The next events occurred privately between Chase and me on Facebook and AIM. I considered falsifying the report, but have since admitted to the true version of events.

Supheter awoke for the last time in his home in Harkenwold. The scent of ash drifted through the drawn curtains, likely a warning from the dragon Renophylax to the city he held for ransom. Last night, Citric reported disrupting some of his agents attempting to free a demon from its prison close by. This morning, Supheter frowned at the prospect of meeting its possible descendant, a female tiefling attached to Baron Thomas Harken. Citric had brought spoils from his adventure: a chest full of ritual component powder.

Supheter considered its safety whilst he ate some breakfast. Carrying the chest would make him a target and leaving it would permit theft. Supheter decided to take the cautious path of playing a shell game. He separated the powder into three bags as well as two bags of flour. He hid the fake bags as well as one real bag in abandoned neighbor’s houses. He left another in an Enneadin dead drop and kept the last. If he were shadowed, the kobolds wouldn’t have enough to finish the ritual.

He entered the castle and found Miranda gloating over her army’s advance. Apparently, she gathered a mercenary army from the eastern Dragon-born providences of Praseolaire to intersect the Queen’s army. To protect Harkenwold from invasion, she would quarter hers within the city when it arrives. She lent Supheter three of her silent lieutenants and bade him scramble the portal to the demon. As it is a fourteenth level ritual, he asked her to prepare a scroll version of it.

Supheter spent the time searching for his political rival and fellow wizard, Chester Pence, to no avail. The other factions had left. Baron Harken remained in a tower, under watch. Supheter asked him about Miranda’s first appearance and plans. Significantly, Thomas revealed he had maintained contact with a dwarven court wizard, Rellum Redfate.

He descended and picked up the scroll and minions. In weaving through the deserted streets, the group avoided a platoon of the Queen’s troops before arriving at the house with the stashed powder. Supheter explicitly lined out his plan and likely tactics against their foes in the basement. In action, the lieutenants revealed themselves as two sorcerers and a shapeshifter. They handedly beat the guardian demons and advanced to the vault’s antechamber with the portal.

Facing the portal, Supheter now saw the hulking devil clawing at the warded door. It turned toward him as he readied the ritual and spoke an Abyssal that Supheter nonetheless understood. It called itself “Barabalam, lord of the seven hundred forty-third circle” and bade Supheter cease helping Miranda. It claimed that the tiefling had stolen an item he had safeguarded for centuries for a dark paladin who had sold his soul. Supheter’s mind raced for hours in the space of seconds [a benefit of these informal sessions], charting the short and long term consequences of each scenario the creature’s offer portended.

Thankfully, Barabalam eased his decision somewhat by holding a brief, telepathic conversation whilst verbally chiding Supheter for indecision, to deceive her lieutenants. Supheter suggested he could steal her prize but the Old One claimed she absorbed his charge as well as another piece of the Staff into her body. Further, she had plans to unite the entire set and “unlock an ancient destructive force” thereby. With a prayer to iQi, Supheter killed the weakest minion and stepped into the portal.

Barabalam chortled at his decision and blocked Supheter from the minions’ attacks. They fought to the death, thankfully, rather than warn Miranda of his betrayal. Rather than scramble the portal, Supheter realigned it with the exit in his chambers in the castle. To cover his intent, Supheter asked the Old One to polymorph to an unassuming shape. It could not, but shrank and Supheter disguised it somewhat as an angel via prestidigitation.

Supheter ran down the stairs to the front gate, hoping to corral the sheriff into helping kill Miranda. Unfortunately, he had led his own troops into the streets against the Praseolarian incursion. Though they represented little more than meat shields, Supheter convinced some men and Gerald (a second level fighter) to ‘save the Baron.’ In the throne room, Barabalam reverted to his towering stature yet the disguise held. Both sets of minions evaporated under the onslaught and we three began to bleed. Miranda declared she would punish us as were the ‘elves and men of the north.’ She flew out the room, followed by Barabalam.

Supheter ransacked her room finding items, healing potions, and ritual reagents, but no journal. He ran up to the Baron and found him sprawled in the center of the room, back-stabbed. Ominous clouds hid some of the mess in darkness, but Supheter shoved the rest of the healing potions into his friend’s mouth. Though he vomited out half, Thomas woke. Both shared consoling words before they noticed that “a great fireball hung in the sky above, three times the size of the sun at high noon and nearly as bright.”

