Rumors of War

After spending a few months on the run from various factions after their blood, the party has arrived back in Thracia, where they hope to track down Eithne's grandmother.

Campaign Summary

Rumors of War is a Dungeons & Dragons v.3.5 campaign set in Mythical Greece. Troy lies in ruins and old wounds have only just begun to heal...

Five adventurers from different backgrounds were hired by an organization called the Order of Orion to investigate an abandoned temple in a distant country. The Order put them on a merchant vessel headed to the port-city of Varna, where the party began their expedition. The party was joined by several more individuals they met in their journey through the desert, including a strange man named Cyrus, who'd wandered into the desert to escape his past, and a goblin shaman, Krest, who protected a tribe of friendly, desert-dwelling goblins.

The expedition proved successful, the oracle confirmed, and the party made their way back to Varna, only to learn they missed their ship home. While they waited for the next ship to come in, the leader of the local Order sect beseeched their aid in rescuing his brother and offered to pay them out of his own purse. The party rescued Trias, a troubled seer, from captivity and torture within a temple dedicated to the god Apollo. They also met the former guardian of the corrupted temple, a mummy by the name of Hattusa.

It wasn't long before another problem landed in their lap: their friend Krest of the goblin tribe arrived in town and asked for their help in rescuing his kinsmen from slavers. Though the effort ultimately proved successful, it wasn't without it's cost: two party members fell to the dangers of the waste. A greatful Krest made a formal alliance with the Order of Orion, uniting the two groups. Meanwhile, Polynices received grave news about a curse he'd fallen under, and rushed to a healer, only to fall into the trap of an unknown adversary. In the following days, the party was beset by a band of mercenaries; when Qual and Sapling were assaulted in the streets, they managed to take one mercenary alive, and learned from him that the guild was employed to harass and kill them.

Several skirmishes with mercenary scouts took place; each time the party managed to defeat them or drive them back. Following one battle, however, Eithne gave chase to a fleeing mercenary, who led her into the waiting hands of his reinforcements and she was taken prisoner. Deciding to take charge of her rescue, Anaxagoras recruited several allies to aid him, including Cyrus, the necromancer, Krest, the goblin shaman, and the mummy Hattusa. The party staged a raid on the mercenary's guildhall, and emerged triumphant, though at the cost of their friend and ally, Polynices; the party then burned the mercenary guildhall to the ground and fled, carrying the body of Polynices.

A confusing series of events followed: the party encountered a cousin and lookalike of Polynices named Lysander, who'd recently arrived with news for the former; a cousin of Eithne's revealed himself as one of the mercenary leaders, whose discovery brought with it some strange revelations; a search began for the misplaced body of a royal prince, presumed (by the party) to be an undead creature exacting vengeance against his killers. After a failed attempt to lure the prince into a trap, a clue from the Order's seer Trias sent the party searching instead for the prince's surviving wife and daughter.

The investigation of the princess led the party into the sewers beneath the acropolis of Varna, where they hoped to find the missing royal and her daughter. They encountered the royal guardsmen who'd been sent to search for the princess, remade as the undead, the young daughter of the prince, also made a terrible undead monster, and finally, the princess, her soul unable to rest after her death, the maddened spirit attacked the party and tried to wrest their sanity from them. The party dispatched the nightmarish creatures and found the body of the missing princess.

Upon leaving the sewers, the party was confronted and arrested by a contingent of city guardsmen, on suspicion of royal abduction and murder. They apprehended the characters and, as the characters were deemed too impure to be executed, instead imprisoned them in oubliettes. The party managed to survive, one day at a time, for the five weeks that followed before Sapling contrived an escape plan. Using spell after spell, the druid was able to whittle away at the stonework of the prison until he broke into Lysander's cell; the pair of them escaped and managed to free the rest of the group. Reunited after weeks of imprisonment, the party banded together to take down the guards and raided the armory before setting foot outside for the first time in over a month.

