WHF 1-3: Hornraven's Quest

The Wilderlands of High Fantasy (WHF) Campaign begins...

DM's Note
While waiting for more FOE2 adventures and such, I was convinced to DM a one-on-one hex-crawl exploration campaign. I busted open my old copies of some Judge's Guild products [The Wilderlands of High Fantasy, the City-State of the Invincible Overlord (CSotIO), etc.] and got to work...

We rolled randomly to determine which WHF map and hex # the player appeared in for the start of the campaign, which was really exciting. For this game, we have no set day to play and we plan to just play it when we have extra time, between other games and adventures. Thus it might not get updated as often as our regular games. Who knows? There's also a chance that there will be a TPK and a restart with a new character in this setting.

I would say that it's being ran similarly to a West Marches Campaign, but there's only 1 player so it doesn't entirely fit that description. But other than that, it's very much West-Marches-esque and focused more on exploration than a DM-driven plot. The adventure logs are also from notes taken by the player, just revised some when I type them up. The player is also doing his own mapping.

WHF Log 1: Hornraven's Party
Module: Wilderlands of High Fantasy
Naivara Hornraven, the half-elf street urchin trained as a rogue/cleric of Mask, prayed to her goddess for a chance to prove herself as an adventurer and a portal opened up to another world; she travelled through and ended up in the Wilderlands of High Fantasy! She was on a frozen tundra and met up with some traveling traders who took her to the village of Tarkesh.

Hornraven found out there was an abandoned castle nearby, said to have some treasure and monsters. She told the wizard Figmold that she was going there, but she left him behind. Near the castle, she battled with a bear and almost died. She killed a boar and used its meat to distract the crocodiles at the castle moat. She ended up killing a sprite and 2 crocodiles.

Figmold joined Hornraven and they went together to Josay, where the dwarf leader Dvalzed agreed to pay them to go to an old dwarven tomb and bring back some urns. Hornraven recruited the dwarf fighter Zadzorn to accompany them on the quest. On the way, they stopped at a halfling hamlet called Trepesay and had to fight 4 dwarves that had followed them and tried to kill them; they were arrested by the halfling guards (for murder).

The halfling mayor said they could have their freedom if they recovered the urns and brought them to him instead; he sent 2 halfling guards with them, but on the way they fell into a sinkhole and ended up fighting minotaurs in an underground maze. The guards were killed, but Hornraven and her 2 companions survived. They made it to the tombs and collected the urns (which contained efreeti).

WHF Log 2: Fight or Flight from the Fire Lizards
Module: Wilderlands of High Fantasy
When Hornraven, Figmold, and Zadzorn returned to Josay, Divalzed paid them and they restocked their supplies. They decided to go into Karkesh and heard about elven ruins in Skymidden Forest, east of Tarkesh. They got riding horses, a donkey, and a covered wagon before leaving for a keep to rest at.

At the keep, they were hired to go kill 2 fire lizards; when they fought the monsters, they realized the creatures were too strong for them and had to flee in their covered wagon.

They rested in the forest, where they had to fight off some orcs that attacked them during the night.

WHF Log 3: The Forest of Wild Halflings
Module: Wilderlands of High Fantasy
Hornraven, Figmold, and Zadzorn were waylaid in the forest by wild halflings. Figmold burned some of the forest during the battle. After ward, a human druid approached them in a clearing and warned them not to disturb the woods anymore. They left the forest, found a cave where they battled spiders, and rested.

They found a group of elves camping outside the woods who asked them to help reclaim their forest home from the wild halflings. The team sneaked into the settlement and assassinated the druid before killing the halfling army. Hornraven ended up with the druid's staff of healing.

When they returned to the elves, they helped settle a dispute with the human barbarians of the frost tundra. The elves returned to their forest home. They found the evil town of Lormur, where people worshipped Anubis. Hornraven convinced the town leader she would help him and Anubis, but at night, she defaced the monument with a symbol of Mask and they got out of town.

While heading north, the team encountered a wizard with a magic scroll that could teleport people to the City-State of the Invincible Overlord; they stole it from him and used it before he could get it back... in a teleport flash, they found themselves outside the gates of the huge walled city. They talked with the guards and paid to enter the city...

No FOE2

Sorry folks but we had no FOE2 adventures in September because the DM had some medical issues and needed recovery time. Hopefully Fox, Ox, Seiken, and Goffrey will continue their adventures next month...

SAGA 1455: Tomb of Dead Gods

The RPG SAGA continues with...

DM's Note:

First, I want to say how happy I was to find the module ST1: Up the Garden Path. I thought this adventure was pretty much lost to time and that I would never be able to get a copy or run it since it had such a small release. I modified it for higher level play, though it mostly consisted of puzzles/thinking RPG encounters. The players sped through the situations.

