SESSION 0

ENTER THE PLANEBREAKER

The Ishtar priestess leader of the temple, a nice harpy-like being named Aeris, rewarded the party (forgot what the award was, besides provisions?). The people of the temple mostly just called their world “the desert” but someone said the word “Windswept”, which sounded more like a regional name or something, maybe.

After a couple of days of rest, the party headed into the desert to the north to seek an outpost town of Dinothar. The party witnessed the arrival of the Planebreaker [see notes in-game for details]. Found a strange coin seemingly connected to the Planebreaker. Calvyn could see straight away that it was magical. Ulysses identified it and learned it could be used to travel to the Planebreaker magically. After some discussion, the party decided to just ignore the item and pocket it.

In Dinothar, the party went to the Tower of Elders. They met Marcus, a portly human male middle-aged guard, and Bartholomew some kind of Gandalf-looking sage or wizard guy. They had a discussion to learn a little bit more about the town but not a lot. Quest: The party took a job for 500 pp to visit the Planebreaker and report back, and Bartholomew said he and the other Elders would also help them get back to their homeworld. The Tower of Elders loaned the party a Carpet of Flying [4 ft. x 6 ft; 400 lb; Speed 60] so they could catch up to the Planebreaker. Bartholomew also gave Ulysses a scroll of Teleportation so they could get back quickly to Dinothar after they had done the recon mission. 

Characters spent the night at an inn called the Flaming Wand. The party was exhausted from two days of hard travel in the desert, so they just ate their food and drink and went to their room early [-20 gp for lodging and food]  In the middle of the night, Lord Geoff, the local ruler (nobility) of Dinothar, ran naked through the streets yelling ”King of the World” over and over.

In the morning, the party crowded onto the magic carpet which was barely large enough for them. It sputtered and almost wasn’t able to go, due to it being at near maximum capacity for weight, but somehow through sheer force of will, Ulysses was able to coax the thing into the air and they were on their way chasing after the strange low-flying moon. 

They spent the entire day chasing after the strange moon. There was nothing but sand and rocks the entire day. No oases, no nothing. Miles and miles of nothing but sand and rocks. Ulysses decided to take a rest and let Nigel take over evening flying duties. They went on through the night, noticing huge, strange shadows moving about below. The adventurers remained awake for fear of falling off. Each of them had a sense of dread; whatever was below them at night would be terrible to encounter. The temperature dropped rapidly, and before dawn, the party was shivering and getting out any fabrics they had handy to try and keep warm.

But morning did come, basically uneventfully. As the yellow sun crested the dunes, a strange sense of otherworldly beauty.  A beauty that would soon be marred. Latina was the first to notice a rapidly approaching, gigantic wind funnel of sand. It was on a collision course and would intercept the party in a matter of minutes. This swirling brown mass of destruction looked deadly for anything that might be unfortunate enough to be caught in it.

Letina tied a rope to either side of the carpet and everyone tried to hold on, as Nigel tried to get above the storm. They did not quite make it, and as the storm hit, the powerful winds and the stinging sand blasted them, swirling the carpet around like a rag. Nigel tried to control it as best as he could as the others desperately held onto the rope. 

Unfortunately, Camus lost his balance as the winds jerked the carpet suddenly, and he flew off, screaming “Heeeellllllp!!!!”. Nigel quickly mumbled an incantation and waved at Camus with a feather fall spell. His fall was slowed, but he wasn’t safe by any means. Then Nigel flew the carpet in a descending U-turn and managed to get under Camus so that he fell back onto the carpet and grabbed the rope again. Then quickly jerking the carpet back into a steep climb, Nigel was able to get above the dangerous storm and away from it. 

After another hour or so, the strange moon was finally nearby, about a quarter of a mile, and the adventurers were starting to overtake it, approaching it on their carpet that moved around a third faster than the moon was [ carpet = 60, moon = 40 ].

As the party approached the strange, reddish moon from the top of it, they passed through a layer of wispy cloud-like substance that felt like a strange tingling mist. It did not do anything harmful, but it gave them a sensation of “other place” as if they had passed through some kind of barrier of realities and were now in a different one. 

Below they could see some pink clouds, and below that, gigantic pink waves cresting over a darker pink and reddish ocean of some kind. In a few places, they could see large magenta whirlpools. Far off to their left, they could also see something that looked like a massive, magical rainbow storm that had all kinds of strange and unusual objects flying around in it. It looked quite dangerous.

As they flew below the cloud layer, some 500 feet or so above the pink ocean, gravity suddenly shifted. Nigel was flying and expertly looped the carpet in a rapid motion, preventing the passengers from tumbling off the carpet as they held onto the rope Latina had fastened onto it with grim determination. After having been through the sandstorm, this sudden shift was easy in comparison.

