After Action Report
Events of 17-18 July 1021
Blackwood Tournaments IX and Concurrent Interplanar Incidents
My quartermaster Sgt. Westward was not overly happy with the number of items I requested for the journey to Verglas. She has been facing shortages of many materials in her warehouses this year and was reluctant to give up precious goods. I had to insist though, because I have found that this physical projection of myself requires more maintenance as mortal time wears on. A tent in which I can stand up straight and a sleeping surface that is more than a small pad on the ground seem nearly like indulgences, but I hardly regret my decisions no matter how much grief the good sergeant gives me. Aside from that, the weather seers told me to expect rain throughout all of Blackwood, so I asked for a canopy to cover myself and my equipment while resting between tournaments. Unsurprisingly, my wagon was much more full than it has been for previous journeys like this. I did make sure to reserve enough space for Militia Trainee Alias and his gear, who joined me for the ride north.
While I am grateful for the services of the weather seers, I am happy that they were (mostly) wrong about the rain. Thick clouds blanketed the wooded mountains but hardly followed through on their threats of precipitation. The roads were long but thankfully unobstructed by bandits or rogues, so we arrived at the area in which the tournaments were to be held with plenty of time to greet Friends and make camp. Many of the competitors had arrived on the previous night, so the tavern and field were already well-populated.
The tournaments included all of the typical events. Single elimination brackets with best-of-three matchups were the orders of the day. I was personally very pleased with my own performance even though I did not rank well. I did claim second place in the bear pit change-up fights and third place in the “half & a half” event (in truth it was the hand-and-half tournament, but the award parchment has this humorous mistake on it). Two of the engagements were new to me: Saegan’s Challenge was the only team-based event of the day and involved vying for control of four points in the middle of the field while representatives from each side faced off in an endurance drill; and Tao’s Chainsaw Massacre was a painful variation of the traditional single-combatant fight wherein each participant was subjected to a magical leg-mutilating effect at the start of the match. There were other tournaments in which I did not participate, including a projectile gauntlet, quick-fire archery, and improvisational ritual casting. For the relevant events in which I did participate, I used newly-forged swords which I had commissioned from Sir Laika. His craftsmanship is superb and he did a very good job of designing the weapons to my personal preferences. In particular, the oversized hilts were quite comfortable in my grip.
While the combat was proceeding, an unfamiliar being emerged from the woods around the field. I originally took him for Teng Huanesse based on his dress, but he quickly introduced himself as Ambassador Alia (not to be confused with my Militia member, Alias) from the House of Spruce under the Greater House of Fall. Just as these names were entirely unfamiliar to me, the names “Teng Hua”, “Blackwood”, and “Chimeron” were entirely unfamiliar to him. This was shocking given that he claimed to live nearby. As he put it, he heard the sounds of the tournament and walked for about twenty minutes in a southerly direction before coming upon us. According to my knowledgeable companions, that put the Ambassador’s starting location in the northern border region of Blackwood. To further add to our collective consternation, the visitor explained that the lands upon which we were competing were claimed by his House of Fall. Fortunately, he did not seem to take issue with the perceived trespass and continued to be very friendly even after Sir Mathies explained that the land was also claimed by his providence of Verglas (and Blackwood by extension). After more conversation, I found that the Ambassador was completely ignorant of Realms history and nations, and suggested to my companions that he had entered Verglas through something akin to a soft spot. Other discussions were had, but I cannot record their entirety because I was in and out of tournaments for much of it.
After a while, Tempest called for our collective attention so that she could share what she had learned. In summary, it seemed that the Ambassador had indeed come from a different world that was very similar to our own, but more importantly, the two planes now overlapped each other in an unusual and probably-improper kind of way. Tempest put this in terms of a problem that needed to be solved. Naturally, the discussion quickly turned to speculation about what needed to be broken and who needed to be killed in order to restore order. As predictably savage as that may sound, it was actually not far from the truth in this case. Those among us who were most knowledgeable about the situation explained that the best (or at least the most expedient) method for separating the two worlds was to create enough of an imbalance in the area to cause the forces of reality to drive the planes apart. Violence was deemed to be the answer, and there was much rejoicing.
