Sancturi Campaign Sessions

The session-by-session arc of the Sancturi Campaign, forty-one sessions played between 12 January and 21 December 2019. Each entry gives the play date and session number from its document, and records what the party did and found; prep that was not played is left out or given a line. The session logs are terse and give no year in the setting's calendar; the events fall in the Fifth Age, in the years after 704 SM (see the Timeline).

Sessions 15 and 35 have no documents of their own: their prep was carried forward into sessions 16 and 36 (S176, S196), and they are reconstructed from those.

The Blood Pact (sessions 1 to 7)

• #1, 12 January (S161). The party woke in an inn to find that a Hollow had swallowed the village of Harwith, and that a Blood Pact bound them to one another "and also indirectly to" the devil Hal'Gamesh of the Icy Hollow. The pact made nine "mercenaries" of the four player characters, Cassia, Riorden, Khol and Belgriffin, and five others: Neven Hayes, Rakai Karanovic, Zaena Greyson, Normand Haket and Kaito Tadaheik. In the Florentine Woodlands they found the renegade Hollowlock Thorstein and his enslaved demon digging an abbey ruin, "driven by a black stone", and spared him in exchange for his demon killing the imp Vag'Drothos. Looking for the witch Zaela, they reached her protected village of Guillon and talked a band of witch hunters into going after Hal'Gamesh instead.
• #2, 19 January (S162). The witch hunters' informant, the old drinker Astalis, was unmasked and crucified in the village square after a fight. The party won an audience with Zaela and chose, of her paths out of the pact, to go to the Eldritch prince Amer, who set them to retrieve a holy lantern in exchange for a talisman of nullification and sent his mercenary Berin Taskus along. They travelled through Orson and north into Brusau, past a road-toll of bandits and a patrol of Brusau Rangers, to the ruins of Kilmarn, the Brimstone Hollow of the Hollowlord Urk'maggo. They dug through the night and crossed the narrow bridge called the Breath of the Gods.
• #3, 26 January (S163). Beneath Kilmarn's obelisk they met the Brotherhood of the Sun, who hold part of the temple complex, under Captain Bendrik. A nightmare bat killed Kaito.
• #4, 2 February (S164). In Khardas's inner sanctum, around the floating black-red Stone of Ekrumas, the party faced the Five Sisters, a being of dead priestesses merged with Eldritch spirits, and eldritch horrors bred by Namakan priests in a ruined temple beneath. The vault beyond held the lantern Amer sought, the Godfire Lantern of Helis Sunblighter, and three sealed scrolls naming Eldritch whose soulcruxes are hidden in such relics: Phaendar Nar'Vizerai, Allannia Vaj'zaelin and Luiranar Xal'Vanala. By the next session Riorden held the pact totem and Belgriffin a black triangle (S165).
• #5, 9 February (S165). By the cave road into the deep the party reached a ruined dark elven outpost on a lake island, full of hollowed treasure, and fought its drow wraith and its dead. Normand Haket died.
• #6, 16 February (S166). A fight with a fire demon in a hall of skeletons and a throne; the party's corruption from the Hollow grew.
• #7, 23 February (S167). Branching caverns led past a grell colony and an ancient dwarven road to the Wormblood goblin cavern city of the goblin Gusziv.

Miralt and the hunt for Quorvain (sessions 8 to 14)

• #8, 2 March (S168). Captured and carried to the frontier, the party passed Odawara on the road to Kurano and fought Bannerguard and an imperial Runebinder, who escaped with Cassia's cincture. Abithar first appears.
• #9, 9 March (S169). From the village of Haras the party entered Kurano, where descriptions of "Cassia & the Bear" were posted, by its sewers. From the Runebinder Naiyo Dlorea they took back the cincture with letters of Hana Puscavit, "High Priestess of Namaka, Principate & Grand Seer of the Arbitori", asking for sacrifices and news of an Eldritch soulcrux, and the soulcrux itself, "one of the 12". They helped an escaped Oesterkull slave, Thunor, and made for Amer's cabin.
• #10, 16 March (S170). Two days south lay Miralt, "20k in its heyday … down to 5", under Duchess Lavinia Zul-aw-ta, whose favour the Eldritch pyromancer Quorvain had won. Under contract to Captain Jaro the party investigated four killings by a small climbing creature that phased through the shadow realm. Almund appears.
• #11, 23 March (S171). Almund and Abithar borrowed a soulcrux from Amer. Kraken-like creatures guarded the harbour; a child, Petru, who had followed a familiar man into a ruined manor, was killed. The party killed the vulture-like phasing daemon behind the killings and brought its head to Jaro.
• #12, 30 March (S172). Hunting Quorvain through the duchess's court, the party searched sea caves and a derelict manor used by the Lord Commander's chief investigator Maeda, "Hollowlock+Witch", and freed a wrongly held fisherman from the jail.
• #13, 6 April (S173). A hard fight. Riorden, Cassia, Almund and Rakai were taken for questioning and released by the Bishop, who took Riorden "under the protection of the faith". The spymaster Darius was murdered by a brother of Kalar.
• #14, 13 April (S174). The rogue Eldritch Quorvain was run down, and his ring passed to Riorden. Bishop Meven Varecca of the Order of the Crimson Sun was killed by Amer and two other Eldritch, and Brother Tonan led the order after him. Abithar took on a shade's form, and Cassia stood trial, framed, with a control rune on her arm.

