Okay, so I have like all of these amazing fantastic adventures most nights and it is wonderful and awesome, except these adventures are soon lost to the ages. I don’t remember everything about these adventures, but I do remember a little. So, I would like to share a few of my characters and their paths with you now in the next few entries. 

The following one is from Joe’s campaign. I play this one with Brian, Zack D., a Nick, and a Dave out in susex nearly every weekend. Its been going on since late august, early September. And already it is reaching grave epicness.

The campaign is the seven kings. We don’t know if we are the seven kings, or if we must slay the seven kings, we only know that grave workings are going on, and that we can’t lie our way out of the danger forvever, and our destiny shall be tied to the fate of everyone and the very world itself.

Typical d&d that way, but joe is a fun gm and this is an amusing group. Sadly, its fourth edition, but what ya gonna do?

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The Story of Welose “DeathFire” White Rose

 

 

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Note: see the back story for before the story stuff.

 

So the campaign began when we were all on board a ship. My “brother”, a lower noble from the house of Meric, the son of the lord and a tiefling bride and an object of some scandal, had decided to go out into the world to make a name for himself. I agreed to accompany him, as I was seeking my own destiny as well. We were aboard a ship that was attacked by a brutal sea monster with huge tentacles and these freakish huge eyes—and oh the blood shed, oh the carnage! We latter would learn it was a craken.

We washed ashore on the beach and considered ourselves lucky to be alive. We wondered what strange world we may have washed up into, and were searching for other survivers. We found some. A dwarven fighter, a dwarven priest, and another priest. And a horse. My brother thought to calm the horse, but it had been crazed by the ship wreck and it attacked. We fought with all of our hearts and souls and it took some effort, but together our combined powers were enough to vanquish the beast.

Together we then looked over the next hill to find civilization. We had apparently ship wrecked just shy of one of the greatest maratine cities in the land. We applied to the mayor for aid and he granted it to us as survivers of the ship wreck. We also discovered the happy clam casino were one of our number tried his luck and was reduced to absolute poverty. I tried my luck and came out slightly ahead.

But all was not right in the land, we soon discovered. We talked further with the mayor and found that undead were troubling the land. Now, he didn’t seem to worried, but that was before he heard the …uhum…tale of Greenbriar, of how the undead had attacked that town and nearly everyone there died save my brother and myself and oh how lucky we were to live…but how we had learned o the horrors of the undead and how to fight them and how we must fight them…eventually the mayor caved in, agreed to give us all sorts of rewards, and access to the town shops. We took advantage of this, for the good of the people of course.

So we made our way to the grave yard were there were sightings of undead. The town guards laughed at us and didn’t seem to plussed about tales of green briar, saying that yeah, every night some undead would rise and walk around a little bit but they were right easy enough to handle. We ignored there mockery and assured them that we were indeed the heroes of legend and we adventured into that graveyard.

            Now, from one of the shipwrecks caused by the cracken that had been occurring, I had rescued a strange dagger. My brother, by the way, had somewhere discovered an intelligent whip that was trying to devour his mind and soul and take possession of his body, but that is another story. This strange dagger began to glow as we neared a mosolium and we encountered a door that had a strange dagger shaped cavity.

Yeah, you can guess what happened next.

So we are in this dungeon, inside of the mausoleum, and we fight lots of undead. We have to solve lots of riddles to get deeper and deeper to the source, and we discover various body parts and regalia. We get deep enough and sundly doors fall shut behind us a corpse situated upon a throne stands and all the objects and my dagger go flying into the air to assemble upon the lich king.

            He thanks us for having raised him from his slumber, and says something to the affect that our gift for making him recover is that we may live. He says that in fact we are the ones that prophecy spoke of, the ones that may rise to stop him and the seven kings…and that we have no chance at all. But he will let us live to so long as we go forth and awaken the other kings. If we fail, he will kill us.

            He then flies up into and threw the ceiling, and the whole moseleum is crashing down all around us.

            We flee for it and beat our way back to town to talk to the mayor and discuss our victory.

