Artung "Artie" Dwarforged

Artung Dwarforged was a Bronze-ranked adventurer (posthumously promoted to Silver-ranked) who began his adventuring career much later in life than most of his peers. He was once happily married to a prominent adventurer named Miu until her mysterious disappearance. Soon after, he found himself given an unexpected gift of magic and resolved to use his new talents to uncover the truth. He joined the guild and found himself partnered with the Headhunters on a number of adventures. But when the group failed to stop Levira from freeing Mesogog from his imprisonment, Artie chose to make the ultimate sacrifice so that his friends could escape. He may not have avenged his old family, but he saved his new one before being reunited with his beloved wife in the heavens.
Table of Contents

History

Background

A middle-aged man, Artie was married to Miu for many years and worked as a blacksmith in Inkhear while she pursued her adventuring career. But one day, she simply didn't return. A day turned to a week, then a month, and Artie began to assume the worst. His fears were realized when the Adventurer's Guild arrived at his doorstep to confirm his wife was dead. The circumstances of her death were classified as a state secret and Artie wasn't even given a body to bury.
In mourning, he began to go through his wife's old things. It was there he found a strange thing, the lamp of a powerful efreeti. Inadvertently summoning the genie with a rub of the lamp, Artie eagerly wished for his wife back and the wicked wishmaster laid her corpse at his feet. Dismayed, he wished for her to move once again, and with a twisted smile, the efreeti reanimated her as an undead zombie. With only one wish remaining, and now wise to the genie's malicious intent, he then wished for the power to fix the problem himself. Try as he might, the efreeti could not think of a way to twist this particular wish around and implanted a seed of magic in the mournful dwarf.
Empowered with the magic of a warlock, Artie quickly learned that he would need practice to make perfect. And so, like his wife before him, he joined the Adventurer's Guild. Here he knew he could gain the experience to master his magic and save his beloved while perhaps also discovering the truth behind her death. It was this decision that led to him meeting the up and coming group of adventurers known as the Headhunters.

Artie Joins the Headhunters

Artie first encountered the Headhunters shortly after the death of their friend Kiri. The group stopped by Ohnaka's shop to ask about a job he posted, they met Artie doing some shopping. Needing other adventurers to shore up their numbers, they assumed Artie was Silver-ranked like them and he did not correct them when they invited him along. The group set out to the southern mountains to deliver a package to one of Ohnaka's old friends. When they were attacked by hungry manticores along the way, Artie quickly demonstrated his mastery of summoning magic by bringing forth monsters of his own to do battle.
After meeting the wizard Ramag and getting some information on the Gravestones and Grave Orb, Artie experimented with a Gravestone and used it to power up his ghost summon. The empowered ghost made short work of a herd of aurochs Artie used for a combat test. Unknown to him, this allowed Rhith to establish a metaphysical foothold within Artie and he began to drain energy from the summoned creature to further facilitate his plans for reincarnation. Once the group arrived back at the Inkhear guildhall, they and several other groups were instructed to go south of Painfaire to deal with an incursion of giant ants destroying the ecosystem.
Artie's ghost summon once again proved to be very useful during this latest quest, exploring underground to find the ants tunnels. Unfortunately, the ghost was quickly overwhelmed while exploring the tunnels with Chigiri, although he did allow Chigiri to escape and gather reinforcements. Right around the time the party noticed a strange discoloration in the tunnel soil, Artie sensed another Gravestone nearby through the one he was carrying. The group continued to fight their way through wave after wave of ants, occasionally meeting up with other adventurer teams in the process, as they followed the Gravestone signal to a pond the ants appeared to be emerging from.
Jumping into the pond, the group found themselves in the Feywild with a Gravestone floating near the bottom of the pond in that realm. While the rest the group pondered how to get the stone without just falling back through the pond portal, Artie noticed runes in Deep Speech around the pond's perimeter. He concluded that someone was trying to create a portal to a different realm, but botched the process and got the Feywild instead. Their time began to run short as the Queen Ant approached with her main army. Chigiri magically froze the water around the Gravestone, causing the ice to float to the top, as the party jumped back through the portal while Artie's ghost summon stayed behind. The ghost was able to remove the Gravestone, successfully shutting the portal from the other side and making the Headhunters the heroes of the day.

