Dark Age Adventure

To Restore a Kingdom

Running exactly two years (Oct. 22, 2024 to Oct. 19, 2024), this campaign began with only two players and an NPC as a trio of adventurers who find a treasure map pointing them to the Crown of Kings. This powerful artifact could be used to unite the kingdom of Alamayne under an authentic ruler instead of the puppet regent (the so-called “Black King”) installed by the Church of Deem to legitimize their oppressive theocracy.

The Quest-map

Through adventures that took them as far as Elfland, the Inverted World and the Skyrealms above the clouds of the kingdom, the adventurers learned that the Black King was, in fact, a Vampire working in concert with a Lich who was secretly running the Church of Deem. Meanwhile, Modrons would interfere from time to time, abducting characters seemingly at random and for inscrutable purposes.

(That last one was actually a way for me to narratively justify player absences as the Modrons could control time to the point where it looked like characters were just blinking out and back in again with no sense of time having passed. As for what they were really up to, how can mortals expect to understand the motivations of beings who exist outside of spacetime as we know it?)

This was my first campaign with an actual end goal. Just about everything I’ve done before has been open-ended, which is the style of play I prefer. There were times when this campaign meandered a bit too much, perhaps, but I was very happy to have it conclude in so many satisfying ways. And I think it’s especially cool for the characters to finish a campaign at 9th level as lords of the realm.

There is plenty of room for a sequel or spin-off campaign, for sure. Even though we ended with the death of the titular Black King and Nihl crowned the first Dragonborn King of Alamayne, there is still the matter of the Lich who has been pulling the strings of the church for a century and a new war in the south with Orcs running amok. Also, Nihl made some problematic promises in order to become king which will surely come back to bite him.

The highlight of the whole thing was having Natasha come back and reprise the role of Zabrina. That was a fun little crossover from another campaign!

The players

  • Jake – The Dude
  • Kasey – Nihl
  • Mark C. – Maran, Akram
  • Mark M. – Gilbert, Argual
  • Martin – Wyll
  • Natasha – Zabrina
  • Ross – Villitch
  • Sarah – Rosetta

Campaign History

Campaign Log

Alamayne

The isle of Alamayne is a land ruled by the oppressive theocracy of the Church of Deem. They came to power a century ago in a crusade that swept away King Olaf the Old and replaced him with Virigoth, the Black King, a seemingly immortal figure who still rules to this day. Only the independent city-state of Ludinium on the south coast remains as the lone hold-out, an oasis of enlightenment amidst a land in a Dark Age.

For millennia, Alamayne was the domain of barbarians and bandits with endlessly shifting lines of succession and many periods without kings at all. Many believed unified rule of the island was folly, fractured as it was by feudalism and an inablity of its nobles to get over historical slights, but then, a hundred years ago, the Church of Deem emerged in the north as a power to be reckoned with.

With a zealous and brutal pursuit of justice, the Church was able to unite people against the institutional corruption and abuse of the ruling classes. At first, the devoted were dismissed as a fringe cult, but in the span of a few years they swept to power, ousting King Olaf the Old and installing Black King Virigoth in his place. His apparent immortality is their proof that he was divinely selected to be king of Alamayne, but nobody knows exactly why he is ageless.

Before the Dark Age of theocratic rule, Alamayne celebrated a pantheon of gods who were multivarious in form and function. Chief among them was Vatael who identified closely with the spontaneous energy of Chaos. The Church of Deem, obsessed with order and control, swept away the old gods, assimilating those they could, erasing those they couldn’t, and setting up Vatael as the ultimate villain.

Mogretza, capital city of Alamayne

Alamayne is a cold, dismal place of rugged terrain, lakes and forests, about 800 miles north-south and 600 miles east-west. The overall style and flavour of the setting is Northern European, Celtic/Norse/Mongolian of the 12th-14th century. Think Frazetta’s Conan the Barbarian paintings or the first 20 minutes of the 1982 film. Only the southern tip of the island is in the temperate zone, the rest is sub-arctic, so lots of wind, rain and snow.

Ludinium

The campaign begins in the independent city-state of Ludinium. Home to about 25,000 people, it covers an island just off the southernmost tip of Alamayne connected by a bridge with a large fortress gatehouse. The surrounding countryside is soft marshland which discourages any attack by land forces.

Ludinium has been around for centuries but became an independent city-state shortly after Virigoth was coronated, when the most wanted man in the kingdom, Temvorian the Sorcerer, formed an alliance with other magic-users and took the palace of Ludinium in a swift coup that ended the reign of Duke Miderran. Temvorian had a special relationship with Ozeiaza the Bronze Dragon who helped repel the avenging armies of the Black King long enough for the magic-users to turn the surrounding land to intractable swamp which claimed many an enemy soldier.

Whereas Alamayne resembles a Dark Ages European backwater, Ludinium is an oasis of culture and enlightenment more akin to Renaissance Florence. It is governed by a council of eight guildmasters who are selected from the dozens of trade guilds in the city, serving for two years before being replaced. Presiding over the council with veto power is Lady Marade, the latest in the line of Temvorian’s descendants to take the leading role. As long as Ludinium has a ruling Sorcerer of the line of Temvorian, Ozeiaza will be its patron and protector.

Alamayne’s navy has never fared well in the waters around Ludinium where Ozeiaza loves to swim and capsize hostile vessels. The city-state, lacking any arable farmland, trades heavily with the Kingdom of Falay across the channel for everything they need, so the merchant marine class is vital to Ludinium’s survival and the Dragon is known to favour trade ships over war ships.

Ludinium has a sizeable University Arcanum where magical tomes from across Alamayne have been sequestered rather than be burned by the church. There is a population of Wizards, Warlocks and Sorcerers in Ludinium which puts it on the map for travellers from the Skyrealms. The University Tower even has a dock for skyships which come to visit on a semi-regular basis.

All races and classes are available in Ludinium, but outside the city things get a lot more restricted.

The streets of Ludinium

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