The Morgansfort BFRPG Campaign ended – but not the world. So we fast forward 100 years and pick up a new campaign, based in another place called Wildehaven, with a new party.

What happened during those 100 years?

The dark cleric Azequia has unlocked the demon and opened a portal to Hell. As a reward, she was raised to the highest echelons of power in the infernal planes. Meanwhile, armies of infernals and devils have streamed out into the Western Lands and have smashed the resistance of barbarians and civilization alike.

The hordes of Chaos attacked Morgansfort and swept it away. From the northern city of Slateholm a “Triade of Holy Light”, including Father Tehlbain from Morgansfort, launched an expedition to close the portal – but failed. Further missions of Knights from Novatia also failed. The only gain was that the world learned about a mighty black tower that stood now high above what was once Stormwing Keep.

And yet: the armies of the Inferno were not limitless. They conquered the northwest of the continent and overran Slateholm; they swept westward and subjugated the known parts of the continent. But curiously they neglected to swarm the barbaric east, or the deep south. Even more so, the infernals failed to conquer the Seas: Island nations and other continents remained free.

And so a new equilibrium developed, with an infernal “state” of sorts claiming its place amid the nations of human, elf, and dwarf.

Wildehaven

90 years after the infernal storm – 10 years ago now – a small group of headstrong settlers eeked out a spot up along a river in the wilderness east of Stormwing and its Black Tower. These settlers created Wildehaven, a small settlement, much like a village, but crucially at the banks of the river with access to the pirate infested Sea. It became a refuge for stubborn farmsmen who insisted on clawing fruit from this hard, foreign soil, for pirates who wished to lay low, and former adventurers who thought it was time to settle but did not fit in well with the polite society of free nations.

Our heroes

And so we meet our heroes: 

• Farin the young dwarf cleric, well-versed in old lore, including knowledge about the rise of the Infernal Hordes. And interested in learning more, gaining lore and spreading knowledge and good recipes for food.
• Willem Lightsun, a skilled and strong fighting-man who struggles with memories and regrets, and who seeks peace in Faith. He is plagued by dark secrets and self-loathing, but he has a good heart.
• Hermione, a halfling ranger (whose player sadly missed the action this time)
• Elyndor, an elven mage-thief, a quick-thinker, planner and improviser with a good mind for economics.
• And my own character: Merrick Malmora, a wandering priest of the Order of the Weeping Widow. A stern man on a mission, he wears a faded and wrinkled monk’s robe and is a deep believer in the lore of the Reformed Church of Tah. The raison d’être of his fanatical Order: to prepare a new religious war: to create a significant fighting force of faithful volunteers and bring it to bear on that Black Tower of the Infernals – to slay the infernals and their ilk, clean the land of hellspawn, to topple the foul walls and to strike down the citadel of Demons and close forever the foul portal of Chaos.
  Merrick Malmora of the Weeping Widow is a soldier of Tah who lugs around a massive Maul wherever he goes, as a promise given form: his desire to make the Demon-Tower fall. So he is here to seek out the path to that Black Tower and collect information that may aid the Order in organising the next great Crusade, the one that will finally topple the Tower and cut the infernals in this plane of existence off from their semi-corporeal home.
  The order, and by extension, Merrick, is preaching of a bright future to come once humankind has managed to purge the evil of the Demons off our world.

Our group met on a privateer ship headed for Wildehaven and quickly got to know each other passingly well, so upon reaching the destination they had already loosely banded together and promised to have each others’ backs.

Wildehaven turned out to be a comfortable little affair, even though it is a mere decade old to begin with.

It has one Inn, fishing docks and a bakery, one tower of a wizard who was considered a “stubborn” one, an orchard, a blacksmith and a Church of Tah, from the classic denomination, not my reformists. Better than nothing. The village is surrounded by wooden palisades and has a watchtower to overlook the southern gate. All counted, 10 watchmen guard this settlement. Precious few, considering they also have night shifts and do small patrols.

We rented rooms at the only local Inn, the “Happy Barracuda”, and went on to look for job opportunities.

Rumor mill

Even a fanatic believer in Tah needs money, so we put our ear to ground and looked for opportunities to earn money.

1. Numero Uno: The village Elder is hiring a party to look at some ruins not far away in the west. Very close even! Kobolds there have become unruly. They have started to raid farms in the area, and after 10 quiet years of ignoring each other.
2. A nobleman from nearby DarkMoor in the south has come to this village, and he is looking for people who help him lay claim to the castle Darkfir, which lies about a week of travel easterly. That castle is said to be haunted and/or occupied by lawless ruffians.
3. Up north and west somewhere along the coast there is a wrecked pirate ship infested with horrible creatures, but potentially carrying valuable cargo.

So, my two cents: why did the kobolds be at peace so long? They must have a good reason to make trouble now. I suspected that they were bullied by someone or otherwise in trouble. So I felt it was important to treat them gently.
Dark Moor I did not trust, nor anyone hailing from there. How come this “Barony” can exist out in the wild, and not too far distant from the Demon Horde central too? I smell corruption! So if a noble from there wants Darkfir now, I smell even worse things.

The pirate treasure is too far out of the way for me. I want to hurt the Devils, not creep around looking for gold. The justice of Tah does not dispense itself without human hands to deliver it. That makes A the priority, and B potentially something to prevent rather than to abet.

Kobolds

The kobold-gig was closest, so we went to the village elder, Davin Thorawal, and asked for the particulars.

The kobolds lived in underground ruins one day to the west, for as long as anyone could remember. No interference with humans. Only in the last couple of days did they start to sneak up on farms and steal. 100 gold each for investigating – 200 each if that included solving the problem. Very generous, we thought, and accepted.

