Campaign Summary: The Great River

Arriving at the great city of Jinja on the shores of Lake Nalubaale, the Dragonriders, Demeter and the prince were welcomed and led into the city in a great procession. Meade - perhaps self-conscious about the people chanting "SHINY SHIELD! SHINY SHIELD!" - encouraged the prince to stand on the back of his dragon with him, so he could be seen by his father's people. Gin set Demeter on the back of his dragon, too, so she was not left out - but when the people saw her they were amazed and a silence fell on them. Then, a small child whispered "Is that the Pale One?" and then the people started chanting "PALE ONE! PALE ONE!"

Clearly, Demeter was much paler than the natives (especially the very dark-skinned prince) and even the Dragonriders, but the people seemed to be speaking of her as some specific, prophetic figure. Much puzzled, they went into the city where they were met by a great procession of the King who greeted them. His son, Demeter and the Dragonriders made obeisance to him and the legend of the SHINY SHIELD! was mentioned to the King. He said "Shiny shield, shiny shield," meditatively and invited them into the inner court where they could have a great feast.

As they passed over the bridge between the two parts of the city, the King told them his people's story about the Lake (how it was the place of union of the goddess of Love and the god of the Sun. He then led them to a great feast, where they told the tale of their heroism and learned that "the Pale One" was a figure in the legend of the SHINY SHIELD! who would assist the bearer of the SHINY SHIELD! find the monsters he must slay.

The King said his people were travelling down the river to the great city of Khartoum - a place of union and joining - to celebrate the marriage of his granddaughter (the daughter of his eldest son) to the prince of Sheba. He also speculated that perhaps there would be another joining . . . of his son the prince of N'Djamena and Demeter. He demurred, but it was clear Demeter was interested! The evening ended with a great firework show put on by the dragons, which the King enjoyed immensely.

The princess was already in the city of Khartoum, having set off some weeks earlier for her preparations - but now the court traveled on the King's great barge down the river to the city. With them went the Dragonriders, the prince, and Demeter.

Approached the city of Khartoum, and saw smoke rising from the central island temple complex, and many dead bodies on the ground. Flew over to the city and examined it - saw the bodies were both the priest-inhabitants who had been killed recently, and also older more decayed corpses. Gin suspected necromancy!

In the central pavilion of the temple-island, Meade saw the statue showing the union of the god of the Sun and the goddess of Love had been shattered and scattered. In its place was a round orb of luminescent white stone. Meade grabbed it and felt a cruel power assault his mind - he resisted its attempt at possession and threw the orb down, but it did not shatter. Prism stomped on the orb and it broke, releasing an evil black smoke which rose up and blotted out the sun itself! With this darkness, the corpses animated and attacked them - but they were able to mount their dragons and fly away.

Deprived of the power of the sun and love, the brothers became weak and uncharitable - but they were able to fight the worst of it. Their dragons quickly grew tired and could not use their breath weapons. They flew back to the barge where it was clear the King and his people were feeling the effects of the darkness - they were angry and snapped at the brothers and each other. The King demanded to know where his granddaughter was, and was angry when the brothers were less than perfectly deferential to him. Gin resolved to pray to the goddess of the Harvest and asked Demeter for the candles of the Underworld, which she lit. Gin drew blood from him and his brother and their dragons and mingled it in a saucer, and then they prayed.

They stopped their prayers when they heard a gasp of horror - the saucer was now filled with maggots! Even worse, glowing over the temple city was a vast luminescent, transparent pyramid glowing with white light. At its base was a pulsing red glow, the color of blood.

Demeter grabbed one of Gin's poisoned arrows and said "The goddess wants more . . ." and scratched herself. She collapsed into Prince Bomwambe's arms. "I am coming, lady of the Harvest . . ." she gasped.

Bomwambe was overcome with grief and regret he had not told her of his love sooner, and raged at the Dragonriders. Gin flew off to see the pyramid, flying high above it. As he did so, Magmar grew weaker and weaker, eventually being unable to fly and falling through the pyramid ... into a nightmarish dimension of strange angles and impossible geometry, all made of the bones and bodies of the dead.

Meade saw the rivers were turning into blood, flowing from the red glow, and realized the evil magic was corrupting the city. He flew towards the pyramid, entering the same nightmarish world as his brother.

