(Cydra) The Year 271 Campaign (Low Magic experiment)

[the Jester]

Me- Sir Percival- roars in anger. The air is suddenly deadly cold. Frost forms on our heroes, who groan in pain as the cone of cold blasts over them. Only Kyle manages to tumble out of the way in time to evade the deadly cold. Gulping in terror, he casts mage armor as the thing’s eyes flick momentarily in his direction.

It is large, broad-shouldered, with bright blue skin and little horns. It wears a cruel demeanor across a broad, flat face. It wears fancy, exotic-looking silk garments. It laughs at Kyle, and then at the rest of our shivering heroes. With a single cone of cold, it just brought most of them nearly to their knees.

But not quite all of them.

Me roars again and paws the floor with one foot, as if he were a bull. He charges the monster and swings with all his might- and connects! His blow cuts into it with incredible force. Bones shatter as flesh and muscle are torn apart. The blue giant gives a surprised yell and drops to the ground, its chest hacked open!

But-

“Its wounds- they’re healing!” cries Sir Colder.

“Ready torcheth and oil!” orders Sir Cedric.

Sir Jorgen and Sir Fwaigo do so, and Otis tries an acid splash directly to the face, dropping it in the monster’s mouth and melting its teeth!* Soon the party is covering the monster in oil and burning it, and soon after that the creature stops regenerating.

“Whew!” declares Kyle. “That was a close one! That guy had magical powers the likes of which I’ve never seen before.” He glances at his master, Otis.

The wizard cocks an eyebrow. “I believe that this creature was an ogre mage,” he states. “I have heard of such things, but I thought they were only legends.”

“Look here,” calls Sir Cedric. “A door, with thtrange markingth upon it.”

The party crowds around. Indeed, a door made of metal is just off of the ogre mage’s chamber. Its face has a strange inset area. The area is shaped like the perimeter of a square, but with round, almost tower-like areas at each corner.

Dahlia and Goer- er, Sir Fwaigo- look at each other. “That piece of metal,” she exclaims. They had found an odd, flattened piece of metal with a rounded end up above, in the manticore’s nest. Not being sure just what to make of it, they had put it away until they had more of an idea. Now they pull it forth and find that it is the right size to fill up one side of the inset area, with the rounded end fitting into one of the corners.

“There must be more of them,” Sir Jorgen thinks aloud.

“Perhaps the other stairways?” suggests Sir Colder.

The party troops back up the stairs, preparing to examine the other stairs in the other corners of the courtyard. As they ascend, Kyle says, “We should be careful. Didn’t we hear that there were two-”

As they emerge in the shattered courtyard of the tower, they fall under instant, furious assault by a second manticore- the mate of the first! She had been out hunting, and now she is out for revenge! Tail spikes cut through the air, and Sir Cedric’s shield deflects a few of them. But then his sword hand takes a hit- and his pinky breaks.

“Crikey!” cries Kyle.

Sir Cedric screams out in pain and horror, “MY PINKY FINGER!”

Otis fades into invisibility as the beast howls and snarls. It springs for him, its nostrils dilating, and Otis shrieks as it rakes him with its claws. Still invisible, he scrambles to get away from it.

Meanwhile, however, Sir Fwaigo has drawn forth his longspear, and he and Sir Percival- who nobody can stop thinking of as simple Me- proceed to harry the manticore from either side. It tears back at them, enraged at their temerity. Sir Cedric, recovering from his momentary loss of morale, angrily smites it at the ankle, hamstringing the beast. He shouts something about his pinky incoherently at the monster.

Then, from behind the cover of some rubble, Otis casts a volley of three magic missiles at the manticore, and she gives a last frustrated yowl and then falls dead before our heroes.

“After that, I don’t think I can go on without resting,” Otis gasps, wincing at his wounds. Dahlia and Sir Cedric move to bind the wounds of the others as best they can, though after the ogre mage they are essentially out of healing magic. Even so, they stop the bleeding and splash some whiskey on the cuts (as well as a little down Cedric’s gullet).

Then the party moves back outside of the ruin to camp. They ensure that they move off a little ways so that they won’t be seen easily by, say, any black magic cultists heading towards a dark ritual on New Year’s Eve. While they are camped, Otis muses, “I wonder if that door is the Gate of Fire.”

