December 24th, 973
GM NOTE – this summary of campaign events/issues is not all-inclusive; it’s just what Gareth remembers! Peruse the website for more details.
From the Journal of Gareth Alven
Written in Hollowmere, by weak lantern light, with sore feet, damp socks, and a growing suspicion that the world is coming apart at the seams.
I have begun keeping these notes partly to keep myself properly oriented and partly for future documentation. If we survive whatever in all the Hells is happening in Cambria, somebody will eventually need to explain it to sensible people.
Preferably somebody more articulate than me. Unfortunately, the articulate members of the company are currently occupied with,
- Investigating conspiracies,
- Communing with mysterious powers,
- Solving ancient riddles,
- Looking for dead hookers,
- And suborning government officials.
So here I am instead – underqualified, unpaid, and increasingly alarmed.
At present our known problems include:
- Undead armies,
- Very unusual hobgoblin/goblin military coordination,
- Between 2 and 4 revolutionary conspiracies (depending on whether you count Wolfgang and the Druid of the Sewers in the same rank as the Ebon Blades and the Cambrian Compact),
- Ancient Orcish ruins,
- Cultists attempting to destroy reality,
- A prison built atop a balrog,
- Several mutually contradictory prophecies,
- A surprisingly large quantity of tunnels,
- And a kingdom apparently unable—or unwilling—to properly manage plague, corruption, widespread poverty, civil unrest, or, for that matter, basic governance.
I note with concern that none of these problems appear to be improving.
It began, for my co-travelers at least, with Captain Nelson.
Nelson sent the letters that drew everyone toward Cambria. By all accounts he was an honorable officer who became convinced that something terrible was happening in Cambria and that the local authorities either could not or would not act.
Before the party could meet him, he slit his own throat rather than allow himself to be possessed by… something.
This is the sort of thing one hopes will later seem less alarming in context. So far it has not.
Speaking of doom, it turns out the Northmarch Correctional Bastion was apparently built atop an ancient anti-magic field that is currently imprisoning a balrog beneath the prison.
The Crown did not know about the balrog when they built the prison and they still don’t know about it now.
Unfortunately, they have learned where the anti-magic field is coming from and have therefore begun sending people underground to poke at it with sharp sticks and bureaucratic optimism. Given the Crown’s well-known competence, this will almost certainly end badly.
I should also note:
- The Bastion command structure is divided and openly feuding with one of the commanders recently ambushed and murdered,
- Grelda was freed from imprisonment there,
- And a colony of kobolds living nearby turned out to be both harmless and surprisingly endearing.
Sergeant Elowen Thatch deserves considerable credit for preventing their immediate extermination by authorities eager to solve problems through enthusiastic overapplication of violence.
I do occasionally wonder how the kobolds are doing which probably means that I have spent too much time around this particular group of adventurers.
The Crown itself is increasingly unstable with a worsening economy, the plague known as The Withers continuing spreading through remote parts of Cambria, and the Druid of the Sewers apparently conducting an underground campaign against Manchester.
Governor Kanwal continues responding to these crises by remaining, with admirable consistency, “The Man of Leisure.”
Meanwhile we have learned that the government maintains something called War Plan Bone Chorus, which is precisely what it sounds like – a contingency plan for fighting an undead uprising. It is difficult to feel reassured by the existence of a document named War Plan Bone Chorus. Especially since rumor suggests it has not been updated in nearly a century.
And perhaps worst of all for the Crown, the death of CMOT Dibbler in custody appears to have turned Wolfgang Spicebeard fully against the regime.
This is unfortunate because Wolfgang already possessed the dangerous charisma of a man who could begin a riot simply by entering a tavern and criticizing the stew.
Of course, Wolfgang is hardly the only person in Cambria who hates the Crown.
The Ebon Blades continue operating throughout the region. Barin and Phineas appear sincere enough, though sincerity and legality rarely travel together in revolutionary circles.
Adrien Valcour—the major with the bird tattoos referenced in Captain Nelson’s letters—remains involved with smugglers, clandestine operations, and other activities generally associated with future regrettable developments.
We have also liberated Renn—printer of The Ember—and Kenning, who distributed it, from a Manchester lockup.
Unfortunately, we also liberated several considerably worse people in the process, including members of the Cult of the Unmaking.
And this brings me, unhappily, to the Cult.
The Cult of the Unmaking believes reality is held together by “Rivets,” elements common across multiple universes. Their theory is that destroying enough Rivets will collapse creation itself and allow their god, Zaldru, to recreate existence according to their preferences.
This already seemed rather antisocial. Unfortunately, the cultists themselves also turned out to be fanatics. And jerks.
Important Rivets apparently include:
- General Sherman,
- Elvys Pressley,
- Governor Kanwal,
- And, rather unfortunately, CMOT Dibbler, who is already dead.
The General Sherman incident deserves special mention because it involved:
- Mysterious lightning,
- The apparent weakening of reality itself,
- And two travelers from another universe suddenly appearing nearby carrying objects labeled “Patagonia” and “Nalgene.”
One of them took a “selfie” with Merrythought after mistaking her for an unusually dedicated “LARPer.” None of us knows what any of those words mean as the travelers vanished before we could ask..
More concerningly, the “selfie” produced a perfect reproduction of Merrythought’s likeness upon a small rectangular surface which raises the possibility that Merrythought’s soul may have been stolen.
She reports feeling unchanged but will bear watching, especially with all of the undead already wandering around.
The ancient Orcs continue to complicate nearly every accepted historical narrative in Archea.
The Tomb of the Teacher revealed evidence of literacy, formal education, and sophisticated culture.
Later discoveries beneath the sinkhole uncovered ancient waterworks powered by bound water elementals. During the Righteous War, the orcs turned it into a redoubt and our side apparently unleashed a demon called The Sereth to kill them all and then trapped it within the flooded ruins.
