#codexumbra

19.11.2019 - Session #34 - Lv.9

The group had one minute to brainstorm about what they wanted to do with the Kraken after Cloud entangled it with a Wand of Binding. After a lot of back and forth, they finally managed to talk to the Kraken. The baby titan didn’t answer them in words but it looked like it could at least understand now them. It wasn’t hostile at all, it was just defending itself previously, when it grappled and threw the group around, followed by gentle - really really painful - electro shocks. They told the baby Kraken to hold still and open its mouth so that a polymorphed wizard could enter its digestive system and get the key out. It didn’t quite work since the belly of a baby Kraken is already quite big. Cloud couldn’t find the key. So Dirodan used his Detect Magic and a Mage Hand to get the key - and the wizard - out via a magical endoscopy. (No, this is not the weirdest thing that happened that day...)

Now, they had the key to the already open door. The group went back to the room, placed the small orb in its hole and... nothing happened. It took them a couple of seconds to realize that they had to open the door from the inside with the key inside its hole. When they did, they found a giant icy corridor instead of the narrow staircase, which was supposed to be there. Upon entering this hallway, the group was faced with a sudden cold and the slippery surface of the ice. Luckily, they are all hardier than they look and managed the cold and the ice. Except Valaris, who fell on his butt and decided it would be best, to just slice along the group instead of walking. (I like to mention that I, as the DM, never said anything against him just standing up)

The group walked through this enormous hallway without any indication of what was or is living here. There were no decorations within the hallway or on the walls. The only thing besides the white ice were destroyed bodies frozen within the walls. All of the bodies seemed to have been nibbled on.

They continued around a corner into another large hallway. This time there were inticrate carvings of landscapes on the walls and giant statues of bearded warriors. Still no sign of anyone or anything living in here. Eventually, they reached a giant door. Said door was not closed but slightly ajar. Inside it looked like the giant room had collapsed inward. A quick look around though showed that the walls and the ceiling were intact. But there was this weird, rythmic wind coming from within the room...

The group decided, it would be best to proceed stealthily. They turned themselves invisible and ereased their tracks. Which was good, since the rythmic wind was actually breathing. A large, snake-like creature with six limbs was sleping on a giant icy boulder. They. Went. Right. Past. That. Thing. Without waking it up. 

Behind this pen for the worst pet ever was a smaller room. Still big in comparison with everyone in it but smaller. Here, two stone chests caught the attention of the group. Dirodan discovered that one of them had an evocation rune etched into the lid. Which started a ridiculous scene where the group tried to take the whole chest instead of its contents. Didn't quite work though and they got frosted. After that, they took everything from inside the chest, namely an Armor of Cold Resistance, Boots of the Winterlands, and a Frostbrand Shortsword. In the second, not so trapped chest were five Fire Elemental Gems. (Combined with their Marid Bottle from the Black Market in New O'Noa they now have expanded their joke plan of just bombing the bad guys out of Kraghammer)

The next section of their tour led them to the biggest door yet. Around it was a giant sculpted head of a Dragon which made it seem like the door was leading into its guts. There was also a small little riddle. But since the door asked them to „Kneel down before the King of Eternal Winter“, they figured it out pretty quickly.

Behind the door lay a roaring blizzard. This problem got solved in the same (idiotic) way as all other things in the groups life: The complicated way.

Valaris jumped into the Bag of Holding, holding his breath indefinately as an Air Genasi. Dirodan took the Bag of Holding and mounted a mammoth aka a polymorphed Cloud. Together they went into the blizzard, gaining no benefits from their „preparation“ what so ever. They reached the giant throne of Errevon, which had a glowing orb on top of it. Dirodan tried to get it, but it was stuck and his noodle arms didn't help. The mammoth on the other hand ripped it from the throne, ending the blizzard in the room. The orb – now exposed as the White Dragon Orb - immediately tried to take over Clouds will – and succeeded since he had to use the mammoths stats which were everything but beneficial. The orb told Cloud to get out of the building. So he ran. Dirodan – still mounted on the mammoth and very inclined to get the orb for himself / his mysterious patron – held on for his dear life while the mammoth was storming out of the building by ramming doors and making a lot of noise. While holding on, Dirodan also tried to get the orb out of the mammoths trunk. Eventually he succeeded but the damage was already done: On their way out, the mammoth had woken up a second weird snake pet, which was now on the hunt. So they proceeded to run. Dirodan – after overpowering the Dragon Orb with his will – had the amazing idea to get Valaris out of the Bag of Holding so he could help.

