A Call to Arms

A Call to Arms is a campaign taking place in Gernon. Having fled from Scientarian aligned bounty hunters who had sought them out in Nuhaven, the team has to begin working with the Kurosekai Resistance in order to fight the Scientarian regime that will not leave them in peace. The events take place in 5 asr.

### Player Characters

* Yotokono Kusetare: a human Drunken Monk, and future King of Kurosekai.
* Trigwocket the Engineerateer, a gnome alchemist and gunslinger, and future founder of the nation of Trigwocket
* Geylin, a Simian Wizard forced far from his former position in the Institute of Magical Learning.
* Raito Hiyoshi
* Harkalios

### Important NPCs

* Kasidrek
* Valdemarr

### Bounty in Nuhaven

The story began about five years after the group began hiding in Nuhaven, with the group waking up in the Drunken Camel Tavern after a night of celebration. While trying to discern what happened the night before, the group was approached by one of the town youths saying that there were a group of low life bounty hunters looking for them. It turned out that the hunters had been sent by Nehrun Savoy, Lord Mayor of Kurosekai. He had sent the bounty hunters to track them down for two reasons.

1. In order to learn from them all they knew about Kasidrek, who had left Nuhaven years before and had apparently joined the resistance against the Scientarian occupiers in Kurosekai.
2. It was known that they had worked for the Institute of Magical Learning and had been present at the institute on the day of the archmage's assassination. Thus. they considered potential pro-magic activists and worthy of being hunted down.

Fearing that there would simply be more hunters on their way, the group had the Monks from the Monastery of One Thousand Moons spread the story that the group had fled to Oyashima. This gave them time to have Trigwocket call in a favor from his gambling buddy, Santiago, who took them by boat to Caliyan. There they got a trader to smuggle them from Caliyan to Kurosekai, where they may be able to stop Baron Savoy before he could kill them.

### In Kurosekai and Rescuing the Slaves

While walking through the shipping district, Trigwocket spotted a small boy trying to slip a note onto Kusetare. Kusetare grabbed the boy, but the boy only gave him the note and told them to find "Shayla", so they let him free. Following the note took them to the North-Western district, one of the most run-down of the residential districts in Kuroseki. After a brief search they were able to find the location mentioned in the note, a seedy bar called "The Sullen Wench". Inside the Sullen Wench the group met Shayla Nehmen, a half elf activist, who told that a mutual acquaintance of theirs had told her that the group was reliable. She explained that there was an underground resistance trying to overthrow the Baron and the Scientarian regime and that if they helped the Resistance she could help put them in touch with Kasidrek. The group agreed, so Shayla ushered them into a hidden room behind the bar where there were enough beds for them to spend the night.

The following morning she woke them to give the group their first mission. In the shipping district there was a Scientarian prison where a group of prisoners were being held until they could be sold as slaves. These prisoners were primarily members of the resistance, and needed to be freed if the fight was to continue. The empire had instituted penal slavery as part of their repression of the resistance and the arcane elements of society. The group was to infiltrate the prison before the slaves could be sold, free them, and lead them to the canal where a boat would be waiting to take them out of the city. Shayla gave them the location of the prison but offered them no other assistance, though she warned that they only had three days to complete their task, as on the fourth a buyer was expected to purchase the slaves.

That day the group set out to find the prison and do initial reconnaissance. They discovered that the prison was fairly small and poorly defended, with only a few, ill-armed guards in place. They decided that the best course of action would be to induce some kind of illness in the slaves and then send Geylin and Raito in as doctors to get the slaves out without alerting the guards. They returned to the Sullen Wench to sleep with the plan of finishing their preparations the following day.

The next morning the group was woken by two members of the Resistance, a Human male and a Half-Elf of ambiguous gender. The Human did not introduce himself, instead introducing the Half-Elf as Harkalios, another new recruit into the Resistance who was to assist the group in their task. After making their introductions and getting acquainted with their new ally, the group split up to complete their tasks for the day. Geylin and Raito traveled to the High-Residential District so that they could find appropriate garb for a doctor and that Raito could learn to effect the air of a Kurosekai elite, and Trigwocket and Kusetare moved through the various markets and trade districts of the city so that Trigwocket could gather the materials needed to create a poison which would visible sicken the slaves without killing them. While the others prepared, Harkalios kept watch over the prison in case anything of note took place.

