Campaign and one-shot diaries

For a friendlier reading experience, see the session logs sorted by year: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023

## Session 90: Kerrum Roads

December 11, 2020

While Neeril Orlyar and Mica Zrika harvested the dragons' parts, Percy retrieved the last fleeing goats. As the guide led the party over the crest of the mountain valley, they spotted a harsh sandstorm to the east. By night, Percy set up a TEMPLE OF THE GODS, wherein Khrein and Neeril cooked a pretty delicious meal for the party and Almalak recounted events from his past in Thorothar. After a night's rest, Zephyr burrowed a whetstone from Mica, for his totally complete longswords that he really sharpened just over there behind that corner, totally, like that's just exactly what happened. Percy used her scrying on "Slonn" and saw five kernenvalians, among whom the last one had a panicked reaction to something. With an other scrying, targeting that man's location, Percy saw a half-orc woman and a young human beat up the last guy and grab some stuff from him, then noticing the slime and extracting it into a vial. Half-recognising the pair, Percy cast a sending to Foxtail to explain some of the slime and mindflayer stuff. He was shocked to learn and to hear from "Violet".

Continuing their journey towards Kerrum, the party was alerted by their guide, to a trio of hill giants: Go, Gar, and Gum having a rock-throwing competition. The party passed by unnoticed. It was a long day of walking, and Zephyr lightened the mood as a levitation ballon for a little while, dragged behind Mica by a rope.

Percy's next scrying revealed a disguised Slonn in an underground town, some kernenvale slime dudes chillin, two of them together, being weird and probably telepathic in some way, both at a dinner Kernentown. More sendings to Foxtail, describing two noble slime hosts in Kernentown, including directions and information supplied by Beatris. Foxtail thanked her, somewhat sceptically. Later, the party bypassed some basilisks after spotting their half-eared, petrified victims. Another day under the sun followed, and once again it was Scrying Time! No Slonn was seen this time, but three of the four slime hosts in kernenvale were spotting doing mundane things at an appropriate hour. The party trekked on past sunset, and in the night, Beatris spotted some winged humanoids in the dark outside Percy's Portable Pantheon.

On the next day, the party arrived in Kerrum and paid for the lost goats. They overheard a few stories about gnolls, creepy laughter, and strange shapes in the sandstorms. Also something about a weird dragon out there. In the Pillarfoot Camps, they were greeted by Ongor who recognised Lo-Tha from that time when they were both reincarnated, and Ongor's assistant Shyltana, who had maybe seen a half-elf Slonn in the city a few days ago. They got a brief intro to the city’s districts and planned how to enter its upper layers. With Lo-Tha and Beatris flashing some status and explaining that they sought a criminal, they entered the Shielded Sanctum, where they commissioned a repair job for Lo-Tha’s awesome boots. With Beatris put her delver's cube to good use and the party was only minimally lost in the Tunnelling Terraces. On their way, they met a barendain monk, found a ruined shrine and some zodiac cards. Percy scried on the slime collective again and saw just two nobles, entering Kernentown's church, where her scrying was barred and ended. Finally, they arrived at the HIGH HALLS!

## Session 89: The Slearch (Slime Search) Continues

November 22, 2020

Having placed Karhin in the capable hands of the Golden Hope, 'Percy's Taskforce: Slonn Division' got a well-earned rest in the guild house. The party coordinated with Sannl Fireforge regarding Trevylla Dwarelph and the latest developments in their respective endeavours. Sending spells to Yohannah Jauntlore still yielded only static. The party spoke to the authorities (i.e. the captain of the Evocation Guard) to inform them of the "slime satellites" in Kernenvale, while they themselves prepared to set off for Kerrum to track down the most Bronn-like traveller from Percy's scrying. To make the preparations faster, the party split up to visit multiple magic shops throughout the city simultaneously. Some of them visited the Gemstone Emporium, where they bought an echo stone, which can enhance arcane teleportation spells, but disappointingly not in a meaningful way when it comes to party-transportation across countries. For Beatris to use this arcane lens, a specialised arcane focus was also required, so they visited the Worldly Wandwright as well, where such a focus was purchased. The NPCs were also kind of charming, right? I hope so. Meanwhile, Mica, Neeril, and Zephyr (with Percy on wind-walkie-talkie) went to Tressym Rd. and visited Brimbly's Boutique and Bestiary, a quant shop where common wares and uncommon creatures are for sale. The party members quickly grew fond of the half-orc employee Soren who was in charge of the animals. They even bought the displacer kitten, named Bingo, that he was caring for and gifted it to him so he could keep it.

With that all out of the way (and the DM unable to push the players to visit all the fun magic shops) the party travelled by teleportation circle to Kavaad, where they met up with Sannl. They further travelled to Skywarren House in Swordview to investigate if "Slonn" had passed through on his way to Kerrum. Khrein spoke with Quonen about the smaller slimes and how to exorcise them from their victims. The group went around the gem cutter's guild and tested the members with fire, and found no slimes among them. With Sannl's help the party was teleported to ~~Kerrum~~ Botlode, where they hired a guide and rented some giant goats to ride out of the mountain valley and sat course for Kerrum. On their way out of the mountains, the party was encountered a fight between four young brass dragons and two adult blue dragons. The party hid while the blue dragons tore the young ones to shreds. Some of the goats were scared off, but the party managed to stay hidden from the huge dragons… at least or a time. One blue dragon spotted the party and informed the other, which turned out to be a dracolich. The dracolich proved a tough adversary, but once the party had learned to fight together, and Lo-Tha had obliterated the dracolich, the second dragon was no real threat in comparison. And so the journey continued.

## Session 88: Stake Them Out Tonight!

November 7, 2020

The gang fight their way down the stairs into a strange creature's chamber. Some annihilation occured. Trevylla Dwarelph, once a wizard, now a book-eating nothic, relayed some cosmic theories and let the party rest in the dungeon. After sleeping till past noon, the gang headed out and split up. Percy had scried on Slonn, and saw three separate targets: A traveller on a rocky trade route, equipped with a sword and a bag of holding; a man in a field, and the magic shop worker Kahrin. Percy, Zephyr, and Mica spoke to the authorities. Beatris, Neeril, and Khrein visited Borna and interrogated Kahrin. Lo-Tha and Almalak went on a stake-out, and ended up sneaking into Borna's office to find Kahrin's address. The gang then uncovered a hidden slime that was influencing Karhin, removing and destroying the slime, thus saving the poor shop worker.

## One-shot: What year is this!? (part 3)

November 2, 2020

Galad and Willow return to Randers, changed by their time in the Plane of Faerie. Willow with her (un)holy symbol, and Galad now a splendid spring Aladdin (fuck it, autocorrect is right. what is an eladrin anyway?).

## One-shot: Maybe we should just stay here? (part 2)

October 29, 2020

Galad and Willow encounter every single fairytale trope and jump in feet first.

Galad gets high on mushrooms, stares at his own reflection in silence for a long time, and pulls the ultimate prank. Willow does more druid stuff than she has done for the entirety of the rest of the campaign and gets a new preferred Wild Shape.

## One-shot: What happens in the Feywild... (part 1)

October 27, 2020

Galad and Willow get some and almost end up in the Shadowfell.

## Session 87: Back to School

October 18, 2020

The team looks for clues, is partly arrested, and finds some weird tunnels under the Mythhold Royal Academy of Arcane Studies.

## Session 86: The Missing Spellcasters

October 10, 2020

#TeamSlonnHunt assemble and accidentally unravel a Doppelgänger mystery in Mythhold.

## Session 85: A Breath of Fresh AAARGH!

October 3, 2020

Before joining the others in Sazzanith's lair, Neeril completed her business in Ryldz'tes. The lair was looted for treasure, and the party rested among the dirt and coins. As the party planned their next moves on the surface, Durthee said her goodbyes and disappeared into the dark. A while later, the fire giant from Krûl arrived and thanked the party for slaying the dragon and allowing the giant to return to its home behind the smoking obsidian gate in the back of the lair.

With most of their business in the Underdark completed, the party returned to the surface, arriving at Gallo's Tower in Tradefall. Neeril got her first impression of the surface: cold, vast, beautiful. Persephone and Marigold had their real bodies back on the surface for the first time in years and decades respectively. At Tradefall Castle, the group was received by Dalion Sohl and offered a place to sleep, guarded and watched. In the morning, they were escorted to the docks and set on a ship to Syllior with Kelp Blackheart who had promised Willow to capture the party until they could verify that none of them were imposters. On their way to this quarantine, the party discussed how to restore Neeril's mother and Harran, and what to do about Galad's facial tattoos. Percy had the rest of the party fill out a form for medical and divine healing by the clergy of Hermes. Can I just say ?? That was really fun !!

In the dungeon under Longstrider Citadel, the party was scanned by Cathosta Honeypond using Sannl's ring before being released again. Sannl cast sending to Aknarr to ask where he was, but received only a riddle in response. Visiting Kassiopeia's parents, they learned of some of Maledictus' projects, including that Akaloth's horns had been stolen. When Sannl asked around, Kass' father Oren had an answer to the riddle.

To figure out what was up with Aknarr, the group headed to the sphinx under the theatre for answers. The sphinx had imprisoned him when she sent Willow through time, then created an illusion of him to ensure that Willow arrive in time to use the mirror. Time travel is messed up, but essentially, Aknarr broke the mirror while Willow took her long rest, then an hour later, he pretended not to know, and followed Willow to a secluded space, only to be trapped with the sphinx. Yea, sure why not spoil that Aknarr did that, it's not like you don't already know that that's basically what happened. No more time travel.

Willow read Sir Angus' list of possible magi and concluded that no, that wouldn't do at all. Instead, she offered the position to Marigold, who accepted and was instated as the new court magus in Syllior. In a conversation on the topic of the previous magus, it occurred to Willow that Neeril's acute senses could track the two mimics in the citadel. And so, they went on a mimic hunt, killing the one in the whine cellar, and sparing a bookcase that seemed well behaved or at least passive, which Dalion may later pick up.

A visit was paid to the Obelisk, where Kelp and the other followers of Osprem had received a few dozen refugees rescued from the City of the Glass Pool. The group was accompanied down to the chamber where lay Bronn's body and Faelor's corpse. Beatris had an emotional conversation with Faelor's corpse, asking its animating spirit about Faelor's wishes and forgiveness for being too late to save him. He was at peace. Percy sat with Bronn, telling his comatose body of the adventures he had missed out on. She visited him daily in the next week. Sannl returned to her monastery, began her research, and collected her apprentices to teach them new spells for their mission: establish a base in the City of the Glass Pool, learn their secrets, and uncover a way to restore the minds and memories of the people in the Archivist's storage. Galad went to Kelp to check on the Soulstone and found that it was no longer in her bag of holding. Persephone gave a stunning presentation on the olympians at the theatre, complete with slides and hilarity. The joyous mood was quickly washes away when Galad told the others of the stone's disappearance. Everyone went on high alert and started planning immediately. With Slonn (slime Bronn) and the Mediator at loose, most likely carrying the Soulstone, it was difficult to prioritise other goals. Just as the hag Adrienne was mentioned, a bird landed on the theatre and shone with the blinding, conical light so iconic of the hag's servants.

The search began quickly, but something seemed to block Willow's summoned elemental from tracking its quarry, as if the very air itself suppressed the stalker's abilities. In the following days, Percy and Willow managed to restore Draada's mind and identity, reuniting Neeril with her mother. The two drow bonded at the beach and saw the sealight algae of the Green Sea. Oh, also, Kelp's cat Tudsetrold was awakened! I wonder what he has to say… what he has *seen*.

## Session 84: Sazzanith

September 13, 2020

As neeril heads off to ryldz'tes for a bit, the party plans to myrrh, myrrh-der, sazzanith. willow's (un)holy symbol? Rube Goldberg kobold machinery in sazzanith's lair, chaotic combat, beatris got the kill, more kas drama, but this time with a resolution. btw durthee died (marigold almost did too) but she got better.

## Session 83: Quarrel in Quarzendorf

August 23, 2020

Galad emotional moment, saving maegra tuskheart, zoom to cave of illusions, kas' curse drama, quarzendorf, grill night at durthee's

## Session 82: Going Through the Remains

July 17, 2020

Looting the city, freeing some captives, meet martanna, bye shurynda, purple worm

## Session 81: The Elder Brain

July 16, 2020

The longest, most tense, and most epic combat encounter. Thank you all for that amazing and exhausting day.

## Session 80: Secret Tunnel

July 13, 2020

The party had a wild time. There was combat, mystery, family drama, and even time travel!

## Session 79: Deep Storage

June 28, 2020

In which our heroes chill with the Archivist, and deal with the Regulator. Also, Aknarr. Also also, rats!

## Session 78: Bodies

June 19, 2020

I kind of wanted to title this session "Godmorgen Morgenfrue", because that was an excellent quote.

In which the missing spellcasters are found and the search for the missing spellcasters continues.

## Session 77: Basements and Brains

May 29, 2020

TL;DR: Det gik fint, alle er i live. Alvin er nuttet…

With the party reunited in the mind flayer library of body parts, and somewhat recuperated from their encounters, it was time to follow Neeril and Sannl's pointers toward the mind flayers, down into the center of the City of the Glass Pool. The party went back to where the main group had entered. There they descended into a room, identified by a qualith tablet as "the distillery". The group had found they could open the locked doors by recreating certain movements with tentacles, which Willow could do while in the shape of an octopus. While exploring this room, the door behind them opened again, and a mind flayer entered, unprepared and vulnerable. Neeril swiftly dispatched the Distiller, which was then reanimated by Beatris as a zombie and a key to the doors, allowing Willow to return to her human form. Neeril also harvested the Distiller's brain, extracting her favored enemy's psionic ability to bombard minds, learning the *mind spike* spell.

Continuing down into the illithid colony, the group faced a number of guards and monsters, and managed to press through down into the lower chambers. Here they found a room aptly labeled the "brain library", where brains were stored in various liquids, and books were strewn across a table, along with square metal pieces inscribed with qualith text, and tiny shells. Persephone read the thoughts of some of the still-living brains while Beatris snatched some books from the table. Before exiting the brain library, Willow spotted a mind witness floating up through the shaft. Neeril extended her supernatural senses to pinpoint the aberration's location to ensure that passage was safe for the party. The next room down was the "transformation chamber", where various monstrous creatures were in the process of transforming into aberrant mutants: a beholder becoming a mind witness, a basilisk growing tentacles. Galad spotted a secret tunnel in this chamber's ceiling, which Percy explored just enough to determine that it led to an extended storage room of similar experiments, and was situated roughly under the prison cells. A scuttling was heard, and Kassiopeia, who was on her way out again, became motionless. Stunned and feebleminded by an intellect devourer, she was in a critical situation. Galad banished Kas to keep her out of harms way, while the devourer was killed. When she returned, Kas was (greater) restored to her senses by Willow.

Heading farther down, the party found a small "dreaming chamber", where a singular mind flayer levitated peacefully among a myriad of small crystals, each giving off a dim light. One crystal was larger and brighter than the others. The group was unable to attack the mind flayer in its reverie and decided to inspect the crystals instead. They grabbed the brightest crystal, and Durthee and Percy peered intently into its light. The two found themselves in an otherworld, with endless fields of sunlit tall grass under a dark and foreign night sky. Percy spotted a strange fortress in the distance while Durthee used dream logic to manifest her own winged boots to follow in flight. They then both agreed to head back to their own reality if at all possible. This proved to be trivial, and the others had simply seen the two small women stare into a crystal for a few minutes. Sannl began to set up a tiny hut underneath the levitating mind flayer.

## One-shot: F holtarr

May 24, 2020

F

## Session 76: Split Up

May 16, 2020

The party is split, and the time is slime. Yes, I have started updating the entries again.

Tricksters: Perslimephone and Durthrat slipped down through a narrow crack in the floor of a ruin in the City of the Glass Pool. Here, they eventually found a cell containing a singular, short-furred quaggoth. Recruiting the quaggoth (called "1"), they managed to escape the prison chamber and fin themselves in a slimy corridor.

The others: Those not in the aforementioned group continued towards a building where they had spotted hooded figures climbing around on a spiral staircase. On their way there, they heard the ramblings of several enthralled humanoids on the way. While climbing the stairs, Neeril spotted a figure not dissimilar to her cousin Shurynda. Descending into the building, they found no people, nor a secret entrance to the place below. Instead, Galad found a small well or pool with some symbols carved into its floor and sides, depicting a triangle giving directions to three different monoliths. Here the group fought some cloaked duergar cultists possessing mystical powers. When that was done (as most encounters are in one sentence or less in these entries), they went back out to find a different way in. In the ruins just outside, they met an old man with an alien dialect identifying himself only as "old sod", and prodding fun at the party. The stranger seemed amused at their lack of certain knowledge which he proclaimed to have himself. He offered the group clues and information in return for treasure. Neeril made simple deal with the man for magical harvesting powers in return for every amethyst gemstone she will ever find. The old sod pointed the group towards the ruins of a tower, saying among other things "the way was a climb but is upside down," before he disappeared.

Tricksters: Durthee and Percy investigated an organ library with their new friend, 1. This quickly attracted the attention of a number of guards that captured 1 and started carrying the quaggoth away. When the quaggoth called out for "Pursee", the halfling cleric could only do one thing: save that quaggoth. The guards were killed, but a psychic effect started emanating from behind the door the guards had entered from. A particularly large mind flayer with many long tentacles blasted the group as they tried to find a way through the door. Læderlap got poofed, but a small whole in the door was made. In the following fight, Percy went unconscious, 1 died, and Durthee managed to fend the mind flayer off and hide away with a stabilized Persephone. Durthee also did hypnotize a bunch of duergar reinforcements first, and for good measure, she made sure to stab them all to death. A green, flaming, and bladed death.

The others: The larger of the two groups made their way into the ruins of an old tower and found a common room with surprisingly few guards. Kas skewered the stronger of the guards, and spent some time in prayer to Gruumsh, presenting the slain duergar as an offering. She also noticed some unusual stars projected by Starlight's glow. After considering their options and working to break through a gross door, they descended into the illiquid lair and followed the scent of fire and the drag marks of a small humanoid to the room where the tricksters were hidden away, thus reuniting the party.

Durthee had already had time for a short rest while hiding, and spent the time when the others were resting to resummon Læderlap. During this rest, Neeril told Beatris that she would rather die and be reanimated by Beatris as a skeleton, than transformed into whatever the mind flayers would want to make of her. Understandable. Sannl performed an augury ritual to tell which way was most likely to lead to a terrible, horrifying death by mind flayers, so that the party could go that way and find the mind flayers.

## Session 75: Spying Eyes

April 13, 2020

Willow returned from Syllior through the magic mirror, bringing along Beatris Louhi. Keeping watch, a member of the group spotted a dwarf matching the description of one Ezerina Steelsinew. The dwarf was lead closer to the group's tiny hut, where she spoke to Sannl, who managed to talk Ezerina out of giving in to the mind flayers' promise of knowledge. Ezerina seemed adamant in her pursuit of knowledge, but out of respect for her elder and her fellow acolytes, she relented and shared some texts she had transcribed from kuo-toan lore tablets. They planned for Ezerina to return after some hours had passed.

Being elves, Galad and Neeril completed their rests early, waking from trance having developed ideas and emotions they would later suspect to have originated from a foreign influence. The two elves noticed a rumbling beneath their group, and woke the others as a group of tentacled ankhegs hollowed out the ground beneath Sannl, thus dispelling the dome of force as they burst from the ground. After relocating the tiny hut, the party tried to get some more rest in. when the others were sleeping, Neeril spotted the silhouette of a figure not unlike a drow, and soon noticed that the hut wad been magically dispelled. Thralls of the mind flayers attacked the party, expending most of their remaining resources (this was when the notorious "scoobaguy" appeared). After beating back the island's guards, the party finally completed their long rests. However, in the meantime, they too had developed certain invasive thoughts, with the exception of Persephone.

Realising that Ezerina was supposed to meet the party at their previous hut's location, Durthee snuck back to the agreed-upon meeting place and avoided any guards on her way back with the dwarf paladin. The party discussed their new thoughts, the "Index", and what to do next. They agreed to let Ezerina watch over Harran and Draada, while they followed her augured path to mostly woe in the central temple atop the island, as Ezerina kept an extra eye on them with a *clairvoyance* spell. The group was quickly noticed and followed by more guards. With a well-timed fireball, Sannl pushed the enemies back and gave the group time to access the temple doors. Kassiopeia hurried to the entrance, pulling at the enormous door handles. Seeking refuge, the party hurried through the gates, only to quickly turn on their heels and run back out at the sight of two massive giants. Kas and Neeril closed the doors, and the party readied themselves for a few seconds before the resounding footsteps of the giants thundered up to the gate. With a fiery shield bash, one giant smashed a door to pieces, flinging large chunks of debris everywhere, crushing Sannl. The fire giant continued to plow through the area with two massive, spiked shields. the other giant, a stone giant peeked out over the still intact door and joined the fight. Kas slew the fire giant, lodging her sword and forearms in its chest as it toppled down onto her. An intellect devourer appeared as a crawling brain next to the giant's head, climbing down towards the buried Kas. Meanwhile, Durthee, Galad, and Beatris' skeletons felled the stone giant, which also released an intellect devourer. This one targeted Galad, reducing his mental capacities completely before being pelted with arrows. A desperate attempt to save Kas arrived just in time, as the devourer had reduced her to unconsciousness, but had not yet infiltrated her head and snatched her body. The devourer was burnt to a crisp by one of Sannl's spells.

Between Percy and Willow, the two incapacitated characters were magically healed and restored. Some time was spent harvesting parts of the giants and healing those party members in need. Following this, the party reentered the broken temple to investigate. They quickly noticed a thin crack in the temple floor, and decided to take a closer look after noticing the sour scent that drifted from the opening, calling to mind the shelled laboratory where some of them first encountered the Distiller. Realizing that the strange thoughts that appeared after their rest, the party tried to sever whatever link might still connect them to that influence. Once all had succeeded, the entire group was placed under *nondetection* spells to evade prying eyes and meddling minds. examining the crack in the floor, Percy found her arm oddly malleable, able to bend through twists and turns in the thin opening in the stone. As it was decided that she and Durthee should enter through this backdoor, the two groups said their goodbyes. Perslimigold and a rat that was Durthee disappeared into the floor.

## One-shot: The Monster of Lake Virdenia

April 12, 2020

A group of adventurers and knights of the Rose Order were hired to retrieve a lost ring from Lake Virdenia where undead soldiers and other monsters lurk. The group slew a huge, tentacled monstrosity that dwelled in the deep and compelled sailors to join it as its servants. One such sailor was saved from this fate by the group, and surely many others in the future.

## Session 74: City of the Glass Pool

March 28, 2020

Cool, so I've lost my notes from this session. Oh well.

The party crossed the dead-magic lake on their fabricated boats. While rowing across the eerily still surface, the group was assailed by kuo-toas, chuuls, giant electric eels, a mind witness, and finally the hydra. An enlarged Kas hauled the hydra just far enough out of the water to make it vulnerable to the party's magic (F Hydrapytra). Having sustained some damage, and spent quite a few resources, the party was eager to find a place to rest on the central island. Mistaking the first option for the best one, the party entered an old kuo-toa dome full of guards. When they later decided to find a safer place, they were once more attacked by thralls of the mind flayers. Among those was Trufzo dominated by cranium rats, Harran subject to the mind flayer's enthralment, and Neeril's mother Draada similarly enthralled. The group managed to defeat the other thralls while freeing Trufzo and capturing Draada and Harran. The place the party chose to rest contained rounded stones with spiralling messaged from long-gone kuo-toa scribes. These lore tablets where translated while Willow wildshaped through the magic mirror to Syllior, bringing Trufzo along to send him home.

## Session 73: Heads and Tails

March 14, 2020

The hydra gobbled up the captive goblins, and two of its heads shared a Kuo-toa, before then sniffing around the party, threateningly inspecting them with open mouths and pulsating nostrils.

Persephone Buckthorn convinced the Kuo-toa that Hydrapytra would accept the party as part of its cult, using invoke duplicity and thaumaturgy to sell the idea that the hydra could speak. Strangely, the duplicate didn't resemble herself, but instead bore the visage of Marigold, who doesn't speak Undercommon. With her *tongues* spell still active, Percy "translated" the hydra's divine message, and as the two-headed archpriest and its cult began to believe her, the hydra withdrew from its aggressive stance and disappeared back into the water.

The party was invited to stay with the cult and rest in the old Kuo-toa ruins at the edge of the water. Willow went through the magic mirror to fetch Sannl, and the two decided to go shopping for diamond dust in Syllior before heading back to the Underdark. When they did return, it was mid-combat.

Percy's attempts at exploiting the power of the fish people's faith resulted in her hearing voices as if the hydra was speaking directly into her mind. Its words of hunger and sacrifice served as a warning, and Percy told the others to scram before it returned. They backed up a little, and Durthee hid in a ruined hut. Soon the hydra returned, stretching its long necks out of the water to bite at the party and then disappearing back under the surface, where magic seemed ineffective against the monster. Percy briefly convinced the Kuo-toa that this was a test of the cult's loyalty, and that they should protect the party from the hydra, though when its heads started coming off, the Kuo-toa turned their weapons on the party once more. By targeting the hydra's severed necks with fire, as Durthee did with her *green-flame shadow blade* (edgy), the cauterised wounds couldn't regenerate, as they otherwise did into two new heads in place of one. When the hydra retreated, it had gained two heads over the course of the fight, and Durthee had very nearly been eaten.

Seeing the water's effect on magic, the party wracked their minds over its unnatural properties, wondering if it was psionic slime or some planar well, though Sannl could confirm it was neither. They tried to fix Neeril's new slime gun she looted from a kobold inventor, but without a proper tinkerer they had no luck.

In a peaceful *tiny hut* the party waited out the rest of the day's hours, Sannl delivering her few findings from her sendings to Lo-Tha. Percy invoked her Marigold-duplicity again for a brief conversation. Galad took some Sylvan lessons from Willow.

Durthee gave Sannl the Distiller’s spell book, allowing the wizard to transcribe the spells *nondetection*, *mind spike*, *detect thoughts*, and *life transference*. The book included notes on how to copy the effects of arcane spells with psionics. The party discussed whether help was needed against the "Alvins", as well as the possible consequences of bringing in different otherworldly beings to fight the mind flayers.

After a long rest (Kas attaining 12th level), the party backtracked into the ruined laboratory, where Starlight's glow revealed a strange creature to Kas. The small, malformed, aberration introduced itself as Kaeth "Pebbletoes" Svarthand. Durthee had heard from Underthane Umbra of Quarzendorf that Kaeth had not returned to the other deep gnomes since delivering the gems and dust to the party while in Krûl. Durthee and Percy consoled the now tentacled, mutant that Kaeth had become, and despite Percy's protest at Kas' looming presence above the creature, Durthee urged Kas to proceed with her intentions to slay the former deep gnome. Kaeth was then buried near the mongrel village, where the party was headed.

While exploring the sorry excuse for a village that was the home of Stankelmus and other odd and mutated beings, the party spoke with Globulon the psychic gray ooze, and found that Grugnir had made his way all the way down here in his search for treasure. Grugnir told the adventurers about a dwarf paladin, likely Ezerina Steelsinew, who had accompanied a mind flayer through the cavern above.

When the party passed by Kaeth’s grave, which they had constructed out of small stones and pebbles, they found it had been shaped into a solid sarcophagus with the likeness of the gnome's original shape. The earth-gliding fox showed up then, and bowed to the party before disappearing into a stone wall. Galad managed a *message* cantrip to it, and received an answer from the fox, thanking the party. Durthee figured that the Kavaadic saint, Celes, was probably involved somehow. Percy was sickened, puking up a cloud of spores. With a touch, Kas cured the cleric of poisoning and of gas spore disease.

Setting course back to the lake, Sannl fabricated a couple of boats from cave fisher carapace and the broken remains of the laboratory's shell. The party then rowed out onto the lake towards the City of the Glass Pool.

## Session 72: Kobolds and Kuo-Toa

March 1, 2020

In the early morning, Willow and Neeril spotted some odd creatures seemingly playing in the tunnel below the party's resting spot. One was a pale kobold, the other a dark fox that disappeared into the earth, walking effortlessly through the stone and leaving no trace in the rocky surface. The kobold scrambled on all fours and ran, but before it was completely gone, Willow checked the Delver's Cube and saw the dragon rune was glowing.

When everyone was awake, stories and knowledge of nature above and below the surface were swapped, and no one could make sense of the earth-gliding fox. Percy had spoken to Hermes in the night, and received a few revelations. Sannl was sent through the magic mirror where she could safely cast sending to Lo-Tha in the astral plane, and thus research the mind flayers' enemies and the limitations of Thindrel's closed ley lines. The others ventured forth into the familiar kobold lair, watching out for traps this time.

Through fire, ice, and fungi, the party made it through the lair, though Galad was nipped in the butt by a quipper and Percy breathed in some fungal spores from a ballon-like fungus that resembles a beholder. The kobolds had been caught somewhat off guard and retreated quickly. As the party left the lair, a final trap caught Neeril in a leech-infested cell, slowly filling with water, but with a rope trick and some hill giant strength, this proved to be a minor setback.

And so the party trekked on into the cave with the caustic geyser, where a cult of Kuo-toa were capturing the local goblins as sacrifices to their god Hydrapytra. A fight broke out, as the Kuo-toa thought to make sacrifices out of the party as well, but Durthee and Percy managed to convince two of the cult leader's three heads to accept the party as a fellow cult to Hydrapytra, and killing the third head. The crazed fish people then warily accepted the party as allies for the time being, and invited them to accompany their cult back to its mighty god. On their way through the roper lair, a few goblins and Kuo-toa were caught and eaten, but the party was unscathed. The now two-headed archpriest explained to Percy how the cult had once been of one mind, but upon leaving the sea and witnessing Hydrapytra's presence, they had been granted their own minds, divine magic, and a purpose: to conquer the dry land in Hydrapytra's name.

To lead the party towards Hydrapytra, the cult showed them through the broken doors into the cave containing the mongrelfolk village where Stankelmus lives and the mind flayer laboratory where the party had first slain the Distiller. This time around though, the laboratory was in ruins and overgrown with slime molds and algae. The party decided to ignore the mongrelfolk village for now and head towards the lab, following the Kuo-toa into an ambush by a pack of cave fishers. After this encounter, the group spent about half an hour exploring the lab, discovering that its conch shell was seemingly once home to an enormous mollusk with large tentacles, fins on its shell, and a hollowed out structure containing the mind flayers' instruments and some strange biological mechanisms. The shell also seemed to later have been hidden from prying senses through a mix of psionics and arcane practice, possibly to keep the laboratory secret, even from the old Distiller's kin.

The group then followed the Kuo-toa through the back exit of the ruined lab, crawling through a small tunnel under the lab and emerging through a curtain of kelp and algae into a vast cavern with no end in sight, even for Willow's endless dark vision. Through the dark fog, Willow could see distant mind witnesses floating around in the air, a singular mind flayer leaving a small structure in the ceiling, and some miles away, an island with huts like those in Doomoodpool, and faint lights like nothing of the mundane world. After taking this in, she bestowed that same sight upon the others, and before they could truly process their view of the City of the Glass Pool, a shape moved through the still lake that covered almost the entire cavern. Several large heads rose from water, barely disturbing the clear surface, carried on long, frilled necks all connecting to the same huge body of a hydra, and the Kuo-toa all fell to their knees in humility before their god, Hydrapytra.

## Session 71: Knowing Makes All the Difference

February 16, 2020

J'kae and the party bypassed the kobolds outside Sazzanith's lair with a sleep spell, that caused some minor wild magic, entering the clumpy cave from below. However, no flumphs were present, and in their place, a troop of Kuo-toa worshippers of Hydrapytra trudged about in search of sacrifices to their many-headed deity. between J'kae's insect plague, and the party's deft barrage of spells and attacks, the zealous fish people were slain. Naturally, Neeril harvested their bodies for useful parts.

While heading back to Ryldz'tes to fulfil the agreement with J'kae, the party experienced no visions like they had previously in that area. Neeril could still sense the aberration's presence, and Willow could see the light of flumphs in the hidden cave above. Curious, the group decided to investigate on their next pass through.

In Ryldz'tes, the party retrieved their new silk products and paid J'kae to let the paladins free. The party spent some time at Neeril's place comparing notes and maps, and discussing what to do about Sazzanith, now knowing that the dragon possessed knowledge of Quarzendorf's location. A fiendish spider familiar was spying on the group, but Kassiopeia made sure to kill it (thus possibly committing a capital crime in Drow society). The group quickly packed their things and left, parting ways with Tullr's group who were headed upwards to search for more lost paladins of Barendain to unite with.

While the flumphs were still swarming in the hidden cave, Neeril performed a rope trick to allow the party passage into the mysterious, crystalline lair of what was revealed to be a mind flayer. Visions flooded the adventurers' senses, and psionic energy impeded their movement through rows of small metallic columns. With flumphs to aid them and Starlight aglow in Kas' hand, the group pressed through and made their way to the Monitor's strange throne, where the mind flayer sat unmoving, static, dreaming. Kas beheaded the mind flayer while Sannl's *arcane hand* picked it up. Percy inspected the metal columns and found them to respond strangely to *speak with dead*. The spell allowed her to speak briefly with a being that considered itself chosen for a higher purpose for its unique perspective. The columns turned out to be connected through worm-like tubes to brains encased in the crystal floor below, most in the form of intellect devourers, but a few as people — one among them being Maegra Tuskheart of Barendain's monastery. Finding her to have died around the same time as the mind flayer had been slain, the party unplugged Maegra's brain from the tubes, and copper coins were bound over her eyes before she was lowered gently back into her crystal repose.