It was a close call but they somehow managed to escape the giant blue snake thingy before it could take a bite out of them. They slipped though the door, closed it and ripped out the key to what they assume to be a pocket dimension with the remains of the ice citadel of the Rimelord in it. And now, Dirodan has two Dragon Orbs.

The group didn't waste any time and went back to the surface of the cold Formare Basin. They found their bird and made their way over to the Ironseat Ridge, looking for something that they only know as the Seat of the Titan. Cloud used a Legend Lore spell to gain more information about the Darkbeast (you know, the monster currently nesting on top of Kraghammer) and got the exact location of the cave of a Behir.

15.10.2019 - Session #32 - Lv.8

After acquiring the needed paperwork, the group is able to enter the Ivory Tower, seat of Arcanist Allura Vysoren, member of the Council of Tal’Dorei. It is here, that the group meets their lost member Raz again. He’s calmly sitting in a corner, drinking tea as if nothing happened. The group barely noticed his disappearance anyway. 

They look around for a couple of minutes but nobody greets them. They hear voices from upstairs, though. There they find Allura discussing magical business with a tall Moon-Elf. Since the reason for their visit is quite pressing, Allura pauses her meeting to listen to what the group has to tell her. Her guest, another wizard called Relon Helvindar, quietly joins them and later provides important information about the infamous Codex Umbra.

Apparently, the Codex Umbra is only one of three books remaining from the vast collection of works by Vespin Chloras, the very man who freed the Betrayer Gods in an attempt to gain more power and/or immortality. All of his possessions were destroyed during the following war but cultists of three Betrayer Gods managed to steal the corresponding book. The Codex Umbra is tied to the Betrayer God known as the Chained Oblivion and can be used to free this entity from its prison if fed with enough souls. Besides that there are the Codex Deus, tied to the Strife Emperor and working in a similar way, and the Codex Imperium, tied to the Lord of Hells. Each book is dangerous on its own and now the group thinks - after hearing quite detailed descriptions of the powers the books use - that all three are active again. The Codex Umbra is clearly the most advanced currently with a cult having multiple of the monsters from the book already summoned. But there are also hints of the Codex Deus in form of ancient spells hidden underneath O’Noa, which apparently were used in the Scattered Wars, and the Codex Imperium could be responsible for the latest attack on Kymal since the group knows of an entity called the Smiler, which acts pretty close to what the Codex does, and which lives close by the city.

Puzzled by this new information, Relon sends out messages to a couple of colleagues while Allura is looking for helpful items to give to the group. Both wizards think it’s best if the group tackles this problem since they already know most about the events and are involved with the Sarcana. Allura describes them as a “radical group operating on the outskirts of real research” but since their forcus is the Age of Arcanum they probably have the most information about it. So she tasks the group with stopping the progression and the destruction of the Codex Umbra while she will do everything she can to slow the cult down.

The group accepts this task and is then teleported by Relon to Lyrengorn, the Elvenpeaks. They told Allura and Relon that most of the Sarcana members were missing but that there was at least one remaining in the hidden city of Elves. Relon, who lives near the city gladly brought along. The group made their way through the cold and uninviting north over to the tropical forest within the split mountain. On their way up thorugh the massive trees they stumbled upon a Displacerbeast with her three little cubs. They threw the mother down into oblivion and decapitated one of the cubs in front of the other two before trying to adopt them. Needles to say: It didn’t work.

Eventually, they made their way up to the Gates of Lyrengorn where Raz - who lived here for quite a long time - managed to get them in. Strangely enough, the guards where super nice to Valaris. Within the city they immediately discovered the Melody Tree, a giant, hollow tree in the middle of the city. There are holes strategically carved into it so the strong wind that blow through it produce a nice melody which can be heard all throughout the city. Also, the inhabitants use the strong winds to traverse between the three layers of the city. It takes some practice but eventually one can easily ride the winds up and down the tree. Valaris, being a s**thead and an Air Genasi, wanted to try it as soon as he laid eyes on it. So they skiped the whole city only to travel up the tree to The Blooms. Here they found a Temple of the Moonweaver. Valaris got told by the headpriest to come back in two days for the festival called the Moonweaver’s Ribbons. He would get answers he is looking for.

