Before the Fall
An opening theme for the age before ash, when Sunspire still looked like a promise instead of a warning.
Two eras · One history
The Chronicles
The world after the bargain, and the people who watched it begin.
Present day On hiatus after the red-light cliffhanger
Sunspire Campaign
Fourteen published sessions of infernal crystals, suspicious factions, airborne disasters, and a party that keeps escaping towns under increasingly specific circumstances. The public record ends with the party surrounded by red light; open a record for the story as it unfolded at the table.
01Festival of FlameEldenhold · Valeria
A celebration becomes a riot, and five strangers leave Eldenhold as fugitives.
The campaign began during Eldenhold’s Festival of Flame, held twenty years after the Champions sealed Asmodeus away. Kelsynk, Valen, Reese, Grenak, and Mruno arrived as Lady Arabelle Thorne’s guests. Their assignment was essentially to attend politely. Grenak bullied a beer vendor into a discount, Pip Thistledown unveiled his Transmutative Ale, Old Man Griggs muttered that the rings were breaking, and dignity began its swift retreat from the square.
The festival shattered when a frightened boy tried to throw a burning infernal egg into a noble tent. The party intervened, but the crowd saw armed strangers striking a child. Dockworkers surged forward, the Iron Guard moved in, and the square dissolved into smoke, shouting, and broken stalls. Somewhere inside the chaos, time stopped for Valen and a vision showed him cracked silver rings above an impossible well. When reality returned, the party’s first shared decision was not to explain anything. They ran.
Open full session record →02Fear, Flight, and the Girl Named SusieEldenhold to Ashenvale
The fugitives escape the city and find one little girl waiting in an empty town.
Lady Arabelle begged the group to surrender so she could clear their names. General Thornvale arrived with the Iron Guard and a far less comforting interpretation of due process. Reese scattered the angry crowd with magical fear, Mruno covered the escape with darkness, and the party slipped beyond Eldenhold’s walls while everyone else argued about where they had gone.
They headed north toward Port Town, filling the road with a singing contest that grew loud enough to threaten the entire concept of stealth. By evening they reached Ashenvale, a lakeside town with barred doors and empty streets. Inside an abandoned-looking inn they found Susie, an eight-year-old girl who said ghosts and zombies came out at night. Exhausted, suspicious, and apparently immune to obvious horror-movie warnings, the party barricaded the tavern and stayed.
Open full session record →03Little Susie and Mruno’s Soiled PantsAshenvale · Valeria
Susie loses her disguise, Ashenvale wakes up, and Mruno loses considerably more.
Mruno decided Susie’s story did not survive close inspection and cast Dispel Magic. The child’s shape peeled away into a small horned demon, and the tavern became a battlefield. A necrotic shockwave blinded and terrified much of the party, dropped Mruno, and sent everyone scrambling. Grenak raged because he had wasted good life advice on a demon. Valen finally drove the creature’s head into the bar and ended the fight.
With Susie dead, Ashenvale’s people stumbled back into the streets as though waking from a shared nightmare. The innkeepers learned their adopted daughter had been the thing imprisoning the town. The party accepted free food and drinks for life instead of twenty gold, while Mruno negotiated permanent performance rights and quietly changed the pants he had soiled during the battle. Then came fresh indignity: his old band, the Silken Sonics, had replaced him with Dark Bronson.
Open full session record →04Of Banjos, Bards, and Billy BumblersAshenvale · Valeria
Roland joins the hunt while the others prepare the least subtle undercover performance imaginable.
The next morning introduced Roland Blackstone and his Billy Bumbler companion. Roland was hunting Towerheart, a demon tied to the destruction of his old company, and the group agreed to help once they finished the far more urgent matter of humiliating Dark Bronson. Mruno completed his disguise as Bruno Bars, although Grenak failed to recognize him until the addition of an absurd moustache apparently made everything clear.
To promote the show, the group created a temporary band, rejected several catastrophic names, and settled on the Punch Drunk Loves. Their sign-making and street performance drew nostalgic fans back to the inn. Carly Beltweek attached herself to Mruno with alarming intensity while her sister Marina tried to behave like a normal person. Above it all, a gleaming gold pirate-style airship crossed the sky—a hint that their next problems would have altitude.
Open full session record →05Battle of the BardsAshenvale · Valeria
Mruno faces his replacement, wins the crowd, and helps start the campaign’s second civic disturbance.
