A Brothers Search and New Friends

Thargrin was drinking again at the bar, losing himself and his pain in the bottom of his mug. Most of the barkeeps knew him by now, as he was at one of their establishments every night.

One of the days of late drinking, a small and petite lady, dressed in nicely cut robes walks up to Thargrin, while he is passed out and gently touches his shoulder. "Grakslhlasf!" as he pushes her away, a look of concern appears on her face. "I am here to help ease your pain." she calmly tells Thargrin. "I donsh wanna your elp, I'm fiiiine! Leaf me aloon!" She beckons to the barkeep, "Take this one to my room, please sir." The barkeep motions two bruisers over as they follow the lady up to her room. Thargrin fights meekly all the way.

 The next morning when Thargrin awakes, he doesn't feel his hangover. Looking around he sees candles and feels a sense of peace, nothing like what he has felt since a very long time ago. As Thargrin grabs his gear, he hears footsteps coming towards the door, moving quickly and silently behind the door he waits. The door opens, as the lady from last night walks in to the room, Thargrin grabs her, as she screams and drops the food she was carrying. "I mean you no harm sir." as Thargrin gently releases his hold, his anger becoming harder to hold on to, and the feeling greatly confusing him. He shrugs things off and heads back to the ship, as the lady follows him, gently helping strangers on her way but keeping up with Thargrin.

Back at the ship, Thargrin goes to his spot and sits down, as the others greet the newcomer. "Sylvia, a priest of the Lifemother, pleased to meet everyone!" she proclaims with joy. Walking over to Slick and sitting down next to him.

Elsewhere, Kainlan receives a message to meet a man that has information on his brother. Heading over to the agreed spot, the man points Kainlan at a local business man, Jake Muller. Kainlan heads back to the ship and shares the information he has found. The adventurers decide to help their friend, and join him to go meet Jake, so they bring heading over to the warehouse district.

An arrow whistles by and hits Ambryin square in the shoulder. Thargrin and Slick run from the direction of the arrow but are too late, the assassin is long gone. Syliva pulls out the arrow and gently places her hands on Ambryin wound, a light glows and when she removes her hand, it appears to have been healed. Ambryin thanks Syliva, as everyone examines the arrow. "This appears of distinct design, we should keep it and investigate this." as Syliva puts the arrow away in her pack.

Once at the warehouse, the group is confronted by a few bruisers, one of the steps up to Kainlan, "Jake will only see you." The others rile up up at the veiled insult, but Kainlan explains the importance of the information to him and they reluctantly agree to wait. Inside, the hallways is more exquisite than anything Kainlan has seen. At the end of the hallway a great room, with only one man sitting there. "Kainlan, welcome! I know you seek your brother, a favor I ask in return for information, bring me back a shipment of Cotton and I will give you the information you need." he pulls out a bag of cogs and hands it over to Kainlan. "2000 cogs to help you on your journey and expenditures, and 10,000 cogs plus the information on your return." Kainlan questions the ease of the deal as it appears too simple and easy for such a great payout.

Back at the ship, the crew discusses options, they decide to take some material with them, and find out from the locals where the best cotton island can be found. Ambryin and Kainlan go out on the town, asking around, they discover metals and sand are good commodities to trade and Bridgeway has the best cotton supplies in the skies. Once the group has gathered the supplies, they head in to the skies.

"Harpies!" shouts the captain on the third day. As the adventurers and crew scramble to engage. The fighting gets fierce, one of the ladies dies to the harpies, as her friend (Shaelyn) screams and kills the harpies near her trying to get to her friend. After the battle Syliva puts her hand on Shaelyn and shakes her head, Ambryin puts her hand on her shoulder as comfort  the crew as a whole are pained at the lost. Shaelyn gets a void look in her eyes for the rest of the trip, making others worry about her.

As the crew nears Bridgeway, they notice a ship limping in the distance, as they get closer a larger ships appears to be chasing it. The smaller ship has an injured Orc, in the outfit of the couriers guild, he is pulled on to the ship where Syliva rushes to treat him. Before he passes out he hands Kainlan a message saying this needs to get to the Couriers guild as soon as possible. The crew look around and decide to out run the pirate ship, which they do with ease. The Orc is taken below deck and tended to, as the group breaks the seal and opens up the couriers message. It reads as gibberish to the group so they decide they will return it to see if they can get some rewards.

