Chapter Twenty-Eight: The End...

I'd always hoped the campaign would end like these fantastic pieces of art by Leo Hao

The sky above them had turned red, fireballs were arcing through the firmament, and the roar of demonic monsters rent the air. The glacier had turned to water, leaving the Stellarium of The Vinteralf isolated on an outcropping of rock, flanked by torrents of boiling water.

Cobblethwaite's Companions decided to take a moment to explore the underground complex, beneath the stellarium, that they had found previously but hadn't really looked around propely.

Their explorations unearthed a strange, alien, complex of indescribable machinery, bizarre globes, metallic statues, and dismantled "golems" - all of which reminded them of their expedition to the "storehouse of the gods" out in the Badlands.

They were drawn into a scrappy fight with some small, feral, grey humanoids, where Marigold used the last charge of her Wand Of The Marrow Squid to pull the skeleton out of one; a sight that still sickened some of her comrades, even though they had seen her use this power before.

Then, as the roof was shaking and rubble falling down around their ears, they heard a booming demonic voice calling Kirchin by name.

It was Yuzaru The Barbed Devil that Kirchin has disrespected during the party's trip to Avernus Ridge. He had tracked Kirchin down and wanted his pound of flesh.

The battle against the heroes was brutal, with the devil's animated spikes causing damage whenever our heroes struck the monster, but eventually - although a lot of blood was spilled on both sides - the devil was slain.

Emerging back in the main dome room of the stellarium, where the enormous brass orrery bisected the room, they discovered more of the roof had been torn off and both the colossal Yellow King - his cape now sweeping the peaks of The Gargoyle Mountains and holding the dead corpse of the yellow dragon in one hand - and the terrasaque, a force of nature moving over the mountains towards the stellarium, were visible.

Enormous demonic creatures were swarming the sides of the building, and winged monkey creatures were swooping in and around the brass armatures of the clockwork orrery.

Inspired by the engraved wooden book they had found, which appeared to show the fate of the wielder of The Gauntlet Of Angelus, Harry headed for the ladder up to the mechanical structure, feeling that he needed to be elevated to activate the artefact... although still not 100 per cent sure what it did.

One of the flying monkeys went for Harry, jabbing with his trident, while the others attacked the rest of the party - some jabbing with tridents while others hovered further away and peppered our heroes (Kirchin in particular) with arrows.

[It was kind of at this moment that had this been a film Samuel Barber's Adagio For Strings would have swelled up, and the action would have gone into slo-mo, cluing the audience in to what was coming next.]

Harry, singing a final rousing tune to bring a tear to the eye of his heroic comrades, valiantly thrust his gauntleted hand into the air. He could feel the flames engulf him, but still he sung on as a pillar of light erupted from the gauntlet, fuelled by the fire of his body, and tearing a hole in the fabric of reality.

Harry's singing momentarily transformed into screams, then his angelic voice was silenced forever.

Davian, fallen to one knee, found his final thoughts were memories of his beloved dog (Spot) and he hoped they would soon be reunited.

There was a clatter from the gantry where the Gauntlet of Angelus had dropped to the ground, next to the pile of ashes that had been The Chosen One, Harry Cobblethwaite.

The hole in space and time opened into a white tunnel of light. Rather unexpectedly in the light was a red haired woman, gesturing to them to follow. It was Imogen! And Marigold realised that this was also what Imogen herself had seen in The Nexus Of All Realities, inside the hut of The Witch Of The Woods, some kind of 'future echo' of herself!

[Davian's player, Kevin, played his Plot Twist: Flashbacks card, acquired a looooong time ago (possibly more than two years ago in 'real time') from an encounter with the "memory mist", which served to accelerate the opening of the portal and signal the return of Imogen]

Marigold, battered and blooded, had evaded the flying monkeys and ran towards the tunnel of light as it sank towards the floor of the room.

Davian had died in a heroic final stand with two of the trident-wielding flying creatures.

The brothers Kirchin and Dirkin both ran for the tunnel of light but were cruelly cut down by arrow fire, dropping dead mere feet away from salvation.

Only Marigold made it into the light.

The portal closed behind her.

And Cidri was no more.

THE END OF EVERYTHING!

CAST:

• Davian (Kevin)
• Harry (Simon)
• Holly (Erica)
• Kirchin (Pete)
• Marigold (Clare)
• Dirkin (Erica)
• Imogen - special 'ghostly' guest appearance

Chapter Twenty-Seven: A Hundred-And-One Uses For A Frozen Corpse...

