A note before you read: this is the opening of the campaign, including its violence. It involves the abduction of three children and a killing.
Treefall, in the Broken Lands · Terrevar, the 2nd of Semaille, early spring · Imperial Year 9,723
The Four of You
Lifelong friends, near enough the only young folk in a quiet farming town.
Sonny, a warforged: an old-world metal man with no past, woken years ago on Brannoc’s workbench. Immune to poison and drink, but vulnerable to lightning; doesn’t eat or sleep, just powers down. Stronger and more likeable than he looks, though he has no notion how to use his own charm. Every so often his sight flickers, a fraction of a second of blurry moving lights, gone before he can hold it. He’s learned to live with it.
Hayden “HayZ” Zable, an air genasi, blown into town as a small child after a storm out of the south and raised hand-to-hand between families. Blue-skinned, storm-eyed, happiest in open air and among animals at the stables. Quiet, quick, and hard to find when he doesn’t want to be found. Shocking magic he’s never explained; it just came out of him young.
Astarii Floshem, an elf and a sorcerer, from a family with no magic at all (nobody knows where hers came from). Persuasive to a fault; she’d rather talk you into a job than do it herself, and she can talk Sonny into almost anything. Uncle: Brannoc the smith. Constant companion: her armadillo, Coron.
Chester Winslow, a true believer in a town that mostly isn’t. His “god” comes to him only as a blurry figure of light in white robes, wordless, one-sided, and he means to prove to his skeptic parents there’s something greater out there. Sharp eyes and a nose for a lie, if not much book-learning. Little sister: Lisa. Student of the town cleric, Reva.
Evening at the Dry Well
End of an ordinary sowing-season day; the friends gather at the Dry Well, the town’s only tavern. Garrick Mott tends the bar and ribs everyone about their tab; his daughter Sennie brings the ale (Astarii, naturally, leaves someone else to pay).
The talk is all about the black-and-gold caravan that rolled through weeks ago. Old Hesker holds court with “back in my day,” and Tomas Vey waves the whole thing off: leave it alone, don’t borrow trouble.
Chester and his faith. His parents needle him gently, always talking to that god of his, and it never talks back. Chester describes the figure of light, and jokes he’s been promised his own planet when he dies. He’s sure the cleric Reva sees the same light he does: “she saw something in me before I did.”
Sonny’s flicker. Mid-conversation Sonny’s sight goes blurry for a heartbeat, moving lights, then nothing. It’s happened before; nothing has ever come of it. Chester notices, wonders aloud whether something is trying to reach Sonny too, and tells him to keep his mind open when he powers down tonight.
Hesker’s story of the keep. Fifty years back, Hesker and some friends rode out to the old gray-stone keep on a dare: huge, smooth gray stone unlike the red rock hereabouts, long abandoned, nothing living in it. But traders now report lights in its windows, and winged shapes coming and going.
Little Lisa tags along, wheedling Chester to take her herb-hunting in the hills tomorrow and to come with him for tonight’s rain ritual. The town turns in early. Everyone is up at dawn.
The Caravan (weeks ago)
A while back a long military column came down the main road heading south and rode straight through Treefall without stopping, better than an hour to pass. Covered carriages, mounted riders in black tunics and breastplates, black pennants with a gold mark. Ordered, purposeful, nothing anyone here had a name for.
It was bound for the old keep, abandoned a couple hundred years, now lit and lived-in. Traders from Thornhollow and elsewhere say the same: something has moved into Greystone Keep.
The Rain Ritual
Chester’s mother sends him to run the weekly rain ritual (he does it more often than not; the cleric is glad to let him). He takes the Thunderstone from its shrine, a fist-sized, smooth gray stone scarred black from years of lightning, and carries it out into the field.
He sets it down and wakes it. The temperature drops on the spot, clouds gather within minutes, and a cold, soaking rain sets in. This is how Treefall lives in dry country: the stone calls rain across a wide circle for about eight hours, ending when lightning strikes the stone; then it needs a week to recharge. It is the town’s treasure and its lifeline.
Tonight it was left out in the field, still working, when everything went wrong.
The friends linger; Chester says a quiet prayer that Sonny might “have an encounter.” Then home to bed in good sleeping weather. Hayden stays at the stables to keep the animals calm in the rain.
~1 AM, The Raid
Chester wakes from a vivid dream, clearer than any before: the figure of light, a sense of connection, and then mountains under ice and snow, one great peak beneath a blue sky. It means nothing to him.
And then, a scream, and a crash. Lisa.
He stumbles to her room: window open, Lisa gone. Screams and shouts break out across town.
Everyone wakes to it. Sonny (at the forge), Hayden (the stables), and Astarii converge. In the dark and rain they see black-clad figures and hear horses already receding. Chester throws light; there are only shapes running for the edge of town. A bolt is loosed after a fleeing rider, marking him with a lingering glow.
In the street: a body. A townsman run through with a sword, a hoe fallen beside him. Jonathan, Tomas Vey’s nephew, the boy Tomas raised like a son. Killed trying to stop them.