Early in the evening the next day they put their plan into action. Geylin had his familiar, the raven Quoth, drop a vial of poison, along with a note encouraging the prisoners to drink it, in the midst of the prisoners where the guards wouldn't catch sight of it. After fifteen minutes a messenger was sent out of the prison to fetch a doctor. Kusetare and his wolf familiar followed and quickly dispatched the messenger, bringing the note back to Geylin and Raito so that they would seem credible as doctors. The two then waited a believable amount of time before running from up the street to the prison. It took little effort for them to bluff their way past the gate guards and they were admitted into the prison.

However they didn't anticipate that there would be such elite Scientarian soldiers within the prison, and in their attempts to deceive the guards they outed themselves as magic users. On seeing Geylin use arcane magic, the tower guard fired a distress-flare, prompting Hark to shoot him with an arrow, however it was too late to stop the Scientarian soldiers from the area from being alerted. Realizing that they were quickly losing control of the situation, the rest of the group made to storm the prison, rescue their captured allies, and free the slaves, hoping to escape on the boat waiting for them in the canal.

After quickly dispatching the gate guards and entering the prison, the group was confronted by the four Scientarian soldiers who had captured Geylin and Raito. The soldiers immediately fired on the party members, but the party was quick and were able, after several rounds, to dispatch two of the soldiers and severely wound one of the others. Meanwhile, in the back of the prison courtyard where Geylin and Raito where being dragged off, the two made contact with an unexpected ally: Valdemarr. Though he was currently employed as a prison guard, Valdemar decided to give his two-week's notice in the least subtle way possible, and so he immediately set to freeing his friends. However, in an ill-advised attempt at freeing Geylin from his manacles, he cut off Geylin's left hand, leading to the Simian mage passing out from pain. though it was quickly reattached thanks to Trigwocket's alchemy.

At this point, notified by the sound of Trigwocket's bombs exploding a wall to allow the slaves to run for the ship, the remaining four elite Scientarian soldiers came out from inside the prison barracks, quickly turning the tide of the fight. A rifle shot to the chest quickly took down Valdemarr, who was in the process of trying to flee with the unconscious Geylin, and another shot almost killed Trigwocket. With only Kusetare and Harkalios able to continue fighting, Hark decided it was time to make a quick escape, and so he used his druidic magic to create a thick fog in the hopes of giving the group enough time to gather their wounded and escape. But this was all for naught, as while the slaves managed to get away, the party were captured by the Scientarian reinforcements that arrived.

The following day the group awoke, weak but with their injuries bandaged, in a dark prison, each member chained to the wall in adjacent cells. With the group all awake, a halfling Scientarian official entered and gave an ominous monologue. For some unknown reason, this officer surreptitiously aided the group in their escape from prison, and the party was able to successfully return to Shayla. Not willing to look a gift horse in the mouth, they were still quite interested in who this traitorous Scientarian officer on the inside truly was and why they were helping them.

### Graccus Mori

The resistance celebrates immensely following the success and escape of the party, surprised that they managed to get out so quickly, even with Kasidrek's help. Shayla next orders them to complete a new mission. The next important mission they were given was to find and either kill or discredit Graccus Mori. A scientarian official and head of the Academy of Science, getting him out of the way or at least out of power would be helpful in their efforts to continue the fight. After sneaking into the headmaster's house, they considered a plot to help discredit him by leaving arcane spell materials and necromancy components all around decaying flesh to make it appear that Mori had been dabbling in proscribed magical experiments. The party set fire to the Academy of Science before sneaking into the central district, allowing part of the building to burn and bring in people to see the planted evidence.

### Assassination of the Lord Mayor

Upon the arrest of Graccus Mori for his alleged crimes, the western emperor Alek Tellumnar gave a public speech about the national security threat that magic is continuing to play in their lives. The following night, the party members joined resistance members undercover as waitstaff at a party hosted in the Lord Mayor's mansion with the goal of killing the vile Savoy, but all were captured and nearly killed as Shayla is revealed to be Alek Tellumnar's "daughter," a clockwork android named Marisol Tellumnar. She set all of this adventure up to capture as many of the resistance as possible in one fell swoop, and dozens of elite guards burst into the room at the same time. Before anyone could move, the Lord Mayor is assassinated by the same halfling officer that had released the crew from prison, who is revealed to be Kasidrek using a powerful Mask of Disguise. Combat ensues in the shock and turmoil, and the party killed Marisol, though not without losing the lives of their friends Geylin and Valdemarr, and permanently traumatizing Raito from the violence he witnessed. The party runs away and returns to Nuhaven, as with "Shayla"'s betrayal, all of the resistance's people and hideouts were compromised, and the fight would need to start again from scratch.