In the Common Year 592 (or 1987 AD, depending on your frame of reference), a group of players sought out a cleric in order to raise their friend from the dead. In exchange, the priest of Forsetti charged the heroes with finding and returning the Staff of Law, a relic with the power to thwart Entropy and champion Order. After a fun (and murderous) adventure battling gargoyles, stone giants, cockatrice, daemons, and a fireball-hurling dark priest, the heroes finally recovered the Staff and handed it over. No one thought much more about the quest. Years passed. 596 CY (and 1989) rolled around...and I was looking for a new story arc...
The Staff of Law was stolen again. Someone had murdered the priests of Forsetti, carrying off their very souls and leaving no trace of the assassin's identity. A new quest began. This time another group assembled to recover the Staff, chasing an army of orcs, ogres, minotaur, trolls, and other monsters across Furyondy. But the baddies didn't have the Staff. It turned out, however, that they had enough information to find out who did...
Navroc MacCorval of the Highlands, working with the witch Rhemba, had arranged for the assassination of the priests and the recovery of the relic. Now, working together, the pair was hell-bent on raising the slain Arch-Devil, Satan, using the power of the Staff.
The heroes arrived in the Highlands just in time. During a chance encounter, Raitan crushed Navroc's ribs, taking him out of the fight. But the Laird of Irongate's castle remained well-guarded. Penetrating the inner keep, the party survived both Navroc's diabolic allies and his nefarious glyphs (albeit with help from Fadranth). Finally, the group reached the inner sanctum of the coven. There, Rhemba, holding the Staff of Law, magically sealed the room and dispelled the party's magic. Trouble is, horned and ice devils can only be harmed by magical weapons... Were it not for Tetsuko's kensai talents, the story would have ended there. Ultimately, the heroes recovered the Staff, although Rhemba escaped.
Then things got interesting...
You see, Raitan had died a few months earlier. Tetsuko had him raised by the only priests willing to intercede on his behalf, the clergy of Set (Nereganti god of evil). Their quest? Recover the Staff of Law and bring it to the priests. The heroes arrived in Greyhawk, walked into the Temple of St Cuthbert, presented the Staff of Law, officially fulfilled their mission, then beat the crowd senseless, grabbed the relic back, and made a hasty retreat. Tetsuko and Raitan then presented the Staff to the Egyptians and were done...
...almost...
...Except that Tetsuko had also died earlier. Borlon, a sympathetic priest of Ra raised her with the understanding that once he found a suitable quest, the pair would have to accomplish it. Needless to say, Borlon was livid when he found out what Tets and Rai had done. He joined the pair, as well as Rullo and Zeb, and journeyed to the high temple of Set in Neregan to put matters right.
Meanwhile, the remaining heroes, Kinsa, Findar, Kozar, Alec, and Yavin were quested by Ian MacFarland of St Cuthbert to re-recover the Staff. With the help of a Nereganti guide, Quetep, the group penetrated the high temple of Set.
The two parties marauded around the religious complex for nearly an hour, finally following one another's trail of destruction and meeting up in the main treasure vault. There, the combined forces of Set attacked. Half the group tried to hold them off while the other half went for the relic. Just as the heroes reached the Staff, a doorway opened in the air. Navroc and Rhemba had been watching the party through her mirror of mental prowess! Navroc snatched the artifact, only to be mortally stung by a giant scorpion. Rhemba stepped over her former-ally's body, hefted the Staff of Law, and returned through her magic mirror. The heroes followed her.
In the resulting battle, Rhemba pulled asteroids from their orbits and demolished her entire castle-complex, using the Staff. The heroes narrowly escaped, saving their companions in Neregan and closing the portal moments before the followers of Set let loose a rain of flame strikes. Finally finished, the group presented the Staff of Law to the high temple of Ra. The religious hierarchy of Neregan decided that the relic was too dangerous to remain on Oerth. The priests of Ptah cast the Staff into another dimension. Finally, the Quest for the Staff of Law was over.
Or was it?
In 598 CY (aka early 1992) a handful of heroes "had a dream". In this vision, they had been whisked into an apocalyptic future. There, the heroes were to find the Wand of Chaos before another group of anti-heroes did. The fate of Oerth rested on these "Seven Swords" of Oerth. Successful, each awoke to find some minor, beneficial change to their reality. But their recollection of the events were vague and the players never really pursued them...or the visions and prophecies about "a great time of Chaos" to come...
...Until February 25 of 609 CY (aka 2000), when another group of adventurers accidentally helped a band of Kenku uncover a strange "egg" buried in Furyondy. The Egg opened to reveal more than a dozen tiny shards...the Shards of the Wand of Chaos. Each Shard shot off in a different direction. And in the distance, those present could hear the ringing of a great bell.
Over the course of nearly seven years (and four real years), more than a dozen different parties have encountered these Shards of Chaos. Each time, these relic "bits" have caused natural laws to impossibly warp, bestowing tremendous power on nearby agents of chaos and undermining the fabric of reality. Each of those particularly touched by these changes can then hear the sound of chimes afterward; the bells ringing when the Shard is freed of its corporeal host. Moments before each tolling, the last sight each group sees of the Shard is it speeding off in the sky, disrupting the environment in it's path.
