Scavenger Hunt

Slick asks himself, 'Why did I accept this job?' He recalls a human coming to him and asking for his help finding his son. He understood the pain that losing a family member is, and reward was more than he has gotten so far doing any job, but now he questions the companions recruited. A quite elf, who is fascinated by his weapons, speaking very little. A female drakin, proclaiming to be his god and protector, followed around by what he can only see as a man in servitude to her. Finally, their captain, a large Orc, who 3 days in has begun to show his frustration at not being able to find their destination.

Kar looks around his 'crew' and surveys them, if there was a more in-sociable lot, he has yet to see it. At least they haven't killed each other yet. Where Thomas found this ragged group he will never understand, but the pay was good, and Thomas always was good to his customers. Kar barks out orders to his crew. The wildling shows surprising knack and agility for working on a ship. The elf seems to be very clumsy and has almost fallen off the edge of the ship a few times before Kar just stopped asking him to help. The insane drakin was useful, even if she proclaimed her godhood everyday and demanded he bow to her. She had some talent at least on spotting food and keeping the lines tight.

On the fourth day, a shout of 'Ship!' wakes everyone. Rushing up to the deck, they can see what the captain has called out, a beached ship. The adventurers hurry to prepare the island hopper to investigate.

As the hopper approaches the ship, four large apes jump down and being to throw rocks at the group. The elf takes a hit directly, and while he shakes it off, the others quickly close the distance and kill three, before the last ape makes his escape. While debating how to investigate the ship, the elf walks up to a corpse, and begins to soak his blades in the blood and draw symbols on himself. The sight causes a sense of unease between the group as they do not know what to make of this ritual.

The group makes its way up the side of the ship, to a gruesome sight. Skeleton heads adorn the mast, broken and wasted. The only way down is through the hold, that has a foul stench. The wildling throws up when he is hit by the smell of rot and decay.

At the bottom of the stairs, more apes start attacking. One of the seems different, the skin barely holding on to his bones, his eye's appear to be melting, and is clearly the source of the smell. After an intense couple of minutes, the apes are dispatched. Ambryin bleeding  as she took a hit squarely across her chest and the claws dug deep. While her minion took care of her wounds, Slick surveys the room and finds a tunnel that leads further in, possibly to a hold. As he looks up to inform the others, again the elf is soaking his blades in the fresh blood and eyeing the drakin weirdly.

As they near the hold, a sound of gently crying is heard, maybe this is the son! But as soon as the group walks in to a room, they see a large obese monstrosity leaning and scratching against the wall, the void glow coming through an opening creates and atmosphere of dread. The grotesque abomination notices the adventurers and turns around. Four skeletons stand up in from the rubble, attacked to the grotesque through tentacles. Slick steps up to a skeleton, and breaks it with one hit, however the tentacle releases and quickly darts to him and attaches to his neck. He begins to feel commands and thoughts in his head but resists them. The elf rushes over and cuts down the tentacle, causing the grotesque to scream. Ambryin goes toe to toe with the obese hulk, until finally it is cut down.

One of the skeletons is wearing the gloves of the son, as described by Thomas. Another has a pendant on him, that creates a sense of dread to Ambryin. Once back on the ship, Kor is taking aback by the pendant, even offering his share up in exchange for it. Ambryin decides she better not, as it seems to hold some power.

During the night, a scream is heard. As others rush to the deck to see what happened, Kar is enveloped in a bright void light, the pendant floating in front of him. The light envelops Kar, as he gets larger, as the light disapates, you see an Ogre, an orc who has gone glowmad! The elf swiftly steps forward, and with some help from his comarades, takes down the ogre quickly.

As the ogre dies, a sound is echoed in to everyone mind:

"I am the god Lightbringer, but before my insanity I was Oceanius, Lord of the Oceans.The disk you found was a holy symbol of my priests. I have not seen its like since before the dawn of this world. 

