Holding's Demise

Run by Clementine Intertwined

## Introductions.

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. A man by the name of Ozymandias has gone through history systematically picking people off from Alterum, taking them to a place unknown to the material plane at large. Where they end up is a mystery to most, but after 5 adventurers get taken in, the secrets begin to unravel.

## Timeline

Although most events of Holding's Demise are set aside from Alterum as a whole, much of the campaign takes elements and continues plot threads from other campaigns within Alterum. Because of this, much of the game requires a timeline of sorts.

The events of the story follow this order,

Prelude: "Canon Oneshot"

Chapter I: The Bleak Masquerade

Interlude I: Heroes of Another Tale

Chapter II: In Our Midst

Interlude II: Memorandum Memoriam Mori

Chapter III: Of Kings and Queens

Interlude III: [Redacted]

Chapter IV: [Redacted]

Interlude IV: [Redacted]

Chapter V: [Redacted]

Interlude V: [Redacted]

FINAL CHAPTER: [Redacted]

Epilogue

Important campaigns for full understanding of Holding's Demise include Liberation of Barovia, Draco Resurgem, Stone Quest, and Lords Frontier.

## FATE

FATE is a mechanic in Holding's Demise used to create a sense of dread. FATE are a type of dice, also known as a dF, which has 3 possible outcomes and must always be rolled in groups of four. FATE dice will either result in a positive, negative, or neutral integer. After the rolls, these integers are added. Depending on whether the result is a positive, negative, or neutral number, the result of a campaign altering decision will change. FATE dice can only be used at DM discretion and are never triggered by players.

## Elements

Demise - Filled with destructive properties, Demise is an orange material that can take on many forms. Touching it in its pure liquid form causes immense pain as well as infection. If infection reaches the brain, Demise will disintegrate a character's mind and then replace it with a tumor made out of concentrated Demise. This tumor's purpose is not yet understood.

Hope - Filled with defensive properties, Hope is a blue material that can only appear as a liquid. Touching it is believed to be safe, but ingesting it causes infection. Once infected, a person's hope for the future will begin to take a physical form. Although much safer than Demise, once Hope fully overtakes a person, their entire body will shut down and cause a near immediate, infinitely painful psuedo death. In this state, a person's soul is placed in a state of complete and never ending limbo. This place will constantly split and pull apart the person's soul, just to recombine it. If placed in specific waters, these effects can be reversed.

Aether - Filled with properties of insanity, Aether is a crimson material that can appear in liquid or gaseous forms. Aether was created by Dinah in order to [Redacted]. Touching Aether will cause complete incineration of every part of the body that comes in contact. This disintegration leaves behind no traces and will even pull apart that piece of a person's soul. Aether can infect a person through injection, but its side effects are not worth the risk. Aether injections allow a quick burst of incredible power, enough to rival nearly god-like beings. However, even a drop of Aether injected in a person can completely eat them from the inside out and is nearly guaranteed to drive them irreversibly insane.

Drive - Beetle.

## OST

D&D is an audiovisual experience, even if it relies on imagination. Because of this, Holding's Demise heavily relies on its music for storytelling. The soundtrack for the game can be found here.

## Ancient History

### Prologue:

Party is taken to the house of the dead and finds hints of Dias’ past.

Books: Discoveries - Ancient Inventions impossible to understand, Stories of Old - The story of Dias’ Orc genocide and his party’s assassination of him, Secrets Not Meant to be Told - Solution to the puzzle as well as detailing Dias’ enlightenment

Pages: White - “Blood red, green gone. \*random BS about nouns and adjectives\*” Red - “Blood, help. Dying, no way. Starvation.” Blue - “One Way.”

Findings: The timeline goes in order of Dias’ findings, then he became racist, then genocide, then his assassination, then his enlightenment.

### Chapter I: The Bleak Masquerade

Session 1: Party finds themselves in the main room chained up. They explore the facility, gain general ideas of the game they’ve been taken to, and make a deal with Peter to save Shenze and Brak, who have been infected by the Orange (Demise). They meet Peter and Danielle and never ask the names of anyone else.

Session 2: Party’s first night. Peter’s phantom is revealed. Exposition dump on Hope and Demise. Tumeda chooses mercy, forcing his party to go hungry. Dias brought up again. Party gets the shit beaten out of them by a mystery girl. Gas mask guy shows up and saves them. She attacks them again but they’re saved by Tumeda who comes in at the last second. Lore dump on Demise and Hope, Shenze gets hope overdose, Brak gets called an unusual case of Hope.

