The campaign opens in absolute, pitch-black darkness deep beneath the roots of Hinn Hjartar Fjöll (The Heart Mountains). There is no torchlight, no draft, and no sound except the echoing breath of five strangers standing in a cavernous stone chamber. Suddenly, illumination bleeds into the gloom—not from fire, but from a sickly, pale-blue phosphorescence emanating directly from bare, dry bones. Standing before them on a dais of carved basalt is the towering skeletal frame of the Lich Lord.
His voice echoes not in their ears, but inside the marrow of their skull and bones: “I am the eldest voice upon this world. I walked the crags of Leeka Sinada before your cities had names, before your Ordining was etched in stone, and before the domains swallowed their gods. You stand before me because I have chosen you specifically.” With a flick of a skeletal finger, a harsh beam of ghostly white light snapped onto each adventurer in turn. As the light hit them, the Lich introduced them, and also the unalterable path he had chosen for them to follow:
“First, the Ogre Maga, Maga Tuura. At my direction, your parents, High Nobels of Suur, sent you to study with the Sages of Uuro. But, besides gathering snow, there was absolutely nothing to do there except peruse and copy ancient manuscripts. But you also learned the great secret of what lies beneath your Sorceress skull… your soul. Your cold, Aberrant Mind shall become a weapon of silent, psionic terror.”
The light shifted to the young, yet hulking ogre. “Voimo, my Barbarian; it’s difficult to say that you grew up in the basalt quarries of Laakso because you’re not yet full grown. And yet your greatest strength—like Tuura—is also your brain, your love of the past, your sharp insight into the whys and hows of what is and how it came to be there. You shall stand in the vanguard, shielded by your spectral ancesters.”
The light faded only to resume, rekindling in intensity upon the dark-haired human. “Sten Lót, the Unshakened, most recently from Kuruu. Cleric and Charlatan, and you’ve rarely betrayed which is which during your 80 seasons on this moon of ours.”
Sten spoke, “I’m ready to serve you, Lord Kivi, in any capacity you choose.”
“So you say, but you’ve already chosen your path, Holy Man; you speak like a worm to everyone but you carefully warp and weft a fabric of Trickery that wholely covers your intent. It’s difficult to serve two masters, but you at least will give that appearance.”
The light then shifted and intensified on the small Skogsmann. “Kanto of Budyur,” Outlander. You stand now at the bottom of everyone, barely a step or two higher on the food chain than a turnip or a squirrel. But you have become scrub-kin with the tundra; I smell this moon upon you, Druid. I hear the primal quavering, your trembling resentent, which you yearn to focus and reshape. You will become the apex predator of this group, never forget that.”
And finally, the glow flickered off and then solidly onto the tall, lanky form of an aqua-skinned Havströll. “Stranda of Sjör, most recently a marine deployed along the shores of Southeastern Ökenveld. You learned to fight in the freeing surf. You’ve been conflicted most of your life. Let me assure you, Madam, you were always meant to walk two paths at once, but the journies are not of equal length. Your swordwork will be thin, but you will swash with the best of them.”
The chamber blackened then, but as The Lich stepped forward, his hollow ribcage began glowing where his heart once sat. “These paths I see for you are absolute. There will be no debate, no divergence. My mandate to you is simple: All five of you shall reach the twentieth tier of power together, or every one of you shall perish ulterly, where not even the gods can find and delivery you to their final domains. You will become a team. Once you achieve this goal, I will select one of you for the greatest reward that is in my power to grant. But, if any single one of you dies permanently before this, my pact with you is broken and all of you are forfeit.”
Stranda, her hand resting on her rapier hilt, stepped into the cold light, her jaw set: “What pact, and why us? Why this ragtag assembly of noble, boy, human, and this forest vermin?”
Before the Lich could even exhale his icy breath, Sten Lót dropped to one knee, nodding enthusiastically with his hands clasped around his cudgel: “I see and share your vision of absolute, divine brilliance, My Lord! Who are we to question the eldest, most astute mind on Leeka Sinada? I, Sten Lót, humbly devote my mortal existance to your profane planning.”
Maga Tuura didn’t even glance at the prostrate human, her eyes fixed as coldly as her own breath upon the Lich. Unconsciously falling in line behind her, Kanto muttered a curse under his breath, while Voimo refused to get angry. He continued silently processing what the Lich had said while simultaneously analyzing the spatial layout of the cavern.
To force this mismatched crew to learn each other’s combat ranges and physical limits, the Lich removed even the appearance of an exit from his underground chambers. For the next several days, he subjected them to a rigorous, closed-door 1-on-1 tournaments. A silent, undead priest sat on a basalt bench at the edge of the arena pit. Beside him was a crate of Potions of Healing and a few spell scrolls of Revivify. While the contests were intended to be non-lethal, everyone was expected to win. And, as such, an all-out attack routine or a critical spell strike, might accidentally take a life. If so, in less than 60 seconds, it would be restored. The lich assured them that these brief samplings of death were in no way harmful to their Essen, their enternal selves. But he also warned them that if it became habit forming, they all would be erased from reality.