Hunting for Levira

The party took their time returning to the guildhall, getting themselves a little R&R on the road as they headed back home. On arriving, the receptionist gave them a sealed message from Cordelia stating she and Mira had spotted Levira in the capital and were in pursuit. Fearing another unprepared confrontation with Levira, the group went to Guildmaster Nergalee for help. It was then that everyone learned someone had been tampering with the paperwork from the Headhunters quests to keep the rest of the guild in the dark about Levira. Outraged, the guildmaster began to look into the issue while conjuring a golden chariot pulled by twin pegasi to get the party to the capital quickly. She told them to head to the local guildhall and consult Sir Hunter von Huntington once there.
At the capital city's guildhall, the group quickly noticed most of their adventurer colleagues had acquired Gravestones. The other adventurers seemed more interested with their Gravestones than helping the Headhunters, but Sir Huntington was ready to accompany them personally. He told them Cordelia and Mira had pursued Levira across the northern sea and he had a ship ready to follow. Along the way, the ship was attacked by a dragon turtle that killed most of the crew and heavily damaged the ship. The party managed to bloody it enough to attract a mosasaurus and made their escape while the sea beasts fought. The Headhunters took a rowboat to shore while Huntington tried to save the ship and were greeted by Cordelia on the beach.
Cordelia explained that the island's dinosaurs had attacked her and Mira, causing them to be separated. Artie used his magic to conjure a sea hawk that could keep an eye on Huntington while the party moved inland. After a brief run-in with an allosaurus, the party noticed a pack of raptors were hunting them and tried to scare them away. While the raptors did run, the party noticed too late that they ran not from the Headhunters but from the green dragon stalking them. The dragon blasted them with its poison breath and fled, though the party decided finding Mira was more important than hunting it down. Unfortunately, the dragon had other plans.
After it returned and used hit-and-run tactics, the party determined finding Mira would be impossible with the dragon harassing them. They chased it to its nest, making their way up a rough cliffside as the dragon rolled boulders down at them. Artie's summoned creatures were able to distract the dragon a bit while he himself proved support fire with his eldritch blasts. With the dragon dead, they were able to focus on picking up Mira's trial and found her unconscious outside an ancient temple.
The party explored the ruin, solving a series of puzzles to advance from one room to the next. Artie's ghost summon did try to fly ahead to explore, but entered a lagoon and was almost eaten by the returning mosasaurus for its efforts. Just as the party caught up to Levira, who noticed them and was ready for a fight, Artie checked on Huntington and saw him under attack by Moltor, Nadira, and a small army of their Molders. The group had no choice but to leave Levira to her devices and rush to Huntington's aid.
Artie and Chigiri teamed up to take on Moltor and Nadira, proving to have the better teamwork as they forced the dark warlock and succubus to retreat. The rest of the group focused on the minions and narrowly kept themselves alive while finishing the Molders off. It seemed the day was won until Mira regained consciousness, approached the group, and revealed herself to be the traitor by stabbing Sir Huntington through the heart before beheading his corpse. As the rest of the party looked on in horror, Artie pulled his bag of holding over Huntington's remains and lept into the sea. Inside the bag, Artie used his Gravestone to preserve the body though was considerably drained by Rhith for this effort.
With the party safe for the moment, Artie sent his ghost summon back to the temple to investigate but Levira was long gone. All he managed to find were pieces of a tablet that Levira evidentially shattered before her departure. Due to the damage, he could only get a partial translation of whatever it said. Artie then used his magic to contact the the guildmaster and give her an update on the situation. She sent Shimmerscale to collect them from the island and the party somberly made their way back home.

