The Messiah of Hope:

• The entire Cannons episode is perhaps still the highlight of all my campaigns for general player fellowship, atmosphere, adventure, and player use of resource, as well as some wonderful interactions with characters and Sidney and Elliott's finest lines. The party was sent to the drow elven nation of Caerdwonnum (then part of the Ailanea-Ranu supercontinent) to stop the Vesturian/Drow alliance from using the Gifted, world-destroying Cannons they had stolen from the Vault of the Last Guardians. They snuck in and gathered intel, then formulated a plan which involved Kateri sneaking in glamoured as an enemy officer, communicating through their magical necklaces, and Elliott using his Gift to make a juggernaut siege engine to knock the Cannons off their giant platforms. Meanwhile, the others would wait by to do what they could. The idea of knocking Gifted, giant, world-destroying Cannons to the ground prompted Sidney to quip, "What do we do if the subtle plan fails?" In the course of the event, Elliott managed to sneak atop a platform, disguised as an evil gnome, and hold the entire area hostage ("People of Vesturia and the drow nations, Do you want to die today?!"). Kateri gathered information, Ferali the Last Guardian destroyed Cannons with his Gifted Sword, and one of the cannons obliterated a temple after it fell over. In the end, they succeeded by using the Cannons to destroy the other Cannons, and generally creating sheer, unadulterated madness.
• After the fall of Avagen, the campaign was officially over, but there was a one off to wrap things up that had many of the heroes going, twenty years later, to face Deserel on Ansulym. Her death was scripted, but the ensuing fight with Raithev (who stole her soul) followed him through the Hells. Two moments are worth noting here: (1) Raithev managed, through manipulation and cunning, to convince Dmitri Molotov, a noble but clever maze-maker thief and mage, to turn sides and (2) Virgil Simon, seeing his twin brother who was linked to him via a Gifted Sword steal the soul of Deserel after Raithev was slain, sealed the Sword of Hope in order to prevent a repeat episode of the battle everyone had just been through, neatly capping off the entire campaign as the story of the Sword of Hope.
• For much of the game, the heroes had no recourse when facing Avagen. He was a god, he didn't follow rules, and they had no weapons to harm him. Then, they got the Sword of Roses. In the sewers of Iescu, a major Tara'hinian port under Vesturian military control, the heroes were escaping after a successful mission, when Avagen appeared. At the time, the Sword was in the hands of Vanhulle, the Master Sender, for some reason. As everyone escaped, he took a pot shot at Avagen and managed to cut him since the god assumed the Sword would not work. When he realized he had been cut, Sidney felt via empathy that Avagen was terrified. The heroes took heart.
• Nathan loves to tell the story of the heroes in the drow-occupied elven lands, helping the elves fight the war. The armies all lined up, but there'd been some inconsistencies in the back and forth. Kateri slipped into the enemy lines in glamour, sneaking up on the enemy commander. Only, when she does, she finds out that he is in fact the Tara'hinian shapeshifting spymaster Klaus Reidelene in disguise. Cheeky, I know.
• The very first battle the heroes ever found themselves in came when a fleet of flying dragonships descended upon the circus the heroes initially traveled with. Vesturian slavers spilled out and brutality followed, but the arrival of those dragonships was apparently an evocative image to start a campaign on.
• On one of the moons, where gravity was low, Elliott decided, for whatever reason, that using a massive juggernaut siege engine as transportation was a good idea. If nothing else captures the madness of the gnomes, that did.
• When Balkis got fed up with Tara'hin's slow response to the War of the Gods, she left on her own and sought power and adventure. She ended up in the Aeridan Mountains, which at the time were home to dragons. She met Hutyra, an old man who happened to serve the King of the Dragons. Via him, she met Ernogemous himself, and the two became fast friends.
• The best character the tyrant ever ran was Takhuk Grendaar, the GMPC of the first campaign. Solid, quiet, and sometimes putupon, he ended up having to face a demon king in single combat. His response was not fear or anger or madness, but exasperation. Sidney, being empathic, noticed, and legends were built upon it.
• In the Havens, outside the Library of Nomus, Sidney (in his finest moment of audacity) quipped with Elliott several phallic jokes involving various divines. Enough said.
• Toward the end of the campaign, Paralaxyl just snapped. He had a run in with chaos, and he just lost it. He kept a beholder eyestalk with him, he cut out the tongue of a gnomish alchemist, and he cut off the ear of one of the villains, tied them on a string and wore them as a necklace. He formulated his own religion, quit the special forces, and left to start the Cult of the Mouth of Chaos, which persists to this day.
• Omar was overpowered from the beginning, but part of his story was seeking the long lost watchers of the Faith of Hurshul. He found, eventually, that they existed out of synch with time by stopping it. One of the earliest and best examples of the Age of Legends.
• In perhaps the most tragic moment of the campaign, the heroes were running from a death knight and its ethereal horde, when the death knight called out to Lydia the Left-Handed to duel him. Thinking her friends needed time to escape, she stopped to duel him, and in a few swift blows, he slew her. Using her last strength, she took her Gifted Sword of Frost and Sealed it. The other heroes, meanwhile, stopped and came back to help her, only to find her dead. Kateri simply shot once and took the death knight's undead existence away from him with her Gifted Bow.
• During a one off, Rochar the Red and the thief Sather were involved with some others in a high seas caper that ended with a raid on a treasure trove. Sather took the opportunity to steal a Gifted Mace, and Rochar, suspecting that Sather had something, had a discussion with him. Rochar and Sather talked, and Rochar used various tricks to try to get Sather to admit he had treasure, but none prevailed before Sather escaped. The scene, however poorly described, was one of the more humorous and yet tense scenes in the campaign.
• Another moment of wonder from the very earliest parts of the campaign came when, in trouble, the ringmaster of the circus revealed that he was, in fact, a dragon, proving that on Shem, anything could happen.

