Here is our campaign story so far:
Scenario #0, Howling in the Snow: We journey to Frosthaven fighting wolves along the way, until
Scenario #1, A Town in Flames: We show up at Frosthaven and there's a fight going on with the Algox. After we meet Satha, the town mayor. We mention we're sent by and from White Oak, the capital, as it seems they want to see how Frosthaven can better benefit the empire. One of their past expeditions desecrated an Algox burial site and now Algox attack. We decide to take the fight to them by going to their mountain base.
#3, Algox Offensive: Go to the Copperneck Mts. and find two groups of Algox fighting each other. One group is more just big "brawlers", the other more magical and throwing snow magic. After the battle a "brawler" tells us the other group is the "Snowspeakers." and they are the "Icespeakers." This place we've gone to "Snowscorn Mt." is of religious significance to both groups.
#4, Heart of Ice: We follow this Algox "Icespeaker" deeper into the Mt. and find more fighting. In the last room we see the two chiefs battling and we help defeat the Snowspeaker chief, unlocking Frozen Fist in the process. The Algox chief is thankful. He thinks we're a bit crazy to come here and risk the wrath of their God, Geryuu (we decline to mention that our Banner Spear is an strong atheist.) They say they will allow our town to stand, for now. Then we find the Snowspeakers our at the summit of the Mt. using magic to try to bring the whole Mt. down. He tells us it will take them some time to complete their spell, and they will stop the Snowspeakers from leaving the peak. But, when we're ready we can come back and prove our friendship by stopping the Snowspeakers from finishing their plan to bring down the Mt.
Section # 63.1: Back at Frosthaven we tell Satha all the stuff. She tells us some watchmen have spotted Lurkers on the outskirts of the territory. Also a scouting party has seen some strange metal constructs marching through the wastes to the Whitefire Woods. She says for us to help rebuild the town and also go out and adventure while collecting resources, especially before winter.
#8, Crystal Trench: We travel East to the Whitefire woods. We find ourselves in a narrow ice ravine fighting and running from wolves and imps and polar bears. In the end we win/get away and look over a valley with large ice obelisks jutting from the ground. One is larger and darker and more a spire than a spike. One is also shorter and wider than the others. We go to the taller one first.
# 15, Ancient Spire: The tall iron spire of riveted metal covered in ice has a weird opening mechanism we finally get open. Inside is cogs and pistons and scampering metal creatures carrying stuff down a large hallway. We travel down the hall into a large room that has a beam of energy coming up from the floor and piercing the ceiling. More mechanical creatures here and we see they're carrying body parts, so very many and going down a stairwell. Then a demon shows up on a platform and says it'll use our limbs to "complete the cycle." He uses a control panel to get the automatons to fight us and most of the party fights them, while the Blinkblade goes up to kill the demon. In the end the demon says our efforts mean nothing as "our machinations are ageless. We will gather our power and turn this world to ash.," and that "even now my kin prepare to destroy you moral upstarts and your failed outpost." We decide to go down a stairwell to see where the machines have been carrying their cargo .
#23, Spire Basement: Go down a stairwell and wind through tunnels. Machines here are lifeless and their "cargo" is scattered around. Finally we get to room with red energy beam and then dead bodies (living bones, living dooms, and living spirits) attack us. We go deeper fighting more stuff until finally beating a Living Doom named "the Hateful." In the end we stand in front of the furnaces and figure that the bodies go into the furnaces which fuel the energy beam with some "nefarious magic." Next we go onto a pulley elevator to the top of the spire.
#34, Top of the Spire: At the highest level we can see hundreds of ice spikes over the whole region. We see a great spiny demon, "The Lord of Chaos," and elder fiend born of madness with prismatic skin bursting with spikes. He speaks of a "rebirth," that no one will escape. 3 of us kill him while working to stay out of the energy beam while the Deathwalker and Blinkblade fend off the "sparks" that keep spawning. The whole thing takes much longer than Sam thought it would. Finally, we beat him and he dissolves into air. There is a piece of orange coral lying in the remains of where his chest was and we take it. "It's impossible to know what cataclysm you prevented."
#16, Derelict Elevator: We go back to check out the smaller, squatter spire sticking out of the ice field. Covered in ice the dark metal and we break through the ice and then the metal door. We get on an elevator going down and have to fight creatures on the elevator, while platforms we descend by have artillery shooting at us and the whole ceiling starts to collapse on us. When we get to the bottom there are two ways to go and we go toward a red light, thinking it's a more straight line to a fight and maybe something interesting.