After days of bruises, broken bones, blood, and the quick-resurrection magic, the five stood in the center of the pit, exhausted, but they had been taught many valuable lessons. They didn’t like each other; that had come quickly and easily. And Tuura still refused to look directly at Kanto except to target him for a melee or spell attack. She preferred to just breathe out her innate, once-a-day casting of Cone of Cold in his general direction—and assume it would hit and freeze him. But the others had developed respect for Kanto as the little bastard fought like a bobcat. But they all had. They now know exactly how hard each of them was to kill—as well as how hard each of them could kill.
Although it was completed healed, Stranda still nursed a phantom pain in her shoulder where Voimo’s axe had separated it from her body. Only Sten appeared unchanged after the rugged trials, but that was only because his nature—from the start—seemed always in flux. One second he would be apologizing, and the next he was smashing someone’s head in with his gnarled cudgel.
“You’re ready.” The Lich’s voice echoed as the heavy stone doors of the vault began to grind open. The fresh cold wind of the Rimemarch mountain passes clawed its way inside. “You know your paths. You know your sworn companions. Go now to the port of Kuurs. Meet with Jarl Haakon. Your first contract awaits.”
The next session will start with the characters at 2nd level as they travel south. Along the journey, they will decide upon the name of their group.
The chill wind of the high plateau cut across the open grassland like a whetted blade, carrying the faint salt tang that promised the distant sea. Five riding horses (two of them quite large) plodded south along the packed earth track, their breath steaming in the late afternoon air. Ahead, the land slowly descended toward the southern horizon where, somewhere beyond the haze, the port city of Kuurs waited with its tall docks, its steep tariffs, and its inevitable questions from suspicious guards.
Tuura the Ogre Maga rode at the front, a massive womanly figure wrapped in layered travel cloaks that did little to hide the blue-tinged skin and the pair of short, curling horns. Innate Sorceress energy occasionally crackled faintly around her thick fingers as she adjusted her grip on the reins. Beside her, Voimo—a younger, leaner ogre, but still a walking wall of muscle—sat easily in the saddle, sharp eyes scanning the empty plateau with the quiet intensity of someone who thought faster than most expected of a Barbarian.
Stranda brought up the near side, the amphibian Ogress’s skin carrying a subtle sheen that spoke of deeper waters than these dry heights. She rode with the balanced posture of someone already half-dreaming of jack boots and ship decks. Behind her, the human cleric Sten kept a loose, almost lazy seat, the holy symbol of his Trickery domain half-hidden beneath a scarf. And near the rear, almost lost in the saddle of a patient gelding, rode the small fey-like Moon Druid—spry, a hollow backed, and green-tinged Skogsmann, looking more like a wayward spirit of the wilds than a proper adventurer.
It was Voimo who broke the long silence first. “I think the lich was full of shit,” the ogre lad said, his voice low but carrying easily over the wind. “All that talk of ‘seeing’ us. Like our future’s already been written and we’re just actors. Cause and effect, that’s all it really is. Kivi pushed pieces the the game board. And we moved at his command. That;s probability, not prophecy.”
Tuura gave a rumbling chuckle that sounded like stones shifting; she was used to hearing Sages talk like this, not boys carring their first battleaxe. “Aye, lad. He’s calculated the most likely outcomes after stacking the deck in his favor. Divination magic, even for the gods, is just fancy statistics and educated guesses. Still that doesn’t mean that I appreciate being one of his probabilities.”
Stranda snorted, the sound wet and amused. “And it doesn’t mean we have to walk around calling ourselves ’Lord Eero Kivi’s strike force’ like he was suggesting, either. We need a name that tells people that we make things happen—not that some dead wizard and his crystal ball drove us to do it.”
Sten leaned forward in the saddle, grin already forming. “Which brings us back to the important business. What do we shout at the gate of Kuurs when some overworked guard asks who the fuck we are?”
The little druid’s voice piped up, low and dry as autumn leaves. “I like ‘The Catalysts.’ Short. Dramatic. ‘We’re the Catalysts. Let us in.’ Implies we’re about to make the whole city interesting--whether they like it or not.”
Voimo shook his head. “Too vague. Catalysts could be anything. We want something that says we’re the reason the dice came up the way they did.”
“‘Causal Agents,’ then,” Tuura offered. “Sounds official. Almost bureaucratic. Guard hears that and thinks twice before starting trouble.”
Stranda made a face. “Sounds like someone you’d find in a tax office. I want something with teeth when I say it. Or at least something that makes them blink in confusion.”