Disorientated by the unnatural geometry they struggled to find each other - and they were forced to fight off some cruel intelligence trying to dominate them. Eventually, they found each other and advanced towards a red glow they could see far off. Arriving there, they found it was coming from blood smeared on the bones that made up the walls - and there was Demeter, paler than usual with her tattered robes blowing in a gale no-one else could feel. "You are here, finally," she gasped. "You must journey to the Underworld and defeat the Yellow King - then the Huntsman will come and take the souls of those undead to Hell." She smeared them with the blood from her wound - which was running with the five colors of the Underworld - and then tore a hole in unreality, revealing the swirling colors of the Underworld. The brothers and their dragons dived through the hole and fell endlessly through the Underworld.

They landed on a seemingly endless sand desert, with the bright sun beating down on them. A couple of hundred yards away was a temple of shiny black stone with statues of animal-headed men and decorated with unknown glyphs. Striding from the temple was a tall figure in a tattered red robe and cowl, with skeletal clawed hands and glowing golden eyes in the blackness of his hood. "The Harvest-Queen's bitch will not save you!" he snarled. "I will defeat you and then travel to your realm and make in a necropolis!" He then attacked the Dragonriders with a sandstorm that flung Gin to the floor, but Meade was able to attack him by reflecting the light of sun into his eyes with the SHINY SHIELD! which burned him terribly.

Prism grabbed him and slammed him to the ground, pinning him to the sands with a spike so that Magmar could blast him with fireballs. Meade was able to blast him with the reflected sunlight again, burning him to nothingness.

The Crimson Huntsman appeared on the horizon, riding hard between the brothers and towards a portal which opened onto reality - the brothers could see it was opening onto the barge, where the dying Demeter was being cradled by Bomwambe. Leaping on their dragons and riding as fast as they could, they beat the Huntsman to the portal ... where they found the barge rocking as the undead rose out of the river and tear it apart!

An instant later, the Huntsman came galloping through the portal with his hounds following after him. They bit down on the zombies and wrenched their souls from them, the corpses falling still into the river and the immaterial souls dissipating. The pyramid faded away, the darkness left, and the blood sank to the bottom of the river.

Gin then noticed Demeter was dying and the Huntsman was ... waiting. Quickly, Gin explained to Bomwambe what was necessary - that he should pray to the goddess of the Harvest. Bomwambe begged the Huntsman, saying he had been a fool and not to take the woman he loved. But the Huntsman was unmoved. Gin lit the candles and offered Bomwambe his sword to cut his hand - but Bomwambe grabbed the sword and stabbed himself through the heart!

His father cried with rage and grief as his son fell dying atop his beloved Demeter. The Huntsman cocked his head and reached down, intending to rip the soul from the prince. The barge had drifted down the river to the conflux, and then from the river that ran from Lake Tsana an arm came - an arm clad in a sleeve of scales that could have been skin or a dress, an arm that grabbed the Huntsman's wrist and stopped him. And then out of the river stepped the goddess of Love.

With inhuman strength she pushed the Huntsman back. "These are not yours, tell your mistress," she said. The Huntsman stared at her evenly. "I will pay her price," the goddess assured him. The Huntsman glowered. "You doubt my word?" the goddess snapped. "Get you gone, fool." She snapped her fingers and he vanished in a puff of red smoke.

The brothers could sense the souls of Bomwambe and Demeter leaving their bodies. The goddess tore her dress off and laid it over them - it was as if it were lifted by something immaterial rising out of them, but then the weight of it pushed that down, back into their bodies. She pulled Gin's sword from the prince's chest and handed it to him, and then dived into the river and vanished.

Beneath the dress the prince and priestess were struggling - Gin and Meade pulled the incredibly heavy dress off them, and they were whole and well! They embraced and pledged themselves to each other, as King Sh'ken-Sh'ack rejoiced but then asked what had happened to his granddaughter.

The Dragonriders searched the islands of Khartoum for clues as to where Princess Andromeda had been taken - they found her bodyguards and handmaidens killed, but also the bodies of men wearing strange armor and helmets that looked like fishes' scales and heads, armed with tridents. Drag marks showed where she had, presumably, been carried off in a boat down the river towards Khemri.