Session 3: The party begins in the main room, before noticing Shenze dying from hope poisoning. Peter says that he can save Shenze, given that he gets something that he lost. The party heads to the theater and sit in the raised balcony seats. They are sucked into a memory by an orc before blacking out. Orc (Bar) explains his prison. Puzzle begins. The room has connections to Olg; writing on core: “Dear mighty bison, if you’re reading this, that means that you have finally arrived. I’m sorry that I could never meet you, but-” Tumeda gets vices and seemingly indestructible cigarettes as well as a deck with only one card. Leo lore dump and he learns some words of power. Icarus remembers information on Draco and begins translating ancient orcish. Leo recognizes rabbit statues and some ancient druidic magic. Core seems to be the green dragon gem (which no one recognizes). Honeymoon becomes the Bar theme. Bar and Leo become sort of brothers as they bond over shared history. Magic causes the green gem to activate and doors burst open. Waves of fake Bars appear and nearly kill the party. The party retreats and Bar kills the fakes by attacking the green gem. Bar remembers his past, Dias lore dump, ancient orc lore dump, Brak forms a connection, and Leo lore dump. Leo and Bar have a private moment in which he is told to kill him in the event of a fatal injury. Leo complies. Bar goes back with them, they’re told that they’re in a safe place by Phantom Peter, and the party is told that they will be given water by the end of the night as thanks for sparing him. \*\*Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing begins to play\*\* Mystery Woman appears, tells Bar that she’ll “gut him like the fish he is” at which point Bar seems genuinely offended. Initiative is rolled, but she immediately appears behind him and kills him instantly. She delivers a speech about “the danger of Phantoms” and spares the party. Bar’s final wish is fulfilled, and he is finished off by Leo. His final words were, “Do you hear her song? Thank you for indulging me. I’ll see you on the other side, brother.” He disappears, confirming that Phantoms leave behind no bodies. Leo falls to the ground, as the magic that he always relied on failed him. The session ends with his broken, bloodied wedding ring falling to the ground as a large hand falls from the sky.

Session 4 (FINALLY CHAPTER 1: ACT 2 CAN START): Leo begins to feel the world turn as the ring Bar held falls to the ground. Leo gets mindfucked and thrown into a flashback. He realizes that the flashback is of a strange man who Bar called Dias. The flashback includes him being referred to as Bar, causing him to realize that he’s not actually in his own body. Clearly evil, honestly extremely racist speech ensues until finally, the flashback ends.

The giant hand is revealed to have a strange symbol on top. It begins bleeding uncontrollably when Phantom Peter comes in. He gets upset when he sees the mess that the party left in his home, but Leo’s still upset over the murder of Bar. When asked to, he still cleans up the mess and realizes that he doesn’t see the symbol on the hand. Tumeda realizes that the symbol is forming out of the blood as well, and antics ensue. Leo pockets the ring, and the party gets 5 days' worth of water. Eventually, the blood sigil connects and Phantom Peter tells the party to leave, but not before answering 2 of Leo’s questions. He says that he has no information on Bar as well as informs Leo that removing his or someone else’s mask would result in instantaneously killing the body while leaving the soul in permanent liminal pain.

The party arrives at the night but is able to leave after talking with Barton (gas mask guy). The party is told of a little favor that they can do for him to repay him for the whole saving them thing. They are also offered half of whatever they may find. Upon returning to the main room, they begin to search the chromatic rooms as they were asked to, but not before taking a short rest. They decide to go into the green room and Tumeda is nearly killed by Brak. The funny puzzle begins and the river Styx exists. After a lil bit of finesse, Icarus puts together pieces of the puzzle and eventually refers to some of the books written by Dias for guidance. The puzzle is solved upon the realization that pulling a switch in the river would completely kill all of the inventions in the death game.

The party heads towards the red room and are told of Barton’s discoveries. They are told of his past and that Danielle is his sister. He talks about his dead brother and best friend as well as their causes of death. This leads to a few more discoveries about the mechanics of the death game. They are told that Danielle is in the purple room, and sure enough there she is. She seemingly was in the middle of a fight with Peter when the party interrupted them, causing her to storm off into the main room. Peter asks the party if they have his prized possession, and for a while, they think that they forgot to get it, but then Tumeda pulls it out of his back pocket. Brak gets upset and yells at him while Peter tells the story of his past. His prized possession is a deck of cards with only the ace of spades. According to him, it belonged to his mentor, who was killed in a standoff as a result of his mistakes. After this Peter disappears, leaving behind their reward, a box of 1 day’s worth of food and a light amount of gold. The party takes a break to eat their food and Leo gets a letter that perfectly transcribes the words from the room of memories. The letter is sealed with a crest that has its origins in TGIF in Aethrad, Sigozasia. During this break, Brak attempts to have a heart-to-heart with Leo and is ignored, when suddenly the ground begins to shake.

