A Song of Flame and Mist

The Good King
In Stromgarde, the venerable Aesir King Vendrick of Drangleic gathers two adventurers--Ignatz Hellstrom, a Cambrian monster slayer, and Mordred Edain, a young doctor and wizard. His mission for them is to travel north and rendezvous with Nikolai von Baer, a charlatan impersonating a foreign noble who had managed to ingratiate himself with the king. Once united, the party was to travel further north still, into the magically frozen lands beyond Hearthelm, to the magical Vaniir city of Eleum Loyce.

The purpose of this mission was to investigate the failing defenses of the city, which for decades had kept the perfidious influence of an evil entity known as the Profane Flame at bay. The flame, through it's psychic manipulations was constantly trying to draw in cultists and was stopped only through the efforts of noble Vaniir whom evidently were now failing in their duty, as displaced cultists throughout the kingdom flock to the city.

To the North
Mordred and Hellstrom encounter Nikolai, a bard, north of Stromgarde and rescue him from wolves and later defeat mad cultists while traveling to the Cunning Hearth Inn, the last friendly house before the northern frontier. There, they meet Morlock, a wealthy, ill-tempered orc sorcerer and his goliath bodyguard, Gromm..Olaf Braadur, the owner of the inn, informs the party that many adventurers as well as strange groups of people had been traveling north. Morlock warns the party not to follow him as he departs. They also meet an elvish woman wearing a crown of fresh flowers despite the winter.

Later, the party continues towards Eleum Loyce, finding a group of dead cultists which had apparently been dispatched by Morlock and Gromm.

City of Ice
The party arrives at Eleum Loyce where they find cultists are attracted to semi-hypnotic flames but burn magically in braziers throughout the city. After dispatching another group of rabid cultists, the party finds out why as the flame psychically contacts Nikolai, offering power in exchange for absorbing the flame into his body.

Suddenly, Morlock the Orc emerges and seizes the flame for itself. It strengthens his body but he is ultimately defeated and killed while fleeing. Meanwhile, Gromm is healed by the party and chooses not to attack them for killing Morlock. Later, the party finds Gromm looting the abandoned parts of the city. He describes a monster he found in a basement, which Hellstrom identifies as a mimic. The party defeats the creature and finds a staff of storms that it had been guarding.

Outside, they ask Gromm if he would like to travel with them and he agrees.

The Vaniir
The party encounters a Vaniir knight who tells them of one section of the city which remains fortified and occupied, guarding just one of the four brazier-spigots of the Profane Flame. The knights are human, but stoic, selfless, and loyal to a superhuman level. While traveling to the Vaniir zone, the party passes another knight and a group of peasant miners who had been ejected from their tunnel by a rogue clan on small dwarf-like creatures native to the underdark known as derro.

In the Vaniir quarter, the party discovers a half-dozen or so equipped knights guarding a displaced rabble of peasants and their families, with only a scant few more knights scattered through the city, including guarding another brazier. Meanwhile, in addition to the derro infestation, the knights face nightly incursions of prowling gnolls and a food shortage due to their magical greenhouses being overrun by rampaging yetis.

In the palace, the party meets Alsanna, the succubus-queen of the king of Eleum Loyce who reveals that the pitiful state of the city is due to the absent king, who descended into the pit beneath the citadel at the center of the city. She guards the entrance with her sabertooth tiger, Ava.

They also meet with a hideously deformed oracle, a former flame cultist priest who had been saved by Elric and the Vaniir. The priest warns the party that king Elric may have been corrupted by the flame, something the fanatically loyal Vaniir could never accept.

The flame tempts Hellstrom, but fails. The party dispatch Vaniir peasants to ride south to petition king Vendrick for assistance, fully describing their problems.

Taking Back the City
The party elects to deal with the gnolls first, baiting them to attack an exposed section of wall while illusions, traps, and conscripted peasants dropping rocks help the party dispatch the gnolls. Gromm dies in this battle and is buried with his weapons.

Then, the party descended into the infested mine to slay the derro and liberate the knights supply of alabaster, a metal necessary for their magical crafting of weapons and armor. They also take three derro hostage, initially to interrogate but later as long-term prisoners when it became obvious that they didn't share a language. The derro, later named Inky, Binky, and Clyde by Hellstrom were cared for mostly by the slayer until they were neglected, apprehended, and executed as unnatural by guards in Stromgarde, while outside of Hellstrom's supervision.

While traveling to the greenhouses to deal with the yetis, the party encounters a giant rampaging wolf, evidently possessed by the spirit of the refilled brazier. Defeating the wolf reveals it to be a transformed druid--the human woman with the flower-crown the party had briefly encountered at the Cunning Hearth Inn.