Seek these artifacts of the Souls in preparation for the final battle. The fuel that burns in the Queen's barge; the armor of Orcbane; Festival's harp, ignored by my followers; the hammer of the damned dwarf; and the raven staff. Recover them all, for soon the Shield will fail again. 

Begin your quest by seeking Joeseth Truthbearer in Gateway..."

After successfully returning the remains of Thomas' son, and bringing him closure, the events that transpired bring along many questions.

Thomas has offered his services for salvage recovery and sale as well as he will help in finding missions for the adventurers and has offered up his services and trade at discounted prices (10% discount).

You also find yourselves in ownership of a small Skyship (1 crew + 7 passengers). This means you need 1 person to be dedicated to flying the ship, the other 7 members can disembark/lounge. Your ship also comes with an island hopper ( 1 + 4 ) that ferries a small group from/to islands. The Skyship comes with 1 cargo hold.

Shattered City - Gateway

Before the Sundering, the Shattered City was an enormous metropolis. Now all the remains is a vast field of drifting islets each bearing the ruined fragments of the once-grand buildings and streets.

The settlement of Gateway exists on the fringes of the Shattered City. Merchants of all kinds compete with one another to sell their wares to scavengers. One of the merchants making a name for himself is Thomas Hawke. He’s been known to offer 10% off his wares to scavengers who sell their salvage exclusively to him.

Thomas is haunted by his own demons. His son, Allon, went down with the frigate called the Raven 7 years ago. After getting himself sober, building his reputation, and saving up some reward money, Thomas has started looking for a captain and crew to help him investigate the wrecked ship and return his son’s body for proper burial.

While down at the markets, he chances upon an Orc, Karr Luckfinder. Karr is the captain and only crew of a cloudskiff. These ships are quick and agile making them great for transporting small and valuable cargo. Karr and Thomas work out a deal where Karr will get two shares of any salvage found. Thomas shakes Karr’s hand and sets off the task to find scavengers. It should be easy to find a few willing to help him find his son.

Ambryin

Dreams and reality. Ambryin walks the line in between, where does a dream end and reality start. She dreams of wars and destruction, power and flight, visions of a world similar yet different to where she is today. She looks down on herself, and is smaller than she remembers, yet bigger than others of her kind. 'The elves did this!' she curses under her breath. The cursed elves, that took her from her master and friend, Festival, took her dragon form away from her, and left her unable to comprehend the common language.

In her defiance of the elves, she helped the wildlings, with her power and memories, she was a god, their savior, their protector, and cursed elves had to pay. Pay for cursing her, pay for daring to defy her, she who flew the skies and wielded power and ran with the gods!


'Minion!' she shouts. 'Yes, mistress!' replies a burly man, coming to her side. To onlookers the sight was something to behold, a drakin larger than most, and a human bowing and obeying humbly, running off to whatever errand his mistress has demanded. Curses of mistreatment to a god, and dirty elves can be heard by anyone close enough to her. Distrustful looks to people passing by, not many venture near her other than her 'minion'.

Gladiators

The wildling jumps off the ship in the confusion of the unloading, quickly getting to cover away from the ship. He looks up and sees his first city, Shadowhaven. Its bizarre to the wildling, the cities are all leaning together forming a darkness and shade more dense than any forest he's seen. As he staring wide eyed at the city, he hears people grunting around him, pushing him, cursing at him for being in the way. Every bump and shove causes him to rush his hands to the weapons at his waist, weapons he found in the hold of the ship, they are as precious to him as his freedom. He moves off to the first building he sees. As he approaches a petite man greets him, 'Greetings wildling we don't see much of your kind here at the arena. However you are welcome to test your strength and mettle against other fighters.' The wilding overwhelmed by the noise, responds with a grateful acknowledgement and asks a few simple questions. The usher politely answers and sends him onward into the arena to the Keeper to sign up for activities of the day.

