Proturan Campaign¶
Contested
This page is named in the open question Marcella or Marcayllis at Urdhar; Malathar and the Circle. The prep notes disagree on who sent Argo his dagger and on who rules at Urdhar; the page gives the readings as the notes do.
"Look, I have no interest in being a slaver … For fixing 'me forge and making this dagger, we'll call that an even exchange for your freedom." — Berek Beetleslayer to Maggem (S062)
A campaign of the Fifth Age, played in thirty sessions from January to November 2023, set in and around Proturas, the hidden city of the Grotto. The players chose the setting by ballot in December 2022: "Players are working for one of the smaller crime syndicates within the city of Proturas", in an era "post Dark Sun", "post-Sancturi", and "following the Second Araxian invasion", when Proturas "is the last bastion of the Kalari races in the north-eastern part of Astia" (S077). The crew of a small-time relic fence were caught between a cabal seeking immortality from a dead primal dragon, a red dragon in human guise, a lich of the old Nexa-Vinians and the serpent cult of an Elder God; they fought through the gang war of the Warrens, voyaged through the Rift, and came home to a city at war, then went into the forbidden forest of the Etterwood, where they took up the Seed of Caerylas and the Claw of Vixseranyol.
The party¶
| Character | Notes |
|---|---|
| Argo | Argolluvel, also written Argoluvel. An illusionist who passes as a Wood Elf; in truth a High Elf with no memory older than "a ditch, covered in blood and muck" some 250 years before, Hobard's lieutenant and book-keeper (S074, S068). He learned in play that he is Arvandor Sel'Dorais, a prince of Vael'Dorais born in 156 AL, exiled by his father in 426 AL "for terrible magical experiments committed against the citizens of Vael'Dorais", and believed slain in 432 AL after working with Malathar (S044). |
| Ashtareth | A Riftborn warlock of the Raven Concord, born a slave to a warlock of the Blue Flame, whose Juxtaposition Ritual brought her the dreams of Inwe (S074, S068). |
| Maggem | A dwarf artificer and runecaster, an orphan who "worked initially as a slave, but eventually earned emancipation" (S074, S068). |
| Alvaldi | Also written Avaldi. Warrior and beastmaster, soul-bonded to the displacer beast Azura; marked by Teneb'Urat (S068, S040, S056). |
| Zygzil | A kobold rogue, rescued by Hobard as a child and sold by him to Maggem's smithy, "which you resent" (S074). |
Companions who travelled with the party for parts of the campaign are on the minor figures of Proturas page: Veldin and Uffe Birkson, a mercenary captain of the Silver Moon and his lieutenant, set by Berek to watch the party (S038, S068); the dwarf runecaster Yagrun, whose riftship carried them out of the Demonblight (S051); and Gaelwyn, a shapeshifter who broke out of Mist Keep with them (S050, S057). The ranger Dala Stonefoot shadowed them from the first tomb to the Rift.
Prelude: the Proturan Mini-Campaign¶
Two sessions in December 2021, played with pregenerated fifth-level characters, served as a trial of the setting and its rules (S073). Eliron of the Warlocks of the Blue Flame, carrying a Proturan Council writ, hired a party to excavate the recent tomb of the warlock Deron in the Marshes of Algher. The road ran from the Aren Gate across the Vale of Aren to Hulbeck and over Tugard Pass, then south and east past the Sulfur Creek Ruins into marshes of Ra'ana toad-folk, crocodiles and wandering dead, where Nutemi's divining rod found the tomb. Its defender was Deron's younger brother, the hermit warlock Ather, with a bone demon, possessed Ra'ana and charmed lizardkin. The players' characters, Asmund, Eadric, Nutemi, Remus and Sigebert, survive only as discarded sheets; how the excavation ended is not recorded.
Arc¶
Nearly every session document is gamemaster prep with a short recap of the last session and a running status of the party. The arc below is rebuilt from those recaps and statuses; the long setting passages repeated session to session, the Warrens' gangs, the Rift, Urdhar, Anoth-Urulien, belong to the world pages linked from them.
Hobard's crew and the Tomb of Malathar (sessions 1 to 4)¶
The crew worked for Hobard, a relic fence of Spillwater. Their first job, on a tip from a buyer coded "K31", robbed a warehouse of the Blue Banner Brothers and left them "temporarily in possession of" a small mithril dragonskull, a dragon-egg stand, and the blood of Vixseranyol, a primal red dragon (S036). Sent next to salvage an abandoned dig near Banbridge, they found that Radulf's Relics & Recovery had opened the Tomb of Malathar, "a Nexa-Vinian Necromancer of considerable power", in a buried iron mine, and that its workers had become plague-zombies; the expedition's papers held "an exact drawing of" Argo's knife, "a symbol/key of the Circle of Eternity" (S047). Dala Stonefoot, claiming to be of the White Fire, was trying to reseal the tomb (S047). The dead marched on Banbridge; the crew returned to find it quarantined by the Knights of the Steel Cross and bodies burning outside the palisade (S058, S060). Argo's dagger, Mala'thazus, was linked to the revived Malathar, who "let the players have it to keep tabs on them", and Argo began to lose his strength to it (S060, S064).