In the 500 years since, the water elementals fused into one large one that called itself Thalrunn. A group named the Argent Company wanted to bind it and while the resultant argument singed all of our eyebrows, we managed to make our point of view stick. Fortunately, even when released, Thalrunn has proven benign, which frankly makes it one of the more emotionally stable beings we have encountered lately.
The further we investigate ancient Orcish civilization, the less trustworthy the official Crown version of history appears.
Which is awkward. Especially since the Crown is rather heavily invested it its version.
Along with Thalrunn, the Druid of the Sewers may actually have been one of the more reasonable people we encountered, despite his endearing habit of picking bugs off his hide and eating them mid-conversation.
His original complaint concerned giant rats mutated by illegal alchemical dumping from the Phlogiston Works.
We were unfortunately too occupied with preventing civilization from collapsing to assist immediately. He therefore solved the matter himself by leading sewer creatures to the surface and attacking and destroying the facility directly.
The government is trying to retaliate by clearing the sewers using the Army, Civil Guard, and hired adventurers.
Recent reports suggest this effort is proceeding badly enough that the rats may soon qualify for municipal representation.
Hollowmere itself remains deeply suspicious. Officially, it is merely a copper mining settlement of modest importance.
Unofficially,
- There are way too many Crown personnel here for a copper mine,
- People keep disappearing,
- And goblins and hobgoblins are doing their own mining in the hills
Corin Vale, a Crown surveyor or mapper of some sort, discovered something there roughly six weeks ago and shortly afterward he vanished. Then his courtesan—or girlfriend, depending on which rumors one believes—Lysa Harrow also vanished under suspicious circumstances.
Meanwhile we know from Captain Nelson’s letters that Colonel Varnes went to Hollowmere in the past and returned… altered. Not ill or injured… but changed.
We saw him here the other day and Nelson was entirely correct. That boy just ain’t right.
Varnes is also connected to the disturbing situation at Nareen’s Hill.
Records concerning the Righteous War—particularly those involving strategies for combating undead armies—were secretly removed or destroyed. The repository guardians vanished under mysterious circumstances.
Varnes also placed a small unit there whose apparent mission was to conduct strategic reconnaissance and then, eventually, guide commandos into Manchester harbor as part of a coordinated attack by something called “The Cambrian Compact”.
This is not normal military planning unless one is expecting war. Or preparing for it. Still worse, the Ebon Blades don’t seem to know anything about the Compact and vice versa.
And the same strange symbol keeps appearing around all of this – a red/blue split circle crossed by a jagged line.
It was first mentioned in Captain Nelson’s letter about Nareen’s Hill. We first encountered it in person, however, on Rudric Thorn of the Last Laughers after he attempted to murder us while undead and carrying a recently used shovel, which is not a sentence I expected to write this year.
The symbol later appeared,
- At Willowhollow, where someone appears to be raising undead from an ancient battlefield,
- Near Barrow’s Edge, where an entire barrow complex had already been emptied of corpses and apparently replaced by an agricultural blight monster,
- Most recently in a cave being excavated by goblins led by a hobgoblin,
- And most alarmingly, Captain Varric and the rest of Warg Squad immediately recognized the symbol as being associated with Colonel Varnes and the Cambrian Compact.
The goblin caves proved particularly unsettling because there were no undead present at all—only unusually organized goblins working under hobgoblin leadership while excavating something underground.
One goblin explained they had been promised a future where humans would stop bothering them so much and under ordinary circumstances I might even sympathize.
Under current circumstances, however, I become nervous whenever anyone starts organizing goblins around long-term strategic objectives. Particularly when hobgoblins are involved. Goblins are chaotic nuisances but unable to organize themselves to threaten anyone beyond isolated individuals and small encampments.
Hobgoblins, on the other hand, build armies and lay waste to entire lands. The combination of the two suggests somebody intelligent is coordinating their cooperation to build something stronger than the sum of the two tribes.
Which means we are probably doomed.
And then there are the “smaller” problems by which, I mean,
- Rum gremlins,
- Prophetic patrons,
- A mysterious magical ring,
- Extradimensional mazes,
- And invisible entities stalking the party.
Pabst the rum gremlin still travels with us and continues to be alarmingly competent.
Ant’s patron insists the company are somehow “the hinge of history” and absolutely must reach Hollowmere but instead of explaining why, provided her with the strangest shopping list I have ever seen. And an prediction that Archea’s collapse is nigh.
The Ring of Dawn remains mysterious enough that every supposed expert who examines it directly contradicts the previous expert entirely.
And Kardan—the knowledge broker we first encountered in the past, because apparently linear time is now optional—wants us to retrieve an artifact from the center of an impossible extradimensional maze built by a forgotten trickster goddess.
At this point I have accepted that my life no longer belongs to the category of events best understood sequentially. Or rationally.
At this point, I can no longer tell whether these are separate problems colliding by chance or parts of the same disaster viewed from different angles.
Questions remain:
- What changed Colonel Varnes?
- How did he become connected to the “Cambrian Compact” and its plans for Cambria?
- Why did he remove records regarding the Righteous War and destroy the ones concerning anti-undead warfare?
- What did Corin Vale discover? And who killed him and Lysa Harrow for it?
- Who is coordinating the goblins and hobgoblins?
- What lies beneath Hollowmere?
- What exactly was trying to possess Captain Nelson?
- Who—or what—is Ant’s patron? And what’s his/her true motivation?
- Is the Cult actually capable of destroying reality?
- Is the undead threat already underway?
- Who killed the Crown’s agricultural investigation team outside Barrow’s Edge?
- And should we tell the Crown about the balrog under the Northmarch Bastion?
And why do I increasingly suspect we are already too late?