Campaign Synopsis#

Overview#

A half-elf sorceress named Odine Dunmere leaves her isolated elven homeland, the Thornwood Vale, because a creeping corruption, later called the Wither, is killing its crops, its creatures and its people. She joins three companions on the road: the silver-tongued noble Cassian, the horned, ghost-chasing Azrith, and the tiefling ex-guard Aldric. Together they arrive in Everdale, seat of the long-vacant Empty Throne, during the annual King's Tourney. The tourney’s grand prize is the deed to the Vale itself, which the great noble houses have fought over for a decade. The four enter as Cassian’s Crushing Crusaders, an unknown team of underdogs. With the backing of the scheming Duke Tristan Blackwood, they climb from the muddy Proving Grounds to the famed Crown Gauntlet, which no team had cleared in seven years. Along the way they win the hearts of the common folk and the attention of the nobility.

The party is pulled into older and darker currents. The arcane House Godrin has been hunting the young mage Jevon to reach his teacher, Maralynn, a legendary witch of the Vale they have now confirmed is alive. The dwarf smith Gruvelda Duskbelt reveals that Odine’s grandmother, Mara, gave her life to hold back the entity behind the Wither, and that humanity’s tale of its King’s victory over it is a lie. Cassian carries a bargain with The Masked Figure who visits his dreams. The Wither is spreading into the Crownlands. When the party freed a captive manticore in The Menagerie instead of slaying it, they scandalized the tourney. Blackwood sent them by ancient teleportation circle to Havenport, a ruined seaport that turns out to be Aldric’s forgotten home. There they heard the Oathkeepers’ legend of the Dark King, which echoes Odine’s family stories. Then Azrith leapt headlong through a curtain into the realm of death, and returned with news that Aldric has a mother — Eleanor Gray — who named him after King Aldrich and always meant to bring him home. The party also learned that House Wulfhelm killed House Westermere in a coup 15 years ago to silence a secret, and that a putrid spirit commanding the undead waits beyond the black veil in the Westermere undercroft. No one in Havenport has managed to break the veil, and passing through it demands a toll of the party’s own life force.

Timeline#

Prologue: The Road to Everdale#

Before the first logged session. Odine, Cassian, Aldric and Azrith travel toward Everdale with Jevon, a young mage carrying a glowing elven box. On the road they meet Sir Televast, an Oathkeeper knight, and encounter a horse twisted by the same black corruption Odine has seen in the Vale. It is her first sign that the curse has escaped her homeland. See 2026.05.05.

Arc I: Arrival at the Tourney#

2026.05.05 “The King’s Fair”
The party reaches Everdale, with the Gleaming Keep shining above a sprawling festival. Cassian glimpses the black, tentacle-like marks on Odine’s arm. The party registers for the Proving Grounds and meets the tourney’s colorful locals: the registrar Holt, the cook Slug, the brewer Minnie, the apothecary Marea Voss and the bard Virellan Le'Strange. They also catch sight of Kardis Wulfhelm, prince of the house that holds the Vale’s deed. Then Jevon vanishes, taken by white-armored knights, and Azrith finds his box dropped in the mud.

2026.05.12 “The Stone Sanctum”
The party pitches itself as “ghost hunters” to the dwarven smith Gruvelda Duskbelt. She shows Odine a severed hand bearing the same corruption; she cut off her own to survive it. Following rumors of nobles meddling in a hilltop graveyard, the party finds Jevon bound at the Stone Sanctum and destroys the ghost-possessed House Godrin soldier guarding him. Jevon reveals that Godrin wanted his teacher, a witch of the Vale named Maralynn. He goes into hiding and gives Odine a sending stone.

2026.05.19 “A Deal in Dreams”
At the commoners’ tavern, the Ragged Flagon, run by the orc Rory, the party convinces Gruvelda that the ghost job is done. She arms Aldric with a Sentinel Shield and points them to her brother, Grimhall Duskbelt. Cassian talks the party into a borrowed tent on the noble hill of Boarhead Tor. That night, The Masked Figure visits his dreams and strikes a bargain: keep Odine close and stir trouble among the houses, and the Figure will clear the tourney’s champions from his path and reveal where his family’s strange dice came from.

Arc II: The Proving Grounds#

2026.06.02 “First Blood in the Mud”
In their first bout, Cassian and Azrith are both knocked out. Aldric holds the line alone until Odine revives them, and the Crusaders win to a roaring crowd. The minor lord Duke Tristan Blackwood takes notice. Cassian’s side bet is lost on a technicality.

