The New King of Callegia

Co-gamemastered by Arch Gamemaster and Looweeja during the pandemic and was hosted online. Also known as 'Cults and Crowns'.

"Your 3rd-level characters are all members of a single noble house in the kingdom of Callegia, where the long dynasty of the Jabbats has recently come to an end, with the last, tremendously inbred king dying at the ripe old age of (for the Jabbats) 33, and being unable to sire any children. One of your number must be chosen as the head of the group's noble house, and your job is to get them onto the throne. To do this, you will need to get the majority of the 6 minor noble houses to support you, and fend off the skulduggery of your two competing houses." - Campaign Announcement

The campaign focused on the attempts of the noble House Carter to gain the throne of Callegia, and use their magitech to better the lives of people in the kingdom. The major members of House Carter were:

Percy Carter, the man running, he's outgoing, and he's a big time gambler. He's human. He's also largely responsible for magitech.

Davelyn Carter, his righthand man, a prime advisor and a body guard, he's been working for the family for some time (He's a 300 y.o. dwarf). A little gruff,but he believes in the house, and is a little worried about the new leader's capabilities, but believes in the house.

Marta Elfblood**,** a hired sword, another bodyguard of sorts, but not the kind that works as a court adviser, he is a counterintelligence operative and a spy for their house who previously worked with House Wormwood, and an elf. He is an anarchist from the forest who works for the highest bidder.

Frey Lee Rossum (of course an anime trope) the childhood best friend who entertains the Fey, is a court adviser and is good at talking to people and in charge of diplomatic affairs, public relations and bargaining. Super lazy and laid back. He is originally from house Rossum and a half elf.

Lastly, Uncle Ahab is Percy's uncle. Ahab provides moral support but also knows the people and advises his nephew on how to behave. Mother came from House Rossum, very distantly related.

The campaign itself started off in the Carter Manor, shortly after the announcement of the election. The PCs were lounging in the 'Pillow Maelstrom', a large, circular room filled with nothing but pillows, and discussing their methods to get Percy to win the election.

However, they were shortly interrupted by Mia Maller, daughter of the head of House Maller, who proposed marriage to Percy Carter, and declared that if he accepted, she would induce House Wormwood to vote for Percy.

Percy, rather disinclined to give up the card of marriage so early, began proposing wagers, and he and Mia haggled back and forth until it was agreed that he would marry Mia if she could also get House Goodfarms onboard.

Soon after Mia left, Jeremiah Baxtersmith showed up, and Percy received him in House Carter's throne room - a bit like the Sistine chapel, only covered with wizardly graffiti from past Carters - and they had a lovely time trying to outmatch each other in terms of impressive chairs. The grandiose iron lazy-boy of the Carters can outmatch pretty much anything, but unfortunately Jeremiah was able to match it in terms of height, due to having a levitating leather recliner.

"Throne room has tons of art from the wizards, like Sistine Chapel. And a comfy sitting area in the middle. With big couches. Has a red carpeted conveyor belt to get you there. And a lazy-boy throne, built iron throne style. Enormous. 12 feet tall, 5 feet off the ground. Raises and lowers so you can get on." - GM notes.

Jeremiah and Carter chatted quite a bit, made some veiled threats and insults, and then Jeremiah rolled off with his whole entourage, and the Carters were finally able to get down to business.

During the next few days, they did a bit of plotting, bounced around a bit, and visited the Witch Market, where Ahab acquired a potion to fix Davelyn's heartbreak over his long-dead wife, which he gifted to him. They also visited House Rossom, and met Frey's mother, a lovely lady named Brenda, who did her best to feed them up - and had begun arranging a marriage for Frey with a noble lady from out of the kingdom - the charming Delilah Dickenhorse, whom Frey was able to meet for the first time during this visit. The chatter soon turned to the topic of horses, unicorns, and other such creatures, with the mention of a unicorn running around near House Goodfarms.

