So here's the story

Be warned, this whole post is more than a spoiler, it spoils everything about DiD, start to finish, and what was planned for the future. If you hate plot arcs, design, and/or, well, spoilers, then you're gonna hate this post.

...

I don’t think the whole game here was an ad hoc hack. So, here’s the story. Short version: this was Zelba’s story, and Master P’s mainly to blame. Vrill was just driving the bus.

First, a lot of this was hidden or non-obvious, but I think if you’ll look back, some things will fit. I’m also not saying this was all designed from the start- actually, I think designing a little master plan at the beginning is a sure way to make a bad game. Leaving a lot partially sketched out or unclear is a DM trick I’ve used for years; fill in the details of things as we go. For example, the dreams and prophecies I only loosely had any idea of what to do with… the whole Abbey/Zelba twinning was planned (just look at the names- as close as it comes without being too obvious I hoped), as was a lot of other ‘twinning’, and I hoped as a sidequest Marivhon would pursue Shi Jukka to the castle under the sea, but mostly it was just colorful language I hoped to be able to pull in someday.

I like happy accidents. The ‘Contrarian of Grisbane’ twinning is another example of something that just happened that fit in well to one of the major game themes. Even the game beginning in the ruined temple of Zelba is sort of neat.

I also like keeping things ambiguous, to allow for multiple interpretations. At first blush, this looks like a typical PCs vs the evil wizard story. Dig a bit deeper, and it's about Abbey and Zelba, self-identity, god, family and work. Dig a bit deeper, and you get back to an evil wizard story- only with a different wizard. Plus a love story.

I don’t like revealing the, er, ‘little master p’ during the game, I think it detracts. But since it’s all over now, you might find this interesting. First main note: it’s all about the character names. There might be plot holes- it’s not like I’ve been laboring over this weighty manuscript with an editor’s help. Anyway, I had originally wanted to keep going with these characters after Vrill was dead: the idea was a set of three campaigns, mimicking the three characters in the mirror world: Armek, Ravenous, and Sarah the Devourer. But nope. Flush. Without further introduction, I give you… the backstory of Descent into Depths.


1) Master Parsifal Meeks and two other guys (who collectively formed the Potion Guild Board of Executives) were looking for a way to cheat death, and wouldn’t you know, they found it. Found it under Grito of all places: a gate that they used to summon Zelba and extract some of her goddesshood into special death-preventing philters. (Note: this is the grandfather of all clichéd sinister RPG plans, so I sort of had to use it. Also note: the two other board members I hadn’t decided, maybe his brothers? The three members might also have been analogs of the three mirror world characters, but this too I set aside for further elaboration depending on where the campaign went.)

2) Not that they were the first. Like a thousand years ago or something, Croatius was the old master of ancient Grito and had done the same, extracting the essence into a ‘Zelba vessel’, Sarah DeVaunet.

3) Croatius was a pal of Archbishop Arkenz, a lich of Zelba’s. Not a great pal though, as Croatius stole from Arkenz the White Book of Poppies, a manual on summoning and commanding Zelba, and did just that. Zelba diminished, she lost power as a goddess and moved to Hello.

4) Being that Sarah was now essential for Croatius to live, he fell in love with her and stole her away from this other guy (Ravenous, portrayed as a jester), went crazy with paranoia, and built his little mirror world. But alas, after an incubation time, Sarah became full of death and he could no longer touch her, so put her to sleep in a glass casket and put her in his mirror world too. (Who Ravenous was, and the details of the affair, I left open for the future.)

5) For defenses, Croatius built a self-replicating golem factory to churn out little iron golems, the Knights of R.M.C. (Rovertius Merelius Croatius), and charged them to defend the comatose Sarah. Then he went into his room and got busy with gardening and writing love poems.

6) Back to the present day. Parsifal wants to test his Zelba extractor. He bullshits Journeyman Gregory Vrill into being part of new secret project and promotes him to Master of the Grito guild, in exchange for running some ‘tests’ on his newly-pregnant wife (pregnancy unknown to the guys). Well magic’s a fickle thing, and not the wife but the new baby got the Zelba essence. Parsifal didn’t know this, gave it up as a failed experiment, and got back to work in the Zelba temple below Grito.

