Campaign 1: Ritonar
Part 1.0: Ten Initial Characters
This campaign was my first in 5e, and I wasn't familiar with *any* of the canonical worldbuilding. As such, I didn't bother writing up an intro to my campaign beyond "you wake up and you don't know where you are nor how you got here". Thus, some of my players wrote their characters backstories, and some didn't. Before we get into the campaign, here are the ten characters that attended Session One. I've sorted them roughly from Most Important to the Story (Marcus/Vale) to Least Important to the Story (Masiwa). This roster would not remain the same throughout the playthrough--characters left, died, joined, and so on thoughout the story.
Marcus, played by my brother Cameron Riker, is actually a facade for Vale, a changeling L5 bard/L1 Warlock with a perverse aspiration to become a god. Marcus appears human and very blonde, and wears stock armor that could fit lots of body types.
chrome://dino is a tiefling L6 Oath of Honesty Paladin played by my friend Joe Stay, who has never played D&D of any kind before. chrome://dino has white skin and circular horns.
Vasher is an Earth Genasi L4 Fighter/L2 Barbarian played by my cousin Evan Riker. This character is minmaxed to the teeth, and yet has too much of a conscience to actually attack anything. He was a real pain to DM.
Boneless V is a half-elf L6 Sorcerer, played by Joe's little sister Crystal Stay. He, as the name suggests, has removed every bone in his body through magic, keeping his form only through his singular mastery of Mage Hands.
Bartholomew is our tiefling L6 necromancer, played by Crystal's friend Jayden Chamberlain, also a first-timer. Ever heard of a murderhobo? Bartholomew is an unmurderhobo.
Myrian Araquen is an eladrin L1 fighter/L5 Monk played by my brother's friend Lily. He doesn't like wearing clothes, and has the nastiest unarmed strike possible. A gimmick of this character is that nobody's quite sure if he's male or female.
Aesden Elt is a high elf L6 Rogue played by my other cousin Simon Riker. All of the tropes you love about rogues, with all of the condescension you love about high elves. Also, a weird fascination with holding the high ground in any fight.
Ilimyar Horineth is another high elf L6 rogue, played by my brother's friend Henry Iglas. Henry is also a first-time D&D player.
Badger, the Silent Buster, is a changeling L6 bard played by Alex Thompson. Badger is open about his changeling nature, and his preferred form that that of a fat Russian man. He is quick with a war story, and almost none of them are true.
and finally, Masiwa is an aarakocra L6 Cleric played by Joe and Crystal's older brother, Louis Stay. None of the Stay family (or, as we call them, the Staymen) have played any D&D before.
With that, let's start the story.
HYPERLINKS TO CHAPTERS:
Part 5: Mountains of Confusion
Part 18: Battle of Brunlight: Assault
Part 19: Battle of Brunlight: Skyfall
Part 20: Battle of Brunlight: Disaster
Part 21: Battle of Brunlight: Retreat
Part 35: Ascension through Chaos
Part 1.1: Slaanesh
Ever since I made a group of friends in 5th grade who wanted to try Dungeons and Dragons, I have been the Forever DM. I enjoy it much more than actually playing. I stopped in highschool because it became too taxing to keep coming up with interesting plot points for my unpredictable friends. From the day that I stopped (late 2016), my friends began harassing me to play again. I spent a long time using the excuse “I can’t; I’m in college”, but when I left college in 2019, I no longer had that excuse. As such, in 2020, I began Ritonar, my first 5e campaign and the campaign that would become my magnum opus.
In an effort to learn from my past mistakes, I chose to prepare a whole open world, rather than a plot of any kind. I had the whole map drawn up on a whiteboard in my room. The idea was that the party was going to be trapped in a pocket dimension, with four floating islands to explore. There was only so much for them to explore without escaping. I wrote up a list of 100 or so things that were around for them to find (they ended up finding about 40), and went from there.
I created a tutorial kingdom, called Windfell, and really tried to channel my inner Hollow Knight with an icy mostly-abandoned kingdom in the shadow of a larger continent. The party started in front of a path from Windfell up to the continent above it, which was blocked by a river of lava (from the top continent) and an obelisk that read:
"Smith, butcher, or usurper prince
For all who seek the God's Eye since
The Ring of Doom shall ever burn
Until at last Slaanesh return"
and the party immediately started complaining about me naming NPCs after existing characters.
Anyway, they had no choice but to wander into Windfell. I created a small abandoned town for them to find, populated by a few elusive kenku and even fewer bugbears. They found a kenku, and I, wanting to ease the new players into combat, had him ask the party for help (in the style of weird kenku imitation-noises) and lead them to an abandoned bank where some bugbears were beating up a bunch of kenku.
The party rushed in to save the kenku, and the bugbears actually made a really good first fight for the new players. Myrian used Misty Step to teleport behind some of them, and distracted them long enough for everyone else to either get into the building or break through the windows and shoot into the building. The fighters got the bugbears to leave the kenku alone, and slowly surrounded them and pushed them back toward the door...
...and then Marcus cast Shatter on the bank vault.
This was my first big mistake. It was an abandoned town, and I was improvising, and I said, "eh, what buildings do abandoned towns have... it's a bank." My second mistake was to include the location of the vault in my drawing of the battlefield. Needless to say, the party killed the two mimics that I put inside the bank vault, and have spent almost the whole campaign since drowning in gold.
Part 1.2: Windfell
The next few sessions consisted of the party navigating Windfell. They found a church in one city, and I had to invent a religion (and a hymn) on the spot. Through that, communicating with Kenku villages, and some lore in other places, they gathered that Slaanesh was a religious leader in Windfell, and that he had been dead for a long time.
During this time, I killed Masiwa with a trap. I offered to find a way to resurrect him, or to let Louis make a new character, but he refused. Therefore, by the time the party reached Ishtenton, Windfell's capital city, there were only nine of them.
I had a plan for Ishtenton, a pretty average the-noble-family-has-been-cursed side quest. For better or for worse, however, the party was singularly focused on getting back home, and activating the obelisk from before, which they had now identified as the Liar's Monolith. They attended a church in the city, and met some friendly NPCs that helped fill them in on the nature of Slaanesh's death. According to their creed, Slaanesh had been the only one capable of entering the God's Eye, a perpetual hurricane that stayed unmoving within the kingdom of Ritonar. His skull was on display within Ishtenton's castle, but the rest of his remains had been scattered elsewhere throughout the world.
The party decided, out loud, in the street in front of the church, that they were going to find out what Slaanesh's quest was, and, if possible, complete it. They were laughed off by passersby, and one man said, "you'd have to be a Wizard to survive in Ritonar." Three of the party members proceeded to make manifest their magical abilities at that moment, and the party was immediately escorted out of the city by the guard.
A few of the NPCs that they had been talking to earlier followed them out, and said something along the lines of "yeah, magic is banned in Windfell", a conversation that actually turned into an interesting, nuanced conversation about the nature of the Second Amendment. The NPCs recommended that the party seek the help of the Windfell Wizard, an eccentric magic user that lived within an ever-changing labyrinth nestled in mountains just beyond Windfell's border. The party thanked them for their time, left them some money, and began the journey.
It was on this journey that I was introduced to the single most damage-dealing move that the party had. It was a random encounter against six or seven ghouls, and, as luck would have it, during the chaos, five of them stood in a straight line. Our sorcerer, V (a first-time player who, I was coming to realize, had watched far too many youtube guides), then revealed that, by combining an ability that allows him an extra action, an ability that allows him to take the next turn's spell slot on this turn, and an ability that allows him to cast spells without material components, he can cast an extended-universe spell Aganazzar's Scorcher twice in one turn, dealing 6d8 fire damage to all creatures in a straight line. He killed four out of five ghouls.
Part 1.3: Eyrie
By the time that the party had made their way across Windfell, everyone was at least familiar with basic 5e combat and V had racked up a bunch of kills with Aganazzar's Scorcher. They were entering the Blasted Mountains now, and had seen a house on a tall tower (we're talkin’ full-sized house supported by flimsy little staircase Minecraft-style), and were setting their course towards it on their way to the Wizard's fortress. I communicated with the party over text and asked them who was taking watch as they camped at the base of the Blasted Mountains. Myrian, who was going to be late to the next session, agreed to take the last watch.
The next session started with the rest of the party waking up to find Myrian petrified, looking off toward the tower. Assuming the effect to be permanent, the party proceeded more cautiously, hoping that this tower would provide some way to navigate the labyrinth in which Elornhasemmarim lived, so that they could get to him quickly and ask for him to un-petrify Myrian.
The base of the tower was exactly what it looked like from afar: a (magically reinforced) spiral staircase that continued incredibly far upwards. Aesden checked the base of the staircase for traps, and found a magical trigger about ten steps up. chrome://dino checked behind the staircase, and immediately turned to stone. In the following fight, both Vasher and Badger were paralyzed before the basilisks finally retreated into the mountains.
Bartholomew and V investigated the "trap" on the staircase, and agreed that it was benign. They activated it, and a written magical message welcomed them to the Eyrie of the Watcher, and the staircase immediately became much easier to ascend. The party investigated the surprisingly small house, and found that it belonged to Venial, a spellcaster, geologist, and geographer that had not been home for some time.
The party did not find a cure for petrification, nor did they find any hints as to how to solve the labyrinth. They did, however, by way of the telescopes pointed in several directions, discover for the first time that they were on a floating island in the void. (This reveal was not nearly as exciting as I had hoped for it to be.)
Part 1.4: Elornhasemmarim
The party (now V, Aesden, Ilimyar, Bartholomew, and Vale, still disguised as Marcus) left their petrified cohorts near the base of the Eyrie and journeyed to the Labyrinth. It took them all of two minutes to come up with a solution to the maze: repeated concussive impact. I ruled that each time Vale did n damage to the walls via Eldritch Blast, a hole would be made with radius 3n centimeters. Therefore, even a nat 1 on damage would allow for limited sight through a wall, and Vale's maximum damage (8) would create a hole that took 3 seconds of movement to fit through.
This became relevant, because I populated the labyrinth with a bunch of nothics. The party got most of the way through the labyrinth (which I had algorithmically generated) before the nothics caught up to them, and, much to my surprise, decided to negotiate with them. I decided that the nothics were goblinlike creatures that had been given their magical properties from their proximity to the Impossible Stronghold. Living too far away from the labyrinth would cause them to lose their magic, and close proximity to the spellcasters could often have fatal consequences, so therefore, the nothics lived exclusively in the labyrinth, and fed upon those that wandered into it.
This meant that the party was able to cooperate with them right up until they cast their next Eldritch Blast. Knowing this, they (with the help of the nothics!) did their best to navigate my labyrinth, climbing on each others' shoulders to determine, to the best of their ability, the path leading to the Stronghold that would require the fewest Blasts.
The party coordinated, and did their best to kill all of the nothics suddenly and at the same time. One escaped, however, to go warn other nothics of the danger. What followed was an excellent chase scene that played to all five players' strengths in different ways, where the party fought off more nothics from all directions as Vale/Marcus frantically blasted his way through the labyrinth. I think, by the end, I had almost 50 nothics on the field at the same time, and they almost overwhelmed the party. They made it through, however, and Bartholomew covered the last hole in the wall with a Flaming Sphere to keep the nothics in the labyrinth.
The party entered the castle, and met Elornhasemmarim, the Wizard of Windfell. He lore dumped on them for a while, and explained what he knew of the pocket dimension in which he lived. Elornhasemmarim's self-appointed bond was the protection of humanity. He was old, however, and the threat of the Plague Lord had been growing too strong. According to a prophecy made by one of the Wizard's many live-in students, it would only be a week before the Great Tree fell, and darkness overtook the land.
The party had been summoned by Elornhasemmarim as a last resort. He had, through great expenditure of magic, reached out into the dimension above and summoned the inhabitants thereof that would be most able to help defeat the Plague Lord. They were supposed to appear in the place that they would be most helpful in. It must have been an error, the Wizard reckoned, that they instead appeared in Windfell, next to the True Liar's Monolith.
Bartholomew told Elornhasemmarim about the four petrified members of the party, and demanded that they be healed. The Wizard agreed, teleporting them into the castle and restoring their forms immediately. One of his students took responsibility for the release of the basilisks, but the Wizard was mostly unconcerned. Their petrification was temporary. Myrian had already mostly turned back to normal in the hours that he had been left alone, and was more annoyed than he was hurt.
The party was given beds to rest in for the night, and several healing potions. In the morning, they were to leave for the Mountains of Confusion, beyond which was Oshland, through which they would have to travel to get to the Battlegrounds of Neothorus.
Part 1.5: Mountains of Confusion
The Mountains of Confusion separated Windfell (or at least the Wizard's barren corner of it) from Oshland. The gimmick about the Mountains of Confusion is that when you enter them, you always come out where you expect to come out. So, the citizens of Oshland who believe the legends about the Wizard of Windfell find them to be true, and come out the other side to the labyrinth. On the other hand, the citizens who believe the legends about the powerful warrior cult (the Dragon Knights) also find them to be true, and stumble into the Dragon Sanctuary. Groups traveling together will never be separated, and it helps to have one's eyes closed. In the event that the party worked out how this system works, I was thinking about allowing some real physics-breaking travel through the Mountains.
The easiest way in and out of the labyrinth was the entrance, and so that was the side that faced the Mountains. As such, it was easy for the party to follow the footprints that led from the labyrinth and into the mountains. However, they had no ranger, and Badger lost the trail as they headed into the mountains.
Few of the party had been taking their travel into the Mountains seriously up until this point. They were all flourish and fanfare, arguing about which one of them was going to get to kill the Plague Lord. V, one of the loudest members in the group, had already forgotten all mention of Oshland, and was assuming that now that the party had left Windfell, they were only a short distance from the Plague Lord.
Members of the group began looking around for a clue as to where to go next. I asked V, Bartholomew, and Myrian to roll me investigation checks, as they were the most obvious in their demands.
V rolled a 1. Grinning, I told him that he could just make out a tall graygreen building in the distance. I checked my notes for the day, glanced at my random encounters table, and confirmed that I was indeed ready for the party to come out of the Mountains of Confusion on the doorstep of the Plague Lord.
Unfortunately, both Myrian and Bartholomew rolled high, and the party, seeing the numbers on the dice, decided to trust their assessments, and not V's.
I went with my original plan. A party of ten kuo-toa slaves (to a kuo-toa master) had befriended an orphaned kobold, and between the kuo-toa's planning and the kobold's stealth, had freed themselves. Exiled and with no resources, but knowing from kuo-toa creed that the Mountains were home to gods, they had traveled to them, and trusted their faith, tying themselves together with rope and donning long robes that covered their faces completely before starting on their treacherous journey through the mountains.
Myrian spotted these figures now, eleven humanoids in robes marching in single file. Bartholomew was able to plot a trail to them, and the party hurried along, eager to get as close to the strangers as they could before they walked beyond the party's view. The next hour (in-game, not IRL) of the party's time was spent chasing this group, which was only visible about half of the time.
Finally, on the slope of a snowy mountain, the party was climbing up switchbacks when they took a left 180 degree turn and found the figures to be right in front of them. Several of the party members readied weapons, but Bartholomew, leading the group, instead announced himself to them. The kuo-toa (and kobold) all stopped, and reached up and lowered their hoods. The lead one was only about 8 feet in front of Bartholomew, and could see Ilimyar and V behind him. Excited, the kuo-toa started babbling to each other in Undercommon. They had found their gods.
V fired an Aganazzar's scorcher along the narrow linear path, killing five kuo-toa and the one kobold instantly. Aesden got another kuo-toa with an arrow, and it fell down the mountain, dragging the corpses it was still attached to with it. Before Vasher convinced the other party members to stop, all but two of the kuo-toa were dead.
An awkward conversation then followed, where Vasher explained as much of the party's mistake as he could before realizing that neither of the surviving kuo-toa spoke Common. He, and the apologetic members of the party, made it clear to the duo in nonverbal terms that they intended them no further harm. They then left. And the kuo-toa followed them.
It makes sense. You've come this far--abandoned your life, braved Oshland, and made it into the mountains, and now found your gods? They killed off all your friends, but they left you alive! And then they explained, in their indecipherable holy language, that they meant you in particular no harm. You must be worthy!
The party descended the mountains into the kingdom of Oshland, followed now by their two ardent amphibian disciples.
Part 1.6: Tychus-Asadar
I tried hard to make this campaign as non-linear as I could. Sure, there was a prophecy about a Great Tree falling, and political unrest in Oshland, and a ghast problem in Windfell, but the party didn't have to address any of those. They could just explore the world, and each town would present more scenarios for them to either influence or ignore.
As the party entered the city of Tychus-Asadar, I gave them one such scenario. Three men on horses tore through a market square right in front of them, smashing through merchant stalls and taking whatever they could grab without stopping before leaving the same way that they came. I had planned an entire arc around these guys. Horses are rare in this dimension, and so the fact that Tychus-Asadar has so many makes it the horseracing capital of the world. This brings lots of scoundrels, seeking money and exhilaration. The party, however, chose to ignore these horsemen entirely, assuming that this type of thing was normal for the city.
No matter. I had a Plan B. The kuo-toa were still following the party. After a few minutes of them walking through the city, four men with extensive dragon-themed tattoos jumped out and attempted (almost successfully) to capture them. These men had heard the tales of the Dragon Knights, and pursued the glory thereof, but lacked the faith to discover the Dragon Sanctuary. Thus, they themselves had founded a group of "Dragon Knights", a small syndicate of rioters with very strict entry requirements, including a harsh training routine, mandatory body tattoos, and a dangerous initiation ceremony.
The party fought these men off (they wounded two but no kills), and demanded answers from them. The occult Knights answered (truthfully) that they had assumed that the kuo-toa had been Creatures from the Vale of the East. They meant to capture them and use them for combat practice, as they did with most Creatures that made it this far west. Impressed by Myrian's fisticuffs, one of the Knights extended to him an invitation to join the session of said practice, later that night.
Myrian declined.
Alright, fine. Ignore my plan A and my plan B, why don't you. A little frustrated, I asked the party what they meant to do in this city, and Bartholomew, ever the unmurderhobo, asked, "Is there anyone who could teach me more advanced necromancy?"
Sure. Whatever. There's another unmurderhobo, Bartholomew. He tells you to come meet him tomorrow night at the unfinished church. Happy now?
Vale told me in private that he wanted to separate from the party, drop his disguise as Marcus, and use his shapechanging to blend in and figure out "what the dirt" in this town was (had you been paying attention, Vale, you would already know “the dirt”). I had some herald yell something about some murder that had occurred (I made it up on the spot, something like "he comes in the night, cannot be seen, and can appear anywhere! The InViSIble kiLleR!")
And, of course, the party latched on to this "invisible killer" nonsense immediately. The Great Tree? The Plague Lord? completely forgotten. gotta go get this invisible killer guy I guess
Throughout the session, the party had been interrogating the nervous kuo-toa. The pair spoke only Undercommon. Of the party, only Vale spoke undercommon, and was unwilling to do so, lest he reveal to the rest of the party his true form as a changeling. Because of this, the party didn’t know the kuo-toa’s full story yet, but they got the main parts. The kuo-toa used to be slaves, they had gone to the Mountains, they thought the party were gods.
This interrogation had taken place without Vale present. Vale had already assumed a new form as the travelling musician Gregori and was now elsewhere in town talking to a half-dwarf named Talus, who knew the father of the girl that the Invisible Killer (reminder, I still had no plan nor explanation for this) had killed some nights ago.
In Vale's absence, the party went to a bookstore, and bought four children's stories. They were going to attempt to teach the kuo-toa Common. However, as soon as the purchase was made, an argument erupted among the men as to which words to teach the kuo-toa first.
Let's say you're the party. What are the first words you teach these defenseless fish-men, who worship you completely? "Hello"? "Freedom"? "Home"? "Food"? Your own names? Their names? "Oshland"? “Windfell”?
Anyway, they ended up choosing "Dab me up, homie".
Part 1.7: Invisible Killer
Talus, the half-dwarf that Vale had been speaking to as Gregori, was the suspicious type, as were his friends, and before the party knew it, they were being "held" in the spare bedroom of a Tychus citizen, under suspicion that one of them was moonlighting as the Invisible Killer. Talus himself took Gregori to a different room and questioned him alone, and two of his men did the same for Ilimyar and V, to ensure that their stories would align.
Gregori/Vale had finished telling his story to Talus completely when he realized that his lute was not where he left it. The room in which Talus was interrogating him had no windows, and only one door, which had remained closed the entire time. His only conclusion? The Invisible Killer was in the room with them.
Vale tried to keep Talus talking while he investigated, but the half-dwarf quickly caught onto his change in behavior. Talus stood up, facing Vale, and readied his axe before falling to an expertly placed knife in the back.
Talus realized what had happened and yelled to the villagers as he passed out, but it came out as a yell of incoherent pain. Villagers came and opened the door, and Vale blocked them with his body as best he could. Vale, still in disguise as Gregori, pulled the door shut, and summoned an Unseen Servant on the other side to hold it closed, trapping himself in the room with the Killer. He yelled to them to explain what had happened, but as he was doing so, some of the villagers ran into his Unseen Servant, and misunderstood him, thinking that the Servant was the Killer and attacking it.
Realizing that the door was going to be opened soon one way or the other, Vale swept the interior of the room, but failed to find the Killer. He then fired a Thunderwave, listening for the thump of the Killer against the walls. Sure enough, Talus' comatose body was flung to the side, as were the chairs, table, candles, and Vale's lute, but there were no additional crashing sounds to be heard.
The chaos brought the rest of the party running down the hall, and Myrian was able to push through the crowd and get to the door. Vale yelled an explanation of the situation to him, and, with some charisma and some luck, he and Vasher were able to calm the crowd.
Vale opened the door just enough for the party and a few villagers to enter the room, but try as they might, they never found a Killer. They reasoned that he must have left the room when the villagers had opened the door immediately after Talus had been stabbed. The party did, however, stabilize Talus. Vale cast a Cure Wounds on him, and he was immediately whisked upstairs by his friends, who expressed their thanks, despite clearly still being wary. In all the chaos, Myrian managed to pocket the dagger with which Talus had been stabbed. He showed the rest of the party as soon as he could get them alone.
The dagger was unremarkable, and neither Ilimyar nor Bartholomew could find any trace of poison on it. Engraved in the base, however, was an unfamiliar symbol made of three lines and an arch. Vale went outside and showed it to a passerby, and they were able to identify it as the symbol of a blacksmith in the city. The hour was getting late, but the party decided to go and interrogate that blacksmith to get some answers.
Part 1.8: Necromancers
When interrogated, the Blacksmith confirmed that the dagger with which Talus had been stabbed had been Talus’ own weapon. Left with more questions than answers, the party decided to return the dagger to Talus' house, and ask if they could stay one more night therein.
As most of the party (and the kuo-toa) did this, Bartholomew went to the unfinished church that he had been invited to, and Aesden, Myrian, and Vasher joined him. This was a little worrying, though. I had a plan for a big reveal involving the Invisible Killer at the end of this session, and I was worried that with four minds there instead of one, they would figure things out too quickly.
The logistics of this were a pain. I ended up running two sessions on the same day, one over discord (Talus' house) and one in person. On top of that, I had to keep the party members from communicating with each other until both sessions were over (for once, they were nice about this).