The party rushes to check on Barton but is told that the machine in the red room is activating. They rush to shut down the machine, not knowing that it wouldn’t have any effect on it. The party is able to flick the switch, believing that they shut down the entire operation. When they do this, the lights turn off and they’re told that the emergency protocol will begin in 30 seconds, giving them a time limit to flee the scene. King calls out to them in the dark, and the party follows him. Eventually, they find themselves in a dark corridor, when the lights suddenly turn back on. When they get a visual of the room, they realize that it’s a throne room. To their left and right are tied-up versions of Barton and Danielle. Unbeknownst to the party, both have been tied up with a special rope infused with Demise in order to paralyze the person tied up. At this point, they realize that in front of them is a man with a striking resemblance to Barton calling himself King. He tells them that they have seen a few like him and closes the door behind them. King then warns the party of the room’s gimmick, that being that any lies told in the room will result in the immediate death of everyone in the room. He then has a funny argument with Tumeda and leaves, but not before Leo confirms him to be a phantom. Leo also realizes that both King and Barton are vampires. The party solves a puzzle in the room, resulting in more knowledge on the story of Dias and also hints towards the death game having to do with Malkis’ 4th world ender via visual references to Draco Resurgem. Each puzzle solved resulted in harder questions, starting out as “Tumeda, what do you see? Nothing.” “Brak, what is your model number? Insert random numbers here.” “Icarus, what is your name? Icarus” “Leo, what is the purpose of your journey? To save my people from a plague.” Then leading into, “Leo, how’s your father? Unwell, his illness is fungal, and it spreads quickly.” “Icarus, how’s your relationship with your family? It’s alright.” “Tumeda, what’s up dog? Up dog.” “Brak, does your life have a purpose? Yes.” And then ending with “Leo, do you honestly think that you can save them? Absolutely, yes I do.” “Icarus, have you ever been truly happy? There was a time, yes.” “Tumeda, have you ever felt love? I guess yeah.” Finally ending with the question, “Brak, are you a person?” When Brak answers yes, the detector begins to malfunction, rapidly switching between red and green lights until finally fully shutting down. Not even the magic in this place can tell if Brak is a person.

Session 5: As the room rises, Leo has another memory unlocked, this time of Bar meeting and terrorizing King with unknown actions against Dani (Danielle’s phantom). The memory shows King through multiple months, becoming more and more hardened and yet still never reaching the insanity of modern-day King. After snapping out of this memory, Leo saw that the puzzle had been solved and that the room seemed to be moving upwards. The party saw a door open and before leaving Brak wrote down the contents of the tablets. King gives a speech and some lore shit goes on with Barton and Danielle. King does his evil thing and sends minions to kill the party. The party wins the fight but loses the cutscene until Danielle pulls off some anime bullshit. They head back home and are told that the night has been delayed. They get a long rest and talk to the Smith. They grab Shenze and are told of a few magic items that could help them. Shenze is given the Pendant of Pandora. The party is given a task by Peter and is then taken to the night. Wolf in sheep’s clothing hits and they’re taken to the memory of Barton and Danielle by the woman. In the memory, Dani (Danielle’s phantom) and King are clearly not themselves. The memory details how Barton became a vampire. An eye for an eye and some beholder imagery appears.

Session 6: The group sets up camp with Barton and Danielle and share tid bits of their past. Barton shares his days as the Baron of Ordo Mortem (name of city not yet revealed), in which he did vigilante work in the shadows along with his sister. The memory begins to crack as they get sent to a new location, ending up in an aztec-like ruin. At the top is Dani (phantom), who has renamed herself the Baroness. She gives a speech about trapping them in her game and takes Barton and Danielle as hostages. The Puzzle of Cowardice begins. The Baronesse shows herself to be a constant liar, but constantly condemns cowardice. Any time that anyone moves away from her, they steadily grow more and more insane. This comes to a head when Brak fails their final save and is brought down to 10 intelligence. Another step away would have immediately killed them. Luckily, they solve the puzzle with the help of the Smith’s Wild Potions, granting Icarus over 4000 pet beetles. Upon solving the puzzle, the party jumps into an endless hole, becoming completely engulfed. This time alone allows Danielle to become whole, completely merging with her phantom. She resets the room with her newfound powers, and her mask disintegrates, showing her true inner self. Danielle becomes a vampire. Her room, once the green room, is a cloudy sky. It begins to shift as gems appear and Danielle, now accepting the name Dani, asks the party to move them. When brought together, a vision of the future appears. The party sees Tempos’ wrath.

