Defenders of Daybreak, The Early Years.

[Bandeeto]

OK folks.

I know that it's been a long time between posts, and I left ya' kinda hanging. The final official post of Arcade's Journal is coming tomorrow night, Pacific time. After that, we'll just have to see.

I may try to reconstruct some more of the Defender's old adventures in a different writing style. Or, alternatively the whole thread could come to a crashing halt, and then be stored somehow for those curious about the Defenders of old.

Tune in tomorrow for a legendary battle (at least as far as the Defenders were concerned)!

 

[Piratecat]

KidC has suggested I clean the gaming room. That means... duh duh duh... unearthing the notes of yore!

 

[KidCthulhu]

Hey now. I suggested WE clean the gaming room. Just because you're the only one who knows what 75% of the stuff is, and most of the paper is Secret Game Notes that I can't look at, doesn't mean I won't help.

And Bandeeto, where are you?!

 

[Bandeeto]

OK KidC, now I really wish that I was there.

Nothing like cleaning out a gameroom to unearth ancient plothooks and other artifacts of yore.

 

[Bandeeto]

Arcade’s Journal – Final Entry, Academy of Flamecraft Part 2

…in a moment, all of the inhabitants of the Mirror of Life Trapping were freed. Chaos immediately ensued.

A middle-aged woman dressed in red robes appeared and assumed a casting stance, her aura visibly pulsing with power. Next to her was a young man, also wearing a red robe, but plainly confused and disoriented. A heavily-muscled, bald man materialized, wearing a girdle that seemed to be made of dragon bones. A young lad in climbing gear appeared, apparently in the act of yelling a warning. With him was a young lady, lying comatose on the floor, and also dressed for climbing. A man dressed as a monk also lay unconscious. Last of all, a screaming man appeared, charred and still smoldering. He too slumped to the floor.

With them emerged two lizards, a 4-foot-long purplish-red lizard, and a 1 ½ foot long red lizard. In the first moments, while the rest of us were gathering ourselves, Grundo quickly struck with all his force and slew the larger lizard. Sadly, his blow could have been put to better use elsewhere.

Within seconds, as the 281-year-old Reduce spell expired, the tiny red lizard, Pyreclaw, spawn of Tagachark, was restored to his former 80-foot-long glory! At this moment, I suddenly regretted the emphasis on spells useful for climbing cliffs in my current repertoire.

Alix leapt into action, scooping up the helpless young woman and springing away across the cavern. Grundo, realizing his error, raised his axe in both hands and charged. Glimmer hastily cast Fire Resistance. The bald man ran at the beast, using his magically-enhanced strength to slam it with both fists.

The woman in red (Dargastal the Archmage, of the Academy) tried Finger of Death and several Missiles, but the spells extinguished themselves harmlessly as the dragon “resisted.”

Grundo managed to hack off several large chunks of wyrmflesh, and attracted Pyreclaw’s baleful gaze. The dragon grabbed the doughty battlerager, and before our eyes, squeezed him to paste. Tao seemed to go mad, and began trying to climb the thing’s flank to get at its neck. I joined in with my remaining Darkening Bolt, crisping the creature’s hide, and Tom-Tom launched his Dagger of the Swarm. The wyrm seemed to laugh, a low, coughing, chuckle.

A great rush of inhaled air signaled the next onslaught. I managed to grab Nolin, Tom-Tom, and the young man in red (Kestellan, an Academy acolyte). Using the staff, we Dimension Doored behind the nearby stone dragon in the nick of time.

Velendo, standing squarely in the dragon’s path, began rapidly repeating, “I don’t believe this is happening! Wait… that’s right! I DON’T believe this is happening! There is no dragon. No dragon at all. I don’t see a dragon.” A glowing nimbus of faerie-light began to surround him.

Pyreclaw’s flame breath roared across the party, incinerating the charred man, the bald fighter, and the lad in climbing gear. Glimmer quickly took advantage of a bad situation, pulled on the dead man’s bone girdle, and felt his muscles begin to bulge with unnatural strength. The flames washed over Velendo where he stood, bemused and untouched, wondering what was going on.

The fire also claimed Cadrienne’s pack, which had contained her Holy Book. The peace-loving, compromising, sweet-tempered cleric promptly drew her flail, screamed with rage, and charged the dragon.

Dargastal finally managed to score hits with some of her Missiles. Grinning, the dragon leaned in close and bit her head off.

