Eberron - Passage
Brief Description:
House Orien, in the last days of the war, used its teleportation powers to steal huge caches of magical treasures, hiding them in a secret location even its own agents knew only by description, not geography.
Now, in the aftermath of the war, Hawkins d’Orien, an outcast who bears the Mark of Passage, meets a wandering warforged with a clue to that treasure's location. Pursued by bounty hunters and agents of an evil cult, Hawkins must oppose family and old friends to find out the truth of House Orien’s last mission of the Last War.
Full Synopsis:
Our three main characters are Hawkins d’Orien, a human sorcerer who abuses his teleportation powers to live as a thief; Labeth Porter, a kalashtar warrior seeking a fortune so she can resurrect her husband who died in the war; and Alloy, a warforged paladin who tried and failed to find a simple life among the Talenta halflings.
After a short vignet introduces each, Labeth meets Hawkins in a Brelish village when she tries to collect the bounty on him, but he evades her. She pursues him to Sharn, to a gala held by several dragonmarked families. Hawkins is looking for leads on things to steal when he sees an argument between a strange warforged and Hawkins’ father Ghen (whom he has hated ever since Ghen let Hawkins’ wife and son die). The warforged is trying to gain access to records of the dragonmarked houses so he can identify a body he found in the Mournland. Ghen will not allow it, but Hawkins becomes friends with the warforged, and agrees to help.
The warforged paladin, Alloy, will not agree to steal the records, so instead they set out to collect a bounty on a group of brigands in the King’s Forest – the Jungle Boys – intending to buy access to the records. During the hunt, Labeth first tries to attack them, then helps them defeat some of the brigands. They discover they have a common interest: Labeth overheard Ghen d’Orien mention “retrieving the cache during the transit,” and Hawkins realizes the person Alloy saw had a Siberys Mark of Passage. Hawkins admits that he was involved in stealing and hiding a great amount of magical treasure and dragonshards toward the end of the war. He wants to disrupt his father’s plans, Alloy wants to solve the mystery, and Labeth wants to get the treasure, so they join forces.
Seeking clues, they sneak into the headquarters of House Orien in the city of Passage, and follow a trail that leads them to a few possible sites of the ‘cache.’ They find no treasure, but do cross paths with agents of Ghen – a fighter from House Orien, a House Lyrandar mage, and an Inspired monk – but Hawkins and company teleport away before the fight escalates.
Alloy has spurts of dreams that suggest mysterious planar energies are at work. Directed by Labeth’s contacts, the group visits a planar observatory in the Eldeen Reaches, just miles from the ground where Labeth’s husband died. At the observatory they learn that a rare planar transit will occur soon; Shavarath, the Battleground, will metaphysically pass in front of Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead, eclipsing that plane and briefly cutting it off from Eberron. They are attacked at the observatory by Ghen’s agents, and though they escape again, the psychic energy of the Inspired monk affects Alloy, and he sees a vivid vision. Ghen, he learns, is allied with the Dreaming Dark, attempting the pinacle of dimensional travel – accessing Dal Quor, the Region of Dreams – by means of an eldritch machine hidden in the Glowing Chasm in the Mournland. The planar eclipse will allow a resurrection spell to call a spirit from Dal Quor, rather than Dolurrh, and the eldritch machine will give it a body.
Unwilling to teleport somewhere they've never seen before, the group hijacks a lightning rail train and ride into the Mournland. They discover that the spirits of the dead are appearing on the train, apparently drawn to the planar conjunction. But before Hawkins can reach his father's secret base, the train is attacked by a Lyrandar airship, and the group is taken prisoner. The ritual to open the portal to Dal Quor requires a body that bears the Mark of Passage, to focus the planar powers, and the body they have chosen is that of Kev, Hawkin’s dead son.
Hawkins can only watch as they perform the ritual, but as the planar dream energies slip into the world, Alloy is able to bend enough of it to his will that he frees them, and they disrupt the last moments of the ritual, unleashing energy that twists people's dreams, killing them. Aside from agents of the Dreaming Dark, the only survivors are Hawkins and Labeth, who have lost too much to still have any hopes or dreams. The Quori that was intended to appear instead resurrects into Kev’s body, and with the newly awakened power of a Syberis mark, it flees to Ghen’s manor in Sharn, needing to rest until the planar transit ends.
Hawkins curses his dying father in the ruins of the eldritch machine, and nearly gives up. But from the many spirits drawn by the planar transit, Labeth’s husband appears, giving her the strength to keep going. She convinces Hawkins to help her. They scry and teleport to Sharn, sidetracking briefly to get an ally with the Mark of Healing, Parison d’Jorasco. Together, they face Ghen’s agents and the dream monsters of the Quori, finally managing to drive the spirit out of Hawkin’s son just before the transit ends. The plans of Ghen d'Orien and the Dreaming Dark are defeated, Hawkins is reunited with his son, and Labeth, finally able to mourn for her lost husband, is healed spiritually.
I could use some help, I'm sure. Is it action-y enough? Should the villain play a bigger active role earlier on, or is it okay for his henchmen to be the main antagonists until the ending?
