Campaign One: Chapter V - Allies Lost and Gained

The Lightning-Struck Tree

Faustas 10th Concord, 30 Fifth Age

It was a few hours before midnight, and the life shared by Baesellor Rhelareon and Lancion Strong had been extinguished. Reeling from the loss, Vilwyn took the burned body in search of a burial place while Visimar roamed the riverbank, searching for their killer. As he wandered in a trance, Vilwyn came across a tree, split almost perfectly in two by a lightning strike. One half had blackened with age and fire. The other lived on, new shoots sprouting from its split trunk, fighting valiantly to reach the canopy. Vilwyn dug a hole at the base of the tree, and in this watery grave he laid the body, placing Lancion's spear against the tree to mark the site. 

When Visimar returned, he hung his symbol of Haelion on the spear to ease the twin souls' passage into the divine realm. Visimar wished to seek out the monster and slay it, but Vilwyn did not share his reckless fury. Instead, he insisted that the party needed to find their guide. The flask of alchemist's fire boiled hot within his rucksack - too much heat would rupture the glass and catch the substance aflame. Though his anger urged him to violence, Visimar relented, and climbed a tree in search of a plume of smoke. He found one emanating from a narrow spur jutting out into the Ramman River, a few miles north.

As the trio of lost comrades wandered the forest, they happened across a hunter's lodge, and noticed that the sinking mud did not reach this far away from Correnwald. The interior of the lodge was caked in a yellowish fur. Even the corpse at the table, slumped in a state of advanced decomposition, was overrun in yellow mould. After Vilwyn nudged the corpse aside and triggered an outburst of poisonous spores, he fled the cabin, but Visimar lacked the human need to breathe. He stripped the cabin with impunity, finding a silver ashtray on the table, a tin of gold above the washbasin, and a magical arrow and a pearl necklace stored away in the chimney. He also claimed the longbow mounted over the fireplace and, knowing the rogue was missing a ranged weapon, gave his crossbow to Callidus. 

Burning the Distillery

Saturnas 11th Concord, 30 Fifth Age

Shortly after midnight, the trio arrived at the Swamp Snakes' distillery, built inside the ruins of an old Swamp King fortification. Visimar scouted the building, identifying five halflings - including Finlan Bolger, who had narrowly survived the attack on his boat - and two giant frog mounts. Vilwyn and Callidus squeezed through a hole in the ruins and killed the guard at the boathouse while Visimar hurled the flask of alchemist's fire into the distillery. The glass shattered and the substance spread across the muck, igniting at the touch of air. For a moment there was only panic as the distillery guards frantically tried to stamp out the fire. Then the substance touched the moonshine stills, and a blast of emerald flame erupted from the distillery. The stills and their minders were reduced to ash. The force of the explosion blew out the walls, almost crushing Callidus under debris. Visimar clung to his treetop perch as tongues of flame lashed the air. The frogs bounded away in terror, and amidst the blazing ruins, the remaining two halflings surrendered to Vilwyn.

For a moment, all saw a glimpse of hell in the swamp.

As Vilwyn and Callidus searched the blasted carcass of the ruin for supplies, the Swamp Snakes' pleas for mercy only stoked the fires of Visimar's rage. He plunged Lancion's heart-shard into Finlan's chest, but instead of retrieving either soul from death it only killed the halfling. He then lunged at the second, sinking his teeth into his neck while Vilwyn tried and failed to wrestle him away. The halfling reached for his scimitar and slashed Visimar's face, giving Vilwyn a window to tackle him to the ground. The halfling ran into the woods, staunching the wound in his neck. Vilwyn had not the words to castigate Visimar - in truth, he knew it was no blood-hunger that had triggered such violence, but a rage at losing Baesellor, and guilt that his last words to the warlock had been glee at Lancion's return. 

A New Ally

Though their mission was complete, their victory had been neutered by their losses. Battered and bruised, the trio took the Swamp Snakes' canoe back to Correnwald, landing at the Middle Docks as the sun rose. As they made their way to the Taproot Inn to sleep, they glimpsed chaos in the Siltwater Market - four giant lizards, pustulated and twisted like the ogre and crocodile before them, advanced towards the collapsed watchtower in the town square, where a terrified potter scrambled for safety. Though exhausted, the trio ran to help, but a newcomer got their first. Clad in brass-link chainmail and wielding an ancient greatsword of impressive breadth, a bearded dwarf came charging into the market and decapitated a lizard in one swing, his blade empowered with divine might. The party rushed to his aid, and slew the lizards one by one. Though Visimar's rage had not dulled, he resisted to urge to lash out against innocents, and instead finished the final lizard, using his Curse of the Fallen Puppet to turn its fellow's corpse against it before piercing its skull with his blood-flaming scimitar.

