Affirm Good Buddy

I think I've decided that I do want to use Cafe Press to make a hoodie. Jeremy and I were talking and I described to him the emblem of Cenn's Reavers and he seemed to think it was a neat icon. Its a horizontal crescent that is open with a sword perpendicular to it as if it is sliding down into the crescent. The sword is almost down to the hilt in the crescent so the handgrip is about the only portion of the sword that extends up past the points of the crescent. Beneath the crescent, in line with the descending sword, is a drop of blood. I dunno, I kind of like it and think it might make a decent looking thing to put on the front of a hoodie sort of to the left or right of the zipper on the breast. I think a full back picture of it would be a little too much. I dunno though, the kind of black hoodie I was looking at was like sixty bucks, and I've been burned by internet hoodie purchases before. I love my Penny Arcade hoodie, but the thing is thin to the point of being more like a long-sleeved shirt than what I consider a hoodie to be. Maybe I'll get together with Jeremy and see what we can come up with We'll see.

The One-Eyed Man, Part 3

Last Week of Fourthmonth, 9995 DK

We lay on the scrub grass clad only in tunics and trousers and stared up at the night sky. After our discussion we had left Kusseth and had spent the majority of the day walking. Our kind had no need of sleep and our regenerative abilities allowed us to stave off exhaustion for far longer than a mortal could, but even we must eventually tire and need to spend an hour or two at rest.

We had shed our disguises and our ears had long since healed. Our weapons and armor and supplies lay nearby, for no creature can truly relax when clad in heavy leather or when gird in a dozen instruments of bloodletting. We had even removed our boots and socks. We had stopped when we saw a shower of falling stars to the south, one had been so large that a dust cloud rose into the sky when it finally struck the earth.

The scrub grass was sharp and dry, but we ignored it. I lay half-atop Callifay with my head resting on his stomach and his arm across my chest. Staring at the sky, the endless void which always mesmerized me, I could have lain there for a thousand years and not grown bored. Callifay laughed.

"What?" I asked.

"You stare at the sky, so mesmerized. There is no tension in your body."

"You know of my fascination with the heavens, and the comfort you closeness brings."

"I do," he said and I could almost see his smile in my mind's eye, he continued, "Do you miss the blade of Old Night?"

I chuckled, "What warrior does not miss his favored weapon?"

"What will become of it when Cenn the Reaver dies?"

I had not thought of that. In my tent deep in the Wild Lands there was a treasure trove of weapons and armor. My old blade was resting in an oak case, but when Cenn died the pile of loot would be scavenged by even the most loyal of my men and that blade could not resurface in this land.

"It cannot easily be moved," I said.

Even stored in its case it produced a profound chill that others could sense, though Callifay and I had never been able to feel it and if it were moved those of the band would sense it.

"And I cannot wield it, I've not the strength for that. Could you draw it here now and hide it?"

"No, it is not a weapon that can be hidden and I cannot call it to hand over so great a distance. Perhaps if we were closer."

"What will we do with it then?"

"I could not bear it with me in my new incarnation as your aide."

He chuckled and my head moved with his laugh, "No, it is rather identifiable. Could you secure it as you have in the past? Within you?"

I stared at the void above, counting stars and missing another presence.

"No, the Nightmare Lands no longer rest within me and that is where I have hidden the blade before."

"Could we not just let it be taken from your tent and released into the world? You can feel its presence as easily as you can feel mine, and I think no creature could keep it from you if you truly desired its return."

"You speak truth, but The Blade of Old Night is a subtle artifact. It is not a weapon to destroy armies or make a mortal into a god."

"What then is the power of such a blade? You have always been cryptic about its deadliness."

"With good cause."

He took his hand from my chest and I felt him cross his arms over his own.

"In this place, among such as you and I are, what harm is there in the telling, Cenn?"

I sighed, he was right. If ever a creature were worthy of knowing the nature of my blade it was Callifay, and there was no harm in telling him.

"Its most base power is the method in which it deals death. The Blade of Old Night is not an object of this reality. When it cuts, it does not truly cut, it removes. If I were to cut off your arm with it and you put the arm back together you would see it was now shorter, shorter by the width of my blade."

"Would that aspect not have come to light by now among our people?"

I shook my head, "How often has a warrior of our people had the time to stoop to the ground and reclaim a fallen limb? Is it not easier to wait a week for the limb to return of its own accord?"

"A valid point. What of the starry sky bound within the blade?"

"The Old Night. There is no other name for it. It is a carpet of stars and clouds and that exist within the blade. On no world have I seen such a sky, only within my old blade."

"What does that mean though?"

I shrugged, "I cannot say, I know only that that was the name that leapt from my mind when I decided to name my blade."

"What of the objects you pull from it? The knives of black and silver?"

I shrugged once more, "They are there. I know what the blade contains and know that my hand may draw it from within."

"Useful, but not something I would think it necessary to be cryptic about."

I nodded, "True."

He waited but I said nothing.

"Please," he said as his hand returned to its place across my chest.

I sighed and spoke, "It has the power to cut our Gifts away from us in a fashion that prevents their return."