Understanding that flumphs feed on excess psionic energy, and knowing this can have a calming effect on overly anxious creatures, Durthee pointed a flumph in Percy's direction. At first, the flumph simply drifted over and fed on the ambient energy around her, but Percy quickly became the center of a feeding frenzy. A quick escape later, the party decided to smuggle Percy past the flumphs that were drifting back to their cave, and Sannl put up a *tiny hut* at the entrance to the kobold-infested tunnels below. During this rest, Percy noticed that her shoes felt a bit loose and about a centimeter appeared to be missing from her usual height.

The following morning, Percy decided to get a biopsy to gauge what would happen to her body, should she die. With the party's help, a skin graft was removed from her leg and kept in a glass vial for later observation. The group then squeezed their way through the smaller kobold tunnels, where a bait-trap activated and partially collapsed the tunnel while greatswords of fire giant make swung down at the party. Sannl narrowly shielded herself with a spell, while Kass caught a sword in the leg and was slowed down while the others faced off against a small band of kobolds led by one with a grudge against Durthee. Eventually, the group made it through the kobold territory and repelled down into the fungal cavern below with Neeril's help.

In the fungus-infested cavern, tiny beholder-kin and gas spores assailed the party, commanded by a beholder that was carving out its lair in the walls. This beholder was identical to a vision that had appeared briefly to the party while in the Monitor's crystal lair the previous day. Kass and Percy took a dive on Willow in her eagle form. The others formed a parachute team with *feather fall*, drifting down almost too slowly to help those in combat with the beholder. Percy was petrified, Kas almost died multiple times, and after Neeril had weakened the beholder with purple worm poison-tipped arrows, Galad disintegrated it, leaving only a pile of dust. Percy was restored with greater restoration, and Willow checked on the skin sample from earlier, which by then had become a coagulated blob of red slime. This revelation gave Percy and the rest of the party much to think about as they ventured through the Cloaker Caves. Deciding against exploring the caves, the party spent the rest of the day trekking and climbing their way to the dead stone giant, fighting a single gelatinous cube on the way. Thus ended the moon of the Owlbear 853 CL.

## Session 70: Goodbye Krûl World

January 28, 2020

A fog of spores rolled through Krûl, killing a few citizens and putting the others into an even deeper haze than the stupor they were already in.

Persephone and the Great Eagle Ruler of the Surface World brought the three duergar kids and their mom to Syllior via *word of recall*. There, Kelp and Habla agreed to give the grey dwarves a home at the Obelisk.

The remaining party escaped Krûl, with Kass sealing some of the gates to stop the spreading of the spores. Neeril and Durthee led the way to Ryldz'tes while discussing the surface world (a truly horrifying place). While passing under a hidden cave where Neeril could sense an unmoving aberration, strange visions came to the party as mild hallucinations or vague impressions of otherworldly sights and unfamiliar creatures.

In Syllior, Percy and Willow arranged stuff with the people there: Sir Angus will make a lost of possible magi to replace Dalion Sohl as court magus of Willow's ward. Percy and Beans spoke about Dill and how best to communicate in the future. Willow and Percy then rejoined the others in the underdark through the portal mirrors, each in the form of a tiny beast.

The party entered the drow town of Ryldz'tes, There, they met with Neeril's cousin Shurynda Orlyar, the captain of Ryldz'tes, who was very impressed with Neeril's trophies from Krûl, particularly two mind flayer tentacles harvested from the Mediator, one of which Shurynda got to keep. In return, Shurynda extended her kindness to the party, gave them three potions of poison resistance, and told them where to find J'kae. Before leaving Captain Shurynda's home in the stalactite at the top of Ryldz'tes, Durthee spotted an odd skull in Shurynda's possession, which Sannl identified as that of Rhilin Farspire, a late archmage of Mythhold and former member of the Circle of Guardians.

The party found J'kae Rhithiss in the weavers' house, where she offered to get them all some fancy silks in payment for helping resolve Neeril's favor by going on J'kae's mystery quest below Ryldz'tes. J'kae explained the nature of her quest: To seek out the dragon Sazzanith and gain access to her vast underdark maps. She also informed the party of her preference for a non-violent solution, so she could make the dragon her ally (wink wink). J'kae then escorted the party to see the paladins Tullr, Mezmin, and Hathrat, all tired but unharmed since their time in Krûl.

With J'kae being on a schedule to return in time for the final trials of a new generation of priestesses, the party set out to find the dragon Sazzanith and either kill her, rob her, or help J'kae ~~seduce~~ convince her. To get there, they had to pass a number of kobold traps and tricks, which Durthee helped with by enchanting one of the kobolds for an hour. This kobold now considers Durthee a dangerous trickster.

   In the purple dragon's lair, J'kae led the negotiations with Sazzanith, but the dragon also interrogated some among the party. Sazzanith was persuaded to give up copies of her underdark maps to J'kae, and the sword Starlight to the party. In return, J'kae would give the dragon sanctuary and status within the drow queendoms, and the party offered critical information and warnings concerning the mind flayers.

Backtracking through the kobold tunnels, the party found a place to rest, huddled up in a tiny hut. Throughout the long rest, several people spent some time in quiet, one-on-one conversations. Notably, Percy got some answers from J'kae, and Neeril had a much-need talk with J'kae and later with Sannl. Durthee rattled through the maps Sazzanith had given to J'kae, making sure to steal each copy that contained information about the location of Quarzendorf. While going through these many maps, she noted a number of new pathways mapped by the purple dragon.

## Session 69: Nice

January 19, 2020

At the fire giant's workspace in the armory in Krûl, Kas worked to remove the demon from a plate armor she wanted, leaving its ichor in the hot coals. When the ichor started to move, Percy took a shovel and shoved the ichor into a tub of water. Sannl and Percy went upstairs to raise Grellik Ambereye from the dead, while Kas refitted the armor for herself. The ichor eventually grew into a water demon, attacking the party, but was quickly smote by Kas, returning it to its blood-like ichor form. Unsure of how to destroy the ichor, the party had Willow fetch Galad to banish it. After eight attempts, the ichor was finally gone from this plane.

Willow offered to teach Galad Sylvan, knowing his growing interest in the Feywild.

With Kas on the ground, and Willow and Galad in the air, the three went out to hunt for those star-palmed duergar who seemed to control the people of Krûl. Meanwhile, Percy and Sannl went snuck out to look for loot and scribing materials, winding paper, ink, and Sannl's hat of wizardry. Percy then failed to scry on SlimeBronn, and Sannl failed to read a Qualith tablet, rendering her affected by multiple forms of indefinite madness.

Kaeth, a deep gnome scout from Quarzendorf, who was called by Durthee arrived in the armory and offered his help in getting some diamonds recut to fit the spell needed to bring back the three dead duergar children. In exchange for some money, Kaeth promised to return with the recut diamonds and some diamond dust.

Kas was left to fend off the mindless masses in Krûl's market while the star-palmed duergar slithered around invisibly, puppeteering the crowd to attack Kas one at a time, and Kas to strike down one of the mindless marketgoers. After a while, she gave up on finding the mind master and took refuge on a building, where she, Galad, and Willow found a cache of strange artefacts gifted to the past Baron's of Krûl. After Willow dispelled the wards in the building, a silver sword lifted itself up to attack her, but Kas caught it in time to stop it.

The party reunited in the armory, planned, identified items, and were met with Helper the four-armed treasure goblin assistant to the Jackal Fiend. The party, unhappy with the new prices, decided not to take part in Helper's loot crate gambling. To get some alcohol, Kas went back to the market and killed six duergar guards, returning with three bottles of vodka and an amulet with a horse emerging from a wave on it. The group spent some time discussing relationships between age and race, and Percy spoke about her written will and her feelings toward reincarnation. Galad promised to get Percy back as herself should she die. As the conversation slowly died out, the group got a long rest. In what can only be assumed to be the next morning, Kaeth returned with the requested gems, and fighting a headache and having to deal with still maddened Sannl, he informed the party that the City of the Glass Pool is the ancient Kuo-toa city of Doomoodpool, and that the party had only seen the very top of its ruins. Kaeth himself had barely escaped from the glass pool itself, and warned the party not to go near it. With the diamonds dust, Sannl was cured of her madnesses, much to everybody's relief. Sannl then recalled the urgency of helping the trio of paladins purchased by J'kae Rhithiss who had most likely already left the now war-torn Krûl. Percy was concerned for Kaeth given his headache, and Sannl cursed the loss of her ring of x-ray vision. Before leaving, Kaeth delivered a message from Durthee's husband Snichtick, in the form of a kiss on Durthee's cheek.

The party made their way to Krûl's temple, narrowly persuading the Baron's son to let them in. There, they spoke the the duergar foster mother and offered their help. After a long and emotional ritual, Percy completed her raise dead spells on the duergar children, returning all three of them to life. She payed the kids for their help with the armor the other day, and offered the little family sanctuary on the surface. Percy told the kids to make trouble, but also to remember to be nice. Especially to their mother.

With a promise fulfilled, and three more lives saved, the party made their way back to the armory, preparing their next move. Some made a quick visit to the factory district, finding the workers pretending to work, but all in a state of mindless, repetitive imitation, accomplishing no real work anymore. Perhaps the time had come to leave Krûl behind…

## Session 68: Krûl and Unusual

January 4, 2020

After a long rest in their mossy hideout in the flumph cave, the party brought Percy up to speed, and Durthee was introduced to the party. Durthee carefully opened three small boxes Sannl had found in the Artefactium in Krûl, and Sannl read the Qualith inscriptions on the tablets within, gleaming some of the mind flayers' history on Thindrel, including knowledge of a failed index that became a giant spawning ooze due to demonic influence before the closing of the Ley lines.

After much deliberation, the party wend back to Krûl in the guise of a travelling trade caravan. In the smithing district, the party found an armory where a fire giant was forced to work for a mostly mindless duergar smith. In the armory, Durthee managed to steal some armor, including an elven chain recognizable to the party. In the market district, Sannl and Neeril persuaded J'kae Rhithiss to buy a trio of Barendain's paladins free from the duergar, in return for a favor from Neeril.

With Willow's eyes of night, the party spotted a mindwitness floating above the city, watching them with one lazy eyestalk. Escorted by scores of guards, the party was brought before Baron Graldain Ironpike of Krûl. The Baron held a sword in his hand, a mind blade containing the psyche of Otiskar Blackscream, and influenced by the sword, the Baron commanded the party be killed. However, the party acted quickly, calming the guards and banishing the Baron and the blade. When the Baron returned, the party had convinced his son Lerrek to stand down, so they could free his father from the Blackscream's command. Between Percy's swift mace action, Durthee's deft use of mage hand, and Galad's new *disintegrate* spell, the mind blade was destroyed, and the Baron was freed. The baron was grateful enough to let the party go, and he was even talked into allowing the party to hunt down the aberrations in his city, on the condition that they cause no further trouble.

Now, naturally, some trouble was caused. A purple worm tunnelled up through the ground and spewed forth a wave of monsters, including a mind witness and two mind flayers. in the chaos, Percy had run down an alley to look for armor in her size, finding three duergar children and a small-sized chain mail. The children agreed to help Percy, who then hurried back to the action after stopping a wave of mind-controlled sewer rebels. A hidden mind flayer tried to catch Percy off guard, but was slain by Durthee with her psionic crystal blade. When the purple worm swallowed Kas and dug back into the ground, Galad followed suit and killed the worm with a guiding bolt. Percy stepped through a dimension door to escape a swarm of cranium rats and reach Kas to heal her inside the worm. The others hunted the second mind flayer over and into a building, where Galad blindly fired a fireball, accidentally killing a trio of dwarflings, but also hurting the fleeing mind flayer so Willow in her white dragon form could kill it with her frost breath.

The purple worm was looted for treasures it had eaten, and Sannl found the dead body of Grellik Ambereye. Galad tried his best to console the duergar children's foster mother, before taking off to help fight through the chaos of the city. The party split up to raid a gemstone storehouse, fight some duergar disciples of the mind flayers, and free the fire giant from the armory. Percy, who recognized the three duergar kids, cast gentle repose on them and had them placed in a temple in the Baron's fortress district. Galad stayed in the temple, while the others camped in a *tiny hut* inside the armory.

## One-shot: Beasts of the Night

December 31, 2019

A band of heroes freed the Beastlands from a dark corruption at the heart of the secret spring of life in Karasuthra, which had left many of the Beast Lords changed and mutated by demonic influence.

## Session 67: The Mind Flayers

December 30, 2019

In which our heroes attempted to regain some more of their gear and lost two dear friends.

The party got a rest in the side of the tunnel wall. The group quickly discussed their plans for the time being and Faelor reassured Percy that he would do everything to get her and the others' things back while keeping the party in one piece. After a hug between the two, Percy switched and Marigold (spelled with an 'a' unlike her Witcher namesake) took over, and needed to be brought up to speed. Marigold learned how to fly using the winged boots, and she experimented with calling on Percy and her divine spells even when Marigold was alone in the "driver's seat" of their shared body. Outside their hiding place, a pack of basilisks were driven into a pit of carrion crawlers, resulting in the opposing groups of monsters eliminating each other. Peering out from the wall, the group saw a familiar figure in the darkness — Beatris Louhi, accompanied by her feline familiar, Akhtin.

Beatris joined the group and introductions were made for those unacquainted. When the dragon rune on Beatris' delver's cube lit up, the party became quiet and watchful. The whooshing echo of great wing beats rolled over them before a tiny, pale figure crawled anxiously through the tunnel, sneaking past the last remaining carrion crawler and responding only briefly to Galad's message spells. Amid the continued planning of the upcoming heist for their remaining magic items, Galad ran to catch up with the tiny kobold-like creature, but lost it before it vanished at the gates of Krûl, at which point the delver's cube lost its glow.

The party decided to send in a small expeditionary force and connect with some of Beatris' shady contacts in the sewers of Krûl to find if there was an easier way into the city and the Artefactium where the items were stored, and also to possibly unify a resistance group against Baron Graldain Ironpike of Krûl and his supposed mind flayer masters. To aid in this scouting mission, Elmira placed a glamour of seeming on Bronn, Faelor, and Beatris - the three volunteers for the initial expedition. Thanks to Beatris' papers and contacts, they successfully entered the city and learned of a possible weakness in the duergar fortress' defenses.

After meeting up with Gnask, a goblin informant for the local underground resistance, the expeditionary trio, headed by Bronn, decided to investigate some mysterious snail house-like structures in Krûl reminiscent of the mind flayer laboratory where they all nearly died. Faelor received a sending with warnings from Apo'Otu to beware the hostile waters of the City of the Glass Pool. Faelor responded to his master's call, unsure if that action would alert the mind flayers to their presence. At the snail house, the trio observed a group of dwarves enter in a strange state and exit some time later, changed. One dwarf in particular had gained a glow to its eyes and stared straight at the group for a moment before disappearing into a marketplace crowd. Here the trio split up. Beatris returned to coordinate the sewer rebellion, while the other two returned to the eastern gates, wherefrom they had entered Krûl, and beyond which the rest of the party waited for the safe return of their friends. This is when it all went wrong.

Beatris found Gnask and the rebels more ready and eager than she had anticipated — more coordinated as well; their steps choreographed, sentences simultaneous, and in place of the pronouns "I" and "me", they all seemed to use "we" and "us". After an uneasy while, in which Beatris tried to ensure that the rebels were indeed sufficiently prepared and informed for the mission, her familiar alerted her to the presence of rats. Rats hiding on the rebels. In their shoes, their hair, their bags. Knowing now that something was definitely wrong, Beatris bolted to the eastern gate, sending Akhtin ahead to warn Bronn and Faelor. When grumpy cat and his wizard arrived at the gate, it had just closed behind Bronn and Faelor who were well on their way through the seven layers of gates. In the third room, however, something was waiting for them. A row of duergar guards surrounding a tall figure with a robe impossible to tell the color of. The figure's face writhing with tentacles and set with strange black eyes — all matching an illusory image previously conjured by Elmira. Above the mind flayer, a large orb hang fixed in the air, topped with glassy eye stalks, filled with an empty-looking central eye, and adorned with four tentacles around a circular row of teeth.

The mind flayer in the glistening robe reached out with its slime-covered hands to grasp Bronn's face. Quick to action, Faelor reached for his axe to strike the aberration but found himself paralyzed by a spell from Bronn. Faelor could move only just enough to lock eyes with Bronn, whose cheeks were then caressed by the mind flayer before it turned its attention to Faelor. The mind flayer wrapped its tentacles around the head of Faelor Xiloscient, just as Beatris managed to make her way into the room and Bronn was ordered away, disappearing through a *dimension door*. Beatris, her familiar, the duergar, and the orb above all bore witness to the horrible thing that happened next. Wrapped around his face and neck, the tentacles tightened their grip and made a slithering sound followed by a pop and a crunch. With a guttural slurp, Faelor's brain was extracted out through his skull and devoured by the mind flayer. His limp body fell to the floor. The room was on fire. All Beatris could do in the moment was to burn down everything around her. Caught in the orb's appendages, she was nearly treated to the same end, but with Akhtin's help and some hearty skeletons, she managed to slip from the mind flayer's grasp and scare it into a flight as she herself took off in the opposite direction, barely creeping through the last four gates alive.

When Beatris united with the party outside the city, and Faelor's brainless corpse was reclaimed, the group decided to fall back and hide in a cave inhabited by flumphs. When Beatris had told the others what had happened, some decided to rest and protect Faelor's body while Sannl and Galad immediately went back to Krûl to find Bronn and hunt the mind flayer before it could restore its defenses. Running through the dark, Sannl and Galad heard a clicking sound echo through the tunnels and saw a hook horror. An unseen force made swift work of the horror, and the two decided to rush ahead when Sannl's *see invisibility* spell failed to reveal the hook horror's killer. As they reached the broken gates of Krûl where dwarves were already working to rebuild, they were dragged behind cover into a hiding spot by a creature that revealed itself to be a drow. The drow offered Sannl and Galad her help in passing into Krûl unseen as well as finding —and fighting— the mind flayer.

With the drow Neeril's help, the small group infiltrated Krûl and made their way to the mysterious snail houses and conch buildings of Krûl's smithing district. In the first, they found only a deep well. In the second, a similar well, but also a mind witness and a group of strange duergar wielding some of the party's old equipment. Though Sannl nearly drowned under the mind witness' weight, the group prevailed and gathered the stolen items, including Percy's bag of holding and a belt of hill giant strength. in the third and largest conch building, a mind witness and two mind flayers surrounded three glass tubes. In one tube was a red ooze, in another was Bronn, and between them a stream of slime was growing into a clone of Bronn. The mind flayers escaped, leaving behind swarms of cranium rats. Bronn's clone escaped as well, but the real Bronn was rescued by the group, though he had been rendered comatose. The ooze disappeared into a metallic cube the mind flayers had been working on, and a whirlwind of limbs spewed forth from the cube to attack the party. With a storm of spells, the limbs were repelled and reduced to a single body — that of Kanilm Foheen, royal court magus of Kavaad, henceforth referred to as "Kaslim Foheen". A confused Kassiopeia arrived with a score of guards tailing her, but Kaslim Foheen transmuted the conch's material to seal the entrance, keeping the guards at bay. A brief combat with the slime wizard became a tense conversation, and after the group allowed Kaslim Foheen to cast a protective spell on himself to "fend off the cube's influence", he teleported away, and Galad's attempt to counter the spell was ineffective.

Introductions were made with Neeril and Kas, and the group decided to make an attempt at the originally planned heist. With no other exit left, the group swam out through a well and up into another snail house, bypassing the guards and sneaking into the fortress district, Kas carrying Bronn's body, and Percy's bag of holding stuffed with eye stalks. In the Artefactium, the group distracted an elderly archivist —a dwarf woman who had clearly seen better days— and reclaimed a few stolen items as well as some new ones, including a pair of portal hand mirrors and a crystal ball appearing like a shape changing eye. In their escape, the group fought off a pair of troll warriors from Grurg, Vort and Okka. Once outside, they quickly made their way back to the flumph cave to reunite with the party and rest. Elmira and Beatris teleported out to the circle in Gallo's Tower, bringing with them the bodies of Bronn and Faelor, as well as one of the portal mirrors. Willow watched over the resting party and heard a small creature foraging in the cave. Recognizing the creature's Neblim dialect and identifying it as a deep gnome, Willow decided to seek out the gnome. The gnome was shocked at first and tried to hide from Willow before introducing herself as Durthee.

## Session 66: A Krûl Mistress

November 24, 2019

Unconscious or dead respectively, each member of the party was rolled up in a ball of web and dragged off to Krûl by a drider. There, the party was confiscated from the drider and stripped of their equipment. Percy brought Faelor and Galad back to life, using the ice elemental's heart to do so. Thanks to Elmira, disguised as drow noble J'kae Rhithiss, the party was bailed out and Bronn went on a heist with the disguised noblewoman to regain some of the group's lost equipment and find Kas' body and bring it back to Percy to be raised from the dead. Willow woke from her slumber with a quest from the Queen of Air and Darkness, to retake the Queen's domains from the Red Witch. Once safely outside Krûl's reinforced walls, Elmira dropped her disguise, and the party made camp, hidden in the side of a tunnel wall, ready to rest.

## Session 65: Slime Time

November 19, 2019

Trapped between sealed doors, the party found themselves attacked by grey ooze, slithering out of hidden cracks in the floor and walls. The door ahead opened for an unseen creature that stunned Willow and tempted the others to pursue it while Sannl completed her casting of *tiny hut*. The door closed behind the creature when it left, leaving the party behind with a reinvigorated floor of ooze to deal with. When the hut was completed, the ooze closed in and covered the dome, which had to be cleared before the spell ended. In the rest, Galad decided to sleep, and had a dream in which Willow disappeared under the snow of a wintery landscape and Galad himself sank into a crystal-clear frozen lake where his magic failed him. With the oozes cleared out and the long rest complete, Willow remained fast asleep, breath cold, and unresponsive to any attempt at waking her. Persephone tried *greater restoration* but to no avail, receiving only a message from the North Wind: "Her mind is my charge, her body yours. Keep her safe."

Bringing Willow along on a *floating disk*, the party bypassed the door ahead with *stoneshape* and *fabricate*, leaving a hidden section in the wall where the is thin enough to break with ease, should they need to escape that way. Kanilm Foheen's Codex lit up on Percy's back, as was pointed out by a strange creature in the cavern beyond the door. The creature, a bat-spider-human hybrid, offered to introduce the party to its village and their leader, a psychic gray ooze called Globulon. The party graciously declined for the time being, and made their way past a group of cave fishers, into a huge snail shell, seeking the mind flayer rumored to reside there.

With Fafnir as a spy, the party gleamed a row of glass tanks containing various monsters and slimes. Bronn and Percy deceived a pari of quaggoth guards and the party started investigating the inside of the laboratory. Faelor pressed on through the spiral building and into the back room, where he found the mind flayer and a group of slimy minions copying his elvish appearance. Combat broke out. Faelor was stunned for most of the fight. Kas and Bronn brawled their way through the slimy minions, while Percy flew over them to cast *inflict wounds* on the mind flayer, which then teleported into the room with the glass tanks. Galad and Sannl protected Willow's hibernating body from the quaggoths, and the others followed into the room, where the tanks opened one by one, releasing the creatures insides: A death kiss, a goblin, a spirit troll, and three Kuo-toa, one of which had been transformed into a black pudding. The party's attention was quickly diverted to the death kiss, giving the mind flayer enough time to go meddle with some tanks with hidden contents. Still stunned, Fealor was attacked by the mind flayer, its tentacles wrapping around his neck and head. This shifted the party's focus, and when they ran to help Faelor, the mind flayer let go of his head and backed up, creating a wall of force separating itself and Willow from the rest of the party and the other monsters. Bronn, Kas, Faelor, and enlarged Percy soon followed with dimension doors, and managed to slay the mind flayer, Kas splitting its head with a divine smite. This broke the wall of force, and there were still monsters being released from their tanks. An ooze with faces, connected to a tube where a clone of Ezerina Steelsinew was growing, stole Sannl's memory of preparing spells, and it stole Brown's free will, forcing him to attack his allies. One by one, the party fell unconscious. Kas bled out on the floor of the laboratory. Darkness took the rest, as yet another monster - a drider - emerged from its glass tube.

The mind flayer was killed, but at what cost?

## Session 64: Down Under

November 3, 2019

The party escaped the Cloaker Caves and huddled up for a short rest in a small tunnel. Kas noticed a small group of kobolds in the tunnel ahead and snuck up on them, scaring three of them to death instantly before Galad killed the last one with a firebolt. Continuing through the tunnel, the party climbed up at a crossroads, finding a long-dead stone giant. Percy spoke with the dead giant's animating spirit and gathered information about the purple dragon Sazzanith and the history of Kavaad's ancient architecture.

Leaving the stone giant to rest, the party found their way into a kobold lair trapped with falling spikes, slippery lake banks, swarms of piranhas, underwater bear traps, and murder holes along the walls, not to mention a trapped chest over a pit trap with a gelatinous cube inside. The party exhausted a great deal of their spellcasting clearing a path through the kobold lair.

Beyond the kobold lair, the party came upon a goblin cave with a caustic geyser filling the ceiling with acidic gasses. Defended by Galad and Bronn, the party went out on a naturally formed stone pier and started transforming into their *wind walk* forms. During this transformation, while the party was incapacitated, pale, eyeless goblins attacked, dragging a helpless Percy under the water. Bronn dove in to save her while Galad protected the others. With Percy rescued and the goblins fought off, the party made their way across the lake, taking some damage from the exploding geyser and the caustic air.

Sannl set up an other tiny hut and the party took a short rest in the tunnel on the opposite side of the lake. There, Willow spotted a number of creatures in the dark cave ahead, including a floating creature with tentacles. The party decided to follow into that cave after their rest, and parted ways with Jooprin, whom they sent up into the purple worm tunnels leading to Doomoodpool. The party had a little pep talk for Kas, for though immune to being frightened, she was still horrified by the tentacled monsters in the dark. Galad and Faelor swapped out some magic items, leading to Faelor having the strength of a hill giant.

Following the way Willow had spotted the creatures, the party stealthily moved through a cave full of massive drip stone formations. However, some of the stalactites and a stalagmite the party hid behind turned out to be monsters. Ropers and piercers attacked the unsuspecting party, but were struck down with greater ease than the kobolds from earlier in the day. The party also encountered strange doppelgängers incapable of intelligible speech in these caves, as well as the remains of a party of paladins from Barendain's monastery. The body of Ezerina Steelsinew, the party's leader, wasn't among them.

Percy found a hidden alcove in the side of the drip stone cavern, giving the party a safe place to rest for the night, but when a group of gray dwarves emerged from a metal door carrying a strange box, the party was intrigued and decided to investigate instead. Percy and Bronn put on false dwarf personas as Nora and Kildrak, using *disguise self* and *tongues*. The two managed to speak with the dwarves and negotiate a way to enter the metal door, bringing the whole party with them, while the dwarves carried their strange box off toward Krûl. The leader of the duergar group revealed that he had seen through the party's illusions, and when the party went through the open door, the duergar disappeared, and the door closed behind them. Behind the now closed door, the party was faced with another door identical to the first. Between two doors, the party was trapped.

## Session 63: How Fholtarr Got His Mojo Back

October 26, 2019

Up in the Kalruun Forest, the party and Kas decided to return home, but first, Kas wanted to stop the orc chief Vrosh from pillaging the human lands and prove herself in front of the tribe's warriors. She defeated Vrosh in a duel, revealing her half-orc nature and displaying a supernatural change with a glow in her eye and her scars forming into words on her left arm. Scared of Kas, the orcs retreated, and the party made their way to a dry place to draw up a teleportation circle and return home.

After checking in with their royal allies, the party went back to Syllior to join up with Percy. In discussing their next move, Bronn offered to deal with the politics above ground while the others could venture into the Underdark. They also discussed what to do about Fholtarr and the Soulstone. Then a week of downtime and carousing followed, in which a number of things happened.

Willow and Galad had some talks about the Feywild, their concerns for Kas, and more. Sannl and Varoin frequented the inns of Syllior and discussed matters of the monastery, such as the appointment of a new oracle. Bronn and Percy spoke at length, among other things about what happened in Flowerfen and Mythhold, regarding Percy's past as Violet and Bronn's latest encounter with voices in his head. The two of them drunkenly decided to scry on Kanilm Foheen, and learned that *true seeing* works through a scrying sensor. Though the spell was unsuccessful, true seeing did reveal a strange silhouette overlapping Percy. Through sending, Percy managed to speak to this "silent passenger" and got to know this "Marigold" person a little bit better. Kas revealed to the party that she was now a paladin, and she also managed to royally piss off the Black Kraken by pointing out her secret hideout to Viviel Onnurai. Checking in on Mara Calladar, she appeared to be developing new, less stable personalities. Galad quietly celebrated his birthday during this week. Oh, and then Bronn drunkenly stole the Soulstone to figure out if he could get Fholtarr's mojo back, but ended up trapped inside it, where he found the souls of some slain dragons and even fought one of them before the party managed to get him out (thanks to their new and improved understanding of the invisible stalker spirit). The party summoned Fholtarr, who was teleported directly to them from Mithindel, and Galad managed to channel the infamous mojo out of the stone through a lightning spell and back into Fholtarr. With his magic returned, Fholtarr returned to the high elves to plot his vindication in Jharuul and revenge against his sister. Lastly, Percy got her road project approved, and set up a Sanctuary for *word of recall* at the herm nearest the Longstrider Citadel.

With these problems and preparations all done, the party decided it was time to head into the Underdark to search for the missing spellcasters and learn more of the "all-knowing mind flayers". After some consideration and his latest harrowing experience, Bronn decided to join the others in the world below, and the team prepared to use the teleportation circle to the drow outpost Ryldz'tes, which they had learned from Beatris Louhi.

However, there was a mishap wit the spell, and the party and their Kuo-toa ally Jooprin were thrust into an unknown location in total darkness. Luckily, they weren't far off target, and this way they managed to circumvent the drow. The party had a cave above them with some distant, coloured lights, and a network of small tunnels below. Using Jooprin's equipment as a component, Willow found the path to Doomoodpool, and the group decided to go through the smaller tunnels, though not the smallest ones here Fafnir had been attacked by some unknown creature. A handful of traps sat in their way, and crafty kobolds set ambushes for the party, but such simple trickery wasn't enough to stop these experienced adventurers. With some clever use of magic, the party found a way to get around the kobolds' den and into a large cavern below, where strange fungi grew, and oscillating particles and a seemingly sleeping beholder floated about in the air. Percy's illusory duplicate distracted the odd beholder as the party drifted down to the stone floor, narrowly evading the suspicious fungal growths. Among two stone statues and a pile of dust, Bronn found a convenient ring of feather falling. Ready to end the day of adventure, the party rested in a narrow passage, shielded by Sannl's tiny hut, and Willow's fey magic. The next morning, the party followed the path into the Cloaker Caves and travelled with wind walk through most of this haunted place, but were caught by cloakers woken by the heedless noise of Jooprin who wasn't yet used to flying. With nothing to hide behind out in the open air, the party was forced to stop and fight until their captured members were freed from the monsters' grasp.

## Session 62: Journey to Kalruun

October 16, 2019

After the battle with Eknoron, the party and their allies began to assess the situation. Some of them spent the rest of the day inspecting the now inert constructs that Eknoron's mages had commanded. These constructs appeared to be hollow suits of armor inscribed with strange arcane sigils and draconic runes, much like Eknoron's fallen steel body, except that they were powered by chaos magic like that from the Soulstone. Galad experienced some limited control over one of these constructs.

The next morning, the Willow scried on Kas and saw her duelling an orc warrior in what looked more like a bout than a battle to the death. The party contacted Kas via sending and decided to go looking for her, but before they left Tradefall, they made sure to speak to their allies. Galad checked in with Kovauk, while Sannl and Bronn visited Leonara. Bronn also reported back to Maro Zokesh.

In their search for Kas, the party decided to look for clues about Maledictus and travelled to Windfall Tower to investigate further. In scouring the caves in the cliffside, the party found dungeons and cells containing some captured servants from Prince Tymos' court, though most of them and the prince's personal griffon had been slain. In the tower itself, Galad and Bronn found no servants or guards. They did find some strange items, among them a metal slab with barcodes and a mirror of life trapping, which they shattered, releasing a confused Tymos Meisent. They also attracted the attention of Maledictus' mother when they used a magical communication device to write to her, pretending to be Maledictus. Willow found signs of a shadow crossing in the back of a cliffside cell containing some of Kas' things. Tymos was safely teleported to Gallo's Tower in Tradefall, and the party looted some sunken treasures in the cove and on a shipwreck. Among other things, Sannl found a spellbook and a ghost that seemed determined to destroy the last of the book's contents. Sannl recovered the broken pieces along with the intact spell notes, and she later repaired the torn up pages to reconstruct their secret knowledge.

