Session 1

A fresh dawn rises on a new generation of heroes, adventurers, and villains in the land of Serulea (more context in other docs). On this dawn in particular, four unknown strangers arrive in Old Byron, an idyllic cottage town near the capital, at the behest of a famous archmage that none of them had ever met in order to celebrate a protégé that they had never heard of. These four, who arrived separately, were named:

• Irene Stengard, a mysterious human warrior from the West who seemed to harbor a not-so-hidden grudge against magic
• Harlan Ceisser, another human from the West, but one who grew up in the capital city as a holy paladin of El
• Vireya, a mysterious and fiery Tiefling from the Northern wilds, who spent both her childhood and adult life exploring ruins and magical groves
• Lorien Brightquill, a notable musician and orator in the Arcane Collegium who became ostracized after speaking out about his missing friend

Upon entering the town, a tumultuous thunderstorm began, trapping everyone inside for the day. Laying down to sleep, Irene experienced a strange nightmare, in which she explored a shadowy dreamscape with three other translucent figures. Upon finding a mysterious, iridescent woman, the four battled an evil presence to protect her. Harlan, even as a shadow, managed to mog the evil presence into hesitation, opening the chance for Irene and Vireya to strike lethal blows.

Before they could reconvene with the woman, a massive, god-like figure swirled out of the shadows, calling herself Mortholme, the Queen of Dreams. Before the fighters could prepare, she swallowed the group within a large black flower. Irene woke with a start, a headache, and dismayed to see that the storm had not let up. Regardless, the party began at dusk, so she had no choice but to set off towards Attwen Manor.

As she traversed the few miles between the town and Archmage Ullic’s estate, the storm soaked her to the bone, the wind ruined her hair, and the mud stained her clothes. Within a few minutes, her mood was lower than it had been even after her nightmare. But as she finally reached her destination, the storm cleared, and she got a true picture of the majesty she was approaching. The river gurgled gently, the animals were quietly enjoying the surrounding nature, and the manor shone brightly in the setting sun. Irene got the distinct feeling that this was the start of something Glorious.

As she knocked on the door, a distinct tinkling of bells rang through the mansion. An elderly butler named Bendel greeted her at the door and invited her inside. As she entered, a magical doormat cleaned and dried her clothes within seconds, buoying her mood further. Bendel walked Irene into the next room, explaining that only one more guest was due to arrive. As they entered, a dimensional corruption warped everyone’s consciousness for the better part of an hour. During this phase of instability, Irene attempted to stuff her face with as much food as possible.

Once they returned, Irene listened as a young mage named Alkamer boasted to three young women about his exploits fighting against The Ascendancy, and showing off some of his prizes: an Amulet of Suggestion, an anti-magic dagger named Spellrender, and an empty case where his Black CrystaL Tiara had been removed for further study by the archmage. Irene also noticed that one of the young women was one of the strangers she had fought with in her dream. Vireya, disgusted with Alkamer’s chauvinistic tendencies, decided to follow Irene and Bendel as they continued into the dining room.

In the dining room, the pair of women spotted another fighter from their shared dream: Harlan was seated at the long banquet table listening passively to a Halfling noble espouse fiery rhetoric about the Verdant Eclipse. Mogging this halfling as he mogged the evil presence in his dream, Harlan successfully avoided taking a controversial stance. Irene and Vireya immediately cornered the paladin, insisting he accompany them as they explore the rest of the mansion. Bendel explained that the guests were free to wander the estate and listen to a performance by Stradavon, an Awakened Tree bard, in the eastern wing.

The group of three pointedly ignored a sad-looking elf noblewoman as they exited the west wing into a central garden. Harlan lagged behind the girls as he struck up a conversation with Mayor Montgomery, a kind elderly figure gazing at a large statue at the center of the garden. The new mayor explained that he had taken over authority of Old Byron after the previous mayor had been run out on charges of tax evasion and embezzlement. Montgomery also implied that he had some unsavory business with Archmage Ullic, but was as confused as our heroes as to why he was invited to the banquet.

