The Road So Far...

(*cue Kansas' Wayward Son)

The Beginning
After years of adventuring both together and separately, the party rendezvoused in the town of Tsuragol, on the northern coast of the Sea of Fallen Stars with the intention of traveling east to Kara-Tur.  Unknown to the adventurers, several of their party members had angered the goddess Shar after killing one of her high priestesses a few days earlier.  Shar however, was unable to act against them because gods were prohibited from directly interfering with the lives of mortals.

The group set out and found themselves caught in a terrible thunderstorm.  They took shelter in an abandoned temple of Talos.  The temple had been designed by the long-dead priests to collect and channel power from storms to augment spells.  Long disuse of the temple had left it unable to store the gathered energy and Shar used her magic to fuel the storm, making it more powerful and longer lasting than it would have normally been.

While all of this was occurring, Malazzarr, the patron saint of magical item creation and a god of the fallen Netherese Empire was drawn to the area as he could sense the impending destruction of a powerful magical item, specifically the temple.  Malazzarr discovered Shar tapping into the Shadow Weave, a secret source of magic that existed in between the spaces of Mystra’s Weave.  Not wanting what amounts to her “secret weapon” to be revealed, Shar turned her fury on Malazzarr and stripped his divine power from him and cast him down as a mortal in the very temple the adventurers were gathered in.  The temple, over-charged with energy exploded, tearing open a rift in the fabric of reality and deposited the group on a world far from their own.   

Hyboria

After introductions were made, the adventurers began trying to determine where they were and how to get home.  They soon discovered that they had somehow journeyed to the world of Hyboria and found themselves caught in a war between the Kingdom of Aquilonia and the Picts, a savage race of men.  After fighting on the side of Aquilonians and putting down the Pict uprising, the group made its way to the capital of Tarantia.   

Malazzarr, though mortal, remained a powerful magic-user and drew the attention of several local deities and came into conflict with the spider god Zath.  With assistance from the Court Wizard of Tarantia, the group learned of a sorcerer-priest in the city of Arenjun who had imprisoned a demon in his tower and went there to obtain information about how to return home.  The sorcerer-priest, a fell wizard known as Yara, attacked the party when they tried to enter his tower.   

During the battle, Zath, tired of Malazzarr’s antagonism, transferred a portion of his power to Malazzarr, re-elevating him to divinity with the intention of destroying him.  Zath, despite being more powerful was outmatched by Malazzarr’s mastery of magic and was defeated.  On the mortal plane, the adventurers slew Yara and spoke with his imprisoned “demon” and learned that it was a creature that had once lived beyond the stars before it was betrayed and bound in the tower by the sorcerer-priest.  It told them of a portal on the Isle of Iron Statues that would allow them to travel from one world to another in exchange for a merciful end to its tortured existence. 

On the island, the adventurers fought a vampire named Akivasha who drained most of the life force from one of the party’s primary spellcasters.  The vampire was killed and Malazzarr traveled to the underworld to negotiate with the Lord of Murder for the return of the stolen life force.  The god agreed but only if the spellcaster would become his servant.  Malazzarr refused the deal and told the god to speak with spellcaster himself.   

The Lord of Murder ventured to the island to collect the rest of the spellcaster’s soul and a fight ensued.  The adventurers managed to beat the Murder Lord and he was slain in their battle.  This drew the attention of other gods who began to appear on the island.  The Lord of Murder was raised from the dead and the party was sent through the portal and told to never return. 

Malazzarr, however, gave one of the adventurers, a priest of his newly-established faith a bag of seeds with instructions to plant one everywhere the group went.  The seeds would grow into a tree that could be used as a gate to travel to whichever worlds the trees had been planted on.  The adventurers then journeyed through the Island’s portal and arrived on another world. 

Nehwon

Not knowing where they were, the adventurers headed west, hoping to find a city.  Additionally, magic did not work as expected – it was painful to use spells and many enchanted items did not function properly.  Eventually, they arrived in the city of Ilthmar, home to a thriving population of wererats.  Continuing their march, they soon arrived in Lankhmar, a bustling trade city. 

They soon came to the attention of the city’s Overlord and were asked to return to Ilthmar to collect his son from one of the temples there.  The group agreed and, upon arrival came into conflict with a mercenary band that had kidnapped the Overlord’s son.  After defeating the mercenaries and returning to Lankhmar, they made their way to the temple of Aarth, god of magic.  They learned that, as far as the priests knew, magic seemed to be functioning normally as it “has always been this way”.  Dissatisfied with the answer they received, the party’s wizards began to conduct experiments to see what was going on. 

Other research revealed that the amount of rainfall, crop yields, birth rates, and even life expectancies had all been slowly declining over the course of the last several hundred years.  Consultation with a local tavern keeper the group had come to know brought a myth to their attention.  Millennia ago, when the Lords of Necessity created the world, there was a being even older than them.  It was the personification of entropy itself and it existed for the sole purpose of destroying creation.  This force, known as the Devourer, vied against the gods brought into being by the Lords of Necessity but was defeated.  The Devourer was then bound in silver and buried beneath the earth.

Believing that the myth had a basis in reality, the group set out to find the Devourer.  After several adventures, they made their way south to the Jungles of Klesh and found a pyramid inhabited by a Devourer cult and Keesha, the world’s First Woman, who had served the Devourer since time immemorial.  In a volcano beyond the pyramid, they found a mystic seal that prevented energy from the Positive Material Plane from flowing into the world and broke it, restoring the world’s natural magical balance.

When they returned to Lankhmar, the mystical being known as Ningauble of the Seven Eyes allowed them to pass through his caverns, claiming that they led to "everywhere and everywhen".  But instead of returning the adventurers to Toril, Ningauble sent them to a different realm entirely. 

The Grimmlands 

The region the party arrived in was mountainous and foreboding. The first person they met was a young woman who was being attacked by a monstrous spider the size of a small keep.  After defeating the arachnid and making introductions, the girl told them her name was Miss Muffet.  She was confused and intrigued by the party’s elves, claiming that the only ones she had ever heard of weren’t warriors or wizards but were bakers and cobblers and the like.   

The group asked if she knew a way out of these lands and she told them that while she did not know, she was sure the Giant-Slayer, King Jack of the Beanstalk would.  The group set off to search for Jack only to discover that he had been missing for years, lost after falling into a river from atop a hill and that Cinderella and her Fairy Godmother (in reality the Tenth Muse, Melusine) had usurped control of the kingdom.  Melusine was also responsible for the creation of the Grimmlands.  She had given two young men a magical book they could write in simply by reciting stories into it.  The beings and lands the stories were based on would then appear within a demiplane she had created to rule over.  The brothers discovered her ruse and read her and themselves into the book, trapping themselves within. 

The party defeated Melusine and Cinderella and rescued Jack from their clutches.  Jack told them that he had traveled the length and breadth of the land and that there was but one way out that he knew of, the Rabbit Hole in Wonderland.  The group marched to the Wonderland and fought their way across the Checkerboard Kingdoms and defeated the Jabberwock.  After nearly being ensnared by the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party and coming into conflict with the Red and White Queen, the group found the Rabbit Hole and looked upwards, where they began to float up and out of the Grimmlands and toward their next destination.