WP2: LGBTQIAD&D+
From the minute I read the prompt for WP2 I knew what I would be making. While a short dungeons and dragons campaign written to explore the evolution of one’s sexuality may not seem like an obvious choice to many, there is no better way for me to archive part of my life.
Right now, my sexuality and Dungeons and Dragons both play massive roles in my identity, but for most of my life, neither have been present. I want to take this opportunity to examine the period of my life where my identity was the most unstable through the lens of the game most responsible for helping me define my identity for myself.
I have broken my WP2 into four parts, each focuses on a different part of my life and a different way that I thought about my sexuality. Chapter 1 is the time period before I even understood that being gay was a possibility. Chapter 2 focuses on my experience of understanding and running from realization that I was gay. Chapter 3 is about me coming to terms with the fact that I am gay. Lastly, Chapter 4 is the set around the period of time where I had accepted it for myself but was to scared to be gay in the eyes of the world.
A Brief Synopsis
Many years ago the land of Vasjeel was ruled by Kaybea, the Goddess of Night, and her trusted right hand: a magical tapestry with a consciousness that she called Samlain. Vasjeel was a land made for a race known as the Shifters; they were human animal hybrids that lived peaceful lives in a region untroubled by the turmoil of the outside world.
This era of prosperity ended abruptly when Lyan, Demigod of the Sun, invaded Vasjeel making it a home for himself and his followers. Kaybea, Samlain, and the Shifters fought back as much as they could, but they were no match for the crusading armies of Lyan. He swept the land, massacring almost all the Shifters, save a few that escaped into the Manakis Bogs to the west. With the help of his most powerful clerics, Lyan cursed Samlain and sealed it deep under a mountain range where it could never feel the light of day again. Lyan’s next order of business was Kaybea herself.
Before Lyan could take care of Kaybea and continue his conquest, she used all her might to seal Lyan away in the staff he used to channel his magic. This left her open and vulnerable, and in the final act of purging Kaybea’s name from the region of Vasjeel, Lyan’s now godless clerics turned Kaybea to stone.
The adventure begins 700 years later. An earthquake in the Atama Peaks has revealed a passageway to the tomb where Samlain lies and an unhinged cardinal is trying to complete his life’s work of reawakening Lyan from the staff in which he lies dormant.