Sten snapped his fingers. “What about the one we kept circling? ‘The Likely Cause.’” He tested it aloud, pitching his voice into a mock-authoritative bark. “‘We’re the Likely Cause. Let us in.’”
A short silence followed, broken only by the creak of leather and the steady clop of hooves. Voimo’s mouth curled into a slow, appreciative smile. “That’s clean. ‘Probable Cause’ was close, but this is better. We’re not claiming destiny. We’re claiming responsibility. Whatever’s about to go wrong—or right—in that city? Odds are pretty good it’s because of us.”
Tuura nodded, the faint crackle of mental magic appearing across her knuckles. “It fits the lich’s little vision too, without sucking and swallowing on his mysticism. He sees a high-probability outcome for us. But we’re still the causation of whatever he predicts.”
Stranda sat up straighter, already practicing the delivery under her breath. “We’re the Likely Cause. Let us in.” She grinned, showing a flash of small, sharp, fish-like teeth. “I can work with that. Especially once I get a proper cutlass and start looking the part of a pirate captain.”
The little druid tilted his head, his affixed antlers on his head catching the thin sunlight. “And when someone inevitably asks us what that means, we just shrug and say ‘cause and effect.’ Or, if Sten’s feeling helpful, he can start a theological argument about free will while the rest of us walk past.”
Sten placed a hand over his heart in mock solemnity. “There are logical consequences to action, my Son; that’s been pre-ordaned.”
Voimo chuckled. “No it hasn’t. No more talk of fate. Just five people who plan on being in the center of things because that’s where people are when they’re actually doing something.”
Tuura raised one massive hand in a rough toast toward the southern horizon. “To the Likely Cause, then. May the gates of Kuurs open before we have to demonstrate the ‘effect’ we’ll have on them… otherwise.”
The five riders continued south across the chilly plateau, the wind at their backs and a new name settling over them like a tailored cloak. Somewhere ahead, the port city and Jarl Haakon waited—unaware that the most probable source of its next disruption was coming to visit.
Upon arriving at the salt-swept port of Kuurs, The Likely Cause managed to get through the gate, but not as smoothly as they had hoped. Eventually, they met with Jarl Haakon to receive their first official contract. The party was tasked with eliminating a rogue band of Frittlandr Hill Dwarves who had seized a strategic outer palisade fort 140 miles to the west. It was near Racine de Boue, a former dwarven bastion captured by Rimemarch forces during the 162-Season War. Sten Lót covered the party’s intent with practiced flattery while Voimo committed the overland maps to memory. Following a multi-day trek across the freezing taiga, the group reached the fort and opted for a stealthy infiltration rather than a frontal siege.
Utilizing their distinct abilities, The Likely Cause eliminated a few smaller groups of dwarfs (who may or may not have been involved) while they assembled more information. After reaching the scene of the occupation, Sten touched Stranda with divine stealth, Kanto scouted the immediate courtyard as an arctic wolf, and Maga Tuura coordinated their approach through silent telepathy while Voimo watched the tree line for hidden traps and ambushes. Once inside the perimeter, Sten deployed a trickery illusion to draw archer fire off the catwalks while casting guiding bolts, allowing a raging Voimo to absorb the brunt of the dwarven counterattack. Stranda used an Action Surge to quickly drop the nearest sentry before catching her breath. She recovered from damages inflicted upon her using Second Wind. Maga Tuura cast Dissonant Whispers to send panicked defenders fleeing into the waiting blades of her companions. Kanto maintained pressure fighting in his beast form and by knocking archers from elevated ramparts, allowing the party to quickly secure the courtyard and clear the garrison.
Searching the commander’s quarters and body, the party uncovered coin and a Periapt of Wound Closure. To ensure equitable distribution of magic items moving forward, the party established a dicing rule: the winner of a magic item cannot roll for another item until every other member has won one, after which time the cycle resets. Voimo won the first die roll and claimed the periapt, significantly boosting his natural resilience once he attuned to it. With the palisade secured, The Likely Cause prepared to ride back to Kuurs to collect an expected bonus from Jarl Haakon, and also train themselves up to 3rd-level.
Upon returning to Kuurs following their success at Racine de Boue, The Likely Cause was welcomed into Jarl Haakon’s estate, receiving high-level training from his house guard to help them reach 3rd level. Haakon then immediately offered them a new contract: travel to the mountain fortress of Killpi to gather proof against a political rival who was levying unsanctioned tariffs on Haakon’s lucrative trade of oils and scents destined for Lumi’s geothermal hot springs. Because the regional Cliff Giant governors had no tolerance for unshared corruption, obtaining official financial ledgers would be enough to ruin the rival. To secure the documents, the party executed a split-operation that showcased their newly unlocked 3rd-level abilities, dividing into a loud courtyard distraction and a covert infiltration team.
