[FR] Fenrir's Pack Presents: Shadows of the Past

[Fenrir]

After nearly two years of poking, prodding, and cajoling, I've finally conceded and decided to write a story hour based off of my long running D&D 3E campaign set in the Forgotten Realms, Shadows of the Past. This campaign began in February of 2001, and has continued unabated for the two years since.

Due to the massive stretch of time between the beginning of the campaign and where we are now, I have decided to make the first several entries heavily condensed summaries of the action- to detail the events fully would take me ages. When I get within a few months of the current action, I'll likely start updating in more detail.

This Story Hour is presented from the perspective of Arundel Berethani, an NPC that has traveled with the group through thick and thin.

First, let me summarize the list of characters, including some of the minor ones and villains that will appear in the first few entries. The main characters are detailed as they stood three months ago, but all personality information is mostly up to date with any period of the story.

Enjoy!

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

Drim Soigrim, Male Halfling Rogue: Drim is a changed man from his early days. Then, a freewheeling, passion-filled rogue living his life in Waterdeep, he is now a much more dark and severe person. Having no cultural identity from his Halfling heritage, he is as human as any other. Now, he is an amazingly efficient and brilliant rogue, exhibiting latent leadership qualities. And while outwardly dark, he keeps a glimmer of his lost hope alive deep within.

Kantral Searthan, Male Human (Cormyrian) Wizard: A brooding, secretive, and troubled man from the heart of Cormyr, Kantral’s past was stifled and cloistered. Undergoing training by an itinerant wizard known only as the “Wanderer,” the young Kantral ran away from home and embarked on a career that would change him forever. Kantral is thoroughly and completely devoted to his art, using it as the consummate tool to further his own ambitions. He has an insatiable lust for new knowledge and power, and a cynical, jaded view of the world usually reserved for those of a riper age.

Arundel Berethani, Male Sun Elf Wizard: A withdrawn and inquisitive young elf born of a passion for the spread of knowledge both to himself and others, Arundel maintains a compassionate streak beneath his analytical nature. Called “Del” for short, he has seen the breadth of what magic can do, and is still haunted daily by his brush with the Shadow Weave, an event that nearly took his sanity.

Harami al-Rashid Abdullah Faqid, Male Human (Calie) Monk: Despite his length of time with the group, little is still truly known about Harami. Picked up by the group in a state of near death in the first days of their journeys, Harami is a pillar of stability within the order. His unflinching calm in all situations and wisdom that he is always pleased to put forth are indicative of the man within who is so rarely seen. The black monk is someone to be looked to for strength in dire times.

Garinol Andover, Male Human (Dalesman) Fighter: Harsh and callous veteran of countless battles, Garinol is a recent addition to the group, having been a former enemy who was captured by Drim and issued an ultimatum of survival. Garinol is unyielding in his high standards, holding everyone to the principles of total self sufficiency. Years of torment at the hands of Zhentarim occupiers and internal conflict within Daggerdale have built Garinol as a perfect example of the soldier of fortune class that rose to prominence in pre-rebellion Daggerdale. Garinol fights for his own survival, but feels indebted to Drim for sparing his life.

MINOR CHARACTERS, NEUTRAL AND ALLIED

Belmer Bowman, Male Human (Silver Marches): A ridiculously affluent merchant entrepreneur who came upon his fortunes as a direct result of the group’s actions. Believed to be dead after an explosion destroys his Suzail townhouse.

Yosef, Male Human (Waterdhavian): An old fence and longtime player of the urban underworld, who provided jobs for the group while in Waterdeep.

Mei Fa Lin, Female Human (Kara-Turian): The young daughter of a noble house of the city of Pingchow, who helped the group in the reclamation of her ancestral estates while stopping the advances of the Conspiracy.

VILLAINS
Darius, Male ?: Apparent leader of the Conspiracy. Nothing is known, besides the fact that he is a magic-wielder of some considerable strength.

Anthalus Lorken, Male Human (Heartlander): Vindictive wizard and apparent lackey of the Conspiracy, killed twice by the group in Waterdeep and Calimshan.

Karnak, Male Orc: Chief of the scattered Tribe of the Bleeding Blade, who inhabited the keep that proved to be the opening lead of the Conspiracy.

Martin, Male Human (Tantran): Cleric of now-dead Iyachtu Xvim, killed at Pingchow in 1369.