The Drunken Wyvern filled beyond capacity for the promised showdown. The Silken Sonics arrived dressed like a corporate fever dream, followed by Dark Bronson, whose confidence had no measurable relationship to his talent. His performance was a glittering, tone-deaf catastrophe. He nevertheless left the stage convinced that everyone had witnessed greatness.
The Punch Drunk Loves answered with an actual performance. Spells, coordination, and raw enthusiasm turned the tavern into a roaring crowd, and Mruno won decisively. Dark Bronson’s tantrum ended when Marina kicked him in the balls. His entourage advanced, magical darkness swallowed the room, and another celebration became another riot. Carly led the party through a hidden escape route before the crowd could reorganize around murder.
Open full session record →06The Spy in the RoadRoad to Port Town
A roadside alarm brings the Black Talons, a spy warning, and absolutely no increase in trust.
The group left Ashenvale with food, although Reese left enough gold behind to keep the departure technically outside the category of theft. They camped after an extended argument over whether the middle of the road was a sensible place to sleep. Mruno’s Bruno Bars disguise shed itself piece by piece until only smeared makeup remained.
Before dawn, Roland’s alarm spell woke them as a unit of Black Talons rode toward Port Town without noticing the camp. Roland then revealed that General Thornvale had warned him there was a spy inside the party. Insight checks produced incompatible conclusions, Grenak remained suspicious, Valen remained confused, and the discussion deteriorated into goat metaphors and bad spelling. They reached Port Town with no spy identified, but at least everyone distrusted everyone more efficiently.
Open full session record →07Portside Promises and Big Titty DemonsPort Town · Valeria
The party hires an airship and unknowingly shares a tavern with the person sent to capture them.
At the Bent Coin, the party met Captain Rhogar Skyscale and Kaela Voss. Rhogar offered passage aboard his airship, the Storm Wraith. Kaela was a bounty hunter working under a contract connected to the Eldenhold riot, although she kept that detail to herself while studying the group. Roland’s Billy Bumbler did some quiet eavesdropping and learned more than the adults realized.
The party secured passage and boarded the Storm Wraith, heading toward Big Titty Demon Island in search of the red crystals that powered the vessel. Grenak discovered new and overlapping fears involving heights, open water, moving ships, and whatever lived beneath them. The island emerged ahead—an infernal place with a ridiculous name and no obligation to balance the two.
Open full session record →08Crystals, Chaos, and the HingeBig Titty Demon Island · Lost record
A reconstructed account of the lost session at Crystal Hinge.
The original recording and detailed notes for this session were lost. What survives comes from the later campaign record and the state of the party when Session 9 began. After landing on the island’s crystal-covered coast, the group searched for the red crystals needed by the Storm Wraith, fought a pack of infernal gremlins, and encountered Sniv camped inland beneath a sky he insisted looked wrong.
The trail led to Crystal Hinge, where a massive dark-red monolith stood inside an ancient ring. Three infernal guardians manifested when the party approached, and the battle pushed them toward collapse. Valen received a sudden flash of insight and hurled a dagger into the crystal itself. The resonant strike destabilized the demons long enough for the group to seize the heart crystal and retreat to the ship.
Open full session record →09The Sky Burns RedAboard the Storm Wraith
A talking skull provides directions shortly before the cargo opens a portal to Hell.
Recovering near the coast, the group met Azrul and discovered a sentient skull infused with red-crystal energy. The skull called itself Sam and balanced being irritating with being useful. He pointed the party toward Mireholm and Krivahn the Verdant Fang, one of the Champions who fought Asmodeus twenty years earlier.
The red crystals were packed into the Bag of Holding and loaded aboard the Storm Wraith. Mid-flight, their energies destabilized and tore open an infernal rift inside the ship. Gremlins poured through, turning the deck into another short, ugly battle before the breach collapsed. The party reached Mireholm at dawn with a destination, a dangerous cargo, and no improved understanding of storage safety.
Open full session record →10Last Gourd, First HangoverGravenhollow · Mireholm
Krivahn points toward the corruption; the party points itself toward a tavern and a hydra.
In Gravenhollow, the party met Krivahn the Verdant Fang at Jollow Fang. She sensed corruption inside the red crystals and warned that Mireholm’s spirits and land were reacting to them. Roland’s resemblance to someone from her past earned a moment of attention, but the spreading taint was more urgent. Krivahn gave them a map to an old swamp shrine where the guardians might reveal what the crystals were becoming.
