World of Prime: Campaign Journal #55

Coming Home

Exhausted from dealing with ghosts and grief, the party decides to go home again. Along the way they pass through the nearby lesser realms that once might have been considered dangerous adventures, but are now merely scenic.

First they encounter the ruins of a city. The duchy of Urtygh has lost its battle with its neighbors; only a handful of desperate, depraved gangs hide in the broken down buildings. The party marches on to the duchy of Biocear, prepared to dispense justice; but the obvious order and cleanliness of the city gives them pause. Earl Valath describes his life-long feud with his hostile neighbors, showing them the tree outside of the city with an Urtyghian arrow embedded in it. Only recently did a heavy infantry mercenary contingent from the Gold Coast tip the balance (the Iron Company, from Journal #27), breaking the Urtygian archery advantage and ending the war. Valath took in those refugees willing to learn to live within the law, farming the many parent-less children out to families willing to take them.

The party negotiates their relationship with Valath; not just as neighboring lords, but as an overlord - a Domain Lord, to be exact. While his duchy will remain independent and pay no taxes, he will recognize their authority and contribute to the defense of the region when necessary. In exchange the party will protect his realm from threats too great for a mere Earl. Threats like love-crazed liches, for instance.

Next they travel to the forbidden desert, from which the Earl warns them that no travelers ever return. Perhaps they are hoping for a terrible monster, but what they find is a kingdom of pint-sized lizardmen: kobolds, to be exact.

The kobolds launch a surprise raid on the party, wounding the Barbarian with a well-hidden ballista and peppering the rest of the party with arrows. The Wizard obliterates the archers while the Barbarian charges the siege weapon, but the Ranger kills or chases off the crew with arrows before he gets there. The Bard discovers a small tunnel and investigates. In the narrow and dark passage, the kobolds are brave enough to parley; the Bard negotiates a meeting with their ruler, to explain their new status as Domain Lords.

The kobolds provide a guide, which proceeds to lead the party into a trap set by the entire kobold realm. Once this would have been a fatal ending; but the party is simply too strong now. They don't even flinch, and the Queen recognizes their courage must be a product of their pussiance.

She does try to bait the Barbarian into a single round of combat, which if he were to survive would convince her that the party is indeed qualified to rule. He actually considers it, adding up the expected damage from hundreds of arrows. But the Ranger refuses her challenge, pointing out that the fact that they do not need to prove themselves is itself sufficient proof. Just as well - the Ranger clearly guessed that the kobolds had a trick up their sleeve, and in fact the Barbarian's survival was well in doubt.

Instead, both parties find a better way to resolve the standoff. The party agrees to head south and crush an orc brigand camp that occasionally causes trouble for the kobolds; the Queen will provide a guide who will also report on their performance.

This adventure would have been quite a challenge, before their trip to the Gold Coast. Now they simply march onto the orc camp, only slightly annoyed that it appears to be a city of several thousand rather than just a biker gang. They storm the keep, opening the gate with a fireball, followed by a mad charge from the Barbarian. The orcs fight valiantly but are severely outclassed and die by the squad. Even the Chieftess's magic is quickly dispatched by the Cleric's storm of mystical hammers.

The kobold guide is suitably impressed, though he points out that true Domain Lords would have crushed a threat like this in a single round, not the three or four it took the party. He agrees on his Queen's behalf to the same deal they made with Valath.

Now the party finally rides into old Varsoulou, to find a community doing well. While they are not thriving, as the cinnamon trade has been utterly disrupted, neither have they been attacked by vampires or demons or what have you. The Ranger tells them they can restart the spice business with Biocear, and openly trade with the kobolds rather than hiding it. The Barbarian is handing out magic swords to the knighthood, increasing both their effectiveness and their loyalty.

In the midst of this domestic tranquility, a dead man walks into the court. He speaks with Kek's voice - "Hey, guys, when are you coming back? I have another problem for you to solve." Kek wants them to collect another tribute, and this time he'll pay 5,000 gp per corpse. When they agree to pay him a visit, the corpse collapses, its magic expended.

World of Prime: Campaign Journal #53-54

City of Remembrance

The party travels to Kek's stone pyramid to return the Disk of the Sun. As he is a high level caster, with a thousand years of encountering adventurers, they decide he's likely got some decent magic items to sell. This proves to be true, and Kek relieves them of hundreds of pounds of gold in exchange for some items he had lying around.

Then he sweeps all the gold into his portal to the sun. "Don't want to leave that stuff lying around. That's how you get adventurers."

