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This is a very distilled summary of the Dark Mysteries Campaign. Many of the details of events have been glossed over or omitted. The chapter numbers below are links to the appropriate chapter, if you would like to read it in its entireity.
The Dark Mysteries Campaign is composed of four books plus a set of loosely-connected side stories (the Eyes of the Church). Titles of the second and third major stories (campaigns) are listed here as well:
The Heroic Personae of the story are introduced. Bilbus the Great, with the help of Farran, rescues a boy in an alleyway. The boy and horse lead Bilbus to the Triknot Inn, in which we meet Kasey Bittrand, Eric Ithell, and Sturm Sunblade. Eric invites everyone present to his father's Beltane Fire Festival in nearby Armagh. Bilbus asks to invite his companions, Rishala of Orkney and Adria del Quintin. Eric agrees.
We also briefly meet Rishala and Adria, left waiting for Bilbus at a different tavern. Adria has to fend off an overly-amorous drunk.
The party leaves for Armagh. On the way, they find a merchant caravan under attack by bandits. The party rescues the merchant, Quaeven. Quaeven is a strange man from the distant land of al-Rhayidh. He thanks them for rescuing him, and asks them to escort him the rest of the way to Armagh. The deceased leader of the caravan raiders has a note telling him to return to a safehouse in Saltcliffs, a couple days' journey away, when he is ready to return to whoever sent him.
The party reaches Armagh. Quaeven bids them farewell. The party decides to stay in Eric's family manor instead of one of the crowded inns. They enjoy the large dance that night, and spend the next day partaking in various games before setting out for Saltcliffs.
The party arrives in Saltcliffs. They find the safehouse in an abandoned, "haunted" house. The house is occupied by smugglers who put up a fight. The party also discovers a pair of orcs in the secret caves beneath the house. The quarrel between Bilbus and Adria, which actually originated as a series of e-mail exchanges, reaches a climax when Adria challenges Bilbus to a duel to first blood. Bilbus cheats to win the fight, using magick to protect him from her fast blade. That night, the smugglers' ship arrives.
The party boards the ship and steals it after destroying their opponents, including three more orcs. Messages found in the secret caves and the ship explain that the orcs are near Hillsdale, and that they will no longer be purchasing weapons from this group of smugglers. The party also has disturbing dreams during the night. Later that evening, Bilbus and Adria finally seem to reach a truce in their arguing (players' side story).
Breanna Ceiturin is introduced. She is an apprentice apothecary in Armagh, Eric's home town, who has learned as much as she can of the healing arts from the town's apothecary. She accepts an offer to travel with the party, since she needs to complete her studies elsewhere, anyway.
The party arrives in Hillsdale. During the night, orcs raid the town, burning several buildings and wounding several people, including Kasey. Breanna and Bilbus are able to save Kasey from the near-mortal wound using healing poultices and some more powerful magicks. The next day, the mayor of Hillsdale dies while Breanna tries to help his illness. He speaks of never walking so far in the shadow that one can not return to the light.
En route to the Hillsdale Mines, the party finds a large, abandoned tower. They find it occupied by a witch and a Shadow Kindred. Sturm is cut by the cursed blade of the Shadow Kindred, a wound he later learns can not heal without a special cure known only by centaurs in the distant Nomad Steppes. Sturm and Eric, with some Heka-based assistance from Bilbus, defeat the two foul enemies. They find an incomplete letter hinting that Eric's father had been targetted by this organization.
The Sturm, Kasey, Eric, and Rishala decide to approach the mines openly, claiming to be Snake-Eyes Sigurd, the former captain of the Sea Ghost, and his entourage. Using that as a distraction, Bilbus and Adria approach the mines magickally disguised as orcs while Breanna hides in the bushes. The party manages to eliminate many of the orcs using guerilla tactics and general confusion. They escape back into the woods before any orcs can organize.
During the trip back to Hillsdale, the party finds an apparition watching them near the river cave outside Hillsdale. They follow the apparition into the river cave to discover an ancient elemental temple. Following the demonstration of the apparition, most of the party receives small magickal amulets. They also discover fragments of the Shroeganus Balsil.
Once the party returns to Hillsdale, Adria decides to get even with Bilbus for interfering with her archery practice that morning (players' side story). The party organizes the villagers of Hillsdale to assist in liberating up at the mines. After a fast, violent fight (assisted by Bilbus's liberal use of Heka to speed his companions), the orcs are defeated and most of the miners rescued.
The party travels to Londoun via Armagh, spending a night at Eric's family mansion and meeting Breanna's father. In Londoun, the party learns that the dwarves have mobilized for war. The knights both check in with their orders, Rishala visits a fellow story-teller, and Bilbus takes Eric to the Salty Anchor Tavern, a neutral hangout for thieves. Bilbus and Eric also find the Sea Ghost in town, so they decide to use it for the trip to Kieta.
The party travels by sea towards Kieta aboard the Sea Ghost, the ship the party captured in Chapter 4. During the early part of the trip, Breanna and Eric spend some quiet time together (players' side story). Later that evening, Bilbus talks to Eric (players' side story) and Breanna talks to Adria (players' side story). The Sea Ghost, however, is under control of the very people the party has been fighting. The ship docks late at night in the town of Noyonne, and orcs board the ship and capture most of the party. Sturm and Farran escape to sea and make it to shore while the rest of the party is imprisoned in the town overnight. In the morning, Adria sees a woman from her hellish dream just before the prisoners are loaded into cramped cells on the backs of wagons...
