Gahn the Red River

Centuries ago, a lone plasmoid descended from Wildspace and took up residence on the surface of the Silverlands. It would go on to split and over time, a tapioca of plasmoids would form from its descendants. At some point one of these plasmoids struck out from its tapioca and began a life of adventuring, developing strong stealth and combat skills. When it split in 1936 SMA, its two halves went their separate ways. One, Hier, decided to return to the tapioca, while the other, Gahn, wished to remain an adventurer.
Gahn continued on with a life on the road before being recruited by a dark organization called the Spellbreakers. Recognizing his abilities, the organization further honed Gahn's abilities and trained him in the art of assassination. Gahn served them for years but eventually tired of having his contracts chosen for him and amicably broke away from the Spellbreakers, though he still occasionally takes contracts from them from time to time.
Gahn has since taken up residence in the holy city of St. Rask, mostly serving its dark underbelly which never seems to run short of criminals who want each other dead. After only one job, he earned himself the epithet of the "Red River", alluding to his style of assassination that often catches others in the collateral damage, resulting in a bloodbath. Furthermore, Gahn stole an axe from an officer of the city guard and modified it with enchantments. This "Manslayer" combines the speed and dexterity of a dagger or short sword with the terrifying aesthetic of an axe.
Gahn has made quite a bit of gold and lives in comfort along with a goblin orphan that he has unofficially adopted. This goblin, named Gordo, has learned basic reading, writing and math and serves as Gahn's manager, picking out contracts and negotiating prices.
Late at night, Gahn finishes up with an impromptu hunting trip in Bowm’s Playground and swipes some weapons from a few thugs on the way back to his home. At his home, he drops off his collected weapons and speaks to the goblin Gordo. Gordo tells him that they have received a short-notice contract on a high-profile target. Aware that Gahn does not like unusual contracts like this, Gordo convinces him to take it by telling him that the client offered 1200 gold total for the job, paying 300 up front.
Unable to resist the reward money, Gahn accepts the contract and heads to the home of his target: an old sage named Gideon. At the home Gahn realizes that Gideon has hired a personal guard to protect himself. Unimpressed, Gahn eliminates the guards outside the home before entering and slaughtering all within, including slicing one man in half with a single swing. At the top floor, Gahn enters the panic room and meets Gideon, who attempts to warn him of a dark vision he had. Gahn does not care about this nonsense and beheads Gideon.
Upon exiting the home, Gahn witnesses the Calamity on the Mountain. He decides that it doesn’t involve him and heads for home to protect himself from the invading fiends. He attempts to cross over a bridge and witnesses another plasmoid slaughtering a handful of guardsmen. Deciding that he’d rather not get involved, he heads north.
A pain devil arrives and attacks some of the guardsmen outside the church. One by one, Gahn and four others arrive and decide to do battle with the pain devil for their own reasons. Once the battle is over, they convene and speak with each other. Suspicion is high among the group - except for Quaithe and Areth, who already know each other. The five decide that they are likely the five most powerful beings not working with the fiends and decide to enter an uneasy alliance to pursue their own goals.
They first decide to enter the church and speak with Jonas, who had been attacked by a plasmoid Gahn had seen earlier. It flees at the sight of the party and they speak to Jonas, learning a bit about the political issues in St. Rask and about the potential state of the church. The party convinces Jonas to take them to where he hid his holy artifact so they can prevent it from falling into the fiends’ hands. Spotting a massive, bullish devil flying in the air, they leave before Jonas is able to lay down the protective ward around his church.
The party arrives at the innocuous statue that Jonas claims holds his artifact. There are a few members of the Spellbreakers working around the statue, attempting to uncover its secrets. Gahn quietly sneaks up and eliminates the men. The rest of the party then move up and kill the rest of the Spellbreakers, including one of their griffons.
Once handled, Jonas opens and enters the vault, with the party choosing to trail behind him. They arrive at the main room, which contains a massive statue of a golden eagle and four mummified clerics perpetually casting a ritual spell of protection. Jonas gives the blood tax to the eagle and acquires the Icon of Yush. He then speaks with the party and they exchange some information before deciding to keep Jonas held up at Gahn’s house with Gordo. They quickly head over to the Godless Heap and drop Jonas off, with the party seemingly having no concern for leaving an old man alone with a goblin. Jonas asks the party to check on his church for him, which they say they will and then immediately decide they have better things to do.
The party then decides to look for some of the magical runes that Yellesa is seeking out and decide to check some shipyards on the way to the Mages Guild. At two they find the runes and learn a bit about them with a book on magic that Ardryll had. They determine that they are part of a larger magic circle, with the caster likely in the center. The party also captures a lone Spellbreaker and interrogates him, learning about Khilvel and his relationship to Glasya. He is unable to reveal the location of Khilvel, however, saying that he is not important enough to have that info. The Spellbreaker also informs the party that the other plasmoid is posing as Gahn, which the real Gahn finds offense with.
