I Play Alone

So, weird thing about me: as far as I know, I’m the world’s first single-player, 100% mobile D&D group.

Which would technically make me not a group, as it’s just me, but there we go. Mostly this is because I live in the sticks, where asking someone if they’d like to join your D&D group would be met with a blank stare and a shrug. But it’s also because, well… It’s the sticks. There isn’t anyone else to ask. And when you’re living in the same room as four other people? Even without horrific social anxiety it would be a chore to play online. So instead, I did what I’ve always done: played it all myself.

“But Fanatic,” I hear you ask, “how can you play D&D without other people? If you’re acting as both DM and player, doesn’t it stop being a proper game at some point?” Quite true. You can’t play a “proper” game that lacks a DM without it simply becoming a session of let’s pretend. Luckily, solutions do exist for those wanting to play alone, the best one being the Mythic GM Emulator. At its very basic level it’s a simple yes/no system, where you ask questions and receive answers from the dice. A lot of improv and adaptability is needed to run something cohesive, but when you get into the meat and bones of the system it’s almost as good as having a real-life DM.

“But Fanatic,” I hear you pipe up, “surely you can’t be 100% mobile? Don’t you have all the books, papers, dice, etc.?” Yes, actually. But they’re all in digital format. Everything from the adventures, to the character sheets, even the dice are all stored on my tablet. This allows me to do two things;

1, play anywhere. And I mean, anywhere. I’ve trudged through wave echo cave while in the middle of the English Channel. I’ve explored pyramids spawned from magic beans while taking my evening walk. I’ve had characters meet their doom in the back of taxis. And I’ve trudged through the deepest jungles while lying on a Mediterranean beach.

And 2, I get to play at any time. Because everything is digitally stored, I can whip out my tablet while, for example, waiting in line at a supermarket, plough into a couple of demons or two, pause the game when the lady in front has finally stopped chatting with the guy behind the checkout, and resume the battle when I have a free moment. This means I go through modules really, really quick. I think the fastest was Storm King’s Thunder, which lasted me less than a week.

So that’s my setup. No fancy setups, snazzy dice towers, or even physical character sheets. Just me and the “virtual DM”, as I’ve come to call the combination of Mythic and the random generators I use. Solo D&D. Some people think I’m a weirdo for playing like that. And they have a point, because it sounds like it would just produce a bunch of boring “go there, kill this”, CRPG-like stories, right? Well, that’s what I kinda thought too, at first. But now? I’m a die-hard convert.

And hopefully, the following saga will convince you too.

Creating Legends

I’ve been running campaigns in the same setting for a little over a year now. Beforehand I’d played in a faerun style world, where magic was rampant and you were just as likely to encounter a slaad as you were a goblin. It was fun, but it felt like a “D&D world”. There was little consistency, and sporadic plot. Not to say it wasn’t epic: it certainly was. But after literally ending that world, I decided it was time to make something different. Something interesting. I’d tested the waters with the Mythic system, and it worked. It was time to take it to the next level.

There were two things I knew while dreaming up this new playground: it was going to be an island, and it was going to have steampunk tech in it. I’d been reading the old Eberron sourcebooks, so that influenced the latter side of the world’s theme. The island thing is because I’m a huge tiki fan. Anything related to Polynesian culture (the Maori in particular) is instantly good in my book. Observant users who’ve seen my username might know where I’m coming from.

Thus, Empai Tirkosu was born. I honestly have no idea where the name came from. It might have been as out-there as a prophetic dream, or as simple as a chocolate wrapper name with the words slightly mixed up. But it sounded right. “EM-pie teer-KO-sue”. It has a certain ring to it that just clicked with me.

I had no idea about the lay of the land. My situation at the time meant I didn’t have access to any graphical editing software, and with my horrendous artistic skills a physical map was out of the question. So instead of going all out with the world building, I focused on the characters. The main cast, if you will.

Flamer was the first. I’d been browsing a lot of fantasy art, and was steadily getting bored with the large amount of full plate armor knights, shirtless druids, and hooded rogues. Then I came across a pic of a warforged, coppery-gold in color and radiating a regal air like Sean Bean with a crown on. It was fantastic, but there was something too epic about it; This was a character in his final form, at the end of countless unimaginable adventures. I was creating a level 1 rookie. So I kept on looking until I found yet another warforged: standing tall and looking upwards while wispy flames licked his char-colored limbs. There was something very vulnerable about this new image that perfectly contrasted the heroic stance of the former one. This was perfect, this was the hero in his early days. It was there and then that I formulated Flamer’s backstory.

He was a warforged. A mechanical soldier, one of the many. Sworn to protect the trade empire (it was called Empai Tirkosu after all). An average warrior, just doing his duty, sir. Until an accident with some energy crystals destroyed his unit, leaving him as the only survivor; and wielding an apparently innate control over fire.

This was an okay start, but I wanted to put a spin on things. A couple of questions put to the “virtual DM” confirmed it; warforged were not supposed to have any innate connection to magic. Arcane magic, sure. But magic without study was seen as unreliable in even normal beings; in a warforged, the unknown effects were downright dangerous. Fear of technology is an interesting and current theme in the real world, after all.

Next up was Della, a half-elf. I actually modeled her with Nick Fury in mind, because I decided she was going to be the glue that held the team together. But she wasn’t going to be the tough, special agent type of character. Quite the opposite: Dell was sweet, innocent, and slightly shy. The perfect waifu, if you’ll excuse the anime term, except for the fact that she was a cleric of the Supreme One (a deity pulled from my previous game), and had taken an oath of chastity. Basically a nun with impressive bo staff skills and divine magic.

I created Lundal while en route from London, which is probably where the name came from. I already had an idea of what their first adventure together was going to entail, and from previous experience running Mines Of Madness I decided they needed a Bilbo Baggins. A burglar. Lundal was created to fill that role. As a gnome, he’d worked on the interior design of the Warforged during the Great War, but when the fighting died down and the engineers were laid off he fell on hard times. Lund had lost his fiancé in an aerial bombing, and was dealing with the grief by gambling. A lot. This led to him stealing and selling illegal tech, which eventually landed him in jail. That was the hook that led to lead him to the team; help them break into the mine, and he’d earn time off his sentence.

And finally, Turf. Megan Bridgewater, who preferred to be called by her nickname, was created to be the muscle of the team. We had Flamer the magic user, Della the healer, Lundal the trapmaster. We needed a heavy hitter, and an ex-military Berserker Unit was the perfect fit. I’d already decided there was going to be a heavy focus on the elements in this campaign, and Turf being an earth genasi fit that theme. She’d come from a rich family that was only rolling in it because of her absent father, an uncaring Dao who gave them the gold in return for their firstborn son to train up as an elite warrior. Turf was the tomboy sort, and had excelled in the Great War; but now that there was no imminent threat, she was getting restless. Della’s team was the perfect distraction.

When I created these characters, I decided to run them thorough a mini-adventure to give me a chance to explore their personality independent from the inevitable group. They were just small, one-encounter little plots, like something you’d find in an introductory Adventurers’ League module. I actually only remember Flamer’s in proper detail. Lundal stole some magitek (I think), Della exposed some cultists, and Turf… Killed something, probably. They weren’t really important, but they helped me get into the groove. I think Flamer’s one in particular stood out because of how cinematic it was, and because it set the tone for the campaign perfectly.

So the first “scene”. Adventure structure is quite cinematic in Mythic, which makes dungeons crawls slightly difficult but allows the overall adventure feel a lot more like a movie. The first scene was set only a year after the end of the Great War, and ran something like this.

Captain Veil, a low ranking officer wearing a discreet combat exosuit and outlandish purple hair highlights, walks briskly down an wooden paneled hallway reminiscent of an expensive hotel. She opens the doorway at the far end and steps through to a room cluttered with maps and strategy tables, lit by the orange glow of a setting sun through a large Georgian-style window. At a central desk sits a man in his thirties wearing a crisp white military uniform, his jet black hair swept back from an angular face. This man is Grayson Strell, the Grand High Commander of the military.

Veil: You wished to see me, sir?

Strell: Indeed. (Sets down his pen and pressed his fingertips together) The warforged. How’s he coming along?

Veil: Number T-K19?

Strell: The same. Any news from the lab coats?

Veil: (Apologetically) He’s only been conscious for two days, sir. We’ve been focusing more on his physical injuries than any… Effects he may have sustained.

Strell: Hm. And you’re quite sure that what he displayed was magical in nature? Not a, system failure or residue energy crystal?

Veil: Positive. He… He was able to create a small fire in his own hand. It wasn’t unintentional.

Strell: I see. (Stands, turning to face the window with his arms folded) Take him with you. Tonight. You’re looking into those smugglers, aren’t you?

Veil: Well that’s true, but he isn’t ready. His reflexes are still far from the standard-

Strell: Forget his physical limitations. Take him along with the unit, and observe his behaviour. Take a note of any magical outburst.

Veil: And? If he does display any… Irregularities?

Strell: (Pauses) We terminate him.

Veil. I… Yes, sir. (Turns to leave)

Strell: And Charlotta?

Veil: (Looks back, a half-smile on her face)

Strell: Be careful out there.

Veil: Always, sir. (Exits)

Scene change. Panning across another corridor, filled with bronze pipes and ending in a brass airlock. It opens with a hiss to an airship hanger converted into a running track. Two men in protective suits spray down a char-colored warforged, his chest heaving from the training despite not actually needing to breathe. Captain Veil approaches the metal man.

Veil: Flamed up again?

T-K19: (Nods)

Veil: But only a little, this time?

T-K19: (Shakes his head)

Veil: The Grand High Commander wants you in the unit tonight. You think you’re ready?

T-K19: (Grins) Ready.

Things didn’t go as planned for Flamey, that night. While Veil had managed to keep his powers a secret up until then, he ultimately gave himself away by displaying them in front of the whole unit while fighting the smugglers on top of an airship. Veil told him that if he stayed, he’d be killed. So he ran, and hid. And just by luck, he ran across a secret organisation of druids, who taught him how to control his fire power. They also helped him learn an ancient Druidic secret: the ability to morph one’s self into an animal form. Of course, Flamer was made of metal, so the creatures he transformed into were also metallic. But it was still a useful skill. And it was epic as heck.