Sturm wakes early the next day, but is eventually captured as well. The party winds up in the presence of the Lady Edralve. They recognize her name from some of the documents they had recovered from bad guys they had defeated. She orders them disposed of, and they discover themselves trapped in a natural cave under Griffon's Beak, a keep on the small island-town of Suderpol. Through some ingenuity, and ample use of Heka, they manage to escape from the dungeons. Bilbus then tries to sneak into the walled town of Suderpol, and winds up getting some clothes and shoes for his comrades. He then manages to find the warehouse where Edralve's agents had placed their possessions. He finally returns late in the evening with the extra clothes and the box of goods.
The party disguises themselves as a slave owner (Bilbus), five slaves (Eric, Rishala, Adria, Breanna, and Merek), and two orc guards (Sturm and Kasey) thanks to a combination of Bilbus's magicks and Breanna's alchemy. They cross the island to the docks, and Bilbus gets passage across the crater lake to the cliffside shores. The party rents some animals and starts their trek out of the giant caldera and back to Noyonne, where they find the Sea Ghost still under repair. Again taking advantage of Breanna's alchemical skills, the party disguises Bilbus as a woman and sends him in to reconnoiter the town. He meets the captain who captured them, and manages to convince the captain to meet him that night for a date. That evening, with Eric also temporarily transformed as a woman and both knights again disguised as orcs, "Jezz" (Bilbus) barters with the captain to give "her" companions passage to Londoun in exchange for sexual favors. Instead, the party eliminates the crew and captain and steals the Sea Ghost back from their enemies. They survive a storm and wind up in Kieta, their original destination. Some time during this sea voyage, Eric and Breanna have another late night rendezvous (players' side story).
The party checks in to an inn for hot baths, warm beds, and plentiful food. Kasey runs in to some old friends from the Javik lands, and they reminisce over generous helpings of meat and ale. They find centaurs the next day. A centaur offers to take them to his village if someone in the group can "impress" him. A drinking contest ensues, and Sturm manages to beat Tamm the centaur, thanks in part to Breanna putting a little magickal protection on him. They travel overland to the nomadic centaur village of tents, Breanna passes the trials of adulthood to become a centaur so she can learn the cure, and the party travels with a centaur healer to Ubai, where healers are taught. On the way, Sturm and Kasey participate with another centaur tribe in a tonkari (woolly mammoth) hunt.
Breanna now faces the tests for becoming a healer, which involves a half-day of answering questions about remedies, mixtures, concoctions, and herbs. She finally passes, and learns not only the secret of healing a darkblade wound, but also the reason why centaurs know this cure. She's also told never to share it with others, for it is something only centaur healers and centaur chiefs know. The party then fetches the ingredients: several locally-available herbs, chips of a tonkari tusk, and an asylphar. The latter, an elemental crystal found on the peaks of higher mountains, required them to climb nearby Heavensmount and fight a pair of ogres. With the ingredients in hand, Breanna mixes the paste and potion for the cure and removes the curse from the wound. They travel back to Kieta, hire a crew to man the now-repaired Sea Ghost, renamed the Aquasition, and sail for Londoun. At some point during the trip, Bilbus and Breanna have a little talk about magic (players' side story).
Adria discovers that her father has called her home so that she can be married off. She and Breanna get drunk and spend the night on the town (players' side story), eventually being followed by most of the men of the party and the Company of Unusual Headgear, who had been hired to bring her home. During the boat trip to her home of Portsdale, Bilbus kills Coalface after Coalface told Bilbus he knew that Bilbus had been exectuted by the Brallian Thieves' Guild for Heka use. They arrive at Portsdale, and they meet Duran del Quintin, Adria's father. During the meeting, Adria's mother identifies Bilbus as the son of a family to which the del Quintin household had been allied. Duran del Quintin tries to kill Bilbus; he would have succeeded had Bilbus not been wearing some Heka-enchanted protective necklaces. After a very tense standoff -- the party was outnumbered 2:1 -- Adria talks to her father. Using threats of leaving Duran heirless, she coerces her father into naming Bilbus del Cartach as the heir of the del Quintin lands; she also forces him to recognize the betrothal agreement he had made with Bilbus's father so many years prior. After a wedding -- officiated by Kasey, acting in one of the lesser roles of the Church Knights -- Adria disappears. The party waits several days for her, but she does not return. Cain del Quintin, Adria's eldest brother and original heir to the del Quintin holdings, turns up dead and missing his signet ring. Bilbus finds the signet ring on his pillow the following morning. Sans Adria, the party returns to Londoun.
The party returns to Londoun after a long journey back home. The trip took twice as long as usual thanks to calm winds. These winds finally broke and started to pick up when the party was ready to dock at Londoun. After a severe thunderstorm, the party decides to travel to Armagh to sequester Felicia del Quintin, Adria's mother, at the Ithell Manor. In Armagh, the party decides to spend a few days resting, since the Harvest Festival is about to get underway. During the first evening of the celebration, while the party and others participate in a ceremonial cutting of the grains, Sturm spots someone in the nearby trees trying to get his attention. He goes over to the person and discovers it is an orc. The orc kneels and offers a page to Sturm, then turns and runs into the woods. Sturm translates the page, discovering another part of the dark prophecy.