I anticipated the dragon’s next move, and Dimension Doored the rest of the party to the left flank moments before his massive tail destroyed the stone dragon we were using for cover. Knowing how much we needed his aid, I strove to talk Velendo out of his Solipsism. As the spell effect faded, blisters suddenly formed on his skin. Luckily the damage was minimal, and he returned to the fray.

Tao was hacking desperately at Pyreclaw’s neck, doing hideous damage. Augmented, Glimmer moved in to strike with his mace. I transported Nolin to the dragon’s back, where he put the Frost Jambiya to good use.

The dragon was now badly wounded. He whipped his tail around and swept Tao and Glimmer off, slamming them hard against the cave wall.

Again came the deadly inhalation of breath. Pyreclaw opened his mouth wide. The raging fires within could plainly be seen as he began to breathe.

I cast Pyrotechnics.

With an earth-shattering roar, Pyreclaw’s mouth exploded. His lower jaw hung loosely, unhinged and useless.

The end came soon after….


…we buried Dargastal. Cadrienne was despondent over the loss of her Book, and we gave her Dargastal’s necklace of red rubies as partial consolation. Cadrienne then managed to awaken the sleeping monk, one Brother Caldecott of Celian, who had been comatose in the mirror for decades. It turns out that Caldecott had been sent on a mission to recover the Incabulin.

Kestellan, Dargastal’s apprentice, speaks Common badly, but was able to tell us that he was chased into the mirror by the dragon, who had moved it from the passageway it was guarding. Kestellen has seen the Incabulin before. He reported that the last mage to touch it had his hands blown off. I think that making use of the tome may require both myself and Brother Caldecott. I have decided to trust Kestellen temporarily, although his manner irks me.

The poor young maiden in climbing gear could not be awakened from her coma. She had a heart-shaped locket inscribed LH III+ET. Plainly the couple had inscribed the initials outside the cavern years before, but who were they? We will seek to uncover the mystery later.

We gave Grundo an amazing wake. We poured the heroic dwarf’s remains into one of the empty ale kegs. Now drunk, Alix and I got into a ripping row about fleeing from combat….


…healed and rested. We entered the secret passage. Tom-Tom detected a fire trap, but the Fire Resisted Glimmer absorbed it without harm. We entered a circular room with a ring inscribed upon the floor. The place was filled with sconces and braziers. These we lit, and a flame sprang up in the center of the ring. Kestellen assured us that this was the gate to the Academy. We put our trust in fate and our gods, and leapt in….



This is the end of the official entries found in Arcade Deltarion’s Journal.

If I can get enough source material from Piratecat and others in the group, I may start a new thread to pick up where this one leaves off.

Many thanks go to Sialia for convincing me to work on these tales, and to KidC for her endless encouragement. As always, much heartfelt appreciation goes to the peerless P’Cat, without whom none of this would have been possible. I hope that you have enjoyed these tales of the Defenders’ beginnings. Thanks to everybody for your support, and for reading.

 

[Fade]

And thanks to Bandeeto for writing it!

 

[madriel]

I hope you can continue posting stories about the Defenders earlier exploits. It's fascinating to see the world-shaking, army massacring, do it all and rescue stray kittens too heroes matched up against people they'd squash like a bug nowadays.

Thanks, Bandeeto.

 

[Negative Zero]

And thanks to Bandeeto for writing it!

indeed! i second that. it's been a great ride. my thanks for taking us all on it even if there is no more, i'm glad to have gotten this much. of course, being a selfish bastard, i want more too!

~NegZ

 

[Caliber]

I just wanted to chime in with a thanks, Bandeeto.

 

[Sialia]

Sigh. It really is a pity that this is where it ends.

THIS is where it all started to get interesting.

Bandeeto always said that the reason he stopped keeping the log was that things suddenly got too darn complicated to keep track of. Y'all will have to ask Piratecat about why that was.

Since I don't know whether the next chapters ever get written or not, here are some spoilers/teasers about what came next.

The necklace Cadrienne got as a consolation prize from the combat had an, uh . . .extra gift in it.

As we journeyed through the ruins of the Academy of Flamecraft, Cadrienne started hearing voices. Well, one voice actually. One persistent voice. She didn't mention it to anyone at first.

She was convinced that it was the soul of the Academy Library speaking to her. (Everyone knows that magic books have intelligence sometimes, right? So why shouldn't a whole library full of them acquire a certain sentience? A lonely, abandoned library in need of students . . .) As a cleric of Morphat, god of knowledge and thought, and a prophetess accustomed to receiving visons, she welcomed the passenger in her head.

Only, as was often the case with Cadrienne's dear, sweet and generous impulses, she was dead wrong.

