The Circle of the Afterlife

Throwing out some potential campaign idea's

Our new adventures fall asleep at their campsite excited to finally be going on their first adventure together. They then find themselves in a mysterious queue, waiting in line behind some grumpy old half-orc. After hours of waiting in this line and occasionally walking forward the party is confronted with a stranger holding a clipboard. This stranger asks for their names before taking them down on his clipboard, then asks to see their arms revealing a strange string of characters on each of their arms “5C2B143597A5FDE5E8CC”. The stranger remarks that they all have the exact same number and that he’s never seen that before but obfuscates any additional information about where they are or what's going on. The clipboard man sends them to wait in a new line and they do, any attempt to exit the line immediately fails. Hours go by, then days, weeks, years of waiting in these lines only to be confronted by more clipboard wielding strangers sending them to a different queue. The party has lost all sense of time waiting in these lines. All hope seems to be lost when one of the party members hears a faint voice in the distance, “Next”. They can’t see the source of the voice however after a few minutes they hear it again, “Next”. It takes another few days of waiting, hearing the voice in the distance say “Next” each time it gets faintly louder, until at long last they see it’s source. A figure sits behind what appears to be a ticket booth, obstructed by the others in the line in front of them. A little more waiting until the Elvish man standing directly in front of them approaches the booth. The party struggles to hear what they are talking about until the Elvish man shouts “I told my wife and daughter how to do the preparations, I know I have my toll this is preposterous!!!” The figure behind the desk responds, “Well maybe they just didn’t love you enough, and seeing your record it’s not hard to imagine why that would be. Look if you don’t have your toll there’s nothing else I can do. You’ll need to stand to the side and wait.” The Elvish man shouts “I’m tired of waiting! Let me through!” and bangs on the glass. The party see’s the man behind the booths hand reach to the side and pull a leaver, causing the floor under the Elvish man to drop out, followed by a splash. “Next” With the Elvish man gone the man behind the booth is now in full view and the players now see that he’s a skeleton wearing a black hood with a suit and tie. His eye sockets have little green flames approximating pupils. “This may be a timeless eternity of torment and damnation but I don’t want to spend the rest of forever staring at your ugly mugs, NEXT!” The players approach the booth and begin to hear the sound of water flowing beneath their feet. The skeleton introduces himself as “110010011111100111000” and says he’s one of millions of identical copies but they can call him Charon. “We count ourselves in base two to confuse and piss off the mortals” he laughs. “So did any of the interns give you the rundown?” wait for response “Of course they didn’t, can’t expect anyone to do their fucking job now can we? Gotta make everything hard on me… Well here’s the deal: You’re dead. My condolences. Welcome to the afterlife. That water you hear beneath you is the river styx. It’s not a normal river, kind of non-euclidean in that in flows in circles but never ends up back where it started. You can just throw out any of your prenotions of geometry here by the way. River Styx flows and creates 17 circles, you're currently in circle 0, purgatorio, with seven circles above us and nine circles below. Now I, Charon, will be your ferryman, tour guide, and legal representation here in the afterlife. That is assuming you all have your toll.” The party checks their pockets and only one of them finds two platinum pieces when they rub their eyes. Charon expresses sadness at this “Well looks like the rest of your are going to have to stand to the side and wait for the next rapture here in purgatorio, I’ll start the invoice for each of you. Can you read off your death stamps?” The death stamps are the characters on each of their arms and after Charon realizes that each one of the party have the exact same death stamp his jaw drops and he rubs his forehead. “You all know just before you came up here I said to myself ‘it’s one minute to lunch, I'll be the good employee and do one more.’ and of course you have to make my life complicated. Well technically I’m not alive but you know what I mean” Charon explains that the death stamp is a number that represents the amount of time since the beginning of the universe to the exact moment your soul left the mortal plain. It’s down microsecond and it’s unheard of for multiple people to have the same death stamp. After doing a bit of research of his glowing green magic box that looks vaguely like a computer from the 1980’s he tells the party that in the 13.8 billion years that we’ve been in business there have only been 6 case’s of two individuals having the same death stamp, let alone *however many party members you have*. Charon says “Here’s the deal, those death stamps are like your id’s here in the afterlife, it’s how we identify you, process you, and get you where you need to go. Since you all have the same death stamps… Well, we’re gonna treat all of you kinda like a collective. Hope you like each other because you are stuck with each other for the next… well… forever I suppose. That is unless a few of you want to volunteer to take a dip in the river styx. Wouldn’t recommend that as there are fates worse than even the 9 circles of hell have to offer.” Since the party is being processed together all of their lives are put into a “judgment algorithm” together averaging out all of their places in the afterlife, ideally some of your players are virtuous and would be going to the heavens and some are very sinful and would be condemned to the hells. The Judgment algorithm determines that the party has been sentenced to eternity in the first circle of hell, Limbo, and with good behavior they have a chance at reincarnation in about 20,000 years. Since they are to be processed as one soul the single player who could afford the toll now counts for all of them and Charon gives the party a ride to Limbo. Charon would also explain that the river styx only flows one way and once you go down it you can never come back up without divine intervention. Limbo is like a large open cave the river styx flows through with mountains in the distance. There are several towns in Limbo but it’s become pretty touristy in the recent centuries with countless angels and celestials deciding to take weekend vacations in hell but never want to see the real hells. The primary method of torment and punishment in limbo is minimum wage quests, high rent prices due to the influx of vacation rentals, and an exorbitant amount of minor annoyances. The inmates of this hell are free to roam as they please otherwise. Charon drops the party off in the town of Asphodel (the mayor of this town is named Virgil), where they are free to do some freelance adventuring and explore the many gift shops and cheap rides and sideshows. After a doing a few minor quests Charon confronts the party making his first appearance since he dropped them off (although you could have other Charon's show up in the meantime and have the party mistake them for their Charon). Charon informs the party that one of them (ideally a cleric or paladin) has got some friends in high places and that he’s in big trouble for the way he processed the party. He tells them that because a deity has appealed their case they have earning a hearing with lady judgment, however, lady judgment is a very busy deity and is bound to the circle of purgatorio. This is a problem as the river styx only flows one way and they can’t return to purgatorio without divine intervention. It is mentioned that the deity that appealed the case claimed to be “too busy” to come down to Limbo and retrieve the party herself. Charon gives the party a couple of options including applying for reincarnation and bathing in the river Lethe (this would erase the parties memories and wouldn’t solve their problem). The final option Charon gives the party is that as he said before only divine intervention can allow you to travel up the river and that apparently there was this one weird case where some poet walked his physical body all the way to the ninth circle of hell to get his girlfriends soul or something stupid but the point is that he managed to get out. Charon explains that Amodeus, king of the hells, in the ninth circle has the power to return them to purgatory to get to their hearing. The adventure is now about traversing the nine circles of hell with the potential of discovering why they all have the same death stamp. Something nefarious may be going on there.

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Created by: Ksync101 3 years ago
Last edit: 3 years ago
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