Don’t Know

Early Game

One of the tall tales told by the sailors at the Long Walk was of a marauding reaver king who invoked the ire of the sea god, who in turn brought down a wave so mighty that it smashed the reaver’s fleet to splinters and buried him in the rubble of his own castle.   Buried so they say.. along with all the treasure he had taken from raiding richer ports... and while the story is likely exaggerated... it wouldn’t hurt to go take a look, would it?

Strange rumours trickle in from the hinterlands, odd folk on the roads, sightings of unnatural animals, talk of a cave where whispers of the past and imagined tomorrows dance. All of these threads will lead the party to a meeting with a potential mentor, an old lighthouse keeper who holds the mystery of the stars and stands against the cold cruelty of the void. Perhaps he can shed some illumination on the party’s current struggles

The star’s falling has caused chaos in the region’s capital: an arson spree, the baroness forcefully conscripting oracles,  sightings of a dragon out in the wilderness. Trekking along with a professional hunter, the party discover that they are not on the tale of some feral drake looking to move into new territory, but a full dragon who seems to be purposefully searching the region with the help of a masked rider.

As it turns out, the dragon and rider are travellers from the astral sea, pilgrims following an omen from the goddess of guidance and starlight. They followed the star across worlds until it landed in the barony, and was eventually misplaced by a hapless young man rounded up by the baroness’s agents shortly after becoming an accidental oracle and asking the party for help earlier on their travels. Reuniting the star with its chosen seekers grants the party a vision of the future, of an attack they will not have time to avert.

Mid Game

Hollowed out by eons of immortality and war, a clan of astral elves has ripped open a portal and begun raiding the original port city the party started their adventure in, snapping up goods and taking hostages. Here is a decision point: should the party rush to save the innocents before help can be raised, they will be overwhelmed, taken captive and hauled away to the raider’s stronghold. Should they rally their new allies and arrive in force, they will be too late, and will have to seek out another means of travelling beyond the reaches of the waking world.

In the latter option, the party will find themselves portalling to Lydestrum, a city of glass floating in an eternal gyre of mist and wind, and the hub of their outerworld adventures. Here they might begin their search for the pirates by seeking rumors at the alien filled docks, make an alliance with local powers by helping to wrangle some storm-tossed architecutre, or simply sign on to a spelljammer ship and begin to learn their space-legs.

The bright maiden Urania is not the only goddess at work among the stars, for as the party explore the city they hear the name and see the handiwork of Nyx, Mother of Primordial Darkness. Catching a night blessed thief is enough to earn the party Nyx’s attention, who decides to rope the party into a little wager involving her astronomic counterpart and the disaperance of a sacred lantern before an imporatant voyage.

After meeting an artisan who can make marvelous weapons out of light, the party end up getting snared in local politics after this new friend is kidnapped from their shop. The trail leads them into conflict with blackmarket dealers from the plane of exiles and getting mixed up with the glass city’s political powers. 

Tangling with the astral sea’s criminal element may have just paid off, as the party have managed to snag themsleves a star-chart pointing to what just might be the haul of a lifetime: The long abandoned manor of an archmage hidden in the vastness of the silver sea. What they find instead is a labyrinth of nightmare and splendour and fungus, which just might hold power and secrets that will aid them as the campaign closes.

One of the expeditions sailing out of the star port has its aim on discovering the much speculated origin of an eerie signal coming from a haunted nebula. As luck would have it, this happens to be a regional base of the elven pirates who attacked the party’s homeworld, who destroy the ship they’re travelling on, capture their companions, and leave the party stranded in the frigid barrens of a meteor field. Searching for shelter, they find the origin of the signal: the partial wreck of a long abandoned jammership still attempting to deliver its message. With a little elbow grease and some ghostly aid, the party can take this ship as their own, bring vengeance against he pirates, and begin hunting for the villains who set this all in motion.

Late Game

The party’s enemies are not simply slavers and pirates, they are recent converts to the following of Mnyull the revelation tyrant, a god of interplanetary conquest. He has tasked the rabid immortals with the reunification of their long scattered army, and the reactivation of the ancient weapon they were once tasked with guarding, a labour to which many including the party’s old friends have been put to work. If Mynull’s plan comes to completion, whole systems will be forced to submit, and if the party can bring evidence of this to their allies in Lydestrum, they may just have a chance to fight the pirate fleet on equal terms.  

Fighting an army is one thing, defeating a god is another, and so the party are counselled to seek out the great celestial sage who makes weapons at the star-goddess’s behest. Therein the party must undertake a sea-spanning quest to gather the materials necessary to withstand their struggle: Venturing into shadowed vaults within the core of a moon-sized forge, seeking out the most dangerous and beautiful of lights at the edge of known space.

The Revelation Tyrant cares nothing for the fate of his pawns, merely that victory is achieved in his name, and so has planted the same vision of supremacy into the Skyscour elves as he did the leaders of Lydestrum.  The idea of a weapon that could strike far away worlds, tribute and glory delivered by subjugated neighbours, a threat to that glory by a challenger from afar and the need to strike before that challenge is made. No matter who wins the battle, Mnyull benefits from the outcome, as the leader of the victorious force will be struck by further visions and ascend as the Tyrant’s physical avatar.

The Party will be hunted, possibly by former allies, into the depths of wildspace, unable to return home lest they single out their humble world as a target for the weapon. In that lonely and desperate moment the goddess will appear to them: Nyx, merciful but resigned will offer them a shroud, a means of hiding their world from Mnyull’s sight and sparing themselves the conquest others will doubtlessly suffer provided they give up sailing the astral sea forever. Bright Urania offers them a chance, a divinely ordained heading to slip back around their pursuers, back past the fleet they helped to provision and the weapon they ensured would be completed, and right to the foot of the tyrant’s throne. It is only a chance though, no guarantee they can pull it off without loss and sacrifice, no guarantee that they will win in the end.

We all know what the party will choose, Nyx does too, and when the heroes jet off to go on their suicide mission they’ll do so with the ancient goddess working from the shadows to turn aside the eyes of wary sentries. She’s had a cold, dark vault beyond the boundaries of reality picked out for Mnyull for quite some time. She just needed him to make the mistake of incarnating himself in one place so she could stick him in there all at once.