Mia got back to them around this time, and said she'd managed to work House Goodfarms over to the idea of supporting House Carter, but that they'd still need to pop over and help finalize things. They did so, but not without popping into House Baxtersmith on the way. Interestingly enough, they found a bit of internal turmoil within that house. It turned out that Meaghan Baxtersmith, Jeremiah's mother, was not entirely pleased about her son's choice to run for the throne, due to the fact that he was only in his twenties, and she deemed him inexperienced. The Carters, after some further persuasion, had Meaghan Baxtersmith set them a challenge - they would come over again, and she would ask them nine riddles to test their acumen. If they could answer all nine correctly, she would get her son out of the race for the throne, with the reasoning being that if Percy and his entourage were clever enough to answer her master riddling, they were likely to be clever enough to damage her son quite a bit in the race for the throne.

After this, the Carters proceeded over to House Goodfarms and had a chat with them. During this meeting, Davelyn opted to use a rather invasive mind reading power on Karen Susberg, who was representing House Goodfarms, which had some interesting repercussions later on.

The Carters left Goodfarms, with the latter having said that they would back them - though with a rather aggrieved undertone. On the ride back, Percy and Mia began haggling again, due to the fact that Mia hadn't outright won over the Goodfarms, and he decided to let pure chance decide the outcome - should Mia happen to spy a unicorn as they were travelling through Goodfarm lands, he would consider the matter done, and marry her. Mia did, and so Percy was caught.

The Carters arrived back at their manor, and not long after, received a barrel of fine wine from the Goodfarms - one made in the dwarven style. Recalling that Karen Susberg had not been very happy with them after they'd left, they subjected the wine to spells that cured disease and poison, and sensed magic, but didn't come up with anything too unusual. Davelyn had a good look at the wine, which had a fair amount of pulp in it, but nothing too unusual, and so it was pronounced good.

The Carters, and every single one of the servants, then had a wine party. A really, really big one. The next day, after the headaches had been cleared away by some magical tonics, they ended up calling on Meaghan Baxtersmith once more, and engaged in a mighty contest of riddles. There was great cleverness on both sides, but the Carters prevailed, and Meaghan promised they would see no more of Jeremiah in the race to the throne.

The Carters then rolled on over to House Rossum, where they engaged in various preparations for Frey's wedding, and attempted to win the rather dour head of House Rossum, Frey's uncle Brandoth, over to their side. Unfortunately, Brandoth was not very inclined towards the Carters, considering magic to be a rather messy thing, and unsuitable for a ruling house to be heavily involved with. Percy ultimately brought up the topic of what Davelyn had seen happening in Karen Susberg's mind at House Goodfarms - ritual animal sacrifices to a creature in the lake - and also mentioned that the Baxtersmiths, who Brandoth had expressed interest in supporting, were no longer running, and cast some doubt on the wholesomeness of the Tulaks. Ultimately, though, Brandoth remained resolute in not backing the Carters, and talk turned to Frey's wedding.

Frey was by now very friendly with Delilah and her father, Charles Dickenhorse, and was having a wonderful time riding around and talking about horses and fairies. Around this time, he also popped in to visit House Rossum's biggest secret - his undead, rooted-into-a-crypt-by-black-veins, many-greats grandfather, Gareth Rossum. During that visit, they talked a bit about Frey's wedding, and then Gareth began muttering about corruption, at which point Frey headed off, as undead Gramps seemed to want him to consume some bizzare necromantic substance in order to 'purge the corruption'.

That night, some of the Carters began noticing bumps, boils, dryness of skin, and food poisoning-like symptoms.

The Carters then resumed their normal rounds - plotting ways to gain the throne at Carter manor. The topic of what Davelyn had seen in Karen Susberg's mind was discussed further. During this time, the group also made a trip to House Brewer, which turned out to be something along the lines of a giant, polyamorous commune, with tons of alcohol, and some devils popping out of fires. During negotiations, Brendan Brewer, head of the family, suggested marrying one of his daughters to Percy. Percy, already having agreed to marry Mia Maller, suggested that a union with Davelyn might also be a possibility, and both Brendan and Davelyn accepted the idea. Thus, Davelyn ended up going around the various pubs with Dina brewer, a charming halfling lass, and the two chatted about their differences as a fairly proper middle-aged advisor to House Carter, and a far less proper, and somewhat younger, member of House Brewer.