At one of the shipyards the party finds hundreds of crows seemingly speaking to one another. Gahn throws a rock at one and kills it, causing the rest to attack him. Areth’s quick-thinking saves Gahn and the rest of the party and they kill all but one crow, which Yellesa grabs and swaddles, giving it to Ardryll. Ardryll recognizes the crow to be a familiar - one of Xanthe’s specifically. He holds onto it for the time being.
The party then reaches the Mages Guild and speaks to some paladins. They tell the paladins that Jonas is not actually dead and that they need to get into the mages guild. The paladins said that they’d have to get permission from the acting Grand Paladin, Lyveria, first. The party decides not to wait and use magic to put the paladins to sleep before picking the lock and entering the Mages Guild.
The party enters the mages guild and encounters a bloodbath seemingly caused by the constructs that the mages had made to protect them. After eliminating the constructs in the main lobby, the party reactivates the magical AI, Tori, that the guild uses for intelligence. Tori informs the party of all manner of topics that they ask it, from alchemy, biology, magic and fiends. It even tells them about the lockdown in the guild and that the party needs to flip three switches to deactivate the magic barriers in the building. The party decides to split up to accomplish their goal faster.
Areth and Quaithe team up, perhaps unsurprisingly, to tackle the artificiery tower. There they find where the constructs were being assembled as well as the room where magical weapons were created. They notice the potentially valuable metal and grab a couple of the magical weapons they find as well as some enhancement powder. At the top they defeat a snow golem and pull their lever.
Yellesa and Gahn begrudgingly team up to climb the alchemy tower. In the first floor they find where the potions were brewed, and the two find some unbroken but unlabeled potions. Yellesa successfully identifies hers but Gahn just bites the bullet and drinks his, being shrunk down to a height of 2 feet. The next floor is where the alchemy ingredients are stored, and Gahn fills his bag of holding full of it. Yellesa locates a ceremorph and takes it. On the third floor they fight some metallic wasps and pull their lever.
Ardryll summons a fiend with his magic and takes on the education tower. There he finds several books on various subjects and takes them all. At the top of the tower he finds an iron cobra and manages to avoid its venom long enough to kill it. He also pulls his lever. The party meet back in the lobby and exchange notes before heading to the previously locked tower where the Domain Leader of Arcana is staying.
There they find that Hier has already killed him, but they manage to sneak up on the plasmoid and wound him. Hier flees and summons two werewolves to keep the party busy. The party angrily kills the two werewolves and curse Hier for his cowardice.
The party decides to sleep for the first time since the Calamity and are woken up soon after by Xanthe, who asks for her familiar back. Ardryll hands it over without issue and she leaves peacefully. The party then goes back to a proper rest, with the two elves awaking sooner than the rest of the party and doing some research with Tori. They also notice the ring of magic developing as a result of the shield caused by the Pridwen.
Once the other party members wake up, Areth tells Yellesa about the magic ring and the party collectively decides that it must be dealt with. They continue tracking the magic circle that’s maintaining the spell and triangulate the location to a shipyard. They sneak in through a back entrance and Yellesa finally gets close enough to connect to the Mindflayer. Choosing to go ahead with such a dangerous operation, she locates the Mindflayer and shares power with it. It uses that power to short-circuit the entire complex, killing several and activating the emergency shutdown.
The party rushes to where Yellesa now knows the Mindflayer to be, mostly ignored by the panicking Spellbreakers. Once they arrive at the machine holding the Mindflayer captive, they fight the Spellbreakers trying to bring it back under control. In the chaos, the leader of the Spellbreakers, Khilvel, is killed. The party successfully manages to activate the self-destruct on the machine, killing the Mindflayer within.
The entire Spellbreaker base collapses as a result of the explosion and the party escapes with some minor injuries. Once outside, they engage in some third-degree with a paladin who noticed the chaos and manage to convince him that they are working with him and not the demons. Heading back to Gahn’s place, they debate extensively on what their next goal should be and settle on dealing with Gahn’s doppelganger. They drop off all of the alchemical ingredients gathered at the Mages Guild and pick up Jonas, planning on using him as bait.
The party heads back to Jonas’ safe room to set the trap, with Ardryll donning a Spellbreaker robe and fake capturing Jonas to make his survival obvious. Hier takes the bait and teleports into the room, not expecting five combatants lying in wait for him. Despite his advantage psionics and skill in combat, he can’t prevail against a force so overwhelming and is killed. Gahn consumes Hier’s brain, gaining some of his memories and a sliver of his psionic powers.