Naturally, the group stopped at the Last Gourd for powerful swamp liquor before conducting sacred wilderness research. They eventually followed the map into the marsh and were ambushed by a three-headed mirehydra whose death released a swarm of venomous serpent-spawn. After surviving the fight, they returned to the tavern with trophies and a rapidly deteriorating relationship with sobriety.
Open full session record →11Shrine of the Three HungersMireholm wetlands
The shrine takes Reese, the mimics lose patience, and Rhogar arrives at exactly the dramatic moment he wanted.
After shopping at Dartfang Forge, the party followed Krivahn’s map to a ruined shrine. Three corpses and a riddle explained how to feed three stone chests: by spell, by distant sting, and by fang. The party struck all three correctly. The chests unfolded into mimics but remained calm, creating the rare possibility that the puzzle had actually been solved without disaster.
Then the altar erupted with red light and dragged Reese through a portal mid-sentence. In the confusion Roland fired at a mimic, broke the truce, and began the disaster everyone had apparently missed. The guardians merged into a massive corrupted creature and nearly killed Valen. At the critical moment, the Storm Wraith crossed overhead and Rhogar rappelled into the clearing, joining the fight and the party with all the restraint of a man who had rehearsed his entrance.
Open full session record →12Echoes of TowerheartSpirit Realm · Mireholm
The party enters a world where truth is power and still attempts to defeat a bargain with wordplay.
Valen survived the shrine but his spirit did not return with his body. Krivahn sent the party to the Shell of Many Dreams, an ancient shaman able to guide them into the Spirit Realm. They awakened beneath a bruised sky where lies weakened them and honest admissions produced silver crystals capable of cutting the crimson roots binding Valen.
Each companion offered a truth, and together they reached Towerheart. The entity offered Roland one absolute answer in exchange for breaking his horn, marking a friend, or surrendering his future. The party immediately tried to exploit the wording by insisting they were not friends. Towerheart accepted the argument and marked Billy Bumbler—the one companion Roland could not honestly deny. They freed Valen and returned to Mireholm with Billy’s eye burning red and their legal victory looking suspiciously like defeat.
Open full session record →13Stormwraith Under FireThe skies above Sunspire
The Golden Minotaur Guild attacks from two ships and discovers the Storm Wraith is crewed by lunatics.
While flying toward Sylvara, the Storm Wraith was trapped between two hostile airships bearing the Golden Minotaur Guild’s colors. Cannon fire damaged a crystal engine and set the deck ablaze. Mruno created illusionary engines to confuse the attackers while Rhogar drove the ship through a sun-blind turn and down toward the treetops.
When boarders crossed on ropes, the crew dropped anchor and stopped hard enough to ruin several carefully planned landings. A mage fireballed the deck, Rhogar answered with lightning breath, and Grenak introduced the enemy captain to the practical limits of feathered hats. A surviving attacker admitted that a hidden patron called the Golden Voice had ordered the party captured alive. When he had nothing else to offer, Valen threw him overboard.
Open full session record →14Mead, Mutton, and MisinformationVaelthalas · Sylvara
The published record ends in Vaelthalas, while the campaign’s later red-light cliffhanger remains outside the numbered archive.
The damaged Storm Wraith reached Vaelthalas, the elven capital built around Whisperroot Sanctuary. The party began at the Gilded Pot, where Velsar Thornweave, Saelva, and Tessa introduced them to Sylvaran mead and the city’s careful social rules. They learned that Whisperroot was both the nation’s spiritual center and the place most likely to hold answers about the crystals—but openly discussing the corruption was taboo.
At Whisperroot’s reception desk they met Raelynn Mossveil, whose interest in Valen quickly moved her from receptionist to drinking companion. Their questions attracted Sareth Vosser, a connected aide who confirmed that Champion Elyndor Faelithil was the right person to seek. He provided a referral that could get them past the sanctuary’s outer bureaucracy. The public record ends here, but the campaign later reached a red-light cliffhanger; the final played session number and full public recap remain unverified.
Open full session record →Five years into the golden age Current campaign
Rise of Maltraxis
Sunspire is peaceful, fertile, and impossibly prosperous. The new Kingsguard is beginning to understand that perfection has enforcement mechanisms. Open each record for the fuller surviving account.
01The Gathering at SunspireFive years into the bargain
King Maltraxis summons tribute and representatives from the allied nations. The capital is prosperous, orderly, and untouched by hardship—but Stormurinn overhears a visitor remind the ageless king that only ninety-five years remain.