During the partying at House Brewer, the odd symptoms of the group began increasing in severity, but most of it was put down to the copious amounts of alcohol being consumed.

Afterwards, the group headed back to Carter manor, slept off the hangovers, and awoke to find an army on their doorstep. The group quickly leapt into action, and invited the leaders of the army and some soldiers inside, only to find that the army was led by none other than Brandoth Rossum, working alongside Brenda Rossum and Jeremiah Baxtersmith. Meaghan Baxtersmith, it seemed, had underestimated her son's desire for power, and once he had realized who was sabotaging his campaign, he had her chained up. Percy and the others discovered this when the chained Meaghan was brought into the manor, and Jeremiah launched into a tirade about the whole business.

Brandoth cut Jeremiah off, however, and launched into a lovely, flowery speech about how he was now running for the throne, and how the Carters ought to join him. The Carters, particularly Frey, realized that something very odd was going on, especially since both Brandoth and Brenda looked much younger than they had previously.

Frey, upon hearing them mention corruption, immediately connected the dots, and realized that Gareth was involved in this. Things then got very, very exciting, as a whole lot of information spilled out, including people being corrupted by an evil force living in the lake in the middle of the kingdom, Brenda's idea to marry Jeremiah, since she was now quite youthful, and Frey's father was long out of the picture, and Jeremiah's idea of ruling the kingdom as a 'vice-king' beside Brandoth. Despite Jeremiah stressing his own importance in all these matters, despite Brandoth looming over him, Percy Carter's summary of the situation was quite accurate; "I'm sorry... but you're his bitch."

Jeremiah was less than happy with such a blunt summary of the situation.

Fortunately, there was soon a new topic to be discussed - the possibility of Percy's share in this leadership. The snag, however, was that Brandoth required all the Carters to submit to Gareth's 'cleansing of corruption', which they were pretty sure was a mind-control strategy, due to Brandoth previously having absolutely no intention of running for the throne. Indeed, as Frey pointed out, the honourable role of House Rossum was always to serve and support, but never rule.

However, large armies speak loudly, and eventually the Carters were hustled off to House Rossum, along with most of the army. They were then sent in one at a time to Gareth, who ended up feeding his 'special sauce' concoction to Ahab Carter - who then began vomiting out blood, chunks of flesh, and horrific creatures like elongated shrimp.

Frey, who had up until this point been engaged in a dramatic discussion with his grandfather about how there wasn't any proof of corruption, immediately changed his opinion on the situation, and began getting the others who were entering the crypt to undergo this purging process, as well as doing so himself.

Unfortunately, Percy, being the last one to enter the crypt, and seeing his friends bound up in black veins, looking deathly pale and vomiting blood, understandably misunderstood the situation, and began dueling the black veins that came his way, ultimately escaping the crypt with an unconscious Davelyn, and getting him past the guards with the explanation of medical attention - a fair one, since the guards clearly had no idea of what was actually going on, and Davelyn was looking awful.

The rest of the group, once they'd purged themselves and Marta had burned anything infectious-looking to ash, thanked Gareth, and dashed out of the tomb after Davelyn and Percy, who had acquired horses and ridden off. The rest of the group followed suit, and eventually caught up with them on the way back to Carter manor, where a tense standoff ensued. (Oh, and at some point during all this, Frey chatted with his patron, put himself even more into debt, and banished the slight mind-control effects that Gareth had included in the cure. How did he pay off this debt? Well, he invited his patron Artorias the party fairy, and anyone else Artorias wanted to bring, to his wedding.)