I used the mostly-built church as an enormous lore dump for Bartholomew and his companions. During their visit, the party learned that:
-they were in a pocket dimension
-the Blood God who built the dimension was no longer influencing its fate
-he had left behind 13 Blood Princes to succeed him
and some basic information about each of these princes, including their names, domains, likenesses, and how the townspeople thought about them (which statues were in which states of completion).
They then had to use this knowledge to locate a secret room underneath a statue of Iesceltan, a Blood Prince who had established himself in the governments of the four human kingdoms. He had formed the Obsidian Council, a controversial yet respected self-governing state in the far reaches of Oshland.
When all four men descended the ladder to the Necromancers' meeting, they were stopped by guards and told that Bartholomew was allowed only one guest (again, I couldn't have them figuring things out too fast). Aesden went to resist, but Bartholomew insisted that he would be safe. The four decided that Myrian, a skilled martial fighter with basic arcane ability, would be the best guard for Bartholomew. Aesden and Vasher returned to the rest of the party at Talus' place.
Now for the overlap between the two sessions. As most of the party was speaking to Talus' entourage (who were lovable, yet still very wary of the party) and negotiating cost for a night's stay, I had intended for Bartholomew and Myrian to be scared out of their wits by the atmosphere of the Necromancers' Guild. I described each man they interacted with as differently intimidating, heavily armed, and otherworldly.
This proved to be a mistake. Bartholomew felt right at home, and rolled *very* high on his various charisma checks. Before long, he was cheerfully debating manners of forcing corpses to convey messages ("Aron can make them speak full sentences! He leads a raid upon a graveyard just north of the city tomorrow, come and learn!") and playing hide-and-seek with a pile of animated severed hands (a favorite among the necromancers, apparently). In an attempt to further join himself with the necromancers, Bartholomew even dismissed Myrian to return to the rest of the party.
Myrian, instead, went out drinking. He was recognized by one of Talus' men, and the two spoke about what had been happening at Talus' residence. The reason why everyone was acting so suspicious of the party again, the man explained, was because they, in the process of healing Talus, had actually found the "Invisible Killer" that had stabbed him in the back. It had been a severed hand, well-hidden in the back of the dwarf's armor.
Myrian then proceeded to not put two and two together until well after it was too late.
Part 1.9: Graveyard
At Bartholomew's direction, the party left before sunrise to go to the graveyard, where several of the best necromancers in the city (and, by extension, in Oshland) were to practice their craft. Hopefully, they could persuade Aron, the necromancer leader, to allow Bartholomew into his inner circle, so that he could have some sway over the necromancers of Oshland.
As such, when Talus, who was conscious and mobile again, came to the party's room (which was very near the door of the large house, as opposed to Talus' second-floor room) to tell them about his findings and the severed hand, he found only Ilimyar, Vasher, and the two kuo-toa that they had been left behind to watch.
Upon hearing Talus’ report, Ilimyar and Vasher agreed that the necromancers were clearly to blame for the killings, and that it was critical that the party be warned of the danger. Talus offered to come with them across the city, but Vasher objected on the grounds that Talus would slow the duo down as they ran and then become a liability if there was to be a fight. Ilimyar attempted to order the kuo-toa to stay with Talus, but they either objected or did not understand ("Dab me up!") and so Vasher and Ilimyar gathered what little supplies the party majority had not packed with them and left, kuo-toa in tow.
The main body of the party arrived at the graveyard to find that the necromancers had already assembled. Gregori and chrome://dino (in whom alone Gregori had now confided his true identity) recognized two of the men from among the entourage of the noble that had recently been killed (!), an old man named Emile and a teenager called Domard (the youngest of the necromancers by far). Bartholomew and Myrian went to meet with the necromancer leader and were surprised to find that he was Aron Asadar, steward of the city. The man's body was decrepit, and though his ability to speak was undamaged, he preferred to speak through the several unusual zombies that escorted him. He welcomed the party to the unearthing, and asked Bartholomew to participate in raising several bodies from the dead to send as messengers to the Obsidian Council. Bartholomew did so.
It was then that Vasher and Ilimyar arrived, waving their swords around wildly as they approached, to draw the party's attention. They succeeded, and all of the party save for Bartholomew and Aesden jogged outside the graveyard's fenced border to see what had alarmed them. Domard, the young necromancer, tagged along with his as-of-yet friends. When Ilimyar then related the news to the rest of the party, Gregori turned to Domard for confirmation. By the time he did, Domard was already running back into the graveyard to warn the other necromancers.
chrome://dino and Gregori mounted the party's only horse (Titana, a racehorse that chrome://dino had created with magic the previous day) and charged after him, and Vale warned Bartholomew telepathically of the situation. Although Bartholomew was skeptical of Vale's claims, the two agreed that Domard could not be allowed to escape, and so chrome://dino managed to get a hold of him, tied his arms, and brought him aboard the horse as well. Domard, however, kept shouting warnings to the other necromancers throughout this process. chrome://dino posited to the rest of the party that it might be better to kill the young necromancer, but the other party members stopped him, as while the situation was bad, it was not yet ‘summarily-execute-a-child’ bad.
The party (still with a screaming Domard) collectively reentered the graveyard to find weapons of all sorts, from stone chisels to crossbows, pointed at them by both the necromancers and their undead. Aron, however, waved them all back, and telepathically ordered Domard to quiet.
Asadar then confirmed Ilimyar's suspicions. The necromancers of the city, and by extent, the kingdom, had been operating at his command. They had been planting evidence, creating suspicion, and when necessary, killing the supporters of the Obsidian Council. The Council, Asadar explained, had been giving the lords of Oshland misinformation, hiding an enormous incoming invasion and calamity. Asadar invited the party to join him in forcefully removing the Blood Prince Iesceltan and his followers, and, in the process, preparing Oshland for war.
V responded by casting both Fireballs of which he was capable.
An epic battle ensued. For the most part, any necromancer or zombie caught in the Fireballs died immediately or was reduced to low enough hit points that they began to flee. Aesden and Myrian began hunting both groups to the last, fearing that the zombies could cause havoc in the city and that the necromancers would fetch reinforcements. A hole was cut in the graveyard fence by a necromancer trying to escape, but the man's corpse ended up blocking the way after Vale hit him with a Shatter.
The lines between life and death got more and more blurry as the necromancers got more skilled, and Aron Asadar was killed once by V, once by chrome://dino, and then again by Vasher before he finally stopped fighting. Very few necromancers were left alive, including Domard, who the party agreed among themselves to release after the battle. The forest in the center of the graveyard was burned.
Part 1.10: Mansion Asadar
The party then began an incredible streak of high charisma rolls, starting by talking their way out of getting arrested when the city guard showed up at the graveyard. They were still detained, however. The guards decided, due to the inherently political nature of their crime, to take them to Mansion Tychus, where their fate would be decided by Lord Lerian Tychus himself. However, on the way there, Vasher was able to convince them to first stop at nearby Mansion Asadar and search it for proof that Lord Asadar was the leader of the necromancy cult.
Lady Radalta Asadar had disappeared overnight. She was not missed by many of the staff, who seemed glad to have her gone. Tychus’ guards (at odds with the Asadar family but not their staff) asked after the Lord’s habits and soon gleaned that there was a door on the ground floor of the house through which no staff were allowed. Asadar’s guards tried all of their keys on the door to no avail, and, further trying to impress the city guard, Ilimyar picked the lock.
It turned out that Mansion Asadar had an extensive secret basement. The party, with the help of the city guard, carefully descended down the stairs to find an armoury worthy of an Orc warclan. Deeper inside was a large circular room with a spell circle on the floor. Eleven zombies stood guard around it, each very well-armoured. The party and city guard dispatched these creatures, soon realizing that if they attacked them one-at-a-time, the zombies would not come to each others’ aid.
V hypothesized that the spell circle was a teleporter, and, against the advice of some of the guard, attempted to activate it. He was several minutes into attempting to do so when Lord Lerian Tychus arrived with his personal retinue. They did some of their own, nonmagical investigation, and found that the spell circle was being used to sell Osh weapons and armour to the Neothorus Kings, a group that Lord Tychus described to those present as “less men, and more beasts.” Neothorus, like Oshland, had been one of the Four Human Kingdoms, alongside Windfell and Ritonar. Ritonar had been decimated some ages ago, and Windfell had decayed into ruin more recently. Neothorus had been entirely conquered by the Plague Lord, but its inhabitants, Tychus explained, still pointlessly warred over small patches of forest near the Great Sea.
The party resolved to all go through the portal and to learn what they could about the other side. Lord Tychus, slow to trust, offered them a short rest at Mansion Tychus first at his own expense, during which he would send Eoward, his surviving son, to attempt to locate Lady Asadar. When the party woke, they would be free to enter the portal, with Lord Tychus’ blessing and a handful of his soldiers.
Part 1.11: Spell Circle
Most of the party agreed to stay at Mansion Tychus, but Aesden and his new party member, Gregori (still Vale but under a different disguise), decided instead to take chrome://dino’s horse, Titana, for a ride through the city. They went first to the graveyard in the hopes that they could help contain the fire, but found that the fire had grown out of control and that there were enough townspeople there that the two of them would only get in the way. Next, they went to the guardhouse, and found that a few necromancers, including Domard, had been captured and were awaiting trial.
The captive necromancers had spoken to each other, likely telepathically, and made sure that their story was sound: they had been blaming the destruction of the graveyard on the Invisible Killer. Gregori and Aesden, though, were quick to set the record straight. Having now witnessed the duo kill many of his friends and then return to doom himself and his companions to the noose, the young Domard, Tychus servant by day and necromancy prodigy by night, lashed out in angry defense of his companions’ actions. In the process, he admitted to having killed Oliver Tychus himself through the body of another Tychus servant.
Having now secured enough evidence to sentence the necromancers to death, Gregori and Aesden questioned them further about Lord Asadar’s dealings. Over the next few hours, they rode throughout the city, uncovering a large circle of blacksmiths that had been selling armour to Asadar in bulk for some time.
The rest of the party woke in the best of comfort within Mansion Tychus, and before long, Lord Tychus announced to them that Eoward had located and detained Lady Asadar. Tychus introduced the room to a squad of 12 of his soldiers, and said that the soldiers had been given orders to obey them so long as it suited the interests of the city. Aesden accepted graciously, and assumed command of the troops.
As always, when Lord Tychus accompanied the party to Mansion Asadar, he in turn was accompanied by an entourage. Vasher recognized one of the men in the entourage as one of the necromancers from the graveyard, and lunged for him, grabbing him and explaining the situation to the rest of Lord Tychus’ entourage. Lord Tychus himself was perturbed by the accusation. The man, Emile, was one of Tychus’ most trusted butlers, and had an alibi putting him elsewhere that morning during the events of the graveyard. Vasher relented, but Tychus’ guard now watched Emile more carefully than before.
Activating the teleportation circle turned out to be no easy task. Throughout the evening and into the night, the party, and especially V, did all they could think of to activate the circle, but did not succeed. The group began to mingle, and someone got Lord Tychus a beverage.
Suddenly, as V was crouched over a rune of the circle, Myrian was mid-Misty-Step, Aesden was introducing himself to the squad of Tychus soldiers, and Ilimyar was licking the ground, Emile attempted to push Lord Tychus into the circle and activate it. Tychus reacted with surprising dexterity, keeping himself firmly beyond the boundaries of the circle, but he could do nothing to stop its activation. In the instant before the party was whisked away, Vasher shot a crossbow bolt through Emile’s leg and V fired a counterspell at Lord Tychus with the intent of dispelling any spells affecting his will.
Part 1.12: Jungle
The party, and all of Tychus’ soldiers that had happened to also be standing in the circle, appeared in an identical spell circle in a jungle clearing. Two men stood guard, but the party (non-lethally) incapacitated them quickly. Aesden climbed a tree and scanned the party’s surroundings. The night was dark, but Aesden could see that there was another enormous floating island only a kilometer overhead. Some distance away, a huge tree grew up out of the jungle. The overhead island clearly rested on it for support. Nearer to the party was a militaristic human encampment.
Forgetting the prophecy about the Great Tree, the party decided to move in the other direction, away from both encampment and Tree. Since the party was traveling at the slow speed of fifteen men and two kuo-toa navigating unknown jungle, Aesden took the opportunity to get good at climbing between the (conveniently-shaped!) trees. As such, Aesden was the first to see the colossal tree stump ahead that the party was approaching, and among the first to see the squad of humans following the party through the jungle.
The human encampment, upon discovering that the guards to the teleportation circle had been bested, had dispatched a group of soldiers to track the party through the woods. They were now only an hour behind the party. Vasher and Ilimyar discussed the problem and decided that they alone would make a fake trail forward then quickly double back, and, along with the rest of the party, sneak off to the side. The hope was that the party would hide and wait as the human search party walked right past them, then turn around and hustle back to their encampment, which would now be without many of its fighting men.
As the party trudged forward, looking for a good place to execute their plan, Ilimyar suddenly (but calmly) fired an arrow toward the front of the party. The arrow stopped in midair only 20 feet ahead of Myrian, who approached it and discovered that it had hit its target: a near-transparent man-eating acid slime hidden among the trees.
The party attacked the slime, which made a surprisingly hasty retreat to what it had been guarding: a wooden cottage hidden away between the trees. As the party came closer, their path was blocked, as two trees came to life and joined the fight to defend the cottage. The party, with the help of Tonilm’s soldiers and the kuo-toa, began to do battle with the dendroids. Aesden, spotting three figures in a nearby clearing, ran to them and warned them of the fight, demanding the noncombatant figures either join the battle or flee. He reached the clearing just in time to see the three sprightly hags choose the latter option, and run off into the woods.
Ilimyar, however, remained undistracted. He had noticed something the rest of the party had not: an enchanted human eye, undamaged within the slime, watching the party intently. Ilimyar alone dashed past the battle and the trees, chasing his quarry into the small cottage it defended. In his rush to catch the slime, he failed to realize that he was moving into confined territory that would give it the tactical advantage.
Once Ilimyar entered the cottage, the slime outmaneuvered him, and before Ilimyar realized what was happening, he had been consumed.
The battle immediately turned to a rout. Vasher ran for Ilimyar, but in so doing, turned his back to the dendroid he had been fighting. The dendroid took the opportunity to severely wound the genasi. The kuo-toa attempted to fight off the trees, but were overwhelmed. Now near death himself, Vasher attempted to retrieve Ilimyar from the slime that had consumed him, but failed, and was forced to watch his teammate’s skin melt away until Aesden could arrive and finally pull him from the slime. Carrying Ilimyar and Vasher’s helpless forms with them, the party ran a full retreat from the cottage, maintaining their path toward the Stump.
The plan to evade the humans pursuing the party was all but forgotten, as the party had just lost its best navigator. Finally, after chrome://dino determined that the party was sufficiently distant from the hostile trees, the wounded were laid out and treated by the healers of the party. All survived except one.
Lying in an unfamiliar jungle in an unfamiliar world, unable to see or hear his friends’ attempts to save him, Ilimyar let out a final breath and succumbed to his injuries.
Part 1.13: Stump
The party reached the Great Stump only minutes before the group of native soldiers caught up to them. The Stump was 50 feet high, and almost as wide. Clearly, magic had been a factor in its demolition, as the rot holes that littered the stump were mirrored in the branches stuck to the bottom of the island overhead. One of the Tychus soldiers, Hernandez, realized that the party’s original plan was still an option: they could circle the stump, get the enemy soldiers to follow, and then take off running the way they came, losing the enemy soldiers behind the stump. At Vasher’s order, the party complied.
The ground around the tree, while still jungle, had clearly been the site of a battle many years ago. More often than not, the nearby trees had corpses laid against them for dozens of meters in every direction. Most were human, but Vasher, intrigued, spotted several harpies, two trolls, and a number of frightening ethereal beasts.
The party found a hiding spot on the far side of the tree, but their luck ran out, and Aesden was able to hear the soldiers on the other side split up, with half of them going around each side of the Stump. Tychus' soldiers, having been told to take orders from Aesden, looked to him for guidance, and Aesden, characteristically, climbed a tree.
The rest of the group followed. The rot holes in the tree made for convenient handholds, and nearly every member of the group had reached the top before one of Tychus’ soldiers finally lost his grip and fell.
The search party heard the sound, and gave the order to form up and surround the Stump. Ready for this, the archers of the party (Aesden, chrome://dino, and two of Tychus’ men) readied their bows and fired. Vasher threw a rope to recover the Tychus soldier who had fallen and rescued him before the native soldiers could reach him. Not to be outdone, the native soldiers began throwing ropes to the top. chrome://dino attempted to cut them, but the enemy were inhumanly strong and climbed very fast, and chrome://dino soon found himself overwhelmed.
The monstrous enemy soldiers were effectively kept on the outskirts of the Stump by the coordinated efforts of the party. Tychus’ men saw this as an opportunity to charge forward and attempt to push the enemy over the edge, but Gregori ordered them to hold firm, waiting for as many natives to climb up as feasible before casting Shatter on the Stump itself in an effort to throw the soldiers off the rotted outer edge.
The kuo-toa had spent a significant portion of the battle pointing at the sky instead of fighting. Finally, Aesden looked to the sky and saw a flock of oddly large birds approaching. At around this time, the leader of the native troops, who seemed only mildly bothered by the two of chrome://dino’s arrows that were sticking out of his torso, called up to the party. “Which usurper do you stand for!?”
"We stand for Baeron Silmaeril of Waterdeep, who lays no claim to these lands!" Vasher replied. "Who do you stand for?"
"We fight for Kilgrim, the TRUE King of Neothorus! Usurpers will perish!"
Vasher and chrome://dino climbed down to the ground in hopes of reasoning with the natives’ leader. A soldier approached Gregori at the center of the Stump, and Gregori laid down his weapon. His plan also was no longer to fight the natives, but to reason with them. Between Gregori’s efforts atop the stump and Vasher’s efforts below, the party was slowly able to convince the natives that they were not “usurpers”. The fighting slowed and stopped, and both sides began to regroup.
Without warning, Hernandez fell to a slew of arrows from above. The birds approaching the party had in fact been a flock of harpies, and as the harpies approached, they stowed their bows and drew sickly green swords.
Suddenly, the two parties that had just been fighting each other had a common enemy. The Neothoran natives clearly had experience fighting the harpies, and formed a defensive perimeter around their archers. Tychus’ soldiers, deferring to the experience of the natives, did the same. United by the new enemy, the group made short work of the harpies, with the archers targeting their wings and the ground troops attacking any that fell from the sky. Vasher collected two of the harpies’ magically-enhanced swords in the chaos. As the harpies retreated, one of them cried a warning: “Spencer will find you!”
With the battle now over, Gregori found himself in a unique dilemma. He had only one heal spell left, and there were three revivable friendly dead troops: a Neothoran, a kuo-toa, and Hernandez. Gregori, knowing he had little time, quickly voiced his thinking to the rest of the party: should he revive Hernandez, the Tychus solder whose loyalty had already been tested and proven, or revive the Neothoran in an attempt to secure the loyalty of the locals?
As if with one voice, the party immediately reprimanded his incompetence. Obviously, the correct choice was to revive the kuo-toa that had fallen from the Stump during the fight. This unintelligible, frail, uncoordinated creature, whose companions the party had slaughtered without care, was of infinitely more value than any meager soldier. The kuo-toa was the clear moral and strategic choice.
Reluctantly, at the enthusiastic behest of the party, Vale revived the fallen kuo-toa, earning no small amount of ire from both present factions. Tychus’ men, whose safety had been entrusted to the party, were resentful. They were already uncomfortable in this unknown land, and one of their number had just been left to die. The Neothorans were more understanding. The jungle was dangerous. People died. They had never expected Gregori to heal their ally to begin with.
Part 1.14: Kilgrim
Kilgrim’s men escorted the party to their warcamp to introduce them to Kilgrim, True King of Neothorus. It had been late evening when the party had teleported, and was now well into the night. Kilgrim’s warcamp was too large to be a campground, but too small to be a town. The barracks (little more than large tents) were separated by age, rank, and gender. At the lowest end of rank, some tents were left empty for visiting allies. The party was given one of these for the night.
Vasher was the first to rise, and, after completing a morning workout, asked one of Kilgrim’s men to spar with him. The man agreed, and several Kilgrim soldiers formed a square in the dirt so that they could spar.
By this point, the rest of the party was awakening and preparing for their parlay with Kilgrim. After some deliberation, they agreed that their main priority was to stay safe (and keep Tychus’ soldiers safe) until they could figure out exactly where they were with respect to Oshland and Windfell. In this, they agreed, Kilgrim would be a useful ally. The party left their tent and joined the crowd around Vasher’s duel.
Vasher’s opponent fought skillfully and refused to yield. Both he and Vasher were powerfully muscled and punched with great skill and power. However, Vasher was substantially better at evading attacks than his opponent, and when the Neothoran finally collapsed and yielded after yet another blow to the head, Vasher was tired but uninjured.
Gregori and V had spent the morning’s conversation having disagreements about which one of them was the “leader” of the party. In an effort to settle them, and to impress Kilgrim’s men further (and prevent any more of them from challenging Vasher), they stepped up next to duel. Kilgrim’s men mostly laughed at this. Vasher and his opponent had been well-matched physically, but Gregori’s stout neck and generous flabby gut was a stark contrast to V’s wrinkled, spindly, frail frame. The mockery of Kilgrim’s soldiers increased as the two prospective duelists insisted that they be given more space for their duel, so as not to harm onlookers.
The duel that followed involved the physical stature of neither man. Spells were flung left and right, and by the time Gregori yielded, the entire dirt field had been blown to smithereens, caking the onlookers in mud. The mockery from Kilgrim’s men continued, as all rules of any formal type of dueling had been completely abandoned, but it continued with respect.
Kilgrim himself looked less intimidating than most of his men. He had an Oshforged sword, and the party found him speaking to several other men about a suspected incoming attack. He saw the party approaching, and welcomed them to the Battlegrounds of Neothorus. The people of Neothorus, he explained, had been pushed from their homeland by the Plaguelord and his armies, and were now pressed into a perilous situation, with the Plaguelord advancing from one side and a Great Sea on the other.
Aesden asked where the party was in relation to Oshland and Kilgrim explained: they were directly below it. The party had teleported almost one kilometer straight down, onto the island whose trees supported Oshland. The only way back up of which Kilgrim knew was the Bridge of Fools, a treacherous bridge built far beyond enemy lines.
Kilgrim’s tone soured when he learned that the party had not come to facilitate more reinforcements through the portal. He had been promised an army from Oshland to support his troops’ reclamation of the Neothoran battlegrounds. Tychus’ guards had heard of no such promise. The party informed Kilgrim of Aron Asadar’s fate, but omitted any mention of their own role thereof. As the party withdrew, Myrian thanked Kilgrim for his time, and Kilgrim promised the party that he would send a map of the Battlegrounds to the party’s barrack.
Aesden spoke to Tychus’ guards and told them that as the party no longer needed protection from necromancers, their bond was completed. They agreed. At first convenience, they would depart for the Bridge. They were more than ready to leave the locals.
Part 1.15: Neothoran Retreat
A messenger named Aziz arrived to Kilgrim’s warcamp that day carrying a decree from Tonilm:
To the people of Neothorus, be you servant or lord:
My armies grow weary fighting the Plague Lord alone. It seems each day I lose more men and territory, and though I call to my brethren, few send me aid.