Meanwhile, the two women cornered another soul in the garden, a handsome half-elf lightly strumming a lyre. Lorien took the pestering in stride, joining to form a full party of four almost immediately. The group’s first act as an official party was to surround a Tiefling noble admiring the garden’s rose, and tell him to admire something else in another place. Offended, he retreated to the eastern wing to listen to Stradavon. As the group then took their turn looking at the plaza’s statue, Irene read a plaque describing the great acts of the folk hero Mute, who helped tame the lands of Serulea before it was settled.

The group was struck by intense hunger pangs (despite Irene’s hoarding a few rooms before), and so the four sprinted past the crowd gathering in front of the bard to follow their noses to the manor’s kitchen. Upon entering, Chef Schenler, a portly dwarf, screamed at them, banished them, and locked the door behind them. After getting stuck in the bathroom together, the four then explored Schenler’s quarters, judging his taste in decoration and furniture. Irene, after digging through some of his personal belongings, serendipitously discovered a cracked, purple crystal, darkened so much that it appeared black.

Returning to the dining hall, Irene and Vireya attempted to woo Lady Gwendolyn, the elven noblewoman from before. She explained that her heart still belonged to Archmage Ullic despite him breaking their betrothal many years ago. She also explained that he had been a part of many archeological expeditions, including one to a northern druidic temple, after which he brought back the broken crystal and Schenler as a child. As Gwendolyn lamented her position, Irene assured her that was still quite young and fertile. Vireya then asserted, more importantly, that the four of them remained both petite and breedable. And thus, their adventuring team was named.

Team YFPB: Young, Fertile, Petite, and Breedable. Eventually, the group made their way back to the western wing, and attempted to speak to Stradavon, who revealed that the Archmage was actually his creator. While attempting to showcase his musical talent, Stradavon accidentally destroyed the priceless harp that was originally going to be part of the performance. Despite this, the Awakened Tree managed to form a flute and an organ out of his own limbs, and performed masterfully.

As the performance began winding down, the tinkling of bells resounded once again through the manor. The final guest, Justicar Wargreaves, had arrived. As the guests took their seats, Bendel introduced the Justicar as a traveling judge and loyal community member of the region. Lorien, who took an immediate liking to the dragonborn, stood between him and his seat in order to talk to him more. Before the conversation could turn any deeper than professional, however, Bendel burst back into the dining room, proclaiming that the Archmage was dead!

YFPB rushed upstairs to the floor previously inaccessible. They started with Alkamer’s room, noticing that the decorations were surprisingly cheap given his previous boasting. Harlen discovered a series of writing implements, with fresh ink but blank paper. Irene attempted a rubbing to ascertain what had been written before it, but was only able to concretely see the words “Bendel”, “Alkamer” and “Ullic”. As they exited the room onto the upper veranda, they noticed that the speartip of the Statue of Mute was sparkling. Thinking nothing more of it at the time, they moved on. This veranda proved quite dangerous, however, as several members of YFPB became stuck, floating outside the walls of the walkway. Luckily, a mysterious force ushered them into the next room without further issue.

Reaching the dais in the room to the north of the veranda, the group met Justicar Wargreaves again, setting up a ritual circle to extract a confession out of anyone suspicious. After the Justicar directed them to the Archmage’s bedroom, the four discovered a grisly scene. They also discovered that not one of them was capable of analyzing the body with any amount of ability more than simply confirming that he was, in fact, dead. They did notice a single massive stab wound in his chest, and that the wards in his room had been disabled.

Next came the Archmage’s study and his library, from which Irene and Lorien were able to find diary entries dealing with the Archmage’s journey to the northwestern temple in an attempt to stop the Verdant Eclipse from using a Godshard as a weapon. The middle entry was never found, but the first and third entries painted enough of a picture that YFPB felt confident that the crystal Irene had found was this damaged Godshard, and that the Archmage was responsible for stealing both it and Schenler from the destroyed temple. Lorien also managed to miraculously find a locked ledger book hidden among the piles of disorganized papers. Harlan, in a feat of martial excellence, managed to smash the lock without damaging the book, which detailed the severe debts owed by the Archmage to the town of Old Byron.

