SESSION 36B: THE MADNESS OF MAHDOTH

January 24th, 2009
The 19th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Leaving Castle Shard, they headed down into South Market. There they found Mahdoth’s Asylum – a small, rather nondescript building on Childseye Street.

They were greeted in the small, rather dingy offices of the asylum by a plain-faced, brown-haired man who introduced himself as Danneth Sonnell.

“Ah… I believe you sent me a letter, sir,” Ranthir said with a slight smile.

“And you are, sir?”

“Master Ranthir.”

“Ah, of course. Yes. I am glad that you have come.”

Danneth led them down a back stair into a basement of remarkable size. Not only its scope, but the stonework of its construction was quite out of keeping with the plain wooden construction above. (It had almost certainly been repurposed from some older structure.) They were taken through several rooms and then into a long hall lined with iron-doored cells.

Halfway down this hall a figure suddenly threw himself against the bars of the nearest door: “Please! Get them out of here! Get them out! They’re driving me mad!”

Danneth quickly crossed to the door and shut the outer shutter, but not before they had recognized the prisoner as the dwarf who had been summoning fell creatures during Tavan Zith’s escapade through Oldtown.

At the end of the hall they turned into another, similarly lined with cells. Danneth led them to one of the doors along this hall, removed a large ring of keys from his belt, and unlocked it.

“What exactly do you want us to do?” Tee asked.

“I honestly don’t know,” Danneth said. “When he is not asking for Master Ranthir he simply raves.”

“What’s his name?”

“Tabaen Farsong, an elf of House Erthuo.”

They exchanged glances and shrugs. None of them recognized the name.

Danneth opened the door. Crouched against the far side of the cell, feebly pawing at the wall and murmuring inarticulately under his breath, was a scrawny figure dressed in shabby clothes. As the inmate looked up they saw that it was another of Tavan Zith’s victims: The elf who had been driven mad during the ordeal.

Tabaen’s eyes seemed drawn to Ranthir’s, locking his gaze upon the mage. He said in a desperate, sibilant whisper: “A key. A noble key. You know the door. The key is the hand which will open the door. You have to get it. You have to get in to keep them out. A key which is a hand and a staff which is a knife. Many dangers. So many evils!”

The words poured out of his mouth, but as soon as they were done the elf’s eyes emptied of thought and he sank back against the wall.

Danneth rushed to his side and quickly examined him. “There’s no response.”

“He’s comatose?” Dominic asked.

Danneth nodded.

“I’m sorry,” Ranthir said, sincerely abashed.

Danneth shook his head. “I don’t know. This might be for the best. At least his mind is at rest.”

“They’re here master!”

The sudden cry had come from the far end of the hall. Looking that way they saw a dark-haired halfling peering around the corner.

There was a moment of puzzlement and then, floating into view from around the corner, came a beholder.

“What’s happening here?” The beholder’s voice was gruff and impatient. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“We were summoned,” Tee said brashly. “Who are you?”

“My name is Mahdoth. This is my asylum. You are not welcome here.”

Danneth emerged from the cell.

“Master, I—“

“I told you that there were to be no visitors here.”

Danneth fell silent.

Mahdoth turned to the rest of them. “Leave. Now.”

Tee walked up to him. “You’re being very rude. We were asked to be here.”

Mahdoth glowered down at her with his large eye. “Danneth should not have brought you here.”

“That’s between you and him.”

“Zairic, show them out.”

The obsequious halfling scuttled forward and escorted them out of the complex. As they walked down the street away from Mahdoth’s, they chatted briefly about the encounter.

“Do you think he was hiding something?” Ranthir asked.

“I’m sure of it,” Tee said. “On one of his eye-stalks he was wearing a bone ring.”

THE ALL-KEY AND THE CODEX

When they returned to the mansion on Nibeck Street, they found Elestra waiting for them. they ran through the now familiar checklist of unanswered questions and tasks left uncompleted. But this time their conversation returned to the strange, obsidian box that Ranthir had found in his rooms upon awaking for the first time at the Ghostly Minstrel.

“I really want to know what’s in there,” Tee said.

“Maybe it’s a magic box. Maybe our memories are trapped inside,” Ranthir said, only half-joking. “We just open the box and we get our memories back.”

But wishing the box open wouldn’t make it happen…

… unless they’d been over-looking the solution.

“What about the key from Pythoness House?” Tor asked. “The one that can open any lock?”

“Would that work?” Tee asked. “There were no moving parts in the lock.”