The others chew this over for a while. The door had nothing to especially indicate that it was fiery in nature, but it certainly wasn’t an average door. Reluctantly, our heroes agree that Otis might have something there. It’s far from a sure thing- but the possibility cannot be discounted.

Watches are set, and our heroes lay down to rest.

Next Time: Our heroes explore the rest of the stairways! Will they find the hypothetical other three keys? Will they find any black magic cultists, or will any find them? And how long until the inevitable return of Sir Harth??

*Crit!

 

[the Jester]

The ruins of the ghost tower cast strange, crazed shadows all around our heroes when they awaken early the day after their confrontation with the second manticore. A chill breeze washes over them; clouds loom above, and sleet begins to spit down on them as they prepare for their forthcoming explorations of the next passage down into the dungeons below the ruined tower. Winter has swept its mantle across the land. Icy puddles melt as the day warms up, but refreeze by dusk. The flat piece of metal with a rounded end that our heroes had found in the lair of the first manticore looks as though it would fit directly into one side of the strange depression on the oddly-marked door below the south-eastern stairway. The party has surmised that there must be three more pieces like it, to complete the square formed by the depression in the door. Thus it is that they troop down the next stairs, in the southwest of the ruined courtyard. The southwestern passage leads to a set of crumbling, dusty hallways. At first there is nothing but an empty hallway that doubles back on itself, but abruptly it opens into a chamber bearing the markings of an ancient bedroom whose furnishings have poorly withstood the ravages of time.

The party cautiously enters the chamber and begins to search, hoping to turn up another of the odd keys. “I wonder when the cultists will arrive,” Kyle mutters to himself thoughtfully.

As the party searches, the air seems to waver before them. A spectral form materializes! Dahlia blanches, remembering their previous encounter with a spirit in the haunted house in Kamenda City. A small bloodstain over the apparition is obvious. The figure is translucent and its image wavers and shifts. Clearly this is indeed some kind of ghost.

However, before our heroes can respond to its sudden appearance, the ghostly figure gives them a hard look, and then does a double take. In a wispy, ethereal voice, it states, “You are not who I expected.”

“Um, who were you-” Kyle begins speaking, but the ghost ignores him.

“But you have the key.”

With a tremulous sigh, the ghost fades from view.

Puzzled but pleased not to have to fight such a terrible creature, our heroes make a quick search of the chamber and easily uncover another flat length of metal with the same rounded edge. Examining the two of them together, the party cannot tell them apart: they seem identical.

“I’ll bet there are two more of those things,” Kyle remarks.

“Obviously,” Otis nods. He gazes at them thoughtfully.

“They must be the key to that strange door,” suggests Goer. Er, I mean Sir Fwaigo.

“The Gate of Fire,” Otis opines.

“Maybe. We don’t know that for certain,” Kyle cautions.

“Should we open it at all?” wonders Sir Jorgen. “Maybe we can destroy the tower instead.”

“But would that help?” Dahlia sighs. “The door is beneath the tower.”

“What if we could block the entrance to it?” suggests Otis. “The rubble might be enough to slow the black magic cult down enough that they can’t do their ritual at the proper time.”

“Which would really slow them down a year.” Sir Fwaigo smiles.

“If it has to be on New Year’s Eve for their ritual to work,” Kyle warns. “Remember, we aren’t totally sure about that.”

“Bah!” Sir Cedric snorts. “It ith altho pothible that they cannot perform the ritual on just any New Year’th Eve; perhapth the thtarth mutht be aligned correctly or thomething. We jutht don’t know. Tho, regardleth of whether we can pull down the tower or whatever, I think we thould retrieve the other keyth.”

“Just in case,” nods Sir Fwaigo. “As my lord says, we can’t take the chance. We don’t know what these bastards are after or what this ritual is really all about, do we?”

“Not really,” replies Kyle.

“We know enough!” declares Otis. “We know they’re trying to open a gateway to Hell!”

“We do?” asks Sir Cedric.

“It’s called the Gate of Fire,” Otis sighs. “What else could it be?”

