The Legendary Heroes of Cataclysmic Fire
Characters
- Garsan Eyllisvirrea - Elven Ranger
- Dasred Oathspinner - Half-Elven Wild Mage
- Ignatius - Human Gallant
- Zorintino Gaf - Gnomish Mage
- Drolund, the Intransigent - Dwarven Cleric
- Tytus Luneus - Elven Thief
Utilities and Reference
House Rules and Social Contract
Initiative Tracker
Initiative Roller
Zorintino's Character Sheet
Dasred's Character Sheet
Prologue
Once upon a great while ago, in a time and place that never existed, six legendary adventurers joined together to engage in a series of not-quite-so-legendary adventures. This is how their story begins.
-By Garsan Eyllisvirrea
Session 1 - From Rescuers to Bodyguards (3/5/11)
The campaign began with the party traveling nowhere in particular, in the middle of a forest. They happen upon a party of goblins chasing a middle-aged man in a wagon. Driving away the goblins, they learn that the man, who called himself Tarvin, was ambushed while on his way to search for an old family heirloom buried in a nearby crypt. His hired guards ran away when the goblins came. Offering to help, the party accompanied him to the crypt, where they fought some undead and found that the heirloom was a mysterious pocket watch, left resting on a pedestal by itself. Among other treasure found was a bag of magical beads. As they were about to leave, Tarvin's guards showed up above them in the shaft, threatening to kill them if they did not hand over the pocket watch. The party was in no condition to fight, so they decided to withdraw and rest for a while back inside the crypt before trying to fight the guards.
Session 2 - The Magic Watch (4/1/11)
This session included fighting the bodyguards outside the crypt, accompanying Tarvin to town, and stopping the kobold raid at Sprick's farm.
Session 3 - Mongrels and Reptiles, part 1 (4/16/11)
This session ran from the owlbear fight to entering the cave and finding the treasure and lizardman eggs.
Session 4 - Mongrels and Reptiles, part 2 (5/7/11)
This session included killing the lizardman king, finding the rest of the treasure, and returning to town.
Session 5 - The Spider Farm (5/27/11)
The adventurers travel to a silk farm to rid it of an infestation of shadow goblins.
-By Thayne Bohman
Session 6 - The Melford Murder (6/10/11)
This session ran through the whole murder mystery.
Session 7 - Shrine of the Oracle, part 1 (6/24/11)
The heroes receive a mission from the priestess of the Oracle and attempt to locate and recover a lost party.
-By Drolund the Intransigent
Session 8 - Shrine of the Oracle, part 2 (7/8/11)
Exploration of the cavern continues, and the group passes through many traps, fights vermin and undead, and heads back to recuperate.
Session 9 - Shrine of the Oracle, part 3 (8/6/11)
The party continues through the cave, defeating dozens of ape-like humanoids and the giant slime monster they worship as a god.
Session 10 - The Prophecy (8/20/11)
After a rest, the party clears the rest of the cave, finding that the regressed have fled. They return to the shrine and are the subjects of Maenae's prophecy, which lays a path before them. Not quite ready to set out, they return to town to train and equip themselves.
Session 11 - Water Burglar (9/3/11)
The party crosses the skybridge into the desert in order to follow Maenae's instructions. They happen upon a village whose water supply has mysteriously dried up almost overnight. Eager to assist and claim the reward, they follow the evidence to a bugbear bandit's lair, slay him, and find where the water has gone, helping the town to dig a new well to reach it.
Session 12 - Deadly Dogs and Stoneshadow (11/4/11)
The party sets out into the desert on a journey to the city of Stoneshadow after bidding the village farewell. While camping en route, they are attacked by a pack of more than 20 death dogs. They defeat the beasts, but lose two of their lizardman hatchlings in the process, burying them in the sand and marking the grave site with an enormous glass ring that formed when Dasred accidentally cast a circular Wall of Fire spell during the battle. Eventually, the party reaches the city of Stoneshadow, so called because of its location at the base of the mountains. 150-foot high stone walls surround the fortress-like city, and they are surprised to find it filled with stone giants, orcs, hobgoblins, and other humanoids along with the expected humans, dwarves, and elves.
Session 13 - Crag (12/28/11)
There is a great debate about whether or not to hire a stone giant bodyguard to assist in the journey through the mountains and to the ocean, but the decision is made to travel with only a human guide in a small caravan. The party learns of a small town, Crag, located near the midpoint of the mountain range, and decides to forgo buying extra food in favor of warm blankets and clothing for the journey, believing they can resupply there.
On their way to Crag, they are attacked by a group of hippogriff-riding bandits, who swoop down on them while crossing a rope bridge. They force the bandits to retreat, acquiring a hippogriff in the process, and reach Crag only to discover that they and others have been keeping all caravans from reaching Crag for months, and the town is starving. The party decides to recover the food to save the town and resupply at the same time.
The party locates the bandit's lair in the mountains and scales their wall, making plans to strike at night in hopes of not drawing attention from the bandits' stone giant allies.
