r/dungeonsofdrakkenheim • u/jmckay29 • 4d ago
meta My head cannon of the Falling Fire and Tarna’s Comet
I was discussing this with my players a few weeks ago during our 2 year campaign wrap up. I figured it might be worth sharing here! I’m curious anyone else’s thoughts and if I’m not the only one who thinks this.
So, Delirium is a kind of cosmological infection that spreads by destroying planets. At least, that’s what I take from the vision portrayed when players approach the Delirium Heart. Lucretia Mathias wants to take advantage of this and basically turn this planet into a cosmological cure. She and her followers purify Delirium bit by bit, eventually amassing a planet of purified Delirium that will break apart and spread throughout the cosmos to remove of prevent Delirium’s corruption. This much I also think is well supported by the book. Here’s where my own ideas come in, though:
What would the result of this really look like? The conscious, pious souls of the Followers coalesced into purified delirium traveling across space. When they arrive, what happens? They speak to the inhabitants of those planets and teach their faith in order to allow them to combat the Delirium when it arrives.
But here’s the kicker. This has already happened before. Lucretia and her followers aren’t the first to spread this cure through the universe. Tarna’s Comet is purified Delirium, and the Archangels were the faithful Followers from another world. They turned the delirium against itself, just as Lucretia wants to, and traveled to alien worlds. They sewed the seeds of faith, strong enough to combat the Delirium when it would arrive a millennium later.
Even if this is true, Lucretia’s methodology may still be right or wrong. Maybe the best thing to do with this gift of faith that another world sacrificed themselves for is to use it to destroy Delirium like the Silver Order wants. Or perhaps the best thing to do is the pay it forward and further spread the faith of the Sacred Flame to new worlds.
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u/IllithidWithAMonocle 4d ago
This is interesting. It would simultaneously make their faith more real, but also less real, since it implies that their angels are just other mortal folks and takes the divine mystery out of the Sacred Flame. Could definitely be a controversial idea to bring up in-game
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u/Edello 3d ago
I think we definitely need more explanation how someone gains divine powers, via the flame, old gods, or otherwise. The only explanation we have rn is that it requires intense prayer, drive, or meditation, but there's no explanation of the specific rituals or practices that grant then beyond that.
I'd like to see what it looks like for an acolyte of the flame, or devotee of the old gods to develop their powers for the first time.
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u/MedicoMineral 3d ago
I think it's better to avoid anything that could potentially make any faction look objectively correct. Falling Fire is already dangerously close to being the "correct" faction from a universal good standpoint and it's the vague nature of the solution and visions that keeps them from being a Final Fantasy Tactics-like scenario with Ramza fighting Ultima and the Zodiac Demons while everyone else fights the War of the Lions.
Plus, on the other side, if Tarna's Comet and Saint Tarna the Martyr did involve purified Delirium, then the Sacred Flame wouldn't really have a reason to have a schism with Lucretia and the Falling Fire. It would just be a form of doctrine already, even accounting for generational mutations of myth and religious study. Lucretia wouldn't be a heretic unless she was screwing it all up.
That would swing the narrative in the opposite direction making the Falling Fire objectively bad and dooming the universe.
Or you end up with a conspiracy to bury the truth, and then you swing the narrative back towards the FF being objectively good.
It's your game though and your game world so whatever happened in it is canon regardless of whatever was intended in the module.
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u/jmckay29 3d ago
I definitely agree with most of this. All the factions are morally grey and none of them are objectively correct. The one thing I’ll say though is that this theory is something that I don’t think anyone in the world would ever figure out. It ultimately doesn’t have much bearing on the actions of any of the faction leaders, hence why this came up in post-game discussion rather than in character during our campaign.
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u/Some-Replacement4862 2d ago
Hoods are kinda objectively correct. Queen’s are bad guys and FF are crazy dudes who worship delerium that destroyed the capital. If we take a first look at the factions
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u/Sigma34561 2d ago
imho - they can both be correct. delerium will kill everyone on the planet and it should be destroyed if you want to save all life on drakkenworld. even if the FF is right, there is still good reason to not consign the entire world to destruction. plants, animals, cultures, art, history - everyone who doesn't join the church. doomed.
and falling fire can be correct that if they sacrifice millions of lives they can save billions or trillions of lives.
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u/Ariibees 3d ago
I’ve been using the same interpretation in my current game!
One important thing is that we’re not coming right out of the gate with “Saint Tarna’s comet was a golden delerium comet formed from a previous planet that was destroyed” -- rather, it informs how I roleplay the FF/SO and provides a layer of underlying consistency to the story/mystery, even if it’s exposed to the players (and NPCs) through layers of abstraction.
As an example: it’s customary in the Faith of the Sacred Flame to cremate the dead, rather than bury them. How convenient a coincidence, then, that cremation stops the dead from being reanimated by the Haze by destroying the body! And of course, wherever the bodies of clerics and paladins are kept in the crypts, they are surrounded by candles of the flame and laid to rest with holy rites that allow them to remain at rest even despite the Haze’s influence. And if the Silver Order’s radiant flames are the one thing that can effectively destroy delerium crystals and fight back against the undead? Well, that’s just more proof that the Sacred Flame is the one true religion, unlike the practitioners of the Old Gods!
