By James Swift
Assault on Fort Bramble (Lost Kingdoms/Dark Cosmos)
Our ally in the fight against the Lost Kingdoms, Elder Walter, warned us of a new attack on Fort Bramble. We knew of a weapon that could be found that would turn the tides, but we would have to find it, it had been hidden away.
As we rushed to get to Fort Bramble, we came upon the foes that would be sieging it, and had to punch through them to get ahead so that we could defend the place. Unfortunately, the forces of the Lost Kingdoms are no mere thing. The weakest of them were Rottlings, and they needed to be slain with fire, else they would explode in a cloud of disease. Very quickly our party’s healing was throttled. And that was the weakest of their forces, again, the Lost Kingdoms is no mild threat.
Their other forces were innumerable, and included Wolds, needing to be slain with unbreakable blunt objects or magic weapons, and Skalds, each storm of which has their own vulnerabilities, ranging from needing to be slain by a specific weapon type, or with a light in the off hand, or non magical piercing weapons. In a fight, parsing these vulnerabilities and resistances, and then getting the right thing in the right place is a difficult prospect. This was all made the harder by our party composition. We only had one fighter.
The knowledge of all of this has been cataloged and disseminated by several, but chiefly Magus Dame Margaret August.
We broke through their lines, and were able to get into the Fort, where we held the line while figuring out the next steps and reinforced the place. The spear, a great weapon with the power of “Discordance” was hidden and sealed away, the keys or key pieces, to pull it from its hiding place were buried. A strike team went out, initially Magus Sir Rorin (excellent to see him on the field again), Page Ace, High Priest Tony, and myself.
We dug a bunch of holes while being attacked by the above listed difficult to kill enemies, and others also came out to assist after a time. The four pieces were assembled, and we pulled forth the Spear of Discordance, a powerful weapon, long but light as air, could be used by anyone.
The Watchers of the Eye were called out to in order to ensure the souls of the Skalds we killed went to Gamblienn instead of Oblivion. And the foe didn’t like that. They began a last push, but with the spear in the hands of Dame August, we were able to push them back and lay them low!
The dark hold on the lands was lessened, and we took some time to perform reinforcements on the Fort so it would hold until next needed. Then we departed, keeping close and aware. It was a day of great victory for us against these foes.
Unfortunately, it seems that our guide, Elder Walter never returned from their own scouting mission. We fear he may have been taken by Wolds. We must recover him soon, he should not fall into enemy hands.
Return to Return to Monk’s Keep (Nemesis)
Several times now this year we have come across the wraiths under control of the Demon Prince Nemesis, and each time we have learned more of how to combat them, how to slay them, and how save them. They are not willing servants, but bound slaves. They deserve the opportunity to find redemption. We had a lead that one of the wraiths, in a moment of their own will, was able to leave behind more paperwork on how to defeat them. We had to take the opportunity.
We returned to Monk’s Keep, and the ruins beneath it. The journey there was a trail of its own, and we faced a good amount of opposition. There were wolves, trolls, bees, and… wolves.
I will admit, my recollection of this whole quest was… colored. I was borrowing an item that allowed me to transform into a Coyote, and as I was needed heavily on the combat front, I allowed an amount of influence and instinct from the transformation to take point. So of those enemies I was mostly focused on those wolves. (I have begun writing an essay on the nature of perception in altered forms, comparing and contrasting my experience as a Coyote with the multiple different iterations of lycanthropy I have endured across my life. The similarities were comforting, but the differences were fascinating!)
Ahem.
We found the cave that would lead us to the ruins of Monk’s Keep and the dungeon below, and began traversing. We fought some undead, some spiders, and bats. Though most of the bats were less hostile, and more… just around. We did find the remains of someone long dead, and after we assembled their remains, we put them to rest. And over the course of the journey we began finding papers in a strange script, one we were able to recognize as the old language of Monk’s Keep.
Eventually we reached a sheer drop off. People began rappelling down, fighting bats that harried them, but I without hands, my fellow Stonewood member Tony and I decided to follow Pawldo’s lead and took the… Quicker route.
At the bottom there were a few undead, but these ones were stronger and faster. Eventually they were laid low, and we began the next trial to the next section. A wait. The wait lasted a while, and at someone’s suggestion, I passed the time by curling up for a nap. No sooner than me settling in with muzzle on my paws, did the passage way open. Such is the way of life. A waiter won’t ask about your meal until you have a full mouth, a cat will wait until you are carrying something heavy to begin weaving between your legs, and the quest won't continue until you finally sit down and get comfortable.
When it did open, we found a chamber full of automatons, strong ones, still marching around in patrol. But there were also notes and papers everywhere. One of the benefits of Coyote over wolf in this case is less of a prideful mindset and more of a scavenger one. I was able to collect a lot of that paperwork even with paws, and get out. I don’t think we fought many of the machines, but that was likely for the best, they seemed very strong.
