[April] What's up in your campaign?

[Psion]

The River of Worlds game rolls on...

The party just wrapped up their time in the Lizard Kingdoms (from Beyond Countless Doorways). They tracked down the lair of the Yuan-Ti that kidnapped the elven prince betrothed to the daughter of their leige.

The yuan-ti lair was in the cliffside over a giant lizardfolk city; the yuan-ti controlled the city by means of a swarm-dragon that they controlled. The party discovered that the yuan-ti were also blackmailing a copper dragon into doing their bidding by holding his daughter captive. The party stole into the yuan-ti lair and released the young copper dragon and the slaves the yuan-ti captured, but the elven prince was not there; only humans are useful to the yuan-ti's experiments and the elven prince was traded off.

In the party's retreat, the adult copper dragon grappled with the dragon swarm and lost. The very young copper dragon became the fighter's dragon cohort.

For next session, the party is bound for Dragonwatch Harbor, a small tradeport on the river of worlds, in search of the elven prince that the yuan-ti sold off here. Dragonwatch harbor is a city controlled by Dragon Mages, spellcasters who have uncovered the secrets of dragon magic.

The city is tense, and there are mercenaries from the faceless legion all around; the legion has been hired to protect the city, as the city fears they will be next in a rash of raids by the forces of chaos.

While in the city, the party will learn of the Planar Trade Combine and meet a raveller wind elf, the first wind elf the party has met other than their own wind elf druid. The NPC seer will reunite with his people, and that should set the groundwork for a future villain, a renegede Talaire Shaper whose hatred of Mind Flayers has led him to ally with the forces of chaos.