We ended our session with the group finding a place to stay for the night and with a call to Vimak, one of the last remaining members of the Sarcana. She and her friend Julene just left the city but would turn around to come back in about a day or so. 

08.10.2019 - Session #31 - Lv.8

Faced with a little boy waiting to hear about the adventures of the group, everyone decided to turn around and discuss the situation. They completely ignored little Sisk for longer than necessary. Good thing they had a nice NPC Cleric with them: Inian took care of the little one until the group had decided on what to do with the boy. Which was leaving him with Inian back in the city of New O’Noa until they had an actual idea of what to do with him. Inian himself came up with the idea: “I literally have nothing else to do. I mean, I’m only here because of that.” Leaving Sisk with a Cleric who not only knows his way around fire (Cleric of Light) but who has also proven to “have a stable moral code” - as Cloud put it - appeared to be the best solution they had at that moment, so they went with it. After a short goodbye - and realizing that their Ranger was now missing for several days - the group left the city in search for the horses they randomly parked somewhere in the ruins. 

No horses were harmed during their stay at O’Noa.

Three days later they arrived in Emon, capital city of Tal’Dorei. Most of their allies sit here, especially a powerful witch called Brielle Mirrorshine, a cryptic Gnome-Lady with a huge collection of mirrors and stray Doppelgangers. Like always, the group wanted her to teleport them wherever they needed to go - in this case “the highest point furthest up in the north”. After some errands - checking in with the smith, stopping by in the library, stuff like that - they went to the mansion of Briella only to find it empty. No Doppelgangers. No Gnome Witch. Only the mirrors and the two Dryads who take care of the garden. Valaris, as a personal friend of Birella, got worried quickly, since the woman is known to never leave the house. Dirodan used his Dragon Orb to scry on the missing Witch only to find her at the same place another missing NPC seems to be held captive. This is now the 3rd time they get Gatshadow as a location for someone they are looking for... This, of course, concerened the group so they checked in with the other members of the Sarcana. With their limited ressources, they reached out to 5 different members, including Briella. No one answered. Now, after months of trying to deal with everything bad happening, the group finally decided to talk to the officials. Cloud, using his posh upbringing, charmed their way up to the Captain of the Guard for Abdar’s Promenade (Market Quater). They told him everything, mildly surprised by the fact that he actually listened. The Captain promised to inform his superiors first thing in the morning, since he had another important meeting coming up. The group left but not before embarrassing the Captain out of his Dragonborn scales: Valaris, eager to cause some mischiev - again - wanted to use his Mage Hand to loosen some buckles. With a 30 on his Slight of Hand the target of this prank was clear: The Captain wanted to go downstairs when all of a sudden his belt came loose, his pants slid down his legs and he flew down the stairs, faceplanting right in front of the group. 

At this point we took a brak to relearn how to breathe after laughing. No players lost consciousness during the prank.

Informing a mid-ranked officer wasn’t enough in the eyes of the group. They needed to get the information as high up as possible. They recently got given the adress of a powerful mage who happens to be part of the Council of Tal’Dorei: Allura Vysoren. Why not pay her a visit? Well, there were a couple of guards in the way. But Inian taught the group well and they asked instead of just killing everyone. The guards pointed them towards the Master of Defense or the Master of Law. The group headed for the first. After a lot “I need to ask my boss” they were eventually led to the office of one Saytar Alcott, a buff guy with some anger issues after recently being relieved of about 2/3 of his importance with the announcement of a Master of War. He listened as well and took some immediate action. He gave the group the mandatory paperwork to get a meeting with Allura and wanted to talk to the Master of War right away. He only broke one chair and a piece of his table during that process.

12.11.2019 - Session #33 - Lv.9

Starting at the Ivory Tower, the group attended a high class operation meeting with the Master of Defense, Arcanist Allura Vysoren, Archaeologist Jorlund Vohr, Realmseer Eskil Ryndarien and a mysterious Figure in the background. As a former student at the Alabasta Lyceum, Cloud started fanboying about all the famous people in the room.

