TAND: Under the City of Stars

This campaign covered the events at the ruined city of Tana Mo, and revealed the truth about the events leading up to and causing the mysterious Collapse of Tana Mo some 10,000 years prior to the events of TAND.

### Principal Characters

* Kyt Zophiran
* Dirvin Karsh
* Margery Frimpe

### Important NPCs

* Walt Diggoran
* Senfris
* Morwena Morrow
* Corthin Crillo
* The Undermancer

### Mentioned and referenced

* Abess Maris Entrophia
* Renwyn and Unakite
* Berthold Brand and The Siren
* Maebe

## Background

When the Blast at Frontier City shook Edar at the start of the Third Era, leadership figures across the world began to worry. Mages, high priests, royals, and more began to worry at the threat that could be caused by a war on, or within, the heavens.

Pioneered by the magnate Walt Diggoran, a grand project designed to unite the mortal realms began, known as the World Road Project. It was kicked off with a Grand Exhibition in Verian as well as at its proposed construction point, in the Western Dockside of Frontier City.

To complete with unification of the mortal realms to form a united front against the supernatural forces of the higher planes, teams needed to be sent out to each of the capitals, each bearing a Sigil Stone, to

For some cities this was simple: rulers in Khildon, Gorian, and the Earth Plane were easily convinced. Drascus in particular welcomed the rift, as the natural ebb and flow of the drifting of the planes had all but sealed Drascus off from Edar in recent years. For these cities, divine gates were built rapidly and without great debate.

However others, such as Felhammer Spires in Nordest, and Yl Theras in the Elven Heartlands, were not as ready to join the alliance. Specialist teams were sent to convince the leadership of these regions to allow a Gate to be built within their walls.

Harder still were the inaccessible, or even lost, rifts to the unknown air plane, Zophiran, or the Plane of Fire, Murantis. Specialist teams of adventurers were assembled to rediscover these civilisations and treatise with them to join the initiative.

Walt's suspicion that the Air Plane lay under the ruins of Tana Mo led to a focus on this city at the Exhibition. He opted for a free-for-all approach, while allocation extra resources and permissions to teams he found more promising. He assembled a few teams himself, including the Party involved in this campaign.

## Timeline of events

### Day 1

The Party arrive at Tana Mo, and are welcomed into Forum. They visit the various shops and services on offer:

At the Underchapel, they find the worship centre sparse, but with two main inhabitants. The first is Flameseeker Marks, priest of Gland, dwarven god of fire. They also meet Seeker Ancine, a tired and bedraggled-looking Seeker of Od.

At Forum's tavern, the Pick and Hammer, they meet Sir Nigel Puffinfoot, old-time explorer of the city and patron of the tavern under the hill. They drink with him and discuss his time exploring the city, where he recalls how finding the old council chambers inspired him to fight for the abolition of the Gorian Monarchy.

Here, they also meet a group of young gnommish adventurers claiming ancestry to the undercity. Kyt, knowing this to be false (at least for the period he knows of, immediately prior to the Collapse of Tana Mo), is suspicious of the group. They claim to have lost a member of their group under the city.

Kyt visits Forum Gifts, where he meets Poe Kimbra, a purveyor of relics and other treasures from the city. Maddie, the resident archivist, helps from time to time.

Meanwhile, Margery heads to the import/export area of Forum where she actually meets Maddie. She feels a spark between them, not realising the cause of this is that Maddie is also a servant of The Patron.

Deciding to wait until morning to enter the undercity for the first time.

### Day 2

The party rise early for the lifting of the Heavy Gate.

They explore the old Games Hall, where they solve a number of puzzles left by previous adventurers in the hall. They piece together a Story Stein created by ancient Tana-monians, which ridiculed the worship of "old gods" as foolish.

The party were ambushed upon leaving the hall by a number of kobolds. When they were defeated, the final kobold revealed itself to be under the control of the warlord, Oshtruck, whom Dirvin thought to have been exiled from power before his departure from the mountains. Oshtruck revealed himself to have returned from the depths and taken control of the council, taunting Dirvin to face him once again.

The party also discovered that the city's Depth Collator was out of action, leaving the lower levels of the city inaccessible for now.

To circumvent this, they took a cracked Pynvion bell from the old Earth Stables, aiming to repair it to summon a Bullette.

In the first-level corridor, Dirvin tripped over something inside a mound of earth. Inspection revealed this to be a kind of pale statue of a Drow, old inhabitants of the lower city. When Kyt reached out to touch it, it grabbed his hand, causing him to recoil.

