Bradley Jersak sits down with Nikki Morgen, discussing how her current D&D Campaign is re-enchanting reality to explore the nature of the soul and the cost of entering covenants with tyrants … and the spiritual death of untethering from them.
NIKKI: In my current D&D campaign, I’m exploring the nature of a soul. The main party is a group that unwittingly made a deal with a tyrant—one they entered into with good intentions. They wanted to free the realm from this tyrant and thought, “Hey, we can mess up the system from the inside.” But now as they go around trying to bring peace to the land, they have to make deals with people who are different from them—including unsavory characters.
There is a way that the soul is transformed through those exchanges. Not necessarily that you’re losing something, but there is something alchemical going on, and you need to be careful about which exchanges you’re making. Also, to a degree, when you have that alchemy—that chemistry between souls—you might end up owing something in that equation, and you don’t want to owe it to the wrong person.
So, in the party’s quest for power and control over this region—to take it away from this evil person—they have made a deal with the devil. Now they’re like, “Well, we’re not going back on our deal, but now we are serving something that isn’t directly in line with our own hopes and goals.”
One of the things that happens throughout the campaign is that they try to untether themselves from the tyrant. By the end of the campaign, if they want to succeed in untethering themselves, every single person will have to pass through a kind of spiritual death. One character gets reincarnated. Another literally sacrifices their body and is put into a new one. One character sells their soul to a different devil, so it’s almost like a dismissal of responsibility: “Hey, it’s this other guy’s problem now.” But that has a cost. That character gives up autonomy in a certain way—leases it out.
In the game, they are literally playing with their souls, but it’s also a metaphor. This party wants to do the right thing and make this place better for everybody. But they are essentially in hell—a country of exiles where they are not welcome anywhere else. Imagine if we had a country in real life where nationless migrants could at least go. Even if they were treated poorly, there would be a place that could be used as a dumping ground for them. They’re trying to bring these people freedom. They’re entering hell and allowing themselves to be transformed in their effort to free everybody else.
BRADLEY: In those exchanges, I’m hearing the cost of it, but you also suggested there’s something we bring to it—or that they bring to me.
NIKKI: One example: early on, they go to a mining colony. The people there are basically fracking for oil, and the company keeps getting raided by elves and beast-men from the forest because it’s destroying nature. The question becomes: “Are we willing to give up having gas power in this region if that means we can have peace with this other faction and develop trust through sacrifice?” So, they give up a resource and a technological advantage to become one with another group.
BRADLEY: And what’s the payoff?
NIKKI: The payoff is peace—but it comes through giving something up.
BRADLEY: If we think in terms of these exchanges and partnerships with “the other” as costs and sacrifices that require losing your soul, you could argue we should never enter those partnerships. But then you live in isolation. And what’s wrong with that?
NIKKI: It’s solipsistic. It’s, “I don’t want to compromise, so I’m going to retreat into this strange, isolated existence.” Some people might frame it like stoicism—“I can make it on my own”—or a kind of libertarian mindset: “I got what’s mine.” But really, you’re suffocating yourself that way.
BRADLEY: So that suggests the opposite: it’s a balance. By entering into these relationships, you’re not only gaining peace—there’s something expansive about it. If isolation suffocates, then partnership, even with its risks, expands your soul, your culture, your humanity.
NIKKI: I think about people who are anxious and say, “I don’t want to be perceived.” If you live in your basement and never talk to anyone, sure—you won’t risk anything. But you’re risking something worse. You’re risking the loss of intimacy. You’re risking not being seen or being able to communicate from the deepest parts of your heart. You won’t be able to share anything, and nothing will be shared with you.
Before they can overthrow the tyrant, they need to essentially be reborn—some kind of ego death, letting go of their original idealized selves.
BRADLEY: That’s important, because earlier you called it a spiritual death, and some people would see that only as negative. But calling it ego-death helps us see why it’s also expansive. You can suffocate in your own ego. Letting go of it allows growth.
NIKKI: So, back to the nature of the soul. In this world’s theology, if you don’t pledge yourself to a god—even though gods physically exist—your soul goes into the ether, mixes with others, and is reincarnated into a new body. It’s a recycling process. But if you commit to a god, you enter that god’s afterlife.