Second, I have to admit I took on too much with this session. I prefer to play for 6-8 hours, which is great since I know most RPG groups these days only play for 2-4 hours. Last week the time just ran away from us and we actually had to stop mid-combat. They used the rival NPC and enemy groups against each other, but in the end, we had to admit it was time to stop after rolling initiative and starting the first 2 rounds of combat.

SAGA Log 1455: Tomb of Dead Gods

Modules: ST1 Up the Garden Path

& 4E Tomb of Horrors Campaign (Modified for 5E)

Since Blueblood III (Daria) & Oran had been adventuring in this reality, they had heard a rumor that some monsters had captured Holic & Ryali in mortal form; Pylia and the rest of Force Green suspected that it was a lie constructed to distract them from their quest to stop Caperaktis (which was, itself, a distraction from the vengeance quest against Veersalla).

They decided to just spend a day investigating this side quest. The group tried praying to Ryali, used their scrying mirror, and cast legend lore (to learn of the white dragonborn Chosen of Semuanya). They plane-shifted to Waterdeep, to the Yawning Portal, and spoke with the Chosen of Semuanya. He spent an hour going to check intel about the situation. With the intel from the Chosen of Semuanya and Bloodblood III’s knowledge of hidden elemental planes, they used Garble-Garble to help break into a steam-based paradoxical imprisonment dimension of a primordial quark named Iffanbutt.

In the paradox demi-plane, the Force Green team (Pylia, Drizmar, Blue, & Blood) and the Chosen of Semuanya collected paradoxical objects and presented them to the quark in order to force him to release Holic & Ryali (who turned out not to be the gods in mortal form, but the twin quarter-elf children of Elaida and Vandomar - named after their friends from the Sapphire Circle Adventuring Party; they destroyed the demi-plane, releasing all of the people inside back to the prime material plane. They made sure the twins and the Chosen of Semuanya would be fine and then departed for their next quest.

Force Green plane-shifted to the Shadowfell to destroy Cap’s soul engine there. The team fought off the undead guardians and destroyed the Shadowfell soul engine, but the Caperaktis construct took the soul of Drizmar and teleported out to an Astral Plane base called the Tomb of Dead Gods (which he mentioned because he assumed Pylia already knew about it from the Acererak books the group had stolen).

At the Tomb of Dead Gods: Pylia, Blue, and Blood met up with some Vecna cultists who told them Vecna was upset about Cap stealing the Eye of Vecna artifact; the team sent the cultists in first to defeat many of the undead guardians and a team of devils inside. The ice devils told the team they worked for Mephistopheles, who sent them to “help” the group. The devils were soon defeated by other guardians inside. Vecna himself appeared and tried to work a deal with the group. An eladrin gambler also tried to get them to make deals with him. Pylia went with Vecna to fight Cap, who had left, to his actual lair. Blue and Blood stayed and destroyed the soul engine there, but then left because the area was also guarded by powerful undead bodies of Orcus and Demogorgon.

Blue and Blood had alerted the Alpha-Omega Organization about Vecna potentially interfering in mortal affairs. They arrived at Cap’s lair at the same time as the AO Agents; Vecna left. The cultists went to fight the large Cap construct body and the undead demon lords while Pylia, Blue, & Blood stayed behind to finish searching the lair for Cap’s phylactery. Before they could find the phylactery though, Cap showed up controlling an undead lich body and started fighting them [to be continued]...

SAGA 1454: Garden of Graves

The RPG SAGA continues with...

SAGA Log 1454: Garden of Graves

Module: 4E Tomb of Horrors Campaign (Modified)

Meanwhile during the downtime: Glora and the rest of the Sapphire Coast leadership agreed with having an allied Sword Coast government and chose to use the current Veertopia unified military/guard, converted to a new system. Each city-state/region provided representatives for a council system and elected King Harpell as the tie-breaker/leader. Blueblood III (Daria), back in this universe, had been traveling with her husband Oran (from the other reality), gathering intel about the elementals/primordials. In the Jade Empire, Borngray II and his wife Kya decided they were too young [elves!] to produce an heir.

Blue learned abyssal and re-bonded with Mercy, who said he’d be happy to step aside and let Blue take over the family affairs and palace when Blue was finished adventuring. In her new city, Pylia was approached by the Skullsmasher adventuring party, who told her about Caperaktis trying to use some of Acererak’s plans (in the Feywild and Shadowfell) to steal soul energy; they left to hunt down Moghadam.