Ranthir shrugged. “I don’t know. It might.”

And so, quite unexpectedly, they turned towards the Hammersong Vaults. There Tee removed the golden key from her lockbox (immediately feeling the heavy weight of its soul-wearying effect) and Ranthir retrieved the obsidian box from his. They returned with both of them to the Banewarrens and rendezvoused with Elestra. They quickly explained their plan to her.

“That might be why we were looking for they key in the first place!” Elestra exclaimed.

“Here goes nothing,” Tee said. She slipped the key into the feature-less lock of the obsidian box.

It turned effortlessly.

Tee felt the strength of her soul pulled through the key and into the lock. In the same instant, a thin sliver of light spread along the box’s impenetrable seam. A moment later the lid popped open with a burst of stale air.

FLASHBACKS

In that moment, Tee found her vision turned inward: There was an echoing, thundering crash… and she found herself stepping through a wall of broken stone and shattered shards of adamantine. Beyond it, in a small vault of sorts, there stood only two columns of stone. And atop each column was a solid block of obsidian, gleaming with a faint iridescence. And a voice spoke: “At last! The secrets of the Stonemages!”

Ranthir found himself sitting in an inn’s common room, hunched over a table. A fire roared a few feet away. He was speaking to an older man, with white hair and a well-trimmed beard. “I’ve found it. It’s being carried by a northern barbarian and an elven girl.”

Dominic and Elestra once again found themselves standing before the door of shadows upon the cliff-wall of the Northern Pass.

And, Agnarr, too found his thoughts cast back to the interior of a black coach. Tee was sitting there, fingering her necklace thoughtfully while gazing out over the landscape of green hills rolling past the carriage window.

WITHIN THE BROKEN BOX

The visions – as vivid as they were – lasted for only a moment and then they found themselves once more huddled around the box.

Lying within the box there was a small codex with pages of thick vellum and covers of banded, blackened adamantine.

With an air of exhaustion, Tee pulled the key out of the box. Ranthir eagerly scooped up the book. As he flipped through the book (discovering it to be written entirely in dwarven), Agnarr was playing with the lid of the box – opening and closing it, only to find that it could not be resealed.

None among them were familiar with dwarven characters, but Ranthir was hardly going to let that stand in their way now: With a wave of his hand he began to translate the text…

CODEX OF THE SHARD

(written in Dwarven)

A study of the Great Crystal, recovered from the ruins of Ibbok Turren in the 943^rd Year of the Great Thane.

These are the first words in a small codex with pages of thick vellum and covers of banded, blackened adamantine. The rest of the book is dedicated to a meticulous study of a small crystalline jewel. It is written in several distinct hands.

The jewel registers with an overwhelming magical aura, thwarting more mundane efforts at identifying its properties… while simultaneously deepening the evident curiosity of the writers.

• Various efforts aimed at creating “elemental sympathies”, “energetic repercussions”, and “lesser effect echoes” meet with failure. But dozens of pages are dedicated to each experiment.
• The experimenters then turn their attentions to divination magicks. These meet with unexpected reactions. Weaker divination spells seem more powerful in the presence of the crystal, but reveal nothing of the crystal itself – the term “reflection” is often used to describe the failure, although even the writer seems hazy on what exactly that means.
• When more powerful divination spells are attempted, the casters are apparently driven mad. Despite this, the effort is attempted three times.
• The third caster is referred to by name: Sulaemesh. Like the others Sulaemesh is driven mad, but apparently his madness takes the form of scrawling or screaming the same phrases over and over again: “The Tower of the Dragon. The Lake of Silt and Ash. The City Fractured. The Stone Broken. The Net of Black Iron. The End of All Dreams.”
• At this point, it appears that the writers stop studying the crystal directly and focus their attention on trying to decipher the Vision of Sulaemesh. Many elaborate theories are concocted, but it is clear that they are mostly leading to frustration.

A period of several years appears to pass with little or no activity in the Codex. Then there is a new entry in a fresh hand, beginning with:

The crystal matches, in all respects, the properties of the dreaming shard.

The next several pages are a collation of research apparently drawn from several different sources. The dreaming shard is one small sliver of a much larger artifact known as the Dreaming Stone. The Dreaming Stone is described as “the source of all dreams” and “the resonance of the Dreaming”, among other descriptive titles.

