New Found Facets

Founding

A new band of heroes find themselves slowly gathered with wilderness of the Storm Broken Lands Easter forests and mountain ridges.  Called down into a cave above the Runol Pass, Chuptah and Astrid are joined in the shadows by Crush and Fozz.  Their journey takes them through a gate into a pastel, muffled plane and into a temple containing the Shade Crystal, a broken and scattered Lesser Idol seeking to make itself whole again.  The party agree to help for a myriad of reasons from altruism through future reciprocity.

A new band of heroes find themselves slowly gathered with wilderness of the Storm Broken Lands Easter forests and mountain ridges.   The large and laudible Chupta found himself up a cliff face near the Ulgoine Valley and near the Runol Pass. His own task to find an isolated hermit and acquire a prized ungent had brought him to the region but a distraction had pulled him up the mountain: a familiar, internal pull, one he hadn't felt in years.  It had drawn him to a cliffside cave that he found himself absently staring into for hours.  With dusk arriving, just as he turned to give up on the pull, he found an armored woman approaching the very same cave. No coincidence this so far in the wilderness and so far up a stoneface. With the sun going down and time slipping by, the pair found themselves winding down into the caves. Getting to a spiked cavern of much moisture, they quickly found two more companions, a giant tortle bursting from the underground whirlpool and an injured man sweating and bleeding out on rock floor. Kane was not the most hospitable upon being cured, coming to in a panic. Without want of aid, Astrid saw little more worth her time in giving extra and distracting from her course. In attempting to leave though, the inhabitants of the cave reacted.    Darkmantles fell from the ceiling and a toadlike monstrosity attempted to eat the wayfaring strangers. The darkmantles conjure globes of impenetrable darkness. People ran in and out attempting to defend themselves and the banderhobb itself as capable of teleporting through them. By the end of the encounter, there was still increasingly oddities as one more individual, an elf, plumped from the darkness into the mess.   With the monsters disposed of, Kane attempted to move on not needing anyone... but Crush would not have that. Having been directed here of his own means, the tortle sought to aid the others pulled here in their own manners. With Chupta, Fozz, and Kane all feeling their own unspoken pulls further into the cave in which Astrid strode, the group continued on together in safety.   The naturally descending rock slowly took on a rubbery texture and the party soon found themselves standing outside a large gate interrupting the subterranean environment. An aberrant growing pumice suffocated the crystal door but as the party beat it down and the duo of Fozz and Kane opened the door, the party quickly jumped through the closing portal onto a bridge beyond. Only once there did everyone fully appreciate what was beyond.   A vastness of space. No walls. No ceiling. A damaged bridge extending to a ruined keep, chains extending overhead and wrapping to the back of the fortress. Upon the keep itself and on a tower outside, a pair of draconic beasts wreathed in shadow reposition themselves. Black ribbons dripped from jaw and wing and tail. The air around party was muffled. The view hazy and tinted, they felt their chests heaving and could feel adreneline spiking yet barely hear the breathe in their own chests.   Fozz could sense of peace continuing to pull from beyond the fortress waqlls. For Kane, the whispers continued to beckon onward. Chupta's intuitive sense of direction still pulled onward.  But the shadow wyverns posed a problem.  In patience, one of the two beasts took to wing and disappeared throught he pastel haze.  In impatience, the remaining creature took not of the party.  Soar, blinking, and teleporting towards the party, tenuous relations broke as the Chupta disappeared, Kane fled forward and general chaos took the bridge.  The wyvern never stayed still, nor in continuity with itself as it would dissolve into smoke to appear elsewhere.   Not intending to fight but simply claim a meal, the injured gloomstalker turned from the fortified Astrid and Crush to soar back, snatching violently onto Kane and bringing his body to the fortress wall.  Returning back down to grab a second meal, Fozz broke through the gate and ascended the stairs to Kane's rescue.  Meanwhile, the others led by the flaring smites of Astrid punished the creature for attempting a second meal in gluttony.   Hearing the screeches from the gloomstalker that had left returning to it's mate's aid, the party conglomerated again, entering the walls and the temple structure within.   