My scouts report that Vormian’s abominations run freely from Headwell to Minister. Many of you lay claim upon these lands. How can you claim these vital lands and not defend them? I am engaged from three sides, fighting ghasts edgeward, trolls from home, and the defiled corpses of our Neothoran brothers from the sickward swamps.
I fear that Minister has fallen already. I know not what has occurred, but I have received no messengers from the Neothoran Bagroerder for a full fortnight, and I fear for our brothers of the Seven Stones. I am sending my fastest unit to scour for survivors, with orders to meet me personally in Dimar in three days’ time. I ask that they not be harmed by any Neothoran citizen. They fly a blue King’s flag.
I am pulling my forces back to Brunlight. I will do so with prudent discretion, but I fear the Plague Lord already knows. I hear him in my mind…
The reactions from Kilgrim’s men were mixed. The party quickly learned that Tonilm, whoever he was, was a usurper, and wanted Kilgrim’s throne for himself. However, Kilgrim’s men begrudgingly respected Tonilm. Apparently they owed the usurper a debt.
V managed to meet with Aziz and Kilgrim and told Aziz about the rest of the party and their plight. He invited Aziz to travel with the party, but Aziz refused, saying that his own personal quest was of utmost importance and that he would leave as soon as he was fed. Kilgrim, at V’s insistence, told Aziz that he would bring his army to help reinforce Tonilm’s, having no more use for his camp near Asadar’s teleportation circle. Aziz promised that he would inform Tonilm of both Kilgrim’s and V’s parties, and that there would be available barracks and provisions when they arrived.
The party spent the remainder of the day travelling to Brunlight, using Aziz’ notes he had written on the map given to the party by Kilgrim. Kilgrim’s men followed, but they needed more time to get ready and would not arrive until the next day. In their travels, the party passed by guards flying colours of Kilgrim, Tonilm, and Trinus, another Neothoran faction. The one time that Trinus’ guards stopped the party, it was to ensure that they were not loyal to the usurper Stoutfang. Myrian told them that they were about the business of Tonilm, and the Trinus guards allowed them to continue on to Brunlight.
Brunlight was a city in the bottom of a steep valley. A river passed through the city and into the Great Sea at the distant end of the valley. The city might have looked quite beautiful if not for the three armies camped on its edges.
The party followed Aziz’ trail around the edge of the large army flying golden flags, passing to the direct opposite side of the city as the distant smaller army flying blue. As they approached the city, they saw that many individual buildings inside flew the colours of one of these two armies. The third army, coloured green and orange, was Tonilm’s. This army had yet to gain any sort of foothold inside or near the city.
Part 1.16: Tonilm
Ilimyar’s player wanted to get back into the game. Knowing that the party had just arrived at the three-way battle for Brunlight, I wrote up a character sheet for the leader of each of the three armies. Ilimyar’s player was welcome to rejoin the game as long as he was willing to play one of those three characters.
Trinus was a human L6 cleric. He had been an opportunist who had run into a few magical items in a kingdom that didn’t completely understand magic. As such, he had made a following out of the people of Brunlight before Stoutfang had attacked.
Stoutfang was a half-orc L6 barbarian. His clan believed in the rule of the strongest, but had been pushed from place to place by zombies or fearful Neothorans over past months and now intended to make Brunlight into a new home.
Tonilm was a human L6 ranger. He had been raised in the forest by strategists, and knew little other than guerilla warfare. His troops had been routed by zombies and also intended to co-opt Brunlight as their home.
Ilimyar’s player chose to play as Tonilm.
Tonilm’s army was not as numerous as Trinus’, and not as individually intimidating as Kilgrim’s, but better-organized than either. They spotted the party early, and by the time the party approached their camp, Aziz was there waiting for them. He escorted them to Tonilm’s mobile antimagic bunker, dodging friendly questions about what his quest had been that day.
Tonilm was 15 years old. He wore no armour and carried no weapons but a dagger. His defining feature was an astonishingly linear scar where a thin line of his flesh had been burned away from his right collarbone to his left armpit. He welcomed the party tiredly, and asked for help conquering the city. The party expressed disinterest, and instead asked Tonilm what he knew of the Plague Lord and his abilities.
Tonilm said that he had met Vormian himself in battle, and wasn't even sure if he was mortal. He spoke of the Plague Lord creating a beast in battle, called Spencer, that his men still could not defeat to this very day. All in all, he speculated, "only a Blood Prince can kill another Blood Prince."
This did not deter the party. Aesden asked if Tonilm knew of any other Blood Princes who may be up for the challenge. Tonilm, surprised to see anyone genuinely considering fighting the Plague Lord, said that according to legend, when Neothorus fell, the Neothorans had thought along the same lines and had gone to the Thirteenth Prince, Kelapan, for help. Kelapan, showing further the untrustworthiness characteristic of the Blood Princes, had ignored their pleas, and simply taken over their capital city of Centrous for himself.
Tonilm assigned one of his advisors, Grathum, to help the party learn about Neothoran history and Vormian armies, dismissed them all from his presence, and returned to his plans for conquering Brunlight.
Part 1.17: Tonilm's Plan
As Grathum was telling the party about the weapons that Vasher had stolen from the harpies, a messenger came for Gregori, summoning him back to Tonilm’s quarters. Tonilm had formulated a proposed plan that relied on the abilities of the party as they had been explained to him by Kilgrim’s men.
The reason why so many Neothorans of other clans respected Tonilm was because of his fiercely-held territory. It was on the inward edge of the Battlegrounds, meaning that most of Tonilm’s fighting had not been against other Neothorans, but against the zombies of the Plague Lord that ran amok across mainland Neothorus. As other Neothoran clans warred for territory outward, Tonilm’s forces had been holding off Vormian’s, protecting the other Neothorans from calamity. In return, other clans mostly left his alone–and even gave him resources from time to time.
Tonilm had pulled his forces back from this line only days ago. Vormian’s zombies had not given chase, but it was only a matter of time before they regrouped–the bases in which Tonilm’s army had been camped only days ago were probably already overrun. Tonilm (and his advisors) had chosen this course of action for a number of reasons, including a recent battle with heavy losses (responsible for Tonilm’s scar), the unwillingness of other clans to supply his, and the continually decaying health of the Great Tree.
In Brunlight, young Tonilm’s advisors saw a solution to all of their problems. Brunlight was near to the territory of Trinus and Esoci, two of the most trade-important Neothoran tribes, and would be powerful leverage. It was also well-defensible–when the zombies of the Plague Lord inevitably arrived, Tonilm’s trained-and-tested forces would be able to keep them beyond the city’s walls. And in the worst-case scenario–if the Great Tree fell and the island of Oshland collapsed onto the Battlegrounds of Neothorus–Brunlight’s unique valley geography would make it among the safest places to wait out the disaster.
There was one main hiccup–Brunlight was not in Tonilm’s territory, nor owned by his clan. It had been the subject of battle between a number of clans for some months now. Trinus’ army had nearly secured it in recent weeks, but now found themselves facing a new, guerilla-efficient foe. However, Tonilm’s advisors (and, elsewhere, the advisors of the enemy) were confident that in an extended battle, all other factions would have no choice but to yield to Tonilm’s famous military force.
Tonilm, however, was moving with uncharacteristic urgency. Ever since the semi-recent battle in which the young king had been wounded by a magic blast, those who knew Tonilm had reported erratic behaviour and nervousness from the king. Tonilm was convinced that disaster was approaching. He had withdrawn his forces from the border suddenly, and against the advice of many of his clan.
In truth, what had been happening is that Tonilm was unwittingly subject to the magic of the Plague Lord. Vormian had not been able to gather enough remains of Tonilm’s charred chest to scry on him effectively, but could get a rough sense of what Tonilm was doing, and could sense who he was with. In turn, Tonilm had been able to hear the occasional thoughts of the Plague Lord, especially when they were related to Vormian’s mental bond with Spencer, the Plague Lord’s magically-created henchman that had wounded Tonilm in battle.
Tonilm had not been able to get enough from the Plague Lord to know what was going on nor his intentions, but he could tell that they concerned him in particular, and that Vormian’s plans were soon coming to fruition. As such, Tonilm was eager to take advantage of the strange adventuring party, his own army, and the recent intel that Trinus’ weapons supplier had suddenly disappeared to attempt a fantastic feat: he planned to conquer the city of Brunlight in one day.
Tonilm offered Gregori, Myrian, and Aesden 30 gold pieces each to go and assassinate Lord Trinus. Trinus, characteristically, had been providing medical and religious support to his army in person. Tonilm had hoped to keep him alive to foster trade agreements, but his advisors agreed that the rumours of his sudden lack of weapons were credible and that Trinus had grown unpredictable in his recent religious craze. The hope was that Trinus’ troops, wary of their leader, political weakness, and Tonilm, would rout as soon as their leader fell.
According to Tonilm’s spies, Trinus was going to preach to his soldiers at Brunlight’s town hall at dawn. Gregori, Myrian, and Aesden’s job was to kill him during this speech. Once done, Gregori would cast Shatter, making a deafening crack of sound in what would hopefully be an otherwise quiet morning. At the sound, Tonilm’s army would attack and push straight down the middle of the city, meeting up with Gregori, Myrian, and Aesden at the city’s west fountain square. Trinus’ army would be leaderless and would not be able to react to the threat until it was too late. With the west square and main gate captured, Tonilm’ army would then pinch together to spread Stoutfang’s few troops thin enough to push him out of the city.
Gregori, on behalf of the party, agreed, and went to inform the party of the plan.
Part 1.18: Battle of Brunlight: Assault
Gregori, Myrian, and Aesden left early, while it was still dark, and began moving across the rooftops of the city. The trio employed teamwork, short lengths of rope, a map Tonilm had provided from when he owned the city, and creative uses of Mage Hand to remain unseen until they had reached the town hall.
While Aesden and Myrian waited on the roof, Gregori cast Invisibility on himself and snuck into a balcony door. The trio had looked over a map of the town hall beforehand and guessed which room Trinus would be preparing inside. By luck or chance, they had guessed correctly, and Gregori entered into a small room to find Trinus and a half-elf named Andela preparing for the imminent sermon.
Gregori’s luck ran out here, though, as Trinus was familiar with magic, and, sensing Gregori’s presence and seeing the door move, cast Detect Magic and located Gregori immediately. Thinking quickly, Gregori dropped the Invisibility and hit both Trinus and Andela with Charm Person, succeeding on both. Gregori ordered Andela to search a nearby wardrobe for hidden compartments just to keep her occupied, and ordered Trinus to follow him outside and to the roof.
As Myrian helped Gregori and Trinus climb to the roof of the town hall, Aesden peeked over the roof and confirmed that Trinus’ followers were gathering on the nearby hill. The trio helped the warlord to the center of the rooftop and Gregori introduced him to his companions. Trinus had almost a full second of lucidity to meet them before Myrian broke his neck and Aesden put an arrow through his head.
At that point, Andela called out loudly from below that she had found the hidden spell scrolls inside the wardrobe. This drew the attention of the building’s other occupants. Rushedly, the trio made their escape, throwing Trinus’ body over the edge of the town hall rooftop and onto his waiting followers below, causing immediate chaos. As they jumped from rooftop to rooftop, Gregori cast Shatter as far as he could toward the main gate of the city, signalling the attack.
Tonilm’s army, who had been maintaining the pretense of a normal morning in camp while secretly arming its soldiers within their tents, immediately surged forward toward the main gate. Trinus’ soldiers were ready, but any time a group of them got together to ready a trap or a ballista for the incoming army, they were met with one of V’s Fireballs. Bartholomew removed the city’s wooden gate with similar methods, and Tonilm’s army was inside. Soldiers from the army of Stoutfang ran to the door in an attempt to stop the incoming army, but the bulk of the party defended it. All players were now here save for the three that had just assassinated Trinus and Vasher, who stayed behind in Tonilm’s camp with the reinforcements.
The city was familiar to Tonilm’s men, who had owned it less than two years prior. The men struggled against Stoutfang’s vicious infantry near the city’s gate, but once a foothold was established there, they tore through Trinus’ disorganized ranks with ease. In little more than an hour, the clan was in full retreat from the city.
Having just spent a day surveying the potential weaknesses of the building, Tonilm decided to set up his command post inside the town hall in which Trinus had set up his. It was in a convenient location. Tonilm sent a squad to gather Gregori, Myrian, and Aesden from their rendezvous point, but did not find them there. The three had been scattered by Trinus’ men during their frantic retreat. Myrian found his way back to Tonilm’s army, but Gregori and Aesden decided on a new plan. Gregori stole a Trinus uniform and Aesden donned the informal blue paint of Stoutfang, and the two ran into their respective armies to spread misinformation.
Gregori was recovered by Tychus armies as the last of Trinus’ actual forces left the city. With Trinus on the rout, Tonilm’s forces began the next part of their invasion plan. The first wave of their army (the only one that had yet been fighting), moving directly from Tonilm’s town hall, surged into Stoutfang’s territory from the outward side, as the bulk of the army, now ready at their campsite, began to assault it inward from the main gates. Stoutfang’s men, already not known for their communication, were unsure where to guard, as “falling back” now meant “assaulting the opposite side”.
Vasher and Tychus’ soldiers pushed into the city with this second wave (leaving the kuo-toa safely behind in Tonilm’s mobile bunker), but did not fight. Instead, Vasher secured a building near Tonilm’s town hall and began turning it into an infirmary, using Tychus’ soldiers to carry wounded and supplies. His plan was for Tonilm’s army to have an infirmary available on both sides of the city, so that injured soldiers on the outward side would not have to be ferried all the way back to their original territory for help.
It was at about this time that the Great Tree fell.
Part 1.19: Battle of Brunlight: Skyfall
The Great Tree was visible from Brunlight, but only barely, and so the first sign that anything was wrong was the sound of loud cracking and snapping in the distance, not unlike Vale’s Shatter that had started the battle only hours ago. Quickly, all parties completely reassessed their priorities as the floating island less than a kilometer above them began its slow fall to the ground.
Suddenly, the battle for the city was an afterthought, as all troops immediately scurried for cover. Tonilm had chosen the top floor of the town hall for his command post for its view across the city, but that very same view now made it a death trap. The basement of the town hall, however, was reasonably sturdy. Vasher and his soldiers immediately began work on the impossible task of bringing all of the wounded to the town hall and down the stairs. Tonilm and both of his advisors present followed.
The party retreated into the town hall and began reinforcing the basement in any way they could, carrying in pallets and haystacks to support girders and bracing weapons and shields around themselves. Tonilm Greencrest got to watch in horror for the first time as V melted into his true form, the Mage Hands that normally held his body together moving to instead support the ceiling. With seconds to spare, the party had greatly increased their chances of survival.
The exception was Aesden. He had been among the first inhabitants of Brunlight to notice the Great Tree falling, but had been on the sickward side of the city, surrounded by Stoutfang’s men. Aesden hid as long as he could as the local hostile soldiers ran away and then took off down the hill toward the town hall, but despite his impressive speed, he was still blocks away when the sky hit the ground.
On impact, the sickward, seaward, and outward sides of town were crushed completely with no survivors. Most of the town hall was crushed, but luckily, the party’s reinforcement of the basement kept all of them and most of the basement’s other inhabitants alive.
Gregori smashed through a window and then magically cleared a substantial amount of debris, and he and Vasher began helping people up into the street that was now a cave. chrome://dino lit a torch and Tonilm, still shocked, helped him gather V into some cloth so that he could safely be handed up to Gregori through the window. Once all survivors were clear of the basement, V began the long process of reapplying his bones, allowing what was left of the town hall to collapse.
The area nearby was completely clear. Anyone uphill of the town hall had been crushed, and anyone downhill had run further downhill for safety. In that direction, the city was still navigable–the streets were still streets and the buildings were still buildings, even if the streets were full of rubble and the buildings’ top halves were all now joined by a claustrophobic landmass. With the help of the party, Tonilm cast Locate on Aesden and the party descended toward the valley below, where the torches of other survivors were now being lit.
Tonilm’s Locate spell led the party toward a large pile of debris. Aesden had jumped between two stone buildings for cover, and both had fallen inward toward him. Aesden’s left arm had been crushed under a large wall, and one of his legs had been run through. Seeing him at the bottom of a pile of rubble, the party assumed him dead, but Aesden used Minor Illusion to illuminate himself and the party got to work clearing the alley.
Part 1.20: Battle of Brunlight: Disaster
45 minutes later, Vasher, Tonilm, Myrian, and chrome://dino worked together to pull the wall off of Aesden’s arm as V’s mage hands helped him roll out from beneath it. Aesden’s arm was broken, and he started to make himself a splint with his other hand before getting hit with four consecutive healing spells by his friends and realizing that he was healed. At Tonilm’s order, the now-reunited party turned slightly, travelling down toward the main gate of the city. It was best, they supposed, to formally regroup.
Along the way, they encountered some Kilgrim soldiers. Kilgrim’s men had apparently arrived that morning, but had taken the same road that Trinus’ men intended to use to retreat. Trinus’ disorganized, unprepared troops had been no match for Kilgrim’s men and had been decimated, but then Kilgrim had set up a base of operations at the top of a mountain and most of his troops had been pulverized by Oshland. Kilgrim himself was still unaccounted for. As soon as Kilgrim’s soldiers saw Tonilm, all past relations were forgotten and they attacked the party. The party fended them off, even in their wounded state. Will’o’wisps began to appear from the stone above them, drawn in by the loss of life.
The party carried on through the city more carefully until they reached the city wall. They found a climbable portion of collapsed wall near the city’s main gate. Upon reaching the top of the wall, the group was relieved to see that Tonilm’s staging grounds had not been crushed by the overhead landmass. The mountains on either side of the valley had caught Oshland, turning the valley itself into an enormous cave more than a kilometer wide.
Unfortunately, that cave was full of zombies. The Plague Lord’s forces had arrived, and had been tearing through Tonilm’s forces as the Great Tree fell, undeterred by the existential threat. The few of Tonilm’s troops that remained were now pressed up against the wall of Brunlight, their escape routes blocked off by the wall, the river, and the rocky edge of the chasm.
Even before Tonilm ordered them to, the party ran to help. The gates of the city were still permanently open, burned away by Bartholomew’s Flaming Sphere only hours earlier. Most of the party ran through this gate now, while chrome://dino, Tonilm, and Aesden ran across the top of the wall to man a ballista.
Up close, the party found that the attacking force was not made entirely of zombies. Several slaads were in the army, alongside trolls and other even larger humanoids. Having had experience fighting trolls, Tonilm jumped down from the top of the wall to grapple the one that was most threatening to his soldiers.
The fight did not go well. Even against the zombie horde that they had anticipated, the party’s odds would have been bad. They were wounded and tired. Myrian managed to save a sorry few of Tonilm’s men and get them into the city, but more than half of Tonilm’s forces were killed by an apelike giant before chrome://dino brought it down with a Branding-Smite ballista bolt. There were magic users in the enemy army, and it seemed like every time the party damaged an enemy creature, it was immediately healed by one of its ilk. Myrian used Blink to avoid the punch of one giant ape only to teleport into the path of another, and Gregori found himself fighting a slaad that he could not damage.
Vasher recovered Myrian’s body and ordered the retreat. Tonilm leapt from the shoulders of another troll back up to the wall, where he caught chrome://dino’s rope and was hauled to the top. Gregori managed to magically stabilize Myrian as Vasher carried him away, and Aesden fired as many arrows as he could to cover the retreat. The sorry group took off running deeper into Brunlight as zombies began to flood through the main gate.
Part 1.21: Battle of Brunlight: Retreat
The party found themselves in a desperate situation. On all sides of them, Oshland met the ground, forming a wall. Behind them, a horde of zombies advanced into the city, moving at a pace gently faster than the party. chrome://dino dispelled Titana, intending to Find an aquatic Steed on which some of the party could escape, but cancelled the spell once he realized that the zombies would catch him before its completion.
The party turned and ran into Stoutfang territory, and discovered that Stoutfang and several of his men had holed up in a reasonably-defensible part of the city up against the newly-created continental wall and were preparing for the hardest fight of their lives. Vasher attempted to negotiate with them, but they were adamant that they would not fight alongside Tonilm the Traitor.
The party’s first encounter with Spencer was a silver beam of light blowing a hole in the ground that Bartholomew and Myrian were standing on. Turning to look for the source of the light, the party saw him: a disembodied manic green sickly head with one giant eye in the center. He flew above the main mass of the horde of zombies. To his right and left each were three more harpies like the ones that the party had fought alongside Kilgrim’s men. Spencer’s eye flicked back and forth from enemy to enemy as he approached slowly but inevitably, and then, with a blink and a blue flash, he shot Tonilm in the chest with a beam of light, causing the king to drop his weapons and panic.
Vasher was making headway slowly with Stoutfang, convincing the half-orc that this victory over Tonilm and Trinus would give his clan a legitimacy that it had never yet had. V had cast Mold Earth on the ground, providing Gregori and Aesden with cover from behind which they could return fire at Spencer. Bartholomew was not behind this cover, and with a maroon ray, Spencer sent him flying backward into the continental wall.
At the combination of seeing the battle and hearing Vasher’s arguments, Stoutfang agreed to help the party. He pointed at V and barked for the wizard to quickly follow him, then, once the party started to do so, ordered his men to hold the line against the now-mere-feet-away zombies for as long as they could.
The orcs formed a strong defensive line, but they did not have archers. The harpies began to pick them off one by one, and while Stoutfang’s men made it hard, they had no counterattack, and Spencer continued to loom ever closer. As such, as Stoutfang led the rest of the party to a secret cave, chrome://dino turned around, looked directly at Spencer, touched his own neck, and used Thaumaturgy to amplify his own voice. “I DO NOT WANT A CHALLENGE”, he yelled to the creature, “BUT IF IT IS A CHALLENGE YOU SEEK, THEN I ACCEPT!”
By the time he had finished speaking, all of Tychus’ solders and the party except for Vale and V were inside Stoutfang’s cave. V looked at Gregori and turned to go help chrome://dino, but, knowing that Stoutfang needed V in particular, Gregori waved him on ahead, turned, and ran back beyond the orcs’ to support chrome://dino alone.
The wave of zombies hit chrome://dino and Gregori and ignored them, running to the side and attacking Stoutfang’s orcs. Spencer eyed the two, tilting his head (and, indeed, entire body) to the side. As stealthily as he could, Gergori gave chrome://dino an enchanted sword that he had stolen from Vasher earlier.
Seemingly coming to a decision, Spencer fired a purple blast of magic at chrome://dino. He made no move to dodge it, laughing proudly at it petrified him instantly. Stoutfang pushed V and as many of his orcs as he could into the tunnel, then jumped out as the wave of zombies hit and V used Mold Earth to seal everyone inside. Gregori got hit with a matching purple blast and petrified as well as Stoutfang fought back to the collapsing front line, saved as many of his men as he could, and, as the zombies helped the harpies carry chrome://dino and Vale away, smashed his way through the earth back into the cave.
Part 1.22: Unpetrified
When chrome://dino and Gregori were unpetrified, they found themselves bound with sickly vines. Gregori was unfrozen first and forced into a position of submission. chrome://dino had been petrified with his arms outstretched, and was therefore already completely immobilized before Spencer brought him back to consciousness.
