Campaign '26: City of Arches - Seekers of the Sun

    My declaration of intent to participate in the Campaign 2026 challenge as laid out on the Press the Beast blog. I'll try to turn this post into a sort of directory for the posts I make all year related to this challenge, by adding or updating links to the session reports and other types of content I post for the campaign.

    The details so far:

• I'm DMing the campaign, with my wife and two of our very good friends in the role of three PCs. 
• Planning to play once a month, and I hope we can stick to that schedule. We may take a break later in the year to try other systems I'm excited to play - Shield Maidens or Shadowdark. 
• We're playing with the D&D 2024 rules, probably pretty close to the rules as intended, but I'll make posts for any significant changes to the rules or if systems are grafted onto the core.
• As you can probably guess by the chosen game system, we'll be playing in the style that many in the community would call "trad" but I prefer to call Destined Heroes. 

    As noted in the title, we're playing in the City of Arches campaign setting published by Mike Shea (aka Sly Flourish). I'm enthralled with this setting and its book! I presented my players with a few options for a general campaign structure, based on the one goal they've given for this game (wanting to reach level 20) aside from just having fun and allowing some flexibility if they want to change characters after a few sessions. 

• They've chosen to be members of the Seekers of the Sun faction, which is an adventurer's guild connected to the Museum of Worlds Beyond within the City of Arches. I love this idea! It will allow us to explore where the players choose and makes sense for the characters, without being so heavily influenced as we might be if the characters were going up against a cult intent on ending the world.
• I'm also hopeful that this campaign will encourage more player, and character, driven adventure choices. I'll have lots of chances to come up with original adventures and locations within the setting.
• I plan to kick off the campaign with the introductory adventure in the book and its immediate follow-up, adjusted for the fact that we are starting at level three. After that I want to incorporate and run us all through Tomb of the Serpent Kings by Skerples so that we can all get more familiar with dungeon crawling ahead of our campaign centered around ethical tomb raiding.

    I think that's all the important stuff for the start of this campaign challenge. Happy 2026!

 The Seekers

    The PCs of our campaign:

• Ari (Alex) - a high elf bard, of the College of Lore, native of the City of Arches. Loves to mock viciously and lean into the horny bard tropes. Favors magic and drama.
• Ashley, it's a family name (Jarrett) -  a human rogue, focusing on his Assassin skill set, arrived in the city through an arch which severed him from his past life in Faerun. A bit of a fop, and still figuring out how to be more hero than criminal. Loves showing off his skills with a bow.
• Ophelia (Lizzie) - an aasimar of human lineage, and non-secular monk who turned her martial arts studies toward anatomy and became a Warrior of Mercy. Always excited to punch and kick with style, but first priority is usually to help her friends and those in need.

Sessions of the Seekers