Welcome to the Sord Coast, @caligulasAquarium, @handMaid, @deathlessDeadwood, @glamorousAuspiciar, @glitteringAcuity, @affableCantor, and @timaeusTestified#0414. All other #LAIRSANDLUSII Player Applicants are in reserves for one shots. This is a malformed and deeply suspicious continent resting somewhere west of civilization, east of reason, and directly beneath the gaze of several actively malicious stars. It is host to doomed kingdoms, irresponsible wizardry, overfunded churches, hereditary violence, prophetic nonsense, and of course, monsters with distressingly specific emotional needs. Its peoples are varied and all equally terrible. Humans sharpen swords they cannot lift. Sea-dwelves run criminal empires from seafood restaurants. Purplebloods host traveling revival circuses that qualify as small forms of government. Jadeblood druids continually attempt to solve ecological collapse using bisexual polycules, moss, and the occasional jamboree. This campaign is semi-serious. Which is to say that my narrative, worldbuilding, and emotional stakes are all real. However, you are players. Ergo, I expect you to lay into absurdism, interpersonal drama, catastrophic violence, emotional sincerity tied up in irony, and the occasional moments of horror. This is inspired by our combined experiences of SGRUB, SBURB, and life itself. This much you know from the primer. You are not entering a campaign in the traditional sense. That word is too clean. Too martial. Too eager to promise that someone, somewhere, knows what they are doing. You are entering a Session. Its rules have been assembled from bad maps, old grudges, misread prophecies, dead gods, worse living ones, and the awful instinct that convinces otherwise sensible people to open a door because the growling on the other side has become narratively compelling. I will serve as your Session Guardian. This does not quantify myself as an enemy. I am the one holding the lantern, the knife, the Game Grimoire, the Minion Manual, and the small porcelain cup from which I will sip whilst you explain why your character should be allowed to renegotiate zoning rights to make hallowed land a commercial district. You are Hero Players. You may not necessarily be heroes, but it is the title given by the mechanism of the game. Simply put, this means the session has noticed you. Some invisible mechanism has turned its attention in your direction and begun making noise. Your choices may acquire symbolic weight. Your mistakes will develop into motifs. Your bad ideas will have teeth. This is considered the beginning of an adventure, but it is really a warning sign. The Sord Coast does not have a healthy relationship with destiny. Most continents have a founding myth. The Sord Coast has several, all mutually hostile, all partially true, and all somehow legally binding. Every ruined tower is a footnote in an argument nobody living remembers. Every noble family is a hereditary Status Affliction with dinner manners. Every church is either hiding a miracle, laundering one, feeding one in the basement, or attempting to invoice the gods for services rendered. There are kings here, though few deserve the term. There are saints, though most were canonized by committees with weapons. There are wizards who should have been stopped during adolescence. There are knights who believe strongly in honor, which is usually a polite way of saying they own armor and have not yet been contradicted by anyone with a shovel. You will find yourself undertaking Land Objectives for consorts, witches, fishmongers, pirates, druidic councils, cathedral bureaucrats, criminal families, ghosts, lusii, petty gods, wounded monsters, suspicious grubs, and at least on individual who is clearly lying. Some questlines will seem important. Some trivial. Some will reveal after sessions of mockery that they have quietly been the central plot of the story. The spine of it all. This is not a flaw in the session. This is how stories behave when left unattended. You will carry your sylladex. You will have a strife deck. Even if you insist on calling it a sword, staff, bow, frying pan, pistol, haunted umbrella, or emotionally significant brick. It will be your most valued tool. You will gain Boondollars, you will suffer in your vitality. You will attain afflictions. You will role to enter the ideal timelines. You will roll Perfect Timeline Hits at the worst possible moment and immediately waste them on nonsense. You will roll Critical Timeline Failures in moments where dignity would have been convenient. This, too, is tradition. There will be Strife Encounters. There will be Lair Progressions. There will be Terminal Strifes. There will be underlings, elite underlings, Denizens, and things that should be monsters but are either objects of pity, attraction, or professional curiosity. I have already accepted that some creature may become a recurring cast member despite his ER being 0.125. I resent this only slightly. The tone of this Session is gothic absurdist adventure. You are encouraged to take your characters seriously, but not yourselves. You are encouraged to joke, scheme, flirt, mourn, grandstand, confess, lie, apologize poorly, make threats you cannot back up, and occasionally realize that the bit has become more emotionally honest than the scene it interrupted. Expect horror, and jokes, and sincerity while accepting solemnity, a lack of safety, and stupid hats. This is a world where a clown sermon may conceal a coup, where a seafood restaurant may serve as the front for a sea-dweller crime syndicate, where a moss-covered polycule may genuinely be the last line of defense against ecological collapse, and where a noble duel may be interrupted because the ancestral ghost has notes about everyone’s posture. Absurdity is not the opposite of seriousness here. It is the native dialect of the type of seriousness I indulge in. Your pre-entry histories are also to be indulged in. They will matter sincerely. Backgrounds exist as far more than the decorative lace pinned to a player profile to make you seem more appealing. It is a loaded mechanism. Haunted paperwork in the background of your diligence to be consulted whenever introducing a concept. Each NPC in your background sits dangling by a thread as the villains toss knives in the air, hoping to snag dear old GRANDMACRAB. If you give me a hometown, I will endanger it. If you give me a sibling, I will complicate them. If you give me a rival, I will make them competent. If you give me a god, I will make them answer. If you give me a dead parent, I will decide how loudly the grave can speak. If you give me nothing, I will assume the absence was intentional, and I will ask what kind of person becomes interesting without knowing what abandoned