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!