---

Samuel Jericho & the Fingers of Deserel

• The defining moment of Samuel Jericho's career came at the very end of the campaign. No matter how much evil he knew was in a woman, he could never let one be harmed. Throughout the campaign, he had lived this motivation to the hilt, never once wavering (though sometimes trying and failing to defend a woman). After the Fingers had been slain, after Malefestra had been turned, after the dust had settled, the holy squire Keyon Tanner turned to stop Rhevalla Sris, Prophetess of the Webweaver, from leaving to create more evil in the world. Rhevalla, cousin of the Webweaver and his most powerful servant, was undeniably the most evil figure there. Samuel Jericho, though, would not allow Keyon to harm her. He stood between her and the boy-paladin. He refused to back down, allowing the most insidious being on Shem to one day rise to supremacy in the courts of the divine.
• Another moment of Samuel Jericho's protectiveness of females came when he was facing Malefestra, another undeniably evil individual. Trying very hard to bring things to a satisfactory conclusion, without harming her, he snuck into her palace and worked his way to her, and began discussing and working with her. He had, before he snuck in, told his friends to wait outside. They didn't listen, and just as he was beginning to deal with her, they barged in and forced her to react. In order to save her, and them, he used his powerful Lover's Touch prayer, causing her to love him with utter and complete perfection. Doing so broke his heart, and he wept at having done so. (For the record, she eventually got better, but found the need to atone for the sins of her past, and sank in the past with the continent of Fasune.)
• In the elven lands, on the eve of the first diplomatic meeting of drow and high elf, Samuel Jericho, Rhevalla Sris, Belle Reed, Imugawa Hanzou, Sarah Chase, and Marius Tove sat down to a card game--strip poker. Belle and Rhevalla and Sarah conspired to cheat Samuel Jericho to nudity, and did so with gusto. This card game and the subsequent naughty antics that followed (including Marius and Hanzou engaging in some rather confused activity--Hanzou thinking Marius was a heron, for instance ("I have a bird in my pants!" [it made sense at the time, sorta])) dominated the session, with the only real action occurring near the end as Malefestran agents attacked and Celeanna, goddess of inspiration, appearing for the first time (and turning Hanzou into Callipe, the First Muse). While storywise, the ending might seem the moment of note, the players spent six hours simply interacting and having a good time, and to this day, it remains a favorite because of the card game.
• In the deepest recesses of the world, an ancient temple to Deserel sat buried and guarded by the fallen angel Kanjirathael. The temple, site of a bleak and dark betrayal by the Last Guardians (who made a deal with Deserel to seal the gods), was hidden away and cursed. Samuel Jericho ended up there, discovering the truth, and facing the fallen angel (which are the most powerful of all demons). Having no weapons but his belt knife to fight with, Samuel Jericho did the impossible: he wrapped his holy symbol of the goddess of love around the hilt of the knife and leaped at the angel, plunging the knife into the angel's head. Miraculously, the blade, empowered by the holy symbol and Samuel Jericho's faith, destroyed the angel.
• Richard Healfdane was a bit of a rogue, a charming, freewheeling Dhunic nobleman whose older brother was the good sheep of the family. Richard liked a good time. However, after a hunting party with the prince of Tara'hin went wrong, he found his life taking a turn for the serious. He ended up with the Gifted Sword of Luck and a debt to Tara'hin. He discovered the Dhunic nobleman Presley Green was a traitor, and he vowed to end him. He traveled to Ansulym with Samuel Jericho and others and faced the traitor in single combat in Malefestra's dark empire. Wielding a Gifted Sword, he easily won, taking the traitor's head. He then celebrated in one of the most grim, psychotic moments possible, holding up the head and smiling madly at it, spinning it for effect.
• Rhevalla Sris was cousin, as we said, to the Webweaver, who famously cut out his own eye to earn a Gifted one from the Grey Crone, daughter of Quilia, Mother of Undeath. He used that Gifted Eye to his advantage for decades before he ascended to Undead Immortal status. In an effort to emulate her powerful cousin and earn the right to be his prophetess, Rhevalla took a dagger and removed her own eye in the jungles of Kali. As reward, Raithev gave her a new one, black and tainted with red spiderwebs.
• The changeling St. Theresa was an information broker in Galdun before she met Samuel Jericho. She was clever and resourceful, but when the lovable deserter fell into her life, things started to change. For one thing, she kind of fell in love with him. She ended up moving her operations to Merukis, a much more centralized location, and meeting and instantly hating Rhevalla Sris. From there, she just ended up getting bigger and bigger.
• On Merukis, Samuel Jericho met up with old friend Jae Aroca. Jae had come into a Gifted Bodhran that made people dance, and he was a bit paranoid about it. He made a comment about not wanting it stolen, and Samuel Jericho quipped that if he were going to steal it, he'd buy Jae a drink first. Later in that session, as it happened, Samuel Jericho's niece was found having been turned into a vampire. Needing a miracle to restore her, Samuel Jericho prayed to his goddess, Thamia, and found himself in her presence. She told him that she could revive his niece, but it would make her weak to assault by her enemies. Not wanting to risk his goddess, he knew that trading a Gift for his niece's life would work. So, he found Jae, bought him a drink (laced with sleeping drugs) and stole the poor reever's Gift. He then offered it up and restored his niece. The inadvertent foreshadowing could not have been done better if we had planned it.
• As stated above, Samuel Jericho could never let a woman be harmed. However, Farah Volkv found his limits. She was a Vesturian woman who made a deal with the newly born Zegara, goddess of envy, and became the second doppelganger, a being who could consume the identity of others. She then joined the Spider Cult, the Webweaver's fledgling faith. In the jungles of Kali, while acting as a bodyguard to Rhevalla, she captured a tribal felinian and, feeling the need to consume someone, took his identity. Samuel Jericho, witnessing this, became disgusted and horrified, and Farah, now physically male, ceased to be under his protection.
• The villain Savanis was one of the earliest villains I ran that had the style needed to really work as a villain. He was affably evil. He still managed to piss off the heroes, and the shaman Aecha Gotog found him especially horrible. So when he finally ended up at the mercy of Gotog, Gotog did not hesitate. He used his massive badgerman claws to crush the bastard's skull.
• The family Tove was cursed. Their ancestor had made a deal with a monastic order called the Fingers of Deserel, and this ended in the whole family being cursed. In game mechanics, this meant that every time a triple was rolled (three ones, three twos, and so on) a different effect occurred, giving rise to the players announcing "triple [insert number here], Tove." Every session had a member of the Tove family in it in this campaign, and the story progressed with their growing awareness of the plot. When the curse was finally broken, the eldest member of the Tove family, Anton, instantly died, while Lucas, the youngest, mastered the power of controlling curses.