So now the story truly begins, with the four members meeting up to delve into the Mines Of Madness. If you haven’t run or played in this yet, you need to. It’s a quest to get this philosopher’s stone from a lich hidden in an insanely trapped mine. Basically a more fun version of Tomb Of Horrors. I’d run it a couple of times before, each session ending in horrific TPKs. So I was interested to see how these new guys would fare.

And they did it. Not flawlessly, but they actually got the stone without any of them dieing. Della agreed to be killed to save the rest of the party only to turn up alive two minutes later, and Turf got turned into a gelatinous version of herself, but even that was reversed by the end of the dungeon. It was a great success.

There was a bit of a bother about what to do with the quest macguffin, which they dubbed the Forever Stone. You see, Della had put together this team under the urging of the high priest of the temple, who hadn’t specified what the artefact could actually do. And finding out that it made the holder immortal, well… She wasn’t exactly keen on simply handing it over to anyone, even the high priest. Not that she wanted the thing for herself, mind you: she unattended herself from it after the team finally agreed to pretend as though it hadn’t been inside the mine at all, and that Dell should keep it hidden and safe. In her mind, only someone truly worthy should become an undying, and only if they were doing so for reasons other than the fear of death.

So they split up, a little older and a little wiser. Flamer went back to the druid enclave, Turf brooded about her family mansion, Lund went back to jail and, Della tried not to lie too much to her superior. They’d beaten what had never been beaten before at my table/tablet.

It was then, that I knew; they were destined for great things.

Wow, I’ve only just remembered something. I came very close dropping the team I’d only just created.

You see, although MoM was a success, it took me two days to complete. For a single dungeon, that was inordinate amount of time for me back then. The problem was the amount of characters I was playing. Beforehand I’d stuck to parties of two, as it was small enough to be manageable while also allowing some RP dynamic. The problem with that was, most big modules aren’t designed for such a small group. I could have scaled up encounters on the fly, but that was a hassle and I wanted to really feel like I’d completed the whole module. But having seen how long things took with four characters, and having finally scanned in my favourite published adventure (Princes of the Apocalypse), I decided to give them a break until I figured out how to speed things up.

So I created a new duo, an Aaracokra Monk hailing from the birdfolk monastery who was being paid to teach a spoiled human girl how to survive in the wild. I don’t know, it probably made more sense at the time. I don’t even remember their names; they got as far as the introductory dungeon before dieing to the necromancer miniboss at the end. I did a metaphorical table flip, and decided the extended play time was worth it if the characters actually survived. But looking back, it was a close shave: if monk and brat had survived, the epic tale that unfolded over the next year might not have ever happened.

Their short-lived adventure wasn’t worthless however, as it acted as the hook which introduced the actual team into PotA. When the bodies of the two were found dumped in the center of the nearby village with a eye symbol carved in their foreheads, Della got her team together again to investigate. They arrived to find the place flooded with undead, which they quickly ploughed through, and put down the necromancer controlling them. This in turn led to them investigating the individual elemental cults.

Well, I say investigating. It was more like a standard dungeon crawl than the covert infiltration the book seems to want the players to do. You see, I’d already played through the first couple of chapters in that stealthy style during a previous campaign, and I wanted to switch it up a bit. It also fit with Turf’s preferred style: go in, wreck everything, and get the hell out before things got tough. It was fun, but it was a bit of a grind. I remember Riverguard Keep best, the water castle dungeon. It was quite thematically appropriate, because I played through it while on the worst ferry crossing I’ve ever experienced. Seriously, you went into the bathrooms and there was literally vomit on the ceiling. I mean, how does one even manage to do that, even gives the massive waves we were experiencing? It was like the real elements themselves were rebelling as I plunged deeper into the cultist’s lair. Very fun, for me. Not so much the poor soul who’d defiled the bathroom.

At this point I actually drew up a proper map of Empai Tirkosu, and filled in some proper worldbuilding details. Still very rough, but that was okay. With solo play it’s a good idea to stay vague about something until it’s directly referenced in game, as the virtual DM requires a fair bit of improv to work. But at the moment the island’s geography was less than vague, bordering on nonexistent. So out came the pencils. I decided on a few main towns dotted about with a smattering of smaller settlements around the mainland, and, of course, the big steampunk city, Orthraze. I also established the ten main races, and because I’m a Bionicle nut I affiliated each one with an element: Dwarves with Earth, Aaracokra with air, Aasimar with light, Merfolk with water, Golath (basically non-nomad Goliaths after a typo) with ice, Elves with life (or, greenery), Gnomes with steam, Warforged with fire, Elkore (custom race with martian eyes and a hair thickness 50x the norm) with smoke, and humans with dust.

I spent extra time statting out the nearest village, a place called Rahg Krahv (the name coming from the Golath that had started the settlement, and totally not a random generator). So, naturally, virtual DM decided the earth cultists were going to bomb the place. And so they did, wiping out half the population and three hours of work. It was annoying, but it made me hate the cultists more than the system. We returned to the grind with a vengeance.

It was around this time that the individual combat styles of the characters were forming. Turf was a straight up powerhouse, flattening everything and anything in her way. Flamer had mastered his druids transformations, now able to turn into mechanical animals at will. Della was very nimble despite wearing heavy armor, while also being surprisingly strong; at times, she even outmatched Turf in damage output. Lundal… Complained a lot. He wasn’t too keen on delving into ancient Dwarven mines in search of elemental cultists, even if it meant a shortened prison stint. A fat lot of good liberty was if he wasn’t alive to enjoy it. Despite this, he was pretty effective in combat. He’d found an octopus familiar in Riverguard Keep, and was wearing the thing on his head. As it counted as an ally, he was getting sneak attacks every single round. He also called it Nora.

They eventually reached the fane of the Elder Elemental Eye, which I shortened to the Elder Eye for some reason. They met the Black Earth prophet, who waffled on about how the all-seeing Eye would be their eventual doom. They shrugged it off as lunacy and bumped him off, Turf claiming his silver warpick as her own. It was time for the final dungeon of the module: the fire node.

They were woefully underleveled. Thanks to Turf’s in-and-out style of combat they hadn’t been able to clear every single room in each dungeon, meaning that a level thirteen area was being challenged by a group of level eights. Five levels is basically a whole tier in D&D. The module provides many chances for side quests for this purpose, but the virtual DM had set a ticking clock by making the cultists bomb Rahg Krahv. The team was hell-bent on destroying the cultists before they had an opportunity to unleash a devastation orb elsewhere, regardless of whether they were prepared to face the challenge. So in they went.

It was chaos. Let me try to put into perspective how insane of a fight it was: The final fight consisted of Vanifer the fire prophet, who on her own was a deadly challenge for the team. Then on top of that, there was a fire elemental and a young red dragon, who together made up a second deadly challenge. They were all coming at us with full strength, and we were already below peak performance from dealing with some flameskulls on the way there. Add to that the timer which the virtual DM had kindly added, ticking down as Vanifer concentrated to the moment when an all-consuming fire elemental would be summoned, and… We should have died. We should have died.

But we didn’t. Lundal changed headfirst into the fire elemental and tore its molten body to pieces, Della and turf worked together to confuse the dragon as they darted out of reach of its fire breath, and Flamer, in one of those epic moment where everything falls into place perfectly, transformed into a giant steampunk eagle and rescued turf as she was tossed out over the lava. I hadn’t been checking his Wild Shape ability for a while, and when it seems like they were going to lose their heavy hitter I was delighted to discover that 8th level provided no flying restrictions. I’m sure there’s a trope out there for critical abilities being unlocked at the last moment, but I really don’t want to lose myself in TVTropes again.

So they did it. Against insane odds, they managed to take down all three adversaries. Flamer gave the final strike, plunging Vanifer’s own dagger into her with a heroic battle line. I can’t remember what his exact words were, but I believe they were something like: “I’m sorry. But I am going to have to burn you to the ground.” Flamey was always anything but impolite, even to his enemies.

The team slow-mo walked out of the elemental node to the fitting tune of Sonic Librarian’s Dice Of Gods. Flamer, battle scarred and clutching the dagger, named Tinderstrike. Turf, carrying the heavy warpick on her shoulder and grinning ever so slightly. Lundal, jaw set and staring straight ahead through the welding goggles he constantly wore. Della, leaning on her staff from the many burns, but smiling. The island was free from elemental evil. Imix would not be crossing over to this plane any time soon.

If the virtual DM had a physical form, he’d have been cackling and rubbing his hands together at that moment. Because something big was brewing. PotA was officially over, but the team’s adventures certainly weren’t. And I’ve found that the best storylines spring up when the imagination is left to run wild, free from the constraints of an official module. This moment of epic destiny, this success against the impossible? It was just the eye of the storm. And the forecast was cloudier than it had ever been.

The Tsethem are called by name.

Flamer and Co. returned to Orthraze, receiving a hero’s welcome from the city. News of the bombing of Rahg Krahv had reached the military there, and Turf’s status as a special forces unit meant that their story was heard in full by the officials. They were presented with a medal of honor at a formal ceremony, Captain Veil standing by with pride at how Flamer had proved himself in the eyes of the authorities. The Grand High Commander wasn’t present for the ceremony. I’m not sure if he was still wary of a spellcasting warforged, or if he was simply busy. Lundal was also absent; he’d decided that he didn’t need no medal from no damn military.

Things were peaceful for about a year. I think there was a bit of an incident with a friend of Della’s, who was staying in Orthraze at the Tharth (elvish word for temple or shrine). She decided to become an elemental cultist, or something. The details are a bit fuzzy. What I do remember clearly is that Turf managed to get hold of a wingsuit from the air cultists on one of the cleanup raids.

At one point during the summer the team decided to meet up again, for that noble quest so many before them had untaken; having a picnic. They met up just outside Rahm Oru (the largest mainland town now that Rahg Krahv was destroyed) and headed off to find a nice spot.

Of course, the virtual DM wouldn’t stand for such pleasant peacefulness, so Della discovered a strange basement-like structure while frolicking with Nora the octopus. There they discovered a creepy elf lady who seemed to be kind of confused about where she was. She also kept mentioning an Eye. When pressed as to who she was, she got irritated and vanished. The team explored the dungeon but didn’t find anyone else. Just a bunch of shadowy mist and some scales.