In the Nexus, Kainlan enjoys his fifth drink of the day, but notices that the drinks are getting weaker. Behind him he hears two men discussing the latest activity list in the arena.

'Today is a great day to make money at the arena, no dangerous criminal or creatures, and lots of new combatants.' His friend acknowledges with a laugh. Kainlan wanders over and asks about the arena, boasting he could take anyone on. The barkeep shouts from across the room 'Do not be stirring trouble up Kainlan!' as a few barmaids laugh. Kainlan shouts back, 'I was leaving anyways, you've been watering down my drinks and cheating me out of my coin again!'

Kainlan wanders in to the arena, he notices an big orc standing in a corner. He walks over confidently and looks the orc up and down, 'Greeting sir!', the orc surprised by the brashness of this human attempts to dissuade him from continuing, 'Leave me alone, I'm not in the mood human.' Kainlan continues on, even remarking about the great ax that the orc has behind him. 'Is that blood I see on your ax  I usually clean the blood after using my blade.' The orc looks Kainlan over, for some reason he likes this human. He reaches over to pat the human and accidentally hits him a bit harder than expected ringing Kainlans bells. 'I like you human!' as he picks up his great ax and walks off.

From across the room the wildling notices the exchange, riled up that the big orc would bully the smaller human, but something about the nature and posture of the orc makes it seem that it was a friendly exchange. As the wildling surveys the room, he notices the humans are gathered in packs, each pack has similar characteristics, and some humans even show hatred towards other groups. There are a few dwarfs drinking around and some glowborn keeping to themselves. In one of the dark corners, the wildling notices another of his kind. He walks over slowly to him, as he nears, the small wildling gets very defensive. Holding up his hands to show that he means no harm, he stops a few feet away from him respecting his personal space. As he asks the wildling about his time here, he realizes that the wildling doesn't really reveal much of himself. He does learn that registering for group combat is the safest way to make money. After a few more minutes of discussion the wildling decides to leave the other in peace, as he turns around he hears scampering, when he looks back the other wildling is no where to be seen.

The wilding and Kainlan are drawn to the Registrar shouting out matches. As different men reach forward or hold up their weapons to sign up, responding to the different shouts of combat available. Kainlan and the wilding get to know each other, and the wildling gets the name 'Slick' from Kainlan. Kainlan and Slick are soon joined by two other men Kurt and Mag, as they are signed up for a four vs four first blood arena fight. Kurt is very boistourous and knows Kainlan from the Nexus, while Mag is quiet and keeps to himself ignoring any conversations.

In their waiting cell, Slick starts to question the guard on the activities he sees, the Watcher gruffly responds to all the questions, as Kainlan in cheering on the fighting.

Soon it is the turn of the adventurers to enter, each prepares his weapon and slowly join the fray. Mag calls out 'Drakin, dwarf, and two humans' as he pulls out his weapons and advances. Mag takes a few shots from the humans, but shrugs it off and continues towards the drakin with Slick and Kurt right behind him. Slick playing to crowed in a wild flourish strikes down the drakin and begins to move towards the dwarf. One of the humans takes aim at Kainlan and hits him squarely in the side, as a lot of blood starts to color his shirt. But soon the enemy is overwhelemed by the adventures, when Kainlan gives a speach, asking the last man to surrender in front of their prowess. The crowd loves the show as they cheer loudly for the group.

As they walk out of the arena, each is handed a purse of cogs. Slick receives a second pouch, 'The Eskelat approve of the show wildling and give many thanks.'

Kainlan

Laughter and scream sound in the middle of the city. Around the corner runs out Kainlan confident boistourous and loud. 'No one can catch me for I am the fastest in Shadowhaven!' he yells. Behind him two burly men, one with a black eye are stumbling behind attempting to chase him. The only thing keeping them close is Kainlan being distracted by a pretty girl at every turn.