---

The Law-Master

• The absolute best thing to come out of this campaign was the mischievous and mysterious Grinning Men. Derf and Tal fashioned makeshift masks that included a wink and a smile on them, and went about causing trouble in various places and for various reasons, ultimately creating a Shem tradition that is a source of wonder and delight.
• The campaign's end, however, had perhaps the best moment from it: Berrin Toddbrook, the put upon shellen healer, proved his greatness and goodness and was given the opportunity to define the next age. He chose Hope, allowing for the release of the Gods and the rise of mortality to come. He also found his home in a quiet plot of land north of Ienova.
• Meanwhile, Derf put gnomish ingenuity to good use and invented, amongst other things, the hookshot.
• And Tal repeatedly made good use of her faith in the god of change to gain advantage over her enemies--most notably while shackled by a Sister of Destruction, she changed the chains so that she could wield them as a weapon. The Sister, not knowing this, was caught completely by surprise when the heavy chains slammed into her temple, killing her instantly.

---

The Rise of Terror

• Hollow Jack was once a human prince of the dark nation of Mal'sk. He loved to hunt, and being a decent hunter, he loved to hunt dangerous prey--people. He found a Roma tribe passing through his realm, and he set out to decimate them. Ramsay, as he was known at the time, killed each and every one, and as he hunted down the last of them, the young girl he sought used the Shemmish tradition of invoking justice to curse the bastard that had slaughtered her and her family. Ramsay went home, unconcerned, and sat down to a meal with his family. As soon as he took a bite, his insides rebelled--and spilled out of his mouth. In that instant, his mother died of shock and his father went slightly mad. Rats flowed from the walls and filled Ramsay, turning him into the walking, rat-filled horror Hollow Jack. Banished by his own father, he wandered the land and became a legendary monster. Years later, he rose to the role of Champion of Pestilence, master Body Mage, and Bringer of Plagues. He returned home and found his father, bringing with him great power, and captured his own kingdom back. He gave his father all seven of the great plagues and watched him die, forcing his father to apologize repeatedly on his deathbed.
• Genfyllid Cuniaid was a conniving Aeldian noblewoman who sought to become the greatest doppelganger that ever lived. She preferred female forms, strong and beautiful ones, and she embodied the role of the being of envy. She left her home to see the world and fell in with those who would one day be the Champions of Terror. She herself became the Champion of Envy, and she returned to her own home, where she immediately became embroiled in the race to become the next High King. She took down her rivals, one by one, either by winning the various trials or by poison, intrigue, or, in one case, marriage. In the end, she killed her own father, several of her enemies, married another, and made the rest her vassals.
• Elden Overbough was in a tough position, leading the future Champions of Terror to their destiny, so it was no wonder he needed to blow off steam once in a while. However, being a priest of undeath and a control freak, his methods for doing so were less than savory. Indeed, they were perhaps the most depraved in game yet--after killing a few of his enemies, including a beautiful, sweet voiced woman, he forced them via his powers to make love to him.
• Gabriel Leannan was never properly loved, being untouchable by bare flesh (his skin would burn living flesh to touch him), and thus, he grew up a complete sociopath. Charming, handsome, graceful, rich, and evil beyond compare. He hated himself and others, and took pleasure in using his privilege to get away with everything. He was also an excellent swordsman. So great was he that, when ambushed by thirty centaurs, he did not hesitate to fight them each and all... and he won. Referred to as the "thirty centaurs and a dog" story as a reference to a Discworld story.
• Nicolle Deaver's best moment, I feel, came early on, when, while interacting with the mad, feral child Michael Vane, she became fed up with him and beat him with a wrench. She was a mechanic short on patience and compassion, and dealing with a mad child with fangs was not on her to do list. So, she bashed his head with a big wrench. When his magically strengthened skeleton resisted it, she did it again, just to get the message across. Do not fuck with Nicolle.
• Hollow Jack's other darkest and finest moment came when the villains (err, main characters) needed something from a well fortified city. Instead of sneaking in or fighting their way in, he sent a few of his rats in--carrying plagues. Before a week was out, most of the city was dead, and the villains only had to waltz in and take what they wanted.
• Gabriel Leannan, meanwhile, had daddy issues of his own to deal with. He was, unwittingly, the son of the (False) Messiah of Love (who was in turn the immortal son of Samuel Jericho), and when Gabriel learned this, he realized he would have to destroy hundreds of siblings and nephews and nieces and so on, because those of his blood were the only ones who could actually harm him. He went to the city where his father lived and... found his father repentant for how he Gabriel had been raised. Momentarily, this put Gabriel off guard, but his father's love was, in the end, not enough. Gabriel dueled and killed his father, then went on to massacre everyone else with his blood.
• The moment we knew the party was evil, the moment we truly saw how the campaign would go, came when they had to get information out of an elderly scholar woman. Instead of dealing with her, as soon as she showed resistance, they tortured her. Brutally, and in detail, they tortured an old woman to death to get what they wanted. And it worked.
• In another example of villainous depravity, Michael Vane, the Champion of Darkness and insane, psychotic orphan, went to the Hells and found the souls of 13 horrible traitors from history. He then used his powers to weave these souls into the form of a woman who looked an awful lot like his mother. He named her Guinevere, after his mother, and gave her life as the Queen of Traitors--and his consort.
• Traa' Arkaun, the Champion of Destruction, wore armor forged from the remains of a morag, a being of pure destructive power, and wielded a maul made of the same. In the final battle to seal the Mother of Hope, he single-handedly held her off while his allies completed the ceremony to seal her away.