After a night's rest, the party (minus Faelor) continued with *wind walk* to Agranor, where they arrived late at night in the town of Flowerfen. After a day of travel, the party payed for lodging at an inn. Bronn and Galad both went out about town in secret, while Sannl stayed up late transcribing spells. While poking around in Percy's past, Bronn was pulled into a dark alleyway, and sensing an ambush he annihilated three people with a *steel wind strike*. When trying to heal one of them, he found the man was already dead, and that he wore a simple tattoo of a stylized eye. When Bronn returned to the inn, he approached a green haired half-orc woman to possibly find more information. The woman spoke mostly in thieves' cant and wore the same tattoo as the man back in the alley. Bronn managed to get a limited amount of information out of her, but she wanted coin for the rest. When she asked why he was so interested, he told her that he was "collecting flowers". The conversation became strained, and Bronn decided to back out before the situation escalated, instead opting for sneaking into his room's window from the back of the inn. Failing spectacularly at this, he snuck in through the front in disguise. This all happened just in time for Galad to notice as he was returning from his own errands.

The next day, people were watching from the shade as the party got on the first coach out of town in the direction of Mythhold. On the open road, the party discussed the history and morals of the "fuck Avtoor" meme. Sannl spent most of the trip reading the restored last ten pages of the spellbook from the shipwreck. In reading this, Sannl learned strange and forgotten lore, but was wracked with the cosmic scale of it. When she tried to stop, the text kept pulling her back in with the insidious promise of eldritch knowledge, and were it not for Willow's quick reaction, Sannl would have transformed into an allip (an evil ghost that seeks to infect others with the same cursed lore).

When the party arrived in Mythhold, the party sought out wizards and librarians to learn from. Willow summoned an invisible stalker to find the path to Kas, but her order to the spirit was insufficient and the elemental broke free. With the help of librarian and conjurer Yohannah, Sannl learned some tricks to summoning elementals, and how best to command invisible stalkers in the future. Willow remembered a different spell to find the path: the aptly named *find the path*. However, this spell required an item from the target location, so Bronn and Galad went out to find lumber from the woods where Kas would most likely be, given the presence of orcs in Willow's scryings. In the end, they ended up stealing a sliver of a very expensive desk made from Kalruun oak.

And while in Mythhold, there was a carousing quota that needed to be filled, because of course. Galad encounter Udhros Orixidor, and the two zipped through the city with far step, jumping from wizard's tower to wizard's tower, discussing events and items, including the eladrin necklace Galad got from Kyrë. Galad told Udhros some things about the Soulstone, and Udhros offered to safeguard it in a sealed-off demiplane. Bronn showed some wizard school students how much cooler it really is to be a bard, and enlightened a necromancy drop-out warlock-by-mistake to take up the harp again. In his persuasive presentation before the small crowd, Bronn was disturbed by a plural-presenting voice in his head approving of his talents in recruitment.

Meanwhile, Kas joined a hunting trip with Vrosh Horntooth into the Kalruun Fields, where the orcs were pushing back the human settlers. Kas agreed to burn down the village and steal their sheep and cattle on the condition that no villagers were harmed. This deal was upheld, at least for the most part, as a few humans were roughed up a little before they were allowed to flee with their horses.

Two days later, the party found their way to Vrosh's camp in Kalruun Forest. Bronn and Galad took a detour and teamed up with Zilmenaa who was flying over the Kyrval Mountains. In the meantime, Kas introduced Willow and Sannl to Aktul the orcish head priestess. Reunited with Kas, the party swapped stories until they were all caught up on the past few weeks. Kas recounted how she travelled through a nightmare realm and briefly met Burbas'Tel there while on her way to some force calling her north. Bronn and Galad convinced Zilmenaa to come back to Kavaad and help the party sniff out an other silver dragon, in the hopes that it can aid the Red Hand's cause. Zilmenaa had also come up with humanoid personas each more or less based on Bronn (Vronn Zvelton), Galad (Trouble, or "Balade"), and Percy (Mercy).

Kas and Aktul prepared an orcish feast and a party to celebrate. There was armwrestling, brawling, gross stew, and all-round merrymaking late into the night. In the early morning hours, Kas had been separated from the party, and Bronn was lost alone in the dark woods where demon orcs were hunting in the dark. Bronn managed to escape and find Kas, and the two then fought off the hunting party long enough for the others to arrive with Zilmenaa. With the slaying of these demon orcs, Kas felt seen and partly fulfilled in a new and spiritual way that connected with her experience of hearing drums in her heartbeat as well as her lessons with Aktul and Vrosh. Will Kas pursue the demon orcs further, or is she ready to head home with her friends?

## One-shot: The Nameless Saint

October 15, 2019

In the early centuries of human civilization in Thindrel, the angel Valaara rallied a group of heroes to fight back against a dark god. In their quest, these heroes acquired the Bow that Knows the Names of All Worms, which would later be known to humankind as the Bow of the Nameless Saint. With the bow, the group went about slaying demons and eventually was called to the outer planes to slay the evil god of worms.

## Session 61: The Battle of Balzamar

September 21, 2019

With Eknoron's armies marching back into Balzamar, the party had called out to their allies across the kingdom to prepare for battle. To buy time for Sannl to speak with the king of Duerhaith, the party's armies pulled back to Tradefall. An envoy of Percy, Galad, and Faelor travelled to Drevnir's Hall to help Sannl present her case. Percy listed the names of ninety-nine victims of Eknoron's criminal and demonic allegiances. When the king defended Eknoron as a dragon-slayer and presented the heads of three dragons given to him by Eknoron, Percy replied that Eknoron will only be worse than those dragons, and presented with evidence, the king had to listen. Galad spoke of his part in Daeszal's return and his determination to right his wrongs. Faelor shared his personal history with the Ashen Fist and the love it had taken from him, and the king was moved. Finally, when Sannl pleaded with king Drevnir and his advisors, the king decreed that his subjects take no part in Kavaad's internal conflicts on pain of exile or even death. Sannl the other acolytes of the monastery, however, were allowed to oversee these foreign affairs and interfere with Eknoron's conquest of Kavaad. The party then regrouped in Tradefall, where Willow, Bronn, and Kas had readied the troops.

When Percy received word from Hermes that Kas had tried to pray to him, she took Kas aside and spoke with her in a gnomish tavern. This talk was abruptly interrupted by a of viral fit of cackle fever spreading throughout the tavern. The party managed to contain the problem, and when investigating the scene, it appeared a large monster had mysteriously infiltrated a group of drinking soldiers and inflicted the laughing curse on one of them.

The Hoghill Rangers arrived at dawn the next morning, with sir Callum Ferngreen and Captain Ellywynn in front. Eknoron's army arrived less than an hour later, and in greater numbers than the defending units. Eknoron had brought mindless helmed horrors to the battle, and mages to direct them. With wyverns screeching above and drake-riders in the field, the dragonborn soldiers quickly engaged the party's archery line, so Bronn, Faelor, and Kas had to go in and break the cavalry wall to save the archers. With the archers safe, the enemy wyverns started falling from the sky, one crash landing with its rider unscathed. An antipaladin waded through the battlefield, carving a way for a swarm of kobolds to scuttle in and attack. The party quickly descended upon this otherwise menacing knight, making quick work of him and leaving the kobolds asleep. When away from most of the party, Kas attacked Maro Zokesh. Kas was revealed to be Maledictus in disguise, and managed to damage the prince before the party could arrive to stop him. When banished by Galad, it seemed Maledictus was gone. As the armies clashed, more and more allies arrived to help against Eknoron. Sir Harkin and his griffon knights, Kovauk and the Makate tribe, and even Maro Zokesh and the Red Hand. Sir Bronn advised Leonara to ride into battle to rally her knights and display the sword Virtue on the battlefield, which she did, though still in recovery from her death. In the chaos, her troops were cornered by their fellow knights who had now sworn fealty to Eknoron, and Leonara was captured. Time after time, the combined forces of Syllior and its allies were unable to break through the line of traitor knights, until, when all others had failed, Kovauk and her goliaths pushed them to the very top of a hill where Harkin and his griffons could descend upon them from all sides. Carried by griffons, the party chased down Eknoron and his wyvern riders over the morning bloodbath.

Captain Boomerang split Eknoron's head from the rest of his construct body, revealing an empty armor with strange, arcane carvings inside. Maledictus returned to the battle but was sunbeam'ed by Willow. Wyverns nearly caused a TPK, but through overwhelming damage and constant healing, the party managed to survive the fight and bring down Eknoron and his most elite troops. The remaining units of the attacking army fled or where captured while trying. I think that's a victory! But where is the real Kas?

## Session 60: Rising Tensions

August 29, 2019

Returned to Syllior, the party brought a somewhat dissociated Percy up to speed on recent events, and they started planning their attack on Eknoron. They decided to take Tradefall while Eknoron's armies were still busy taking Hoghill Forest and camping out at Arrovale's borders. In preparation, Kas contacted some gladiators and had Okriyet freed to start building and repairing siege engines. Wosheg was freed on the condition that she would keep the peace with Barendein's monastery and march the war band out of Kavaad. Galad meditated on Fulgurot's power in a lightning bolt, praying for some show of divine will to manifest in Redgate, where Eknoron was last reported to be.

Teleporting to Gallo's Tower with princess Leonara, sir Estos Banadir, and a group of soldiers, the party managed to take Tradefall from Eknoron's remaining guards and instate the princess as self-appointed Baroness of Balzamar. In the castle, Willow and Sannl found some magic items left behind by Trissana, including a robe of useful items.

With Elmira Dushiuri's aid, Willow, magically shifted into the form of a yuan-ti pit master, acquired a mercenary unit of tiefling warriors. Kas led a mission with some of the others into the sewers and the undercity of Tradefall, where they found Viskhart's agents, and were brought to the Greyhand herself. The party struck a surprisingly easy and surprisingly generous deal with Viskhart. Percy helped return a former warlock's soul to her body, and was in turn given some worn-down antique winged boots. Useless on their own, the boots provided an upgrade to Percy's current boots after Dalion and Icon had spent some time with both pairs. Kas' missing mithral was returned, although Viskhart denied ever having taken it and instead implied its disappearance was the work of the Blackhand in Syllior.

Galad had the dryad Folyana settled and planted in a grove near the Sunstone on the Salt Coast, where Grugnogg the hill giant also came to stay. Sannl scanned Kas on Percy's behalf, after Percy had received a weird hunch. An instance of cackle fever in the army's camps was quickly averted, but the cursing culprit was never caught. While moving the army across the Balzian Fields, a rift in the planes tore itself open and gave way to Helper, the merchant assistant to the Jackal Fiend. The party spent some of Willow's useful items to purchase two boxes of randomly determined magical items. From these boxes, they received a number of cool trinkets, an elven chain, and a belt of hill giant strength.

To celebrate the loot crate jackpot, and to ease the nerves of war, the party spent some time carousing in Syllior. Sannl had to rethink her choices and alliances, after learning that the king of Duerhaith had allied with Eknoron, putting her at risk of exile for fighting on the party's side. Galad was kidnapped by Blackscales, but sank their ship and escaped with relative, sorcerous ease. Percy got on thin ice with her guild, due to her recent fugue-induced mistakes and unreliable work hours. Kas earned good money. Willow heard reports from Arrovale about abnormal monster sightings, connected to the troll elves' reported "demons" and loosely matching the descriptions of the previous bodies of Willow, Lo-Tha, Creed, and Ongor Flowermine. With Arrovale's paladins gone, the threat of the undead looms again.

Sannl leaned on the party to decide on her next move. She wind walked to Drevnir's Hall and ended up sneaking windily through the king's palace to speak directly to King Drevnir XXII. In her audience with the king, Sannl failed to convince him, and was then asked to present one-hundred pieces of evidence before him — one for each step on the stair to his throne. Regrouping with Percy and Willow, Sannl decided on a dramatic presentation before the dwarven king, in which Percy would recite 99 names of victims of Eknoron's shady connections and demonic allies. Then on the hundredth step, they plan to pile all their collected pieces of evidence, incriminating Eknoron.

## Session 59: Winds over Kavaad

August 24, 2019

After Tubrin disappeared into the metal cube, Persephone spaced out and the party was escorted from the dungeon by Martanna Emberstar. Upstairs, Denos Falstane showed a much grown Godric to Galad and Willow. The party spent some time planning how to reveal certain secrets to their allies, before they found and told Harkin Falstane about Daeszal, the Ashen Fist conspiracy, Eknoron's connections, and the legitimacy of the Red Hand.

To earn Martanna's favor, the party went north, wind walking in search for Sir Lygar Boatspyre's party of paladin knights in the Arrovale marshes. There, they tracked a group of troll elves, who then ambushed the party, but were all killed, some quite violently by Kas in a blood rush. After a short rest the party continued into the dark swamp and found ghostly lights watching over a shaded stream. Crossing the stream, the party followed the tracks into a troll elf camp and negotiated briefly with a pale troll elf, who demanded the party's magic items and wanted the magic users killed or delivered to a mountain. The party wriggled themselves out of this situation with no major drawbacks. The troll elves complained about demons in the area.

On their way out of the swamp, the party was attacked by a dire troll. In the battle, Willow revealed that she had alway been a white dragon??? This whole time??? Plot twist! Kas almost died, having been left alone on the ground with the troll, while the others took to the sky. The troll was finally killed by a combination of Galad's cone of cold and Sannl's magic missiles. After this, the party discovered the corpse of paladin leader Lygar Boatspyre, and brought it back to Starpyre Keep, where he was burned under the cold night sky.

The party spoke to Martanna about war, family, and Arrovale's many issues. That night, Willow faced insomnia and sought Sannl's help identifying her, finding that some magic prevented her from sleeping outside a stone circle. the next day, the party attended a hastily arranged feast at Windfall Tower, where they informed Prince Tymos on almost everything concerning their various conspiracy theories and alliances. His magus was not available, and the griffon knights were absent, but there was much partying and merrymaking. Walking along the coast, Galad gained some dryad allies in Umina and Folyana, whom he thanked and sent to the Salt Coast. Kas blacked out and woke up in a cave prison, facing Maledictus and the shadow of Akaloth. In the darkness, Kas received a vision.

Ascending the sheer cliff face under Windfall Tower, Kas rejoined the party the next morning and absolutely obliterated Bronn in a fist fight duel. After some baths and a hearty breakfast, the party wind walked back to Syllior.

## Ragna story session 2: Eyes of Ice

August 7, 2019

Ragna went hunting with Algrim the Black's pack and learned the ways of the Lohkenorian werewolves, while occasionally visiting Sátved and working in smithies there. While hunting in the weeks before the winter solstice, the pack stumbled across a strange frost that controlled the minds of local creatures. With the aid of a wereraven druid and a werebear paladin, the pack tracked this frost to an elderly man and his four mute sons, who turned out to be one disguised Fomorian giant. With the giant defeated, its amulet released a captured winter hag, who fled into the mountains. The party of three left the pack behind and explored Myravellir's swamps, where a lost tribe of lycanthropes had disappeared and all that remained was a serpent cult and their lindwyrm protector. The lindwyrm turned out to be a human who had performed the blood ritual with too many strange creatures, transforming them into an amalgamation of beasts and horrors. The lindwyrm slain, the three found a sending stone of elven make, connecting the lost tribe to a mysterious high elf. Returning to the Thing for winter solstice, Ragna briefly encountered the high elf who had attacked the lycanthropes on the last solstice.

## One-shot: The Fholt in Arr Stars

August 6, 2019

Fholtarr Thunderblood awoke, returned to life in the nursery of Tiamat's temple in Jharuul, but without his magic. While piecing the past few months' events together, Fholtarr teamed up with Leandor the high elf swashbuckler and Talky the kobold archivist in verbally facing off against Raishan, investigating some illicit Blackscale business at the docks, and helping the magic seller Sandhorn. With some help from Thrivakk Thunderblood and Badhor Amastacia, they discovered that Fholtarr's magic was captured inside the Soulstone when Raishan had allied with Eknoron's magus Vizharr. After being teleported to Mithindel, the three, Badhor, and Ielenia entered the Elemental Chaos to search for Fholtarr's magic, but found that this plane was not the same as the Soulstone's. Leandor and his husband got back their lost wares and items from the Blackscales, and Talky was honoured with titles in both Jharuul and Mithlaru.

## Session 58: What Lies Within

July 24, 2019

After the night's battle against the invading hobgoblins, the party locked the enemy leaders up and started clearing the field, driving the last enemies away, and healing their own wounded. With Maglutai's war band on the run and Syllior successfully defended, Sir Harkin and his griffon knights returned north to Harkin's ward in Arrovale. In the early morning, strange lights could also be seen in the northern sky.

The three captive hobgoblin leaders, Maglutai, Wosheg, and Okriyet, where held in the citadel's magically sealed cells. The party interrogated Maglutai first, and through Kas' brutal intimidation, they came to an agreement; the war lord informed the party and their allies of Eknoron's role in the attack on Syllior, and in return, Kas would battle Maglutai one on one, for a death more honorable than the one awaiting him in the dungeons. Wosheg seemed nonplussed about the coming death of her mate, and she claimed to have nothing to do with Eknoron, but was unsurprised by Maglutai's "foolish involvement with the iron dragonborn". Unaffected by the dungeon's magic, she conversed with Sannl, demanding freedom in return for leading the war band far away and upholding the peace with Barendain's monastery. Finally, they spoke to Okriyet, and sort of, kinda, maybe offered him a job???

All this, the party reported to the Longstrider Council, who were preparing a meeting about Percy's infrastructure project. The vote has not yet been cast, giving Percy some time to lobby for her position. The council agreed to use Maglutai to expose Eknoron, and admiral Viviel Onnurai suggested that Kas simply not fight fair. Kas decided on a fair fight to the death—no magic, no cheating.

After the meeting, Viviel took Percy aside to speak to her about Mara, Leonara, and being a foreigner in Kavaad. In return for supporting and lobbying for Percy's herms and roads, Viviel was promised Percy's aid in talking to Leonara.

Varoin Goldenplate approached Sannl and asked for her guidance, looking to her as the authority on Kavaadic matters. She hesitantly took up the mantle and guided Varoin on his path in the kingdom and the coming war.

An arena was constructed at the city walls, and citizens were gathered around to witness Kassiopeia's fight with the hobgoblin war lord Maglutai. Guided by Bronn, Maglutai told the audience of Eknoron's involvement (collusion, if you will) before the fight. Triggered by the heat of battle and Maglutai's words, Kas had a vision of the dream Daeszal had given her on Tol'Anar, where the orcs looked to her as their leader and the mother of a new legion of demons. She could hear the war drums of which Maglutai spoke. Shaking the vision, Kas, bloodied and bruised, managed to fell the warlord, severing his head from his body.

Half-drow necromancer Beatris Louhi arrived just in time for the end of the battle. She reconnected with those of the party that had gone into the Underdark and saved her life in Doomoodpool, and then they all has a well-earned night of carousing. Sannl and Varoin found the ruins of an old tower dedicated to Barendain and the Kavaadic saint, Lectilles Taegus. Kas asked Percy for help with her dreams, and Sannl examined her with her ring of x-ray vision.

After a long rest, the party decided to pursue the strange lights up north. Using Willow's *wind walk* spell, they could easily make it there before sir Harkin and his knights. On closer inspection, the lights seemed to emanate from a magical storm cloud, which made life difficult for the party's wind-forms. Galad decided to stop at Gamrion's tomb, and the others follower suit, except Willow, who spent some time in the storm, feeling a connection to its magic. Inside the tomb, Galad picked up Soliel's war hammer, and found that its sunlight repels the undead—and as it happens, also necromancers of 10th level or higher.

The party reconnected at the hanging bridge leading to the monastery of Barendain, and there, they were forced to revert to their own forms again. While carefully walking across, the party was attacked by frozen undead, including griffons, humans, and a dead goliath covered in retributive ice. A boomerang hurled the undead off the bridge, and when Galad and Percy turned griffons, it looked like the party would make it over safely; however, it was not so simple. A massive silhouette appeared in the frosty mist ahead, reaching with a mighty axe up to the ropes.

A frost giant with entirely too many heads came lumbering up under the bridge, and nearly cut it down. The axe sliced through one side, leading the bridge dangling from one side, and the party hanging on for their lives—but not Beatris and Percy; they fell into the windy chasm below, disappearing in the storm. Sannl was quick with a *featherfall* spell followed up by a *dawn* on the giant's head. Kassiopeia leapt unto the giant, sword first, but was thrown into the snow by a massive hand, alining next to Percy, who was clutching unto the giant's right ankle and inflicting wounds up and down its frustratingly regenerating Achilles tendon. Bronn strummed on his bandora and flew down, catching Beatris and lifting her into fireball range. Willow coated the giant in faerie fire, allowing Kas to hurl javelins at it through the wind and snow. The giant was brought down, its heads collapsing into its torso, but not for long. It rolled off a cliff, bringing Percy down with it, regenerating itself just enough to keep fighting on the descent.

With the last few griffons dying to magic missiles, Galad hopped off the bridge and into the chasm, aiming for the glimmering faerie fire-covered silhouette. Because sorcerers don't care about "action economy" or "rules", he fell with style, rushing past Faelor and Kas, gliding acrobatically on the wind, watching out for the plummeting Percy, then immolating the giant with one spell and returning several hundred feet up to the cliff with another, his hands grasping the edge as the giant finally died. One small detail, however, is that Percy was still falling, already dangerously close to death from a gash in her back. Her boots of flying weren't much help in the magical storm either. With a *polymorph* spell, she took the form of a giant sparrowhawk and barely managed to steer herself up from her dive, and flying to safety. With the battle won, the party climbed and/or flew safely to the other side of the half-broken bridge.

The storm seemed to be entered around he monastery, and when the party was nearly there, the storm intensified until Willow was able to dispel it. The storm cleared almost instantly, and from within the mountains themselves, a great elemental of glacial ice appeared and spoke to Willow in Primordial. It asked her why she stopped its final rage, and when her answer was so she could better listen to its words, it thanked her and warned her of the creatures of the deep, mournfully recalling the loss of its followers to these otherworldly beings. The glacial ice started to crack, and the icicle at the heart of the elemental gave out, the spirit's life snuffed out. Faelor retrieved the heart.

The party was received at the monastery where Sannl was the only elder present, and one of the ten oracles would soon reach the end of its cycle. Sannl visited the oracles' chamber and visited her own dreams and then the oracle's, briefly discussing visions of death, and the purpose of life and foresight. The others mostly rested, some exchanging niceties, knowledge, and magic with Beatris and the local acolytes. Namely, Beatris shared a teleportation circle to Ryldz'tes in the Underdark in exchange or one in Kavaad. Kas found some books on orc lore to read. Fealor got to read a little about the primordial spirits of the Ridge of Blades. Sannl made sure to leave the monastery in good order, calling back some of the other elders to keep an eye on things while her adventure continues.

A little after noon, when Kas finally got out of bed, the party went wind-walking to Starpyre Keep to visit Tubrin. Camothas Gembrawl received the party there, and told them that an ankheg had appeared in Tubirn's cell. The baron's daughter Martanna Emberstar escorted the party down through the dungeons to the prisoner, where a few new doors and locks had been installed. The prisoner was duplicitous at best, and hard to speak to, until after an hour of interrogating him lead to some answers about Percy's mysterious past. According to the amalgamation of shifting personalities that Tubrin presented as, Percy was once one of his collective, but he did not create her and neither did his creators, and yet some of her useful memories are still stored inside Tubrin. Bronn gave the eldritch horror some constructive feedback, and Galad basically told the mad mage to go fuck himself, so Turbin pressed himself into the metal cube in his head and disappeared into it, dropping on the floor with a loud clang. Percy kicked the cube, and then she heard its voices beckoning her to rejoin them. So yea, that was pretty messed up.

## One-shot: The Eternal Flame

July 4, 2019

In the Elemental Plane of Fire, a party of treasure hunters sought a holy artifact of Thalaar, each working for their own secretive patrons. A few demons, dance moves, and deaths later, Nauron ascended with the artifact.

## Session 57: Syllior Besieged

June 14, 2019

After the demon Akaloth was banished from the secret engagement ceremony, the party went back to Syllior, bringing with them the priest Heidegar. Heidegar spoke briefly with Galad and Willow about Greencrest and Eknoron's attacks on Hoghill Forest before he set off to find Kendor in the capital. Upon return, Viviel asked the party what for they had taken the princess off with them on a secret trip. Kas nearly spilled the beans about the betrothal before the others stopped her and directed the admiral to speak to Leonara herself.

Faelor visited his temple and told Apo'Otu about his and the party's experiences. Though the demon was expelled, Faelor wanted a true cleansing. So the high priest drowned the elf, and Faelor was reborn from the waters of the elemental plane.

Meanwhile back in Syllior, Bronn had Sannl use stone shape to help him censor the theater's statue of Hermes. Percy came in to inspect the statue and de decided to alter it very gradually, but was spotted by Eccho, who reported it back to Bronn. The feud continues.

Willow used her new *wind walk* spell to taketh party on a small trip to the ruins of the old Castle Semarro, where they met with the two-headed hag-spawn brothers Malgenus and Pugnatus. The brothers promised not to eat any people if the local goblins were dealt with. So the party dealt with the goblins, no problem.

One night of carousing had some interesting consequences for the party. Kas and Galad found themselves tracking some Ashen Fist agents in the Black Kraken's old territory, and drunkenly fought their way through a few guards. Greyhand Viskhart, who was there managed to escape, but the two green drunks found and rescued Kyrë who had been bound and prepared for a dark ritual. Sannl got black-out drunk and awoke the next morning at Mara Calladar's place, apparently after having devised a new spell with the help of one or more of Mara's alternate personalities.

Sir Harkin Falstane of the Arrovale Marshes arrived on his griffon, warning Lady Willow and her people of an army of hobgoblins marching their way. In preparing for this battle, Bronn and Sir Guy readied the troops. Sir Estos was sent to rally the Outwall farmers. Kassiopeia spent some time training with Viviel and helping Leonara get back in fighting shape. Before the night of the battle, Sir Bronn made a powerful speech, imploring the soldiers to fight Eknoron and consider giving Maro Zokesh a fair chance to prove himself. The speech was inspiringly delivered and well received.

The goblinoid war band attacked Syllior's forces and the griffon riders of Arrovale under the cover of night. A few goblins made their way into the city, but most of the attackers were repelled, though at great cost to Syllior's numbers and morale. The Salt Coast druids were pushed back after calling on the land itself to combat the invaders. Forced to flee or face certain death under the weight of Wosheg's worg riders. Okriyet brought siege weapons and rust monsters, but the obgreblins were fought back by Gruggnog the hill giant and the party, after the party had successfully defended the eastern gate and captured Okriyet. With Kas as a giant ape carrying a howda siege tower, the party stormed into the battlefield and managed to capture Wosheg using Sannl's beholder eye ray. The knights of Longstrider charged the war band's back line, and Sir Guy successfully captured the warlord Maglutai. With the three enemy commanders all captured, their armies disbanded and fled into the night.

## Session 56: Eldritch Knowledge

May 25, 2019

As the new year began, Willow's plea to the Queen of Air and Darkness was delivered by the north wind. Willow's mind was bombarded by cold chills and eldritch knowledge of the mind flayers. When she woke, the north wind had taken her hair. (Willow is now level 11 by the way)

Percy opened up about her history and got a full-body magic x-ray scan from Sannl. She also opened up about her early life, referring to her younger self as "just a piece of street waste". The party assured her that she isn't trash.

A proper burial was held for Xanthe the adventurer cabalist, and the party took some time to reflect on life, death, and the costs and repercussions of resurrections and war. Willow argued that Xanthe, unlike the gnomes from Underfield, had already served her purpose when she died.

The party went to the Obelisk to speak with Princess Leonara about the coming war and the possible marriage between her and the Red Hand Maro Zokesh. After the meeting with Leonara, Kas found High Priestess Habla working in the armory, forging a bolt of lightning into her morning star. Kas and Habla discussed the possibilities of imbuing Kas' mithral sword with elemental magic.

The next week of downtime was spent preparing for a meeting with Maro Zokesh in a secret grove near Tanglestone.

Kas exchanged favours and information with the Black Kraken. The former Ashen Fist Blackhand started teaching Kas the shadow movements and weak points of her possible opponents (multikassing into rogue enabled). In return, the Black Kraken requested to be released from house arrest and have access to the whole city. Kas spoke to Willow who spoke to Viviel to make this happen.

Faelor and Galad went adventuring around the Outwall Farmsteads and heard rumours of high-ranking Ashen Fist agents and recruiters collecting in Redgate. The two were teleported to the capital, where they got a ship from the Thorothan ontogwites to Redgate. Thanks to Percy's connections in the Golden Hope, Galad and Faelor got to meet up with Kyrë at Elvenfall Square. At Kharo's Keep, they found a Red Hand agent in the city guard called Matthéo, who offered his help. Galad found a note using new thieves' cant, and followed the lead without much research. Galad and Faelor infiltrated the Ashen Fist hideout as noble elf patrons of the guild, while Kyrë kept watch out on the street. The two ex-noble elves found a charismatic human called Maledictus, who seemed a leader among the crowd, and they followed him down below the basement and into a dungeon. There, the two were met with the visage of an elderly woman who transformed before their eyes into a lumbering hag matron, Maledictus morphed into a horned ogre, and conjured a second hag and the demon Akaloth. Akaloth gave Faelor visions of Creed's nightmares, thanking the barbarian for giving him the troubled dreams of the chaos sorcerer. The new hag laughed maniacally, inflicting her cackle fever curse on Faelor, all while giving birth to a third hag. The elves saw Maledictus and the three Sisters of Dread and all went black. They came to later in the night outside the hideout, and Kyrë was gone. Galad burned down the hideout and the two found some midnight refuge in the Cathedral of the Lord's Host. Here, Galad experienced a spiritual connection to the angels of Manarakh and the history of Soliel's crusade. From the colossal glass mosaic of Fulgurot, a spark of lightning struck Galad's holy symbol (level up to 11). They never found more of the Ashen Fist, and all they found of Kyrë was her bead necklace of the four seasons.

With the knowledge Willow had gained from Mab, Sannl reached out to the outer planes, casting sending to Lo-Tha in the Astral Plane. Over several days, she received a couple of answers regarding illithid lore and the mind flayer's enemies, the Gith.

Percy, Willow, and Sannl went to talk to Mara Calladar, and tried a few restoration spells on her. She exhibited a few different personalities, and her knowledge and memories seemed to change throughout the afternoon. Sannl visited her again to help Mara remember her spells and possibly write them down.

The party recollected and shared their knowledge before heading to Tanglestone to meet with the Red Hand. In the war room, Faelor's cackle fever spread amongst the party, but with a few greater restorations, their curses and diseases where removed. On their way down the coast, Willow befriended the hill giant Gruggnog who had walked all the way from the southern tip of Dragonhorn.

Elise Riverlock sent Leonara and the party off the the secret grove, where they met with Mero Zokesh and a small entourage, including Bronn (how can a man be in the two places at once?) and the priest Heidegar (from Greencrest). Leonara Meisent and Maro Zokesh spoke in private and decided on the alliance, completing a royal Kavaadic engagement ceremony. As the the alliance was sealed and the betrothal completed, a green mist rose from Faelor's shadow, and the high elf rushed at Maro Zokesh with his axe. Akaloth, who had been hiding in Faelor's shadow, possessed him, and when Galad banished Faelor, the demon was forced into its physical form. Each character's shadow rose and use their powers against them, until Akaloth's form was destroyed by Sannl's magic missiles. After this, the party knew the war was near. Sannl harvested Akaloth's horns, as the rest of his form turned to tar-like ichor and shadowy mist.

The party went back through Tanglestone and boarded their small sailing ship en route to Syllior.

## One-shot: Maggie the Magnet Thief

May 18, 2019

Garret Brushgather the halfling giant hunter, Meena Silverthread Ironhide the rock gnome battle smith, and Talky the blue kobold archivist broke free the gnomish miners of Botlode and slew an evil, tree-eating giant, allowing the miners to relocate and unionize.

## Session 55: Virtue and Sin

May 10, 2019

Sannl harvested an eye stalk from the slain beholder and discovered a hidden passage into the svirfneblin village of Underfield. To get to the village, the party had to cross a lake of acid with floating platforms of giant mushrooms. Percy arrived in a hurry, and the party started making their way across the lake and into the poison spore filled village, putting on masks and cloth over their mouths to not inhale the spores. Faelor refused to don any sort of mask, so he stayed behind and guarded the entrance. Kas struggled to cross the lake without falling in, but all managed to pass the acid. There was supposed to be green mould or something, but the DM couldn't find it. Let's just say that Galad and Sannl burned it away.

In the mushroom infected Underfield, there seemed to be no survivors. A loud roar from a troll alerted the party to danger, and Galad lit the whole place aflame with a fiery *dawn* spell, scorching the overgrown huts and incinerating the infected troll. Percy found the troll had been carrying a dead gnome with spores in its eyes, and called the party over. The central structure of the village was still standing and spewing spores. Infected myconids and gnomish spore servants attacked. Percy and Willow used necrotic magic to open the central structure and stop the mushroom creatures. Willow blighted a gnome wearing a mushroom cap, which was the source of the infection, ending the battle.

Percy cast *speak with dead* on an overgrown gnome lying over the table where the leader with the cap was sat, and the corpse moved to give Percy a vision through its psychic spores. In this vision, she saw the gnome's last memory —how the infection began, and who was behind it. The vision showed Percy a tall figure, floating over the ground, with a long head with tentacles over its nose and mouth, and next to it a glass tank with a gnome floating in a slimy green fluid. Reeling back from the vision, Percy was overcome with an eerie sense of déjà vu.