Entering the next room, YFPB discovered Alkamer’s trophy room, filled with supposed exploits of battles against the Ascendancy: a breastplate that was once a giant’s ring, an Orb of Memory Erasure, and two ram’s horns that could be used to communicate. Nearby, the group ransacked the Archmage’s laboratory, discovering notes about Ullic’s experiments on the Godshard and successful revitalization of its power in another, artificial crystal. Irene discovered a black tiara, which began whispering to her as she approached. The spirit inside begged her to release him by sundering the tiara, but before she could touch it to save for later, Vireya ran over and attempted to tuck the tiara between her breasts.

However, as she grabbed it, the spirit began possessing her body. Thinking fast, Irene and Harlan acted to restrain Vierya’s body, knocking her against the wall and causing her to drop the tiara. Upon breaking, the spirit within the tiara manifested and attempted to escape. After several failed attacks (and a mental rebuffing of Lorien’s mockeries), the spirit managed to wound Irene and make it to the doorway. Luckily, a strong swing by Harlan and an eldritch blast from Vireya made quick work of the spirit, leaving behind a purified (and valuable) crystal shard.

Finishing their upstairs investigation, Harlan discovered Bendel’s quarters and his alchemy station, from which he believed the butler to be making vials of delicious cherry juice. Vireya scolded him, telling him that it was obviously some sort of potion - but of what kind, she also couldn’t tell. It took a third member, Irene, to posit that the glowing red potions were likely of the healing variety. Two finished vials, one labeled with a black band and the other white, made their way into Harlan’s pocket (to be forgotten for a long while).

Returning downstairs, the group bumped into Montgomery, Bendel, and Alkamer, the last of which was extremely distressed to find out that Vireya had released the spirit inside the tiara. Reaching the kitchen, Lorien interrogated Schenler, who claimed to have been working during the entire party and was not at all upset at the Archmage’s death due to his involvement in Schenler’s childhood temple being destroyed. After attempting to break into his cellar, Schenler let the group downstairs before leaving the first floor entirely. YFPB noticed that one of the knives was missing from the chef’s table set, and that he had a list of ingredients deemed “safe” for bland taste buds.

In the cellar, Lorien was immediately drawn to a massive cage in a shadowed corner where he noticed that the lock holding back the manticore inside was undone. His quick reactions prevented an immediate mauling, but the fight promised to be dangerous. After Vireya attacked the beast from behind, it retaliated with a massively damaging tail swing that knocked the tiefling unconscious in a single blow. The rest of the party immediately engaged in distraction and kiting tactics, with Lorien creating an illusion of another voice and Irene running around the corner. It was at this time that something moved within Harlan’s bag, but he was too distracted by the fight to check.

After another of Lorien’s mental attacks was rebuffed (a pattern often repeated that night), Irene in desperation shot the manticore with an eldritch blast of her own, shocking her party members who believed her to be a simple fighter. During this distraction, Harlan manages to heal Vireya, who in anger blasts the manticore again. What followed was a series of hit and run tactics by YFPB to great success; Lorien even managed to land a mental attack that left the manticore ashamed of his breed. The success of this attack was instrumental in Vireya’s continued survival: in its anger, the manticore left itself open to a crunching blow from Harlan which prevented it from fully reaching and clawing the injured woman. The group lasted long enough that Alkamer arrived from the stairs, blasting the manticore with two green firebolts that left its corpse smoldering.

After some heated back-and-forth, the group discovered a small room with a cage containing two zombies. These zombies, however, seemed strange, with one appearing disease and plague-ridden, and the other magically animated. They thought no more about this, though, as the reverberations of an explosion shook the manor. The group rushed upstairs to find Schenler staring forlornly at the body of Ullic, and ushered them forward into the study. There, the group found the body of Montgomery and a mortally wounded Bendel, as well as a massive blood smear and large green scorch marks. Deciding not to expend resources to heal the poor butler, the group scoured the manor for Alkamer, who they knew had been traversing the manor with the pair of old men.