7) Meanwhile, wife gives birth, daughter grows up, and due to magical-girl-mind-telepathy shit, knows all about the Knights of R.M.C. who are designed to protect her. Calls them ‘Knights of Armek’, because she’s a kid, and drew a picture, and has a prophecy about their arrival. Parsifal realizes that maybe his experiment worked after all, took Abbey’s prophecy seriously, and turned Vrill’s bullshit project into something more ‘serious’: making an owlbear army to defend Grito and Greyhelm. In the meanwhile, the owlbears could defend the Zelba temple.

8) But the Knights of Armek hadn’t arrived yet. That was due to two other accidents. One was the birth of another Sarah DeVaunet, Lord Rupert’s wife (the priestess he killed at the top of the ancient weather station). When she was ordained, the registration of a priestess with the name Sarah DeVaunet fucked up the order that Croatius gave to the KoA. Now the Knights had to come to Greyhelm and find the other Sarah.

9) The naming of Sarah was chance, due to her father’s reading an old story or something. Parsifal, before he left, hooked up Sarah with Vrill, thinking that either together, things might work out, or at the least, you guys would kill them all, and fix his problems. Parsifal being not a bad guy couldn’t bring himself to kill anyone himself, not that he was convinced that’s what the problem was. Parsifal only knew a bit about Croatius’ entire story and the KoA, but suggested to Sarah she change her name. Parsifal then got the fuck out of dodge, later turning over his Board seat to Vrill and retreating to either the safety of Durth or the Sea Kingdoms, I hadn’t decided.

10) Then Mike the Zombie killed Abbey. That’s when she became full-blown avatar of Zelba, and became the third power referenced in one of the Oracle’s prophecies.

11) Anyway, how’d the Knights get here? That was thanks to more studies and magical experimentation, by the Castle Greyhelm guys. They had heard about the KoA prophecy, as the Castle Librarian (Master Meeks) was Master Parsifal’s brother (same last name). High Priest Bartholomew communed with his god Isaac, who told him that the Knights would eventually aim to travel to the moon, to seek out a portal there. Yeah, the moon, and the High Priest was confused.

12) So a portal and a telescope were made. In the process, they’d made a few other mirrors that didn’t quite fit to spec, so offered them for sale (which is how Vrill came to get one) to various parties. One of these parties, as of yet undesigned, in Greyhelm itself fucked around a little too much too soon, and the Knights of Armek began to emerge. (Slowly, because of the time difference.)

13) The Knights were looking for Sarah and Abbey, both who were dead. Seeing that they had basically failed, they tried to find a way to get back home, so they built a rocket ship to take them to Ravenous’s moon base laboratory, so they could find the other portal they knew about there and go on home. (And while you were in Castle Greyhelm and the mirror world, they succeeded.) The Knights were pretty pissed and took it out on this crappy meat world. Details of their charge and the whole moon-base thing left open.

14) However, the first time you were in the mirror world, Vrill had a lot of time on his hands, and found the White Book of Poppies. Used it to bring back Abbey, this time with even more Zelba power. But by now they didn’t have great father-daughter relations, and Abbey was kind of pissed that Vrill had used her and her mom in an experiment for career promotion. Abbey couldn’t harm Vrill as part of the White Book stipulation (that Arkenz added once he saw what happened with Croatius and Sarah).

15) Abbey wanted the White Book, which Vrill hid in his wizard-locked magic cave: a place Abbey couldn’t go. So she decided to enlist your help. Orcus got wind of Abbey/Zelba hatching a plot to reunite herself (although Abbey may not have been cognizant of such), and sent Rupert, aka Skullbones over to you to clean up. Abbey steps in and uses her death magic geas skills- not from the White Book, the kind the Book mimicks- to get you guys to go after Vrill, thinking he somehow took the book with him.

16) That’s Hello Airport. It’s pretty clear at this juncture that all the plot points are lining up and the campaign kicks into the beginning of endgame, which was all about the different aspects of Zelba coming back. With Vrill’s death, Abbey can finally get the White Book and ‘go home’ to Zelba. With Croatius’ death, Sarah can do the same.

17) Finally, the last secret is that you guys would’ve died in the mirror world too, and it was your mirror clones that Greetles and Gregolas found up at the top of the Solarium. (I wasn’t too worried about skills, knowledge, or equipment and would’ve chalked it all up to garbage falling out of the other planes or mirror clone false memory.) Thanks for reading and thanks for playing, and if you want to know any more, I’m happy to tell you anything.