Previous Seasons Recap
General Summary
Season 1 - Rebellion and “The Guild”
The first season of our play had adventurers exploring the world and its many locations. They explored into Seelie Court and Unseelie Court territory, discovering cities and towns. They also had their first intermingling with the Archfae (see High Fae) , traveling into Domain of Gloomhaven for the very first time to meet Hagatha.
Most of the adventures, though, happened in part in the main city of Nemeton . Here, players discovered the start of a rebellion, set out on removing injustice and the power imbalances throughout Albin. Key rebels like Kermie the Frogmin lead the players in their first steps to “freedom”.
Players also encountered an elemental wizarding student named Blake Harold, who studied at the Illumina academy of the arts. They uncovered that indeed he was a “serial killer” who in fact was enacting revenge on a group he identified as “The Guild” by using a magical device to open a portal to the elemental plane of void. He supposed they were a group of string pullers behind the scenes controlling most of the flow of money and power amongst the lesser people of Albin.
The first season came to a head when the players angered the wrong people and a faction of The Guild came to attack Danu (the bar in Nemeton obviously). They fought valiantly and managed to stave off the destruction (for now).
Season 2 - Balancing the Elements
This season picked up right where the players left off, getting involved in things bigger than them. The players helped retrieve Gloomhaven’s orbs of dark power for Hagatha. They wandered into Domain of the Joyful Lost and met the folks of Mounton to retrieve lost children from a fake monster. They found themselves lost in "The Woods", a dark forest that they seemed to eventually wake from.
Quite a bit of this season was spent in Seelie territory, around Wondershrub. Shroomerilda became a valuable resource in helping the adventurers learn about and protect the city in the trees.
The Guild also continued to be a problem for the resistance growing at Danu. Particularly one very annoying Dunkworth (the bard). They staved off the many threats and annoyances while continuing to make connections in worker groups to help the resistance flourish.
This season came to its conclusion when the Archfae known as Growth and Decay began to get out of control. The players were tasked with retrieving the 4 elemental cores from around the world and summoning their titans to fight off the rampaging Fae. Caught in the crossfire of two massive forces, the players got away with minor casualties and set balance to the world again. Wondershrub was however partially destroyed in the process.
Season 3 - Worsening Conditions
The heroes began to see the cracks forming in society. A migration of Trolls from the east causes problems in Cobbleston, and seeds of chaos begin to form amongst the workers throughout. While some of this was necessary to uproot power systems, the players began to sense that other groups were also hoping to profit from the disorder. Namely a group called The Miserable Few , followers of Misery.
The group did many things in this era, like dealing with an Archfae that fed on regrets and making deals with the party. They met an enigmatic artificer named Funkmire whose problematic business would only seem to make more issues. They also continued to work with rebellion connections to uncover many different factions of people working against them, such as the bombmakers.
Our season finale took place during the Unseelie Court winter court festival at a grand chateau that was a secret plan by a coalition of vampires and bombmakers. Of course all of this had many connections to the Guild. The adventurers quickly realized what was afoot and split up to find the bombs in the basement by way of eavesdropping and social deduction in the ballroom. While they managed to secure some, in a tragic conclusion, many innocent died within the chateau as a few remaining bombs exploded. They did manage to help out one of the major vampires and stop future plans.
Season 4 - Misery Hates Company
This was the season where our players really had the world following them. It all began with a missing noble child that fell into "The Woods". However, after finding their way to Penulton and getting tricked by The Dealer, they raced into the woods to find they might be just too late. Too late that is without the help of the beast. In order to transport the child back to the world, Nest agreed to take on The Dark Lantern. A decision that would forever change the course of the world.
The players continued to explore the world's reaches, solving even more problems in Cobbleston, making powerful connections in the erratically lucky Vas Legas, replacing a mayor in Coral Harbour, and stopping an Elf attack on Whimsy’s Candyland by tracking down werewolves, dealing with Funkmire and his endless connections to The Guild, and coming to the desperate aid of VillageTown after their bricks went missing. The adventurers also helped Blake retrieve a few dark cores for himself, where the players came face to face with Gloom who revealed some old connection to Wanderlust (odd given that Wanderlust was supposedly a Seelie Court Archfae that had been locked up for ages).