            :”Ah, yes mayor…the..uhm…undead menace…it’s gone from the cemetery, that I can promise.”

            We let the mayor shower us with rewards for a while before my tiefling brother had a turn of conscience and admitted to the mayor that we had somehow awoken an ancient evil that will now no doubt pray upon the land.  The mayor was very sad and agitated, but he didn’t seem to blaim him. He said such matters were beyond him.

            We began to fit together rumors and clues and we learned of another great and powerful king that had vanished and might be sleeping. He was in a far off desert corner of the world. We set off in that direction. On our way we had many encounters with creatures and bandits and for a while we protected a caravan until it was pretty much destroyed by bugbear bandits and everyone…or nearly everyone…that we were protecting died. Yes, even the younglings. It was a bad blow. We did however take the head of the leader of the bugbear raidors to the next town and received an ample reward.

 

 

 

 now, something I forgot to mention before is that the Lich king, yes, that evil Lich king, did grant us a few boons to make matters more sporting. He left us the dagger and his regalia. The regalia, that was worthless, more or less. Those that knew of the feared wizard and his family when he was alive and a mortal didn’t want anything to do with it, and those that didn’t figured we could melt down the gold and get a few hundred gold pieces if we were lucky. But the dagger was more, and I kept it, and it spoke to me.

            So we made our way to Miles, the center of the world, the grandest city on the planet, the center of all roads, all merchants came here. The remains of our runined murdered caravan came here, and we came here to, for help, for clues. While in the city a few of our members once more tried our luck at the local casinos. One of our members oncemore faired fairly badly. The stars were not all that much in my favor as well.

            The city was a buzz with some ceremony for the king of Miles…I forget right now if he was getting married or if it was his birthday.  My brother thought this was a great opportunity to spread word of the good doings of the house of Mereck and how the sons of Mereck were going forth to stop this great evil. So, my brother hired a town crier who spoke of how the great Lich king had awoken and was now being opposed by our mighty adventuring party. The people apparently thought it was a comedy scetch. I went to the seedy side of town to talk with other warlocks and to study in the great dark library. The others also went about their business, discovering more and more. We learned the name of the next king to face, his wereabouts. In the desert he was, by Tercha. The temple of Ion, or rather the ruins of the temple of Ion. 

            While I was studying in the seedy side of town one of the unlucky members of our party was also in the seedy side of town and he tried to enter a very shadowy tavern. The bouncer threatened to kill him. He somehow got through with out being killed but it was a near thing,. I also eventually went to this evil tavern, and I was also threatened. The bouncer let me through into the tavern so that I might spend some money and then be murdered on the way out, to be more sporting. Inside there was a great fight that people were taking bets on. I bet a lot…I forget if I won or not, but my actions attracted a wicked rogue who had eyes on my coin purse and my life. I feigned being hopelessly drunk and I asked the rogue to help guide me back to the safe side of town. He agreed, a wicked look in his eyes. Of course, the evil inhuman bouncer once more moved to murder me as I neared the exit, but I complained to the rogue that also wanted to murder me, saying that how was I to reward him for bringing me to the safe side of town if I was murdered here. The two spoke and reached some sort of deal and I was allowed to leave the tavern, the rogue said for me to follow him this way towards a dark alley, and I ran like hell the other way to safety.

            My brother somehow also made aquantances with a legendary informant, information man. The guy had teleportation gates going through out the whole world and knowledge and riches that were truly stunning. He also had a love of drink. My brother used this to make a fast friendship and gain some more information and help.

            So, we continued onwards.

            We encounted huge ruin covered obelisques guarding the pass through the mountains that would lead to the deserts around Tersha. We adventured through the pass after reading through the crumbling obelisques. Something about a great evil being not able to pass.

            One night in the mountains kobolds attacked our party. We proved victorious against the kobolds and blasted the lot of them either to pieces or off the mountain. Soon we were traveling through the desert and then we reached Tersha. We spoke to the  mayor of the city, a very irate man. We learned that the trolls and Cyclops for some reason had an uneasy piece right now. We learned more of the temple of Ion, its exact location, and we learned more of the great evil that had once lived in this area and might live there again.

