Altered Realities

After rescuing the baron, the heroes wen to meet up with him in his home in Syris. After a long trek, they arrived in Syris, restocked and visited the palatial home of the Baron Cyrus Drakclar. It finally dawned on Eraclius just how influential this baron was being of a lesser family under the royal Drake family. The baron thanked the heroes again for his rescue and paid them a thousand platinum pieces, and wishing he could grant more to his saviors. He also granted them a writ that stated he would sponsor the group with the League of Questing Companies, the adventurer’s guild that operated in most civilized countries.

With their new writ in hand, they went to to local branch of the guild and found a couple of interesting postings. They chose to aid the beleaguered soldiers at Knightswatch Keep at the southern borders of the country to fight off a seemingly non-stop undead assault coming from within the Marsh of the Fallen.

They traveled by barge down the river and got as close to the keep as the captain would allow before disembarking. They walked the rest of the way, and eventually found themselves in the marsh itself, the ground giving way to a spongy, wet morass under their feet. Eraclius would see torchlights bobbing nearby and decided to check it out. The others followed hesitantly, and eventually they managed to get lost. That’s when they heard a shout, almost like a herald’s call. a few minutes later a griffon with a rider flew overhead, and the rider called upon them to beware the wisps and to follow him to the keep. They followed and finally found themselves at their destination. The griffon rider met with them and introduced himself as Knight-Commander Eroth Gryphon, of the royal house, cousin to the crowned prince. His pure white panther-hawk griffon had been seen by the group before, during the attack on the mercenary fortress.

Knightswatch Keep was built once as a strategic point of operations for the Kyradorian military when it was at war with the elven nation of Duania to the south. Now it stands to guard against undead incursions from Shadestone, who tend to send their undead soldiers on the long march from their home kingdom around the southern edge of the mountains and into the marsh. Just like the one that seemed to be taking place. The heroes were thrust into battle shortly after their arrival, and afterwards came across Navina, a half crystal elf that is training to become a Magi-Knight, and her adopted father Garock, a dwarven soldier.

After a restless night, the group aided in the burning of the undead and afterwards waited for the arrival of a scout that was just sent out. He returned with news of a nearby elven crypt, leftover from the Kyradorian -elven wars, not too far from the keep. He said he noticed that the doors were open, and within was a sense of…wrong. He agreed to lead the group to the crypt, and did so with all due haste. Now the heroes stand in front of the crypt and are preparing themselves to enter… 

So our intrepid heroes made a decision that would have them speeding to the rescue of one of Kyrador’s most influential barons. They knew that the mercenary fortress was high up in the Silverpeak Mountains, the range that marked the western and northern borders of the Kingdom of Kyrador. Along the way they encountered (and wisely avoided) hill giants, stone giants, a griffon (who sniffed around Eraclius, our Silver Knight squire, and flew off), and several mercenary patrols.

They carefully navigated narrow goat paths with a mountain looming overhead on one side and a long drop off on the other. They faced treacherous conditions as it poured rain, which eventually became sleet, and then snow and ice. Eventually they came to an area where it plateaued out, and the found the first major encampment of mercenaries. They gave it a wide berth and waited until night had fallen before going any further.

After night fell, they climbed up a cliffside so they could continue their journey. As they traveled through a forest of pines and firs along the mountain trail, Coralise found  a small hut deeper in the forest and there she saw an old woman who beckoned for her to bring her comrades to the hut so that they would be safe. They felt a sense of peace from the old woman and agreed to enter. There she fed them and they eventually nodded off into a peaceful slumber. As they slept they had dreams of the old woman, but instead of her current appearance, she was young, beautiful and noble in bearing. She wore a gown made of diamonds and a silver crown with a griffon at its center.

When they awoke, they found that the hut had been obviously abandoned for ages, and some among the group began to wonder as to the identity of the old woman, as the dream they had was that of Kyra (the goddess of healing, and the first queen of Kyrador when she was mortal) in her avatar as the queen of the Tribunal of Light. Feeling refreshed and reinvigorated, the group continued on and eventually found the mercenary fortress. They eventually found a quiet way in and managed to infiltrate the fort until they came face to face with the apparent leader of the mercenary company and her wizard companion. After a heated battle that almost saw the end of the heroic group, they managed to defeat the commander and her wizard pet. In the end they found the baron in a soul jar and managed to release him. Using a ring of telepathy the baron called for a contingent of Silver Knights to attack the fortress as the group made their escape.

Now the group heads to the trade city of Syris to meet with the baron in order to receive their rewards and accolades. What awaits our heroes next? What consequences will be wrought from their decisions?

So our campaign in my homebrew setting of Eldritch Empires is officially underway. Currently there are three players and myself, and though that seems small, I think it’s working perfectly for us. It allows me to bring in various NPCs to help the players out and give a little more flavor to my world. Within the next week or so I plan to have character bios for both the PCs and important NPCs up on the D&D page, so keep an eye out for that.