Dwarf

But we did not run out immediately: we first went around and spoke with people.

For example, there was only one dwarf in town: obviously our dwarf Farin had to meet him. It was an old ex-merc named Dhulgorlim Bonebuckle.

He hailed from Ravenstone but had been working for the Baron of Dark Moor for a few decades; first the old Baron, true flint and stone, fighting hobgobs, but then for the son Edmund, who was not liked that well and just sent out the troops to fight barbarian clans, orcs and others, while he stayed home. His mother was still alive, but the family did not get along well … and Edmund’s younger brother had disappeared mysteriously ages ago.

Dhulgorlim had something interesting to say about the prospective Lord of Darkfir too: Lord Eloy Marcedo was supposedly betrothed to the granddaughter of the village elder! Status-wise that was a step down for an aristocrat: the village elder and his granddaughter are commoners. So what is the reason? Food for thought, but too delicate a question to pose before we knew more.

The merc had tips for us how to handle kobolds too: ‘ware traps, and don’t let them surround us. They are weak mono á mono, but they like to tip the balance of an encounter in their favour.

Elf

Religious as we are, we also stopped by the temple of Tah. Our fighting man Willem is a man of the traditional branch of the Church, so he took the lead. The priest there is called Tanyth Glynfir; an Elf. A soft weakling overly concerned with definitions of demons vs. devils, but still, this priest was blessed with a good brain in his skull.

Standoffish against our dwarf because Farin immediately started to vent about his 100 gods .. the dwarf just can’t read a room. I could respect the Elf for that, even though he is one of the outdated reading of the Word.

But let’s be practical:

This priest confirmed my suspicions about Dark Moor. Unholy cults and sects, no temple of Tah, and barely any contact with civilization and Order, few traders, and always the same bunch: DarkMoor will be a corrupted nest of vipers and probably report much to the Devils. We will have to go there eventually, but we shall do that best under cover, as caravan guards or something similar.

Guard duty

Just to get a feel for the place we volunteered for supporting the thin numbers of the village guards during a night shift. We hear noises and spread out hoping to catch kobolds (catch! Not kill!), but it is false alarm.

Expedition

After a day of rest, inspecting the defenses, and shopping, we are finally ready to move out. We check the way one last time, say our goodbyes to the guards, and set out. Once more we discuss and I have to insist in clear terms that we are definitely not killing any kobolds: our goal is to gather information, so we want to either talk freely, or capture and interrogate, but no blood.

Our plan is not the most simple, but it should work:

Our fighting-man, disguised as a poor farming man, takes point. If he finds kobolds, he talks with them. If that does not work out well, Elyndor is sneakily not far behind and casts “sleep”. If that does not work out, the rest of us is there, and fine, in self defense blood may be spilled as a last resort, but it must be avoided as long as possible.

Willem does a splendid job pretending the harmless country man, and as he sits near the kobold lair, a secret door pops open and three kobolds jump out to surround him and try to rob him. He attempts to talk but they are obstinate. They seem hungry, and as he lets on that he has rations to give, they can’t hold back their greed and want to kill him to take it all. Elyndor lets loose and his spell rocks the clearing, laying them all low, Willem and the kobolds.

The rest of us comes quickly to close the door to the warren, wake Willem up and bind the kobolds with all sorts of items (but not ropes, because for all our shopping we all forgot ropes).

A bit farther away we talk shop with one kobold called Gim who speaks common: and we find out that I was half-right. It is no bully that has taken the reins in the kobold warren, it is a monster problem: they have opened an old door that they have not opened ever, in kobold generations, and they discovered undead humans. Now they have them boarded up, but they don’t feel safe any more. So scouting parties move far and wide looking for a new home – and that is when they discovered chickens and their tasty flesh. So that is what they are after in their raids: chicken.

Willem and I both could not resist: we believed the kobolds, and we felt compelled to do something about the undead. We cannot allow foul aberrations to disrupt the natural order of things.

To the kobold’s great surprise (and also Farin’s and Elyndor’s worry) we set the trio free and requested an audience with their chief. Moving into the deep relatively cautiously, but protected by Gim’s guidance, we get down, past traps and ambush spots, into the warren, which is built into some buried structure that was built by human hands in ancient days.

Here we met with KeGrik, the old chieftain of the kobolds, surrounded by a good number of twitchy kobold warriors, and with a green slime “pet”.

Clearly not all of the kobolds were happy to let some stinking humans, elves and dwarves into their beautiful pile of old stones and mold; at the same time, our party was aware that we were risking a lot here. Still — it felt important to act immediately, rather than to spend two full days with travel to send word back to the village. We had to trust that we would survive — if we would perish here, the village would surely assume that we had been murdered by evil kobold raiders in a forest ambush… may Tah prevent such a costly misunderstanding.

KeGrik explained the details: 4 skeletons and a further 8-10 zombies await in a room with a sarcophagus. So we struck a deal: we are going to take care of the undead, and that means the kobolds can stay in this old ruin and don’t need to seek new homes. In exchange, KeGrik tells his kobolds not to raid the farms. This way, we can have peace between humans and kobolds.

Farin immediately wanted to start to negotiate trade relations, but Willem and I stepped on the brakes: let’s not sell the cat before we have caught it: there will be time enough for commerce once (if?) we get the skeletons and zombies sorted.
And that is what awaits us next time.
Honest, faithful and righteous combat against the foul evil of possessed corpses.

More Wildehaven

The Story before: Morgansfort