Vormian immediately began interrogating the pair with regards to their relationship with Tonilm Greencrest. How had the party arrived in the Battlegrounds? Why had the king trusted them so immediately? How had the party known to go to Brunlight where they were needed?
Following his oaths, chrome://dino answered the Plague Lord’s questions accurately. The party had arrived in Neothorus by accident, and had never heard of Tonilm before arriving there. Their interference at Brunlight had been the result of simple coincidence. Vormian, who had been intending to use the two of them to extort Tonilm, was not at all pleased with these answers. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you where you stand,” he demanded.
Vale thought characteristically quickly. “We surrendered to your general, that we might swear fealty to you and serve you in the coming war. You stand in the strongest position to benefit from this disaster, and we realized that this makes you the obvious choice.”
Vormian considered, flattered but unconvinced. “If what you’re saying is true, what use are you to me? I do not hoard followers like my brothers Xelgol and Kelapan. I am quite content to destroy this world on my own terms.” He paused. “But,” he considered, “there is in fact one way that you could be useful to me.” He gave a knife to one of his companions. “Remove the changeling’s ear.”
“What changeling?” asked chrome://dino in an attempt to maintain Vale’s disguise. The Plague Lord’s henchman, unconcerned, grabbed Gregori’s head and sawed off his left ear, then brought it back to Vormian. For several seconds, Vale and Vormian simply stared at each other. Eventually, Gregori shrugged and grew back the ear.
“With the Great Tree blighted, Oshland is in disarray. My forces already march upon the Final Free Kingdom. With Iesceltan’s death, there are now only a few men who could think to stand in my way. One of these men is Falanil the Green. The king of Oshland has retreated into his city and could be preparing an army to defend his people against my attack. You two will bring me his head.”
“We shall,” said chrome://dino. “Send us on our way.”
“Not yet,” said the Plague Lord. “It will take the zombies some time to climb the wall. You will strike when the hour is right, as my troops prepare to assault the city. Falanil’s people will be too busy mourning their leader, and will crumble quickly.”
“We are to deliver the head of the king to your troops?” asked Vale.
“No,” said Vormian. “They are mindless, and will not know not to attack you without Spencer or I present to control them. You are simply to bring the head of Falanil beyond the antimagical field of the city. With this,” he wiggled Vale’s ear at him, “I will be able to sense your every move. Once you have the head of the king, I will know, and you will have proven yourself. Until, then, well, I can’t just leave you running around, can I?”
The Plague Lord gestured at his pet. “Spencer.” Spencer petrified chrome://dino and Vale.
Part 1.23: Stoutfang
As Stoutfang had been fighting, V had been carefully modifying the improvised bunker, adding air holes and peep holes in locations inaccessible to the zombies. When Stoutfang kicked in the door and re-entered, Vasher and Tonilm guarded V while V restored and then reinforced the door.
V was excited. He had been practicing Mold Earth for just this type of situation for a while. “Alright, crew, I can take us anywhere, ever”, he said. “We could go to the Wizard? We can last about a day in here with our food. Orc chieftain,” he looked at Stoutfang, “what say you?”
“To unite Neothorus,” said the coldly angry orc, “we must first slay the cowards Esoci and Bagroerder. They represent all about mankind that is weak.”
“Who are they?” asked V. “My company is new to Neothorus. Do you have a spare rations stas-”
“So long as they live,” Stoutfang answered, “their lands will not unite under our banner. We will kill the cowards, and we will kill every man who fights back until they unite!" Some of Stoutfang’s men cheered at the confident words.
“What makes them cowards?” asked V. “What have they done?”
“Are we just going to ignore that our leader and the guy with the weird name got taken?” asked a recovering Myrian, struggling to stand.
“Yeah. Nothing for us to do now.”
“We follow them. Run them down. Outpace them.”
“They outnumber us 30 to 1,” estimated V conservatively.
Myrian stumbled. “I could take thirty zombies before I…” He fell over.
The orcs were amused by the exchange, and were still cheering for the threat upon Bagroerder and Esoci. Stoutfang turned from where Myrian was now passed out and clapped V on the back. “Come, sorcerer. We march sickward! To Esoci’s lands!”
V protested. The last time he had entered a battle, he reasoned, the sky had fallen. He needed more of a plan before the next one. Vasher, too, was resistant. “Who do you fight for? Your own power or the betterment of your people?” the genasi asked the half-orc.
The orcs responded confidently. “POWER!” Stoutfang smiled and said nothing to refute them.
“Then you believe that the strongest should rule?”
Stoutfang’s men began to shout the affirmative, but Stoutfang warily calmed them with a hand wave. “I can see there is no fooling you, golem. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Stoutfang the Green, rightful king of Neothorus.”
“I challenge you to single combat to the death or yield,” said the wounded Vasher to the injured orc. “If I win, your men fight for me in my fight against the Plague Lord. If you win, our party will support you and your men in your campaign against”–Vasher tried and failed to pronounce the strange name–”Eaoci.”
“So,” interrupted V pointedly, forcefully turning Vasher to face away from Stoutfang. “I don’t like these guys. If they believe that the highest power rules, they will make us do their dirty work, and I don’t want to go take another city we know nothing about. Aren’t you the honour guy, Vasher? Taking a city we know nothing about is against your honour code.” The rest of the party nodded their assent.
“Clearly, you have much to discuss,” said Stoutfang, amused that his potential challenger could not even control a handful of men. "I propose this. Sorcerer: you make one barracks for my clan, and one for yours. We meet in the morn, to fight usurpers or each other."
“Okay,” said V. “I will.”
That night, during V’s (final) watch, he used Mold Earth to completely encase Stoutfang and his men, sealing them inside with no air.
Part 1.24: Dungeon
When Vale and chrome://dino were unpetrified for the second time, they were locked in a small, humid cell. Spencer was present, but the guards of the cell were large surreal catlike creatures. After Spencer left, these creatures silently roamed the halls, keeping watch and occasionally feeding the prisoners.
Shortly after the pair was unpetrified, once all of the guards were out of sight and earshot, a familiar pair of hands grabbed the bars of a nearby cell. “Dab me up!”
Vale and chrome://dino were elated. The party’s kuo-toa were alive! Over the next day, in between feline guards prowling down the hallway, the two duos compared stories in Vale’s native Undercommon. The kuo-toa had been left inside Tonilm’s personal bunker during the invasion of Brunlight. They had a minimal guard, as most of Tonilm’s soldiers had rushed the city during the second wave of the attack. As such, when the zombies had hit the back of the army as the Great Tree fell, the sparsely-inhabited warcamp had been powerless to stop them.
While the party had been rescuing Aesden, Tonilm’s warcamp had been completely overrun. However, the zombies had not killed certain command staff. Instead, Spencer had petrified them, and a horde of harpies had carried them away as prisoners. This had been the fate of the few inhabitants of Tonilm’s bunker: assuming them to be useful leverage against Tonilm, Spencer had petrified them and ordered them carried away.
This was as much as chrome://dino and Vale learned before more grotesque feline guards escorted Spencer to their cell and he petrified them yet again.
Part 1.25: Ankhegs
V Molded Earth to rearrange the tunnel gently, making his lie more believable, and then told the rest of the party that Stoutfang and his men had woken early and chosen to part ways with the group. Several party members did not believe the lie, but nobody spoke up to correct him. They didn’t fancy the idea of being in tight quarters with an elite team of barbarians any more than V did.
V then got to work on the reason why the rest of the party had given him the final watch in the first place: the long process of tunneling upwards through the island. V worked in a tight spiral, so as to move at a reasonable speed and get to fresh air as soon as possible, but still make the hike reasonably comfortable for his companions.
As V (and, having long since awakened, the rest of the party) encountered packed dirt instead of stone, Vasher figured that the party must be nearing the surface of Oshland and ordered V to make a horizontal tunnel to that the party could take a break from their harsh upwards climb before surfacing. V did so, and accidentally tunnelled into an existing tunnel.
As Tychus’ guards rested and V continued tunnelling upwards, the few uninjured party members explored this new series of tunnels. There were air holes, and fresh air, but also the stench of decay. In places, there were secret doors in the ceiling, but they were out of reach of the party. Whoever had dug this tunnel had not intended to traverse it on foot. Several of the members of the party climbed upon each other in a group effort to open one of these trapdoors, but found that the door was made of very heavy stone.
Aesden continued exploring, and therefore was the first one to hear the approaching ankhegs. By the time he ran back to the rest of the explorers, they had heard the noise too, and the group collectively ran back to V’s tunnel.
Around this time, V, Tychus’ soldiers, Bartholomew, and Myrian reached the Osh surface and surveyed the terrain. There was another island in the sky to the right, only a few kilometers away, supported by some mountains that had turned into stalagmites connected to stalactites. There was a large city to the left, much farther away.
Vasher was the first to surface and warn the group about the incoming threat. His companions followed shortly. Not knowing the identity nor size of the incoming monsters, V sealed the hole behind them, and for the first time in its history, the party assumed a coordinated defensive formation.
The first ankheg burst from the ground near the party and was killed before it even had the chance to approach. Several more followed and were dispatched handily. Vasher killed the final beast from inside its mandibles, slicing one of them off entirely with a stolen harpy dao. After the rest of the bugs had retreated back underground, Tonilm secured the severed mandible. Tonilm had some experience manufacturing weapons out of creature corpses, and knew at a glance that the antler of the powerful Osh beast would make for a fine blade.
Part 1.26: Stir Fry
Ankhegs defeated, the party trudged toward the unknown town for only an hour before the Tychus soldiers recognized it: it was the city of Tychus-Asadar. Eager to return to familiar territory and return the remaining Tychus soldiers to their home, the party hurried to the city and walked to the Tychus grounds, where Lord Tychus greeted them and personally reassumed command (and subsequently dismissed) his remaining soldiers.
Tychus explained to the party the dire situation. Oshland’s east edge was walled off. Beyond the famous Wall lay the Vale of Creatures, a magical land full of demented monsters. Due to the calamity of the previous day, that Wall had broken in several places, and its governing body, the Obsidian Council, had mysteriously disappeared. Oshland was about to be attacked from two sides at once, with Creatures from the east and zombies from the south.
The city of Tychus (no longer called Tychus-Asadar) had been crippled by the Fall of Oshland. Carpenters and blacksmiths found themselves drowning in repair orders. Finding himself unfamiliar with the foreign craftsmanship, Tonilm instead appropriated a burner and cauldron and began serving out copious amounts of Neothoran stir fry. After tasting it, the townspople were quick to get more ingredients, and before too long, Aesden had turned the entire square into a food distribution booth centered around Tonilm’s cauldron.
A skinny elf named Shen recognized Myrian from the day that they had drank together and watched horse races. Myrian recognized the elf as well and asked about the current state of the city’s racing, and Shen explained that while most of the horses were unharmed, the Tychus grounds and its racetracks had been severely damaged and the town’s famous horse races had been postponed until they could be repaired. Myrian immediately departed to help with the restoration efforts that Lady Hazendra Kerrigan was leading.
Bartholomew went to the necromancers’ church. It was more finished now, but three statues (Talaan, Vormian, Xelgol) had been damaged during the catastrophe. Pushing on Iesceltan’s cane, Bartholomew opened the secret door from before. He found the necromancers’ secret room empty, but clearly inhabited. There was food and a bed here. Unbeknownst to Bartholomew, in the party’s absence, the young Domard had escaped being hanged, and was currently living here. Bartholomew waited for several minutes, but nobody arrived, and so Bartholomew left without ever learning that the prodigy was still alive.
Later in the day, the party reconvened at the square where Tonilm had now run out of stir fry to serve. Talus had arrived, hearing of the party’s return and identifying them through hearsay, and was personally thanking them for their efforts. The party had already arranged to stay in an inn, but Talus insisted that they meet him the next morning to discuss concerns about the well-being of Oshland.
The party returned to the square the next morning to meet with Talus, but before they could speak to the stout man, they were approached by a stranger. The frail man introduced himself as Ozymandias, a student of Elornhasemmarim. He requested that the party please return to see the Wizard immediately, as something had happened there that was even more pressing than the Fall of Oshland. Ozymandias had heard that the party was looking for magical reagents, and promised them their choice of powerful reagents after they had met with the Wizard.
The party agreed immediately, and Ozymandias vanished in a puff of smoke that Aesden quickly recognized as simply a combination of Presidigitation and Invisibility. Vasher and V finished their business with the city’s smiths, and the party departed north towards the Mountains of Confusion. As they left the city, however, Myrian noticed part of the city’s wall to the east being attacked by frightening Creatures and implored that the party go help.
The party was torn between two objectives. Hypothetically, they knew, whatever task Elornhasemmarim had for them was of greater importance than any one city. However, the party was sympathetic to the plight of Tychus’ people and loath to leave them to their own defenses. As such, the party, having just lost two more of its members in Brunlight, decided to fragment even further. Tonilm, the newest and most politically valuable party member, and Bartholomew and V, the party’s two strongest magic users, would travel north to see the Wizard of Windfell. Vasher, Myrian, and Aesden, all career warriors, would remain and guard Tychus.
Part 1.27: Displaced
Unbeknownst to Vale and chrome://dino, Vormian was not the only inhabitant of the Plague Lord’s mansion. His younger sister, Thenayea, had once inhabited the upper floors of the mansion, which itself towered through the low-hanging area of Oshland under which it was built and up onto the surface. Due to their magical connection to the dimension in which they lived, the drifting apart of the siblings had been one of the causing factors of the drifting apart of Neothorus and Oshland, until, from an outside perspective, the two buildings had separated along with their islands. The interior of the buildings, however, remained unaffected, and there were a few doors in each mansion through which people could walk straight from the Plague Lord’s mansion (near Gith) to the Library of the Ninth (in Oshland).
Vale and chrome://dino were taken through one of these doors while petrified, and then, by hovering behind the closed door, Spencer successfully unpetrified the pair of men in Oshland from the Battlegrounds of Neothorus. Vale and chrome://dino woke up and noticed the ornate door behind them, but, reasoning that they were likely being scried on, elected not to attempt to unlock it. Instead, they trudged forward along the path that the Plague Lord’s zombie had prepared for them, following the instructions through the Library and out onto the surface.
The Library was nestled in a small hill valley, making it difficult for Vale and chrome://dino to see their surroundings. Once they climbed out of the valley, they realized that they were in Oshland. There were three cities in distant view, but no sign of life at all nearby. Realizing that they would need the speed to reach a city before nightfall, chrome://dino Found Titana again and the duo mounted up and rode.
The pair had no idea where they were, and, by chance, ended up travelling northwest until they reached the city of Tychus-Asadar. Approaching the city, they found themselves in a dangerous scenario. The outer wall of the city, damaged by the disaster of the previous day, was now under siege by a myriad of horrifying, disfigured Creatures. Acting rather than thinking, the pair rode into battle, saving a welcome city guard from their plight.
However, the Creatures proved to be too much for the duo beyond the city walls, and they ended up retreating into the city as night fell. A displacer beast chased them past the city walls. The pair attempted to outrun it, but, without the city guard nearby to distract it, the displacer beast easily ran down and killed Titana before being killed by a furious chrome://dino.
As chrome://dino was grieving his magic horse, the Plague Lord spoke to the pair telepathically and warned them that their old party members were in the city. The Plague Lord ordered the duo not to be discovered by the party until the king of Oshland was dead.
Vale changed his disguise from Gregori into that of an old man he called “Ozymandias”, stowing his armour in favour of simple robes. He gave chrome://dino his disguise kit and told him to make himself difficult to recognize. chrome://dino did so, concealing his horns under a wig of long, frazzled hair. The pair then reported to Lord Tychus and asked them the inn in which the party was staying. They reserved a room in the same inn, keeping watch on the party and their whereabouts.
Soon, Vale learned that the party planned to meet up with Talus in the smith’s square the following morning. The next morning, the duo woke early, waited for the party to leave, then stealthily followed them into the city. Disguising himself as an old wizard named Ozymandias, Vale stalked the party surreptitiously, watching as V led them from alchemist to alchemist in search of explosives. Finally, Ozymandias hailed the party, claiming to be a messenger from Elornhasemmarim. He requested their presence in the Impossible Stronghold at once, and the party departed north, unaware that they had been deceived.
Ozymandias vanished with an Invisibility and a Prestigitation, and Vale took on a new disguise as an inexperienced city scoundrel. Together, he and chrome://dino went to the city’s blacksmiths and began shopping. What armour would they need to kill the King of Oshland?
The question would remain unanswered, as a sudden disruption occurred across the square. For whatever reason, Vasher had returned to the city, and was now attacking its blacksmiths. chrome://dino ran to help, but Vale stopped him and pulled him from the fight. Regardless of the situation, it was of utmost importance that the duo not be caught.
Part 1.28: En'Ha
Myrian had spotted two aggressors attacking Tychus from its outer wall. One was a large floating brain with a huge avian beak and several tentacle arms. The other closely resembled a headless gorilla, but with too many limbs. As the trio approached the fight, Aesden climbed the city wall and called down to his comrades that he would distract the latter of the two Creatures while the two of them handled the first.
Myrian ran around behind the strange floating creature, in an attempt to work with Vasher to flank it. She was unsuccessful, however, as Vasher quickly found his body under the strange Creature’s control. Instead, Myrian used Misty Step to teleport atop the Creature, surprising it enough for Vasher to break free of its magical influence with a Wisdom save and hack it to pieces with his harpy dao while Myrian held it down.
Aesden stood atop the wall, releasing an arrow at the grotesque primate each time it showed him one of its many eyes. Identifying the threat, the beast began quickly scaling the wall toward Aesden, rolling its body to reveal an impossibly large mouth with hundreds of huge teeth. Scared and having realized that his friends had won their fight, Aesden jumped from the top of the wall and landed in a roll. The Creature followed, but Aesden had landed near enough to Vasher and Myrian that the two of them were able to grapple the beast, immobilising it until Aesden recovered and killed it with arrows.
Now that the fight was over, the trio were curious. They propped open the Creature’s mouth with debris from Tychus’ wall and looked inside. Sure enough, the inside of the Creature was larger than its outside. Its stomach was large enough to contain all three party members, and in place of stomach acid, there was only strange erratically bubbling lava.
Curious, Vasher went and sourced a bucket and ladle, sampled a gallon of stomach lava, and carried it back into the city, with Myrian and Aesden in tow. On their way to the smiths’ square, the trio passed the Necromancers’ church, which was now destroyed, with the body of a displacer beast hacked into several parts across its walkway. Oshland was under attack.
Vasher arrived at the smiths’ square and spoke to some blacksmiths he had befriended. With their help, Vasher was able to forge his stomach lava into a hammer. He, and the other blacksmiths, had expected this process to be difficult, but the material behaved strangely cooperatively, as if it knew Vasher’s intentions and wanted to become a hammer as well.
Vasher finished creating the hammer, and embossed a rune on its side–”En’Ha”. The hammer, curiously magical, instantly cooled, and Vasher picked it up. As soon as he did, though, a magical trance fell over him, and he smashed a table and mortally wounded two smiths. Aesden was nearby, but across the street, and Myrian was nowhere to be seen. As such, by the time that Aesden heard the commotion and ran to the scene, the blacksmiths had already organized into a frightened formation and were engaged in battle with their former friend.
Vasher spent almost a minute fighting the smiths while fighting to regain control of his body. Unfortunately, in the chaos, whenever Vasher would successfully stop himself from attacking the smiths, they would not stop attacking him, and so he was soon injured. With impressive dexterity and luck, Aesden forged a lasso out of some rope, and successfully snagged the head of the hammer while Vasher was between swings. This led to a prolonged tug-of-war, with the crazed barbarian on one side and Aesden and a few smiths on the other.
Vasher was caught off guard by his second mental battle of the day. He could feel En’Ha’s excitement to be used. He could not stop the attacks. Focusing on the anvil, he swung En’Ha again, breaking Aesden’s rope and swinging En’Ha at an anvil rather than a person. Inside, he was having a very strange conversation with his new hammer: He tried to explain mentally to it that these people were innocent. It didn’t work. He tried to explain that there were other people who would be more fun to destroy. No dice. Finally, he thought to the hammer and did his best to communicate that it was better than this; that there were more impressive opponents beyond the city of Tychus. Here, he made headway.
At this point, all noncombatants in the square had cleared and Vasher was quickly losing a fight against various local ruffians (with Myrian now included). Seeing the writing on the wall, Vasher, with Myrian and Aesden chasing him, ran east until he was beyond the city, and then turned north and travelled quickly to the Impossible Stronghold.
Part 1.29: Diverted
En’Ha smashed away happily at Elornhasemmarim’s Labyrinth, and before long, the six members of the party that had departed from Tychus earlier today were reunited at the base of the Impossible Stronghold. The Wizard had felt them enter the Labyrinth and was waiting for them. However, he had not summoned them, and had heard of no wizard by the name of Ozymandias. Realizing the deception, the group realized that this could be a trap, and Elornhasemmarim put the tower’s occupants on alert to prepare for incoming attacks.
Elornhasemmarim, curious and amused, explained to Vasher the unique situation of his new hammer. Somehow, the Wizard said, Vasher had gotten ahold of leftover lava from the Foundry of Rage, and had crafted it into this hammer. Elornhasemmarim calmed En’Ha via magic, but warned Vasher that it would still be dangerous to wield, and could only be repaired at the Foundries themselves.
The Wizard then showed the party his most recent project. He had set aside a room in the Stronghold and created a magical map of Oshland, Neothorus, and Windfell. The Wizard explained that this room tracked the party, drawing from the power of the innate magic of Ritonar. Whenever the party changed the fate of the dimension, a door would open inside the map room, allowing them to travel back to near the location where fate had changed.
The party spent some time inside the Stronghold resting, recovering from their injuries, and allowing students of the Wizard to enchant their weapons. Finally, they approached Elornhasemmarim and asked him to resurrect Ilimyar. The Wizard affirmed to the party that he could do it, but encouraged them to reconsider, and instead focus their efforts on recovering the lost-but-still-living members of the party: Gregori, chrome://dino, and the two kuo-toa.
Upon hearing that the four casualties of Brunlight were still alive, Aesden immediately ordered the Wizard to locate them. Elornhasemmarim, indicted in the party’s actions, had already been scrying on them, and told the party that the four had been held in the Plague Lord’s mansion only days ago. However, while the two kuo-toa were still there, Elornhasemmarim’s magic showed that chrome://dino and Gregori were now free of the Mansion and in East Oshland near the city of Falanil.
Krofarihm, the leader of Elornhasemmarim’s warriors, told the party that this was reason for concern. Oshland’s famous east Wall had been broken in a number of places. If chrome://dino and Gregori were outside Falanil, it was more likely than not that they were under attack by Osh Creatures.
Gregori and chrome://dino were on the party’s route to the Foundry of Rage. In order to get to the Foundry, Krofarihm explained to V, the party would have to pass through Wraithgate, which lay atop the highest peak in Oshland–less than a day’s journey south of Falanil. The party resolved to use Elornhasemmarim’s map room to warp to Tychus, rescue the duo and take them up the mountain to Wraithgate. Along the way, they would question them about their experience at the Plague Lord’s Mansion.
Part 1.30: Regicide
The city of Falanil the Green was actually much closer to the Library of the Ninth than Tychus-Asadar was. chrome://dino and Vale (now back in disguise as Gregori) had travelled to Tychus simply because they had not been able to see Falanil behind a mountain. While Oshland was flat between the Library and Tychus-Asadar, the kingdom grew more and moe mountainous to the east, with some few enormous stalagmites even becoming pillars connected to Ritonar above.
