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RickAllison
2016-09-11, 02:07 PM
Session 0:

"Men and Women of Adventure,

The various Monarchs, Emperors, Nobles, Councils, Archbishops, and Other Dignitaries of our world of Vazenia request your presence in a Great Expedition, one to find the cause of, and to stop, the plague that has claimed the lives and souls of citizens, bandits, and even monsters of every nation and habitat. Come to Amn, the capital of the Republic of Kerzenor, where all species are equal. From there, the Armada shall depart to the Northern Glacial Wall and, from there, to the Polar Mountains and what lies beyond.

May the gods speed your arrival"

With this declaration, the group gathers in Amn and meets while waiting for the quartermaster. Striking up a camaraderie, the ragtag band of adventurers soon found themselves embroiled in the logistics of the Armada, their ship, and the mystery of what lies ahead.

Three galleons, six frigates, and nine longships form the western fork of the global efforts. Upon the frigate "The Western Wind", the group of four adventurers found themselves hard at work. Norward Bound, treasure hunter extraordinaire and representative of the Conclave of the South Cerean Sea, prepared his charts to navigate to the unknown reaches. Dismus, bandit and highwayman, maintained equipment and acted as a forward scout. Dagonet, thief and crafter, found himself as quartermaster after the death of the original due to the mysterious plague. Ephraim, youngest prince of the Air Genasi, quick of wit and educated to keep the company sharp. Adron, druid of the Chire, acted as the eye in the sky of the armada. These adventurers left for the Northern Glacial Wall...

Session 1:

Following a quick encounter with a kraken that capsized a longship, the Armada reached the Northern Glacial Wall. However, the casters who were ready to cut through the ice found their spells misfiring. Fire Bolts summoned wire boats or dire voles, while clerics offering Guidance instead found the men inexplicably forced to dance and druids attempting Druidcraft instead found their powers pouring crude drafts of ale. As part of the advance force, Norward volunteered to take a group of adventurers onto the glacial wall to find the disturbance to permit further travel.

After ascending the ice wall, the party found an ancient tower with a glowing, magical beacon atop it. Carefully pressing through the icy storm, the party sensed the great tremors most similar to the terrible purple worm! Fortunately it either didn't sense the presence of the party, or this arctic variant worm simply wasn't interested in them. Upon arriving at the mysterious tower, the party decided whether to attempt ranged destruction of the beacon, sneak into the tower, or simply knock on the door. Fortunately, the latter won out, and the party soon found themselves face-to-face with an Ogre Archmage who did not fluently speak any language of theirs. He beckoned them in and out of the cold, offered them some tea and kelp bread in very broken Draconic, then rushed upstairs. He came back down in a very silly hat and able to speak in every tongue. Long story short, he opened up the path they were having difficulties with, gave them some magical trinkets he hoped would help their journey, and gave them some warning of the nature of the dangers beyond the polar region. He also explained the nature of the disruption of magic by his beacon, that it was a defense mechanism so that the creatures from the north would be weakened.

The party returned and guided the armada through the strait carved by the archmage's ice worms, then attempted to test the magical trinkets. Among the rather pointless objects were a tooth that when put in the mouth caused the user to grow fairy wings that couldn't fly (yet), a frying pan that makes delicious food and is a decent last-resort weapon or shield, and a sticky net that traps both the target and the user. Disappointed (and unknowing of the growth in power these items would have as they delved into realms of stronger magic), the party locked the items away in a chest.

Soon, they landed on a sunny beach; for some odd reason, the weather actually grew warmer as they approached the far north. Strange as this may have been, the party scouted ahead, tracking mysterious and shadowy entities through the jungle until they reached a pit that extended deep into the earth, with different offshoots as they went down, as well as strange tracks that indicate creatures of similar size to an orc, but very different. The party reported their findings to the admiral and, after being offered the chance to join the foray to a distant city, chose to instead investigate the deep pit.

They rappelled down the pit with little problems, squeezing into one of the diverting tunnels. They sprang a trap that nearly crushed Norward but, using their wits and some magic items brought onto the journey, disarmed it. They reached a fork in the path. One led deeper into the strange tunnels, while one reached a dead-end.

The players had voted 3-2 for doing a traditional dungeon crawl for the first session. The pit leading deeper held such a crawl, while the dead end was just a sealed construction and maintenance tunnel for assembling the great statues of the Guardians, which was a great puzzle. Guess which one the players decided they would go for...

The party decided that a glint of metal within the wall of the dead end indicated some great treasure and tore into the wall with a pickax and crowbars to dislodge said glint, only to find a pyramidal spike from an unknown metal. When this spike was grabbed by Dagonet, he felt himself charged with great amounts of magical energy. When Norward struck him to dislodge Dagonet, he instead found himself blasted back by a wave of magical energy. Dismus tried a different approach, grabbing the spike himself and then striking Dagonet. As the magical auras of the two clashed, an explosion rang out, collapsing the tunnel and separating Norward and Dagonet from the rest of party while revealing a cavern filled with four great statues, hundreds of feet tall. That strange artifact they had touched was simply the top of a magical dagger held by one of these four-armed giants.

As the group attempted to break down the wall of rubble, they managed to open it up just enough to crawl through. The curious Dag then attempted to harness the magic of this giant dagger, grabbing it once more and willing it to open the cave to them. With that will, the dagger shifted, a beam of great energy fired from its tip and carved out a path not just through the tunnel they had come from, but through the wall of the statue's room and coming to rest in a hole on a central plate marked with runes, with three other holes for three other statues.

While the rest of the party climbed down a rope to investigate the central plate, Dag took a hands-on approach to deciphering the cavern's mysteries. While the party on the ground attempted to decipher the meaning of the runes surrounding the central plate, Dag attempted to activate the trident held in another hand of the first guardian. It fell into position in front of the statue, creating two beams firing directly up and down.

After seeing the destruction, Norward, Ephraim, and Adron attempted to escape through a drainage tunnel, while Dismus and Dag activated the last two arms, creating two horizontal beams through the sides of the cavern and one that fired into the statue across the room. This disturbance, however, awoke an evil from within the cavern, a Remorhaz of terrible proportions. Meanwhile, the escaping party members found themselves face-to-face with two Otyughs within a refuse-filled drainage room.

The escaping party fought off the denizens of the trash chute, while the stealthy bandit and thief played cat-and-mouse with the Remorhaz so they could escape through the tunnel created by the trident's beam. At the end of the day, the trio made their way back to the camp to the revelation that a dwarf city, Pittsburgh, had just been destroyed by a great pillar of magical energy. Meanwhile, the pair found themselves atop a tall mountain, seeing over into the other side of the world, literally. As they looked from their vantage point, they could spy the great ring of the planet they knew bounding the interior part that had alluded civilization for all of history. In the very center of it all, swirling around the beam they had fired, was an abomination of darkness.

So by the end of the first real session, they derailed the plot, destroyed a semi-major city, uncovered a major facet of the world, and they aren't sure whether the actions of Dagonet and Dismus have moved to save the world or destroy it!