They should have seen it coming, really. It was only a day or two after the picnic, when they were safely back in Orthraze, that disaster struck. They were gathered on one of the tower-like airship docks to see Flamey and Dell off. The sun was casting a deep orange over the domed roofs and tall spires of the city. Mt. Tirkosu rose up not far to the southeast, icy peaks glistening in the dying light. It was the perfect sunset.

A shadow fell across the land. Heading over the mountain was an enormous black dragon, vaporised shadow pouring from its flapping wings like smoke. It flew with deadly purpose, straight towards the city.

I was thankful beyond belief that the team was hanging out within reach of an airship. They geared up and rolled out on a nifty little ship, soaring over the rooftops to face the dragon as it crossed the city walls.

What followed was the longest battle I’ve ever experienced, despite the relatively small number of combatants. It was exhilarating. The dragon tore into their airship, trying to crash the thing, but the elemental propulsion engines held them aloft. Turf made good use of the wingsuit, leaping from the deck to deliver a few powerful blows before circling back to safety. By this time Flamer had unlocked his elemental wild shape, so he used that in combination with Investiture of Flame to become a superfast, flying, flaming version of himself. His super-saiyan mode, if you will. Lund piloted the craft while Della tried her best to heal them all up. Because man, those breath attacks were deadly. This wasn’t a young dragon trapped inside a relatively small cavern, like the one they’d faced before. This was the real deal, and I intended to play her as such.

They fell. Della was the first to go, tossed off the airship and landing a few hundred feet below. Turf and Lundal were consumed by shadow breath. Flamer only survived because his sheer speed allowed him to easily escape the dragon. As he stumbled to a halt on the slopes of Mt Tirkosu, the immense creature that had defeated the city’s heroes offered a victory roar to the heavens. The team, at long last, were defeated.

There was no way Flamey could take on the creature by himself. So he hatched a plan, one of the most risky ones I’ve seen in all my time playing D&D. He would travel back to the fire node, disguise himself as a fire elemental, use Tinderstrike to summon Imix to the island, and persuade him to take down the only threat bigger than the eternal flame himself: the shadow dragon residing in Orthraze.

And it worked. The wild shape was enough to fool Imix into believing he was a trusted servant of elemental evil, and his earnest plea to destroy the dragon was heard. While Imix led as many fire elementals as were on hand through the portal, Flamer slipped away and headed back to Orthraze. He arrived there a day before the fire army and used that time to observe the dragon. A dark, stagnated shadow had fallen over the once grand city. To drive the last of the inhabitants and defenders out, she appeared to have enlisted the help of the Mirlings; a bunch of subterranean races that act as dark reflections of their surface counterparts. The dragon was gathering a fair portion of her army together outside the walls, preparing for a march. Flamer guessed that they were going to head to Little Orthraze, the Gnomish seaside town just a few miles north. Time was running out.

The fire army struck that night. Imix’s soldiers ate up the ground as they charged towards the city, leaving the ruins of Rahm Oru in flames along with several acres of jungle. The shadow dragon waited until they were in reach of the walls to engage, which was probably a fatal error on her part. Imix was a lot faster than her, and his attacks were brutal. They wrestled together across the rooftops, obliterating the few standing buildings beneath their ferocious onslaught. Fire smote shadow, and soon the dragon was fleeing for her life. But there was no escape from the all-consuming fire.

Flamer had taken advantage of the commotion to slip into the city centre. A couple of locational scans (Find Object) detected the corpses of his friends. He found them in front of the dragon’s temporary lair, impaled into the wall with spikes and leaking necrotic ooze from their eyes. It was horrific. He didn’t waste time, taking them quickly to a hidden bunker beneath the military headquarters and boarding a prototype airship. He escaped the carnage of Imix and the dragon, heading out over Mt. Tirkosu. Beneath them, in a confusing move at the time, the Mirlings turned on their former leader and joined the ranks of the fire army.

Flamey wasn’t a healer. No one on the island except Della was powerful enough to use resurrection magic. So he did the only thing he could, and cast Reincarnate.

Now this was a lot more risky than it might at first seem, because I was using a custom list of reincarnation races. Although the main ten races of Empai Tirkosu were the most likely (followed by genasi), I had every single official and semi-official race on there. Della could have ended up as a half-orc, a svirfnerblin, or even a vampire. She was incredibly lucky. The dice decided she would become a full human, essentially losing her Elven side. She had never known her parents, having been discovered on the steps of Appinamopu Tharth as a baby. Her Elven heritage was all she had of her father, so losing it was a crushing blow. She resurrected Lund and Turf, then quietly retreated below decks to weep.

The rest of the team wasn’t in high spirits either. Flamer explained to them what they’d missed, and Turf was furious. By getting Imix to destroy the dragon, he had only replaced one deadly foe with a much more dangerous one. There was no way they were going to defeat him without help.

But help was at hand. Landing at the wicker monastery of Hepthurai, they were greeted by the Aaracokran elder who informed them of a resistance group assembling at Paku, the Elven village. The elder also told them of a prophecy concerning such a time as this, when shadow and fire would collide again, as in the days long before the island had a name. He showed them a map, marking a point high on the mountain. When they arrived there via airship they found a marble statue of an angel, which became a real, living version of its depiction when Della prayed to it for help. The angel said she had been placed here to defend the island in its darkest hour by the Supreme One, the most commonly worshiped deity on Empai Tirkosu, and also the god Della worshipped. She agreed to fight alongside the team to take down Imix. With her aid, they had a fighting chance.

They headed to Paku to meet up with the resistance. Grand High Commander Strell was there, having escaped the city thanks to the actions of Captain Veil. It was rather awkward for Flamer, as this was the first time they had met face to face since Strell had given the order to terminate him. The Commander greeted him like an old friend however, and soon they were discussing battle tactics together.

The gist of the plan was, the resistance would take on the combined Mirling and fire elemental army at the gates, while Turf would lead her team and the angel past enemy lines and take on Imix himself. It worked out smoothly enough: they snuck into the treasury Imix was using as an HQ using Turf’s merge with stone ability, and soon came upon the head honcho. They struck with blinding speed, but it wasn’t enough: the angel fell beneath the onslaught of fire. They were out on a limb, without otherworldly backup, facing an enemy they couldn’t hope to defeat alone.

So Flamer did something crazy again, and snapped Tinderstrike.

Now, each elements weapon is supposed to contain a shard of its creator. Snapping one unleashes that shard, but as a separate entity. It was as though a pale reflection of Imix unfurled from the dagger as Flamer ripped it in two. So now they were facing two Imixes, one undoubtedly weaker than the first but still a prominent threat. I thought they were certainly doomed.

But the virtual DM decided to be gracious that day. Imix, seeing this new version of himself appear before him, decided quite rightly that having a second insane megalomaniac running about the world was actually a threat to his safety. So he attacked, and the rest of the team stood back and watched while they beat each other up. It was child’s play to dispatch the winner of the tussle, having already been softened up for them. Outside along the walls of Orthraze, the Mirlings fell beneath the sword and the fire elementals fled to the hills, fearing whoever had the power to destroy their almighty prince.

They stood among the ruins of their civilisation. Shadow brought down order, and fire had destroyed what remained. The darkness that had followed the dragon wasn’t dissipating, reanimating the corpses of the Mirlings every few hours to prowl the twisted wreckage again. All but a few airships had been destroyed in the assault. The humans, Dwarves, and Warforged who once called the city home now had nowhere to live. They couldn’t simply build a new city right next to it, due to Tirkosu’s unique planar structure; as the plane was constantly being “fed” by the ten elemental planes, any structure built in an unstable zone would eventually disappear, sometimes along with any occupants. They were without guidance, without the comfort of the city’s technology, and without hope.

So they turned to their protectors, Turf, Flamer, Della, and Lundal, calling upon them by a name that would resonate throughout the course of the island’s history. They turned to their Tsethem, the Elvish word for protector. And so the heroes led their new followers into greener pastures, as behind them in the last light of the dying human empire, Orthraze burned.

The destruction of Orthraze was a huge change for Tirkosu. It had been a center of trade, innovation, and security for so many years that its sudden absence was felt even in villages as far-flung as Pernep. Freighters were forced to switch back to the much slower method of sea transport, what with the majority of airships having been destroyed in the battle. The central bank was out of bounds, stuck in the center of the ruined city and crawling with zombies and other shadow creations. Both the Grand High Commander and Captain Veil were killed during the onslaught; Flamer reincarnated Charlotta as a half-orc, but Strell’s body wasn’t found. No home, no leader, and no gold. The human empire that had stood proud throughout the Great War had officially been destroyed.

The Tsethem went their separate ways. The Warforged (who had been granted citizen status after the Great War, although most of them stayed on as soldiers) chose Flamer to lead them. He took them to an isolated volcano just off the northeastern corner of Tirkosu, and discovered the wreckage of a huge cargo airship conveniently located in a planestable zone. Over the course of the next year he and his fellow Warforged carved a home into the rock, with the airship serving as an entrance of sorts. Continuing with the trend of naming things in Elvish, they called their new village Karu Sampur, which translates directly as “crashed ship”.

They used the natural heat of their home to smelt metals into various parts and pieces, sending the finished items to the gnome village of Little Orthraze. The Warforged were one of the main reasons that society didn’t collapse into a chaotic scramble for resources, as their tireless work served as an example for the other races. They didn’t need food, water, or even gold to survive. Yet they set themselves to work for the good of the island.

Turf took change of the Dwarves, which they were actually fine about. Dwarves on Tirkosu aren’t exactly racist per se, but of all the people affected by the fall of Orthraze they felt it the most. And they blamed it on the humans, whether it was their fault or not. But Turf’s father was a Dao, a creature of the earth; same as the Dwarves. So they welcomed her as their protector, and followed her to a planestable spot at the southeast foot of Mt. Tirkosu. There she literally carved a village out of the mountainside by hand over the course of a few months, an impressive feat even with the aid of her elemental warpick.