Falanil was built into a mountain, albeit not a very big one. The Osh Palace sat at the very top of the mountain, where it was visible from anywhere in the city. Markets and trades occupied the surrounding streets, and finally housing splayed across the base of the mountain.
Uncharacteristically enough, the duo had a plan. Gregori had stolen a seal of Lord Tychus, and the duo were now posing as messengers from Tychus on their way to deliver top-secret emergency information to King Falanil the Green. The premise of them being messengers would give them reason to see the king, and the alleged importance of their message would explain how heavily armoured they were.
However, upon arriving, they were informed that the king would not be accepting visitors. This was unusual, and the pair insisted that they were to give their message only to the king, but they were told that they would be waiting in the city for some time until the king again chose to see the public.
Their first plan having gone awry, the duo waited until nightfall, cast Invisibility on themselves, and found a climbable section of the palace. The two snuck in through a window and slinked into the king’s chambers. They were empty.
The staff of the palace were frantic and nervous, and for a few seconds, chrome://dino and Gregori thought that perhaps foul play had occurred. Had someone beaten them to the kill? Was a secret coup occurring in Oshland?
Following the captain of the king’s guard, though, they soon learned the truth: Falanil was gravely injured. He had been near the eastern wall of the kingdom during the Fall, and had insisted upon staying and fighting alongside the inexperienced troops there when the Creatures had surged forward to attack the weakened wall. He had been delivered back to the palace (near enough to the east border of the kingdom) with great haste, and was now being treated in a secret room in the palace that was solely dedicated toward the magic of his bloodline in particular. Few knew of his true condition, so as not to mar the morale of the people nor invite assassins (much like Vale and chrome://dino).
The King’s Infirmary was actually near the top of the castle, so as to be less suspicious and enable just this sort of ruse. Due to the terrain of Falanil, the lower levels of the castle were the ones actually most seen by the commoners. As an added measure of security-through-hiding-in-plain-sight, the Infirmary was directly behind three ornate stained glass windows, through which the main thoroughfare of the city could be seen. The eerie magic glow of the room and the layout of other parts of the palace suggested to outsiders and potential intruders that the space behind the stained glass, where the Infirmary lay, was actually a smaller room used for storage. This was part of why Vale and chrome://dino had taken so long to find it.
In truth, the Infirmary was not much wider than the storage room its outer design evoked. The centerpiece of the room was its single sickbed, and there was just enough space for two men to walk side by side past it front and back. The ends of the room were longer, making it so that there was still enough room for company and guards, and one of those ends concealed a hidden staircase that led back into the rest of the palace.
The king lay upon this sickbed now, attended only by his personal healer and two of his children. There were two guards in the room already, and chrome://dino and Gregori, still invisible, had just followed a third through the secret passage into the room.
Directly above the king’s torso, an ornate chandelier-like structure hung from the ceiling, bathing the room in a gently pulsing purple light. This assembly of crystals and runes was one of the most expensive items in the palace, and, indeed, in the entire dimension. It had been crafted for Falanil’s grandfather, and had been carefully tuned by dozens of magi to specifically bond with each Osh king since. A powerful, motionless beam of purple light coalesced along its sides now and shone straight down onto the king, unnaturally keeping him alive as his healer carefully replaced each of his shattered ribs.
chrome://dino and Vale could not communicate lest they be discovered, but they both knew the plan. Vale moved stealthily to the far side of the room, where he was in position to attack one of the two guards but far from the other. The captain that the pair had followed into the room glanced at the king, then turned and faced the city through the stained-glass windows. chrome://dino moved directly behind him, preparing to run him through with his sword.
As soon as he did so (and, in the process, became visible), Vale cast Shatter on the top component of the healing crystal. The powerful spell blasted the stained-glass windows out into the streets below and sent the corpse of the captain of the guard falling out the edge and into the multicoloured glass. The healing crystal, famously fragile, plummeted through the room, and skewered the king of Oshland through his stomach, separating the top of his body from the bottom almost completely.
Vale killed the guard he was standing near before he could react, and chrome://dino turned on a dime and killed the healer, cutting off his Magic Arrow before it could be fired. Both of Falanil’s heirs fled the room, and Vale and chrome://dino were too busy fighting the other guard to stop them. Once chrome://dino killed the guard, the pair turned to pursue, but then–
“And what now?” said Falanil.
Shocked, Vale and chrome://dino turned to face the king. Falanil the Green, King of Oshland, was speaking to them. Skewered by the crystal that generations of wizards had designed to keep him alive, the king’s arms and legs were useless–he could barely move his neck. He moved it now, though, as much as he could, and turned to face his assassins, his face resolute but saddened. “Now, in the Final Kingdom’s hour of crisis, you have–”
chrome://dino cut his head off.
Part 1.31: Fugitive
The party spoke to Lord Tychus and confirmed that Gregori and chrome://dino had been in the city the day prior. They travelled across Oshland, fighting several Creatures and relying on Tonilm to track the missing duo. Tonilm did so, leading the party on a path straight to the capital city of Oshland.
As the party approached the city of Falanil, it became clear to them that all was not well. Lamps were lit despite the late hour, and yells of combat were erupting inside the city walls. The party hastened their page to the city’s main gates.
As the party approached the gates, they were thrown open and chrome://dino rode out on a new horse he had summoned and named “Shawty”. He had Falanil, the king of Oshland, on the back of his horse, a large sack in his hand, expensive armour on his body, guards on horseback pursuing him, and he was loudly shouting “SPENCER! WE HAVE YOUR HEAD!”
The party briefly attempted to use persuasion to stop the horse chase, but, seeing that such efforts were fruitless, Vasher attempted to stop the chase by force. Somehow (I made the DC 25), he successfully jumped up onto Shawty, pushing the middle-aged king over its left flank and onto the ground. Myrian and Tonilm then, astonishingly, mirrored the move, unsaddling the two guards that followed closest behind chrome://dino. The horse chase still took some time to stop, with the party moving at high speeds around the south side of the city, until Bartholomew finally used illusionary walls to confuse and redirect the horses while Myrian and Aesden killed their riders.
The party escorted chome://dino and Falanil a few miles south of the city and set up camp in a small outcrop shielded by mountains on all sides. They unrolled their beds, made food, and prepared to question chrome://dino and Falanil, that they might decide their course of action the next day.
Falanil spoke first. "My friends, I am very sorry for the loss of your companion Gregori. He fell in battle, attempting to save me from assassins alongside chrome://dino. They had infiltrated my own guard, and I fear they have been sent by the Plague Lord himself. I'm afraid I won't be able to supply much ‘kingly aid’ if the guards of my own city are attempting to assassinate me."
“That’s unfortunate,” Vasher said honestly. “We are a party of adventurers from another plane of existence. We aren’t quite sure how we got here, but we must slay the Plague Lord in order to return home. I am Vasher,” Vasher said with characteristic nonemotion, “and that is Aston, Myer-iln, Bart-alimmew, and V,” he attempted.
The party decided that they would return with the Falanil to the Impossible Stronghold, that they might recruit Elornhasemmarim’s assistance in defeating the infiltration of Falanil’s guard. This, Vasher said, was of a higher priority than the repair of his new hammer. “By the way,” Vasher said to the king but mostly for the benefit of chrome://dino, “this is En’Ha. En’Ha, introduce yourself.”
“Salutations, your Majesty!” the hammer said audibly, much to the party’s surprise. “I am En'Ha! Today I smashed a lamia!" it continued, referring to a Creature the party had encountered on their way to the capital.
“Bruh,” chrome://dino acknowledged.
“Remarkable!” said the king. “I have only ever heard legends of weapons that can think for themselves. How did you come across something like this?"
Vasher grimaced. “This morning, me and those two,” he gestured at Myrian and Aesden, “fought off two Creatures that were assaulting Tick-ows. I found magma in the center of one of them and crafted this hammer from it. I did not expect the… side effects. It is very dangerous to possess.”
“What are your intentions, Mr. Hammer?” asked chrome://dino.
“I wish to help my mother become the Blood God!”
Suddenly, Tonilm called down to the party to pack up camp. He, not being comfortable near the king of a country that had so famously betrayed his own, had instead been keeping watch on the city of Falanil. This proved to be very useful, as he had just spotted a large regiment of Osh soldiers leaving the city and marching south along the party’s trail.
The party began to pack up. “I would say that we should hunker down and hide,” Vasher said to chrome://dino, “but I’ve already tapped my Pass Without A Trace for the day, so we have to run.”
Aesden produced a map of Oshland and the party considered their retreat. The Impossible Stronghold was over two days’ travel away, and the flat ground in Central Oshland would make them easy to spot. As such, Elornhasemmarim was now off the table.
“We’re only two hours from Thenoyeo,” Vasher pointed out. “My vote is we stealth to Thenoyeo and find a barn to sleep in.”
“Thenayea is a big abandoned library,” Falanil said, gently correcting the genasi’s pronunciation. “It probably would be a good hiding place.”
“Fun,” Tonilm said, as the other party members agreed to quickly travel to the Library.
Part 1.32: Library
The party ran themselves ragged southward, then cut west toward the Library. As far as the army knew, they could be anywhere in the mountains, or even in Neothorus or Gith by now. When the party finally entered the Library and carefully looked around to ensure that it was a safe place to rest, Vasher spotted an awkward man living in the Library. The man introduced himself as Lucero, and told the party that he and his people had actually arrived in the Library earlier that same night to hide away from the people of Oshland. Falanil asked Lucero where in the Library was the safest place to hide, and Lucero bid them follow him.
Lucero then led the party into a trap. An ornate rectangular room in the Library was the temporary home to two huge apelike monstrosities much like the one that had nearly killed Aesden the previous day. When Falanil attempted to warn Lucero and his several present friends, the clan of vagabonds began to mutate rapidly into animal forms and attacked the party.
Most of the party panicked and scattered. Falanil immediately stabbed Lucero and cast Thunderwave, killing him and three of his associates. Bartholomew finished the rest of the lycanthropes off with magic, then guarded the door to the room, ensuring that no more could enter. Myrian, however, charged straight into the center of the room, attempting to engage both of the monstrous primates in hand-to-hand combat.
Only one beast actually engaged Myrian. The other followed Vasher as the genasi ran to the edge of the room and jumped out a window. Vasher, landing in an ornate courtyard, attempted to hide, but, noticing that the creature following him had gotten itself stuck in the broken glass frame, ran up and pounded away at it with En’Ha from just beyond the creature’s reach. By the time the rest of the party regained their wits, Vasher was clearly winning his fight.
The same could not be said for Myrian. The elf was vastly outclassed in weight and strength, tired from running, and, perhaps most critically, had two fewer arms than his opponent. Only twelve seconds had passed since Myrian attacked the beast when he found himself completely incapacitated by its grasp. As the creature maneuvered Myrian into its jaws, he noticed that it opened a small eye on its torso near its mouth to ensure that he would fit. He attempted to strike this eye, but the monster’s grasp was too tight, and in six more seconds, he was eaten. At around the same time, its companion broke free of Vasher’s window, wounding the earth genasi and chasing him out into the courtyard to finish him.
Aesden, Tonilm, and chrome://dino (atop Shawty) had exited a room through a side ramp and now emerged back into it atop a balcony. Aesden saw Vasher’s plight and jumped through a second-story window, finding himself landing hard on the ground near where Vasher was fighting an ape Creature for the second time that day. chrome://dino cast Smite on the dao that Gregori had given him in Brunlight and rode Shawty off of the balcony and onto the Creature that had just eaten Myrian. The combination of stampede and Smite dealt a great amount of damage to the Creature, but Shawty was injured and chrome://dino was thrown off of her. Fortunately, Tonilm finished the Creature with the arrows that Elornhasemmarim’s students had enchanted, and as it died, it turned to ice.
Falanil revealed to the party that he knew Revivify, enflaming V’s suspicion that he was not who he claimed. However, Myrian had now been dead for almost half a minute–if the party could not retrieve him from inside the ice within thirty more seconds, the spell would prove ineffective. The group inside the room split up–Bartholomew, V, and Tonilm ran to save Vasher and Aesden as Falanil and chrome://dino began to hack away at the frozen beast, quickly finding that their efforts were ineffective–the beast’s hide and muscle were powerful and thick, and the ice was magically strong.
The second Creature soon fell to Tonilm’s newly-enchanted daggers, and the rest of the party carefully escorted the wounded Vasher back through the window and into the room. Vasher stumbled up to the frozen Creature, and, with a final swing of En’Ha, smashed it into dozens of pieces. Falanil Revived the revealed corpse of Myrian within, Tonilm healed him, V healed Shawty, Bartholomew mourned that Myrian would have made a fantastic zombie, and, without exploring the remainder of the Library, the party collapsed and fell asleep.
Part 1.33: Wraithgate
After successfully hiding the night at the Library, the party journeyed deeper into the mountains and began to climb the path to Wraithgate.The path was made of hundreds of wooden stairs that wrapped around the side of Oshland’s highest mountain as it tapered out and became a stalactite at the edge of the enormous island of Ritonar. It had held up shockingly well through the Fall of Oshland.
The party navigated the treacherous stairs with relative ease, with one exception: chrome://dino elected, against the urges of his peers, to bring Shawty up the stairs. Just when it was looking like Shawty would make it to the top, the party encountered a nesting pair of hook horrors, and in the ensuing battle, Shawty plummeted to her death.
The view from the top of the spiral staircase was informative and majestic. Ritonar was a relatively flat continent, save for near its far edges, so the party could see the majority of its lava-filled, ruinous desert. To the other side, the original kingdom of Neothorus was visible–also in ruins, but this time swampy and overgrown. To the left, the party could see Tychus-Asadar and the Mountains of Confusion. Most of Windfell was hidden beyond the Mountains, but small parts of it were just visible in the distance. To the right, the party saw another island they had not yet visited, a mountainous landmass in the shadow of Ritonar around which space seemed to slightly distort.
The way into Ritonar was, as Elornhasemmarim had warned, blocked by Wraithgate. The gate itself was fashioned from ornate metal, and was 50 feet wide and almost 100 feet tall, with a single ruby at the top. A large Wraith floated in the center of the gate, motionlessly watching the party arrive.
Ever fearless, Myrian attempted to walk right through the gate, nodding at the Wraith as if the two were friends. To his surprise, the Wraith turned and repaid the nod. “Welcome, Myrian of greater worlds. I am Selrach. I have been waiting for you.”
The Wraith explained to the party that he had been watching the party’s travels through the dimension, and offered his condolences to the deaths of Masiwa, Badger, and Ilimyar. Tonilm asked him to sign the dagger that he had created from the Osh ankheg’s antler, and he did, carving “Selrach” into one side of the hilt and “year 611” on the other. Selrach said that he knew of the party’s plans to access the Foundry of Rage, but cautioned that “the last time my brother had a good man’s ear, a kingdom fell in a week’s time.”
Selrach explained that he had been guarding Wraithgate for hundreds of years, since even before Oshland had been founded. He had been killed, but had continued at his station, ensuring that no unworthy man could pass into the danger of the Blood God’s Domain. In order to be allowed to pass, Selrach explained, the party would have to defeat him in combat.
Vasher expressed concern for the Wraith’s health, but Selrach assured him that if killed, he would simply be reborn inside the Six Circles, and would return to Wraithgate forthwith. Falanil cast Charm Person on Selrach and Selrach promised to honour the surrender of individual party members, but refused Falanil’s requests for another type of trial. During this time, Aesden climbed to a substantial height up the convenient chintz of the gate, something that Selrach clearly noted but did not rebuke.
Tonilm, noting the Wraith’s incorporeal form, asked if he could be harmed or killed at all. Selrach admitted that, since his death, most weapons had been much less effective in hurting him than they had during his life. However, Selrach assured, he was much less of a combatant now than he ever had been during his life. The Wraith shielded himself with magic, and the trial began.
Myrian’s first move proved to be the most important of the fight: teleporting behind the Wraith and grappling him. Selrach quickly freed himself through magical means, and, with more magic, killed Myrian completely, but in the process, Tonilm, Vasher, and chrome://dino hit him many times with their magical weapons, and Aesden filled his upper body with arrows. Realizing that he was losing the fight, Selrach cast Spare The Dying on Myrian before chrome://dino finished him with a Smite and he vanished. Falanil cast Cure Wounds on Myrian, and the party collectively ventured into Ritonar.
Part 1.34: Changeling
As the party journeyed, Vasher confronted Falanil. He had heard Selrach refer to the king as “changeling” during the fight, and wanted answers. Sure enough, Vale admitted to having been complicit in the death of the king and then having impersonated him shortly afterward to escape the palace.
The party stopped and demanded the full story, and Vale complied, explaining that he had always been with the party, as Falanil, Gregori, Marcus, and, in an encounter with chrome://dino and V before Ritonar, a tiefling named Fresh. In the guise of Gregori, he had been captured and taken to the Mansion of the Plague Lord.
Intimidated by the Plague Lord’s power and entourage, Vale had struck Vormian a deal: Vormian would release Vale, chrome://dino, and the two kuo-toa, and in return, Vale and chrome://dino would bring Vormian the head of Falanil the Green. The Plague Lord had agreed, and returned the pair to Oshland (where they had awoken inside Thenayea), and chrome://dino had killed the king, but the people of Oshland had chased the duo out of the capital city before they had been able to hold the Plague Lord to his word. As far as Vale knew, the kuo-toa were still being held in Vormian’s dungeons.
Satisfied but disgruntled, the party continued walking, with Vale now in his pure form: a slender, pale, disconcerting man. There were several signs warning travellers to avoid Ritonar’s outer edge, and, recalling the warnings of Selrach, the party heeded them, taking a longer but safer route. At the end of the day, the party set up camp on the outskirts of Ritonar proper, still hours away from the Foundry of Rage.
Vale and chrome://dino’s killing of Falanil had been a substantial challenge to Vasher’s narrow code of ethics. On one hand, the duo had been under duress from the Plague Lord’s infamous power, but on the other, not only had they broken the law, but they had critically weakened Oshland at what was potentially the worst possible time. At camp, he again confronted the two about this.
“If it helps,” Vale said, “Falanil was practically dead when we got there. Oshland would’ve fallen soon anyway.”
Neither Vale nor chrome://dino claimed remorse over the death of the king. chrome://dino claimed the Nuremberg defense, implying that Vormian had just as many reasons to want the people of Oshland dead as the people of Oshland had for him. Vale’s view was similar, and he reminded Vasher that the party was, in fact, inside a simulation, a pocket dimension full of simulated people whose fates were not as important as the happenings beyond the dimension. Agreeing, chrome://dino said, “I serve Vale, the one true god”. Aesden and V also nodded assent.
Vasher, much more shocked than angry, rebuked these claims reflexively, claiming that now that the pair had opened Oshland to its enemies, they had an obligation to protect it. “Obeying the law isn’t important,” he said to them. “Righting the wrong you committed is.” Vasher went to bed early, confused and distraught with his teammates.
Part 1.35: Ascension through Chaos
For the first time since their return, the party gave Vale and chrome://dino consecutive watch shifts. Vale woke chrome://dino and beckoned for him to fetch Falanil’s head, then softly called to the Plague Lord. The Plague Lord waited, ensuring that chrome://dino did not wake any party members, then responded with a voice from a source the duo could not see. “Show me.”
chrome://dino pulled the head of Falanil from its bag and deposited it on the ground. Vormian voiced his approval, stating that he regretted not being able to contact the duo until now, but was unwilling to risk revealing himself to the party. His armies, Vormian claimed, were already overtaking Oshland. The Library of Thenayea was completely under Vormian’s control, and the city of Falanil had been evacuated. Falanil’s zombies had run down the evacuees, and had them pinned between the island’s edge and the Vale of Creatures.
The Unseen Servant that Vormian was using to speak coalesced into visibility above Tonilm’s sleeping figure, startling chrome://dino. Vale glared at it, demanding that it declare their contract complete, and it did so. Vale then asked the Plague Lord his endgame, and the Unseen Servant began to tell a story.
Less than a thousand years ago, the world in which the party found themselves was ruled not by men, but by titans and dragons. This perpetual battleground was what Slaanesh was meant to overcome. He, the first Blood Prince, was chosen to ascend into the Greater World, from which he could command the titans and dragons of the lesser. He failed. When Vale questioned further as to the nature of his failure, Vormian admitted that he had been sealed to secrecy by a power even greater than himself.
Two more Blood Princes, Talaan and Am'leth, attempted to ascend in Slaanesh's stead. Both perished. By this point, the titans and the dragons had all but destroyed each other, and had shattered the world into the pieces its inhabitants now knew. Each failed Ascension had earned disastrous consequences on the entire world, and so Haxithor, the Seventh, made it his duty to see that no one else would ever challenge the Blood God through the traditional means.
The fourth Blood Prince, Iesceltan, whom Vormian seemed to hold in great respect, had a different strategy. He decided that, so long as the Blood God no longer cared about the world, no benevolent champion would be able to get him to remove them from it. So, instead, Iesceltan decided to become such a problem that the Blood God had no choice but to descend into the world, in the hopes that either Iesceltan or someone else could then Ascend with him and fulfill Slaanesh's destiny. Iesceltan founded the Obsidian Council, and helped raise four great human kingdoms out of the remains of the titans and dragons. Vormian admitted to having had Iesceltan assassinated only recently, and seemed only mostly sure that he was actually dead, despite having now recovered his corpse.
Vormian's plan was the same, save only that he was uninhibited by his elder brother's morals. He planned to conquer the entire world, something he was sure he was completely capable of, and then to wreak such monstrosities on its inhabitants that the Blood God would have no choice but to intervene. Once this finally occurred, Vormian intended to challenge the Blood God himself.
The Plague Lord asked the duo if he had anything to fear from the party. They told him that most of the party was harmless, but that Vasher might be powerful enough to stop him. Vormian seemed content with this, and said that upon capturing Vasher, he would keep him in the same cell in which he had kept the kuo-toa. When Vale asked as to their fate, Vormian claimed that their former masters, the Magi, had successfully negotiated their freedom, and that they were now with their people in the jungles of Neothorus.
chrome://dino asked the Plague Lord whether they could consider him a friend. Vormian thought for a moment, then agreed. "My doors will open to you," he claimed, "in both my Mansion, which is now accessible from the Ninth Library, and the Lair of the Thirteenth, in the city of Centrous." Lastly, Vormian invited the pair to Centrous to meet his youngest brother, Kelapan, a notorious illusionist and trickster, and to match wits with Kelapan in a game of his own choosing.
As the rest of the party began to wake, Vormian again thanked the duo for Oshland, and his Servant disappeared.
Part 1.36: Orcs with Laser Guns
At this point, I had returned to college, and was both DMing a campaign and preparing for finals week. This meant that I had much less time than usual. The party, however, was excited, and constantly asking to schedule extra sessions. This is miraculous, as, at this point, the party was still nine men strong (with one more asking to join), and I took the fact that nine people were willing to get together for four hours with less than a day’s notice as the massive complement that it is. I, however, needed to study and do homework, and did not have a session prepared.
However, as fate would have it, there was a day where every single one of my party members was available at the same time, and they all hopped into a call together, originally to play Halo, but their appetite soon changed. One of them called my phone, and I picked up while I was studying. “Jump in the <call>*,” they said, “we’ll have a session right now.”