All the while, Nest was suffering for taking on such a dark artifact. He finally broke, deep under the mines around Basaltimore after fighting the Dirtman (yet another formulation of Whimsy). Here he broke off from his friends so that he would no longer have to make them miserable.
The Danu crew took this time to really come together for their friend. They went to the ends of the earth to uncover the mystery of the connection between Gloom, Misery, Wanderlust, and the enigmatic nature of the courts. They discovered that in fact Wanderlust was not Seelie, nor Unseelie, but an Archfae from before the courts were even drawn. They discovered a story of heartbreak of Gloom and Wanderlust once being together but a plan between Titania and Misery removed Wanderlust’s memory and locked her up in the Seelie court for being a traitor.
In exchange for freeing Wanderlust (accomplished by using one of her berries to sneak into the Seelie court itself), it used its power to break the bond between Nest and Misery’s Dark Lantern.
Season 5 - Stirrings and Changes
While things seemed to calm for a bit, the players thrived in their newfound knowledge about the world.
It didn't take long for problems to start reappearing. Gang wars in Vas Legas, recovering magical weapons designed to attack archfae, Hags moving en masse in northern Unseelie territory, evictions and power struggle in Candyland; all just the tip of the iceberg. The players were beginning to uncover something much bigger than they could have imagined.
There was some good still in the world as the player partake in the Giveness Festival festival in Pechington. They make new connections in Illumina Academy of the Art. They help Blake Harold find and cure/ help control a bunch of wererabbits. The Danu adventurers did some real good.
In the Unseelie Court, dark plans began as whispers. With the help of hags and other magical creatures, deals and power plays began to sway the balance. Hags began to take many children, a phenomenon that only serves to increase their numbers and historically happens before major conflict. In order to save one of these children, Memog gave the true name of the Archfae known as Gloom to two sisters, an action that was clear to have dire consequences.
In a wizards tower far to the west, the party tried to save a crazed mad man. He was past saving, but they were not past stealing from him. They recovered a Dark Idol, and upon using the Tome of Lore on it, learned of a powerful creature, Lord Night, living in a great city of the underdark that had never been heard of. They also learned of something called the Court of Night, the first mention of a court other than the Seelie or Unseelie. (See The Dark Idol to read the short story given to the players)
Things accelerated as a party intercepted a massive cargo of magical equipment designed to hurt or kill High Fae . Hagatha, for once, chose a side and helped them take it and hide it away. Concurrently, more hags and “vampires” were flooding Pechington and its surrounding townships just as a powerful woman took over to clean up the streets, a Lady Cecilia. They discovered that indeed these were not vampires but Darklings, creatures that were cursed with an anger and hunger that they had learned to control.
Consequences came to light as the Danu folk learned of people being massacred by creatures in Bog Hollow, just south of the Domain of Gloomhaven . When they arrived they found that many of the projections of Gloom had escaped. By making a deal to carry The Dark Lantern, Memog managed to stop a few dangerous projections, but with the path to Gloomhaven remaining open, they went inside to seek the help of Hagatha. To their horror, they found her corpse hung on a gallows by her hut. A note on her body warned others not to get in the way of what was coming. They found a journal referring to a meeting with Blake Harold the elemental wizard and went themselves, informing him of her death. They helped him retrieve one of the elemental cores when he claimed they needed a protection plan and he had been working on something.
Without any time to grieve, their attention was quickly drawn to Cobbleston with news of an occupying army from the underdark. They arrived at an oddly peaceful standoff. While the army would not allow any resources in or out of town, little to no violence had occurred. The army’s demand was for Mayor Hector Windebald to hand himself over as he had been a tyrant for too long. The leadingDarkling claimed it would take over the town long enough to institute a more fair labor practice for the workers. The heroes negotiated with all the parties to feed the citizens, drag the mayor to be killed in the streets, and create a steering committee composed of a darkling and Gerald Igny (a trusted local). They then discovered the army was to march on Nemeton next and hold the city under siege. Instead of following them, the heroes decided to make the dangerous journey through the underdark to the city of Stalactic, where they got their first sight of Lord Night.