After collectively deciding that the hat that caused the infection was a very bad magic item, and that no one should use it, Sannl decided to take a look around the village, and the party started investigating. They found mostly empty houses and about a dozen dead infected gnomes. In one house, however, the inside was untouched by the spores, but burned to a crisp. Also burned were two recently dead gnomes, so recently in fact that they demise had to have been Galad's *dawn* spell. Kas picked up the two burned corpses and Willow gave the party a speech about the morality and ethics of their "kill first, ask later" strategy that had become the standard.

On their way out of the Underdark, Kas briefly fell in the acid lake, Bronn was given a box of myconid spores by the myconid sovereign "crown", and the whole party was applauded by "crown" for their deed. Back on the surface, Galad turned invisible and took off on his own, while the rest went back to Tanglestone and met up with the druids.

In Tanglestone, Percy had her god Hermes raise the two dead deep gnomes, promising Hermes to improve the infrastructure of the land and to erect herms along every road in Syllior and the Salt Coast. The party and the people of Tanglestone then had the chance to speak with the raised gnomes, Xibli Slimelicker and Dazra Downdigger. The two provided mostly stories of their harsh survival in the infected village, and seemed to know only little of the tentacle-faced creature from Percy's vision.

The party reunited and formed a plan to acquire the sword Virtue from Eknoron under a special play in the new theatre. To account for every possibility, the party laid detailed plans and Kas melted down Fholtarr's staff to forge two fake Virtues from the moonsilver. Her father Oren and the dwarves Sannl and Habla aided in the smithing, as mithralwork requires special techniques and ancient elven arts. In the weeks of planning, Percy had a good talk with Kas and later one with Galad, where she offered her wisdom and services as a therapist-flavoured cleric.

Before the play, Percy went to check in with Mara Calladar, who acted more than a little strange, and shared a new memory of her — one in which Percy was floating in a cylindrical glass tank, hooked up to a thing called the Index, which was also somehow connected to Tubrin.

With all this in mind, the party made their final preparations, and welcomed Eknoron and his entourage into the city. Eknoron, his new magus Trissana, and the black dragonborn knight sir Xerrix Malflame rode in on drakes along with a score paladin guards. Xerrix and the guards stayed in the weapon house with Faelor, Galad, and Sannl. Trissana and Eknoron went to the box to watch the play from the best seats as guests of honour. Before entering, the party convinced Eknoron to leave his weapons behind with his guards, allowing the party to switch the sword for a fake during the play, while Kas, Percy, and Bronn kept Eknoron and Trissana entertained and distracted, respectively. After the play, Trissana received a sending with news from Wosheg that Vizharr was dead. She whispered something to Eknoron, who seemed busy taking in the applause (which was actually directed at the actors on stage). Then Trissana went off to check on her demiplane and try to locate the soulstone. Despite the lengths the party had gone to hide it, Trissana might just be able to find it, if only she had access to a *locate object* spell, which she then asked Percy for. Eknoron had a sparring fight with the lead actor and one with Kas, but was never allowed to use his "real" weapon and discover that it was replaced by a fake. Eknoron left Syllior with his guards, thanking the party for a magnificent start to the new year 853 CL.

Trissana was delayed and annoyed to no end this night, but did manage to talk the party into joining her and Xerrix in her demiplane to locate the soulstone. This was a grave mistake on her part, underestimating the party, as her plan to kill them failed the moment sir Xerrix was banished by Galad, returning his twisted body and soul to the soulstone by which he had been magically altered. Trissana filled the room with deadly fumes, but lost her concentration on the spell. Held in place by Sannl's beholder eye ray of telekinesis, grievously wounded by Percy, and thoroughly disappointed in her own fate, Trissana was shot through the heart by Galad, and her body plummeted into the velvety floor of an unraveling demiplane. Her equipment resurfaced as the room started clumsily falling apart. A hasted Kas quickly gathered most of the loot and the hidden corpse of the cabalist Xanthe. The party narrowly escaped with their lives and a lot of gemstones.

A new year began, and everyone had a lot to think about.

## Session 54: Strange Sights

April 28, 2019

Party got back to Syllior via teleportation circle to Kavaad.

Jooprin released in Syllior, Kelp got the Soulstone (and forgot by Modify Memory)

Sir Bronn heard of an ancient tomb deep below the theatre

Sphinx puzzle revealed the coordinates to the sword Starlight.

Faelor in Astral Plane with Feelings™, Galad banished himself to a distant continent on the other side of Thindrel.

Reconnecting and carousing: Black-out drunk Kas was robbed and lost her mithral armor, Galad and Bronn made enemies of Stephana Honeypond and Viviel Onnurai, Willow had a quick fling

Morning after interrogating Willow. No luck finding Kas' mithral armor; It was likely acquired by Greyhand Viskhart.

Viviel and Stephana sorted some worries with Willow, and Viviel asked Willow for relationship advice.

The party went on foot to Tanglestone and met with the druids.

Entering the coral caves and meeting the myconids, such as "bell" and the screeching sovereign "crown".

Umberhulk fight. Corrupted quaggoth spore servants, abandoned mushroom village.

Beholder fight in fungal lair. MVP Faelor, HDWTDT Galad, Investigation 37 Sannl.

## Session 53: Shenanigans at Skywarren House

April 15, 2019

Having found some strange gem powder after the battle with the gnome artificer, the party went to investigate at the geomancer's guild at Skywarren House in Swordview. Sannl spoke to the gem cutter Quonen about geomancy and alchemy. To pay for the expert cutting of Galad's fire opal, the party decided to become test subjects for a line of experimental potions. Stuff happened, hijinks ensued, weird magic occurred, and Willow became even more perceptive. Sannl extracted the memories from one of the obsidian skulls she retrieved from the stone cursed, discovering Vizharr's involvement with the local geomancers. Kas knew enough to suspect the Brotherhood of the Stone.

After retrieving Faelor's body from possession by a mostly friendly water elemental (as I said, stuff happened), the party met up with the leader of Skywarren House and the geomancer's guild, Lady Skywarren. Through her, the party got access to the Brotherhood of the Stone, and she agreed to let Sannl identify the soulstone. However, Sannl's will wasn't strong enough, and she had her soul trapped in the stone. The party tried one by one to attune to the stone so they could free Sannl, but Galad became trapped as well, disappearing body and soul. The others banded together to all touch the stone at once, giving the hearty Kas the opportunity to control the stone for a few seconds, freeing the two trapped magic users, and nearly dying in the process.

Kas turned and attacked Lady Skywarren, and combat broke out. The part struggled but in the end, they killed the guild leader, along with three cabalists and one of Eknoron's dragon knights, who seemed to be afected by the soulstone's magic. Helmed horrors arrived, but too late to save Lady Skywarren. With a well-placed *tiny hut*, Bronn prevented Trissana from teleporting in when the party was at its weakest.

Galad staged the scene to look more like Vizharr's doing, and the party pressed further into the dungeons of Skywarren House. There they met a party of cabalists, and nearly killed some of them before deciding to approach with diplomacy, rather than unprovoked murder. The cabalists, Xanthe, Caldorin, Ieresto, and Gronn, were convinced that the party was part of a sub-order of the cabal, and they were quickly swayed to the party's side. The cabalists came to believe that either Vizharr had gone rogue, or Trissana and Eknoron were evil masterminds and not to be trusted, which may not be too far from the truth.

Galad got his fire opal perfected and Sannl was given a few spells by three of the cabalists (*elemental beam* by Xanthe, *conjure minor elementals* by Caldorin, and either *enlarge/reduce* or *create homunculus* by Ieresto).

Having taken the soulstone and a few other items from the first group of cabalists, the party spent some time trying to understand and attune to the soulstone. Galad eventually succeeded, but upon wielding just its simplest powers, he decided it was much too dangerous for anyone to use.

## Session 52: Two of Swords

March 23, 2019

After allying with the goliath turned green dragon Kovauk and slaying Lord Balzamar's magus Vizharr, the party spent some time with the Makate tribe. As promised, Sannl exposed the intellect devourers among the Makate. Anuk's druid apprentice Nukai was among them, and caught on to what was happening. Nukai and their fellow intruders from the Underdark tried to fight back, but the intellect devourers were all killed. For a while during the battle, Percy was a brain-dead mammoth, and Galad banished Nukai into a harmless demiplane. Faelor cut a beefy brawler to bits and squashed the brute's scuttling brain, while Sannl's *dawn* spell took care of the rest. Bronn stayed mostly untouched (as I remember) thanks to his defensive flourishes.

The party returned to Syllior, going through Nearbridge, where the rain was heavy and Eknoron's dragon knights stood guard. Galad meditated in the rainy woods, giving prayer to Soliel and the angel Fulgurot. Thunder rolled in during the night, and lightning crossed the sky in the early morning, giving way to sunlight.

When the party arrived in Syllior, they were met with celebration; the princess Leonara was alive again. Admiral Onnurai and Lady Willow had broken the bag of holding where Leonara's soul was trapped, letting it pass into the Astral Sea. The clerics of Osprem, Habla and Kelp where then able to raise her from the dead. Meeting up with Willow, the party gave report on their latest quest and started planning with Leonara on what to do next. The princess was still weak from her soul being trapped and haemorrhaging into her shadow, which was now destroyed, so Willow was asked to remain as Warden at least for the time being. The idea of an alliance with the Red Hand was discussed, and a possible marriage between Leonara Meisent and Maro Zokesh was mentioned.

Creed was mentioned, and understanding that the vegetable sorcerer was possessed by a shadow demon, Faelor decided to cut Creed down, causing a mild burst of wild magic. This surge of chaos caught the attention of an extraplanar businessperson, whom the party traded some random magic items with, acquiring among other things a lantern of revealing and a new armor set for Galad.

The conversation in the war room continued without the princess, and Bronn had the others agree on the alliance with the Red Hand. Then he teleported them all to the Red Hand's secret hideout in Selvat's Tower in Swordview. Here, the party met the sinrian diviner Abiran Alzur, the Hand of the Hand Pedro Prodromos, and Maro Zokesh himself. The party spent some time finding out if this prince was aligned with their own goals and ideals, and ended up with a new ally in the Red Hand. (Bronn levelled up to 10 and will soon meet a sphinx?)

To celebrate this new alliance, the party went carousing in Swordview, where Percy maybe got a follower or title or something yet to be determined. The next day, the party fought a gnome artificer in the Bramble, along with some stone cursed, a grey render, and the artificer's piloted golem/mech. Apparently gnomish technology is really coming along lately. The artificer was spared, and brought back to the town for justice. The gardeners' guild in Nesternook sued the geomancer' guild at Skywarren House. All in a day's work for a group of accomplished adventurers.

(Persephone and Sannl also attained 10th level)

## Session 51: The Dragon on the Mountain

March 9, 2019

To stall on Eknoron, the party took a quest from his magus Vizharr to slay the fabled dragon said to live near the Greatsword. In the mountains, the party fought some yetis and met the Makate tribe who had recently returned to their winter territory. Kas tested her strength against the goliaths, and Percy spectated an orgy in Kovauk tent. Galad sought out Ra-Sok, and was informed of the druid's passing. Instead, they spoke to Anuk who was becoming the tribe's new spiritual leader. When Kovauk was no longer occupied, she spoke briefly with the party, who told her of their quest. Kovauk wished them luck, and pointed them way north. The party then spent a week north of the Greatsword before divining that that they had to turn back. In a hidden cave on the south-eastern side of the mountain, the party found the frozen corpses of Ra-Sok and a younger Kovauk. Kas and sir Bronn found a druid's altar probably belonging to the late Ra-Sok, and then spearheaded the party's way deeper into the caverns, through a thorny maze of brambles. Sannl, Galad, and Faelor hacked and burned the bushes away, and discovered the ruins of an old stone giant temple. Sannl and Percy scouted ahead, flying into the temple and finding the remains of dead goblinoids on their way before being attacked by giant eagles. When the eagles were dead, the party made their way into the inner sanctum, which looked very much like a green dragon's lair (possibly in disguise). There they saw cave paintings detailing the meeting of Ra-Sok and Kovauk, their journey back to Ra-Sok's tribe, and Kovauk's death at the hands of the chieftain Ko-Kra. A cold wind howled through the lair. The sound of wings, then silence. The beast was home. The party started their attack on the adult green dragon, yet the dragon hesitated to retaliate. Once it was clear this was a battle to the death, the dragon and her lair assaulted the adventurers, nearly killing both Sannl and Faelor. Though Sannl had prophesied and promised it not so, Bronn died in the battle, poisoned and crushed by brambles. His body was obscured by the lair's bushes, but Percy managed to reach in and bring him back to life. Meanwhile, the dragon, who had revealed herself to be Kovauk, angrily inquired the party on their motivation and alliance to this "Eknoron" figure. Transforming back and forth from her goliath form, Kovauk struck at Faelor and Sannl before rushing away from Galad's radiant fireballs, Sannl's napalm strikes, Faelor's ghostly grandma, and Percy's golden dildo spiritual weapon. Galad pursued Kovauk into her hoard as they started negotiating. Finding, the dragon nearly dead in half-giantess form, the party offered a deal. Kovauk would help them against Eknoron and Vizharr, and in return, she would live, and Sannl would help to find the remaining intellect devourers among the Makate clan. Kovauk quickly accepted the terms, and promised them a share of her treasure as well. The next day, the party set up an ambush for Vizharr, and with Kovauk's eager participation, they slew Vizharr and his paladin guards before he had a chance to fight back.

## Session 50: Lady Longstrider and the Order

February 24, 2019

The party spent three months of downtime mostly apart, doing their own separate things.

Galad visited Nrannas and reconnected with some of his noble family. He went to his cousin Wranfir's deathbed and released the prince's shadow, restoring Wranfir's soul in Arvandor. On his way back to Syllior, Galad met Theia Riverfang, who had discovered that much of her tribe had survived the massacre and fled deeper into the swamps. Theia wished Galad well and continued on her quest to find her brothers.

Persephone met a mysterious figure known as "Beans", who turned out to be the half-orc Nigel, whom Percy thought was a fictional character. The two didn't have many answers for each other, but Nigel gave Percy a broken coffee table and they both promised to let the other know, should they find clues regarding Crocus or Lord Kernenvale.

Sannl received an ominous vision following her death in the Underdark, and decided to make real changes in the world outside the monastery. As a result, she is now an evoker. Sannl also heard from Aknarr Graw whose paladins had mapped out a good portion of the world below. She now possesses a more detailed map.

Lady Willow's keep Longstrider Citadel raised some archer units, and she attracted the two-headed half-giant to her ward. Malgenus and Pugnatus live in the ruins of Castle Semarro. Willow also received the wrong draft of a letter from Prince Tymos Cornelius Avtor Windfall, and was invited by Sir Harkin Falstane into the secret alliance of wardens. The illusory skype-simulacrum of Elmira Dushiuri visited Willow and offered her help against the shadow demons, hoping to then get Willow's help against the other coloured lords and ladies of Sinria.

Kassiopeia met the Keited Hand and heard rumors that the Ashen Fist in Kavaad was moving many of their agents to Tradefall, where the two Greyhands, Viskhart and Fezim are stationed. Kas also became involved in Bronn and Percy's theatre project as a prop maker and entertainer.

Kelp and Habla stopped some zombie shark ghoul submarines. That sentence is canon. Kelp said goodbye to the party, deciding to keep her adventures close to home and close to Habla. The ensuing group hug would have been somewhat awkward if the short members of the party couldn't fly.

In a flashback scene, we played out Faelor's fight with the ~~Patriarch~~ Muscle Pope, which was witnessed by a few members of the party. These members later recognized Faelor, when he appeared near the end of the downtime period.

Sir Bronn successfully got his establishment funded and built a theatre. He then attracted a tailor follower, and set up his spymaster Eccho Vassalar as manager of the establishment. Bronn also received information regarding the Ashen Fist spy inside Longstrider Citadel, and prepared an ambush.

In the moon of the Manticore, the party reconnected as Bronn's establishment (funded by Percy and Hestitia Honeypond) was nearing completion. The party set an ambush for a spy from the Ashen Fist, who turned out to be Sir Guy's son Aelum. During the confrontation, a high elf ontogwite struck down two Ashen Fist agents and hastily introduced himself as Faelor, sent by Apo-Otu to enlist the aid of the party against the Ashen Fist. Aelum ended up joining the theatre's production crew as a teleporting stagehand, and his dad got a short vacation to sort out his family life.

Eknoron Zerevil made a short visit, ordering Willow to attack the rangers of Hoghill Forest. Through some tailor-made negotiation, (and subtle attempts to banish Eknoron) the party manage to alter the deal and were instead ordered to bring Lord Balzamar the head of the Red Hand, Maro Zokesh. Eknoron's own men will march on Hoghill Forest instead. To buy some more time and re-earn goodwill with Eknoron, the party decided to pursue a dragon hunt commissioned by Eknoron's magus, Vizharr.

After Eknoron and his guards left the citadel, Admiral Viviel Onnurai stormed in, drawing her blade and pointing it at the warden, announcing: "I know how to bring back Princess Leonara!"

## One-shot: High Levels, Low Stakes

January 25, 2019

Kelp and Galad took a few missions for the Golden Hope on the Salt Coast. After speaking to Silvarax Nevathuul, the two signed a contract for some rodents of unusual size and a small goblin infestation.

On their first quest, they encountered one-eyed beasts including a trio of capybaras that were stealing away people's pets and animals for the hag Hyrnibe. Following one capybara into a feywild crossing, the adventurers found Hyrnibe and spoke with her, discovering the truth behind the many missing eyes, as well as the reason for Tudsetrold's occasionally glowing eyes. According to Hyrnibe (or her awakened peacock guard anyway), the hag Adrienne can spy through the eyes of any creature that has never spoken a word and has at least two eyes. Leaving the feywild again and returning the farmer Milos' (now one-eyed) dog to its rightful owner, Galad and Kelp met a green adventuring party — a young human woman, her grandfather, and a gnome rogue. Kyrë was her name, and she was allowed to come with the heroes on their second quest.

Clearing a vineyard of goblins proved a trivial task, but offered a more relaxed adventuring experience. The trio had plenty of time to train and trade stories between the tracking and whacking of garden pests. Galad became acquainted with his new abilities, and Kelp was there for damage control. Kyrë even took out the goblins' bugbear boss all by herself, using the training and encouragement of her adventuring elders. She straight up rolled nat 20 three times in a row, and is now a 2nd level monk.

Kelp spent some time with Habla and the two went on a trip to visit Kelp's mom. Kelp and Habla fall in love.

Galad journeyed to Nrannas to speak with Udhros and returned to keep saving the world one quest at a time.

## Alt-Campaign epilogue: The Way Home

January 20, 2019

Successful in their endeavour, the heroes part ways, some to go home, others to carry on the adventure. While returning the artefacts from Harendûr's Tomb, the adventurers received visions in the chamber of futures. Adran found out just how bad his deal with the Jackal Fiend was, and warily returned to Executrix Melidai and his fellow desert elves. Magret and Key visited Quiet in Camp Zeroth, and helped her guardians find a way to better connect with her. Key banded together with Ko-Tha and Mo-Tha for a while. Hemakshi teleported herself, Mehen, Alt, and Ulla to Tradefall, wherefrom they went to Syllior. Altruism reported back to Willow and Bronn, handing over the Tome of Understanding.

Hemakshi managed to find one of the Guardians of the Circle and warn them about the vision of Blackscale's return that she had received in Harendûr's tomb.

Alt, Mehen, and Ulla returned Alfgrindr to the tribe in Lohkenor. Then they destroyed Nefathat.

## One-shot: Winging It

January 13, 2019

Bronn and Percy took a one-day tourist-style vacation in Kavaad. A few days later, news reaches Syllior of a sudden but short-lived fire in the Gnomish Gardens.

Two houses, a potion shop, and a potato patch burned down. Eight people got badly burned. Sources say the fire was caused by a magical explosion.

(The two acquired some new and interesting stuff, including a few books with new information regarding certain conspiracies in Kavaad, a coven of hags, and a strange revelation from Percy's past. )

## Alt-Campaign session 9: Dark Lords

December 31, 2018

The NPCs like Ko-Tha, Mo-Tha, and Prong all went down with Adran, Magret, and Key, all descending through the sandstorm that still held up the top layers of the tower Galoz Klyth.

The remaining party came upon hill dwarf cleric of Torasenna, Reirak Helcral, whom the death knight had captured and chained in the room above. The dwarf had apparently soloed his way through the tower up to that point, bent (eller børge) on conquering it.

In the next room up, the party of five stood before five skeletal serpents, intertwined in each others bones, and giving off a faint aura of magic. Mehen sensed their undead nature and tried to strike, but was overwhelmed by mournful cries and painful memories of his past. Ulla slapped the paladin awake as tears were streaming down his scales. Mehen relayed the information and they all attacked the snakes, who by now had come alive in a circling blur of animation. the five bone nagas where quickly reduced to two. These transformed into lightning and slithered to hit each of our heroes several times before finally being bashed and smote to pieces.

[After the Alt-party defeated the Azijhara room with the nagas, the DM offered a draw from the tarot cards, which resulted in the *Heretic* card.]

The spitting image of Khovakis the blood mage came dripping down the stairs into the naga room, drawing a greatsword from his own ichor. The creature explained that some of the top rooms had yet to be reinstalled according to the last emperor's wishes, and as such represented challenges related to outdated religions. The party fought and defeated the creature only to find that it was merely a blood simulacrum and not the mage himself.

In the next room the party found four levers and a door. Each lever shared the likeness of a bird: crane, duck, peacock, and emu. Above the door was a large bust of an ibis bird with gemstone eyes of green. A hapless NPC who should've really left when the others did came up and pulled on the wrong first lever and was promptly disintegrated by the ibis' eyes. The room was also decorated with great prayer wheels and floating scrolls recording the last words spoken spoken by any creature that dies in the tower. Reading through the scrolls, the party found quotes from the dungeons that contained the last living words of Ozimir and of Khovakis. They also found the last spoken words of other adventurers who had reached this level of the tower. By reading through the mistakes that other had made before them, the party found the correct sequence for the levers and could pass through the door.

In the next room, there was a strange chess set with only one color's pieces. The pieces were all life-size colorless constructs and resembled ancient kavaadic soldiers. When touched, the pieces attacked. Casting *light* on a crystal embedded in a construct's form restored its colors and converted it to the other team. This helped the party take the king and advance. Then they took a short rest, all while the tower was crumbling below them. Indeed, the rooms they had just passed through were breaking down and falling into the sandstorm. [tarot card: Favorite] As the floor gave out under them, a gnoll pack climbed up to pursue the party. The pack leader, a flind called Grin, decided not to trust the party, despite sharing the goal of reaching the tower's top. Grin tried bringing Altruism down, but was forced to let go and fall into the storm by a well timed *heat metal* spell from the horned shaman. As Grin and her pack descended, they laughed a mad laughter, magically overtaking Alt, Ulla, and Rierak, who then fell too. Mehen caught Reirak with his new hand. Hemakshi caught Alt with a *feather fall*. Ulla managed to step into the ethereal plane just in time to phase back onto the crumbling stairs. Then a demon tried to infiltrate the party in the guise of one of Alt and Ulla's old friends, but they had found Magni Steinursson's last words on a scroll in the bird room. They slew the demon. The party was safe for now, and could progress up the darkened Steps of the Damned. There, they found themselves face to face with a colossal demonic serpent of fire and shadow—a guardian creature deployed by the god Apep. The serpent's presence caused maddening crowns form around the skulls of the party, and the demon's hissing tongue of flame nearly brought Altruism down. In the face of doom, Hemakshi spun a spell and managed to banish the fiend before it could do any more damage.

Boss Fight 1.1: Minion Mania

Mehen stormed forward at the necromancer and blackguard protecting Khovakis. Hemakshi and Ulla were pulled off the tower by the storm. Jhiraaj arrived to help. Ulla summoned a giant fey owl. Khovakis killed Hemakshi and used her angelic blood to start his demon summoning ritual. Altruism consumed the soul of a demon to escape his vampiric mist form. Adrika arrived with some much-needed healing. Reirak revivified Hemakshi, forging living gold into her mortal wounds. Khovakis had escaped into the ethereal plane, but was trapped by Mehen's *magic circle* spell.

Boss Fight 2.0: Ethereal Boogaloo

When Jhiraaj left, Ulla's sword Krûszat overtook her to go shout at the dragon for a bit. Altruism stormed in and was surrounded by shadows and the full demonic form of Nefathat the Dark Glutton. Reirak channeled Torasenna's divinity to destroy the shadows. Mehen smote Khovakis and claimed Alfgrindr. Ulla helped Alt against Nefathat. Hamakshi killed the demon with her radiant consumption.

The party landed safely, and is now alone in the desert. (-ish)

## Alt-Campaign session 8: The Tower of Sacrifice

December 29, 2018

These are rough notes, so forgive me, while I sort this out and make a proper write-up.

You found Key's old cell, prisoner body parts with arcane tattoos, and a hemogoblin that once slain dropped the Heart of Khovakis.

Back in the guard room over the dungeons, Prong and his party had taken care of an enemy patrol, but the goblin went berserk and killed one of the hobgoblins.

Ehrbad Lu-Galoz in the Great Hall with skeleton waiters and delicious, delicious food, wine, and mead

The archpriest's quarters, killed the archpriest twice and fought his chandeliers of human bones

On the archpriest's very dead wife, Key found an amulet containing a key and an image of teh archpriest in his youth. With this key, they could unlock the door to the next flight of stairs up to the archpriest's study.

The study was decorated with statues and filled with books. There were statues of Azijhara the Lady of Snakes, Apep the Apocalypse Serpent, Thoth the Bringer of Knowledge, Mithaar the Sun King, and a dozen others, including one of Ontogwi bringing the "Unclaimed Light" of the moon to his chosen people, "the Exhaulted Faithful". Ulla opened a book of shadows and tried to read it, but was sucked in to an empty demiplane. Trying to find Ulla, Key read in the book as well and was also trapped in the Emptiness.

While searching for answers on the book of shadows, and trying to free their two missing friends, the remaining party members found a secret passage to a laboratory, where a strange magical experiment or ritual was taking place. Thinking this might be the death knight, Mehen misty-stepped into the lab to stop the ritual. In that moment a writhing mass of body parts, stitched together in a vaguely humanoid shape and covered in arcane symbols much like Amirr, that was targeted by beams of crackling lightning from four large crystals, rose up and killed its necromancer creator. Mehen, a bunch of terrified lab workers, and a hulking patchwork monster, were joined by Alt, Ko-Tha, Adran, and Magret as combat broke out. Magret stopped a lab worker from zapping her friends with the beams from one of the crystals. Ko-Tha, Alt and Adran prevented the other lab workers from calling in reinforcements, and Mehen took on the experiment, which was being healed each time the crystals cast lightning bolts on each other, catching it and the party in the damaging line. With his mighty dragon hand, Mehen pushed the monster out of the beams, but then he was left standing in the middle of them, and with the next zap, Mehen went down. Magret got Mehen out of the blast zone, and an unstable crystal was broken to ensure that neither Mehen nor Hemakshi would be hit by a stray arc of energy. The experiment was eventually felled, but its presence had disturbed the magic around it, causing spells to take on strange effects, and Magret to surge with wild magic for a whole minute. For over a week, neither she nor Mehen would have to sleep, nor would they be able to.

After that mess, the party took a short rest to recuperate (I think Mehen used a charm of rest to gain the benefits of a long rest). Two tarot cards were drawn, and Hemakshi had a vision of the Helper card. A four-armed vaguely goblin-like fiend appeared before the party and offered them a number of items, some of which it had acquired from the tower itself. The party traded in the berserker axe, some manticore parts, and a chestful of gold coins for a dustbringer maul (good against skeletons) and Krûszat the Screaming Blade, a sentient longsword previously wielded by Halmdin Ol-Akarim. The helper also told the party that Khovakis possessed a sword, a ring, an armor, and a dream catcher—all containing some form of magical essence.

After this, and once Hemakshi understood what the book of shadows was, the party all read the book and entered the Emptiness one after another. In the Emptiness, each person was isolated in sensory deprivation, alone with a single question or thought. Hemakshi, holding the Heart of Khovakis, witnessed the hobgoblin magus' time in the dungeons and conversion to the Ghoul Lord. She also learned the names of all the tower's blackguards, including that of the death knight—Ozimir.

After the emptiness, they all emerged from a dark pool in the middle of a large stone chapel—a room further up the tower. There, they were attacked by spirits of dead priests wearing broken amulets, and found themselves unable to damage the spirits. Large statues beside the pews appeared to look like the spirits, so Key, Mehen, Alt, Adran, and Ulla redirected their efforts to the statues. Each time they destroyed a statue, the corresponding priest's soul was destroyed. When Hemakshi started a *mending* spell on one of the broken amulets, the spirit stopped attacking. When the spell took effect, the spirit was freed. Three out of eight spirits where saved. The others perished, their souls forever lost. Under the chapel's alter, Hemakshi and Key found a key and a magical amulet. The key unlocked the chapel's door, which the others couldn't seem to open after destroying the chapel's spirits.

Another short rest. Tarot card: Host. Adrika appeared in her heavenly glory and that was pretty cool i guess. While following the angel through the next room, Ulla had a little talk with Alt.

A shady cultist called Thras tried to get the party to help him in a blood ritual to summon a sliver of Nefathat. Adran didn't buy it, and the party pwned Thras and his followers, after Mehen sensed that they were all in fact undead. Not wanting the blood ritual to go off with the cultist's blood, Hemakhi cast prestidigitation, which resulted in five granite armed crushing the altar completely, as Adrika momentarily reached back into the material plane to help the party.

They party fed and freed a pack of gnolls, lead by a gnoll called Yit who warned the party about a terrible demon up ahead. I said the gnolls would help in the boss fight against the butcher demon, but then i just kinda forgot about it. Onward!

In the next room, Adran walked out on a balcony, finding himself face to face with a blackguard on a zombie wyvern. Meanwhile, the rest of the party was being attacked by a ~~bullshit~~ butcher demon (y'know the one with four arms, a horse head, and a cleaver that can cast *absorb elements* at will). In the end, Ulla got the hdywtdt on the demon and the wyvern, and Hemakshi named the blackguard, killing him instantly. Milestone leveling caused everyone to instantly level up and get all their stuff back. More blackguards came streaming in, but they too were named and dropped dead, their skeletons rising to serve the wielder of Khovakis' heart. The death knight arrived and prepared to incinerate the heroes, particularly Mehen, but as the name Ozimir left Hemakshi's lips, the death knight was undone. His helm fell down and skid across the floor, ending in front of Mehen, who picked it up and crushed it in his blue hand.

Key found a lock to the entire lower tower, and used his skeleton key and crusader's greatsword to bring all the lower levels of the tower down. However, he had to leave the party behind, as they progressed upwards into the top levels, held aloft by the raging, magical sandstorm. Magret went with Key to make sure he would survive crashing into the rubble below. Adran spotted Pyrioth, the zombiefied offspring of Jhiraaj, about to attack Key and Magret. Adran used the charm of the dragon slayer and leapt onto the dragon's back, bringing the light of the stars with him. In a graceful last effort, Adran slew the dragon and ran down its falling spine, jumping to meet Key's range with *feather fall*. Catching Adran in one hand, and holding the sword that toppled the Tower of Sacrifice in the other, Key descended out of view. The sand swallowed the final heroic image of Magret, standing guard for two of her friends. Three heroes completed their part in the quest. Now it was up the others to defeat the DARK LORDS.

## Alt-Campaign session 7: Sand and Blood

December 20, 2018

Alt, Mehen, Magret, Ulla, Key, Hemakshi, and Adran (and an assortment of magical animal companions) continued their quest on the Road of Offerings, facing a sandstorm and their final destination, Galoz Klyth. Among the spiky cliffs and skeletal remains of ancient beasts, the party came upon a group of cloaked figures paying tribute to undead spirits tethered to urns, as well as the spirits themselves. As the spirits attacked, hungry and vengeful, so did their cultist tributaries. In the fight, ghouls and gorgers arrived, eager to feast on the living, and skeletal minotaurs stood guard against intruders. But none of that could keep our party of heroes at bay, and their adversaries were slowed, crushed, blinded, stabbed, bloodied, and in some cases, terrified. One cultist simply gave up and decided to change his ways, and managed to flee. The similar-minded, de*feet*ed minotaur was not so lucky. The party took some time to loot the scene and rest up.

In the aftermath of the encounter, Hemakshi received a vision (or tarot card), placing a page from her book in the correct chronological order. The page read 'Master' and contained a drawing of a jackal-headed fiend. This very fiend then appeared before the party, offering a little help for the small price of the buyer's soul. The deal was negotiated, and Adran gave up the first 50 years of his afterlife for a rustblade sword and a one-time call-in of any one creature from elsewhere in Thindrel. The fiend's little helper, a four-armed goblin-looking creature, was also bound by the contract—to return the sword to Adran, should he lose it. The field of the battle turned out to be encased in the skeletal remains of an ancient blue dragon. Seeking to understand his heritage and the nature of dragons, Mehen collected some bone, marrow, and filings of the dragon's horn.

On the steps to the Tower of Sacrifice, the party spotted a winged silhouette in the distance. Ulla had sensed this to be a dragon, and another flying creature miles behind the tower to be an undead. Before Ulla or Adran could stop him, Key waved to the silhouette and caught its attention. The wings disappeared and out from the cliffs and spikes came Jhiraaj and their red guard drake. Jhiraaj explained their true reason for coming to the tower—to free their son Pyrioth, and to avenge his death and reanimation.