They continue to the greenhouses and narrowly defeat the yetis, observing that they too had been drawn under the spell of the profane flame. The party also discovers a large cultist camp had been smashed to bits by a Werebear and kill it.

The Seal of Many
Back in the Vaniir zone, the party are applauded for their efforts to assist the knights. They are given access to the royal armory, where Nikolai is granted a particularly special gift in the form of Iceshard, a sword of Vaniir kings. While Hellstrom has a shield and crossbow bolts magically forged from alabaster steel, Mordred and Nikolai are summoned once more to the mutant priest who again cautions them with the knowledge that King Elric may have been lost to the flame. It is revealed that the Staff of Gales recovered from the basement of the house with the mimic is the priest's staff, though he allows Mordred to keep it.

As Mordred leaves, Nikolai lingers behind and questions the priest to the point of tears (for the second time) before springing upon him with a looted cultist's dagger. Mordred attempts to stop Nikolai but is unable to. He kills the priest and later successfully accuses him of heresy to the other guards. Mordred and Hellstrom convince the knights to at least give the priest a proper burial. Mordred leaves the Staff of Gales with the priest. Mordred is tempted by the flame but refuses it.

The party investigate king Elric's bedroom, finding the completed notes of an arcane spell meant to seal away evil.

The Ivory King
Fully armed and equipped, the party descends into the pit beneath Eleum Loyce. Before they are allowed to descend, they must pass the sabertooth tiger, Ava, who smells them to detect evil. She refuses to allow the derro to enter.

In the underground cavern, the party finds a large and intimidating but bare stone chamber inhabited by king Elric, who fully under the influence of the flame is known as the Burnt Ivory King. The king orders the party to leave and the fanatically loyal knights who came with the party comply, leaving the party alone to battle him and his imp minions Before the outcome of the battle could be decisively determined, Nikolai threw down the magic sword Iceshard and uses diplomacy and the suggestion spell to convince Elric to abandon his attempt to single-handedly bind the flame, which had transformed him into the Burnt Ivory King.

King Elric's humanity is restored and the party emerge with him to the surface of the city, where they are celebrated. The knights work together to pass the seal against the evil of the flame and begin to shore up the defenses of the city as the party prepare to return to Stromgarde to report their success to Vendrick.

They leave with no horses, having given theirs to the three riders, and a sled bearing their possessions.

Curse of the Wolf
While traveling south, the party visits the Cunning Hearth Inn where they buy a horse to pull their sled. Nikolai swindles some peasants out of some coin while gambling and a fight almost breaks out. The party decides to visit the walled city of Morthwell in Hearthelm before returning to Stromgarde in order to buy more horses and a cart, given that the changing season from winter to spring means their sled will become useless as they travel south.

While approaching the city, the party are attacked by a werewolf. They kill it and discover it is a wood-elf. At the walls of the city, paranoid guards use silver to screen all visitors for infections and report that their town has been plagued by werewolves. They identify a Cambrian slayer named Hellstrom as having been hired to hunt the lycanthropes. Ignatz Hellstrom quickly realizes this is Finn Hellstrom, his foolhardy younger brother, who is operating against the will of the tribe as a rogue slayer, or mercenary monster-hunter.

A distraught Hellstrom leads the party towards the direction of the slayer and discover him wounded nearby a booby-trapped cave entrance where werewolves had been sleeping. Infected with the disease but otherwise healthy, Finn reveals that the werewolves are connected to the Feywild and are a cult of mostly wood elves who worship Nimrodel, the Archfey god of the hunt.

The party, aided by a werewolf Finn Hellstrom, attack the cult at a holy site and defeat them with Ignatz Hellstrom, like his brother, becoming infected with the disease in the process. The party collect their reward in Hearthelm as the two Hellstroms take the fast horse to seek magical healing, promising the party to meet them in Stromgarde.

Before they leave, Mordred and Nikolai meet Elaine d'Ascolat a mysterious young woman with snow-white hair and an unknown foreign accent. She is a traveling musician who displays some psychic and magical powers and claims to be a fortune-teller. She claims her tarot cards told her to travel with the group which she does, allowing her to pursue her second passion which is recording the stories of adventurers and heroes.

The Prince
In the city of Stromgarde, the trio visit the Palace of Kings to meet with crown-prince Harald Aran who has taken over as regent of Drangleic, due to Vendrick suffering from an unknown debilitating illness. Harald is competent, strong, and stern, indicating a devotion to obedience and the law that was reminiscent of the Vaniir. Although he thanks the party and rewards them reasonably for completing Vendrick's task, Harald's abrasiveness and zealotry made the situation tense.