The Warrens (sessions 5 to 17)¶
Back in Proturas the White Hand had seized Hobard for the theft of the blood (S061); he did not survive (S068), and the Dockside Cutters, Spillwater's thieves' guild of underbosses, lieutenants and crews (S029), seized his shop and took in some of his old crew (S028, S062). Maggem was held at the forge of the Pale Pit by the Stone Syndicate, whose boss Berek Beetleslayer let him go for mending the forge and offered the crew work: "I'm no worshipper of demons and dark gods" (S062). Allied with Berek, and with Maggem now "wanted for 100k damage by Proturan Arbiters", they hunted the Tenebrian constrictors that were taking people from the Warrens, and found in the Lost Mines a slave colony serving the serpent-folk of Teneb'Urat (S063, S064). Dunstan's crew, sent to help, betrayed them; Darwin died, and Dunstan and Sesca carried Azura off to the White Hand (S065).
Then "Berek is dead … or so everyone thinks": his head was set on a spike outside the Pale Pit (S038). The crew discovered that the Berek they knew was a simulacrum and that the mystic Isador had ruled the Syndicate through him since the original died (S038, S039). At the election that followed, held under an exchange of hostages, Dunstan won; Argo, held as Dunstan's hostage, escaped when Isador's charm became a guardian at his side, and the restored Berek killed most of the crew bosses who had turned (S040). Dunstan and Luca fled to a fortified manor outside the city, where both died; Alvaldi killed Dunstan as Teneb'Urat's fragment in him woke (S041). The Proturan Arbiters asked the crew to spy on the Warrens, and they refused (S040).
Dala, now revealed as an agent of the red dragon Eksuru, wanted a dragon-egg cradle that the warlock Valtor had modified "to focus energy from a primal's corpse" (S040, S041). The crew robbed Valtor's mansion for it: the Dracius Cradle built by Severuc, which Ashtareth had seen in Inwe's dreams (S042, S044). In the mansion they freed the demon Zexl'ummus, who in exchange told Argo who he had been (S068, S044). "This session was about escaping from Valtor's Manor, avoiding Demons and having discussions with Dala" (S044). The status line of every later session reads "THEY LEFT THE CRADLE IN THE VAULT" (S046 to S059).
The Rift (sessions 18 to 23)¶
Dala was to escort the crew into the Rift, where Eksuru has holdings (S041). They sailed to Urdhar, a rift-rock once on the road to a wood-elven realm, whose castle is the base of a riftborn privateer captain, Marcayllis (S045, S049); a boat failing for want of anima stranded them among the outlying rocks (S046); and they reached Vegryn's Tower (S048). Malathar's laboratory was at Mist Keep, where he was trying to remake the plague Arvandor had once made for the High Elves so that it would cross species and "neuter Humanoid's magical abilities" (S042, S049). The crew "attempted entry into Malathar's Mist-Keep", were attacked by a red drake, captured by its fiery skeletal Warden, and broke out with Gaelwyn and Zygzil, Zygzil having been tortured by the frost-skeleton Jailer; they fled through the Mistlands into the Vileryth Demonblight of the demonlord Vileryth, "Lord of Corpserot" (S050). There the demon Voragul helped them kill his own master, Ragnazak, herald of Vileryth, and Yagrun's riftship took them out (S051). From this point Argo speaks to the crew only "from the Dagger", from inside Malathar's household (S051, S052).
A city at war (sessions 23 and 24)¶
The crew "returned to Proturas to find quite a few things changed" (S052). The Proturan Council had declared war on the Boreal Elves after the Sack of Dunharr; the Warrens had been annexed; Ravenhold had fallen to Valtor and the Concord was outlawed (S051). Through Ashtareth's ring of the Concord came Grimbac's last messages from the siege, "We are trapped! We attempted to secure the Tear of Inwe, but there is no way out", before Zolnira told every member to take off their rings, for Valtor "is capable of using it to track down its users" (S051). Grimbac had left Ashtareth a vault at the Zerajic Bank with titles to Silver Moon property held in Ravenhold. Dala, now hunted by Eksuru's agents, and Veldin and Uffe left the party (S051).