Anyone who plays D&D knows that this is simply not how things are done, and that I was under no obligation to comply. If anything, I was obligated *not* to comply, so as not to tarnish the integrity of the story by running a completely improvised session. However, anyone who knows *me* knows that when put in under pressure like this, my arrogant ass has a tendency to react loudly, sometimes with humour and sometimes without.
Mentally (still on the phone), I thought through my notes. The party was nowhere near their destination at the Foundries.The easiest way to run an improvised session would be a random encounter. At the start of the campaign, I had generated a huge table of “random” encounters for the party, and it had been responsible for the hook horrors that had killed Shawty as well as all of the Osh Creatures. I didn’t have it in front of me, but I remembered that I had designed Ritonar as a Mad-Max-esque technological scavenger’s land, and that its encounters were themed appropriately.
This gave me an idea.
I joined the call with my party and cleared my throat. “You wake up and you’re surrounded by orcs,” I said dramatically. “They all have laser guns.”
“Really?” asked a party member.
“No,” I lied. “Now leave me alone; I’ve got homework to do.” The group laughed as I left, but complied, leaving me alone for the next few days until our actual session days later.
“You wake up and you’re surrounded by orcs,” I said, starting the week’s actual planned session. “They all have laser guns.” The party laughed again, but the laughter died off and turned to awe as they realized that I was not joking.
The orcs had surrounded the party as a show of power, and now, upon waking them, demanded they turn their weapons over to Borgan, Greatest of Orcs. The party, of course, hunted them to extinction. As a reward, I gave them the orc’s weapons, which were haphazardly modified magical torches that did little actual damage.
*translated from original unintelligible inside-joke slang
Part 1.37: Foundry
Toward the edge of the Ritonar continent, the land melted into lava, top layers first. The result was a crescent-shaped “lake” of lava, when several islands near the continent’s edge. Greatest of these islands was the Foundry of Rage.
The Foundry was even hotter on the inside than it was on the outside. Its staff were azers, dwarflike fire elementals renowned for their industry. They did not share a language with the party, but one of them, Dralr, knew Giant, and so the party used Bartholomew to translate. The communication was difficult, as both Bartholomew and Dralr were only barely fluent.
The Foundry extended just as far into the ground as it did the sky. It was a significant walk from the main gate to the central chamber. The central chamber was a huge oblate cylindrical chamber with balconies ringing its sides. A metal pylon spun slowly in the center, turned by the constant march of sixteen large fire-breathing bovine gorgons. Gears of various teeth sizes were secured to the pylon at several heights, and each balcony had multiple telescoping axles that could be extended into the central pylon to power machinery elsewhere in the Foundry and then retracted to avoid overworking the mechanical beasts that turned the pylon from the ground floor.
The party spent the rest of the day and the morning of the next running errands, repairing flammable devices, and otherwise helping the azers, and in return, Dralr and his companions agreed to repair En’Ha (and upgrade Tonilm’s favourite dagger) for only a staggering sum of money instead of an outrageous one. The azers had their own brass-based currency, and were loath to take human money unless it was in large amounts.
The next day, however, Dralr and his cohorts took the party to a square nook in the bottom of the Foundry’s central chamber (one of the few places in the Foundry where the sweltering heat was bearable). The presented Vasher with a newly repaired En’Ha, gave Tonilm his now-Foundry-enhanced dagger, and, as a show of good faith in the party’s budding relationship with them, they also presented a vast selection of prototypes to the party, allowing each member to choose an item as a gift.
Aesden and Vale both immediately began to peruse the swords. Vale, imagining himself as increasingly glorious characters, chose a thin, glowing vorpal rapier. Aesden, despite private warnings from the azers, chose an ordinary-looking blade labelled “DO NOT APPROACH” in Ignan.
V was overwhelmed at the available options, but ended up choosing the Pendant of the Sun, a magic item of the azers’ design that stored magical fire up to capacity and then released it in a frighteningly powerful beam. Myrian, walking with V, claimed the Rings of Ritonar: a set of rings that drew upon the magic of the dimension and allowed its user to bend it in firey ways. Vasher chose a mechanical harpoon that pulled with incredible force, and Bartholomew got a magic floating orb that assisted the user’s necromantic powers.
chrome://dino considered for quite some time, then confirmed with the present azers (by way of Bartholomew) that he was allowed to choose any of the magical items before him. When the azers confirmed that this was correct, chrome://dino turned and pointed to one of the sixteen gorgons that were powering the Foundry. “Then I want one of those.”
Bartholomew relayed the request to the azers, and they spent some time discussing, but eventually relented. chrome://dino was now the (extremely) proud owner of his very own fire-breathing Ritonar gorgon, bronze://dino. The azers had chosen the most docile of their number, but warned the paladin that because the beast had been created and trained only for its duties inside the Foundry, its obedience elsewhere in Ritonar would not be guaranteed.
Part 1.38: Forge
The gifts from the azers were not given out of complete altruism. Dralr was to travel alongside the party for the next few days, to see the items used in action and take note of their use cases and ways in which they could be improved. This made the party no less grateful, however, and they thanked the azers profusely before leaving the Foundry, Dralr in tow.
The party traveled inland toward their old campsite, where the heat was more bearable. Dralr, knowing what he had signed up for, was able to withstand the relative cold, but warned the party that he (and bronze://dino) would not be able to travel anywhere with rain. As the party walked, they discussed their next move.
Most of the party agreed that their collective goal was still to stop the machinations of the Plague Lord, but they varied in opinion on how best to do so. Vasher, backed by Myrian, demanded an immediate return to the leaderless Oshland, that the party might defend the kingdom that two of its members had doomed. V, backed by Bartholomew and Tonilm, insisted that the best way to stop the Plague Lord (and in the process, save Oshland) was to enlist the help of at least one other Blood Prince–and an army. To this end, Vale took the opportunity to tell the party that he and chrome://dino had been invited to Centrous to match wits with Kelapan the Thirteenth, a prospect that made Tonilm visibly uncomfortable.
chrome://dino alone voiced the pragmatic option: concede the odds and join Vormian. In addition to being the safer plan, this would give the party the best chance of freeing their captured kuo-toa companions, and the best position in which to escape from the pocket dimension.
Discussion turned to debate, and debate turned to argument. chrome://dino, in an effort to intimidate Aesden, brought bronze://dino around to face the party and began antagonizing it, but V cast wards to protect the party from the gorgon’s magic fire. Tonilm threw his newly-reforged dagger at Vale, who caught it, pocketed it, and refused to give it back. Before a full fight could break out, however, Vasher slammed En’Ha into the ground (to its delight) and declared a plan.
Thanks to some clever magic that Vale had performed for the azers the previous day, Dralr knew that Hyacinth the Eighth was currently aboard one of Ritonar’s moons, the Forge of Souls. While the party had been inside the Library of the Ninth, V had researched Ritonar’s moons, and thanks to that, the party knew that the Forge of Souls was due to pass just by the edge of the continent later that very day. The party would travel to the edge of the world today and use Vasher’s harpoon to attempt the treacherous task of boarding the moon, then would ride the moon as its orbit passed over Neothorus, where they would descend (somehow) to Neothorus, recruit an army, save the kuo-toa, and march on Centrous, where they would battle wits with Kelapan and restore Tonilm to his rightful throne.
The plan was very risky, but met more goals of the individual party members than any other that they could conceive, and so, in tense agreement, the party redirected, travelling instead to the nearby edge of the continent. There, they prepared for the daunting leap they were about to attempt, and, since they had time, those of them who needed to attune to their azer artifacts did so.
The Forge of Souls floated gently by soon after midday. It was an enormous humanlike head reinforced with complicated metal structures, and its magical repeating path dictated that it passed just ten meters away from this point at the edge of Ritonar, moving much slower than gravity, floating in the way all islands in this dimension did.
Myrian got across first, using Misty Step. He was the best climber of the group, and moved around on the lower jaw of the moon until he found a good point to shoot (both in range of Vasher’s grappling hook and not too precarious to land on). As soon as it was in range, Vasher fired the hook, and party members began to climb across. The crossing was perilous, and involved the throwing of the hook across halfway through. The last party member to cross, Tonilm, had to jump down from the surface of Ritonar, catch the line and slide, and get grabbed and pulled to safety by Aesden just as Vasher detached the hook and the line went slack. All party members had crossed, and were now frighteningly cramped standing next to each other on the perilous jawbone.
Part 1.39: Hyacinth
The party's first encounter with Hyacinth occurred through one of her modrons, a handheld machine that was little more than a human eye given housing of iron and a single small leg for mobility. It popped out through a hole in the side of the skull, admired the party (Aesden bowed), and retreated. Several seconds later, the Blood Prince herself flew around from the front of the moon, carried by a fantastic apparatus featuring two blades spinning fast enough to keep the Prince's lean body airborne. At Hyacinth's command, several much larger modrons flew to the party on preserved, repurposed bird wings, and quickly constructed a scaffolding on which they could safely climb into the skull's interior.
Once the party entered, Hyacinth flew in and landed, her flight apparatus folding up against her back, and gave them the tour. The skull, she explained, belonged to an exceptionally powerful Titan. She and her cohorts, a mixture of cyclopes, modrons, and azer, had preserved its enormous brain and were slowly using technology of Hyacinth's design to drain its soul, bestowing bits and pieces of it to modrons and exceptional machinery (the line was blurry). Vasher asked her the purpose of her modrons several times, and eventually she responded with "construction and exploration", though she seemed genuinely confused as to why a purpose was necessary.
Tonilm asked her to sign his dagger, and she complied, retrieving a hot branding iron, spinning a mechanism so it would list the correct date, and pressing it to the base of the dagger's blade near her brother’s signature. V asked that she take up arms against the Plague Lord, and she declined, saying "I will not involve myself in my brother's intrusions."
The party was not content with this answer, and continued to pressure the Eighth into intervening with the collapse of Oshland. ‘How could she ignore the suffering of so many’, Bartholomew asked the prince, ‘when she had such technology at her disposal’. Hyacinth, distressed, responded with a history lesson very similar to the one that the Plague Lord had given chrome://dino and Vale two nights before.
Less than a thousand years ago, the world in which the party found themselves had been ruled not by men, but by titans and dragons. This perpetual battleground was what Slaanesh was meant to overcome. He, the first Blood Prince, was chosen to ascend into the Greater World, from which he could command the titans and dragons of the lesser. He failed. Vale, knowing this already, told the party that he had questioned the Plague Lord as to the nature of this failure and had been told that Vormian's lips had been sealed magically by a power even greater than himself, ostensibly the Blood God.
Two more Blood Princes, Talaan and Am'leth, attempted to ascend in Slaanesh's stead. Both perished. By this point, the titans and the dragons had all but destroyed each other, and had shattered the world into the pieces its inhabitants now knew. Each failed Ascension had earned disastrous consequences on the entire world, and so Haxithor, the Seventh, made it his duty to see that no one else would ever challenge the Blood God through the traditional means.
This chaos had led to the fall of the dragons, and to great destruction in the kingdom of Ritonar, which had been, up to that point, the only human kingdom. Hyacinth, therefore, had chosen to intervene, using the power Ritonar supplied her with to enforce peace. This had backfired catastrophically, and Hyacinth confessed that, by introducing humanity to explosives, she alone had been primarily responsible for the fall of Ritonar and the extinction of the titans and dragons. Out of respect for Hyacinth's obvious guilt, and to her relief, the party chose to ask her no further questions about this event, but she did mention that, should they need them, the last remnants of the titans could be found beyond the edge of Ritonar, and the corpse of the final dragon was guarded by the Dragon Knights of Oshland.
Hyacinth then spoke of the aftermath of Ritonar's fall. Although she and her siblings had assumed humanity all but finished, a band of men called the Green Army had united under the great kings Frostwulfe and Osh, and had, though great effort and peril, colonized what was now Oshland and Neothorus. Hyacinth offered Tonilm her condolences as to the fall and scattering of his army, but promised him that, as they always had, humanity would endure on their own, by working together.
Hyacinth bid the party farewell, to travel to her other foundries and continue her work on Machina Daemonium. She invited them to stay the night in the Forge of Souls, and had a cyclops, Argie, supply them with parachutes for their descent into Neothorus. "Best of luck," she offered. "And be wary of Kelapan. That man is more powerful than he seems. Only he has the power to give you what you seek."
Part 1.40: ODST
The following morning, the party decided to drop directly from the moon into Brunlight, hoping to gather whatever of Tonilm's forces that remained and use them to crusade through Neothorus to Centrous. Hopefully, there would be other Neothoran troops remaining that the party could recruit through either superior strength or charisma.
It did not look promising from above. The once proud peoples of Neothorus were nowhere to be seen, in their place the occasional zombie or demon marching idly--never dense enough to be overwhelming, but instead spread out enough that as soon as the party landed, Vormian would know when and where it happened. As the party continued to descend closer to Brunlight, however, they found small holdouts of Neothoran troops, flying the banners of Kilgrim the Great, Trinus the Mystic, and, to his relief, Tonilm the Brave.
The largest of these groups was that of Stoutfang. The orcish men were almost exactly where the party had left them, holding the uppermost portion of Brunlight to their own with several intimidating ballistas. The party dropped as close to them as they could, with Aesden and Dralr landing in the center of their camp and the rest of the party landing only minutes away on foot.
More familiar with orcs than he was with men, Dralr was unintimidated, and asked Stoutfang's men why they had remained in Brunlight. They answered that they had not. They had retreated into the cave system carved by V, and modified it for their own purposes. Stoutfang had led them back into Brunlight, against their wishes, in search of a supposed single human within the city that had allegedly been holding his own against the forces of the undead.
Vasher, Tonilm, Bartholomew, chrome://dino, Vale, and Myrian had all landed elsewhere within the city, and, as expected, the zombies had seen them and immediately fled to regroup. Vasher, Bartholomew, chrome://dino, Vale, and Myrian all began the short walk up to Stoutfang’s men, but Tonilm noticed a zombie acting strangely and, ranger’s instincts kicking in, decided instead to follow it.
By the time that Bartholomew and Vale reached Aesden and Dralr, the pair had already convinced the orcs to grant the party an audience with their king. Realizing the situation, Bartholomew used Message to remotely warn V, who had landed beyond the seaward wall of Brunlight. Bartholomew warned V to stay hidden, lest he be recognized by Stoutfang’s men, but V, realizing that the rest of the party was even more recognizable than he, began to tunnel underneath Brunlight’s wall, making an escape tunnel from his own landing point to the party’s location.
Myrian and chrome://dino had arrived when Stoutfang spotted the party and greeted them with “HOW DARE YOU!?” The orc marched up an ornate pile of corpses to a makeshift throne, retrieved his favoured axe, and began approaching the party, and, following their leader, the orcs surrounding them readied their weapons as well. Dralr, fluent in Orc, attempted to defuse the situation, but his efforts were in vain, as he had no idea of the party’s prior betrayal of the group.
Vale, however, thought characteristically quickly. He bowed to the leader of the group and apologized profusely for V’s betrayal of their trust. “No apology could be enough for what we have wrought upon you,” he said, “but know that as soon as we learned of the wizard’s treachery, we executed him on the spot, without trial nor jury.” Vale, as always, was at his best when lying to large groups of people. Stoutfang was not convinced, but, with a subtle nod of the head, Vale drew his attention to the faces of his men, whose catastrophic morale had suddenly turned to triumph at the news that their king’s attacker had been brought to justice. Seeing this, Stoutfang sneered at Vale, but raised his hand for his men to stand down.
It was at this moment that V, finishing his tunnel, ascended into the center of the courtyard.
Chaos ensued. Wildly outnumbered, the party rushed into a circular formation, and, at Myrian’s order, V, nearer to the orcs than to the party, reburied himself in the ground. In the circular formation, only three orcs could attack each party member at once. Three against one, the party could hold their own against their plentiful opponents, and chrome://dino, Dralr, and Myrian could even win.
Stoutfang’s full rage was now focused on Vale, who had instinctively run from the orcs instead of getting into a group. Vale had successfully punched through the back wall of orcs, and was now running downhill to where he knew that Vasher was approaching. As Stoutfang chased Vale toward Vasher, Vale looked back and gestured forward at the genasi, giving Vasher the duel he had been asking for. “Hail Vasher of Greather Worlds,” Vale yelled, loudly enough for Stoutfang and his orcs to hear, “Champion of House Greencrest, Defender of Neothorus, and Bane of the Plague Lord!”
Vasher began to speak, challenging Stoutfang to a civilized duel with clear, notarized terms, but as Stoutfang ran at him and entered a rage, Vasher quickly realized that this duel would not be a civilized one. The two barbarians met axe to hammer, and the duel for Neothorus had begun.
Stoutfang’s men had regarded him as the greatest fighter that Neothorus had ever seen since long before the orc had punched his way free from certain death in a cave. As such, when he struggled to kill Vasher, his men took notice, and more and more orcs began to leave the fight at the top of the hill to watch the impromptu duel. En’Ha smashed cobblestone like paper when Stoutfang evaded Vasher’s blows and Stoutfang fought with no regard for who his greataxe might hit, so the orcs did not dare approach. Before long, though, the duel had gathered the present orcs’ complete attention.
Almost a full minute later, a maimed Vasher delivered the killing blow, and En’Ha smashed through the head of the Neothoran king like ripe fruit. Leaning on his (ecstatic) hammer, Vasher looked out at Stoutfang’s men and was met with silent stares. Vasher, ever the career fighter, recognized his enemy’s weakness and pressed the advantage. Addressing the orcs, he demanded that they forsake their now-deceased leader and instead follow the party in their quest to re-conquer the kingdom of Neothorus.
The orcs considered amongst themselves, and allowed the other members of the party to tend to Vasher’s wounds. Eventually, as Aesden congratulated Vasher on winning what would hopefully be the first of many Neothoran duels, the orcs sent a messenger to the party, who informed the party that the orcs had much to discuss and would take some time to come to a decision. The party granted them this time, and, noticing that Tonilm was not with them, went down into the city to find him.
Part 1.41: Hanged
V had made himself a new exit to his tunnel nearby in Brunlight, and joined the party in their search. When he did, Dralr, still confused as to what had happened, asked V why Stoutfang had hated him so. V admitted that the last time the party had seen Stoutfang, V had used magic to bury him and his party deep inside the island of Oshland. Hearing V finally admit to his crime, the party rapidly began infighting. The argument was just beginning to become physical when they found Tonilm.
Tonilm was staring silently into the entryway of a Fourth Church at the freshly-hanged corpse of Emile, assistant and butler to Lord Lerian Tychus. Around the church and surrounding blocks were several other zombies, all hanged in the same way. Emile’s eyes were open, and he scanned the face of each party member as they slowly entered the church, sneering visibly at chrome://dino and V. “Where is Gregori?” Emile demanded.
The party considered their response. Nervous, Bartholomew told the group that zombies could not talk. chrome://dino reminded him that Aron Asadar had claimed to be able to teach necromancers to make zombies speak. Emile, dangling and listening, reminded the party in an accusatory tone that they had in fact murdered Asadar before he had had a chance to teach this skill. The party had then seen to it that all of Asadar’s students were killed, either by their hands or by law enforcement. Emile should have been the sole exception.
Since his opponent was already hanged, Vale saw no risk and morphed into Gregori, prompting a string of death threats from the anomalously vocal corpse. Curious more than threatened, Vale inquired as to Emile’s healer. Emile explained he, along with the two remaining free necromancers, had been hanged in the public square after another necromancer had given the city guard their location. Two of these criminals, Emile and the other adult, had died instantly, but Domard, being light of frame, had had the time to bring them back from the dead and had magically commanded their corpses to free him. Collecting footsoldiers from the dead as he went, the prodigious Domard had fled the city and travelled to Brunlight, the last reported location of Asadar’s murderers, for revenge.
The party readied their weapons. “Well, I offer my sincerest apologies,” said Gregori, “for not killing you too.” Myrian walked forward and prepared to cut Emile down, but Emile beat him to it, revealing an obsidian dagger and using it to cut himself free in one smooth motion. Gregori decapitated him with his azer sword, but Bartholomew had noticed a bigger problem: all of the hanged corpses in the town were revealing daggers of their own, cutting themselves free, and converging on the party.
Aesden rushed for the high ground, running to the church’s second floor and climbing out through a window onto the roof. V cast Fireball over Myrian’s shoulder and it hit the group of zombies running at the church’s main doors just as Myrian began punching them in the faces. Tonilm drew Sel-Ath’Alar and threw it into another group, where it flew between zombies almost of its own volition.
Bartholomew walked to the corpse of Emile, knelt, and touched the corpse with the Sphere of the Damned. Emile’s corpse turned to mist and was absorbed as raw power into the Sphere, which began to float above Bartholomew and grow. As the rest of the party fought out of the main doors of the church, Bartholomew followed slowly. The Sphere floated just ahead of him growing in size slowly. Each time that it passed a fallen zombie, tendrils of darkness sprouted from the sphere and dissolved the corpse into the Sphere, causing it to grow larger still.
As the Sphere exited the church and entered the street, there were fresh corpses of zombies aplenty for it to absorb, and it began to swell in size so much that it passed into the walls of buildings and the street, sizzling and melting stone as it went. With every zombie that the rest of the party killed, the Sphere grew larger still, tendrils drifting through the battle and seizing the fallen legions of Domard. As the zombies retreated, chrome://dino chased down a small one that looked somewhat like the Osh necromancer. Pinning a nearby zombie to a wall so that he knew Domard was watching, he held the zombie up to its companion in the same way in which he had held Domard at the graveyard, and then slit its throat, sending a clear message to Domard as to his intentions with the child.
While Tonilm stayed at the church, collecting the obsidian daggers of the fallen zombies for his own mysterious purposes, Vasher led the rest of the party back to Stoutfang’s men. They had seen the whole fight, but were still not convinced to march with the party. Vale met with them, and informed them that V was in fact a slave of the party, and that once Centrous had fallen, Stoutfang’s men could do with V as they wished. They believed this, and the party and orcs departed Brunlight towards Centrous.
The march was strange. This territory had once been Tonilm’s, and before that, had been Stoutfang’s, but little of the life-dense jungle that both clans were familiar with remained. Instead, the forest was rotting and silent. Several zombies and a few flights of harpies lurked in the trees, but, even though Stoutfang’s men killed and ate some harpies, none made a move against the group. The party had packed for two days for the journey, anticipating resistance, but, after one day and night, they found themselves out of the jungle and at the open gates of Centrous.
Part 1.42: Throne
The capital city of Neothorus was full of plants of all types and well-maintained lawns. It was still populated, but not nearly as much as it clearly once had been, and not by humans. Tonilm cast Detect Magic and found that although the city was alight with it, the Blood Prince was easily detectable by the Neothoran ranger. He began to lead the party there, but, for reasons he could not articulate, chose instead to lead them to the castle, and once there, to the Green Throne.
The throne room was cluttered and dirty, having been used as a storage room for some time. Tonilm opened the door and entered first, but stopped shortly after entering, simply staring at the Throne itself. The rest of the party entered, and, with wordless agreement after seeing Tonilm’s situation, began to clean the room as best as they could, quietly coordinating with each other and leaving Tonilm to his peace. V and Bartholomew cleaned the Throne with magic, and Dralr repaired the dais and a broken chandelier. Aesden opened the windows and Vale shooed the dust out, and before long, the throne room was restored to a portion of its former majesty. Satisfied, the party gathered to see Tonilm finally take his seat on the throne. They were disappointed when he made no move to do so.
