Drakkenheim Part 1: The Outer City

Rats, haunted houses, and greed.

Since I didn’t write this campaign I’ll keep these recaps short and general. Boo hoo.

The Road to Emberwood

The party met in a city about three weeks’ travel from Drakkenheim. They had all been recruited by a trader to protect their wares on the way to Emberwood—a town just south of Drakkenheim where those who have business in the ruined city would camp. On the way they met some bandits, as is to be expected in games like these, and saw the effects of delerium poisoning first-hand when an adventurer they met on the way turned into a tentacled monster. Like the bandits, he was quickly and violently dealt with.

The town of Emberwood was in a sorry state. While some of the establishments were still open due to the influx of adventurers and faction agents, most houses stood desolate and decrepit. There was no grass, and the constant downpour had turned the ground to slick mud. All birdsong had faded away about a week’s travel from the town. The edges of town held plenty of trees, but there wasn’t a leaf in sight.

After Sonny spoke with the Followers of the Falling Fire, who were camped out on a deserted farm, and learned about their faith, the party headed for the burnt-down manor that the townsfolk claimed was haunted. Inside, they found nothing of interest except a hatch in the soot-covered floor leading down to an empty basement. Dragging his hand across the walls, Sonny found an that a part of the wall was an illusion, which he stepped through. Snes had crawled into his backpack which Sonny had cast a light spell on, and he was holding it before him. Before either of them could see anything on the other side, they were nearly immolated by a sudden, thundrous explosion. This near-death experience concluded their adventure in the basement.

You Have Advantage on Charisma Checks Against Lord Farquaad

After trying to buy some gear and determining that everything in Emberwood was expensive as the nine hells, the group headed north for Drakkenheim hoping to score some precious but oh-so-dangerous delerium crystals to sell. They wandered around for a few hours in the rubble of the ruined metropolis by the outskirts, far from the city walls but still very much within the strange iridescent mist known as the haze. After being ambushed by mutated rat people, known locally as ratlings, they eventually stumbled upon a street covered in craters with an octarine shimmer glowing within.

Before they could get to the delerium fragments in the craters, they were assaulted by a group of former residents of the city, shambling husks awoken to undeath by Drakkenheim’s strange magic. The party made quick work of them. As soon as they’d extracted the delerium, being careful not to touch it, the party ran afoul another group of adventurers. Their leader was a short noble whom, not bothering to ask for his name, the party referred to as Lord Farquaad due to his appearance. He and his goons claimed that the delerium was theirs. Disagreeing, Melly cast a charm spell on him and the gang hurried out of there before it got a chance to wear off.

Back in Emberwood, they met a tiefling dressed in the purple robes of the Amethyst Academy named River. She rented a room at the Red Lion Hotel—the most extravagant place in town. They sold all their delerium to her and, having shown their ability to enter the city and get out of it alive, received a well-paying mission to fetch a large delerium crystal from a place called Rat’s Nest Tavern.

Animal had contracted contamination when fighting the city’s undead, leading to the skin on his face beginning to rot off. Snes had likewise been contaminated and had grown scaly spikes from his body as a result. As they couldn’t afford healing from the small local chapel, they had no choice but to head back into the city for that darn crystal.

My New Band Name: Prophets of the Rat God

The next day, they headed back into Drakkenheim and the Rat’s Nest Tavern without incident. Not much was left of the place. It had been hit by a fragment of the meteor and was now little more than a few waist-high wall fragments and a hole in the ground. Dropping down into the hole, the party discovered that the delerium crystal had been removed from the impact site. A conspicuous tunnel dug into the basement wall provided a clue as to where it might be. Following the tunnel, the party found themselves—fittingly enough—in a maze of giant ratling nests.

A group of ratling guards attacked the party as soon as they entered, firing arrows and throwing bottles of alchemist’s fire. Ryan pointed out that a patch of loose dirt seemed to be hiding something, likely a pit trap, and that the party should avoid it. Sonny immediately stood on it, thinking that if it was a pit trap, he could hide in it. Unfortunately for him, the pit was full of wooden stakes at the bottom, and a swarm of regular, small rats began nibbling on his ankles as soon as he fell.

Somehow, Spellini survived. He had spent the entire battle drifting in and out of consciousness as the rats tried to eat him while the party tried to balance healing him and simultaneously whacking the ratlings. After stepping outside to rest in an abandoned building, the party headed back into the labyrinth of rats. The ratlings seemed to have regrouped after the party’s previous invasion because the group couldn’t find any of them. What they did find—or rather, who—was a teenage woman of the Hooded Lanterns named Petra. She was chained up in a room full of bones and body parts, no doubt being kept there to later serve as a light snack.

With Petra in tow, they searched the rest of the nest and found out where the other rats had gone. A group of about thirty rats stood before them in a large chamber containing a crude mud statue of a demonic rat god and an altar that—based on the dried blood covering it—was intended for sacrificial purposes. Disliking their combat chances against a whole platoon or ratlings, they attempted diplomacy. The biggest of the rats wore a golden crown and a necklace made from human digits. He called himself the Rat Prince. When he asked why the party had come, Snes thought quickly and claimed that they were prophets sent by the rat god. With Spellini selling the effect by casting a light spell on Snes and with a particularly high deception roll, the rats bought it without question.