The Etterwood (sessions 24 to 30)¶
Argo reported that Malathar's steward Perithus was leading a dig deep in the forest for Eksuru, and that "Perithus is to ensure that this is a one-way trip for everyone involved" (S052). The crew crossed through the Rift from a gate in the crypt of the church at Etterdun to a kobold hold sheltering the expedition's camp of fifty, and followed its advance party into the old forest (S053). They fought a losing battle against Boreal Elf wardens until a scourged toad came out of the forbidden zone and turned it, found the dig at Kae'Ferrel, and captured the guide Pye'Dara, whom Ashtareth killed under interrogation, "angering some of the other party members" (S054). In the temple of Moros they solved the maze of the Paths of the Dead and reached the inner sanctum, where kobolds and scourged Boreal Elves of Teneb'Vari were animating a dead dragon (S055, S056).
At the Shrine of Caerylas they met the High Priestess Caolynni, Inwe's mother, kept alive in pain since the Hollowing by the Seed, who "has not seen another elf since the Hollowing (200 years or so)" (S057). Judging them worthy, she laid a geas on each and gave them gifts, and to Ashtareth the Seed itself: "Ashtareth, I entrust you with the bearing of the Seed of Caerylas. The future of the Elven race is in your hands. You must see that it is safely delivered to noble High Elves or righteous Aryic Priests" (S057). The crew took the Claw of Vixseranyol from the cult and left the forest pursued by Boreal Elves, into the borderlands of the Urok'gar Confederation. There Princeps Hrok'thog of Agor'haem sensed the Seed and trapped them in a cave; Alvaldi escaped and ran (S059). The last prep offers the trollfather Irek of the troll warrens as a possible ally.
What changed¶
All dates are in the Proturan calendar (AL) of the Fifth Age. No session document gives a year; the world events of sessions 23 and 24 fall after the Proturas timeline's present of 834 AL, as the Timeline places them.
- Malathar the Pestilent revived from his tomb near Banbridge, and Banbridge struck by his plague-dead (S047, S058, S060). See Malathar and Banbridge.
- The Stone Syndicate's rule in the Warrens broken from within: Isador's control of Berek exposed, the traitor bosses killed, Dunstan and Luca dead (S038, S040, S041). See Stone Syndicate and Dunstan.
- The Dracius Cradle taken from Valtor and left in a vault (S044, S046). See Dracius Cradle.
- Ragnazak, herald of Vileryth, killed in the Vileryth Demonblight (S051). See Vileryth.
- War on the Boreal Elves, after 834 AL: following the Sack of Dunharr, "the destruction of a town of 5,000 people", the Proturan Council declared war on the Boreal Elves of the Ettermore Forest and deployed the Silver Wolves brigade with two new conscript brigades (S051). See Proturan Council and Rift Period.
- The Warrens annexed as the County of Claydun, after 834 AL, under Count Galaphile, a blue flame warlock, with Valtor as Mayor; the Stone Syndicate and the Drowned Ring dismantled, Isador vanished, Berek imprisoned and on trial "for murder, racketeering and extortion", the Pale Pit pulled down for a hall and courthouse (S051). See The Warrens.
- The Raven Concord outlawed and Ravenhold seized, after 834 AL, on Valtor's "evidence" of anti-Proturan activity; Valtor, now of the Warlocks of the Blue Flame, occupies Ravenhold (S051). See Raven Concord and Valtor.
- The Seed of Caerylas and the Claw of Vixseranyol carried out of the Etterwood by the party (S057, S059). See Seed of Caerylas and Caolynni.
The dreams of Inwe¶
Ashtareth received, as handouts, a series of dreams lived from inside the memory of Inwe, a High Priestess of the Raven Keepers and later an Ascendant of Arya: the workshop of the wizard Severuc and his cradle, the massacre in the Hollantine Hills, and her mother Caolynni at the young Caerylas tree (S071, S031, S056). They are dense with lore of earlier ages, which belongs to Inwe and the pages she links.
Earlier accounts¶
The plot notes written before play (S076, S072, S028) imagined a longer arc: "Save the Grotto, Destroy the Araxian High-General, Nicoleta before she is able to restore Seth-Arax", a villain of the Sancturi Campaign; the author then wrote "Maybe the Crisis is just when they find out what Nicoleta is up to … Do we want to recycle Seth-Arax as the villain? That was last campaign" and turned instead to "Separate Small Adventures ALL tied to Factions in Proturas" (S076). On who sent Argo his dagger, one prep note says a member of the Circle of Eternity (S060) and the next says Marcella, "Witch Queen of Urdhar", Eksuru's spy within the Circle, who "needed a High Elf to revive Malathar" (S061, S028).
Gap
No documents survive for sessions 10 and 16, and session 1 is a single page. The notes never say how Argo came to be inside Malathar's household, what became of Azura, or how the campaign ended after session 30. A set of 2022 player sheets for a separate campaign, filed in this campaign's folder (S086 to S093, discarded), has no campaign documents.