The trio eat and drink at the House of Gwyndolin, where the party learn that king Vendrick is at death's door and everyone expects a transfer of power to happen soon. They somberly reflect on the beloved king Vendrick.

Guilder and Guildmaster
Mordred uses his share of the reward and the recovered treasure from Eleum Loyce to join the mages guild and purchase magical knowledge. He meets and consults with Glynbalor Oloris, the high elvish leader of the mages guild while Nikolai takes Melanna Maxwell, the secretary, on a disastrous date.

Nikolai, as a victorious noble returning to the city, takes Melanna to the Stromgarde Grand Hotel, where he seeks out gambling. Ignoring his date, he wagers his adventuring treasure against the table, eventually attempting to swindle a jeweler named Guilder, a habitual gambler and debtor. Nikolai successfully cheats but still loses and the elated Guilder leaves with his winnings.

Meanwhile, master Oloris has taken Mordred to a hidden city in a pocket dimension, where they discuss the philosophy of religion and magic particularly around the topic of life and death which Mordred is naturally interested in. He discusses his thoughts of pursuing necromancy as as major discipline of study. Oloris warns of the difficulties associated with this but does not dismiss it, and he informs Mordred of another guild member in Stromgarde walking the same path, an elvish woman named Elenwen Dinuviel, claimed by Oloris to be suffering the effects of an illness contracted during elvish meditation. Mordred meets her and the two bond over necromantic magic.

Against the protests of Melanna, Nikolai leaves the mead hall and trails Guilder the jeweler. He is recognized in an alley and first tries to trick Guilder into an investment scheme before drawing a knife and lunging toward the man, prompting him to yell for guards who are promptly summoned in Harald's police-state.

Trial and Inquisition
Elaine and Mordred discover that Nikolai has been arrested and is being held in a jail not far from the Palace of Kings. They learn that he will face trial in the cathedral for the Church of the One and visit him before the trial, where he is placed under the power of zone of truth and forced to confess. He is ordered to compensate Guilder financially. Crown-prince Harald enters dramatically and demands that, on top of this punishment, Nikolai must also track down the smugglers responsible for importing illegal elven wine, drugs, and goods, or face exile. He is also warned that any subsequent serious crimes would be punished with death.

Nikolai, now disgraced, shaves his characteristic mustache and cuts his long hair short, rebranding himself as Nicholas. The three are watched and later contacted by Coteaz Torquemada, an agent of the Holy Inquisition investigating a series of disappearances in Stromgarde that he believes are connected to the occult and he has a device indicating the presence of a human-sized undead creature in the city located usually in the sewers or in the elven quarter, particularly near the mages guild. He invites the party to keep their eyes open and investigate the issue and they agree.

While shopping for thieves tools and other supplies necessary for a plan Nikolai was concocting, the party stumbled upon an integral member of the smuggling ring in the form of a suspicious gnome named Picklewink who owned a large shop of mostly junk merchandise. He also had a goliath bodyguard named Gorrg. On a hunch, Elaine began flirting with Picklewink which led to him leading the party beneath the shop, where they had a sub-basement full of smuggled merchandise and told the party that they regularly receive more.

After a fight, Picklewink and Gorg are arrested. Documents and ledgers are recovered that indicate that the smugglers are also seriously involved in heretical practices devoted to Asmodeus, prince of the betrayer gods.

Mordred continues to visit Elenwen while copying arcane spells at the mages guild. He is attracted to her despite the frailty of her sickness and only realizes after a sensual embrace ends with her teeth in his neck the true nature of her sickness--that she was a vampire, and presumably the undead creature Inquisitor Coteaz had been monitoring. She is deeply ashamed at biting Mordred and claims to have been unable to resist. Her sickness was related to her subsisting on blood from sewer rats, whose bodies she also used for necromantic experiments. Drinking Mordred's blood makes her immediately look and feel much healthier. They proceed to make love.

The Slayer Returns
Hellstrom arrives at the city, having been healed of his lycanthropy by halfling clerics. Finn the rogue slayer, however, had escaped in the night in order to refuse treatment, instead accepting the "gift" of lycanthropy for the ability it gave him to fight evil. He is filled in about the situation with the smugglers and the disappearances and the three are later invited to see the ailing king Vendrick himself.

The dying king thanks them for their service to the realm and ensures them he has instructed Harald to pursue friendly relations with King Elric of the Vaniir in the north. He also tells them of another threat to the human kingdom. An ancient black dragon has been sighted to the east, above the mist-shrouded shores of Albion and it's appearance is associated with a surge in magical mist that seems to harmlessly impede travel of ships, cutting royal colonies on the island off from the mainland. The king's dying wish is for the party to visit the island using a ship equipped with a techno-magical device known as the Mistbreaker, currently outfitted to a ship known as Mistrider which is awaiting the party in Port Astur.