The tone of the next several entries is one of excited discovery. But then things take a darker turn: There is a reference to “an area of great concern” and then several pages have been ripped out of the Codex. Other pages have been completely blotted out, leaving only vague references to a “Great Crypt” and “—if the shard were to awaken—“

The last few pages of the Codex are intact. They describe the design of an impenetrable box, which the writers hope will “seal both the shard and its dangerous knowledge from the waiting world”. Two boxes are created – one for the shard and one for the Codex.

Running the Campaign: Secrets of the All-Key – Campaign Journal: Session 36C
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

Go to Table of Contents

We’ve now reached the final chunk of Storm King’s Thunder as published, with the PCs investigating Lord Hekaton’s disappearance.

Before we dive in too deep here, though, I think we all need to acknowledge the giant squid monster in the room: This section of the adventure doesn’t make any sense.

• The PCs are given a gambling chip that was found near where Queen Neri’s body was found.
• From this chip, they’re supposed to conclude that the owner of the casino must be directly involved in Neri’s death and Hekaton’s disappearance. (This, of course, is a nonsensical conclusion.)
• Lord Drylund, the owner of the casino, is involved and knows where Hekaton is being held. But… involved how, exactly? Drylund is a krakenar agent operating out of the inland city of Yartar who’s attempting to take over the local government. How does he or his team get involved in murdering Queen Neri in the Sea of Swords?

It’s not just that the evidentiary trail is flimsy and fragile. (Although it is.) The more fundamental problem is that Storm King’s Thunder never actually explains what happened to Queen Neri or Lord Hekaton. We know very broad generalities (Queen Neri was “ambushed” and Lord Hekaton was “tricked” while investigating her death), but no specifics. And even these generalities are actually contradictory. (In one section, Lord Hekaton is said to have been kidnapped while going to a location where he had been falsely told the assassins were. In another, he was attending a meeting with fake representatives of the Lords’ Alliance and believes he was “betrayed” by them.)

This lack of specificity is one of the reasons why this mystery is dysfunctional: It’s all well and good for the detectives to be in the dark about what happened, but if the writer’s understanding of the murder is limited to “somebody killed them in one of the rooms in this mansion with some kind of weapon,” then it’s going to be pretty tough for them to lay down any meaningful clues.

WHAT REALLY HAPPENED

Mirran, Nym, and Serissa are the daughters of King Hekaton and Queen Neri, who rule from the storm court in Maelstrom. King Hekaton was a strict and conservative ruler, seeking always to live within the light of Annam and to adhere to the Ordning. Queen Neri, on the other hand, sought to temper her husband’s wraths and was also something of a reformist; she believed that the giants could not only make peace with the “small folk” — the humans and elves and dwarves and halflings — but that such an alliance could mean prosperity for small- and giant-folk alike.

Five years ago, Serissa ascended above her elder sisters in the Ordning. King Hekaton responded by officially recognizing her as the heir apparent.

Mirran and Nym did not like this, but there was nothing they could do: The Ordning is the Ordning.

Nevertheless, their bitterness and resentment grew, and they began to leave Maelstrom on sojourns together. These journeys eventually took them north to the Spine of the World, where they searched for the lost Eye of the All-Father in the hopes that they would be able to commune with Annam, discover why he had chosen Serissa over them, and perhaps even right the great wrong which had been done to them.

What they found instead was the wyrm Iymrith. Long ago, her daughter Chezzaran (SKT, p. 73) had been scarred by a storm giant raiding party and she had never forgiven the storm giants. She approached Mirran and Nym in disguise as a storm giant, intending to lull them into a sense of false confidence and then murder them. When she learned who they were, however, and heard their tale, she conceived an even greater revenge. She befriended the sisters and used them to infiltrate the Storm King’s court.

And then the Ordning was broken.

Suddenly Mirran and Nym weren’t helpless any more: If the Ordning no longer existed, then their sister no longer had divine favor elevating her above them.

Their father, however, persisted. He wanted to hold faith with Annam, even if Annam had forsaken them. He refused to reverse his decision and Serissa remained heir apparent. At this point, they likely didn’t require Iyrmith’s counsel for their resentment to blossom into rage, but it certainly helped.

Iymrith convinced them that “working with the small folk” was the reason that the Ordning had been broken: If they could break their mother’s friendship with the small folk, they might repair the Ordning… and, if so, they would almost certainly find themselves raised once more above their sister! Then their father would have no choice but to acknowledge them!