Seth'Arax (sessions 15 to 20)

• #15 (no document; from S176). Its prep is carried into session 16, which opens in Redesian; nothing separate is recorded.
• #16, 4 May (S176). At Redesian, the only port of Delvarn, a city of inhabited ruins under four clans, the party found the broken lich Ix'ghol and killed a sick man to restore him. Near Esgarlan they fought a mantis-headed horror, an umber hulk and a plague swarmer, on the road to a buried Aquitanian complex north of Alghert. Owl appears.
• #17, 11 May (S177). The Aquitanian Temple of Seth'Arax: a defiled temple, a Namakan high priest, halls of horrors and the Dread Gate, where "Pitch is trying to free its master/creator Seth'Arax" and an Umbric queen fights to keep the gate.
• #18, 1 June (S178). The party trapped the Pitch with light, and came out marked by soul fragments of Seth'Arax, "that he himself created and hid": Cassia took the blue fragment of Power and the purple of Knowledge, Almund the red of Vigor.
• #19, 8 June (S179). In a ravine of a destroyed Namakan camp the party were taken by knights of Athagilion under Captain Malor, after a squire witnessed "Heresy, Blasphemy, Defile, Desecration, Profane, Sacrilege". They met the half-Oesterkull Sivar of the White Fire, sent to "look into darkness falling on Alghert", and the Namakan runeblade Kagara, who invited them into a Sancturi task force against Amer. The Aquitanian "Dread Metal" they carried was forged into plate.
• #20, 15 June (S180). Twelve knights of Athagilion followed and fought them. Sivar and the dwarf crossbowman Khalban joined the party for Archmage Kholvar, and they rode for the pass into Alghert, where "all trade in/out of the kingdom has ceased".

Alghert and Pemeril (sessions 21 to 26)

• #21, 22 June (S181). Alghert was a mega-hollow, "the site of a Demon vs Devil war": the fungal demonlord Adramycos, serving Bhaal, was spreading it with the consent of King Baellin Tugard and Princess Ewe Tugard to break into a vault holding part of the Mithis Heartstone. The party fought spore demons at Amberwatch and slipped into the castle at Pemeril.
• #22, 29 June (S182). Captured papers named the soulcruxes, the Hollow's makers, and the Eye, "Keystone to the Arcane Heart", and showed that the Keepers of Abaddon agent Apuuk was hiding his aura. The party resolved to destroy the witches and the Hollow and take the Eye, and fled to the tunnels as Malo came for them.
• #23, 13 July (S183). The battle with Malo, an Eldritch knight, and Apuuk, a winged demon in disguise: both died, and so did Sivar.
• #24, 20 July (S184). Pemeril began to fall: with Malo dead its wards failed, devils came through the north ward, the guard deserted, and Princess Ewe was a prisoner of her father. Lord Emory Tiebald, proxy Hollowlord, was Adramycos in disguise.
• #25, 28 July (S185). The party plundered the nest of a fungal-corrupted green dragon, then passed the trials of the Monastery of St Morgan, beneath which "the Vault of the Eye was hidden".
• #26, 3 August (S186). The Battle of Angels in the vault, against Adramycos, Princess Ewe as a shadow witch and two fallen angels of decay. Nicoleta first appears. In Brusau the party found a hidden sect of Arcantus in the Halls of Methusial and a Book of the Eye in ancient High Kalari.