            So, we made our way to the temple, and found an oasis on the way, were we were attacked by cyclopses riding huge lizard beasts. We had managed to barter for camels from a wicked man named Abeep, and I accidently nearly set our beasts a fire during the battle. Anyway, we found victory here. Onwards we journeyed to the very temple itself. A great Cyclops slept outside the doorway of the temple. He awoke and we thought the be attacked, but though we didn’t speek giant, we soon learned that Cyclops unintelligible mumblings hailed from a simple and child like mind. By sharing some of our food and playing catch with this very special Cyclops we thus were allowed to pass and the Cyclops went back to sleep on his rock.

            Inside we encountered a massive battle. Trolls and Cyclops were battling a gang of kobolds led by a wild gun wielding kobold dressed in desperado clothing. This battle was the stuff of legends, the stuff of heroisim. Though I accidnetly set some of the kobolds on fire, we dispatched most of the Trolls and Cyclops together and  we formed an uneasy truce with this gun wielding hero kobold. The leaders of the Trolls and Cyclops had left the battle to go deeper into the temple and to the tomb of the long ago defeated demon creature that had once dominated and caused such fear and havoc in the deserts around tersha.

            We found the two standing above his tomb, arguing and screaming at one another. We guarnered something along the lines of an argument of who the power would belong to. The tomb opened and an unholy power erupted as the two came to blows. There flesh was sundly rent asunder as a truly monstrouse beast of twisted sinew, bone, and all sorts of bits of troll and Cyclops formed to face us.

            We couldn’t let it escape. The kobold fired his gun again and again. I cast my most powerful spells from the tip of my wand over and over as my comrades called on the power of the gods and of their blades and gradually the reborn evil lestned. The flesh mound fell and there was a torrent of black energy floating in the air of the chamber. The very tomb began to crumble and all hell lived in the tomb for a while and my dagger glowed a hot sick blue and I plunged the blade into the ebony energy and the blackness disappeared. A blue stone lit up on the dagger and flashed.

            One of the seven kings had been stoped, one of the seven kings had been imprisoned in the dagger.

 

 So, we left the ruined temple of Ion, having defeated one of the seven kings—and we set knew we were truly heroes. The simple minded Cyclops was still guarding the entrance to the temple. We didn’t have the heart to leave him there to die by himself. He obviously must have been fed and taken care of by those cyclopses that had died. So, after some more befriending, we took him with us. We also set free the great riding lizards of the cyclopses and the horrid riding birds of the trolls.

            And once more we set out across the burning sands of Tersha, this time to return to the town as heroes. We talked and laughed joyously at our victory and discussed just what to do with the Cyclops when we returned to the city. We expected that the mayor would be happy to take care of the Cyclops for his champions so we approached the city gates with the massive brute and met an army waiting for us.

            The mayor, after some work, did agree to parlay with us.

            “What have you done?” he asked us in a great rage. In short order we were chained up and imprisoned for some unknown crime, to be set on trial, and probably to be shortly thereafter executed.

            We were imprisoned and spat upon by the guards, given food that even a dog would frown on. We could hear the poor Cyclops being badly abused in the next room. I begged one of the guards to stop. I must have said it in the wrong way, for the guard got a wicked grin, took out a club, and promised to have some sport with the Cyclops.

            Now, under my brothers direction, we hoped to endure our imprisonment until they would realize we were innocent heroes meant to be honored. But the food was disgusting, and, well, since I can teleport once every few minutes, I teleported outside of the prison. Almost imeediately we all heard a great rucus somewhere away from our position, by the town gate. They ordered me to get food and investigate, to definetly get food. So I set down the street. People were running around and screaming in a panic everywhere. I encountered one merchant frantically packing up his gear, and I tried to explain that we needed some food, and what was going on. He told me that the town was being attacked by an army of cyclopses and trolls. Uhm, wow, I said,  we still need food…because when we left greenbriar, long ago, the poor long lost town of greenbriar, my father had told me to look after my brother, and we were both starving, and only if I could have a little food we might survive. He responded, if memory recalls that I seemed in hard straights, maybe the gods had cursed us and so I deserved my fate, and  since I was in such hard straights I could stand to pay even more. I responded with this break down in diplomatic communication by grabing some of the merchants food and running. He began to say, hey, get back here, but since he was also fearing for his life, what with the oncoming army and all, he didn’t pursue.