Afterwards the party releases Jonas to go gather the rest of the Domain Leaders, now that they are no longer being hunted. They go to the Church of Life and find it is inexplicably empty, instead running into the same paladin from before. He says he is also looking into the lost citizens and offhandedly mentions an old tale about a dragon living under the Arena. With several leads, the party sits down in the church to decide what they should pursue next.
The party somehow is convinced by Ardryll to pursue the dragon lead and they head to the arena. There they kill several demons outside and sneak inside, finding several shadow demons setting up a detonation despite the mortal slaves toiling away in the caves. The party decides that the lives of the slaves aren’t worth saving and detonate the bomb themselves, killing all 22 slaves inside and opening up an entry to the lair of the copper dragon Agamol. Ardryll wakes up the sleeping dragon and converses with it. It is polite, but makes it clear it sees no value in Ardryll or anything he can offer. He, somehow, has the patience to allow Ardryll to ask several pointless questions and even lets him leave alive.
The party simply watches this proceed, hiding in the hallway. The party quickly leaves when given permission and roast Ardryll for his recklessness. They then talk about what actually useful action they will take next.
After escaping the increasingly-irate dragon, the party decides to go speak to the paladins and see what is their deal. They all approach and ask to be let inside, but the paladins only allow in Areth and Ardryll, who disguised himself as Jonas. The other three engage in a minor argument about racism and suspicion with the paladins, who aren't impressed. The paladins separate the elves, leaving Areth in a bunk room on the second floor and taking Ardryll to a secret room on the third floor.
Gahn, Yellesa and Quaithe get suspicious after a few minutes and Yellesa discovers an open window on the second floor. She jumps on up and lets down a rope for the others Areth grows uneasy and prepares her weapons as a precaution Ardryll discovers two corpses in the room he is in and determines that they have only been dead for a few hours. He gets the hint and uses some beads of force and his halberd to pry the door open, finding himself in the quarters of Lyveria, the head paladin.
The three begin cutting their way through the paladins quickly and quietly, eventually finding the room Areth is being held in and helping her kill the other paladins on the second floor. Ardryll finds a silver dagger and uses it on a paladin after cutting both his Achilles tendons. The dagger kills the paladin instantly, confirming Ardryll's suspicion that most or all of the paladins are werewolves.
The four head up to the third floor and kill Lyveria's second-in-command, taking his amulet-key. They find Ardryll looting and killing his way through the third floor and all five head down to the first floor. They open a magically-sealed door with the amulet and confront Lyveria within, who seems pretty unconcerned with their presence. She even smokes a cigar while heckling them about how they're following their own goals instead of greater good, just like she is. Eventually she grows tired of the party and decides to kill them. She is strong, but the party has learned to work together and cover each other's weaknesses too well for her to succeed.
The party searches Lyveria and heads back to Gahn’s place to take a long rest. They notice that many of the mortal forces of Glasya have dried up, and while there are more fiends, they seem to be less organized. At Gahn’s home, the party finds that Gordo has somehow managed to successfully brew a few potions, which he gives to Gahn to hand out to the party as necessary. During the long rest, the two elves hear sounds of crashing and roaring, which Ardryll convinces Areth to come with him to investigate.
They find their way to the St. Rask National Bank, which has been broken into. Ardryll ventures inside and enters the vault, in which the dragon Agamol has entered, planning to take the city’s wealth and add it to his hoard. Ardryll, for some reason, sees this as an opportunity and helps Agamol transport the gold while Areth heads back to inform the party. The party is not keen to help Ardryll and instead venture off to find the Domain Leader of he Forge, Harsola. They rescue her from a few demons and she rewards them by upgrading some of their gear.
Ardryll grows on the dragon somehow, and it tells him a few choice secrets about the city. Satisfied, Ardryll leaves and reconnects with the party at the Library. Inside the library, the party can barely see through the magical fog, but they manage to find and kill the vampire Xanthe, despite her best efforts to separate and disable the party. The party searches Xanthe's lair and finds a few magical items, including one of the Church's artifacts. It is a book written by the Skeleton King about becoming a lich.
They head back to Gahn's to get a long rest and decide it is time to go after the portal. Through their various abilities, they climb the sheer cliff next to the river so as to not fight the fiends guarding the main path. On top, they fight to a garden shed where Areth casts a spell that shuts down all portals, including the fiendish one.
They rush into the cathedral and eliminate Rozin, with some effort. After Rozin's death, they have a short chat with Glasya, who is unbothered by the failure of the invasion. They head down the mountainside and run into Jonas, who congratulates them. They warn him of the dragon's plans.
Gahn heads back home to pick up Gordo and what stuff he can before heading down the river to the next city of the Heptades, Yurra. He then decides that with his old life over, it is about time to move on anyways. He splits into two new plasmoids, Kaym and Whente. Each one inherits different skills and equipment.