Reclaiming Orathos — Campaign Overview

40 years ago, the people of Orathos were forced from their homeland. Now it is time
to take it back.

A D&D campaign played on Foundry VTT, set in 4E 1396. The party —
The Shattered Coin — is one of several parallel adventuring groups serving
The Coalition, beginning in Port Quaybay, Varia and sailing for the
shores of Rivalon in Orathos. See World History for the timeline.

The Party

Player	Character
Cara	Thalia (Thalia Blackthorn, fairy courier)
Fantom	Fenric (Fenric "Kind-Hand" Vale, spellbreaker)
Johan	Silithane (swordsman; joined Session 4)
Kadie	Llashanna ("Lash", axolotlan repairsmith)
Ryan (away)	Kain (Kain the Blessed, Firebrand — through Session 7) → Draak (lizardman, from Session 7; departed Session 21, away)
Vale (away)	Ashlyn (Ashlyn Blackwood, dhampir blood knight; away)
Mia	Magra (Magra Greysong, half-orc arbalest)
Nat	Jex (amnesiac slime archer; joined Session 22)
Neko (left)	Valmora (winged cleric of the dead gods; joined Session 23, left the campaign Session 44)

Run by the Gamemaster.

Session Log

Session 03 — Port Quaybay: Scrawbles' manor eviction, town errands, discovery of The Urina
Session 04 — Fight night at The Urina: Silithane joins, four arena wins, Handsome Jane freed
Session 05 — Last day in Port Quaybay; the party sails for Rivalon aboard The Expedition Ship
Session 06 — At sea: settlement site picked on Brebo's land, Laila found stowed away, the party hires on with the ship's drug cook
Session 07 — At sea: Kain sacrificed himself in the fire ceremony and was reborn as Draak; silver confirmed to kill ghosts; the hunt for stowaway Vana Vermillion begins
Session 08 — Landfall at Fort Foothold: Draak replaces Kain, Queen Ysolde's speech, the land boat bought, off to Ankley
Session 09 — First leaving signature won sparring Sir Ronald's initiates; Lash sun-blinded; the freak incident empties Ankley's inn
Session 10 — Roger Payton's pirates wiped out on Ankley Island; celestials sensed beneath the ancient ruins; Tegrak freed, Devlin captured
Session 11 — Coelodon on the road, a tiny-race caravan, courier Zantaya; the party reaches Gwyndinas
Session 12 — A week in Gwyndinas: trained by The Serpent, spy work with Dominus, two arena wins (killipede, Grievek)
Session 13 — A haunted Gwyndinas inn: a grief demon slain, and ancient skeletons reveal Ankley Island is a sealed prison
Session 14 — Investigating Smiling Sam, Gwyndinas's patternless serial killer; a basement madman blames cabbages
Session 15 — A day of wizards: churches and mages probed; souls are free, the missing blood points to a vanished blood mage
Session 16 — A body-buying ambush in the South Wall alleys; Ashlyn killed and raised, the butcher escapes
Session 17 — Downtime, auricalcum cold-forged; Eldrich the Elder's hook, and an arena draw vs. four squires
Session 18 — Eldrich's errand into the Gwyndinas Sewers: a mad scientist sought, ~65 mushroom men slain
Session 19 — The sewer scientist sells a god-slaying Shard of the Autarch; a changeling's forgery lair found
Session 20 — The changeling caught and mind-read — seemingly a Reclamation helper, not a villain; the party turns toward the Veilwood
Session 21 — The party leaves Gwyndinas and crosses the Palisade; Draak departs, a salamander joins, and bandit lord Mindel Cromelon springs a bridge ambush
Session 22 — The bridge ambush bartered for a cart-toll; a giant's footprint, the slime Jex joins, and spy Tycho is killed at the Keep Grow Inn
Session 23 — A killer's mind read and a serial hangman spared; winged cleric Valmora joins, and the Grey Vale Cave proves a pit of breeding hand-monsters
Session 24 — The Grabblers fall; a smuggler's cave, the ship necromancer Gravis, and a sunken tomb below
Session 25 — The vain Queen seen, the wood-folk and Mush Mother met, a prison of seven cells learned of; gobblers slain, level 6
Session 26 — Water Breathing opens the depths; the under-prison and its lizard-guards found, and Otto lost to the Queen
Session 27 — The six prisoners met, the immortality-thief "Nice One" questioned, and the lich-smith Malifax befriended below
Session 28 — Bugs cleared; Malifax's cupboard plundered, a meteorite gifted, and a funeral in the deep
Session 29 — The immortal-raider council out-voted into oblivion; a hidden Shushu teleporter found
