor Corvarus I, perhaps by tracking down the enigmatic playwright behind Corvarus I. Or maybe they seek the tomb of the emperor to recover the witch's blade, which originally slew the divine patriarch.

Or maybe Corvarus I stopped aging after his final victory. What if he disappeared after half a millennium of rule, never to be seen again? Then the players could head into the wilderness, chasing rumors and legends to find him.

Or maybe the answers to those questions suggest an entirely different adventure. 

In any case, I'll won't advocate a lore handout to the players. They will rarely read it, and it's much more fun for this stuff to come up organically piece-by-piece in play anyway. 

Anything that's common knowledge can come up as a result of whatever skill checks your system of choice employs, anything that isn't common knowledge can be a reward for exploration by players who enjoy that sort of thing. The knowledge could even be the goal of a quest, if it's relevant enough.

If it's super important that the players know a key history fact, the GM can just tell them for free when it comes up, if it's common enough, or hint at it with some foreshadowing, if it isn't.

No, not quite human at all.

The Wendigo

An excerpt from Daniel Wraeden's The Divine Histories: A Study of the Pit and That Which Waits Beyond.

---

The Wendigo is a singular creature. Two of its kind have never been observed at the same time, and those who interact with it multiple times report that it seems to remember previous meetings, i.e. it seems to be the same being.

"You seem to have made a mistake."

Physically, witnesses say it looks similar to a tall, emaciated corpse. Former exile Herrod Plume describes the creature in his autobiographical work, The Featherweight Adventures:

Its skin was stretched so tight and dry over bone that I thought it might tear if it brushed up against anything. Its lips were cracked and pulled back to show a human-looking, if exaggerated, grin. Extending from its head was a pair of antlers, spread maybe three feet from tip to tip. The air around it seemed to freeze, and I found myself shivering against both cold and fear.

It appears to have only three ways of interacting directly with the world. Primarily, it can speak. Its voice shakes like that of a hypothermic victim, but its body betrays none of the pain or panic that the voice often does, nor do its words. The tone seems to be entirely unlinked to the content of its speech.

The most obviously cosmic of its faculties is the incredible ability to open dimensional gates to apparently anywhere in the world. The Wendigo always makes it clear to the user what awaits them on the other side and allows them to choose whether or not to enter. No witness thus far has reported the Wendigo forcing them through the portals, nor indeed anything passing through the portal without being carried by a willing being.

Finally, the most ghastly of its abilities. The Wendigo can consume the corpse of a sentient being in an impossibly small space of time, so long as it is not observed. One particularly colorful witness described whirling around only a moment after turning to glimpse it “sucking down the last of my brother like a thick noodle.”

The Wendigo walks among us on a festival night.

Notably, witnesses have never reported seeing it physically interact with or directly harm anything aside from corpses. Instead, its first contact with a person is almost always nonviolent. It usually appears after the person performs some impactful act (saved or taken a life, started a war, won a battle, etc.) to inform them that things are not as the “should” be, though it does not elaborate on that point.

It will usually offer those it appears to the chance to in some way undo the act. The most famous example of this was Duke Jared Fontelle executing an injured man he had saved from a bear attack during a hunting trip the prior day. 

Sometimes, these people become its agents. It will appear to them again and request more help “fixing” causality, this time because of someone else’s mistake. Often, these agents are brought to bear on victims who refuse to follow its commands. 

Plume was one such agent, and he describes three encounters without much detail. Though the finer grain of his story may be suspect, he also attributes the exoneration ending his exile and subsequent return to Corvarus City to The Wendigo’s intervention.

Not much else is known of the being itself, though, nor the deity it presumably used to serve. It has never been captured, and no study of academic rigor has yet been made, beyond the interviews referenced in this work.

How it fits into a game

The Wendigo shouldn’t get a stat block. Unlike most monsters one might meet in a game of Dungeons and Dragons, The Wendigo is not meant to be a combat encounter. In fact, try not to think of it as a monster at all. If the players try and fight it, they will find it is incredibly fragile: its bones snap at a whisper, and it doesn’t hit back. It will just appear again, and eventually it may gate a psychopath into their tent while they sleep.

Instead, try to treat the Wendigo as a story catalyst. One part quest giver, one part game master’s fiat, all moral quandary. The deals it offers should be tough and interesting. It doesn’t care about morality, so this could be a chance to juxtapose the things it asks against those of whom it asks them.

You never feel like you're being watched, but you are.

For instance, maybe a prince has been bad. He kills his older brother to make himself the heir apparent, but things are falling apart. His brother managed to scream before he died, and now the guards are pounding down the corridor outside. The Wendigo stands hungrily next to the prince. There’s a young boy lost in the woods half a world away who isn’t supposed to die, and the Wendigo wants the prince to go fight off the monsters that are closing in on him. In exchange, it will take care of that body.

Alternatively, maybe the monsters were supposed to snack on that kid, but the players managed to save him. Later that night, after they dropped the boy off at a local church, a chill sweeps over the campfire. The Wendigo steps out of the flames and informs the party that they made a mistake. 

“Kill him,” it shivers. “He is supposed to die.”

It opens a portal to the sleeping child’s room at the church, and offers them something really tempting, like a second portal into the sleeping chambers of the evil wizard they have been hunting for months.

If the players do well, the Wendigo may call on them again. Offer another deal, another adventure.

But if they don’t, if they persist in wrecking fate, maybe soon they will be the ones on the other side of the portal. Maybe it’s their room the guilty princeling is sent to, holding the same knife that just made him the future king.