 

[Fenrir]

From Shadows of the Past: The Collected Memoirs of Arundel Berethani (Abridged):

It began, as many things do, as an accident.

A cold day in the month of Hammer, a shortage of supplies, inexperience- whatever the reason, many wanderers came upon the village of Howlett that day, knowing not that some of their actions would one day change the very face of Toril forever. Kantral tells me that all he was looking for was a bowl of hot soup. Harami sought inner peace. Karl lusted to live up to his mentor’s legacy, and I, Arundel n’Tesseline s’Berethani, chased after the dream of exploration, away from the oppressive walls of Evereska.

Ironic, that I would soon be trading one set of walls for another, and another, and even another, but that is later.

I myself never reached Howlett. I was captured in the woods several miles from the village, cold and hungry, by a patrolling group of orcs. My voluminous historical knowledge told me that a horde had invaded this region, near the Western outskirts of the Silver Marches, and I had the sinking feeling that these orcs were leftovers, refugees from a failed war, desperate and alone.

I did, however, have the honor of experiencing the curious tyranny of the Prefect of Howlett, one Prefect Arlis, who had my future companions marked as “miscreants” upon entering the village. My companions report poor treatment, and a curious proliferation of the ubiquitous Black Guard, a group of eerily unresponsive watchmen who always seemed to have one eye cast at the marked ones.

Brought before the Prefect, my friends were accused of violating a clear blockade of the area, and as punishment, all “miscreants” within the village would be forced to attempt to deal with the cause of the blockade- the same tribe of renegade orcs that had taken me and apparently a keep too near to Howlett for the Prefect’s tastes. Two groups left Howlett that day, and one would be almost completely decimated before the day was done. My companion Harami, the noble Calie monk, was among the two survivors of the first group found by the second. The other was Jelifer, a lovely young elven girl who had suffered some atrocities at the hands of the orc raiders.

Among the group that rescued me, in the end, was Karl the Red, Kantral Searthan, Harami, Jelifer, and a gnomish girl named Loopinda Tumbleberry. I never met “Loopy,” as she was slain shortly after the keep was stormed. While the rest of my group was gathering their strength after the initial failed charge, I was hung from a wooden plank in a basement filled with corpses, similarly bound. Minutes before my salvation, the keep shook with some unseen force, and my plank fell upon my orcish guard. My future friends saved me, and I lent them my hand as reward.

Jelifer was slain by a man found reading on the second floor, after slaying the apparent chieftain of the tribe. What we found in the next room, however, was even more chilling- a man named Tarkis, a brutal tower of a man, was controlling the keep, and he was in league with the Prefect. We fought with Tarkis, slew him, and raided his desk to find letters between the Prefect and himself, among other correspondence. The names on the letters meant little to us then: “Lorken, Darius, Karnak...,” but we knew that our enemy had been given a name.

Returning to Howlett, we confronted Arlis, and were joined by one Jack Valgardsen, a Howlett native with a foul tongue and even fouler breath. Arlis, it was found, had created the Black Guard through the help of an orb that allowed the user to raise vengeful undead. We were sent to the keep to be harvested as soldiers in the Prefect’s yet undiscovered cause. The undead were too many to hold back, but after Karl shattered the orb with a lash from his weighted whip, the Guard turned upon their tormentor and tore him limb from limb before collapsing into dust.

Among them was one Golin Vend, an innkeeper who had befriended Karl and Kantral days earlier with an amiable card game. Moreover, the undead had set fire to the building, and the fire quickly spread throughout much of the town, razing most of the buildings to the ground.

Once again, we found similar letters as those lifted from Tarkis’s desk, and all signs now pointed to Waterdeep as a potential base of operations for whatever group had caused this destruction. We committed ourselves to track this Conspiracy, so that we could properly finish what we started. Needless to say, our appreciation of the treatment we had received was left wanting.

Sometimes, I regret that decision. It was a choice that would change the course of our lives and those of many others. I still cannot say with total confidence that I prefer the way things ended up. A simple life never called me, but this...this was something else entirely.

Our journey to Waterdeep was marked by a near-death experience with a youthful green dragon. I am still proud to say that it was I who, in the end, severed the beast’s head, and I kept it for some time afterwards, until I gave it to Belmer Bowman.

