Wolf's scenario recap

Run #1: Alcheringa Calling

Starring: Bran Brightwood, Bree Specklefoot, Caeleth Mutewind, Cainin, Dork, Korona Psefdiko Theo, Morti Kustos, Piddles Proudfoot XIV,

The Prologue: All the elves and half elves of Qoin have been having the same dream. The dream was troubling to all the full blooded elves because, elven trances give rest but there are never any dreams. Although the dream seemed garbled some things could be gleaned. Some words were hard to interpret as they faded in, faded out, sped up or slowed down.

The grey statue of the crocodile man stared at his feet while he held the leather-bound tome over his head. There seemed to be bandages around his right arm and the right side of his face. His robes were torn and you could see the stone reptilian skin through the holes. A blue fan and shards of black glass were strewn on the rough floor before him. The dawn lit up his face and a mouth appeared in the upper right quadrant of the book cover.

In a heavy breathed elvish with an odd accent, four mouths seemed to say the following words in various quadrants of the leather bound tome.

"Witness… the end… Gargravarr... stone prison… living place… beginning… divide… reality… peace…"

The Story: Yulga, the seer of Archeringa, an immortal from the world of dreams explained that in order to crystallize and reconstitute the energies being sent from Alcheringa and ungarble the message, there must be nine rods placed around a commonality where physical energy and spiritual energies merge. He suspected he had found a place. The location is atop a somewhat active volcano where the ruins of an ancient elven stronghold sit. It was near the border of Sardalus and the Barrowlands. The Seer of Alcheringa was a double agent working in the Lesser Council of Light and needed to be back soon before his cover was blown. He dismissed his significant other, Jordan, and went over the ritual with the party and told them there would be a ship waiting for them in the morning.

The mission left the following morning aboard the Heir Apparent. Just to be sure the immortals hid below deck as they passed the Isle of Light. They passed the ice flows near the center of the Qoin and Korona tried to convert as many sailors to his brand of religion. They arrived at Bath’s Bay at the mouth of the Iron Way River and sought passage down river aboard an ore barge captained by Lorna a female dwarven devotee to Daglir. She was very flattered by Bree’s advances but due to Bree’s lack of a magnificent beard, the effort was for naught. At each night, Caeleth and Korona, (the two who had elven blood) analyzed more of the dream and determine more details such as the embossed symbol on the books formerly leather cover now made of stone. Bree confirmed it was truly the symbol of Alcheringa, so unless this was a cleverly constructed ruse, the communication was continuing to be sent from Alcheringa, the land long thought dead and gone having been devoured by Gargravarr. Bree was sure because she was from old Archeringa.

The group arrived in Rat’s Mouth, the mining town where there is a dilapidated bridge to the Barrowlands. The bridge was in disuse because the Barrowlands is a dead land where all sentient life died about 300 years ago. The locals say the land is cursed, but the Iron Way River provides a magical barrier from the evil there.

After the group tried a confidence game utilizing arm wrestling in the Tin Swords Inn, they all went outside to investigate the sound of someone getting beat up in the street. Dork, the Aru cleric told three assailants to stop but the two spear men moved menacingly toward her. One of spearmen, named Stabbington sporting a ridiculous mustache must have been at least second level with a name like Stabbington. What should have turned into a small scuffle turned into the party murdering all three brutes and questioning the victim. When they heard the constable’s whistles getting closer, they high tailed it over the crumbling bridge in the dark.

In the morning, they climbed to the top of the volcano and witnessed smoke mephits dancing around a circular pool of lava. Despite the cackling, they trusted the mephits to not harm them. But at the first hammer strike of an iron rod, a lava elemental emerged from the pool and the mephits attacked with glee. After the battle, they arranged the nine rods and imagined them connected with lines creating a network like a dream catcher. The ritual worked by pulling the ghostly spirits of the past into the imagined networks of fiber. Caeleth witnesses the full dream before any other elf. The dream was clear, complete and is in the proper order narrated by the Dragonborn’s precast magic mouths….

"Gargravarr made history and on Archeringa, he ended history. I saw his charismatic arrival. How he spoke of peace but he only sold fear.

"I saw him divide us. I was a witness from the beginning to the end and I am a chronicler of what transpired.

"In the Dindaralu Nation, in the living place west of the Manburi River. In the seventh tower’s hidden vault, where she policed reality,…

"I will wait to be awakened from my stone prison to tell you details of how he did it. Unfortunately, I can wait forever."

Suddenly, from across the crater, Marti, the human paladin, spied a Halfling witnessing what they had done and little one was, without a doubt, an immortal like many of them. And when the Halfling realized he was spotted he ran and jumped down the far edge of the volcano. And despite his small size he covered the ground as quickly a normal sized person would. They lost him in the brush but understood in order to get back to civilization he must also cross the bridge back to Rat’s Mouth. The party ambushed him and captured him. Under interrogation he told them his name is Charles Tantoes. He went on to tell them that he stumbled upon them and recognized them as immortals when they arrived in town but he did so from the shadows. Knowing their immortal aura sensing abilities would peg him as an immortal too, he arranged with the thieves’ guild (In Rat’s Mouth, called the Butchers) to rough up the rat piper outside their inn to ascertain their capabilities and general demeanor. However, after their display of cold-blooded murder, he definitely tried to stay clear. Despite his newly granted immortality he was afraid of death. He was still in his original body and thought, perhaps ‘this immortality thing’ might not work and he was sure it would hurt anyway.

They returned to Bath’s Bay with the help from Lorna and made their way back to the caves of Hireling Hideout with the rather frightened immortal prisoner of the Lesser Council of Light. And with the reconstituted dream being sent to all of elven blood they knew what must be done with the information. It was time to somehow travel to Alcheringa, the World of Dreams, and awaken the Dragonborn who witnessed Gargravarr eat his world. Maybe then the rebellion could figure out how to stop Gargravarr from devouring the Qoin in the same way.