---

The Runners

• Sendai Taro was a new age doctor and a peaceful monk. He never killed. He always incapacitated. He healed with feng shui, chiropracty, and other strange therapies, and he lived in a world of Terror. While traveling with a crew of Runners, he met Bequn, son of the Mother of Peace, and in the instant they met, he knew he had met his master. After a long and arduous journey to bring the world to a new Age, Taro returned and became Champion of Peace, and Bequn became his student.
• Baeluhk Greniir was an ogre. He was a bit simple, but he wasn't evil. He had a family he loved and a good soul. He was, however, a vessel of violence, and he became the perfect student of Egil Salil, the First Sword. However, his finest moment came from his interactions with the infamous drink the Souls of Vesturians. In a hidden Runner-run bar, he tried it--and found it quite effective. The future Champion of War was lain low by strong liquor and mild narcotics.
• Juan Gracia was an ulus-tythe. He had to speak lies or he would suffer pain. In order to get around this, he told stories. Part of his journey as a Runner brought him and his companions to a secret library where dwelt the Beast of Ordeals. In order to pass, he had to speak truth. With difficulty beyond measure, he managed to spit the words out, showing his inner strength in a moment that was both touching and awesome.
• Jumana, the first Runner, kept to herself. She was paranoid and powerful, and when she finally did come to trust people, it was after a great trial. During the middle years of the Age of Terror, when the Champion of Despair ruled, she made friends with a man that refused to hide behind a number, named Grayson Caer. He lead the Runners and many others in revolt and faced down the dark leaders of the world--until he was betrayed by one of his closest advisors, a man Jumana never quite learned about. Not, that is, until many millenia later, when she was facing the end of the Age of Terror. She met a sorceror named Jedidiah Thrace, who took great delight in tormenting her and taunting her. In time, she learned he was the man who betrayed her friend, mentor, and hero. So after great trial and tribulation, she faced him in a Wizard's Duel. She, as Champion of Music, and he, as Champion of Betrayal, faced off with incredible magical powers, and she destroyed him quickly. As his blood spilled over the floor, though, it quickly became apparent he had one last trick: he summoned the demonic Master of the Wild Hunt. With nothing left, Jumana reached into her bag of tricks and desperately fought the most feared enemy of her kind, barely surviving.
• In the end, though, the ultimate villain was the Champion of Despair. He had set up an intricate and demented plan to get the final war of the world into action, and as it began, the Runners went to his fortress to destroy him. His power was so great, however, that it took several holy Gifts to destroy his ethereal form. Riquita Xerxes, Champion of Vision, not having a Gifted weapon, was last to find a way to harm him, the last piece of the puzzle. She used her faith to summon the mythical Ki-Rin, which appeared and impaled the despair-being, ending him.