Session 7: Prep session. Party gets supplies, including magical gauntlets for Leo, Drive for Icarus, and a weapon for Brak. Hopes are high. Tumeda goes on a solo mission to get a couple of rings from the dismembered hand, shrinks it down to size, and gives it to Peter. Peter rewards him with some food for the party, some money, and a strange mysterious box. The third box is then revealed to not be from Peter but Dinah. Tumeda is bound to secrecy, being told about a Plan to Eradicate Evil. The party is also warned of Ozymandias’ test for them, being told of his surprise appearance. Hopes once again descend

Session 8… CHAPTER 1 FINALE: Everything comes together here. The party realizes that they’re all in the same dream, coming face to face with Olg (voiced by Baron Dipitous). Olg gives all of them cranberry juice, (he’s trying to get off the wine) and fixes brak’s issue by giving shenze a use of greater restoration. The party then wakes up in a new waiting room to the face of Ozymandias. He tells them of their objective. If they can escape with their lives, he’ll reward them with the new room. They begin to search for ways out. The party gets blind sided by water from Styx (name not yet revealed), which completely stops them in their tracks. The party finds spending money to be their only way in. This comes to a head when Shenze buys a cursed looking diamond, granting him the power of Aether. The diamond shatters, releasing a soul that crashes through the center point of the main room. Brak runs to the center and begins allowing it to feed off of their arcane energy, before completely causing the party to go backwards in time. This is quickly found to be another illusion however, as reality shatters and an eldritch horror begins to try to destroy the whole party. Before they’re all killed, they get transported to a random forest, right in front of Dinah. She tells the whole party to trust her, as she shows up completely armorless, and invites them to her lab. They see Phantom Peter, who’s been self isolating in her lab. The two of them have apparently grown close. She tells the party of her experiments to try to peacefully resolve phantoms and shares that her wife was killed by phantoms. The truth about her “evil” deeds are then revealed, as every time that she showed up in a cold open, she didn’t have an eyepatch. That was her phantom. She asks that the party earn their keep and help her get some arcane energy without harming anyone, and they agree after drinking some tea. Tumeda gets more info on the plan, and talks a bit to Phantom Peter. The party reunites and gets some food, learning that Peter has been stealing Brak’s supplies, likely without reason. She leaves them for a bit, telling them that if she screams to take her out without remorse. The party agrees and sits down to eat. After their meal, she starts screaming for help, and the party gets up and gets ready to fight. They go upstairs and find her in full armor, fully silent. She slowly takes steps towards them and eventually moves with extreme speed. After a little while, she sheds her armor and has aether fully overtake her, causing her mask to disintegrate and allowing her to become one with her phantom. She gains a huge sword and the ability to fire a laser with enough power to destroy nearly anything. Right before the party dies, Phantom Peter appears, turning into a black dragon, presumably matching Dinah’s power. He tells the party to get lost, and they quickly do. Right when they think they’re safe, the party gets teleported to Peter’s room. At which point he loses his cool and sends kill bots against them. The robots do very little to the party, but manage to cause Leo to drop his ring, leading it to shatter and completely freeing the soul inside. Strangely, what he sees inside is not Bar, but rather his dead wife, Varian. She tells him that she’ll be in his mind from this point on, and sends him back to the real world. As he snaps back to reality, the ring’s shattering causes all the robots to break down and explode on impact, and Varian grants the party a gift. As they all get back into fighting form thanks to her, they get found by Ozymandias. He takes them to the den of his weakest Ly-Ohn, a huge mechanical monster with the ability to nearly kill any creature it comes into contact with. As the party defeats it by exploiting its manufacturing error, Ozymandias gets ready to summon 4 full strength Ly-Ohns, until he gets interrupted by Andi’s appearance. She shows up completely out of nowhere and teleports the party out of the masquerade, showing them the full Land of Holding. As she opens the doors of the world, she gives the party the final line of the Bleak Masquerade.

> “I’m Andi, Peter’s sister.”
>
>