Prior to the breach, Sten Lót applied Blessing of the Trickster to Stranda, cloaking half of the infiltration team in near-total stealth. Outside the estate, Voimo, Maga Tuura, and Sten drew the main garrison into a chaotic courtyard skirmish. Voimo unlocked his Ancestral Guardian powers, calling forth spectral giant ancestors whose haunting forms imposed disadvantage on the guard captain’s attacks and shielded his allies. Maga Tuura demonstrated her new Metamagic and 2nd-level sorcery, utilizing Subtle Spell to cast Hold Person on an enemy officer without uttering a sound, before slinging a long-range spell to shatter the archers’ barricades. Sten deployed an illusory duplicate via Invoke Duplicity to draw crossbow fire, and then summoning a ghostly, glowing Spiritual Weapon to strike guards from behind.
Meanwhile, Stranda—having multiclassed into Rogue—led the infiltration alongside Kanto. Leaning on her new Rogue Expertise in stealth and lockpicking, Stranda picked the vault lock silently and dropped an internal guard with a lethal Sneak Attack combined with Action Surge. Kanto scouted ahead through ventilation grates in spider form using Combat Wild Shape, locating the hidden floor safe containing the ledgers.
The party regrouped and fled Killpi with the evidence, the rival’s elite mounted enforcers attempted to cut them off in a narrow mountain pass.
In the ensuing fight, Kanto showcased his 2nd-level druidic magic by casting Heat Metal on the armored captain, cooking the knight inside his half-plate armor before shifting into a ferocious Brown Bear to tear through the cavalry. With Voimo’s ancestral spirits locking down the frontline and Tuura suppressing the rearguard, the party wiped out the ambushers.
Reaching the Cliff Giant governors, the party presented the ledgers and ruined the rival merchant, successfully fulfilling the contract. Among the confiscated goods recovered from the vault, the party claimed a +1 Cloak of Protection. Adhering strictly to their magic item dicing rotation—which excluded Voimo following his prior win—Sten Lót won the die roll and claimed the cloak to bolster his armor class.
Flushed with confidence after back-to-back victories at Racine de Boue and Killpi, The Likely Cause grew overconfident during their return journey through the mountain passes. Spotting an isolated ravine lair where a bugbear raiding party was hoarding stolen merchant silver, the group rushed the site without proper scouting. The hasty assault quickly turned chaotic when a pair of cave bears and heavily-armed enforcers caught the party in a narrow choke point.
Meanwhile, on the canyon floor where he had circled around as part of a planned pincer attack, Voimo bore the brunt of a hobgoblin reinforcement wave that was just arriving to concult with their cousins. Riddled with shortbow arrows until he resembled a pincushion, the young ogre leaned on his Barbarian rage and durability, halving incoming piercing damage and single-handedly pulverizing the hobgoblin squad in a display of relentless brute force.
Taking heavy damage early himself, the lightly-armored Kanto quickly transformed into a dire wolf—primarily to gain a temporary pool of hit points. Realizing then that they all were pinned and Voimo wasn’t coming to help, Maga Tuura set aside her subtle telepathy to showcase her long-range, regal dominance. Utilizing Metamagic to invoke Distant Spell, she cast Shatter from completely across the canyon—doubling the spell’s reach to 120 feet to pulverize enemy armor and collapse a massive stone ledge onto the secondary wave of attackers.
Despite Tuura’s explosive intervention, the front line of Stranda, Sten, and Kanto likewise collapsed when Kanto was battered out of his beast shape. Having already taken severe wounds in his natural form beforehand and out of healing potions, the druid was helpless. The bloodthirsty cave bears continued to maul him even after he fell unconscious, inflicting fatal wounds that killed him outright. With the last of the beasts finally dispatched by the others, Maga Tuura looked down at Kanto’s corpse with callous disdain, muttering that the forest-kin was easily replaced and that they should cut their losses. A frantic Stranda refused to let the Pact fail, pulling out the 3rd-level Revivify spell scroll she had secretly stolen from the Lich Lord’s undead cleric during Session 1. She thrusted it into Sten Lót’s hands with barely twenty seconds remaining on the spell’s one-minute after-death effectiveness.
Sten wanted to know as to where Stranda had acquired such a high-tier scroll, and he wanted also to admit that casting a 3rd-level spell was well beyond his current abilities. Instead, quickly calculating the remaining seconds, Sten determined he had just enough time to cast Guidance on himself to help stack the mathematical probabilities in his favor. Glancing through the parchment, he began reading the complex incantation under extreme pressure. Against the odds, Sten successfully completed the reading with seconds to spare for the spell to be effective at stitching Kanto’s Essen back into his body. As the divine magic surged, Sten experienced a brief, jarring vision of Furantur Fox-Wise scoffing at him, “You fool, you can’t… oh, it worked?” before the deity’s image popped into nothingness. Rubbing a heavy knot on his temple from a club strike he had taken earlier, Sten dismissed the vision as a concussion-induced hallucination.
