The Convoluted History of The Campaign With No Name*, Part Two D: In Which The PCs Do Politics

The First Bit, The Second Bit, The Third Bit

Shortly after taking office, the new Captain of the Guard learned of the ongoing rivalry between the Guard and the Sheriff. Having spotted the crude assassination attempt, he summoned the Sheriff who blustered and denied everything. He quickly set some poor underling the task of working out how to arrest/kidnap/dispose of the Sheriff and went to the pub. After hearing about this, Mouse did some "investigating" of the Sheriff's house and found evidence that he was blackmailing members of the council. Some kerfuffle and public posturing followed, and one of the blackmailees dropped hints that if the Warlord could possibly sort out the Sheriff problem once and for all that would be nice.

Chuck and the Drow went to the Grand Assemblage of the League of Eternal Discovery, and joined the Arcanum by solving a teleport maze, with the intention of using the extensive library to learn rituals. The Drow had a strange experience with a door in the library everyone else wanted to get away from but he felt strangely drawn to....An epiphany on the nature of the universe followed, while anyone else nearby just got a headache. The door may have hidden a Source of Arcane Magic or something. Whatever it was, it didn't distract him too much from spreading the Word of Dave and having some pamphlets printed.

The mages in the Department of Chronomancy were excited at the prospect of studying a Time Trap in person, but due to interfaculty politics and the need to maintain quorum in the senate, getting permission for a field trip was less than straightforward. The person in charge of signing off on expenses would only do so if the party found his sister first, who was missing presumed investigating leads to the ruins of Alabaster City in the jungle to the south.

So, leaving the mages to prepare for the trip to rescue Charles and the city Guard plotting to take down the Sheriff, the four adventurers headed south, following hints and rumours of a determined archaeologist and avoiding most of (but not all) the dangerous wildlife. They made their way to a hole in the ground that was the adventuring mage's last known destination, and fought some duergar that were guarding it. Making their way down, they faced stirges and more duergar, and an angry dragon at the bottom who told them to p*ss off before attacking. Once they'd beaten the dragon up a bit, it shapeshifted into a humanoid form and admitted defeat. Turns out the dragon was the mage they were looking for, and she thought they were rivals looking to steal her "find" from her. She showed them the decorative portal that she believed led to the Alabaster City but which she had been unable to open. She conceded to return with them, but only to regroup and do some more research before heading back, and they headed back to the city.

Once back in the city, the Sheriff sends an assassin after them, who dies horribly. Then he attempts to settle the situation by a duel, with the winner taking up the combined post of Sheriff and Captain of the Guard. However, as he names a champion to fight on his behalf, the Warlord decides to name his own champion, and persuades the dragon mage/archaeologist to fight on his behalf. The Sheriff's champion turns out to be a bitter, twisted, Pete who had been held captive and tortured by the Magus all this time and now sported a withered Wight claw instead of his normal left hand. The dragon mauled him horribly, Mouse stopped the Sheriff's bodyguard unleashing undead to distract from the fight and the Warlord stopped the Sheriff himself escaping. Once it was all over, the Warlord left some poor sap as Acting Guard Captain, the mage had been press-ganged into sitting on the council and the Sheriff was due to be executed.

Then they finally set out to rescue Charles from the Time Trap with the Chronomancers.


* Yeah, I've given up.