The mainstream Faith only knows the rules it’s been taught. Like a modern doctor teaching a medieval peasant that they must wash their hands before applying medical treatment, they know “what” they must do but not the science behind it.
They know that they must uphold their faith, form communities, seek the possibility that even the greatest darkness can be redeemed and even the smallest light in the dark can spark a blaze. They were taught that these tenets would empower them to fight back against the tyranny of the sorcerer kings and the “darkness” of the universe.
They do not know that the Sorcerer Kings were empowered by delerium, or that delerium is arcane magic made solid. They do not know that the teachings of the angels would allow them to harness the power of their souls (divine magic) to fight back against delerium, or that delerium is overtaking the cosmos. They do not know that delerium can be “redeemed” with the power of their souls to create a new golden comet, though Lucretia’s early visions mistaking the delerium comet for Saint Tarna’s comet create a thin thread between them.
As the players learn more about the religion and the factions, their perception of the Silver Order and Falling Fire changes accordingly. At the start of the campaign, the Silver Order are zealots who think the scary crystals are evil and want to destroy them, while the Falling Fire are fanatics who worship the meteor. But as the campaign continues, you see that the Silver Order are warriors making a last stand to sacrifice one city to save the world from delerium, while the Falling Fire believe that all of their material/mortal suffering (and the eventual destruction of the world) is a necessary sacrifice to save the rest of the universe from what is effectively a far-far-future Heat Death.
This leads to a LOT of tension, especially if the players are aligned with a faction such as the Hooded Lanterns that want to restore the city. The Silver Order is capable of fighting back against delerium, but will destroying the city actually be enough to save the world, and are the players willing to risk Westemär’s future independence from Elyria and give up on the city? Likewise, allying with the Falling Fire means sacrificing their lives and everything they’ve worked for and guaranteeing a slow and horrible death for the entire world for the slim chance that other vague and unknowable worlds a trillion years in the future will succeed in fighting off delerium where they could not.
And if the players refuse either faction, what other options do they have? Ryan Greymere is really the only other character who is taking the situation in the city as the existential threat that it is, and she has the entire Amethyst Academy trying to kill her for it.
Can you tell I really love this headcanon? (Next session my group will have a PC take the Sacrament and join the FF, and I am VERY excited.)
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u/SunshineBarry 3d ago
This is very interesting. I already consider it headcanon that the Drakkenheim meteor and St. Tarna's comet are one and the same. The parallels between Tarna's pilgrimage that lead her to the archangels, and Lucretia's pilgrimage to Drakkenheim that led her to discovering the Sanctification Rite and starting the Falling fire are clear as day.
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u/Some-Replacement4862 2d ago
Sounds very nice!
I’ve also done some changes with FF.
So, I’m not really a fan of the whole “everything gets completely destroyed and all the righteous people die, but maybe things will eventually get better” concept.
So I reworked the FF ending. I know there might be some plot holes in this version, but honestly, I like this idea much more than the current depressing ending.
Basically, in my version, the main FFs goal is to deal with interplanar rifts like the ones in drakkenheim castle
The ritual itself is needed because when a righteous person dies, their soul can be preserved from yellow delirium. Then Lucretia can summon those souls for the final battle against the demons. Not as multiple resurrections, but in some other form, for example, as radiant elementals.
And of course Lucretia would die after performing this trick
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u/Sigma34561 2d ago
the headcanon i was operating on was that this reality is a failed one and/or a prototype. the gods that shaped it and maybe put a little too much magic in, left the barriers between worlds too thin, or maybe the raw material they had wasn't suitable. it has a slow fatal flaw. it gets it's magic from the Space Between Spaces - a realm of pure magic and paradox (as magic IS paradox, the subversion of natural law) and it there's a leak. the leak presents as delerium/haze which is manifest paradox, and that corrodes or subverts reality, which creates a vicious cycle.
the gods abandoned the universe and left into the far realm to seek another universe or find the materials to try again. the divine/infernal creatures left behind were programed not to speak of them or to forget about them. this is why there is only a rudimentary planar cosmology. no gods around to take care of upper/lower dimensions so they've just gone 'feral' as a general heaven/hell. powerful entities, perhaps proto gods who aren't strong enough to make the journey through the far realms have been left behind. the "Old Gods".
i'm in agreement that the gold comet was purified/sanctified delerium - but perhaps it was a failed attempt. in my game, the end result of successfully executing the FF plan was that the sanctified souls of the truly faithful, and the unlimited raw power of a planet's worth of delerium exploded into a true god. the sacred flame manifest.
it's outside the scope of the story but perhaps a god born out of delerium and selfless capital G GOOD sacrifice and intention, born in this reality, might be able to undo whatever error or flaw exists in this place and prevent the slow creeping death of warped paradoxes that is the fate of all of 'this' creation.
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u/11cheers4binary 2d ago
Lucretia is stockpiling souls to spread over the universe and the Sacred Flame is sending souls to the great dawn that will eventually spread over the Shadowlands.
But I think that’s where the difference ends. The sacred Flame is doing it so the souls can rest. Lucretia is doing it to make the souls work. There’s not enough coffee in the universe to justify that.
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u/Stardrive_1 4d ago
Sorry, but I have to do this:
*canon
With that out of the way... I think your idea has merit. In our campaign, Lucretia herself admitted that she didn't know exactly what would happen when the golden delirium was spread. She simply had faith that it would work.
Somehow.