---

The Three Brothers

• Albert Renkarr, as far as Matrim Argent knew, was an aberration. Because of the Empire of Maraddon's dogma, Matrim believed Albert was inherently evil. Matrim was an Identifier, a person whose job it was to check the children of nobles to ensure they were not aberrations, and to report them when they were. He fully and wholeheartedly believed. Over the course of the campaign, however, he found that not all was what it seemed--Albert was a decent enough fellow, for one. For another, nothing he thought was true was turning out to be so--his siblings were only half-siblings, the Empire was full of bastards, his mother was completely cold and evil... And Matrim himself was hanged for treason, only to awaken to find orders from his Emperor to take up a new mantle (Caspian) and seek to do what was right. As he entered this new life, he met Albert again and had a talk. In it, Albert inadvertently said everything Matrim ever wanted to hear. Within moments, Caspian (nee Matrim) was on his knees swearing fealty to Albert Renkarr, the idealistic young man from another continent who came to free his people from oppression.
• Paul Driver believed in the notions of home and country, of civic pride and keeping your people safe. He failed at this early in the campaign through little fault of his own, but he took up the pain and anguish of that and he used it to drive him to make things right. He became, slowly, an agent of pure justice. However, deep in his heart, he still carried that burning desire for revenge. On the eve of the final showdown with the ones responsible for all the horrors he had lived over the course of the last year or so, he looked deep within himself and cleansed his soul of that burning hatred. He just walked it away, let it go, and found in himself the mercy that tempers justice.
• Meanwhile, Viollca Lovell found herself dealing with her own powers--that is, to see the spectral undead as they walked the world and to feel them as corporeally as she would any living thing. She knew where the weakest of the lost souls were and she had the power to send them to the afterlife. She had access to the psycho-spiritual realm called the Cave of Souls, and in the end, she realized, she had access to her own metaphysical being there. She could, with her powers, look into the eyes of a spectral being and allow them to switch metaphysical places with her. While in the Cave of Souls, though, she did the same to her own metaphysical being. Doing so allowed her to unlock the depths of her own soul, making the incomplete power of mediumship blossom into the full strength of soul magic.
• Aldo Murgen was a priest of the Silver Mother, Ashariel, Mother of Life, and an old drunken dwarf to boot. He found as he journeyed with the heroes that he was chosen to become a Silver Walker, one who would find as he traveled all the old connections of his life coming together as he walked to his own death. Every time part of his past confronted him, his faith would grow in strength, but his death would come closer and closer. Only by uniting his being with another could he avoid the inevitable, but nothing was certain. However, as his power grew, so did the miracles he performed. One thing that held pretty constant on Shem was how mortals usually could not imbue new powers on Gifts with magic or faith, but with the strength of his faith, Aldo managed not just to imbue a new power upon the Hammer he forged of Gifted Metal, but to bring it to life. The Hammer became a close companion of the old priest.
• Naitaka "Taka" Citlali was a later addition to the heroic party, but her story did culminate with meeting the dashing tren hero Jean Luc d'Artagnan, a fencer and unwilling agent of the bad guys. However, his revelation of being an agent of the bad guys kinda sorta crushed his chances with her, and he swore to find a way to be worthy of her. Instead, he stumbled into the path of the Devil, who tricked him into becoming something much worse. Driven mad and seeking to win her, he journeyed to the place of the final showdown, where he destroyed the monster Taka had been hunting and faced her himself. Moving past the tragedy before her, she used the powers she had gained to mercifully put the once charming warrior down.