When the bell rang to announce the day's dig was over, the party ran to reach Forum in time. Kyt, called by mysterious voices to stay for the night, was eventually *puppeted* by Margery into crossing the threshold before the door fell.

That evening, the party visited Corthin Crillo, an artificer specialising in animating Automata. He promised them a "competent creation" in exchange for treasures they brought back to the surface. Reluctantly, after watching the process of coercing energy into a habitable form, they agreed to take an automaton with them into the city. They were shocked when, upon accepting the offer of an upgrade, Corthin discharged all the energy from the machine to make alterations - in effect killing the creature.

Troubled during her sleep, Margery saw a vision of Primrose in her sleep, who told her she was lost within the city. This was later revealed to be The Patron in disguise.

### Day 3

Needing Pynvion to repair the bell, the party encounter the gnomes from the first night's pub trip carrying a mirror made from the metal. They pickpocket this and bring it to Flamebringer Marks who, seeking to help the party, melts it down and reforges it to repair the bell for them. They use this to summon a bullette and head down to the second level of the Belows.

The dwarven adventurer, , a longtime enemy of kobolds, announces he is going into the city to slay the Undermancer, believing it to be a Kobold mage.

Kyt casts Immovable Object to jam the Depth Collator, trapping the adventurers following the dwarven leader in the shaft. Their fate is unknown as, upon inspection the next morning, they had all disappeared.

The party discover several ancient rooms on this floor, including the passage under the mountain through the Refinery, the Lunar Forge, and the Mages' Quarter of the city.

In the Refinery, Dirvin finds the head of his friend, Gortin Hundlar, along with another taunting message from Oshtruck. It appears he has taken relics from the deepest depths of the city and used their power to take back control of the kobolds.

In the Lunar Forge, the party discover recipes for dozens of magical Pynvion tools and weapons, and see great shards of the metal hanging from the ceiling. They find a defaced mural depicting the "new gods" vanquishing the old ones, with the help of power drawn from "stars" in the night sky.

Upon touching it, Kyt is faced with a vision of the announcement of two new gods, Felix Fleetfoot, and Od the all-knowing. He remembers his mentor, Elder Eventriss, scoffing at the new gods.

Upon entering the Mages' quarter, the party find an ancient library where they discover a version-controlled manual for Celestial - suggesting its creation as a constructed language, rather than the native tongue of any celestial being.

They inadvertently wake the Undermancer, who reveals itself to have once been an Archmage of the Arcane Eye. This formidable foe begins to chase them through the whole floor, throwing potions and casting Lightning Bolts.

The party defeat the Undermancer after a dangerous battle - Senfris the automaton is killed during this, but Kyt finds himself able to revive the creature by calling its soul back into its body.

That evening, Walt Diggoran arrives via a hastily-constructed miniature Divine Gate to announce the closure of the dig. He believes a party has cleared a sufficient path to reaching the Zophiran Rift and has assembled a team of bladesingers and mages to help him get to (and through) to meet the Zophirans. Announcing the closure for "safety reasons", he takes a meeting with the party.

They warn him and his team, including the Archmage Morwena Morrow, about the dangers under the city and the threat of an attack from Oshtruck. He warns them that, if they somehow get into the city and cannot escape in time, they may be sealed out from the world forever in the Time Lock they plan to seal off the Kobolds with.

### Day 4

The party, using the bullette train, sneak out of Forum and into the city under the Heavy Gate while the city is sealed.
They pass through the House of Alembia where, speaking to the dead that remain there, Margery learns of the ritual she needs to revive Primrose. It will however, according to the voice of the dead, require an immense amount of power from a charged idol in addition to meeting the basic requirements of necromancy.

A potion factory behind the Mages' quarter reveals corruption seeping out from far below the city - the potions, while functional, all appear to have corrupting side-effects, seemingly spreading from below.

Trying to reach the bottom of the city where Kyt can speak to Djustra, the Underent, Margery can find the idol and revive Primrose, and the Council Chambers, where Dirvin is set to face off with Oshtruck, all before the sealing in the evening, will be tough. They agree to seek out the Ent first, then deal with Oshtruck alongside Walt's forces. Margery has not let slip her true intentions.

The party pass through the Hall of the Dead, where they notice a trend through time of old gods replaced by science and magic, until new gods arrive to be worshipped in the most recent graves. They do not notice that many of the oldest graves have been desecrated and exhumed.