Session 14 - Assault on the Bandits' Lair (2/11/12)
The attack plan is finalized, and almost carried out successfully, but after accidentally alerting a few too many guards, the party is forced into a fighting withdrawal, then into pure flight. Garsan bravely holds back to buy the party time by drawing attacks from a stone giant, but is quickly crushed under a boulder and nearly killed. The rest of the party escapes, severely injured, only to be attacked once again by bandits on hippogriffs. They fend off the new attackers, several party members falling in the process. Eventually, the party drives off the surviving bandits and claims another hippogriff as their own, which they use to fly back to Garsan and recover his comatose body.
Session 15 - The Defense of Crag (3/24/12)
The party arrives back at Crag and redistributes all the food they can without jeopardizing their own trip through the mountains. While they rest from the battles, bandit campfires appear in the mountains above the town, and they devise a plan for the town's defense. The attack begins at noon, with bandits swarming in from all sides. Many of the town's defenders are slain, and the battle leaves the party with a few more scars, but eventually the attackers are again driven back. A final arrow is shot into the snow at the edge of the village, with a message attached: "I will yet have my revenge. -Krivin of the Black Marauders"
Session 16 - Chadranther's Bane, part 1 (5/17/12)
The party travels to the other side of the mountains, defeating a trio of hill giants along the way. Once in the foothills, they stop by a small village to resupply, and are approached by a sage seeking the recovery of a dangerous magical orb stolen before the cataclysm from a now-destroyed kingdom by a man named Chadranther. The thief has since vanished and is believed dead, probably killed by the power of the artifact. The party accepts the request and travels to the location given by the sage. They stop at one of a series of small, dilapidated wayhouses along the road, and just as they settle in find themselves suddenly reduced to less than an inch tall, as miniature goblins swoop down from the ceiling and attack. They repel the attackers and regroup, struggling to form a plan.
Session 17 - Chadranther's Bane, part 2 (7/7/12)
Deciding that they can't leave the goblins alive above and behind them, the party scales the inside walls of the wayhouse and attacks their lair. In the process, they free a woman who claims to have come to the house recently with a companion, and seeks to know if he is safe. They agree to search for him and help him if possible, then bring the woman safely down to the floor of the house. Searching for an appropriate route, they try going under the floorboards only to be set upon by giant rats, and try to leave the front door but are attacked by a weasel. The only option left is the door to the stables, which they enter to find a miniature half-orc sentry asleep on the top of the step. They capture him, and discover that there is a village nearby, under the stable wall, run by Chadranther himself. As the party advances to investigate, they are attacked by a ballista mounted on a high shelf and rat-riding warriors who emerge from one of the stalls. Fending off their attackers, Ignatius grabs hold of one of the fleeing rats and is carried back towards a small opening in the wall.
Session 18 - Chadranther's Bane, part 3 (8/17/12)
The party infiltrates Chadranther's bandit village, but is captured and questioned by the guards. The woman's companion is also held in the town, and the two are reunited. Drolund uses his magic to charm a few of the guards, and they gain an audience with Chadranther. They meet with a man in starry robes, his face hidden. He tells them about the orb, which now rests atop a broken fountain at the far end of the wayhouse's overgrown yard, and asks for their aid in destroying it. He claims that doing so will return everyone to normal size. The party, unsure of his motivations but willing to try anything to return to normal, agrees and sets off. They venture outside and reach the edge of a briar forest, where they find heads mounted on pikes. They decide to heed the warning and travel around rather than through, only to be attacked by a snake with fangs as long as they are tall. Garsan is bitten, gravely wounded and poisoned, but the party summons all their strength to slay the beast, and Garsan is tended in the relative safety of the briar's branches.
Session 19 - Chadranther's Bane, part 4 (12/26/12)
Still unwilling to enter the briar patch proper, the party continues around the northern edge, turning once again east towards the fountain. Along the way, they pass by a traveler's shrine, dedicated to some forgotten god, where they hear screams and see smoke. The party advances to find a middle-aged man clinging to a ledge high in the shrine, and a group of gnolls attempting to smoke him out. After they defeat the gnolls, the man climbs back down and thanks them, informing them that he is a traveling peddler who deals equally with Chadranther's band and a group of friendly halflings who live under the roots of a particularly large pine tree to the southeast. They go their separate ways, and the party arrives at the halflings' tree to find it oddly silent. Crossing the edge of the fir, they are attacked by gnomes, then proceed to explore the tunnel system under the tree, causing a few explosions and severe property damage along the way. Eventually, they kill the invading gnomes, free the surviving halflings, and journey on towards the fountain, which they find cracked but still functional. The party begins making plans to reach the top.
