The Ultimate Player Convergence

1 year after starting my Divine Council setup, something spectacular happened

It’s funny how world building tropes can resurface organically when players are given space to be creative together.

As explained in my posts about the setup of my campaign, each of my 15 players are running a god, a civilization, and at least 1 player character.

Since the game’s inception, I’ve lost 2 players for various life-related reasons, and gained 2 new players who were excited to participate. The new players already had friends in the group, so they got along well, but something that I thought would be completely detrimental to my game is the lack of evil gods, since both players I lost were evil-aligned. And who wants to play a game like this where everyone is aligned for good?

The Dark Triad

Thankfully, one of my new players, named Mason, opted to play an evil god of death and darkness, using aztec-themed dark elves called Mictari as his player race (not like the drow of faerun, but dark elves who drew their power from blood sacrifice). And thus Xipe Totec joined the game.

This left me with 4/15 players running evil gods, and one of those four really aligned with the good and neutral gods on most issues, so it was really just 3 of them for most purposes. We had Veilith, the night priestess of sin and vice, Khar’Aeres, the god of war, and now Xipe Totec, the god of darkness and death.

It would be a while after Xipe Totec joined that a major move was made. The three of them colluded within the game rules last month on a surprise attack on Taranach, the halfling capital. Khar’Aeres lead the assault, which was fitting, as he brought the most fire-power with him. Xipe Totec joined the assault and allowed the use of his underground bases for a sneak attack, and Veilith used her magic to gain a potential ally in a dragon roosting nearby. What a beautiful and organic warlord/rogue/priestess triad they had built together.

The halfling city was well fortified, had many player characters rushing to defend it, and had its own alliance with a dragon in the area, meaning it would be one of the most difficult targets on the map for the dark triad to claim. This did not deter the evil gods, who tried anyway, despite being outmatched by the dozen civilizations rushing to fund the halflings’ defense and the swarm of player characters rushing to help Taranach within the week they had to prepare.

The offense was outmatched and it was obvious, even with the little time given to defense to prepare due to the sneak attack. Veilith’s dragon ally could have helped them, but she was not loyal and instead of helping the offense fight, she took a huge bribe from the defense to sit out. This did break the bank of the defenders, but it meant that the battle was all but lost for the offense, who had nearly lost hope by this time.

Except the war wasn’t lost yet.

The dragon ally was one of two paths to victory the offense had and they lost it. The other path was much more absurd and hinged on a player character bard named Zatarain doing the one thing he was explicitly told never to do.

The Story of Zatarain

Zatarain was a trumpet-playing bard who had gotten lucky on more than one occasion, making him quite rich. He was not his group’s leader, but he was able to fund a lot of their adventures with his gambling winnings. His group had been given a quest by a player-controlled civilization only a few months back: destroy the relic of Ecrecer, the shark god.

The player controlling Ecracer was one of the two I lost from the game, so the sharks were in decline, but his holy relic remained in the possession of the orisha, who worshipped the god Sartori (also player controlled). The relic was evil and harbored a thousand year old grudge against the halflings after the halfling-shark wars that happened in the 4x game setup a year ago. The orisha trusted Zatarain’s group with the task of destroying the relic, which would mean a trip to the forge of destruction in the north. The orisha warned them that the relic was evil and should never be used under any circumstances. The group took the relic and went on their way.

But they didn’t destroy it.

The relic remained with them for several months and their quest to destroy it took a back seat to other curiosities they found themselves entangled in, setting the stage for Zatarain’s decision.

As the war was announced and everyone gathered around Taranach, Zatarain announced that he would use the relic in the halfling’s defense. I expected his group to remind him it was evil, to tell him no, that he wouldn’t get the relic. But none of this happened. Zatarain was handed the relic of the shark god and sent to Taranach to defend. Not one mention of the relics evil powers, the warning they recieved, or the 1,000 year old grudge it had specifically against the halflings. They let him do it.

I asked Zatarain to make a saving throw upon attuning to the relic, which he failed. He didn’t ask what it was for, he didn’t spend resources (mana) to reroll, he didn’t ask anyone else to spend resources to help him, he just accepted the result and figured he would learn eventually. And he did learn.

When the battle lines were drawn and decisions of who would be on what side were finalized, before the battle dice were rolled, I launched into a story about the thousand year old grudge, the relic, and Zatarain’s decision. Some players laughed, others gasped, and there were cries of “what did we do?”

Zatarain would be fighting for the offense with the dark triad.

Now, of course, one player character wasn’t going to hand the dark triad a certain victory. The fight would still be close and the halflings still had the upper hand. But the dice spoke, and not only were the dark triad declared victorious, they captured 2 player characters as prisoners of war, wounded the dragon, who retreated to her lair, and took Taranach as their own. The margin of victory was tiny. Zatarain’s foolish decision alone had swung the outcome. No one expected this.

It was the talk of the players for days after, people are excited, some are nervous that they could be the next target. A new age of darkness has descended upon the land, and the fact that it looked remarkably similar to Lord of the Rings was not lost on the players. They had together, accidently created an alternate universe where Frodo did not destroy the ring. And it was the ultimate player-driven outcome.