Campaign Timeline

Your party bore witness to a strange office within a shared dreamscape. Maps, shelves and well-organized displays of military strategy and necromancy books and paraphernalia walled the hexagonal room around a broken sapphire sigil on the floor. Shephard gathered the maps and the open book of battle tactics.   Around you were 5 doors. Each bearing a symbol and each with their own environment seemingly unaware of you or the room's existence.   Etched Brain: An Elder Brain and Illithids, accompanied by Drow who'd succumbed to intellect devourers. Scratched Sylvanus: A peaceful, yet uninhabited forest, mid-solstice. Coin and Bones: A section of the Empty Basin with a dead tree where a nobelman supervised orc children grinding bones on a mill while under guard of hired mercenaries. Old Well: A hellscape throne room where a large demonic skeleton sat, observing a small fire. The demon offered Ignacious a wish. Carved Dragon: Unknown   Before they could enter the door with the dragon's head they heard screaming from behind it. An ethereal skeleton (clad in beautifully-maintained blue armor) stepped out burning blood from his bracers. Not responding to the 'visitors' who had knocked over his desk to hide, he went to the forest room, reached in to grab and break a thin, translucent green string. As he did the ground beneath the trees began to boil with what looked like disease.   Turning back to the office, he seemed suddenly aware of the guests. Extending his claw-like hand, he flicked a finger and everything went dark.   Immediately after, each of you awoke in the beds you had gone to sleep in the night before.

The next morning they meet with Varzok at the market who warns them the trip is long but hires them at 250 gp per person. Ignasious asks to exchange some of that gold for a navigation set if possible and Varzok lets him know he'll ask his brother for a spare set and get back to him. The group heads to the caravan and helps get it loaded to head out that day. The first 3 days of the trip are uneventful, but the 7 become the target of a swarm of locusts. Second Chance and Ignasious opt to ... fight? the swarm but - it's a swarm of bugs. The locusts chew all the canvas protecting the goods, and as the swarm passes a group of Naga follow behind to pick the remaining scraps. The Naga are cautious, but are unable to get close enough to the goods to carry any away. Then 2 of them are cut down, one calls to the others telling her sisters to flee. Two start to get away but Second Chance holds one of them in place. She approaches to kill while Ignasious and Shephard approach to asking Second Chance release the Naga and show mercy as she is trying to run. Ignasious even offers to question her for information. Second Chance refuses and cuts her down despite her party members anger as her First Chance attempts to stand between her party and her sister. Ignasious and Shephard are not pleased and Second Chance makes it clear the Naga was just a monster and not worth allowing to live. First Chance speaks to her sister trying to understand where the anger is coming from and discovers it's recurring anger from their past.

Packed and travelling the next day, the caravan was ambushed by pale bandits. Debonari, Ignasious and Second Chance engaged the enemy while the rest of the caravan fled. Shephard and First Chance secured an exit strategy, releasing the horse and calling to their party. Debonair and Ignasious quickly returned to the cart and they fled into the distance; Second Chance reluctantly joined them soon later, killing one of them on the way out.    From a distance, they watched the bandits raid the cart as a brain with legs came crawling after the party. They quickly dispatched it and began to understand what they may be facing. For 1 day they followed the bandits, but they had to rest. Shephard sent some allies to follow and report their location. The next day they followed the vultures' directions and discovered a pit of sand draining beneath the earth.   They investigated but realized it would be a much larger commitment to infiltrate whatever may be down there and decided to head back towards some dead trees they saw in the distance: their original goal for entering the Empty Basin to Begin with. With a dragon in the sky, potentially Illithids behind them, they finally arrived at the 'forest' in the Empty Basin with the dead trees.

The forest of dead trees was heavily booby trapped. A massive stump revealed druidic and ancient elvish runes, documenting the ritual of a druidic circle that must've once lived in this place. They called themselves the Circle of the Sun.   Navigating the traps, they crossed the forest to a clearing with a dig site. Guards stood watch while children dug and ground the bones into powders. Shephard immediately put half the guards to sleep, alerting to rest to a threat. The battle was interrupted by a dragon crashing into the desert, obscuring the area, clearing to a heavily armored man with a tattered blue cloak holding the well-dressed man by the throat demanding answers.    Unsatisfied with what the man had to say, he chastised him for desecrating a sacred land and turned to the party, identifying Shephard, First Chance and Second Chance as all having been tainted before disappearing.   The party reached the well-dressed man and began interrogating him.

In the morning, they decided to return to the sand pit that led down the tunnel, now that Shephard could safely fly them down. They arrived the morning of the 2nd day.   Shephard turned Second Chance into a Giant Flying Spider, terrifying Debonair, and turned into a giant bat himself. Together the group flew down the hole the sand was falling into and found the bottom of a cavern going east to west. The cavern itself was only 12 feet tall and a Grimlock pushing a cart came upon them. Dropping Ignasious on the ground, Shephard grabbed the monster with his claws and flew him 100 ft in the air with Debonair on his back. Dropping the monster to the ground killed it, only to reveal an intellect devourer.   Frozen by the trauma of the whole event, Debonair watched as the brain on legs dove back into the sand and disappeared. Ignasious, with Giant Flying Spider Second Chance and First Chance above him, saw the four-legged brain land on the pile of sand next to him. It swatted at Ignasious but was killed by a fireball from the ceiling by First Chance.

After breaking into the old grainery, our heroes work through an illusory well and a floor filled with dark soil and large, violent and loud shrieking mushrooms.   On the top floor they found an old Illithid with dry, flaking skin and the young boy who had been selling magic items without a permit. The Mindflayer was once a member of a clutch from the Unnamed Mountains but fled to study the arcane. A Sapphire Knight gave him this home in exchange for the location of his people who had massacred the Changelings of the Unnamed Mountains.   He offered First Chance a tool that could protect her mind from invasion if she brought him back a Sapphire.

The party continued to Uo Ansari to stop before making their way to Autumn Grove and stock up on supplies. There, they ran into Maddock again and his father who had an unsettling amount of information on legends and myths that linked directly to the party's past. A small local boy also asked them to bring his father, hunting in the grove, some new 'hard butter' he got from the halfling trader, Nob. Slashburn also made friends with some local orcs celebrating freedom, and Dagoza, returning to Harikhat to find her brother Shadbak.   Having collected the supplies they were looking for, they moved on to the wood and camped next to it for the evening.

Leaving the gate behind you went to Spring Grove. At the edge of the forest, frog folk argued with one of their own from the tops of the trees, with blue lizard-looking people ducking behind a cliff. One of the frogfolk eventually made their way to the ground and one of the lizard people shot lightning up at the treetops, distracting the frogs long enough for them to flee.   After witnessing this, you approached the frogs and p'Oob, a golden grung, led you through the treetops to their village to meet with their chief, d'Oh p'Oh. On the way, he briefly explained the blue lizards were once them and demanding they change their ways (slavery/racism in general).   The Grung chief demanded Shephard prove he was a druid before allowing you to take a makeshift elevator to the forest floor and the entrance to the Spring Grove.