Act One

This is players' accounts of sessions during the First Campaign of Nearden. Accuracy is questionable at best.

## Pre-Wiki

The campaign begins with an adventure party consisting of the following:

* Bittah
* Kevin
* Makoto
* Monte
* Mulder

The party is mostly first-time adventurers, who meet each other and decide to team up on the way to Helmsgard.

### Helmsgard

The party starts in Helmsgard, eventually picking up a quest from Abasi, a travelling gem dealer. They must safely escort him and his goods from Helmsgard to Hammerfel. Monte has vivid dreams of a mysterious woman talking to him, while Mulder learns that his missing sister Samantha was sighted being taken to Hammerfel.

At some point, the party recruits Kurama to join the envoy.

### Goblin Cave

En route to Hammerfel, the party is ambushed— with an enemy stealing a box of precious jewels from Abasi. The party tracks the thief to a cave, and learns the thief is a researcher who goes by the name Johann, who is the only non-goblin in the cave. He then takes them to what seems like a religious ritual involving The Great Grub. The party attempts to foil the ritual, but fails as they stumble upon the heavily guarded Grongle, leader of the Goblin cult. The party then grabs all the loot they can hold, and fight their way out of the cave. Johann dies during combat, with the party securing the box of precious gems. They continue onto Hammerfel, without Abasi's cart of goods.

Monte has another dream of the mysterious woman who informs him that there's more to the precious gems than meets the eye, and that the party should take interest in them. Monte awakens before the rest of the party and takes notice of what the woman had told him. He steals the gems from the box, held snug in Abasi's grip while he sleeps, and replaces them with rocks of similar size and weight. All twelve gems he tucks away safe in his bag.

### Hammerfel

The party arrives at Hammerfel and parts ways with Abasi, as he has business with the Queen regent and the gems, not knowing that they were stolen by Monte. The party chats with Rosie, a high-profile prostitute who informs the party that men have been going missing from the town.

Later that day, they find Abasi has been murdered, with his head hanging outside the gates of the keep. Monte and the party make their way to a tree, not far from the northern gates of the keep, where the womanly entity instructed them to deliver the gems that Monte had stolen from Abasi. They placed them in a magical box. Once all twelve were safely placed inside, the box magically sealed itself shut and vanished from sight. The woman's appearance in Montes dreams stopped.

While at a tavern, Monte has an encounter with a witch, who pulls him into a time freeze and informs him that the identity of the mysterious woman in his dreams is named Shiroi Kumo, also known as the White Spider. The witch also tells him that the White Spider wants the gems from Abasi for nefarious reasons, possibly to restore a demonic curse that was ended by Jorgund long ago. The sword used by Jorgund to break the curse is rumored to be somewhere within the Jorgund's Bane mountain range.

During this time, Bittah and Mulder encounter Sasha, a local who tells them about mysterious lights she saw on top of Jorgund's Bane recently.

### The Slug

For reasons not completely clear to me, the party is then approached by 3 rat-like creatures, who lead the party to the Slug, who lurks in the deep waters of a large cistern somewhere on the outskirts of Hammerfel. After making no attempt to enter the Slug's domain whatsoever, the party bravely runs away from the situation, abandoning it entirely. They then decide it would be easier to ascend the entirety of Jorgund's Bane to investigate the recent sightings of unusual activity.

### The Mountains

Battling the cold and altitude, the party ascends the nearby mountains until they come across a battle between four mountain dwarves and a giant ice arachnid. The party takes action and saves the lives of three of the four dwaves named Throar, Thrum, and Thrar, who then take the party to their home, the dwarven Ruins of Drugal. Once there, the party is introduced to Holcom Magnaborne, the leader of the ruins. The party then makes Drugal a short-term home, staying for rest and trade. Hulkum tells the party of a nearby cave system that the party may have interest in.

### The Fight

Feeling invigorated, the party leaves the ruins and heads towards the nearby cave system. Near the cave, the party finds themselves in combat with many Yeti that downs several party members. Then with smart use of fire potions, and a biblical three critical death saves that happen during the fight, most of the party avoids death. However, Kevin dies during this fight after receiving a massive amount of damage from a Yeti.

The party retreats back to the ruins with the body of Kevin, who Mulder then honors by ripping his torso off of his stumpy turtle legs and using his corpse as a shield.

### Brix

After resting once more in Drugal, the party goes back to the cave they previously fought at. Once in the cave, Monte notices a secret entrance into a larger area of the cave. In the first room is a power source, which is later found to power on an artificial defensive guardian by the name of Brix, created by the dwarves that used to live in the forgotten ruins.