#25, Rusted Tunnel: We walk along an old metal tunnel and as we walk in the dim light we see shapes... Of course they are things we have to fight. Bladespinners and Boltshooters first. There are two tunnels we have to collapse to keep the machines from coming forever. One is continually spawning Bladespinners and the other Ruined Machines. We finally collapse both tunnels and we hear a voice from a Quatryl named Crain Tallengyr, who has been trapped down here for some time. He came here alone to explore a year ago and was captured. He knows another way out. He tells the the machines are called the "Unfettered," and were built a long time ago by an elder civilization. He thinks the ancient engineers created them for cheap labor. He thinks now the machines are planning something. After this mission we're tired, but Gobtondo! so right to...
#35: As we wander, Crain stops to start making something out of trash in a big pile. We protect him against Living Bones, Ruined Machines and Spitting Drakes while he runs around building a contraption, skull sized, that when activated unleashes a flash of light that kills all the unfettered around us. He says he's made enough for everyone. We could go on, but for some reason...we go back to Frosthaven and to...
#65, A Strong Foundation: An alarm bell goes off and unfamiliar Aesthers are approaching Frosthaven. The shimmering forms speak in unison but we hear one voice in our heads. They've come to ask for help. They explain that "when the betrayer brought about our dissolution, we were not strong enough to bring our forms back on our own, but, through the strong bonds of our former life, we found each other in the vast emptiness and decided to meld - to become as one. Only by doing so did we bring ourselves back." It/they/zim continue, "We are not strong, not in the sense that others of our kind are, but if you help us we will provide knowledge in return." We decided to help them and go to some snow fields north of Frosthaven. While there we fight a bunch of monsters that we forget to have push us every attack and in the last room find an "elemental array" that keeps the Voice-of-Eight anchored to this plane of reality. We defeat Rimeheart the Wraith that was feeding on it's energy and the Voice-of-Eight surrounds the elemental array chanting in words of an ancient language. The ice on the array melts and one of the Aesthers steps forward dissolving into the mist around the array making it glow. Then it reforms and the rest of the Aesthers fall silent. They say they must find more elemental cores -at least 4- and put them back into place in the array. We are suppose to wait 4 weeks of time before we meet up with them again. But a clerical error causes us too...
#66, Elemental Cores: The Voice-of-Eight talks to us again while we're in Frosthaven and they want us to meet them at the elemental array. They say please. At the array they have reformed walls of something that looks like ice with purple tints. One Aesther, named Nera, is studying something and the Voice-of-Eight tells us she studies enhancements (hurry up please). They open 6 portals to different elemental cores, 4 of which we must retrieve. If I remember correctly we opened Fire, Sun, Earth, and Wind. It was a hard, and we think we may have opened one door a turn too soon. When we finally finish placing the elemental cores down, the array comes to life, humming with energy and we hear a ringing bell sound. The Voice-of-Eight is worn out and will take time to recover. However, they tell us that while the cores are misshappen they hold potential and they will work on reshaping them and will require our aid again in the future. We put a note note on the calendar for 6 weeks, plus the time we should have waited before even doing this mission.
#69, Sacred Soil: After collecting a lot of wood, we follow the DeathWalker to the cabin of a local Savvas, named Listeritus. We're looking for signs of the Great Oak. Some of the wood we brought comes from the Radiant Forrest. So in order to find groves of oaks we go to the Radiant Forest to gather soil samples. There we fight Earth Demons, Forest Imps, and Rending Drakes. During this scenario we teleport to different parts of the forest killing the earth demons that drop soil samples. We think about splitting up, but mostly don't. When we return, Liseritus starts picking at the samples with tweezers under magnification while muttering and scribbling notes. She says it's going to take a while and we add a new section number to the calendar.
#43, Overrun Barricade: While Banner Spear and Bladeswarm are off at a contemporary festival the 3 other members of the group Gobtondo away. First, they meet up with Crain, back in the tunnels to make our way to the heart of the complex. He knows a way, but it's barricaded and the Automatons are really tough. However, he gives up some neat bombs we can refresh with long rests that really do the trick. However, in the final room there is just too much spawning and Crain sees a passage we can escape through up near the ceiling. This scenario is forced linked to the next one, and with only 3 people: Gobtondo!