Barabalam broke through the window sill and carried them down to the teleportation circle. Baron Harken suggested Hammerfast and all strove to complete the ritual as quickly as possible. The light and heat rose until Harken fainted Supheter heard his skin crackling. At the last possible second, all three barged through. (I have expressed the end as akin to a nuclear explosion. Chase scoffs, but I will paste his exact narration below.)

The inferno that sweeps through Harkenwold and the surrounding lands is unimaginable in depth for those looking in from a distance. For several miles underground, a great thundering shake is felt, and aboveground the heat reaches several million degrees Celsius. As the explosion touches down on the castle, surrounding buildings are flattened and the heat flash vaporizes most of the people in the city: local militia, Miranda’s mercenaries, and the Queen’s forward company are all turned to dust. In mere seconds, the entire land is nothing more than a smoking wasteland. In the coming days, the heat will dissipate but the magical pollution will rival that of similar sites. Such is the power of the Crown and Staff.

If one good thing should come of this, it is that the queen no longer has an easy entrance to the valley. Her next company of men come upon a blighted landscape, and are unwilling to cross it. They must find a different route, now.

As no one was in the teleportation room, their arrival went unnoticed as an earthquake swept past the Dawnforge Mountains a minute after arrival (the theory of relativity at work). The Old One informed Supheter he would accompany him, knowing the wizard wanted to disarm the tiefling as much as he. In the end, clerics took care of Harken’s wounds. He and Supheter submitted to an interrogation about their arrival and the Harkenwold’s final day. Supheter told a careful reconstructon of events to the king and Rellum (and later, the Vanguard). Though Supheter regarded the demon dispassionately (and yet watchfully), he knew others might despise his choice. So, he substituted in the dragon Renophylax instead.

In the days before the Vanguard’s arrival, Supheter stayed in the abandonded human consulate. He copied more of Spah’s rituals into his own book and urged Rellum to have mages and bards research the Crown and Staff as well as the Black Rains.

As Chase complimented me, I will do him a kindness too and record more of what occurred in the campaign. Mind, these represent how Supheter would report it, so I explicitly avoid a thorough explanation of events. (Also, it has been a really long time since the following and I didn’t make contemporary notes.)

I am Supheter Iulian, wizard and diplomat for the Baron of Harkenwold. Some fringe members of the adventurers called the Vanguard have saved me and dozens of other former slaves. After harrying a nearby dragon, we returned to the crowd. We consisted of Spah, Citric, Eldrith, and Rayne.

The last is not entirely true. When flying back to the refugees, Spah began to experience a fatal withdrawl sickness from losing a cursed artifact he threw to the dragon. He fell to his death seconds afterward. His companions assured me that he had been wasting away under the influence of the skull for some time prior. They kindly offered me his arcane equipment, so I did not ask about burying him as we sped over the snow-topped trees.

Upon arrival, a barber with pretensions to magic told us two old townsmen had been abducted during the night. This complicated our argument over where to lead the peasants. My peers held some loyalty to the seditious city Fallcrest. I argued that they walk to the closer Harkenwold. Because I insisted on rescuing the old folks, I lost the argument since the others would lead the crowd in my absence.

Rayne accompanied me using the flying carpet to a kobold camp. After a brief skirmish, we accomplished our goal and discovered where the ice witch had disappeared to. She wore a strange leather armor that allowed her to change into a rat. Given the superior armor of the others, I kept the set. Upon our return, the other pair informed us of their compromise. Eldrith planned to head the pack to Fallcrest whilst Citric and Rayne accompanied me to Harkenwold. They had finally coerced their prisoner into promising his estate to them as well as all his money. Silently disapproving, I agreed to escort them to the vault within the castle.

Our carpet ride into the city disheartened me greatly. The dragon’s siege had actually prompted an exodus and disturbing behavior on those who stayed. It demanded a ransom from every citizen, so many families piled their valuables outside their homes. More than capture and desensitization, the half empty and bleary-eyed city shot horror through my soul.

The guards at the gate recognized me and explained the situation. Despite allowing us through, they informed us that the treasury had closed to discourage citizens from raiding it to bribe the dragon. The pair led their quarry down none-the-less. Here ensued the most embarrassing exchange in my entire life. Yes, it out-dunced the time when I mistook a Halfling bodyguard for a child and tried to scold him away with the promise of candy.