One character—let’s call him Ben—is a humanoid dragon. He came from a dragon nation where he was considered a heretic. The dragon queen was a high monarch, and he spoke out in favor of interfaith exploration. He was flayed and exiled, left scarred.
Despite that, he became a major interfaith voice. He primarily worships a god named Paladine. At one point, after sacrificing himself for someone running a clinic for the homeless, Paladine remade his body. He went from a scarred black dragonborn to a radiant figure with golden scales—an envoy or prophet of this god. He even communicates directly with Paladine through prayer.
BRADLEY: This connects to interfaith dialogue. Some people think interfaith dialogue means watering everything down until no one really has a relationship with God anymore. But others say, “No. Come with loyalty to your tradition, so I can bring my loyalty to mine. Don’t erase our distinctions, but don’t let them divide us either.
That builds trust. If I say, “I’m nothing,” people can’t locate me—they can’t trust me. They wonder about hidden agendas. But if I’m rooted and still inclusive, people know where I stand.
NIKKI: In this world, gods also function like domains—there’s a god of contracts, for instance. When making an agreement, both parties might pray to that god to ensure good faith. It’s not about worshiping that god daily but recognizing its role.
There’s also the idea that gods gain strength from belief and action. As belief fades, they weaken. Whether that’s literally true or not, it reflects something real: when faith weakens, our experience of the divine diminishes.
Finally, there’s the danger of making a covenant with a tyrant. At one point, the party invoked the name of a powerful demon, Bezengule, to get out of trouble. They didn’t know the terms. One character sold not only his own soul, but another’s—Ben’s—without permission. Later, the cost came due: a demand to kill someone.
In the end, Ben chose to sacrifice himself to negate the deal and save the intended victim. But the one who made the deal had to repay everything—and more.
The lesson seems to be that you can never fully know the cost upfront. Trust and risk are necessary for intimacy, but bad-faith shortcuts cost more in the end. It’s harder to dig yourself out of a hole than to act rightly from the beginning.
BRADLEY: Well, one thing I was about to say is that if you transpose this to the real world… but then I thought, “No, wait—this is the point of re-enchantment: and what you’re describing is the real world, a mythical description of what is.”
I’m seeing the wisdom you’re in tune with. When we have entered a covenant where the cost is never simply quid pro quo—asymmetrical—and we begin to recognize it, the only way out is a spiritual death. That’s exactly true.
And I’m even thinking of someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene being absolutely the most loyal Trumpist there was. But she had a wake-up call when she read the Epstein files and turned on the president and on her colleagues. That required a sacrifice of vocation and reputation. She resigned from her position in Congress and destroyed any leverage she had within the MAGA movement and even said that MAGA influencers “look like cult fools” for mocking victims.
For MTG to see this and call it out—well, I don’t know who will trust her voice. She’s been regarded as this horrible person. But having gone through some sort of awakening, it’s as if she’s had a spiritual death and resurrection, at least on a couple of issues.
But the cost of disentangling herself from Trump appears to be enormous, and that might even be what gives her some credibility. No one on the political left is going to love her, but now she’s probably also in real danger from the right.
Is it too much to imagine her saying, “This has already cost me my soul. There’s no going back. But what I can do is fall on my sword here, stand with the Epstein victims, and give up my political credentials.”
At this point, maybe she’s trying to mitigate the damage done by her party. Or maybe those efforts are useless, but she believes it’s still the right thing to do. Breaking rank may have no impact except to save her soul—whatever that means, right?
Why did I bring that up? Just to say that what you’re describing is real—that is, a dramatization of reality. So, is your storyline fiction? Yes. Is it real? Yes. And is it true? Yes.
You’ve penetrated something, in terms of truth, that I really value.
NIKKI: Oof! It’s like I’ve been running this… this story that keeps evolving and changing. I’ve been running the campaign for about three years, and I’ve had materials for it that I’ve been writing—just in preparation—for about eight years.
BRADLEY: I would say you’re not only describing an unfolding reality, but you’re seeing patterns of history—and you’re also anticipating them.