Saga of the Gaoler of Ruin Campaign Introduction

### Beginnings

The Fear Dearg, humanoids with rat heads and rodent-like features, have grown in power.  They have grown in numbers in Kelenor, the capital of Hilden, and formerly capital of the known world, the now crumbled empire of Vaanth.  Long has Hilden been a largely human society, but in the previous months the Fear Dearg have gone from being stories of scuttling figures coming from the ancient sewer networks of the capital to being fellow-citizens.

The Dearg have pushed beyond mere acceptance, starting nothing short of a political campaign to shame the people of Kelenor for their behavior toward them in the previous decades. Their efforts in the previous month have been precipitous.

The former officer of Kelenor, now a wanted man, Captain Leon Phelps, is seen as a boogeyman, a marauding human who relentlessly slaughtered Dearg, destroying their city while creating a scheme to look the hero by halting a supposed assassination that he himself was found to have coordinated.  Then, having broke free of the city jail, the murderous thug and his cronies fled into the hills after assaulting a female Dearg, and nearly killing the child of an influential member of Kelenorian elite.

The Dearg, desperate to halt this marauding, snapped and fought back, taking several blocks of the city in the so-called Goldgrass Incident.  The Senate saw fit to sue for peace, and executed a senator found to have been sending Phelps as his lieutenant.    The kingpin of the whole matter was former Senator Alton Verdo III of Kelenor.  Under torture, called for by his former fellow senators, he confessed to having invited his right-hand man, Phelps, to fake an assassination attempt on his fellow Senator, Melburin Desart in an attempt to ingratiate himself to Desart and ensnare him in Verdo and Phelps plots to slaughter the people.

Senator Desart has aided the Dearg acceptance movement by introducing Seer Rivek and his work in battling the Telanian menace.  Rivek and his Lancerbuck detachment have aided the people of Hilden trhough the month of Soln, in throwing back then encamped Heródian knights from castletown Dintedgel.  Rivek called out to his god and cast out the invaders.  The Hero-Priest of Dintedgel has returned, with human faithful among his flock, and has won the hearts of Kelenor and looks to win Verdo's Senate seat.

Meanwhile strife continues as the working-class grow Dearg resentment and hate, while Rivek and his ilk become the darlings of the Visibœr and the upper class.  Desart, a favorite of the people, has championed Rivek, his progressive ideals toward the Dearg running into the antipathy of the people of Kelenor and wider Hilden.

### What Sort of Campaign?

You shall be either citizens or sojourners in Kelenor, finding yourself enmeshed in racial strife, antipathy, political manipulation, and in spite of the mundanity of the world of Caligos, hints of the otherworldly drift near.  Will you stay in the capital?  Choose a side?  Flee the strife?  Or carve into the mysterious forces that seem determined to assail the already struggling lives of the people of Hilden?

What sort of campaign do you wish to play in? Are you as a group seeking more of a roleplay experience? Do you all want battles? Large scale like going to war or the small scale of adventurers casting about in dank depths and dungeons?

Additionally, you may have noted that several of the world in the intro are hyperlinked through a wiki. That is what you are on, the wiki of Saga of the Gaoloer of Ruin. Feel free to look around a learn a few things about the world around you.

You will start out as regular people, regardless of race, at level 0. Thats right, level 0. I will explain it all in time, it will frankly make sense shortly after you make your characters. I would suggest you make more than one character, and have in mind which you would like to play first. Know that this is a fiercely dangerous world and death is very possible. Additionally, and quite importantly, know that experience points are not accrued by grinding down monsters, as if this were some cliche MMO, but xp is earned as you spend gold on things that your character does not need. That might sound crazy too, but it will make sense. Finally, keep in mind that I use the "gritty realism" rule for rest in my campaign, and that, simply states that short rests are 8 hours and long rests are a week.