NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="nogray" data-source="post: 8204313" data-attributes="member: 28028">A note on setting and a summary of early levels:The party is playing in the Nentir Vale/Points of Light setting, to which I added a "touchstone" city, called Bomire, which is located at the mouth of the river that flows south through Nerath. It has (or had) a real Freeport/Mos Eisley feel (city of pirates sort of thing). In my background notes, the name of the campaign is "Trouble Sires Three Children." Each paragraph, below, represents about one level of adventure.The party's story began in Fallcrest, deep in the Nentir Vale. It was there that the core of the group first discovered a trio of threats to the town and possibly the world. The first of these involved an apprentice mage named Delevor, who slew the family on a farmstead on the outskirts of the town. The party investigated their deaths and followed the trail of Delevor to a tower locked "outside of space and time," hidden by an ancient being known as "the Collector." Within the tower, the party confronted and defeated Delevol, but they found evidence that Delevor had transmitted information to his master on the construction of an arcane machine intended to purify elements and enhance them. Investigating the rest of the tower, the party found that the machine, which had been left active for centuries, produced a crystalline scorpion-beast that destroyed the machine that birthed it. Subsequent to defeating this strange elemental thing, the party's research indicated that the machine seems to draw energies from the elemental chaos through the feywild and into the world. It looked as if the location in the elemental chaos from which the machine drew its power was close to the edge of the abyss if not actually within that hellish realm. Further investigation led the party to conclude that Delevor came from the south, a city called Bomire.While the party recovered from the battle, the town came under attack from an odd assortment of kuthriks and hobgoblins. Tracking this assault back through the underground passageway to its origin, they discovered a goblin named Gorlak that was psychically dominating the various creatures with the assistance of an insectoid abomination. The defeat of Gorlak and his mind-bug "pet" caused a vortex of psychic energy that imploded the space around Gorlak, causing him to be apparently disintegrated. Gorlak's journal (kept in Deep Speech transliterated into the dwarven script) and the surviving pieces of his lab indicated that the goblin had learned to summon the far-realmsian mind-bug from a person or entity in the woods near Bomire.Not long after returning from the woods from which Gorlak had mounted his attack on the town, the party became aware of another threat to the people of Fallcrest. Several townsfolk were abducted by some undead. The party tracked the undead back to a wooded area in Fallcrest known as the Tombwood where a short-distance teleportation circle was discovered, guarded by demons and undead. Tracing the arcane energies, the party learned that the townsfolk had been removed to the Tower of Waiting, rumored to be haunted by a spirit from the time long before the empire of Nerath. The party there found Nikos, a scribe of Fallcrest, in preparation for a ghastly ritual designed with knowledge gleaned from a modern "Cult of the Black-Feathered Ram" and the ancient necromancies of the Lady of the Tower. It seems that Nikos had learned of the Cult (which the party deduced must be dedicated to Orcus) in a trip to Bomire and had become obsessed with the power the necromancy promised.With the source of these threats all pointing towards Bomire, the group finalized its arrangements to journey there. The assistance of a caravan of halfling barges was acquired (and another apprentice with livery like that of Delevor was delayed in acquiring some iron), and the group traveled south with the halflings, assisting them in making the journey safely. Upon arrival, the party was set upon by a gang of local toughs (one of the two major gangs in Bomire) known as the Blade Brethren (more formally, the Brotherhood of the Blacksteel Blades).After arriving in Bomire, the party undertook several tasks. They slew the leaders of the Blade Brethren* and assumed control of that gang, turning it into a sort of police for the Riverside district of Bomire, setting themselves up as enemies to the other major gang, the White Petal Tong. They discovered a tomb of one of the handmaidens of the last empress of Bael Turath. They averted an attack by fell scars (psychic aberrations) brought about by a hunter that journeyed into the forest near Bomire -- a place that was becoming known as the Warp Woods. Research led to the discovery of the name of the far-realms threat, a being known as Ixhushah Quoreth (this was discovered in the mad ramblings of the hunter who unwittingly brought back the fell scars from Warp Wood). They attended a party hosted by Lord Rathel Kiernan, the master of Delevor and apparently a mage of significant power. (During this, Makaria befriended Kiernan’s majordomo, a half-dwarf with a peculiar elementally-empowered replacement hand.)