Kanto was queasy all over after "coming back from the dead" and felt horrible. He just sat there, shivering and retching, and he ate one of his previously-cast Good Berries every six seconds until the numbess subsided. After recovering from their near-disastrous mistake, the shaken party cleared the ravine and unearthed a heavy cache of silver coins and oversized weapons.
The party will begin next session after training up to 4th level.
Upon advancing to 4th level, The Likely Cause received a new contract from Jarl Haakon in Kuurs: locate Per Tergenssen, an up-and-coming thieves’ guild leader operating somewhere in Sjör. Although Haakon didn’t exactly explain why, it was apparent that Tergenssen had betrayed the Jarl somehow. This was made evident as he instructed them to bring back the target—dead or alive—to Haakon.
Because Tergenssen relied on a tariff-avoiding smuggling pipeline based out of the male-dominated Havströll city of Trow, the party needed to first infiltrate that island port to gather damning evidence of the betrayal and, more importantly, clues as to Tergenssen’s base of operations. Stranda provided the rest of the party with crucial cultural insight. She explained that Havströll males and females lived rigidly separated daily lives—and they despised routine, non-mating contact—making a female Havströll’s presence in Trow exceedingly rare and volatile.
In Sjör, they hired on to a coastal knarr bound for Trow exchanging their services rowing the ship when needed for a reduced passenger fee. Rather than being forthright about who they were, Sten Lót applied Blessing of the Trickster to an especially masculine-tailored and cosmetically-disguise for Stranda to help her slip past the ship masters and harbor sentries, while Sten himself boasted aloud to everyone within earshot regarding his newly-purchased, decrative breastplate armor (which, not mentioned, paired well with his +1 Cloak of Protection). The cleric was now well protectived physically.
Upon arrival on the island, the party followed up on an overheard tavern rumor and worked their way to the edge of the pier that had been built adjacent to one of the pungent rendering pits of Trow. There, they cornered the guild’s primary smuggling contact on the island: Ménärd Krebs. Krebs had been lounging and drinking aboard The Sea Hag, a nondescript sexæring docked along what appeared to be the worst section of the pier. The open, clinker-built boat measured roughly 30 feet from stem to stern and about 8 feet in beam, with a shallow draft of little more than a foot and a half when lightly loaded. Its low freeboard and weathered pine-and-oak hull sat low in the murky water, three pairs of oar ports cut along each side. A short, unstepped mast lay ready amidships. A single square sail, still furled on its yard, rested against the thwarts beside a few crates of dubiously-labled cargo.
Before starting a direct confrontation, Kanto utilized his Wild Shape ability to take the form of a giant reef shark, patrolling the dark underwater pylons for any aquatic forces, traps, or secrets. On the pier, Maga Tuura bypassed verbal confrontation entirely with the lowly dock workers, using Telepathic Speech and subtle psionic mind control on them to disorient the syndicate’s bodyguards. She drained them of their resolve. When the smuggler captain became aware of trouble, he attempted to fight his way out. Voimo waded into the fray of the man’s personal bodyguards with brutal efficiency. Voimo’s spectral ancestral guardians shielded him and Stranda, helping them shrug off counter-strikes.
Then, supported by Stranda’s tactical Cunning Action positioning, the young ogre slobbered his saliva over a demented grin and intimidated the battered smuggler into surrendering the secret location of trade manifests, transaction ledgers, and secret entry codes for the Sjör Thieves’ Guild sewer network.
With the evidence secured and the smuggler leader thoroughly neutralized, the party commandeered the syndicate’s sexæring, deciding it best to use it to sneak across the strait into the Sjör harbor (as the ledger records indicated that it was soon expected to deliver a small shipment of ivory). The open hull offered enough space for the five of them: three could work the vessel while two rested in shifts along the bottom boards or on the thwarts. Stranda used her maritime expertise and Rogue lockpicking skills to quietly sever the moorings and free the 30-foot boat. The short mast—no more than 15 feet or so—could be raised or lowered by two people in just a few moments; for now she stepped it and set the square sail while the others took the oars. Sten deployed an illusory duplicate via Invoke Duplicity on the opposite dock to draw away harbor guards who must have felt that something was amiss or happening outside of the expected schedule.