them. This is my narrative hospitality. The Sord Coast is full of people who would like to be mistaken for the Primary Terminal Threat. Monarchs with inherited curses. Pirate-princes with excellent teeth. Cathedral treasurers with assassin budgets. Revival preachers whose congregations double as armies. Lich-adjacent academics with tenure. Fishmongers with spy networks. Druidic elders who can end a war with a kiss, a mushroom circle, or an extremely pointed group meeting. Some are villains. Some are quest givers. Some are both. The world does not owe it to you to organize its monsters by function for your convenience, nor do I. Feel free to kill, spare, expose, embarrass, seduce, betray, redeem, employ, be adopted by, adopt, or install them in a position of municipal authority. I will not stop you from making these decisions, provided they are interesting and you accept the bill when it arrives. Death is on the table. So is resurrection. So is coming back wrong. So is learning that death was a stepping stone to greatness. A Hero Death may be noble, stupid, funny, horrifying, or all four in rapid succession. A Doomed Timeline may still matter. A fixed point may still bleed. The Alpha Timeline may appear to favor you, but I advise against trusting it. The Alpha Timeline does not love anyone. It has preferences. Most of those preferences resemble a cat pushing glassware off a table while maintaining eye contact. I operate similarly to the God Tier system. Your death may not matter unless it is heroic or just. You will be rewarded for engagement, style, cleverness, emotional sincerity, dramatic stupidity, and understanding when the joke should become a knife. You will not be rewarded for refusing to touch every suspicious object. Even if it is cursed, you should probably touch it anyway. Haha. The Session wants characters with wants. Not vague preferences. Not “I guess they like adventure.” Wants. Sharp ones. Ugly ones. Noble ones. Embarrassing ones. Wants that can survive contact with danger. Wants that can become mistakes. Wants that can tempt, wound, and transform. Bring me someone who needs something. Suggestions: A throne. An apology. A cure. A name. A family. A god’s attention. A chance to prove everyone wrong. A chance to prove one specific person right. A reason not to become what they already suspect they are. Bring me flaws that can do work. Pride. Cowardice. Hunger. Vanity. Devotion. Guilt. Curiosity. Loyalty pointed at the wrong target. Mercy applied at the worst possible moment. A private belief so central to the character that challenging it feels like violence. Again, you are playing a character, not a statue. You are not an ideal. The session also expects you to play with one another. Not just beside one another. Interpersonal drama is welcome. Conflict is welcome. Rivalry is welcome. Romance, suspicion, loyalty, bravery, whatever. It is welcome. Also quadrants are the primary romance system. What is not welcome is making the table miserable and calling it characterization. Your character may be a problem, even if you aren't. There is a difference. The sord Coast is a continent within Lairs and Lusii. The Lairs are wounds dug into the earthen soil and seas. They are old crimes with doors, threatening you to enter. The world tried to bury them. Lusii are not just beasts. They are guardians. Some are gods. Some are ecological facts. Some are parents in the same way a guillotine is a civic instrument. Some will protect you. Some will hunt you. Treat all with caution. You will travel through coastal towns with salt in the walls and knives in the local government. You will cross forests where the trees gossip in dead languages. You will enter churches whose stained glass keeps changing its mind. You will meet sea-dwelves who conduct business through shellfish, purplebloods who think theology requires pyrotechnics, jadebloods who believe every crisis can be resolved through ritual, compost, and a sufficiently complicated relationship chart. You will meet humans. I apologize in advance. The Session Parameters are simple enough. Pay attention. Share the spotlight. Do not hide from the premise. Make choices. Accept consequences. Let your character be affected by the world. Let your character affect it in return. Do not arrive with a Hero Player who is too cool to care, too detached to hurt, too ironic to want, or too competent to fail in an entertaining fashion. The Sord Coast has no use for immaculate people. It eats them first, usually out of spite. You are allowed to be funny. You are allowed to be tragic. You are allowed to be strange. You are allowed to make the Session Guardian stare silently at the ceiling for several seconds while deciding whether to permit something deranged because it is, regrettably, thematically appropriate. This will happen often. I have made peace with that as well. Mostly. When the Session begins, you will not be expected to know everything. You should not know everything. Excessive certainty is unbecoming in a world where the stars have motives and the maps are probably lying. Ask questions. Make assumptions. Be wrong loudly enough that someone can correct you before the bridge collapses. Or don't. Maybe. The bridge deserved to get collapsed. There will be mysteries. Not every mystery is a puzzle however. Some mysteries are miseries. Some are just evasive rich lords. You are not required to solve my world with perfect efficiency. You are only required to make your attempts interesting. There will be moral choices. Safety, mercy. Truth, Peace. Saving someone who hates you, or punishing someone who deserves it. If you are looking for a world that will label the correct answer, you took a wrong turn back at Albuquerque. The Session will have jokes about odd topics. Crab divorce comes to mind. It will also have grief, silly names, consequences. It will have ugly little goblins who are unionizing asking you to kill the scab goblins. Ornate villains with tragic motives may fall for you. At least one scene will have everyone realizing the bit has gone too far and must be honored fully and wholly. This is the texture of my game. The joke is allowed to matter. The horror is allowed to be funny. The sincerity is allowed to be embarrassing. The embarrassment is allowed to become sacred. Bring a Player Profile that can survive that kind of weather. If you can not. Do not. The Sord Coast is waiting. Its Lairs are open. Its Lusii are hungry. Its churches are overfunded. Its stars are watching. Its seafood is not to be trusted. Prepare your Sylladex. Select your Strife Specibus. Review your Pre-Entry History for loose knives. Calibrate your expectations toward danger, irony, and deeply inadvisable tenderness. The Session will begin soon.