The dwarf introduced himself as Kharmir Stoutbreaker, a paladin of the Great Crucible: a long-forgotten god of dwarvish civilisation. Vilwyn was stunned, believing all the dwarves wiped out in the Age of Cinders. Indeed, Kharmir explained that much of their way of life had been lost, and offered the party a drink in the local inn. The party went to collect their reward from Osborn Tealeaf, and brought their complimentary kegs of Emerald Brew to the Taproot for drinking. There, they made their introductions, and Kharmir explained that he was once a watchman of a Norod Dulum, an ancient dwarven city that once stood proud in the Dragonspine mountains before being knocked into the earth by the demigod offspring of the Stormlord. Trapped in underground stasis, he emerged from the ruins just months ago, and travelled the new world in confusion before deciding to carry on as an honourable sellsword, hoping to do good in the realm. He had come to Correnwald to speak to Father Anselm, a local cleric of Haelion who needed assistance with a matter most urgent. Feeling the absence of a fourth, the party offered to help the newcomer with his task.

Plea of the Priest

First, the group went back to the Emerald Brewery, where Callidus proposed his employer's deal to Tealeaf - forty-five percent of the company in exchange for help in expanding operations south of the Dragonspine. Tealeaf almost balked at the lofty percentage, but instead of slinging insults like Bolger, offered to meet this Arania of the Deep in Sturmenfell and talk business in person, hoping to forge a more amenable deal. Callidus shook his hand, and Vilwyn noticed - now that Tealeaf had shirked his gloves - an old scar across the halfling's palm. When Vilwyn asked about the supposed resistance movement in the town, Osborn denied knowledge of it, but suggested the party continue on their current trajectory of helping the townsfolk and avoid butting heads with the law enforcement.

Meanwhile, Visimar was reading the notes left for him at the Taproot Inn by Ario Va'Kel: a collection of transcripts from old and forgotten texts. Three particular passages caught his eye: a note on the use of silver to defeat monsters of lycanthropic and devilish origin, a description of the effects of an infernal pact upon the environs, and an account of the twisted workings of the Guild of Fleshwrights in Kastalav. Wishing to arm himself against monsters like that in the swamp, Visimar visited Byron's smithy and handed him the silver ashtray and his scimitar for infusion.

Following this, the party met with Father Anselm at the Sun Chapel in the Stilts district. Anselm was a cleric of noble birth, come from the far-off city of Kallantium with his curate, Symon Vicario. Recognising Kharmir from their correspondence, Anselm poured his guests some Kallantine red and described his predicament. 

"The wildlife has turned violent. The waters of the Ramman are putrid, and I've heard reports of the water burning green in the black of night. The Ramman has been poisoned with something dire. The townsfolk have enough rationed for a few more weeks, but unless this corruption is swiftly resolved, they will die. 

Two weeks ago, I sent my curate, a very pious young man named Symon Vicario, into the swamp to investigate the source of the corruption in the river. He did not return. I have my suspicions, but I have not enough proof to be sure of them. I need you to head into the Hellmire to search for him and secure his return - if he is still out there. If he has perished… then his body will need to be returned to me to be anointed in the light of the dawn. No child of the sun deserves to die in the dark."

Though he remained cagey about his suspicions, fearing them unfounded, he marked on the party's map the path Symon took into the swamp, leading through the now-sunken graveyard. The party resolved to set out as soon as possible to find him. After taking a well-earned rest, the party spent Dametras shopping and preparing for their expedition into the swamp, refusing to be caught unawares again. However, in the night, Visimar was wracked by a physical transformation, his body taking on the hardened scales and claws of the monster that killed Lancion Strong. Whatever experiments had wrought him, it was clear that his body had been granted a chameleonic power, though the adaptation was both impermanent and agonisingly painful. 

Setting Out

Lunas 13th Concord, 30 Fifth Age

On the morning of Lunas, Visimar collected his newly-silvered scimitar from Byron, as well as the pouch of three silver darts - wrought in the style of the Swamp Kings - that Byron had made with the excess. When he saw Alice reading the book Baesellor gave her, Visimar told Byron of his passing, and the saddened smith returned to his forge in a state of melancholy. The party then set off into the woods by way of the graveyard path, which was choked in mud and stagnant water. The route took them past the house of Aggie the seamstress, who - from her porch - warned them again of the ghosts in the swamp. While Vilwyn assured her they would be careful, Visimar noticed tracks in the mud that had yet to be washed away: narrow depressions formed by cart wheels, moving off into the forest. It seemed that there was more to the ghost story than they had previously assumed.

With old questions answered and new ones asked, the replenished party of four moved off into the forest in search of Symon Vicario: an ally lost, an ally gained, a new quest undertaken. 

And so it is written.