The Dwarves soon moved in, and swiftly started doing what they do best: mining for ores, which they sent to the Warforged village for smelting. Turf’s mum died in the shadow dragon’s attack, and as Orthraze was inaccessible she was buried in a special tomb her daughter carved for her. They’d never really gotten along well, what with Turf being quite tomboyish and her mum being, for want of a better word, a fuddyduddy. But she was still family, and her death hit Turf hard. Especially as her brother, Claye Bridgewater, also died in the assault. Or at least it was assumed that he died; The only piece of him they found was his hand.

The gnomes that had previously lived in Orthraze kind of already had a place to go, because the city’s sister town was already predominately populated by their kin. Lundal went along with the refugees to Little Orthraze, and worked diligently to ensure the prosperity of his people set up a literal underground fight club. He really wasn’t ready for the mantle of leadership, but he also wasn’t a fool. Instead of continuing to hog the limelight as the leader of his kind, he had the wisdom to hand off the reigns to a friend, who also happened to be the oldest gnome in the town.

The humans were an interesting case. While many of them did the sensible thing and moved to Rahm Oru, there were those who didn’t take the sudden loss of modern conveniences very well. These were mostly the richer families who’s gold savings were lying in the ruins of Orthraze, or merchants who’s trade relied on Orthraze being a central hub. All in all about twenty percent of the population. In their desperation to regain at least a little of their wealth, they followed the recent rumors that told of a massive oil reserve in the desert wasteland to the east. They went to all the trouble of moving their belongings around the island, spending what little coin they had on the boat fare. And it was all for pretty much nothing, as the black gold was a lot less plentiful than the rumors had made out. They had no choice but to drill what little there was, and do their best to survive in the harsh environment.

Della didn’t go with the humans, despite now being a full one. She was still trying to figure herself out after the drastic change. She returned to Hepthurai, having felt a connection to the Aaracokra during the team’s brief stay there. The airfolk welcomed her into their home, and she spent the following year training with them, worshiping the Supreme One, and healing her soul. In time, and after several demonstrations of her harmony with the elements, the Aaracokra joined the humans in calling her Tsethem of air. Indeed, so did the rest of the island, for all four of the original team.

It was around this time that I picked up Horde of the Dragon Queen, and Rise of Tiamat shortly after. I was eager to run it, but Flamer and co. were much too powerful for the recommended level. I was still not too speedy at adjusting encounters to fit different party levels, so I decided to take a short break from the main heroes and roll up some new characters.

Jaques Torrem had lost both of his parents in the bombing of Rahg Krahv. He and his little sister had moved to Orthraze to get away from the cultist threat. I actually ran him and his sis through a mini adventure just before the picnic episode, in which Captain Veil recruited them to head into the city’s catacombs and figure out where the corpse of a flumph had come from. Tragically, Jaques was the only one who made it out alive. Losing the last other member of his family like that would have probably pushed him over the edge, if he hadn’t met Tikka.

Tikka had the perfect mindset of an Elf. Bubbly, vivacious, brimming with life and the love of it. She was the daughter of the Elven chieftain, and as she was destined to inherit the mantle of leadership her father had sent her to Orthraze to get a proper education. While she didn’t completely cure Jacques’ depression, she did manage to stop him from becoming suicidal.

Then Orthraze fell. The two were among those who were captured by the Mirlings, and they survived the imprisonment by keeping each other’s spirits up. With the final attack on Imix came freedom for the Mirlings’ captives, Jaques and Tikka leading the escape from the shadow-haunted ruins. They spent the next year together, working through Jaques’ depression and helping the survivors settle.

This is when the story picks up again, one year after the fall of Orthraze. Something weird was going on; people were being bumped off, seemingly at random. The only thing the deaths had in common was that the victims all worshiped Tiamat, the mythical five headed dragon. Word was spreading that some kind of judgment was coming for anyone who believed in her. So swift and discreet were the killings that they didn’t even have a description or name of the culprit, so naturally the bards of the island got inventive, naming him “the Vindicus”. Tikka decided they needed a skilled tracker to have the slightest chance of a lead, so that led to the introduction of the third new character.

Naliko “Icestalker” Lakumathala was literally raised by wolves. Golath, the icefolk living on the slopes of Mt. Tirkosu, have a brutal survival of the fittest mentality. Any newborn child that isn’t physically up to their standards would usually be given away to a foster home. A trip downmountain was too too much of a wasted effort for Naliko’s parents however, and she was unceremoniously dumped in the wilderness to die.

So the clichéd “wolf takes her into the pack instead of eating her” backstory happens. Basically Mowgli, but in the freezing cold instead of the jungle. She worked as a hunter and tracker, and that’s how she wound up with Jaques and Tikka.

Their first meeting was quite funny to play through. Unlike most of my adventure starting points, it actually made sense that they would meet in a pub, so I could check that off the list of tropes I’d used. While Jaques and Tikka were relatively normal, Naliko was certainly not. She had a kind of rambling way of talking, and would stare dreamily at anyone except who she was speaking to. The other two didn’t really know how to deal with her, because although her age was only twelve she was talking about quite serious stuff like she was an adult (I.E. tracking, killing, wages, etc). One moment sticks out in particular, when they were sitting by the frosted window of the mountainside tavern:

Jaques: Does two gold pieces per day sound fair?

Naliko: (Pauses) Yes, that would be nice. I like gold. It can get you drunk. I like drunk.

Jaques: (Nervously laughs) Ah hah, yeah… One moment.

(Jaques rises from the table, and walks over to where Tikka is ordering at the bar)

Jaques: Tikka… Um… What are we getting ourselves into, here?

(Both turn and look at Naliko, who stares back and slowly waves at them from across the room)

The two Tyranny of Dragons modules were the hardest I’ve ever had to adapt to fit the setting of Tirkosu. Mostly because of the scale of the thing: a whole lot of it is just travel, and that’s pretty hard to pull off when you’re on an island that’s only a hundred miles across. In fact, I threw most of it out the window and let the virtual DM run the show. For instance, the beginning scene had a totally different structure to the one in the book. I won’t go into spoilers here, but those who have read or played the adventure will see the difference.

They started out on a stormy beach, overlooking the waterfolk village of Pehkeiai. The rafts and stilted huts that constituted the settlement were being buffeted about by the tall waves that broke through the protective reef. A storm was coming, both literally and metaphocically. And there he was. Staring out to sea with both feet planted firmly in the sand, his black plate armor shining in the fine misty rain. Naliko could sense that this was her quarry: the man who had been killing Tiamat’s followers. The Vindicus.

And then all hell broke loose. Hundreds of men and women charged onto the beach from the jungle, screeching and roaring as they brandished their many weapons. More burst from the choppy water and swarmed up onto the village, swiftly followed by scaly wyrm-like creatures. They began hacking their way into the huts and forcing the inhabitants out at swordpoint. As Jaques, Tikka, and Naliko ran to defend the villagers against the bandits, Vindicus looked to the heavens and drew his blade, masked face fixed on the giant blue dragon circling above.

I ran the battle as a kind of skirmish, with multiple smaller fights working together to create the sense of a large scale battle. Vindicus waited until the dragon got in range, then eldritch blasted the loving daylights out of it until it retreated. The other three took down multiple raiders, but were otherwise kind of ineffectual. Eventually the attackers retreated, taking most of the village’s wealth and about a quarter of the population as prisoners. Vindicus went off after them, without stopping for a break.

The rest of the party (because yeah, Vindicus was actually supposed to be character number four) took a moment to catch their breath before heading back into the jungle. It was easy for Naliko to track the huge raiding party back to their camp, but it was much more of a challenge to get inside without being immediate spotted and swarmed. Jaques and Tikka decided to head to Appinamopu Tharth to get reinforcements, while Nali scouted around the perimeter and ran into Vindicus. They introduced themselves, in a manner of speaking, and Vind explained in as few words as he could that he was killing cultists, specifically those who worshiped Tiamat. He didn’t know why the bandits had attacked Pehkeiai, he just knew that they needed to die. Naliko took that with a nod and a shrug. It seemed like a good enough answer to her.

The other two arrived back with some holy warriors from the Tharth, including the high priest of the Supreme One’s church. Tiseo was an Aasimar, or angelfolk as they’re called on the island, and he was the one who originally gave Della the idea of forming a team to go artifact hunting in the ancient Dwarven mines. By the time they got to the camp however, the cultists had already set off north, heading for the the Elven village of Paku. Naliko had convinced the Vindicus to wait until the other two arrived, thankfully; I didn’t want this party to fall apart before it even started.

They pursued the cultists northwards, clinging to the coast until the tracks branched off and headed for Paku. Upon reaching the jungle village they found it in complete chaos, their quarry having raided the place on their way through. Gold and humble treasures had been seized, and multiple captives had been taken. Jaques talked with the chief (Tikka’s father), while Tikka herself tended to the wounded.

At this point I decided to add two more PCs to the party. Don’t ask me why, I don’t even remember. Maybe it’s because I wanted to suffer. Although that doesn’t really ring true, because I was getting a lot quicker at running battles. Regardless, two new PCs came to fruition:

Inalak Onakea was a thirty year old Elven sorcerer from Paku. His parents had just been killed defending their home, and he was out for revenge. Korena Ionu was one of the holy warriors Tiseo had brought from the Tharth, who practically worshiped Della and was excited about getting to go on an adventure like her hero.

They continued the pursuit around the foothills of Mt. Tirkosu, stopping off at the village of smoke. The Elkore inhabitants admired Vind’s gothic-style armor, fussing over him as a welcome guest and making him very annoyed. I believe this is where one of my favorite quotes from Naliko came up, in reply to whether Vindicus would be needing any refreshments before retiring:

“Oh don’t worry about him, he’s dead.”

Keep in mind, Vind hadn’t taken off his mask to anyone except Nali at this point, and even she didn’t know exactly who he was. I did, because I had planned this from the moment Orthraze fell.

See, Vindicus was a Revenant. A being who had died, and come back to life for vengeance. The actual race is totally overpowered, as when you die you can automatically come back to life within a few days. It would never be allowed in a game with many people in it. But that’s another great thing about playing solo: balance doesn’t matter. If you allow a certain character to have more power than the others, you’re not going to make the other players feel left out; because there are no other players. The same goes for party levels; I’ve had level 20 demigods fight alongside level 3 newbies, and it doesn’t, can’t feel unfair. Party balance can be bent a little in favor of narrative coherence or flavor, and it doesn’t impact my enjoyment of the game.