The discussion goes on interminably for a time, but finally the party decides that they don’t really have a way to check any of their speculation other than continuing with their plan to gather the keys. Whether they will open the mysterious door or block the passages remains in question, however, and Dahlia points out that it is quite possible that simply collecting the keys could foil the enemy.

Thus it is that they descend the next staircase, and soon they find themselves in an odd chamber. A number of goblins stand motionless and unresponsive in the room, as if frozen. Otis fireballs them without a second thought, but to the party’s surprise they are unmarked. However, they don’t move at all. Hesitantly, our heroes enter the chamber; a quick search turns up the third key.

“All too easy,” snorts Otis in disdain, and our heroes ascend back to the top of the ruined courtyard. Icy rain slathers down on them, but it is letting up already. The sky is grey; the sun hides behind the dark clouds.

Beneath the final staircase, the weather’s fine.

Next Time: A puzzling chamber, the final key and a fiendish trap!

 

[the Jester]

Beneath the Ghost Tower of Inverness, our heroes come upon a strange room. The floor is laid out in a grid, with squares of many different colors. At the opposite end of the room is a statue of a kingly-looking fellow with his hand outstretched. Our heroes look uneasily at the area for a few moments; Kyle, especially, looks for obvious traps. But his nervousness makes him careless. “I don’t see anything,” he gulps.

Sir Colder takes a single, hesitant step forward onto the corner of the grid. Nothing happens. He glances at his companions. They seem to be waiting with bated breath. Sir Fwaigo makes an impatient “go ahead” kind of gesticulation. With a shrug, Colder does so, taking another step.

Zap!

A blast of electricity shoots through him. He spasms in agony for a moment. Then it stops. Gasping, he looks back at his friends again. “Careful!” he calls. “There’s some kind of trap after all!”

“What happened?” asks Sir Cedric.

“I tripped some kind of shock or something. I... I’m not too sure.” Confused, he looks back at the square behind him, then forward. “Anyone got any ideas, here?”

Sir Fwaigo takes a running jump and lands with a thump and- no zap. Pausing for a moment, he takes a step-

Zap! He dances on the square for a moment as electricity runs through him.

“It mutht have to do with that thtatue,” Sir Cedric splutters. After a moment’s consideration, he casts resist electricity on himself. Then he takes a step onto the colored tiles. Nothing happens. Slowly, he moves another tile forward; still nothing.

Frowning, Sir Colder takes another step forward. Zap! “Ouch!” he yelps, then curses. “What am I doing wrong here??”

“Hold thtill, Thir Colder!” cries Sir Cedric. “Perhapth I can deactivate it onthe I reach the thtatue.” He advances on the statue, occasionally feeling a trickle of lightning, but his prayer protects him from the worst of it. Upon reaching the statue he begins to search it. After a few moments, he discovers the final key held in its grasp, and manages to pull it free.

“Let’s see if that changes anything,” Sir Colder grins, and steps forward-

Zap!

“OW GOD DAMMIT!!” Colder curses angrily. “What am I doing wrong here?!”

***

Back on the surface, our heroes find a medium rain awaiting them. Still, being underground brings a certain kind of oppressive gloom even a hurricane couldn’t match, so a little rain isn’t so bad. Plus, it isn’t too cold.

“I wonder what’s behind the door,” Kyle says, rubbing his hands together.

“Whatever it is, I doubt whether it’s good for us,” Otis responds dourly.

“I’m sure the black magic cult wants whatever is behind there. Maybe we can go in and get it first.” Dahlia looks at the others.

“Why not just collapse the remaining tower sections into the stairwells?” suggests the wizard. “We could probably make it so tough to dig out that they wouldn’t have time before new year’s eve. Even if they have a way to open the door, they won’t be able to reach it!”

“I like it,” Sir Colder says.

“My master,” confides Kyle, “is brilliant.”

“Well, what do you think?” Otis presses. “Collapse it?”

Our heroes stare at each other for a few moments. They all agree: collapse it.

It takes three days, and by the time they are done they are dirty, stinky and exhausted. They leave, heading several miles away to a little rill of water they had found the day before. There they wash and rest themselves for a night.

It is on that night that they are captured by Sir Harth.