He again warns them his divinations have revealed a "shadow in the east." Convinced that Kek is a danger only on a geological timescale, the party sets out to quell this more immediate threat.

After days of travel they come across a city of contradictions. The place is utterly deserted, the buildings shabby and barely standing; but the streets are clean of weeds and some minor replaces have obviously been done. They cautiously investigate the dockyard area, but only find answers once the sun goes down.

A fog rolls in from the sea, thick as soup; and in the cloudy mist the city comes to life. Housewives sweep their front steps while children play in the street, workmen stroll to and fro, street vendors hawking treats and bars bustling with patrons. The Bard notices that one establishment has recently changed its name, the old one painted out in favor of the new, though both coats of paint are peeling from several hundred years of neglect.

The Bard attempts to buy a street snack; the vendor holds out his hand, but when paid, the coins drop through his semi-translucent palm onto the street. He appears not to notice, handing the Bard a dead sea-creature roasted on a stick. This also semi-translucent treat vanishes as soon as it leaves the vendor's hand; again, with no reaction.

The party enters the bar and repeats the process for foamy mugs of ale that never reach their lips. The Bard makes new friends, or tries to; but the conversation gradually turns to local politics as the night wears on, becoming more and more heated with each hour. Shortly before midnight, the Bard realizes that the situation has passed beyond words; the crowd is angry and ready to fight. He sneaks out into the street, but this is no better. Surly looks from all sides, as street-corner orators shout increasingly violent rhetoric. Spotting another newly renamed inn, the Bard deduces that there are two sides to this conflict: the House of the Sun, representing aristocracy and tradition, and the Company of the Stars, a populist reactionary position.

He returns to the party and warns of them of imminent violence. The party decides to side with the Company, mostly because it's official color is silver instead of gold, and thus the required tokens to indicate their loyalty are easier to fake. The Druid is already wearing a silver helm; the Barbarian and Ranger stick silver arrowheads through their lapels; the Cleric puts his silver holy symbol on the outside of his armor for a change.

At the stroke of midnight the war begins. An angry crowd of ghosts, now glowing yellow, burst through the inn door and attack. The occupants, glowing silver, eagerly leap into battle, fighting with hammers, table legs, knives, and other random tools reforged to violence in the heat of rage.

These ghosts are not really dangerous to our stalwart heroes, though their incorporeal nature is somewhat frustrating - the Druid manages to miss his flame attack seven times in a row. The Barbarian, as usual, decimates whole squads of enemies, and the attackers are soon vanquished. But the respite is brief; within seconds, more flood in from the street.

The Ranger quite sensibly bars the doors, but this does not deter them; they simply pass through the doors and walls. Halfway through this new battle, a group of silvers enters, and soon the golds are crushed. The silvers begin streaming out into the street, only to be replaced by more golds and silvers spilling their battle into the inn. The Druid drinks a potion of Invisibility to Undead, and politely steps around the combatants to check outside.

Where he finds the streets choked with battle, a roiling sea of gold and sliver clashing as far as the eye can see. When he returns to inform the rest of the party, they quickly return to their favorite tactic whenever things get tough: bailing. The Wizard Dimension Doors them to the street (GM note: my world only has short-range teleport spells), the whole party quaffs down potions, and they flee the city for the safety of the dark, quiet countryside.

In the morning they stroll back into the once-again quiescent city, and immediately deduce that the entire performance will be repeated every night. (GM note: the GM forgot they have had prior experience with ghosts, specifically, their first set of adventures.) The Bard recalls ancient tales of a King and Minister, a potion of immortality, and a tragedy; armed with this background, hey seek out the heart of the city, trying to find the key that will release the ghosts from their cycle.

What they find is a barren empty castle, with one hundred magic swords hanging in the extensive barracks. There are virtually no other objects of value to be found, but this clue does not dissuade the Barbarian, who promptly gathers this arsenal into his magic knapsack. Meanwhile, the rest of the party is investigating a simple sewer grate in the middle of the courtyard, as the Bard has deduced that this grate once held a statue of some significance. Why was a piece of art replaced with a bit of plumbing?

As the sun goes down, the grate begins to display mystical properties; but this is quickly superseded by the appearance of one hundred angry ghost knights mounted on ghost horses and bearing the one and only normal weapon the party still fears: lances.

The Bard quickly intervenes and uses his epically powerful smooth-talking to negotiate a total surrender: the party agrees to return the magic swords and once again bail. They flee the town and camp under the stars.