"That, that is a power worthy of your secrecy. I almost regret prodding you."

"Yes. It was with the Blade of Old Night that I was able to become Cenn the Reaver and leave our homeland in such a state as it is. It is why I cannot will us back to our homeland."

"You mean you cannot reclaim your power?"

"No, I can, but I must return to where it has been stored. It has been truly severed from me, I cannot even feel it calling to me. It it gone from me, cut away by my starlit blade."

"I, I had not known that. I thought you, I did not know. It is one thing to be unable to use your Gifts to their full potential, that is my weakness, I can fathom that. To be unable to even feel their presence though, I had not imagined any of our kind could willingly do that to themselves. I did not know, Ker-"

"Enough," I growled angrily, "I more than anything living know what I sacrificed for our people. I need no one to tell me of my loss."

He was silent, but he shifted and was able to put his other arm atop my chest and clasped his hands there. We stayed that way for the rest of the evening.

Campaigns That Could Have Been

I guess I'm on a festival of remembering older stuff. There are a few campaigns that I was never able to do, or that just never got off the ground. Here is a bit about them.

2nd Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons

Unfortunately any records of what might have been in this era have been erased from the annals of time. I can't find anything on my laptop. Aside from always wanting to try out Dark Sun or Planescape, I don't know what might have been. There is a folder on my laptop titled Orsus. All I have is a paragraph in a file titled "Scenario 1" where the player's wake up in a tomb with gold coins on their tongues and feel their memories slip out of their grasp. They're covered in dust and know that one of the many doors around them is an exit and the others are armories and spell component closets and the like. I have no idea where that was going, but there is a companion file that has an alternate class system I was trying to finagle into 2nd Edition.

3.0/3.5 Edition Dungeons and Dragons

Heck If I Know

This is the one I am currently running in 4th Edition, but it would have been nice to play it in 3.5. I can't date when I first started working on it because all the files have a created date of March 2009, which was when I transferred all of my DnD stuff from my desktop to my laptop and the computer they were originally stored on has long since passed into ruin. There is a last modified date of February 2008, so they predate 2008. I had a good feel for 3.5 Edition, so I was pulling out all the stops and creating my own classes and a bizarre system of poisonous and unreliable magic that only partially translates into 4th Edition.

New

This one was slowly approaching the point of robustness that Heck If I Know was at, never quite got there though. There were a lot of maps and I had some ideas about a lot of things for it. The main unique point of it was that there were no humans in it.

Nosgoth

This was a world where everything had died, or was dying, and it was all undead except for a few enclaves of the living. I basically deconstructed every undead monster, then rebuilt it in a way that was based on feats that the players could take. We talked a little about it, but it never went anywhere. I think part of it was that we couldn't reach a consensus on whether the group should be living or dead.

Planescape

I tried to convert Planescape into 3.5 Edition. Huzzah for consensus reality! No interest from anyone but Tony and a little from Jeremy because of the philosopher clubs that can change reality motif.

Tony and I

Tony and I were going to create a campaign. I shit you not. We spent a lot of work time at computers bouncing emails back and forth at six am. He was working on a kingdom of Aasimar based on an image of an aasimar king brooding on a stone throne and I was working on a clan of swamp gnomes that rode dire wolverines into battle. It would have been epic. We both got lazy I guess. I like my current campaign, but I think that with Tony and I at the helm, this could have been something amazing.

Torem

This one was a result of reading a lot of Michael Moorcock, a love of the phrase "consensus reality", and my frustration that no one would choose an appropriate alignment. I actually tracked alignment points in d20 Modern Shadow Chasers, you know what alignment everyone was? Chaotic Neutral. They randomly followed rules and broke the law and basically did whatever they felt like doing at the time. I've since learned that alignment is a really stupid system for understanding the complexities of the human psyche. Anyway, the campaign centered on the balance between Law and Chaos and it had a few maps and a unique pantheon of gods and the like (many of which were divine incarnations of previously retired PCs). As far as robustness of the background material, it is somewhere between New and Heck If I Know.

4th Edition

The Nel

When we first got into 4th Edition and I hadn't discovered my niche or groove or whatever you want to call it when I decided to try and be a really good DM, I toyed with the idea of converting the Nel to 4th Edition and trying to run something in Grenaldeen in the era following the disappearance of Keroen Skathos. Eric is the only one that has read my story about Keroen Skathos, so everyone would kind of be more lost than they usually are when I throw them into a strange fantasy world. I managed to tamp down my urges to go converting, partly because it would be super easy in GURPs and ultra hard in 4th Edition, and in GURPs the Nel (or Fey if you want to think of them as that) would be balanced unlike if they were put into 4th Edition. Anyway, I still think it would be neat as Hell to run it, but I might just write about it instead when I get around to it.

So there it is. Lament for what could have been experienced. Imagine the laughter, loot, and licentious behavior that the world shall never see.

Campaigns That Were

Ok, so the previous two posts influenced this post a bit. I'm going to go back and as best as I recollect write down some previous campaigns I've attempted to run. It'll be broken down by edition or system. I forget things so feel free to offer insight if you're a former player. Not all of these are necessarily "campaigns" in the truest sense, some might more accurately be described as character creation trends.