Marta, being Marta, decided to let them sort it out, and traveled over to Carter manor, which Percy had almost reached before Frey and Ahab caught up with him. Upon arriving at the manor, which had begun moving, Marta found that the servants were now dressed in odd robes, and acting very strange. They offered her some lovely fruit and seafood, which secretly contained magically altered lake larvae, she chowed down, and thus ended up joining the glorious hivemind of the abomination living in the massive lake in the center of the kingdom.

Marta, being naturally chaotic, thought this was most glorious. Marta then rushed back to the standoff on the lakeshore. At this point, Percy decided to avoid going through Gareth's method, and instead just had the group kill him, transferring his soul into a ring. Unfortunately, the lake monster then animated his highly-corrupted corpse, and the group ended up chatting with the being that had been happily stuffing the various noble families full of mind-control larvae.

However, the conversation (which was mainly just them trying to find ways for said being to *not* overthrow the kingdom for its own ends) was soon cut short by Marta finding a unique way to solve the problem for the lake monster, and combining two bags of holding to catapult everyone except Frey and Percy's body into the astral plane.

Frey and Percy's body stared at each other, and then Frey realized that Percy was on the guest list for his wedding. Which was the next day. And it was dusk. Oh boy.

By the time the wedding actually began, Frey had had almost no sleep, and been trying to keep an eye on Percy's body. The festivities were marked by vast amounts of fairies, nymphs, old gods, and biker alicorns showing up. In other words, the precursor to complete chaos. At this point, everyone at the wedding also had a nice view of House Carter circling the lake, hurling fireballs and burning things... a rather fitting metaphor for the situation.

Meanwhile, the others had ended up in 1997 Chicago, Earth. Earth having far less ambient magic to draw on than Pthfnder, it took them a little while to gain their bearings. They ended up talking to a cat fey, who led them to another cat fey, and after some discussion, pointed them to The Silver Dollar, a pawnshop run by a trans cuban woman named Latifa. After some discussion about local portals, the group bought everything in the shop, including a lot of computer parts and guns, and Latifa, after a few questions about the views held on the world they came from, decided to emigrate.

The group headed out to Lake Chicago on a boat driven by one of Latifa's friends, with all the contents of the shop nicely packed up and waterproofed. They then ended up waiting for the full moon to rise, and leaping through a portal about thirty feet underwater. This was helped along by employing some water manipulation magic.

The group ended up at Frey's wedding, where the chaos was going along nicely. There was dancing, singing, drinking, Percy's body trying to spike drinks with larvae, and a senile Bush god wandering around and growing bushes.

Once there, the group added to the chaos, and Latifa eventually headed off. Marta joined the efforts of Percy's body to spike drinks, the actual ceremony happened, one thing led to another, and suddenly all the guests are writhing in agony as all the wine in them is turned to seeds, weaponry, and writhing nymph-spawn. Not fun. Ahab snapped at that point, and started purging things with bolts of blue fire.

Just before chaos descended, the news had come in that House Tulak had decided to call a vote for the throne, so the group organized themselves, tried to get some of the less-mangled wedding guests to help them, and headed off for Castle Jabbat, where the vote is taking place.

Carter manor had by now returned to its accustomed place, and Percy's body was running towards it, so the group hunted it down and killed it properly. Upon realizing the manor was occupied by infected servants, they hightailed it over to Mia Maller's place, where they discussed strategy with her, and Marta ultimately ended up doing her in.

**Details needed ^**

So, the lot of them headed over to Jabbat castle, with some discussion on the way of how to deal with the situation. Percy was able to communicate from his ring, and had by now gotten over the shock of being stored in it. He had intended for Davelyn to resurrect him with the spell 'Revivify' in his plan, but it turned out the actual spell worked a bit differently than it was thought. The idea that was settled on was for one of the group to have Frey project an illusion over them so that they seemed to be Percy, and convey Percy's words from the ring, which they would be wearing.

Note: At this point, things get a little odd, due to a large disruption, the campaign going 4 sessions past the predicted endpoint, and several other factors.

