Silver Crusaders

**The Silver Crusaders** are a band of adventurers based in Chrono Aetas. They are the protagonists of the first home campaign, notable for slaying Voholth and Drasgelid, servants of The Whispered One.

## Silver Crusaders

### Favored Deity

* Pelor
* Gaia
* Nyarlathotep

### Goals

* Stop the insurgency of the Whispered One
* Obtain the Arms of the Light and destroy the Chromatic Generals

## Membership

### Notable Members

* Seven
* Theta
* Kibble Brandt
* Manfred Silverpax
* Jerimand
* Belzoff
* Artorian Holt (retired)

## Relationships

### Allegiances

* Sylazar
* Fareyes

### Enemies

* King Akavad
* Voholth
* Drasgelid
* The Chromatic Generals

## **Founding**

### Arc 1: Curious Beginnings

The original party started off with Seven, Theta, Kibble, Manfred, Jerimand, and Artorian, who met in a tavern in the town of Guildsworth and happened to be sitting at a table all together. Before the events of the campaign, two people in the party were travelling with each other (Artorian and Seven, Theta and Kibble, Manfred and Jerry). A halfling bounty hunter mistook them all for a party, and gave them a quest to investigate some mysterious ruins inside a mountain. After the quest, they became bounty hunters themselves, starting to grow in power.

Several notable quests happened afterwards. One such quest was to clear out some kobolds nesting inside a cave in the forest of Grimhelm, additionally encountering a Behir along with the Kobolds. As the party ventured deeper into the cave, their exit was closed off, and it was revealed to be the lair of an adult green dragon named Surgidas. Surgidas offered the party some of the weaponry inside his lair for the party to kill a silver dragon that had been bothering him for a while, named Fareyes. The party accepted, and made their way to the nearby mountains of Braelon. The Spire was guarded by reanimated Frost Giant zombies, which the party dispatched. The party met Fareyes in his lair, who took the form of a human, and they teamed up to kill Surgidas instead.

Fareyes had also given them an amulet to transport the party to his father Sylazar's lair in the scorched land of Prima Terra, where Sylazar gave them their ultimatum - stop the forces of darkness while he kept the Fallen at bay. The party agreed, donning the name of *The Silver Crusaders*. The party went on other quests to gain power for Sylazar's orders, such as being kidnapped by a group of Frost Giants to be sacrificed to an adult white dragon, dethroning a mad warlord, interrupting the transformation of a dracolich underneath Nova Aurora, and having a run-in with a Rakshasa posing as the king of a foreign nation.

The first major assignments from Sylazar were to kill Voholth the Death Tyrant and Drasgelid the Illithilich, both incredibly powerful foes. For Voholth's fight, they journeyed through the Shadowfell to persuade the Shadar-kai to make them a portal to Voholth's lair. And for Drasgelid's fight, they had to destroy his Phylactery located in the Shroud, a Sphere of Annihilation, and were accompanied by Belzoff, who joined the party. In the end, the Crusaders remained victorious, killing their foes, but at a heavy cost to the party itself.

### Arc 2: Curse of the Generals

In the aftermath of Drasgelid's bloody battle, the Crusaders took a minute to resurrect Manfred and Theta, who fell in the battle, but needed to find a way to restore a disintegrated Seven back to life. However, a voice pulled Belzoff to an altar in Drasgelid's church, where a purple stone of Thri-Kreen origin beckoned to him.

After resurrecting Seven with the aid of his comrades and Sylazar, the Crusaders took a "vacation" of sorts at Sylazar's urging. From there, they spent a week in Nova Aurora, establishing a small restaurant called Papa Pelor's Pizzeria and trying to prevent Aziz from drawing cards out of the Deck of Many Things. At the end of the week during a completely clear day, the sky started to turn stormy, and frozen acid began to fall. When the warning bells of the town sounded off, a colossal white dragon began to wreak havoc on the city, with more on the way. A mangled blue dragon, a black dragon, a shadowy black and purple dragon, and a green dragon all stormed the city, destroying most of it and killing many other people. The Crusaders engaged the mangled blue dragon, who swiftly knocked Theta and Seven unconscious by the middle of the first round. Before it could finish the party off, the shadow dragon tackled the undead dragon to the ground, telling it to stop focusing on the Crusaders and destroy the city, leaving an opening for the Crusaders to escape to Sylazar's lair.

Sylazar told the Crusaders to seek the Arms of the Light, various powerful artifacts that could help them stand a chance against the dragons. The party had two already, the crossbow Condemnation (in the possession of Jerimand) and the Philosopher's Stone (in the possession of Belzoff). The first Arm the Crusaders decided to look for was the Stave of Aeons, a staff created by Melora during the War of the World. After Plane Shifting to the Feywild, they met a Night Hag, Nanna Raggedy, who informed them that Gaia resides in the heart of the Feydark, a boggy swamp and the region of darkest magical energy, hence why her hut was on the edge of it. After nearly killing the hag (twice), the party left her with seizures for a week (courtesy of Belzoff's Contagion spell), and traversed through the mucky Feydark. It seemed that the more the party travelled, the more exhausted they became, until they found a bottomless pit that urged Theta to jump down. The party did, meeting Gaia herself on the other side, the Stave embedded in a tree stump behind her. Gaia desired to be free from the curse of Nyarlathotep that afflicted her, even summoning the regretful Fallen god herself. With the aid of Seven's Divine Intervention, Nyarlathotep's improving removal of the curse, and Theta and Belzoff sacrificing their ability to cast spells for the rest of the day, the curse was broken, and Gaia was freed. Gifting the Stave to Theta, the party left the two gods in the Feywild to reconcile as they Plane Shifted back to Sylazar.

The party traveled to the town of Banderas to seek Colton Axelrod and the Desperado's Sash. After noticing his potential, Colton took a slight interest in Manfred, and told the younger gunslinger to challenge him at noon of the next day, but first, he had to solve the Riddle of Smoke and Fire. Seeking therapy with Lucius Blackwood at Colton's request, Lucius and Manfred debated together on what Manfred's answer to the Riddle would be, as well as giving him the name of the demon who killed his friends - Mazgulah, the Envoy of Hellfire. At dawn of the next day, the two gunslingers dueled each other, and eventually Manfred won, but was also fainted due to blood loss in the form of Colton's Hemorrhaging Critical. When both of them recovered thanks to Seven, Colton gave Manfred the Sash, and the two parted ways.

The last two Arms of the Light were the Aegis of Effulgence and the Veil of the Dawnbringer, both in the possession of Rictor Gravesworth, an Oathbreaker paladin who wanders the Beggar's Bane. Teleporting there, the party was hot on the trail of the Oathbreaker. When they found him, Rictor had killed two adventurers, and summoned Wraiths from their corpses. The fight was long and grueling for both sides, with Belzoff transmuting the battlefield into extremely difficult terrain. Rictor managed to slay Manfred early on in the battle, as well as eventually impale Kibble. When the odds turned in Rictor's favor, Belzoff closed him off in a prison of stone trapped with Seven, who Rictor stabbed. Rictor was looking near death at this point in the fight, so the party took time to revive their comrades and execute Rictor when the wall dropped, the final blow coming from a revived Kibble. After attuning to their items, the storm on the island grew more intense, and when the Crusaders tried to teleport out, their amulet suddenly dispelled. Riding a lightning bolt directly in front of the party, Maldredier, the Eye of the Storm, appeared, greeting the party amidst the barren rocky wastes of his island.