* My best early skill challenge[spoiler] I ran what was my best skill challenge to date as part of this event. In fact, it remained a high-water-mark as far as skill challenges for quite some time. I set up a high-complexity skill challenge with several moving parts. The characters first used Stealth and Perception to scout the forces that the Blacksteel Blades had at their disposal, then used Intimidate and Deception to remove some of the available forces from the leadership. I don't recall what skill I had them roll against, but some success allowed the party to select the battlefield, then successes allowed them to prepare the battlefield to suit their strategy. I recall the party setting up the fight in an abandoned warehouse and fashioning a couple of traps they could trigger using Thievery and Athletics. They made a challenging (or deadly) fight into something far more manageable that had additional elements that they could deploy in their favor. It was a blast to run and the players gave me a lot of positive feedback about it. [/spoiler]Hearing about attacks by groups of undead, the party returned their attention to investigating the Cult of the Black-Feathered Ram. They put down the next attack by a group of undead and subsequently tracked the origin of the attack to a sealed-off section of ancient sewers, slaying the cult members there and further tracking the leadership back to the clergy of the Raven Queen in Bomire. Upon the advice of Valdreshar (a relatively junior clergyman who had aided the adventurers in acquiring invitations to a party hosted by Lord Rathel Kiernan) and using their own skills, they determined that the cult leader in Bomire was the second most senior high-priestess, Shantellia. The party did discover, however, that the previous cult leader (an unknown male) had left Shantellia in charge fairly recently, leaving Bomire to grow the cult in other lands.The party at this time decided to prioritize investigating Lord Rathel Kiernan and his elemental machinery and magic. They ramped up their politicking among the upper class of Bomire, and they used the cover of the party I mentioned above to investigate Kiernan's estate and research. They determined that the machinery would draw power and material from the Abyss (or at least the elemental chaos near the abyss), filter it through the feywild (depositing some of that material and energy there), and enhance the value and purity of items placed in the machine here in the world. Excess energy and waste would be shunted to the Shadowfell. The party discerned that nothing would dissuade Kiernan from activating the machinery, so they researched the consequences of this happening. They were not encouraging. At the very least, it would risk offending the sidhe courts of the feywild; at the worst, it would cause a massive disruption that would fracture the planes. (I use a sort-of Dresden-Files-inspired fey court, complete with Mab and Titania, so "offending" these would lead to interesting consequences, to put it mildly.) During this time, the party met agents of the Collector, who remained very much alive despite being an almost-indescribably ancient being. They successfully lobbied to meet with the Collector, who turned out to be a spell weaver, though somewhat different from most of his kind. From the Collector, the party received ritual materials and directions for the creations of the necessary wards to block the flow of magic into Kiernan’s machine. Unfortunately, these wards would have to be placed in the Feywild and the Elemental Chaos. The party departed from the non-space that the Collector occupied via a portal. Upon their return to the World from the "peculiar non-place" that the Collector had held out of space and time, a group of cambions appeared and attacked. The party defeated the devil-spawn and determined that the far-future destiny of Makaria was at the root of the attack. The unique circumstances of the Collector's method of travel had facilitated the tracking and attack of the party by the devils, so while this was an element of the future gameplay, it needn't be central in the concerns of the party. (I wanted to discourage the party from using the Collector as a resource in the future if they didn't want to deal with additional threats and costs and to foreshadow an additional element of late gameplay, but I didn't want devils and whatnot to intrude upon what the players planned to do in the short-term.)Up next: Finishing off Heroic Tier and the introduction of some house rulesFurther note: I introduced the three threats (powerful wizard Rathel Kiernan, Cult of the Black-Feathered Ram, and agents of the Far Realms entity Ihushah Quoreth) with the intent that the party could resolve them in any order, but each would be the capstone of a tier.</blockquote>

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