2nd Edition AD&D

The Whatever Wars

-This was the name I just came up with for when we all played back at Handy. Eric, Jeremy, Mike, Shawn, and a few others that might have been Troy Histead and some dudes we knew from the Handy library got together during lunches and played DnD in the library or the science lab. There was no overarching plot, just sheets of college ruled notebook paper with stats and we'd slog it out. Good times.

The William Wallace Era

-Mike and I watched Braveheart and we thought it was glorious, so Mike decided to make a fighter named William Wallace that was attempting to recreate Scotland in an ocean by dumping dirt into it. He killed a lot of kobolds and got to level fifteen. I actually had a decent campaign written out where he recruited rangers and warriors and such to his banner. It was probably the first kernel of a campaign setting that I ever came up with. Wish I could find the notes for it somewhere.

Reboot

Summer happened and we all finished junior high and we kind of took a break from gaming for a while. I mentioned DnD to Jason in passing while he was getting me into Magic: The Gathering and he kind of thought it was goofy, later he expressed an interest in playing it so we broke out the old stuff, bought some books, and started gaming again. I recall him being a...wizard and us playing the silver anniversary edition of Keep on the Borderlands. I don't recall who all was playing, but I do remember giving Jason a real hard time for using thees and thous and attempting archaic speech patterns to fit the world. I probably should have let him roll with it. I don't recall how long this lasted but I do recall us also owning White Plume Mountain and Against the Giants and intermittently attempting to play those.

The Black Claw Clan Era

I started attempting a linked series of adventures that started in a town called Runegate (it was called such because it had a magic gate with runes on it). This first scenario was pretty standard fare, the guys were hired to destroy some bandits. At this point Jason was running his tigerman Kain and had decided to be evil. Long story short, they cleared out the bandit fort and took it over. Before they took over the territory I believe there were a few scenarios that Eric and Jeremy were around for (as...druids? rangers?) and I recall a bullywug scenario with an ambush scene that took a bunch of part members down and got them captured and no one really liked that, which was understandable. Anyway, the "arc" ended with the group sneaking into a dwarven city for unspecified reasons and killing everyone in it. For some reason the city was also above ground.

The Gauntlet

These were a series of random encounters designed to be really tough for players. We (Jason and I) had reams of paper dedicated to challenging fights of various kinds designed to brutalize your character. If you survived the...twelve rounds I think it was, you got to keep your character and any associated XP or loot. If you lost, I can't recall what happened.

The Drow Character Era

During the previous era of gaming the Drizzt Do'Urden books began circulating the group. Suddenly everyone (myself included) decided that they either a) needed to be a drow, b) needed to wield two melee weapons, or c) needed to be festooned with hand crossbows. Or they needed to do all three. With Jason's penchant for killing any PC that disagreed with him or Kain, there was a high turnover rate for non-Jason characters.

The Fey

I read this series by...her last name was Rusch. It was called The Fey and was like five or so books. I also read the trilogy of books that take place after the Willow movie by Chris Claremont. From both series I cobbled together a race of highly overpowered and magical immortals and those became what we played for a while. I think Dave Morgan joined us once as well. Later I began to write about "my" Fey, which were basically Rusch's Fey, plus the malevoiy or whatever they were called in the Willow trilogy. I also really needed to check the power of Jason's Black Claw Clan and stop him from using Kain to kill and control the group.

The Sokar Fey

Anti-heroes roxzor!!1! I liked the Fey, but they were too clean for my tastes at the time, so I wrote a plotline where they fled a world and became trapped in a lightless abyss and over time their society became darker and more evil. Then they found a way out and decided to reclaim the place they used to live. It was actually a little fun, it was two campaigns run at the same time and the players were actually hunting their alter egos in the other campaign. I know JP, Jason, Jason Knochel, and...James I think were involved. There were also some cybernetically inclined dwarves. I think we actually played like seven or so scenarios.

A Norse Story

A read a book series about an alternate Norse mythos. I say alternate because as far as I recollect it did not take place on Terra. Anyway, I took the world depicted in the books and converted it into AD&D and we played around with it a little bit.

The Kardia Campaign

My second edition epic. I threw everything I had previously created into one big pot and made a pretty robust world, there was also a story associated with it about my Cernunnos NPC, I was big into myth and legend and horned gods back then. The Fey were there, the Black Claw Clan was there, pretty much everything I could think of from mythology and contemporary fantasy fiction was in there as well. We had ten players as well as two DMs (Jason and I) running everything. It was a massive clusterfuck. We played once and didn't even finish the entire scenario. I honestly don't even recall the main plot or whatever of the campaign.

Spawning Time

I was reading some Age of Mortals or Fifth Age or whatever the Dragonlance stuff was called after Weis and Hickman killed off their most beloved characters. Kitaria's dragon Skie created something called a spawn, it was a rather powerful dragon humanoid. I rolled with it and statted them up for like every color, shade, or metal of dragon. So the spawn intermittently hopped into scenarios from time to time. I think Shawn played a mercury spawn one time. Eventually Mike, Jason, and Shawn played some platinum spawn working for Pyrite, the gold dragon that took the form of a ring on Fizban or Zifnab, whichever one was Paladine. They had disintegration breath weapons.

