Category:Campaign Narrative

The story of the evolving party of adventurers and their sojourn through these Malachite Nights is one that is sporadically chronicled -- though, thankfully for my memory, I now record sessions for updating later.

The Campaign Chronicles below detail specific gaming sessions, but groups of sessions tend to fall into general "Story arcs" that can help organize an understanding of the party's goals and experiences.

Sessions #1-3: The Gathering, the Statue Garden, and the Malachite Men

The first three sessions saw the party meeting each other and establishing themselves as a cohesive group under the mentorship of the dwarf Gastric Tankardtaker. Their original mission -- to rid an old statue garden on his family estates of a goblin infestation -- led to a series of revelations of what was to come: Two of the party members had reasons to be concerned about a growing "hag menace" in the swamps of the Northern Expanse, for example. On the way to the Statue Garden the party rescued a young goblin girl from the clutches of some modified ghouls, and through clever interrogation they heard of a menace known as Shadowtongue. Using the little goblin girl they saved as a diplomatic wedge to meet with the goblin chieftain, they discovered the goblins were under the compulsion of a fugitive in the cemetery to the North. They confronted this foe, revealed to be the elven forger. He fled the scene of battle as the party got an upper hand, but before he could escape a mysterious assassin -- one of the Malachite men -- showed up and robbed something from his body. From his dead body, the party found half a scrap of paper with strange indecipherable writings and magical traces of the forger having used some minor artifact (a celestial plume) for making forgeries, which presumably this Malachite man had just stolen. On their way home, they investigated a hidden temple to the goddess Hekate that the now-freed goblins revealed to the party, where they learned the story of the Broken Goddess Empusa and pledged themselves to helping restore the Goddess.
 * Main opponents: Fire Spider, Scarecrows, Ghouls, Goblins, the Elven Forger
 * Main Sponsors: Gastric Tankardtaker, the Broken Goddess
 * Major Contacts / Allies: Madame Tajemství, Efluvia TankardTaker, Statue Garden Goblins (now allies), Elven Forger (Resurrected, now a contact) , Glort
 * Threats Revealed: Hags, Shadowtongue, the Malachite Men
 * Further Quests: Investigate new threats, translate the mysterious writing, collect the celestial plumes, restore the Broken Goddess

 Sessions #4-9: Hodemont Asylum 

After selling their loot from the previous adventure, including meeting the antiquarian Lucretious Slenthir, the next five gaming sessions started simply enough. The party followed up on the clue of the strange celestial writing, seeking an expert linguist named Father Azerun. Since he was with a friend, Father Pietro, and doing archaeological excavation of Lyrean ruins at the town of Oldhollow, he offered a trade: He would spend time working on translating the party’s writing if they would handle a request for aid that had come to him from Dr. Swindon of Hodemont Asylum. Little did the party know how much a small errand would change their perspective.

Hodemont Asylum proved to be all of the things a good, creepy place should be – isolated, menacing, and creepily haunted. The party was further motivated to find the Asylum was originally dedicated to the god of growth Irori, whom a number of the party members admired. Indeed, they would liberate the games of perfection eventually from the Asylum, important tools for aiding their own personal growth.

As the party slowly unraveled the mystery of Hodemont’s infestation of ghosts and devils and the death of Dr. Swindon, they came to realize that Dr. Lazreal was the main villain of the place: He had been experimenting on patients because he believed all madness derived from possession. In his way of thinking, if he could force these demons or devils to emerge from the patient, he could “capture” their madness and cure them. He was using an elixir given to him by a mysterious group called the Phosphorescent Order to bring out the demons in his patients – but apparently, in truth, the elixir was demon / devil ichor and actually grew these infernal dwellers in their hosts instead. The irony: Lazreal was the one infesting them, therefore “proving” his theory. The party was aided by the other surviving Doctor, Dr. Audimay, and one of the patients who called himself Cyrano. The devils infesting Hodemont had their own agenda – one of the patients, the Baroness un Derun, had once given birth to a baby tainted from the lower planes. They planned to use her as a focus, and with the sacrifice of the captured Paladin Gaston they planned to open a gateway for their Maralith mistress Zesessna. The party was able to rescue the Paladin and Baroness, eliminate the Chaos Hounds that had been sapping the willpower of the residents of Hodemont, defeat the devils, and although Zesessna was almost summoned, their alliance with Glort, who brought along his brigade of ooze mephits and his friend Jabobber, turned the tide. However, just as Lazreal lay dying and his soul was about to be claimed by the underworld horde, Ozmond used a soulgem that the party had taken from the corpse of a cacodaemon and trapped Lazreal’s ghost into it for possible questioning or redemption later.

The long battles at the asylum took their toll on the party, but they left Hodemont wealthier and with greater experience. And, as they would find out later, the events at Hodemont were far from just a minor sidequest; they would intimately entwine with the twisting storylines of the Malachite Men.

Main opponents: Samuel Briarwulf, Venge Vine, Chaos Hounds, Accuser Devils, Fly Demons, Cacodaemons, Lemures, Bearded Devils, Fear Devil, Incubus, Dr. Lazreal

Main Sponsors: Father Azerun

Major Contacts / Allies: Dr. Lorelei Audimay (ally), Gaston (ally), Jabobber (ally), Cyrano (Chester De’Dorrelle) (contact), Lucretious Slenthir (contact)

Threats Revealed: Dr. Lazreal, Zesessna, the Phosphorescent Order

Further Quests: Investigate the Phosphorescent Order, deal with the captured ghost of Lazreal, learn more about the writing from Father Azerun, solve the Games of Perfection