NERI’S PEACE

Queen Neri had formed friendships with the Order of the Blue Moon, a Selunite knighthood who operated out of the House of the Moon temple in Waterdeep. Each month, on the night of the full moon, the knights would gather at a secret chapterhouse hidden in the Red Rocks islands known as the Hall of Reflected Moonlight, and there Queen Neri would meet with them. She was particularly close with High Moonknight Xale, an elderly aasimar who was the leader of the order.

With the breaking of the Ordning, Neri was more convinced than ever that an alliance with the small-folk was essential. With Xale acting as a go-between, a meeting was arranged with Laeral Silverhand, another devotee of Selune who had recently become Open Lord of Waterdeep.

Queen Neri even convinced her husband to attend the meeting, bringing with them only a small force of four honor guards in “the spirit of trust and peace.” In the name of security, only their three daughters and Imperator Uthor, King Hekaton’s brother and commander of the king’s garrison, were privy to the details of Neri’s Peace, as it was known.

THE BETRAYAL

Iymrith, of course, learned of the meeting from Mirran and Nym. It was the perfect opportunity.

Iymrith formed an alliance with the Kraken Society because she needed both muscle and agents to carry out her schemes. It was an easy sell to Slarkethrel, as breaking Maelstrom’s power would remove a major impediment to the kraken’s imperial designs beneath the waves of the Sea of Swords.

• The Skum Lord, based out of Skullport beneath Waterdeep, created forged correspondence from High Moonknight Xale to Laeral Silverhand, purportedly delaying the meeting by a fortnight. The Skum Lord’s agents also intercepted Laeral Silverhand’s replies.
• Ascalian merrow warlocks provided a siren’s cage, a powerful artifact which was smuggled into the Hall of Reflected Moonlight and, when activated, dropped all the knights into a deep magical sleep.
• Lord Drylund of Yartar provided a company of mercenaries, who disguised themselves as Knights of the Blue Moon, rode to the coast to meet Lord Hekaton and Queen Neri, and then ambushed them.
• The were-shark Reefkin of Neverwinter simultaneously cut-off the storm giants’ escape to the sea.

The plan worked perfectly: Queen Neri was killed. King Hekaton was captured and loaded onto a specially prepared vessel called the Morkoth (SKT, p. 221).

Design Note: In the published campaign, Queen Neri is killed in one vague encounter and then King Hekaton is kidnapped during an even vaguer encounter. By collapsing both outcomes into a single event, we vastly simplify things for ourselves. (We also sidestep awkward questions like, “If your wife has just been killed, why would you wander off into an ambush all by yourself instead of bringing like a bajillion guards with you?”)

AFTERMATH

The siren’s cage was retrieved and, a few hours later, the Knights of the Blue Moon awoke. The unnatural slumber baffled them and Xale was confused why neither Queen Neri nor Laeral Silverhand had appeared for their meeting. He attempted to contact Neri via a sending spell, but received no response.

When Hekaton and Neri failed to return to Maelstrom, Imperator Uthor journeyed to Red Rocks. There he discovered his sister-in-law’s body, surrounded by ample evidence that she had been murdered by the very small-folk she had sought to make peace with. With his elite guard, Uthor followed the trail back to the Hall of Reflected Moonlight, slew the small garrison there (most of the knights had returned to Waterdeep with the passing of the full moon), and ransacked the place looking for evidence of what they had done with Lord Hekaton. (He found nothing, of course.)

Back in Maelstrom, Mirran and Nym were shocked. This wasn’t what they had wanted… but they also weren’t exactly upset about it, either. Whatever second thoughts they might have had were quickly quashed by a more pressing realization: Their implication in regicide gave Iymrith the ultimate blackmail to use against them.

“Don’t worry, though,” Iymrith told them. “We’ll still make you the Queens of Maelstrom!”

… they just need to deal with their sister first.

Design Note: Why not cast raise dead on Queen Neri? This is a question that D&D adventure writers frequently just ignore. The go-to answer is simply that the soul of the victim isn’t willing to return, and you can just kind of handwave why Queen Neri wouldn’t want to come back.

Option #2: The merrow warlocks crafted some sort of soul-binding poison and her soul is trapped in the Abyss. Or, alternatively, a soul-binding crystal and now her soul is held captive in the sunken city of Ascarle.

Option #3: The breaking of the Ordning and the withdrawal of Annam’s light from the giants also means that giants can’t be raised from the dead at the moment. (Their souls can depart this world, but the road back from Annam’s kingdom is shut.)