3rd/3.5 Edition Dungeons and Dragons

The whole 3.0 and 3.5 Edition Dungeons and Dragons line is pretty damn blurry, so some of the stuff may be inaccurately placed.

The Tomb of Damara Revisited

Whenever the group rolled up a bunch of new characters we always ran the 2nd Edition Tomb of Damara that was included with a box set that I originally bought ages ago. It got to the point where everyone that gamed regularly with us knew precisely what was in each room even without my descriptions. As an homage to our roots I converted the tomb to third edition and made the monsters and loot random so we wouldn't grow to insanely knowledgeable about it in this edition. We never used the Tomb 2.0 again.

Orsus

I was at a loss for ideas, so I brought out the big guns: the Arthurian mythos, sort of. Armies of undead were storming across the world directed by an evil sorcerer so the players were going to try and break into Camelot and free Arthur from his slumber to save his people when their straits were most dire. Long story short, turns out the evil sorcerer is Merlin and Arthur was a Lawful Evil despot that brought peace and prosperity to the land via his iron fist and killing naysayers with his armies of undead. Player's were going to end up joining or fighting him once they woke him up.

Unspecified Revival

Like the Tomb of Damara, this was another homage to the past. I decided I wanted to try and run a free form campaign where I pulled shit out of my ass and rolled with the punches. As a twist I started everyone out at tenth level and created a stable of characters based on all our favorite 2nd Edition characters like Kain, Gherett, Shade, Algar, and two or three dual-wielding drow. All told, there were like twenty characters brought back to life. Nothing happened and the scenario was kind of lame because I didn't even have a bare bones plan, and Jason Knochel just wanted to go into the mountains away from everyone else.

The Fey

Brought the Fey up to speed for the new edition, still overpowered, still carbon copied from those books and Celtic myth. Everyone rolled characters, we even got Tony's friend Joe to roll a character. Never played it, I honestly don't even remember what the campaign was going to be, I was just excited to play the Fey again.

New Kardia

This is one that was actually long runningish, like seven or eight scenarios I think. Everyone was involved and I'm pretty sure it was definitely 3.5 D&D. The players were in the employ of a guy named Ardas who had a metal face and wore a cloak that was either red or composed of blades, I can't recall. Eric played a coked out wizard, Tony a psion, Jeremy a ranger with philosophy, John was a favored soul, and Dan was a dwarf. There was a demonic army invading this continent and Ardas wanted the guys to stop it. Eventually it would have involved journeying through the nine layers of The Nine Hells only to confront Asmodeous of the Ninth and have him step aside and show them a portal to the tenth layer, which was actually the continent they were from. Spoiler Alert! Ardas was the Lord of the Tenth and he was trying to make the Hells expel his layer so it could become its own plane. The player's were actually petitioners of the Hells before Ardas started doing stuff. If the players wanted to fight Ardas they could go to the upside down floating mountain city and turn it on so the robot inside it busted out and then they could fight Ardas physically. We did not get that far.

d20 Modern

Ambrosia Matrixes

This one was short and kind of odd. d20 Modern had just come out and I thought it was pretty neat, but I didn't quite know what to do with it. For some reason I decided to go the American Gods route and say that gods are real and like to bum around America, the player's were fledgling gods. Each player was granted something called an Ambrosia Matrix that accrued a special type of XP and gained special abilities as it levelled. Some dude named Atreus granted the PCs these matrixes and then I think they killed Tiamat because she was a computer...something. I was probably playing Final Fantasy 7 and reading American Gods around that time.

Shadow Chasers

I had just fucking ridiculous high hopes for this campaign. When I sold Jeremy and Dan on the Shadow Chasers concept I think it had kind of a noir/pulp/Lovecraftian feel to it. Monsters exist and you are the hard boiled detective types that peel away the layer of illusion and exposes the monstrousness beneath it. ...Didn't quite pan out like that. I ended up girding the setting in the same shiny bullshit exterior that DnD is always clad in and it lost the pulp and scariness, if it ever had that in the first place. Jason and James tried to play too, and they were not invited back after they basically tried blowing up everything in sight. It took about two seconds for the spookiness of Shadow to be worn away and it became hack and slash. It was also a sequel to the book Pages of Pain (in which Poseidon fucks with the Lady of Pain's mind to convince here that she is his daughter). Anyway, Ellen was the Lady and her mind had been so fucked with by the Trojan and his urn that she had turned Sigil into another plane (Earth), but one that bordered on all other realms of Shadow. I couldn't really make any of that come across because Tony was the only one that knew anything about Planescape (consensus reality for the win) and no one had read Pages of Pain, so the last few scenarios looked extra random to the guys I'm sure. Then I just quit and this thing ended up tying in with Hekinoe as previously mentioned.