Session 30 — The Shushu named Gerald; the prison's immortality-elixir history laid bare, a third living god found, and the Queen's cell readied
Session 31 — The Queen Grabbler, named Caressa, beaten and caged in a session-long boss fight; Gravis dies, a meteor looms
Session 32 — A shopping day in Ponterford: the Northern Trading Company, a freed orc, and a witch who'll help with the child-Snatcher only once the party earns the town's trust
Session 33 — A witch sermon on Rhiannon, a shopping spree at owl-wizard Renforth's, and Doug Dillinger's tomato uprising exterminated
Session 34 — A spell-slinging river crocolion slain for the frog-king; the Aberforth Speakeasy found, the snatcher ruled out
Session 35 — A downtime night in Ponterford: an owl's dinner, the screaming wyrm dispelled, the snatcher confirmed dead, Lash turns ethical eater
Session 36 — The silent wyrm and the fortnight ahead (reconstructed — no recording)
Session 37 — Lawyer Ponterford errands: the frog-folk's land deed won, and the orcs' poison-breathing Beast of the Woods taken on
Session 38 — Antivenoms and an anteater bought; the mutated-treant Guardian of the Woods ambushes the hunt and terminally poisons Silithane
Session 39 — The Guardian felled and its wyrm-skull venom harvested; a Varian spy reveals Laewendas's child-sacrifice cave; the party hits level 7
Session 40 — A prep-and-scout day: The Snatcher's Cave cased, its cave of villains and a crocodile worse than Caressa
Session 41 — The cave raid begins: the Varian Trio joins, skeleton misers slain, and the ghoul Rusty recruited
Session 42 — The cave boss Halren falls; a ~5,000-gold vault, and the Hollow House's four immortal scholars revealed
Session 43 — The riverside camp falls at dawn; the Hat Man slain, the unkillable Thunt let go, the cave cleared
Session 44 — A combat-free downtime in Ponterford; Valmora leaves, and Eldrich the Elder sets the party on Knucklebones at Lambert's Crossing
Session 45 — A zombie-horse blight on the road; Old Halfwood's massacre learned, the druid Clover met, and New Halfwood reached
Session 46 — New Halfwood's food crisis and the 150-year-old Grey Man; the archdruid Stunghelm Elkheart rescued, the sealed Druid's Grove reached
Session 47 — Inside the grove: its 42 druids murdered and fused into one monster by the necromancer Dreadweaver Corpsefortune, the amalgam slain
Session 48 — The water-nymph Songbird joins; the party reaches the Laewendas-occupied Menagoles, where skilled folk vanish under Orathos Keep
Session 49 — Eldrich's hidden war-council at the Tapped Clapper; a silent infiltration of the forbidden mine past a bird-beetle brood
Session 50 — Disguised as miners, the party infiltrates the Middle Tor mine — a Laewendas operation digging the god-crystal Shard material — and in the burned deep finds the scapegoated orc Vara'nak Gar-Galdar's grave, journal, and a machine key
Session 51 — Trapped in the burned deep, the party repairs the sabotaged mine-lift (Jex rides a bucket six miles down for the stolen drive pin), reads Dilbert the Mage's ghost-journal (Laewendas hunts the Godkiller Shard), finds their hauled "crystal" is explosive, and reaches the deep dig's boring machine and a blue-crystal vein
Session 52 — The party kills the blue-crystal golem, explores the Foredweller ruins beneath the mine (brick canals, warning-shades, a psychic alarm room, a titanic undead dragon in a 220-ft pit), and opens the deep doors onto a hidden 17-scientist research facility whose green "panache" is both the immortality elixir and the god-slaying Shard
Session 53 — Touring the deep lab: a lever that tracks the sun, a 10,000-book library, and the reservoir of green panache the party is offered and refuses; Dr. Xiao Li asks for help escaping her own lockdown, and a +2 dragonslayer is found in the bone dragon's skull
Session 54 — The mine's last rooms give up a pair of gravity gauntlets; the party kills the bone dragon, claims the dragonslayer sword and arrow, reaches level 8, and leaves through the scientists' north tunnel with Dr. Xiao Li to meet Eldrich the Elder
Session 55 — Anita touches a shard to Thalia's Void Stone: it kills the entity inside and reveals the stone had erased Anita's own wife from existence; Fenric works out the void comes from space and only five stars remain, four of the party swear an oath and are given the shard, and they leave the mountain past a Morkid that never lands a blow

