# Psionics Rising, A Campaign



## Grim (Sep 6, 2003)

I've been running this campaign for about a month and a half now, and since school started, its slowed down enough that I can actually start keeping track of whats happening, given that we only meet once a week now. Anyway, I've written up a good portion of whats happened, and will continue to write as the campaign moves on. 

We started the campaign with Piratecat's Of Sound Mind, but have since moved on.

To spice things up a bit, I will be writing the campaign as a series of letters, journals, etc, and from all points of view. So don't be surprised when you start rooting for the badguys just because they do cooler stuff.

Anyway, heeeeere we go!

*The Journal of Antoni Selecus*

*May 5th*

Marshdale isn’t much to look at. Sure, you could call the Tower of the Morning pretty, but then again, you could call the Church of Pelos overrated and over-loved. Pudgy priests and their ceremonies. I’ll admit, Pelos does grant his followers a good deal of power, but at what cost! Worship? Nay, ‘tis not the path for me. Antoni Selecus kneels before nothing and no one. But he can be humble, and at some points, he does need protection.

That is why I posted a sign on the door of the Black Boar Inn this morning calling for bodyguards for my journey to Bellhold, some ten miles east, through hills, valleys, and the Lord’s Forest, where no man may hunt but Lord Rordic.

Three likely candidates have presented themselves. John Smith is a simple farmer strapped for cash and looking for an honest line of employment. He seems trustworthy enough, and probably to dumb to do much but swing the sack of potatoes he carries over his back.

Jessica Twostrokes is a halfling, and a shifty one at that. Ah, but I repeat myself. In any case, I’m sure that she’d kill me without blinking, IF I wasn’t paying her.

Finally, an odd one came looking for me. Thriss is a gold kobold, the last of his tribe, a mystical shaman. I don’t understand much of his magic beyond that it arises from his ancestors, but I do know that his mace is thick, and the giant spider he rides is mean.

These three are the only warriors to have made offers, and so I think they will have to do. Tomorrow I will call them in, cut a deal, and we will be on our way. Potion-master Antoni is back in business, baby!

*May 6th*

	Over a breakfast of eggs and bread, the rate was decided at 10% of my profits per guard, rounded in their favor, leaving me with about 7 shares of 10.

	We gathered out things after breakfast. The innkeeper of the Boar’s Head, a man named Orrus, advised us not to go to Bellhold, as a family, the Robertsons, had come in late last night from there. They claimed that there was an evil presence in the town keeping everyone from sleeping, and those who did sleep had unending nightmares until they woke. Unfortunately they were sound asleep, and I was unwilling to wait around until they woke. So we set off, our backpacks lined with a lunch Orrus had made for each of us.

	About midmorning, John heard a rustling in the bushes. He grabbed his sack and froze, listening. Thriss grabbed my arm to stop me, and Jessica drew her daggers. The bushes on the left side of the road rustled again, and then I heard a high pitched clicking noise. The hairs on my neck stood on end as an ice blue lizard leaped from the bushes onto John. Its claws sank into him as its mouth delivered an electrical shock to John’s chest. The lizard jumped off, and another of its kind slinked out from the bushes of the other side of the road. John clutched his chest, the flesh there frozen and reddening, as he drew the potato sack from his back and thwacked the closer lizard over the head.

	Jessica ran the other one down, her dagger bouncing up and down as she tried to hack at the things vitals. Unfortunately, the bizarre little creature didn’t, and her dagger simply could not penetrate its blue, frozen skin.

	Thriss was about to charge the things, when I finally got ahold of myself. Raising my arms, I spoke the words taught to me, and felt hot energy run through me and out the tips of my fingers. A red orb grew at the tip of my hand, blossoming like a rose in summer before streaking off at the closer lizard, which Jessica was having a hard time with. The orb struck it on the head, the sizzling energy frying its brainpan. The thing fell to the earth, now nothing but ice.

	John, meanwhile, connected solidly with his potato sack, and the other one too was destroyed. John slung the potatoes over his shoulder again. “What were those things, mage?”

	“Frost salamanders, baby ones. They usually stay up in the mountains, but I guess these two got a little lost.”