Searching the Great Forest

Following up on information Hugh Morris had discovered, the party decided to focus on finding the remainder of Chigiri's 7 Swords to better help them slay Levira. One sword was located in the Great Sengorian Forest so they took a missing persons job in the area as a pretense to go there. Guildmaster Nergalee invited the Headhunters to accompany her as she traveled to the forest herself to answer the summons of an archfey. Entering the forest, they made their way through the Bear King's territory and into a village of peaceful lycanthropes, where they found a wanted poster of Mira for the crime of regicide. Nergalee parted ways with them there after Chigiri received directions from a wereowl who mistook him as a worshipper of Sampati, Lord of Vultures.
After narrowly avoiding some malicious moth fey, they found one of the swords sitting on a stone table surrounded by pillars arranged in an arcane circle and connected by rope. Chigiri instantly crossed the threshold and removed the sword from its resting place, breaking the protections binding the rakshasa Sweetmeat trapped in the sword. Sweetmeat immediately began trying to get Chigiri to free him by saying his name 3 times, which Artie and the rest of the group loudly protested. With the sword in tow, they decided to find their missing person and worry about the fiend later.
After slaying an ankheg, they found a man named Nevill hiding in a cave who appeared very confused. Artie, suspicious of Nevill's behavior, used his helmet of telepathy to read the man's mind and discovered he worshipped an unknown goddess named Mielikki. Nevill led them to a temple that he claimed belonged to Melora, Goddess of Wilderness and said he needed materials from a ruined village nearby to complete its restoration. The party was skeptical, but decided to humor the man. In a shack next to an abandoned graveyard, they discovered the town was once a place where humans and fey lived in harmony worshipping one of the old gods, Mielikki, Goddess of Forests.
The village had been the last of her followers on this world and her power was weakened when she helped the druid Altmera rescue Lurue, the Unicorn Queen, from the erinyes Dunames. It was then that Levira appeared to them under the guise of friendship, offering a ritual she claimed would restore Mielikki's power. In truth, it stole the spirits of the villagers and forced Mielikki to use the last of her waning power to save them, removing her influence from Nexus permanently. The party rushed back to the temple, convinced Nevill was another of Levira's minions conspiring to commit some dark ritual. Artie kicked a unicorn horn out of a magic circle Nevill had drawn and accused him of working for Levira, while Nevill in turn accused Artie of the same. After a brief scuffle, the two sides agreed to a truce.
Nevill explained he planned to summon a unicorn to purify the taint Levira had left on the land and restore this part of the forest to its former glory. He summoned the unicorn Brightstar who could not help the souls of the fey move on until the "dark guardian" was dealt with. Returning to the graveyard, the party found a hidden chamber that was quickly sealed by walls of thorned ivy as one of Levira's Void Beasts, the Thornheart, awoke from its slumber and attacked. It was a difficult battle with the corrupting creature's greatsword nearly killing Artie and Leliana while its ivy wrapped the party with spiked tendrils that began to drain their lifeforce. In the end, Hugh Morris managed to strike a killing blow with his thunder magic. With Levira's guardian destroyed, the souls of the fey were finally free to move to the afterlife.

Old Friends (and Enemies)