I had pointedly tried to ignore their business with the minor aristocrat, as gratitude for liberating me. I even offered to take responsibility for their conduct. The curfew suggested it and I hoped that the pair would keep their business brief and reasonable. This hope had all the reality of fey coins. Apparently, they believed their dupe had failed to pay them for some service and demanded the rest of his wealth in return for not killing him. So, all tromped to the treasury and woke the accountant at the door. I must admit that Rayne does not draw my ire, except in suffering his partner’s behavior. Citric brashly demanded the money despite the obvious farce. The accountant refused, barring the Baron’s approval. So, rather than appeal to me for help, Citric did a little stunt cajoling then threatening the man. Frankly, I suspect ‘divine intervention’ moved that money. Any reasonable person would have called for the guards long before. I saw my own hanging more vividly than when caught in my own crime many years ago.

With their loathsome work completed, we took Rayne and the now penniless man to the mob. [I know I am remembering the next incorrectly in sequence, but it happened at some point.] Citric and I rode the carpet back to the dragon’s keep. Instead, we found a crater with a hardened pool of gold at the bottom. I helped him pry up the biggest lump as a tiefling woman touched down. She obviously had a spat with Citric in the past from the way they traded venomous remarks. Likely, she only forbore killing him for my benefit. She invited me back to Harkenwold to help her unseat the dragon which had taken residence in an inn in town. [We passed through the inn unknowingly earlier, but did not investigate its cellar. The following definitely happened last.]

Logic suggests that Citric would have made a beeline for his newly stolen mansion, but he accompanied me back. In fact, despite all my misgivings, he did me a service. I wanted to investigate the dragon’s new lair, but had cast all my spells and feared not sleeping long enough to memorize them effectively the next day. At my insistence, he snuck into the cellar to scout the area.

Upon return, he reported killing kobolds engaged in creating a portal into a magical prison for a demon of some sort. Citric managed to defeat them and steal the components for the ritual. I suggested that I pay him, but he – uncharacteristically – refused. He finally left to accompany his partner to claim his prize and start his own little despotocracy. I fervently hope I never have the displeasure of speaking with the one-dimensional killer again. I went to sleep in my own house, which ended the session.

Perhaps Chase would appreciate a secondary resource for people interested in his D&D campaign.

I am Supheter Iulian. I returned from a trip to [some place] representing the Baron Harken’s interests. A group of slavers intercepted my own and captured me. The kidnappers realized my value and kept me alive. Sometime later, the local Vanguard chapter reached my location at the same time monstrous spiders attacked. I ‘awoke’ to Eldrith cutting my bonds. As I wandered the camp, I strove to understand the factions present. Citric and Rayne captured the leader of the camp. It seems they demanded some ransom for his safety. A doppelganger imitated the indentured servants to steer them toward Fallcrest. Eldrith knew of more slave camps so I endeavored to liberate more fellow citizens.

We chanced upon a stone bulwark. Spa, the imitator, drew out the guards for a quick dispatch. A portcullis raised freed still more, including one who recognized me. This set off the south division’s suspicion of me, though I can not imagine why. Nevertheless, distance induced them toward Harkenwold. I assured the four that the Baron will sincerely thank them.

Citric scouted ahead of the long train of people and observed the dragon recently harrying the city. Again I saw a direct course to protect my benefactor, as I had noticed the adventurers seemed more capable than the city guards. We left the crowd in the dubious hands of the “follicle-mancer.” The dragon occupied the top of an abandoned keep. The dense snowfall empowered his own vanguard, a female who constructed snow golems and skeletons to defend the bottom two levels. She managed to escape by ‘invisibility,’ and her potential presence played heavily on our minds. The dragon had slept during these encounters but awoke as Spa triggered a trap in its horde.

The ensuing battle confronted me with my limitations more rudely than in many years. All had spent their spectacular techniques throughout the preceding day and we fought during the witching hour. We holed up in a small room to wait for the dragon to tire to no avail. It began a ritual to (likely) assume a smaller form. We pressed and ran on fumes a bit before scattering into the night. I understand Spa gave the dragon some cursed object with conflicting consequence. Citric had the foresight to steal the dragon’s flying carpet and we dejectedly returned to the amassed villagers.

Here we ended the session intending to lead the mob to safety. No binding decision emerged.