After searching the entire manor, YFPB ended up right where they started: behind a door in the cellar that had originally been magically sealed, they found a naked Alkamer inside of a rusty metal cage. He explained that the trio was attempting to break into the Archmage’s safe to pay back his debt to the town. His story didn’t quite line up, but the group was tired. After interrogating him thoroughly, the team decided to release the mage despite not trusting his story.

It was at this time that the final bells of dawn began to toll, and the group headed upstairs to meet the Justicar for the final accusations. The Justicar had drawn a Zone of Truth, but it was capable of testing only one person successfully. At this point, as dawn approached, the party had been up for too long without sleep and with too much stress, so their brains were fried. They decided not to attempt to breach the safe (which, unbeknownst to them, Alkamer had broken into mundanely before magically killing Montgomery and Bendel in order to switch the Archmage’s real will with one of his own writing), and simply begin the final accusations.

Irene chose Schenler for the interrogation, both because he appeared to have more motive and because he was less likely to resist the Zone of Truth. After the chef revealed under oath that he was a pacifist, the party finally believed his alibi. That is, until Schenler also revealed that he had a suspiciously long blackout in his memory before the party arrived, waking up with more blood on his apron than he had remembered previously. Hearing this, Irene officially accused Alkamer of murdering the Archmage. With less than stellar evidence, but with a defined means, motive, and opportunity, the Justicar decided to arrest Alkamer to await trial.

Alkamer resisted violently, blasting away the Justicar and beginning combat. Unfortunately for him, he was surrounded by several capable heroes and many more fodder-like nobles. Alkamer was immediately stabbed in the arm by Schenler, who forsook his pacifism to enact revenge on the mage who used the Amulet of Suggestion and Orb of Memory Erasure to force Schenler to do his dirty work. Harlan followed this by tackling Alkamer to the ground, and the Justicar, recovering quickly from the concussion, sliced with alacrity using his scaled katana. His blade struck true, and the arm Schenler had stabbed was cut clean off of Alkamer’s body.

Screaming in agony, the mage teleported to the other side of the room (scaring Gwendolyn, who had attempted to flee as the fighting started) and launched a massive green fireball at the center of the room. Only Lorien and Vireya managed to avoid the worst of the blast, taking minimal damage, while the others took the full attack. The explosion took down Harlan, Irene, Schenler, and several bystander nobles. After several nobles tried and failed to assist the heroes and attack Alkamer, the Justicar used Harlan’s single healing potion to restore him to consciousness (the disappearance of the other remained unremarked on). Stradavon did his part to heal Irene using his music, and the pair successfully returned to fray.

Lorien, after failing again to provoke any kind of mental anguish on his target, stabbed Alkamer in frustration, striking a clean but ultimately weak blow. Irritated, Alkamer teleported away again, but in his attempt to launch another fireball realized he was out of third level spell slots, which ended his turn early. Harlan, Lorien, the Justicar, Irene, and Vireya landed successful attacks, bringing Alkamer to his knees. Before he could be finished, he unleashed a lower-level lightning bolt, frying several more bystanders and nearly taking down Harlan and the Justicar. Proclaiming his now obviously false innocence, he invoked his war record.

Irene, restored to life and angry, felt Alkamer’s comments touch a part of her memories she desired to uncover, but was unable to parse their meaning. She knew only that he was lying about fighting giants, because the Ascendancy would never use magical creatures in their army. With her final eldritch blast connecting, Alkamer was weakened enough for Wargreaves to slam him against a wall and attach a magic-dampening collar to him. Dismembered, blooded, and now magicless, Alkamer was officially defeated. The members of YFPB sighed in relief; they were beyond exhausted and were barely conscious themselves.

As the manor faded in the rising sunlight, corpses and magical artifacts rained from the manor onto the hillside. Our heroes, leaning on each other, weakened but jubilant, watched the sun rise above the green valley. The Justicar praised their detective efforts, and promised to reward them when he could. YFPB’s first foray into adventuring may not have earned them much money or strength, but it most certainly earned them a bit of glory.