4th Edition Dungeons and Dragons

Hekinoe

As long as I live, even if I live so long that time itself is slain upon the black blade of Entropy, I will remember this campaign. If I were some manner of delusional schizophrenic, this would be the place I live. Every little bit of fiction that I've written since I gained the ability to not steal every single little thing from other sources, has been written here in one way or another (except the James story and some GURPS stories). This campaign is glorious and I love every second I get to spend with the guys (and Martel) in it. I can't wait until we get into the rebellion plotline and I am super geeked about the heist scenario (even though I expect nine specific flavors of disaster to occur). Just as a little note, at this moment I am eleven minutes shy of eight hours of work on the heist.

I Just Remembered

In reviewing the previous post and thinking about that era I just remembered another d20 Modern campaign I was thinking about doing. I really dug the d20 Future and Future Tech stuff, I like badass gadgetry and technology and cybernetics and things of that nature so I was trying to do was find a way to use that stuff, but also do some post-apocalyptic stuff as well. So I came up with this campaign idea.

It was set in the future probably on a distant planet in a high end technology level, and the world was sort of dying out. I forget why, but the apocalypse was coming. The players were part of a special forces type operation and were sent out to secure certain resources for the future. Basically they would have ten or twelve scenarios to venture forth out into this dying world and their actions would change the face of the world when it "rebooted".

A couple examples:

One vault/complex/city was a genetic engineering facility that was trying to engineer certain attributes into humanity that would ensure they survive the apocalypse. The lab had a bunch of scientists though and each one had different ideas about what needed to be done to humanity. Some thought the world would be carpeted with forests by the time humans rejoined it, others thought the sun would never re-ignite so they would need to live underground to get closer to the planets core for warmth. Others thought it would just be a rugged wasteland, etc. Anyway, based on who the players sides with there would be elves, dwarves, and orcs in the new world and they would outnumber the natural humans or they could have said that everyone's points were valid and got everyone to agree to share resources and when the world restarted natural humans would outnumber the other races like typical fantasy world.

Another possibility was an energy net experimentation facility. One of the big concerns was dying tech in this coming new world, how would humanity be able to use the resources of their past if none of it had juice? This facility was going to engineer wetware nanites that would flow out into the world like pollen from a flower and slowly circulate among the living creatures left on the world. Currently the planet had a sort of energy web, kind of like wireless energy that Tesla dreamed of. If you had powered armor or energy weapons it was coded to draw off of this network. The nanite pollen would get stuck in living creatures and the bioelectricity generated by the living things of the world would fuel what was left of this network so your pulse rifle would still pulse after the apocalypse. If the pollen linked to a sentient mind it would also grant people the ability to draw on the energy network and wield psionic powers.

There was also a robotics facility that was working on mass producing robots to do mining and other resource gathering type things while humans waited out the apocalypse. Depending on the actions the players took there might be all kinds of resources available in the new world, or there would be a race of warforged hanging around after the apocalypse.

One of the last scenarios would be the players choosing to either a) find a secure location and go into hibernation till the world recovered from the impending apocalypse or b) they could join a clan of humans seeking to survive through the apocalypse. I a) was chosen, they get to play their same characters in the new world. If b) they got to help ensure humanity had a strong powerbase post apocalypse, they would also determine the type of society this clan evolved into, and they could play their descendants when the world restarted.

I dunno, I always thought it was a neat campaign idea.

Hekinoe

Hekinoe is the name of the planet that I write in and DnD in. I only came up with that name last month. Here is how I came up with it: the folder for this campaign and the stories I write in it was called Heck If I Know because I never knew if the campaign world material would get used and I didn't know what to call it because not all the stories were written about The Known World, so on a whim I crammed all the letters together and deleted some and added an eee onto the end. Hekinoe. I do a lot of goofy stuff like that to come up with names.

Anyway. I feel like writing about the history of Hekinoe, but from the "metagame" standpoint and not the "seven thousand years ago so and so conquered a meaner so and so and thus the world was saved" standpoint.

It all started with d20 Modern and the Shadow Chasers campaign. The original intent of that campaign is irrelevant, I was just getting sick of it. Everyone seemed to think it was about killing monsters, so I stopped caring and kept trying to do silly things with it in my head and it became this kind of haphazard collection of scenarios that were only partially related, and the guys kept killing monsters. The only two scenarios I really truly enjoyed were clearing out the Bay City Mall and shutting down the Shadow Gate that had popped open in it and the Groundhog's Day scenario that involved Shadow itself trying to lock the guys into a coma as they relived the same day forever.

Anyway, as time progressed I was putting more and more work into the Heck If I Know folder and less into Shadow Chasers, so I was looking for a way to bring the two together. I made a scenario that plopped the guys down into another world at its start, total railroading. I'm not sure how they felt about it and at that point I doubt I cared. I recall it was a world with pine trees of blue crystals that the guys used to fuel a car that someone they killed had willed into existence. They also encountered someone called The Guardian and were tasked with procuring a skull of brass and bronze by some guy they encountered that had horns on his head.

