Into Text for the "Akashic War" PF1 Game I Am Running for TWO Friends (Patreon)

Due to Adult Schedule Syndrome, my group of five dedicated gamers is currently a group of Three Dedicated Gamers, and may be that way for a while. So, I launched a campaign for the other two in my group. These are people I have known and games with for more than 40 years.

So, since this game will have only 2 players, I let them go hog wiled with character creation. Everything is legal, including a ton of 3pp content. Start at 9th level. Gestalt characters. Automatic bonus progression. More=than-high-fantasy point buy abilities. Bonus skill points and feats.

And then I built a campaign around those two characters. Here's the campaign opener:

Akashic War Campaign Opener

There are no gods of ignorance. Lies, yes. But to lie, someone must know the truth and conceal it. Without knowledge, there are no lies.

Secrets, of course. But secret knowledge is still knowledge, not ignorance.

Foolishness even, but you are only a fool if you ignore knowledge you do, or could, have.

Mortal rarely notice, but in all the pantheons, among all the cultures, there are NO gods of ignorance. All gods support the existence of knowledge. And all knowledge exists within the Akashic Record.

The Akashic Record is a conceptual place, more real than a mere idea, less real than the outer planes such as heaven and hell. All knowledge exists there, everything that anyone ever has or ever will know. Its librarians are loyal only to the Record itself, and are drawn from aeons, angels, daemons, divs, and sahkils. It sits on the membrane between the Ethereal and Astral Planes, connected to those places that themselves connect to everything else. And the Akashic Record exists for a reason.

When the Old Gods were young, they turned on the Elder Things that existed before Time was created. The Elder Things were more than Chaos. They were a lack of any kind of causality or continuity. Near the Elder Things, nothing mattered, nothing caused anything, and nothing connected. Elder Things changed, endlessly, melding and splitting and constantly being both new and unspeakable ancient. Even chaos could not exist within them, for chaos is a counterpoint to law, and the Unruling of the Elder Things was beyond any such concept. But the Old Gods wanted identities, and to keep them, they had to hedge out the Elder Things.

So the Old Gods defined... everything. Jointly, Good and Evil, Law and Chaos, all the Old Gods agreed upon everything that ever could be, or ever had been. Those definitions forced the Elder Things to cease to have ever existed. And as the definitions included everything that would ever happen, they included everything that would ever be known. They were the Akashic Record, and their existence is the only thing that keeps the Elder Things at bay.

This was the only time ALL the gods worked together, and in doing so they created something both more than the sum of its parts, and greater than the reach or control of any of them.

So when a planar army of Elemental Evils, Maddened Inevitables, and Crazed Qlippoth stormed the Akashic Record, making it physically manifest in both the Astral and Ethereal Plane in a way it never had been before, it took the gods and their agents by surprise. A vast war waged. The gods themselves sought to find the source of the planar armada, and bent their powers to maintaining the Record from any harm. Defending it fell to demigods, godlings, outsiders, and heralds of the gods, the mightiest of entities just shy of true divinity.

You were one such champion of a God, fighting the most terrible, reality-rending war the planes had seen since the first Angels fell to become the first Devils.

And just as victory seemed within your grasp, the UnKnowing appeared.

A forgotten concept. A wroth lost Old God. The concept of ignorance. The opposition of Knowledge. The UnKnowing had been excluded from the work to create the Akashic Record, excluded from becoming a modern God. And now, for some reason, the Ignorance of the Unknown was unleashing itself upon the universe.

It swept all defenders aside. It began to Unravel the Akashic Record. Some fraction of infinite knowledge was destroyed... and as yet, no one knows what Akashic definitions were lost... and in desperation the defenders unleashed a collective Smiting.

The UnKnowing was driven back. But a CRACK opened, between the Astral and Ethereal. A barrier of indefinable, inexplicable otherness that follows no know laws, no known logic. A conceptual span no extant power can cross.

A... Gap.

Those in the Inner Planes were trapped within the Inner Planes. Those in the Outer Planes were restricted to the Outer Planes.

And those RIGHT on the border? A split in reality moved to rend them.

Most were destroyed. But you? You had been gifted a Divine Nimbus, a thing that only those JUST short of godhood could attune it. Once a tiny thing, it had grown with you, grown THROUGH you, and made you a force of the universe. So when the Rending came you survived... but your nimbus did not. Worse, more than HALF of what you were was stripped away into... the UnKnowing.

And you feel. Fell through the Ethereal, past the Elemental, and crashed into some random Material Plane. There is pain, and confusion, and a great crater where you landed. You had been a 20th-level gestalt Mythic Tier 10 near god. Now... you're just 9th. And gestalt. And powerful in a way few mortals are.

But... mortal, and so much less than you were.

Also, you hear people screaming in terror. You think the screaming is coming from... that way.

Nimbus: As Favored Souls of a true deity, you were each granted a Nimbus, which made you direct agents of that divine power. You lost your nimbus, and 11 gestalt class levels and 10 mythic ranks, in your Fall. You want it all back.A Nimbus requires level 20, mythic tier 10 to attuneGrants:Plane Shift at willNecklace of AdaptationThe Final Revelation of 2 mysteries connected to You or your Patron DeityManifestation - You can can ignore lesser entities and, unlike mortals, can (potentially) kill true gods. Treat lesser gods as 30th level, mythic tier 11 creatures; intermediate gods as 40th level mythic tier 12; greater gods as 50th level mythic tier 13, and apex gods as 75th level mythic tier 15.When a nonmythic entity attempts to affect you in any way, you are aware of who, what they are attempting, and can choose whether or not to allow it.You sometimes receive, and may be able to answer, prayers.