Cordova: The Story So Far (Part 1 - Beginnings)
I have an ongoing D&D 3.5e campaign that I play every Monday that I'm actually really attached to. The campaign is character driven, based around a character I'd played in a separate campaign a few years before this current one. Her name is Cordelia Elizabetha Olivia Cordova VIII, or CoCo for short. And before you ask, yes that is a JoJo reference because I knew this was going to be a bizarre adventure. Her magic items are even named after artists and songs.
Our campaign starts with Cordelia running her restaurant, which is also the cathedral to the goddess of madness in the City of the Gods, the only place on the Two Continents where you can openly worship any god without fear of public discrimination. While putting together a very complex dish, she's contacted by her goddess, whom speaks to her through a herald connection. Apparently her presence is required in her homeland of Cordova, a duchy that used to be ruled over by her parents before Cordelia and her group of adventurers dethroned them and instilled Cordelia into power there. She's been gone for 7 years and had completely forgotten that she was as Queen, which would also make her wife, Sato, a Queen, and she still needs to tell Sato about it but that whole conversation can come later.
So anyway, she gathered her cohort, a tiefling sorcerer named Lisa, and took a quick detour to a monastery in Limbo (blindly plane shifting into Limbo and getting lucky) as a means to see the home plane of one of her kitchen staff (a grey slaad that she's named Steve) before she fully returns home. Here she meets with a monk named Seeker, whom her goddess tells says would come in handy during future events (and they do). The two share nicities, Cordelia is honest about her goddess's wishes, and Seeker joins the party. We return back to Cordelia's castle and it turns out the rainbow rabbit she left in charge all those years ago has gone off somewhere. She brings him back with Lesser Planar Ally and we get to work determining why Chandra (her goddess) told her to return home.
Upon going to a friend's house to both check in and catch up, she's greeted with an empty building. It seems that a few other people around town have also gone missing. Cordelia uses a Sending to ask her friend where she is, which is a dark cell. That's not enough information to go off though, so Cordelia did a Divination to determine where her friend was, and through a Knowledge (Planes) check and a bunch of problem solving, we determined that she was being held in a fortress on Acheron, a plane of ever lasting war. Before we could plane shift to Acheron, we were disrupted by a Barghest who was attacking the castle with an unknown motive. We spooked it with a show of power (we were level 15 at this point) and it started withdrawing deeper into the castle. Tracking the Barghest within the labyrinthine corridors of the castle was simple enough with a mixture of Cordelia's knowledge of the castle's layout and a handy use of Light (the spell) on one of the creatures magic items. Killing it was even easier as we were far beyond the level required to deal with it quickly.
After taking the Barghest down, and determining there were no others in the vicinity of the castle town, we left for Acheron. We had to blindly plane shift and home we landed close to her friend, and due to luck (and probably the fact that the DM didn't want us to be stuck on this one, short, adventure for more than a couple sessions) we landed within teleportation range of the fortress that her friend was being held at.
We had Seeker invisibly sneak into the fortress using a mixture of stealth and psionic powers to avoid detection. Seeker eventually reached the lower floors, leading to the dungeons. All Cordelia and Lisa had to do to get into the fortress now was scry on him and teleport to his location. Through a mixture of visual aid and luck on the dice, we were only one floor away from our destination. We fought a couple ogres with barbarian levels, survived a Forbiddance spell, and Plane Shifted back to Cordelia's castle.
Now at the castle, it's obvious that her friend has been wearing cursed manacles that cause psychic damage if they leave the forbiddance. Seeker uses a psionic power to switch their places, putting him in the manacles, which he was flexible enough to slip out of. Cordelia brought her friend, whom we'd named Isalda at this point, to the highly warded master bedroom to get some rest. Obviously people close to Cordelia were being targeted, leading her to contacting her wife, who was doing fine.
Upon leaving the room this time, Cordelia began hearing a poem in her head.
"Mary had a little lamb,
Who's fleece was white a snow."
Cordelia stopped in her tracks and asked what her goddess was going on about.
"And everywhere that Mary went,
The lamb was sure to go."
The ground began to shake as the final verse was stated. Cordelia frantically ran for a ritual chamber below the throne room (which she knew about from the previous campaign) to check and ensure that there were no residual effects from a past ritual she'd interfered with. As she went back to check on Isalda she heard another poem start up in her head.
"Mary had a little lamb,
Who's fleece was black as pit,
And everything that Mary wanted
The lamb-"
Cordelia asked her goddess to stop there, feeling a much more violent vibration this time, and Chandra obliged. She felt that something much worse would have happened had Chandra been allowed to finish the poem. She left to check on Isalda again. After becoming satisfied that her friend was alive and healing, she went about contacting her friend's mother. Isalda's mother repeated the first poem and castle shook again.
Remembering the existence of secondary ritual sight behind a trapdoor within this room, Cordelia ran to the trapdoor, opened it, rushed down the spiraling staircase, and found something in the ritual circle. Something new. A small lamb, with fleece as white as snow.
"Where's Mary?" The lamb cried out, distraught.
"Who's Mary?" Cordelia responded in kind, hesitant to approach any closer.
"She's Mary! Where's Mary?" The lamb grew more distraught, being held in by the ritual circle surrounding it.
"I don't know, little lamb."
By this point, Seeker had found his way to the hidden ritual site as well. There was a lot of back and forth between Cordelia and the Lamb. The Lamb wanting Mary, and Cordelia wanting to know who Mary was so she can either help the Lamb or warn this Mary that it's here. But neither lines of questioning go anywhere. That is, until the lamb started talking about the truth.
"Do you know the truth?" the Lamb asked Cordelia.
"I think I do." Cordelia responds, not fully understanding what the creature is asking her.
"Oh, you don't know it. Do you want to know the truth?" The lamb was starting to seem a bit more playful at this point.
This is where we paused for a moment as I thought about it both in and out of character. I eventually came to the decision that Cordelia would be curious and I wanted to know some deep lore for my DM's setting out of character. Cordelia turns to Seeker, warns him that she's going to make what's probably a very bad decision, and gives him the choice to leave before she makes said decision. Seeker steps back a bit but stays in the ritual room with Cordelia.
Cordelia says yes, and she blacks out.
When she comes to, she sees her soul, a single drop in an ocean of souls being used to power some being far beyond mortal comprehension. This being is holding something at bay, but Cordelia gains the understanding that our experiences are being used as a sort of fuel for it. The gods are only caretakers, ensuring that souls make it to this being, or group of beings, that are holding reality together. Her existence and experiences have no other purpose but to provide sustenance to some greater being. She's just a small, and insignificant battery. Cordelia tries to go forward but hears her goddess screaming for her to come back to reality. Seeker then calls for her to snap out of it, and Cordelia pulls herself from the Lamb's influence, but before the Lamb releases her, it shows Cordelia the imagery of a woman. She's seeking out knowledge to help those around her, and then she finds it, the knowledge is too much for her to bear and the woman is driven to madness from what she learned.
Cordelia breaks free from the Lamb's hold and the lamb starts desperately baaing. The ritual circle seems to be lighting up as the Lamb gets more distraught. Seeker strikes the ritual circle, breaking it and the Lamb disappears, the energy exploding out into a shockwave that we just barely avoid.
Cordelia goes into a corner as soon as she returns to the master bedroom and begins crying, she tells Seeker what she learned and tries to rationalize her existence. Then she here's a pop of displaced air through the balcony window. Standing up to see who it is, she finds her mother staring back at her with a gentle smile, dressed in robes made of black wool.
