Journal—Old Journal entries for previous campaigns

Eberron Campaign (mid 2005)

6/18/05 [Kell]: We spent most of the evening ironing out some details of our new campaign and creating new characters.
7/2/05 [Kell]: Most of the party started out as children rescued from some disaster and brought to a small village. A man named Arron did most of the rescuing. The rescued children were trained and fed by the village inhabitants. For example, Reina was Kell and Killian's warden. Her husband, Taran, was Eimaj's warden. Caden was trained by Gan.; The village is in a vale in the shadow of a mountain. Our adventure starts as there's a town meeting of the valley families. Reina opens the meeting. She tells us we're special (hey, we're special!) and it's time we go out and seek our destinies. Arron says that the peace in Khorvaire won't last and we must prepare ourselves. Gan steps up and gives us each a gift (masterwork item). Finally, Reina provides us with clothing, rations, and general adventuring gear.; We have to choose between 2 paths from the village. One goes north to Greenheart, the capitol of the Eldeen Reaches. From there we could follow the road to Varna (which has fine mage-bred animals). Beyond Varna, we can get to Aundair. The other path goes south through The Gloaming (a dangerous place) to Sylbaran. The roads from Sylbaran lead to Droam and to Breland. We decide to head to Greenheart.; After a going-away breakfast the next morning, we head north through the forest. We lunch in a redwood copse and, just as we finish, we hear a yell off to our left. We start off to see what all the yelling is about and find out first-hand when we get grabbed by an assassin vine. We all manage to escape it with little injury. The "we" now includes a new warforged named Mullusko—the original yeller.
7/9/05 [Kell]: We continue northwards for a while, then set up camp. The next morning we head out in the drizzling rain. After several hours, we hear a wagon. We go to check it out and discover 2 people are being held prisoner in the back of the wagon. The wagon is being driven by orcs. Ten or so orcs follow, including one that's riding a wolf. We attack... several party members ended up near death, but the party cleric managed to stop the worst of the bleeding. It was a tough battle, but we were victorious and freed the prisoners (Katus and Controller).; We all pile into the wagon and continue towards Greenheart. We camp that night and get a good night's sleep. We move a bit faster with the wagon and get to Greenheart itself late in the day. Greenheart is a medium-sized town right within the woods. The town center is a grove of trees (from which the town gets its name). Buildings are made mainly of stone and dirt; several are nestled in the branches of trees. We get rooms at the Guesthouse (one of the up-in-a-tree buildings) and our rooms have fabulous views of the town below.

Previous Terra Mystica Campaign (early 2005)

The town of Tekva Amaris is located at the northern edge of Arcinia. For the past few years, the town has regularly been attaked by undead. The town guards are more experienced and numerous than you'd expect in a town this size. The town guards are called the Necrolion. They aren't the only ones who have to fight. Everyone in town does their part to combat the undead.

Lately, the number of undead attacking at night has increased. Things are getting a bit desperate. If the number of undead continues to increase at its current pace, the town will be doomed. Even the Nercolion cannot hold back hordes of undead for long. It doesn't help that landslides in the mountains south of town have completely blocked the passage southwards. Evacuating the townspeople by that route will be difficult, if not impossible.

A select and varied group of young people from the town volunteered to travel north in an attempt to find the source of the undead. Perhaps the town can be saved by stopping them at the source.... These are the tales of that intrepid band of volunteers.

So, one auspicious day finds our little group heading northwards through the woods. We see a few undead through the trees. They're heading townwards as we travel in the opposite direction. For the most part, we move during the night and sleep during the day.

The second night out, we engage some of the undead in an effort to thin their ranks before they can attack the town. We're successful, but after destroying the undead within range, we hear something unusual. Actually, I'm not sure that “hear” is the correct term. There's a voice, but it seems to be inside our heads and not an actual sound. It says “These are not for you... these are not for here. these are not your paths. THESE will be your undoing.”

We immediately hear sounds of something, two somethings in fact, clawing their way out of the ground. Whatever these two are, they're much more powerful undead then what we've experienced before. It's a tough battle that leaves us injured and exhausted.