I ate biscuits as I ran. And I teleported back into the prison, but ended up in the wrong cell. But the guards didn’t notice. I divied out the food and told my party of what was occurring. We decided it was time to break for it, and my brother used his roguish skills to break us all loose. We however heard the great child like Cyclops crying down the hall, so we had to go help him out. That was when we interrupted by the guard that had been so awful and mean before. He pulled out a sword and with fanatical light dancing in his eyes, he said he would kill us for the lord mayor. He droped dead within seconds.

So, we reclaimed our gear and the Cyclops and on the way out we realized we needed camals if we were to flee fast enough. (There was some talk about going to the towns folk aid, but due to the treatment we had suffered, we figured they were getting what they deserved, and besides, it really wasn’t our problem.) We ran into abeep who wanted to charge us absorbanant rates for camals in this crisis time. One of our members, I think it was our cleric, decked him and we took off on our camals.

            I named my camal horse. He was a real ass.

            Anyway, we made our way north and by night fall we could see fire glowing behind us where tersha once stood. A few days latter we heard a great rumbling in the earth, moved off the trail, and witnessed a tide of horses thundering down the road, knights upon their back. Knigths of mile, we discovered, were coming to try to save Tersha from the Cyclopses and Trolls who had decided to destroy Tersha in revenge for the death of their leaders.

            I think we all felt a bit of shame, but we kept our secret and continued north to Miles once more. We gathered information and gave the Cyclops to a very nice miner who would feed him lots of ice cream and never mistreat him In Miles we discovered rumors that the cracken was attacking massive numbers of ships, and that the very coast land was flooding and sinking. It was a sign of another king, we knew it.. So, we set forth once more.

            One night we neared the remains of what had once been a camp ground. There was the wreckage of a caravan, wagons ripped apart and rotting, corpses and bones scattered about, and a single corpse rested impaled on a long sharp shaft of wood. We began to investigate when one of our number, I believe it was my brother, got this unholy smile. He attacked one of us, and sundly the air erupted with horrid wails as incorporeal beings swarmed before us. The spirits gave us a long hard battle. My brother fought repeatedly to regain his will, and it was a long hard fight. The spirit would speek through my brothers mouth, answering our question as to what it wanted with the simple words,”For you to die.” We struggled to gain control and to pry the body off of the shaft. Eventually, it took our magic and burning the body to end the horror. We did find a number of interesting items scattered around the camp site after the battle.

            My brother took sick soon after that and wouldn’t go far from his camal. Another of our number mumbled something about his god calling him and he broke from us one day, riding off far and away, and who knows where he is now. Yet, we continued on, for now with merely 3 active party members.

            We eventually came to a swamp. By now, we had traded our camals for horses, and I patted Camal on the head as we went deeper into the darkling swamp. Soon we found signs saying keep out. Doesn’t apply to us, we figured, and we kept going, until we happened upon a cottage in a clearing. We went to the cottage and knocked on the door. No one answered. We were tired and hungry again and the cottage looked warm and inviting, so we of course brook in. Inside, we could see a tiny bed, carpets, a fire place, and a stove. On the stove cooked a stew. One of our members neared the stew and looked in and discovered a human finger floating within the masses of the broth.

            The door banged open and a wizzined old voice commented,”I told you not to enter!” The hag stood, blocking our exit, and perhaps for a moment we felt fear fly though our hearts. But only for a moment.

            The battle was long and it took all of our magic, gods, and wits, but in the end, the hag dropped dead at our feet. We decided to camp there that night, in the cottage. One of our member toyed with the idea of trying the soup, such was our hunger.  I thought to lie in the cozy little bed at first, but then, thinking of all sorts of vermin and what not, I figured better of the idea, and instead curled up in the floor.