At that point the delegation from Tsana arrived, headed by Prince Memnon, Princess Andromeda's intended. It soon became clear the Tsanites were unhappy with the domination of the realms by King Sh'ken-Sh'ack and his kingdom ... and they had plotted with evil men to have her kidnapped. Prince Memnon - a very handsome man - was angry with King Sh'ken-Sh'ack's arrogance, and said others were angry at the fact he had claimed his granddaughter was more beautiful than the Nereids! King Sh'ken-Sh'ack became angry himself at this, and when Memnon promised his kingdom would fall that was the last straw - he castrated the unfortunate Memnon so his line would end and then gave orders that the Kingdom of Tsana was to be destroyed by his armies. He then begged the Dragonriders to rescue his granddaughter.

The Dragonriders, used to adventures and so forth, readily agreed and took one of the barges down the river, asking the farmers and fishermen they passed if they had seen a boat with people wearing the fish-like armor on. Yes, they said, they had - it had passed some days before. The Dragonriders hurried after it as fast as they could, anchoring in the evenings.

One evening they anchored in a quiet, shallow bend of the river where there were reed beds ... and there they encountered Naiads! These tricksy river-spirits took the form of beautiful young girls, playful and flirtatious. The dour Gin was unimpressed with them and they played many tricks on him, pouting at his lack of humor, but they found the more-friendly Meade more to their liking. As they spoke with the nymphs the Dragonriders learned the men "simping for the salty-bitches" had taken the princess downriver, to be offered to the "moon-goddess' simp". Accepting their offer, Meade spent the night with them . . .

The next morning, the nymphs pushed the boat along the river at great speed and they arrived at the Temple-City of Luxor in short order. There they anchored and explored the city on the easten bank of the river; it was dominated by two temples - one devoted to the Goddess of Wisdom (known in Khemri as Sekhmet) to the north and the other to the God of the Underworld to the south. On the western bank of the river was a dry valley where there were many tombs and crypts; places where the kings and nobles of Khemri had been buried.

The Dragonriders went to the temple of the Goddess of Wisdom where they were received by the Basti priesthood with great ceremony. They feasted and celebrated with them, and spoke with them about the kidnapped princess and their adventures - including their most recent conflict with the Yellow King. The priests were very concerned that the Yellow King - a former Pharaoh of Khemri who gave himself over to necromancy and evil - might have returned. They did not know about the fishy-armored kidnappers - but suggested the dockworkers might know more, so the Dragonriders went to the riverside wharf to ask.

There they met a dockmaster who was an old friend of Nedjemet; he had seen the boat with the fish-armored men go past a few days ago - but he could not say if there had been a prisoner with them.

It was now evening and the sun was setting, and the valley on the west side of the river was thrown into darkness. But as the Dragonriders looked, they saw an eerie green glow from inside the tombs - and then the doors exploded open one by one to reveal the horrible green light and a shambling horde of undead marching out of the tombs towards the city!

The Dragonriders flew out towards the undead and attacked them with the dragons' breath weapons, but it was clear there were too many of the undead to fight - hundreds of them! They flew back to the city to warn the people, with Meade flying to warn the priests of the Goddess of Wisdom and Gin going to the temple of the God of the Underworld. The priests of Wisdom gathered their guards and sent runners out into the city to rouse the people.

Gin found the guards of the Temple of the Underworld were dead and there was a glowing green spectral pyramid in the center of the plaza! He summoned his brother who had Prism shoot a red hot iron spike (from Hell) into the pyramid and with a grinding of stones a passage opened up ... which the Dragonriders flew into!

They found themselves in a vast desert-like space, poorly illuminated, with the ground being made up of undulating dunes like the waves of the sea but solid - a yellow, waxy surface broken up into tessellating hexagons. Some of the hexagons had their yellow cap torn off, revealing a dark pit below. Magmar spat a fireball into one of them and it sizzled like cooking meat, the illumination of the flame revealing the walls were made of raw flesh. The light also illuminated and revealed there was something shadowy moving inside the sealed cells.

Prism fired a spike into a sealed cell and it tore open. Bursting from it in a welter of blood was a horrible giant fly which flew upwards. Desperately Magmar hit it with a fireball, but that just burned some of the blood away - but when Prism hit it with a spike it shriekd and was pulled back down into the cell, which closed over it.