As they finally caught up with the marauding thieves, they gave the slip once again by heading straight into the ruins of Orthraze. This place was basically death for anyone without serious experience, with all the Mirling zombies and tormented ghosts of fallen soldiers milling about. While Korena and Inalak split off from the group to reach Little Orthraze and call a meeting of the Tsethem, the rest continued on through into the shadow-blackened necropolis. Naliko tracked the cultists to an underground series of tunnels, but again they had given the party the slip via a teleport circle.

I was getting quite sick of chasing these people now, so I was thankful when upon activation of the portal we ended up waltzing right into the center of a mountain cabin, filled with cultists. Not the same ones we were after, exactly, but after the fighting died down they could still fill us in on a few details. According to them we had appeared back down in the south, just a few miles from Pernep. They knew that the raiders were headed to a temple of some kind, but they know where it was located. Apparently a prophet had been stirring up trouble among the formerly peaceful worshipers of Tiamat, proclaiming that now was the time for her arrival upon the island. The party’s prisoners also knew that several of their brothers were holding the settlement below hostage. So down they went, to defend the villagers.

I don’t know what they were expecting, but it certainly wasn’t a floating tower. Back when I was playing through PotA with the original Tsethem, they’d been attacked by air cultists from a large turret that floated miles above the ground via a huge elemental propulsion engine. They’d delved into the Dwarven mines just after clearing the tower, and when they returned to the surface it had disappeared. They assumed it had drifted away in the wind. But it wasn’t lost, as it’s presence over Pernep was testimony to. There were only two problem however: the cultists had taken it over, and they’d invited a dragon.

You might be deceived by the recent attack on Orthraze into thinking that dragons are a common feature of Tirkosu. They’re not, at all. In fact, the fall of Orthraze was the first time one of those creatures had been seen in dacades. Fishermen and waterfolk tell of the far-off dragonlands, a place solely inhabited by the ancient beings. But any solid evidence that such a place existed was nonexistent. Seeing a dragon just perching on top of the flying tower was a scary sight.

…Which was promptly undermined by the easiest dragon fight I’ve ever experienced. This guy was an adult white dragon, and should have been a deadly challenge for our level. But we cut through him like a knife through cheese. I was only partially miffed by this outcome; this time around I didn’t have a magic dagger on hand that could summon an archomental, in the event of the party’s dragony death.

With the raiders having slipped away while the heroes protected Pernep, there was nothing they could do except return to Little Orthraze and consult with the Tsethem. Luckily they had the airship to command. They flew the thing across the island and arrived at the Gnomish town the following morning, greeted by Inalak and Korena, and the Tsethem. Flamer, Turf, Lundal and Della had each been summoned from their respective villages to hold council about the threat of the dragon cult. Flamer was looking as charred and noble as always, as he spoke to the elder Gnome about the village delegates. Turf was now wielding a giant meat cleaver of a blade. Lund was wearing a chunky mechsuit of his own design. And Della was quietly speaking with Korena about the Vindicus. She could sense an aura of evil around the man, but Dell reassured her that he had good intentions, implying that she knew his true identity. Korena was torn between her instincts and the word of her hero, but ultimately decided to let her suspicions lie.

The six who had pursued the raiders were given honorary Tsethem status, allowing them to participate in the discussion. And with that, the ten heroes gathered together with the elders and chiefs of each village, to hold the first Council of Little Orthraze.

The Council of Little Orthraze consisted of a representative from each village and the Tsethem, honorary and otherwise. Their topic of discussion was basically “what do we do about the dragon cultists?” The answer may seem obvious, and it was to the Tsethem: take them out. Give them the same treatment as the elemental cultists before them, who I’d named “Primadans” for their worship of the Primordials; ancient and powerful elementals composed of two types, Archomentals and Colossi. Imix, the being Flamer had summoned before the fall of Orthraze, was one of the former kind.

But the council elders, led by the high priest Tiseo, countered that it wasn’t so simple. They had no idea of the opposition’s numbers, they were clueless as to where their base of operations lay, and apparently they had dragons on their side. These were all issues that had to be addressed before an assault could be attempted, otherwise they would be going in blind. They needed intelligence.

So Tiseo split the party. Turf and Flamer were sent off into the ruined Orthraze to check out the teleportation circle the cultists had used, in the hopes of figuring out where their HQ was located. No dice on that, it was simply a two-way spatial portal. The two ran into a bunch of Mirlings on the way there, and spent some time trying to figure out where they came from. Flamey thought they were manifestations of the evil that permeated the ruins, and Turf speculated they were souls trapped in their own little hell.

Lundal, Della, Korena and Inalak were all shipped out on the flying tower to check out an anonymous tip Tiseo had received, concerning the cult’s whereabouts. They arrived at this weird, extradimensional fort held by a crazed wizard only a few had heard of. Unfortunately the cultists had gotten there ahead of the heroes, and killed the owner. Upon further exploration of the place however, Lundal found a fire genie locked up and contained in an antimagic field. The genie offered him a wish if he let him go. It took every shred of resolve Lund had to say no.

You see, Lundal wasn’t stupid. He knew that wishes are always a dangerous thing to be messing with, and that accepting a wish from a genie was tantamount to suicide. Wish for a million gold pieces? Bam, you just got crushed by them. Wish for limitless good luck? Then “good luck” is the only thing you’ll ever be able to say, ever again. Lund had listened to tales of foolish people who’d asked genies for wishes, only to be doomed forever by their own greed.

But Lundal didn’t want gold, or fame, or luck. He was content with his worldly possessions. He wanted something that no amount of wealth could ever get him: Nora. The woman he’d named his little octopus familiar after. The only gnome he’d ever loved. The fiancé he had never said goodbye to. She was gone, and despite his bitter mourning he had found new purpose as one of the Tsethem. But the genie had offered him a chance to change the past, and it burned him to his core to walk away from that.

Meanwhile a smaller group of dragon cultists were being attacked by Vindicus, Naliko, Jaques, and Tikka. They actually had a small water dragon with them, and I was glad to see that they were almost TPKed by it. I was worried that I was playing dragons wrong after the pathetic cakewalk the last ice one had provided. Vindicus interrogated the survivors, which was one of the few moments Naliko allowed him to actually be grimdark and edgy, and he actually wrangled the location of the cultist’s HQ out of them; a hidden temple dedicated to Tiamat, situated on the volcano and only a few miles from Karu Sampur. Finally, they could scout out the area and plan an attack.

There was only one problem; as the three teams returned to Little Orthraze they were met with bad news from Karu Sampur. Apparently a large number of the Warforged living there had rallied under a new leader called Veetoo. She was a prototype for an improved model that was never completed before the Great War ended, and was adept in using arcane magic (differentiated from innate magic by its reliance on energy crystals, runes, and clockwork mechanisms). She’d taken advantage of Flamer’s absence to rile her fellow Warforged up against his peaceful coalitions with the other villages, stating that as the most advanced race on the island they should be afforded more respect, especially given their part in winning the Great War.

This was concerning in the long run for Flamey, as he didn’t want a whole “rise of the machines” thing to happen. But the more pressing matter was whether Veetoo and her supporters were going to interfere with the attack on the dragon cult. Tiseo had been compiling an army from the surrounding villages and was preparing them for the coming fight. If the Warforged intended to interfere with the landing on the volcano, Tiseo needed to know.

Turf, Dell, and Flamer headed to Karu Sampur to negotiate. Lundal wasn’t feeling up for it, so Korena went along in his stead. They met with Veetoo in her cave, now dubbed her throne room. She told them she was considering which side to join, the united villages or the dragon cultists, and that her decision would be based off who was more likely to win the coming battle. She demanded to know details of their battle formations and tactics. They didn’t have much choice, so they gave her the lowdown. She didn’t seem impressed, but told them she would take time to consider and give her verdict the next day.

Only she never got the chance, because Flamer used Tree Stride to get the team out before dawn broke. Turf and Korena had been mentally attacked during the night and tortured for more information. They learned in their dreams that Veetoo had already joined sides with the cultists. She had been secretly training a select number of Warforged in the arcane arts, and had sent them to aid the cult in their ultimate goal: the summoning of Tiamat.

Flamer and Co waited at little Orthraze for the rest of the Tsethem to return. They had all been sent off by Tiseo to various locations, for reasons which I can’t remember. What I do remember about them was that they were all so trivial. I think the one Jaques and Tikka had was about searching for lore on Tiamat. They learned that:

She had been created before the island even existed, by some creature named Nekrahtrox, to be a living weapon. She had five heads corresponding to an element, earth fire water air, and shadow. She had been banished to the nine hells by the Colossi. The ancient carvings of her drew her with stupidly long whiskers.

This was interesting and all, but wasn’t useful. It wasn’t information they could use to defeat her, if worse came to the worst. And the rest of the team had been sent on similarly trivial expeditions. Jaques in particular was fed up, because he felt they were being shunted around to keep them out of the limelight.

Out of game, I knew they had a traitor in their midst. Someone on the council was working to give the cultists some extra time before the battle. And I had no clue who it was.

Charlotta Veil was representing the Humans on the council, but while she had been acting a little more violent lately due to her reincarnation as a half-orc, I couldn’t really see her being the traitor. Tiseo was the most influential of the elders, but he was also the high priest of the Hopefuls; you couldn’t get that kind of position if you were secretly evil. Gert, the elder Gnome of Little Orthraze, was also a friend of Lundal, and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. The rest seemed just as unlikely to be working for the cultists.

There was no time to start a detective sidequest though, because time was of the essence. The different parties reunited on the shore of the sand belt, facing the volcano. The army they were heading was pretty huge by Tirkosu standards, and they had the advantage of air superiority thanks to the flying tower. They knew they would meet resistance from the Warforged, but they were ready for them. They crossed onto the volcano via a tidal causeway and started the march up the slopes.

The cultists struck. Their numbers were less than half the united villages, but they still had the upper hand: four adult dragons of various elemental affiliations soared overhead, breathing destruction down on the attackers. The battle begun in earnest, and soon the Tsethem were right in the thick of it.