Later in the day, Ambassador Alia left our field and we met another foreigner. I write “we” here, though I admit that I know very little about this individual other than that they were eager to participate in our tournaments and were very strong (at one point the stranger single-handedly tossed a boulder at Drike and crushed Trent’s chair in the process--Trent was not pleased).
When the last of the tournaments wrapped up, we all moved ourselves to a nearby tavern and its large fire pit. I was surprised to hear that our hosts would be holding court before dinner given that the Feast of Blackwood is set to take place a couple of months from now, but I soon learned of their motivations. Among their other business, King Sir K announced that he has received a prestigious invitation to visit another kingdom far to the south (even farther south than the Southern Wastes is my understanding) and expects to be away from Blackwood for the rest of the year; that being the case, he tapped Prince Sir Saegan to lead the kingdom in his absence. To emphasize his trust in the prince, K presented Saegan with his amulet, his magic sword, and a fine marne bearing the heraldry of Blackwood. I will be interested to see if the prince holds another court at the Feast in September.
Dinner comprised such hearty offerings as hot dogs, hamburgers, barbecued chicken, potatoes, salad, potato salad, beans, and… was there something else? I actually can’t remember. All I know is that I loaded up my plate and stuffed my face with some much-needed food. It was quite good, especially the chicken! The staff of the tavern’s outdoor kitchen were very talented.
After nightfall, we were called back into the woods by a series of large and colorful explosions. They kind of reminded me of Night Sky. Being a collection of tournament fighters and spectators, our magical resources were a bit sparse for adventuring, but we donned our armor and equipment anyway and made our way back towards the tournament field. Unfortunately by this time the rain had started in earnest.
On the tournament field--or rather, what we believed to be the tournament field, we ran into crowd of armed temple guards who accused us of committing recent vandalism in their sacred halls. None of our party seems to be aware of such a crime, particularly because the structure in question was sitting on a field which had been notably temple-free during the day. We quickly deduced that this was another manifestation of the interplanar merger and attempted to convince the guardians of our innocence and of our intentions to set things right. They didn’t believe us. Frankly, I don’t really blame them; were I in their position, I too would be skeptical of a crowd of heavily armed strangers asking for safe passage through my lands. Violence-as-a-solution ensued as the temple guards bared weapons to drive us back. I had very mixed feelings about the morality of the engagement, so I called Alias to me and stationed myself as the rear guard. We did not spot anything attempting to sneak up behind us, although there were several times where the tides of battle in the field sent a stray temple guard in our direction. Whenever this happened, I deflected the would-be attacker until they lost interest in a less-than-hostile opponent.
After a long while, the fighting was truly spread across the entire field. It was difficult to determine the tactical situation through the dark rain, but things seemed to be winding down. Since we were no longer being pushed back the way we came, I took the downturn to mean that most of the temple guards had been defeated and that the few who remained locked in combat would soon meet their end as well. In truth, I was less than half right about this; many of the guards had indeed been defeated, but those who remained had survived because they were impervious to our attacks. At the same time, many people from our party had been struck down and seemed to be missing. Once I became aware of this, I fell back to the entrance of the field in an attempt to regroup with my remaining companions. There were only a few of us left and by all measures we did not seem to be much of a threat to the temple guards. One of the guards “strongly encouraged” us to leave and that drove us back against some sort of magical barrier. While keeping the guard at bay, we quickly inspected the obstacle and intuited that only those who were imbalanced by Day could pass (this did not include any of our small group). At some point during all of this, we witnessed another guard drag one of our dead companions through the barrier. It took us a little while to realize that this was likely why so many others seemed to be missing. After a time, the barrier appeared to collapse; to my knowledge nobody on my side of it did anything to trigger this, so I assumed that our “missing” allies had brought it down in some way, even though we saw no sign of them. Hearing quiet around us and fighting in the distance, our group carefully snuck back onto the field. We did come across the same guard who had been pushing us back earlier, but he seemed to finally relent and pointed us towards the sound of our companions.
On our way across the field, we approached the temple. It was a small enclosed building with a glowing star-shaped rune on the wall. I never approached the rune and definitely did not do anything remarkably stupid to it. As such, no further details are required.