From there, it was no trouble to simply ask the rats for the crystal they’d come for. They headed northwest, finding a silent undead ferryman to help them across the river splitting the city in half. Once out of the city, they headed for the abandoned Eckerman Mill to meet up with River. They decided to call their group Prophets of the Rat God from that point on.

It’s Not About Where Your Beard Is, What Matters Is The Length

After getting their money, the group camped out at the mill and headed back to Emberwood the next day. They finally had the money to heal the damage done to Animal and Snes by the contamination, so they went to the chapel to take care of that. Removing the contamination was quite taxing, so the group spent the next couple of days hanging around in Emberwood. Sonny was interested in the sect of the Falling Fire, who considered delerium to be sacred, so the gang headed to the farmyard where the pilgrims of the Falling Fire camped as part of their journey to the crater.

As adventurers, Spellini offered the group’s brains, brawn, and assistance if there was anything the pilgrims needed help with, and as a matter of fact, they did. Some dwarves had been mining and selling delerium (big no-no for the pilgrims) and weren’t afraid to shoot any acolytes who encroached on their mining territory. The Followers of the Falling Fire wanted them gone. The party gladly took the job. Their first order of business was to find a dwarf.

They found a dwarf. Snes made fun of him for only having a goatee, leading to the above header quote, and then demanded he pay protection money to them. When he explained that he and the other dwarf miners were already paying protection money to the Queen’s Men, Snes claimed he was just kidding and that they were actually a band looking to write a song about the dwarves’ awesome mining operation. When the dwarf asked where their instruments were, Snes said they were a barbershop quartet. It should be noted that only Snes, Animal, and Sonny were there that session, making them one man short of a quartet. The dwarf told them to go perform at the Gilded Lily, a bar with open Mike night, (named after a guy named Mike) which they did, and were promptly booed off stage. Twice.

After that diplomatic fiasco, the party decided to simply head out to the mining site, known as the Scar, themselves. They ran into some ratlings on the way—who now considered the party holy—and convinced them to help lay siege to the place. Being inside a city full of monsters, the site was fortified with a stockade and two cannon towers. When the party and the rats were in position, Snes hurled a bolt of fire toward a gunpowder barrel on one of the towers, causing it to erupt in a deafening explosion and setting the tower on fire. The rats rushed to stack barrels and crates at the wall, forming a staircase up the palisade. Outside the walls, miners were working in the scar-like gorge the place was named after. They raised their pickaxes and shovels as they charged at the adventurers. The party didn’t have to hold them off for very long—soon the sound of a bell indicating surrender rang out across the haze-filled ruins. The doors to the stockade opened as dozens of dwarves fled into the cratered streets.

The miners fled too. Unfortunately for the dwarves, a band of humanoid hyena creatures were prowling the streets for prey, guided by a pack of flaming hellhounds. The party didn’t stay to find out if any of the dwarves survived. Their job was done. To the north, they could glimpse the massive crater where the meteor had struck Drakkeneheim fifteen years ago. The haze was thicker there, a sickly swirl of purple and green. Snes and Animal wanted to go down there, to discover what awaited at the heart of the crater, find the cause of their nightmares. The party headed north.

The crater was deep. They couldn’t see more than thirty feet into it because of the haze, but judging by the sound of a stone rolling down the inside, it had to be at least five times that. Strange lightning crackled from within the mist. The group tied a rope around Snes for safety, and he slowly climbed down the steep wall. It wasn’t long before he slipped, and slid to the end of the rope, scraping knees and elbows. They didn’t have anywhere near enough rope, and without rope, there was no reliable way to get back up once they made it down. None of them trusted their strength enough to dare climb back out, so Sonny and Animal pulled Snes back up. They headed back to Emberwood, suffering from contamination once more due to the crater haze.

In Emberwood they headed for the burnt-down manor again, thinking it’d be less dangerous now that they were more experienced adventurers. And because they’d bought a magical bag that lets them summon three random animals per day. They headed down to the basement and sent a weasel through the illusory wall. As weasels often do, it went pop as it triggered the explosive runes on the other side. Next, they sent in a dire wolf to see if the runes were still active. They weren’t, so the gang headed inside. The corridor beyond the illusion led to another room, empty except for a large, rune-filled magic circle decorating the floor, stretching from wall to wall. Sonny recognized it as a teleportation circle.

Teleportation circles require a password to use. The party quickly discovered that “password” was not the right one. They tried every common password imaginable but quickly went quiet when they heard the sound of footsteps heading down the cellar. There was nothing to hide behind. The sound of the footsteps continued into the room with the teleportation circle, but nobody appeared. A familiar voice asked what the party was doing in there. Then River dropped the invisibility spell.