2026.06.11 “The Straw Doll”
Blackwood sponsors the party for 8% of any winnings, paying a 750 gp advance and magic items collected at Clover Hill. Cassian is publicly named “Lord Fortescue,” heir of House Fortescue. Odine finds a century-old straw doll from the Vale, which unlocks Gruvelda’s trust. The smith reveals that she knew Odine’s grandmother Mara, who sacrificed herself to cast the entity back. She names Odine one of the Touched. And she confirms that the King’s “victory” over the blight 150 years ago was a lie. Gruvelda gifts Odine an Elven Chain and Cassian the mysterious Chain of the Unbroken.

2026.06.23 “The Crown Gauntlet, Part One”
Jevon slips into camp at night; he is still hunted. Cassian learns that House Godrin wins the tourney to mine mana crystals in the Vale. The party bets 50 gp on themselves at 3× odds, hypes the crowd, and begins the Crown Gauntlet, a 40-foot obstacle tower over a mud pit. Illusions and laughter spells neutralize most of the guards before the clock is paused.

2026.07.14 “Six Seconds Left”
The party maxes out the crowd’s cheers, scales the wall, frees a jammed gear-tower with Cassian’s chain, and hauls Odine up in a last-second rescue. All four ring the bell with six seconds to spare, the first team to finish in seven years. Blackwood offers only a slow, reserved clap.

Arc III: Shadows of House Godrin#

Untranscribed session “The Wither”
Known only from the GM’s recap (see 2026.08.11). The party buys its own campsite, learns the blight’s true name, the Wither, from a disillusioned Oathkeeper, and rescues Jevon from Godrin’s knights a second time. They learn that Godrin wants to know who gave Jevon his stone.

2026.08.11 “Spoils and Ledgers”
Blackwood’s nephew Renny Blackwood delivers the Gauntlet prize: about 1,500 gp and a magic item for each hero. The party sets up a hidden dead-drop to keep Jevon supplied. Gruvelda quietly reveals that House Godrin keeps ledgers of its dealings. Holt confirms the Crusaders have been promoted to The Menagerie, the tourney’s beast arena. At the table, the GM corrects a running mix-up: the knights hunting Jevon were always House Godrin, not House Oswall.

2026.08.18 “The King’s Cup”
Blackwood finally explains the true stakes. Godrin and House Wulfhelm have traded the Vale for a decade. House Corwyn believes the Vale hides a secret that could topple them both. Godrin has been abducting hedge mages and, rumor says, children. He hands Cassian a sealed intelligence note on Godrin’s camp, White Feather Tor. That night Aldric enters Rory’s drinking contest, the King’s Cup, and wins it. His last rival, a dwarf, dies at the table, and Aldric is left incapacitated at exhaustion level 6.

2026.08.25 “She’s Alive”
The priest Father Caldus Vey nurses Aldric back. Cassian and Azrith infiltrate White Feather Tor invisibly. They steal a Godrin letter and overhear Percival Godrin: Maralynn is alive, and they have found her. They also glimpse Godrin’s towering champion, Sir Thorin Cassavar, “the Crow.” To protect Maralynn, Odine invents a decoy witch, “Aerendyl Morath,” and Blackwood agrees to spread the lie. That evening the party walks into the Menagerie to face a manticore.

Arc IV: The Menagerie#

2026.09.08 “Unchained”
Mid-battle, the manticore speaks, and Cassian chooses words over steel. He learns that the beast is a captive held by a trebuchet-and-net failsafe and talks it down. He then rides it to destroy the machine and sets it free. The Freed Manticore flies off promising to visit. The paying crowd boos and the judges are in uproar, while peasants on the cliffs cheer. Blackwood slips out of his box without a word.

2026.09.15 “That Was Genius”
The party flees in a haze of burning banners. Holt warns that the stunt may end their tourney run, while the common folk hail them as folk heroes. In private, Blackwood calls it “fucking genius.” The scandal is the perfect distraction for his own schemes. But he warns that mercy will one day cost lives. He sends them away to lie low under his stern captain, Captain Garran, to a town called Havenport. That is also Aldric’s surname. The party reaches level 5.

Arc V: Havenport#

2026.09.22 “Beyond the Curtain”
Blackwood’s gold buys passage through an ancient teleportation circle in the Gleaming Keep. It is powered by spell draught, a liquid made from the Vale’s mana crystals. The party arrives at Westermere Manor in rain-lashed, dying Havenport. There they learn it is Aldric’s hometown. The lone Oathkeeper Ian tells them the legend of the Dark King, a corrupting power from a far realm. King Aldrich defeated it alone, and all that was found of him afterward was a statue of himself in the Vale. Odine has seen that statue with her own eyes. In the haunted undercroft, Azrith leaps into the Curtain, a gate to the realm of death, and vanishes. The ghost Samantha Westermere explains what it is, and the party studies a black veil of pure entropy that is sealing off the depths.