• Damon Argent was Matrim's father, and one of the most powerful nobles in the Empire. He was also a low ranking knight and secretly merely human (meaning he should not have been a noble), but that never stopped him. Through iron will and incredible wit, he forged a comprehensive network of spies and soldiers, rose to high military rank, and became the Emperor's most trusted agent. His wife, a conniving bitch who murdered the mother of his first child and forced him into an arranged marriage, consorted with traitors. She bore a son by another man, but Damon raised that boy as his own, and she bore Matrim by Damon, and Damon shielded Matrim from the terrors of the world (over sheltered, as it turned out). So when Matrim discovered his mother's treachery by finding her holding a poisoned needle to his elder (half-)sister's neck, Matrim did the unthinkable: he killed her. Innocent, noble Matrim killed his own mother in the first watershed moment of the campaign. After Yvenna (his mother) fell to the ground, the room filled with Damon's agents, and Matrim, slipping into shock, realized the cavalry had arrived as Damon and his old friends Kaylarr and Arlie showed up.
• Damon Argent's days as a special forces agent, however, make almost every other moment listed seem... well, paltry. Sent to the Empire of Atanaxus to break up a smuggling operation run by insectoid animalmen (who ruled Atanaxus), Damon Argent and his companions (including Kaylarr Vernac and Arlie Battisto) had to travel back to Maraddon via the many thousand mile long Island Bridge that connected the continents of Ranu and Taggarus. On their way north, the crew ran into trouble in the form of a storm and some morags, during which Damon and Arlie somehow ended up naked (long story). Finding shelter by a massive rock, the two hunkered down and slept, only to awaken and find that (a) the rock was a morag and (b) a hex of hexars was nearby sinking islands. Seeing no alternative plan present, Damon and Arlie did the only sensible thing for a bad ass and a mad mad could do--they charged, naked, at the six unmortal beings of pure destructive magic and attacked.
• Albert Renkarr fell in love with his bodyguard, a former gladiator from his homeland named Caradonna Dedizione. She stuck with him through thick and thin and nearly bore his child. The turning point for Albert was seeing her assaulted by a superstrong villain, killing the child she was bearing. From that moment on, Albert left behind his carefree delight in the world and took the war seriously. So when, at the cusp of the final showdown, Caradonna (whose real last name was Thrace) reversed her iconic red cloak to magically shift it to yellow, the color of the enemy, he was devastated. As she revealed via her hidden psionic abilities every other moment she had betrayed him and his companions over the course of that year or so, he just broke down. He was defeated, completely and utterly, and to this day, he bears the pain of her betrayal with him.
• The most prominent villain throughout the campaign was Chaos's Fool, Belizo Avam, a shapeshifting, chaotic jester who taunted and tormented the party every step of the way, giving them hints, helping them out, then subjecting them to horrors and agony for laughs. His most insidious moment, though, was when the party came down out of the mountains after a significant but hard won victory to find ten thousand people, many of whom they knew, crucified.
• And speaking of horrors, the first part of the campaign took place in the quiet village of Anlir, where a murder got things rolling. As sheriff, Paul Driver took his job of taking care of the town very seriously. Aldo was the local priest of life, and the others were new in town. But when, shortly after they arrived, millions of cockroaches swarmed the town and destroyed it, leaving very little but a thin film of black filth, all of them knew nothing would ever be the same again.