Within the moon’s gravity, the carpet’s movement seemed to become relatively much quicker than trying to chase the moon from outside the moon’s sphere of influence. They flew on for a few miles as they could see nothing but the ocean far below. As they flew, the sky started to become land, and they began to come around to the side of the moon that was facing the desert below. A strange sense of vertigo began to overtake a few of the riders, but they closed their eyes until it passed.

They started to see something that looked like a long line of rocks. As they moved closer to it, they could see that it looked like some kind of silver-grey ancient stone-like substance, with odd geometric shapes poking out of it at strange places, like some kind of causeway. Nigel piloted the carpet along the causeway, hoping to follow it to some kind of civilization. 

After around a mile, they saw a large humanoid form that looked like some kind of giant, perhaps a stone giant. He was casting a net into the pink waters, fishing for something. A large cart stood nearby, with a brown tarp over a few odd shapes under it. 

Latina used her psychic-link ability to communicate with the giant from a safe distance on the carpet. She telepathically asked if there was some kind of civilization nearby. The imposing creature just shrugged and pointed further along the causeway, and went straight back to tossing his net out into the pink ocean. As she was about to cut off her link, the creature thought to her, “N00bz”. 

The party flew on along the causeway. The causeway intersected another branching causeway and then another, and as they continued down the way the giant pointed, they saw other causeways further in the distance. The causeways seemed to be arranged in a spider-web pattern. As they moved deeper into the “web,” they saw ahead of them a structure with massive walls—a city. 

A gargantuan, monstrously alien statue of an unfamiliar, four-armed humanoid straddled the wall of the city. It was at least 150 feet tall, its’ terrifying visage gazing menacingly out across the endless waves of the pink sea. The walls it straddled were at least 50 feet high, with large, head-shaped towers spaced roughly 50 feet apart along the circular defenses.  One section of the wall had been destroyed, a ragged pile of ancient grey stone stood in a pile instead. The causeway led directly to the breach, serving as an entrance to the city beyond.

As the explorers made their way toward the city entrance, They could see people coming in and out of it. The people were extremely varied, mostly humanoid, but some creatures that were not also made their way through. Some looked familiar, like elves, gnomes, human-blooded creatures like genasai, or the planar-blooded tieflings and aasimars. Others were even more exotic, like fish and animal folk, giants, fae, or aberrations like illithid. The people were sometimes accompanied by beasts and other creatures pulling wagons and carts, most of which looked alien to the heroes.

As they started to walk down the streets of this city, they saw a building that looked like some kind of visitors’ center of sorts, with runes and icons engraved all around its outer walls. One particular icon that frequently appeared prominently on the building’s walls looked like two hands being put together to form an “8” or infinity symbol with the other fingers spread to look like wings.

The party decided they had better start by going to this “visitor center” to ask around. And that is where session zero ended! This was technically not a true “Session Zero” because, being a sneaky-ass DM, I sprung this shift to a new campaign on my players. But in Session 1, we went over the stuff most game masters will go over and had a short session zero session before proceeding to the planar city of Timeborne kick-off.

 

SESSION (-1)

Valentine’s Day One-Shot

All of the characters awoke next to a massive desert temple, at least 80 feet tall, in the middle of a vast desert. There were giant-sized double doors with no handles, along with a gong and a mallet nearby. The giant doors each had a giant glyph carved into the outside of them. Nigel used a ritual casting of Comprehend Languages to translate the left door’s glyph to mean Love and the Right door’s glyph to mean War.

 

Latina took 30 minutes or so to sneak around the entire structure and found 3 other entrances, but then the party decided to just bang the gong and attempt to be cordial visitors to this place. As the gong rang, the gigantic stone doors began making a huge scraping noise. Behind the doors was a dusty entranceway, with huge 60-foot vaulted ceilings, and corridors leading to the northeast and the northwest; the big entranceway was the bottom of a V-shaped layout. The walls were also yellowed, ancient sandstone, lighted with reddish light from floating glowing bulbs that certainly were magic. 

The light shined upon a 30-foot-tall bronze statue of a goddess. Ulysses recognized the statue immediately as an ancient goddess known as Ishtar. She was a goddess of amorous love and vengeful war.  

Heading down the northwestern passage stealthily, Latina discovered a door at the end of the hall. Peaking inside she found a very large chamber at least 70 feet high, 100 feet long,  and 60 feet wide with pews and flying female humanoids that looked vaguely like a harpy except they were beautiful, clad in shiny metal armor, and held spears and pole-arms for weapons. 

One of the Ishtar harpies [NAME?] flew down next to Camus as he came down the corridor and seemed to be smitten by his rugged good looks. She agreed to take them to get some food and water. The group went eastward through the fortress and through a room full of desert warriors who treated the “harpy” with utter respect. 

Latina and the others went into what looked like some kind of dining and kitchen area. The friendly harpy was accosted by one of the warriors who seemed to be jealous of her attention to the party or Latina, it wasn’t clear.  A fight broke out between the harpy and the desert warrior. While that was going on, one of the desert warriors [NAME?] came up quietly to Ulysses and explained how people in the temple had been going crazy with lust and vengeance. 