Kasey is recalled to Londoun to receive orders. He must escort a member of the Church's Diplomatic Corps to question the new King in Caledonia. King Seamus has publicly ordered the Church Knights to leave his realm, and privately ordered the Church to leave as well. The party is permitted to accompany Kasey and Mother Meridaun Byddir to Caelioradh, the Caledonia capitol. Once in Caelioradh, the party goes straight to the King. He allows them a few minutes to visit, and dismisses them by telling Meridaun that he will talk to them "tomorrow". He invites them to a feast that evening. The two knights, Rishala, and Meridaun attend. Late that eve, Sturm spots some guards going into the sealed church within the castle grounds. He, Bilbus, Meridaun, and Kasey investigate. They find the "former" King Donaidh imprisoned within his own crypt beneath the church. After a rescue (without casualties), the party coerces the jailers to assist them in smuggling King Donaidh to a Church safehouse. While Kasey and Meridaun escort the guards and King Donaidh (in disguise) to the safehouse, Bilbus and Rishala magickally search the guesthouse to ensure no spies have discovered what they've done.
After Meridaun and Kasey return, the party decides to attend the meeting with King Seamus. Except for Meridaun and Kasey, the party is left waiting in the antechamber. Meridaun and Kasey meet with the King in the Great Hall. The King orders them executed, and a fight breaks out. A group of castle guards rush the outer chamber, attacking the rest of the party. Through some well-placed Castings, Bilbus and Rishala manage to disrupt the attack enough that Sturm and Eric are able to cover the party while Bilbus forces the door to the Great Hall open. The party enters the hall and seals the door behind them in time to witness Meridaun calling down lightning against the King and his advisor, Ezeka. The fight ends with the King the only surviving opponent. Alarm bells are heard ringing outside the chamber as the party decides what to do next.
Breanna finds a note on Ezeka ordering him (or his assistant) to travel to Londoun to report to an representative of Baroness Eclavdra. The party starts looking for an escape route. Adjacent to the Great Hall of the castle is a lavabo. The seats of the lavabo lift off, revealing a fifty-foot-deep pit with a door at the bottom. With the King tied up as a prisoner and lowered by rope, the party descends the lavabo, avoiding the offal that had accumulated at the bottom of the pit. The door opens into the Lower Bailey of the castle, where a fight between Church Knights and the church guard was underway. Some of the party help the Church Knights defeat the guards. To break the impasse, Meridaun, Kasey, and Sturm chase down the legitimate King Donaidh, who is being smuggled out of the city. King Donaidh returns to power, and the party leaves for Londoun.
The party returns to Londoun. Bilbus, Eric, and Rishala are wounded by a magickal trap on Bilbus's door. Inside his trashed apartment, Bilbus finds a note from the Dales listing him as a wanted man for kidnapping Adria and her mother as well as killing Adria's brother. A personal note from the Company of Unusual Headgear is scribbled onto the bottom of the note. Bilbus then finds Adria at the True Point Tavern, working as a barmaid. Later on, Sturm encounters her there as well (players' side story). After a few days, the party prepares for the meeting with the Baroness's agent. Bilbus is chosen to play Ezeka's representative. Eric, once more alchemically disguised as a woman, goes with him as an "escort". Sturm manages to get a pass into the exclusive wine club, and he waits in the "public" part of the club. Rishala makes a dinner reservation across the street so he can attempt to spy on the meeting using clairvoyance and clairaudience. He discovers that the "private" meeting room is magickally shielded from spying. Adria leaves work early to watch over the back of the Carved Tusk wine club.
The Baroness's representative, Lord Ayarmis Silverthorn, is a drow, one of the foul-hearted elves whose skin is darker than the night. Over the course of the meeting, Bilbus & Eric discover that the Anlor Balsil Agralem is very extensive: the dwarves are under attack by a large orc tribe; the next harbor master controlling the ports of Brallian in Eiresud will be an agent of the ABA; a Portal has been created in Camelough, and a fist of orcs will soon be assembled in the city's ruins to raid the countryside near Londoun; orcs in the Middle Ranges have cut off all the routes through those mountains separating the Kingdom from Eiresud...
The party assembles outside the offices of Stalgraf Imports, where Bilbus had followed Lord Silverthorn and a Londoun agent. Bilbus levitates through a second floor window of the three story building and searches the place, discovering that Franz Stalgraf has a magickally-hidden stairwell to the third floor of the building. The party decides to sneak into the building and rush the third floor after Bilbus sneaks up the stairwell to make sure they can make the assault. Bilbus reaches the top of the stairs and looks upon the demon Ngatet, a creature so hideous that Bilbus freezes in place. Kasey loses his cool when Bilbus freezes, and the party draws the attention of Franz and Lord Silverthorn. Bilbus rushes out a window, diving headfirst through it and remembering his levitation casting inches from the ground. The rest of the party flees down the stairs to the ground floor and out the front. They fight and defeat Lord Silverthorn, then convince Franz to surrender.
