The Last Words

The adventures of our brave fellowship finally came to and end in the summer 2012. The campaign was a huge success, greatly because the DM with partial aid from Melkors player, planned the main plot all the way back then when the heroes were just 1 level greenhorns. That kept the adventure nicely together without sliding into dumb sidequests or into general mindset of indolence. But what did we get from our four main characters?

Warning! Contains spoilers!

• Arius was taken to the adventure by sudden and the young boy was soon informed about his magnificent future as the rightful king of Darnon. Sadly much of his efforts were sort of in vain as Melkor revealed his true agendas. Arius felt like a puppet, but because of his honor, he fought for Darnon until the end. In the end he united with his father, Melkor, and looked forward in to ruling the kingdom of Darnon.
  The relationship of Arius and Melkor was one of the key plotlines planned before the campaign even started. It came up good, and for the players the revelation of their true bond was as shocking as the famous scene in Star Wars.
• Melkor was the mastermind behind all their efforts. He did everything for his own agendas of capturing the Eye of Karsus, a powerful Netherese artifact. Cold, calculating and cruel, he was a quite a character, he even had his own theme music! 
Although Melkor had his good side, it was well hidden all the way to the end, when he saved (some say accidentally!) the last darnonese soldiers alongside with his son and friends. At least in the ending he gave up his cold facade and embraced his son for the first real time.
As said, Melkor the loremaster was essential character for the DM to push the adventure forward. Melkors player received many secret notes depicting the future moves of the wizard, a quite cunning way to emphasize his ?26? intelligent score!! and the knowledge that his prestige class Loremaster gave him.

• Jared was the cleric that destroyed undeads like thin glass vases. Jared was always bit in a auxiliary role, although he had his moments. When Jared was killed by the giant undead maggot in the battle of Durunmer, his player had great doubts about resurrecting him. We managed to make a deal where Jared actually died and his body and soul was taken by a colossal demon entity known as Gor Marrak (which I had introduced, then forgotten, but which made some "sense" why the cleric was possessed) which avatar/servant manifested in the final battle. Losing Jared saddened the happy ending a bit, but was in line with sacrifices that had to be made in order to save Darnon. A statue was later raised for Jareds memory in Iriaebor, and the brave cleric was heightened as the Patron Saint Jared of Iriaebor.
• Douglas was the good guy behind it all. Always there, always ready, maybe bit uneffective against undeads and constructs, the rogue did his share of turning people and creatures into "luskanese bagpipes". He was known for his legendary sarcasm and wit, and he was probably the only one that never had any hidden plots behind him. Well he had his personal encounter with the torture chambers of Asbravn. Douglas should have deserved some more personal plotlines, but after all, Melkor hired him to aid rescuing Arius, and the thief stuck with the others in order to gain more wealth. His death and "faceswap" episode made us consider the pros & cons of raising the dead, and for the new campaign we decided to introduce a new system to replace the raise dead-magicks.

But now we are ready to depart from the Kingdom of Darnon, the greatest adventure of our gaming career. Personally as a Dungeon Master, the campaign has been a rewarding one. It sure has been a blessing and a pain, seeing the players actually excited by the adventures and plots, but also the planning processes have been the most demanding yet, almost exhausting. And then is this blog, demanding even more efforts. But the blog collects my thoughts about the late adventure and helps me to plan the new one, so I guess we're slightly on the positive side with this one. I had considered leaving the chair  of Dungeon Master for a while, letting one of the players to game few adventures of something totally different, but as the campaign ended, everybody was so excited in creating a new one, as was i, so I guess no pause for me, the adventure calls! And this time it calls in the north, be my guest and take a peek at the "To the North"-campaign blog!

Now this is the farewell!
Yours truly,
Jakubias the Dungeon Master