As Cobblethwaite's Companions looked down upon the Stellarium of The Vinteralf and came up with various plans to gain egress to the ancient building, there was a flash of yellow-orange light in the sky followed by an almighty earthquake. Which triggered an avalanche!

The entire party was buried in the snow, but luckily Harry and Marigold managed to dig their way out and start finding the others and rescuing them. Unfortunately, they found Holly too late and the young sage had frozen to death!

[From beginning to end, this was all dice rolls and skill checks in the hands of the players, from the strength of the avalanche through to the numerous survival rolls. It was very tense, and we could see Holly's life trickling away, but the dice were against her and we're surprisingly strict in our 'let the dice fall where they may' attitude to gaming. And eventually Holly's endurance and strength just ran out... quite a time before they found her body].

The adverse conditions, and looming end-of-the-world made the party quite unsentimental. They looted their colleague's body then left her in the snow for wild animals to dine on.

Dark gallows humour took over and for the rest of the day they were positing random uses for her frozen corpse (from sledge to doorstop, to frozen meal or canoe).

Scaling the side of the stellarium, Harry peeked in through the massive hole and saw a giant - but damaged - orrery above a concave bowl filled with rotten books, paper, gold, silver, gems etc and something large and almost invisible curled on top of it.

The party then opted to scale down the front of the glacier and gain access through a tunnel there. The ice tunnel led to a complex of exotic stonework that mystified their resident dwarf.

Lengthy exploration unearthed a number of rooms across several levels; the deeper one being particularly peculiar and only Harry managed to gain access to that level.

They also accidentally woke up a party of "walrus-men" (actually Vinteralf), ogre-sized creatures with walrus-heads.

Vinteralf

Having 'robbed' the walrus-men while they slept (in our heroes' defence, they thought the creatures were dead) of a folding wooden picture book, the party saw a series of wood carvings demonstrating the use of the Gauntlet Of Angelus... and the (fatal) cost it appears to exact on its user.

By returning the book to the leader of the Vinteralf, Prince Thravir, Marigold discovered they both shared a knowledge of the Sorcerer's Tongue and haltingly managed to convince Thravir that Harry was the "chosen one", selected to wear the Gauntlet to face the two-pronged apocalypse of the tarrasque and The Yellow King.

The Vinteralf were also very impressed by Harry's willingness to sacrifice himself for the greater good [due to the language barrier, I'm not entirely sure that Harry fully grasps what is being asked of him].

Thravir conducted the required "passing of the torch" ceremony and handed the Gauntlet to Harry. Kirchin produced the starstone which they slotted into the metal glove, which was then slid onto Harry's hand. There was a click and the halfling realised the Gauntlet wasn't coming off.

Our heroes then made to leave via the route they had come in by, but another smaller earthquake, bright yellow/orange lights in the sky, the melting/collapsing glacier, and the sounds of hordes of demons and sundry other unknown critters coming from both sides of the valley suggested that they might be making a final stand at the Stellarium.

CAST:

• Davian (Pete)
• Harry (Simon)
• Holly (Erica)
• Kirchin (Pete)
• Marigold (Clare)
• Dirkin (Erica)

Chapter 25: A Dish Served Cold...

Religious Fervour: Wild Dancing And Prayers Granted Salli A "Message From The Gods"

The refugee caravan made slow and steady progress towards Bendwyn, with the earthquakes and strange light show behind them turning the sky yellow and orange, even through the night.

The new arrivals, Salli and Pham, led the scared and huddled peasants in wild, evangelical religious ceremonies each evening. And one night Salli started speaking in tongues, proclaiming Harry as the "chosen one" and that "the stone is the key".

She had no recollection of this afterwards, but was adamant that the gods had spoken through her. From then on, Salli and Pham became Harry's handmaidens - much to his delight - tending to his every need.

Finally nearing their home town, the heroes and the refugees came to Bright River Fort and were shocked to see it almost unmanned, its doors hanging open.

Captain Hammerhand

Captain Dexter Hammerhand, wild with madness and drunkenness, proclaimed the end times, telling Cobblethwaite's Companions that most of his men had deserted to be with their families in the final hours of the world.