Those crystal pine trees were the ancestors of the Eldumans and The Guardian was one of their descendants that was a former builder-slave of Kaleshmar. The orb he used to contact beings from other planes and realities was the Kaleshmar internet. We never played again after that scenario, but I had planned to make the stealing of the skull of brass and bronze sever this world from Shadow and trap the guys there. We would then switch to 3.5 Edition DnD and they would play the same characters in a fantasy setting trying to find their place in this world they had helped to apocalypse-ize. What I later decided had happened was this:

They would have eventually found a glassy black monolith after following a glassy back road north. There were also swords and walls that were both glassy and black, apparently I was into obsidian then. Inside the monolith they would have found a creature chained to a strange and alien device that caused their teeth to vibrate unpleasantly in their skulls.

The chained up creature would have been like ten feet tall and fanged and taloned and kind of monstrous and inhuman looking. He was something called a saevoi, a race that has had a lot of impact on poor little Hekinoe and the thing he was strapped to was a cosmic engine. The cosmic engine was a storehouse of energy drawn from everywhere at once. In my little mythos there is this energy that moves the cosmos, where it comes from and how it is generated I do not know, but it makes planets spin and stars continue to burn. The saevoi and their sibling races can draw on this cosmic energy and manipulate it, they are the creators of the cosmic engines. Anyway, this particular cosmic engine was malfunctioning badly and the people of Kaleshmar decided to capture a saevoi and lash the sucker to the engine in the hopes that its presence would stabilize the engine and keep it from malfunctioning too badly. It would have been better for all of Kaleshmar if they had captured a conteog, a race that embodies all the natural checks and balances that keep the universe from spiraling out of control and into oblivion. Saevoi embody that spiral, so the saevoi's presence juiced up the engine and had it providing all kinds of power for the Kaleshmarians. The process worked so well that Kaleshmars basically began dragging whatever cosmic entities they could find down out of the sky and slaving them to the engines they had powering their society.

To continue, the saevoi probably would have howled at the PCs a lot and begged for freedom or something. They would have killed it because it was big and there and they thought they were supposed to kill it and they never question anyone that ever gives them a quest of any kind, even if he has horns and offers no explanations or has a bearded metal face like Adras did.

When it dies and they remove its brass and bronze-like skull, all the juice that powers up the cosmic engine cuts off and suddenly the cosmic engine has to do all the work on its own. The engine breaks and probably explodes. The PCs don't know that because the horned dude that needed the skull whisks them away from ground zero.

Kaleshmar at this point is in serious trouble. Because of its huge output of resources they had come to rely on this engine for all manner of things, when it broke a lot of stuff stopped working on Kaleshmar so they began scrambling for solutions to their energy crisis and in the ensuing tizzy they really didn't have the resources to figure out what the PCs and the horned man were up to. Meanwhile Mr. Horn Head had the PCs venture forth to other cosmic engine sites to kill whatever cosmic entity was chained to them. The horned man was a bit of an anarchist and sought to bring Kaleshmar to its knees.

I'll clear up something right now: the horned man is still around in The Known World and has achieved his goal, which was to bring Kaleshmar down and to ensure his survival till time itself dies upon the black blade of entropy. He is not Keroen Skathos, Cenn the Reaver, Cernunnos, or Kern Yew'nose.

So the guys systematically cause Kaleshmar's power grid to go almost completely dark, but they (Kaleshmarians) are not stupid. They live on a floating continent and have backup systems to keep it floating even when they do get stupid and frantic. The horned man knows this and steps from the shadows and says he has captured the players, the villains that were slaying the cosmic creatures that were bound to the engines. He tells his peers that there is a way they can save Kaleshmar and return its might tenfold. He has the skulls the players have stolen and he believes that with the proper alignment of forces he can use the skulls of the creatures to seek out others of their kind and bring them to Kaleshmar against their will. Being desperate, everyone gets on board (Except A'lst?).

What the horned man intended to do never happened. There was a war going on in the stars above Hekinoe and it had just ended. The most potent weapon in that war had been decomissioned and the wielders of that weapon knew that many of their kind had come to Hekinoe and never returned. They cast the weapon down out of the sky and it struck Kaleshmar and split the floating continent asunder. All that is known about it was that it was a projectile of some kind that fell from the sky trailing thick clouds of grey smoke. It didn't burn or scream out of the sky, it just fell trailing grey and plowed right through Kaleshmar, further disrupting the power grid of the continent. It wasn't a massive missile or anything, what destroyed Kaleshmar was the energy associated with its passing.

I just learned that high velocity bullet wounds that pass through flesh have this effect called cavitation where there is a pressure wave that results from their passage through your tissue that knocks everything around and messes you up. Its like that.

It's at about this time that the timeline associated with my DnD campaign comes into play, so there you go. I'm not going to lie and say all of that was the plan from the beginning. I knew that the whole skull stealing bit was going to reboot the world and allow me to get in some fantasy play time. I only later began to try and synch everything up the way it currently is now and I kind of like the way it turns out. It ties my sci-fi stuff to my fantasy stuff in a way I like. If you find it interesting and enjoyable as well, cool.

The One-Eyed Man, Part 2

Fourthmonth, 9995 Dk, Later That Night

We had no need of sleep and so we spent our time wandering the streets of Kusseth. We were unarmed but the individuals that often waylaid travelers were a savvy sort and had a knack for choosing their targets wisely, though there were only two of us we were left unmolested in darkened alleys and while we walked lonely roads. I could sense them out there observing us though.