The party takes their prisoner, Franz Stalgraf, to the Church Knights' compound in Londoun and convince Head Knight Sir Mikall to supply troops for a reconaissance mission to Camelough. Eric and Sturm then visit the Sun Knight compound, where they discover the Lord High Commander of the Sun Knights is visiting. The Lord High Commander agrees to accompany the mission to see for himself what is happening. The recon mission stages out of Kasey's father's lands, which are just a few miles from Camelough. The mission arrives in Camelough, moving through the rubble-strewn fields that were the Imperial Capitol two millenia ago. An orc scout squad spots the twenty-some horses crossing the fields, and they use a signal arrow to alert a platoon. Bilbus and Adria, followed reluctantly by Sturm, try to charge forward towards cover while the rest of the riders withdraw. All three riders are heavily wounded by orcish longbow fire -- Adria was seriously wounded, Bilbus was critically wounded and fell from his horse, near death. Sturm threw the unconscious con man over his saddle and took them to the safety of cover with their comrades. Once back at the Bittrand household, the party and the knights planned for several days while the party recovered. Once reinforcements arrive, the 850 knights and footmen march for Camelough.
Bilbus leaves a note with Rishala, explaining that he is riding ahead to see if he can bluff his way into the orc stronghold to spy and disrupt their operation. Amidst curses of "Idiot!", the party rides along with the army. Well ahead of the army, Bilbus manages to approach a squad of orcs, who take him prisoner. One of the orcs is a guard from Noyonne -- "No Tar King!" -- who does not recognize Bilbus right away. When the army approaches, the orcs use signal flares to warn the command post in the Silver Towers. The command post orders a retreat. Bilbus retreats with the orc army into the Portal. Rishala uses his clairvoyance magicks to reconnoiter the Silver Towers, finding no one in the compound. The humans enter the ancient Imperial Palace, finding the Portal on the dais where King Uther Paendroeg's throne once stood. After some additional reconaissance, the party decides to spend the night in the ruins of the Imperial Palace, waiting for Bilbus to return. He does not. The party leaves for Londoun to find a ship to travel to the dwarven kingdom Clemendeev.
Bilbus follows the retreating orc army to the drow city of Erelhei Cinlu. On the way, he learns more about the orc operations, the city of Erelhei Cinlu, and the Portals.
The party sails to Clemendeev without Bilbus. While they sail, Bilbus wanders the Portals, trying to make sense of this strange realm. He eventually finds his way to an orc city near the dwarven lands, and he follows an orc army to the dwarven Citadel Altspire. In the mean time, the party has landed in the northern extents of the dwarven kingdom, where partisans prepare for an expected orc attack. A large group of dwarves travel with the party to disrupt orc supply lines, and they eventually find a way to sneak into the mountain fortress Citadel Altspire. The party sneaks into the Citadel, as does Bilbus, just in time for an orc assault to start in earnest. Kasey retrieves the ancient Caledonian greatsword Caladbolg, and the party fights a desperate battle alongside the dwarves as orcs rush the Citadel. Bilbus activates a powerful casting that temporarily blocks the entrance to the Citadel as the party treats their wounded.
Orc mages readily dispatch Bilbus's shield, and the party scrambles to escape the Citadel as an orc army surges through the main gates. They escape through the tower atop Altspire, then hurry down the mountain with the dwarven forces who had escorted them to the Citadel. After a lengthy, miserable overland escape, including an ambush of an orc pursuit force, the party sails to Portsdale. During the trip, Rishala confronts Adria about her treatment of Bilbus (players' side story). Adria challenges her father to a duel to the death, and she nearly loses. The critically-wounded noblewoman/assassin, now in a coma, is carried back to Bilbus, and the party eventually returns to Londoun. Priests at the cathedral in Londoun are able to revive the weakened Adria, and the party prepares to head up the river to Armagh, en route to the Academy in Hellenas to find help with the Shroeganus Balsil.
Adria and Bilbus decide to ride to Armagh so they have some time to work out their relationship while the rest of the party travels by barge. In Armagh, the party discovers that a large number of refugees have moved into a tent city on the north end of town. These people fled Londoun because of rumors of orc armies marching on that city. Eric finds his father worrying over getting enough food into Armagh to support a population that has grown by almost 10% over the last few weeks. Worse yet, a lesser crime family from Londoun has set up shop in town. Eric announces his intent to marry Breanna, and the Ithell family hosts Breanna's father and brother, where Eric proposes the union of the families. They then ride to Llwelyn, the home of the Sun Knights, so Sturm can check in on the election of a new Lord High Commander. The new commander is an Inquisitor who announces that the Sun Knights will start rooting out Heka users in the general populace. He has also started cleansing his ranks of dissidents and spies. Sturm discovers that Sir Richard Atenburg, the head trainer of Sunkeep and the man who raised Sturm, has been taken to Hold Asam for "reeducation". He and his compatriots decide to break Sir Atenburg out of the education camp.
After a stop at Sturm's vineyards, the party arrives near Hold Asam, on the edge of the Middle Ranges. They spend a couple of hours watching the hold while making plans on how to rescue Sir Atenburg and the other political prisoners who are being held in Hold Asam. Rishala uses a scrying magick to investigate the interior of the hold. Once the party has a plan ready, they notice that the Inquisitors guarding the hold are looking south. Rising over the hills south of Hold Asam are ten fists of orcs -- 7,500 orcs with Shadow Kindred.
The party abandons their plan and decides instead to charge up to the gate of the hold in the Inquisitor tabards Sturm had taken from the Sunkeep. In the confusion of the impending orc attack, the guards let the disguised party into the keep. Kasey rallies the Sun Knights, directing them onto the narrow palisade wall surrounding the compound. Eric escorts the women upstairs to a room at one end of hall. At the other end is the room being used to hold the prisoners. Rishala, who is magickally invisible, poisons the food and water supply of the hold. Bilbus and Sturm "help" in the compound for a minute, then also head upstairs to spring the prisoners. After a quick attack, the two guards outside the prison are dead. Breanna and Adria pick the locks of the cells, and Bilbus attempts a dweomer casting for the first time since he lost the Dark One's protections.