Run #2: Waking the Crocodile Man

Starring: Annondolis, Belgron, Benzamfel, Craag, gmac, Red, and Vivienne

The Story: The mission was get to the fabled world of Alcheringa, the dream world. There they would reawaken the Dragonborn who was a witness to Gargravarr devouring his world and possibly find a way to defeat him on the Qoin.

With the information provided from the reconstructed dream, the party and an odd priest gained a focus on the world called Alcheringa. He told them that they should take a sacred sash similar to his and do whatever they felt naturally doing with it. For instance, wave it about, hold it on your arm, dance, feel the wave of creativity and when about a minute has passed, repeat the following words three times with conviction “But the end never came. At least not then.”

Then sight down your thumb and open the golden portal and follow the golden Broomway to Alcheringa. Repeat the same steps to get back but to get back to the Qoin your must repeat, “Don’t Panic!” three times.

They appeared in front of the steps of an old opera house. The building was covered in vines practically bursting with small bluish white berries. As were all the buildings in the area. They realized they were on a shard of the original planet. All seven moons were disintegrated and the multicolored dust blew around in the street. The sun seemed to travel at a very fast speed across the sky bringing 3o minutes of daylight and 30 minutes of darkness before a new day would begin. As the dream message had mentioned he was in the seventh tower, so as they started moving through the streets, they heard a droning humming sound, as an alarm resonated throughout the dilapidated cityscape.

They surmised the ‘crocodile man’s hidden vault’ was in the violet tower, one of three towers remaining. (as it corresponded with the last of the set of seven moons of old Alcheringa). As they travelled through the dust strewn streets they spied two humanoid figures climbing among the foliage of the buildings. As they craned their heads to look behind them, their spines seemed more flexible and the party was able to see that although they may have been elves at some point, their toothless jaws jutted upward and forward like post-spawned salmon and their left eyes seemed to be missing. The party was caught between them as they each belched forth a watery mist and obscured the streets. Many other savage twisted elves using mostly cobbled together armor and weapons joined their comrades in the battle against the party. Another pair of twisted elves missing their right eyes joined the battle and fought against the first group and tried to scavenge from the dead ones before the fight was even over. The party showed no mercy when dealing with either groups of denizens of this dying world shard.

The party found the secret door in the lower levels of the tower and discovered the red waxen walls of the vault which at one point served as the home to one of the Dream Serpents. And just as expected, the statue of the crocodile man was waiting. Using the blue fan at his feet, they waved air across the still form and it turned back to flesh. The Dragonborn was named Warrugul Tau, or Tau for short. He had willingly turned himself to stone to escape what he called the Mind’s Eye plague that was sweeping across the world. He was a historian and chronicler and expected that Gargravarr was either defeated or had ascended to godhood since fifty thousand years had passed. But of course that wasn’t the case because it hadn’t been that long. The giant mirror that had been sending the dreams to the elves across the multiverse was set to count the number of dawns that had occurred. Tau had not expected the days would slowly get shorter and shorter nor did he expect that his world would shatter without the Jade lattice Heart.

He went onto explain that Gargravarr,in the form of a Dragonborn, had come to Alcheringa and sowed the seeds of discontent among the normally peaceful nineteen nations that were ruled over by the nineteen divinely created Dream Serpents. The Dream Serpents trusted him implicitly because they could look into his mind and see no falsehoods and only good intentions. When Gargravarr asked for a ritual called the Dream Barrier near the Jade Lattice Heart because one of the other nations was trying to get into his mind and steal his power, they did so willingly. That shrank the World Heart enough that he could magically devour it. He killed everyone in the room including the Dream Serpent of the Dindaralu Nation who had cast the ritual, but the badly burned Tau had escaped in the water. After Gargravarr ate the World Heart, the ‘Jade Immortals’ of his world suddenly died. In the days that followed, Gargravarr killed all of the other remaining Dream Serpents and flung himself into the vastness of the multiverse to find his next conquest.

Using the magic mirror in the Dream Serpent’s lair, and the sky projector book, Tau set up the plan to be reawakened when any surviving elves in the far off future would hear the call.

When asked what a Dream Serpent looked like, Tau said that their forms were so gloriously incomprehensible, that the mind could not truly contain the image. The memory of their true form would fade immediately when they can no longer be seen, like a tentative dream upon waking up. But it didn’t matter anymore, Gargravarr had killed all of the celestial beings known as Dream Serpents. And now no one could possibly undo the Dream Barrier.

On the back of the gigantic stone mirror there were nine elven heads on spikes, each of them alive, preserved by magic in the middle of actual dreaming. They were sending out the images of whatever the mirror saw at dawn each day. In this case, it was the repeating message of Warrugul Tau, the ‘Crocodile man’. The party removed the heads and destroyed the mirror for fear that Gargravarr could use the mirror as a weapon against those with elven blood.

With nothing left, Tau agreed to follow the party along the golden broomway. It was discovered that the portal could only be entered if one had a sizable chunk of gold on them. It was also discovered that the reason why the immortals from Qoin could enter easily was because their hearts were truly made of gold when their bodies had formed.

Once back on Qoin, Tau set up the sky book projector in the main cavern of Hireling Hideout so people could see the glory of the sky from within the normally dark cave. Among the resistance, Tau looked for those like him but never saw another Dragonborn. He began to believe he was the only Dragonborn left in the multiverse or, at the very least, on the world of the Qoin.

Now armed with the knowledge of how Gargravarr devours worlds and his potential vulnerability without a Dream Barrier, the rebels began hatching a plan to defeat him. No more worlds would fall to Gargravarr!

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