After a minute of waiting, the party started asking each other how much longer to wait, or if they should clean further. They asked Tonilm his preference, and, when he did not respond, some of them began to mock his inaction. Mockery turned to argument, and eventually, Myrian and Vale (still disguised as Gregori) both rose, running to the throne to sit on it themselves. Tonilm called a warning, and the rest of the party clamored to stop the pair. When Gregori continued to the throne, Tonilm threw Sel-Ath’Alar at him, forcing him to dodge into the party’s melee, but by now, that melee was happening centered around the throne. As soon as Vale sat in it, the party was teleported.
Part 1.43: The Game
The group was now in a great hall with a long table down the center. Tonilm and Vasher were still holding Gregori, and were now presenting him to the hall’s inhabitants. Kelapan sat at the table’s head, in a large, cushioned chair, with one foot up on the table and his right hand raised thoughtfully. He was a large man, and muscled, but not enough to be outstanding. His hair and beard were long and unkept. He did not introduce himself, but the Blood Prince’s status was evident from his position in the room and the deference of the room’s other inhabitants.
The other men and women in the room were of many different races, with no majority group. The two most common races were a large lionlike humanoid race with wrists that bent in strange ways and a race of slender, silky humanoids with varying quantities of eyes. All present turned and regarded the party for a long moment before Kelapan lazily spoke, reminding one of the lion-men that it was his turn to deal the cards, speaking an Infernal-like language that hurt the ears of some of the party members.
Tonilm, still holding Gregori, ordered him to introduce himself and the group. When the changeling hesitated and then refused, Tonilm summoned his dagger (from Brunlight, where Domard had recently recovered it) to Gregori’s throat and repeated the request, this time as an order. Reluctantly, Vale shifted back into his true form, gathering the attention of the room, and Tonilm released him and allowed him to approach the table, where he introduced himself and the party, and asked that Kelapan honour his invitation to Vale to play cards.
Aesden noticed that something was off about the cards. They were magical, as was common for expensive card games. Each player held and played cards depicting monsters, traps, treasure, and more, and in the center of the table sat a deck of cards bearing the likeness of great heroes of legend. From time to time, the characters on the cards in the center would discuss among themselves and then disperse across the table to the players. What Aesden had noticed, however, was that these heroes were not from this pocket dimension. They were from the real world.
Kelapan agreed to Vale’s request. The current card game ended, money changed hands between the players, and all party members took seats at the table save for Aesden and Vasher, who remained standing guard behind the party, mirroring the honorguard of some of the other players and ensuring that the party’s route out of the room was unobstructed should they suddenly need it.
As cards were dealt, most of the party made bets against the Blood Prince. Vale and Tonilm wagered information, Dralr and Myrian wagered money, and chrome://dino demanded that, should any member of the party score higher than the Blood Prince, Kelapan would supply chrome://dino with a pair of fireproof pants, that he might ride his new gorgon. Kelapan grinned at that request. “I happen to know someone with thermally insulating leather,” the Blood Prince said. “After this game, I will see you formally introduced.”
The rules of Kelapan’s card game were not simple, but neither were they complicated. Each participant would combine his or her cards into arrangements on the table before them that represented an enticing yet impossible quest. Enchanted cards would then draw themselves from the center of the table, with the likenesses of heroes of legend upon them. Each of those heroes would then, independently, choose a quest to complete. If they succeeded, the player whose quest they had completed lost standing, but if they died in their attempt, the player responsible for the death earned their soul.
The rest of the party now began to also recognize that these heroes, which many of the game’s players had believed were fictional, were in fact legends from beyond the pocket dimension over which Kelapan reigned. This implied that Kelapan, or whoever had crafted him the cards, knew a way to escape. Myrian attempted to address this, but Kelapan simply smiled evilly and refused to answer his questions.
From the first turn, it was clear that the party would not win. While most of them understood the rules completely, the strategy turned out to be much more complicated. Players were sabotaging each others’ quests’ lethality, strengthening heroes that would pursue other players’ quests, and using souls in creative ways that the party had not considered. Most of the party floundered, unable to even produce a quest enticing enough for any hero to attempt it.
As they played, Kelapan spoke with the party, asking them about their experience in Ritonar and their next steps. The party spoke about Vormian, Brunlight, Elornhasemmarim, and the Fall of Oshland. Kelapan seemed remorseful, but more than that, he seemed disappointed, as if he had been expecting the party to say something and they had not said it.
Most of the party went the entire game without earning a single soul. Vale eventually figured out a strategy to lure heroes in with the promise of enchanted weaponry and then kill them with that same weaponry. Vale shared this strategy with chrome://dino, who was sitting beside him, in the hopes that it would improve both of their chances of winning. This proved to be a critical mistake, however, as the heroes that would fall for Vale’s trap were now instead attempting chrome://dino’s less dangerous copy, decreasing the scores of both players.
When all was said and done, only Tonilm had proved to be a challenge for the other players to beat. He had laid a cunning and complex magical trap that was near-inescapable, but he had taken too long to lay it and by the time he began to reap its rewards, Kelapan was too close to winning, and gathered the one remaining soul he needed to win well before Tonilm could earn his required ten.
At the conclusion of the game, Kelapan’s companions, nervous about the Blood Prince’s demeanor and the situation as a whole, moved to capture the party. Kelapan bid the party a dismissive farewell, too lost in thought for his usual jokes. “Feed them to the grick,” he said to the party’s would-be captors.
The party did not go easily, but the situation was certainly unfavourable. They were surrounded, the doors were locked, and the ornate chairs and table prevented V and Dralr from readying their weapons. V cried foul play, and chrome://dino procured a chess set, insisting that he could outwit the Blood Prince in a game where he understood the rules. Kelapan raised an eye at the chess set, but the party’s captors did not stop their efforts until Tonilm threw Sel-Ath’Alar at the Blood Prince himself.
The signature enchanted dagger of the young king-hopeful soared through the air and impaled its intended target–the card with which Kelapan had won the game. Kelapan held the dagger-impaled card up at Tonilm, amused, and Tonilm demanded his signature, citing the game’s close outcome. As Kelapan considered the request, the chaos in the room resumed, with V resuming his tirade of verbal abuse as Kelapan’s companions subdued Vale and Bartholomew. Kelapan grimaced as he read the names of his older siblings, but, complying to Tonilm’s request, he snapped his fingers and summoned a pencil from thin air, then drew a small symbol on the dagger.
V, still yelling even as his captors held him, recognised the symbol. It had been on the hymnbook that he had taken from the Church of the First, in Windfell, before the party had met Elornhasemmarim. “What do you know that we do not?” he snapped at the Blood Prince, who did not return his accusatory gaze. The Prince, having finished signing Sel-Ath’Alar, dismissed his pen with a snap and released the dagger, allowing it to fly across the room and into the waiting hand of Tonilm, who immediately caught it and held it at the party’s captors.
“Prove yourself to the grick, then to Arnzipal,” said Kelapan. “Then return, and prove yourself to me.” With that, he snapped his fingers again, and the party was teleported away.
Part 1.44: Gricks
The party found themselves in a hot, humid tunnel. Aesden and V lit torches to pierce the blackness, and Dralr brightened his ambient glow, allowing the party a vision of their surroundings: curling circular tunnels through fertile soil held together by roots and vines. Tonilm knelt and sifted through the dirt, testing its feel with his hands. “This is Neothorus,” he said. “Between Centrous and Shelffenaighte.”
Seeing nothing else to be done, V began magically tunnelling upwards. Since the heat from bronze://dino was only somewhat greater than the ambient heat of the cavern, Aesden took cover from V’s falling debris underneath the gorgon, shutting his eyes against the creature’s natural light and using his ears to scan his surroundings. As such, he was the first of the party to hear the approaching gricks.
A large beak and tentacles grabbed Bartholomew before he could react to Aesden’s called warning. The party rushed to help, Aesden attempting to cut him free of the tentacles and Dralr fighting off a second creature that had been sneaking up behind chrome://dino. Vasher leaped over chrome://dino and Dralr’s melee and at the creature holding Bartholomew, cutting it cleanly into two pieces. He sliced the monster into further bits to free Bartholomew, and, seeing the fate of its companion, the second grick turned and slithered away.
Bartholomew was left plenty of space by the party to free and clean himself of the tentacles that had held him and the blood the grick’s beak had extracted, causing the party to bottleneck around bronze://dino, for whom the tunnel was clearly too small to be comfortable. Tonilm had been burned by the gorgon in the chaos, and so when V ran into a boulder that he could not Mold, he descended to the party and instead widened the tunnel so that bronze://dino could fit and not compromise the party’s ability to defend themselves. In the process of moving bronze://dino to the side, V too was burned by the creature.
Aesden, uninjured and impatient, ventured off into the tunnels alone, against the better advice of Tonilm. chrome://dino began to harvest the dead grick’s skin, finding it strong, pliable, and amazingly resistant to bronze://dino’s heat. Several members of the party attempted to strategize, but, with tensions high and the orcs of Stoutfang no longer present, this conversation turned to infighting quickly, with Vasher fuming at V for his betrayal of Stoutfang and Vale, Myrian, and Dralr struggling not to pick sides.
Because of this fighting, Bartholomew, still cleaning grick entrails from himself, was the first to spot the approaching alpha grick. He called a warning and the party heeded it, but not in any coordinated way–Tonilm ran toward Bartholomew and the beast while the other party members gathered to defend bronze://dino and quickly found himself thrown to the wall and then pinned between earth and grick.
By the time the grick reached the party, however, they were using the cramped tunnels to their advantage. Vasher stood in front of the party holding the twin dao he had looted off of Kilgrim’s harpies, and alternated blocking beak and tentacles as Bartholomew and V fired offensive spells over his shoulders. The beast’s complete focus on the group was broken when the wounded Tonilm threw a (now more powerful than before?) Sel-Ath’Alar into its back, and, as it cried out in surprise, Vasher finished it off with a dao to the mouth.
At this point, with Tonilm, V, Vasher, and Bartholomew all wounded, the party had learned their lesson, and stopped infighting to focus on the task at hand. Defending their wounded from more gricks, they met back up with Aesden and followed his map up towards daylight. When they reached it, however, they were disappointed–they were at the sickward side of the Neothoran continent, not the top, and were now looking out at several smaller islands with nothing but void below and beyond them.
While the party could not see the surface of most of these islands, they could see from below that one near them had a bridge to Neothorus’ edge, and so V began Molding a switchbacked path upwards and towards it, keeping the party right on the edge of the continent so that they could still loop up and see their destination. As the party ascended the treacherous path, Tonilm got a glance of the island’s side and correctly identified it as the city of Arnzipal.
Arnzipal, Tonilm explained to the rest of the party, had originally been a city on the very edgeward side of Neothorus. Its namesake, Lord Arnzipal, had been the personal sorcerer of Frostwulfe Greencrest. During the age of Neothorus’ prime, the citizens of Arnzipal had taken after their namesake, and the city was constantly alight with magic, with its residents holding magical baking contests, teleporting from place to place, constructing homes out of magic, and even using sorcery to dramatically alter their physical forms. However, near the end of the era, something had gone horribly wrong, and the entire city had exploded, violently but uncannily slow, crumbling off of the edge of the continent in pieces. To this day, Neothorans spoke of the Curse of Arnzipal, which was said to affect those (Tonilm mentioned the name “Bagroerder” with distaste) who wandered too close to Arnzipal’s original location.
The party soon reached and crossed the bridge to the floating fragment of the magically-constructed town. The fragment was small; only a kilometer in diameter at its widest point. Searching the homes, the party found the city deserted, with one notable exception. Lord Arnzipal was alone in a modest house, smoking an unusual substance through a wooden pipe and resting his feet on a sleeping homunculus. Aesden, who had seen him first, introduced the party as they entered.
V, wary of the Curse, asked Arnzipal if magic could be used here safely, and Arnzipal, interpreting the question as a request, agreed to allow it. Tonilm told the wizard of the party’s situation, starting with the party’s march on Centrous and ending with their battle against the gricks. Arnzipal, his eyes unfocused, stood as if lifted into the air by careful unseen hands, and, without looking but with much gravitas, agreed to return the party to Kelapan.
Shortly after Arnzipal led the party out of the door, Vasher decided that his honour had waited long enough, and he attacked V. The party held him back as soon as he started, insisting that while this was a safer venue than the grick tunnels, it was still not the place or time for infighting. Arnzipal, curious, asked what was going on, and nodded understandingly as the party explained to them the ongoing feud between its two most damage-dealing members. “Then you must duel,” Arnzipal said to the two. “Come. I know a place.”
Part 1.45: Duel
I cannot express to you how little the characters of Vasher and V got along. In writing this summary, I’ve skipped over so many details that arose from petty squabbles between them. In real life, the two players also have two completely conflicting worldviews, one being a conservative Christian eager to support the police and one being a transgender college student fond of converting her friends to Linux, but they are both good people who can agree to disagree and coexist with mutual respect. In D&D, however, V and Vasher could do no such thing.
V and Vasher had been having heated disagreements since the literal first session of this campaign, when they had argued over whether the party should interfere in a fight between kenkus and bugbears. Vasher had held a grudge against V for his slaying of the kuo-toa in the Mountains of Confusion, and V had held a grudge against Vasher for so eagerly challenging Neothorans to duels. V resented Vasher for his strict yet inconsistent moral code, Vasher resented V for his complete lack of morals, and both felt that the other party members had taken the other’s side. A duel was long overdue.
As this point, the party was nine players strong: V, Vasher, Aesden, Vale, chrome://dino, Myrian, Bartholomew, Tonilm, and Dralr. Of these players, five were highschool students, three were college students, six had jobs, and two worked full-time. It was a miracle (caused by careful planning) that we were all available at the same time every week. Wasting a play session on something non-plot related like a duel would be regrettable (this was one reason why no duel had yet happened), but scheduling a time for all ten of us to meet elsewhen in the week was out of the question.
Fortunately, I didn’t need all ten. I only needed three: me, Vasher, and V. I scheduled a time when all three of us were available, and in so doing, was intrigued to learn (but retained my poker face) that both players were completely confident that they would need only seconds of in-game time (and minutes of real-world play) to force the other to submit.
Another reason why there had not yet been a duel between the party members is because several of them believed that it would be fatal to V. Vasher was a heavily minmaxed character (as opposed to V, who was only a standard-issue minmaxed character), and was a tanky genasi with an astonishing collection of enchanted weapons who, at the start of the campaign, had literally had more than double as many hit points has his famously-frail opponent.
Both V and Vasher had leveled up at Centrous, from level 6 to level 7. Vasher was confident his increased strength would make the fight against his rival even easier. V, however, had a trick up his sleeve: leveling up meant he could learn a new spell, and that spell was Fly. Since the only session since the leveling had been underground, V had not had a chance to use this spell, and so Vasher had no idea that he knew it.
The players of V and Vasher (as well as the players of Vale, chrome://dino, and Tonilm) had a common real-world interest: the Halo video games. Halo Infinite had come out during the course of the campaign, and we had met up and played the game together enough that I was confident both men knew all five of the game’s multiplayer maps by heart. I whipped an appropriately medieval clone of one of these maps, Bazaar, together in Arnzipal for a battle arena that would favour neither player yet be familiar to both. (For purposes of drama, I started them face-to-face below where the rockets spawn.)
The day came for the duel, and, despite the inconvenient time, almost every player showed up. I added a ledge far above where the overshield spawns from which the rest of the party and Arnzipal could watch the chaos. Aesden rang a makeshift bell to start the duel, and I had both V and Vasher roll initiative to see who would move first. Against the 153/400 odds, V won the initiative roll.
“I cast Fly,” V’s player said, “and I rise 50 feet into the air.”
The assembled players, few of whom knew that V had learned Fly, collectively lost their goddamn minds. Vasher had been the clear favourite to win this duel, but that was with the assumption that both fighters would be on the ground. With one move, V had changed the paradigm entirely. No party member could deal damage from a distance like V could. Against a flying V, any of the party would be doomed.
Vasher’s player recovered from his surprise quickly. “I cast Pass Without Trace, and I dive into the door of this building,” he said, indicating the Den.
Vasher now had a total modifier of +12 to his Stealth rolls–and, over text (so as to conceal it from V’s player), I agreed to give him an additional +2 if he was in a building with a corresponding -2 if V was looking in his direction. This +10 to +14 modifier was pitted against V’s Perception (as it was higher than his Investigation) modifier of +3. In layman’s terms, every turn (six seconds of in-game time), V had between a 18/200 and a 39/200 chance of spotting Vasher, depending on what both players were doing, giving Vasher a probable 40 seconds of secrecy.
So V burned down the bazaar.
V had been a pyromaniac since before he had mastered Mage Hand, and, armed with his magic pendant from Dralr and his extra spell points from Level 7, the sorcerer was more than willing to let loose against his unseen opponent. V used mostly low-level spells to flush Vasher out of buildings in which he could be hiding, but let loose an Aganazzar’s Scorcher or three to really start the bazaar burning. Since Arnzipal had complete magical control of the island, I decided that he would put up a magical barrier to dispel any fire that burned beyond the bounds of the duel (the edges of the Halo map).
These fire spells’ true purpose was threefold. First, they would hopefully wound Vasher. Second, they would destroy any cover he could hide behind or below. Third, they would charge V’s azerforged magic item–the Pendant of the Sun. The Pendant of the Sun had been made especially for pyromancers like V, and gained power each time its user cast (or was damaged by) fire magic. V had been eager to use it since he got it, but had never had the chance to cast more than a few Scorching Rays on stray zombies during the March on Centrous.
Now, though, V and the Pendant were operating at maximum efficiency. The Pendant held a 100% charge, dealing a total of 10 damage to the pyromancer throughout the unusual duel by simply burning his chest with raw power. The damage was worth keeping the Pendant’s charge, as once V found Vasher, he would be able to use the Pendant to deal an awe-inspiring 8d10 fire damage to him in one hit. This Beam attack was +12 to hit and Vasher had an AC of 15, giving V 17/20 odds of hitting his target and even the (very slim) possibility of killing Vasher in one shot from full health.
As V rained fire from the sky upon the doomed marketplace to the uproarious cheers of the party (a poetic parallel for the Halo fans present), I pulled out my phone and repeatedly DMed Vasher’s player. Each turn, I would have Vasher DM me an image of where on the map he was and where he was moving. I would then have V take a guess as to where on the map Vasher was. If he was close (say, the same group of buildings) to any part of Vasher’s path that turn, I would give Vasher the -2, and if Vasher passed outside of a building (or through one that had completely burned down), I would rescind his +2.
Vasher played hide-and-seek well, working his way across the market bridges and into the west base, even intentionally taking a substantial amount of fire damage by moving through burning rooms to stay hidden. I was impressed, but saddened–Vasher had no way to win this duel anymore, and all of this stealth–and all of his righteous anger at V–was going to be, in the end, ultimately for naught. In our private conversation, Vasher’s player asked me several times how high off the ground V was, and did his best to move to higher buildings and areas of the bazaar. He had my respect–even in a hopeless situation, the stubborn barbarian fighter was still trying to close distance between himself and his opponent. I surreptitiously found ways to ask V’s player (aloud, so all could hear) if he was ascending or descending at all, but he insisted that no, V was remaining 50 feet above ground level at all times.
As this happened, I described to the other members of the party as Arnzipal lifted his hands and began to tear the island fragment from the Neothoran mainland. The duelists were too busy to notice it, but the rest of the party got to watch as Neothorus floated downwards relative to them and rotated, Arnzipal transporting the burning city-fragment to Centrous.
Eventually, as V passed directly overhead, Vasher’s player asked me if there was anything nearby that he could vault off of. Considering it part of my role as DM to give the characters honourable deaths, I told him that there was a wagon of covered hay nearby with its wheels removed, and prepared to describe to the party what cooked earth genasi smelled like. Sure enough, Vasher sprinted from his hiding place to the wagon, revealing himself, and used the spring of the tied hay to jump into the air–and then fired his grappling hook.
I–and every other party member but Vale–had completely forgotten that Vasher still had the grappling hook. Beating the 11/20 odds to hit, Vasher stuck V right in the waist, activated the hook, and began to pull him in, being lifted off the ground in the process and drawing En’Ha.
Now, when I wrote the description for the grappling hook, I left in a little easter egg that I called “Special Delivery”. When a creature hits an attack after a grapple of 45 feet or more (recall that Vasher was leaping off a 3-foot hay wagon on a 2-foot ledge at a 50-foot target), that attack is treated as a crit and does double damage. Not even considering that this would ever be used against another player, I did not specify that the creature attacking had to be the one holding the hook. I had, in fact, intended to have enemies crit my players if the players were foolish enough to grapple towards them.
Accepting his fate, V dropped focus on his fly spell, angled himself toward the ascending Vasher, and hit him with the Beam of the Sun. Vasher was already injured, and while the spell would have struggled to kill him in normal conditions, the now-critical reaction attack did it with ease, firing a focused beam of heat in through the front of Vasher’s head and out through the back. However, it was Vasher’s turn, and the earth genasi had already begun swinging En-Ha at the pyromancer before his brains were liquified. The swing hit true against the already-injured sorcerer, and, a guaranteed critical hit, decapitated him.
Part 1.46: Chess
The party ran into the courtyard as the two headless bodies fell from the sky and hit the dirt. Unwilling to wait for Arnzipal, Vale cast Revivify on both duelists, who, of course, began immediately arguing about who had won. As the island approached and then stopped beside Centrous, Arnzipal opened his eyes, lowered his arms, and floated down to the duelists, congratulating them on their effective draw and restoring them both to full health.
It was night, and Centrous was even more quiet than it had been the first time the party had seen it. The ornate buildings and bright flora were no longer visible, and the city’s sparse population was made evident by how few lamps were actually lit. The party, led by Arnzipal, entered the quiet city, and Arnazipal led them to the great hall from before.
“Kelapan” was toying with the chess set that chrome://dino had left behind when the party had been teleported away. He was unsurprised when the party entered the room with Arnzipal, and made no move to stop them.
chrome://dino was not a smart tiefling, but was familiar with chess. While the other members of the party were staring down Kelapan, speaking with Arnzipal, or scanning the room for traps, chrome://dino’s eyes stayed on the chess set. The board was set in a position unlike any chrome://dino had ever seen.
Curious and suspicious, chrome://dino walked boldly to the head of the table, sat down beside the infamous Prince, and asked his permission to reset the board. “Aye,” said the Prince. “You may.”
chrome://dino set the board with the white pieces on his own side. He had a particular strategy in mind for this game. To his (and Vasher’s) surprise, the Blood Prince made no complaints. This was out of character for the notoriously competitive man, and it only increased chrome://dino’s suspicion. chrome://dino moved his king’s pawn forward, but rather than moving, the Prince looked up at Arnzipal.
“Your Majesty,” Arzipal said.
Kelapan seemed disappointed but unsurprised at the use of the honorific. “Kordmot,” he replied, moving his pawn to double chrome://dino’s.
“How have the years been?”
