City of Lumen

Lumen is a bustling city full of up-and-coming stars, proteges in their fields, and personalities that strive to change the world. Most importantly, it is a city of heroes! Valiant warriors defend the city from the forces of evil in any form they come; master sorcerers block asteroids on their lethal trajectory, knights fend off criminals from massive heists, and cosmic protectors battle grand enemies that threaten the universe, using Lumen as the stage for their affairs. The city has always played a critical role in fate, being dubbed the epicenter of cosmic interaction, and deals with relentless chaos from the forces of the universe.

You are a team of heroes that have taken up the oath of a Lumen Vigil; guardians that protect the city under the oath of light, and defend the world against any threats that would see to its destruction. You fight monsters larger than skyscrapers, battle torrents of darkness for the sake of the city, and would see to it that any evildoer is behind bars. Your top priority is always the safety of the city… right behind this upcoming test. The class is kicking your ass, ok? And you can’t afford to pay for another semester. And the school-wide talent show is in a few weeks, you can't for the life of you figure out why you wanted to attend now that the deadline is coming up. And it doesn’t make your life any easier that your new homeroom teacher is a super nefarious villain masquerading as a teacher, charming the entire school into believing their false identity, and knows you all are Lumen Vigils.

Maybe not all of that, but your shared class teacher is the BBEG. This campaign will be a spider-man-style superhero campaign revolving around your lives as ordinary college kids who just so happen to have alter egos as cosmic protectors. If you’re feeling extra magical, you could even twist it to feel more like a Harry Potter style campaign. The campaign will flip between your obligations as a Lumen Vigil, protecting the city, and fighting the forces of darkness, as well as your lives as students, keeping up with your classes, your lives in school, and the next big social event.

For Lumen Vigil, your races will be limited to the following: No limit (except maybe core Aarakocra). I mean, look at any comic book universe and you’ll find any race in the PHB and more.

Your real limitation is in scope: I want every one of you to be college kids (or at least attending college, if not 18-25 ish), a Lumen Vigil (explained more in Gimmick), and someone who actively wants to keep their alter ego identity a secret from the rest of the world. As a team, you will all know each other's superhero and college identities (to a degree, I know at least one of you will want to be sneaky with it), but your character needs to have a reason to keep their identity secret from the rest of the world. Will it paint a target on the backs of your friends and family? Does your identity contain a key to your kryptonite? Whatever it is, you want to keep your hero life and your school life separated as much as possible. This means finding some excuse to go to the bathroom whenever your team is called into action, or scrambling for an excuse as to why you missed a recital because the forces of darkness chose the worst timing, etc etc.

Regardless of story, I want the party to have known eachother for at least a year before the start of the campaign. I don’t care how, but you will have been on the same Lumen Vigil team for at least a year prior to session zero. I want to skip the awkward getting-to-know-each-other phase. This doesn’t mean no secrets or twists, I just want to experiment with a less tense starting environment and see how drama impacting a tighter-knit group looks.

For Lumen Vigil, the main gimmick will be both Familiars and Falling. Two for the price of one <3. Familiars are simple; everyone will be granted a familiar as a part of pledging your oath to the Lumen Vigil. Everyone will have some kind of pendant that their familiar is tied to, an amulet or ring or something of the sort that represents your oath. They will act statistically as a standard Familiar, and everyone will have access to the spell Find Familiar to summon/resummon them.

Falling is a more complicated gimmick. I want you all to face the challenge of death in this setting more so than any other campaign; death, however, is usually a pretty definite end for the character and is pretty hard to deal with from a gameplay perspective. Nobody wants to abandon a character they’ve built up a story for because of a few bad rolls, and nobody else really likes getting to know their replacement when options to revive/resurrect a character exist. Thus, this campaign I want to play with a classic comic book / manga trope instead: When pledging your oath as a Lumen Vigil, you offer up your soul to serve the forces of light even after you fall in battle. What remains is a Fallen Vigil, or an Umbral Vigil, chained to the forces of darkness until their soul can be recovered. These Vigils undergo physical and mental changes that reflect the state of their death, variably succumbing to the forces of darkness. Sometimes Vigils willingly fall to darkness to free themselves from their oath, other times they find themselves at the mercy of the forces of darkness, forced to do their bidding until another Lumen Vigil rescues their soul from the light and makes them whole again.

Falling is not the end, but it will scar you. When falling, you may be claimed by the forces of darkness and be forced to act against the light until you recover your soul. When you fall, you will change according to the nature of your death. You may lose your familiar, become disfigured, shift your personality, or change your stats entirely, depending on what you’re comfortable with. Regardless of how far you fall, the consequence of darkness is always the same, and may lead you to destroying the things you hold dear if you do not act to reverse the drop.

I apologize for the strange formatting of this page. It is horrible to format in World Anvil and this page in particular is built diff.