They worked together perfectly. The virtual DM was throwing challenging combatant after challenging combatant at them, and they simply bounced back. Turf was tearing through the enemies with her meat cleaver of a sword, while Lundal used his exosuit for maximum efficiency. Della’s dual-wielding of staff and Spiritual Weapon was actually matching Turf in damage output. Flamer soared through the air like a beefy Johnny Storm, wrestling dragons to the ground for Inalak to polymorph into frogs. Jaques and Tikka were highly affective together, the wild and ferocious slashes of his wristblades complimented by her more refined rapier maneuvers. Naliko helped Korena down another dragon foolish enough to try and pick them up, as Vindicus sliced through cultists with a bridaled, focused rage. Up above, the archers inside the floating tower stuck the final dragon full of arrows and sent it crashing onto the rocks below.

The Tsethem continued up the volcano while the stragglers were being rounded up below. Upon reaching one of the secondary cones they discovered a large structure composed of obsidian and volcano rock, looking like a cathedral build of melted black plastic. Inside were about ten Warforged in the process of casting the summoning ritual, and the head of the cult himself floating above them all. I was gearing up for the fight of a lifetime.

And the Tsethem absolutely banana pureed them. The Warforged were turned into scrap within rounds. Flamer went nova and slam dunked the head cultist into the ground, killing him instantly. They never even learned his name.

But unlike the previous anticlimactic final battle, the one against the ice dragon, I was okay with it. Just the charge up the volcano had been enough to batter them about enough, so the victory didn’t feel totally unearned. And yes, they’d breezed through what should have been a tough challenge (four dragons are four dragons, after all), but… These guys were Tsethem. They were the protectors of the elements. A year ago they would have crumpled under the pressure. But now they stood strong.

They took a moment to catch their breath outside Tiamat’s temple. The sun was setting, casting that familiar orange glow over the island. Their home was safe from the tyranny of dragons.

Vind took off his helmet. I don’t think anyone one except Della and Naliko knew who he really was before this. His armor literally covered everything except his eyes, and his voice was so hoarse it was unrecognizable. So most of the others were shocked when he revealed his true identity.

Grayson Strell. Former Grand High Commander of the military. Died in battle to take down Imix, after the fall of Orthraze. He stood there before them, gaunter and greyer than before. In his last moments on that fateful battlefield, after he had seen Charlotta fall beside him, he had been visited by a demon and offered a chance to get his revenge on those who had destroyed the empire. He accepted and became a revenant, neither alive nor dead.

The next year was spent hunting down individual cultists and trying to uncover more of their plot. He learned that they had brought the shadow dragon to the island long ago in the hopes that she would help them. When she refused they left her locked away underground, and she lay there undisturbed until the Tsethem came along. The dragon cult had been responsible for the destruction of everything Strell stood for. And now, with their numbers thinned and their leaders crushed, his thirst for vengeance was slated.

And as his purpose as a revenant had been fulfilled, it was time for him to go.

Della wasn’t giving up on him that easily. She gave him her pendant, which turned out to contain the Forever Stone. I wasn’t sure it would work, as while the stone is supposed to keep people alive, Vind technically was already dead. But the vDM seemed to think it was good enough, so he didn’t waste away and vanish into the nine hells. He thanked Della and swore to use his immortality for the greater good.

And thus ended the Rise of Tiamat. Or to be more accurate, the Brief Mention of Tiamat. But although the officlal module was over, the virtual DM still had some threads to play with. Why were the cultists obsessed with bringing the Living Weapon into the world? Was there really a traitor on the council? Will Vindicus pluck up the courage to talk to Charlotta again? Find out next time on Eastenders. Although the answer to the last question was obvious: he didn’t want her to see him as an undead. Hence the concealing armor.

I’ll put this chapter to bed with a quote from Turf’s actual memoirs:

As we stepped out into the night, with the lava pouring down the sides of the volcano and a chill wind cooling our adrenaline-filled bodies, we all finally understood: the elements were ours to protect. Not just because our villages needed leadership, or because we felt it was our duty. It was our destiny to safeguard our people against the forces of elemental evil. Since the dawn of our times, we had been waiting for this moment. We were the Tsethem. The Protectors of the world.

The Tyranny of Dragons modules were finished. It was time to let the virtual DM run wild again.

The party found the captured villagers from Paku and Pehkeiai imprisoned beneath the temple, waiting to be sacrificed to Tiamat. Inalak, Jaques, and Tikka set off to escort them back to their homes, while the rest of the Tsethem traveled with the army back to Little Orthraze. A celebratory banquet was summarily prepared for them, because Gnomes will take any excuse to throw a party.

It was in the middle of the festivities that Tiseo asked Della if he could have a private word with her. Stepping inside one of the nearby shops, he revealed that one of the Tsethem (I never found out which one) had mentioned the Forever Stone in passing. Tiseo had been the one to originally suggest Della investigate the Stone’s existence. But when she had obtained it and found out its function, she had elected to keep its discovery a secret. Tiseo wasn’t happy that she had lied to him. What’s more, he demanded she hand over the artifact at once.

She refused, naturally. As far as she knew, the forever stone was the only thing keeping Vindicus around. He’d earned the chance to redeem himself by helping take down the dragon cultists, and she wasn’t going to take that away from him. So Tiseo struck her across the face.

Now, Mythic has a sort of “random event” system, which activates at certain points. Most of the time they change the current adventure somewhat, adding complications or boons, new NPCs, or other such twists. But there have been a few of them over the years that have sent the whole narrative spiraling into the unknown, a single dice roll that sends shockwaves of consequence throughout the world. This was one of those moments, which I later dubbed “pivot points”.

Tiseo began to change. His face swelled up and warped, his armor snapping off as his stature grew. Fire burst from his eyes, and he screamed in pain. Della was panicking a bit. She’d seen pictures of the creature Tiseo was morphing into, and she wasn’t prepared to fight one. Because what stood before her was a pit fiend, an incredibly dangerous devil from the depths of the nine hells. The rest of the Tsethem would step in to help, but Dell might be crushed in the first few rounds. I mentally sighed and prepared for a battle across the village of Little Orthraze.

And he rolled a natural one. First attack, first turn of combat. The pit fiend rose to his full height, smacked his head against the roof of the Gnome-sized hut, and collapsed on the floor. Tiseo shrank back to his usual form with a hiss. His eyes were scorched and all his hair had been burnt off. He wasn’t going anywhere soon, and good thing too, because Della was in shock.

The rest of the team eventually found them and locked Tiseo up. Korena interrogated him with Zone of Truth while Flamer comforted Dell. Tiseo didn’t know what had happened to him, but he guessed it was some kind of possession. That seems weird enough, for the high priest to be targeted by a devil. So Korena started asking questions about his loyalties.

And the penny dropped: Tiseo was the traitor. Not only that, he’d been responsible for the whole dragon cult. During the Great War he’d discovered the existence of a prophecy that predicted the coming of Tiamat. The carvings stated that only the most faithful to the Living Weapon would be granted respite from her wrath. Normally Tiseo would have dismissed this as fanatic lunacy, just like the myriad of other doom-mongers on the island. But this was different; It was written by one of the Supreme One’s prophets, which made it gospel for Tiseo.

He became obsessed with finding a way to survive the coming draconic apocalypse. He researched lichdom, arcane cloning, and reincarnation. Anything to make himself immortal. He even manipulated Della into forming her team to find the Forever Stone. He’d covertly started and controlled the dragon cult from behind the scenes, working toward what he believed to be the inevitable coming of Tiamat. He thought he had it in the bag. But he hadn’t counted on the sheer might of the Tsethem united under one cause.

The one thing he denied involvement in was the attack of the shadow dragon. He didn’t know why she’d decided to lay Orthraze to ruin. Or why the Mirlings had come to her aid, only to turn on her when Imix showed up. This worried some of the more suspicious minded of the team, because it meant someone else had coordinated the attack. He said he’d investigated the dragon’s motives, to see whether his cult could regain any control over her. But the only thing he’d found when venturing into her throne room was a symbol, carved by a dragon claw into the wall and hidden by perpetual shadow: a symbol of an eye. The same one that had led Flamer and co to investigate the elemental cultists. The one carved into the foreheads of the two adventurer’s I’d hardly had a chance to play. The elder eye was still out there, and had been in cahoots with the dragon.

They locked Tiseo up in the ruins of Orthraze, leaving him cursing their names as he stared at their retreating forms with sightless eyes. No one dared venture into the ruins any more, due to the spirits and Mirlings infesting the place. Tiseo had enough magic to create simple food for himself, but escape was pretty much impossible. The traitor was found, the culprit locked away. Peace could return to the island or Tirkosu once again.

Thus began the age of the Tsethem. They were heroes, celebrities even. Those who had only been been honorary members of the team were granted full protector status by their respective villages. The elves were more than happy to have Tikka as their guardian, as her father was already chief. Inalak’s innate connection with storms and the waves made him an instant hit in Pehkeiai. Naliko was asked to come back into her tribe by the Golaths, which she accepted without any sense of begrudgement or “I told you so”; to her, it made sense that they’d cast her out into the cold for being weak, and she bore no malice against them for doing so. Jaques was named Tsethem of Gokapu, the dusty village housing the remnant of the human empire’s elite. He didn’t spend much time there, as he and Tikka were married seven months later. They spent much of their time in the flying tower, which had become the Tsethem HQ. Mobile bases are something I really like, so I was ecstatic that the cozy tower also served as a fortress from which they launched their missions.

Meanwhile, the temple of Appinamopu had taken a huge blow in the eyes of the other villages, thanks to Tiseo’s betrayal. He had been the high priest after all, so to find out that he was behind the attacks didn’t shine the Tharth in a good light. Luckily for them, Korena (who had been named Tsethem of Light) was quick to send out as much help as she could spare, to aid in rebuilding the affected villages and returning life to normal. Since Tiseo was a heretic, Della was elected as the high priestess.

Vindicus… Ah, Vind. Ever attempting to be the tragic brooder, but so often ending up as a clown instead. He was named Tsethem of smoke by the Elkore, but instead of hanging around D’Okai he sulked off into the forest down south. Where he promptly met a band of ex-druids, found a substance called Dreamroot, and spent the next few months high off his head. I think he was trying to deal with his newly found immortality, and lack of purpose. He was supposed to be finding a way to get rid of his undead nature. But instead he ended up slumped against a tree, smoking weeds with a bunch of hippies.