The group told Allura what happened in Lyrengorn and got told, that the people present had somewhat of an eye on the situation. Apparently there was an attack on the guard’s HQ but nobody stayed dead for long thanks to the priest, the group left behind. The whole meeting was about charing information between all the factions involved. The Master of Defense informed everyone about the current situation in Kymal, Kraghammer and the southern border, which are all military points of interest. Jorlund Vohr and the Realmseer were working on finding more Astural Scrolls based on the information the group got from the Sphinx a couple of weeks ago. They managed to track down two more scrolls somewhere in or around Ank’Harel, the capital city of Marquet, where they also located another strong magical artifact, which sparked Dirodans interest for no apparent reason. 

Since the group also had the infomation, that they had to go to the sea of fire at some point, Allura took the liberty to contact Planesrider Ryn for help. She couldn’t come but she send a friend who could deal with it: The mysterious Captain, named Elias Emery. He also proposed the idea of geting the group to Marquet, since he was ordered to get a delegation of marquesian politicians back home. The group agreed. In one week they have to be back in Emon to catch a ride on his ship. In the meantime, they had some things to cross off on their to-do-list:

Find another Dragon Orb for Dirodan’s Patron.

They knew where to look since Dirodan had the same dream over and over again for weeks at this point. They just needed to find a save way to get there. Their solution: The feather tokens Allura had gifted them before they headed off to Lyrengorn. They teleported to Westruun and hopped onto a giant bird from there. But before they did that, there was a little... incident:

Cloud, amazed by all the glory in one room, wanted to leave a good impression. Unfortunately, his friends didn’t care much about that. They blantly asked for money and more magic items in order to do their job. And they made it sound like blackmail... So after leaving the meeting, Cloud went to a bar and payed everyones drinks for the whole evening, just to feel cool again. He was so very drunk... And apparently teleporting is not a good idea when intoxicated. Lets just say, he needed a bath and the teleportation circle in Emon AND Westruun needed a clean up crew...

In Westruun, the group stayed at a small laboratory which belongs to two Sarcana members, Cleo and Waywocket. Both are missing for a couple of weeks at this point. The group searched their place but found nothing that would hint at their current location. Instead, they found a couple of potions. Clearly magical ones, but they weren’t distilled properly, so nobody could tell, what they were going to do. At this point (after a really long discussion about the wizard throwing up all over the place) a discussion about the rights and wrongs of ‘stealing’ unfinished magic potions from a friends lab broke out. (I kid you not, this went back and forth for a while and I just sat there, smiling my butt of) Raz thought it was not right to just take the potions from their friends house just because they weren’t there to say no. Dirodan and Valaris thought they could use the potions to their advantage when they tried to rescue the two witches. Both sides had valid points (including Raz saying that Valaris thought it would be a good idea to take them, meaning it HAD to be a bad idea). They settled their discussion by Dirodan randomly drinking one potion and poisoning everybody while he was feeling empowered. Eventually, they agreed to take two potions and leave the rest.

[blueprint of the plan to destroy a Retriever, art by me]

Developmental Update 29.10. - 11.11.

There is no big recap from last weeks session, since there simply wasn’t a session. We took a week off due to a players vacation plans (how dare they!) and I as a DM took this opportunity to call a creative break for me. Especially since the group now reached a point where I had to stop planing out a lot of the story skeleton. I needed to know what they were doing in order to continue the story. After the last session, I knew. So I filled in the stuff between my plot points and oh boi, am I excited to see, what they are going to do about it. 

They have a couple of decisions ahead of them which may or may not decide the future of the world. It’s gonna be fun! Especially since I threw a lot of NPCs and lore and what not at them. Thing is: I’m not gonna stop with the lore bits. Or the NPCs. The curse of a creative mind, I guess. i just wanna see all my babies out there, rocking the adventure style life.

And that’s about it. I’m still working on some of the paths they can take, still working on a couple of other projects, including the mind breaking experience of NaNoWriMo (updates on that every friday, right here), building NPCs like crazy and binging Harry Potter TikToks.

Shameless Plugs of my Social Media:

29.10.2019 - Session #32 - Lv. 9 

The group now had an egg to take care of. Valaris became very protective of it immediately. Cloud wanted to take a look at it to discern what may hatch from it and Valaris was like: “Nope! Don’t touch my egg!”

(combined with Dirodan’s ball I dug my own grave with dick jokes, since eggs = balls in German...)

