Campaign Chronicles

04 Deepkolt 349 AC Kysek, Ra'ziir, Cedron, and Shadow all fly over the battlefield, searching for survivors and any goblins who may be fleeing. Smoke rises from blasted craters and burned bodies. Romulus' conjured blizzard continues to rage throughout the remainder of the day and well into the night. Elven scouts, under the supervision of Commander Parnitha, Ornforithalas, and Raven comb the field, finishing off those few humanoids unfortunate enough to have the survived the overwhelming magical onslaught unleashed upon them by the party's wizards. Raven begins counting the fallen and while he is unable to entire the raging snowstorm, he is able to confirm a little over one-hundred slain enemies. Sifting through the pieces of bodies left behind after being ripped apart by blasting spells, he is able to comfortably estimate at least forty more, although he admits that this number is probably low - bringing the confirmed number of those slain in at around seventy percent of ...

SATURDAY MORNING Greta arrived at the television station early and went inside, still shaken be what she saw on her ride home. She found Dusty smoking in the breakroom, a cup of coffee sitting in front of him. Lionel stood by the counter, getting another pot started. Chet walked in behind her, his dog, Ralph at his side. The golden retriever slid his nose under Greta's hand, prompting her to pet him. She obliged, feeling slightly more normal. "Guys, I want to ask you something," she started. "Have you ever seen anything that wasn't really there?" Dusty blume out a long plume of smoke. "Kid, I toured with Pink Floyd in the 60s. I have seen lots of $^%@ that wasn't there." Chet huffed a laugh. Lionel cracked a smile. Greta rolled her eyes. "I'm serious." Dusty stopped and looked at Greta, studied her. His humor drained away but his tone was still warm, soft. “Yeah,” he says finally. “I’ve seen things that weren’t there.” Avery ...

PROFESSOR AVERY AND MADAME CELESTINE Early Friday evening. Lionel Avery was sitting in the station breakroom having a cup of coffee, having just finished setting up the experiment he was planning to tape for his show the next morning. Madame Celestine was seated across from him. The two, scientist and psychic, had been talking. "Correlation is not causation, Celestine. Humans are pattern-seeking creatures. We find meaning whether it exists or not." He passed her a mug filled with coffee that had been sitting for an unknowable amount of time. Celestine smiled faintly, reaching for a packet of creamer. "And scientists are certainty-seeking creatures, Lionel. You reject meaning if you can't see it under a microscope." The professor stirred his coffee. "Be that as it may, if psychic divination were valid, it would produce measurable, repeatable outcomes." "Not everything meaningful is mechanical, Professor." She drew her tarot deck from a poc...

  CHEF  CHET Another week goes by. Greta doesn't see anything unusual, no hazy figures in doorways, no lurking shadows looming in the cornfields on her way home. There was still tension between her and her mother, Margaret, but there had been no further mention of Greta's hair, fashion sense, or television show. As Friday rolled around, Greta, with a homemade tesla coil, an octopus puppet dressed in a lab coat, and her notebook tucked carefully into her backpack, rode out to the station. As she pulled into the gravel parking lot, she spotted "Chef Chet" unloading some plastic bins from the back of his station wagon. His dog, a golden retriever named Ralph, stood off to one side, sniffing the gravel along the building. Chet nodded in her direction, and she rode over, leaning her bike against the side of the building. "Morning, Goblin Queen." "Climate Goblin," she corrected automatically. "You're here on a Friday?" "Yeah, Lione...

  03 Deepkolt 349 AC As the worg-riders rout, Kysek urges Dusk into a dive. He taps his heels into the griffon's flanks, urging greater speed from her and she slowly overtakes the leading edge of the retreat. Kysek falls into his spellcasting, drawing energy from the world around and shaping it to his will. With a cry of, " Цлоудкилл" a green cloud boils up out of the ground, engulfing the riders and their mounts below. Shadow sees the cloud form and circles back toward the raging blizzard. He shouts to Ra'ziir, “That didn’t last as long as I had hoped!  But sure was fun. Let’s hope everything is ready when we get there!  If not, Grotto will have me eating that stew!” Once they reach the ambush site, Shadow peels off to the east and casts the same spell, hemming the goblins in and cutting off another avenue of escape. With the blizzard freezing solid anyone entering it, and poisonous clouds rising to the north and the east, the handful of Worg-Riders pivot west. “...

MARGARET Sunlight streamed through the window of the Whittaker kitchen. Greta walked in, brushing her hair and found her mother seated at the table, sipping her coffee as she was finishing getting ready to go to her job at the Fairhaven Baptist Church. "You were out very late, Gretchen." "It's called a night show, Mom." "Oh, I know. Mrs. Delaney called to ask me why you started reporting Halloween weather so early in the year." Greta felt her face flush. "You don't have to dress like... that to be talented." "It's just a costume, Mom." "It doesn't look like one to me. Girls your age shouldn't be gallivanting about like that. You should be in college or maybe settling down with a proper young man." Margaret paused, "You know, Bob Mercer's daughter got an internship at a real television station in the city. Maybe you should talk to her when she comes home this summer." Margaret rose from...

  CHAD The show was over. The station was closing down for the night. Greta, her spirit buoyed by the unexpected pep talk from Dusty and Celestine, exited Studio D. For a second, she thought she saw someone standing in the doorway across the hall, a tall thin man but when looked again, nobody was there. She stepped out of the side door of the cinderblock broadcast bunker, locking it behind her, and dropped her backpack into the milk crate on the back of her bike. The crunch of tires on gravel and the sweep of headlights across the face of the building drew her attention. She turned. To her surprise, Chad Williams, the Boy Who Had Been Quarterback when she was in high school, opened the car door and stepped out of his father's old Ford Mustang. "Hey, Greta… uh, you want a ride home? I mean, it’s late, and it’s… kind of creepy out here.” He smiled charmingly, something Greta would have died for two years ago and she started to smile back but noticed his eyes lingering on her c...