Next Time: Why won’t the collapsing of the towers matter? What does Harth want? What are the gates? What is the connection to the cyst at Goblin Gorge? And what shocking surprise will our heroes learn about elves???

The next update or two should show us to the conclusion of the Year 271 Campaign (arc 1).

 

[the Jester]

Sir Fwaigo is on watch when they are taken.

He walks back and forth, yawning occasionally, but alert. There is no visible reason for him to fall asleep; no visible reason at all.

Especially given that the fire is just embers, banked low; and especially given that it is an overcast, moonless night. Sir Fwaigo sees nothing at all.

***

The group awakens to find themselves bound tightly. Me- Sir Percival- immediately begins to struggle, but it is, for the moment at least, hopeless.

Laughter dances across the early morning, and our heroes look upon a terrible sight. Leading what is surely the black magic cult, Sir Harth stands before them triumphant. “Fools!” he sneers. “I’ve beat you at last, and now you shall only live long enough to see my triumph!”

Otis groans around a gag. “This is terrible,” moans Kyle.

“It doesn’t matter,” cries Sir Colder. “We’ve collapsed the stairways! You’ll never dig them out in time for your ritual!”

“Oh, but you’re wrong,” Sir Harth chuckles. “We will get through your little barrier with ease.” Gloating, Sir Harth turns and calls, “Come, my friend! Show yourself.”

Something moves into view from the ruin itself. It is a horrific ball of angry-looking eyes, with a great sharp-toothed maw snarling and spitting. A huge central eye stares balefully out at them as the creature approaches, and atop its orb writhe nearly a dozen eye stalks!

“Oh, no, my friends,” Harth smiles wickedly. “We will not have any trouble at all.”

With that, one of the eyes fires a cold grey ray that blasts a hole in the ground. Where soil and grass once were, now there is only a crater and a puff of dust. It happens without a sound.

“We won’t even have to dig...”

Harth’s gloating is interrupted by Dahlia, who has seen enough. She wild shapes free of the bonds holding her, turning into a bird. She catches Sir Harth, his cultists and the strange eye-monster off guard and begins speeding away as swiftly as her wings will carry her! A few rays of light from the eyes of the monster shoot past her, but she manages to avoid or resist them, and soon she is out of range!

But what do I do now? she wonders. I can’t take out Sir Harth and his cult and that monster by myself. I need help. Maybe in Kamenda City...? Sir Martin should be there- either he, or Baron Rusk, may be able to help me. She grits her teeth. I have to move quickly. We may need some time to muster forces to attack that thing. Grimly, she realizes that the beams that shot at her were different colors, and most of them didn’t seem to disintegrate matter. That means it has unknown but highly dangerous and varied abilities, she groans to herself. This is trouble. Big trouble.

She wings her way north.

***

The others struggle, apparently unsuccessfully, to free themselves. The strange eye creature begins clearing one of the stairwells of rubble, simply annihilating it with no mess and no trouble. All that work for nothing, thinks Sir Fwaigo regretfully. It takes several hours, but once the passage is clear enough, the cultists carry our heroes downstairs, one at a time, and lay them against the goblins. One by one they grow rigid, drawn into the goblins’ magical stasis. Satisfied, the cultists leave after a moment more.

Then, at last, Sir Cedric rolls off of the goblin. In the darkness, the cultists could not see the sweat on his brow. It took all his concentration to keep from being put into stasis, but somehow he had managed.

Carefully, he rolls himself until he is in a position to saw at his bonds with the sharp edges of the goblins’ boots’ accoutrements. A few minutes later he is free. Chafing his wrists to restore his circulation, Sir Cedric hesitates for a long moment.

If I try to pull my friends free, and I fail, then we are all caught again- except for Dahlia, he thinks uneasily. Yet if I go for help I leave them at Sir Harth’s mercy. Either way, I am taking a huge chance.

Sir Cedric searches himself, but he has no liquor, beer, wine or even mead with which to fortify himself. He looks around uncomfortably. The thought of all of them being lost to Harth is unpalatable. But the thought of leaving his friends is frightful. To leave their manly muscles in danger- it is unthinkable.