At the tower's gate, a hungry hill giant stood chained to the ground, eager to devour any who should be unfortunate enough to walk too near. As the party assessed the situation, the gate opened and gave way to five riders—four blackguards led by the death knight that the party had defeated only hours earlier. The riders charged right by the hill giant and the gate shut behind the hooves of their skeletal warhorses. Mehen stood his ground, bracing for impact and poised for victory. With friends by his side, he fought the death knight for a second time in one day. During the clash, Adran snuck around and rusted the hill giant's chain, releasing it upon the blackguards. As the first rider, slowed by Hemakshi, fell to Altruism's rage, the death knight spoke the rider's name and commanded its corpse to serve him in battle. Balthazar's lightning breath helped Ulla take out the skeletal steeds, but the blackguards fought back, knocking Ulla down. Altruism picked her up and started running. Key was unable to get a good hit in on the death knight who constantly blocked his attacks and countered with destructive wave spells. Adran rusted the death knight's shield away, and Magret aided Key, but the death knight still withstood their combined attacks. Mehen dropped his weapon and wrestled the knight with his bare hands in an attempt to tie him down. His balance was thrown off and Key managed to get in a good blow, knocking him to his knees, but in a split-second, and with a popping sound, Mehen was gone. With a single word, the death knight had banished the party's paladin. And by simply speaking its name, he instantly killed a blackguard and raised its corpse, gaining the last bit of life force it still possessed. With haste, Key took three mighty swings at the kneeling death knight. One hit. Just enough to break the banishment spell and bring back Mehen to finish the job. The death knight vowed to return. Mehen vowed to slay it each and every time it did.

The party still had a hungry, hungry hill giant on their hands. They scattered in the cliffs and tried their best to hide. However, Key was a little too big and a little too slow after his haste subsided. The giant's shadow loomed over the goliath. Key spun around and looked up, speaking to the giant in their shared language, and he managed to convince the hungry hill giant that the best course of action was to head inside the tower for more food. The hill giant picked up the last blackguard as a light snack and broke through the massive gates, clearing the way for the party.

The party took a quick breather before following the giant into the dungeons below the tower. Adran went in alone to scout. A blackguard and two ghasts were keeping watch over the entrance to the jail cells. When the blackguard disappeared into the storage room, Adran silently took out one of the other guards, but he was jumped by the second ghast and paralyzed by its claws, giving the blackguard time to arrive with a venomous trident. When the party upstairs heard the commotion, they came to Adran's rescue and quickly laid waste to the last two guards. Key looted the blackguard's key to the storage room and headed there himself. The room was just an empty corridor with six doors, each marked with a hieroglyphic rune. The runes were a broken chain, a severed hand, a flask, a pentagram, two overlapping rocks, a mustard flower. Other than that, the doors were featureless and had no handles or keyholes.

Mehen stepped in front of the door marked with the hand rune and the door faded away, effectively opening. Inside, there were a number of crates and boxes which Mehen grabbed without investigating. When the paladin of Tyr left the storage room, his right hand fell of off his arm. The party panicked and did whatever they could to heal it back on, but their magic wasn't advanced enough to restore the hand for good. The door with the flask rune opened for Mehen after drank his own blood while licking his wound. Behind this door, the party found alchemical supplies and a set of notes detailing the undead invasion. The door with the broken chain rune opened for Ulla who cleverly vowed to never hit Mehen and then gave the dragonborn a smack across the face. Having broken an oath, she was free to enter the room and find the death knight's old diary. The pentagram door opened for Altruism. The mustard flower door opened for Adran while he was the target of Alt's hex spell, which uses petrified "eye of newt" (mustard seed) for its material component. Hemakshi contacted her guardian angel Adrika to ask for help. As part of contacting Adrika, Hemakshi received another vision by way of tarot card. This time, she got the Prophecy card, and Adrika told her to seek out healing behind the last door. Together with Key, Hemakshi could enter the room with the dual rock rune and found some more treasure. Suddenly, the sound of company came from the guard house where the corpses of three guards and a hill giant still lay. A party of goblinoids, led by a half-orc with a trident tattoo on his forehead. The half-orc introduced himself as Prong the recovering warlock, and he briefly mentioned having made a regretful pact with a sly devil. Prong and his company agreed to stick with the party and not attack each other.

In the early morning hours of the 2nd Treeday, Dragon, Hemakshi used a diamond she found where Adrika told her to look to cast a regenerating spell on Mehen's hand. Mehen had injected his wrist with the bone marrow and filings he gathered from the blue dragon corpse outside the tower. With the blessing of Tyr, Mehen's hand came to life once more, sprouting new, blue scales marked with golden runes, and growing in size and strength to wield two-handed weapons with one hand. Before dawn, the party made sure to rummage through all the storage rooms again to find the last potions, magic weapons, and records of history. Then, having rested up, Hemakshi got another vision, pulling the Tribe card and placing the page in her book in its chronological order. Alt and Ulla recognized the figures appearing on the page as the goliaths that had helped them in their original quest for the Alfgrindr. Hemakshi said to find them in the jails, so the party decided to explore the lower level of the dungeons.

In the Dungeon of the Faithless, the party encountered the ghosts of four dead prisoners who had died without finding faith. Mehen and the Lohkenorians helped the ghosts depart for the Fugue Plane, and were gifted with additional uses of their magical charms (the ones Mirindnn gave them in Harendûr's tomb). Shouting out in Gol-kaa, Key located his fellow goliaths and freed them with Adran's help. They quickly introduced themselves as Ko-Tha and Mo-Tha Thunukalathanu, the siblings of Lo-Tha, and they caught up with Altruism and Ulla whom they had met once before, very briefly and not realizing that they had joined the humans' tribe. Mo-Tha asked Altruism about Lo-Tha's fate. Ko-Tha asked for a weapon and a target.

With newfound strength and allies, the party was finally ready to take on the TOWER of SACRIFICE.

## Some kind of alliteration with dragons

October 28, 2018

I'm not the DM, I don't know what "Dragekrigen" is…

## Alt-Campaign session 6: Oaths and Offerings

October 16, 2018

Inside the ruined temple to Barendain in Harendûr's Valley, the party was met by visions. Hemakshi cast a spell to read an inscription over the entrance to the room where the visions took place. "Thou dost enter the sacred Tomb of the prophet Harendûr, the Prince who saw the End. Behold the Dead gave thee Life," the inscription read.

Alt and Ulla caught each others eyes and saw the same time of their lives. They were parting with their families as they left their village to go and fetch their artifact, the Alfgrindr.

Hemakshi found a different kind of vision from the others. She saw the past of Ûder, how grand the empire had once been, and how far it had stretched millennia ago.

As they pressed on, there were also rooms showing the present and future. However, only Hemakshi's visions appeared here. She saw the city as it was outside, in ruins, and watched by Magret Twice-Orphaned. The ruins of Ûder were lost and scattered, buried and forgotten. In the future, she gleamed an alliance between Drevnir the 22nd and some greyish dragonborn, joined in a crusade against the undead. The armies of Duerhaith and Dragonhorn were working together, as they had never done before, and were unlikely to do. Hemakshi sensed that there was more to these visions, but it did not show itself to her. Ulla's powers to sense the unnatural were also somewhat clouded inside the temple, and the party's food and water spoiled and evaporated.

The next corridor was blocked by sand, which took a couple of hours to clear out. Behind the sand was a small tomb with six sarcophagi and a statue of a dwarven saint. The statue was labeled "Mirindnn, Warrior Saint of Engineers" and when they inspected it, the statue came to life and presented the party with a riddle in rhyme. When they had solved her riddle, she granted them these four magical charms: Charm of the Dragonslayer, Charm of Darkvision, Charm of Vitality, and Charm of Rest. As the statue returned to its inanimate self, they were shown the way to Harendûr's tomb. The party descended through a hole hidden under a false sarcophagus and came to an empty hub. Most of the paths from this hub were blocked or collapsed, but the way to the tomb was intact. Inside the tomb, Adran was tempted by greed and started to lift coins from the grave gifts. The others stopped him in time for the dead not to strike out in vengeance. The tomb had Harendûr's sarcophagus and eight smaller ones, including Mirindnn's. Altruism reached out the Mirindnn's spirit and inquired about their tomb and the mummies' wishes. The mummified remains of the warrior saint told Alt of a disturbance to the necromancy of their grave, and told him that he could have some of her grave gifts if he swore on his blood and proved himself worthy against the foe ahead. As the party's destination was already Galoz Klyth, the same place that disturbed the tomb, the party agreed. One by one, they gave some of their blood to the dead dwarves and swore to serve their common goal. In return they were each given an item from the tomb. Mehen was allowed to take Harendûr's Helm of Prophetic Clarity, which he then gave to Hemakshi, who had earned a book of divination spells. Adran had to destroy his magical whip to convince Harendûr's spirit that he was not governed by greed. This earned him a magical dagger. Key was given a Claymore of the Crusade, and was allowed to attune to it as otherwise only a paladin would. Alt earned Mirindnn's Ring of Spell Storing. Ulla took a Bronze Dragon Shield and gave it to Magret when they were once more outside.

On their way out, Hemakshi got to see the rest of her visions in full clarity. The past now included the fall of Ûder, in which a massive black dragon had felled the entire empire, and only a few dwarves had survived. Among the survivors were Harendûr's people, whom he had warned of the end. In the present, she saw how dragons and dragonborn ruled, while dwarves were forced into hiding, where they cowered and waited. In the future, the vision showed the alliance between dwarves and dragonborn to last until their armies reached Qorath. Then each faction split the the others and the age-old conflict began anew. The dwarves appeared victorious and invaded Dragonhorn to reclaim their promised homeland, but then the mountains shook and crumbled as a massive spine emerged from the earth. The dragon returned to cast its shadow over the world once more. [Aren't you guys just excited for that?]

With these gifts and this knowledge, the party got ready to head into the approaching sandstorm and take the last steps toward Galoz Klyth. Their way through the sand was less difficult thanks to Ulla Strigisdatter, and with her and Mehen in the front, most of the undead they encountered on their way were but trivial to defeat. Leaving behind Harendûr's Valley, they set foot on the Road of Offerings. Here, they were met by an ominous song, as a choir of cultists greeted them with blades. The party made quick work of the choir, sparing only the first soprano who in turn gave up what little information she had on her masters. She told them to make offerings before the Gatekeeper, an undead knight guarding the path to Galoz Klyth. When Adran heard the soprano whisper something to herself about maybe screaming of help or trying a spell with only verbal components, he slit her throat without warning the others. Ulla shouted in shock, and the others demanded an explanation. When they were stopped by the Gatekeeper and forced to present an offering in fresh blood, they gave the knight the body of the dead singer. Spotting Hemakshi, the knight inquired as the the reason for her presence, suggesting that she might be an offering, or that her passage would cost them more. They decided to tell the knight that she was their offering to Lord Khovakis, and the knight decided to leave his torch behind and escort them to the tower personally. When they rested for the night, the knight was up, speaking to each of the party members who held watch from within the tiny hut. Through these conversations, the party deduced that this knight was the adventurer who had commissioned the maul from Mehen's father and then joined the undead once he witnessed their power in Ironston. Indeed, the Gatekeeper had helped the ghouls in destroying the town and killing Mehen's parents. Once this was clear to Mehen, he attacked the knight. Before retaliation was possible, the part descended upon the knight with everything they had, and Mehen smote the unliving crap out of that death knight like it was nothing. The Gatekeeper's skeletal minotaur guards were too slow to react, and they too were BEATEN to BITS.

## Alt-Campaign session 5: Path to Prophecy

October 14, 2018

As Paarthurnax slowly dug out an ancient temple, the tanks of the party went out into the ruined city of Harendûr's Valley to slay some undead. Mehen Myastan, Key, and Ulla Strigisdatter mauled their way through a group of animated skeletons that they found in the sand. Adran Onnurai joined their endeavour and helped them take down a group of ghouls and gorgers lead by a spell-casting ghast. The ruined streets were covered in poisonous fumes and Mehen was blasted by a *disintegrate* spell, but our heroes prevailed and the monsters were slain. Adran looted a magical whip that amplified his greed and obsession with material wealth.

The team made their way to one of two large towers within the Ûderai ruins. Ulla had sensed a concentration of undead in this area, and a singular fiend. So, as adventurers do, they pulled off the door and poked their heads through the opening to see what the monsters were up to. When the undead showed themselves to be the lingering spirits of black dragonborn-looking warriors and attacked the party, it was time to kick in the door and go full ham. But in that moment, five additional spirits rose from their corroded graves, and cooked the party's proverbial ham, and our heroes were forced to flee, with Mehen carrying an unconscious Ulla out of the tower and away from the overwhelming number of axe wraiths. On their way back to Hemakshi's *tiny hut*, the brave runners-away ran through a group of helpless zombies with zero issue. Some fights are easier than others.

Back in the camp, the party started to investigate the ruins behind the statue of Harendûr. Inside a small tower to the side of the temple, Ulla's owl familiar Ole spotted a hidden trapdoor. Adran and Key inspected the trapdoor more closely and found a key in Key's keyring that blocked the entrance. After some discussion, Adran went down into the buried structure. Thanks to Hemakshi's *telepathic bond* spell, Adran could easily call four help when he was attacks by swarms of poisonous snakes. The others came to his rescue—Ulla through the ethereal plane, and Alt horns first through the wall. They decided to leave the dungeon for the day and rest up for the next. The bruisers returned to do battle with the axe wraiths, and again, the evil spirits increased in numbers, but with some clever tricks and taunts, and just pure muscle, the party laid the wraiths to rest. Key grabbed the skull of the their leader out of the sand and started wearing it as a helmet.

Victorious, the wraith-banes returned the others and journeyed into the temple. In one of the temple's rooms, they were all met by a vision of the past (except for Magret, who stayed outside to keep watch).

Key's vision brought him back ten years to his time in a jail cell when he had first met Amirr. Key snatched a keychain off of the guard, and managed to hide it behind his back, while they repaired and reinforced the chains Key had broken.

Adran was flushed with a memory of wandering through the desert with his tribe. Xeteraenon Naïlo was leading the nomads, guiding them by way of the stars. Other elves looked up to Adran and told him they could see him leading the tribe one day.

Mehen relived the time he found Tyr. His village was attacked by ghouls. His mother's orphanage was destroyed, but he found a frying pan in the kitchen and shielded himself from the paralyzing claws of the undead. A desperate swing with the pan gave him enough time to make it to his father's smithy, where the bodies of two golden dragonborn lay before a hungry ghoul. Mehen filled the room with smoke and made his way outside with an unfinished maul an adventurer had commissioned from Mehen's father. Mehen was cornered by the dead in the street and his vision went dark. The next thing he saw was a pile of dead ghouls and a glow from the WEAPON in his HAND.

## Alt-Campaign session 4: Broken Wings

September 23, 2018

Burbas and Alt stood face to face with Glorael the Whitehand, a fallen angel of Manarakh. Their allies emerged from the deathlock's crypt as the angel demanded that they surrender the Dark Spear and the drow to him. The angel was willing to let the others go, showing its goodwill by letting Adran, Amirr, and Key pass. The others stayed back, obscured and blinded by a magical darkness that Burbas had cast to buy more time. When it was clear that the party wouldn't yield to the angel's authority, it displayed its power by manifesting a golden plate armor, thus preparing for battle. In this moment, Magret stepped between the angel and those in the darkness, specifically Altruism and Burbas'Tel. Amirr feigned loyalty toward the angel, attacking Key without warning, so that it would let him cast *haste* on it. Before Amirr's plan could be revealed, Key returned the favor, knocking Amirr flat out. Glorael tried to walk through Magret, but was stopped by her shield. Mehen and Hemakshi debated their next moves, and finally decided to send a hasted Mehen into the fray. Bombarded by blistering sand and bloodthirsty stirges, the party fought the angel.

Burbas, who had convinced Alt that the angel would surely break through his friends, asked Alt for a drop of blood and his freedom. Alt allowed this. Burbas plucked the drop from the barbarian's lower lip, drank it, and transformed into a true vampire. Then he joined the fight, teeth and claws at the angels neck.

Altruism broke through the angel's magical armor after Mehen and Key had put cracks into it. In a golden light, the fragments of armor exploded and holy light burned from Glorael's skin. Some of this light was absorbed by the Dark Spear (and I forgot to mention that Alt can consume that light to gain Radiant Rage). The angel put its white hand on Altruism and commanded that he die, but the Dark Spear saved him. However, now Altruism was but a dark mist in the wind. The party was wounded and their magics expended, but with the strength and judgement of Tyr, Mehen brought the angel low, its broken wings bleeding with golden ichor. Smite after smite, the angel was beaten. But its retaliation was swift, and with its heavenly sword, the angel smote him back. Magret parried the first strike, but the second lacerated Mehen who fell to the ground, unconscious and bleeding.

The others were running out of options. Amirr had summoned the imp Yezmeniev with his trident, but was constantly near death. Key was wounded. Burbas still clung to the angel's throat. Alt was a cloud.

In that moment, Paarthurnax arrived to avenge his friend and master. Lunging at the angel's back, Paarthurnax made contact and toppled the angel. The two slid across the hot sand. Burbas leapt from the fallen angel. Paarthurnax dug in with his claws and caught Glorael's head in his jaws. The angel's head was ripped from its bleeding neck, flying in an arc away from its body.

Now freed from his service to the Dark Spear, Burbas'Tel upheld his promise to not immediately kill the party. They all rested, finally able to dig into the loot in the dungeon below. In the night, Amirr left with Yezmeniev and Burbas left on his own. Amirr left a note for Key. Burbas'Tel swore to hunt down the hags that control the Cult of the Shadow.

All rested and (levelled up!), the party continued on their path to Galoz Klyth. In the ruins of an old dwarven city, the party met Ulla Strigisdatter, who was a member of Altruism's original expedition to Thorothar. They were also introduced to her spiritual animal companions. In the city, Magret fell in a snake pit (why did it have to be snakes?) and the party found an old statue depicting "Harendûr, Prophet and Prince of the Valley", a dwarf lord of Ûder known for spreading the faith of Barendain. We ended the session after a gross zombie fight near the excavation site of a sand-covered temple found behind the statue of Harendûr. The party was about to DELVE into a DUNGEON.

## Session 49: Galad

September 9, 2018

With the help of Theia Riverfang and her newfound shadow magic, the party managed to enter the Shadowdark to look for Galad. However, Theia's magic is powered by negative emotions, and in order to create the shadow crossing needed to enter the Plane of Shadow, Theia was angered by the memory of her death and the ignorance of her companions. This anger manifested itself in the Shadowdark and summoned a sorrowsworn spirit of anger, which the party chose to fight. They were also attacked by smaller sorrowsworn, called the wretched, that resembled top or bottom halves of human bodies with lamprey mouths at the cross-section of the cut bodies. Willow called on the fey spirit of a darkling elder, who came to the party's aid, but after these encounters and the dragon fight earlier in the day, the party had expended many of their resources.

Beyond the sorrowsworn, there was a locked door, heavy and wooden, with no visible hinges—clearly opening inward. First, Kelp and Fholtarr inspected the door thoroughly, to ensure that it was neither trapped nor illusory. Kelp then picked the lock and opened the door. When a shadowy presence, sensed only by Kelp, struck, she responded by smashing her Warhammer into the door as it opened into the room beyond. Kelp fell to the floor, lifeless; Fholtarr, standing nearby, was next, both victim's to Daeszal's Fang. Gwathren had ambushed them in true Bryn fashion. the rest of the party, shaken to careful consideration, planned their next moves with great caution, but little time for strategy. Percy and Willow assumed the forms of giant apes. Bronn and Grimna teleported to Galad's still body in the back of the room behind the deathly door. Sannl and the darkling elder guarded the entrance. Varoin lit a torch and watched the dead. Then the hunt for the shadow began.

The apes broke down the doors, countering Gwathren's ambush. Bronn examined Galad's body to decipher his fate. Grimna ran back to the action. Percy was hit and reverted out of her ape form. Sannl blinded the shadow, and Bronn forced it back when it tried to flee. With the perfect opening, created by her allies, Willow hurled her hulking form at the shadow, managed to grasp its incorporeal form, and slam it into the ground multiple times until it was torn apart in the flickering torchlight. Gwathren was ended, and all that remained of him was the cursed dagger from Gamrion's Tomb. Daeszal's Fang, having earned the fear and respect of those around it called out to the darkness. A part of the demon lay before the tired adventurers. Grimna handled the item carefully in her gauntleted hands, studied it coldly, identified it. Ideas were presented on how a soul might be freed from the demon's grasp. With great difficulty, seemed to be the answer. Percy, frustrated by her own uselessness, and blunt as ever, asked "well, what are we waiting for?" and as Grimna laid the Fang before the halfling, Percy swung her mace, and with the guidance of Hermes and inspiring words of Sir Bronn, struck the dagger. The moment of impact seemed to linger before the small cleric. Serpents slithered from her own weapon and into the demon's, forming cracks in its blade. Splinters flew in every direction, then evaporated. A roar of souls. A flash of light. A wind of voices. A quiet. Peace. Freedom.

Daeszal's Fang was no more. (Needless to say, Percy instantly gained a level.)

With the help of Willow's edgy fey friend, the party escaped the Shadowfell while Theia's magic was still active. When they had all made it through with the bodies, the portal closed behind them, and Theia reappeared. Back in Doomoodpool, Percy cast *raise dead* to bring back Galad. Aiding this ritual was Bronn, Sannls, and Willow, each with an appeal or a prayer crafted for the occasion. From his desert heaven, and through the guidance of Hermes and grace of the Light, Galad came alive again, and the Bow of the Sky Tree with him. However, there was still the matter of raising Kelp and Fholtarr, and the party's materials didn't reach that far.

With a night's rest and some preparation, Bronn created a teleportation circle and brought the party, including Theia and the dwarves, to a permanent circle in the Palace District Hall of Guilds in Kavaad. Here, they collected the materials to bring back Kelp in the House of Healers. But when the time came for Fholtarr, a delegation of blue dragonborn who happened to be in the city, and who had just heard of Fholtarr's death, arrived to take him to their ship. Leading this group was one Raishan Thunderblood, who nearly caused a scene before Willow told her to take Fholtarr's body. That way, leaving the Thunderbloods to pay for their wizard's resurrection.

While swimming to shake her traumatic experience, Kelp met a fellow water genasi, who lived with dolphins. The genasi, known only as "friend", told of her genie father's magical gifts to her and warned Kelp of undead wildlife at sea. When Kelp emerged, she spoke briefly with Raishan, who was readying her ship to sail off. Then she found the shrine to Soliel in Kavaad, where she brought Galad to watch the sunset. There, Galad prayed for light, and the statue's warhammer emitted a brilliant light, saluting the sunset and looking to the island of Tol'Anar.

From here, we are doing downtime until the Alt campaign is completed. It will probably last at least a month of in-game time if not more.

## Session 48: Gwathren

August 9, 2018

Galad and Gwathren had been thrust into the Shadowdark, the world below the dreadful Shadowfell. While the rest of the party was resting in Doomoodpool, Galad tried to convince Gwathren to reunite with him. When that failed and Gwathren had retreated into the darkness, Galad befriended a horrifying creature that had grown deformed in its isolation in the realm of shadow. Violently embraced by this sorrowful creature, Galad settled down in the skeletal remains of an enormous fish, not far from a bottomless pit. There, Gwathren possessed the lonely creature and responded for the first time, urging Galad to join the dark side, so to speak, and together they could reap the powers of Daeszal and finally become the world's most dangerous assassin. Still, Galad insisted on the light, and so Gwathren drained the sorrowsworn of its strength, leaving Galad alone in the darkness.

In her sleep, Willow walked across a frozen body of water to the edge of the night sky, where blackness draped the border to an ethereal dream world. Visited by wretched lamprey-like half-people, and urged on by a freezing wind, Willow stepped into a place where she could visit Galad as a winter breeze.

Galad had visions of the night he killed Prince Wranfir. Willow saw them as well. And as she stared into the bottomless pit, the vision revealed the passing of time around Wranfir's shadow, the crown princess mournfully watching the bed as the seasons passed outside under the Old Tree.

Sannl dreamt of Theia leaving and being ambushed by a dragon, causing the loss of Galad, and then when the dream restarted and Sannl intervened, Theia, half-clad in shadow, escaped the dragon and created a dark portal. Upon waking up and talking with the others, Grimna shared her dream about green eyes, demons, and a door of shadow leading to light. The party agreed to contact Theia. Bronn warned of the dangers of using the sending spell, and so Willow let Bronn use her magical messaging stone to speak to Theia.

Doomoodpool was visited twice by outsiders. First by three duergar demanding slaves from the Archpriestess. The first duergar was zapped to death by the might of Blipdoolpoolp. The second was torn to shreds. And the third was drowned to appease the Sea Mother. The second visitation was by Theia, and riled up in a zealous rage, the kuo-toa were ready to attack. As the party scrambled to prevent almost fifty kuo-toa from bombarding their much needed ally, Theia made a show of her shadowy powers and also revealed that a dragon was on its way. Once the kuo-toa had been washed aside or lulled to sleep by magic, the purple-scaled face of a huge dragon appeared behind Theia. The dragon's feline smile curled wide and opened to reveal rows of sharp teeth and a bright beam of light spilling from the dragon's maw. In a flash of light, Fholtarr and Theia were down, and Sannl was dead.

In the dark reflection of Doomoodpool, Galad asked his shadow to delve into the bottomless darkness that Gwathren seemed to love so much, but the two halves of his soul could not see eye to eye, and Gwathren drew Daeszal's Fang, ready to strike. Familiar with his opponent's weapon, Galad circumvented his soul's capture by focusing a spell into himself, stopping his heart.

The purple dragon was pushed back through the collapsing tunnels, and Bronn and Fholtarr decided to give chase. Unable to accurately calculate the direction and distance of their dimension door spells, the two had to abandon the chase. Back in Doomoodpool, Percy revivified Sannl, returning the slain diviner to life.

Split in two, yet still connected past death, Galad had to face his shadow once more. As his halved soul was guided to its afterlife, Galad was stopped by Gwathren and the temptations of Daeszal. The demon commanded the shadow to take him, but Galad's faith carried him on, bringing him before the light of Soliel Felessa herself. The heroine welcomed Galad into the light and forgave him his shortcomings, promising him that the demon would face judgement with or without Galad. In the afterlife, Soliel was gone, but her daughter Helieth had appeared in her place, next to Seraphina Zokesh and a host of deva angels. The dryads that perished at Tol'Anar on the day Galad had returned to life were there as well, presenting him with the bow he had crafted from the Sky Tree. Contemplating his fate, Galad strode into a desert heaven with peace as his sole companion.

## Alt-Campaign session 3: Camp Zeroth and Beyond

August 7, 2018

On the 4th Fireday, Crown, 852, Altruism and his party of ghoul slayers, do-gooders, and assorted allies were trekking ever closer to Camp Zeroth on their path to Galoz Klyth and Altruism's clan's artifact.

In the Windblown Wastes, the party was attacked by ghouls in a blinding sandstorm. After defeating the monsters, the party was hit by a powerful whirlwind, which separated the party members and nearly killed Quiet. When the sandstorm subsided, the party got to Camp Zeroth. Mehen earned enough *EggsP* to level up, and we're using collective milestones from now on.

In Camp Zeroth, Hemakshi recognized a person from her drawings, and told him to join their quest. This person, a desert elf called Adran Onnurai, employed by the local authorities, didn't take too kindly to this strange and sudden imperative from a complete stranger. Adran fetched a medicine man of his people, Xeteraenon Naïlo, to cleanse Hemakshi of her "desert malady", but instead, Xeteraenon spoke telepathically to Hemakshi, and told Adran to trust his new adventuring companions. After also speaking to Amirr, Mehen, and Alt, Adran agreed to work for them as a guide in the desert.

Ahmad Ol-Ahmad found a different protector in Halmdin Ol-Akarim, and he joined up with the Golden Hope to investigate the disappearances of poor and infernal people.

Magret bought herself a cowboy hat, and Quiet a matching one. Then the two of them and Balthazar went out for a night of fun, while the others caroused.

As part of this round of carousing, Altruism had a whirlwind romance with a local tiefling called Virtue, which incidentally is also Altruism's dad's name (a fact Irene had forgotten when she stated this, much to the amusement of the rest of us). Key and Amirr managed to get themselves into local legend, as they won a small fortune each, and they also got some good PR done throughout the evening.

In the night, there was some trouble with a few tribal refugees being arrested by guards for theft, vandalism, and disturbing the peace. Mehen convinced the guards to allow most of the refugees to return to their camps, except for this one boy, who had a pair of lion gloves, a knife, and an assortment of jewelry on his person. The jewelry was given back to the vandalized shop's owner. The shop was repaired with mending by Hemakshi. The knife and the gloves were taken by the guards, but Hemakshi managed to snatch the gloves with a mage hand.

Adran's employer, a tiefling known as Executrix Melidai was impressed with Hemakshi (because of a high carousing roll) and agreed to help find a good home for Quiet, while the party advances into the perilous desert. The next day, the party went to visit Quiet's new home and say their goodbyes. This home, as it happens, was the family home of Alt's recent fling, Virtue, and a couple of middle-aged tiefling dads. Magret promised to come back for Quiet once the mission is over.

As the party headed out of the camp, they witnessed a visit from Satrap Azi Lu-Khadin. The old satrap appeared to have some sort of agreement with the owner of the shop that was vandalized in the night, possibly involving protection money or blackmailing. The party also stopped by a crowd collected around a doomsayer, telling of the end of days, and warning people against trusting the authorities. The party managed to ridicule the doomsayer, and spin it into a PR stunt for the Ghoul Hunters when a stirge swooped down and attacked Amirr. When Amirr blasted the stirge to pieces, a wild magic surge happened, forming a sphere of darkness around Amirr, which Hemakshi dispelled.

Eventually, the party managed to leave the camp, and on the 4th Ashday, Moon of the Crown, 852 CL, they entered the Burning Valley and fought a band of smoke mephits. They also found an ancient statue of dwarven make, which contained a fire elemental spirit, which can be woken by blood.

In the night, a draconic individual and their large guard drake came by the party. Adran, Mehen, and Amirr approached the figure who presented herself as Jhiraaj, a red dragonborn from Jharuul, and his guard drake as Ix. (Jhiraaj is pronoun indifferent and subtly changes shape to slightly mirror those around them. They also have wings!)

On the 4th Saintsday, the party, now consisting of Alt & Burbas, Mehen & Paarthurnax, Hemakshi & Eyes, Magret & Balthazar, Key & Amirr, Jhiraaj & Ix, and several camels, absolutely destroyed a pack of hell hounds. Amirr's magic missile was a little too wild and had to be stopped by Hemakshi's shield spell. Then the imp Yezmeniev (the same imp that they had met at the Crossroads) appeared, announcing that they had completed his first challenge. Then he challenged them to create a new hell hound using the charred remains of burnt skin and hair left over from the defeated fiends. The party improvised a "hell hound" by summoning a fiendish steed in the form of a big black dog. Yezmeniev disapproved and told them he would have their souls if they failed. They cast dragon's breath with fire on the steed. Yezmeniev laughed and told them they still hadn't completed the task. Amirr challenged this, but Yezmeniev boasted and reiterated that they hadn't used the remains of the slain hell hounds. Amirr responded by adding a bit of the burned stuff to their home-made hell hound. The imp shrieked in defeat and allowed Amirr to use his trident as promised.

Amirr and Mehen went back to the Crossroads to fetch the trident, while the others slowly pressed on, venturing into the Chimera Oases, where they found an illusory watering hole and were attacked by undead zombies and skeletons. After the battle, the party found a secret dungeon entrance concealed by the illusion. In the night, Jhiraaj sent out his guard drake Ix to scout, and Hemakshi recognized that he was seeing through the drake, not unlike her own situation with her familiar Eyes. Hemakshi peered into Jhiraaj's mind and felt all the senses of Ix as her own. The guard drake was scouting in the east, where it spotted the tower the party was seeking. Then a sandstorm came rolling westward with a roar. This roar awoke thoughts of family and grief in Jhiraaj, who seemed to then catch on to the detection of her thoughts. They awoke as Hemakshi withdrew her spell, and Jhiraaj seemed to think that Burbas was the one peering into their mind. Hemakshi and Jhiraaj exchanged a few words, and the wizard learned a few things about the dragonborn. Come morning, Jhiraaj journeyed, while the party awaited Amirr and Mehen's return.

On the first two days of the Moon of the Dragon, the party explored the Chimera Oases, experiencing a nature documentary from inside *Leomund's tiny hut* next to a real watering hole. From the corpse of an elephant, Hemakshi got a piece of cloth containing an old necromancy spell. With the aid of a being Hemakshi calls Adrika, she uncovered the nature of the spell. Adrika visited upon Hemakshi a vision. With a low mountain hovering in the horizon, and a golden light from above, the vision took the form of an elephant from an old Zabrabani story. As in the story, the elephant was seeking a watering hole, and as it walked and walked, it never found one. While it was busy looking for water, the elephant had died without even noticing, so it just kept walking. The spell is called *animate beast* and functions much like a cross between animate dead and dominate beast.