Also: Why not just kill King Hekaton, too? That’s because Iymrith has a clever scheme. If Hekaton was dead, Serissa would simply ascend to the throne. With Hekaton alive-but-missing she’s only acting as regent, and the situation in Maelstrom is more unstable. (The Kraken Society thinks this is a crackin’ idea — pun intended — because this sort of destabilize-and-exploit is their modus operandi.)

Go to Part 4B: Seeking Hekaton

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 36A: The Knighting of Tor

And in this way, Tor did service upon the Eight Stations and swore the Eight Oaths. The gathered knights lowered their blades and Sir Gemmell laid his own blade upon Tor’s shoulders.

“Rise, Sir Torland.”

A procession was then formed, led by the priests and followed by Sir Gemmell and Sir Tor. They passed through the gates of the Godskeep and then into the inner passages. Tor was guided by a secret way into the basement of the keep itself, and there taken to a chamber where the Statue of Vehthyl stood.

Here the last of the water from the cups of mithril were washed across the feet of Vehthyl and into a final cup of taurum. And from this Tor drank deep.

I’ve previously discussed how I design fictional rituals for my game worlds.

But why would you want to do this? Why not just say something like, “You go to the Godskeep in the morning and, in a formal ceremony in front of all the other knights, Sir Lagenn begins the ritual of officially knighting you… but then Rehobath shows up.” Isn’t that enough detail to play through the scene? Is it really worth your time to invent an entire religious ceremony?

The truth is that it often will be more than enough, and there’ll be no reason to recite an entire liturgy or script a full sermon just because the PCs happen to be walking through a church.

Conversely, though, there are also a lot of situations in which I think it’s absolutely worth the extra effort.

It can emphasize a moment or, alternatively, reflect and respect the emphasis which is already being given to a moment. In this session, for example, Tor is achieving — through perhaps the unlikeliest series of events — major goal that his player had set for the character when she created him. That’s huge! We don’t want to just toss that moment away; we should revel in it and make it feel like a real payoff.

Along similar lines, you can also use rituals like these as a reward. In some cases, just the experience of the ritual itself will be rewarding in its own right, but it’s also quite possibly to build literal mechanical or material rewards into the ritual. For example, perhaps joining an organization gives you access to unique character abilities. Or perhaps every knight receives the magic sword with which they were knighted as a gift.

Rituals can also serve as exposition. Having the players actually roleplay through a call-and-response ritual, for example, is a great way to get them to actually focus on and care about that content. Rituals in the real world have a wide reach and can touch every aspects of our lives, so whether you want to establish facts about religion, history, politics, or even just daily life, it’s pretty easy to find a way to inject that stuff into a ritual.

Similarly, rituals can also set up or emphasize the themes of your campaign. If you’re playing in a campaign that emphasizes oathbreaking, for example, then getting your players to literally swear oaths is a pretty literal invocation of theme. Or you might build a ritual around a legendary tale in which the Trickster God deceived his mother.

For an example of this from another medium, consider the final montage in The Godfather, in which Michael Corleone is show baptizing his child at the same time that he’s having the rival mob bosses assassinated.

This example from The Godfather also shows us how rituals can be a great way of structuring a scene: The cuts between baptism and murder provide a staccato rhythm and regularity to the sequence. (I’ve also talked about this scene in Scenario Structure Challenge: The RPG Montage, if you’d like a more detailed look at how you can pull off similar effects at the gaming table.)

Of course, a montage is not the only way you can use the ritual as a structure. For example, I once ran an exorcism scenario in which the PCs had to (a) research the ritual required for exorcism and then (b) actually perform the ritual during the final scene. The trick was that at least one PC (and player) had to be chanting at all times or the ritual would fail, but there were, of course, a bunch of things that would be interfering with their ability to do that. So, in practice, the scene became structured around the players swapping in and out of the ritual, while also trying to deal with all the demonic incursions and other interference that was happening throughout the ritual.

Campaign Journal: Session 36B – Running the Campaign: Secrets of the All-Key
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 36A: THE KNIGHTING OF TOR

January 24th, 2009
The 19th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Going downstairs, Ranthir discovered that he had overslept – it was now midmorning on the 19^th. Tellith had yet another letter for them, this one having arrived earlier that morning.

NOTE FROM ZAVERE

I have at least some of the information you requested. Attend me at Castle Shard at your leisure.

                                                                                – Zavere

He returned to the others, who were still awaiting his return in the antechamber of the Banewarrens. While Elestra refreshed the alarm spell on the sealed door, they discussed their plans for the day: They gave up on the idea of tracing the teleport (concluding that too much time had passed for a useful pursuit to be raised), but they still needed to follow up on the letters from both Zavere and Mahdoth’s Asylum. And, of course, Tor was to be knighted.