They returned to Danu to a city in chaos, under siege, barely able to make it through themselves. The townsguard offered a mighty reward to anyone who could figure out what the army's plans or intentions were. Sneaking out to the field and throwing a classic Gourd party, they managed to knock out and capture a general. Smuggling him back to Danu, he awoke under a Zone of Truth where he told them that he did not know what his orders for the day was as he had not read the envelope with orders for that day, but every one previous had read to stand around and do nothing. Not a single person in the army knew why they were there.
As the zone of truth came to an end, Kermie La Grenouille came running into the bar. They follow him out to see a massive void-like dark elemental titan coming towards Nemeton. Moments later, Blake Harold came in and admitted that he was responsible for this titan, attaching the dark cores the heroes had retrieved from Domain of Gloomhaven to the elemental core they recently got. Our season finale had the party split up, some to try to calm the front line war that broke out at the base of the tree as both sides thought the other was attacking with the titan, the other group going to the top of the tree to evacuate as the titan began to destroy the upper branches.
They managed to calm the front line as the titan arrived, fighting off elementals from the sky. They made their way to the docks to calm the panic there and help innocents get on boats to flee the city. It was here that the Great Leviathan made its first appearance, claiming to be from the Concord of Twilight and that it could no longer stand back and watch civilians lose their lives. The heroes helped many onto the ships and the back of the serpent before going to meet back up at Danu.
The other group met up with an artificer from the Illumina Academy of the Art who begged the town’s guard for help, claiming to have a magical toxic bomb in an academy building. The guard ignored him, focusing on the wealthy. The players followed him back as the titan began ravaging buildings left and right. The players managed to find the bomb, commissioned by Funkmire as a last resort against the Archfae, just as the titan demolished the building. The bomb exploded covering most of the upper branches. Some of the players fell deeply ill as civilians died all around them. As they made their way back to Danu, they spotted a brilliant green floating island descending from the sky, the Emerald Isle . An Aos Sidhe made first contact with them from the Consortium of Stars and offered to save any remaining living they could from the tree.
As the heroes met back up at Danu, the Pooka elder from Mounton and representative of Wanderlust arrived to warn them that an official court vote was called for the first time in ages in the Unseelie Court, which could only mean something bad. With the elemental void titan still attacking the tree, Rowan Whitlock took one half of the party to their patron, the Greenman, to seek out guardian beasts to help fight the titan. The others took a portal offered by Wanderlust to the outskirts of The Great Bog Pocosin.
They snuck their way in through the weakened fog where they finally reached a barrier. They could see that within there was indeed a counsel being held to elect a single leader to fight whatever force was coming their way. The vote was about to be won by Misery, using the true name of Gloom to force their vote and the votes cast to them to be given to Misery, but just before it could be settled, the heroes used a wish chip from Whimsy to tie the vote. With the time bought, they spotted a group of Darklings attempting to get through the barrier. The heroes opted to give the darklings acquired Cold Iron (from the cargo they intercepted) to help. After saying emotionally goodbyes, one darkling pressed the cold iron to get her through the barrier darting to the center where Misery promptly pierced her heart. Just before the light left the darkling’s eye, she set off a smaller version of the Archfae bomb on the entirety of the Unseelie court.
Bursting up through the ground, Lord Night emerged and speared right through the heart of Misery just as they had finagled the vote to take power. Looming over the extremely weakened court, Lord Night took power of the Unseelie as Wanderlust opened a portal to allow the remaining Danu heroes (having successfully defeated the tidan with the help of the beasts) to see the result of the battle. Lord Night thanked them for choosing their side and promised to honor their work and sacrifices.
Current Season - Season 6
With the world now more expanded than ever and the political and power systems the most out of balance, the Danu heroes have many adventures awaiting them!