---

The Sound & the Fury

• Arlie Battisto went from fighting hexes with Damon to jamming with a motley band of musicians as part of an undercover mission. His wife, meanwhile, once a pirate and now a privateer, found herself bored with living a legal and civilized lifestyle. So when Arlie and his band helped arrange an invasion of the Reever Empire that dominated the seas and Merukis, she lead the charge... and took the opportunity to conquer the Reever Empire for herself instead of Maraddon. Returning to her old ways as Merian Blood, she declared "We sail for blood!" and took the fight directly to the Merukisi reevers. In the ensuing battle on the docks of Merukis, though, she took a fatal wound, and Arlie faced true and total despair. In the moments where she lie dying, all thoughts of duty vanished, and all that mattered was Merian. A Gift revived her, and afterward, he knew he could not be without her. She knew, too, that she could not let him go. Over the course of the rest of the campaign, they came slowly toward the arrangement that she'd bear him three children and he'd stay with her no matter what after he finished his last mission.
• Arlie, meanwhile, did end up cursed at one point to age backward, and because of some other magic and necessity, ended up very quickly being about five years old or so for a little while. In an effort to save Arlie, Avery Colzayre finally stepped up to his role as a leader and brought the band together to focus Arlie on the task of breaking the curse--by growing up and realizing the lesson the Norns intended to teach him. Until this point, Avery had been a good kid, a skilled musician, and the victim of cruel fate, but a carefree and innocent one. His ability to finally make decisions and guide his friends rather than follow marked a moment of true development for him.
• Jack Crane, lead singer of the band and a recovering alcoholic, had no faith anymore. He was bleak, dark, and disenchanted with the Mother of Music. Over the course of the campaign, he slowly but surely discovered the joy of performing again, and he slowly but surely began to understand the role of the gods in the world of Shem. The culmination of his return to faith, though, came when he reconnected with his sister Rubella and realized he could do something huge to help the Champion of Music. He gathered a hundred thousand people together for a concert. As they band played one of the finest concerts of their lives, the energy of the crowd that Jack has amped up hit= them each, one at a time, and each of them wielded it into something incredible. Avery turnd all hundred thousand people in the audience into his family. Sue found how to spread harmony to all around him. Bartleby fashioned a brand new note of music. Arlie improvised perfection and learned how to bring greater joy to people. Leia found new rhythms. Arsul followed the paths of the music and saw the whole map of fate--and learned how to control it a touch. Magnum's national pride brought him to new levels of skill. Leonas hit a wrong note and flubbed it. Dionysus's hearing returned. Valara found inner peace. Aurelia dedicated her portion to her own deities and Mastered her Oboe. Each of these were a moment unto themselves, but Jack was the orchestrator of this whole thing, and he became a Euphonic Knight, Servitor of Music. He went, as I promised, from drunken hasbeen to paladin.
• Subiquim Ixioj found his own faith during the campaign, becoming an unwitting thrall of the God of Void and the Lost God the Never. The two used him as a battlefield and an unwitting agent in their games. In the end, he found he preferred Void to Oblivion, and he sought out ways to defeat the Never. He, an athak composer who had seen more of the world than any expected, found a Name for the Never and met him in the realm of the Void. He faced down a god and banished him to another universe. In the end, Sue had to reject even the God of Void, learning that while void itself can be good, Quaigor would not.
• Arsul Toutant's family all had strange time, fate, or luck based powers that had no explainable origin. Arsul himself was a seer, using his sightless eyes to see the paths of the future. After these powers manifested late in his life, he began to find faith in the God of Destiny, so when he met the Norns on a lonely path on a moon, it did not occur to him that the blood price the crone asked for a relic of his faith would be his playing hand. Losing his hand hurt him deeply, but he slowly rallied and sought a way to replace it. He came to an ancient lunar temple dedicated to time and space, and there, his friend Magnum Peltier and other allies helped him swim the rivers of time, where he went back to the dawn of his family and found that the powers he bore were the result of a deal with the Devil... that he himself made.
• Dionysus Berrywight traveled with Matrim and Albert in facing the Indestructibles and Chryandemus in the campaign before, and he already held a reputation as a legendary composer and bard. So when he became the patron of the Sound and the Fury (or the Colour of Sound as they were once known), they band knew something big was in their future. After countless journeys, they came to the last stretch as they explored the moons and got the last songs they needed for the Contest, and Dionysus carried with him a box given him by Albert Renkarr, who got it from the gods themselves. The box, quite simply, he explained, held faith, and he was to launch it to another world.
• At the Contest, the band prepared vigorously for their opponents. The first session of the Contest itself was perhaps the best climax we've ever managed. The band defeated their opponents only with great planning and skill, and crushed them utterly, managing several moments during that were notable in and of themselves. Further, the last session of the Contest, after a long, protracted bloodbath, was a richly described epic concert that can't properly be expressed here. The only thing that topped it was the final performance of the Sound and the Fury, their battle in the planes against Rex Cuniaid:

-> "In Maraddon, Damon Argent awakens to a moment of pure harmony, echoing through the world. In Madziar, the Alpha Shemir sees the Map of Creation humming in resonance, and the World Tree hums along with you all. In Myrmexia, the Great Hill where Nik'laas rules, all the thrax stop and focus on the great thrum of the world. In Akazad, in the Sisters, Aldo's brother Maurd looks up from a long night of paperwork to notice that every nightingale in the city is suddenly singing the most perfect Song every sung. In the underground realms, the world rumbles with the percussion fo the Song.