Bowman was a flagrantly flamboyant caricature of a man; a short, fat, balding figure who spoke in endless crescendos and lifts in pitch, almost squealing by the time he had finished his sentence. He had quite the quandary, as well- his new enterprise, the Northern Lights Trading Coster, was in danger of bankruptcy. Bowman had come to Waterdeep with two emissaries in order to negotiate the terms of a financial agreement with one Keldan Gobinda, a local aristocrat with a lustful cousin who he adored. Bowman’s emissaries were to woo the cousin, Alayna, henceforth earning Gobinda’s trust and securing the arrangement. Karl, ever the man to love attention, responded to Bowman’s frantic cries on the Waterdhavian streets. It seemed that Bowman’s emissaries had encountered some trouble in the town, and had been arrested by the watch- not a desirable characteristic in a representative supposed to be apt at garnering trust. After a brief “test” of Karl’s skills that I found particularly amusing, it was decided that Bowman would pay us to act as replacements.

What followed was quite a farce. Karl’s flagrant tastes in fashion led us to our first of many journeys to a professional tailor. Looking back, I can’t help but laugh- somehow, someway, we always ended up at a new clothier. Our fortune, I suppose. Purchasing a heap of fineries, Karl began to anxiously await the social event of his life, a mere two tendays away.

Those tendays were not without excitement of their own, however. Karl was also eager to renew one of his oldest contacts in the city, an aging fence by the name of Yosef, the man who had used a younger Karl as an errandboy during his time as an orphan. Karl was overjoyed to find Yosef still intact and still practicing his old profession, but I can’t say I was positive that Yosef remembered Karl at all. Still, he made much use of the tall man’s enthusiasm, lending us a task to track down whatever it was that had been plaguing the tunnels beneath his shop that he used for his illicit deals. He had lost a great deal of men in the last few days alone, and was more than willing to offer a suitable reward.

Our fortunes recently wasted on the trifle of fancy clothing, we agreed, and the next day slinked down into the tunnels. After some searching, we came upon some sort of twisted, intelligent fish who had taken a young girl as his thrall. We made short work of him, although Jack would not have agreed with me. The girl revealed herself as one Laena Kylith, an unusual figure with equally unusual powers. She claimed that this abomination of a fish had killed someone close to her, and she tracked him all the way to these sewers before he finally got the best of her. With nowhere else to go, she readily accepted Karl’s rather pointed offer to join our motley band.

Knowing Karl, it wouldn’t take long for him to woo the poor girl. I was right. Even lost in reverie, I didn’t get much rest that tenday.

In this same time span, Karl’s dreams came true as he was reunited with his old mentor, Jordan Dane. The old man’s wanderings had eventually led him to the City of Splendors, where his journey had begun.

The time of the party arrived, and we assembled our baubles and took the ornate carriage rented for us by Bowman. In his squealing pig voice, he wished us the best of luck, gave us a few tips, and sent us on our way. Arriving there, I found the whole thing to be a rather trite affair. But it was a learning experience, much like watching a fine play- everyone was an actor, and played their part superbly- all save Laena. Her jealousy over Karl’s persistent attention to Gobinda’s attractive cousin almost cost me whatever face I had at the sordid soiree.

I kept close observation on Karl’s diplomatic meanderings with Gobinda, especially the interference of a middle aged man who a nearby guest identified as Anthalus Lorken, a wealthy wizard from the North. Immediately, the flare went off in my mind- Lorken was one of the names on the letters we found in Howlett. I tried to warn Karl, but in his boundless ignorance, he missed the hint. By the time I finally managed to speak to him, Lorken had already seen the futility of words and had taken Gobinda’s cousin hostage, dragging her up the stairs and demanding Gobinda come alone.

Karl wouldn’t hear any of it, and bounded up the staircase after him. We were obliged to follow. A spell from Lorken nearly burned us all to a crisp and the building with us, but a well placed spell from Kantral and Karl's puissance in grappling subdued the wizard. He managed to inflict some more damage to his surroundings before we finally got a gag around him.

Ever grateful for saving his cousin, Gobinda agreed to Bowman’s offer and granted him the financial backing he desired. We took Lorken into our own custody, eager to question him. Taking him back to Bowman’s residence, Karl summoned Jordan and we began our interrogation.

Needless to say, Lorken’s reaction to Dane was unsettling. He cursed him in a number of languages, and then began foaming at the mouth, apparently releasing some sort of poison stored in a false tooth. Jordan explained that he had crossed Lorken earlier, since they moved in the same circles.