Monte is pulled into a magical mirror by a reflection of himself. The party cannot find a way to help, but he emerges moments later holding a skull. The odds of Monte being the evil Monte instead of the good Monte are pretty even, but the party is not smart enough to really give that any thought. This concern is short-lived, however, as Monte decides that saving the world from a demonic curse is too "boring", and leaves the party to find more excitement.

The entire party almost dies in combat near the throne room of the forgotten ruins, but is saved by Bittah and taken back to Drugal.

## The Forgotten Ruins

*Events from here on out occurred after the start of the wiki. For main article, please see The Forgotten Ruins.*

### Teifer

The party rests in Drugal yet again, and yet again leaves to continue investigating the forgotten ruins to the south.

As the party leaves Drugal, they find a body half-buried in the snow near a slain avalanche screamer, the same type of ice arachnid found battling the dwarves during the ascent. They dig out the snow to find a demonic tiefling that goes by the name Tiefer Sutherland. This new adventurer knows of the party's goals, and agrees to join the squad.

The party finds combat shortly after with several ice mages, and the newest party member falls twice. We don't know if it's a blood sugar thing or what.

As they attempt to enter the forgotten ruins via the secret entrance found earlier, the party once again finds themselves in combat from both sides. Mulder finds his Kevin shield highly-effective in combat, though Brix nearly loses his life in the skirmish.

### Fo' Chizzel My Nizzle

The party shortly collects themselves in the entrance to the ruins, and sneaks their way past an avalanche screamer at the end of a branching hallway.

As Kurama enters the next room, he notices a shadow skittering across the floor, into a corner. Bittah is sent in to take a look at the situation, and finds a small creature named Chizzel. A former slave to the previous dwarven residents of the ruins, Chizzel seems shy and timid, mostly chewing stone into small cubes used to line the walls of the ruin.

Chizzel points out the direction of a storage room and the throne room to the west. Inside the storage room, Mulder finds an ornate warhammer named Firesoul, embedded with magical fire. Brix finds a gnarled magical wooden staff, which can entangle foes in a mass of web.

Nearby is another mirror, similar to the one Monte was pulled into previously. Mulder throws a stone through the mirror, and it continues on as if another room existed behind the reflection, as a rock came out of the mirror in the opposite direction.

After several ambushes from a spectral being, one of the members recognize that the party is being continuously ambushed due a skull they are carrying, one of a former ruler of the ruins.

### The Throne Room

The party continues on to the nearby throne room, where they find more statues, and a large carving in the wall that seems to be missing a large disc of some type. The party, not finding any clues in the area, attempt to have a forgery made of the disc by Chizzel, who makes reverse mold of the inlay out of nearby stone.

After laying the stone into the inset, the three stone statues came to life, attempting to slay the party. Facing certain death, the party is able to smash the chiseled disc and remove it from the socket, deactivating the giants. Chizzel reveals that there is a seal that matches the design of the inset, a seal in the tomb a former rulers of the ruins.

### The Massacre

The party, low on resources and health, use their remaining health potions and head to the east, looking for the tomb of the former kings of the forgotten ruins. They hear a giant beast lurking down one hallway, and head south to avoid combat.

After going down a flight of stairs, and surprising a small group of patrolmen with quick death, the party finds themselves in a room with a magical torch, casting a void-like shadow on a wall opposite a column. After some experimenting, the group finds themselves rotating the column to aim the magical shadow onto the lantern itself, causing a large Black Pudding to spawn, engaging the party in combat. The party defeats the monster, and continues on to the tombs of former rulers.

Finding the tombs, they open the one that matches the skull in their possession, and place the skull where it's missing. On a nearby wall, they also find what they believe to be the seal they need to use in the throne room, though it will not budge. Assuming there must be another seal, they open one of the remaining two tombs to inspect and are met with an interesting development— the tomb they open also contains a skeleton of a former king, without a skull.

Remembering that the first skull came from Monte when he left the mirror, and the party has found two other mirrors, they now know what they must do. They plan to send in one, and only one, adventurer per mirror. Most of the party is near death, and cannot take on this challenge.

The party sneaks back north, past the slumbering beast they heard earlier, and get back to a mirror. Kurama volunteers to take on his reflection in the mirror realm, and steps into the mirror. After a few minutes he returns badly injured, with a skull of a former king.