-> "In Kren'atan, the Emperor sits with his great grandfather, the King of All Dragons, and their guests, an empath woman and a strange, Immortal child. The empath woman's breath catches as she hears the melody of her daughter's passing in the air, and the Song brings the dragons to tears. In Mwyr Aeld, the Vendales are in the midst of a political maneuver that will leave a few more Srisians dead, but they stop a moment, and smile at your success. On the other side of the continent, the Aeldian High Priest weeps for the loss of his Goddess's son. In Berellia, Guiteau Toutant catches echoes of his lost father and brother, and his niece and other brother fighting the war in the planes. He smiles at the Song as all the songbirds join in.

-> "In Belthine, all the Splashsingers, the dolphin children who play the traditional music and dances, simultaneously join in the most intricate they'll ever know. In Mesoine, every living sirine's voice raises in Song, and all the other mermen stop in worship. In Dalurine, the sea elves gain a boost of strength as the deep ones, a musicless people, are brought to crippling tears at a beauty they never know.

-> "On Uur Sodzul, the athaks hear non-void sound for the first time, and pause in wonder. On Kyellezhi, the star elven prince stops playing a moment as the pink crystal palace vibrates with the Song, and he hears his mother cry. On Lunaria, the lunarians all pause in their ritual cycles to listen to the still atmosphere vibrate impossibly with music.

-> "And on Merukis, Merian Blood laughs as she hears Arlie's arpeggios in what is otherwise the most beautiful thing she's ever heard. She pats her belly and whispers to the child inside that that's its papa out there.

-> "In the Dream Realm, Matrim Argent pauses in his raw fight with Manifestation to thank all the gods for this news. The Song sends a wave through Wrongness that pushes it back. St. Theresa smiles, and thinks to herself, "Price paid in full, Jack Crane." The Prophetess of the Webweaver listens carefully for things only she understands, secrets only the most foul would find pleasurable, and she smiles.

-> "A Voice echoes through the Divine, We are free. Let us end this war. Let us send Wrongness back to where it belongs. Let us Balance the Realm once more. Laurelin, Mother of Music, calls out to the Gods, and opens the way to the Arbiter. She pauses, looks down at the band, and says, _Thank you, Children of Euphony. Come, let us Right these Wrongs once and for all._"

• But the crowning moment of heartbreaking and awesome of this campaign came for Aurelia Lucent. An ender born, she was raised as a female and lived as a woman. She wished for nothing more than to physically be female, but circumstance rarely allowed it. She pretended to be an empath and actually was a woman in spirit. She was the band's heart, but their journeys hurt her, deeply, repeatedly. She learned the truth of her father and mother's dark past, healed her mother only to find herself terrified her mother wouldn't love her if she knew the truth of her (Aurelia's) past, suffered at the hands of the powerful, and lost her father before she could make amends, and she bore the child of Nightmare Incarnate to attain her goal of physical womanhood. Her chance at revenge felt hollow. But during it all, she met Bartleby Thrush, the Rogue, and fell in love. He loved her back, unconditionally, and he was her strength. Their marriage was one of the most poignant moments, culminating with a song they wrote for each other. When they finally got to the planes and started slaying the Immortal Upstarts, Aurelia feared the intimate connection of the Song would expose her, but she persevered out of love for Bartleby. When they finally killed the villain who was killing the Goddess of Love, they found her so wounded only profound sacrifice could save Her. Aurelia was faced with a choice. With Bartleby, she chose to give up her entire existence, her child, everything, and imbue the Mother of Love with the love she and Bartleby shared. She Sacrificed her heart, which was entwined with his, and forever changed the world by saving Love Herself.

---

Other:

• Alfred Schwarzmann erased himself from history on worldwide television.

---

The Movies: to be determined, some nice ones listed below

? Alice sacrificing part of herself for Manvi.

? Q saying "No."

? Alsa smoothly handling the misfits that are the movie crew.

? Tilluel connecting to the Corrupter.

? Corby earning the Sword of Inferno.

? Angela choosing Alsa when infusing herself with loyalty.

? The twist after being freed of the horror film.

? Archie Challan's house in general.

? Rocco and Tilluel kissing.

? Bart Crow's killing the Scissor Man out of respect for the Chancellor.

Chronurian Archives:

? Dinner with the Prophetess of the webweaver

? Davan bargains for a Srisian shuttle. "No, really. How much is a pilot?"