Kanto resurfaced from the harbor depths to help guide the sexæring through the treacherous coastal shoals. The light, shallow-draft boat responded readily to the oars and the small square sail, allowing the group to slip away into the dark waters of the strait without the navigational savvy of the locals. With three of them handling the tiller and either the sheets or oars while the other two rested low in the open hull, they made good time. Sailing the stolen 30-foot sexæring toward the sea-gates of Sjör with trade ledgers and sewer passcodes in hand, The Likely Cause prepared to complete the rest of their contract—the subterranean assault on the guild leader’s sewer stronghold. When the time came, the mast could be quickly unstepped and laid flat, dropping the boat’s profile to little more than the height of its low gunwales so it might slip into the large sewer outfall for a discreet approach and unloading.
Arriving at the sea-gates of Sjör aboard their stolen sexæring, The Likely Cause used the maps and diagrams discovered on Trow to slip beneath the stone-paved fjord port and into the dark, subterranean sewer canals. The air turned thick and reeking—stagnant water, rot, and the distant drip of unseen leaks echoing off slimy brick. Their objective was clear: infiltrate the elaborate sewer suite of the up-and-coming thieves’ guild leader—a skinny land-ogre named Per Tergenssen, who managed smuggling operations while keeping carefully out of sight of the city’s ruling aquatic ogresses—and extract him to fulfill their contract with Jarl Haakon.
To execute a quiet, disciplined raid without raising a city-wide alarm or the entire thieves’ guild, the party needed to leverage their full 4th-level toolkits. Kanto used Combat Wild Shape to take the form of a quiet sewer rat, vanishing into the shadows and slipping through iron grates and narrow drainage grilles. His tiny claws scraped against wet stone as he scouted the patrol routes, noting the flicker of torchlight around distant corners and the soft splash of boots in ankle-deep filth, until he located the leader’s suite.
Sten Lót applied Blessing of the Trickster to Stranda and positioned an illusory duplicate via Invoke Duplicity at a key pipe intersection. The spectral double drew the sentries’ eyes and crossbows away from the actual breach point, their muttered curses echoing down the tunnels as they chased a phantom.
Guided by Maga Tuura’s silent Telepathic Speech, Stranda relied on her Rogue Expertise and Cunning Action to pick the suite’s reinforced locks with practiced speed. Tumblers clicked softly in the gloom. One by one she dropped isolated guards with surgical Sneak Attacks—quick, precise thrusts that left bodies slumped against the damp walls before they could cry out.
When they breached the inner chamber, torchlight flared across damp stone and scattered maps. The skinny land-ogre and his elite bodyguards had been taken by complete surprise. They scrambled to mount a desperate defense, steel scraping free of scabbards, crossbows rising. Voimo, thus far having felt useless on this stealth mission, stepped into the vanguard without hesitation, joyfully entering a Barbarian Rage. His spectral Ancestral Protectors swirled into being around him like ghostly warriors, locking down the guards and blunting their strikes against his companions.
Sten’s armor and magic turned aside incoming crossbow bolts with sharp pings and flashes of protective force as he directed necrotic touch spells from his duplicate’s more-dangerous positioning. Maga Tuura’s psionic mind control lashed out, scrambling the target’s thoughts and leaving him reeling. Stranda and Kanto moved like shadows, rapidly subduing and binding the ogre rogue before he could unleash any of his Arcane Trickster magic.
Searching the captured land-ogre’s quarters before departing, the party recovered a fine, rune-etched rapier that later would prove to be a magical Weapon of Warning. They were lucky that the guild leader, casually relaxing in his lair, hadn’t been wearing it at his hip. With Voimo and Sten having won the previous magic item rolls, Kanto and Maga Tuura voluntarily passed on trying to win this one—neither having use for a rapier. They allowed Stranda to “win” the weapon without anyone rolling the dice for it.
With their captive bound and his men killed or knocked unconscious, the party chose not to explore the complex any further. They executed a swift retreat through the waterway, loading the bound ogre onto the sexæring and navigated out into the open fjord before the garrison positioned above had realized the underground suite had been compromised. Cool night air and the salt tang of the fjord replaced the sewer’s stench as they slipped away into the darkness.
Facing a 60-mile coastal voyage along the fog-choked waters of the Blinda Vågar (Sea of Blinding Waves) back to Kuurs in a small ship, and afraid that other members of the guild along the shoreline may have been magically alerted by now, the party chose instead to risk exhaustion. Thick, cold mist clung to the surface like wet wool, swallowing the horizon and turning every wave into a sudden, unseen roll. Lacking experienced sailors apart from Stranda, the crew managed only about 3 mph aboard the stolen sexæring instead of a full 5 mph, stretching the journey to roughly 20 grinding hours.
Because the vessel required at least two people on the oars or sails at all times, and a diligent navigator was required at all times in these waters, the group instituted a rolling shift system: while Stranda (the only one of them with Navigational skill) was forced to stay at the helm without rest, pairs of party members rotated through one-hour Short Rests to eat and drink while expending their Hit Dice and applying Healing Kit salves and bandages to their wounds from the sewer fight.