For the final mirror, Tiefer steps up to the plate, to prove his worthiness to the party. He steps alone into the mirror to battle his reflection. After a few moments he returns unscathed, holding the third and final skull.

The party moves back to the east, to return to the tombs of the kings. On the way, the beast they've been sneaking past charges the party, with two more enemies dropping from the ceiling. The party, with no spells and facing certain death, have to flee this fight if they want to live.

This is the moment when Tiefer shoots the ceiling with magic, causing a cave-in that traps the party with the monsters. The party then realizes two unfortunate truths: that the real Tiefer did not make it out of the mirror, and that the party will not survive this.

Kurama takes action and murders Tiefer, as Brix, Makoto, and Mulder fall in combat. Mulder's body, as well as the Firesoul artifact are dragged into the monster's nest.

Kurama then quickly digs a small hole in the cave-in, so that he and Bittah can attempt to escape. But on the way out, he realizes that Tiefer still has possession of the final skull they need, and must retrieve it. Bittah helps him by loosing an arrow into the nearby ceiling monster to cause a distraction as Kurama grabs the skull, but is subsequently lassoed by the creature and pulled into the ceiling, and starts being strangled to death.

Right before he blacks out and dies, Bittah is able to find his way out of the grasp of the creature. He immediately shoots through the hole that Kurama had made, and flees the ruins entirely, heading back to Drugal. Kurama follows, dragging the unconscious body of Brix behind him.

They return to Drugal, where they've dwelled for over a month, with half of their party dead or missing in action.

## Welcome Home

### Relative Abundance

Back in Drugal, the party is summoned to the office of Holcom, who introduces them to Thurman, a resident who has returned home to Drugal from selling goods on the road. With him is a travelling partner he met in Hammerfel named Ron T, Monte's twin brother that is in no way rerolling the same character, so don't even think that.

Thurman has agreed to help the party clear the forgotten ruins, so that Drugal can expand into the area and have the might they once had many ages ago. Ron also agrees to join the adventure, to do what Monte could not.

As the party leaves Drugal, they come across a tall, gauntly woman— shackled to broken chains and holding the head of a creature the party has never seen before, seemingly from another world. She reveals her name to be Samantha, and was captured by beings and taken to lights on top of Jorgund's Bane, though she has no clear memories of it. She fought her way out with her newfound magic powers, and found herself outside of Drugal— after visions of her brother Mulder brought her there. The party does not mention their association with Mulder to his long-lost sister, nor his death.

The party enters the cave and tackles the creatures that killed so many in their last battle, and they find the bodies of their former teammates. Samantha comes to terms with Mulder's death, as Thurman takes Firesoul with dwarven pride. More magical items are found, but if it doesn't have to do with Thurman then I don't care, call the fuckin cops if you got a problem.

The party sneaks past an enemy guard patrol, and makes their way to the tombs. After putting the skulls where they belong, the seal is released from the wall. The party collects the seal, and heads back to the throne room. On the way, they find combat with numerous enemies that are able to split up the party's attention and kill Thurman, and severely injure the rest of the party. Afterwards, the party heads back to Drugal for maybe the 10th time, dragging Thurman's stupid dead body with them, like kids dragging a broken present back home on Christmas evening.

The citizens of Drugal gather around and have the priest resurrect Thurman, because they cannot bear to see their chosen one die before his time has come, and glory is restored to Drugal. That's the excuse we'll go with, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the amount of deaths lately, so don't even think that.

### VIP Access

The party heads back south to the forgotten ruins, with the seal in hand. They make their way to where Chizzel stays, meeting Thurman for the first time. Thanks to Thurman's natural dwarven strategic slave-owning tendencies, Chizzel becomes useful— as he prepares the throne room for Holcom to claim, and prepares sleeping arrangements for the party to use while in the ruins.

They head back to the throne room and replace the seal, opening a secret door to a locked vault. They find a nearby statue holding a key, and twerk on the statue until the key is released. Opening the door, they find thousands of gold pieces, and many valuable gems. Due to Brix's and Thurman's loyalties, the party leaves the treasure for Holcom to use when Drugal is restored.

They head south, clearing more of the forgotten ruins. They come across a door labelled "Rune Master", with a sequence puzzle on the door. The party quickly solves it with their 2000iq brains; placing the found items where needed and placing the runes in order, finding a key to a stash hidden in the barracks of Drugal. During this, they find the Hall of Heroes, a tomb of fallen protectors throughout Drugal's history.

