cinaed

Trying to use Dreamwidth more, so will probably be talking more about Dungeons and Dragons here, so I thought I’d post some summaries of my games and then do occasional updates.

First up is my Order of the Scribes wizard, Yolov, and his adventures in the homebrewed world of Astvanor. We started the game in August 2020 and just hit level 10.

The adventure began with a diary.

Everyone born on Astvanor knows of the Spring War, an old war between Astvanorians and primordial entities called the Sunken Ones. The Sunken Ones’ eventual defeat came at a high cost in the final battle when Alaeymena Thayerblossom, a young cleric of Relatya, witnessed her lover, a paladin of Tsaliora recorded only by the moniker, Ansrivarr, fall in battle.

The twin goddesses who protected the world imbued her with too much divine power as she called on them in her grief. It caused a magical backlash unlike any other, devastating the entire battlefield. This brought about many changes to the world: the withdrawal of the twin goddesses from the world, the creation of a new pantheon with Aleymena as the goddess of Spring, and the holy enshrinement of Springrest where her body fell.

Thousands of years later, archeologists in Striog discovered a diary that mentioned a relic from the Spring War. They believed the clerics who had the journal originally were from a temple just east of the Springrest and lived there during the Spring War.

Someone was needed to journey to that abandoned temple of Relatya, which might have more information on this relic, known only as the Sword. Should the relic fall into the wrong hands, it could be very dangerous.

Enter the party that would eventually become known to the world as the Hooligans.

Azeldonne Turen is a half-orc, half-gnome warlock whose patron is an Archfey imprisoned in the Feywild after a failed coup against the Courts. Accompanied by a fat tiny pseudodragon called Medrash, he is the youngest son of one of the Striogian senators and part of one of the richest families in the world.

Hava of Alu'daar is a sea elf Twilight cleric of the two-headed sea goddess Tsav’aya and Tsav’ana. Although she has yet to tell most of the party, she is essentially a princess on a quest to find her missing twin sister. She is in an open relationship with a wild elf named Taion that the party saved from a water elemental early on in the campaign.

Galowen is a firbolg paladin who serves Caletras the Wildheart, a goddess of the wild created by Relatya. He was raised in a forgotten temple of Relatya within the forests of Kelfema until attackers razed the temple and killed his parents, at which point he went wandering. He made an oath of glory to Caletras, but during the campaign changed it to oath of the ancients, as well as learning a little about bards.

Terran is a firbolg druid. Closer to middle age and the oldest of the group, he is close with Hava and also from Kelfema, although he lived with his own clan. Laid back and sarcastic, he is often found smoking and encouraging the rest of the group to calm down.

Yolov is a vedalken Order of the Scribes wizard from Avisrune who recently graduated from the Colma, one of the two most prestigious wizard colleges in Astvanor. The son of innkeepers, he attended school on a scholarship, getting invested in arcane ethics, and joined the group with his sentient spellbook, Es, in order to discover how people used magic outside of theoretical spellwork. Idealistic, he has been struggling with killing his first person and having to use his magic to harm people, even terrible ones.

It began with a diary, but everything has grown more complicated the further into the adventure the group goes.

They have learned more about the relic, which is known as the Sword in the Sun. Formerly Alaeymena’s holy symbol, it is now a dangerous magic item that can create fractures into other planes. Its guardian is Illania, Alaeymena’s lover who was revived during the magical backlash that caused Springrest and is now cursed with immortality. She travels endlessly, trying to keep the relic from creating too many cracks, although she does not always succeed. The party has been able to mitigate one of the largest fractures which allowed an Archfey to escape the Feywild and invade the Tessvar Forest over seventy years ago.

They have fought many things, from displacer beasts to devils to vampires to Fey creatures. And learned many surprising things, such as who attacked Galowen’s home and that Yolov’s college secretly teaches necromancy, which is illegal throughout Astvanor.

And they’ve also learned about several secret organizations, all concerned with the Sword.

Their greatest enemy is the Sworn Edge, an organization older than the current pantheon that serves a mysterious entity called the Lady in the Sword. This Lady was imprisoned within the sword, seemingly by the original gods. The Sworn Edge seek the relic to break her free and kill the gods, but many of their members also delight in collateral damage and hurting innocent people.

The Sworn Edge is also willing to join with other groups who have their own goals, such as Archaeological Recovery Team of Holistic Observers & Explorers, an organization composed mainly of firbolgs, wild elves, wood elves, and goliaths. While they are allied with the Sworn Edge, they desire to ‘reclaim the homeland’ and take Kelfema for themselves. This group is the one that attacked Galowen’s home.

Its leader Elathias had made a bargain with the Archfey who had invaded Tessvar Forest and then betrayed him, stealing many of his warlocks to join his army. Terran made a pact with that Archfey in exchange for protecting Kelfema and stripping Elathias of his warlock powers. Elathias was forced to take up a new pact, seemingly with a fiend, and Terran is now often away from the group, learning Fey magic and assisting his new patron.

Then there is the Col’Far, a mysterious crime syndicate that all but controls the kingdom of Kastvar and which the group recently discovered is controlled by a league of dragons that wish for power and control and the Sword. One of the lieutenants is Kiva, captain of the Morning Flight that Hava once had an affair with.