If the party follows all the breadcrumbs, they should discover that the elven prince they seek was sold off to an elemental elf in the long secluded home planes of the elemental elves. There, the party should discover the sinister experiment in progress.

~~~~BACKSTORY MOMENT~~~~

In ancient times, the elves (or rather, their forebears) were like gods. The so called Bright Ones (LeShay, one of the Div) transgressed against the gods and were punished. Their very essence was fragmented by the gods themselves. Now all the races of elves that remain behind are fragmented remnants of this once great race.

However, the elemental elves (from Bow & Blade) found rituals that, by investing them with a bit of essence from their goddess, helped them to recover a sliver of their former power, giving them the elemental powers that characterize their race.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But something happened. The dark elves discovered the efforts of the elemental elves. And one of them set a grand plan in motion, taking control of the elemental elf enclaves, and performing experiments that would reshape the ritual that the elemental elves performed to shape their race to reshape elves on entire planes into Drow Elves, in a move that the dark elf faction hopes will both bolster their faction and deal a blow to surface elves.

When the party uncovers the gate to the enclaves, they will find that the elven prince they seek has been transformed into a dark elf, and the dark elf villain is the one resposible for orphaning the party's wind elf druid, and hundreds of other such wanderers that are known throughout the planes. It is up to them to unravel this plot.

 

[Falkus]

Urban Arcana set in New York

In the past few days, several assassination attempts on the heroes llives have been made by the Fraternal Order of Vigilance due to their continued interferance in the FOV's human supremist plans involving the Aryan Nation.

Despite interference from a mysterious organization known as the Secret Masters of Thoth as well as the FOV rubbing out all their connections the heroes have finally managed to acquire an optical disk giving the location of Carlton Ashe's manor, where the leadership of the inner circle of the FOV resides.

When we last left off, the heroes and Z, a hacker who had been helping them track down Ashe, had just arrived near Ashe's coastal mansion as a blizzard started to sweep in, blocking the roads.

 

[Ricochet]

Forgotten Realms 3.5 game, 19th level party

They just freed a nation stuck in a time vortex, and have ben transported to the ancient past, at the time of Mulhorandi's rise to power. And they just killed the guy who was destined to become the first God-King, allowing an even more evil dude, who was not evil at the time, to take the reigns. Now they are headed back to their own time, but they will be quite surprised when the world is nothing like they remember it.

I can't wait to see their faces, as they thought they did the historically right thing, but in effect did the complete opposite!

 

[demiurge1138]

Things are looking bleak for the Mysterions, a brave party of adventurers in Greyhawk of which Dr. Thanatos, Demonologist, is a member.

Plumbing the depths of an ancient castle left over from a centuries-old fallen empire in the Bright Desert, the Mysterions were looking for an ancient device purported to be able to break through all magical defenses against scying, revealing the Truth. They accidentally triggered a trap containing a bleakborn, one of the ancient undead of the city of Moil. Apparently, the lich-lord of the castle keeps exotic undead as "pets". The Mysterions successfully beat back, but did not kill, the bleakborn, only to reveal a bodak. During the fight with the bodak, in order to avoid its insidious gaze, Miss Bernadina the rogue ran. Right back into the bleakborn trap. The undead monster made swift work of her, and only through fate were the Mysterions able to recover their goods from the zombified Bernadina's bag of holding before leaving the two undead to their timeless prison.

Deeper in the castle, the Mysterions accidentally released two spectral lyrists, members of the lich's menagerie, but they were defeated with little fanfare. We were met by the lich's majordomo, a vampire tatooed with strange, arcane runes, who escorted us into the lich's inner sanctum.

The lich revealed that we had reason to aid each other. The ring we had been given by our patron was the key to a vault in the lich's throne room. This vault was long since unopened, and the lich needed to get the crown within the vault to be able to obtain the eldritch device (as well as open a portal to the Negative Energy Plane, but...). We gave him the ring, he gave us the device, and the Mysterions fled to the surface as the lich sank his castle deep beneath the sands to finish his plans.

The elevated vault that the lich-lord sent us away in contained a very helpful spirit, who informed us of both the possibility of sandstorms and the raging battle taking place within the desert between Rary the Traitor and the armies of the Circle of Eight. Once outside, my character, Dr. Thanatos, attempted to use the device to determine where the armies were, so as to avoid them. He was greeted with a vision that was maddening in its complexity, and fully incomprehensible.

Struck with a sudden urge, as well as the information that the undead of the castle were terrified of an ancient coin in the Mysterion's possession, a coin possessed with the spirit of an ancient Suel archmage, Thanatos attempted to bury it in the sand and encase it in glass formed by his eldritch blast, as its "chosen", Bernadina, was now dead.

Then all hell broke loose.

Suffice it to say, Thanatos and the two halflings, Sunshine and Starshine, were the only survivors, with Rosie Starshine badly dehydrated, Thanatos wracked with supernatural pain, and Radday, the party's wizard, left in the desert, a thrall of the coin and feebleminded thanks to a miscast scroll. But the coin was last seen in the claws of a dire vulture, with Radday dimly chasing after it.

Next week will be bad...

Demiurge out.

 

[Yair]

I would tell you, but grandma wouldn't let me. Let me just say it involves men being tied up without cloths, regularly. (And no, it probably isn't what you're thinking.)

 

[Paragon Kobold]

The ghost beneath the fortress is paranoid about his collection of goblin bones being disturbed.
The group have found it can be easily distracted by summoning a Celestial Dog,
and sending it amongst the bones...

 

[Zappo]

Planescape: the party has entered Demogorgon's realm, and has witnessed many horrible and vile acts before slaughtering an entire village of petitioners and torturing their leader. The good-aligned clerics in the party are now going to suffer greatly for not attempting to preventing this and even participating in the massacre and subsequent torture. Meanwhile, they have to travel 250 km of hostile jungle in Demozg, before reaching the Temple of Insanity in order to speak with Demogorgon himself.

Warcraft: the party has left Kalimdor and reached Lordaeron to rescue a cleric who was imprisoned in Tol Borad, before he can be forced to give away the secrets of their organization. They have met a band of pirates who may help them to storm the island - if they are what they seem to be...

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

We've been trying to track down a small girl stolen from our characters home city. She is the embodiment of pure good. Potentially, a powerful tool for good or evil. Last seen being abducted by Slaadi raiders. Our search led us on a planar trek, right to the hub city of the universe.

We became embroiled in a gang war between the two criminal empires in the city. The Slaadi and the gith. We agreed to assasinate the Gith queen in return for the location of the girl and a few other things.

To cut a long story short, the two crime groups were in league. A colossal battle took place, ending only when the lich queen turned on the slaadi king.


Currently, things go from bad to worse to even worse:

Bad: The three surviving members of the party (of six) are stood in front of the lich queen. One of us is dominated. The other two are incredibly injured... It's going to be fun trying to talk our way out of this one.

Bad: The only stable portal to our home plane is in the lair of a seriously oversized Red Dragon.

Worse: The Slaadi sold the girl to a resident of our home plane. A rather polite gentleman going by the name of Orcus!

Good: We know where Orcus lives. We know a way to weaken him (a bit!).

Even Worse: It's in the bowels of Rappun Athuk. A place we've spent quite enough time in already! The weakening method is nearly as suicidal as fighting Orcus.

 

[Cor Azer]

There's a doin's afoot...

The Legend of Aerilis (Homebrew PBeM I run):
The party is trying to track down two vigilantes, apparently outsiders, who are murdering "scum" - bad folks, but not necessarily evil folks (ie, the fishmonger who sells rotten fish). The outsiders seem to have some connection to the goodly church of one of the characters.

The Coming Night (Homebrew Tabletop I run):
The party has just received more confirmation that there may in fact be a god(dess) in the world (it had previous been set up that there were no deities of any sort). Unfortunately, they're still not sure whether or not they can trust said goddess... she claims to be about protecting and helping the masses, but they've met a few zealots in their travels. In a more secular setting, the rival opponent in the civil war of their home kingdom is within a week of holding his coronation after having defeated their forces (due to some bad planning on behalf of the party), and the party must decide if they'll swear fealty to him or be exiled. A massive invasion force from another continent is shortly to arrive on the shores of their lands, and the rumors point to the invasion force having strange technologies and eschew magic. And finally, the party is deep within the supposedly sealed dwarven kingdom, discovery there's an army of body-controlling... things... overwhelming the dwarves from below.

Into The Mists (Ravenloft I play):
The party is still trying to figure out where we are. There's a powerful winter/cold cult running the place, and most folk aren't too forthcoming with the details.

 

[Captain NeMo]

My players are about to set off on the first quest of the campaign. I really, need to get a tabletop group...PbP goes so slow!