Into the Rift¶
"Short-circuit roundup -- end mini-campaign here." — the gamemaster's fourth outline (S011)
A mini-campaign of the Fifth Age, prepared from August to October 2020, set on the frontier where Proturas, which outsiders call the Grotto, the kingdom of Lorsythe and the Boreal Elves meet, and in the Rift. Five guards and hangers-on of the delegations, from three peoples who had been at war with one another for a generation, survived the destruction of a peace council and fled into a fissure, and the outlines take them across the Rift to the Illuri Fold, where a cult meant to free a fire primordial from her prison.
Gap
Every surviving document is gamemaster prep or a pregenerated character. Nothing records what was played, how far the party got, or whether the mini-campaign reached its fourth part. This page presents the arc as planned. The outlines give no year; Lorsythe is still a standing kingdom.
The party¶
Four pregenerated characters at fifth level survive as full sheets; the fifth is named only in the first outline (S006).
| Character | People and calling | Background |
|---|---|---|
| Hyrella | Boreal Elf, fae archer | A Snow-Huntress of Brae'Dal, guard to the diplomat Lady Aeshrynn; her people fought Lorsythe for three years and drove the Exiles west of the Greenfell River (S005). |
| Ephra | Human of Lorsythe, Kalari cultist | A lieutenant in the Lorsythian army and secretly, for ten years, an initiate of the Moonlight Order, in a kingdom where "blasphemy is a cardinal sin punishable by death" (S004). |
| Aqiran | Ebonheart Riftborn, totemic monk | Also written Aqirax. A scout of the 3rd Company of Proturan Rangers on the Lorsythian and elven borders, hired to protect the Grotto's delegation (S002, S006). |
| Karkazan | Outcast Uk'zarai, fel warlock | An Adiuverent of Marlerai under Master Ulfurzar, the delegation's diplomat; "a direct descendant of the revered Marlezan" whose prodigy is "a lie" made good by grueling study (S009). |
| Jaekul | Wildmen, beastmaster | Horsemaster and caravan driver from a village across a lake (S006). |
The world they began in¶
The character backgrounds share one situation. A month before the council, contact was lost with Myrgitta, Proturus's only trading port, a fortified enclave the Boreal Elves had never dislodged; it had fallen to Guhvils "from the North", whom the Uk'zarai call Sileks (S002, S009). Elves and humans had suffered Guhvil raids too, "capturing many and taking them away to some unknown fate", and "what was unthinkable only months ago" followed: a peace council between the three enemies (S004, S005). The Grotto itself is described as "a refuge for outcasts of all races and castes" ruled by an anonymous government of "The Three Exiles" and "The Blind", hunted by the Divine Alliance (S002, S009); that and the Rift primer the sheets carry are told on the Proturas and Rift pages.
Arc as planned¶
Part 1: the fissure¶
"A massive arcane explosion destroys the town hall where the council was taking place … killing everyone they know" (S006). The blast unleashes a Guhvil plague, "glowing green and brown dust", and opens an unstable fissure. "There really isn't a choice. It's stay and die, or flee into the fissure." Inside, two Guhvil warlocks hold it open while a Herald of Rot, a demon of Bhaal, channels the plague wind through it; killing the Herald "may spare many of the townspeople." Beyond lie a sorcerer's tower on a crag, warded against demons, whose absent master belongs to an order of wizards marked with a silver V, and a stable fissure that drops the party far north, "deep in Guhvil territory … underground in a mostly abandoned dwarven hold" (S006).
Part 2: Latgrove and Vrock Island¶
The second outline lists the town of Latgrove and Vrock Island: vrocks nesting at its peak, a gap guarded by an imprisoned horned demon with a black staff, "kill or negotiate", and a haunted Kalari shrine whose portal answers only to runestones of Kalar, Arya, Orandos and Khardas set in order (S008). A Guhvil outpost with a docked dirigible holds a tower-isle.
Part 3: the Illuri Fold¶
The portal leads to the Illuri Fold, a bright desert fold holding "some old parts of the Astral Shard of Orandos" and one of the prisons of Ambusthene, "Sovereign of Searing Refulgence", at the Tethers of Ambusthene (S010). The site is held by the Primal Union of Ter'Gaia, elemental cultists of Guhvils, humans, Uk'zarai and kobolds who "plan to free Ambusthene" and "are manipulating the Guhvil invasion": one Guhvil general and several council members are theirs. Their leader Rhivzom, an Uk'zarai fire priest who escaped execution for treason in Proturus, is away hunting the primordial Maegera; at the temple are the warlord Drotvull and the high priest Eewaz. To douse the flame wards the cult means to capture Uiren, the Boreal Elves' patron, with Calcadyia's Crystal Lance, and to gather the souls of four red dragons, one of them held in Proturus's Sceptre of Judgement (S010). Their maps of "The Glittering Caverns of Uiren" are of a place Hyrella knows.
The horned demon of Vrock Island, Thularal, betrays the party: he has scried them through his black staff and arrives behind them with borrowed minions of the demon Korthaxis and a rift-stone, to make war on the cult (S010).
Part 4: the end¶
The last outline is a "short-circuit roundup". Demons and cultists thin each other out; Drotvull may take to a warship and turn its guns on the demons' air power; the party escape by dirigible or by a rift-gate to the Cave of Uiren where Rhivzom waits with his bodyguards, "If we are out of time, Rhivzom won't be here. Session ends with return to material plane" (S011).
What changed¶
Nothing is recorded as having happened in play. The outlines and sheets assert, as the campaign's premise, these Fifth Age events (no year given):
- Myrgitta lost to the Guhvils, cutting the Grotto's only port and supply route (S002, S009). See Myrgitta.
- The peace council of the Grotto, Lorsythe and the Boreal Elves destroyed by an arcane explosion and Guhvil plague (S006). See Proturas and Lorsythe.
- The Primal Union of Ter'Gaia holding the Illuri Fold and steering the Guhvil invasion toward freeing Ambusthene (S010). See Primal Union of Ter'Gaia.