On their third day in the city, they wait till nightfall in the castle, certain that the ghosts will have totally reset. While the Bard (futilely) attempts to talk the knights into joining the battle in the streets, mostly to see if it will have any impact on the nightly ritual, the Cleric and Wizard examine the grate. With a few good Spellcraft rolls and a little inspired guessing, they decipher the ritual that will disarm its McGuffin level of enchantment. However, they also determine that doing so will instantly trigger the knights into a full-on attack, and the ghostly nature of their foe means there will be no way to avoid a plethora of lance attacks (no Entangle this time, and in fact the knights won't even be hindered by each other). This is such a potent advantage that the Wizard suggests plane-shifting the party to the Ethereal plane, where at least the knights would have to abide by normal density.

While this is going on, another group of adventurers appear. The Spectators, as they call themselves, are clearly not up to the party's level, but neither are they low-level chumps. Their wizard claims to have memorized a map to the catacombs beneath the grate, but they have so far been held back by the enchantment. When the Ranger asks them why they want to go into the catacombs, they patiently explain that the castle treasury is bone-dry, and therefore, logic dictates that the gold must be hidden elsewhere. Behind the mystical magical seal is the obvious place.

The parties soon come to an agreement to split the treasury fifty-fifty. Worried about betrayal, the two clerics make a solemn promise: "I won't backstab you, and you won't backstab me." As they are both Lawful, they know they can at least trust the letter of this deal, even while clearly both parties are plotting to gain the advantage somehow.

Much discussion is had over how to deal with the horde of knights while someone does the seven-round ritual to open the grate. They agree to meet at sundown again tomorrow, prepared and ready, and once again feck off to the country to wait for dawn.

The next day, however, the spell-casters determine that the grate is only one-way: it does not actually bar anyone from entering, merely from leaving. In an act of supreme self-confidence they assume that there will be some way to disable the gate from the other side, and decide to enter the catacombs on their own, committing their fate to their skill and pussiance (and the Wizard's pocket portal that will let them rest and regain spells, while their Rings of Sustenance mean they will never starve).

Even so, they hedge their bets: the Bard leaves a note for the Spectators explaining that they've cancelled the deal, and as payment for breaking the contract, describes the ritual necessary to break the enchantment.

At the mouth of the grate, they find a clue: half a broken tile, containing two names. This tells them they are on the right path, even if they don't know what it means.

Now they descend into the depths of the tunnels, passing niches of bones in a winding, random, and ancient series of passages. Periodically shadows spring from the walls, floor, and ceiling to attack them; the damage is trivial, but the statistic drain begins to add up. The Barbarian is reduced to mewling weakness and has to be patched up by the Cleric; the Druid, on the other hand, drinks a potion, and thereafter simply observes the rest of the party fighting for their lives. The Barbarian evades several deadly traps because of course he does, and thanks to the Ranger's sense of direction, they soon come to the heart of the lair.

Here the Druid convinces everyone else to also consume potions of Invisibility to Undead, and then the party creeps into the main room.

In the center of the room a kingly ghost stands, his shoulders weighted under immense grief. A magic circle surrounds him, and the party must now choose: is the king the source of the curse, or its chief victim?

The Barbarian tosses a pebble at the circle, intent on breaking its integrity: he has concluded that the king should be freed. He earns a shout of hissing rate: the Minister, once the king's lover and now a powerful lich, hiding in the room invisibly, due to her spells and skills and magic items.

Unfortunately, the party is also invisible to her and her army of shadows. What follows is less a battle and more a game of hide-and-seek. The lich casts Cloudkill; the party scatters. In their flight some of them make enough noise to trigger attacks in their area, most of which miss. Spot and Hide and Move Silently rolls get thrown around the table, amounting to a whole lot of nothing.

Then the Cleric has had enough. He rebukes the shadows, disintegrating a swath of the lessers. Now the combat begins in earnest: the lich is marked out by magic and subject to a wealth of attacks, while the Barbarian bounces her own assaults with his rage-induced Spell Resistance. The Wizard and Cleric both then cast Dispel Magic, and as usual, manage to destroy her two greatest layers of defense. The Druid turns into a bear, charges her, and tears her to bits in practically a single round. Truly these heroes have the luck of the gods.

Meanwhile, the king's ghost has marched out of the room to the surface, destroying the grate enchantment on his way. The Ranger takes the party back the way they came, and the Bard guesses which ancient estate they should start searching in. Soon enough they find the king's ghost standing in an overgrown vineyard, next to the ruins of a shed. At his feet is the other half of the tile. A simple Mending spell from the Cleric joins them together again. The sky flickers; the king begins to fade, and by morning it is clear the lich's phylactery has been destroyed and the curse lifted.