Inside, they found a illuminated antichamber, a crystal wall blocking the doorway further in.  Touching the Wall though caused it to shatter revealing the interior chamber.  a multilayers crystal shell blocked further passage but a trifecta of crystal orbs marked the area.  One by one as our heroes touched them, the shells crumbled as interactions occured.  Chuptah felt his father within the first.  Kane witnessed the memories of the temple, a priest instructing Kane as a lesser acolyte to keep the candles lit.  A shadow escaped the crystal Fozz touched with a myriad of false duplicates turning the hunt into a shell game to find the core spectre.  As the crystal shells fell, the final chamber revealed itself amid a flash of light.  An energy cloud of ribbons, spiralling around a single amethyst shard faintly glowing, floating in an enchanted atmosphere of eminence.   Everyone damage, Astrid horribly weaked from the shadow's strength sapping strikes, crawled her way to the shard, reached up and grabbed it.   ~~~~~~~~ There has been a change. A transition. Certainly past the growing pumice and the crystal door when they went from caves to this swirling, vacuous realm. But also in crossing the bridge and and entering the gate. In slaying the gloomstalker and reviving a companion. But for most of the ragtag party, adventures were not foreign. Dangers have been passed before. Perhaps then in entering the inner fort? Maybe in the slow and gradual destruction of crystalline walls? Reaching out to those loved ones lost? Speaking with the memories of an ancient temple? Destroying the shades of old threats? If at no other point, the transition must have occurred with the revelation of what was within the final destination of their beseeched cavalcade.   The amorphous entity of spiraling energies, ribbons of purples and pinks growing ever stronger in it's callouts to multiple of you despite the growing threats. In extreme physical distress and weakening, Astrid coming to the entity, reaching out to the single bit of solid matter visible amoung it's movements. As Astrid claimed the shard within, a blast of energy rolled over everyone, it's passing taking with it injury, stress, hunger, and heaviness. The twisting energies subduing themselves into a reduced, almost dormant state with the explosion.   After having come in contact with the individual Temperance Shard, further communication elucidated this entity's intent. The Shade Crystal, the core entity, seeks to reform it's fractured body to fend off a greater force seeking to unbalance the Prime Material and therefore the balance of the planes around it. Pieces of the Shade Crystal were scattered across the world both in its ancient attempt to aid anywhere it was needed as well as taken by force.  An army sought to push it's way through multiple destinations of the Lothin Diarchy, Tersule, and Kag Bhurim with their power and first came here to ransack the temple.   Each hero agreed in their own time and for their own reasons to aid the Shade Crystal in it's quest to gather its pieces once more.  Each hero agreed for their own reasons whether personal, altruistic, or in exchange for aid once the Shade Crystal was pack to it's full power.  To aid their escape from the temple without having to face the gloomstalkers again, the Lesser Idol transitioned the party into a memory it had of the days prior to having it's last fractured pieces broken away from it.     The New Companions personally witnessed the seiging army that had raided the temple.  Chuptah conjured a flock of familiars to spy on the army, learning of the General Egoron Birlond's desire sweep across the Ulgoine Valley.  The part began a subtle exit from the fortress through a side wall.  As they got to the Bridge, they ran out in a mad dash, throughing darkness and firing arrows up to the tower archers.  A marching battle commenced as the party darted onward having to deal with the archers above, the guards at the bridges opposing gate, and dealing with all of it before the army left at the fortress wall got to them on the bridge.   The party broke through the gate cajoling a surrendered guard into aid, continued their cavern flight passed the base camp down a side passage and stumbled out of the memory once more into the modern day.  By the time the party made it out of the cave onto the clifface once more, the mid morning sun met them of the next day.     Note: This series of events occurred during a prelude section of the campaign where the players could feel out the table before committing.  Kane's player did not continue on in the campaign but he has been left in this account out of respect to the player.  For however long we play in a game, we all effect what the other PCs encounter and think about.  It is unknown what trickling effects  continue on through the campaign started by Kane.