Blood & Heraldry is a long-form D&D campaign set in the Sixfold Dominion, a fractured realm built from the corpse of a fallen empire. Expect old-school fantasy, folklore, mythic tragedy, political intrigue, and gothic horror in a world where peace is fragile and fraying at the edges, and ancient enemies are beginning to stir.
Campaign Details
System: D&D 5e using the 2024 ruleset as our mechanical baseline.
Legacy Content: Characters may discover and learn select 2014-era spells and feats through play, rather than simply taking them during character creation.
Levels: We begin at Level 3 and are aiming for Level 17, potentially reaching Level 20 if the campaign naturally carries us there.
Campaign Length: Expect roughly one year of play, potentially a little longer depending on pacing and where the story takes us. And if people are having fun.
VTT: We will be playing through Foundry, with Discord used for voice and campaign communication.
Session 0: It'll be all about character creation. If anyone needs help learning Foundry, we'll do that as well.
Hybrid voice/text. Expect most of NPC dialogue / scene exposition to be in text in Foundry. Voice will largely be for communicating between the party, asking what you all would like to do, that sort of thing.
Looking for a party of Five.
The Premise
Centuries ago, the Volatilis Empire brought Aurelys beneath the heel of vampires, until the warrior Seru descended from the moon and united the survivors against them.
Seru forged the Combine Empire, only to be assassinated ten years later; without him, his empire shattered into the six nations now called the Sixfold Dominion.
240 years later, Seru's Peace technically survives, but the Six Lords sharpen their knives, old grudges return to the fore, and the ancient Coterie quietly rebuilds its strength.
You enter this world as members of a House whose future you will shape; who you trust, betray, befriend, and destroy may determine whether your House rises with the coming storm... or disappears beneath it.
Tone & Style
This is primarily Sword & Sorcery, mixing personal stakes and frequent action with elements of high fantasy and gothic horror.
Think folklore, Tolkien, mythic tragedy, faded glory, and gothic elegy rather than clean-cut heroic fantasy.
Political intrigue, scheming, alliances, betrayals, and faction play are available in abundance, but how deeply you engage with them is largely your choice. We'll shift things around based on what the players seem to enjoy.
Your ambitions matter: the campaign's larger mysteries will continue moving, but your relationships, enemies, loyalties, and decisions will shape the future of the Dominion, and whether or not it reforms as the Combine.
The Sixfold Dominion
Duskwold: Mist-choked forests and mountains inspired by Slavic folklore, where witch hunters, haphazard militias, and monster slayers guard downtrodden villages, and reject aid from the Church for fear of their expansion.
Quetzalcan: Jungle highlands inspired by Central American mythology, where the old gods increasingly clash with the Church.
Ashenroot: Frozen forests beneath the colossal World Oak, steeped in Germanic/Norse-inspired mythology. Expect a strong warrior culture and probably more mead than appropriate.
The Aegis Coast: Hellenic-inspired city-states of philosophers, duelists, hero cults, and a shroud of sorrow overlooking the heart of the former vampire empire. Also, big monsters.
The Whirling Steppe: Golden grasslands, caravans, mystics, merchant princes, and clan politics drawing from Anatolian/Turkish mysticism. .. And flying carpets.
Surynavath: An Indian-epic inspired realm of jungle rivers and ancient animal spirits, now ruled by a Rakshasa Fiend-King who has declared himself the one true god.
Faith, Magic & Factions
Magic is ancient, powerful, and politically complicated; depending upon where you travel, a mage might be a respected advisor, spiritual leader, dangerous heretic, or government property.
The Church of the Inquisitor teaches that Seru will someday return to save mortalkind, collecting gold, iron, and people as a tithe while preparing for his promised return.
The Crimson Veil crosses borders to care for the wounded, grieving, orphaned, and forgotten when governments and churches will not.
The Black Rosary Brotherhood are wandering exorcists and monster hunters who answer to neither throne nor altar.
What Kind of Characters Fit?
Characters with ambitions, loyalties, grudges, beliefs, family ties, or something they want to change about the world will have plenty to work with.
The Dominion is culturally diverse, so characters can come from dramatically different traditions while still belonging naturally within the same setting.
Your backstory doesn't need to be a novel; I'd much rather have a character with motivations I can pull into the campaign than ten pages of history that never becomes relevant.
Expect to have a character that is a scion or member of one of the six noble houses, descendants of the six adventurers that traveled into the darkness to expunge the beating heart of the Volatilis Empire. None of the houses have much wealth or glory left to their names, however.
Most importantly, make someone who wants to adventure and has a reason to work with the party - complicated characters are welcome, antisocial characters who refuse to engage are not. Seriously, we don't do the whole 'Strider broods in the corner' thing.
What to Expect
Player choices with lasting consequences.
Frequent combat, exploration, monsters, and adventure.
Roleplay, faction politics, intrigue, and social maneuvering.
Character-driven stories woven into the larger campaign.
Ancient ruins, forbidden magic, religious conflict, vampires, and things considerably worse than vampires.
A world where you are not just a bystander watching the setting's history; you are helping write what happens next.
Seru will return. Will you be worthy? If you think so, send me a DM and we'll talk.