Wilfred Cragbloom, Hamdik Bitterforge, Stormurinn Vyrn, and Elric Helioset arrive as sworn representatives bearing tribute. Each nation sees in Sunspire the same impossible miracle: full harvests, quiet borders, safe roads, and a king who has not visibly aged.
During his watch, Stormurinn hears an unseen visitor enter the king’s private chambers and say, ‘It has been five years. You have ninety-five remaining.’ He enters without permission, earns Maltraxis’s fury, and receives no explanation. The Kingsguard begins beneath a clock only one of them has heard.
Open full campaign record →02The Gauntlet of KingsguardThe first test
Svetlana subjects the recruits to a lethal teamwork trial. Magic, improvised sabotage, airborne dwarven vomiting, and petty illusions carry them through. The real test comes afterward, when starving prisoners who spoke against Maltraxis are placed before them and the new Kingsguard is ordered to execute them.
With Stormurinn sick, Rish Rash and Alaryn join the recruits for Svetlana’s suspended obstacle course. Rish Rash flies. Hamdik spins helplessly in midair and vomits on Pillar Four. Alaryn jams a spinning wheel with a rock, cleans the vomit, then briefly makes it appear on Elric’s cloak. Elric retaliates with radiant blindness. Alaryn makes it look as though Elric has shit himself. Teamwork, apparently.
After a sphinx’s riddle, Svetlana reveals the real examination: four starving prisoners forced to fight the recruits. Elric obeys the execution order. Alaryn gives one captive a blade before killing him. Wilfred, Rish Rash, and Hamdik refuse, so Svetlana orders the survivors tortured before execution and tells the recruits their hesitation caused the suffering.
Open full campaign record →03The Cost of DefianceLost session · Canon reconstructed · Reconstructed
Maltraxis forces the recruits to confront the prisoners again. Stormurinn, Hamdik, and Rish Rash obey. Wilfred refuses, denounces the king, and dies for it. Months later, Lucien Dorian joins what remains of the Kingsguard.
The broken prisoners are brought before the throne as a lesson. Stormurinn kills first. Hamdik follows. After long thought, Rish Rash does the same. Wilfred alone refuses, arguing that mercy would serve the crown better than fear and that obedience without thought leads only to ruin.
Maltraxis has him arrested. In a chamber of fire and chanting mages, Wilfred drinks a potion and steps into the flames. His death teaches the survivors exactly how carefully truth must be spoken. Months later Lucien arrives—polished, observant, and fluent in the kind of survival that smiles while measuring leverage.
Open full campaign record →04The Road to EastmarchMonths after Wilfred’s death
With Lucien now among them, the Kingsguard rides east beside Maltraxis. Prosperous Breecaster celebrates beneath neglected temples, roadside shrines stand empty, and the land grows quieter as the royal column approaches Eastmarch.
Lucien begins the journey with too much luggage and a peasant carrying it. He charms merchant Gozbert Bophin into donating furs, ale, tobacco, and supplies in exchange for the possibility of royal favor, then neutralizes Hamdik’s criticism by sharing the goods.
At Breecaster, Alaryn wins the archery tournament after Lucien and Rish Rash quietly interfere with the competition. During the team exhibition, Lucien opens with Synaptic Static and ends by leaving an enemy polymorphed into a sheep long after victory. Beyond the festival, the party finds neglected temples and empty roadside shrines in lands supposedly blessed beyond measure.
Open full campaign record →05The Fall of EastmarchThe king’s reclamation
The Kingsguard breaks Eastmarch through sabotage, artillery, dragonborn shock troops, and merciless discipline. When the keep falls, Maltraxis orders annihilation—not merely victory.
Lucien’s agents sabotage siege engines and impersonate rebel leaders. Hamdik’s guns break the defenses. Rish Rash shields the advance, Elric closes every gap, and Stormurinn leads the charge. The old King Buckingham offers his life for mercy; Stormurinn kills him. His grandson attacks, and Elric burns the child to ash.
Lucien walls the keep’s exits shut. Rebels, soldiers, and civilians are killed inside. Stormurinn shows unease. Rish Rash fights through tears. Elric executes one of his own soldiers for hesitating. When the city is finally silent, Maltraxis smiles—but conquest alone has not fulfilled the bargain.
Open full campaign record →06The Ashes of RebellionThe road back toward Breecaster
The Kingsguard hunts the surviving royal line. At a rebel-struck caravan, Lucien transforms Stormurinn into a Tyrannosaurus Rex—and the battle becomes a massacre with a wounded child at its center.