	Jessica sheathed her daggers. “Damn things didn’t have any weak spots that I could poke and prod at.” Thriss laughed a strange sound too deep for one so small. “I wouldn’t call what you do with that dagger poking and prodding.”

	John looked back at the three. “Lets go, before anything else decides to bother us.”

	I nodded. We went on our way. At noon, we stopped in a clearing for lunch, sunning ourselves on some rocks by the road. My lunch was a cranberry and ham sandwich. Soggy, but filling. In any case, about when we were to start of again, I saw a robed man walking down the path in the opposite direction. I raised my arm and called out. “Hello there! Care for some lunch?”

	The man approached wearily, his feet shuffling through the dirt. He was old and bent, his face scraggly with wisps of beard, his eyes, a dark green, sunken back into his skull. His robes were as green as his eyes, and his pointy hat too. Both were stitched with runes and symbols. He was obviously a wizard.

He spoke. “You youngin’s heading for Bellhold?”

“Why yes, that is where this path leads, if I am correct.”

“Sure enough, it does youngin. But I would turn around if I were you. Strange things happening in that town, evil things. Livestock disappearing, people turning mad. And the dreams, oh the dreams! Turn back, for Bellhold is cursed by the gods themselves!”

I nodded, and the man walked away.

Jessica looked at me hard. “Curse. You never said nothing about a curse.”

“There’s no curse,” I said. “I’ve known about Bellhold’s problems for weeks, had friends who passed through there tell me about it. And there’s no curse. But there is opportunity. Whatever is causing the nightmares, probably the druids of the Quickriver Forest, whose waters the towns foundries pollute, it has yet to do anything really harmful. It’s probably some pollen that disturbs people’s sleep, that’s all. But what there IS in Bellhold is opportunity. The town is clearing out. Spellcasters were the first, then the priests. That got a lot of people moving, for they thought that the gods were abandoning them. They’re wrong, of course. But the fact that there seems to be almost no magical presence in Bellhold is why we are headed there.” 

I opened up my robes, showing my bodyguards the many potions that lined them. “These, my friends, will sell for quite a profit, seeing as there is no competition. Plus I stocked up on more clerical potions, like ones that protect from evil, or put the mind into a deep, restful sleep. We’ll make a killing with them.”

Thriss nodded. “Makes sense to me. And if there WAS a curse, I could probably see it.”

	Jessica was intrigued. “What would it look like?”
	“I have no idea. Probably big, smoky. Like a closed tent with a fire in it. Hard to breath.”

	We reached Bellhold at dusk.

	Now, it is here that I should probably relate to you who I am. Not because it becomes particularly important in the next few paragraphs, but because it will become generally important throughtout the events of the next few days.

	I am Antoni Selecus, merchant and wizard. I am the only son of a somewhat prosperous merchant family. My father builds wagons and my mother sells them. In any case, at a reasonably young age, I developed some amount of magical amplitude. The fact that we lived just a few steps from Leonade’s College of Wizardry didn’t hurt much, as my abilities were noticed very early on. From about age 7, I would train every day at the college, until I was tested and proved myself to be worthy of full fledged Wizardship by the state of Leonade, with all the intrinsic rules and benefits that title entails. All of which are ignored in the field, of course. As long as no innocents are slaughtered, and I keep a low profile, the Conjury, those brave souls who keep malicious magic in check, will absolutely positively ignore me.

	Back to the days events.

	I take it back. We DID reach Bellhold at sunset, but something very strange happened before we arrived. About four in the afternoon, we reached the first sign of civilization between Marshdale and Bellhold. Of the road was a farm, and further up, next to the road, an old man was trying to catch a horse.

He is ta-

_ The rest of the page is badly burned, and whatever pages may have followed are conspicuously missing. _


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## Grim (Sep 7, 2003)

*Skye, May 8th:*

Copperdeath was defeated… again? Skye did not understand. Wasn’t that the dragon that ruled over Bellhold some fifty years before? Wasn’t he put down back then, by the first Heroes of the Bell?

He asked the merchant to explain himself again.

“We, you see sir, apparently some part of Copperdeath was still alive, but made of rock, or crystal, some say even gold. In any case, these “Breakers of the Stone” came into town, found out that some children were missing, and followed the trail up to Copperdeath’s old lair, where a band of goblins was performing an ancient ritual to bring that damn dragon back.”

