#decided not to play the edgelord rogue and stole angel baby's personality

[eveninglottie]

hello i am interested in some more deets about song of sunder 👀

WELL SINCE YOU ASKED smash cut to about two years ago when I was so badly wanting to play dnd that I just threw seven characters into a half-baked world and played pretend with myself (I’m not kidding there was actual dice involved). since then it’s been brewing in the back of my head and I only really started to think about it seriously last year. I’m sure some of it comes from my obsession with CR and my fic brain going “dothisdothisdothis” because it’s very much a ‘formative text’ for me, but it’s been this nice little feel good place for me to go back to, especially this year. 

it’s actually at the top of my list in terms of what I’ve been thinking about diving into (since I apparently cannot write fic anymore lol it’s fine), and I’ve been working on it a lot recently just fleshing out the world and the character arcs. 

though, one of the things I have been considering seriously is just how you write a story like this, in a format meant to be read rather than experienced like any other dnd campaign. like is it just seven povs with separate chapters (a la game of thrones) or, and this is the one I’m drawn to but have no idea what it would turn out like, is it a story told from a third person omniscient narrator, weaving interchangeably through perspectives just like a dm would do in an actual game. like a screenplay but with prose. dnd is such a subjective experience, and while a lot of people have had success adapting liveplays to other visual mediums, like animation or graphic novels, I’ve never seen someone do it in fiction. I especially have never done it lol. I only ever write from distinct povs and switch them out, so this would be hard. maybe. I haven’t actually tried it yet. 

the story itself is pretty standard high fantasy dnd, a ‘sundered’ world where the planes all kind of smushed up against each other (familiar? :P) with a bunch of different factions and nations and secrets and wars and people trying to be gods and all that jazz, with a group of assholes thrown into the mix to become big damn heroes (the bones of the world are actually what I used to flesh out DW but shh don’t tell anyone). every arc (9, one for each character and a beginning and an ending) would open with ari, the bard, almost like she’s telling a story to the reader. 

my pie in the sky ideas for it would be some kind of serialized fiction, if I could get my ass in gear to actually do it. I’ve thought about how amazing it would be to do an audio drama one day with different voice actors and music and sound effects and all that shit, like oh my god do I want to do that. I have no idea how to do that, obviously, but that would be The Dream. I’ve even gone so far as to pick out a theme song, because I clearly don’t have enough things to worry about in my life. 

(it’s a lullaby, like a story, told by a siren, like a bard, get it, get it)

and because I’m feeling indulgent and I spent all day making these face refs (thank you, you little monster) the aforementioned assholes (they all have multiple classes and subclasses because I have the Too Much gene): 

ari (ariannai), an autumn eladrin bard/druid (college of glamour and lore/circle of dreams) from the feywild, soft and sweet and perfectly capable of gutting anyone who tries to fuck with her, has a gold pseudodragon familiar named trill whom she loves like a child, plays a masterful mandolin, her voice is magic (literally), actual snow white, leliana and josephine were huge inspo for her

kayd, a human fighter/warlock (eldritch knight/hexblade and undying) from the frozen north, a charming sailor with a thirst to prove himself (listen I love fjord a lot okay) and a cursed sword (don’t worry about it), likes purple and flirting with everything that moves, frequently gets into trouble because of this, but he can talk his way out of a jail cell (and has!) so it’s been fine so far (don’t think about the cursed sword)

verity, a half-tiefling/half-drow monk/rogue (way of shadow/assassin and soul blade) from the shadowfell, a ruthless thief and a terrible shit-starter running from a dark past, she has a pet rat named poe and loves gossip, looks like a child but is actually the oldest in the group, knife girl, her horns are tiny enough to fit in a hood but not tiny enough to fit in with her elvish family so that sucked but hey they’re all dead now so who came out on top in the end

esher, a human artificer/fighter/sorcerer (battle smith/gunslinger/phoenix soul) from a bustling white city on a hill, an obnoxious noble with a long lineage and a complete disregard for politics and propriety and his own privilege (he’s a younger son so he’s usually left alone and ignored and that’s fine, obviously), he loves nerd shit and his ancient owl, hornsby, and sometimes he sets things on fire with his fingers which would be fine only he sets things on fire with his experiments as well so things are on fire a lot around him

goya (goyzadara), a half-orc/half-elf fighter/paladin/ranger (samurai/oath of the ancients/beast master), a princess in exile, honorable to a fault (which is why she was exiled), big into history and politics, finds a baby gryphon and immediately goes to pieces, Disaster Sword Lesbian, likes embarrassing men by kicking their asses in fighting rings, though she never takes the money, because she’s noble like that, has a weird obsession with dragons, does embroidery in her free time to chill out, can’t cook for shit

sabrathan, a scourge aasimar blood hunter/ranger/sorcerer (order of the ghostslayer/monster slayer/divine soul), a half feral girl from the woods who knows way too much about how to disembowel monsters three times her size, skittish and intense and maybe an angel but don’t ask her about it or she will disappear for a few hours and come back with an elk for dinner, never seen out of the company of her crossbow or her sickles, more comfortable around animals than people

theo (theoderic), a human sorcerer/wizard (runechild/school of chronurgy and conjuration and transmutation (he’s a special snowflake)), the smartest person you will ever meet and he knows it, socially awkward and unnervingly quiet, not actually an asshole just neurodivergent (but also sometimes an asshole), craves Phenomenal Cosmic Power and affection, has anime hair and terrible handwriting, Gay as Fuck

their group name would be Sirenox (the name of the last dragon seen in Sunder over five hundred years ago, whose final act was to grant a group of adventurers a boon to stop an archlich from plunging the land into eternal darkness), and I love them all very much, and definitely already have full romance arcs fleshed out for all of them, because that’s more important than worldbuilding, obviously.

so anyway there you go, my own little dnd campaign that I will probably never write, just think about wistfully until I die