The party returns to Chizzel, telling him that they're heading back to Drugal for a week, and will return. Thurman tells Chizzel to make preparations for the bodies of previous fallen party members to be entombed in the Hall of Heroes.

### The Ascent

The party tries to rest in Drugal, but Samantha and Thurman are awoken by a commotion at the entrance. The guards are fighting ice monsters, and the two heroes spring into action. During the battle, the party comes face-to-face with Yuki No Joo, the Ice Queen, riding on the back of her white dragon companion, Biyakko.

The two heroes bravely run away from combat to grab their friends, leading to the death of three guards of Drugal.

After the funeral ceremony, the party gathers their belongings to attempt to scale the cliff face outside of Drugal, to reach a cave where they believe they must go.

On the way up, the party is ambushed by several flying beasts while ascending the cliffs with ropes. While the battle proves difficult, the party manages to survive and continue their ascent of Jorgund's Bane.

### Fools Rush In

The party finds themselves at an ornate entrance in the cliffs— adorned with two unlit braziers, wall carvings depicting the three original rulers of Drugal, and dwarven inscriptions.

The first inscription they find reads "The son of my son is the key", leading Thurman to slice his hand, spilling his blood on an exposed gemstone found emerging from the wall. This ignites a magical inscription that says "The Light of the East will show the way", a moniker of Jorgund's sword. Ron T, being the hardcore badass adventurer that he is, rushes to light the eastern brazier, exposing a magical outline of a door on a nearby wall.

Opening the door leads the party inside the cave system, first into a room with shelving labelled "Depository" in dwarven. Thurman heads down the hallway, and immediately feels noticeably lighter. Fearing magic, the party slowly inches into the main room. There, they find that all their items besides weapons and armor are missing, though a quick search reveals all items stored in the Depository.

In the main room, they find it full of rubble and boulders, with two locked doors to the north, and an equally large room to the west, with decorative tiles and a switch in the middle. Bittah rushes in, and when he flies over one of these tiles, he is hurt by fire that appears, making him retreat back to safety.

Thurman flips a switch hidden amongst the rubble, hearing a click and opening the northeast passage to another room full of boulders. The party determines that boulders seems to be purposefully placed in a path, mimicking what is assumed to be safe tiles in the switch room.

Kurama leads the investigation and steps on a tile without harm, followed by several more successes. When the trapped tiles lead him in a path that's in conflict with the boulder room's positions, Kurama heads back to safety, nearly burned to death.

Thurman attempts several times, each time getting burned. Eventually the party realizes that the path they're on is a red herring, and finds the correct path to the switch. On death's door, Thurman hurriedly flips the switch, hearing a click and summoning a stone defender from each of the boulders.

Kurama is near death, and rushes from the main room back to the depository, followed by two defenders. The rest of the party is severely out-numbered, and Thurman has to run back the far path of safe tiles to reach them.

Bittah takes to kiting a group of defenders by darting back and forth across the room, while Brix and the others try to manage the flow of a second group with his wand of web.

Ron falls during combat, but is revived by Brix as he heals the group after Thurman reaches the party. Thurman is able to smash a few defenders while he and Brix shield their team from damage, but ultimately dies in combat.

Kurama finds a potion of climbing in the depository, using it to quickly maneuver around the room and cause the two slow defenders to block the exits of the room while he and Bittah chip away at them at a distance from either end of the hallway.

The party finally manages to defeat the group, though the party is on their last leg and Thurman remains dead. They find the north door unlocked, and see a hallway lined with statues on either side, and decorative dragons at the end. Kurama steps on a tile and is downed by fire shot by one of the statues.

Samantha is able to decipher the hallway's safe tiles extremely quickly and extremely loudly, leading them to two locked doors. One is labelled "The Light of the East", and opens with the key found in the forgotten ruins. Before them is Hikari, the Shining Light of the East, the sword used by Jorgund to defeat the curse in a previous time. The sword is sticking out of a large stone in the back of the room, which is filled with rubble.

Ron T, being the hardcore badass adventurer that he is, rushes in to grab the sword. As he pulls on and fails to free it, creatures even larger than the defenders emerge from the rubble and corner Ron in the room.

The party decides to close and lock the door, sealing Ron in the room with the beasts, ensuring his demise.

### The Hero of Drugal

The party looks around the caves once more, looking for a way out of certain death. They search the locked door to the west, clearing it of ice and debris. This reveals that the door does not say "Drugal" like they once believed, but "Hero of Drugal". They find a key to the door as a hidden feature in the fire-breathing dragon statue at the end of the chess hallway.