Kelapan spoke slowly, ever carefully considering his strategy. “Well. Tributes are paid often and my associates defer. No prince nor king of Ritonar has ever lived as luxuriously as I.” As he spoke, chrome://dino moved a bishop three spaces forward and the Prince again mirrored the move.
chrome://dino executed his plan, sliding a queen all the way across to the side of the board. This was a move that Kelapan could not mirror without giving up his own queen. Noting this, the Prince considered momentarily, then moved a pawn forward to threaten the queen. As soon as the move was made, chrome://dino understood the man’s secret. The paladin’s opponent knew the rules of chess in their most basic form, but he had virtually never played.
“Your majesty,” said chrome://dino, deliberately repeating the deceptively truthful honorific as he captured the corresponding pawn. “Come with us. There is nothing more for you in this world, and it is time you sought the God’s Eye.”
Kelapan hesitated, then moved his king out of check. “The man chosen for that future is long dead.”
“So is the god who chose,” said Arnzipal from where he stood. “My oath to you holds, but I fear that you can no longer hide from the truth. Your father is dead. If you seek an omen, I bid you see it in this coterie.” chrome://dino moved his queen to the very corner of the board, capturing the Prince’s rook. If his opponent could not be persuaded, perhaps he could instead be intimidated.
Kelapan considered the board. He had been all but bested in five moves, a rarity for the trickster. His king, much like him, found itself cowering behind pawns as the rest of the board fell to other threats. Perhaps the game could have been won if it had been more involved.
“Very well,” he said, toppling his king. “It is time.”
Kelapan again teleported the party without warning. Last time this had occurred, it had immediately become more hot and humid as the party was whisked into the home of the gricks, but this time, they instead found themselves shivering in Windfell’s arid cold. Kelapan had teleported them (and Arnzipal) almost all the way across the world, as far as logistically possible away from Centrous without passing into Ritonar. They were now exactly where they started, standing on the very path on which they had entered the world, with the True Liar’s Monolith ahead.
Kelapan was with them. The Prince was not known for his joviality nor happiness, and the cold of Windfell was doing nothing to alleviate this actuality. He, Arnzipal, and Myrian, being the members of the party most used to teleportation, had already recovered from the shock and were moving to the Monolith.
The party fell in line some distance behind the trio. As the group approached, they watched as Kelapan’s clothing and then body began to shift. Kelapan’s lanky frame straighted into broad shoulders, and his frayed suit turned to a bright shimmer, which was replaced by armour that the party had seen in carvings throughout the world.
“Slaanesh,” said Vale when the Prince stopped at the Monolith, his transformation complete. The Prince flinched at the name, but made no complaints. He stood for a moment, then touched the monolith. In the distance, thunder rumbled.
Part 1.47: Doom
When the party had first found the True Liar’s Monolith, I had described the land stretching south of it as an impassable wasteland covered in flowing lava. The party traversed it now. The two dozen volcanoes of the Ring of Doom had stopped leaking lava, but there was still a substantial amount in their path. As did all lava in this dimension, the slag recognised Slaanesh’s authority and shied away from him, and Arnzipal, Aesden, and V worked together to create a safe path for the rest of the party to traverse alongside.
They were now in the Butcher’s Haunt. This area was completely new to them, and, indeed, completely new to every human in the dimension. Made inaccessible by the Ring of Doom shortly after Slaanesh’s first attempt to ascend, this area could not have been more different from the land on the other (west? As there were no people, there was no established cardinal system) side of the mountain range. Here was a marshy grassland, with huge plants growing in soil made remarkably fertile by an eon of volcanic activity. The plants were green and watery, to resist catching fire in the intense heat common to the continent of Ritonar, but had thick stems and firm branches, so as not to fall into the God’s Eye.
The God’s Eye, Ritonar’s infamous perpetual hurricane, battered the party here more than it had any mortal in hundreds of years. As it was normally separated from mainland Ritonar by the mountains on which the party now travelled, the God’s Eye was notorious for its dull roar and flashes of orange lightning, not the winds that only manifested across the rest of the continent as a continual eastward breeze. Here, though, that very wind made the party’s path treacherous, and they were grateful for the presence of the large powerful plants as cover.
The Butcher for whom the Haunt was named was Haxithor the Seventh, who, after trying and failing to ascend to godhood himself, had settled down in the treacherous region, that he might be available to dissuade other parties from attempting to exit the dimension. (Yes, this character, not unlike Selrach before him, was blatant party-redirecting design on my part to ensure that they did not progress prematurely.)
He met the party at the edge of the world, having departed his settlement when the Ring of Doom stopped burning. Like the other Blood Princes, he was around ten feet tall, and he carried a greataxe the size of an adult man. He held this axe at the ready, ready to intimidate approaching parties, but when he saw Slaanesh, he bowed, surprised, and waited for him to pass. Slaanesh took his time doing so, and Haxithor joined the party in following him at a distance. At Tonilm’s request, the Blood Prince used his massive axe to chip the side of Sel-Ath’Alar in lieu of signature, and the party began to realize that he, as well as the ten other Blood Princes, knew of Slaanesh’s true location all along.
The land bridge (or rather, the land peninsula) that Haxithor guarded was treacherous indeed. The party was inside the God’s Eye now, and the rapid winds surely would have prohibited their travel if not for their strange interaction with Slaanesh. The perpetual gale seemed to stand still for him, either pivoting up or down to avoid the Prince and party or slowing down to a navigable flurry.
The party called for Slaanesh to halt, and he complied. They tied themselves to the Prince and to each other, with Slaanesh in the front tied to Arnzipal and V in the back tied to Vale. V used his Mage Hands to secure himself, casting Fly on his organs to keep his shape. The party ventured forward, and every few meters, Vasher pounded a piton into the rock and secured it to the rope lest they fall.
The God’s Eye was perhaps even more magnificent from the inside than from beyond. Pure colour seemed to cut through the wind and rain, stretching out toward mainland Ritonar, and the wind seemed to glow, creating a fantastic aura all around the adventurers that prevented them from seeing their hands in front of their faces.
And then suddenly they were in the eye of the Eye. The land bridge widened out here, ending in a small circular platform. Upon the platform floated a glowing orange sphere, large enough for the Blood Princes to step into. Colour flowed outward from it in all directions, caught by the winds of the hurricane and dispersed across Ritonar. It was at this point that the world had been created.
Bartholomew stepped in first.
The party emerged in the basement of an unassuming home that Aesden recognized as being in Red Larch. The Blood Princes were too large to stand comfortably nor exit through the door of the room. Haxithor at first silently deferred to Slaanesh, but, nervous about the larger Prince’s unwillingness to harm his surroundings, Haxithor eventually smashed upwards with his powerful body, throwing the ground floor’s light furniture to the side and creating a path for his brother into the street.
As the two Princes began to explore the unfamiliar plane from which the party (save Dralr and Tonilm) hailed, the party took it upon themselves to explore the rest of the home. The man who lived here had clearly been an eccentric magic user, and apparently something of an outcast, as his corpse had been dead in his bed for more than a week. The dimension of Ritonar (which manifested in the Material Plane as a large crystal ball) had been his obsession, and the walls of his room were covered in notes and maps of the dimension.
Overcome with the excitement of returning to her home dimension, Myrian raided the Blood God’s food, reasoning that the man would no longer have use of it and taking the opportunity to introduce Dralr to Evermoor cuisine. Indeed, Tonilm, Bartholomew, Vale, chrome://dino, V all individually attempted to revive the God and, in failing, confirmed his fate.
After some deliberation, the party climbed the stairs (as they were smaller than the Blood Princes, this was the easier way for them to ascend to ground level) and informed Slaanesh and Haxithor of their father’s fate. Saddened, Slaanesh turned to Arnzipal for support, and, seemingly uncaring of the beast’s temperature, Haxithor turned to bronze://dino for the same. The party afforded them some privacy as they convened downstairs to discuss their next step.
Part 1.48: Pleasantries
An awkward conversation then ensued: the party exchanged pleasantries. I had told my players that they did not have to prepare backstories, but at this point, they had been role-playing these characters for more than a year, and most of them had written them anyway. At the start of the campaign (and, indeed, until this very moment) it had all been unimportant details–it didn’t matter where they were from or which gods they served, as they were all trapped inside the pocket dimension together. Now, though, with a thoroughly battle-tested party emerging into the Sword Coast, their histories were suddenly relevant.
Aesden had been correct in his assessment that they had emerged in Red Larch, one of six waytowns on the Long Road from Waterdeep to Mirabar. He and Vasher had travelled the Long Road together in previous employment. Unfortunately, this meant that all of the party save Bartholomew were far from home. This meant that they were also broke, as they did not have enough provisions to journey south to Bartholomew’s home (and, Bartholomew insisted, there was not enough money in that home to merit the journey).
The party debated as to their next step. Their goal, for a long time, had been to escape Ritonar and return to the Material Plane. In this they had succeeded, but the victory felt hollow. They were free, but Oshland was falling and the Plague Lord’s armies would soon rule the dimension if left unchecked. Their quest was not at an end, the party agreed. Vormian had to be stopped.
They returned to the Ritonar demigods and explained their line of thinking. Slaanesh thanked them for their continued help, and agreed to finally take on the work of his deceased father, retrieving the pocket dimension from Vale, who had stolen it. Then the group began to brainstorm a way to stop Vormian.
Inside Ritonar, the Plague Lord was nearly unstoppable, and, if killed, would simply resurrect as a still-powerful Wraith. But, hypothesized V, what if he were taken outside? Already, the two Blood Princes present showed signs of tiredness from being beyond their home plane, struggling to support their own unreasonably large bodies in a world where physics did not bend to their will. If Vormian too could be removed from the pocket dimension, he would present a more manageable challenge.
There was no navigating the God’s Eye without Slaanesh present. As such, they had two options to remove Vormian: Slaanesh would have to either personally escort him, or, using his father’s notes, find a way to move the exit portal to elsewhere inside Ritonar.
Dralr pointed out a second problem: the Blood God had clearly been dead for less than a fortnight, but the uncontrolled decay of Ritonar had begun months ago. Time, Arnzipal agreed, likely moved faster inside Ritonar than beyond. The minutes that the group had spent beyond the orb had likely already been hours inside.
The party wanted to return to Ritonar to attempt to save Oshland. Haxithor wanted to return to Ritonar to tell the other Blood Princes of their father’s fate. However, all present agreed that the time dilation was of greater priority. A day would be spent beyond Ritonar by all as Arnzipal and Slannesh studied and worked to slow the passage of time.
During this day, the party found a local guild and looked around for news. They were unsurprised–food and technology were unchanged, politicks was still much the same, and dangerous quests were advertised on a designated sign. As adventurers, of course, the party paid more attention to this quest board than to anything else.
One quest in particular caught Tonilm’s eye. A group of seafaring mercenaries was offering a high reward for a slaad control gem. Nobody in the party knew what a slaad control gem was, but they had fought slaads during the Battle of Brunlight, and Tonilm knew that they were native to the edgeward side of the Battlegrounds.
For adventurers limited to the Material Plane, the quest for a slaad control gem would involve great amounts of travel, and the reward was therefore quite high. However, for the party, the journey would not be as long, even if they had to travel the entire length of Ritonar to get to Neothorus.
Part 1.49: Slaads
Arnzipal and Slaanesh had been able to move the exit portal, but only slightly: it drew from the power of the God’s Eye, and every meter away from the superstorm required exponentially more energy than the previous. The sphere began retreating back to the Ring of Doom as soon as the party left it, as Arnzipal had no intent to spend the energy to keep it in place when it was not in use.
The party’s multi-day (inside Ritonar) trek from Ritonar to Neothorus took them through Wraithgate and southeastern Oshland. This was intentional: they could have travelled instead to Elornhasemmarim’s labyrinth and asked for the Wizard’s assistance, but they wanted to pass by the front lines of the war against Oshland for reconnaissance purposes.
They were disappointed. Trails and debris showed that battles had in fact occurred here in southeast Oshland and seaward Neothorus, but it had been several days, and the battles had clearly not gone in the way of humanity. There were no Osh corpses, but occasionally the group would stumble upon the lone exceptionally mangled Neothoran soldier. Seeing the party’s confusion, Tonilm explained that certain sickward Neothoran armies would begin cutting their own men down and apart if they knew a battle was lost, so that the zombies made from their corpses would be less combat-worthy. The corpses left on the ground were the ones that had been hacked to such ruin that the zombies had not even bothered to revive them. This would be considered an honour, Tonilm explained, reserved for the well-respected fighters among their ranks.
The party was dismayed at their findings, but Tonilm was encouraged. He had been raised to feel no love for the weaker men of Oshland, and had spent almost all of his teenage years pleading for the usurpers of the Battlegrounds to stop fighting each other and lead a combined assault homeward. Where the rest of the party saw abandoned camps whose inhabitants had been forced to run from disaster, Tonilm saw the end of a dark era and the embracing of a higher cause. It was also not unwelcome that the party met no resistance as they marched edgeward into Bagroerder territory.
The first Neothoran that the party encountered was a man named Kaiuko, who demanded immediately that the party remove their clothes. The party, shocked, asked why, and Kaiuko explained that slaads had run rampant through the jungle since Bagroerder’s forces had stopped holding them at bay. If one of the slaads touched you, Kaiuko explained, you were infected, and slowly your skin would change colour as you turned into a slaad.
All parties present disrobed, and, at seeing V’s lack of bones, Kaiuko realized that the pyromancer was turning into a slaad. The party spent considerable effort explaining to Kaiuko that V’s condition was not new, but failed to convince him, even after V used a dagger to cut into his own arm and showcase his unusual anatomy. From that point on, Kaiuko was only willing to follow the party at a distant tail.
Not long thereafter, the party encountered a second Neothoran. Rather than hiding, as Kaiuko had been, this one was running frantically away from two large blue slaads. Heeding Kaiuko’s warning not to be touched, Aesden climbed into a tree and began to rain arrows down at the creatures, and ignoring the warning completely, Vasher fired his grappling hook at the beasts, in an effort to bring one directly to him. By good fate or ill, Vasher missed his target, instead shattering the Neothoran’s wrist but otherwise pulling him from harm. As the hook retracted, pulling the two fighters toward each other, Bartholomew conjured a Wall of Fire behind the Neothoran to protect him from the slaads.
As Aesden and V attacked the slaads from the air, Tonilm snuck up beside one and struck it with Sel-Ath’Alar. The beast retaliated by swinging a claw at Tonilm, puncturing his jaw and the inside of his mouth. Unbothered, Tonilm, having great experience fighting similarly-sized trolls, leaped up and stabbed again at the beast’s neck, working together with Aesden to kill the beast.
As soon as he saw Tonilm take damage, Vasher began heating a dagger in Bartholomew’s Wall of Fire, and now, with one slaad dead and the other retreating, Vasher sprinted to Tonilm, removed the beast’s claw from his face, and used the dagger to cauterize the wound on his cheek. V landed beside him and began work on the inside wound. After much hassle with Mage Hands, successfully removed a wriggling grey-blue amoeba from where it had been injected from inside the creature’s claw. With the infection removed, Tonilm cast Cure Wounds on himself, but found himself immune to healing magic.
Kaiuko had watched the fight from a distance, and, seeing the wounds of the Neothoran and Tonilm, insisted that both were infected. Tonilm was worried about his own fate, but Myrian confirmed that he had been carefully watching and that their new Neothoran friend had not been touched since the party had found him.
The new Neothoran healed his wrist with magic (further cementing the party’s trust in his health), and introduced himself as Isaac, advisor to Bagroerder Greenclaw, King of Neothorus. Bagroerder, Isaac explained, was organizing a resistance against the slaad outbreak. He agreed to take the party to Bagroerder’s hideout, and led the party into Plaguelord territory.
Part 1.50: Myrian and Vasher
They arrived at a small town with walls carved out of the existing rock structures. Isaac led the group to a secret opening in a think wall and ushered them all inside. Once they had passed, though, Isaac’s uninjured hand suddenly doubled in size and swung and Aesden, who dove out of the way. Before the party could retaliate, Isaac slammed the door, intending to trap them inside.
En’Ha made quick work of the wall, however, and Vasher charged back outside to find Isaac now completely transformed into a green slaad, bounding away on all fours. Vasher cast Compelled Duel on the creature, however, preventing it from escaping before forcing Vasher to yield.
Isaac cast Fireball on the door, again attempting to seal the rest of teh party inside while he fought his opponent, then leaped and pummeled Vasher. The creature had near-human intelligence, and was clearly trained to change the size of its limbs to confuse its opponent in martial combat. Vasher was quickly overwhelmed.
However, he was not alone. Dralr charged through the Fireball, the flame only slightly less comfortable to him than the relative cold of Neothorus. Aesden followed, successfully leaping through the flame without being ignited, and Myrien attempted the same, but caught on fire in his effort. Ignoring the pain as his clothing burned, Myrian tackled Isaac from the side just before he could stick Vasher with a claw and infect him, and, with the slaad now prone on the ground, Vasher, Aesden, and Dralr exterminated it.
Before the party continued down the tunnel, Bartholomew summoned two zombies to check for traps, causing Kaiuko to finally lose his nerve and flee. Zombies leading, the party descended down a short staircase and into a cave system cluttered with stalactites, stalagmites, and tree roots. Anywhere that there were not stalagmites, there were boxes of Neothoran supplies bearing a crest that Tonilm instantly recognized as Bagroerder’s. Vasher got to work searching them for control gems while V began a search that would eventually find more manmade tunnels off to the side.
Aesden, standing near Vasher, made a different discovery: the stalagmite nearest him was both sentient and hostile, and the tree roots littering the ceiling were infested with its larva.
Before Aesden could warn the party, most of them had been grabbed by hidden tendrils of rock and flesh. The melee fighters of the party struggled against the vines, but that only caused them to wrap more tightly around the adventurers. The ranged fighters of the party fired spells and arrows at the main creature, but found its stony hide impenetrable.
Only Myrian remained calm, allowing himself to be grabbed. This was not the first time he had been in this situation. He remembered the xorn that had grappled and almost eaten him inside the Library of Thenayea. More importantly, he remembered its weakness. Myrian waited patiently as the roper dragged him toward it, pretending to be easy prey even as the creature’s mouth of daggerlike teeth opened to consume him.
As soon as the beast’s single eye opened, Myrian jumped into action, snapping his arms forward and ripping the eye from its socket before the beast could react. The creature screamed and dropped Myrian and the other party members, but Myrian pressed the attack, ripping out brain stem and eventually brain from the apparent stalagmite until it was no more.
The party fought their way through the roper larva to V, who Molded them a safe tunnel into the catacombs, then sealed the entrance behind them. Now safe, they got to exploring, being careful not to leave any party member alone to be turned into a slaad. It was Aesden and Bartholomew who first found the locked door through which they could hear voices conspiring to “turn” Tonilm Greencrest. They summoned the rest of the party.
Vasher and Myrian smashed open the door a minute later to reveal four slaads. Two were the dangerous green slaads like Isaac, one was a thin grey creature unlike any they had yet encountered, and one was a huge froglike behemoth that was obviously in charge. V launched a fireball and followed it with a Beam of the Sun that crippled the largest slaad. As the slaads reeled, Myrian hit the room’s opposite door with a Chromatic Orb, further disorienting them.
Aesden chose this moment to use the magic item he had retrieved from the Foundry of Rage, the cursed Sword of Hallendren. He unsheathed the sword, drawing the attention of the entire party, and hurled it into the center of the room. Immediately enchanted, all four slaads forgot about their attackers and began fighting each other for the sword.
By the time the small grey slaad came to its senses, the king was holding the green slaad with the Sword up to the ceiling and firing lightning at it repeatedly, unbothered by the biting and clawing of its companion. The lucid slaad charged Vasher, who, with the help of Myrian, rolled it into a hold, where Myrian proceeded to remove its eyes in much the same way that he had the roper.
The creature realized its chances and begged for an audience with Tonilm. By this point, the green slaad holding the Sword of Hallendren was dead and all other three slaads in the room were critically injured, so the party decided to acquiesce. Vasher and Myrian released the creature and it blindly stumbled to the center of the room, followed closely by a Dralr prepared to drain its soul with his prized mechanical staff, and asked Tonilm to join it and its masters in rebellion against Vormian.
Aesden recalled the Sword of Hallendren, and the two remaining slimes became lucid again, and turned to see Dralr poised to kill their companion. The largest slaad lumbered over to stop him, but underestimated its injuries, falling forward onto the azer. Thinking quickly, Dralr pointed the business end of his Staff into the chest of the creature and braced the other end against the ground. Once the creature fell onto him, it found itself helpless, impaled more than an inch into the tip of Dralr’s Spear, but only being held aloft by it.
Tonilm approached to parlay with the monster, flanked on his right side by Myrian and a zombie and on his left by Vasher and the other zombie. Identifying the remaining green slaad as the true remaining threat, Aesden nocked an arrow and watched the small creature closely.
The huge slaad introduced itself. “I am Bagroerder Greenclaw,” it said, “former King of Neothorus.” Bagroerder and his men, he explained, had been overrun by the Plague Lord, and had finally agreed to be turned into slaads willingly to join Vormian’s army. However, in the process, Bagroerder had stolen the control gems of his men, and remained in command and autonomous. This path, it explained to Tonilm, was the only way to defeat Vormian.
Bagroerder’s argument stood to reason. The Plague Lord was near-invincible. No human could ever bring him down in battle. However, Tonilm had learned firsthand that one slaad was worth a dozen humans in combat. Their magical abilities were enhanced, their speed was dangerous, and their skin was almost impenetrable. The Tonilm Greencrest from a month ago would have seriously considered the offer, and Bagroerder, ever the negotiator, knew this well.
However, the Tonilm Greencrest standing in front of Bagroerder now was a different man. He had met five of the Thirteen, defeated two, had seen the Blood God’s corpse dead in a plane whose strange inhabitants cared nothing of the deity, and knew somehow that there was a better way. Humanity would not have to be reduced to this.
At Tonilm’s order, Dralr used the Staff of Hamead Ik'Aemen to drain Bagroerder of his life force forever. Before the other two slaads in the room could react, Aesden had stuck the green one with an arrow and Vale had relieved the blind one of its head. The green slaad, arrow still sticking out of its chest, turned and bolted down a side tunnel at a speed most of the party could not hope to maintain.
Myrian, however, could. Unwilling to leave any loose ends, the monk charged into the tunnel after the beast and chased it through the catacombs. The beast tried at first to escape, but eventually realized that it would be caught, and rolled into a fighting stance.
As Isaac had before, the slaad used its shapeshifting abilities to assist its martial arts, becoming exceedingly difficult to predict and to hit. Fingers would sprout into enormous blades that skewered Myriaп's torso, and when he grabbed them, they would shrink out of his grip in ways no human limb could. Myriaп fought valiantly, and nearly killed the beast, but finally, the creature ran a claw through his ribcage, pulling him close and finishing the fight by tearing open his throat with its teeth. The slaad turned and fled as Myriaп drew his final breath, collapsing forward onto the ground. By the time the party found him, it was too late.
In Myriaп's absence, the party had located their quarry, and most of them agreed that it was time for them to leave Ritonar for good. Staring at Myriaп's corpse, however, Vasher decided that he would no longer be traveling with them. He was now invested completely in the war of this world. The party could go return the control gem to the smithy. Vasher would remain here, and do what he could to keep Oshland from falling. When the party returned, Vasher would be here waiting, and together, they could defeat the Plague Lord once and for all.