At Will

I’ve been a bad boy.  With everything going around me I’ve let session notes slip, and after a while we got so far behind that it became a mountain in mind.  All I’ve got is this little ice-pick to climb Mt. Everest with.

So, I’m wiping the slate clean, in a sense.  I want to update everyone on the story thus far, and then I can in good conscience move on and keep taking notes from the last session.  This will also give anyone who’s new a chance to catch up and follow along with my weekly game.

• History of Greyharbour

Troubled Times

The roads of Greyharbour are no longer safe.  Kobold tribes raid merchant caravans, killing and ransoming the survivors.  The party comes across the aftermath of such a raid in the Tillwood.  Returning what they can to the town of New Water, they seek to rescue the captain of the caravan guard, an old friend of Marc Greysun, the party’s paladin.  They track the kobolds to their lair and manage to rescue the captain and a few other survivors.  Huxor, Marc’s old friend, has a dire warning:  the kobolds are organizing for an attack on New Water.  The united tribes will then launch further assaults on the rest of the region.  They must be stopped at all costs.

Troy Blackshield, the captain of the New Water Militia, does not quite believe Huxor. He sends the players north to investigate the Huxor’s claim.  The PCs barely get away with their lives and the knowledge that things aren’t quite what they seem…

They press Troy on his suspicions and he tells them of a secret threat that he feels is the true enemy influencing the kobolds –the dopplegangers, known as the faceless.  The faceless were hunted and killed by the Baron when he was settling the Greyharbour region centuries ago, but some survived.  The PCs, not trusting Troy anymore than he trusted them, suspect that one of the survivors that they rescued from Kelith’s Grotto could be the source of information, seek to find first the dragonborn Keltha Musha.  He had come to the region he said, in search of his father who was sought proof of his family’s royal lineage.  He dissapeared somewhere near the cliffs of Kellis to the south.

The group pursues, and finds an ancient tomb for dragonborn nobility.  As they explore the catacombs they discovered disturbing black roots that bleed nercotic energy and reanimate the entombed dragonborn within.  They encounter a long-dead dragonborn king, who has been reanimated by the roots’ energy.  He tells them of the dragonborn’s apocalyptic war with the facceless, and of one doppelganger who most certainly lives…Isami the Slayer.  Before the roots animated his form completely overtake him, he tells the PCs of a book that can be used to fight the faceless — The Book of Names.

The players leave with the Book of Names and are greeted by one of Troy’s messengers…New Water is under attack!

The Enemy with no Face

The adventurers race back to New Water’s defense.  It is not kobolds that they face however, but the undead.  Strange undead that are seemingly taken over and reanimated by more of these black roots. They assault the town in unrelenting waves at nightfall.

After the first night the players convince the citizens of New Water to stand and fight against the darkness that assails them.  The next few nights see the PCs leading the defense of the fishing city against wraith swarms and other summoned monsters marching forth from the Tillwood.  They discover that Marc’s friend Huxor was actually one of the faceless. Little information is gathered from him as a silencing rune strikes him dead shortly after capture.  A secret Orcus cult is found under the city’s sewers and is also aiding (unknown to the cultists) Isami and his minions in one of their many guises.

As New Water becomes increasingly under assault from all sides, Arctana, the half-elf warlock, finally deciphers the ancient glyphs of the Book of Names.  She unearths a ritual….

The Black Tree

The Book of Names contains a ritual, ‘Name the Faceless’, that can, for a short period of time, reveal to the ritual participants who is an who is not a doppleganger.  Arctana shares her discovery with Troy and the rest of the group.

They perform the ritual.  Before opening their re-sighted eyes, Troy warns them, but nothing can prepare them for what they see.  Looking out of the windows of Troy’s keep, they can see that about a third of the citizens are faceless!