And yet, it must be done.

Sir Cedric steals up the stairway. Near the top, he does his best to sneak up and look before he leaps (so to speak). It is already late afternoon. The position of the shadows favors him at this point. The eye monster looks to be working at one of the other stairways. Nobody is looking his direction.

Sir Cedric sprints for the wall. He clambers through a hole at waist level, glancing over his shoulder only once. “Nobody hath theen me,” he mutters to himself. Then he hurries off towards Kamenda City. I must alert father, and the baron, he thinks.

Next Time: The next update will be the finale of this story hour. It will bring us to the conclusion of arc 1 of the Year 272 Campaign. A shocking surprise about elves! One last chance to spoil Sir Harth’s plan! The Battle for New Year’s Eve!!

 

[the Jester]

Final Character Update:

Sir Fwaigo ("Goer" to his friends): fighter 5
Otis Optimus: wizard 6
Sir Cedric, Lord of Whitewater: knight 3/cleric 3
Kyle Goldenbow: rogue 3/wizard 3
Sir Percival (also called "Me" because he cannot pronounce his own name): barbarian 3/scout 2
Dahlia Laagos (last name adopted when she was given ownership over the ruins of Castle Laagos): druid 6
Sir Jorgen, sheriff of Whitewater: fighter 4/rogue 2
Sir Colder: fighter 4/rogue 1

Note: the Knight class was specific to the Year 271 Campaign, and bore little (if any) resemblance to the knight class in the PH2.

 

[the Jester]

Finale: New Year's Eve

Sir Cedric moves as quickly as he can. The horses are taken. He moves off on foot, clanking along as quickly as he can in his heavy armor. He is huffing and puffing after a mile, but he perseveres, jogging through the night.

Somehow he manages to avoid loose rocks, snagging roots and potholes that might trip him. Despite the darkness, despite his quick pace, Sir Cedric makes good time and avoids injury. Soon dawn is cracking over the eastern horizon. Bone-weary, Sir Cedric nonetheless continues moving on until he finds an outlying farm, whose owner is surprised and happy to make so much money for an old nag of a horse like that. But the important thing is that Sir Cedric is now mounted, and on an unfatigued mount at that! They eat up some more miles, and finally in late afternoon Cedric halts and collapses into exhausted sleep for a few hours.

When he wakes up, it’s evening. He rides a few more hours, risking two hours of darkness; but progress is slow and the horse is tired.

Dawn seems an eager knight riding hard, and it’s not long before the city of Kamenda comes into view. In the early afternoon, Sir Cedric reaches the walls, where he gives the pass word and moves in, quickly seeking an audience with his father, Sir Martin.

“My son!” Martin cries, upon receiving him. “We had feared the worst!” He clasps Cedric to him for a moment. A glimmer of water forms in the corner of his eye. He straightens and blinks it away. “Dahlia returned alone, and told us of Harth and the terrible creature with him.”

“Father, he hath my friendth! We mutht go to their aid!” Cedric exclaims.

“Of course, my son, we will.” Sir Martin’s face is grim. “We are mustering right now. It will take us another couple of days to get a force big enough to deal with that monster. We may fail entirely. But we will make our best attempt- and, with any luck, we will destroy Sir Harth for good this time.”

“And what of Dahlia, father? You thaid that you had thpoken to her?”

“Yes. She told us that Sir Harth had captured all of you, and only she had been able to escape. She told us that he planned to sacrifice all of you on New Year ’s Eve. We began summoning men to fight almost immediately. But she is not here. She flew away- perhaps to Whitewater- to plan and heal.”

Sir Cedric paces unhappily. “We mutht thuctheed,” he says. “We mutht rethcue them.”

“We will do our best,” Sir Martin replies stoically.

***

Time is running short. Days slip past, and the New Year is starting to peek our from beyond the horizon. When they have just enough time left, Sir Martin and Sir Cedric lead out all the troops they have managed to gather- about two hundreds of men. It is a considerable force of soldiers, but many of them are barely-trained rabble. About half are veterans that fought in the most recent war with Tydon. They march forth with deadly serious intent. It is a journey of three days to get to the Ghost Tower, and the afternoon is getting deep when the army arrives.