2026.09.29 “Aldrick of Havenport” (session 15)
With Azrith’s player back at the table, the party found Mauve Marigold at the Salt House and learned the full story of Havenport’s decline: House Westermere fell 15 years ago when House Wulfhelm staged a coup to silence a secret, and the Wither crept in afterward, taking victims one by one until the town collapsed. Odine confirmed the same 15-year timeline for the Wither in the Vale. Cassian revealed his full title, Lord Fortescue, to Mauve. Meanwhile, Azrith fought through the ethereal plane beyond the Curtain, killed a vengeful ghost, and met Eleanor Gray — Aldric’s mother, a ghost who named him after King Aldrich, called him “Aldrick of Havenport,” and told him he was never a mistake. She had recently escaped the enthrallment of the spirit behind the black veil, a putrid entity that commands the undead. Azrith jumped back through the Curtain and rejoined the party. Back in the undercroft, Samantha Westermere revealed that Beowyn and Eodwin Wulfhelm were friends with her family — until Wulfhelm killed them all. The truth lies beyond the veil. The party studied the veil and learned that radiant energy repels it and that something vital may need to be exchanged to pass through.

2026.10.06 “The Price of Passage” (session 16)
Odine’s natural 20 revealed the black veil’s terms: break it with a divine smite beyond any mortal’s power, or “knock” and pay with life force, 10 hit points of maximum health shared among the party. The Oathkeeper Ian is forbidden by his order to set foot in the undercroft, and Mauve Marigold admitted that priests and a House Corwyn hedge mage had already failed against it. She offered her own blood but would not ask strangers, or the dying, to pay. Aldric still doubts the ghost is really his mother, and Cassian balks at the cost. After salty Harbor Gose at the Salt House, Odine called in her favor, and the Crusaders resolved to face the veil in the morning.

2026.10.13 “Beyond the Black Veil” (session 17)
All four players present. After breakfast at the Salt House (and a free knob of garlic from Edith Rooke), the party gave up on finding a substitute sacrifice: the price needed a conscious, willing subject. Azrith realised that if Odine paid alone she would be stranded beyond the veil, so all four touched the wall together and paid the toll — nine points of life force shared, and Odine’s final point to break the seal. Beyond lay the ethereal domain of death: a corridor of trapped souls begging release from the grasp of The Warden of Death, opening into a burial chamber of nine deity statues with the Shepherd — death’s archetype — enthroned. The souls animated the Shepherd statue; it greeted the party as “little flames” and attacked. The party destroyed the statue (it was undead, charm-immune, fire-resistant), but the Warden’s ethereal rostrum survived — “you have destroyed my body, but you will not break my oath” — and drifted toward another statue to possess. The session ended on that cliffhanger.

Where Things Stand#

• Azrith returned from the ethereal plane on 2026.09.29, bringing news that Aldric has a mother — the ghost Eleanor Gray — who named him after King Aldrich and always meant to bring him home. See Find Azrith.
• The party is staying with Mauve Marigold at the Salt House in Havenport, waiting for word from Duke Tristan Blackwood.
• The tourney run is on hold after the Menagerie scandal; see Compete in the King's Tourney.
• House Godrin is chasing Odine’s decoy toward the western Vale, where Jevon has gone to mislead them; see Investigate House Godrin.
• The Wither spreads. Its link to the Dark King, the kneeling statue and Odine’s lineage is the campaign’s central mystery; see Investigate the Pestilence.
• Cassian’s dream bargain with The Masked Figure is still unresolved, as is the question of why House Wulfhelm will not acknowledge House Fortescue.
• House Wulfhelm killed House Westermere in a coup 15 years ago to silence a secret. Beowyn and Eodwin Wulfhelm were friends with Samantha’s family. The truth lies beyond the black veil.
• The spirit behind the black veil commands the undead and enthralls spirits. Eleanor Gray recently escaped its control. Azrith has declared he will kill it.
• The party passed the Black Veil on 2026.10.13, paying 10 max HP of life force shared among the four (Odine broke the seal). Beyond lies the ethereal domain of death, a prison of trapped souls kept by The Warden of Death — very likely the spirit behind the veil. Its Shepherd-statue vessel was destroyed, but the Warden itself survived and seeks a new vessel among the chamber’s nine deity statues. The party must stop it. See Confront the Spirit Behind the Black Veil.
• Aldric’s mother is the ghost Eleanor Gray, trapped in the ethereal plane. She named him “Aldrick of Havenport” and always meant to bring him home.
• The party left the Salt House meaning to return within two hours; Mauve Marigold will check the manor if they do not.

For session-by-session detail, see each log in 00 - Campaign Log/.