They decided to split up.

THE KNIGHTING OF TOR

The Godskeep

Tor left the others and rode Blue to the Cathedral of Athor. There, at the doors of the church, he was met by Sir Gemmell. From the Cathedral he was taken to the Godskeep and through its double-gates.

A pavilion had been raised in the square north of the Godskeep. Twenty red-sashed members of the Order had been gathered in two flanking ranks, facing a raised dais onto which Gemmell and Tor emerged. The knights raised their swords in salute, and kept them raised.

Atop the western and eastern towers of the Godskeep stood the great statues of Athor the Father and Crissa the Mother. With the knights of the Order saluting him, Tor watched as priests poured holy water across the feet of the twin statues. This water passed down through channels crafted into the bas reliefs upon the northern wall of the Godskeep and caught in vessels of the true silver, mithril.

Into these vessels were first dipped cups of the true gold, taurum, and these were brought forth.

Sir Gemmell gestured for Tor to kneel. “Squire, will you take the oaths?”

“I will.”

Sir Gemmell dipped his fingers into the water touched by the Father and upon Tor’s brow drew the sign of the Knight’s Cross.

May my purpose be governed by the wisdom of Athor, Father of All Things.

Tor repeated the oath as it was said to him.

Sir Gemmell dipped his fingers into the second cup and drew the Arms of the Mother, Crissa’s holy ankh.

May my service be shaped by the compassion of Crissa, Mother of All Things.

The twin vessels of mithril were taken to the statues of the other gods, and some slight amount of it poured over their feet and into similar cups of taurum. And these, too, were brought forth.

The Sword and Chalice…

May my blade be guided by the honor of Itor, Warrior Unparred.

The Daggered Cross…

May my mind be honed by the cunning of Itehl, that my sight never be clouded.

The Wheel of Night…

May my heart be opened by Sarathyn, that my actions be true.

The Wheel of Light…

May my life be blessed by Sayl, that my service may be long.

The Crescent Moon…

May my soul be resonant with the touch of Tohlen, that my works may nurture.

The Eye of the Veil…

May my fate be true to the will of Bahl, that I take no life in vain.

And in this way, Tor did service upon the Eight Stations and swore the Eight Oaths. The gathered knights lowered their blades and Sir Gemmell laid his own blade upon Tor’s shoulders.

“Rise, Sir Torland.”

A procession was then formed, led by the priests and followed by Sir Gemmell and Sir Tor. They passed through the gates of the Godskeep and then into the inner passages. Tor was guided by a secret way into the basement of the keep itself, and there taken to a chamber where the Statue of Vehthyl stood.

Here the last of the water from the cups of mithril were washed across the feet of Vehthyl and into a final cup of taurum. And from this Tor drank deep.

May I be held worthy in the eyes of silver mastery, that my path may stand as one with those of the Nine Gods and the Church Which Is Their Voice.

And from the wall Sir Gemmell drew down the Sword of the Order and approached Tor to perform the True Knighting.

But as he did, a figure appeared from out of the shadows. “I would be honored if you would allow me to finish this ceremony, Sir Gemmell.”

It was Rehobath. Sir Gemmell yielded the sword to him, and Rehobath placed the blade lightly upon Tor’s shoulders.

When Tor had risen once more, Rehobath smiled at him. “Sir Torland, I am glad to see the ranks of the Order so quickly refreshed. The treason of Sir Kabel has hurt us grievously, and it is good to see one of those wounds begin to heal.”

“Thank you, milord.”

“If there is any favor that I might do for you, name it.”

“There is one thing,” Tor said hesitantly. “I would like my daughters to know that I have been knighted. If word could be sent to them…”

“I will see to it.”

“Thank you.”

“Now, I know that both you and the Chosen of Vehthyl are busy about the business of the Church. And so I shall let you return to it.”

Rehobath left. And after Sir Gemmell and several of the other knights assembled had given him their own congratulations, Tor left as well.

THE THIRD LORD OF CASTLE SHARD

The others, meanwhile, had headed up to Castle Shard. Kadmus, of course, was waiting for them at the end of the drawbridge when they arrived. As they passed through the entry hall, they saw that the bas reliefs had changed once again. They now depicted, on one side, squat figures bearing a heavy boulder and, on the opposite side, winged figures chained to a boulder by chains.