The World

Orathos — the fallen island nation; four provinces: Rivalon, Veilwood,
Atollia, Baelheim
Varia — the allied nation that sheltered the Orathi refugees; Queen Amelia Bloodworth
The Coalition — the reclamation alliance and its Code of Honorable Conduct
Firebrand Church — the last god's church · Mage's Society — treaty-bound arcanists
Rivallonian Monarchy — the archival catalogue of Rivalon's 28 rulers (10 Kings, 9 Sovereigns, 9 Queens); Ysolde is its "[Isolde the Rightful]" and Laewendas its "[Laewendas the Quisling]" — the only two bracketed names in the ledger
The Calendar — 365 days, 12 months of 30 plus a 5-day New Year's Holiday; the frame every session date sits on
Major villains: Laewendas (Rivalon), the Cursebringer (Veilwood),
'Seadog' Jon Thomas (Atollia); and Bael'Drakkor's tribute looms (Baelheim)
The Dragon War — the story that Laewendas flew a dragon and killed every other
dragon in the world. It got its name from Polos, a scientist from the far side of the
sea, and Bael'Drakkor is still the only dragon anyone will name as living (Session 54)
Campaign-wide: the race for a god-slaying weapon — Laewendas is hunting the "Godkiller Shard" (Shard of the Autarch) beneath the Middle Tor, mining it with kidnapped alchemists. Session 52 reveals the prize is the refined green "panache" — the same substance that grants immortality (Ambrosia) and slays gods — the Foredweller craft the Autarch used against the god-killing Emperor, studied by a hidden deep research facility. (The bulk red crystal is explosive fuel; a separate blue crystal guarded a golem.) Session 53 reaches the source: a room-sized reservoir of the liquid panache behind the lab's airlocks, hundreds of gallons deep, filled one drop at a time by machinery that has run for several hundred thousand years. Perhaps a hundred loose shards of it exist anywhere in the world. By Session 54 the mine's deep is cleared end to end and the facility's manager Dr. Xiao Li is on the road with the party to judge the Reclamation herself — seventeen scientists, and the reservoir they sit on, are the thing now in play
The Autarch — the god-slayer herself: alive fourteen centuries after Godfall, and her power comes from a source far older than she is. Her masked keeper Malaika holds the reservoir "for her until she needs it", and the party has now been offered the same bargain she took, and refused it (Session 53). They do, since Session 55, carry one of her shards — given by Anita on a sworn oath, with the warning that the Autarch or her agents can simply demand it back
The void — barely a school of magic at all: no scrolls, no glyphs, no teachers, sitting outside the circle of elements rather than in it, and closest of anything to Fenric's own anti-magic. Its work is disappearance, hiding and unmaking memory. Both void things the party has met — the entity inside the Void Stone and the symbiote behind Caressa — came from space; roughly five stars remain in a sky the records say was fuller, and light-lag means those went dark long ago. The GM's framing: this planet and its living, sentient sun may be the only life left (Session 55)

See Canon Questions for unresolved name/lore questions.