He also recounted reports he had received of a rampaging tarrasque heading south through Elyntia, ransacking the capitol, then tearing through Dranning.

When Marigold asked about the Wizard's Conclave, the captain told her they had gone to fight the "world-breaker" and not been heard from since.

The heroes then made their way, at last, down the hill to Bendwyn, only to be met at the bridge by the town guards - and a mob of thugs, fronted by the villainous half-orc Skarg, holding Kirchin's apprentice, Kahl, as a hostage.

Sgt Max Beerfoam

The guard-sergeant, Max Beerfoam, reluctantly told Cobblethwaite's Companions that the refugees weren't welcome in the village and that they - the former town council - were required to surrender, so they could be tried for treason and dereliction of duty, having left the town "in its hour of need".

Unsurprisingly, the adventurers refused to surrender and escorted the refugees back to the fort. Once the homeless peasants were settled in, Kirchin led the group of heroes back to Bendwyn in the eerie half-light, where they hatched a cunning plan to liberate the town.

There was some distracting of the guard on patrol, Cedric (who was eventually magically webbed by Marigold for his own well-being), Skarg's old tavern (now abandoned) was set alight, and Holly swam across the river Wyn and back a couple of times, enlisting the help of a family of friendly farmers.

Skarg

Harry found Max and persuaded him to come over to their side, then the heroes sent Max into Skarg's new headquarters - The Golden Axe (the former base of operations for Cobblethwaite's Companions) - with news that his old tavern was on fire.

Unfortunately, Skarg had suspected a ruse along these lines, although he hadn't foreseen Max's betrayal. He put a crossbow bolt in Max, and the sound of Max's body hitting the ground caused the Companions to storm the building.

Skarg had rigged up a mechanism above the bar, pulleys and ropes that led to nooses secured around the necks of all the hostages on the bar: Kahl, Holly's aunt Gwendolyn, and Marigold's parents.

Cooper

The rope then led back to Skarg's arm, and he was pulling it taught even as the heroes burst in.

The half-orc had also surrounded himself with a dozen tooled-up ruffians (including the juvenile delinquent Cooper).

To the accompaniment of a rousing battle song from Harry, a brutal fight erupted that saw Davian, Kirchin and Holly cutting people down left right and centre; Marigold used her magical webbing to gum up the mechanism holding the hostages, then cut loose with her "viper staff "; Dirkin turned a couple of thugs into pin cushions with his bow, before the crush got too much and he found himself facing Cooper.

Cooper had already taken on Holly, but she got pulled away to fight other scum, breaking her fencing sword in the process.

Dirkin ran Cooper through, and then Skarg, bloodied from an earlier strike, found himself surrounded by the dead bodies of his men, facing his bitterest enemies: Cobblethwaite's Companions.

Davian attacked first, then Holly - having snatched up a random discarded sword from the floor - cut down the half-orc gangster who had held the town in fear for the last few weeks.

Checking on Max, Kirchin discovered, by some miracle, that he wasn't as badly wounded as they first thought and would make a quick recovery.

The hostages were freed and the town of Bendwyn was liberated.

And All The Time The Yellow King Draws Nearer...

CAST:

• Davian (Kevin)
• Harry (Simon)
• Holly (Erica)
• Kirchin (Pete)
• Marigold/Dirkin (Clare)

Marking 24 Months Of Adventuring...

The Chronicles of Cidri has now been running for two years, which is definitely something of a record for the Tuesday Knights.

You can read about our first year of adventuring, in my take on the old Fantasy Trip default world of Cidri, here.

Unfortunately my health was more down than up this year, which resulted in an unforeseen break in gaming over the summer. After a busy April we didn't sit back down at the table until August, even though we'd left things mid-scenario.

As with last year, the games were initially drawn from the work of the industrious Tim Shorts (either from his fanzine The Manor or his Patreon campaign to produce micro-adventures), but then I changed things up by rewriting a very old adventure from an early issue of Different Worlds for the haunted house games, and the current 'dungeon' the characters are exploring is actually an Into The Odd scenario (which would explain why things are a bit... er... odd!).

LINKS TO CAMPAIGN CHAPTERS:

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Marigold Is Cursed: a one-shot ghost-busting adventure that set the direction for the rest of the campaign.