Ulysses and the others followed after the not-crazy desert warrior. He took them to the water source of the temple, a large fountain, and down into the basement where there was a broken vase with a pinkish liquid in it that Calvyn saw magical residue on. It turned out to be some kind of cursed love potion, probably put into the well as a prank that severely backfired. The party used Ulysses’ move curse spell to purify the water, and after a few days, the crazy love-hate fest in the temple ceased.

 

SESSION (-2) 

End of Grayhawk OSR Campaign

The adventurers from Saltmarsh were traveling to the ruined city of Greyhawk to find a Scarlet Brotherhood agent who might know who was after their patron Anders Solmor. The adventurers were Calvyn (gnome warlock), Camus (half-elf fighter), Latina (halfling rogue), Nigel (shadar-kai bard), and Ulysses (ramag wizard).

They were attacked by a band of ruffians along the river leading north to the city from the overflowing refugee coastal city of Hardby. Defeating the bandits, they questioned one named Oliver. 

Oliver told them that the river gang was led by a powerful crime boss named Jinxinor who would be extremely upset that the adventurers had killed his half-dragon son, Jimbo. Oliver offered to take them to the hideout of the river gang in exchange for sparing his life. The party told Solmor to hide with their horse and wagon off the road and wait for them to return. Ulysses left his familiar as a guard, but Solmor was also accompanied by his girlfriend Eleanor Loveage, the mercenary Bayleaf, and the pirate Sonja. 

They found the cave in a hillside as Oliver had told them, and left him tied up to a tree. They went into the cavern and started murdering bandits, who were not very ready. Perhaps the Saltmarshans had gotten to the cave before the other bandits who fled the river battle. Perhaps the bandits were overconfident or just didn’t expect an assault from the adventurers. Either way, many bandits were slain. 

Stairs let down to a second level, a very warm cavern. Kobolds were there, one was lifting weights. Despite being swoll, Bob died quickly, along with the others and the few bandits that fled the upstairs cave. At this point, the river gang was effectively destroyed, but the party pushed on deeper into the hot caves. A river of lava flowed in a huge cavern, and that’s about when they discovered Jimbo’s dad, Jinxinor – who was a red dragon. A young one, perhaps, but he put up a pretty good fight and as usual, the meat shield Camus went down. 

Jinxinor’s young dragonlings came to avenge their father, who fell into the lava from a nice blast of eldritch energy from the warlock Calvyn. Alas, their vengeance was not realized, as Calvyn blasted away the one that Latina wanted to keep as a pet. Bad dragonling! 

They kept going through the caves and defeated some ghoul bats. Then was an ancient tomb entrance guarded by a nasty poisonous and necrotic ooze monster. After they defeated the ooze thing, they noticed that sand was quickly whirling around in the room, and it quickly turned into a crazy indoor sandstorm. The cursed magical sands in the ancient tomb adjacent to Jinxinor’s lair rapidly knocked all of the party into the sweet oblivion of unconscious, as they each became extremely exhausted.

 Greetings, denizens of the infinite multiverse. I am virtuadept, your humble chronicler and facilitator of the adventurers formally known as the "Heroes of Saltmarsh." Their deeds in the Kingdom of Keoland around the small port city of Saltmarsh and its surroundings are impressive and grand. These heroes often risked their lives to protect (and some might say, exploit, but those people are jealous fools) the regular folk of the region.

But one day, as they were traveling to the ruined city of Greyhawk, with their patron, a rich young merchant named Anders Solmor, the party was waylaid by bandits. Defeating them and after questioning a prisoner, they learned of the location of the bandit lair. They learned that one of the bandits, a half-dragon, was the son of Jinxinor, the leader of the bandit gang. After defeating the young red dragon Jinxinor and several more of his spawn, along with many bandits, the party explored the caverns under the hideout and discovered an ancient tomb. 

While exploring this ancient tomb, a curse was unleashed, and a whirlwind of magical sand overpowered each of the heroes one after another. Waking from unconsciousness, they quickly discovered that they were not in Greyhawk anymore. They were in a vast desert with an unfamiliar sky and unfamiliar suns, next to a large desert temple. They had become planar adventurers...

And that's how this campaign began, the third campaign of the "foresters" players who have been with me since August 2020, when I launched a campaign using Tales of the Old Margreve by Kobold Press, which is set in their very cool Midgard setting. Two players have been with me since that start, and others joined during the first year of the campaign, so this group has essentially stayed together for three and a half years (it will be four by August 2024). 

This blogger blog is to chronicle the planar adventures of this yet-to-be-renamed adventuring company and provide any additional lore that might be relevant. The players will primarily use it as a reference they can refer to, but anyone who finds enjoyment in following along is welcome to read it.