The group attempted to sway many people to their side before the voting began, only to be checked by Marta's efforts to infect oodles of people with Carter magic-enhanced larvae, which ended up corrupting NPCS at a rather extreme rate.

When the voting began, there was a bit of a continuity error - each house was supposed to have gotten one vote, but now the major characters of each house got one. However, that was soon overshadowed by House Carter attempting to stir up rebellion against the vote, failing (due mainly to the aforementioned ridiculous amount of infected people at this point), and attempting escape, which was checked by a magical shield springing up around Jabbat castle, powered by the infected House Carter servants, who were performing a ritual.

The castle was then swarmed by infected from the lake. Davelyn merged himself with the stone of the floor to escape, Ahab went down hurling blasts of blue fire, Marta simply gloried in the company of the other infected, and Frey escaped the shield by means of a magical window that he could place in solid surfaces, bringing Percy along with him.

Ultimately, he probably ended up at Artorias's endless parties.

And that is how the Kingdom of Callegia fell.

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# House details

Main: House Baxtersmith. Married into the royalty many times. Controls the money in the area, as they have a large mine
and mint platinum, gold, silver and copper

Candidate running: Jeremiah Baxtersmith. Late 20s. Very intelligent, but awfully young for a politician. He lacks somewhat in maturity. He has much ambition, but he is reckless.

Key figure: Meaghan Baxtersmith. Jeremiah's mother and the matriarch of the house. She's also quite intelligent, but doesn't quite have as much good will with the overarching population to run for politics herself. As much as she loves her son, she doesn't yet think he's ready for politics, even if he is capable. She more or less plans to use him as
a puppet to control the country, should it be necessary. However, if someone is able to beat her in a game of wits, that would be one thing to get her to support them... or fear them depending on how the interaction goes.

-          Has Taj Mahal style home.

-          Outriddled, Meaghan is in chains, Jeremiah backing Brandoth Rossum.

House Wormwood

Known for their... well, wood. The Wormwoods are a somewhat newer house. As thing have become somewhat more industrial the Wormwoods were able to make a lot of money in the logging business. However the key to their success throughout many generations has been environmentally friendly logging operations. Rather than clearcutting areas completely, they selectively log, and use magic to help grow more trees and keep the forests healthy and alive.

Key figure: Hector Wormwood. He's kinda stingy. He's cheap. He lacks in patience, and lazy. And he's greedy. In it for himself, not the house. Unfortunately, he also has little regard for his family's legacy. Especially now that he's the new leader of the house and knows the big secret. The Wormwood's have a secret gold mine they've been using for years to
stay afloat and a duplicate minter. This makes him a little harder to buy off.

Heavily influenced by a circle of clever military advisors. Hector might be ‘removed’ by them if he gets too
troublesome.

Secondary 2: House Goodfarms. This house isn't a family, but rather a group of semi wealthy farmers who control the food market and crops. They value safe farming and money. They also greatly appreciate government funded pest removal.

Key figure: Karen Susberg. She's voted in as the main representative for House Goodfarms because she's well spoken. She's married with no kids, and her husband does a majority of the farming. She's a face more than anything else. It's more a matter of helping the farming community as a whole to get their support.

Secondary 3: House Rossum. Responsible for transportation and basic development of infrastructure. When this kingdom was first being established, an early member of House Rossum, Gareth Rossum, began drawing up plans for infrastructure within the city to create efficiency.

Key figure(s): Brandoth Rossum the 3rd. Current head, human. Seems smart. Wants to keep his secrets.

Gareth Rossum. His genius did not pass down quite the way he had hope via the next generation, so he became quite skilled in the dark arts and necromancy and taught his son and daughter how to periodically revive him in a non-physical form. The plan was to oversee development for a couple more generations. Cut to hundreds of years later and now all he wants is peace, which it seems he can't have.

Most members of the Rossum family are well
versed in necromancy.

-         Brandoth has a sister named Brenda. Extravagant, yelling, charismatic. Flamboyant.

Main: House Tulak.