Once the group had explained that they were just curious and investigating, River told them that the teleportation circle led to the Amethyst Academy’s headquarters. By teleporting in, they didn’t need a camp in or near Emberwood like the other factions. She also gave them a new mission: to find Oscar Yoren¹, a wizard who was thrown out of the academy for his unethical experiments, and seize his research. He had moved into an abandoned manor in the northern part of Drakkenheim, and rumor had it that he’d developed a way to keep the contamination of the haze at bay.

Who Gets the Scepter?

Later in Emberwood, just as the party was about to set out on the expedition to find Yoren, they were approached by a halfling man wearing the red colors of the Queen’s Men. He said that their presence in Drakkenheim had not gone unnoticed and that he had a job for them. They were to see Blackjack Mel at the Sword and Skull Taphouse immediately. There would be no pay and if they refused, the queen would tell River about what Spellini had done to that academy library, and the fact that they were the ones who drove the academy’s largest supplier of Delerium—the Ironhelm dwarves—out of business and into death.

The group accepted and got the details from Blackjack Mel, a short, rotund man with a high-pitched voice speaking in something that resembled a New York accent. He told them that they were to fetch the Scepter of Sant Vitruvio before any of the other factions could get their hands on it. The party had agreed to travel with the pilgrims of the falling fire to Champion’s Gate to meet with their leader, Lucretia Matthias, but that would have to wait. They headed back into Drakkenheim, heading for the Chapel of Saint Brenna where the scepter was located, according to a newly surfaced rumor.

They weren’t the first to reach the chapel. Five horses were tied to the fence of the crematory garden outside. Their caparisons bore the golden brazier insignia of the Knights of the Silver Order. The party relocated them to a nearby abandoned building. Heading inside the main hall of the chapel, they encountered the owners of the horses; five armored knights searching for the scepter, occupied with looking for a key to the catacombs below the chapel. Snes discovered that declaring yourself to be a prophet of the rat god isn’t as effective when dealing with humans as with rats, and a fight broke out. Spellini got knocked out—again—and the party surrendered when the knights threatened to kill him off for good.

Heading back outside, they found a hidden entrance to the catacombs on the back of a statue of a saint in the crematory garden. Animal spent a long time trying to pick the lock on the hatch but eventually made it. In the catacombs, the group did some delightful adventuring and eventually found the scepter.

On the way out, they ran into a group of armed pilgrims of the Falling Fire who were also after the scepter. While the party was in the catacombs, the pilgrims had been fighting the knights in the chapel above. Fortunately for the pilgrims, the party had weakened the knights in their earlier battle. One of the pilgrims, whose name was George Hopper, recognized the party and asked if they were going to bring the scepter to Lucretia Matthias. On the spot, the party decided that they were, so the pilgrims accompanied them to Champion’s Gate.

And so they met Lucretia Matthias, a woman in her early nineties, who had predicted that the comet and delerium would bring about the end of the world, setting alight the blazing hearts of her followers as the new age of heroes dawns and so on and so on. She was pleased to meet the group and offered them to keep the scepter as long as they didn’t let it fall into the hands of the Silver Order. The scepter was magical and let the wielder cast some fire spells. Spellini, hating everything fire after accidentally burning down that library, refused to carry it, and so it went to Snes.

Wizards, Zombies, Rats

After that encounter, the party took the long way around the outskirts of the city to the north, arriving a few hours later at Reed Manor to do a job for the Falling Fire’s enemies: the Amethyst Academy. They were to seize the research of Oscar Yoren. They were greeted by two hulking creatures, their features obscured by large coats. When asked what their business was, the party said they were the Prophets of the Rat God and refused to elaborate. Some wizard apprentices and Oscar Yoren himself came out through the front door. Yoren was displeased to hear that the party was working with the academy. He offered to sell them some potions that he claimed could stave off contamination if they helped him gather some ingredients. After a brief discussion, the party decided to kill him.

The battle would have been a difficult one were it not for the newly acquired scepter. Oscar Yoren burnt, as did his apprentices and their familiars, filling the air with the crisp scent of seared human flesh. Then the party looted the manor in peace. They found his research as well as an altar to a demonic god. Ryan also walked right into a room full of zombies, putting an end to their exploration as they fled in fear.

They headed west toward Eckerman Mill to camp for the night. They decided to name their horses on the way, going with puns and the names of pop musicians. Arriving at the mill, they ran into River² and handed her Yoren’s reserach. To soften the blow of the Queen’s Men telling her about their shenanigans, which they had yet to do, the party told her what they had done to the dwarven mining operation. She said that if they cleared out the rats, the Amethyst Academy could take over the place for themselves. The next day, the party did just that.

Getting the rats out of the Scar wasn’t a difficult task. Snes simply told them that the rat god wanted them elsewhere. Specifically, he wanted them in Queen’s Park looking for eldritch lilies—the component Oscar Yoren had needed for his aqua expurgo, the potion to prevent contamination. Not trusting the rats to actually complete the job, the party would later head there themselves. But Queen’s Park was inside the city walls, along with all the real dangers of the city. Being level five, the group finally dared to venture there for the first time and quickly realized that it wasn’t such a great idea.