CHAPTER TWELVE: If You Go Down To The Woods Today and CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Lost In The Nexus Of All Realitity: In their quest to remove Marigold's curse, the group seeks out the legendary 'Witch Of The Woods' and ends up lost in the Realm Of Fairie.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: I Ain't Afraid Of No Ghost, CHAPTER FIFTEEN: The Hunting Of The Snark, CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Return To The Haunted Manse and CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Manse Raiders Of The Lost Art: after rescuing a lost child from a haunted house, our heroes return for loot and unleash a great evil on the world.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Into The Badlands: The party get a lead on a lost repository of Mnoren treasure and hope to find artifacts powerful enough to take down a tarrasque.

THE TUESDAY KNIGHTS: 

Meredith left us this year to start a new life with her husband Richard in New Zealand, but didn't want to kill off her rogue, Imogen, leaving the character 'in play' should she wish to continue the campaign via email.

After Meredith left we had a gap at the table and Erica (a work colleague of Rachel's) joined us in March as the young scholar Holly.

Clare's trainee wizard Marigold Weaver has become the unexpected focus of much of the 'story' element of the campaign after she was cursed by a ghost, which led to the whole 'Witch Of The Woods' adventure, and now the revelation of her unexplained pregnancy.

My wizard (Marigold's master), Peter Entwhistle, got bumped off during the exploration of the haunted manse (as a key element of the thread that brought the potentially world-destroying tarrasque into the game), and at the end of the year was replaced by the Robin Hood-esque Dirkin as either a GMPC for me or a replacement character for anyone who gets killed.

Pete's Kirchin has become the de-facto leader of the group.

Kevin is playing the group's tank, a beefy dwarven weaponsmith called Davian Battlebeard.

Simon is the group's moral support, morale officer and amoral thief, halfling bard Harry Cobblethwaite. 

Chapter Eighteen: Into The Badlands...

The Western Badlands...

It would be fair to say the members of Cobblethwaite's Companions didn't trust the man claiming to Dirkin, Kirchin's brother, one hundred per cent.

While young Kahl was adamant it was 'Uncle Dirkin', and both Harry and Davian remembered Kirchin talking about his brother, sharing anecdotes of their time fighting shoulder-to-shoulder in the Secession Wars, when the healer had first arrived in Bendwyn, he hadn't mentioned Dirkin since the party explored The Vault Of Viktor Volkov about four months ago.

They were, however, all intrigued by Dirkin's claims to know the location of a lost Mnoren treasure house (a store abandoned by the "gods" when they left Cidri 1,500 to 2,000 year ago). He'd visited it once with three accomplices, but while he stood guard outside all but one of them died inside and the third managed to crawl out of the tunnels, horribly burned, and die at Dirkin's feet.

Drawn by the tales of his older brother's exploits, Dirkin had come to Bendwyn to seek Kirchin out and enlist his aid in a return adventure to the "treasure house of the gods".

The party prepared itself, loaded up their wagon and headed off to the blasted wastelands that lay to the west of Elyntia. The scenery reminded Kirchin of the war-ravaged land around Winterhome, razed during one of the most brutal and protracted engagements of the Secession Wars.

It took the group the better part of three weeks to get to the cave entrance, not encountering a living soul for the last ten or so days as they wove their way through the Western Badlands to the Distant Mountains and the cave that Dirkin claimed was the way in to the 'treasure house'.

On the journey, Marigold - still very clearly traumatised by the grisly death of her mentor - dropped the bombshell that she was pregnant. And yet she was still a woman of virtue and was afraid that she might actually be infected by tarrasque larvae. It was pointed out to her, rather matter-of-factly, that if that was the case they probably would have 'hatched' by now, but she was not wholly convinced.

The party found the cave and saw that the passage into the mountain would require them to crawl, so Harry led the way and the rest followed in the narrow, claustrophobic tunnels.

Crawling slowly through the maze of passageway they found a cave with a strange humming metallic device in, a box with a funnel-like trumpet attached, that was constructed of eternium (much to Davian's delight).

One of the halfling-sized electrical creatures

Where possible they looked for clues as to which  direction Dirkin's men had taken and eventually found that the natural tunnels led into 'man-made' areas, which had humming copper walls, metal doors, and softly glowing white stone floors and ceilings.

But at least they could stand up in these tunnels and had more room to move about.

Very cautious about the walls and metal doors, as they sparked occasionally, the adventurers finally found themselves in a long tunnel which led - through a concealed door - into a room that was the bottom of a well.