The party boats, swims, climbs, and flies to the top of the fountain, finding the orb submerged in the upper basin. Using all of their wit and might, they tether a rope to the orb and pull it to the lip of the basin, but are unable to lift it out. Finally, they use one of their two remaining beads of force underneath the orb, cracking it and launching it into the air. When it lands, it shatters into thousands of pieces, and the party and all of the other miniaturized humanoids slowly revert to their original sizes. The few surviving goblins flee the wayhouse, gnolls move in to attack the frightened halflings, an unknown warrior steps forward to protect them, the band of elves in the briar patch make an exit, Chadranther's men stand confused or flee, and Chadranther himself begins slinging spells at the party. The group splits its attention between defending the halflings and attempting to take down Chadranther, and after a swift but difficult fight manages to kill him and drive off the gnolls, with the aid of Chadranther's charmed guards and the unknown warrior. The remaining halflings, the peddler, and the warrior thank the party and set out to return to their old lives or start new ones, and the party searches the area for treasure, gathering up the fragments of the orb to return to the sage. Upon their return, the sage is displeased that the orb is broken, but concedes to give them a partial reward, and the party goes on their way.
Session 20 - The Dragon Turtle, part 1 (1/12/13)
The party arrives at the harbor, booking passage on a ship and crossing from land to sea using a gondola that spans the continental divide. After about a week of sailing, the boat suddenly lurches upward late at night. The party rushes to the deck as the ship shakes again and several people are thrown overboard, including Ignatius and Dasred. Ignatius and several crew members are recovered, but Dasred vanishes from sight with the casting of a Reckless Dweomer, and is never found. The captain and crew struggle to keep the ship afloat and increase the speed, aiming for Dagger Isle, home of a dragon turtle, but the only land close enough to reach in the rapidly sinking ship. The keener eyes in the party spot the turtle itself as it breaks the surface of the water a short distance away, but it fades into the night and the ship reaches shore.
The captain informs the party that the crew will need about two weeks to gather supplies from the island and make some repairs so that the ship can sail again, but asks that they do something about the dragon turtle so that they don't find themselves in the same situation again. The party sets off to explore the island with a new companion, a halfling psionicist by the name of Athelia. They find a small lake with a waterway leading back into a mountain, and build a raft to explore inside. Clearing out the hostile denizens, they explore the caves and find the remains of a campfire on top of a cliff that overlooks the distant ocean below. They continue searching and find a pair of underwater passages, one leading to a group of vicious-looking creatures that the party has no way of fighting underwater, and the other to a small cave containing a set of hammocks, two bandits, and a magical door matching the one they saw at the stone giants' home, used by the bandits there. They kill the bandits, open the door, and find that it acts as a teleporter to a manor on a small floating island. Realizing the usefulness of owning such a door, with its island, the party decides that the dragon turtle can wait, and begins their conquest of the bandit's mansion.
Session 21 - The Brigands' Manor, part 1 (2/23/13)
After many difficult fights and fleeing for their lives multiple times, the party has a final encounter with Krivin and his wizard ally, back at the teleporter doorway. Krivin changes the door into a shimmering portal using some device in his hand, and many of the remaining bandits run through it. The wizard proves a powerful enemy as he sets the room ablaze, and the party has no choice but to flee, separated by the fires. Ignatius and Garsan run through the portal, Tytus and Zorintino climb through a hole in the wall to a tunnel they carved before the battle, and before Drolund and Athelia can follow through the portal, Krivin and the wizard escape, returning the portal to normal as they leave. The remaining two party members run out of the fire into the cave where they first saw the bandits, and close the door to rest and prepare for another fight. Meanwhile, Garsan and Ignatius quickly succumb to Krivin and his lieutenant, and are taken prisoner, but not before seeing the item that Krivin used to operate the portal – a pocket watch, seemingly identical to the one they recovered from the crypt and returned to Tarvin when their adventures began.
Session 22 - The Brigands' Manor, part 2 (5/3/13)
The four who didn't pass through the portal regroup and begin an assault on the remaining bandits in the mansion, despite their weakened state. They hope to find some clue that will help them once again open the portal and pass through to save their companions. Unfortunately, during the first battle, Drolund is knocked unconscious, and the other three members are forced to leave him behind and flee into the woods surrounding the mansion. As they rest and try to plan another assault, Drolund is imprisoned with the others, in a volcanic cave system, with maze-like tunnels and oppressive heat and darkness. The three of them are taken to a large chamber with two thrones. On one sits a shadowy, hooded man, whose form seems to waver and shift like smoke, as if he weren't a solid being. On the other sits Dasred. The man attempts to convince the warriors to side with him, and aid him as he works to rebuild the broken world in his own image. Dasred says that she has already agreed to help him, and tries to convince the others as well. They refuse, and their efforts to turn Dasred back are in vain. At the man's order, Dasred marks each of the men's right hands in turn with the symbol of Xhandel, god of darkness and magic. He says that the brand will make them follow his orders, despite their refusal. The man then dismisses them, to be returned through the portal from which they came.
Krivin leads them back, and before throwing them through the portal, says that he is glad they didn't accept the man's offer. He once did, and is now forced into his life of servitude. They are branded, but it will only work three times, unlike his own situation. When the party is returned to the mansion, they find it deserted. They eventually meet up with the party members who stayed on the island, and search the mansion for anything useful the bandits left behind, finding a few magical scrolls and potions among the treasure, and a broken pocket watch that matches the one Krivin used.