Flamer was sorely disappointed that the Warforged that had joined the dragon cult. There were only a couple of hundred remaining, the rest having been slain in the charge on Tiamat’s temple. Veetoo was let off with an order to give a public apology. This might seem weird, given how she basically tried to help kill everyone, but you have to remember that the Warforged were like family. They were comrades who fought alongside each other in the Great War, mere years ago. And their numbers had thinned drastically, with no chance of repopulation. Flamer was worried for his people. He started searching for a way to build new Warforged, and tried to get Lundal to help; Lund had worked with magitek in the past, after all. But the Tsethem of steam was becoming more and more depressed, dwelling on the genie’s wish that he’d refused; dwelling on what could have been…

A few incidents occurred during the following year, of only minor significance. The Tsethem, sans Vindicus, responded to all of them in record time thanks to the mobility and speed afforded by the flying tower. Giant dryads rampaged incoherently around Paku, famine plagued Gokapu due to an increase in dust storms, and the Golath decided to ban the other “inferior” races from their village. These were all dealt with efficiently. Everything was running smoothly on the island of Tirkosu.

And then I picked up Curse of Strahd. Goodbye fun times, hello darkness my old friend.

So. Curse of Strahd. This adventure is just fantastic. I absolutely love it. And I absolutely hate it.

Unlike other modules, like PotA or Storm King’s Thunder, Strahd needs a lot of prep. It has a tonne of lore, lore that seems to be spread out over multiple different chapters. You need to reference loads of relationships, locations, random encounters… The works. You really need to have the book there with you while running it. And I essentially played through the whole darn thing on a tablet.

I was traveling for a week, with nothing much to do other than play D&D. It was pretty great, actually. Or it would have been, with an actual computer instead of a dinosaur with an 8-bit display screen.

Okay, that’s somewhat hyperbolic, the tablet wasn’t too bad. But navigating through the hastily-scanned pdf, reloading the whole thing every time I switched between that and the character sheets, and trying to figure out the 3d maps… Oh crumpets, those 3d maps. I still have the nightmares.

But the actual game? It was so worth it.

New adventure, new cast. CoS required the participating parties to be in the lower level tier, and it was enough of a challenge to play though it RAW without modifying the encounters on the go. So I brought out some old friends from the previous campaign to brave the demiplane of dread.

I had previously run the Danger Duo though all the adventurers’ league adventures in the Elemental Evil storyline. Callie Longstrider, a chipper redhead human archer, and Kilmorn Taevarth, a rather dim but strong ice dragonborn. They got their name because there wasn’t a single adventure in which none of them had to roll a death saving throw. They were so prone to near-fatal experiences that it was ridiculous. Jumping off a tower and into a ravine, running into a house fire, getting mauled by a wyvern… The challenges weren’t even that dangerous on paper, but these two managed to to make everything worse before somehow pulling through. I remember thinking that playing them was akin to watching an Indiana Jones movie; wild and chaotic, but with almost unbelievable luck.

To bring the roster up to the recommended amount, I also brought back Elo and Vanella. I’d only briefly got to play them through the starter set, because Vanella died in the final dungeon, of all places. Elo was a big silver Warforged, with a single green eye and a habit of referring to himself in third person. “Elo does not understand the concept of X” was his catchphrase, where X was anything from emotions to social constructs. He sounded like C-3PO if he was a text-to-speech program. Vanella Thane was the opposite of him in many ways: a petite, unimposing human with messy brown hair and a very steampunk fashion sense. She had this perpetually neutral, almost bored expression on her face. That combined with her cool-as-a-cucumber reaction whenever shad hit the fan, almost made her seem like she had brain damage, or was simple a bit dense.

But she wasn’t. In fact, she was pretty dang clever. She made a living as an arcane mechanic, fixing worn down magitek and inventing her own devices. Elo and Vanella worked really well together. She was the tiny deadpan snarker, and he was the quiet, brute strength she used to back up her smack talk. And to hide behind when things went pear shaped.

Both these pairs fit fairly easily into Tirkosu. Callie was from down south, in the medieval-style village of Pernep. Kilmorn had been a victim of a planefall incident on the plane of ice, stranding him on the island when he was a child. He’d studied with the Aaracokra at Hepthurai, and had moved to Pernep when his training was complete. Vanella Thane had folks living up north, and she was using the low tech level of Pernep to charge handsomely for her creations. Elo was a very early prototype Warforged, and was under orders from Thane’s father to keep her safe while she was away from home. As CoS recommends a starting level of 3, I decided that they had helped fight back against the dragon cultists when they’d invaded Pernep.

The stage was set. Elo and Vanella were heading to Rahm Oru to pick up some technical supplies, and they’d hired Callie and Kilmorn as guides. Traveling in Tirkosu is always risky due to the nature of the planar structure: stray off the stable areas at the wrong time and you could wind up lost in one of the elemental planes, or worse. This was exactly what happened to the team. They set up camp in the piny woods surrounding Pernep, and awoke in a bleak, leafless forest. The demiplane had brought them into its prickly embrace.

Kilmorn was close to panicking, but Callie and Vanella managed to quieten him down. They tried retracing their steps and soon came across the road leading to the village of Barovia. Upon reaching the village they did what all good adventurers do, and headed to the tavern. Elo stayed outside in the rain so as not to freak out the locals.

They got to talking with a guy called Ismark and he told them that they could not leave the realm, not while the devil Strahd held sway. Thane wasn’t buying it, figuring that it was some sort of scam, but Callie and Kilmorn thought he seemed trustworthy enough. He told them that Strahd was after his sister Ireena, and begged the team to help escort her to a safer village. They agreed because they had zero money and no other way of earning any more.

They set off right away, which was rather stupid. Night had crept up on them while they were drinking in the pub. The bats were circling over head ominously. It was only a matter of time..

Baron Strahd Von Zarovitch stood before them on the path. Hounds from the fiery depths of hell paced around his billowing cloak. He raised heavily shadowed eyes toward them and spoke a greeting. He welcomed them to his kingdom and invited them to dine with him up in his lofty castle. Cal and Kil seemed inclined to check it out, but Ismark vehemently warned them against doing so. Strahd tired of the debating and gave an ultimatum: hand over Ireena and stay unscathed, or suffer the consequences. So Vanella Thane gave Elo “The Signal”, and he charged into battle along with Kilmorn and Ismark.

It was a massacre.

Kilmorn pummeled Strahd with everything he had, but barely put a dent in that brooding visage. Ismark was nearly torn to pieces by the wolves but was saved by Callie sticking them full of arrows. Elo was brought down to zero by Strahd’s first couple of attacks. Vanella didn’t even have a chance to unleash some arcane fury from her magitek gauntlets, as Strahd effortlessly charmed both Ireena and her. It was only a couple of rounds before the rest of the team joined Elo on the floor.

Somehow, due to some incredibly lucky rolls, they all made their death saving throws. Callie awoke a couple of hours later, and used the few healing spells she had to cure the rest of the team. I honestly can’t remember if Ismark survived. I can’t remember him influencing the rest of the adventure, so I assume he was the only one that didn’t make it through. As for his sister… Both Ireena and Vanella were nowhere to be seen.

Elo was distraught. That much was obvious, despite his monotone voice and strange speech patterns. “Mistress must be rescued. Elo cannot abandon mistress.” Cal and Kil tried to reassure him to no avail. Eventually he agreed not to go charging into Strahd’s castle, and to wait until they found a way to fight such a powerful enemy. They continued on the path they had set out on, and arrived at the dismal town of Vallaki.

A warm (if tasteless) meal and a good night’s kip had them thinking straight again. Back on Tirkosu, if you came across something like an evil vampire that took your friends, the thing to do would be to call the Tsethem. There were no Tsethem in Barovia and everyone seemed to afraid to even talk about Strahd, but there had to be someone who could at least give them a few pointers. Callie asked around, and bam, new character time.

Angelica Mayvern, a old character who’d died to a giant woodlouse in one of my Mines of Madness runs. She was a half-vampire; someone who’d been bitten badly enough to gain a few lesser traits of her proper kin, but without being all over powered. Or evil. In fact, Angelica was a monster hunter extraordinaire. She’d killed the vamp who’d bitten her before setting off on a tour of the planes to take out every single one like him. To her knowledge, Strahd was the last.

If you’ve played through CoS, you might know this is basically the same premise as Rictavio, the acclaimed vampire killer. When playing solo modules I try and read only as much of the book as I need, which is easy enough in a properly arranged adventure. CoS is not a properly arranged adventure. The team was about to leave Vallaki when I discovered Rictavio’s section, and had a good laugh at fate, coincidence, sod’s law, and the universe in general.

I decided to roll with it. Angelica was looking to team up with Rictavio to take down Strahd. She’d heard rumors that he was camping out by an old wizard’s tower, so that was where the party was heading. When they arrived they found a little rickety caravan waiting outside. Both that and the tower seemed to be on lockdown. Kilmorn managed to get inside the former and discovered a bunch of explosives wired to the door, which he dutifully packed into a bag and gave to Elo to carry.

And there they were. A pack of cards.

Now, I’ve always wanted to include the deck of many things in a game, but so far the virtual DM had been stingey. Whenever a character came across a pack of cards, I’d ask if it was the legendary deck, with only a tiny chance of a positive answer. This was too perfect though; the cards were exactly the sort of thing a fabled monster hunter would have in his possession. I decided that now was the time to ask, fifty-fifty percent chance of yes: was Kilmorn holding the Deck of Many Things?

Flying at forty thousand feet above the British channel, I rolled the percentile dice that would decide the fate of Callie, Kilmorn, Elo, and Vanella.

Yes.

The virtual DM had spoken. Kilmorn Taevarth was holding the Deck of Many Things in his hand.

I was psyched. This was the first time I’d been given access to the deck. I hadn’t even read up on its stats before, as I try and keep my knowledge of magic items to a minimum so as not to spoil any surprises. I’d read a lot about it on forums however, and I knew that the safest bet is to draw multiple cards at once. Kilmorn would be clueless about this, obviously. But Angelica Mayvern wouldn’t be.