            In the middle of the night we were interuped by some monster stirring without, and the violent shriek of the word,”Dink!” At first I feared that the hag had returned, but it was some sort of pet of the witch.  Bulky and fierce, it didn’t however attack us. It seemed confused. It ignored our efforts to have it play with a stick and was getting either bored or perturbed with us, its dinks coming out more angsty by the moment, until sundly one of our number noticed a tambirine. We played a beat upon the tamberine and the monster danced and was happy and content.

            In the morning we left, leaving the monster asleep. We were almost to our next destination, and we were growing nearer and nearer to the most dangerous part of our adventure so far.

 

     So, we made our way to a city past the swamp….it wasn’t exactly on the coast, but it was close, and due to the sinking land scape it was fast coming closer. We talked to the mayor there and he said that while he didn’t know why the sinking was occurring, he felt that his city was safe due to an army of golemns working to constantly pump water out of the city. However, perhaps the gnomes might have an answer as to what was going on. Some adventurers had gone out to speak to the gnomes, but none had been successful at gaining the wisdom of the secretive forest folk.

            We agreed to try to approach the gnomes and see what we could discover. So we went out into the forest and after a few minor adventures, we did run into gnomish magic. A voice spoke to us from outside of a tree saying,”What are you looking for?” We said gnomes and it quickly quipped,”No gnomes here! Especially not in that tree there!” so we approached the tree and found a little door in there. We tried our best to open it but just couldn’t, so I teleported past it and found myself on a muddy slide going downwards faster and faster…and sundly I tumbled out right on top of my companions somehow.

Gnomish magic.

            Eventually we somehow convinced the gnomish wizard to show himself. He showed us a few fancy spells. He caused fire works to erupt from his finger tips, that sort of thing. Powerful lost gnomish magic. I was particularly intrigued, and I vowed to learn this powerful magic. Presitdigitation it was called, I believe.

            Anyway, the gnome revealed to us that the reason the land was sinking was because a giant turtle was tunneling beneath the very earth, devouring the dirt beneath the areas, shifting everything. The turtle previously had been a colossal but passive thing, but it had swallowed the wizards staff and become this great menace to everyone.  Well, we decided to recover the gnomes staff and we went in search for the giant turtle. Under direction of the wizard, we learned that it was likely to get thirsty and surface to drink. It would surface by the great lake most likely, so we headed there.

            On the way we ran into a shamantic group of lizard people. I  conversed with them using draconian, and I learned that they worshiped the giant turtle as one of their gods. One of the shamans gave me a sort of dowsing rod like device to help lead me towards the turtle after I explained how we were all in this together, how if we converted the turtle god back to the way he had been, the land would stop being disturbed and the lizard people could then oncemore have an undisturbed nesting grounds.

            We adventured and eventually found the lake. I pressed my ear to the ground to see if I could hear the rumbling of the great turtle. I could not. I did however surface with a leach firmly attached to my face. I pulled it off. We camped for a while and for a while nothing happened, but then we were attacked but other evil lizard people, and we fought a great brave battle and won. After the battle, in impatience, I oncemore pressed my ear to the ground to see if I might hear the great turtle. I didn’t hear him. My companions didn’t bother to tell me that a giant leach was attached to my face. It took me a long while to realize this.

            Then sundly the rod began to vibrate in my hands, and I knew the giant turtle would soon surface to drink from the lake. There was a massive eruption of water and the whole area became a haven for mud. Our horses and we ourselves began to sink. I had scrambled from a tree to I was safe, but poor Camel was sinking. He was becoming encased in mud. I summoned the powers of the stars and fired an eldritch blast upon the mud encasing my horse, but that just seemed to scare poor camel, so instead we all dug our horses out.

            Lo, there was the back of the giant turtle, a turtle the size of a large city, in the center of the great lake. I decided to swim towards the turtle to see what I could see, but a current grabed me. My brother, recently recovered, sought to come to my aid, but the current grabed him to. My other friends fell victim to the current and we were soon all sucked in…inside of the giant turtle.