“Goblins?”

“Yes, goblins. One lady said they was lizardfolk, but I think its goblins. Anyway, they finished the rite just before the Breakers got to them, and the whole town fell under Copperdeath’s spell, again. Until the Breakers found the stone, or crystal, or whatever it was, and used the town bell Wyrmcall, to shatter it.”

“And so you are bringing them beer?”

“Yes! Since yesterday evening, when they shattered the stone, the whole town has been celebrating the victory. They’re gonna carve some big statues of the Breakers and everything, just like they did for the Heroes of the Bell.”

“Really?”

“Yes, even for that poor sap with the potatoes who fell down the waterfall inside the mountain. Its too bad that wise woman who helped them has disappeared, along with her son. Well, Cobble, that’s the son, he was a crazy lad anyway, addled somehow, but no one ever faulted him for it. Poor boy. I bet being mental enslaved drove him of the edge, or some such. Well, I’ve got to be on my way. Sell the beer before they stop celebrating. Goodbye!”

“Goodbye.” Says Skye. The merchant flicks the reins, and his cart trundles of along the path, disappearing behind the first curve.


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## Grim (Sep 10, 2003)

Skye keeps trudging east towards Bellhold. Hours pass with nothing but the trees, the birds, and a sleight breeze to keep him company. A little after midday, a bird flies, spooked, out of a bush. Skye looks at the bush and sees a small figure lying beneath it, clawing at the ground limply.

He hurries over, lifting back the branches to reveal a small… thing. It’s human shaped, two legs, arms, eyes, ears, but definitely not human. The thing is small, maybe 3 or 4 feet at most. It, well, his, skin is a dusty tan or yellow, leathery to the touch. His ears are pointed and huge, its face a sad twisted thing, like a soufflé that collapsed in on itself. Stubble grows around its slim lips and weak chin. 

The thing is dressed in rotting leather armor and frayed black pants and reeks of far too much travel. His belt holds up an empty sheath. Those woven into his armor are also empty. He had, in fact, nothing of any value on him, at least obviously.

“Man thing…” it said. “Wa… wat…. Water.” The thing coughs, a deep, hacking thing, but dry as dust.

Skye reaches to his belt and unties a canteen, which he puts on the ground. He slides it near the thing with his foot, and the small yellow goblin drinks deeply, grasping the canteen with both of his tendoned, frail-looking hands. Then he chuckles.

In one swift motion, the goblin undulates into a standing position, dusts himself, off, passes the waterskin back, and begins walking westward. “Thanks, _manthing_.”

“What are you doing out here, trickster?” Skye calls out as he grabs the hilt of his sword.

“Prukk doesn’t answer to humans, and it’s none of your business, manthing.”

“I’m looking for the four adventurers who saved Bellhold. I wish to join their efforts. Have you seen them?”

“Oh, you mean the four who did my work for me, and then took all my things? Yah, I saw them. Last I heard the three left were heading towards Fool’s Pass looking for some old lady.”

Fool’s Pass was one of they ways through the mountains east of Bellhold, but following it’s name, it is a dangerous road, full of bandits and snow and ice and death.

“Thank you, Prukk.”

“Well, if there is nothing else you are just dying to ask, goodbye manthing” says Prukk. They both turn to walk away, look back at the other, suspicous, and then keep walking, the goblin heading west and the man west.

“Be careful in the woods, Prukk,” Skye calls out, “lest you meet someone not as caring as I.”

“OK!” Prukk calls back.

Skye just barely hears the second part.

“… Manthing.”

Some hours later, Skye comes to a clearing. Picture it. The woods in late afternoon. The sun sparkles in the sky, the air is luciously scented, the trees are bursting with green, as is the grass of the clearing. Centered in it is a splash of white and red. A doe lies dying, its entrails spilt upon the ground like red greasy maggots.

Over it stands a dark brown horse, a stallion. From the horse's forehead a spike of blue crystal has forced its way through, and along its spine more crystals poke out, like the jagged teeth of some strange beast. To the side is a dead human, his own knife lodged in his throat.

The horse looks up at Skye. Their eyes meet, both icy and blue, but the horses more crisp and metalic.

A deep voice resonates in Skye's mind.

Hello. Care to join me for dinner?


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