The ruins of the tower and its surrounding wall look uninhabited as they march towards it.

***

Behind the walls around the tower, the beholder squints, narrowing the focus of its disintegrate beam until it bores a hole just begin enough for one of its small eyestalks to fit into. It drills other pairs of holes here and there along the walls as well, then inserts the appropriate eyes and begins laying the groundwork for the oncoming force’s destruction.

***

Beams of light shoot out as the army approaches, and the army halts and sets up a shield wall. There is no obvious effect, and after a minute, the army begins advancing closer to the wall. The lead members of the army- whom the rays from the eyes are continuing to bathe- approach the holed walls in several opportune areas.

Then-

Suddenly, most of the men who have been bathed in the eye rays turn on their fellows and begin to attack. There is a cry of fear as the noteworthy knight Sir Brand begins laying into the rabble he leads with his great axe.

“What’s happening!” cries someone near Sir Cedric.

“It mutht be the rayth of light!” Sir Cedric snaps his fingers. “We mutht path beyond the wall, quickly!”

The army is in disarray, unfortunately. The unexpected turning on their fellows by a dozen of the first wave- and more every moment- is not encouraging to the soldiers. The rays continue to bathe the uncharmed folk, turning more allies to enemies. The press of people starting to move back pushes Cedric away from the walls. He howls in frustration, then forces his way forward.

A cloud of living terror boils out through the portcullis, where another score men are bringing a huge ram up to batter their way in. Screaming in fear, they begin to retreat from it, backing off for a few paces, and then turning and fleeing in abject terror.

The eye beams stop for a few moments, only to resume again from somewhere else. The army begins to disintegrate as people turn to stone and disintegrate where the beams touch them. More men are turning on each other. The sound of steel clashing on steel and the coppery smell of blood fill the air.

Things look very ugly indeed.

***

Dahlia wings her way beneath a grey sky, heading south and west from Castle Laagos. The clouds overhead are ominous and threatening. The Rise of Battle (once called Inverness) comes into view as evening starts to roll in. A large cloud of dust- as if from a sizeable group of travelers, or a battle- is atop it, near the Ghost Tower.

Dahlia circles at a distance, then banks to her left and closes the distance between her and the tower, intending to fly in close enough to get a good look at the situation. But she squawks and banks away again when the beholder comes into view. Bodies and statues of men dot the area near the Ghost Tower, and there is bloody combat where men have seemingly turned on one another. Her stomach twists at the carnage. Things have gone very, very wrong, she thinks in despair.

From the air she spies Sir Cedric. She lands near him and transforms into her true form, then hurries over to the knight.

“Dahlia!” he cries.

“What’s happening?” she asks grimly.

“Thith beatht ith overcoming the entire forthe! It guardth actheth to the tower and our friendth! None can approach it without being dethtroyed by itth eye beamth!”

Dahlia settles her sight on the beholder. “I’ll do what I can against that thing,” she says, filled with trepidation. She extends her hands and begins making pulling gestures at the sky, muttering to herself like a crazy old hermit. After a long moment there is a flash of lightning as a bolt descends from the looming clouds overhead and strikes the beholder. It gives a harsh cry of surprise and begins heading towards her.

“Save our friends!” Dahlia urges Sir Cedric. She begins calling another bolt at the beholder, and with a crack of thunder another lightning bolt zigzags down from the sky to strike it! The stink of ozone fills the air as the beholder grimaces. It is smoking and small electric arcs are still playing over it as it roars and begins firing eye rays at Dahlia. She resists disintegration and death, but the pain of the beams is almost overwhelming. She throws off attempts to petrify her, to make her flee in fear, to charm her. More rays stab out in other directions, charming, petrifying and killing more soldiers.

A ray blasts into Sir Cedric and he grits his teeth and staggers, wounded. Another hits him and he falls to the ground asleep. And at last, Dahlia’s luck runs out. A brilliant ray of energy stabs out from one of the eyestalks and hits her in the center of her torso. Dahlia groans and falls.

“We can’t hold!” one of the soldiers cries. He throws down his spear and shield and turns to flee. Observing him, the men next to him start to retreat as well. Another man starts to exhort them to firm up, and a ray from the beholder turns him to stone.