Life for Kainlan is easy, hanging out at the Nexus 'sharing' stories of adventure with others there. The barkeep knows Kainlan well, and has often had to intervene due to some conflict or scheme the Kainlan cooks up. Many of the barmaids put up with him as he thinks everyone loves him, in fact he is sure of it, and the girls ignore him, only because he isn't trying hard enough and allows them to.

Every day sharing stories with the different adventures, the longing for adventure itself starts to grow inside of him. He begins to save up some money, practice combat for the arena, in the hopes of one day owning his own ship. His cautious nature has kept him from the arena, till his prowess in combat is the best in the island.

The Wildling

A nameless wildling, running quickly through the forest of the Heartlands. A few elves around him ushering him along, picking him up as he stumbles, encouraging, guiding, moving him along. It's very hard for him to trust these elves, for the elves are the ones that tortured him and his friends and family, experimented and worked mercilessly everyday. He doesn't remember when it started, but for as long as he remembers he was enslaved to the elves and lived at their whim. He has seen many die for elven curiosity, or hunger, or anger, and even madness.

As the forest lightens up, the wildling notices the Void starting to brighten up. One of the elves, the one that broke him out, ushers him to the edge and points towards a small sky ship.

'Go little one, run and hide over on that ship. Keep out of sight of any elves and find your own place in this world.' The elf hands him a small token that is unfamiliar to him, it looks like a hollowed out metallic ring with a tree inside. 'If another elf shows this to you, he may be trusted, but always be wary, and learn who you can trust on your own.'

The wildling, still confused, rushes towards the sky ship he sees. The elves, he notices, create a commotion on the other side of the docks, and the humans rush off to see what is happening. He looks back to the forest to see the elf that helped step back into the shadows. As the elf disappears, he jumps in to the ship and finds his way into the hold, a dark corner behind some crates where no one can see him.

In the darkness thoughts of his brother stir up feelings of anger, he vows to come back and save him as he has been saved this day, and get revenge on his captors and keeper. His thoughts sometimes wander towards the elves that rescued him. They confuse him greatly, for he has a deep hatred of the elves, but as he dozes off with the ship leaving port, his last thought is of the elf's name he overheard during the conversation when he was rescued, 'Calin.'

The Sundered Skies

The Sundered Skies began where another world ended. Filled with floating islands that range from the size of a single tower to ones that support multiple cities. The skies are filled with the Void, an maddening endless light. Staying too long in the Voids light has led to irritability, anger, and as some have reported madness. There are stories of people changing form when they go mad from the Voids light.

The main travel between islands is skyships. Each race has different designs and types. Travel between the islands is done using wayspheres; globes filled with water and an arrow head. Pouring a little of the target islands earth on the waysphere points the arrow toward the island. Each island has a Navigator Hall where earth from different islands can be purchased. Some captains also take earth from islands they visit for trade and barter as well as a second supply.

Since no island is self sufficient, a Trade Council was created at the end of the wars between the islands. The Trade Council doesn't interfere with each islands politics unless it affects trade and threatens the general peace. The Trade Council enforces no standing military on the islands, however some islands maintain their own militia that are organized and structured as a military force would be.

Each island has one representative on the Trade Council. This allows for bigger, richer islands to not have more power, however, richer islands drive the council policies, but have to tread carefully otherwise a coalition of smaller islands can defeat them.

The Void is teeming with life. Skyships drag nets will generally catch enough food for a voyage, and any excess can be traded at the next port. The highest landmass, the Draining Sea, is the largest as well and covered with ice. As the ice melts and drops down on the other islands, it creates rainfall for even the most remote of islands. Some islands send ships up to brave the glacier and mine the ice for trade with other islands.

The Sundered Skies is dangerous and full of opportunity for those providing all kinds of services. Everything has a price in the Sundered Skies.

Campaign Rules:

• Jokers Wild: When PCs get Joker +1 Benny everyone
• No Power Points: Special rule for spellcasting