The party identifies two separate tribes of orcs approaching, and one tribe suddenly attacks the other. The ensuing confused fight saves Hold Asam, for most of the orcs are now fighting one another. A few arrows fall in and near the compound, and a couple of Sun Knights are seriously wounded, but the Hold survives the night. The party eliminates the officers of the compound. By morning, many of the Inquisitor guards have been poisoned by the tainted food stores within the hold. The fight ends in the early hours, and, by morning, only four fingers (500 orcs) remain. They wear tabards depicting the Silver Towers of Camelough, and they carry King Uther Paendroeg's personal battle flag. Sturm, Kasey, Bilbus, and Eric go to greet the orcs, members of the Tree Eaters Tribe of the Dales. The party leaves Sir Atenburg in charge of the orcs, then they ride for Yeti Pass and Arabel Cinlu, en route south to Brallian.
The party travels towards Arabel Cinlu. En route, they discover the remnants of an ambush in which Church Knights transporting Franz Stalgraf, the enemy agent in Londoun, were killed. Stalgraf is nowhere to be found. Once in Arabel Cinlu, the party rests in a bath house and discovers an arms caravan being prepared for a Lord Anmae Nighvass. The party connects the name with "Anmanivas" in the orc prophecy, and they decide to visit the town that Lord Nighvass rules.
The party arrives in Twin Saddles, the town Lord Anmae Nighvass rules. Bilbus and Eric discover that the lord is in his country home, ten miles north of town at the foot of a lone mountain. They ride up there, watch the home, then fetch Kasey. The three meet Lord Nighvass, who seems a little odd, then return to town to get Rishala. Rishala scrys the area, finds nothing amiss in the house, but also finds a trail leading up the mountain to a cave. The four get the rest of the party, travel to the cave, and Bilbus & Adria enter to scout. They find a man talking to a huge red dragon in a cavern. Bilbus approaches and makes a deal with the dragon to lend Bilbus the ancient sword Fragarach.
The party settles in for the night in town, but the town is attacked by two squads of orcs and a Shadow Kindred. During the fight, someone tries to kill Sturm with a poisoned dagger. It turns out that Brule, the once-huge keeper of the inn in Saltcliffs, had been forced to cooperate with the Dark One's minions. Sturm dispatches his would-be assassin. The orcs leave a message -- more orc poetry/prophecy -- on the side of a burning house. After helping get the town settled down, Sturm decides to negotiate with the dragon for the release of Gretorixmar, the sword of the founder of the Knights of the Sun, lost for almost 2000 years. He manages a trade of the cache of darkblades the party buried near Hold Asam, plus nearly a third of his casks of wine (from his vineyard) in exchange for the ancient sword. The party leaves the following morning for Tagellin, the border city of Eiresud. Once past Tagellin, the party rides onward to Kells. En route, they are ambushed by a pair of demonic things that try to attack Sturm.
The party makes it to Kells, where Kasey, Sturm, and Eric go visit Father Gillifin, the person to whom Franz Stalgraf was supposed to be delivered. Breanna, Adria, and Rishala visit the Church Libraries, while Bilbus tries to sneak into the forbidden section of the library (hidden in the military castle, not in the main library buildings). The party continues south to Brallian, and they are attacked by another, larger demonbeast. Eric is struck insane by the thing's nightmarish appearance, and most of the party flees, leaving the two knights to stand and fight the thing. Once in Brallian, Bilbus wants to visit the church facility and orphanage where he was raised. He encounters the mother superior of the orphanage, who chastises him thoroughly, but lets him visit the library where Bilbus originally found books about magick.
Eric's insanity manifests itself when the Karasimian attempt to kill a "demonically-possessed" Bilbus. After a brief scuffle in the church, the party takes the unconscious explorer to an inn, where they restrain him in a bed. While he is unguarded, he manages to escape onto the roof. A comical chase over and through the inn ends with Eric once more unconscious and restrained in bed, this time with a continuous watch. That evening, Bilbus spots the man who poisoned him years ago, Fergal. A mad chase through the dock sector of Brallian ends with magickal explosions when Bilbus, flying in plain sight of numerous witnesses, drops the last of his magickally-rigged glass arrowheads on Fergal. The following morning, while most of the party is securing passage to Hellenas, Bree is distracted from guarding Eric just long enough for the insane man to get loose and escape once more. Another chase around the top of the inn ends with him once more restrained and asleep. The party transports him to the ship they hired and set sail for Hellenas.
The Bard's Hearth carries the party towards Hellenas. On the evening of the first day out, Eric escapes from his cell, aided by Bilbus, who slipped him the key. After a brief scuffle, the explorer is hauled back to his brig cell. The following morning, Mother Meridaun heals more of his mental injuries, as does Rishala and Breanna, who learned the prayers and incantations from Meridaun. Halfway to Hellenas, Bilbus is visited at night by a Shadow Kindred who warns the mountebank that the Dark One wants an answer to which side Bilbus is supporting when Bilbus gets to Hellenas. The following morning, the party discovers that pirates are pursuing their ship. When the pirate ships get closer, Rishala uses clairvoyance to discover that they are orc ships. The party talks Farran into attacking the ships by swimming underneath and kicking the rudders out. Out of danger, the party reaches Hellenas. They find the Academy with little difficulty, and they provide their pieces of the Shroeganus Balsil to scholars there. They receive translated copies of the entire prophecy and mull over next steps.