They enter the Council Chambers, where they first notice the expansive mycelium form of Djustra. It takes the form of a colossal tree made of fungal bodies, of the ancient drow who lived in the city. Its face, within a small stone ruin and taking the face of a green man, speaks to Kyt, who communes with it. It warns Kyt that the corruption in the city is spreading through the Ent itself, and that Kyt must sever the roots connecting the Ent to the source of its corruption to prevent the city's curse from persisting, and to free the Drow from their limbo.

The party also travel to the Cathedral of Dreams, where they find relics belonging to Elder Eventriss, discarded in a pile. They also find the Window in which Kyt was buried for thousands of years, noticing a different sky to the one they know.

It is in this floor that Margery finally finds the House of Alembia, where she communes with a dead hierophant with the knolwedge of the revival ritual she needs. She also reaches into one of the effluent cauldrons in the House to take a small Pynvion figure brimming with Will. Once she finds Primroses' body, she is now prepared to revive her wife.

Heading deeper still, the party seek the roots of Djustra. They come across a great prison - the Hall of the Condemned. Hypnotic patterns on the wall of the cells instilled despair in the inmates - who were the reanimated bodies of ancient priests - and caused them to pray desperately for salvation. This Will was used in the Awakening and Binding Rituals of Tana Mo to force mortal sentience upon distant Endlings, then to power the great Drill that would carve binding runes into their flesh through a Moon Window to the Pit in the Sky. This combined process would, the party discover, bind one of these behemoths to the will of mortals worshipping it.

At the far side of the Dread Orrery containing this drill and window mechanism is the Zophiran Rift. It is currently sealed, but once Kyt and Senfris reach it and attempt to look through, they see nothing but a void of destruction and inky black clouds; later revealed to be a (or multiple) Star Eater(s). Seemingly, the entire plane had been destroyed by something. The body of Primrose floats just inside the Rift, and Margery quickly retrieves her and begins the ritual to revive her.

The Patron is able to use the despair Kyt feels to widen the gate, but he is able to step back. Senfris, on the other hand, cannot look away from what he feels should be his home but has been taken from his people; reduced to nothingness. This despair allows the Rift to open wider; a great being of immense size and power begins to approach the gate.

Meanwhile, Dirvin is struck by the revelation that he is a monk of the Alabaster Steppe and had been training with them in the years lost to his memory. In recent years the Steppe had been beset by a sinister figure going by the name Berthold Brand, who was causing terror and destruction around the Middle Sea to attract the monks, only to kill them when they arrived. Dirvin suggested a renaturalisation of the Angels of the Steppe, where communities could benefit from their own people gaining the skills of the monks; he offered to test his ideas on the kobolds. He was sent with a mission from She Who Sees the End to prevent The Patron from escaping the rift, given only the clues "do not let the key reach the gate" and "the key is despair" to help him.

Kyt is finally able to draw himself away from the rift; however, Margery is revealed to have been the true key all along when her attempt to revive Primrose fails repeatedly. The Patron takes advantage of this moment of frustration and weakness to return the memories she had kept on Margery's behalf: how Margery's use of foresight to protect Primrose became controlling and manipulative, and how Margery's curse to never be believed while knowing how to prevent Primrose's death eventually led her to seek it under the mountain, casting away her wedding Ring of Mind Shielding and leaving Margery alone. The anguish at the knowledge that Primrose would not return because her soul simply did not wish to return, alongside the rapid onset of her worst memories, drives Margery to be stunned with despair.

This is the despair The Patron had truly been seeking.

It quickly capitalises on this to fully widen the Rift, revealing its form to be that of a great eldritch moth, cloaked in Pynvion armour and swarming with moths, and began to approach. It whispers to Margery that, if she removes the Force Shield in front of the Rift, she will help her make Primrose return. In a moment of weakness, Margery begins to cast *Dispel Magic* on the shield. Before the spell can be completed, Dirvin tackles her off the ledge and the two of them plummet 100ft to the bottom of the Orrery below.

Bruised and battered by the fall, Dirvin follows his visions and reluctantly decides to finish Margery off. As he does so, a single moth is able to escape the rift.

Dying, but waking in what appears to be her old office, Margery encounters a figure who does not introduce himself but is surmised to be Phestor. He reveals himself to offer a choice to Margery: to move on, knowing the harm she has done but being free of her pain; or to go back, and try to heal the damage done in her life. Phestor tells Margery this room was the most special place of one other who had come through there, and that she had left a letter for Margery there. Once Margery decides to return to Edar to try to right her wrongs, he gives her the letter from Primrose, which reminds her that "the peace of night is cool and clear" and to "leave the sun in the sky for the next gnome". Finally at peace, she returns to her body and awakens.