Player Characters

• Aurelia, female human ranger 6, played by Amanda
• Eithne, female fey-blooded, wood elf ranger 4/bloodline 3, played by Rose
• Qual, male half-orc barbarian 5/cleric 1, played by Stephen
• Xanatos, male human cleric 5/divine oracle 1, played by Michael

Read Bardic Poem of Inspiration, by Russ

Read The Legend of Telemachus, by Russ

Read The Aspect of Polynices, by James

Faction: Cult of Prometheus

Non-Player Characters

• Argyles, male human "ship captain"
• Cyrus, male human "necromancer"
• Genius, male human "jerk-ass charioteer"
• Hattusa, male? human? "the mummy"
• Krest, male bhuka "goblin shaman"
• Nestor, male human "bodyguard"
• Orteles, male human "information broker"
• Trias, male human "troubled seer"
• Trimedes, male human "Order contact in Varna"
• Useles (deceased), male wood elf "Eithne's cousin"
• Vergil, male half-elf "Order contact in Media"

Retired Characters

• Ala-din (deceased), male elf generalist wizard 2, played by Stephen
• Anaxagoras (indefinite leave), male human bard 4/sorcerer 1, played by Russ
• Eoan (indefinite leave), male human rogue 2, played by Michael
• Katri (deceased), female elf sorcerer 2/wizard 1, played by Helen
• Lysander (indefinite leave), male human fighter 3, played by James
• Polynices (indefinite leave), male titan-blooded, human soulknife 4/bloodline 1
• Sapling (indefinite leave), male halfling druid 6, played by Michael

• Telemachus (indefinite leave), male gold dwarf paladin 3, played by Kevin 

Game Sessions

The most recent games are below. To read about earlier sessions, visit the Game Sessions page.

• The twelfth game was on Saturday, February 28th, 2009 and ran from about 7 PM to 10 PM (MST).
• James, Michael, Nick, Rose, and Stephen participated. Nick was the DM.
• Read the summary here: rw090228

• The eleventh game was on Saturday, February 21st, 2009 and ran from about 7 PM to 12 AM (MST).
• James, Michael, Nick, Rose, Russ, and Stephen participated. Nick was the DM.
• Read the summary here: rw090221

• The tenth game was on Saturday, February 7th, 2009 and ran from about 7 PM to 10:30 PM (MST).
• James, Nick, Rose, Russ, and Stephen participated. Nick was the DM.
• Read the summary here: rw090207

• The ninth game was on Saturday, January 31st, 2009 and ran from about 7:30 PM to 12 AM (MST).
• James, Michael, Nick, Rose, Russ, and Stephen participated. Nick was the DM.
• Read the summary here: rw090131

News and Announcements

Read older news and announcements in the Archived News section.

• 3/4/2009 - updated all current characters to include experience from the last few games. Quest reward experience is also included. In order to get the quest reward, the character must have participated in the games in which the quest began and ended, as well as all the game sessions in between. Each quest has two major objectives -- each one is worth 0, 250, or 500 experience, and is awarded to all qualifying characters.
• 3/4/2009 - updated Player Characters/Non-Player Characters
• 2/17/2009 - created a page for the NPC Hattusa.
• 2/17/2009 - modified/updated some information in the Quest Log.
• 2/17/2009 - finished the summary of episode 4
• 2/17/2009 - the NPC Siris has been renamed Cyrus to avoid any further confusion with the Harry Potter character Sirius Black.
• 2/17/2009 - there are at least two other ways to get experience. One-time experience awards are sometimes granted for awesome roleplaying, and tend to be awarded on a per-scene basis. Residual awards of 75 exp per level are awarded for well-written and well-conceived character material, be it background material, or other flavorful writing like poetry or character journal entries. Any essay I write (and complete) based on information given to me by the player also merits this award, but the more I have to work on it, the longer it will take for the award to show up. Making use of the aforementioned background material in the game is recommended. =P
• 2/17/2009 - updated various character pages for experience. You'll see that each amount of experience awarded now appears in brackets, usually like this: (+1,000/675 exp). The number that appears first is the amount of experience awarded for the game. As of January (I believe), attendance merits a minimum of 1,000 experience points per game; experience earned in excess of 1,000 through encounters is added to this total.
• 2/8/2008 - updated the front page "introduction" and renamed it to "campaign summary"
• 2/2/2009 - added latest session; updated front-page summary
• 1/25/2009 - fixed character stuff on front page; updated miscellaneous things around the site