The party returns to the castle, the Barbarian intent on gathering his army of magic swords; and the party wonders now what threats remain to their peaceful rule, after having destroyed three entire neighboring realms of monsters.

World of Prime: Campaign Journal #52

The Kingdom of Night, fin

The party gets the ministers on the porch yelling back and forth with the crowd in the street, with half the party behind one group and half behind the other, until finally fireworks erupt. One random roll for initiative ruins it all; the crowd wins, and rushes forward, causing the Minister's fireball to not hit the Wizard in the rear of the crowd, leaving him free to fireball the Ministers. After that much damage in the first round, the battle is already half finished. The entire affair ends in the few rounds it takes for Morpheus to show up.

And when he does, a well-placed and lucky Dispel Magic robs him of his best defense: the repulsion field that kept the Barbarian at bay. Absent that, the Barbarian simply ignores the Displacement effect meant to deflect half of all attacks, and chops Morpheus into bits in practically a single round.

The Bard spends the entire battle activating the Disk of the Sun, and complains about it bitterly for weeks afterwards. Even though the light cuts through the darkness, catching the gaseous vampires as they slowly flee to their graves, obliterating them utterly - it just wasn't glorious to spend ten rounds reciting ancient prayers while everyone else was slinging spells and swinging swords.

The party spends the rest of the day dispelling all of the darkness, and then uses magic to dredge the vampire's bodies out of the swamp. The reward is fantastic, and now the entire party has achieved the exalted 10th rank - the second royal rank, rendering them Powers in the world. However, the amount of magic gear is limited - a single Major item (a +5 Ring of Protection) is no longer sufficient to sate the greed of these roving brutes. They head back to Kek to return his borrowed artifact, wondering how much magic he has, or, failing that, where they can find a decent shop selling priceless artifacts off the rack.

World of Prime: Campaign Journal #51

The Kingdom of Night, redux 

Immediately upon entering the shroud of darkness around the city, the party encounters a shrieking mushroom plant. The Barbarian beats it like an accordion until it finally stops wheezing. Only moments later, six vampires materialize out of the mist.

The Herald and the Poet are back, very eager for more blood, and they have brought four friends with them. It appears discretion is not a vampiric skill, and the secret of the existence of humans is slowly widening. The confrontation does not go well, and within a few words has devolved into violence.

Now that there are six vaporous forms crawling across the mushroom moor, the party splits up, the better to track the lesser vampires to their lairs and end them before they respawn. The two Court members will appear at the swamp, giving the party a little more time.

The Ranger easily slips through the town, avoiding trouble; the Bard encounters curious vampires but soothes them with a clever lie; the Druid and Cleric manage to talk their way past a group out for a stroll; and the Barbarian rises to the diplomatic challenge and passes through town with no more than a friendly nod. Just kidding, the Barbarian starts a fight.

He manages to make it one-on-one until, of course, he gets hit; then the group he has encountered goes berserk. As they are the lowest ranks of the vampires, he destroys them all and makes his way to the swamp, where the rest of the party is waiting. After he explains that the party now has four more vampires that need to be staked before respawning, the ministers come out of the swamp. The Bard convinces them to help reduce the pool of blood-sharing monsters, and the party once again splits up, but this time with vampiric guides for the Barbarian, to break into mansions and dust noble monsters.

But rumor spreads faster than blood, and a crowd of vampires is now waiting for them. The Bard sparks the crowd to a class-based rebellion, leading them en-mass to the Minister of Architecture, where the party has agreed to meet back up with the Ministers of Poetry and Heraldry.

The party's complex plan: convince the proletariat to battle the bourgeoisie, and leap in at the last second to finish them all off before royalty arrives, giving themselves enough time to unveil the Disc of the Sun.

World of Prime: Campaign Journal #50

 The City of Eternal Twilight

Traveling east, the party unexpectedly encounters desert. The Ranger and Druid recognize this as somehow unnatural, though there is no magic involved. After a few more miles, the source becomes evident: a deep trench is cut into the ground, draining the local water table. The trench stretches east for as far as the eye can see; at its mouth is a construction crew busily extending it further west.

The crew consists of men wrapped in white against the desert sun, two large self-propelled animated cranes, and a massive stone golem. When the party cautiously approaches, one of the men rushes out to block them, holding a staff ending in a flat hexagonal plate, and shoos them a safe distance away from the ongoing construction. At this range they realize the man is dead and mummified.