Sten Lót recovered his Channel Divinity, Kanto refreshed his Combat Wild Shape charges, and Voimo doubled his Hit Dice healing thanks to his Periapt of Wound Closure. Following these shifts, Sten and Maga Tuura attempted an eight-hour Long Rest to replenish their depleted spell slots and Sorcery Points, leaving a weary Voimo and Kanto to work the oars alongside a completely un-rested Stranda. The fog only thickened as the day plodded along into late afternoon.
Waves slapped the low gunwales with dull, relentless force. The open deck grew slick with spray. Quite frequently, breaks from rowing or sailing were needed to instead bail out water. Crucially, because Stranda had navigated non-stop without taking a Short Rest to attune to her newly acquired rapier, the party lacked its magical aura against surprise. Deep in the rolling sea fog, the Long Rest was brutally interrupted when a trio of Merrow ambushed the vessel.
Pale, scaled shapes surged up from the black water and hauled themselves over the gunwales with wet, scraping force, claws and crude harpoons and tridents flashing in the mist. A desperate, low-resource struggle erupted across the blood-slick deck. Always hesitant to be without it, the Ogre Maga Maga Tuura unleashed her innate, once-a-day use of Cone of Cold. The blast cracked and hissed across the fog, rime forming on wood and scale—but the sea-horrors, apparently used to the frigid waters, shrugged off the brunt of the freezing wave. Two of them coldly piled onto the sorceress, dragging her down amid thrashing limbs and guttural snarls.
After fighting for two rounds in his wolf form, Kanto saw her collapsing and voluntarily dropped his Wild Shape to cast Cure Wounds to protect her. The primal healing magic flared just in time—but without his added beast-form hit points to sustain him, the Skogsmann exposed his already wounded natural body. The third Merrow’s harpoon tore through the druid a heartbeat later, dropping him unconscious onto the planks.
Seeing this, Voimo entered an unvoluntary Rage and fought with furious grit at the two closest ogre-like fish humanoids. They fought back equally as hard, utilizing Pack Tactics. Nearly torn to ribbons by their claws and teeth in close quarters, the young Barbarian dropped to 0 hit points; his Periapt of Wound Closure stabilized him almost at once, and, due to the Relentless Endurance of his family bloodline, the young ogre teetered back temporarily to consciousness. This let him regain his footing in a spray of blood and seawater. The closest Merrow, already turning away and leaving him for dead, stared in shock as the barbarian rose again and drove a killing strike home. Moments later, his Adrenaline Rush now spent, Voimo collapsed a second time. One by one the party collapsed onto the bloodied, fog-wet deck until only Stranda remained. She stood alone in the heavy mist over the last of the three Merrow, herself barely clinging to consciousness, breath ragged, blade trembling in her grip.
During the conflict (and for much of the earlier voyage) the captive Per Tergenssen (bound and deprived of his spell components) had repeatedly rubbed his rope bindings against the deck planks and finally gnawed them apart once open melee ensued. Then, seeing all but one of his captors felled, rather than leaping into the freezing sea to escape, the rogue leader instead snatched up a fallen trident and lunged at Stranda.
In a final, desperate duel the two of them—both already wounded and exhausted—managed to strike each other simultaneously. They collapsed senseless onto the deck together. The ship drifted silently through the dense fog. Each member of the party, one remaining Merrow, and Tergenssen made their Death Saves, stabilizing at 0 hit points. Stranda, however, rolled a Natural 20 on her third attempt, regaining 1 hit point and shocking her body back to consciousness. Bleeding, swaying, and half-blind with exhaustion, she crawled across the deck and cut the throat of the last Merrow. Then she rebound the unconscious guild leader with shaking hands, and began the slow, painstaking work of nursing her companions back from the brink.
The next session will begin in Kuurs after the party has delivered their contract alive and trained themselves to 5th level.
Returning to Kuurs after their grueling ordeal on the Blinda Vågar, The Likely Cause wasted no time discarding the stolen sexæring. They sold the vessel in a fire-sale for less than half its worth, glad simply to be rid of it and any temptation to go back out onto the sea. Almost at once, Jarl Haakon bound them to another contract “on the water”: board a sleek dragon longship laden with lightweight, high-value cargo and guard it through a long, freezing voyage north into the Iskallt Hav toward the port of Mäki.
Frustration simmered beneath the party’s silence. In private they wondered why their Lich master still kept them chained to Haakon’s service and Kuurs. The jarl noted their lack of zeal, offered a knowing nod and a wild grin, then delivered his parting words: “I want you to know that it’s been decent knowing ‘The Likely Cause.’ I gave favorable reviews for all of you to your master. After completing this last mission for me, report to the harbormaster at Mäki; she’ll direct you to your next handler… I suspect I’ll look pretty good to you in hindsight.”