The party settles in for the night -- Kasey, drunk, staggers back to the Bard's Hearth with Farran's help; Breanna plans to spend the night in the Academy's extensive libraries; Sturm disappears into the on-campus housing with at least one female student; the rest of the party heads back to Athenapolis to find an inn. That night, another Shadow Kindred visits Bilbus, demanding an answer. When Bilbus refuses to give a straight answer, the Shadow Kindred attacks. Bilbus fights desperately to hold off the attacker as Adria wakes and covers it with the bed covers. The two flee into the hall, and Eric and Rishala awake to their shouts. Rishala hurls a lit lantern at the Shadow Kindred, and the party leaps out a window to flee. Rishala cloaks them in invisibility and they make their way back to the ship. On campus, Breanna slowly becomes aware of chaos outside the library, and realizes that a squad of orcs are attacking. She escapes campus and works her way back to the ship. Sturm eventually arrives as well. In the early morning hours, Adria and Eric go back to the inn to gather their equipment. The party spends much of the day trying to acquire an asylphar to heal Bilbus, who was cut by the Shadow Kindred during the chaos. Adria pulls a con and gets away with an asylphar, and the party flees by ship. That night, Rishala enters the dreamlands and draws his companions in with him. They encounter some of the strange creatures of the dreamlands and hole up in a village in that alternate universe.
The following day, the party begins a six-day journey to Dylath-Leen, at the mouth of the River Skai. Once there, they book passage to Celephais. On the way, their ship is threatened by a group of Black Galleys, but a group of kelpies attack the galleys. The party makes it to Celephais, and they meet the drow who had visited Rishala in a dream. The drow tells the party that Baroness Eclavdra was holding a victory celebration in a month, and that she had Uther's battle spear, one of the artifacts that the party needed to recover. Creatures from a Black Galley attacked the party, keeping them busy for a few moments. After the attack, the party returned to the waking world. After a few days of sailing, Breanna was able to cure the darkblade wound on Bilbus's leg. The Bard's Hearth sailed on for Brallian.
Upon return to Brallian, the party is accosted once more by the Company of Unusual Headgear, who have a warrant to take Sturm back to the Sunkeep for questioning. After a brief scuffle in which one more of their number falls, the Company retreat. The party meets with a representative of the Church who tells them of ritualistic killings going on in town that started shortly after the party left. The party believes Franz Stalgraf was responsible for the killings, so they go hunting for Stalgraf. After finding him and his horde of lesser demon guards, the party dispatches the evil sorceror. The party then travels north, stopping at Kells to receive some surprising information.
The party reaches the trade city of Arabel Cinlu. Following the instructions that Rishala had received in the Dreamlands, the party approached the Arabel Cinlu Citadel. After flashing the adamantine medallions that several of the party had gathered, they were admitted into the Citadel compounds. Inside a large building, they find a tunnel that lead into the mountain. After several hours following it, they encounter a merchant wagon carrying darkblades to the drow. The party disposes of the caravan personnel and the darkblades, and follow the tunnel to the Outer Gate of Erelhei Cinlu. Once through the gate, they entered the outer cavern of the city.
The party crosses The Wilds, the four mile by eight mile cavern between the Outer Gate and the city gates. They pass a drow road patrol as well as fungus forests and farmlands. Outside the city gates, they pass through a shanty town. Once in the city proper, Bilbus leads them on a twisting, backtracking path through the city, into the ghettoes, and to the Church's secret safe house. Once there, the priest therein teaches the dweomercraefters a number of new Castings.
The party leaves the safehouse to take rooms in an inn on the main road between the City Gate and Noble Gate, so they can start establishing themselves as the pirate Captain Sigurd and his crew. They make preparations to leave town under the guise of a merchant carrying slaves, weapons, and mushrooms. The party then heads to the baronial ball, where Bilbus runs into his old friend, Sulz the orc. Virona and Lady Edralve, the people who had trapped the party in caves long ago in Suderpol, spot the party, but they are unable to warn the baroness before the baroness starts a long victory speech. Breanna is taken away to the baron's chambers to "hold a private audience" with him; Eric is commandeered as a servant. Bilbus discovers that the spear the baroness is parading before her subjects is not the real one -- it is a poorer fake than the one he had made. He and Adria set off to find Eric and Breanna; Eric relays to them that he saw a room being guarded by orcs. Adria causes a distraction by cutting the rope holding the chandelier in the ballroom while Eric disables the orc guard with sleeping poison and Bilbus breaks into the guarded room. Chaos ensues as a Shadow Kindred attacks Bilbus, Eric, and Breanna. After a few more minutes, the party battles a lich guarding Rhongomyant, King Uther Paendroeg's battle spear. The party makes ready to escape the mansion of House Eilservs.
Taking advantage of the chaos caused by Adria's sabotage of the ballroom chandelier and the double fireblast from Breanna and Rishala, the party flees the mansion of House Eilservs. The party makes it back to the city, where they collect their equipment from their inn. They change into their escape disguises and make it out of the City Gates and into the Wilds cavern, en route to the Outer Gates of Erelhei Cinlu. A contingent of drow are following the party, trying to find the stolen spear. The Outer Gates had been closed in response to a signal flare, but, using magick, the party was able to sneak into the gatehouse and take out the light security force. Once through the Outer Gates, the party ascends back to the city of Arabel Cinlu, arriving there an hour after sunset.