Uncharacteristically, the party decides not to start a fight. Instead, they follow the trench east. The water gradually gets deeper and faster as the land slopes down; the artifical drought around them becomes older and older, revealing that the crew has been working for several hundred years. Eventually the canal flows into a gigantic bronze portcullis, set into a high wall surrounding a massive city several miles wide. From the height of the slope they can see at least two interior rings of walls, implying the city has been built up for centuries.

But as they approach the city, it becomes clear it is virtually uninhabited. They evade a patrol of mummys and scale the wall at a deserted spot. On the other side are huge stone buildings, some six stories tall, that should be apartments or shops or theaters but are instead simply empty stone structures. Nothing travels the streets, save for the rare patrol of mummified minotaurs in blue hats, or even rarer, a construction crew building even more unused buildings. Inside some of the apartments are stacks of corpses of indefinite age, both human and minotaur.

At the center of the city lies a pyramid, clearly the source of answers to this mystery. Even more appealing: on top of the pyramid is a glowing light so bright that even when the sun goes down the city is bathed in twilight. This must be the recently fabled Disk of the New Sun.

Upon approaching the pyramid, the party is intercepted by a patrol that seems to be looking for them. They allow the patrol to shepherd them into the pyramid, through its winding corridors, and into the presence of the ruler of the city: the mad, mummified priest of Kek.

This high-ranking priest has been dead so long that he appears to think he is Kek, God of Twilight. The party accepts his self-identity, since they are after all models of polite behavior. Kek is not at all unfriendly, despite being somewhat unhinged, and appears to enjoy talking to people who are not silent robotic construction machines. Kek very quickly gives away all his secrets: the giant pool underneath his pyramid that all four trenches (east, west, north, and south) drain into, the portal that transports the water directly to the surface of the sun, and his epic quest to dump enough water on the fire of the sun that it is modulated to permanent twilight instead of harsh daylight and deep nighttime.

The party does not actually know how the sun works, so they are not prepared to dispute his calculations. Instead, they ask if they could borrow his night-light for a bit so as to deal with some vampires.

Kek has a low opinion of vampires in general and the Kingdom of Night in particular, so he is amenable. However, according the Law of Balance, the party must do something for him in exchange. He suggests that the annual tribute of tael from one of his minor client states to the south has been subject to depredation by a nest of Nagas. If the party could exterminate his problem, then he could lend them the means to exterminate their problem. This seems like a good deal, apart from the part where Kek seems largely unable to distinguish between lengths of time like hours, days, and years.

The party joins the procession south, which is essentially just another construction gang. Along the way they are indeed attacked by Naga bandits who remarkably have the ability to neutralize the stone golem by enclosing it in a force cage. This works equally well against the Barbarian, much to his dismay, but the party defeats the bandits and easily catches back up to the caravan.

Eventually they arrive at a small primitive human kingdom and witness the tribute. The village's dead for the year are reverently loaded onto the wagons, to be transported to the Eternal City where they will be reanimated and live in luxury according to their good deeds in this village. The party, remembering the stacks of dusty corpses, chooses to keep quiet, as little good can come from destroying the villager's hopes, and after all, Kek is not particularly oppressing them, taking only the usual overlord's tax of tael.

The villagers are well aware of the Nagas, and even trade with them, so it is easy to obtain a guide to the nest. Once there, the party has little difficulty extirpating the nest, despite their force cages, unusual cold spells, and charmed minotaur guards.

Returning to Kek, they hold him to his bargain, and obtain the Disk of the New Sun for the next one hundred days. Now they march west again, determined to destroy the immediate threat of Morpheus and his plans to return to the world. Foiling the mad Kek's quest to drain the sea and turn all the land into desert and the sun into twilight will have to wait; fortunately, that threat will require another thousand years to be really dangerous.

World of Prime: Campaign Journal #49

The Kingdom of Night (formerly known as the Kingdom of Blood)

There is some downside to old maps; they are not always up to date on the current political situation. In this case it turns out that the old Kingdom of Blood has redefined itself as the Kingdom of Night, a name more fitting to a epic empire.

The party travels west, in search of this mysterious realm, and finds an epic mystery: a lake of darkness in the middle of the day. While the darkness is only 30' high, it stretches across two full miles.

As usual, the party approaches this terrifying encounter with all due caution, conducting tests and examinations while creeping around the border. As usual, the Barbarian eventually runs out of patience and simply steps into the darkness.

