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. read more…