Candidate: Thomas Tulak, in his late forties. His mouth is too wide, he has little hair, and his eyes bulge. Has a fondness for gold jewelry, and is generally respected as being an intelligent and honourable fellow.

Known for: They're well known for controlling water traffic, and are a very wealthy, old house, second only to the house that
was previously ruling. It's rumoured that the bloodline has begun to
degenerate, as the last few generations have developed a rather sickly look to them, sometimes compared to a toad.

The twist? Over the last few generations, the entire family has fallen into the clutches of the Thing In The Lake, and it was able to work its way up from snaring the ferry-men, to snaring the family themselves. In other words, one of the candidates for the throne has been converted into a Lovecraftian cult, and are in constant contact with their eldritch master. The TITL is the REAL key figure here, and it's trying to manipulate people into getting close enough to its underwater tunnels to be converted. Needless to say, we should try to get the players to accept an invitation to tour the waterways.

Secondary: House Maller.

Known for: House Maller controls virtually all the mills in the kingdom. If you want to have your wheat ground to flour, chances are you're using a mill they own, and they take a portion of the fee. Generally thought of as a quiet, friendly house.

Key NPC: Mia Maller, 23 and vivacious. Her father, Markos Maller, is the head of the family, but Mia is generally able to wind her father around her finger. What Mia wants, Mia gets.

What they ask for: This is where the twist comes in, and where you start realizing just what I have in mind for these houses. So the thing is, the Mallers are all devil-worshippers. What Mia will ask for is an alliance by marriage into the PC-controlled house, but in actuality, that's just a ploy to get the head of the house to accept an invitation to the Maller Manor - and once they're thoroughly enamoured by Mia, she'll try to initiate an amorous encounter, poison them with a concoction painted on her very sharp nails, and steal their skin using dark magic, so that another member of the Maller family can take on their likeness indefinitely, and then the Mallers will back the now Maller-controlled PC house.

Of course, if the PCs can manage to get Mia out of the way so that she can't order everyone around, her father will back the PCs for a lesser price - freedom of religion in the kingdom, so that if the house's diabolism is ever discovered, they'll have something to point to as an excuse.

Secondary: House Brewer

Known for: They make all the alcohol. All the breweries are commanded by them. As a result, the people love them, and they are probably the most popular noble house among the common people.

Key NPC: Brendan Brewer, the jovial, plump head
of the family.

What they ask for: Guess what? They're also devil-worshippers, and they know that the Mallers are devil-worshippers, but the Mallers don't know any of this.

The Brewers are old-school worshippers, and have been at it for far longer than the Mallers, who only began a generation or so ago. So while the Mallers dabble in diabolism, the Brewers are well-established worshippers of Asmodeus, and they don't want a rival diabolic house.

Thus, the Brewers will ask the players to investigate the Mallers under some false premise, perhaps pretending that they think the Mallers are dealing with a rival kingdom, because the Brewers know that if the PCs fiddle long enough, they'll find the diabolism, and then the Brewers can sit back and watch the problem of the Mallers be solved - and swoop in afterwards and buy up all the mills so that they can brew alcohol without having to send their wheat and other ingredients to be milled by another family.

Secondary: House Dalvar

Known for: Lawyers, sheriffs, and everything legal. Not a lot of people like them, as you might imagine.

Key NPC: Dallas Dalvar, head of the house, and somehow managing to channel the spirit of Texas.

What they ask for: They'll ask for a couple small things first, and then get around to what they really want - for the head of the PC house to sign a binding magical contract that will inflict terrible punishment on them if they ever break a law - because this entire house is slavishly devoted to the concept of Law. They're all lawful stupid, and act like it. They have little modron statues, they have one on their crest, and they are, in their entirety, the most uptight, stuck-up, pompous bunch of windbags you could ever find - but only once you get to know them. At first, they seem all nice - but once they get what they want, they're the most annoying group of magical lawyers you'll ever have the misfortune of meeting, and once the PCs realize that, they're going to despise this house.