When nothing instantly bad happens, the Cleric wraps a rope around himself, steps inside, and immediately trips and falls to the ground, lightly bruising his nose. Meanwhile the Bard begins a remote dredging operation to find whatever magic item is producing the darkness, but turns up only dirt and rocks and mushrooms.

Once the party is convinced they will not be instantly consumed, they enter the darkness, relying on a high-level light spell as their lightstones are suppressed by the darkness. Their first encounter is with a predator mushroom that poisons the Cleric but offers no real resistance to heroes of this rank.

Surrounded in a bubble of dim light that extends only 30' from their caster, they walk through a forest of mushrooms and into a city of shabby mansions. These once grand buildings have slowly decayed over the years, though several of them seem to have undergone some magical repair. Approaching one such house, they sensibly knock, only to be invited in by the house's only occupant: the lady Kairos, an attractive and talkative noblewoman.

She seems to have assumed they are new residents, and excitedly seeks to flatter them into joining her particular side in some obscure gossip competition against several other members of the city. She offers them food and drink, which turn out to be tael-infused mushrooms and a bottle of blood. After considering the total lack of mirrors in the house, and the fact that the lady seems utterly unconcerned with the total darkness of the city, they provisionally classify her as a vampire.

Eventually the Ranger induces the woman to discuss something substantive about local politics. She reveals that there will be a speech by the local ruler tomorrow, and invites them to stay at her house until then. The party accepts, and beds down in a dusty guestroom. The Bard, however, sneaks out to engage in further surveillance, and after several strenuous hours of effort returns just before dawn with confirmation the lady is indeed cold to the touch despite the warmth of her affections, just as one would suspect of a creature of undeath.

The speech occurs in the middle of a swamp of scrubby mushroom bushes, attended by approximately thirty old-fashioned but well-dressed lords and ladies. The ruler, Morpheus, gives an impassioned speech about the need to change current policy and begin looking outside the city's borders. Surprisingly for a nest of hungry vampires, the suggestion is not well-received.

Afterwards, Lady Kairos introduces them to the Minister of Heraldry. This kingdom has rather a larger court than most, with more than just the five traditional roles; it appears that Morpheus has been slowing adding to his court over the years, and the city's only real politics is over who gets to join the court next. They also learn the chief benefit of being in the court is being buried in the vast swamp, rendering the vampire's greatest weakness (its inert corpse) moot.

The Minister is also interested in recruiting them to her faction, as the support of the majority is the best method for getting elevated to the court. She takes them back to her mansion and enters their names into the book of residents, capturing them as a party under the noble leadership of the Barbarian (who spends an inordinate amount of time inventing his heraldic device.

The Bard does some information gathering and finds out that the reason the city is cut off from the rest of the world is that Morpheus is hiding from his nemesis, using the typical undead tactic of simply waiting for the foe to die of old age. This leads the party to the Minister of Poetry, who reveals enough details that the party realizes Morpheus' ancient foe is... Rialto. (See: The City of Tomorrow) The Bard also uncovers a clue to a weapon that the kingdom fears, hidden in a piece of bad poetry about the City of Eternal Twilight.

The party does not disclose that Rialto is now a chunk of broken stone. Instead, they accompany the three ladies on a brief tour of the city, still under the impression that they are new residents. There aren't many sights to see, but one of the more outrageous is the Commissary, where a half-dozen trolls are trapped inside iron maidens and being continuously bled to feed the vampiric population. The trolls, after centuries of captivity and torment, are completely insane, and their howls of distress are heartbreaking even coming from monsters. When the commissary attendant, Lord Oberon, proudly offers the party a fresh glass, the Barbarian cannot conceal his disgust. This leads, with remarkable speed, to a duel, despite the Bard's attempt to smooth the waters.

The ladies are eager to make a public event of it, but the party decides less attention is better. Lord Oberon freely agrees to an immediate duel and draws his sword, acting with such cavalier disregard for his life that one suspects he does not value it. But of course, he won't stay dead for very long.

The Barbarian strikes with deadly speed, attempting to end the farce quickly. However, Oberon manages to survive the initial onslaught, and manages to deliver a minor cut before being dissipated into smoke by the Barbarian's greatsword.

The outcome, however, is not expected: as a drop of blood splashes onto the ground, the three vampire ladies completely vamp out. In an insane frenzy they pounce on the Barbarian, driven to madness by the scent of fresh human blood. He is drained of four levels before the party manages to destroy the fiends.