The brothers realized the flies were trapped souls and this was probably the Yellow Hell. They illuminated the space with a high bursting fireball - Meade saw multiple flies escaping upwards, and Gin saw a figure in a red robe far away - now revealed, now hidden by the shifting ground - slicing open selected cells and releasing the flies within. Clearly, this was the Yellow King and he was releasing souls who were reanimating their bodies in the Valley of the Pharaohs and marching on Luxor!

The brothers flew to attack the Yellow King. Meade reached there first and Prism struck him with a spike which set his robes on fire and staggered him, making him drop his khopesh sword. Swiftly, Meade flew down and grabbed it, flying away and holding it triumphantly aloft! The Yellow King was furious and, as his robes burned away revealing him to be a tall skeleton wearing an elaborate golden headdress and the jewelry of a Khemrian king, angrily shook his fists at Meade.

He did not see Gin flying up behind him, and the wily Dragonrider stole his golden hat! The Yellow King was incredibly angry - but then Prism hit him again with a spike and he staggered backwards, being knocked finally into one of the open pit cells by a body slam from Magmar. He fell endlessly into it and then the lid closed over the cell.

The Dragonriders realized the flies were escaping upwards, and so flew upwards after them. The light did not get any brighter, but it turned from unnatural darkness to natural and then they found themselves squeezing through narrow corridors part filled with sand, and then they came out of a doorway into the moonlight valley of the Pharaohs. They hastened towards the city of Luxor.

There they saw the undead had killed the dockworkers - including Nedjemet's friend! - and had stolen ships. Swiftly, the Dragonriders boarded their own barge and made off downriver, towards the major population centers of Khemri.

Gin tried on the hat of the evil wizard. This was totally a thing he did. It turned him evil and he attacked his brother, who knocked him on his back and knocked the hat off his head. One of the bargemen tried on the hat, and Magmar pinned him to the deck and they took the hat off him.

Gin realized the hat was gravely evil and so lit the candles to pray to the god of the Underworld, who manifested as a tall, dark-skinned man of serious mien wearing elaborately embroidered robes in the five colors of the Underworld. He grasped Gin by the chin and lifted him up, recognizing him as "the favored one of my wife." Gin confirmed this, and then the god of the Underworld listed how the brothers had interfered with him; "You have come to the underworld four times and left four times; most only come once and never leave. You have released souls; Sarissa and her followers, the Bull, the witch." Gin admitted the truth of this, but said Hecate was unjustly imprisoned and they sent Circe back and they were just setting things right. "And do you think that counts against all the rest?" the god asked.

Gin said he did not think so, but the god disagreed. "I do," he said. "Sarissa and her followers will be mine again, and the Bull had served his time. My wife is affectionate now. You summoned the Huntsman to bring back those the Yellow King had freed. What would you ask?"

Gin asked for knowledge of how to save the people. The god mocked him, asking why it was his concern - they were on a quest to save their queen and they had been to Hell and through war and suffering. They had sought tears and had shed enough, and now they had the ones they needed. The time of the Dragonriders was over, their kind destroyed by the goddess of the Moon. "What does my sister think she is doing?" he asked.

Gin stood tall and gave an eloquent speech, saying the Dragonriders would always be there to fight for truth and love and that sometimes people just need heroes. The god smiled and said his sister chose their father well.

Gin repeated his request, and also asked about the destruction of the Yellow King's crown. The god said to save the people the Yellow King must be defeated, but he did not know how. He refused to destroy the crown - calling it a trinket the Yellow King made to break the chains of the god's realm and control souls - and gave it back to Gin, saying he might need it. "So I cannot grant this boon - but this gift I will not count as it." He clapped his hands...

... and Gin found himself seated in the kitchen of the temple-farmhouse of the goddess of the Harvest in Tunis, seated opposite Core with a meal set on the table and a silver hourglass trickling down. The god had given him one hour with his love, to enjoy simple pleasures. When the time was over he was suddenly returned ...

... the candles guttered as the god clapped his hands and he vanished; to Meade it had been as if nothing had happened and Gin had never left. The brothers debated how to defeat the Yellow King as the moved down the Great River.