Opening the door revealed a man encased in crystal, as well as a vertical pool of black gelatinous liquid. Touching the crystal on the key to the crystal surrounding the man unleashes him. He is deaf, blind, and dumb— unaware of his surroundings until one of the party members reaches out their arm and assists him. Samantha speaks to him using her psychic powers, and learns that he is Jorgund, the Hero of Drugal.

They take Jorgund to the room with holds Ron-T's body and Hikari, Jorgund's sword. Jorgund collects his sword and encourages the party to continue into the mysterious liquid portal into another cave system.

Now in a cave with runes held in various colored crystals, the party makes camp and rests by a large brazier lit for comfort. Jorgund tells them some of what he knows about the demons that are currently wreaking havoc across the lands. He is aware that Yuki No Jo, the Snow Queen, and her white dragon control these mountains and will be their first stop on the path to saving the world. However, there are many more demons across Neareden that need to be defeated once again. They then use a nearby mortar and pestle to crush up different colored crystals and put them into the fire, creating various shades of flame. This melts the crystals at the front of the cave, revealing runes that the party can use to open doors.

Opening one door with the peace symbol showed a room filled with many spirits, and a pedestal fit for a rune. Placing the life rune within brought back all the spirits, who then started killing the party. Eventually Ron T put the 'Death' tablet in the pedestal, killing the creatures. (Outside game knowledge: putting the death rune in that room caused a DC 18 Constitution check, or the character would die. Every single character rolled above a 20, without knowing what failure entailed. Yes, we are that baller). Jorgund is able to retrieve his armor at this point.

The party then found a room to the east containing one of the most simple puzzles they've ever come across. Maybe the easiest puzzle in the world. To comfort the DM for making such a silly puzzle, the party took over 90 minutes pretending to be confused and helpless, unable to solve such a childlike and obviously easy puzzle for babies. Fucking stupidass puzzle was too easy so we took forever as a gag. That's what happened, fuck that shit. The party then found keys that they figured go to the many chests found in the Rune Master's lair within the forgotten ruins.

The party finds a shortcut to the forgotten ruins, and decides to use the opportunity to return to Drugal for Jorgund and the others to rest and receive training to increase their skills, as the battle against Yuki No Jo draws near. When they reach Drugal, it is completely empty.

## The Finale

*[Here on out needs to be heavily edited as my brain was literal mush during these sessions. -Wade]*

### Much Ado

After training and rest, the party moves on to the cave of Yuki No Jo, to face her and her dragon. They enter through an opening after scaling the cliffsides, and find themselves in a very icy and slippery cave system. Near the entrance they find an injured dwarf, begging for assistance. Samantha is able to detect that something is very odd about this dwarf, and that the party should not assist or engage. Walking further down the hallway, Jorgund and Samantha fall through a false floor, landing in a room below with several enemies.

The others join in and quickly clear the room, and move on to scope out basement. They find several Ice Trolls, but the party uses the element of surprise and stealth to pick them off one by one. They find their way back to the first floor, and at the end of the hallway they find a room full of the missing residents of Drugal, frozen in a large ice crystal. After deactivating the security system in the next room, they're able to free the residents and an unknown elf by the name of Aranith.

On the way back to Drugal with the residents, everyone is ambushed by Yuki No Jo's henchmen and a giant battle erupts. I'm sure it was a super cool battle unlike any other, but that's right about when my painkillers kicked in and that's all I remember.

After a magical timewarp, the party then finds themselves back in the icy cave system, making their way to Yuki No Jo's lair. With them is Holcom, Nefriti, and Aranith. They find Yuki with her dragon and several guards, and start throwin' hands. The party gets bottlenecked in the hallway entrance, as Jorgund is immediately downed over and over again. and again. How the hell is he the chosen one when he can't even walk 5 feet without dying from a stubbed toe, this weakass geriatric mother fucker thinks mayo is spicy for fuck's sake.

Without Jorgund's sword to capture the soul of the demon, the party can only chip away at the pair as they retreat. As they leave, Yuki mentions that she will be seeking out her sister, Shiroi Kumo, to team up against the party later on. And much like the Goblin Cave, the Great Grub, the Slug Cavern, the witch in Hammerfel, the lights on Jorgund's Bane, the Mirror Realm, and the nearby Mindflayers, the party happily leaves the situation with absolutely no resolution— leaving the area potentially much worse than they found it.

Onward they go, blindly following their new companion Aranith into the Dreadwood Forest.