The party follows the mist-form of Oberon to his house and stake him upon revival. Then they return to Lady Kairo's mans, only to find her returned to sanity and able to refrain from immediately attacking again. Nonetheless, they smoke her again, and stake her corpse, putting a permanent end to her. Naturally they search the house for treasure, but nothing of consequence is found. So they set off for Oberon's mansion, on the theory that an even lower rank vampire might have better treasure.

They are intercepted there, however, buy the Minister of Poetry. She tells them to stop wasting time and hurry with her to the Minister of Heraldry, before he blabs about them to anyone else. When she finds out they've already permanently murdered Kairo and Oberon, she congratulates them on their smart strategy.

The Herald is equally unconcerned with the fate of her fellow vampires, instead focused on a strategy that will see her, and the Poet, and perhaps one or two select others, receiving regular donations of blood. After all, while one can survive on troll blood, it's hardly... living. The Herald thinks they can even include Morpheus in on their private dining club, promising the party ridiculous wealth and power if they go along.

The party trades on their generosity for more information, stalling for time. They are wise enough to know that this arrangement cannot last; in a city this small, with creatures this violent and powerful, the secret will eventually leak out and soon the party will find themselves taking the troll's place. They convince the Ministers to show them how the darkness is created.

The two ladies lead them to the edge of the darkness, where they observe the oldest minister, so ancient that even he has forgotten his own name and is known only as the Office of Night, casting an ancient and permanent version of a darkness spell. The Office is almost catatonic; after casting his spell he wanders off, oblivious to the audience. He has been doing this once a day for hundreds of years, gradually extending the borders of the kingdom.

Standing here, on the border, mere feet from ordinary night, the party loses its nerve. They send the Barbarian out of scent range to fill a wine bottle with blood, and use it to bribe the Ministers into keeping quiet for 24 hours, asserting that they're going to leave and come back with more victims. A transparent lie, but the vampires are so overcome by the mere sight of the bottle that they readily agree to anything.

The party retreats into the darkness, unwilling to stop moving until the sun comes creeping into the sky and protecting them from any pursuit. They decide that their best path is to seek out the City of Eternal Twilight, and investigate the mysterious artifact known (at least to poetic vampires) as the Disk of the New Sun.

World of Prime: Campaign Journal #48

 Rise of the Domain Lords, part III: Snakes!

The map is ancient, but the location of the Naga nest is newly inked. The party decides to start there first, and now heads south.

Walking through the brush, the Barb spots a dire boar. It ignores him. Offended, he intimidates it into fleeing. A few rounds later it returns with few friends, and a herd of boars charge into the party, doing tremendous damage. As is typical in these situations the Druid turns into a bear, but this time the reaction is unique: the boards go berserk, ignoring every other threat, to attack the Druid-bear. He is almost instantly driven to the ground. Luckily he de-transitions once unconscious, and the boars go back to attacking everyone else instead of savagely goring his unconscious and helpless body.

This battle is still in doubt when a wolf whistle calls the herd off. Carefully hiding behind a tree, the winter wolf Scar attempts to interest the party in his problems - namely, killing his brother Mustafa and his pack of Dire Bears so Scar can regain control of the wolf pack.

He finds no takers; instead, the Cleric tries to silence him and the Ranger tries to entangle him. He slips away into the forest, and while the Druid can scan and locate the boards, they decide that these small beans are no longer worth their time. They push on to the mountains and the lair of the Nagas.

First Lizard Battle

Entering the rocky hills they are challenged by a trio of harpies. The Bard countersings and the Wizard launches a fireball. Immediately the birds turn and run. But the party knows that the enemy knows they are coming.

Halfway up the mountain they encounter squads of lizardmen and harpies. Again the a firewall shapes the battlefield to their advantage, while the Barbarian does his usual destruction of squads, though the Druid and Ranger are somewhat more challenged by a handful of lizardmen with advanced ranks. The Cleric deals with the harpies with his arsenal of spiritual hammers.

Suddenly a naga appears from nowhere and blasts half the party with a lighting bolt. The Wizard immediately blinds her; on the next round she turns invisible and slithers away. The party finishes off the lizards on this side of the wall of fire, and when the fire goes out, the battlefield is silent again. The party decides to hole up in a Rope trick and wait for morning, ceding the initiative for a chance to restore spells.

Second Lizard Battle

The next day they advance unchallenged. Finding a mysterious tunnel entrance, they debate closing it up or exploring it, but settle for the Ranger putting an alarm on it so they will know if they are flanked.

