We've put together a special episode for you, summarising the adventure so far, and how our heroes got into this web of divine secrets! If you're just starting with us now and sixty-plus episodes of catch-up isn't possible, this will give you the highlights at 180x speed. Educational!
If you're listening on the website, the transcript is below the cut.
Hello everyone, welcome back. You’re listening to Come Out And Play, an all-trans actual play podcast. We release an episode of our main campaign, a Dungeons and Dragons adventure set in our own corner of the multiverse, every week, and we’ve been playing for around sixty episodes. So, to celebrate the end of our first podcast year, we’ve put together an altogether terser work, for skim-readers. If you’re just joining us now and you’d like to get caught up, this is for you. But be warned, it is entirely filled with spoilers, so if you’d rather listen to the whole story without knowing what’s coming, you should pause this recording, and go back to episode one, “Isn’t There An Oath?”
This paragraph has been deliberately left blank, to provide time to escape, if you don’t want the spoilers.
Okay. So.
The story begins one hundred years ago, with the War. The Merciful Dark, the god of death, was killed. Some say it was the Conquering Queen that did it. Others blame the Endless Tide. All that is known for certain is that the gods fought amongst themselves, and dragged all of creation into their fight.
Many gods, and many mortals were killed. The dwarves and drow, who had long been allies in their underground world, turned against each other as their pantheons did, and the dwarven cities were not fortified against magic from below. The dwarves died and their gods died, and in the end they left their doomed strongholds and marched out upon the surface, one last futile strike against the world. They died with their weapons in their hands.
There are not many dwarves left, now.
In the surface lands, the nations of humans and halflings, elves and orcs, the war ran through the middle of each society, as their favoured gods split this way and that. There were revolutions and civil wars and many rulers were assassinated, as those they trusted became enemies overnight, guided by divine hands.
Perhaps it was the destruction of the dwarves that cooled the gods’ anger. Perhaps it was the fear of their own ends. But their anger did cool, and the Treaty of Iron was signed, forbidding the nations to make war.
There are two pantheons now, where before all the gods gave their favour freely, mingling their blessings as they saw fit. There is the Circle of Grace, and the Council of Light, and to choose one is to forsake the other.
In the Circle of Grace, the people pray to the Scourger, who delights in combat; to the Maiden and the Messenger, the last gods of the drow, whose realms are in obsession and secrecy, in the stars and the moon. To the Lord of Falling Waters, patron of farmers and hunters, who sees war only as a way to make peace, and to the Singing Flame, beloved of artisans, whose song is an invitation to join them in the sacred act of creation.
In the Council of Light, the Sleeping Queen dreams beneath her oak tree, guiding the seed to sprout and the undead to rise. The Lady of Silks teaches pleasure in life’s finer things, and the Threadmistress guides everyone to find their place, through tradition and obedience. Earthshaker stands, the only survivor of the dwarven gods, to give blessing to masons and miners and test the work of the builders, and Featherwind, once honoured only by sailors, now spreads their hand towards the sea itself.
These are the pantheons, and though war is forbidden, the enmity continues. Some nations maintain temples to both, allowing the populace to make their own choices. Others are committed to one pantheon, and persecute worshippers of the other. There are assassinations and rebellions still. There are portals opening up a