“That’s ominous,” Tee said.

But Lord Zavere greeted them with his familiar smile.

“Have you had any luck questioning Tavan Zith?” Tee asked.

“No,” Zavere said. “He remains quite mad. And uncooperative.”

But Zavere had looked through the archives of the Castle for information on the Banewarrens. Like Jevicca, he told them about Alchestrin, who had once been the Third Lord of Castle Shard. “He became obsessed with the hidden secrets of the Spire and bent all the power of the Shard towards discovering its secrets.

“Unfortunately,” Zavere went on to say, “Most of the actual lorebooks and artifacts he collected are missing from the archives. It’s possible, given the… poor circumstances under which he left the Castle, that he took these resources with him.

“I know little of Alchestrin’s fate after he left the Castle. But I do know that his tomb is located in the Necropolis, somewhere on Darklock Hill. It’s reputedly a rather large complex, but I have no record of where it might lie precisely. However, it would have been marked with Alchestrin’s sigil.”

Running the Campaign: Using Rituals – Campaign Journal: Session 36B
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

DISCUSSING
In the Shadow of the Spire – Session 35C: Ambush in the Banewarrens

“My friends! To arms! To arms!”

“There’s something wrong!” Tee took off running down the hall.

Agnarr and the freshly boot-enhanced Tor both passed her easily in the race out of the Banewarrens. Coming back up the tunnel leading to the antechamber, however, they came up short in front of a wall of seemingly impenetrable darkness. A few moments later, the others caught up to them. Even Tee’s elven vision couldn’t penetrate its unnatural depths. And everything beyond it was eerily silent.

Then Tee heard heavy footsteps approaching them from out of the darkness… but as those footsteps emerged into the passage, there was still nothing to be seen. Tee whipped her dragon pistol up and fired.

The shot missed.

I’ve previously discussed prepping scenario timelines. The short version is that when you have an evolving situation in your campaign and you’re not sure exactly when the PCs will re-engage with it, the best way to prep that situation is often a timeline of upcoming events — e.g., on the 18^th the bad guys will rebuild the south wall; on the 19^th the bad guys will hire mercenaries to reinforce the compound; on the 20^th they’ll hire an assassin to hunt down the PCs; etc.

When the events from this timeline would directly intersect the PCs, I’ll copy the appropriate entry into the Events section of my campaign status document.

Which leads us to the current installment of the campaign journal.

As I mentioned last week in Running the Campaign: Weaving the Background, the events described in this installment of the campaign journal are being driven by this Event:

09/18/790 (11 PM): GQT2 comes to Nibeck Street mansion. (BW Status)

To decode that a bit:

• GQT2 stands for Grail Quest Team 2. The grail quest teams are dispatched by the Pactlords of the Quaan to find the Black Grail (which they believe lies within the Banewarrens). After the PCs wiped out GQT1, the Pactlords assembled a second team to send in.
• BW Status means “Banewarrens Status.” This is a cross-reference to another section of the campaign status document where I’ve collected all of the Banewarrens-related updates, events, etc. (In addition to the GQT2 material in this section, at this time there were also sub-sections tracking the Malignant Crystal, Umber Hulk, and Thought Stalker.)

So this entry is:

1. Letting me know that something is happening in the campaign world that might be immediately significant to the PCs. (Because (a) they have an alarm spell in the Banewarrens and/or (b) they might be in the Nibeck Street mansion, Kalerecent’s cave, or the Banewarrens themselves and directly interact with the Pactlords.)
2. That there’s additional details about this event that I should reference in “BW Status.”

And if we flip over to “BW Status,” here’s the full entry on the GQT2:

GQT2:

9/18/790 (5 AM): [SPOILER] arranges for Kularas’ escape. Kularas returns to the Belfry.

09/18/790 (11 PM): The GQT2 + Kularas goes to the Nibeck Mansion and scouts carefully, trying to determine if the PCs are present.

• If they are, they’ll pull back to the mansion and lay an ambush (which they’ll flee from quickly if it appears to be going badly). If forced to abandon the ambush, they’ll put a watch on the mansion and then go in when the PCs are known to have left.
• If they aren’t, they all attack Kalerecent and move into the Broken Seal area. They’ll stay in the Broken Seal area until late on 9/19/790, trying to figure out some way through the Sealed Door. They’ll check back every two days until 9/29/790, when they’ll return with another wish spell to open the door (which they’ll go through, knowing that Kikanuile has a ring to get them back out).