It’s a rout.

***

Dahlia’s eyes flutter. She is very uncomfortable and sore, and seems to be in a strange position. She-

Her eyes fly open.

She is tied up, hands behind her back. She glances around her. Night has fallen. The stars are out, winking down from above. Her friends, similarly bound, are here as well.

Dahlia tries to wild shape, but she can’t. The beholder glares at her balefully. Somehow it is negating her powers!

Sir Harth stands at the head of a circle of thirteen cultists. A number of glassy-eyed soldiers are there as well, clearly in the beholder’s thrall. One of the cultists holds a pair of leashes that lead to a pair of elfblood youths. The treacherous knight smirks in the light of the torches that the cultists hold, their flames whipping in the wind. The night is cold.

“What’s going on?” groans Dahlia.

“It looks like Sir Harth has captured us, and is about to perform his ritual.” Sir Colder looks pained.

“You fools thought to deprive me of the elf by turning him over to the Keepers,” Sir Harth says suddenly. His voice is loud and mocking. “But we have figured out another way to open the gate. Two elfbloods, with as much elf as possible in them, should suffice. Ahh, my friends, you will witness a great thing tonight!” He grins, walking towards them. Gravel crunches under his boots. “And then, of course, you will die.”

Sir Cedric spits at Harth. For an instant the smirk on his face is replaced by a look of malevolence so dark that all of our heroes quail. Then he smiles again and sighs, “Ah, Sir Cedric.” He paces for a moment. Then he turns to the cultists and says, “Come. And bring them.”

“What is this ‘great thing’ you want us to witness?” Sir Fwaigo demands.

“You will see,” Harth gloats.

The soldiers herd our heroes down one of the stairwells surrounding the tower, and soon they are in the chamber in which the mysterious door stands. Sir Harth now has all four pieces of the key, and he presses them, one by one, into the door. There is a thrum of power. With a loud grinding sound, the door slides open.

Beyond the mysterious metal door is a 40’ square room with but a single feature: a large archway set into the far wall.

The cultists begin unpacking certain unsavory items and set up an altar before the arch. Slowly they decorate it with odd oils and light pungent incenses. A vague, nearly-formless lump of black stone is placed as the centerpiece. Our heroes watch in horrified fascination. The room grows smoky from the thuribles, and their eyes begin to sting and water. There is something strange in the smoke that makes everyone’s head swim.

Sir Harth has donned cult robes over his armor and has taken up a long dagger made of what appears to be glass. He and the cultists begin a dark ritual. The soldiers stand behind the party, ready to slay them if they try anything tricky. Sir Cedric scowls helplessly as they take the elfblood youths and prepare them for sacrifice, to spill their blood over the altar and the archway. He struggles against his bonds, but to no avail: a master ropesman has tied these knots. A few blows from the mailed fist of the soldier stops his struggles for the moment.

The youths are heavily drugged to prevent their struggling. The first is brought next to the arch. Harth’s glass knife rises and slashes out. Blood sprays over the space beneath the arch, splattering the wall into which the arch is set.

Immediately there is a flare of orange light. A vertical line of blazing orange suddenly bisects the arch’s space.

The cultists bring the other youth forward.

Something wet lands on Cedric, and there is a soft thump behind him. A hand steals across his mouth, urging him to silence, and he can feel a blade cutting through the ropes that hold him tied. He turns his head. A lithe, small figure he does not recognize is seemingly freeing him. She is cowled; her face is only half-visible.

Sir Cedric does not question his good fortune. She steals away and, as Cedric watches in amazement, she slits another soldier’s throat from behind without being seen. Then she begins to free Kyle...

Sir Cedric smiles and quickly takes the spear from the slain guard behind him. The guards are just starting to realize that something is going wrong as Sirs Cedric and Jorgen lead the attack!

But simultaneously, Sir Harth, that villain, has slit the other youth’s throat. Blood splashes across the archway and the space beneath it, sizzling and smoking. Orange light spills out as the line begins to widen like an opening door. Churning, eye-burning light flows forth. The sound of Sir Harth’s laughter rings out maniacally.