Troy then reveals to the PCs the secret of New Water.  When the Baron began to hunt the faceless, he employed magically-bred hounds that could sniff out the faceless.  While those faceless led by Isami the Slayer chose to fight (and later, to hide), the other faceless performed a sealing ritual to lock them in their forms, and to erase their memories.  Their children were born as whatever race the parent was, similarly locked with their true origin hidden from them.  The man who helped with the ritual was Imsem Blackshield, Troy’s father.  The Blackshield clan was task with overseeing the sealed faceless and ensuring that they never awoke to their true nature and that the Baron’s descendants did not discover the true nature of themselves.  Fate would have it that the faceless were subconciously drawn together in this town.  Troy became captain of the New Water Militia mostly so he could keep a watch over his trusts.

The secret revealed, Troy then explained that Isami the Slayer wants revenge on the whole of Greyharbour.  He has been searching for his brethren, but fortunately faceless can not inherently detect other faceless when they change shape. If he found this book however, then he could unleash a small subversive nation upon Greyharbour. Nowhere would be safe, and his shapeshifting minions combined with the undead forces at his command would surely bring ruin to all.

The Book of Names could, under no circumstances, be found by Isami.  The party hides it somewhere in the Radiant Temple of Pelor for safekeeping while they hunt for Orcus cultists in the sewers.

When facing the cultists, they discover that not only is Isami using them towards his own ends, they are making sacrifices to a Blacktree, which grows with each sacrifice in the heart of the Tillwood.  There Bobrick, the elf ranger, finds the artifact Deathshead.  It speaks to him of death and ruin and offers him power in exchange for his soul.  He is resisting it’s most tempting lures but the his skin grows paler by the day…

The City that Used to Be

When the PCs emerge from the sewers, Troy reports that someone had almost stolen the book, and was caught just in time.  Trying to interrogatte the thief revealed him to Troy as a doppleganger.  It is no longer safe to hide the book.  With the ritual in Arctana’s mind and ritual book now, it is best to destroy the book and not risk Isami claiming it.  They attempt to burn the book, but strong dragon magic protects the book from simple fire.   The players have no knowledge on how to destroy the book, so they decide to travel south to Thom.  Going inland is too much time, so they travel south along the coast in a boat to Gromsbury.  When they arrive, the party finds the town mostly empty and in acid-burned ruins.

In not much time after the boat leaves the party finds themselves in trouble against a young black dragon.  Vanquishing him they discover an army of kobold and undead led by the slain dragon and his twin sister stormed upon the town and razed it with blade and acid breath.  Water is being directed inland so much of the town is becoming more swampy, as is the dragons’ liking.

The PCs encounter a group of children survivors who called themselves the Guardians of Gromsbury, who have been hiding in the ruined city, harassing the occupying forces with clever traps.  The PCs try to lead the Guardians to safety but they won’t move until they’ve rescued their parents, who are being worked literally into undeath by the dragon’s forces.

The players decide that they must help the children, and lead some sorties in isolated parts of the city.  They find information on the where the slaves are kept and rescue some survivors.  They organize the ragtag “army” into a distracting force while the players look to attack the remaining dragon twin, Freya.  Along the way the run into her brother, bloated by black roots and resurrected, then also see the someone who is the spitting image of Troy save for an eyepatch working with Freya’s agents.

The players slay Freya and free the captives.  The survivors of Gromsbury will make the best of their current situation and seek to rebuild.  The players promise to get them help, but must travel west to Thom, seeking information on how to destroy the Book of Names hidden somewhere in the Ivory Library.

The Destruction of Knowledge

The players arrive at Thom, where they meet with the wizard Quimmel, an eladrin wizard who, like Khalil the dragonborn warlord, is a longtime agent of Troy Blackshield.  Thom is a city of magic, and has used this magic to create a ward that repels the undead and keeps the city secure.  After speaking to the High Council and having their identities verified, the party is given ivory tokens to enter the library.

Even in this secured city the adventurers are not safe.  They are attacked in their dreams by an unknown force.  Upon waking, they enter the Ivory Library.  The librarians are all ghosts and spectres that have died after become too absorb in the pursuit of historical and arcane knowledge.  The wards have had a special effect on these undead — it has driven most quite mad.

The party must find the knowledge they seek while mad ghosts attempt to make them a fixture of the library…

And we are now at present time.