I found his explanation to be fundamentally flawed, but I kept my reservations to myself. I had more troubling things to worry about.

Earlier in the month, in one of my many meditations, I stumbled upon a source of magic that was both terrifying and yet seductively inviting. A void, the space between the strands of the Weave, subtle, insidious. Each day I had explored it further, followed it’s voice as it spoke to me, drinking in the power and reveling in the uniqueness that it had presented me. My subconscious began to spit things at me, make me say and do things I would have never done otherwise. I began to feel myself grow more secretive, more bitter about the world, as if something was telling me that everything sought my destruction. By the time Lorken lay dead before us, it had gripped me and I had begun to delve into its deepest secrets.

I can’t say it was the worst time of my life, that would come later...but the things I saw, the things I thought every day, are things I will never forget.

 

[dave_o]

Hurrah!

I'm really stoked that Fenny got around to friggin' posting the Story Hour.

I play Drim, who hasn't been introduced yet - oh, but he will, he will.

 

[Fenrir]

After Lorken’s demise, we decided to examine his last place of residence, a townhouse in Waterdeep’s wealthy quarter. Obtaining the address from Gobinda, we arrived at his home and entered the front door using the key so generously donated to us by Lorken’s corpse. Upon entering, the wall spoke some sort of curse at us and we found ourselves trapped in a large, square stone room, the center of which was dominated by a carefully crafted statue of a woman dressed in a flowing gown. From the woman’s eyes spewed a line of fire, which coalesced into what could have only been a fire elemental, twelve feet tall, burning, with eyes like blazing emeralds among the red-orange blaze. Kantral and I bombarded the beast with spells of cold while Karl, with his ring that defended him against fire, took the fight to the beast up close. Kantral suffered most at the hands of the spirit, but we prevailed.

Using the only other door in this room, which had been securely locked and trapped by both mundane and magical means, we came upon a smaller chamber with a single pedestal in the center dominated by a complex puzzle involving numbers and moving tiles. Several hours were spent trying to crack the enigma, but it turned out that the answer had been in front of our noses the whole time. As the final piece slid into place, two swirling vortexes of brilliant blue burst into existence before our eyes. Kantral identified the vortexes as portals that could cover long distances with but a step. Trying our luck, we decided to take the right portal, as there were no other appreciable ways out of this room.

We stepped out of the vortex into a small shack with sparse furniture, but the building was of strange design. The walls, it seemed, were crafted of paper, and every piece of furniture was very ordered and simple, sanded and lacquered to a perfect uniformity. Confused, we walked out onto the streets of a truly strange city. The buildings here were either much like the one we had just left, or were giant, tall structures built in layers, the gables of each layer large, fluted, and exaggerated. The people here all looked at us with extreme curiosity, much as we had regarded them. They were a short folk, dusky of skin and slanted of eyes. Attempts to communicate were met with the strangest language I had ever heard.

Magic proved to be our savior here, and before long we learned that we were in a city called “Pingchow,” in a land known as “Shou.” In all of my reading, I had never heard of such a place, and I wondered if perhaps the portal had taken us to another plane of existence. A sign revealed a nearby building as some sort of tavern to our magically aided eyes, and we took no time making our way in.

As fate would have it, we had walked in on what appeared to be an arrest. Five heavily armed men had surrounded a girl no older than twenty, an exotic beauty with fire in her eyes. We arrived just in time to see the men lunge, and the girl twist about in such an incredible manner that we were all significantly stunned. In a matter of moments, an unarmed teenager had disabled five trained soldiers. Strangely enough, the folk in the tavern seemed pleased that she had defeated the guardsmen, and the owner of the establishment quickly tossed the unconscious louts out. Intrigued, Karl approached the girl.

Brief conversation revealed the girl as one Mei Fa Lin, the daughter of a local governor who had fallen victim to somewhat of a coup. Lin explained that the men she had recently bested were sent by the man who had assumed her family’s lands, and that they had challenged her fairly. Apparently, the new owner of the Mei Fa estate was determined to get the girl with whatever legal means he could. The challengers were growing tougher, and Lin wasn’t sure how much longer she could take it.

Having little else to do at this particular moment, we agreed to help her. Rather, Karl agreed to help her, likely drawn in by her attractiveness, much to Laena’s chagrin. It was clear we had little to do with this, and Kantral and I both agreed that we had more important things to do than trifle with a familial dispute in strange lands.

