Chronicles of the Consortium

Campaign narrative The three friends - Marion, Sir Blanque and Destiny - travel onwards in a SW direction towards the mountains between Changshai and Okara. According to information suppled by the renegade Dai-Oni Blackthorn, the hidden city of Suderham lies in a volcanic bowl in the midst of the mountains, about 150 miles northwards from the coastal point where the Sea of Circles meets the Dawn Ocean. It all sounds very nice, and is indeed extremely pretty, but it is a bit of a slog through forested hills rising towards the mountains in the distance. Once there, they will be looking for a hidden entrance leading to a dangerous cave system that winds it way through the mountains to an exit just outside the slums near Suderham itself. The advantage to this route is that it hopefully might not attract the slavers' attentions - either that, or the group will somehow have to try to find a way through the only fortified pass across the mountains without giving themselves away. About ...

Campaign Narrative The conversation underneath the slavers' stockade takes an interesting turn. After agreeing to betray his erstwhile masters, Blackthorn the Dai-Oni (whatever that is) gleefully gives the players lots of information. It turns out that not only is he well aware of the machinations of the Dharzi sorceress Markessa, but also that there is a further split developing within the ranks of the Dharzi themselves. "House Eilservs is the Dharzi noble clan that has been entrusted by Lolth the Spider Queen to infiltrate the Lands of the East," he continues. "However, the matriarch of that House, Lady Eclavdra, has ordered her agents in the Slavers' organisation to sabotage it, thus subverting the deal between Lolth and Stalman Klim, the High Priest of Xiombarg. He is the man who summoned me to this plane, and for that I owe him a debt of treachery. I should have been passing on this information to him, but sometimes the juiciest part of betrayal is the subt...

Campaign Narrative Now that they have some allies to guard their rear, the adventurous three make their way carefully deeper into the basement level beneath the slavers' stockade. They emerge from the area of the complex belonging to the Dharzi Markessa into a long corridor. To their right, it leads in the direction of the concealed entrance by which they sneaked into the complex, and to the left there is clearly a complicated series of rooms, all artificially constructed and properly faced with dressed stone. They decide to go further to their left, mainly because the way to their right seems to become rough-hewn rather than artificial, and also because they can hear the barking of some unusually large wolfhounds of some sort. A zoomed-in map of the location of the little band. They are now at the corridor point marked as 30 on the map. The barking noises are coming from area 19; the corridor outside there becomes more of a tunnel as it heads off the bottom edge of the map t...

Campaign Narrative Sir Blanque, Destiny and Marion leave the vicinity of Zoshai immediately after taking out the leadership in the slavers' temple. The Marines of Eshmir can take care of the rest of the place. Bomilcar is tasked with telling Duke Avan Astran, leader of their trade and diplomatic mission, what they are doing, and set off for the location of the secret stockade they found out about in documents they have seized from the slavers. They also tell Bomilcar about the hidden place in the mountains called 'Suderham', the idea being that the three powerful PCs will act as an advance scouting and infiltration party while the Esmirian forces and their friends follow in their trail. Fortunately, there is very little incident as they head deeper into the countryside of Changshai. Everywhere is in uproar, the lawless state of the country becoming ever more apparent. The characters avoid any potential encounters with the locals with ease, and eventually find themselves ...

I placed the slave lords' Highport Temple outside Zoshai, a major port in the southern half of Changshai in the realms eastwards of the Young Kingdoms. It is badly damaged, but still functionally intact, as the volume of traffic going there and back from the slave galleys of Zoshai amply demonstrates. Campaign Narrative Sir Blanque, Destiny and Marion decide to investigate the temple complex outside the town, which they know hosts a base and staging post of sorts for the slave trade. This will be a dawn raid, taking place immediately after they leave the slave galley that raided the Aurea estate. They don't want to give the Dharzi captain time to think more on their visit in case he puts two and two together, so they decide to strike at once. They take a roundabout route, skirting the forests surrounding the cleared ground at the temple proper until they reach the rear of the place - proper scouting is always a good idea. This is how it looks to them from a wooded hill at ...

I placed the ruined temple outside Highport in the module in the southern Changshai city of Zoshai for my purposes. The trip to this temple is supposed to be the moment where the players are captured, but this is not something I wanted to force on them... Campaign Narrative Knowing that the sorcerer Hazzard has probably contacted his masters in the slave lords' organisation, the group of three adventurers leaves immediately on horseback for Zoshai. On the way, they manage to avoid a serious-looking ambush including pit traps, priests or sorcerers with some sort of Chaos affiliation, and troops hidden in the forest to either side of the main trackway [ critical See rolls by Marion and Sir Blanque ]. While they give this lot a wide berth, Destiny realises that the whole situation is being further reinforced by the use of some sort of silence effect around the pits that have been dug in the road, presumably with the intention of forestalling any sorcerous commands - and this gives ...

I inserted this linked module into the Stormbringer  campaign by emphasising politics. Basically, Stalman Klim, a main leader of the council of slave lords in the module, is the Usurper of Changshai in my version of the Eastern realms. After the defeat of his invading forces by Eshmir, he has seemingly faded into the background, and Changshai has become increasingly lawless. Rumours of a new force in the region have reached the ears of the merchant princes of Elwher, an organisation of reavers that has become known as the Slave Lords. Nobody in Elwher yet knows a great deal about this group - the location of its bases, or even its composition. One thing for sure, though: Stalman Klim is letting them run riot, and they have been encroaching on Eshmir territory and raiding its shipping. One influential view is that this is in fact Klim's doing; if he can't defeat Eshmir in open battle, he is trying to ruin the basis of the more northerly nation's prosperity, partly as another...