The red ruby necklace contained the soul of Mirata Du Chemith, the headmistress of the Academy. It was a sort of a soul jar. After a while, after spying on Cadrienne's mind for a while and feeling out Cadrienne's companions, Mirata simply swapped places with Cadrienne.

She was a pretty convincing actress. Despite a few odd quirks, such as asking Arcade if she could browse through his spellbooks, and having a good deal more spine in dealing with foes (I recall Nolin saying something about Cadrienne finally getting the hang of the adventuring life), nobody especially noticed the change. Actaully, most people seemed to think Cadrienne a good bit improved since the tragic loss of her Holy Book and knapsack full of mathematical and astrological stuff.

Someone else will have to fill you in on the plot of what happened in the Academy itself. I don't recall it well. I only recall that we located the Incabulin at last in a case with Mirata's own spellbooks and took it home.

And after we got home and were relaxing back at the Manticore, "Cadrienne" said something about the set of books needing to be viewed by moonlight. She picked up the lot and walked outside.

By the time Arcade twigged to the fact that there was something odd about this, there was nothing outside but the sigil of Mirata Du Chemith flaming in the snow.

If Cadrienne ever found out how upset Arcade was when he figured out what had happened, she'd have been gratified to know how worried he was about her.

The Defenders naturally headed straight back to the Academy to deal with Mirata and rescue Cadrienne's body.

However. At this point, the jig being up and all, Piratecat wanted his NPC back.

And there I was for a few weeks without a PC.

No worries, I said, I'll roll up an annoying bit-part sidekick who can tag along and pester everybody for a few days. How about a little brother version of that annoying Tephis Birdhouse fellow. Ok, said Piratecat, if you're sure that's what you want.

And thus Dylrath was born. Being a throwaway character, I rolled him up straight and took what stats the dice gave me. Plain vanilla human rogue, no treasure, no equipment, no levels. Piratecat tacked a very short backstory on him about Alix's guildmaster wanting to be revenged on Alix and assigning him an incompetent apprentice. And away we went.

Right away, a few things happened. The first being that no matter how hard I tired to be annoying, everybody liked Dylrath. It was bizarre. Cadrienne was supposed to be very charismatic and wise, and everybody, including me, found her tedious beyond bearing. Dylrath was supposed to be a complete git, and turned out to be more clever, resilient and charismatic than I am.

Then there was a messy battle and Mirata was destroyed (along with a bystander psionic item we never got a chance to meet) and Cadrienne's body was recovered, and Dylrath accidentally stumbled into Mirata's Mirror and bonded to it. And he picked up this broken chunk of her floating bed out of the rubble of her room, and started careening around on it.

And when I finally got Cadrienne back, I missed being Dylrath. More than I had missed Cadrienne while she was off being a Pawn of Evil.

Well, anyway, the next adventure involved a lot of Dopplegangers, and I have to let P'cat tell that story, 'cause it was gorgeous and I'll butcher it. The politics of Gaunt suddenly became very complicated. For the first time, the Defenders found themselves facing deadly foes, nearly stark naked and in chains. The Defenders, that is, not the foes.

And by the end of that cycle, Alix and Tomtom were a whole lot richer, and Arcade pulled one of the greatest magical MacGyvers ever, and Cadrienne broke her mind playing mental games with telepathic monsters, and Tao's dog became a great hero, and we discover Piratecat's first Most Horrible RatBastard Unique Monster (tm) ever, and Gaunt would never be the same.

By mutal consent, we all decided we had had enough of Cadrienne the drama queen to last us quite a while. Piratecat had her hauled off and magically restored her sanity (she had become convinced that she was Mirata Du Chemith) and I decided that if she was going to have to go through life perfectly sane, she wasn't going to adventure ever again. Nobody who is perfectly sane adventures.

Dylrath was definitely a few tumblers shy of a padlock (think Kiki from Sluggy Freelance ) and a hell of a lot more fun to play.

A few episodes later we broke Chadrather's Curse and destroyed a village, and Cadrienne found her happily-ever-after. These villagers needed her, and she wanted to be needed almost more than a dwarf wants gold. She settled there and set to rehab-ing the cultists, building a village, and trying to establish a utopian community and a University. The sentient Library, after all, would have been a good idea, if she had been right about it. Perhaps it would be a sort of atonement for her abetting Mirata's return, if she built one that really was what she had envisioned.

Anyway, that's enough of suchstuff for now. If we ever get our hands on enough documetnation to fill in any more bits, we'll let ya know.

Thanks for listening!