She told Kilmorn to draw from the pack. He took three cards, one after the other. For any normal person, this would be dicing with death, or worse. But Kil was one half of the Danger Duo. He wasn’t just a normal person. These were the cards he drew:

Key: a rare magic item. A +3 katana appeared in his hand, randomly generated with some custom fluff.

Moon: 1d3 wishes. Naturally, I rolled a 1.

Finally, and probably most importantly: Knight. Gain lifetime servitude from a warrior of 4th level (the same level as the team happened to be).

So, new character time. This was getting ridiculous now, but I stuck with it. I was playing six characters at once. One was admittedly our of action, but we’ll get back to her in a moment. At that moment a clone of Kilmorn popped into being, dressed in full plate armor and carrying a chunky sword. He was almost exactly the same as Kilmorn, with the only difference being that he wasn’t quite as dense.

Killy wasnt too bothered by having another version of himself walking around. In fact, the more the merrier. Angelica quietly suggested a name from her homeland: Pekeski. Callie said she liked it, and that settled it for Kilmorn. Pekeski it was.

Rictavio the vampire slayer was nowhere to be seen, but they felt confident enough to take on the enemy. Armed with their new boons and friends, they set off through the gloom toward castle Ravenloft.

Vanella Thane was sipping tea with Strahd, listening to him drone on about his wedding plans. She was getting rather a buzz from the drink, as Tirkosu doesn’t have any naturally occurring caffeine on it. Some creepy elf butler had taken Ireena away, so it was just her and the Baron.

Then charm wore off, and she realized how much danger she was in. Sitting in a strange castle with a lunatic who had shrugged off the combined strength of her friends, and no Elo around to watch out for her. Things were looking bleak for Vanella Thane.

Then Strahd placed his hand on her forehead and bored into her mind. He shouldn’t have had the power to do that, according to his statblock, but the virtual DM was very clear: he was probing into her thoughts, breaking down her memories. Sifting through two different lives, one where her parents were alive, the other where they were not. Truth and lies were mingled together. The lie that Thane had believed up until now was laid bare: her parents were gone.

There was no Mr. And Mrs. Thane waiting on Tirkosu for their daughter to return. They had been killed all the way back in the Great War, most likely. It was hard to tell through the murky haze of the memories she had taken as truth. At the time I thought this was simply her way of coping with the grief; that she was in denial about losing her family. This would have been a pretty neat character arc, and I would have been happy with it. It later would turn out to be much more complex, but this was what I thought at the time.

Strahd gave a speech, something to the effect that she was special. I had no clue what he was referencing at the time. Thane wasn’t listening either, still in shock over the two conflicting memories in her brain. She didn’t even properly register it when the Baron allowed her to exit the castle. In his eyes, he’d damaged her enough. I was surprised he didn’t try and turn her into a thrall at the time. But knowing how her story continues, I can now see why.

She made her fumbling way down the path to try and meet back up with her friends. But sadly, the vDM was merciless. Traveling on your own in Barovia, at night, is just asking for trouble. Soon a lone wolf was chasing her, and it quickly caught up. A vicious attack left her making death saving throws, but thankfully the wolf didn’t drag her off to eat her. Instead it ran off and left her to bleed out, alone and unconscious. She was only a quarter of a mile away from the safety of the village.

I played what I always play when a character dies: Time, by Hans Zimmer. It was pitch black outside, accurately mirroring my mood. Thane had just been getting interesting to play, and she had to go and die on me. Typical characters, you can never trust them to behave.

She’d died on the path back to the village of Barovia, so there was no way the rest of the team would come across her on their way to Strahd’s castle. I gave her up for lost, and continued with the remaining members of the party.

Before them stood Castle Ravenloft. Grim, gothic, and foreboding. The weather worsened as they crossed the rickety drawbridge and crossed the courtyard. The dungeon crawl had begun.

I’m not going to go into detail about what happened inside the castle, because of spoilers. Simply put, it was hell. There were traps around every corner, some real and some not. There were impossible to beat challenges. There was moldy cake. There was very little to be pleased about, and no sign of Ireena or Vanella (obviously). The only ray of hope happened when they were being constantly teleported into these watery cells, and Pekeski discovered a nice glowy sword in one. But apart from that, they found nothing but pain and misery.

Eventually they worked their way to a strange hourglass system that looked like it might have originated from Orthraze’s glory days. Elo tried fiddling around with it because he knew the most about magitek. That turned out to be a pretty big mistake, as the device sent them warping through space to an attic in Vallaki.

I was pretty annoyed that the crawl had practically been for nothing; there had been no sign of their friend, and they hadn’t even encountered Strahd. If Elo could cry, his eye would have been gushing. The rest of the team comforted him and set off again, this time planning on retracing their steps back to Barovia. It was a last-ditch attempt at finding Thane.

And it payed off. When they arrived at the village they were directed towards the church. Vanella’s blood-soaked corpse was being prepared for a burial by the priest, who incidentally was harboring a vampire spawn that was ruthlessly dispatched by Angelica. Elo just stood and stared. No one knew what was going on behind that big green eye. But before he could break down completely and go on a murderous rampage, Kilmorn stepped forward. He called upon the wish granted to him by the deck of many things, to raise Vanella from the dead.

The wounds closed, thee blood vanished, and she slowly raised her head. “Uh… Yo.”

They took it in turns to hug her, then introduced Angelica and Pekeski. She was in equal measures relieved to see them, and angry at Elo for keeping her in the dark about the fate of her parents. Elo apologised and said there was nothing he could have done; He was under orders from her father not to mention anything to do with their life before the Great War.

It was at this point that I began to wonder if Thane’s memory problems might not be due to denial. There was definitely something more sinister going on. But that matter would have to wait, because the team was focusing solely on destroying Strahd and escaping the demiplane. Angelica was certain that the only way to take him out would be to enlist the help of Rictavio. So they went looking for him.

They traveled all over Barovia in search of the fabled vampire slayer. They protected ravenfolk from angry tree people, fought more of them on a tor while trying to find Strahd’s memoirs, and had a narrow encounter with a ghost. Eventually they wound up back in Vallaki, sitting in the same pub they’d met Angelica in. There was no sign of Rictavio. They were ready to give up and storm the castle without him.

So, naturally, we found him. Or rather Angelica did. We’d been all over the demiplane in search of him, and there he was; sitting across the tavern from her and wearing a disguise. When she confronted him in private, he told her that his hunting days were over. He was too old to be gallavanting about trying to kill the unkillable. She said how disappointed in him she was, and that they were going to take on Strahd with or without his help. Rictavio just shrugged. But before she left, he gave her one piece of advice: there was a legend that spoke of a blade that could kill a vampire, forged from pure sunlight. It was supposedly hidden up at the castle. Angelica thanked him, and went to tell the others.

So once more, they marched to Ravenloft. They’d been in Strahd’s realm for a week now, and they were all looking rather paler than usual. Excluding Angelica, naturally, and Elo. Lightning crashed and rain pelted down as they headed into the castle. They’d learned a lot about Strahd’s defense on their travels, so they went straight to a certain artifact and destroyed it, greatly weakening him in the process. On the way there they discovered the sunsword lying on a mantelpiece. The blade was indeed made of light, as Angelica discovered when she attuned to it. They were all fired up for battle as the headed to the top of the castle.

The virtual DM was tired of waiting. Strahd cornered them at the highest point of the castle, and began to make some kind of impressive speech. He never finished it. Swords, maces, arrows, and the sunsword smote him with a fury. But most effective was the flying fists of Kilmorn Taevarth. The dragonborn’s pride had been sorely hurt by their first encounter with the Baron, and his vengeance could not be contained. Strahd fled, passing through a solid wall. Kilmorn followed. He smashed through a stained glass window, fell several feet onto the vampire lord, delivered an final blow that turned his adversary to a smoky mist, before catching himself on a gargoyle below.

That was the kind of crazy stunt that earned him an Callie their nickname.

It wasn’t over. Not yet. Angelica had fought enough vamps to know that death in combat is only a setback for them. To truly kill one, you needed to strike at its core.

Down they went, down to the crypts below the castle. There were so many tombs, and so many traps. Eventually they discovered one that belonged to Ireena. They found her inside, drained of her blood and fully under Strahd’s control. She attacked them. There was nothing they could do to persuade her otherwise. Pekeski did the honors, slicing off her head with his glowing sword. They had failed Ismark and his sister.

But they would be damned before they let Strahd live after this.

They found his tomb, locked away behind bars. Kilmorn was teleported into the crypt and had to face off against three vampire spawn at once, while the rest went up against the surprisingly strong elf butler. Pekeski and kilmorn went down, followed by Angelica. Thane zapped the spawn to smithereens using her gauntlets. Elo and Callie worked together to defeat the butler. It was a harrowingly close battle. There was nothing epic about it like some close shaves I’ve seen; they were trying everything they could to stay one step ahead of death.

And they prevailed. By the skin of their teeth, they prevailed.

Callie healed up the wounded and Kilmorn let them into the crypt. The coffin sat before them; their final target. Elo and Pekeski lifted the heavy lid as Angelica activated the sunsword. The Baron of Barovia lay in his tomb, eyes fixed in wrathful horror at the half-vampire standing over him. He was unable to move, unable to fight back. This was the end for Strahd.

Angelica spoke, but there was no anger in her soft tone.

“Strahd Von Zarovitch. You brought misery to so many people. You murdered your brother, and his wife. You hurt my friends. I should feel no remorse about killing you.”

She leaned closer, almost whispering now. “But I do. I do feel, Strahd. I feel sorry for you. Sorry that you wasted life. You had so much to give this land, and you choose to squander it.” She let out a little sigh. “I suppose that in the end, that’s the biggest difference between you and I. Because although we both have to slake our thirst of blood, to keep ourselves alive… I feel. You do not.”

“That’s what makes me the hero. And you, the vampire.”

Down plunged the sunsword. Strahd screamed as his unlife ebbed away. Within seconds there was nothing left but a blackened skeleton clad in tattered robes.

They just sat there for a while. It was over. The master of Barovia was defe