The far side of the field was blocked by another magical barrier, though this one too came down after we loitered near it for a while. Our group proclaimed that we were in fact the force that collapsed this and the previous barrier, but this was more due to us going rain-silly than any sort of genuine belief in our meager efforts. Moving forward again, we quickly encountered a large creature that frequently created explosions around itself. Some of these explosions left very wide craters in the muddy ground so we skirted around the thing at a great distance.
At last we met up with more of our party. Between the constant explosions and the pouring rain we had a hard time figuring out what everyone had been up to. Our scattered companions had found several wooden chips with markings on them and as well as carved stones which seemed to be pieces of the totems from the temple. We did not have enough stones to make a complete totem, but we now realized that achieving that should be our collective goal. Around this same time, somebody discovered that striking the explosive creature while one was imbalanced by Water caused damage to the beast. We quickly latched on to this (we were able to gain the imbalance by defeating nearby beings) and removed that threat. I noticed that Sir Rillan in particular seemed to take great pleasure in this.
Eventually we came across a third barrier-- one that required an imbalance by Metal to pass--and a creature that caused us to become imbalanced in that way when it struck us. Through the use of some creative magics, we spread this imbalance throughout our now-larger group and passed through the barrier. Of course, this only took us to a series of yet more obstructions. There was a single creature in front of us and when Lupa defeated it, it retreated through the barrier behind it. We found a hoop nearby which, when we touched it, imbalanced us by Fire and temporarily opened the magical wall. The barrier was unpassable otherwise (no matter our imbalances), so somebody needed to hold the hoop to allow everyone else to advance. The hoop itself could not pass the barrier even while it was open, so the hoop-bearer was left behind--fortunately this also meant that they would be able to let everyone else out when the time came. We repeated this process several more times: Lupa beat up the creature, someone grabbed the hoop, and everyone else advanced. Each hoop imbalanced all those who touched it against a different aspect (believe in order from first encountered to last they were Fire, Earth, Water, Metal, Air). More chips and stones were found at the end of the path.
There was another division of adventurers who explored other paths and also came back with similar pieces. I do not know exactly what sort of challenges they faced along the way.
At last we determined that we had enough materials to attempt to restore the sanctity of the temple, so we returned to the field. I learned that the wood chips were keys to some sort of pattern on the glowing rune; others had already figured out part of the solution, so I kept watch at our perimeter. Sure enough, more guards appeared out of the darkness to defend their holy site. Perhaps I was far too waterlogged to know better, but at the time it sure seemed like the same guards kept appearing in wave after wave (no pun intended) to attack us. Either way, my armor was completely fragged and I was weary from a day and a night of fighting. After an immeasurable length of time, the rune-lock-pickers announced that they had achieved success and opened a wall in the temple. Inside there were four pedestals; two supported stone totems, two were empty. From our collected stone pieces, we rebuilt the missing totems. As soon as those things were in place, the ground began to shake violently and the structure of the temple started to fade from our vision. It was immediately clear to all of us that our goal of separating the overlapping planes was successful and we needed to evacuate the area if we wished to stay on the correct side of the division. With a final burst of energy we dashed back towards the shelter of the tavern. Thankfully all of us made it back in one piece. Many of us shared a few drinks while we dried off and ate cheesy nachos. One by one we drifted back to our respective camps to rest.
I slept very well, though I was sore in a familiar way when I woke up (so familiar in fact that it was almost comforting). It was still raining. I changed into a dry set of clothes and grabbed a shield from my bag to keep away the rain while I traversed the small pine ridge which lay between my tent and the tavern. Over a small breakfast, Sir Tao asked me if I had interest in the second round of tournaments which had been scheduled for the day. On account of the ongoing rain and the state of my corporeal form, I told him that I was willing to fight more, but would not be overly disappointed if the events were canceled. Several of the competitors had already left Verglas and those who remained appeared to share my sentiments, so in the end the tournaments were indeed canceled. Instead we spent the morning quietly socializing in the tavern and waiting for a break in the rain. Awards and prizes were given to those who placed in the events which took place the day before. Finally, the skies cleared for long enough to break camp. By the time the rain returned, I was sheltered by the canopy over my wagon and well on my way back home to Chimeron.
I will be sending my regards to the people of Blackwood who organized these tournaments. Interplanar collisions aside, I had a great time in the Verglas providence and am already looking forward to next year’s contests.
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In service to the Realms,
Captain Orion Mars, Chimeron Militia
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