House of Shadow
Coteaz singles out Hellstrom and asks him for assistance investigating a location in the elvish district believed to be related to the undead or the disappearances. Hellstrom proceeds to invite Mordred and Nikolai but Coteaz, having feuded with Nikolai earlier, will only allow Mordred to come.

Coteaz, Mordred, and Hellstrom investigate an abandoned house near the mages guild where they find a summoning circle to the shadowfell and evidence that people had been dragged here, likely for human sacrifices. To Hellstrom's disappointment and Mordred's relief, they don't find any undead.

Nikolai continues to collect and concoct resources to enact his plan of revenge against Guilder, whom Nikolai blames for his loss of wealth and status. He puts the plan into action as the party presents their evidence to the guards in order to keep the arrest of Picklewink and Gorg quiet. Nikolai is caught attempting to slip a falsified ledger into the pile of evidence which would have implicated Guilder in the smuggling ring and cult. Both Guilder and Nikolai are arrested until the matter can be resolved.

Grime and Punishment
A furious crown-prince Harald Aran appears and cannot be dissuaded from making his way towards the jail. Having always considered Nikolai a charlatan and a scoundrel, Harald seizes this opportunity and abuses his status as regent to personally execute Nikolai using Iceshard, Nikolai's own sword, later seizing his head as a trophy. While leaving, he indicates that despite their efforts against the smugglers, the other members of the party were on thin ice in the eyes of Harald.

The party decide to complete their task of finding the rest of the smugglers before leaving town as soon as possible. They plan to execute the same ambush Nikolai had been preparing, with Mordred disguising himself as the clean-shaven version of Nikolai and Hellstrom lurking behind, in the sewer.

Hellstrom's keen sense of direction fails him and he gets lost while traversing the sewers under the city, Mordred had told Elenwen, who often resided in the sewers, to stay clear of the area near Picklewink's shop where the ambush would be but providence held that Hellstrom would stumble upon her while lost. He holds her at crossbow-point, interrogating her with zone of truth and learns that she wasn't connected to the disappearances at all and has only sucked blood from a single person, although Hellstrom does not know at this time that it's Mordred.

Hellstrom decides to capture her and take her to Picklewink's basement, where Mordred is shocked to see her and Hellstrom is surprised to see they knew each other. By this point, Mordred has been allowing Elenwen to sustain herself on his blood, leaving him to magically heal himself.

After a fight, the cultists are defeated. However, Vendrick dies shortly later and Harald prepares for a coronation. The party, victorious but melancholy, prepare to travel to Port Astur in order to sail to Albion.

Omens
Hellstrom and Elaine leave Mordred with Nikolai's headless body magically preserved in the cart aside all of their gear, their goal being to intercept the Cambrians on the annual springtime northern march so that Hellstrom can visit his parents and consult the Cambrian Oracle before his journey to Albion. She gives a starkly negative prophecy but does not forbid Hellstrom from going.

Tribal dances and stories are interrupted by the arrival of King Harald and his gryphon-riding lion knights. The king announces that he is interested in having Cambrian wisemen and wisewomen visit Stromgarde to engage in a holy conclave with the Church of the One in order to settle dogmatic disputes. Harald presents the offer as a gift and claims that the Cambrians will be consulted for their wisdom of the orthodox ancient ways but Hellstrom and some other paranoid Cambrians are more skeptical.

Mordred arrives in Port Astur with a smuggled Elenwen. Her existence as a vampire would warrant her execution almost anywhere in the civilized human world. There, he meets Phadrig, an ancient and powerful diviner wizard who has forgotten a great deal of the magic he once commanded when he was the young court wizard to king Vendrick. Among his powers is the ability to operate the Mistbreaker, which allows the party to transverse the otherwise impassible magical mist.

While approaching the mist, one of the three sailors under captain Tyrone McLaggen are killed while battling sea spawn.

Glossy Eyes
The party docks their ship at the main colony, New Stromgarde and their appearance causes a muted commotion among the colonists who had been physically and magically cut off from the mainland by the mist. Many people and animals here are malnourished and a general powerful malaise seems to possess most people, something the party immediately recognizes as an effect of the mist.