We puffed on pipes as we strode across the red brick streets, our eyes piercing the gloom of night to take in the sights of wood and brick buildings covered in graffiti and jury-rigged repairs.

"How is it that this place continues to be such a power in this land? Kusseth, A nation whose buildings and streets are covered in the shit of a thousand reeking mortals as they go about their lives, how can they remain so strong?"

Callifay puffed quietly on his pipe before responding, "They are not as long lived as you and I, Cenn. They have no perception of the larger world as we do. They see these streets and think of wars of past years and feel their time slipping by and must rush about to compensate, throwing caution, morals, and peace to the wind. Time to you and is is merely the tick of our blood healing our cut ears, to them it is the harbinger of things left undone and a life left unlived."

I paused and puffed on my own pipe before responding, "I meant how can a nation whose people quite literally shit in the middle of a street be such a dominant power in this land?"

I gestured before us towards a freshly left pile in the center of the street. His eyes fell on it and he laughed. We moved around it and continued our walk.

His laughter ceased and he said, "I still stand by my statement," with a smile. I had nothing to respond with, other than to return his boyish grin.

The smile fell away from my lips and I sighed, "We are old, Callifay, so old."

He pursed his lips and when he exhaled the smoke took the shape of an expanding ring.

"Do you feel your vitality ebbing away, brother?"

I shook my head and said, "No. I've spilled too much blood for that to be a risk, yet I am tired. Weary. So much of my life and who I am has been being the bloodthirsty cretin that freely slays anything without a care, the bastard that cares nothing for life or morals or kindness."

We stopped and faced each other on the streets near a flickering gaslight and he put a hand to my shoulder and let it rest there.

"Are you saying that is not who and what you are?"

I shook my head, "No. I am a murderous bastard. I am war and death personified."

"Then what is this bemoaning of your age I hear? Do you need a nap then?"

I chuckled, "No. I need no nap."

His hand moved from my shoulder and cupped my cheek briefly, then he spoke in a not unkind tone.

"Then shut up, Cenn. I did not lure you from the forests to this place so that you could have a quiet moment of pity and despair."

"I do not despair," I said as we resumed our walk.

"Then what?"

"It is as it was when my wife and I spoke quietly on the field of battle about our wayward son and his desire to return to the light."

"Ah," he said and nodded.

"I wonder if I could be more than a mercenary, the creature that the nations of this land call on when they wish to scorch the earth itself of life."

"What would you do? Paint? Teach?"

I chuckled and tapped the burned tobacco out of my pipe before replying.

"I could live as Volung I think."

Callifay snorted and shook his head.

"Volung is a mercenary captain with a fortress. Do you wish to build a city then?"

"No, but he has something lasting. He has a home, a place where his presence would be missed, he has a wife and son."

"Are you a fool, Cenn?" Iron had crept into Callifay's voice and his eyes turned cold.

"Remember your place, brother." I growled.

"Everything Volung possesses you possess, and what you have is of greater value. There is a place you could call home, a place your presence is missed, a place that will last. Do you forget our homeland and those that love you so easily?"

"No I do not forget our homeland, but that is a place we cannot return. Nor do I forget those who hold affection for me in their hearts."

He gave a nod of understanding but spoke again, "We could return there in an instant if you but willed it and you know this. We could return and wage war as gods of death and destruction and we too could have kingdoms as Volung does. You know this, do not pretend to be ignorant of our past."

"I do not pretend to be ignorant of anything. I only mean that I wish to have something lasting here in this land. This land is full of anger and love and vitality of every sort, it is alive. The races of the poorly named Known World strive for great things, from the most common street shitter to the greatest of rulers. They all have dreams and goals that extend beyond what the next hour will be spent wasting time on. It is not so in our homeland, despite my attempts to cull the uselessness out of our people."

"I understand your meaning now I think. What would you do then, Cenn? Would you teach or paint? I ask that in seriousness this time."

"I do not know. I cannot leave my reavers leaderless, and I cannot cede them to Laram, though he is the most deserving."

"If Volung were to ally with his son in command of your reavers, no country in this land could stand against Volungshemle. They would conquer this place with ease."

I smiled and my forehead itched beneath my bandanna.

"What would it be like to free a land held in Volung's iron grip?"

Callifay was silent for a moment and then spoke, "You would drown this land in blood simply for the challenge of freeing it once more? Simply to free yourself from the burden of leadership and pit yourself against Volung?"

I shrugged and said, "Think of it, brother. Imagine the blood, the battle, you and I freeing a land from the grip of a tyrant. I have been a tyrant before, a leader and king, a conquerer, and an executioner. Never a freedom fighter."

"Would you go to such great lengths then? Alter the face of a continent, merely for the thrill of it?"

I nodded, "I would, but my actions would alter nothing. I grow weary of being the leader and it is well known that Laram has been groomed for mastery of the band. He or William. They are the only two experienced enough. It is fate that if I should step aside, one of them will lead the band."