Coming back home, Artie briefly spoke with Ohnaka to see if he could trade the green dragonscales he'd made into armor for a set of black dragonscale armor. Ohnaka said he'd ask around and to return later. That evening, Artie slept through Hugh unintentionally releasing an allip from a book he'd recovered. This incident did not escape Guildmaster Nergalee's attention, who put the party under house arrest to be magically examined after she learned they were carrying Sweetmeat around. This was made worse by Sweetmeat attempting to magically charm the party into doing his bidding. They were checked for enchantment magic by Mary Ann of the Silver Sorcerers, who began to threaten Chigiri when he let something slip about Gorignak's rune magic but wouldn't speak on it further. Figuring out Mary Ann was secretly hoarding a Gravestone, Artie informed the Guildmaster to get the sorceress off their back.
Knowing Sweetmeat would return to his home realm if released and killed, the Headhunters decided they needed a new way to imprison him. They believed Mount Celestia could hold him and were directed to the aasimar Commander Truestrike, who was reported to have visited the Seven Heavens in her adventuring days. Artie and Chigiri went to find her while Hugh and Leliana attended other business, hopping on a boat to head for a military outpost. A few days into the journey, the two were sitting around below deck when Chigiri noticed a strange, small light on the floor just as Nadira appeared in front of them.
As Artie and Chigiri's hands went for their weapons, Nadira advised against it claiming the light was the spell delayed blast fireball. Hurting her could set off the blast immediately, sinking the ship. She explained she'd come for the Grave Orb and would leave the ship peacefully if they handed it over. Nadira sweetened the deal by offering to give them useful (but unspecified) information as well. Unable to think of a way out of the situation due to the fireball's time limit, they agreed. Nadira showed them an image of Levira) riding a dragon turtle and attacking @[Chigiri's village as she took the orb. She then commented that she didn't actually know the spell delayed blast fireball and that she'd simply cast the light spell on a pebble and bluffed them before teleporting away with a laugh.
Arriving at the military outpost, the two met with Commander Truestrike and Commander Nix Riversong, handing over a letter from Nergalee asking for Commander Truestrike's aid. As introductions were made, Riversong seemed to stiffen when he heard Artie's last name. Truestrike agreed to tell them where the portal was on the condition they deliver a box to Mount Celestia to her. She made it very clear that under no circumstances were they to open the box (which was under every magical and mundane protection she could think of to keep the Eye of Vecna inside hidden and secure). Artie confronted Riversong privately after the initial group conversation and Riversong admitted he had known Artie's wife. His answers to Artie's questions were vague, though he seemed saddened and burdened by whatever memories the conversation brought up. With the location of the Mount Celestia portal in-hand, Artie and Chigiri headed for Artie's hometown of Iron Rock to rendezvous with Hugh and Leliana.
The pair arrived at a café to see Hugh conversing with the traitor Mira. Artie summoned a sprite that managed to invisibly pickpocket Mira's Gravestone and helped his friends pursue her when she fled. Mira quickly demonstrated a number of supernatural abilities she'd never used when spying as an adventurer, managing to lose the party in the city streets by bewitching them with enchantment magic and transforming herself into a swarm of cats that ran in all directions. Artie ran to alert the guards who closed down the city gates, though Mira was still able to slip out through an underground passage.
Sent to the guardhouse to give an explanation, Artie found that his childhood friend Drannin Splithelm was now captain of the guard. He explained the situation as well as his suspicions that Mira was in town to steal the secrets of dwarven Blackpowder for some nefarious purpose. Trusting his childhood friend, Splithelm doubled the guard and offered to let the Headhunters stay at his place. Artie politely refused, eager to get to Mount Celestia so that the party could finally be rid of Sweetmeat.

Heaven's Light

Wanting to get to Mount Celestia as quickly as possible, Artie built a raft to cross the bay south of Iron Rock instead of having to walk around. It was smooth sailing until Levira showed up and used a Gravestone to transform one of Artie's familiars into a kraken-like Void Beast. Leliana cast a banishment spell on Levira while the rest of the party battled the monster, discovering after the fact that this particular Gravestone had been made using the soul of a little girl. Disgusted by the apparent endless depths of Levira's depravity, they continued onwards towards the mountains.
After climbing the mountain uneventfully, the Headhunters found the portal and made their way into the Seven Heavens. Leliana and Hugh, the most good-natured members of the group, had to vouch for the more neutral-aligned Artie and Chigiri before the angels would let them in. They were pointed towards Cathedral D'Adara to and asked the angel Archon for assistance with Sweetmeat, but legally there was nothing they could do without proof of his misdeeds. Archon suggested getting assistance from the ki-rin Ursek, warden of a vault/prison that housed dangerous peoples and artifacts.
Ursek used his powerful magic to cast the legend lore spell on the sword, revealing Sweetmeat's previous reign of terror that ended when a group of adventurers (among them, Nergalee's grandmother) sealed him in the blade. Chigiri spoke Sweetmeat's name 3 times to free him and the rakshasa surrendered without a fight, knowing he'd never win in combat but could potentially win against the Seven Heaven's legal system. Ursek then informed the party they were needed elsewhere and teleported them back to Inkhear, which they quickly learned was being charged by an army of monsters coming out of the Giantsheel Swamp.