The bargain requires submission, not occupation. Maltraxis therefore needs the surviving ruler of Valador alive and kneeling. On the road toward Breecaster, the Kingsguard finds rebels attacking a merchant convoy. Rish Rash opens with fire. Lucien freezes fighters in place. Alaryn fires from range. Hamdik leaps between wagons with pistols blazing.
Then Lucien turns Stormurinn into a towering Tyrannosaurus Rex. He devours enemies whole and scatters the rest. Afterward, Rish Rash discovers a boy named Jeremy beside his dead mother, a shattered bone driven through his abdomen. He draws a salt circle and teleports away. Alaryn and Lucien keep the child alive.
Open full campaign record →07The Prince’s SubmissionThe last heir of Valador
Rise Lightstar saves Jeremy and joins the company. The Kingsguard destroys a blockade, teaches the rescued boy to execute prisoners, and reaches Prince Halric beneath a line of torches.
Rise Lightstar arrives with armored clerics and heals the caravan survivors, including Jeremy. Lucien gives a terrified merchant a meaningless protection ring while quietly relieving him of valuables. At the next blockade, Lucien paralyzes the defenders and the Kingsguard annihilates them.
Lucien places Jeremy before two helpless prisoners. Elric lends the boy his warhammer. Jeremy kills both men and kneels proudly afterward. Near Breecaster, Prince Halric challenges the Kingsguard to single combat for his people. Stormurinn accepts, defeats him, and leaves him alive long enough to submit to Maltraxis.
Open full campaign record →08The Court of Submission and the Fool’s ReprieveReturn to Sunspire
Prince Halric kneels and Valador passes to the Sun Throne. Then the Kingsguard celebrates history by chasing a squealing Elric, banishing one another, turning Hamdik into a giraffe, and horrifying Svetlana.
Halric kneels before the assembled court. Maltraxis accepts the submission, strips him of authority, and claims Valador completely. Afterward, a discussion about Hamdik’s beard somehow produces the word ‘dingleberry,’ a mechanical bidet, and the suggestion that Elric resembles a greased pig.
Elric runs. Lucien magically makes him squeal. Stormurinn tackles him; Hamdik casts Shatter; Alaryn makes the pile smell like skunk; Lucien blinds allies, hangs Alaryn upside down, banishes Elric and Stormurinn, and turns Hamdik into a giraffe. Svetlana enters just before giraffe-Hamdik defecates on the floor, changes back, and falls in it. Elric delivers the historical verdict: ‘Hamdik is a dingleberry now.’
Open full campaign record →Greenhollow case files Active investigations
F.U.B.A.R.
The Field Unit for Bizarre and Unusual Reports handles the cases ordinary investigators would prefer not to touch. The resulting reports are technically evidence that the system works.
01Brambleton ScarecrowsBrambleton · Greenhollow
A murdered boy, slaughtered livestock, and a village obsessed with rules lead F.U.B.A.R. to an army of scarecrows that understand the law far better than they understand mercy.
Brambleton was a quiet farming village, which meant the people there had devoted an alarming amount of energy to making sure it stayed that way. The village maintained twenty posted rules governing fences, crops, roads, tools, fires, livestock, and other matters that most communities trusted common sense to handle. Brambleton did not trust common sense.
Among the rules were several masterpieces of rural government. Scarecrows could not be dressed to resemble living residents. Mabel Bramblefoot could not possess more than six chickens, four goats, and two cows at one time. Livestock had to remain where livestock properly belonged: sheep in sheep fields, cows in cow fields, chickens making a reasonable effort, and goats remaining a matter of ongoing discussion.
Open full case file →02Riverside UndyingRiverside · Greenhollow
Benny Goodbarrel keeps dying, keeps getting back up exactly one hour later, and would very much like somebody to stop murdering him over a beer mug.
There were ten rules in Riverside. This was not unusual. Every halfling village in Greenhollow had rules, because apparently civilization had reached its highest form when somebody carved extremely specific municipal grievances onto a sign.
Riverside's laws covered arguments, sausages, drinking vessels, cart parking, corpse handling, contest prizes, ladders, burial schedules, onions, fireworks, poultry, and, naturally, goats. F.U.B.A.R. was instructed to obey all of them.
Open full case file →The unfinished campaign album
Songs from before the fall
The overture and Session One are complete, with the recordings, full lyrics, and their place in history collected in a dedicated listening archive.
The Gathering
The first session retold as an anthem: six roads, one tower, and the quiet countdown behind Maltraxis’s miracle.