Session 1-3: Rumble in Muntgard

Arran the elven scholar, Vica the tabaxi hunter and Vojta the northern druid show up in Muntgard, all drawn here by letters from someone called Tusk. They are told by an innkeeper that Tusk is with the loxodon warband that inhabits the nearby temple. The three go to the temple, accompanied by the armordillo bouncer Ahrm, but they find only a shady dwarf. The group explores the rest of the temple, fights off some attacking shadows, and find a mysterious altar where black liquid oozes from the walls. They take a sample of the ooze and place a torch on the altar, disintegrating the torch and forming a new shadow. The group locks the door and gets the fuck out of there, noting that the shady dwarf is gone.

The next morning, they find out that the temple had been overrun with shadows and that the Muntgard paladins collapsed the building to keep them in. They find the loxodon warband, and their companion Tusk, a tiefling. Tusk explains that she was sent by Vojta's mentor, the Lunar Man, to collect several chosen heralds and bring them to the City of the Glacial Stream. One of the primordial gods might be awakening to threaten the world, and the Lunar Man sent her to gather the heralds who can stop it, including Vojta. Shortly after, she is killed by a mysterious black dragonborn bearing a druidic messenger symbol.

The group finds a pile of memory trinkets in Tusk's belongings, and a dead shapeshifter in the hallway of the pub where they were meeting, clutching a letter from Tusk addressed to someone named Theras. The group flees the scene and finds a carnie fortune teller to open the trinkets, transferring the memory into one of their minds. He refuses to cooperate after the first trinket, however, because he doesn’t want to open the memories of a dead person. They then find a different shaman called Hardruk, who is disguised as a half-orc but later shows his true appearance as an oni. He opens several more trinkets for them, but each member can only receive one without resting. The memories show different people heading towards different places. Vojta recognises the memory he receives as a vision from the Lunar Man, so it's possible that the other memories were also visions Tusk received. The memories show Glyckheart Fortress, Ceneza Island, The Spike, and a town somewhere in the Varian Highlands.

The group is then attacked by an assassin trying to stop their investigation. They defeat him, but before they can figure out more about the attacker, they are startled by the arrival of a horde of dragonborn led by a brass dragon, who are on the run from an orc invasion. The group leaves Muntgard and heads north, intending to catch a ship from Galead to Ironclad and eventually reach Ceneza Island and the City of the Glacial Stream.

As has slowly been explained through both a oneshot and some roleplay moments, the shady dwarf encountered in the Muntgard temple was a scout sent ahead by the dwarven group of interest known as the Blackpowder Reavers. The organisation was intent on eradicating the dragonborn refugees that were coming from Yolgolzhof. Knowing that they were trekking to Muntgard, one of the options they considered was calling upon local cults and dark goddesses to strike the city with curses and plagues. The temple you visited was one dedicated to the darker aspects of the Saolana, dwarven goddess of life and undeath. The Blackpowder Reavers were hoping to leverage her curses to overrun the city with undead, but this plan was scrapped in favour of a direct assassination (as would be explored in Anthology 3: Dorf Inc.).

At this point in development, Gyrraleth was (in terms of stat-block) a relatively high level druid in an attempt to poetically mirror Vojta's druidic nature. This idea was later abandoned due to the difficulty of fielding a spellcaster as a solo antagonist against a low-level or high-level group. This aspect would be recycled into Kreinshul. Canonically, she was the one who assassinated Clarity by command of Gyrraleth, which is something that I planned to reveal but is hard to do at this point. Gyrraleth retained his druidic ties, having once been the acolyte of a druid, but is no longer statted out as one.

The loxodon warband that the group encountered in Muntgard had trekked from the highlands surrounding Bawher to the deep south of the Valley of Five Rivers. This to pledge allegiance to the corsair lord Ozhjuul the Kind, who leads the corsairs of the Bay of Fayekro. At this point in time, dominance of the Valley was still disputed between Ozhjuul and an (at the time unnamed) merchant lord from Fayekro, both loxodon. This merchant lord would later become Old Blacktusk.

A minor event that occurred after the chaotic battle against the summoned wolves in the tavern. The body of a changeling clutching a letter meant for Theras was found, murdered by an unknown adversary. Originally, this was supposed to be a changeling from The Spike. Theras was, at this point, already imprisoned for his crimes. The priests of The Spike opted to send out a changeling masquerading as Theras to scout out what Tusk wanted. There was a minor encountered planned with him, but I opted against executing it to give the party more bonding time. Funnily enough, his name was Azh, which lines up well with the trend established by Annelot that all changelings have one-syllable names. Looking back now, I like to think that Azh was a truth-seeker who served the priests of The Spike, who volunteered for this mission in hopes of coming closer to the truth.

The dragonborn that arrived in Muntgard had fled from the dragonborn city of Yolgolzhof, situated on the east-side of the mountain-range. Yolgolzhof had come under great threat of the united armies of the orcs and the Hollow Mountains-dwarves, and was on the verge of falling during the siege. The mother dragon of Yolgolzhof, which would reappear in Anthology 3: Dorf Inc., was disgusted by the Orcish-Draconic War, and had hoped that by laying her lot with the neutral city of Muntgard, she may escape her political ties to both the Dragonborn Empire and the war as a whole. Unfortunately, the Hollow Mountains-dwarves disregarded this attempt, and sought her death regardless.

The battle with the assassin right before the group fled Muntgard was supposed to be a set-up and warning. Originally, it was planned that the Lastlight Gang would regularly send assassins, spies, and saboteurs to attempt to stop the group. This was supposed to be the first of many. I opted against pursuing this path for two reasons: firstly, it would've led to repetitive combats with little actually at stake. Secondly, the stat-blocks for assassins and spies are ridiculously burst-y and really meant to take down one target in one hit, I disliked this combat style. While the Lastlight Gang's presence as an assassins' guild has faded to the background, I like to think I made the right call.