Once Mehen and Amirr returned, the party headed into the dungeon under the fake oasis where the undead had come from. Inside, the dungeon appeared to be an old crypt or temple devoted to Asmodeus and his servants that arrived in Thindrel during the Infernal Invasion of Sinria. Only Burbas'Tel and the camels stayed outside. After much investigation of a puzzle room, Mehen managed to solve the code by dumb luck, as he pressed tile number 6 three times in a row. In the final room, an old man woke from his undead slumber and demanded to be fed, but his hunger would not subside, no matter how much food the party gave him. it escalated to a fight, and the old man and his skeletal minions proved a challenge for the party. The party's familiars were burned, and both Amirr and the new guide Adran were greatly wounded when Hemakshi removed her mask, revealing a pair of functional, golden eyes, glowing with a deadly radiance from the decades-old scars on her face. With Hemakshi and Mehen's combined radiance, and with the help of their allies, the old man was crushed under the maul of Tyr's dragonborn servant, and a just vengeance was enacted against the undead and the forces of the Hells.

With no time to loot the place, the party was called by Burbas' voice and the sound of battle from outside. Altruism was the first to react, and as he stepped up through the stairs, he saw the source of the noise. He knew then that his plan had worked, but he did not know if he was ready to face an angel in combat. Glorael, the Whitehand, wings outstretched and covered in crimson flames, stood before Alt and his thrall, pointing a HEAVENLY SWORD at their HORNS and FANGS.

## The Hilarious Hijinks Has Had Honourable Hobgoblins Hastely Hitting Horrifying Hags Heroically Part 3

July 19, 2018

The Advantage arrived at the island of Dorotea, here Random and Tera caroused in the City of Pascual, where they learned of a smith, who worked on magic items. Needless to say they where intriqued, and went to the village called... I wanna say Damian? (I'm an excellent DM who writes things down). The smith told them that his weapons and his daugther had been taken to the abandoned village Tristan (that one I'm pretty sure about). In Tristan the party med the Four Brave Maidens, a small militia of young women from Damian, who where sick of the "my daughter has been taken by goblins"-trope, and decided to take things into their own hands. The four maidens where Ana, the twins Ynes and Ysabela and of course an angry high-elvish warrior lady - Feera the Furious (Astrid's cool new character).

The party soon learned, that the local hobgoblin tribe wanted Matilde, the smith's 12 years, 11 months and 20 days old daughter. What followed was a hobgoblin siege of Tristan, a clever use of the hat of disguise and the child sized Teera, exchanges of magic weapons, the hobgoblin captain Sark offered plenty of gold if the party could kill his betrothed Yvelda on their wedding day, and of course, as Random suspected all along, it was all an elaborate ruse, orchestrated by Yvelda, so she could get her daugther back, the minut she turned 13. Needles to say, the hags where hacked to pieces along with her daughter.

## One-Shot: Lo-Tha In the Sky with Diamonds

July 18 I think, 2018

Lo-Tha and Moraan found themselves in a githyanki city built on the corpse of a power. The locals were all put in stasis by a psionic disturbance, and the two had to team up with a gish and her party to stop an aboleth from rekindling and consuming the power's lost godhood from within. With aid from a band of einherjar, conjured with a horn of Valhalla, the party slew the aboleth and its servants. Lo-Tha also found a second stone similar to the one that was embedded in her forehead when she first entered the Astral Plane.

## Ragna story session 1: The Wolf Thing

July 17 and 18, 2018

Ragna journeyed to Lohkenor and went to Úlfurþingid to beseech the masters of lycanthropy. her way was fraught with fey trickery and mysterious strangers, but also some allies. An old man and his sons asked for direction to the wolf thing but seemed to then walk the wrong way. Wereboars attacked Ragna's party. On the first day of the summer solstice events at the wolf thing, a strange high elf attacked and killed one of the were pack leaders. It was all very complicated, but then the day was saved (-ish?) and Ragna decided to seek training with Algrim the Black and his pack of werewolves.

## Session 47: Scales

July 11, 2018

The party huddled up in a small hut in Doomoodpool with their new ally Jooprin Maneater, setting plans for the upcoming ritual. They agreed on a plan to impress the archpriestess, and convince them that the sacrifices appease the goddess and that the party is indeed sent by Blipdoolpoolp.

During the ritual, the party noticed a fifth sacrifice being dragged up to the drowning pool under the statue of Blipdoolpoolp. This half-elven woman seemed conscious in a way the sacrifices supplied by the party didn't, and a stray cat appeared to urge Kelp to help the woman. The party combined their skills to save the half-elf while impressing the kuo-toa with an awesome display of divine judgement. When Ugologu went to drown the half-elf, Willow finished her *water breathing* spell, and Kelp, Percy, and Bronn cooperated to fabricate a watery avatar of the kuo-toa goddess. After saving the half-elf and gaining the favour of the kuo-toa, the party got to know the half-elf, who introduced herself as Beatris Louhi. In the wake of the ritual, Galad snuck out of the town to investigate an approaching figure, who turned out to be Fholtarr Thunderblood. The now somewhat larger party gained lodging for a month in a fine hut in Doomoodpool.

For their long rest, the party stayed together, guarded by a couple of kuo-toa. Sannl had a dream in which the trolls of Grurg and the trolls of Otrolden worked together. Willow had a dream of her time in the Feywild, on the paths of Spring and among the Summer Court (level up to 10). Bronn had a brief dream of Kanilm Foheen and Mara Calladar in the heavenly Dome of Strength in Kavaad, featuring a sickly green mist. Percy had a dream of a city on a river and a mysterious figure, giving her a strange déjà vu. For the first time in eighty or so years, Galad actually went to sleep as well, and in his dreams, he faced multiple shadows in a dimly lit tunnel, and behind him was a glowing silhouette and a golden tiefling woman wearing symbols of Soliel Felessa.

In the morning, the party set out to find Mara Calladar. On the way to her, Galad briefly encountered a purple dragon. Attracted by the party's telepathic contact with Calladar, a swarm of cranium rats appeared and tried to capture the party, dominating Bronn for an hour, before only a single cranium rat escaped the party's vengeance. Back in Doomoodpool, Fholtarr helped Beatris to learn the *sending* spell, and Bronn asked Mara Calladar a few questions. Beatris offered to help Mara Calladar safely out of the Underdark, and the two left for a drow outpost called Ryldz'tes. With information from Mara, Sir Bronn presented his theories on the Ashen Fist and the history of Kavaad and the kingdom's royal line. The party then discussed what to do with the spellcasters, if/when they find them.

During the discussions, Galad saw a shadow pass by outside their hut. He followed it outside the settlement, with the party following a few blocks behind him. In a cavernous alcove, he encountered his shadow, Gwathren, accompanied by two other shadows. Despite Galad's attempts at reconciliation, the shadows coldly carried out their ambush, weakening Galad and his arriving allies. Theia Riverfang's shadow was stopped from pursuing Galad by a living, breathing Theia Riverfang wielding the Bow of the River. Gwathren took Galad with him into the Realm of Shadow. Kelp defeated Theia's shadow with her mighty hammer, allowing Theia to use her shadow magic to take back her shadow. Willow tore Leonara Meisent's shadow to shreds with her newly acquired *primal savagery*. In the aftermath of the fight, Theia disappeared, Willow was finally restored of her hoarding madness, and a purple dragon nearly flew off with Bronn, if not for his *dimension door* spell. Not knowing much of Galad's fate, the party took a long rest (Bronn levelled up to 9).

## One-shot: Clans and Plans

July 9, 2018

Over the summer of 852 CL, Fholtarr Thunderblood acted as head of his clan on behalf of his father who was leading the Blue Dragonflight on the frontlines near Auria. During this time, he spoke to the dukes of Jharuul and to Akkorak Firestorm, discussing the matters of the clans. Fholtarr also found time to do much needed research, and after persuading Amara Blackscale to join the battle against the undead, Fholtarr himself set out as well, leaving his mother and sister in charge. Through the council of Amara Blackscale and other experienced war tacticians, Fholtarr became a war mage, shedding his focus on transmutation.

## One-shot: Two Warlocks Walk Into a Desert

June 8, 2018

A warlock was walking from Athoran to Qorath. On his way, he encountered a walled-in settlement, guarded by magic and jackalweres. At first, the settlement seemed empty and abandoned, but once he drank from the local well, he saw the town bustling with life. Fearful, he ran, and returned his attention towards Qorath. In the night, the warlock witnessed another pact-sworn mage unleash harmful spell upon a caravan in the distance. The warlock fought well, but the other mage, a deathlock, slew the people of the caravan and reanimated their corpses, all while the warlock was restrained by a spectral skeleton. When the deathlock approached the warlock to go in for the kill, the warlock released his innate and eldritch powers upon the deathlock. As the deathlock fell, his *armor of Agathys* spell rendered the warlock unconscious.

## Alt-Campaign session 2: The Scorched Dunes

June 3, 2018

After slaying a band of goblinoids, Altruism, Burbas'Tel, Mehen, Paarthurnax, Magret, Balthazar, Amirr, Key, Hemakshi, Eyes, Quiet, and the party's three camels still had a long way to go before they would reach Camp Zeroth. First, they rested at the literal fork-in-the-road devil's trident that was stuck in the ground at the crossroads.

After having camped out through the day's warmest hours in a *Leomund's tiny hut* provided by Hemakshi, the party made their way east, in the direction of Camp Zeroth and Galoz Klyth.

Looting dead manticores was the most dangerous part of the whole game.

Burbas'Tel was CREEPY as ALWAYS.

## Session 46: Flesh and Stone

May 10, 2018

Following a somewhat troubled long rest, the party was left in the Underdark without a guide. However, they still had Grurgblimgnerrg's directions to the kuo-toa settlement of Doomoodpool and the svirfneblin ruins of their late guide's hometown beyond.

Once everyone was awake, they discussed the strange brain-like creature that Galad had slain in the night, concluding that Grurgblimgnerrg was likely an intellect devourer. Willow, Galad, and Kelp, who had all previously encountered such creatures presented what little they knew, and the party started talking about the Makate tribe and the rumors that their chieftain may be a green dragon and that several of its members are intellect devourers.

The party's morning conversations were interrupted by the scuttling sound of a swarm of rats. Hundreds of rats with dim lights pulsing from their scalps ran past the party's place of rest before the party set off toward Doomoodpool, coinciding with the path where the rats had come from. Delving deeper into the dark, the party found a small tunnel leading off from the main path, and they heard a strange singing from up ahead. The singers turned out to be kuo-toa — zealous fish people. Between Kelp and Sannl's knowledge of the world below and its denizens, and Kelp's training in Undercommon, the party managed to device a plan to gain the favor of the kuo-toa. Willow transformed into a giant lobster to imitate the kuo-toa goddess Blibdoolpoolp, and with Kelp as her herald, they successfully impressed the kuo-toa party's leader. The fish people quickly devoted themselves to Lobster-Willow, eager to present her and her "sacrifices" (companions) to their archpriestess.

On their way to Doomoodpool, the party and their new allies passed seven duergar guards without trouble, thanks to Sannl giving the duargar a bloodstone that she had birthed from her forehead while affected by wild magic. The duergar seemed happy with this payment, but less than an hour later, the party encountered another group of duergar. This time, the duergar were lead by a gorgon-riding, tentacle-armed duergar called Otiskar Blackscream. The party tried to evade the duergar, but Otiskar Blackscream commanded his men to capture or kill the party and combat broke out between the two groups. After an intense battle, in which both Varoin and Percy had been petrified by the gorgon's breath, the party persevered and freed a number of the duergar's slaves. The petrified victims, except for two kuo-toa-made-stone were restored shortly after the encounter.

In the fight, Blackscream had fallen, and afterwards Bronn picked up his longsword and identified it as a *mind blade*—a psychic weapon tied to the mind of its creator—and discovered that Blackscream's mind had become trapped within the sword. However, the blade proved impossible for attunement.

Some of the duergars' slaves died to a *tidal wave* from Willow Stormborn, and most of the surviving ones were mentally absent and appeared to have been experimented on in strange and disturbing ways. Of the surviving slaves, the most aware was a woman in tattered wizard's robes who cautiously presented herself as Mara Calladar. Percy and the kavaadic locals of the party, Bronn and Kelp, recognized her by name as the latest apprentice of Kanilm Foheen and questioned her on what she knew, but they didn't learn much from that. Sannl and Bronn went around and identified each of the survivors they had freed, learning that Mara Calladar was under the effect of a powerful abjuration effect similar to the *mind blank* spell and cursed to never be able to return to the Westbank Woods.

After looting the slain duergar of some electrum pieces and cephalopod motif adamantine amulets, the party went with the kuo-toa and the former slaves of the duergar to the kuo-toa city of Doomoodpool. On their way there, they fought a pair of ray-like creatures called cloakers, that they managed to scare off with a daylight spell and a number of offensive spells. When Doomoodpool was near, Willow became a lobster once again and the party's kuo-koa guide Jooprin introduced them to his rival Ugologu and their leader, Archpriestess Blipoolipl of Blipdoolpoolp. With Kelp Blackheart negotiating on the party's behalf, the archpriestess nearly had the party captured and sacrificed, but Kelp managed to deescalate the situation and assure the kuo-toa that they had come bearing gifts, and that their leader, Lobster-Willow, was a holy emissary of Blipdoolpoolp. Thus the party was spared and welcomed as guests, while the freed slaves they had brought along with them were imprisoned by the kuo-toa, with the exception of Mara Calladar, whom Galad had cast *invisibility* on — an opportunity for escape that Calladar took, despite that not being Galad's intention.

The party was invited to the grand ritual later the same day they had arrived, where the kuo-toa would perform a great sacrifice to their god and learn if Blipdoolpoolp truly did favour Lobster-Willow and her party. To plan for the upcoming ceremony, Jooprin, the party's guide in Doomoodpool who had also helped them in the battle against Otiskar Blackscream, asked to talk with the party in their designated hut where they were resting. As we left off, the party was discussing the fate of the missing spellcasters and about to plan their next move.

## The Crazy, Compelling, Carefully Coordinated Continuing Cruise part 2

April 15, 2018

The crew landed on the isle of Sjatsø, an island with weird names, and weirder accents. Here the guard captain hired some of the crew, namely Random, Tera and Heral, to help her put an end to whatever was taking the cattle from the farms of the island. Over the next couple of days the party traveled to the various farms, asking around and gathering clues. It slowly became evident, that they where chasing a terrifying monster with glowing red eyes. They gathered some supplies, and where joined by Meriele, a barbarian c-elf. Eventually they managed to chase down the monster and defeat it. Of course this was only the first of the party's problems as it turned out the island was secretly ruled by a coven of witches. Only Random realized this truth, but she failed to convince anyone of the truth.

## Alt-Campaign session 1: The Road to Thorothar

March 18, 2018

Altruism and Burbas'Tel met up with Mehen Myastan in the Red Seal Inn in Kavaad, and once they had discussed their upcoming quest, Mehen bid Yosefka farewell, and the small party set out on their journey to Thorothar.

First they stopped by Syllior to check in with their allies and friends. Kass declined Altruism's offer to join their quest, having decided to focus on her family and her new life in the Citadel. However, right as the party of three turned around on one friendly, spear-wielding half-orc fighter lady, they saw another friendly, spear-wielding half-orc fighter lady right before them — this one followed by a westie. They approached the woman and promptly bombarded her with hot chicken wings and information regarding their quest. And thus Magret Twice-Orphaned joined the party.

Before leaving Syllior, Altruism sought out Lady Willow in case she had returned to her keep. Alt was met instead by Admiral Viviel Onnurai and Sir Estos Banadir, who were leading a party of 30 or so soldiers. The Admiral informed Alt and Mehen that the Warden had not returned, but she deflected any inquiry regarding her current mission. Sir Estos, who had heard of Altruism's quest, asked the Lohkenorian to return with a trinket if he were to visit Ossor. This was not their destination, however, and so the party — now four (and a dog) — took the first ship to Sinria's coast, where they planned to walk around the City of Devils to reach Behera — the last stop before the wastelands of Thorothar.

When the ship got to Sinria, the passengers were instructed to go below deck while the captain and crew steered the ship into the bay and docked it in the city's harbor. The party, who had specifically asked to be docked outside the city, and had been promised such by the crew, where suspicious. Magret sent Balthazar, her fluffy familiar to scout, as colourful Sinrian nobles boarded the deck and exchanged a number of wooden crates with the crew, who then left. Armed guards then streamed onto the ship, following Balthazar down into the cabins. As Alt, Mehen, and Magret devised an escape plan with the other passengers, they noticed that Burbas'Tel was no longer with them. With most of the passengers scared and unarmed, the party attempted to negotiate their way out at first, when the cabin was flooded with guards, but they failed to intimidate the yuan-ti slaver who had apparently purchased them and the other passengers. A battle broke out on the ship, in which Alt, Margret, and Mehen killed the yuan-ti slaver and several of his somewhat snake-like guards. With a mighty dragon's roar, Mehen frightened the remaining guards, leading them to flee out into an ambush set by Burbas'Tel. The vampire spawn feasted well on the slaver's guards.

After the party had captured the ship and defeated their captors, they quickly departed the cliffside docks of Sinria, narrowly escaping another troop of guards who were chasing after a tiefling child who managed to make it aboard the ship as it sailed away. While Altruism looted the bodies of the dead guards, Mehen and Magret saw to it that the newly arrived tiefling and the other passengers were all safe and unscathed. Once Magret had removed the three gold rings from the trifling girl's neck, she spoke with a frail voice, shyly introducing herself as Quiet. The party made sure to arm the other passengers before they docked a few miles south of Sinria, where they split up. Magret asked if Quiet wanted to go with the party or with the other passengers, and Quiet, who had befriended Magret's familiar Balthazar at this point, chose to go with the party.

The following day, the party arrived in the Sinrian town of Behera, which marks the last stop before the border to Thorothar. In the colorful markets of Behera, the party stocked up on rations and desert gear, hired a monster hunters' guild to aid them in their quest, and were joined by a strange fortuneteller, called Hemakshi, who had awaited the party's arrival. The monster hunters Key and Amirr lead the party to the Smiling Sphinx, a cheap but comfortable inn, which also serves as a home for stray cats. A hooded individual warned the party of "the evil tail" while they were navigating the streets of Behera. As the party and their new companions were heading out to the desert the next day, they were set upon by yuan-ti assassins, one of whom towered over even Key the goliath, as it rose above the crowd, revealing a large serpentine tail where its legs should be. In the ensuing battle, one of the yuan-ti was slain by Quiet, who had recently been gifted a dagger by Magret. The remaining assassins fell prey to a *slow* spell and a whole lot of damage. Once the combat was over, Mehen explained the situation to some Beheran town guards, and the party went their way. The last thing the adventurers did before heading into the desert was to purchase a few camels, which they got at a discount for stopping a thief from stealing the beasts from the camel broker. With Paarthurnax and three camels in tow, the party formed a small caravan and journeyed east, following the light from Altruism's sunstone.

Following the desert trail, the party came across a few refugees accompanied by a guard from Camp Zeroth, who were going to Behera. The guard warned the party of giant lizards and scorpions, but when the party later encountered such creatures, they seemed to keep their distance form the caravan; the lizards were intimidated by Paarthurnax. The party's caravan was later approached by four horse riders: three humans and a dwarf. The four riders greeted the party, introduced themselves as members of the Golden Hope, and joined the caravan for a few hours before galloping off at full speed. This caused some annoyance among the monster hunters Key and Amirr, who considered the Golden Hope a rival guild within their line of work. The leader of the four riders, Huntmaster Halmdin Ol-Akarim, revealed that he and his companions were searching for clues in a case involving a number of disappearances among lower-class Beherans and Thorothan refugees. While Halmdin and his crew were still in the caravan, the group was stopped by a band of twelve camel-riding warriors. These warriors demanded a toll of 1 silver per head (not including tiny pets/familiars) on behalf of a person whom the warriors called "Satrap Azi Lu-Khadin". Hemakshi, the fortuneteller who had joined the party in Behera, gladly payed the measly sum for her party, as Halmdin payed for his men and camels. With the satrap's warriors out of their hair, the party was free to continue east, and some time after the riders from the Golden Hope had left the caravan behind, the party saw a handful of figures across the twilit dunes. The party approached and were greeted by some tribal hunters who gladly shared their fire and stories of their lion gods. By dawn, the tribespeople were gone, and there were lion footsteps in the sand.

On their second day in the desert, the party reached a fork in the road: both a crossroads, and a literal devil's fork planted in the ground where the paths crossed. Despite their attempts, none of the party members managed to wedge the large fork out of the ground, and so they chose to continue straight ahead to Camp Zeroth. While cresting over a dune under the morning sun, the party encountered a band of bugbears and goblins, whom they decided to attack. The goblinoids were disorganized but managed to hold out until Mehen was upon them. In a few swift motions, while empowered by Hemakshi's *haste* spell, Mehen dispatched the bugbear chieftain and the two remaining bugbears, smiting them asunder, and sending their heads tumbling in the sand. As the last goblin was fleeing, Altruism sent Burbas'Tel to kill it, leaving no survivors. After looting the bodies of the slain goblinoids, the party prepared to head further into the DESOLATE LAND of THOROTHAR.

## Session 45: The Treacherous Tunnels

March 4, 2018

Having made their way through the Cave of Illusions, the party sent Orm back to Otrolden and made their way into the sewer-like tunnel of dwarven make before them. The tunnel went down and out of the wild magic zone, and into the dark unknown. After an hour of walking, the tunnel's walls were littered with enormous holes dug by a purple worm, and the earth shook with a mighty tremor, as one such worm passed through the tunnel only a few meters ahead, while the party hid in the area of a *silence* spell cast by Sir Bronn. After averting this encounter, the party proceeded with caution. Along the long straight tunnel, the party found a small abandoned camp, seemingly left behind by Kavaadic explorers weeks before. Willow picked up most of the useful equipment from the camp. When the party later encountered some strange plants, Galad kept his distance and Willow collected a few samples. After crossing paths with some goblins, a few giant lizards, and a dead ox, the party came to a T-section where the tunnel met a larger, but similar tunnel. Sannl laid cards to find the way, and determined that going left would bring both weal and woe, as Galad suggested flipping a coin, and Bronn tried to identify any difference between the two paths. With Grimna and Varoin in tow, the party went right.

The tunnel stretched on and on, and the party walked through it for several hours before they came to a large natural cavern in the middle of the tunnel's path. A number of gricks hidden on the rough stone floor attacked the party, but were quickly dispatched. After the battle, Percy went spelunking in a system of small tunnels, where she found a lone deep gnome by the name Grurgblimgnerrg. This gnome appeared to be ancient, grumpy, and suspicious. After learning that some among the party had magical abilities, the gnome offered to guide them to the "strange beings who collect spellcasters from the surface". Grurgblimgnerrg guided the party safely past a number of umber hulks, gricks, and carnivorous giant lizards, to an alcove where they could rest under Willow's protection.

While the others were asleep, Galad saw a dark, elven silhouette luring over Kelp and the party's newfound guide. Galad leapt at the shadow, but grasped nothing, and when he returned to the protective bubble, the shadow was gone, and the guide was dead. The skidding sound of a small creature running met Galad's eardrums, and as he sprang to action (and rolled a 31 perception check), he saw the form of a fleeing intellect devourer. With decisive action (and just enough damage with a guiding bolt), he slew the intellect devourer and collected its gross remains. In the next few hours, when the others were woken for their watch, they were told of the night's events, and Percy gave the deep gnome a burial after finding an unnatural stab wound in his neck. After a long rest, the party is left without a guide, but they still have his directions to the kuo-toa settlement of Doomoodpool and the svirfneblin ruins of Grurgblimgnerrg's hometown.

## Session 44: Otrolden

February 18, 2018

After a battle with trolls, the party collected themselves, as the figure rising from the lake showed herself to be none other than Kelp Blackheart, heralded by a *guardian of faith* which then slew the handful of goblins that had heard the commotion and rushed to pick off the remains. As Kelp was introduced to Willow's new adventuring companions, the party crossed the lake on foot to take a short rest. Galad took Kelp aside to ask her how she'd been doing for the past year, and Kelp shared some of her recent journey. Persephone scouted the area to determine the path forward, and after a brief situation with an ochre jelly which had spawned from Grimna Bronzebraid's snot, the party took the tunnel that was the least overgrown and the best illuminated.

The farther they walked, the brighter the diffuse light hanging in the air became, and with it, the stranger magic behaved. In a shaft-like cavernous hub, with troll-made rope bridges, the party encountered a curious orchid, which seemed to possess some form of sentience and magical ability. A few of the party members, Kelp in particular, attempted to communicate with the orchid, asking it for directions to the deep gnomes. The orchid didn't seem to offer any helpful reply, and the party continued. After climbing down the stars and crossing a treacherous bridge from the hub into a cave system filled with blue fireflies, the party found a lone troll, fishing for earthgliding lungfish. Bronn warned the party of the troll, suggesting a plan of attack (but the DM had drawn the troll, and the players found it too cute to kill). Galad tried to talk to the troll, but ultimately failed to communicate outside of simple gestures, but when the troll greeted him in Undercommon, Kelp stepped up and befriended the troll. The troll introduced himself as Orm and offered to lead the party to his hometown of Otrolden where they would find the chieftain Makmut who could help them find the deep gnome village called Quarzendorf.

On their way to Otrolden, Kelp and Galad connected some more, and though Galad didn't reveal himself, Kelp got the distinct feeling that the elf before her wasn't an entirely new acquaintance.

In Otrolden, the party was met with some skepticism, but thanks to their troll friend Orm, they were safely introduced to Otrolden's chieftain, Makmut the Wise. Makmut presented a story of how long ago, he and the rival tribe Grurg's chieftain, Urgar, once found the secret location of the village of Quarzendorf, but their envy and rivalry caused them to lose the secret location, and now neither of them can find it without the other, and their rivalry has only grown.

The party was allowed to rest in Otrolden, and after arguably swindling a local merchant and then carousing heavily, they all got a full night's rest. During their carousing hours, Willow updated Kelp on what had happened on Tol'Anar, Sir Bronn inquired Sannl Fireforge about the prophecies of her monastery to uncover the secrets of the recent civil war in Kavaad, and somehow Willow was incorporated into Otrolden mythology as "the Great Eagle that Reigns Supreme in the Surface World". During their rest, Galad woke Kelp to confess to his identity, and Kelp, who had basically already found out that he was Bryn, accepted him and went back to sleep. This left Galad a little confused and underwhelmed.

As new spells were being prepared over breakfast the next day, Kelp took a few minutes to cast divination, asking Osprem for directions to Quarzendorf. Osprem answered her, assuring her that "her new friends would help her find the way". Then Orm guided the party to the Cave of Illusions, where Makmut remembers being with Urgar back when they found the deep gnomes' village. The cave itself was filled with pools and small lakes, both in the floor and the ceiling, and the party was subject to a number of strange effects and sensations that could have driven them mad or killed them, but they managed to pull through and navigate to the other side of the cave unscathed. On their way, they picked up a small, intricate key from the corpse of a long-dead goblin. When we left off, the party was staring down a long tunnel with clear signs of dwarven masonry.

## Session 43: Down Below

February 9, 2018

On the eve of the Summer Solstice, the party met up in the werewolf Finildan's old cave, and prepared themselves for the journey into the Underdark to find the missing spellcasters. Accompanied by three dwarves from the Monastery of Barendein, Lady Willow, Galad, Percy, and Sir Bronn carefully joined a party of ten hobgoblins who were headed into the ravine near Hoghill Forest. With the hobgoblins' knowledge of the area, the party managed to circumvent the stirge swarms, giant spiders, and dungeon traps on their way down. After a full day's travel, the party split off from the hobgoblins, who were headed into an iron mine, where their captain, Okriyet, awaited them. Sannl Fireforge and Percy managed to find a safe place to rest for the night, protected by Sannl's *faithful hound* and Willow's *hearth of moonlight and shadow*.

After a few days in the Underdark, the party had stumbled into a goblin den on the outskirts of a troll town, where most of them had hidden invisibly or as tiny inconspicuous bugs, but Percy had to disguise herself as a goblin and pretend to fit in, when the troll in charge of the goblins' care picked her up. A wide-eyed goblin had taken a liking to Percy in her goblin disguise and followed her when she *dimension door'*ed away, only for Percy to knock the goblin unconscious with her mace. Galad quickly slit the goblin's throat to ensure the party's escape into the dimly lit tunnels leading away from the goblin den and its accompanying troll town.

The party followed the light into a series of caves lit by a dim orange glow, occasionally flickering in other hues. Here a single troll scout managed to find them, as they were taking a short rest under Willow's hearth. At first, Sir Bronn attacked the troll, but the fighting ended quickly when Willow put the troll to sleep with a *sleep* spell. The spell also conjured a friendly unicorn, which disappeared after a minute. The party left the sleeping troll behind, and ventured deeper into the dimly lit caves, where they found glowing mushrooms and bioluminescent lichen on the stone walls.

In the dim orange light, the party found an isolated cave with a small, slightly acidic lake where a single troll was fishing peacefully for pale, eye-less fish. After some wonky dialogue between the party, the troll, and the troll's five friends who arrived a little later, combat ensued. When the party started throwing spells around, strange effects followed. For example, Varoin was covered in a sphere of magical darkness, Grimna grew a third eye for a minute, Sannl birthed a bloodstone gem from her forehead, and Galad temporarily gained the ability to climb on walls and even upside-down on ceilings. Once the party discovered the trolls' weakness to fire, the trolls died one by one, but Varoin Goldenplate was close to death several times during the battle.

Amidst the fighting, a figure had risen from the pool's dark and sour water. The figure quickly joined in the combat, summoning a spectral guardian of faith wielding a massive trident and a shield emblazoned with the holy symbol of Osprem.

## One-shot: Journey to the Whirlcurrents

February 9, 2018

Kelp Blackheart, Habla Seafroth, and High Priest Coras left Syllior on the 1st Towerday, Moon of the Tree, 852 CL (the same day as Ragna's reincarnation), for their great journey to Osprem's realm in the Elemental Plane of Water. In the first weeks, as their crew tired themselves against the wind and waves, Habla enchanted the ship's oars to row themselves. When they reached Eenhaven, some of the crew left the ship to do business in the city, while Coras' expedition continued west. In the Skipping Islands, Kelp went swimming with the sea lions, eventually befriending one, and naming it Kim. Kelp gave Kim a tight braid in its mane, hoping to recognize the sea lion another time.

As time went on and the islands became few and far between, Coras gave Habla lessons in leadership and Kelp time to explore the Green Sea. As they crossed from the Near Islands to the Far Islands, Kelp had seen underwater temples in coral reefs, sunken and plundered pirate ships, uninhabited islands, and a floating cloud giant city.

Eventually, the journey took them to Keramma's homeland of Ta'ainitu, where they had to pass the harpy reef without being lured in by the enchanting song. Before reaching the reef, Coras awkwardly inquired the others about their "orientation", and warning them of the harpies' songs. Habla instantly volunteered to be bound to a mast, and though Coras assured Kelp that the harpies weren't tall, she was bound as well, just in case. Coras himself manned the ship without issue, and in the end, it was only really a challenge for Habla.

While travelling in the Far Islands, Kelp befriended and adopted an iguana, which Habla named Mik, after Kim the sea lion. Coras took some time to visit a small island, where he one night told the others about the legend of Osprem and Xerbo. When they returned to the ship, Kelp noticed that the island was actually a dragon turtle, and that Coras tried to secretly say goodbye to the gargantuan sea creature.

After many weeks at sea, the journey took Osprem's devotees to a great maelstrom in the middle of the island realm of Ta'ainitu. On Coras' orders, Habla set a course directly for the maelstrom, and the ship and its crew was sucked in. As the ship was pulled down into the vortex, the crew witnessed tritons, merfolk, watersoul genasi, and a lone storm giant around them, and beneath them, a large tree among the coral reef. As the ship was about to crash into the tree, the crew found themselves in a different world — the Elemental Plane of Water. Here, Coras guided the ship to the Whirlcurrents, where they would meet Osprem herself.

While shopping for gifts in the markets of the great trade barges, Kelp and Habla overheard a sea hag trying to pay for goods with souls — an offer which the aquatic elf merchant in the shop refused to accept. This hag caught Kelp's attention, as a soul trader might very well know how Princess Leonara's soul could be returned to her body. When Kelp followed the hag, she arrived in time to see the hag frighten a fish-man to the brink of death. Kelp chose saving the fish-man over pursuing the hag, and she and Hable found some excellent gifts for Keramma and the other acolytes back home at the Obelisk. For a while, Kelp was also curious as to whether or not the marid (water genies) she saw in the Whirlcurrents were somehow related to her or knew her father. The marid didn't resemble her, though, so Kelp didn't inquire further.

After a few hours, Coras found Kelp and Habla and brought them to Osprem's sanctum on the grand catamaran, and presented the two women before their deity, who appeared as a long-haired human businesswoman in fine gray robes. Osprem welcomed her clerics and thanked them for their service, and Coras revealed that this would be his final stop on his journey, as he had been sick for a while, and now chose to go out on his own terms. Before he left, Coras made Habla the High Priestess of the Obelisk, told Habla and Kelp that he was proud of them, and gave them each a black pearl. This was the last time they saw Coras, but the two clerics stayed around for a few days, speaking briefly with Osprem, who gifted them a magical sapphire and a vampire's heart for Kelp's hammer, as payment for their devotion, and the loss of their High Priest and mentor. In the following days, Kelp acquired some presents for her adventuring party, and Habla finished her improvements on Kelp's hammer.