They find one raider face-down in the mud, unconscious: a young man in a black-and-gold tunic, breastplate, plain sword and buckler. Chester stabilizes him. He is dragged to the council hall and left with constable Edrin Cole.
Garrick Mott cries out that his daughter Sennie is gone.
What the raid took: three young girls, Lisa Winslow (Chester’s sister), Sennie Mott, and Bree Holloway, and the Thunderstone. Jonathan is dead; others are hurt, and in the dark not every body has been found. Chester finds the field empty where the stone stood, and the storm it made drifting off toward the way the raiders rode.
Council Hall: Now, or at Dawn?
Maelle Aubrec takes charge and refuses a rash chase: townsfolk with farm tools against a keep full of soldiers would only get everyone killed. The council and elders will take stock overnight and meet at first light to equip and send a real party.
You four, Astarii and Sonny loudest, want to leave now: every hour puts Lisa further away. Brannoc (Astarii’s uncle, and near enough a father to the group) shouts you down:
Four unarmored kids with swords you can’t use… I’d save us the trouble and run you through myself.
But he will bless a proper departure once you’re outfitted, and there is a prisoner to question first.
Something they told Chester. For as long as anyone remembers, the women of Chester’s family, his mother, his grandmother, little Lisa, suffer the same vivid nightmares of fire and blood, passed down the female line. The whole town knows of the “affliction.” No one knows what it means.
What the forge gave up. No armor anywhere in town, and no real weapons: a few skinning knives, a couple of Brannoc’s hammers. But in his back room, among his pet projects: two beautifully-made longswords, far finer than any soldier’s blade (whether they are more than fine steel, no one can yet say), and a bag of holding. The captured soldier’s sword and buckler, too. The leather shop had only boots and gloves.
The Constable’s Office: The Prisoner
Reva wakes the prisoner with a healing prayer. He is a terrified boy, a conscript who plainly wants to be anywhere else, and far more afraid of his own officers and “the wizards at the keep” than of any of you.
His name is Casper. What you get from him:
He serves the Empire, out of Greystone Keep, empty for centuries, now full of soldiers. (He is a long way from home; he’s from the Black Mountains.)
His orders, from the lord of the keep: round up the girls of this age from across the region and send them east, to the Empire. They will not be kept at the keep. Why, he does not know. And take the Thunderstone, and any other magic besides.
How many soldiers? He manages only “hundreds.” But Sonny, thinking back to that caravan, seventy-odd carriages, riders, retainers, reckons at least five hundred, likely six hundred or more, now holding the keep.
How far is the Empire? The Black Mountains are only its western edge; the Empire itself lies thousands of miles east. None of you had ever heard of it.
The coin. You look at one of his silver pieces: a stern face, writing none of you can read. “That’s the emperor,” he says, and gives a name. “Everyone knows this.” None of you have ever heard it. (Sonny promptly flicks the coin across the room.)
When the Empire is named, old Hesker and Maelle share a look, a flicker of recognition, and fear, and say nothing.
The night ends there, on Brannoc’s word:
We will speak. Then we will plan. Then we will act.
The rest is tomorrow.
Who’s Who in Treefall
| Name | Who they are |
|---|---|
| Maelle Aubrec | Lead of the town council; took charge after the raid and called the dawn plan |
| Hesker Dunn | The town’s living memory; went still at the Empire’s name |
| Tomas Vey | Council elder and farmer; lost his nephew Jonathan in the raid |
| Reva Castaigne | Town cleric; tends the shrine and the sick; Chester’s mentor (he believes she shares his visions of light) |
| Brannoc | Elf artificer and smith; Astarii’s uncle; the man who woke Sonny; gave up the longswords and bag of holding |
| Edrin Cole | Constable; holds the prisoner |
| Perrine Holloway | Runs the general store; her daughter Bree was taken |
| Donal Fay | Leatherworker; buys hide and scale from the Floshem ranch |
| Garrick Mott | Keeps the Dry Well; his daughter Sennie was taken |
| Sennie Mott | Garrick’s daughter, taken in the raid |
| Bree Holloway | Perrine’s daughter, taken in the raid |
| Jonathan | Tomas Vey’s nephew, raised like a son, killed defending the town |
| Lisa Winslow | Chester’s little sister (12), taken in the raid; one of the family who suffer the nightmares |
| Naal and Ashwyn Floshem | Astarii’s parents; armadillo ranchers |
| Casper | The captured Imperial conscript; from the Black Mountains; held in town |
Where Things Stand
- The council meets at first light to outfit and send a party after the girls.
- Three girls, Lisa, Sennie, and Bree, and the Thunderstone were taken toward Greystone Keep, and are meant to go east from there. Time matters.
- Casper is held in town. He may know more about the keep.
- No armor and few weapons: two fine longswords, a bag of holding, some knives, and whatever the morning brings.
- The elders clearly know something about this “Empire” they haven’t said.