Tonight i started a new campaign until my players Jake and Nikki come back to play with us. The players are Steffie the Dark Elf, Brandon the Aarakocra, Shawn the Fire Genasi, and Lucas the Half-Orc.
The players awoke naked and chained to a wall, a six armed creature eating other prisoners alive. The Drow girl immediately slipped out of the chains and hid in the shadows. The Aarakocra man ripped the chains out of the wall with his powerful wings. The Fire Genasi also broke the chains. The Half-Orc sliced his wrist up on the chains. The creature turned around to attack and the Drow lept upon its back and it fell to the ground. She began beating is skull in with a chipped brick. The Fire Genasi shot an Eldritch Blast of black fire, the same color as his own fire, and the Aarakocra reduced the creature to a rotted corpse. After this they freed the Half-Orc and introduced themselves. The Aarakocra was a War Cleric named Hai Yiu and had the coloration of a Golden Eagle. The Half-Orc was a Fighter named Thardoc and was covered in tattoos, scars, and only had one eye. The Fire Genasi was a Great Old Ones Warlock that went by Professor Ignis. The Drow was a Rogue named Karis. They found their stuff and the Aarakocra’s camel in the next room but other than that had no memory of anything except vague flashes.
As they continued their escape they discovered a large long hallway with identical rooms from the one they left for as far as they could see. They picked a direction and went until they found a tunnel spiraling upwards. On the next level were larger rooms just like their prison rooms but scaled up for giants or other creatures of that size. They continued up and found even bigger rooms, they quickly moved up again into a maze. Exploring the maze they encountered a large bipedal gator-like creature that my players named a Deathclaw and my mental image switch to this immediately. The Deathclaw was eating it’s latest victim, a giant, and Karis sneak attacked it. The fight was tough and the Deathclaw tougher. Karis shot arrows through its head, Thardoc disembowled it, and the magic users cast spells but it kept at them for a good while. After this fight they continued on.
The party then encountered a makeshift wall in the maze with a gate. After knocking on it, a voiced asked, “who goes there!” Answering that they weren’t here to murder everyone the kindly Koa-Toa let them into the small community. They met several odd characters and learned some mysteries. They met a female Centaur Healer, a Grey dwarf smith, a kenku hooker, a gnome Trader, and Squigglyface the Mind Flayer leader of the town. They also learned that no one ages on this plane, no one has to eat or drink and in fact the town was founded by Squigglyface well over 15000 years ago. A more disturbing fact was that everyone started down in the cells and have no memories of anything past that. Also, it is rumored that people who reach the top of the labyrinth go mad from what they discover. After some drinking and sleeping the party sets off again.
They got directions to the staircase up and ascended up the 100 foot climb into a cave system. This semi natural looking Cave system glowed a slight blue tint. As they tried to escape they noticed some movement. Suddenly they discovered they were being stalked by a giant spider! A spider that could blink out of existence temporarily. They ran at first but when the spider started throwing rocks at them Thardoc whirled around and charged it. The party actually quite quickly dissected this spider and continued on. They then found light, a vertical shaft filled with spiderwebs, about 200 feet high. Through a series of ropes and pulley systems they got themselves AND THE CAMEL up the shaft, and they only had to fight off a spider swarm once. Once above ground they realized that they were in a ruined city and ash was everywhere. Hai flew up to see the two armies, red versus blue, converging on the city, siege weapons and dragons coming to bear. They found a stable of neglected horses and rushed or if the city barely escaping with their skins intact with the arrows, rocks, dragon fire, and buildings raining down on them. They traveled off into the wasteland and came across a city with blue pennants. Ruled by the blue army.
They were taken in cleaned up and presented to the General. The General was a harsh and angry Drow woman whom the players walked in on her yelling at some underlings who had displeased her. Apparently her army had won the ruined city but lost it to a horde of giant spiders and carrion crawlers. She then solicited the party to extract an undercover agent from the enemy’s city. After some arguing about the morality of war from Professor Ignis and Hai arguing in favor of war as a means, it was revealed by the General that the war started 3000 years ago over her and the other General fighting over an amulet they had found. It slowly escalated to the point where none could stop the machine of war and hate. The party ran off and Karis snuck into the chamber of the Half-Orc secret agent and stealthily extracted him while the rest of the party lead an all out assault on the front gates as a distraction. They also dressed Thardoc as the agent so that the enemy thought it was a full on kidnapping that they were perpetrating. The party was wildly successful and returned to the blue city to a great feast and grand rewards! And that’s where we ended this session.
Thanks for reading this post. I’ll be back soon with some more from this setting and a few more from Godsend after that we may be switching campaigns, i know, not the first time I’ve said this but we may be losing 2 players for a few months so we’ll see as time goes on.
Thanks again everyone,
Dm Chris
Dungeons and Great Tulu 