## Session 42: Answers

January 24, 2018

Akaloth left the party in the dungeons of Longstrider Citadel, where they discussed the implications of their encounter with the demon. Sir Bronn presented some theories regarding the Ashen Fist and its involvement, and implored Lady Willow to accept a more active investigation. With Willow’s approval, Bronn was granted access to the citadel’s secret archives.

The Black Kraken, who had been locked up in the dungeons by Admiral Onnurai, had apparently overheard the conversation with Akaloth, and offered to give the party information about the Ashen Fist in return for luxuries such as coffee and tobacco from Badkûr.

After talking to Dalion Sohl about Kanilm Foheen and his other apprentices, Persephone went into town to ask Silvarax for access to the Golden Hope’s local library of botanical knowledge, specifically concerning certain perennials.

In the night, twisted dreams came to the party in their sleep:

Willow had a dream of restless research, in which a sickly green mist rolled over Syllior and into her bedroom chambers, whispering strange secrets to her — knowledge of the ghoul lord Khovakis, the tower of Galoz Klyth, and a demon-binding ritual. According to Akaloth, this should help them trap Daeszal in the Dark Spear.

Percy had a dream of some white tower by the sea being crushed by the weight of two great serpents, rising from the water, and coiling around the tower like the snakes on the caduceus. Before the tower fell, a light shone in its highest window, just as the light that appeared in the tower in Vallanorn when Percy had inquired her god about a lost connection.

Bronn had visions of cloaked warriors in a great temple to Manarakh. The warriors seemed to follow the orders of a Meisent man who shared the likeness of the old king Jerestan.

Altruism dreamed of dreams within dreams, and was connected to Burbas'Tel Helviep. The drow was clearly in danger, hunted by the angel Glorael (known as the Whitehand) and covered in blood. With the help of some mysterious entity, Altruism managed to trap Burbas’ mist form within the Dark Spear, and pull him to Syllior through the dream. While walking back and forth from the dungeons, where he went to speak with Burbas, Altruism saw Creed look right at him and smile.

Galad meditated on what Akaloth had told him earlier, unable to dismiss the demon’s seemingly valid points regarding the balance of light and darkness.

On the next day, the party — consisting of Willow, Percy, Alt, Bronn, and Galad — planned their next moves and set sail for Kavaad. Altruism would then leave for Westermarsh, where he would be able to return Burbas to physical form. Then Alt and his vampiric thrall would journey to Thorothar to hopefully draw Glorael away from Kavaad, gain knowledge of the demon-binding ritual from Galoz Klyth, and search for the “alfgrindr”.

With Altruism separated from the party, the others sailed north into Arrovale. On their way up the Lên river, Percy spoke with some of Kanilm Foheen’s apprentices: Gruntald Flightstone in Kavaad, and Dieron Pastus in Redgate. These wizards didn’t seem to be able to answer Percy’s questions, but then she also didn’t really know what to ask of them.

When they arrived in Riverrest, Willow and Percy flew on giant eagle wings to Starpyre Keep, where they were met by Sir Denos Falstane and the local baron’s son, Barlin Emberstar.

Percy requested an audience with Tubrin, and was escorted to his underground cell. Willow met with the baron of Arrovale, Skallos Emberstar, and managed to rub shoulders with a few of the local nobles.

As Percy was at the height of an existential crisis, having witnessed Tubrin’s madness, her conversation was cut short by the arrival of Martanna Emberstar, whose mere presence caused Tubrin to freeze up and keep quiet.

As Percy ascended from the depths of Starpyre Keep’s dungeons, Willow had a brief talk with Sir Denos Falstane, who had taken in Godric as his own griffon. Willow was hoping to speak with Sir Denos’ older brother, the knight warden of the Arrovale Marshes, Sir Harkin Falstane, but Sir Denos told Willow that his brother was out defending the northern borders of his ward.

Back in Riverrest, Mehen Myastan was contacted and (probably) convinced to find Altruism and join him in his quest, as Bronn and Galad made the final preparations for their journey to the Monastery of Barendein.

After a few days of travel and a run-in with a few goblins, the party arrived safely in the monastery where Aknarr Graw and his twelve paladins greeted them. When Persephone (somewhat rudely) inquired Aknarr about her dream with the caduceus-tower, she was dismissed and introduced to the diviner Sannl Fireforge, and her serpentine familiar, Fafnir. Together, Percy and Sannl tried to decode the symbolism in the dream.

Aknarr Graw assigned his paladins Grimna Bronzebraid and Varoin Goldenplate to the party, and sent the party off with Sannl Fireforge to seek out the City of the Glass Pool, where many of the missing spellcasters were rumored to be. The party was sent to start at the svirfneblin settlements under the ravine near Hoghill Forest, while Aknarr and his other paladins would enter the world below through Drevnir's Hall and the lost mines near the Greatsword.

On their way through the Ridge of Blades, the party was met by a young silver dragon named Zilmenaa, who offered some of them (Percy, Bronn, and Galad) a ride to their destination — the mountain ravine near Hoghill Forest.

After Willow, Sannl, Grimna, and Varoin fought off some bugbear berserkers, Willow heard another party move through the mountains. Turning into a giant eagle, Willow closed in on them to get a closer look. Once she realised what she was looking at, she flew away as quickly as she could, commanding the dwarves to hurry with her as quickly and as stealthily as possible. For the next few days, Willow was a little out of it, and it took her some time to remember the dragonborn paladin, Pandjed Kepeshmolik, whom she had seen among this disturbing party.

As Zilmenaa departed for the north after having delivered Galad, Percy, and Bronn to the Underdark entrance, Percy gave the dragon a couple of gems as payment and thanks for the dragon’s kindness.

On the day of the summer solstice, Willow and the dwarves caught up to Galad, Percy, and Bronn at the werewolf cave.

## The Ongoing Odd Odyssey On Occasionally Ordinary Oceans part I

January 19, 2018

The crew of "Good Gitta, the Advantage" arrived on the island Natac, in the fine city of... fuck. Her indser forfatteren at alle hans puns var på dansk. I byen Fårum, en by kendt for dens lammekøller, uld, garn og en magisk blå blomst, som farvede hår og uld hvis spist. Desværre var der en gruppe af gobliner som terroriserede landet og stjal alle fårene. Landsherre Fo Srelttes bad den brave besætning om at jage goblinerne væk. Han fortrak at de blev sendt til hobitterne i norden, så de kunne blive terroriseret istedet.

Besætningen bestod af en dybling magiker Random, en hobbit slyngel Harul, en gnomisk præst Tera og en skovridder? spejder? Killian, en halv-elver.

De drog afsted, blev venner med goblinen Kraan, dræbte Cha-Gok, lederen af gobliner stammen. Gjorde Kraan til den nye høvding af goblinerne. Vendte tilbage til en belønning på en last får, en last malm, og en last korn. For det hele var en tyndt forklædt Settlers of Catan joke. Og Kraan vendte tilbage til gruppen inden de sejlede og sluttede sig til dem.

## Session 41: Friends and Foes

January 6, 2018

The party travelled from Tol'Anar to Westhaven, Agranor, and from there to Syllior, Kavaad, making stops in Littlehaven, Smallport, Ulrond's Harbour, Windfall Tower, Grifport, Kavaad, and Welton.

Ragna made their farewells to the party, seeking guidance with the curse of lycanthropy. Galad started to seek out his shadow. Willow returned to her ward and completed the city's defences. Percy made further inquiries into the fate of "Crocus". Altruism unlocked his poison rage, and contemplated returning to his original quest for his tribe's artifact, the "alfgrindr". Kassiopeia and her family settled down in Syllior with the help of Percy's expert knowledge of personal security and identity falsification. Steward Angus Telvar, Admiral Viviel Onnurai, and Magus Dalion Sohl assigned General Bron Wellton as Willow's personal guard.

Oh, and then Akaloth came waltzing up into Longstrider Citadel and did a thing to Creed before addressing Willow telepathically while in the possessed body of one of Willow's guards. Akaloth was then taken to the citadel's prison cells, where he and the party spoke for a time, before Akaloth released the possessed guard and killed the night hag that had been following the party for a while. Akaloth told the party, that he had seen the light, and that he, unlike Daeszal and Nefathat, considers it a vital part of the world's balance. Akaloth seemed to encourage the party to try to rescue the missing spellcasters, and seek out the Ghoul Lord Khovakis in Thorothar, so as to increase their chances of permanently capturing Daezal, preventing him from simply returning upon death. The Night Fiend then left, taking with him the skull of the hag whose soul he had just consumed.

## One-shot: What the Heck II: New year's boogaloo

December 31, 2017

A group of treasure hunters stumble their way onto the unwelcoming island of Heck, but manage to deal with its deadly inhabitants, eventually overtaking and improving their wine-based business emporium, which relies on the presence of a black dragon's lair.

## Session 40: In the Clouds

December 30, 2017

The party agreed to the terms of their trade with Drutor the Collector and accepted his quest to retrieve a rare magical creature from his fellow cloud giant nobles Unvar the Commander and Istma the Cunning. After a bountiful feast in Drutor's great dining hall, the party went to Lagma's secret hideout among the kenku that live in the Aaracokra Stairs in Drutor's garden paradise in the clouds. Here they plotted their heist on Unvar's Aerie, choosing to take the long way in, thus gaining the maximum information while having minimal interactions with the dangerous frost wyverns.

Before setting out on their mission, the party retrieved and defeated the air elemental that Drutor had promised them. This caused the final set of runes in Willow's armor to light up, signalling a change in the armor's abilities, and an attunement with the elements that wasn't there before.

The first attempt at the heist left Percy and Ragna stranded inside the final vault, wherefrom they almost managed to escape with both some treasure and their quarry, which was trapped inside a magical egg the size of a human head. Pursued by Unvar, Ragna had to surrender the egg in order to escape with their lives, so they had to try again. Before that, though, they were met by the Sun Wolf, a protective nature spirit of the island, which had once served the guardian of the elements, who once bore the armor that Willow now donned. The Sun Wolf explained this, and told the party that it was dying after a fateful battle with the entity known as Gwathren, but in the fight, the wolf had managed to banish Gwathren never to return to the island as long as Soliel's Light shines. In its final moments, the spirit of Tol'Anar called Galad "Lightkeeper", and found rest in the ancient stone circle, causing a grove of wild nature to spring forth between the standing stones. The party decided to explore the island for a week before making another attempt at the egg in Unvar's floating castle. In this week, Altruism disappeared, Ragna discovered the consequences of untangling Ley lines, Willow found a forgotten druid grove, Kassiopeia came upon a lost temple while spelunking, Persephone received a sending with information from one of her secret contacts, and Galad saw his shadow, Gwathren, in the waves at sunset. In the cover of night, the shadow went east to Thindrel.

The second time the party attempted to steal from Unvar's Aerie, they had been more thorough in their planning, but they no longer had Lagma to help them. Willow and Percy made it up to the aerie, and Percy made her way into there by sneaking into the wyvern dens and using her *dimension door* spell to teleport in and out of the vault. This way, Percy acquired the egg and escaped on Willow's back, but when she had done so, she shared with the party what she had seen inside the vault: Altruism was chained up in there. As soon as Percy had regained her spells, a rescue mission was initiated, in which Percy had to beat Altruism to death so his vampiric spear would turn him into mist form, and he could float into Percy's bag of holding. It took Percy 72 seconds of beating Altruism over the head with a mace to accomplice this, and then they were discovered by the giants who nearly stopped them, which could very well have been the end of both Percy and Alt. In the end, though, the mission was a success, and Drutor paid the party handsomely with the following magical items: one pair of winged boots, a luckstone, a potion of growth, an immovable rod, and a cloak of protection.

## Session 39: Soliel's Light

December 13, 2017

After a month apart, the party returned to Tol'Anar to aid in the ritual to save the four souls that Daeszal had trapped in a shadowy realm. Willow had spent more than a month in the Feywild, and Ragna had recruited one Kassiopeia Domine to the party in their time of need.

Before the ritual was to begin, Altruism wanted to test the powers Burbas'Tel had taught him in the forests of Westermarsh, so Anorfin and the party went to the remains of the Spider Forest to seek out Eclavistra's old lair, where Alt had seen the spirits of long-dead cultists. The test went well, and a soul was captured in the spear. When Alt released the soul he hesitated for a minute before consuming the specter and gaining its mana, unlocking his psychic rage.

Now the party was ready. They had collected four soul-trapping objects, and were ready to head into the shadow realm to retrieve the trapped souls. The dryads of the Sky Tree initiated the ritual the next morning, and Udhros set up a number of barriers to protect the extraction team from Daeszal. The island of Tol'Anar was still ravaged by the stormclouds of the cloud giants' palaces, and the grand ivory tower of Kutbar the Sorcerer was slowly closing in on the dryad tree. As Kutbar's cloud crept in from the northern skies, the forests beneath whispered their windswept warnings: "Kalrath".

A dark portal opened in the Sky Tree from the Lightkeeper's Balcony and into Daeszal's prison, and as Menos' apprentices and the tree's dryads looked on, the party stepped through — Kassiopeia first, then Altruism, followed by Willow and the halflings, Ragna and Percy. In the darkness, they saw a faint light where Soliel's Light had shone above them in the canopy of the Sky Tree, and this light seemed to trail off into a thin line, which they then followed. To illuminate their way, the party made a light or lit a torch, casting shadows into the void of the dark realm, and alerting the demon of their presence, if he didn't already sense them. The party had their shadows possessed and animated to attack them, but managed to prevail. With Ragna's heigtened sense of hearing, they could tell illusions of light from the true light that connected the souls to Soliel's Light, but on their way there, they were met by a shadow far greater than the ones they had fought before — the corrupted soul of Menos Felessa, whom they thought they were sent to rescue. Instead, they were forced to battle and vanquish his very soul to free him from torment, and to free the other souls. In the battle with Menos, Altruism was wounded and reduced to his mist form, preventing him from using his spear, and reducing the number of souls they could save by one. Upon finding the shadowy entities that were the trapped souls of Prince Wranfir of Tauryun, Princess Leonara Meisent, and Theia of the Riverfang Tribe, they also found a fourth soul: the soul that was binding them all to Soliel's Light. With Ontogwi's gift of awakening, Ragna could reach out to the souls and speak with them one by one, and learned that the fourth soul was a servant of Soliel, by the name Galad (Elvish for "Light"). As the party returned to the portal from inside the shadowy realm, their minds started to faulter and give in to madness, resulting Percy and Kass being separated from the others and falling into dreams of madness and corruption.

Willow, Alt, and Ragna made their way out onto the Lightkeeper's Balcony with three of the four souls rescued, but outside, the valley of the Sky Tree was under attack by undead and elemental spirits, roused by the cloud giant Kutbar and possessed by the evil of the ancient lich Kalrath. Not to mention — there was a zombie dragon and two skeletal wyverns there as well.

Altruism's mist form followed the dryad Umina through a *teleport via plants* door opened by her sister Folyana to the Old Tree in Nrannas. Here Umina ran off with Udhros' silver cage containing one of the souls, as Altruism was left to float about the city, eventually getting lost in the feywild and encountering an unmarked grave that seemed to have been emptied. Next to the open grave was a small silver cage. Altruism took the cage and returned to the streets of Nrannas, where he met a masked high elf, who took little notice of him and said little more than "the moon has many names", when asked if he worshipped Ontogwi. The high elf then *dimension door*'ed up onto his royal griffon mount and flew off into the west. Altruism finally decided to return to The Old Tree so he could get back in the action. In the grove of the Old Tree, he was met by Umina and the newly resurrected Galad, who were also on their way back to Tol'Anar. Since leaving the shadowy realm of Daeszal's domain, Altruism had not known reality from dream and delusion, and his exhaustion was starting to set in.

Meanwhile, Kassiopeia was haunted by nightmarish visions in the shadowy realm, unsure of what was real and what wasn't. In her visions, orcs asked her to lead them in Gruumsh's name, and she refused. Then the orcs became demonic and followed her to battle, calling her war chief and screaming demonic chants. When she finally came to from her visions, she was with Persephone, but Persephone seemed off at first and became only increasingly maniacal during their encounter in the darkness. Percy attacked Kass, but was subdued before they were both extracted from the dark by the cloud giant witch Lagma. As they appeared in the dying forests of the valley of the Sky Tree, Percy remained hostile, but was now bound to Kass, as Lagma flew off in her huge raven form to fight Kutbar. Kass, carrying Percy over her shoulder, grabbed hold of her pike just in time to jab it into the tail of the young green zombie dragon that came flying right over their heads, only barely hanging onto the dragon, and climbing her way up its body.

While the Lightkeeper's apprentices protected the tree by firing spells at the skeletal wyverns and smiting the undead ground forces, Willow took the shape of a giant eagle and carried Ragna on her back, heading for Kutbar. On their way, the zombie dragon attacked them, leaving Ragna in the dragon's claws, and Willow pursuing the cloud giant sorcerer on her own. Kassiopeia eventually lost her grip on the still-mad Percy who was luckily caught and taken to safety by Lagma's giant raven form, as Lagma had given up her hunt for Kutbar. As the zombie dragon was struck in its head with Kassiopeia's wyrmdrinker pike, the pike was sated with dragon's blood, and Kass could then force the dragon's movements, steering it toward the earth elemental, which appeared to animate the dragon. The elemental caught on to this, and refocused its energy from the dragon to the ground forces, causing the creature to plummet to the ground — with Ragna and Kass still on it. Ragna transformed into their hybrid werewolf form, and crawled into the dragon's open ribcage, bracing for impact, and clawing her way out once they had landed. At this point, Zanna joined them to finish the job on the dragon, which was now regaining energy in its newfound proximity to the earth elemental.

When Altruism returned along with Umina and Galad, it was just in time to save the last soul before the portal closed, but Daeszal had broken past Udhros' wards and nearly got to Altruism before he escaped with the soul of Prince Wranfir (I seem to have gotten some of the details wrong here, because Alt spoke to Wranfir while he was in Nrannas, right?). The evil earth elemental had taken cover underground and was attacking the Sky Tree's roots, infecting it with necrotic energy. Udhros devices a plan to lure the elemental out so that he could teleport it out of the ground and into the reach of Ragna, Kass, and Zanna, but when the elemental died, the damage was already done, and the Sky Tree was dying, and Kutbar was coming to claim Soliel's Light for his own, despite his run-in with a very disgruntled Willow Stormborn.

As the light was being ripped from the dying tree by the flying cloud giant sorcerer, the party slowly closed in on Kutbar to stop him before he could kill the remaining dryads and claim Soliel's Light for himself. Udhros disappeared for a while, telling the party that he would return shortly with one of the island's protectors, and as Kutbar was draining the light, and bombarding the party with pieces of it, torturing Willow with an excruciating word of power, and degrading the "smallfolk" before him, Archmage Udhros Orixidor appeared through a portal on the back of the ancient gold dragon Loromalog. Willow and Galad dived after the genie lamp that Kassiopeia had wrestled out of Kutbar's hand. Altruism defended the last dryad in the tree from an invisible air elemental. Ragna and Kassiopeia gauged out Kutbar's eyes, only to find that he could see through an arcane eye in his staff. But, they had done enough damage for Loromalog to come in and bite Kutbar's throat out of his neck, killing him and letting his dead body fall from the skies. Willow and Galad narrowly dodged the falling giant after retrieving the genie lamp, and the party was now left with a choice. The lamp had one wish left, and Udhros warned them that a wish is not without limitations or costs. They could save either the tree, and thus also the protection of the local Ley lines; or they could restore Soliel's Light, which had protected the land against evil for half a millennia. In the end, Udhros was the one to word the wish, restoring the light, but not without the help of Galad, who completed the light's restoration after the archmage's wish had altered reality to a lesser extend.

When the fight was over and the tree had fallen, Soliel's Light still overlooked Tol'Anar, and as the day came to a close, Lagma returned a restored Persephone to her friends. Percy cured Alt and Kass from their madness and magical derealization, and continued taking care of herself as Lagma had instructed, so as to clear her mind of her recent traumatic experiences. Yes, that means that Persephone forgot everything that had happened to her since her time with Alt and Burbas'Tel in Westermarsh.

Willow, who had noticed the runes on her armor lighting up each time one of the evil greater elementals had been slain, wanted to hunt down the last remaining elemental. Searching for the air elemental, she communed with the broken land of Tol'Anar, which was now influenced by all the inner planes, as the Ley lines were unraveling quite violently. With the help of Lagma, the party found their way to Drutor's gardens and his palaces in the clouds, which had flown through a large portal to the plane of air. Here, the party bartered for the elemental, and were offered a quest to retrieve a rare specimen of a magical creature that Drutor wanted to add to his collection.

## One-shot: All the Single Ladies

December 4, 2017

Ragna Bluering signed up for the grand tournament in Kavaad's Arena to pass the time, make money, and test out her new body in combat. Ragna made it to the finale, where she fought against the reigning champion, Domine — an imposing warrior of great strength and skill. After a tough fight, Ragna eventually defeated the champion fair and square, but the masters of the arena intervened through subtle use of magic, giving their champion a chance to fell Ragna. Domine was declared the winner, and Ragna was cheated out of 2000 gold pieces, but Domine allowed Ragna inside her chambers and relayed her situation to the halfling. Kassiopeia Domine's parents have been protected by (or rather, from) the Ashen Fist for years, with protection money payed through means of Domine's earnings in the arena. The two had their conversation interrupted when one of the masters came to give Domine a target for an assassination mission on Callum Ferngreen II, and though she pretended to agree to the terms, she and Ragna rested and planned their escape, in which they would save Kassiopeia's parents and bring them to Syllior. The plan almost worked without problem, but in the early morning hours, the arena master and four of his guards tried to arrest the pair, who then had to fight their way through the buildings, and sneak into the Silver Slums to gather Kassiopeia's orc mother and human father and convince them to follow the plan and go to Syllior. As they reached the docks and boarded the ship Ragna had arrived in, the group set sail for Syllior, where they arrived two days later. In Syllior, Ragna and Kassiopeia acquainted themselves with the aristocracy through means of carousing, earning some gold in the process. Ragna also became the first democratically elected member of Lady Willow's Longstrider Council.

## Session 38: In the Dark

November 19, 2017

With Ulhirr returned, though in the form of a female halfling and without lycanthropy, the party quietly mourned the loss of Charles. In the dark of night, Persephone carried out a divination ritual from her room in a tower in the beautiful elven city of Vallanorn. As Percy completed her ritual, asking if "Crocus" was still alive, a light appeared in the window of a nearby tower. Confused and mournful, Percy went to bed without a clear answer.

On the next day, while walking through the arching limestone and ivory streets of Vallanorn, Percy attempted another divination spell to learn how best to find Charles. At her offering, a snake the only she could see or hear slithered up an old tree and pointed to Nrannas in the west. At Ulhirr’s request, Percy also divined for a way to find a werewolf. This time, sounds of footsteps led her and Ulhirr to two elves, one of which was a high elf hunter of lycanthropes, clad in blue armor, grey robes, and a silver mask.

The high elf guided the halfling women to a temple to Sehanine Moonbow, where the elf expected wererat lycanthropes to hide during the current new moon. In the temple, the elf interrogated and killed a human wererat and extracted his memories of their supposed werewolf leader who was hiding in the forests to the north. Ulhirr and Percy went with the elf on griffon back out in the forest near the mountains to the north. In the woods, Ulhirr and Percy went ahead of the elf and were distracted and surrounded by wererats. Ulhirr was bitten and contracted wererat lycanthropy. With Percy’s dimension door spell, the two halflings escaped back to the high elf who reluctantly cured Ulhirr of the curse. The halflings then hurried into the werewolf’s cave as their high elf ally held back the tides of wererats and swarms of rats.

Within the cave, Ulhirr attracted the werewolf with an imitated wolf howl. An enormous bestial creature with glowing red eyes and a frothing mouth of jagged teeth emerged from the darkness, dragging a massive greataxe across the stone floor. A tiny rat with similarly iridescent red eyes then crawled atop the werewolf, seemingly puppeteering the large lycanthrope. Ulhirr convinced the rat to have the werewolf bite him. Having what they came for, the two halflings escaped in the night as the high elf and the werewolf squared off. Meanwhile, the curse-weaving rat escaped to one day rebuild his network of servants.

A werewolf once more, Ulhirr started to go by Ragna, attempting to accept their small new feminine body.

The party went through the healing tree Dawnfruit to the old mother tree Nimlaroth to seek out help in locating Charles’ soul. In Nrannas, Udhros offered his help and was surprised to hear of the problems on Tol'Anar. Udhros also informed the party of the death of Soliel’s daughter Helieth Felessa. Through the guidance of Hermes, Percy received a conjuration-based spell scroll from Udhros, unbeknownst to the archmage. The party went through the dryad trees to Tol'Anar with Udhros leading the way. On the lightkeeper's balcony near the Sky Tree's canopy, Udhros and the party confronted Menos' three apprentices, Anorfin the Flamecaller, Zanna the Crusader, and Myara the Healer. Myara had apparently been influenced by Daeszal's Fang and released a dark spirit through the Sky Tree's connection to the demon. Luckily the damage on the tree was minimal, but now the spirit called “Gwathren” wielded Daeszal’s Fang and roamed free on Tol'Anar. When Zanna heard about the evil earth elemental empowered by Kalrath's evil raising a young dragon into undeath, she promptly jumped from the lightkeeper's balcony atop the Sky Tree to go hunt these powerful evils.

With a silver bird cage of soul trapping supplied by Udhros, Lady Eclavistra's soul-trapper spider captured in amber, and the night hag’s soul bag, the party only needed one more way to trap a soul before they could save all four souls from Daeszal's grasp. Knowing that his dark spear could imprison a soul, Altruism went to gain the necessary training from the spear’s previous wielder, Burbas'Tel.

Meanwhile, Charles was walking the planes with “Tagless" the jackal fiend. They eventually made it to Sigil, where they shopped magic items at “the Friendly Fiend” — a shop owned by another jackal fiend called A'kin.

Udhros teleported Percy and Alt to Westermarsh, where they teamed up with Burbas'Tel for a month. Alt abandoned the elements to better wield the power of the spirits, giving up his Elemental Rage in favor of Spiritual Rage (currently limited to Necrotic Rage).

Ragna (or "the artist formerly known as Ulhirr") was teleported to Kavaad, where they spoke with Apo'Otu about the church’s teachings and the migration of the tradefallian Ontogwites. Ragna then journeyed to Syllior to keep an eye on the Longstrider Citadel and explain the situation to Dalion Sohl and the Longstrider Council.

Needing some time to herself, Willow went into the Feywild, where she sought out the great faerie courts of winter and summer.

## Session 37: Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies

November 13, 2017

The party set up camp in the dark forests of Tol'Anar, and Charles (still under Nauron's influence) and Willow went to scout the area and gather firewood and food since their rations had been infested with spiders. In the cold dark night, the trees whispered of shadows in the wind, and a lone dire wolf stood listening and smelling for something. Sneaking around the wolf, Willow and Charles found some draconic creature in the woods, and the wolf and this creature spoke in an unfriendly manner. As the wolf threatened the other creature, which appeared to be a young green dragon when Charles and Willow attacked it. The dragon insisted on only being there to peacefully seek out “Temperance”, a shapeshifting dragon disguised as a golden tiefling, but when attacked, the dragon retaliated in full force. Thanks to Willow’s earthbind spell, and Charles’ relentless assault empowered by Nauron, the scaly beast was brought low. As the young dragon fled however, it was killed by Ulhirr Raskulfelt, who was coming to aid his friends in the battle.

Before running off to get help from the dryads, the great wolf had warned Charles and Willow against killing anything on the island while under the cover of darkness, as the evil of Kalrath still lingers within the earth. The wolf gave Willow a spirit hymn to call a spirit of the forest to bind the dragon, but when the spirit caught the dragon, it was too late, and the death of this mighty creature attracted the attention of a nearby spirit possessed by Kalrath’s evil.

Back at the camp, Percy left to lend her aid to the others, and ran through the underbrush of the cold dark woods, while Altruism stayed behind and watched over the party’s equipment. As the dragon had been killed, Charles surrendered control to Nauron in order to burn the dragon away, possibly attempting to prevent it from returning in undeath. A sinkhole appeared and swallowed the dragon whole, nearly trapping Charles within the earth along with it. And when the three hesitated to flee as they discovered the area was an ancient temple to the elder gods, now converted to the worship of Kalrath, the evil spirit rose from the earth in its elemental form, and with it, a small army of animated skeletons. The spirit towered over our heroes, and the ground shook under its immense weight.

Back in the material plane, the huge earth elemental nearly crushed Willow before shifting its focus to her friends that came to protect her. Even as Willow destroyed the skeletons with lightning strikes, more and more bony minions crawled from the earth to attack. Ulhirr was knocked out by a great punch from the evil elemental, and though Willow healed her comrades as quickly as she could with her druidic words, she could do little to save her friends. The earth elemental put its whole weight onto Ulhirrs head… to make sure he was dead, and the skeletons came in to pick the remains apart. Charles fell as well, but disappeared through Nauron’s vampiric tricks. Willow was forced to flee on the wings of her eagle form.

Unable to reach her friends in time, Persephone was lost in the Feywild echo of Tol'Anar’s forests, where a host of quicklings (tiny fey tricksters) played around with her until she proved her worth to them by vandalising an ancient temple to the elemental elder gods. After spending some time by a half-buried temple, the halfling cleric of Hermes figured out a way to enter the temple’s sanctum through a sequence of turnable faces in the temple’s four obelisks around her. Once she was within the sanctum, the doors closed above her and left her with only a great door in a stone wall.

Willow returned to the camp, where she found not only Altruism and the unhelpful smoke mephit, but also a nightmare and its rider — what seemed to be a still-burning Charles with orange motes of flame for eyes and a much too calm demeanor for the current circumstance. Charles’ dead body was possessed by Nauron and thanked Altruism and Willow for their aid and understanding before riding off into the night, leaving only the crisp remains of one of Charles’ hands for his friends to keep. Altruism and Willow — both traumatized and grieving — packed up the camp and set out to find Percy.

Through the ominous double doors in the sanctum of the elemental temple, Persephone found a series of underground caves and tunnels on the material plane. Here the greater earth elemental was performing a ritual on the corpse of a young green dragon, animating its dead remains and instilling it with the evil of Kalrath. Spotting Ulhirr’s disfigured body, she snuck in unnoticed and recovered Ulhirr’s remains and equipment, which she managed to escape the tunnels with thanks to her crafty use of spells and the help of the forest spirit that Willow had called upon to capture the dragon. Percy, Altruism, and Willow were reunited and determined to bring back their adventuring companions, so they set course for Sunharbor to see if the local druids could help in any way.

In Sunharbor, the three found little help. The druids had next to no materials after Belara’s betrayal, but did offer up what little they had. In the local inn, they met a golden tiefling by name of Temperance, and pieced together that this man was probably the other dragon that the young green dragon had talked about. Temperance was solemn and preoccupied with his thoughts, but did let on some draconic behaviors. After a meal and a rest, the party went to the Sky Tree for help, narrowly escaping a wyvern attack, and found that something terrible had happened. The healer, Myara, whom Charles had surrendered Daeszal's Fang to, had apparently succumbed to Daeszal’s whispers and released a single soul through the tree: one called “Gwathren” (meaning shadow in elvish). Luckily, the other two candidates for the title of Lightkeeper — Anorfin, the Flamecaller, and Zanna, the Crusader — had arrived recently and were helping the dryads deal with Myara’s “mistake”. Willow sensed an air of falseness from Zanna, and warned the dryad Umina to watch the gnomish crusader. The dryad Folyana then let Alt, Percy, and Willow through a portal, transporting them via plants to Dawnfruit, the Tree of Healing.

Upon arriving in Vallanorn, the capital of the wood elf kingdom of Enedorei, the trio were met with open arms, but little material help outside of some holy water and a shallow ritual bath. The elves of Vallanorn left them in peace to complete the casting without interruptions. Ulhirr’s headless body — which also lacked at least one leg — was placed in the bath, and magical offerings were made to replace the traditional oils and salves involved in the casting of the reincarnate spell. In an emotional moment, Ulhirr was brought back in the newly formed nude body of a stout halfling woman. Rejoiced by Ulhirr’s return, the party spent some time preparing for another casting to bring back Charles, using the burned hand Nauron had gifted them. When the ritual was completed, and a pale goblin body had sprung into existence next to the burned hand, no life came into the body. Charles’s lost soul had been given a choice: the ever-alluring offers of the mysterious jackal fiend, or a return to his brave friends. In the end, Charles chose the fiend.

## Session 36: Whispers and Witches

October 29, 2017

After escaping the drider's lair and burning the Spider Forest, the party went to rest on Cran the Treant's hill. From here, Willow witnessed a giantess controlling the weather and stopping the forest fire from spreading all across the island. After the party had rested well in the afternoon, two giant ravens landed on Cran and his hill. The ravens cawed at the party and listened intently for their reply before leading them up into the clouds. As the party followed these birds, Willow — in giant eagle form — spotted a lone necromancer drawing lost souls out of the drider's abandoned lair and chaining them to his wizard's staff. Willow and Altruism pursued the ravens above the clouds, while Ulhirr took the others back down on the flying carpet. The necromancer walked out on a lake and drew from it a burning ring, before he presented himself as Alamond Castlemoor from the Royal Academy of Arcane Studies in Mythhold. Charles, wanting to learn more of his family, enquired the man about House Castlemoor, and learned of their ancestor Rhilin Farspire. Alamond also spoke of the powerful magics on Tol'Anar, specifically the Ring of Nauron, which he had drawn from the lake.