We continue travelling northwards. On the third night out, we again have to battle more undead. This should give the Necrolion back at home a bit of a rest, but it's kept us quite busy. By daylight, we encounter an obelisk, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. The writing on the obelisk tells the story of castle and points in its direction. We look for it and see only an empty hillside. A few more steps forward, a magical tingle, and suddenly the castle appears.

Within the castle, people and undead seem frozen in the act of battle. Two main combatants face one another in the courtyard—A skeletal shadow and a human man in plate who appears to be protecting a baby. Again, we hear a voice in our heads. It complains that the magic is weakening. An old man exits the castle—he's the first person we've seen move—and we realize that we can see the castle walls through his body. We try talking to him, but he doesn't make a lot of sense. For one thing, he seems to think he's held the magics in place for only 6 years waiting for Lord Stratholm to return. But, Lord Stratholm is a name out of the distant past&mdahs;650 years or so in the past.

Well, this is getting a bit long... so the short version is that the translucent guy releases the stasis, we talk the skeletal shadow guy into leaving the baby alone (for now), and all the undead that had been held in stasis start marching south... towards our home. There's way, way, way too many for us to handle them alone. We rush back to town and get everyone to evacuate. Since the overland route south of town is blocked, we use some long-unused, little known dwarven-built tunnels to get out of town. We get the last of the townspeople into the tunnel just as thousands of undead breach the town walls.

So, we've headed down in some dank tunnel, leading our townspeople to safety (we hope). There's poisonous fungus on each side of us, someone shooting crossbow bolts at us from the dark, and umber hulks hulking around. And some insane, wizardly ghost keeps talking in our heads. “These are rested and these get ready to move closer. These do not know what it is they move closer to. These know not what goes on in the world above. Hurry, these should.”