The party realizes that the Arabel Cinlu watch are now hunting for them, and that a group of four guards are pursuing them up Yeti Pass. The party crosses the pass and prepares an ambush in the trees on the far side, three quarters of a mile from the pass. While the preparations are ongoing, Bilbus realizes someone is sneaking near their encampment. He sends Kasey charging the intruder, who fires a magickal arrow. In the ensuing chaos, the party discovers that the intruder is a drow, and the drow launches a signal arrow to warn his three companions, who are approaching the ambush, that there is someone here. The other three drow retreat towards the pass as Eric, Adria, and Kasey charge forward on horseback, with Sturm close behind. The drow turn to fight, loosing a hail of arrows from their magickal bows at maximum range. Kasey, Adria, and Eric are all wounded, as are their horses; Adria's horse is killed in the barrage. The party lets the drow retreat, then the party hastily breaks camp and decides to risk an overland trip to Hold Asam, the rebel Sun Knight compound, instead of the longer trip to Llwelyn. The exhausted party keeps ahead of a drow pursuit, reaching Hold Asam after two harrowing days with little rest.
The party talks to Dame Dyer, the commander of the rebel Sun Knights. This group is calling itself "Cunnick's Regiment", in reference to the knight who founded the Sun Knights years ago. During the conversation, the drow pursuing the party arrives. A battle begins at dawn, with the rebel Sun Knights horribly outclassed by the forty magick-wielding drow. The Heka users in the party do what they can to help the rebels defend Hold Asam, but the tide of battle slowly turns against the humans. The arrival of twenty Church Knights, charging across the field towards the drow positions in the treeline, turns the battle. The Church Knights wield magicks of their own, and the drow formation is soon shattered, with few survivors fleeing into the woods. During the battle, Sturm slips away, but the party does not realize it until late in the afternoon, after they have slept for ten or more hours. They set out for Llwelyn after deducing that Sturm was doing something rash to rescue Sir Atenburg, the knight who had raised Sturm. The Church Knights who had arrived follow the party, with their support trains, since they had been ordered to escort Kasey and protect him.
The party stages a daring nighttime visit to the Sunkeep, managing to sneak in undetected and to rescue Sturm and Sir Atenburg just a couple of hours before the two were schedule to be executed. The party rests at the Church in Llwelyn, then sets out for the nearest Portal, which Rishala locates relatively nearby, in the Middle Ranges. Breanna's brother, Jamie, and Adria's brother, Matthias, arrive with a group of about twenty of Jamie's peers from Armagh. They are calling themselves "Jamie's Band", and they insist on escorting Breanna. En route to the Portal, the party also encounters Cunnick's Regiment, who had decided to abandon Hold Asam to head to Eiresud. Instead, they join the party's entourage. The party now commands nearly four hundred warriors and the warriors' support trains.
By the time the party and their army reach Hold Asam, Eric is being called "General Ithell". While the army rests at Hold Asam, Breanna agrees to take a Vow of Service with the Church in order to better heal the wounded in the upcoming battles. With some extensive spellwork, Bilbus is able to cast the Black School casting that opens the Portals enough times to get the entire army through. Once in the Portals system, the army marches directly to the Portal that takes them to the dead world where the spear Gas Bulg is.
The Portal is inside a desecrated temple. The party takes only the Church Knights with them, in order to have a faster, more mobile force. They reach the mansion of the vampire Vladdomani. They meet the vampire and his drow guards, and Sturm is hypnotized. Vladdomani graciously offers everyone a meal, which the party accepts. During the meal, Bilbus continually insults the drow while talking to the vampire. One of the drow loses his cool and fires a snapshot at Bilbus with his longbow. The shot misses, striking Sturm. Fortunately, the magickal shielding Breanna supplied and the magickal amulet Sturm had absorbed what would have been a crippling wound. Kasey attacks the drow who attacked Bilbus, and general chaos ensues. During the fight, Kasey and Eric become victims of a soul-imprisoning casting. Fortunately, in the aftermath of the fight, their soul prisons are found and destroyed, releasing them; the party also recovers Gas Bulg. The party flees the battle -- Vladdomani had strong enough magicks that he was unharmed -- and decide to flee the world. Once back in the Portal system, the party decides to explore several Islands to see where they lead. One of them is heavily guarded by a drow army. Unfortunately, the Tunnels are narrow enough that the supply train wagons could not be turned around. General Ithell orders them abandoned, and the army flees the Tunnel system.
The party reaches Kells, stopping along the way to persuade a Sun Knight hold to abandon their post and join Sir Atenburg's rebel order. Once in Kells, the party discovers that the elves have sent two hundred archers and five mages along to assist in their quest. A force of drow and orcs, assisted by an undead army from Vladdomnai's realm, attack the city. Fortunately for the party, the attacking force is annihilated by the combined army of rebel Sun Knights, elves, Church Knights, and the hundred or so Sword of the Church who participate in the city's defense. From Kells, the party and their army march south to Brallian, where they board ships for al-Rhayidh.
