Cavcari's Last Invocation

I was recently reminded of one of those "Campaigns That Never Were". In this case, it was a Forgotten Realms campaign that lasted all of two sessions before crashing and burning. And, if I'm honest, I was glad of it - I just didn't have the time or inspiration to give the campaign my full attention, and I didn't want to just run something substandard. (Incidentally, it's worth noting that there was very little about the campaign that meant it had to be Forgotten Realms - I only used that setting because one player was particularly keen to do so. That said, I did make sure to throw in one or two Realms-y bits to ground it.)

The campaign kicked off with something that had very little to do with the main plot. The initial setting was a trading post at an oasis in the desert, a city of tents, where a murder most horrid had occurred. Obviously, with the desert being a hostile environment, anything that breaks social cohesion cannot be tolerated, and so 'justice' was swift and decisive. So when the wrong man was identified as the murderer, the PCs were compelled to step in and try to keep their friend alive. That then led to an expedition into the desert to a downed Netherese sky citadel (one of those Realms-y bits - in another setting it would have been an abandoned dwarven fortress), and then the campaign died.

But the ultimate ending for the campaign that I had conceived was the discovery and manipulation of "Cavcari's Last Invocation". Cavcari was set to be an ancient archmage who, way back in the mists of time, had laid down various enchantments that had actually come to define the reality of the world. And his Last Invocation was a simple but profound edict: everything that is born must eventually die. Which of course meant that true immortality, even through undeath, became impossible... but in the Realms it would also mean that at least some of the deities (Midnight/Mystra, Kelemvor, and Cyric among others) who were previously mortals would also be finite. (Of course, this was before Mystra got killed off again, and other shenanigans.)

I hadn't quite worked out all the details, of course - there's no point in plotting the end-point of a campaign months or years in advance if you don't have to - but the final conceit was that the players would eventually have some means to adjust or apply the Invocation in order to change their world: they could use it to compel the end of some Big Bad perhaps, or they could revoke the Invocation, or... something.

Which, by this point, is largely irrelevant. I mean, who cares about a campaign I didn't manage to get off the ground a decade ago?

But the campaign does illustrate something that I think is important, especially with a game like D&D: by the time the PCs near the top of the level range, they are amongst the most powerful beings in the world. And as such, their effect on the world should be equivalently powerful. That's something I've tried to emphasise in campaigns I've run since then: in "The Eberron Code", the PCs eventually cleansed the taint from the Silver Flame; in "The Company of the Black Hand" they liberated the home town Denberg from the tyranny of Lady Aum and her allies; and if "Eberron: Dust to Dust" runs to its completion then that campaign will also leave a mark on the world - and a mark that will then carry over into any future campaigns I run in the setting (whether in 5e, 3.5e, or some other edition or game entirely).