 Once at Bridgeway, the adventurers travel with the Orc to the nearest couriers guild. Once inside, the guild is bustling with people running around efficiently  carrying messages and notes as fast as possible. The orc continues to the back of the hall where he is greeted by the local courier overseer. "Greetings! What messages do you bear?" The Orc beckons to Kainlan as he hands over the message to be handed to the overseer. His eyes squint in displeasure when he notices the seal was broken, "Who broke the seal? All courier messages should have their seals maintained, otherwise we cannot guarantee the message inside. There will be some disciplinary actions taken." The overseer glances over to the Orc, who turns slightly white at the comment. Thorgrin chimes up about a reward, and overseer nodes and calls over a page. "Escort them to the quartermaster." As he hands the page a note. Once at the quartermaster the group receives 1000 cogs for their troubles. Slick and Thargrin feel that the couriers are being insulting and spit on their way out of the halls. As Slick looks back, a page runs up and quickly cleans up before running off again, leaving a grin on his face.

Ambryin and Kainlan proceed to attempt to sell off the goods, and find some cotton for the trip back. Once the cotton is secure, the group begins their trip back. While in the void, they are ambushed by two small pirate ships. The captain with the help of the crew deftly maneuver the ship and blow up one of the small ships with their cannons and chase off the other.

Once back at Gateway, the adventurers are greeted by four hooded men and large man dressed in finely crafted clothes of dark material. "You have something of mine!" he proclaims, Thargrin calmly throws his ax at the man, and charges in to battle. Kainlan takes aim at the man and hits him squarely in the head, but instead of killing him, the man looks angered and hurt. "Kill them all!" as he pulls out a dark sword. Ambryin notices the dark glow the sword has and shouts to her friends, "Be wary of his sword it has a black aura!" as the adventurers throw themselves at the dark man, the four robbed figures begin chanting. Four large spheres of black void grow and engulf the adventurers. As Kainlan, Slick, and Thargrin pass out, Ambryin barely holding on to consciousnesses Syliva walks down the plank and calmly walks down as a light glow quickly expands from her. The dark man looks up with fear in his eyes, "The gods avatar! You should not be here!" The light gets very bright, the last thing Ambryin hears is the footsteps of men running away and a gentle voice saying "Rest."

Bloody Messenger

A bloody elf walks in to the bar, covered in blood and tattered clothes. Many patrons rush to his side to help  him. As the adventurers approach, he can be heard rambling madly about skeletons and undead coming out of the ground. Treasures greater than any have seen and screaming monsters. His ramblings pique the interest of the group, for the alternatives didn't seem 'fun'; following up on the gods warning, helping two elves with some smuggling, or helping a trader procure some cloth. Salvage and fighting seemed more excitable to the group.

Heading over to their ship, the adventurers realize they could hire on a few sailors to help them out. The elf asks Kainlan if they could find female sailors to help. After questioning one of the dock-hands  Kainlan is directed to the far end of the dock, where two ladies were helping load some cargo for a ship. One appears shy and hesitant to join, but is convinced when her friend shows excitement at the opportunity of proper sailor work. The dock-hand also petitions Kainlan to join the crew as he has aspirations to become a Captain, Kainlan reluctantly agrees.

On the way to investigate the island of the dead, the crew encounters a large ship. 'Take them on!' yells the crew; as the captain deftly maneuvers the ship in to position, out maneuvering the other ship very nicely. Once the ship is in position, the adventurers and their new found friends begin to board the ship. Lots of pirates engage them, with their captain in the back urging them forward. Ambryin heads in to the first group she sees and begins to slash away, taunting the enemy captain as well. The two ladies who have recently joined, are inspired and bring down a few pirates themselves. As the fight starts to sway in the adventurers favor, the enemy captain begins to get riled up, accidently shooting one of his own while attempting to take out Ambryin.

Once the pirates are defeated, the adventurers decide to take over the new boat as it is much bigger than their own and let is drop in to the abyss, moving themselves over to the bigger ship. As expected the ship is harder to pilot than their old ship, so food and water become a concern, especially for the return trip.

The rest of the journey to the island is uneventful. Once at the island, the adventurers disembark and begin investigating the ruins. As they approach, skeletons pop out of the ground and assault the adventurers. A wraith also joins the fray. Thargrin rushes to the wraith, while the rest of the adventurers, engage the skeletons.

After a hard fought victory, Kainlan while looking around spots a cache of goods hidden in the rubble off to the side, full of salvage and a relic!

The slow trip back to town to (due to the larger ship) puts the crew dangerously thirsty and exhausted. Once they reach town, Thomas greets them and takes their salvage for them.

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.