Every magical attempt to get more information about the egg ended with a bunch of glitter and/or the Moonweaver shaking her head with a big grin on her face. The group has to wait for the egg to hatch to know what’s inside.

The group shiftet their attention from the egg towards the elefant in the room, or better the missing of it. The two remaining members of the Sarcana were still nowhere to be found. They used the fact that the guards LOVED Valaris to find out more and Raz met up with a high ranking member from the Guardians of the Gate (another one of my secret organisations; Raz is a member). Unfortunately, there were no new clues to where the two might be. But the group found out that there was a murder! There had never been a real murder in Lyrengorn! And the victim was one of the five people baptized the night before.

They managed to get to the body and cast Speak with Dead to find out more about what happened. Apparently, the victim got attacked by a woman surrounded by black smoke and holding a book. They got the complete description of Celeste Clerebold, their BBEG. She was here, two Sarcana went missing. The group connected the dots and immediately headed out to find the other three people from last night. Their working theory was, that Celeste wanted the souls of them to fuel the Codex Umbra. They’d learned before that different souls can have differen values and thought that the baptizing and the connection to the Moonweaver made those five souls more powerfull. Meaning Valaris was also at risk.

They searched the whole city and managed to save two of the three people they were looking for. The third one was already dead, soul missing just like before. With the two civilians, the group hunkered down in the guards HQ and made a plan for what to do next. They called in the Headpriest of the Moonweaver and the Captain of the Skyswimmers (= ritualistic Wyvernriders). Their escape plan was to summon a giant bird and just fly out of the city. It never came to that.

22.10.2019 - Session #31 - Lv. 8

We left the group when they got ready to bed down for the night in Lyrengorn:

Cloud, our trusty wizard, conducted a Legend Lore ritual to get more information about Pater Reynard, one of their BBEGs of the campaign. He got the story (complete with gruesome imagery and everything) of a family father and farmer, who got chosen by an evil entity and killed his family to serve said entity.

Dirodan, our warlock, on the other hand went to bed a little earlier. Only to get a visit from his patron in his dreams. It’s been a while since Dirodan fulfilled the task he was given and his patron decided to remind him of what he should be doing. For now, there were no real consequences but waking up after sleepwalking, surrounded by a couple of hungry Wyverns isn’t the best thing. Who knows what will happen the next time, Dirodan gets a visit...

Valaris went to bed. Simple as that. Nothing more happened to the cleric. He had a good nights rest. And Raz vanished again. But since Lyrengorn is where he’s from, nobody was worried about it.

The next day started very peaceful and without much pressure to do anything. The group knew, they had to wait until evening for the Sarcanas to arrive. Until then, they checked out the city. They got themselves some new outfits by trading the salt crystals from Valaris’ hair. I don’t exactly know what happened but they somehow convinced the seller that it’s some rare and expensive stuff... 

During their shopping, Cloud spottet a large metallic spider. They’ve seen something similar before and the thing kidnapped the Sarcana’s accountant. They followed it and - since they knew this thing could disappear at any given moment - turned it into a snail. 

What happened next is a typical D&D plan, so brace yourself. The snail WAS hurt in this instance.

The group left the city to deal with the snail. They made a plan on how to destroy the thing after they discovered that it was on the hunt for Vimak.  They tied a bunch of potent acid around the snail and got some distance before setting lose a hummingbird bomb (which is basically a fireball that travels 120ft. over one round before exploding in the next one). The very moment the bomb went off, the wizard polymorphed the Retriever back into a snail, after the thing got shot with some Eldritch Blast and got punched with a Spiritual Weapon. It worked, so after the initial explosion, there was another snail. Second round: The wizard fireballs the thing, the warlock hits it with his magical halberd and the cleric uses his Spiritual Weapon and Guiding Bolt on it. The Retriever was still standing though and did not like the situation. So it lashed out and impaled the warlock standing next to it. Shortly thereafter, it was destroyed by the other two party members.

They collected all the pieces of the Retriever in hopes of covering up the immense destruction they caused. They used a lot of dire within a forest. Needless to say, the damage was pretty visible. 

Back in the city they told the guards, who were for some reason very friendly towards Valaris, that they were the ones being attacked not the other way around. And after waiting for hours for Vimak and Julene before discovering that they also went missing, they managed to get the guards to check the whole forest. Within the first 24h, the guards didn’t find any sign of the two but they keep looking.