"Could you do it though? Could you give up your reavers and walk off into the forest alone?"

"Not without you, no."

He smiled and we walked in silence as I thought. This was not the first time I had pondered this potential turn of events. Whenever I closed my eyes an ocean of blood was behind them, it was my nature. I had no desire to ever stop killing or waging war, but I grew weary of leadership. I grew weary of keeping the cutthroats from each other and ensuring no innocents were victims of their ravages. I kept the worst men of this continent together and in one place, I kept the wolves penned so that the sheep could run free.

Each of my reavers was a murderer and each of them was truly a leader of men. Any one of them could have cut away a chunk of any nation to call his own and rule as a bandit lord. It took every ounce of violence and willpower I could muster to direct their urges in such a fashion that it did not drown the continent in senseless bloodshed, yet I contemplated relinquishing my control and allowing that to happen anyway. I had taken responsibility for the bastards and now I had grown tired of that responsibility and sought to unleash them so that I could slay them and free myself from the responsibility. I sighed, I could not allow Laram to control my band of reavers and let he and his father destroy every nation in this land in their quest for dominance. I sought battle for the challenge and the thrill of it, to feel my heart pounding in my chest, Volung merely wanted territory and to kill those not of his kind.

"I cannot do it," I whispered, "I cannot give up control of them and I cannot let Laram and his father do what we both know they would."

He grabbed me by the shoulders and brought his face close to my own.

"I know your nature as well as you know it. If you were angered and had a blade out, if your blood were up, you would do this in a heartbeat because it would mean never ending conflict. You would love it and never regret the decision, but you are quiet and at peace in this place though, you are rational."

I nodded. I had always been a creature at odds with myself. In battle there was no line I would not cross, in peace it was different. That was my nature, to be a destroyer and a preserver. I had tried to change it and it had almost killed me. I would never be anything but what I was and I accepted that and would make no apologies for anything I did ever again.

"You said you had never been a freedom fighter, Cenn."

I nodded again, my eyes downcast and not looking at his face so close to my own.

"You have been a leader though, a master, have you been a servant?"

I raised my face and cocked my head to the side, "Go on."

"If you grow weary of leadership, give it up. If you feel that Volung will be too pointlessly destructive a force with his son leading your men, do not grant it to him."

"William? He is too unstable. He could never hold the-"

"Shh." He held a finger to my lips and went on. "Give up your place as leader of Cenn's Reavers and grant me mastery over them."

I mumbled something around his finger.

"I once led men into battle under your banner before. I made men that could not stand my presence follow me into battle to kill their brothers in your name and for your glory. I could make them follow me."

I moved my head, "And what would you do if Laram challenged you?"

His eyes were wide and bright, his tongue was licking his lips in anticipation as he said, "Kill him."

"What would my place be in your band?"

He smiled, "You would be the ghost at my back, the carrion crow that followed in my wake or announced my coming. You would recruit thugs and murderers to my banner and collect payment from the weaklings and tyrants that hired us. You would be as I am to you now."

"The men would not follow you with me standing at your back, Callifay."

"Of course not, Cenn the Reaver must die through accident or assassination. I must take his place through violence, and you will become my aide. My shadowy second that men would not obey unless forced to."

I gestured to my eyes and hair, "I am distinct and not easily forgettable."

"Hair can be dyed, nails painted, your ears kept perpetually scarred and scabby or hidden under a larger bandanna."

"My eye?"

"Covered semi-permanently or cut out, you've suffered worse."

I nodded, "True, though I like the idea of losing an eye less than other wounds I've sustained."

His eyes were luminescent in the night, almost lantern-like. This as much as his words told of his excitement.

"You've thought on this," I said.

He shook his head, "No. It is a brilliant solution to your weariness though. Can you understand the challenge of always being stuck behind the scenes, never able to impose your will on those that think little of you in the band?"

"Are you that miserable? Is being my closest confidant so poor a place for you? Is being the only creature so loved by me that I've not shed his blood so beneath you? My truest children, even my wife, have all felt my blade at their necks, but never Callifay of the-"

He smiled sadly and his finger halted my lips before the hand moved to cup my cheek once again.

"I cannot be miserable with you so near my brother. It has been ages since I've commanded men though and I would be a liar if I said the thought of cracking the skulls of those that refused to follow me and commanding men to die in battle did not excite me. The question is, can you put aside power and respect?"

I nodded, "And what if I grow tired of my place at your side, Callifay? Will you then step aside and once more reverse our roles?"

He stepped away from me, a sad smile still writ across his lips, "Do you think I've the power to stop you, Cenn?"

"Oh wipe that sad little face away, we will do this," I said with a smile.

He grinned from ear to ear and in the blink of an eye he put his lips upon mine and let them rest there for a moment before stepping away from me. His grin, one that would not look out of place on a young boy of another race, was infectious and I was soon smiling as stupidly as he.

"What now then?" He asked as we filled our pipes with fresh tobacco and relit them.

"I think we go to Meroteth once more."

"Why Hell?"

I smirked at him, "It was in ancient Meroteth that Cenn the Reaver was truly born, I think it fitting that it shall be the place he goes to die."