The party on the ground followed Alamond toward Sunharbor when swarms of spiders ran through the forest, and the sounds of something enormous and something scared surrounded them. Shuibhne, more bird than man, ran to Ulhirr and Charles squawking for help, as he slowly transformed, limb by limb, into a bird with a man's face. Alamond put a paralyzing levitate spell on Shuibhne, tied him up, and handed the other end of the rope to Charles. Convinced that Alamond was possessed, Charles stole the ring while taking the rope, only to find that the ring had placed itself on his finger as he slid his glove back on. Under Nauron's influence, Charles developed pyromania and started flailing his flaming longsword about. Ulhirr took the rope and dragged Shuibhne behind them, much like Alamond dragged five specters in ethereal chains from his staff.

Meanwhile, Willow and Altruism sought out the giantess that had saved the forest from the fire, and landed on her cloud among the many ravens around the giantess' hut. The two were eventually invited in by the cloud giantess, and offered a deal, that would allow them to use the Soul Bag they had acquired in Tauryun.

The party on the ground was set upon by Lady Eclavistra, who trapped Ulhirr in webbing and yanked him into the treetops with Shuibhne following behind on the rope. They fought only briefly before Charles set a tree ablaze, which started a fire that quickly went out of control. Eclavistra kissed Shuibhne, who then returned to his normal self with his soul and mind intact. Remorseful and angry, Shuibhne did not forgive Eclavistra, and instead chose to return to his homeland a scarred and bitter man. With a little help from Alamond, the party escaped the fire, which was later put out by the same cloud giantess as before.

Up in the witch's hut in the clouds, the giantess first conjured a green hag and spoke with her at length in the language of the giants. Then she warned her two small folk guests to hide behind her boots and avert their gazes, before she conjured a red witch who spoke through thunder and lightning. Despite the warning, Altruism looked and was nearly taken by the red witch's charms. As the giantess summoned the night hag creator of the Soul Bag, she asked the the small folks' decision on their offering, and so Willow sold the last breath of her current life to the cloud giantess called Lagma. The night hag appeared and was forced to help the party use her bag to trap one soul of their choice. She now follows Willow around through the Ethereal plane. When Lagma returned from having stopped the second forest fire, she and her guests went to sleep.

The next morning, Lagma lowered her hut down to the grassy hills where Alamond had set up a magical dome to protect the party on the ground. When the party was back together, Alamond went his own way and Lagma and her ravens returned to the skies. From here, the party tracked down a powerful undead that Willow had sensed while communing with nature: the remains of Belara the Blight Maiden, encased in an enormous gelatinous cube. The cube destroyed the carpet of flying, disfigured Ulhirr, and turned Altruism to shadowy mist, but eventually, the party managed to defeat Belara, the cube, and some skeletal minions. Among the slimy remains of the slain undead ooze, the party found a number of items, including the Helm of Blath. Lord Blath was Kalrath's chief lieutenant and the Death Knight that killed Nauron and made him a vampire, so Nauron wanted the helm for himself and for Charles. Amidst their victory, a darkness gathered around the party. Something had happened, and the Veil of Shadows was nearer than before. A hushed voice called out from the trees. A single word of warning was uttered: "Gwathren" (elvish for "shadow").

## One-shot (non-canon): The Door Flies Open

October 15, 2017

A group of women working in the Milestone tavern had a strange couple of days around the harvest festival and were called to adventure.

## Session 35: A Web of Lies

October 8, 2017

The party, accompanied by Fienna, Shuibhne and a smoke mephit, waited until the darkest hour of the night to meet with Lady Eclavistra and be led to the soul trapper spider. After some fights with the local spiders, Shuibhne ran off and the party was lead to Lady Eclavistra's lair, where they discovered Eclavistra's tragic past with her former lover, Shuibhne. Eclavistra was cursed by Lolth for her relationship with Shuibhne and she was transformed into a drider. Eclavistra then cursed Shuibhne and took his mind away to keep him from being heartbroken upon seeing her as a drider. Deep within the drider's lair, the party gave Eclavistra some relationship advice in payment for a soul trapper spider encased in amber. With Persephone's newfound wand of web, the spider could be used once to trap a soul. The party narrowly escaped the lair and burned down the Spider Forest before taking a rest on Cran the Treant's hill.

## Session 34: Tol'Anar

September 17, 2017

Having arrived on Tol'Anar, the party flew to the top of the Sky Tree and spoke to its keepers, the dryads, who spoke of a ritual to secure the souls in Daeszal’s possession. To succeed without allowing the demon through as well, each of the souls must be trapped elsewhere when they are pulled free from the demon’s grasp. The party also heard of the trouble caused by Belara and the cloud giants. Willow talked to the people on the island, and tried to repair an ancient shrine to the elder elemental gods, but the shrine remained in ruins. Without the shrine’s full effect, the Sky Tree can’t connect very well to the Plane of Air. The party briefly met the cloud giant Drutor after a peculiar encounter with two of his courtiers. Unable to use the soul bag of holding without the hag that made it, the party went to look for a soul trapper spider in the Spider Forest. The party met Shuibhne and had a brief encounter with Eclavistra the drider. The party defended itself from an attack by spiders.

## One-shot: What the Heck

August 24, 2017

The lost prince of Heck is a drunk and his only three friends are two half-elves and the wine of their elven ancestors. The location of Heck is forgotten, and between the remaining minions of a long gone necromancer, and the black dragon under the island, its denizens are not exactly welcoming.

## Session 33: Dreams

August 15, 2017

Persephone joined the party, after they saved her from the Cult of the Shadow. The party chose to help Umina the dryad and sailed to Tol'Anar aboard The Mirage. Each of the party members experienced strange dreams. Willow prayed to Mannanan Mac Lir that he would guide them on their journey and protect them in their dreams. Charles and Ulhirr hired Gerk and Erky for the Keithand. Charles, Ulhirr, and Fholtarr played hide-and-seek in Ulrond's Harbour, and there was a brief peace, with shopping, games, and a dragon encounter where no one knew the dragon was actually a dragon. The party arrived at the minuscule harbor town on the southern coast of Tol'Anar. The party was attacked by perytons on their way up the Sky Tree with the dryads.

## Session 32: The Ashen Fist

August 14, 2017

Greyhand Cassador was revealed to be possessed by Akaloth, a shadow demon in service to Daeszal. As the party fought him and his followers, including Argenon the Oathbreaker. Akaloth nearly killed Altruism with Daeszal's Fang, but the Dark Spear prevented Altruism’s death, but in that moment an angel emerged from the spear, where it had been held captive. The angel killed Habla Seafroth and burned down the Ashen Fist inn. Cassador and Argenon were both killed by Charles, but the collapsing building nearly killed Ulhirr. The angel left them in the dust and flames and flew away. The party followed the angel northwestward to Kavaad, where Ulhirr was willingly drowned and revivified in the temple to Ontogwi after he was given their sacred weapon, Wave. Charles was briefly possessed by Daeszal's Fang, while the party searched under the Heavenly Dome of Strength for the Cult of the Shadow and the angel. Kelp stayed behind in Syllior where Habla was successfully resurrected.

## Session 31: Dark Tidings

August 13, 2017

Greyhand Viskhart refused to hand over the prismatic pearl that Fholtarr found in Tradefall Castle, but was willing to part with it if the party gave her whatever was inside the box that the newly appointed Greyhand Cassador had received from Shiv [this item was, of course, Daeszal’s Fang]. The party didn’t want to deal with Viskhart, but did take an interest in the people who had come all the way from Shiv. Admiral Viviel Onnurai had captured the Black Kraken, which left a power vacuum in Syllior. This allowed Greyhand Cassador to take over her branch of the Ashen Fist and convert them to the Cult of the Shadow. Ghoulish assassins attacked Eknoron, Willow, Trissana, and Vizharr in a coordinated, but futile attempt on their lives. This was seemingly motivated by a disloyalty to some “great master” on Eknoron’s part. Having freed the Black Kraken, the party went to her inn to look for Cassador and to root out the Cult of the Shadow.

## One-shot: Wishious Mockery

August 9 and 10, 2017

Soliel’s chosen heroes followed her into one last battle against the forces of evil on the island later known as Tol'Anar, the Island of the Sun.

## One-shot: Adventures of Willow and Ulhirr

August 9, 2017

Willow and Ulhirr's first adventure took them to the Isle of Death, Eenhaven, and Windovel. This is also when they first met Valhirr, Fabulan, and the Blackscale Clan.

## Session 30: The Wolf

July 14, 2017

The party defeated the demon Nefathat, and returned to Kerrum, where Ulhirr and Charles started the Keithand (their spy network). On their way to Kerrum, the party fought a group of bulettes, and Ulhirr discovered the nature of Arydun’s blessing as he sprang into action in his werewolf form, which neither Charles nor Fholtarr had seen before. After some time spent arguing, brooding, and shopping, the party decided to find Vizharr, and when they told him that they had the last piece of the Soulstone, he teleported them all to Tradefall, where they went into the castle once again, fought the Soulstone’s protector spirit, and restored the Soulstone, ending the effects of the chaotic wild magic within the castle. Eknoron announced his plan to become duke (which entails conquering land), and Vizharr took the Soulstone with him once more.

## Session 29: Tall Tales

July 13, 2017

With the help of Arydun, the party apprehended Paul Castlemoor and got some answers from him. As Ulhirr asked Arydun for help against Daeszal, Arydun gave him a small opalescent gem that contained their blessing. Paul was returned to the Feywild, but not before his action caused even more problems — now the party was involved with yet another fiend [we shall call this one Tagless]. At least they got the Honey Pond Mansion’s items back, and got rid of Ozfurt.

The party then made their way to Elmira’s abode in Kerrum where she had asked them to meet her. Elmira told the party of the events of the one-shot “Ceremonial Daggers”, continuing the story to the point where the other adventurers finished their quest, and only a few of them had escaped Horgrol Deepriver’s house with their lives and minds intact. With the demon Nefathat still roaming the town of Shiv, the party decided to join Elmira in her quest to defeat the gluttonous servant of Daeszal.

## Session 28: The Bard

July 12, 2017

Charles’ brother Paul Castlemoor messed with the party and kept evading them and tricking them. Like Charles, Paul had stolen magical items from the Honey Pond Mansion, except, Paul had stolen ALL their items, and was doing all kinds of evil things just to impress his beloved hag back home in the Feywild.

## One-shot: Simulacrum

July 4, 2017

AU Nørd Camp Edition, in which Horgrol Deepriver acquired the fourth dagger for his ritual to summon Nefathat the Dark Glutton.

## One-shot: Masks and Phases

June 27, 2017

The pwelean high elf Aramil Liadon defeated Peland the weretiger curse weaver and formed a bond with a moon spirit from the holy forest by the temple to Sehanine.

## Session 27: Exhaustion

June 11, 2017

After escaping the ruins of Tradefall Castle and talking to the Ontogwites and the Ashen Fist of Tradefall, the party caroused their way back to Syllior. On the way there, Charles stumbled into the Feywild where he met a hideous hag and a number of one-eyed animals. OH! And Ulhirr died from exhaustion, and Fholtarr started researching wizard aids! Willow’s steward also assembled a council for the citadel and the ward.

## One-shot: Nameless

June 9, 2017

After Bryn's death, he was propelled into a shadowy realm within the very being of the shadow demon Daeszal's soul. Here, Bryn reconnected with his royal cousin Wranfir, who thought himself to be fever dreaming and experiencing nightmares in his sickbed. Calming Wranfir and explaining the truth of the matter, Bryn gained the forgiveness and trust of his first victim. Bryn wrested the knife from his torso and felt powerful, almost alive, but Daeszal spoke to him through Wranfir and the realm itself, and took the dagger away. Daeszal moved from the Astral Plane to the seas of Arborea, making all the shadows' emotions stronger, despair was strengthened, but Bryn managed to calm Wranfir again.
After this, Bryn found his latest victim — Lightkeeper Menos Felessa — and woke him from his dark slumber. Menos retained the golden glow in his eyes, but appeared to be weakened and in pain, still covered in the symbol of concealment that Bryn carved into him.the Lightkeeper was in affect and quickly became angered. Furious at Bryn, he refused to speak or cooperate for some time. Bryn explained his intentions of freeing those descendants of the four heroes' that he had slain, and hesitantly, Menos agreed to let Bryn help him find the other two. Bryn managed to find Leonara Meisent, whose left eye still glowed, like both of Menos', marking their weak connections to the light and life of the world outside the dark prison of Daeszal's design. Leonara quickly devised a plan to use Bryn for good, now that she realized what had transpired. The princess united Wranfir and Menos to aid Bryn in his endeavor to escape from Daeszal. Wranfir wanted to pass into the afterlife peacefully, Leonara wanted to return to her people and responsibilities, but Menos was still caught up in his hatred for Bryn, when Bryn left to find Theia. Bryn went into the endless darkness of Daeszal's soul, encountering the shadows of souls he had slain with Daeszal's Fang.

Lost in darkness and despair, Bryn drifted for hours... or days.... no, months. He didn't find Theia, but after a terrible fit of desperate rage in response to countless hours of apathy and dread, Bryn shouted into the void and found at first nothing, but then soon managed to call forth Daeszal's Fang. However, at this point, he had found the faint light that he experienced before with Wranfir and the others. Bryn could have taken the dagger, but chose to seek out the light.

When he ventured up into this purple glow, he witnessed the vibrant skies of Arborea, and he longed for life and color. Not soon after, he noticed that once again, as had happened in the deep sapphire sea of Arborea when he first entered this shadowy place, he was peering through the eyes of the demon. Before, he had seen Lo-Tha's heroic last stand. Now, he saw a happy elven couple, sitting in the woods of the Olympian Glades, enjoying their heavenly life of bliss. Bryn had to bear witness to the death of this man and woman, as they died, screaming silently to their gods. The woman was with child. Bryn called out for Daeszal to stop, then once more for his own victims. When he finally found his was back to them, he found himself unable to reach them, hearing only words of evil in his own voice. Bryn saw Theia in the distance, but could not scream out to her or the others. Drawn back into the darkness, Bryn was forced to battle the part of him that had surrendered to Daeszal's gifts.

Nearly being absorbed by his demonic clone, Bryn tried to talk himself out of his evil. The other Bryn had Daeszal's Fang, and a deep red glow in his eyes. This other Bryn taunted him with words of doubt, temptation, hatred, and isolation. The two parts of this one soul fought stubbornly, and cunningly, but only one could prevail here.

When the possessed Bryn fell, Daeszal rose from his place and tried to take the dagger back and slay Bryn, who had escaped his prison and gone into the Shadowfell where Daeszal now seemed to be as well. The two flew up over a ruined reflection of Nrannas, where a sliver of the Old Tree remained. Looking into the eyes of the shadow demon, Bryn lost his resolve and gave up for a moment, falling back into the soul prison.

When he returned to Leonara, Wranfir, and Menos, many new shadows had joined the ranks of Daeszal's captives, but Theia was still nowhere to be seen. Menos had very nearly lost all the glow of his once brilliant eyes, and it was now clear to Bryn that he had indeed been gone for more than a couple of days. Menos explained that there might be a way to escape, through the connection of the four heroes, using the unity of their descendants, and latching on to a connection outside the shadowfell. However, Menos' dark thoughts where empowered by the demon, and the once graceful Lightkeeper suddenly wrought chaos among the shadows. Leonara guided Bryn and Wranfir away, and helped Bryn to find Theia. As Bryn walked, guided only by the faint green light of Leonara's eye, he experienced walking through the river valleys and marshlands of Theia's homeland, and had visions and feelings come to him. The sensation of walking on swamp water, as with Willow by his side. He knocked his head on a branch, recalling the bash on his head Kelp gave him with a book after he told her about his pact with Daeszal. Then, he had the unmistakable sensation of being watched and judged, as by Lo-Tha's gaze. Thinking this presence to be Theia, Bryn called out, urging her to help save the lost souls. As if by wild magic, a red moon appeared in the sky, full and ominous, and before he could react, Bryn was attacked and toppled by a massive armored werewolf. Bryn was blinded and his vision blurred, went red, then disappeared.

He then awoke to the feeling of company. Theia had come to him to see if he truly meant what he had said. Assured of Bryn's honest intentions, Theia agreed to come along, and joined Leonara and Wranfir in returning to Menos for the last piece of knowledge on their method of escape.

In his last moments of control and devotion, Menos gave his light and connection to Soliel away. Leonara explained that Bryn had to take this light if he wished to return. Wranfir still wished for his final rest (btw, he revealed earlier that he had also read in the forbidden books about Daeszal), Theia was determined to find her brothers, and Leonara felt obligated to return and guide her people, as "none could replace her in her important role". Bryn took the light and became Galad, as Menos faded to a shadow only. Galad closed his eyes, and spoke with Soliel Felessa, whose dryads sang and whose light shone brightly, even to Galad in the heart of shadow. Soliel forgave Galad on the condition that he would continue on the path of light. She then promised to send someone to help those trapped by Daeszal, as Galad asked her to help the others over him, apologizing for taking Menos' life. Galad opened his eyes to see Leonara, Wranfyr, and Theia illuminated, not only by Leonara's green eye, but by a golden light coming from himself.

## Session 26: Back Into the Flames

May 31, 2017

The party celebrated their victory with Lord Balzamar and the soldiers. The party decided to go back into the ruins of Tradefall Castle with Rhea and search for treasure. Here, they battled a terrible demon and found out that Rhea was the last heir to the previous baron.

## Session 25: Chaos

May 21, 2017

Fholtarr was restored from his sheep form, the party found the grand archive of the burning castle, and there they encountered Rhea Avoran, who hesitantly joined them with assurance from Sir Estos that the party could be trusted. Akkorak, Charles and Altruism went into the chaotic plane of the Soulstone. The party looked through the temple to Ontogwi, and eventually Kelp and Ulhirr entered the plane of the Soulstone as well. After many oddities, and a trial against the protector spirits of the Soulstone, the party escaped the chaotic plane. Akkorak Firestorm had the Soulstone, and many of the party members had contracted curses of wild magic. The party emerged from the ruin in time to join the fight and turn the tide of battle against the Red Hand. Eknoron thanked the party, and Vizharr took the Soulstone to Kerrum.

## One-shot: Ceremonial Daggers

May 7, 2017

A group of lonely souls were brought together and hired by the Golden Hope to inspect a shady town for demonic cults. In their search for evil, they discovered a mean, racist pimp of a nobleman who was using exotic humanoids in his brothel, and working with the secret cult, and they killed the pimp. They also almost died to rats.

## Session 24: Tradefall Traumas

April 30, 2017

Charles killed a young man in a watch tower, and was traumatized by a zombie carrying the Fel Scepter from Gamrion’s Tomb. With the help of Sir Estos, the party successfully sneaked their troops up to the northern side of Tradefall, where Akkorak, Sir Estos, and a handful of the party’s members scaled the wall and entered the ruins of the burning castle. The castle contained invisible echoes of the past (and future?), mimics, and fiery undead creatures, as well as a few magical items some of which were infused with wild magic. Wild magic continuously messed with the party, and Fholtarr was polymorphed into a sheep.

## Session 23: To War

April 14, 2017

Dalion, Ulhirr, Charles, and Altruism were surrounded by members of the Ashen Fist, including Krogan. With Willow and Fholtarr arriving not long into the fight, the party managed to fight their way out of the ambush. They then spoke with the local blackhand, “the Black Kraken”, about the Cult of the Shadow and the Ashen Fist. They left with a peace agreement and yet more unanswered questions, especially since Krogan vanished without a trace. The midwinter festivities went well, and the new warden seemed to impress her court. Eknoron Zerevil called his warden and her knights to battle to rat out the Red Hand and retake Tradefall and restore the castle. The party agreed, and travelled on foot to the city of Tradefall, where they parlayed with the Hand of the Hand, and decided on a battle plan. They would strike at night.

## Session 22: Secrets in Syllior

April 1, 2017

Willow was now the warden of Syllior and the Salt Coast, and moved in in Longstrider Citadel with her adventuring friends. She was given very few responsibilities in the first few weeks, but she was involved with the midwinter festivities. On midwinter’s day, the Warden of Hoghill Forest and his rangers arrived with a warning and a strange plan. They told Willow never to trust Eknoron Zerevil. A servant in the citadel was found snooping on the war room, and wearing the symbol of the Cult of the Shadow. Dalion was gone (because he was out in the city, looking for a magical item that Charles ad stolen from the Honey Pond Mansion), and the guards were put on full alert. Most of the party hurried to find Dalion, and when they did, they found themselves surrounded by the Ashen Fist.

## Session 21: The Baron of Balzamar

March 5, 2017

Altruism took up the dark elf’s spear and chased the dire worg Garziz. Aback Willow’s horse shape, Altruism closed the distance and slew Garziz with the dark spear, instantly attuning to it, and gaining its curse, as well as its powers. The party briefly visited the Makate tribe before heading to Barendain’s monastery, finding a petrified Abiran Alzur on their way there. Aknarr Graw then sent the party to Kavaad to attend the appointing ceremony of the new baron of Balzamar in his stead. In Kavaad, the party met Fholtarr Thunderblood, who joined their party after Willow was named warden of Syllior and the Salt Coast. Mehen left the party on grounds of their association with the new baron, Eknoron Zerevil, an infamous iron dragonborn. Charles joined the party after befriending Kelp in the Silver Slums.

## Session 20: Vengeance

February 12, 2017

The party searched for Kovauk in the mountains, and revisited the entrance to the old dwarven mines. They walked through the snowy mountains for several days, but found no trace of the goliath chieftain, who had gone hunting for Garziz the worg. The party met Special Snowflake, alone and without Trufzo. After killing a yeti and resting in some interesting caves, the party came upon most of Narltoc’s hobgoblin warband in a large camp. Upon failing to sneak their way past the ranks of hobgoblin soldiers, the party attacked in full force. Mehen invoked his oath of vengeance upon the evildoers of the world and smote many a hobgoblin, while Ulhirr transformed into his werewolf form, tanking the brunt of the warband’s forces. Altruism threw himself into the fray in a powerful display of rage. The three of them were all knocked out and brought into a small cave system, where Burbas'Tel collected his “blood bags”. The commotion of the fighting and the conjured lightning storms called the attention of a green dragon who was too fast for the remaining hobgoblin shamans and who decimated the warband, killing its worgs, its shamans, and the warlord Narltoc. Willow and Kelp devised a plan with the help of the hobgoblin lieutenant Hragun to sneak into the caves and free the prisoners and kill the dark elf and the dire worg. Hragun died, but so did the dark elf. Altruism, Mehen, and Ulhirr were woken up and freed, but Ulhirr was forced to transform to his werewolf form, in which he ate parts of the other prisoners and Hragun. Altruism took up the dark elf’s spear…

## Session 19: Tubrin the Mad

February 4, 2017

The party met Tubrin (the first missing spellcaster that has returned) in Starpyre Castle, promised the baron's son that they would help find the missing mages and priests, and set off to Makate territory after exploring the cities of Arrovale for a few days. Drana, Gathki, and Anuk approached the party with a theory that chief Kovauk was actually a green dragon in disguise, using the tribe for her own schemes.

## One-shot: Tomb of the Thorothan Kings

January 26, 2017

A band of adventurers (Caramip Raulnor, Murad Osman, Vladislak Stayanoga, and Líng Hóngyù) were stranded in the desert of Thorothar and came upon a buried secret under the small, mostly abandoned village of Theristad.

## Session 18: New Adventures

January 22, 2017

The party tried to cope with the loss of Lo-Tha, all the while still confused about Bryn and mourning poor Avtoor. Harran and Elmira left Nrannas early on, but the party stayed in Tauryun for three months, working for the elves and waiting for Udhros to return them the stolen contents of a witch’s bag. Grateful for the help in the difficult new times, the elves thanked the party and sent them through the Old Tree to Dawnfruit in Vallanorn to aid them on their journey. The party left with a mule and a lack of purpose. Months of travel later, they had picked up two new companions: Mehen in Riverrest, and Altruism in Kavaad. This new party travelled to Arrovale to aid with the search for the missing spellcasters.

## Session 17: Daeszal

January 8, 2017

Bryn and Ulhirr were placed under Kava Jhoriat’s watch during the funeral ceremony of prince Wranfir, Bryn’s first victim. Creed permanently transformed into a potted plant. Lo-Tha, Kelp, and Willow walked through the city, spoke to a few of the Guardians, and met Ceriax. Ulhirr and Bryn got relocated to a more secure place, where they were imprisoned, as part of Lady Qindra of Silverleaf’s plot to have Bryn killed to prevent Daeszal from returning. With the help of the rest of the party’s arrival, Ulhirr’s athleticism, and Kava’s doubt, Bryn managed to sneak out of Lady Qindra’s grasp, but right into the claws of her griffon Silverwind. Bryn died while the party and a small number of griffon knights chased after Lady Qindra’s majestic steed. Lo-Tha’s warp spear from Gamrion’s Tomb tore a rift in space that Udhros had to spend all his magic closing. Bryn was resurrected by Burbas'Tel and a black dragonborn who set the two elves back on their mission to free Daeszal. Burbas'Tel and Bryn killed Menos Felessa and Burbas'Tel distracted Udhros long enough for Bryn to get to the Old Tree and open a shadow portal, releasing Daeszal. The party was out searching for Bryn when they faded into the Shadowfell, falling victim to its despair. Here, they discovered that Avtoor, Lo-Tha, and Harran had been under Daeszal’s influence for several days. Avtoor warned the others when he managed to break free, but Harran killed him and stalked the party with Lo-Tha. Lo-Tha broke free as well, and helped the others to the portal in the tree, escaping back into the material plane in time to banish Daeszal with a bag of holding. Lo-tha was banished to the Astral Plane along with the demon, keeping him stunned, preventing him from fading back into the Shadowfell. Bryn took his own life with Daeszal's Fang, completing the banishment of the demon. Godric had died, but was revivified by Kelp.

## One-shot: Dragonslayers

December 31, 2016

Celebrating the new year with a quest to kill a dragon… if you can get past the centaurs, that is.

## Session 16: An Awkward Dinner

December 14, 2016

The party arrived in Nrannas and visited the Circle of Guardians with Lady Elmira. Willow visited the bath houses and the grove of the Old Tree, Nimlaroth. Kelp and Ulhirr went shopping and had dinner in a fancy elven restaurant. Lo-Tha, Creed, and Bryn stayed at Bryn’s family home where an awkward dinner insued, and Bryn and his friends were sent out into the garden, where they started drinking, heavily. As the full moon rose, and Willow was in the Feywild, Ulhirr transformed, and so did his evil sentient ring. Willow and Udhros Orixidor arrived in time to save the day.

## Session 15: Counterspell Mania

November 20, 2016

The hags that had cursed the trees thought they could scare or kill the party, and attacked under the guise of “cute” hedgehogs. Several counterspelled counterspells later, the hags lay dead on the ground. An encounter with owlbears and some charm effects from Daeszal later, the party was almost at the capital.

## Session 14: The Haunted Swamps

November 14, 2016

Trekking through the swamps, the party encountered the “tree men” from Bryn’s boogeyman story. They discovered a shambling mound that was spreading blights. After killing the shambling mound, the party freed one of the trees from its curses of animation and hunger for human flesh.

## Once-shot: The Westbank Witches

November 13, 2016

Ungarn and Zwakstog were forced to leave the Royal Academy, so they took the long journey to Sinria. On their way, the two encountered a coven of hags who were attempting to open a planar well to the lower planes through a dark ritual and an amulet capable of aligning itself to the positions of the planes.

## Session 13: A Mammoth Task

October 30, 2016

The party hunted basilisks, but needed Aknarr’s help in restoring people from stone. Ulhirr chopped a giant eagle in twain with a single swing, while on his way over the rope bridge to the monastery. Harran, Avtoor, Lady Elmira Dushiuri and the party journeyed north to Tauryun, through the Ridge of Blades, encountering displacer beasts, and the Akathagaru tribe of goliaths. Arriving in Tauryun, Elmira asked Bryn to tell of a local boogeyman story. After defeating the undead spirit of a drowned maiden, they got a good night’s rest.

## One-shot: A Wild Dream

October 20, 2016

A strange and surreal dream slithered non-canonically into the slumbering minds of the group. Avtoor was the evil goblin king of the Feywild, one-eyed and talking animals had built a society there, and our heroes were very different for a while. But it was all a dream. The end.

## Session 12: The Hunt

October 16, 2016

Leonara came to confront the party on what they knew of Burbas'Tel, but Bryn killed her and escaped, outrunning Dalion Sohl and the knights of the Longstrider order. Kelp and a local soldier from Syllior carried Leonara to the Obelisk where she was put under a *gentle repose* spell once the priests realized she couldn’t be brought back. The clergy sent Kelp with the party to stop Bryn, defeat Daeszal, and save the princess’ soul. The party chased Bryn north through Balzamar and Central Kavaad into the barony of Arrovale. Bryn stayed in the shadows until the party needed his help against a group of trolls. After helping the guards of Oxgrave Tower, the party made their way to the Monastery of Barendain. On their way through the mountains, the party witnessed a young/adult green dragon fall to Narltoc’s warband on a battlefield of dead goliaths and goblins.

## Session 11: Leaving Syllior

September 18, 2016

The party helped Imnili Ipravel with a cargo of basilisks. Bryn took an assassination job from the Black Kraken of the Ashen Fist, but would’ve died without the help of Daeszal. Krogan helped Bryn infiltrate the Longstrider Citadel with cat Willow in tow. The others watched over Ulhirr under the full moon. Seeing Leonara secretly meeting with Burbas'Tel, Bryn and Willow went on the offensive, but they had to flee and regroup. Lo-Tha spoke to Silvarax, the Huntmaster of the Golden Hope in Syllior, about possibly joining the guild.

## Session 10: Escape from the Tomb

September 4, 2016

The party escaped Gamrion’s tomb and were met by a wounded and crying Theia, and her undead family rising from their graves to attack the interlopers. Bryn killed Theia with Daeszal’s Fang, even as his fingers were ethereal and useless. Willow guided the others to Syllior, where Kelp joined the party and helped them do research on Daeszal. Willow received a new druidic focus from the spirits of the Salt Coast and her god, Mannanan.

## One-shot: The Rusty Dragon

August 7, 2016

A band of adventurers joined the crew of the Rusty Dragon in a quest to help the druid Belara “save” the Lightkeeper and bring “harmony” to the island of Tol'Anar.

## Session 9: Gamrion’s Tomb

July 8, 2016

The party met Theia and entered the Tomb of Gamrion Riverfang. Here, they were trapped in an enormous room with reversed gravity. The party looted Gamrion’s tomb and met Wakkra, an orc woman whose soul was captured within several items. The Fel Scepter awoke and absorbed most of the other items’ magic. Daeszal’s Fang had successfully called Bryn to this place and seduced him with the promise of power (alignment change CN-->NE).

## Session 8: The Greatsword

July 4, 2016

I honestly can't figure out what happened this session. It's been a long time, and It's not very well documented. This might be the session when the party met Trufzo and Theia, but I'm not sure…

I'm pretty sure we spend two sessions in the tomb (Ella calculated how much air we had in there between sessions). We also had a PvP fight to level Willow up from 4th to 5th lvl (so that she could cast dispel magic on the ceiling/floor).

## Session 7: Shadow Arrow

June 12, 2016

Bryn’s trial and inclusion in the Makate tribe. Kovauk went to hunt for Narltoc and Garziz. Bryn led the party to the Greatsword. Drana made drama with Ulhirr. Finding Godric’s Egg. Meeting Trufzo. This was the first time Creed disappeared.

## Session 6: Twiceborn

May 28, 2016

Bryn met the Makate tribe. The others snuck in and saved Willow, retreated into the old dwarven mines, and fought Burbas'Tel off. Lo-Tha, Willow, Creed, and Ongor died, but were reincarnated by Ra-Sok, the Makate tribe’s druid.

## Session 5: Vow of Enmity

May 22, 2016

Encounter with Hinnaura Tessilthir the vengeance paladin. Creed joined the party. Attacking Narltoc’s camp. Willow was captured by Burbas'Tel. Avtoor and Ongor were rescued.

## Session 4: Arcanum Square

May 5, 2016

First encounter with Ozfurt, Waywocket, Apo’Otu. The party left Harran & Co. behind to pursue the general of the goblins without them.

## Session 3: The Werewolf’s Cave

April 15, 2016

After leaving Greencrest, the party met Hammund, Harran, and Heidegar. Chasing the goblins into the mountains, the party came upon the werewolf Finildan Tessilthir.

## Session 2: Greencrest

March 20, 2016

The battle of Greencrest resulted in the death of most of the villagers, but also the goblins, with the exception of a couple of stragglers. Willow, Ulhirr, Bryn, and Lo-Tha saved most of the village, but very few of the villagers.

## Session 1: Welcome to Kavaad

March 5, 2016

Willow, Lo-Tha, and Ulhirr met near the docks on the market of Kavaad. Bryn followed Burbas'Tel, snuck into the Cult of the Shadow. The party teamed up and accepted a quest to look for Yara’s husband and child in Greencrest.

If anyone wants to write campaign diaries, that would be greatly appreciated; inspiration awaits you.

## Session 0: Character Creation

February 20, 2016

This was the first meeting of the initial D&D group, where we created characters, and talked loosely and very briefly about homebrew rules, table etiquette, and the campaign setting. The Characters created were Ulhirr, Lo-Tha, Bryn, and Willow.