5/6/05 [Bellin]: We have finally made it to someplace other than dark, dank tunnel. We're in a huge, unpopulated city. It's about 6 miles across. Solid rock surrounds the city and there appear to be 4 large exits at north, south, east, and west. Above the city is a solid translucent crystal. Above the crystal is water. The water must not be too deep, because sunlight streams into the city through the water and crystal roof. Oooops! 'Scuse please.... a demon just popped in and we've gotta vanquish him.; Okay, one demon dispensed with.... now where were we? Oh yes, the city... There's a fountain at the center of the city and, at the top of the water plume, an orb floats. Near the fountain we find our old friend— the insane, wizardly ghost—only he no longer seems insane and he no longer seems to be a ghost. We can't see through him any more for one thing. He has yet to tell us his name, so Lystra has has nicknamed him Mr. BReW (for Blue Robed Wizard) to distinguish him from the group's wizards (Kieran and Sahen). He does talk to us and he makes a lot more sense. He's stopped call us “These” which is a bit of a relief. He's even referred to us as “The best Terra Mystica has to offer” which has a nice ring to it, don't you think? He's given us quite a long history lesson. [One of these days I'll add it to the Journal. Really. I promise. Well, Maybe.]; Seems there's an Ice Titan that's about to wake up and start an ice age. Oh, and an ice age is likely to kill most people on the surface. Our mission is to get the people on the surface to evacute to this nifty city we've just discovered. I guess we've got a start since our townspeople are already settling in.
5/13/05 [Lystra]: Talk about angry! I'm supposed to put in the update for this journal of our travels, but I'm too angry to do it. You see, I've got a demon inside me now. All we did was exit the north door (to head to the capitol city and send everyone up there back to the underground city). Back into dark, dank tunnels... except for the fire which dissipated and left us with a demon. This one red and horned and with wings. And arrogant. The arrogant demon just reached around Black Tombs (BT) and grabbed me, Lystra. Then, poof! there's a pile of ashes on the ground and I've got an arrogant demon in my head. And everyone just stood there and let him do it! I didn't even get a chance to dodge away from his grasp. So far, I'm still me... I mean, he's not controlling me or anything, but who knows how long that will last? My blood feels hotter though and the whole red pupil thing just doesn't go well with my dark blue eyes & black hair. And did anyone do anything useful to get the arrogant demon voice out of my head? Oh no... Kieran, Taenarra, and Modrien have threatened my life and Sahen tried to put me to sleep! Even Bellin's Magic Circle Against Evil and Break Enchantment spells didn't help. Arghhhh! I'm too angry at them all to do more on this silly journal.
5/28/05 [Lystra]: Well, I decided to head toward the capitol, Arincia Proper, ahead of most of the rest of the party. (OOC: No one else showed up to play, so it was just me and the DM.) I took Caden (one of the town elders, though he's anything but elderly) and Bellin with me. Oh, and the demon in my head went along too. It took us about a week of travel, without rest, to get to the gates of the capitol. Yes, I know the “without rest” part is a bit weird. I asked Caden if it was his doing along with the fancy spell he used to provide us with light, but he says it wasn't him. That's unfortunate. It means it probably was the demon—he's effecting others in the party apparently, because it wasn't just me not resting, it was Caden and Bellin and the two horses not resting too. We all seem to feel fine though. The tunnels we travelled through were dark and dank, but Caden's spell kept us light enough and we all engaged in all manner of witty repartee. Plus Bellin and Caden got into an arguement over who's among us is the best looking. (I'm still not quite certain who won.); The demon was a bit disappointed to find himself travelling away from the Crystal City, but he didn't kick up too big a fuss. He did tell me that he knows where some first-class treasure is hidden in (or under?) the capitol. Treasure buried by men long forgotten and protected by powerful guardians. He seems to think we could defeat them though... with his help. Going treasure-hunting sounds like fun, but relying on a demon's help doesn't—so I'm of two minds on whether to go after the goodies or not. I guess the issue will be tabled for a bit since our first priority will be to talk to the Senate of Arincia Proper and convince them that the city should be evacuated quickly to avoid all the citizenry being frozen to death when the Ice Titan awakens.
5/29/05 [Bellin]: Caden opened the gate once we reached Arcinia Proper. Doing so released a cloud of dust and opened a ramp leading upwards. Kieran caught up to us just in time to get covered in dust. At the top of the ramp was a dusty, unused room with one door. The door was locked, of course. Lystra managed to unlock the lock, but turns out the door's barred on the other side so we still couldn't open the door. Kieran cast a Shatter spell and blasted a hole in the door, but failed to move the bar. The hole was big enough for us to slip through. Turns out the bar is welded in place. None of us is strong enough to break melded metal, so we had to leave the horses behind in the dusty room. I fed and watered them before we left and hope they'll be okay there.; I rather expected to be outside once we got through the hole in the door, but that's not the case. We ended up in a hallway lined with doors and with stairs leading up at both ends. Lystra unlocked a door and peeked in. She found a bunch of old archived records (mostly pertaining to Senatorial speeches and whatnot). No window in the room though. Looked like we'd have to use the stairs to get out of here. The next level was pretty boring. Just more doors. From the names over the doors, most rooms appeared to be conference and committee rooms. In the middle of the long hallway, there were more stairs leading up again and we could hear voices from above.; We headed up and found ourselves in a very chilly, wide, open-air room. Lots of people were bundled up and wandering about. Off to the side, we found an entrance to the Senatorial debate chamber where the Seante was in full debate mode—over the unseasonably chilly weather. Guess the Ice Titan woke up before we got to the city here. Caden's family connections were enough to get us entrance into the chamber. When the current speaker left the stage, Caden distracted the next person due up and Lystra hopped up on stage and began talking. It took quite a diplimatic effort on her part, but she was finally able to convince the Senate that they should begin making preparations to evacute Arcinia Porper to the underground Crystal City. One of the Senators has been appointed to be in charge of the move and will coordinate with Lystra.
6/3/05 [Lystra]: No game this weekend.
6/11/05 [Lystra]: The game officially moved to Saturday this weekend. The move didn't help as we had no game this weekend either.