Karl didn’t take our dissent too lightly, and he recklessly went off without us that night to the Mei Fa estates. Word got back quickly the next day that a “strange giant with hair of fire” had been captured while prowling around the estates. With a collective groan, we determined to rescue the poor oaf before it was too late.

By the next day, we didn’t have to. Karl came stumbling in to the tavern, near death and sputtering more blood than could fill my waterskin. Discreetly, we tended to his wounds, and he told us what he had discovered. The new ruler of the estates was someone of persuasions more familiar to us than to the Shou- an apparent clergyman of the Child of Bane, Iyachtu Xvim. What a Xvimlar was doing here was beyond him, but much to my dismay, Karl had determined to combat the Xvimlar on his own, and had been severely damaged before he managed to escape. If the Xvimlar had indeed been working for this shadowy conspiracy we were trailing (which certainly appeared to be the case), he now knew that someone from the “old country” was here as well.

Still, we were determined to discover exactly why the priest, who Karl had pegged as “Martin,” was here in the first place. According to Lin, who had apparently been to our lands as a child, Shou was thousands upon thousands of miles distant from Waterdeep. What possible connection could there have been? Lin provided somewhat of a solution, which Karl filled in belatedly. Apparently, the Mei Fa estates included an old monastery that sat atop a tall mountain several miles out of town. Lin was able to identify the rock on the horizon. Karl had heard Martin mention something about a proceeding at the monastery within the next tenday. After cursing Karl for leaving out this crucial bit of information, we returned through the portal to Lorken’s abode, where we tried to find a way out. Lin offered to accompany us, as she would do anything to reclaim her lands from the Xvimlar and also wished to see the West again.

Our salvation lay in the statue of the woman. After very close inspection, it was discovered that her hand could be turned over. Doing so, a staircase opened in the back of the room, and we ascended back onto the streets of the City of Splendors. Returning to Bowman’s townhouse, we began to plan.

It was determined that one of us would have to search the rest of Lorken’s townhouse. Kantral volunteered for this task. I suggested that we hire someone with discreet talents, and so, I went to the only man I knew who could garner me such labor. Besides, old Yosef owed us a favor for the whole ordeal with the glorified mind-controlling trout.

Yosef assigned us one of his new men for the sum of 500 gold pieces. It was then that I met Drim Soigrim, the little halfling that would change the very nature of our journey and would grow to assume the focal point of our troupe. I must confess, he did not impress me much at first glance. His clothes were old, battered, his weapons aging and rusty, but there was something about his stance, his jaw, even, that screamed confidence. I knew he was a wise choice.

I paid out of my own pocket to outfit our new hiree with some better equipment. I told him to meet us at Bowman’s hideout the next day. He did, promptly, and revolutionized our planning, both with his discreet tactics and fresh bottle of Tashalar red that helped pass the evening a bit more smoothly. Kantral’s findings at Lorken’s townhouse were disturbing- Lorken’s documents described some sort of geographically dependent ritual that spanned the world, explaining just why Pingchow was so important. The other portal, according to the notes, led to an underground sanctum in Calimshan, land of Harami’s birth. Both ends of the ritual needed to be performed simultaneously in order to be optimally effective, and thus to stop it, both had to be disrupted.

Furthermore, Kantral’s inspection of the statue beneath Lorken’s house revealed that it acted as a magical focus, the central location of the dual energies collected from the Shou and Calimshan sites. The final plot, a visit to the map showed us, was a giant triangle spanning the continent. The portals would have to be destroyed in order to secure the failure of the ritual.

What made things more difficult was the fact we had no idea what the ritual was FOR. We were running on blind circumstantial evidence- basically, that those responsible for the ritual had tried to kill us multiple times. It boiled down to an act of revenge. Little did we know what sort of trouble this revenge would get us into down the line, but we were all younger then, and had seen less of the world and the way things truly function. The patterns were strange, the nature of this ritual staggeringly ridiculous, but this didn’t occur to us. As far as we were concerned, it was one hundred percent authentic, and nothing was going to convince us otherwise.

Within three days we had planned that the group would split up to deal with each side of the ritual simultaneously. The group would meet again in three years, in the centrally located city of Suzail, capital of Cormyr.

 

[Broccli_Head]

I like!

Especially the Toril-spanning significance.

I guess what occurs next is 3 years later?

 

[dave_o]

!

Yay, Drim!

And there's an event coming up, followed by a three year in-game hiatus.