Kyt, at the roots of Djustra, severs them, in doing so gaining a vision of the truth about the Collapse of Tana Mo and the role his mentor, Elder Eventriss, played as the Heretic of the story. Through the dying Ent, Kyt learns the name of The Patron to be Maebe.

The party, fleeing upstairs to try to warn Walt and the team about the dangers of what lies below, and the imperative not to open the rift again, come across armies preparing for battle in the old Council chambers. Tiny blue lights fall like snow from the branches of Djustra as the souls of the ancient Drow fall to earth, filling the room. This atmosphere appears to empower Kyt.

A battle between the rmies of Oshtruck, the party, and Walt's militia begins, as the party try to wrest control from Oshtruck. They notice he is wielding Uther Overstar's staff, which was used to control the Damned in the prison below via a swarm of Intellect Devourers.

Oshtruck, wielding power beyond his means, sends *Disintegrate* spells flying around the room. The archmages present sling violent magic at the kobolds, killing many. Aware of this destruction, the party focus on freeing the Council from Oshtruck's grasp and limiting the damage to either side. Dirvin, empowered with an *Enlarge* spell by a mage of transmutation, is finally able to take the Overstar Staff form the warlord and free the Council.

In a desperate last outburst, Oshtruck casts *Disintegrate* on Kyt, invoking Tiamat as the god he will command to serve his new regime (having learned the secrets of the undercity, he believes Tiamat to be once of the Endling gods). He avoids the damage completely, but notices that his patchwork body of gold and glass had been hit. It falls apart, and to the ground below where he hovers, but leaves behind a previously unseen starry form which begins to take on the Will of the fallen Drow filling the chamber. Fulfilling his destiny and reuniting his people (and the souls of lost air genasi) with a domain, Kyt leaves his mortal body behind and merges with the divine Will of all unhoused, unsettled folk. A New God rises as The Zophiran, patron of harbours and the unhoused, takes their place in the Mantle.

The Zophiran grasps Oshtruck, ready to unmake him, but a voice from within calls to them, asking them not to make violence their first act. They recognise the voice of Elder Eventriss, a soul unharboured since the Collapse, and set Oshtruck to the ground before Dirvin and the Council.

An avatar of Tiamat herself, the five-headed dragon-god, appears before Dirvin, claiming him as her champion and calling on him to execute Oshtruck in her name. He refuses, calling the deity "incomplete", and sparing Oshtruck. Recognising what he means - that the absence of the Platinum Dragon from the Greatwill Dragon leaves the draconic pantheon incomplete and focused on Greed, Revenge and Avarice - she turns her back angrily on the party and disappears into the Mantle.

Meanwhile, Walt and Margery set out to finish the job they came to do in the depths below. Explaining quickly what she can about the chambers and relics, and collecting the body of Primrose, she and Walt go about preventing anyone from reaching the Rift again. Walt sets his Staff to activate on the area hosting the Drill before the Margery uses Dimension Door to take both of them back to the council chambers. The party feel the staff activate below, feeling a collapse around the area of the rift.

### Epilogue

The Zophiran and Senfris reunite above the city, where Margery gives Primrose a traditional Gnomish funeral on the Hill. Feeling a domain covering many other unharboured souls calling to them, The Zophiran rises to the Mantle where they take up a seat among the stars, guiding those who have lost their homes to a new light in the dark.

The Kobolds agree to peace, and claim Dragonmount in honour of their last guardian, Shimmerwing. Dirvin names their new settlement Shimmerspire and begins to lead reconstruction of kobold society and a new city to rival the other mortal strongholds.

Walt asks to be allowed up to the summit of the mountain before anyone else, to retrieve the belongings of an old friend, Quinn Diblett. Dirvin inspects the boxes Walt plans to take from the mountain, finding only a bag with old tiles, and a quill that had belonged to Quinn. The skeletal bodies of an ancient dragon and a gnome were found atop the ruins of an ancient hoard; this, it seems, is where the last Noble Dragon and Quinn Diblett met their ends.

Margery, alone in her office some months later, opens her notebook through which she would contact The Patron. Instead of a reply, she is greeted by Phestor and Rahada Ologum, who greet her and welcome her to their party.