The early leg of the journey stretched long and tedious, thick with tense anticipation and false alarms as the longship deliberately bypassed the royal capital of Sampo. Even Kanto, who normally disliked crowds, regretted that they never pulled into the docks to resupply or steal a glimpse of the city. Excitement, however, found them soon enough.
As the longship entered the wind-whipped expanse of the Iskallt Hav, two lean pirate knarrs closed from opposite angles, riding winds far more favorable than those filling the dragon ship’s sails. Escape on open water was impossible. The party prepared to defend the deck beside a crew composed mostly of non-combatant rowers.
Rather than dissolving into chaotic brawl, The Likely Cause moved as a single, tightly synchronized weapon. Maga Tuura anchored their coordination by activating Telepathic Speech, cutting cleanly through the roaring gale and stinging sea spray so that thoughts flashed silently between them. From her vantage high in the rigging, the Oni ogress tracked which knarr was committing its forces, where the next wave would strike, and which sections of rail were about to be overrun. She timed the attack waves with ruthless precision while remaining free to hurl lethal, metamagic-extended distance spells.
Before the first boarding axes bit into timber, Sten Lót laid Blessing of the Trickster upon the deck fighters and cast Invoke Duplicity, placing an illusory double squarely in the main boarding path. The duplicate drew the pirates’ opening missile volleys and sowed immediate confusion, allowing Sten to strike with spells—Sacred Flame and Guiding Bolt—from unexpected angles while remaining shielded behind the main mast.
Voimo surged across the slick, pitching deck with Fast Movement, becoming the mobile anvil of the defense. In full Barbarian Rage he leveraged Extra Attack, his axe now crashing twice each turn into the densest clusters of boarders. Ancestral Protectors rose around him—spectral giant forebears that haunted the raiders, imposing disadvantage on any attack not aimed at Voimo himself. Most would have preferred to avoid the young ogre entirely, and the spectral guardians bled the pressure from the rest of the crew.
Stranda, seizing early initiative through Rakish Audacity, dominated the shifting deck skirmishes with Swashbuckler fluidity. She triggered Sneak Attack on isolated boarders, then used Fancy Footwork to strike with her rapier and glide away along gunwales and mast without provoking opportunity attacks. When a rail threatened to buckle under sheer numbers, she triggered Cunning Action to reposition and unleashed Action Surge in a blur of steel that cleared the breach. Second Wind kept her upright through the heavy blows that still landed.
Kanto shifted fluidly between forms, using bonus-action Combat Wild Shape to become a sure-footed dire wolf. He kept his footing on the rolling vessel, knocked boarders prone, tore through grappling lines and boarding ladders, and spent spell slots as bonus actions to heal himself after arrows found their mark.
Then the enemy sorcerer revealed himself.
Standing amidships on the nearer knarr, the rival caster raised both hands and began flinging magic with cold precision—mostly at the vulnerable rowers rather than the hardened adventurers to cripple their mobility. A Scorching Ray streaked across the gap and slammed into the oar benches; two rowers screamed as flames licked their backs and the rhythm of the longship’s stroke faltered. Moments later, as the knarr came closer, a Shatter exploded against the port rail, splintering wood and hurling three more crewmen into the freezing water. A third spell—Ray of Sickness—washed over the remaining rowers nearest the boarding point, leaving them retching and weakened just as another wave of human pirates surged across the lines. The longship’s remaining non-combatants began to break and jump overboard; panic flickered along the benches.
Tuura answered at once, her Fireball (metamagic-extended) blooming across the enemy sorcerer’s knarr and forcing him to dive for cover. Sten’s Spiritual Weapon materialized beside the river caster, hammering him relentlessly, while Voimo’s Ancestral Protectors and Stranda’s relentless rail-clearing bought the remaining rowers precious seconds to recover. Kanto, still in dire-wolf form, drag one half-dazed crewman to safety before returning to the fray.
The fight grew desperate. Boarders gained a temporary foothold amidships; arrows and axes found flesh; the deck ran slick with blood and seawater. Yet by channeling every ability into controlled chokepoints, the party systematically shattered the pirates’ momentum. The enemy sorcerer fell beneath a final coordinated barrage. Afterward, from his body they recovered a Bloodwell Vial (+1). Recognizing its value to an arcane caster, Kanto insisted Maga Tuura take the artifact instead of the two of them dicing. True to her aristocratic Ogre Maga pride, she accepted it to bolster her sorcery—though she made no secret of her irritation that a “forest-kin” had dared publicly to do her a favor.
With the raiders broken and a handful of the longship’s regular crew taking control of one captured knarr, the dragon ship resumed its course toward Mäki at half speed, reaching its harbor only a few hours behind schedule. After a brief stop in a shady pier-side tavern, The Likely Cause tracked down the harbormaster to receive further their instructions.
The next session will begin with the party meeting their next handler.