            Somehow we emerged safe inside of the esophagus of the great beast. We traveled downwards, until our feet began to burn from the acidity of the place. That’s when we were sundly attacked by more of the evil lizard creatures. We dispatched them, but were awed. Creatures were actually living inside of the turtle god. Traveling a bit further revealed a city just beyond the horizon. There was a bridge leading to the city. We made our way there and fought a pitched battle at the entrance to the city. But it drew attention. A lot of attention.

            Now, a great throng, hundreds of the evil lizard creatures came our way, urged on by a 14 foot version of their kind, who barked at them, urging them forward to destroy us. I blasted the bridge leading to our location apart with my eldritch blast, but the lizard creatures were still coming in such great number. So, I plucked the head of one of the creatures we had already killed, and I raised it on high, telling the throng to flee. The power of the heavens blazing in my eyes and my heart, I threw the head at the mob of lizard creatures on the edge of the bridge and I blasted the head apart with a dreadful radiance while my comrades made threatening gestures, shaking the corpses of the fallen wildly to better intimidate the horde. Some of the creatures turned back, and I believe it would have worked, if not for the great 14 foot tall behemoth. It killed its own people to make them obey its will and gradually they all turned back to charge at us oncemore. I let fire land in a group of the creatures at the front of the bridge and copying the gnomes magic, I created a presitidigation of a giant laughing skull were the lizard men had been burned to ash.

            Yet they came on,  and the leader came on to. He somehow threw himself from roof top to roof top and landed right behind us. The battle was the fiercest so far, but in the end, the leader was forced into the stomach acid of the turtle. Now, the leader had held the wizards staff, and when he fell into the stomach acid, so did the staff, and the whole world seemed to begin to shake as the turtle god began to panic. A great heaving of the world began. We managed to somehow wrest the staff from the acid, and plucking the skeletal arm that still clung to it, we ran as fast as we could back the way we came, but the turtles stomach moved faster, and the contents thereof came pushing us outwards and soon we found ourselves outside the turtle, beside the lake oncemore.

            Thus was the turtle god returned to how he had been before the staff and though covered in disgusting turtle vomit, we were otherwise alright. We clensed ourselves as best we could, washed our clothes, and I created a fire with my magic to warm us and dry our clothes then.

            After that, we made our way to find the gnomish wizard, who had offered to watch our horses. The wizard sundly met us, and I said,”We have returned with your staff, oh great gnomish wizard.”  I handed the staff back over.

            The gnome got a very intense look on his face and time seemed to stop. I heard him mumble,”This is indeed a very powerful weapon!” as he sundly plucked my dagger from my belt and threw the magical dagger into a tree many feet away,. And then, it seemed as time dragged for myself and my companions as the wizard levitated up into the sky, pointed his hand down upon us, and unleashed a torrent of wizards fire.

            Stunned and shocked at this betrayel, when I had recovered from the time stop spell, I returned with a volley of my own magical fire. Battle was joined. The gnome kept teleporting about the battle field and we felt ourselves grow very dizzy. At one point the wizard shot harpoons and chains out of the evil staff. We became pinned by the harpoons, but sought to take advantage of the situation. Working together we used the chains to tear the staff from the wizard. The gnome raised his hands, and the staff flew into the very sky, dragging us with it. We were all still pinned by the harpoons and connected by the chains to the floating staff, but I to could teleport, so I teleported out of the chains and above the wizard. I pointed my elbow downwards, hoping to smash into the gnome, but the little person deftly stepped aside and I landed hard upon the ground. Rolling with the impact, I continued battle and somehow soon we were all free and fighting, but the gnome has even more magic. Mutliple copies of the gnomish wizard appeared, and only by hurting the copies would they vanish—we fought and fought, and finally the gnome fell and a dark energy poured forth from the staff to hover in the air. We retreaved my dagger from the tree and chucked it at the gnome and the darkness was sucked in. When I picked up my dagger, it had two blue stones, one clearly imprisoning the staff.

            The dagger spoke to me and I caressed the dagger.

 

To be continued: this is as far as we’ve gotten so far. Stay tuned for more exciting adventures of Welose, maybe?