#ALSO. if you're looking for a radioactivity metaphor in fantasy fiction HERE'S YOUR METAPHOR (free magic)

[utilitycaster]

I've alluded to this before but one of the possible stories I could see happening for Campaign 3 is essentially the story from the Old Kingdom books by Garth Nix, aka one of my formative fantasy series. The basic gist of the story (spoilers for a 20 year old book) told in the original trilogy is that an ancient evil, sealed behind a number of wards by seven of the powerful creators of the world (it was the 9th creator; the 8th abstained) is unearthed, and the agents doing this spark unrest and war (sound familiar?). Those seven creators were largely put into the system of magic and no longer exist as independent entities, with a couple exceptions. Ultimately, people acting as the avatars of six of those creators; the remnant of the seventh; and the remnant of the eighth who had originally not participated are able to seal it once more.

While this definitely has, as I mentioned above, plenty of parallels to Campaign 3 the part that actually made me connect the dots (since, let's be real, this is the plot to a whole lot of epic fantasy) is the concept of avatars of long-dormant or dead powers reenacting an ancient rite of sealing. Ashton and whoever wields the spark of Rau'shan will stand for those titans, who once sealed Predathos; and I wonder if the Raven Queen (who post-dates the original sealing; her predecessor was presumably present) and the Luxon (not mentioned) will have a role to play this time.