The Battle of Inkhear

The Headhunters headed towards the swamp, battling their way through trolls alongside their fellow adventurers before confronting a powerful hydra. As the beast lay dead, the party looked back and noticed smoke was starting to rise from the city. Realizing the swamp monsters were a diversion, the party teleported back to the guildhall (on their 3rd try after two botched teleports) and helped Cordelia and Pryce fend off a group of Shadow Skulls attacking the civilian employees. Cordelia explained she airlifted Pryce from the swamp after he used up most of his magic only for them to find the city under attack by Molders, Shadow Skulls, duergar, and Void Beasts. They spotted the Morlocks trying to get into the tunnels under the guildhall and blasted the main tunnel shut before retreating.
The party headed for a secondary entrance and found it guarded by duergar and Shadow Skulls, teleporting past them to save their strength for the battle ahead. After finding evidence that the Elemental Guardians had tried and failed to stop the Morlocks, they found a maze hidden beneath the trial chamber and began to make their way through while dodging traps and Molders. As they began to catch up to the Morlocks, they encountered a vanguard of Shadow Skulls led by a spider-like Void Beast. Slaying the undead and monstrosity, they made their way into the central chamber where Levira prepared to break open Mesogog's prison while the rest of the Morlocks protected her.
Artie magically flew over Mira and the Black Knight at the top of the stairs to try and attack Levira directly, only for Moltor and Nadira to put themselves in front of her and trade fire with Artie. Though the party fought valiantly, destroying the Black Knight in the process, they were unable to prevent Levira from reciting the Decay Incantation and breaking Mesogog's prison open. As the stone door that sealed him began to crack, Artie made a choice. Using his Gravestone, he teleported Hugh and Chigiri to safety while commanding the beholderkin he'd summoned to fight to drag Leliana back through the maze to safety. When Mesogog emerged from his prison, Artie stood to face him and his lieutenants alone.
The freed cambion took his time greeting and congratulating his lieutenants before turning his attention to Artie. Ever quick with his words, Artie attempted to convince Mesogog that Levira was planning to betray him before they revealed that the two of them were betrothed. But convincing Mesogog with his words was never Artie's true intention; he only needed to buy time. Time enough to focus the entirety of his lifeforce into his Gravestones and launch a kamikaze attack against his enemies. This severely injured the villains and forced them to teleport to safety before they could wreck more havoc on Inkhear.

Legacy

Through Artung's sacrifice, many lives that Mesogog would have snuffed out that day were saved. The monsters still rampaging above were left leaderless and quickly mopped up when the military and their new ninja allies arrived to reinforce the town guards and adventurers. But in stopping one villain, he had inadvertently allowed for the rise of another. Rhith absorbed far more life force than he'd ever expected to gather from a single person when Artie made his sacrifice. When the necromancer finally revived himself, the energy taken from Artie allowed him to resurrect not as the alhoon he was before, but as a full-fledged illithilich.
And as his death brought a much needed moment of relief to his friends, it also brought peace for Artie himself. As his friends mourned him, they found a letter addressed to them in his belongings. He suspected he might not survive his adventuring career and was prepared for such a day. He regretted never having the chance to avenge his wife, but was glad to have known the other Headhunters and to have had a new family even after losing his old one. He considered the possibility of dying in their service a worthy cause and was comforted knowing that once he drew his last breath, he would be reunited with his wife at last. And reunited he was, with his wife waiting for him with open arms in the heavens above. Artie's life was over, but his legacy would allow his friends to continue on even as his own soul rested at peace.

Circumstances of Death

Sacrificed himself to injure the Morlocks and force their retreat during the Battle of Inkhear

Aligned Organization

The Headhunters

Related Plots

• Campaign 02: Shadows Unleashed

Magic Items (taken by the Morlocks)
+2 Rod of the Pact Keeper
Bag of Holding
Helm of Telepathy