Prior to this they had found rooms with pools of oil, a large cyclopean lizard skull, and one hung with owl-shaped lanterns where the floor was covered in scraps of paper scribbled in an unknown language.

Worried about touching the metal doors and being unable to open them, the party turned to Holly and her 'magical doorknob of opening' (acquired in Jerol of Jirrey's haunted manse), which proved to be their saviour as it allowed them access to otherwise impenetrable barriers.

Looking up in the 'well room', through the circular hole in the ceiling, the explorers could see the sky a hundred feet or so above.

Using a copper key-rod they had found in the rubble on the floor, they opened a door from this room and met a number of strange, small, electrical beings that appeared more curious than aggressive.

Fearing they wouldn't be able to take these creatures in a fight, the party managed to negotiate with them - mainly using sign language - and eventually gave the critters Davian's eternium skull ring, which pleased them no end and they headed off further into the 'dungeon', leaving the party to explore where the beasts had come from.

Finding a room with a pile of skeletons in, the party warily avoided that and opened a door in a room bisected by a glowing stream.

To be continued...

CAST:

• Davian (Kevin)
• Harry (Simon)
• Holly (Erica)
• Kirchin (Pete)
• Marigold (Clare)

Chapter Seventeen Epilogue...

Heart-Broken Marigold Blames Herself For Peter's Death..

After a night of consoling Marigold, Cobblethwaite's Companions sat in silence in the main room of The Merry Riot as Darly, Dayla, and Dayl mopped the blood-stained floor around them.

Kirchin took control of the situation, realising that 'busy work' might help to keep the mind of traumatised Marigold off the gruesome death of her mentor.

Davian and Harry he tasked with the job of moving Peter's body as best they could into the back of the wagon, then covering it, for the journey back to Bendwyn.

As he trudged off, Davian muttered something about a bucket, but luckily Marigold didn't hear anything over her sobbing.

"I'm going to see if I can follow any of these trails," Kirchin said, gesturing at the blood, "Holly, why don't you take Marigold and..."

"See what I can find out about these creatures," the enthusiastic young scholar finished.

After a quick word with Bothwell, and learning that this was not the scheduled time for a visit from the druid, Holly knew exactly where she wanted to go first.

She guided Marigold south of the village and across the dried riverbed towards a hut on the outskirts of the village. Outside the hut she could see the fearsome, one-armed and ancient, warrior Tarik chopping wood.

They exchanged pleasantries and Tarik invited the young women into his hut for a drink. Holly immediately noticed a rack of a old books over the old soldier's bed and knew she had come to the right place.

As she explained, as tactfully as she could with Marigold by her side, what had occurred, she could read in the lines of Tarik's face that the adventurer had an idea of what these creatures were.

He reached up to his shelf and pulled down a couple of books, silently thumbing through them until he found what he was looking for in a large tome that Marigold recognised as the Monstrous Monstorum. "Peter has that book..." she started to say and dissolved into tears.

Tarik set the volume down on his crude table, open to a page dominated by a large etching...

The World-Breaker In The Monstrous Monstorum

"What you describe," he growled, "is the larval stage of a tarrasque... a world-breaker... a god-slayer. The most fearsome beast on all of Cidri. They are spoken of only in legend; one has not been seen in 500 years."

He ran his finger down the text that accompanied the picture and quoted: "The larvae are believed to combine into an entity known as an alitnil, a terrifying warrior in its own right, which then grows into its ultimate manifestation: the tarrasque. These beasts cannot be killed by the hand of mortal man."

Slamming the book shut dramatically, he shook his head: "I cannot believe that fool Jerol was keeping a tarrasque egg. What was he thinking? He has brought doom to Elyntia!"

Marigold was rocking to and fro, muttering something about "don't disturb the snark" as Holly decided it was probably time for them to leave.

Back in the forecourt of The Merry Riot, Harry and Davian stood by the cart, which had been secured to Kirchin's mule, Charles. In the back of the cart, covered by an unfortunately bloody sheet, lay the roughly human shape of Peter's remains.

Kirchin came back, shaking his head, and explaining that the blood trails had thinned out and become impossible to follow.

Bothwell, his sons, and the barmaids of The Merry Riot gathered for a somber farewell as the party set out towards Bendwyn like a funeral cortege, transporting Peter to his final resting place in the graveyard beside the Temple Of The Lady Of Healing.

To be continued...