So far the characters were all sent by Baron Cyrus Drakclar of Kyrador (think similar to Camelot) to meet with his emissary who was looking into the increase of goblin and bandit activity within the kingdom. When they came to the crossroads where they were to met her, they found a shadow elf (think drow, but not, still an evil race of elves) beset upon by goblins and bandits using questionably superior tactics. They also saw the bodies of several palace guard about the area, obviously killed by the shadow elf’s assailants. The characters quickly rushed to the elf’s defense, and after a quick battle, killed her attackers.

After the battle was over they confirmed that she was indeed the emissary they had been sent to find. Despite being a shadow elf, they found that she worshipped the Selderine goddess Sehanine Moonbow and was of good intent. She quickly told them that they needed to travel to Appledale because that village had been hit hardest by all the bandit activity.

When they arrived they found Appledale’s famous orchards bare and empty, and the village cut off from outside trade due to the bandits attacking any and all caravans that came near the village. They had also attacked the village itself, and the mayor was running out of guard to help defend the people. The group immediately began searching the areas where the attacks reportedly came from, and found tracks that eventually led back to a large camp on top of a rocky outcropping. They infiltrated the camp, killed the commander and found a trap door that led under the rocky outcropping.

In the caverns below, the group found themselves in a huge underground city, apparently ruined and lost since the Sundering. They eventually figured out that it was the City of Bellreth of the old Rellathan Empire. The upper portion of the city had been converted to house bandits, though the group was beginning to suspect that they weren’t bandits, but mercenaries instead. They eventually found the leader of the group operating out of this area, a gno’blin (half goblin, half gnome, pronounced no-blin) by the name of Falrin. After a heated battle with Falrin and his personal guard which included four Venomclaw goblins and their pet scorpions, they defeated the clever commander and found further plans and conspiracies in his personal quarters.

A blackguard by the name of Soren’tor apparently was in charge, and there were goblin reinforcements coming in to the west and apparently the “bandits”, now confirmed to be a mercenary group, were forming an alliance with the nation of savage raiders to the north known as Maerrheim by kidnapping the baron as a prize. The mercs planned to show Maerrheim that Kyrador was weak by providing the baron as proof that even a noble could be taken with ease due to lax security all around the nation.

Now an important decision had to be made by the group, and they’ve chosen to ignore the goblin threat in favor of going after the baron and stopping the alliance with Maerrheim. Later this week we will find out how that choice will affect the Kingdom of Kyrador!

Okay so lately our gaming groups have hit a bit of a slump. Our every other  Saturday live action game set in my friend’s homebrew game system Curses of Night has hit some rough patches. We’ve had members sick (including myself), and others have needed medical treatment for other reasons.  We also needed a quiet house for a weekend so my wife could do work for her student teaching. Hopefully the next game will happen and be a lot of fun.

As for our table top group, we have started getting together again after a couple of weeks off so my wife could have some quiet time on those days. My best friend is running a temporary game of Shadowrun until I can get my Eldritch Empires D&D game ready to go – more on that momentarily. We managed to get characters made, though we need to get a couple of people a character before next week. We had to cancel this week due to a player being sick, putting us down to two players; not enough for a game really. We would have had a third except we had no way of getting him to our game site for character creation, and it takes quite a while to make a Shadowrun character, but now we have the time to get his character made so we can play no matter what next week. My wife hopes ot be finished with her more intensive work for her student teaching as well, adding yet another player back to the fold, so hopefully we’ll be coming out of our gaming slump here soon.

As for my Eldritch Empires D&D setting, I have finally pulled myself away from the new Final Fantasy XIV MMO to get some more work done on it. 2 continents are now finished for both the player’s book and the DM book, with a third and final one to go. After that will be the relatively simple job of coming up with the mechanics for the setting like new classes, kits, races, and tweaking some rules here and there. Luckily 2nd edition AD&D is really easy to work with when it comes to mechanics and coming up with new things to add to the game. I honestly hope to be done with the setting books and starting on the actual campaign by the end of next week….of course I hope to have my Botany and Carpentry up to 50 and start on my Relic Weapon for my Dragoon by then as well…which will win out in the end? Probably the setting, I’ve been itching to actually get it done so I can write the campaign. Here’s to hoping anyway.

I know I haven’t been updating the site with the latest adventures that our AD&D party has been experiencing of late. This is because I have decided to use most of my free time to really get cracking on my 2nd edition version of Eldritch Empires, so I haven’t had a chance to really do updates here, and I probably won’t for the rest of the Forgotten Realms run.

Now Eldritch Empires started as a 2nd edition setting, so why don’t I use that you ask? Well I lost it, I answer. And even if I did have it, it was a very basic document with a few kits and some notes on a few regions, and mechanics for Eldritch Crystals. It has since grown through it’s life in 2nd edition (I had notes as it grew, but nothing more), 3.0 , 3.5, and 4th edition into a huge setting with many regions with in depth backgrounds, cultures and mechanics. So I felt the need to do the Eldritch Empires setting that I started so long ago with a close friend of mine (may she rest in peace) justice by going all out and really making it what it was always meant to be when me and that friend sat down and drew out a rough sketch of a map and made some notes about Kyrador and that nation’s gryphon riding Silver Knights – a truly diverse, intriguing, and unique Dungeons & Dragons setting.

I will once again start updating once we start playing in that setting, but until then – have fun and keep gaming!