Now, finally, a group of heroes, Raitan, Rufus, and Ael'Mara, has identified the secret of the Shards, the Wand, the Bells, and even how the Staff of Law figures into all of this.
The Shards were once part of a relic known as the Wand or Arrow of Chaos, the counterpart to the Staff of Law. Just as the first Champion of Order fashioned the Staff, so too did the followers of Entropy create the Wand. For centuries, the two artifacts had been weapons and rallying points for an ideological war between Law and Chaos. These battles ravaged the world as each side struggled to annihilate the other. According to the Book of Milian, copied at the dawn of the Suel empire from a far more ancient Morganti source, the Goddess of Fate grew tired of this endless warfare and created the Rod of Balance. So long as the Rod remained on Oerth, there would be a middle ground and neither Staff nor Wand could prevail.
A balance was struck. Peace came to the land. Centuries passed. Civilizations rose and fell.
The forces of Law tricked the keepers of the Rod into removing it from Oerth for a moment. And in that instant, they struck. Using their awesome organizational skills, the forces of Law brought tremendous resources to bear against the minions of Chaos. When the dust settled, the Wand was shattered. But the edicts of Istus transcend technicalities. Chaos can never be truly vanquished. The Shards of the Wand shot like arrows through the sky, attracted to other sources of chaos and spreading their disruptive influence across the world. Rather than a single, powerful foe, the forces of Order were confronted by dozens of small menaces. With the help of the Rod and the Keepers of the Balance, the forces of Law relentlessly gathered the Shards and sealed them with an "egg", a prison for Chaos. So long as the Staff remained on Oerth, the Egg of Oblivion was indestructible. Now, with the balance tipped toward Order, great, continent-spanning empires arose. Although the Morganti fell, in their place rose the Suel, Nereganti, and Shang civilizations. The stories of the Wand and the Egg were forgotten... The laws of gods, men, and nature became sacrosanct.
But it was predicted that if the Shards were ever freed again, their pent up entropy would shake the cosmos to its foundations. The fatalistic followers of the God of Chaos fashioned a nihilistic relic of their own. Their goal was to magnify this disruptive energy in order to achieve their god's ultimate end: the end of existence. But the priests' creation could not manifest on Oerth without the power of the Wand to sustain it, so they shaped it on a demi-plane of the Ethereal. In this place they mockingly called Abydos, the Place of the Dead, they created the Entropy Bell, whose purpose was the apocalypse of Oerth.
And now, with the Staff of Law gone and the Shards of Chaos free, the Entropy Bell rings. Each toll representing another piece of the Wand achieving union with the Bell. Each toll unraveling another piece of reality and bringing Oerth one step closer to oblivion...
...which brings us full circle to the events of Oerth since 610. Withering draughts, tremendous typhoons, summer blizzards, earthquakes, tornadoes, and meteorites have washed across the planet. Strange monsters appear in civilized lands while ancient beings of great power again walk the world, freed from their pre-historic prisons. The economy of the Great Kingdom falters in the East. Giants stir in the West. Iuz readies his armies for war in the North. Pirates and slavers plague the South. Neither the lands above nor below Oerth are safe either; factional wars rip through the drowic cities of the Underdark while celestial conjunctions heralding the end of creation have become almost common place. Prophetic visions reveal blackness, chaos, entropy, or madness...
Heroes in Amberwood have recognized the threat. Working in concert, the champions of lawful deities (Arianna, Rhanée, Moorak, and Sage) have successfully located and recovered the ancient Orb of Law, another artifact of Order. Using it, they've captured a Shard of Chaos in order to prevent the assembly of the complete Entropy Bell. Unfortunately, contact with the Shard has proven most dangerous to Darya and Jyoli, leaving TC as the only person willing and able to hold the disruptive artifact. Meanwhile, Arianna in particular and the temple of Athena in general seem to have become embroiled in other matters, leaving only Rhanée and Sage to wield the Orb.
On the 10th of March, 616, Moorak, Zandra, Sage, Shang-lung, Artec, Tyris=Flare, and Ken Mu managed to defeat and destroy an insane purple "dragon" that had taken control of Wintershiven, the capitol of the Theocracy of the Pale. Originally a demon, this creature gained the ability to actually absorb and feed on negative thoughts and feelings. Unfortunately, this rendered the adult population of the nation helplessly feebleminded while the children became the monster's minions. Over the course of a month, nearly half of the adult population died of starvation and malnutrition, including the Theocrat and all of the Council of Nine. Sage managed to raise one individual from the dead, in essence establishing the new Theocrat, but the future of the Theocracy is in doubt; only a handful of individuals in any region have the wherewithall to act and reason while many of the crops have died in the fields due to neglect. The whole population of several cities lie drooling and blathering incoherently. Meanwhile, again the Bell rings...!
Shortly before dawn on the 10th of March, the alarm sounds in Amberwood. An army of more than 4000 goblins has crossed the Veng River and marched more than 15 miles. Their intent is clear; destroying Dragondale is their goal. Unfortunately, none of the capitol's regular defenders are home -- Moorak, Artec, and Zandra are still in Wintershiven while Rhanée is at Bolthold and Black Robe is at Magic Mountain.
Questions? Comments? Funny stories? Lemme know...
© 2004 buddhabear@geocities.com