In al-Qayir, the capitol of al-Rhayidh, the party meets with the Caliph. He agrees to help them, providing a thousand of his mounted warriors to aid the party in the quest to reach the Dark One's Palace, which lies three weeks to the south, across the desert of al-Rhayidh, beyond the volcanic Vulcan's Furnace, and through the uninhabitable Wasted Lands. The Caliph also agrees to let the party use the Caliph's Zephyr, a flying ship that his wizards had created. Once the armies were organized, they marched south. En route, the Tree Eater Tribe, who had defected outside Hold Asam weeks ago, joins the army.
The army marches south, towards Vulcan's Gap, the only pass through the volcanic mountain range gentle enough to allow the entire army and its support wagons to pass. The army encounters a screening force of five Fists of orcs, about a third of the army's size. During the battle, supernatural winds cause the Caliph's Zephyr to be dashed into a mountain side. The army continues south, now bloodied a little, through the Vulcan's Furnace to the inhospitable sands of the Wasted Lands. After several more days of marching, they reach as-Tikat, the ruins of the city that was once the Dark One's capital city. On a rise near the center of the ruins lies the Dark One's Palace, and the prison that holds him. Arrayed between the party's army and the palace are fifteen fists of orcs, and about half that number of drow. The outnumbered army of men, orcs, and elves fight a desperate battle to keep the Dark One's army busy long enough for the party to reach the palace unmolested. Once through the outer gates of the palace, the party drops the portcullises to keep the enemy army out.
As the party stops to catch their collective breath in the outer bailey of the Dark One's palace, drow flood out of a building in the bailey. The first drow out launches a red signal flare into the sky, while another directs the party towards the inner bailey. In the inner bailey, the party rushes through the former throne room of the Dark One, up stairs to a hallway that leads to a narrow stone footbridge. The bridge leads to the inner citadel of the palace, the prison of the Dark One for over two thousand years. Sturm confronts the vampire Vladdomani, who guards the bridge with two Shadow Kindred, and the party dispatches the Shadow Kindred. The Dark One appears and makes Sturm one last offer of peace before Sturm impales himself with the horrific spear Gas Bulg, sealing the prison. The party retreats from the palace to find that the drow have disengaged from battle, taking their orcs with them, leaving the Dark One's orcs overwhelmingly outnumbered. The party's army collects the living, buries the dead, and marches for home. Weeks later, a week before the summer solstice, the party reaches Armagh.
Nearly ten months after the party reached Armagh, the next Beltane Festival begins. The party has once more congregated in the town, this time to celebrate Eric and Breanna's wedding. During the ensuing months, Bilbus has become a Baronet of the Dales, and a member of the Outer Circle of the Dales Council. Adria has given birth to Sturmelina, their daughter. Eric has organized and started construction of a trade town that will allow merchants to bypass Erelhei Cinlu and the drow who run the town in secret. Breanna has tried with little success to fit into her previous life. Kasey has become one of the trainers at the Church Knight facility in Londoun. Rishala has finished his memoirs of the journey. During the wedding, the Company of Unusual Headgear shows up one last time, to deliver a threatening letter from the drow baronness whom the party opposed. Several days later, while making ready to leave, the goddess Edain visits Bilbus to tell him that the battle is not over.
The stage is set for the fifth installment of the Dark Mysteries Campaign, with the revelation of new drow threats to humanity, along with various human supporters of the drow. There are also very brief mention of the conditions in Portsdale and Ithell's Town, where our heroes are found.
Bilbus travels to Eastdale, the seat of power in the Dales, for the twice-yearly meeting of the full Dales Council. During that meeting, he discovers that the King of the Kingdom of the Five Crowns is marrying his son, the Crown Prince, to a Francian duke's daughter. Bilbus is nominated to go, and the Inner Circle of the Council promotes him to Baron. Meanwhile, Eric holds an open audience with his townsfolk to air grievances and receive reports. Rishala arrives shortly before a drow assassination team attempts to kill Eric.
The party meets at a pre-wedding party in Londoun. They hear from Bilbus's spy/friend, Twitchy the Rat, that there are kidnappings going on, and this time the king is worried, since even nobles are disappearing. That evening, the party hears a scuffle on the streets outside Eric's apartment. They find a man and several frog-people attacking a town watch patrol. The party disrupts the attack and sets out through the sewers to find the source of the frog men.
The party, with Church assistance, pursues a slaver ship. After a brief battle at sea, the party boards the ship and sends over a prize crew. They sail the captured ship to Noyonne, the port city of the slaver town Suderpol. The party poses as slavers to sneak their way to the gates of the hidden city. En route, they encounter centaur who want to surreptitiously enter the town to destroy the Forges. The party smuggles one of their number with them.
Now feigning to be the deceased Lord del Quintin and entourage, the party meets Joscal the Younger, the caretaker for Griffon's Beak. He offers to take the party on a tour of his facilities. En route, they see slaves being led to the Forges to be sacrificed for darkblades. The centaur activates an earthquake spell that causes the small volcano to erupt, setting off a chain reaction that ultimates ignites the massive caldera in which Suderpol was built. The party barely escapes with their lives.
Returning to Londoun, the party intercepts a fragment of the Codex, an ancient tome of immense power. In doing so, they discover that it was being sent to Baron Rufors del Bartholo, Bilbus's benefactor in the Dales. The party sets out to confront the Baron at his home in Pubshill.
The party discovers that the Baron has already sailed. Commandeering a ship in Pubshill, the party sets out to stop him from using the ancient Codex to summon a horrific god-monster.
Back to the Dark Mysteries Campaign.
This page was last updated 25 April 2006
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