Force Green met up at the end of the downtime at the family Feywild palace. Pylia put the silver leaf tattoo on Mercy, Blue, Blood, and Drizmar (but not herself). Pylia spent 12 hours using simulacrum to make a duplicate of herself; the duplicate cast wish to alter Mercy’s true name. They left the duplicate with a plane-shift scroll and instructions to rest in the Feywild and then go back to the wizard school at Skull City and finish training the lizards as guards (and conduct more research from Acererak's books).

Flying on the winged aberration “Garble-Garble,” the group went to Feywild Summer Court and got permission to go to the Garden of Graves - where Pylia had been told Caperaktis had set up a magical device to syphon energy from dead fey. They went there, saved the eladrin named Paelias, defeated the corrupted guardians (fomorians, spriggan, a will-o-wisp, dryads, harpies, wraiths, devas, a firbolg berkserker, & death knights), and destroyed Cap’s Feywild soul engine.

They reported back to the Summer Court, flew back to their palace, and rested.

SAGA 1453: King Harpell

The RPG SAGA continues with...

SAGA Log 1453: King Harpell

Module: 4E Tomb of Horrors Campaign Book (Modified for 5E)

(with Hommet Shaw borrowed from Sword Coast Legends)

The group divided loot, went to the New Mystara Marketplace, and said goodbye to “Wizard for Hire” Worth; he got 47,486 gp from the loot split. The rest of them got 118,968 gp each. They paid to have Mercy resurrected and returned to the Feywild family palace. Va’Zarbreena suggested Drizmar and Pylia should get married; Pylia pointed out she hadn’t been proposed to. Blue cancelled the steam breath helm.

The group plane-shifted to K-T, to Feymarsh. The family revealed Breth was going to be crowned king of Feymarsh. Breth knighted the party, making them official Knights of Feymarsh. He also relayed an invitation to check with Jamah’s daughter Daronica (who is getting engaged/married soon and taking over rulership of her family kingdom). They teleported to Pylia’s family to visit with them and Pezok. Pylia’s brother (Eilion) had broken up with Ivanja. They were reminded that Keraptis was the Emperor of Veertopia for K-T. They also found out that Daronica’s fiance was Hommet Harpell (a.k.a. Hommet Shaw of the Order of the Burning Dawn).

The team teleported to Baldur’s Gate to check on Therlion, who was in a temporary leadership position while looking for new rulers for Baldur’s Gate. Therlion gave them his invitation to go speak with Keraptis. The magic scroll sent them to the Palace of Keraptis, where they met the cunning and suave human wizard. They came to an understanding (he is a servant of Mephistopheles and offered to help them deal with Veersala); Keraptis said he would step down after the team defeated Veersalla and that he would help protect the team’s family members. He also told them Cap was a “wannabe” Acererak.

Drizmar and Pylia checked in with the Eldreth Veluuthra (EV). Blue & Blood prayed to Ehlonna, who let them know they were in line to become her new chosen. Pylia messaged Fritz, who was rebuilding Bloodstone and coordinating the Oerth/Greyhawk Castle rebuild with Brodo. The group rested for a 10-day and then attended the engagement party for Daronica and Hommet.

For the year of downtime:

Fluter stepped down and they appointed Mercy the new family leader. Blue established magical protections for the entire Feywild Palace gardens and outer fence/walls - and 100’ out from them - with tattoo magic (a silver leaf) as a key to allow people to forego the protections and teleport inside by hiring a team of 30 wizards to cast spells every day for a year and paying them 5 million gp that came from the family. Va’Zarbreena transferred over 1.5 million gp. Pylia and her bro got 500,000 gp from their side of the family. From Feymarsh, King Breth let them sell Castle Ravenloft for 3 million gold; one of the dragonborn bought it and became Baron Goldy.

Pylia, with her bro and Drizmar, went to the Feywild swamp and picked up the 12 remaining blackscale lizardfolk that considered her their Swamp Queen. When they said they were weak and needed her, she agreed to let them come with her. Pylia learned the tattoo ritual for the family, trained her lizardfolk how to fight, de-trapped Acerarak’s library and learned new spells; she magically messaged Moghadam, who gave her Ruinblade and granted her the ownership of the Tomb of Horrors/Skull City. Pylia moved her lizardfolk there and renamed it the Tomb of Wonders. The village people who didn’t leave accepted her leadership. She took over the former necromancer’s academy and made it a wizard’s school. She sent word to Kalstrand that they were open for trade.

With all of the downtime passing, the team’s ship was fully repaired by the elves of Evermeet - though the team had not picked it up yet. During the year, Daronica and Hommet married and had a child. King Harpell worked with the leaders of the Sword Coast to form an alliance that could be in place once Veertopia was fully dissolved.