If they learn of the Banewarrens’ key from [SPOILER], they’ll start trying to figure out where it might be, too. This will eventually lead them to Alchestrin’s Tomb. (With their resources, they’ll actually know that Alchestrin had the key at one time.)

The last paragraph here are, as you can kind of see, just notes I’ve made about potential future actions of the Pactlords. I haven’t taken time to work these out in detail, however, because I think it’s likely that the PCs will interact with the Pactlords — directly or otherwise — on the 18^th, which will change the direction of everything that comes after. (There’s no sense wasting time prepping a bunch of stuff that will just get thrown away.)

So how do you know how far ahead you should prep? Honestly, that’s as much art as science. You’re partly making a best guess about what the players will want to do. (In this case, I think it’s very likely that they’ll be coming back to the Banewarrens sooner rather than later.) And, if in doubt, you can also be guided by how far you think the PCs could conceivably get in the next session. (It’s incredibly unlikely in the In the Shadow of the Spire campaign, for example, that we’re suddenly going to start rushing through multiple days in a single session, so if I have any doubt about how things might turn out, there’s little reason to push a timeline out more than 1-2 days in advance.)

Ideally, though, you’re looking for the event horizon: The point beyond which you know that you can’t see the outcome.

And this session is a great example of exactly WHY you want to find the event horizon: Because the PCs will inevitably blow up your timeline.

BLOWING UP THE TIMELINE

And that’s OK. The reality is that these timelines are designed to be blown up.

In this case, though, I definitely thought I knew how these events were going to play out: I thought it was actually very unlikely that the PCs would be in the Banewarrens at 11 PM when the GQT2 showed up. In their discussions they’d put a little too much faith in their alarm spell to warn them of trouble while they were looking for the Banewarrens’ key and:

• that alarm wouldn’t warn them if Kalerecent was attacked; and
• I already knew they were actually spending most of their time outside range of the alarm

So I figured the outcome here was pretty inevitable: Kalerecent, the lone guardian of the Banewarrens, would be ambushed by the Pactlords, hopelessly outclassed, and killed. Which would be great, because it would leave the Banewarrens unguarded, allowing all the different factions interested in the Banewarrens or about to become interested in the Banewarrens — the Pactlords, the Vladaams, the Church, etc. — to send in delving teams, transforming the dungeon into a dynamic and ever-evolving landscape that the PCs would find altered every time they returned.

I didn’t know exactly when the PCs would figure out that the Pactlords had killed Kalerecent and breached the Banewarrens again (which is why I positioned the timeline event horizon where I did), but I knew where the campaign was headed.

… except, of course, I didn’t.

Because the players looked over their notes, looked at the map of Ptolus hanging on the wall, and abruptly realized what I had realized: The alarm spell has a 1-mile radius, and the Ghostly Minstrel — where they slept at nights — was just outside the range.

They panicked and assumed they were already too late: The alarm had probably already been triggered, Kalerecent was dead, and who knew what terrible things were happening in the Banewarrens.

And so they immediately decamped to go see how bad things had gotten.

Except I looked at my campaign clock: They’d realized their error literally an hour before the Pactlords returned. So they checked in, saw everything was fine, recast the alarm spell, and then… stood around chatting about things.

As a result, they were just a couple rooms away when the Pactlords ambushed Kalerecent and the PCs were able to drive off the Pactlords and save Kalerecent.

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING

Looking back on this 150+ sessions later, the impact this had on the campaign is kind of mind-boggling to me.

Not only did Kalerecent not die here, as I had felt so sure he would, he’s still alive today. The PCs arranged for other knights of the Order of the Dawn to join him in his watch, and made sure they had the supplies and resources they needed to keep the Banewarrens sealed.

Rather than a multi-party dynamic dungeon crawl (although there’s still a bit of that), the story of the Banewarrens in my campaign has instead largely been a bloody and inventive siege. (With, if I do say so myself, some incredibly clever play on both sides of the table.)

Not only have the defensive forces grown and multiplied, but the decision to bring in more members of the Order of the Dawn tangled the Banewarrens even more deeply into the politics surrounding the schism of the Church.

Eventually some of these knights would actually become PCs played by a second group of players running in tandem with the original group!

Of course, the alternative to all this would have been for me to simply decree:

The next time the PCs come to the Banewarrens, the Pactlords have killed Kalerecent.

A static, linear, guaranteed outcome.

But, honestly, where’s the fun in that?

Campaign Journal: Session 36A – Running the Campaign: Using Rituals
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index