Soon they are ambushed by a huge troop of lizards, along with a dozen harpies. Worse, two of the harpies are archers. Again the Wizard uses Wall of Fire to stop the lizard heroes firing at them from atop a cliff face, but the heroes just leap down and join the battle with axes.

And then the invisible nagas appear, casting lightning bolts and enfeebling rays.

The Bard sends several squads and a hero fleeing with Fear. He then dances through melee, freely inviting attacks of opportunity because his new Mobility feat makes him nigh-invincible from such attacks. Once he puts up mirror images, the harpies start dive-bombing him, since stripping his images away is the only useful thing they can do (at one point they dive-bomb the Druid-bear, but his reach allows him to catch one as they fly by and bite it in half; after this they avoid the beast). They even manage to nick the  Bard once or twice with their glaives.

The Barbarian destroys several squads, but then a half-dozen heroes surround him and administer a severe beating while a naga repeatedly fails to weaken him with a ray (missing four times in a row!).

The Ranger finds himself targeted by one of the harpy archers and almost killed - again. He shoots back, crippling her to the point where she spends the next few rounds drinking potions.

The other harpy archer is deploying her arrows against the biggest threat each turn. Everyone feels the sting of her arrows over the battle.

The Druid-bear holds the rear, where a group of lizard squads and heroes and a naga have tried to flank them, thanks to the aforementioned tunnel. He slowly chews through the squads and then destroys the naga in a single round, despite her magical defenses.

The Cleric sends out some hammers, but soon finds himself healing the wounded or restoring their strength. He also spends several rounds healing himself, having been caught in the path of one too many lightning bolts.

The Wizard attempts to blind one of the harpy archers. She responds by knocking him out. Once he is healed, he uses Soften Stone to destroy the arch that two nagas are perched atop, forcing them to retreat instead of attacking for a few rounds. When they do reappear, he blasts one with missiles, only to find it protected. It cripples him with a ray anyway.

Healed from that, the Wizard puts up mirror images, causing the harpies to swoop and dive on him, destroying his images but failing to do any damage to him. He stretches across a rock to rescue the beleaguered Ranger with a Displacement spell, but this exposes him to one of the lizardmen heroes, who abruptly cuts him in half! The first party member death has occurred.

The Ranger, wounded from his archery duel and surrounded by lizardman heroes, has been on the defensive. But with the Displacement providing him some protection, he returns to the battle, shooting the lizardman heroes in the face at point-blank range despite their best attacks.

One of the nagas that retreated now appears and catches several party members in a lightning bolt. The Druid-bear kills it, causing the harpy archer to shoot him into unconsciousness.

The Barbarian has, improbably, beaten down all of the heroes ganging up him. The naga hits him with a lightning bolt but his rage shrugs it off. He leaps on the rock she is perched on and attacks, but her Displacement nullifies his whirling blade. She finally lands a ray on him, making him weaker, but it is too little too late: he eventually gets through her defenses and destroys her.

Restored to consciousness by the Cleric, the Druid-bear kills another naga. The Wizard, Ranger, and Cleric combine their firepower and finally destroy the two harpy archers. The last enemy standing on the battlefield is the lizardman hero who has just slain the wizard; he is obliterated by a storm of arrows and blades while the remaining harpies flee, recognizing that the battle is lost.

A voice from a hidden naga calls out. Truce is offered; while the party has slaughtered many foes, the nagas warn they still have more to throw into battle. However, their losses have been heavy, and despite the damage inflicted on the party, victory is not guaranteed. They are willing to call a draw, splitting the treasure from the battlefield and offering the party information on a greater threat to humankind.

The party is divided, some wanting to push on and end the threat; but the loss of the wizard has sobered the rest. They accept the truce. The nagas then provide the party with a map that mirrors the one they have, warning them that an ancient and terrible kingdom of vampires that has been dormant for centuries has now awoken. While the vampires are enemies of all living things, humans are their food source: human realms will be prime targets of this new threat.

The party, having just recently destroyed a vampire invasion and already in possession of a map to the Kingdom of Blood, are not impressed, but a deal’s a deal. They collect their share of the tael and the two halves of their wizard and retreat. The Cleric will soon restore the Wizard to life and as he was the lowest level, restoring his lost rank will not be unduly onerous.

The party has negotiated its way out of the last three major encounters, and yet still seems determined to throw itself against the unknown might of the mysterious Kingdom of Blood. Of what stuff are heroes made!