#51, Orphan's Halls: We arrive at the center of the Unfettered's complex with wires, pistons, pillars of metal, etc... everywhere. We see The Orphan, but between us and it there are way too many guards. Crain modifies his bombs to only one use each and makes them more powerful and we hustle through the army of never ending guards including elite Artillery, Steel Automatons, Flaming Bladspinners, and Ruined Machines. Without the bombs it would be impossible. We fail the first time anyway as Frozen Fist exhausts, triggering the end (not what we could have defeated the last baddies anyway. Second time we plan better and make it through. We get to The Orphan who unloads a backstory about how biological life has been the enemy of The Unfettered and that they were forgotten and abandoned. That after freeing themselves they thrived and now they think the "creators" have sent us to keep them down. We figure that they were built with the capacity to reason, but used as slaves until tossed aside. Now bitter they attack anyone they see as an enemy. However, we decide to try to get The Orphan to understand those masters are long gone and we can have peace now.
#59, Automaton Uprising: We tell The Orphan of how life has been hard for us too, up here in The North and so on. The Orphan thinks it has misjudged us and we all struggle and that perhaps we can learn to work together. It plans to issue a proclamation to the other Unfettered about peace, but warns us that they all have their own mind and come to their own choices, and his personal guard will never allow peace. Luckily, Banner Spear Britney. and the Bladeswarm have joined us for this romp from control panel to control panel, for The Orphan to manipulate, while swarms of Unfettered start lining up. Finally, the last control panel is done and Unfettered that have decided to be peaceful kill the other Unfettered, and we're saved. We spend days with The Unfettered while we heal up and eventually arrive with some of them at Frosthaven. When one of the guards shots down "who goes there," The Orphan reveals himself and shouts back, "Allies" "Allies come to your aid." We unlock Hive!
#107, My Private Empire: After sitting on some kind of invite for a bit our group decides to make some rope and go to the edge of the Whitefire woods, looking for some shadows to converge on a path through the hills. Finally, we find the path and after hours of traipsing involving climbing, axeing, etc... we make our way up to a plateau and walk onto a brick courtyard. There is a bronze door with a knocker marked with a V. After knocking the knocker, we hear a voice saying "welcome friends, I knew you'd come. I've waited so very long for you." We find out we're at some type of party with festivities and we'll need our weapons. We go down into a vaulted chamber that is very ornate with magical lighting and a bell hangs on a rope in the center. The Bladeswarm rings it and faces imminent death; we start over. We fight off the Living Bones in this room and move on to fight Ruined Machines in the next. We might have caused the fight as we were told the Living Bones were just going to take our coats and the Ruined Machines were going to give us refreshments: but it seems unlikely as the coat lockers were in the room with the Ruined Machines, and they didn't have any drinks with them. From here on we discount the nonsense about dancing from the brass piping as we fight next, Automatons: which we took care or pretty easily. However, next was 4 Robotic Boltshooters and 4 Flaming Bladespinners and they give us trouble. Frozen Fist goes down: again. Against, his last mutterings and in accordance with the Deathwalker's appetite for death, we enter the final room. There we find some Living Bones and Lord Ventellion himself in the form of a Living Doom. The Blinkblade goes down: having killed many enemies and fought hard. After the rest of the party beats the room, the voice announces that the ball is over and has been magnificent and to take what's left of his wealth, as long as we tell the stories of the gala and of Ventillion. The magic fades from the room and we get some resources and a magic cup.
#110, Guardian's Temple: Some time ago our Frozen Fist opened a chest and found a keystone to some unknown stone archway. He felt a calling to find where is goes and all he had to do was seemingly meditate on where is goes and he leads our party there...and then goes back to Frosthaven, and the rest of the part (BB, DeathWalker, Bladeswarm, and Banner Spear) have to complete the scenario. What we find is that deep in the Imperial Mountains there is a stone cliff face. We see a hole that fits the stone and upon setting it into the hole the "arch" is complete and passage appears. The keystone was the "key." We go into the tunnel and find a very big room. There are rock columns holding up the ceiling and an alter in the middle holding a scroll. The alter is surrounded by shallow water and as we approach electricity sparks out from the alter and we find that opposing sides of the alter send out electricity to the columns making the water from the alter to the columns on opposing sides damaging. For some reason we need to destroy the columns and to do that we have to get a Ruined Machine adjacent to them and kill it (or have it blow up itself) while there. There is also two Living Spirits in the room and 2 quite dangerious Shrike Fiends. After destroying 4 of the columns another room is reveled when some of the wall collapses. In that room there is another Living Spirit and an Living Doom! But these is a chest to get thta the Bladeswarm insists we get in that room. Somehow our Bladeswarm has the same values as our Drifter, which seems unlikely with them being such different species and all. Finally, we destroy the final column, grab the scroll (blueprints for the "Rose Gauntlet"), and get out as the room collapses. Back to Frosthaven.