They are taken to meet Oswald Aran, Harald's brother and the prince-governor of Albion. He is overweight and jovial to the point of ignoring the serious problems of his realm, likely under the influence of the mist, while his more pragmatic and active wife Nashandra sees to practical governance. They exchange information about the outside world. The mist seems to have been agitating the wildlife and tribes of the island. Captain of the watch Markus Morin is plagued by visions of the city being overwhelmed by Pictish hordes. A stirring up of sea creatures in particular have made fishing more difficult and costly, which combined with the total cut off of supply lines from the mainland has led to widespread malnutrition, although social unrest over food shortages seems to be suppressed as an effect of the mist malaise.

The Mist over Innsmouth
Nashandra requests that the party travel to and secure a nearby fishing camp build around a tranquil bay that seemed to magically deliver fish. While traveling, Hellstrom is confronted by Enapay Springing Hound, a Croix warrior who wields one silver and one metal weapon, something characteristic of Cambrian slayers. He claimed to have some connection to Hellstrom, and there was a phenotypical similarity. He also warned against fishing in the deep ocean and told of a tower in the center of the island inhabited by the ancient black dragon called Ancalagon the black.

Later, the party means Joan William, a half-orc cavalier who became shipwrecked while trying to escape the mist. They're attacked by a bullette that burrows through the sand to attack them. They defeat it and decide to travel together.

They arrive at the village just in time for the fishermen who had been collecting the miraculous gift from the sea to realize that they were the ones being fished as a swarm of kuo toa emerge from the surf to capture the fishermen. They're defeated by the party, who then instruct the fisherman to return to New Stromgarde as the island is clearly not safe.

A Man of Wealth and Taste
While returning to the colony of New Stromgarde, the party is intercepted by a high elvish wizard who introduces himself as Lucan and invites the party to have dinner in his mansion which is located in a mobile pocket dimension. Phadrig and Lucan had known each other for many, many decades and considered each other rivals but Phadrig nonetheless agreed to meet. Smelling a devilish presence inside the mansion, Hellstrom privately made himself vomit the half glass of wine he head drank and took no more, while the rest of the party listened and partook.

Lucan gives his own view of theology and declares that the essence of each god manifested into an object upon their deaths. He further claimed to be the owner of Garl Glittergold's wand, one of the divine artifacts, and to know that another artifact--that of the orc god Megathiro--was somewhere on Albion. He offers the party an enormous sum of money in exchange for retrieving it.

While traveling the rest of the way back to New Stromgarde, the party encounters a small band of three orcs led by Garn. Joan the half-orc managed to peacefully engage the crew. They reveal that they too are hunting Megathiro's artifact, in their case for religious and racial reasons. The groups agree to travel together to a ruined tower near a lake where they believe the artifact to be located.

Ancalagon the dragon suddenly attacks New Stromgarde, devastating many buildings and killing several colonists. After a moment, the dragon disappears and is chased by Price-Governor Oswald in a fit of madness.

Heart of Darkness
The party shares an uneasy boat ride with the orcs, both crews mistrustful of the other. Hellstrom fears that the orcs would kill the party if it meant securing the holy artifact and suggests pre-emptively capturing the orcs in order to incapacitate them. Joan continued to want to travel with the orcs but the issue is resolved when Garn reports that he no longer wants to travel together, either, due to his mistrust of humans. As the two groups depart, Hellstrom informs Garn's crew of master Lucan's designs on the artifact, which infuriates the orcs, and both groups agree that whoever finds it first, Megathiro's artifact won't be allowed to fall into elvish hands.

While searching for the artifact's trail, the party hears the noise of screaming children. Breaking stealth, Joan stormed forward and discovered two Tellan children, freshly captured, being bound by natives and obviously intended for human sacrifice to a large aberrant entity the Tellans worship as a being named the Four-Faced Tree. The party defeats the Tellan cultists and destroys one face of the tree by burning it before departing with the two children, Briane and Duncan.

Into the Abyss
Searching for Sunder, the party visits a Pictish village on the edge of a lake with submerged ancient ruins. The party convinced the Picts and the several orcs living amongst them that they were only there to pay homage to the lake and its gods. They received a spell of water-breathing and swam to the bottom of the lake, which almost killed Hellstrom.

In a hidden ruin under the lake, the party fought more humanoid fishmen and defeated a giant tentacled crab monster. Later in the dungeon, the party passed through magical traps and found a secret passageway with a slimy chest containing tablets with ancient spells written on them.

In a deep chamber, the party finds the orc Garn participating in a ritual with the fishmen cultists which resulted in a battle with the party. Hellstrom becomes cursed, partially transforming into a mutant fishman. Later, the party entered a large magical underwater chamber that seems to have elements of both underwater and above-water environments and a magical forest. In the heart of the forest, a giant guarded the path forward and almost killed Hellstrom as the party passed by. Past the giant, they found several chests full of ancient weapons made of black stone and more spell tablets.