Then the battle is on, as the soldiers struggle to stop our heroes from bursting free at the last moment. Sir Harth cries out, “You’re too late!” He and his cultists- along with the beholder- move towards the blazing, stomach-churning light beneath the archway.

“Stop them!” the lithe figure that freed Sir Cedric cries. She fires a trio of arrows from her bow, his fingers a blur. But it’s too late. The villains escape into the light.

She exclaims musically in Elven.

“Who are you?” demands Sir Jorgen.

She throws back her cowl. She is an elf! Our heroes gape, but she answers none of their questions for the moment. Instead, she cries, “Make ready! This is not over yet!” She gestures. “The villains kept your gear over there. You likely only have a few moments before the elves return. You must be ready to fight them!”

“Fight them?” Kyle says incredulously. But most of the party is already sprinting for the pile of equipment that the elf woman indicated.

“They have changed in their exile,” she replies ominously.

The party straps armor into place and grabs up weapons. The elf nocks an arrow and stands in a position of almost unbearable tension. As the party moves back towards her, she cries, “Hurry! I can see them coming!”

“We’ve only met one of your kind before, and he was-” Kyle starts, but the elf interrupts him.

“Hurry!! They come!!”

“But they’re elves, right?” persists Kyle. “Can’t we talk to them, or...”

He trails off in horror as a half dozen figures emerge from the archway. Yes, they are humanoid; but their resemblance to the elf that came out of nowhere to help them ends there.

But our heroes have seen them before. Oh, yes.

Awkward-looking and unnatural, with the odor of a sick room clinging to them, the creatures are wearing resinous armor and carrying odd ribbon-dagger weapons. The smell brings it back more forcefully than anything: the cyst at Goblin Gorge.

The elf is already grimly firing arrows into them. “Stop them!” she cries. “Don’t let them come through!”

Our heroes charge to the attack. The battle is brief and furious. The creatures can unleash mind-twisting powers that stun or blind. They can create clouds of hypnotic vapor. Their weapons leave nasty cuts.

But our heroes, together with the elf, attack fast and furious, and put the strange, warped elves down.

The elf turns to them. “I know you have many questions,” she says grimly, “and I will answer them when there is time. But for now, we have to go after Harth and his band and stop them!”

“Where does that portal go?” demands Otis.

“Into the past,” the elf declares. “They seek to gain a powerful weapon and then come back here to use it to make themselves rulers of the land.”

“But-“

“I must go to stop them,” she states. “I cannot do it alone; I need your help. Please.” She takes a deep breath. “But either way, I must go.” She puts her bow away and draws out her rapier and dagger.

“I’m with you,” says Sir Jorgen.

“And I,” announces Sir Cedric.

“We all are,” Sir Colder tells him.

Otis frowns. “Oh, why not.”

Together they go through the blazing portal.


The End of the Year 271 Campaign: Arc One

 

[Dawn]

Excellent story telling from the DM and action from the players. Just read through it from the beginning.
Are you finding that the low magic makes the players rely more on their skills and creative use of everyday items?

Next update?

 

[the Jester]

Excellent story telling from the DM and action from the players. Just read through it from the beginning.
Are you finding that the low magic makes the players rely more on their skills and creative use of everyday items?

Next update?

Yeah, the lack of magic- at the end of the story hour, I believe there's a +1 weapon and a +1 suit of armor in the party- does make them rely more on themselves and their creativity, which is one of the great successes of the campaign. That was one of my goals.

As to the next update... I hate to disappoint you... but that was the last one. The campaign arc ended there. We will eventually get back to this game- though Arc 2 will be vastly different from Arc 1- but I suspect it will be a while.

Yes, I really did intentionally end the campaign like that.

 

[Baron Opal]

I have enjoyed reading your experiment, and look forward to the chronicleing of the next arc, in the not too distant future, I hope.

Two questions:

What changes are you going to make to the house rules for the next arc, if any?

IIRC, you have a pretty major player handout for your standard campaign world. How much detail did you write for the time between the standard campaign and this one?

 

[the Jester]

To those of you who read and enjoyed this story hour, HEADS UP!

We're a couple of weeks away from starting Arc 2!!!

In other words- more story soon...