But there are also allies in this fight.

There is the Shadow Broken, a group of former warlocks who broke their pacts with their patrons and were transformed into sorcerers who serve an entity called the Endless Void. She is the space between the planes that wishes to maintain that distance and preserve and maintain the integrity of the planes. A small fragment of her is currently traveling with the group, cared for by Hava. Evie has helped the group close the Feywild fracture as well as smaller portals to Hell.

And there is the secret Archive, a group of people whose masks allow them to teleport to an ancient and secret library that houses tomes on both illegal and legal magic. There are a finite number of masks, and each member passes on their mask to an heir. Its leader is Sae’var Solray, headmaster of Solray Academy in Valnore, the other premiere wizard college in Astvanor and known primarily for ending the centuries-long occupation of his homeland by killing hundreds of Previdian soldiers at once. One of the other members is Yolov’s mentor, Eralissa Dailiir, professor of evocation magic and arcane ethics, who suggested Yolov and Es go to Springrest at the start of the adventure.

Along the way the party has also been joined by two others.

Audacity Jones is a tiefling monk of Asalor, god of redemption. Hailing from Kastvar, where he and his twin sister were raised at a monastery after they were abandoned as infants in its garden, he set out to find adventure as well and has certainly found it. In the last week he has died, spoken with his god, and been revived with a handprint on his shoulder.

Diana Whiteleaf is a wood elf drakewarden ranger. She is accompanied by her sister, a green drake named Adrin, who she grew up with as a part of a dragon’s hoard until adventurers attacked the dragon and she and Adrin were able to escape. She is still learning how the world outside her forest works.

Currently Illania’s whereabouts are unknown, and the party is instead focused on assisting the Archive, which has a traitor in its midst. The party just finished a quest in which Professor Daveena, secret necromancer and warlock, at the Colma, had his mask destroyed and his husband nearly murdered by the Sworn Edge. The party recovered a missing mask that once belonged to Daveena’s uncle to replace the one that was destroyed, killing vampires and claiming a magic house for themselves in the process. Yolov also accepted the Staff of the Arctic Fox, a powerful magic item that connects him to the house and grants him certain spells.

They are now in Radiscune, the capital of Avisrune and home to the Colma, to assist Dailiir in rooting out the traitor and preventing the Sworn Edge from gaining access to the Archive.

It has been a very long day so far.

The party arrived, spoke with Dailiir about the potential traitor, had lunch, and then were approached by a woman who explained that the Sworn Edge had kidnapped her brother and ordered her to deliver a note to the party that welcomed them and hoped they enjoyed their stay.

Realizing it was an ambush but knowing Collie’s brother was in danger, they went with her to her home, where they were attacked by shadows, an invisible stalker, and two members of the Sworn Edge. The party defeated the ambushers, but the Sworn Edge’s death seemed to summon a shadow dragon from off the nearby mountain.

The party had only a minute to rescue nearby civilians who had been injured during the fight, before the dragon arrived. The dragon called itself the Shadow of Radiscune, and a clever use of Disguise Self from Az pretending to be a Sworn Edge lieutenant the party killed previously garnered information of an unexpected Sworn Edge member: the princess of Previdian.

After Galowen landed the killing blow, the party didn’t have much time to process. They discovered that Dailiir had been kidnapped by other Sworn Edge in the city and taken to Shadowfell. While most of the party rested, Yolov was too upset to sit still and tried to track the Sworn Edge, instead discovering with Hava a secret room between the two Colma headmasters’ offices.

Yolov used his new staff to cast Passwall to get himself and Hava inside, where they discovered a furious Headmistress Segwin, who banned Yolov and Hava from the Colma grounds for invading her sanctum.

Yolov and Hava returned to Dailiir’s office, where they found a note from Dailiir that she had crumpled and dropped to the floor for them to find. It was a list of four suspects who might be betraying the Archive. Yolov’s frantic Sending also garnered a weak response from Dailiir that the bastards had gotten her and that ‘one of them’ wasn’t real.

Uncertain what she meant by that, the party focused on questioning the four names on the list. They have spoken with three so far.

They uncovered that the first, an enchanter named Hyland, murdered his predecessor to inherit the mask but wasn’t a traitor. The second, Genesis, is a bard with their own complicated feelings about the Archive but who cares about Dailiir and took the party to her apartment, where Yolov retrieved her mask for safe-keeping. The third, Lorin, is the head of a noble family in Radiscune and according to a servant is running his family business into the ground in order to burn his bridges and run away to live with his true love, a commoner named Molly.

While the party tried to convince Yolov to rest and take up the questioning in the morning, he insisted that they speak to the last suspect, a woman named Juniper who runs an apothecary. They reached her shop around nine o’clock that night, realizing that her shop is a front and she in fact sells poisons.

When they said they were here on behalf of the Archivist, she let them inside. As they began to question her, Audacity realized that she was lying about not knowing there was a traitor and called her out on it.

After she claimed that she was lying because she didn’t know if they were truly sent from the Archive, Yolov cast Telepathic Bond between her and the group so that they could discuss things silently and prevent any potential scrying.

Now they must figure out if she or one of the other suspects is the traitor and rescue Dailiir from the Shadowfell and the Sworn Edge.