By the time we made it out, most of the paperwork had ended up in the hands of Amawar, Omri, and Baron Diamond, who began to work on translations. I believe by now most of it has been logged and submitted to the Library of Ivory.
Entering the War
We were beckoned to another plane by a war that was being lost in a land where death had no hold. As we entered we could feel the influence, or lack thereof. Any death of ours we would return slowly from, but in a not great way.
We immediately encountered kobolds and goblins. They were fighting one another, but were happy to fight us. They did not seem to concerned with their own lack of death, and because they were used to it, they were able to push harder than we expected without the fear of being slain. Over the course of the fight, we found a damaged boat and we repaired it, which brought us further into the lands. Well, others took the boat. I don’t trust a mundane boat here in the Realms, I certainly do not trust a magic boat in a plane we were unfamiliar with. I have a flying carpet specifically so I do not need to deal with horses or boats or such. Bah.
When the boats made landfall there was an army encroaching on us, but someone at the mouth of a cave bade us to follow, so we did. Once inside, they turned on us, ambushing us with their own army. We were quickly trapped between two undying armies, with just a single fighter on our side. Then one of the monsters we fought revealed themself to be a gorgon, petrifying part of out party. I have dealt with such things enough times that I used my field surgical skills (I’m a surgeon, not a doctor) to SAFELY carve out my eyes, then cast divinations to see at a 1:1 rate what my eyes would see, sans the things that would cause me harm to observe.
The fighting continued, and at this point among the coinage we were able to loot off of enemies, we also began finding ingots that Identified as Celestial Bronze.
I lead a small scouting force through some of the tunnels and found something that turned out to be a Skewing Beacon, likely how we ended up at that cave of monsters. Rather than just showing up in another plane, killing the natives, and breaking their stuff, we Communed with the item and Nature to see if we could learn more. The response was… Snippy.
We ultimately decided to break it, then I sought answers. One of the minions kept regenerating and harrying my team, so we trapped it in a Circle and began interrogating it. For the Novem’s sake, we were brought to fight a war, and both sides seemed monstrous with no clear motivation. The interrogation revealed the gorgon was the one in charge of this faction, so we tracked them down, imprisoned them in our CoP. That interrogation went much more briefly. I follow a war goddess, I made it clear if their cause was a worthy one, they could have my support, and I would speak on their behalf to the party.
“We will destroy all Heroes!”
That made it much easier to know who to side against. But before we could probe more, the earth swallowed them up.
We approached the other faction boxing us in the cave, and explained that we were not on the gorgon’s army’s side, and I inquired what they fought for. Gold, and wealth. A shame. So we cut our way through them, and got back to the boats to see if they would lead us to the right place now that the Skewing Beacon was gone.
Dark was falling as we arrived in a vast junk yard, where we fought more Kobolds, Goblins, but now some very strong Clockwork Automatons.
We found a few Celestial Bronze weapons, and eventually defeated the Automaton. They were reclaimed by their creator, rudely, but the day was won.
As things were winding down, a few of us devised a way to communicate with the adventurers of that realm, who identify themselves as Heroes. Bold, but some of us do the same.
We saw a compound or a camp where they were holding the line, and that they weren’t doing too well. We were able to speak to them briefly about a few matters, but we were ripped from that plane before we could get to them.
I hope we are able to get back and lend them aid. I look forward to learning more about them, and their lands.
Topaz is taking point on the scrying front to learn more, reach out to them to coordinate.
OUT OF CHARACTER!
What a wonderful Saturday! First of all, it was fiiiiiiinally a comfortable temperature for me. I was able to quest without overheating!
It was a lot of fun being able to dabble in three different plots in one day, including Emma Perez Rovira’s first event and the start of a new plot!
Each quest was fully its own, so there was a full resource spell reset between each one, and OOOOOH BOY it was a little bit ‘smoke em while you’ve gottem’ so there was no trying to conserve resources. I love a long quest with resource management, and being worried about heals by the end, but this was incredible and made it a bit faster paced.
We only had one or two fighter’s max the whole event, so in each mod I burnt resources to become a different type of fighter, Spear and Shield, Transformation Two Stick, and then 6’6”, and holy cow I had a blast. Maybe it’s just me missing being a 1 path while I am a dagger caster on my necromancy journey, but I jumped right into the fray. Big shout out to Zack, who had my back and kept me in alive while I fought.
Thank you to all of the Quest Throwers who helped make this possible, thank you to Ashenmark for lending gear, and thanks to Pi for funding the NPC drops. Thanks to the full time NPCs for your hard work, and to the people who took a shift even though it wasn’t true Arthurian. A lot of clean fights, everyone was a pleasure to fight with, and against.
I’m genuinely looking forward to the next parts of each of the plots, and cant wait to see you all out there!
