Act II: Northward Bound

Act I

Previously...

The party arrived on the eastern shores of Andoria seeking answers about a mysterious black stone they came to possess in the Forgotten Realms.

They found an unsettled land, rife with political turmoil: the formerly fertile farmlands of the Antilligan writing in their death throes, while The Crown of Dawnmist teeters on the brink of war with the northern realms of Greyhelm beyond the Swordrain gate.

Queen Ezmei and the clerics of Dawnmist suspect that the Dwarves of the Gate have some hand in poisoning the Grey River, their suspicions only held at bay by a constant supply of provisions sent southward by the Dwarves.

The party solicited advice from the denizens of Dalesport, first venturing into The Dakk, where they befriend a Dwarvish Cleric of the Gate named Banu, and eventually discovere and reactivate the Earthrise Mechanism, raising and draining the swamp. They also released an ancient wizard known as Dinbrook, who quickly returned to his studies and excavations of the Thoral Tree Temple.

During their excusions, the party discovers several instances of a mysterious glyph carved into some weaponry and on the dismembered hand of one of the Dawnmist elves; a marking of the Orvothian - a name half-remembered, on the furthest edge of recall...

Returning to Dalesport under cover of dark, having been informed they may be a wanted people, the group learns that the answers they seek likely lie north of the Swordrain gate. After a few brutal run-ins with the Dawnmist Guard (fires and whatnot), the party slinks out of Dalesport, bound for the Gate; they learn that the Queensblade, the Dawnmist black ops, have been sent after them.

Avoiding the main road, the party elects to spend the night just inside the southern boundary of the Endergrove, a vast, thick tangle of ancient forest. Before they can settle down, they are ambushed by the Orvothian, but survive the attack - just before Banu arrives.

Banu had ridden with great haste to catch the party; Mara said she saw the party leave, pursued by riders in black he has come to espouse some important expostion...

shadeplains

The State of Things

Banu set out from The Dakk with tidings from Dinbrook, who believes that the forces acting on The Dakk were created by some ancient elemental power, and believes that the runes under the Thoral tree indicate that the person who raised The Dakk did so by way of one of the four Locii.

Banu conveys the tale:

It is said, that in the beginning, before mountain or sea, the gods of old, known as the Makers, created this realm by binding together the elemental planes; those raw, elemental seas of earth, air, fire, and water, twisted together giving rise to all we know. Yet, of course, not all were pleased by this… creation.

Orvos, a god of the void, took offense to what he saw as an unnatural, impure union, a defiling of sorts; thus he set about undoing that which the Makers had wrought; Orvos The Unmaker, he came to be known. A battle the likes of which creation had never seen took place. The Makers descended upon Orvos in a fury, as he tore desperately at the fabric of reality - legend has it, the chaos and violence of their struggle gave rise to the Voidsunder mountains.

At last, the Makers managed to bind Orvos in a prison of exquisite elemental filigree; they twisted parts of the elemental planes themselves into an inescapable pocket of the void. Of course, this prison wasn’t permanent - it needed to be carefully maintained. And, as most gods are wont to do, they tired of their creation and sought to move on. Luckily, the creatures of this realm were beginning to awaken, and the Makers saw to it that the custodianship of Orvos’ prison was taken up by us mere mortals. A tad shortsighted, if you ask me.

Anyway, as mortal beings cannot access the elemental planes directly, the Makers created four locii, allowing skilled wielders to manipulate the planar folds and maintain Orvos’ prison - so the story goes. The wielders of these locii were, of course, enormously powerful, and weren’t shy about what they could do - naturally, this attracted attention. Now, more directly concerning you and your findings: The Orvothian, as legend has it, were an order bent on unbinding Orvos; releasing him to let him complete his task. They, naturally, would have had some interest in obtaining or otherwise disrupting the wielders of the Loci; and so they tried, forcing the stewards into hiding. Or so it goes. This is, apparently, ancient myth - but Dinbrook believes it true, and believed you to be in some sort of grave danger;

Banu and Dinbrook think the party is in grave danger, namely because:

Despite the myth of Orvos being, well, a myth, Banu seemes convinced that large groups of powerful people are now moved to action by the belief that the party may have knowledge about the location of the one of the four Locii

Cast of Characters