Brusau and the Doomguard (sessions 27 to 32)

• #27, 10 August (S187). After the death of Queen Aalina Lorimer Brusau's council had made a treaty giving the Sancturi control, and the Imperium was purging worshippers of Arcantus, its spies aware of what the party carried. The "Heroes of Alghert" were granted land: an Aryal temple for Almund in the hills above Toffeld, and for Nicoleta the title Countess of Badengrove. They raised a company of thirty-three, the Doomguard, with Almund as leader, Abithar spymaster and Nicoleta "Loremaster & Deathlord".
• #28, 17 August (S188). At Arkuun, where devils on Wizard's Isle had possessed the heads of the witches' covens, the party used hollowing charms to bring forty-seven people out to their camp, with five hundred Sancturi soldiers in the city.
• #29, 23 August (S189). Altandon, Brusau's capital, was held by General Yutoshi of the III Nightshade Legion, and High Consallon Toshidae of the Onyx Order was charged with recovering the Eye. The Great Burning of Altandon killed two thousand. Abithar's body would take six weeks to regrow.
• #30, 7 September (S190). The Great Library of Altandon, being purged by Sancturi sages under Temple Master Harukata: the party fought them, won over two of their neophytes, "emptied the library into the sanctuary", and took down Friar Corbin, abbot of Arcantus, from crucifixion. Owl had been imprisoned at the Nightshade Legion's headquarters.
• #31, 14 September (S191). The rescue of Owl from the Nightshade Legion, whose cohort also held the fallen temple of Haddensfield. Belgrad appears. The party learned of twelve portals that could be reached given an anchor.
• #32, 21 September (S192). Wanted posters named "Dreadwitch Nicoleta", "Consort of Demons", at ten thousand imperials, and "The Bloodfiend Owl" at five thousand. The party looked through the twelve portals, to the buried capital of Amarin, to Kahun'Darahl, to Acadia's red-skied ruins, to the White Towers and others, and went to Gar'Agor of Dru'Bazan, Abithar's home, under Queen Melkorka of the White Towers.

The White Towers and the Thur'arax (sessions 33 to 38)

• #33, 28 September (S193). Blessed by Khardas's high priest Vorgak for the mountains, the party fought orcs of the Dragoneye and a war yeti in the snows.
• #34, 5 October (S194). The dwarven shipyards had been taken by the Hand of Setarak, ogres who worship "an awakened one" of Seth'Arax, and by Rupyt, "Merged Pitch Monster + Frost Giant".
• #35 (no document; from S196). "Sanctuary was destroyed. # of survivors is unknown. They fled to the White Tower Dwarves."
• #36, 19 October (S196). Beneath an underground Araxian pyramid the party passed trials of Courage, Glory and Supremacy, with Almund and Belgrad failing Glory, alongside the green-aura bear Lokgorm of Nox'Somn. They learned of "7 seals of Seth'Arax -- at least one has failed", and Almund cast out his fragment.
• #37, 1 November (S197). At the shipyard the Thur'arax Bhol-tho, "not as weak as I had been led to believe", sprang its trap; the party crossed to the Araxian Plane and its citadel to reach the Heart of Bhol'tho.
• #38, 23 November (S198). "They defeated the Thur'arax." Almund was killed and "brought back with an Araxian body. This body is part of the Hive", and the rangers Norrick and Kessa were dead. A Cthul Elder Brain began whispering to Abithar, and the party took the dwarven roads back toward the White Towers.

Into the Underdark and Acadia (sessions 39 to 41)

• #39, 7 December (S199). Through the deep realms below the White Towers, hunted by the Elder Brain, Araxians and Asmodean fire demons, the party destroyed the demon queen Venghulrak, "Disintegrated by the Eye", and planned a teleport into the mainland of Acadia.
• #40, 13 December (S200). Travel and supply in the deep.
• #41, 21 December, "Arcantus" (S201). With gifts from Vorgak and Queen Melkorka, a beacon of an ascendant of Khardas and lavaforged rune weapons, an expedition of thirty-three went through to Acadia. A planted device mis-sent the teleport and scattered the party miles apart across the Acadian Hollow, among a horde of demons, toward the City of Utarum and the Tower of Dhudarin, the portal to the library and to "THE asmodean trap". The last notes record Almund "buried in Aryan study" and Abithar in an "Eldritch body/form".

✎ Suggest a correction or change to this page