001 A Mysterious Offer (The Original Eight)

Sevin, the Kitsune Trickster Shalzar, the Suli (Elemental-Kin) Summoner Quay, the Grippli Alchemist Ekin, the Sylph (Elemental-Kin ) Sorcerer Brick, the Barbarian (The Slabs) King Alex, the Hinterlands Mercenary Seward, the Karnian (Karnian Royal Army) Soldier Hollow Fury, Ranger of the The Great North Wood

The Offer

Eight messengers. Eight messages. Eight heroes of exceptional powers and unusual backgrounds. The promise of wealth, power, revenge or salvation. A place, a date, a time.
With small acts such as these great things are set in motion. Thus, the eight heroes found themselves converging at the town of Greenfield. Arriving under cover of the great harvest festival of Xerus, the eight convened in a tavern and met the patron of their unusual offers, Captain Rhyann.
His offer was simple, investigate and then sabotage The Theia Commerce Group's mining outpost in the Pandoran Mountains . The reward, a hefty sum of gold, vengeance against the Morin Regime and a potential inroads to greater wealth, power and influence with The Resistance.
The party made their way North, towards Foothill. Along the road they encountered a strange site, recently disturbed Undead of unusual power, emitting some unknown dark energy. This troubling encounter weighed heavily on them as they schemed on how to enter Foothill.

The Infiltration

After much deliberation, the party decided to pose as laborers, joining the intermittent stream of laborers seeking employ at the camp. A quick ambush of an official Morin recruiter procurred them the garb, credentials and magical likeness of a real recruiter. Using his natural shapeshifting skills, the sorcerer Sevin posed as the recently waylaid recruiter and introduced the party as his recruits. With the bulking lithic frame of Shalzar hidden disguised as a hunched elder, the Grippli Quay hidden in a pack and the Ekin's swaying Sylph hair bundled beneath a cap, the party succesfully fooled the gate guards and received assignments as workers. The larger members of their party would take shifts in the mine, participating in Theia's mysterious efforts. The verbose Sevin was posted as an aide-de-camp to a Theia lieutenant (Minor NPCs) and the other casters were posted in mess and service roles. Unable to hide her diminuitive and ranine frame, the Grippli Quay used her inherent stealth and acrobatics to scout the facility in secret.
After a day of hard laboring reconnaissance, the party regathered to share what they had found. Working in the mines, Brick, Seward and Alex had discovered that the mountain barbarians remained a thorn in the side of the Theia leadership, harassing and attacking Theia resources despite intricate security like the enchanted railway that connected the city and the mine. Despite a close call with the lieutenant's blade, a well placed magical charm had given Sevin access to detailed patrol routes and information on the base. Working in the base itself, the rest of the party heard disturbing rumors of cannibalistic barbarian tribes and a mysterious black rock secretly shipped out of the depths of the mine.

The Mountain

Putting this information together, the party devised a strategy. Utilizing engineered gaps in the patrol routes, the party would sneak out of the camp and make their way up into the mountains. Using his connections as a former Slab King, Brick led a contingent up into the mountains to meet a contingent of The Slabs. Arriving at Slabtown, Brick discovered that a former underling, Faceroll, had usurped his position. In a brutal display of strength he defeated the challenger in one on one combat, reclaiming his authority. Using his resumed influence, he sent the Slabs in a feint, to strike the defenses of Foothill and draw off defenders from the mine. The party also procurred a sum of what the party deemed Inscrutable Meat, a preserved Slab meat-product of many unusual properties. Including detonation.
As the sound of exploding barrels of questionable meat products rang through the mountains, the party easily snuck into the undefended mines. Building on their earlier explorations the party discovered a seemingly abandoned side shaft, blocked with debris and rubble. Clearing it away, they discovered that the mines were much longer and deeper than they had first imagined. Following the trail of rubble led them deeper and deeper into the mountains.
But the way was not entirely unguarded. A band of ruthless Sykoss barbarians ambushed the party, emerging from dark side tunnels in a screaming pack. Their traditional masks spewed black smoke and their weapons were shrouded in an inky black mist that cut like fine steel. But the party was not swayed. Alex's glaive-guisarme and Seward's sword and shield became a deadly wall of steel that held back the invaders as the spellcasters rained hellacious clouds of fire and poison and death down on the barbarians. Finally the black smoke escaped their frames and the Sykoss collapsed. Upon closer inspection they found that sharpened shards of glimmering black rock (Sealstone) had been embedded in both their masks and the hilt and grip of their weapons. Exposed to the light of their torches the stone began to dissolve into black mist and the Sykoss bodies withered into dust.

The Depths and the Dark Elves

Unstable minework blended crudely into ancient ruins of worked stone and the party found themselves in a massive open chamber. Inside they discovered a shallow crater of black stone, a tall thin cloaked figure and five masked Nebuchar elves. The figure turned around, revealing an immaculately carved mask of fluid silver. When he spoke the mask moved like a second skin. It was Aldrin, CFO(person:834b31aa-8be6-4963-8533-10ca829d9ae1), an infamous upper operative in @[The Theia Commerce Group. He laughed dismissively and ignored the party's demands for information, continuing his strange task of dropping explosives into the slowly deepening crater.
At some unseen signal the assembled Nebuchar commandos, seemed to go utterly mad, smashing their faces against weapons, the stone floor and even each other. The masks shattered into fragments, releasing a cloud of darkness and rearranging into a horrifying fanged visage. The party engaged them in epic battle, combating their dark magics and horrific abilities with spell and steel and courage. Despite the shadowy power animating their alchemically-wrought forms, the dark elves proved no match for the adventurers.
But they were victorious a moment too late. With one last explosion, Aldrin cracked through the black stone of the crater. A massive tremor ran through the entire mountain and a pillar of awful, whirling shadow burst from the ground and raced out of the chamber and up towards the surface. Aldrin merely stood laughing insanely over the pit he had created, until an arrow from Hollow Fury's bow struck him down. Inspecting the body they discovered that Aldrin had merely been a puppet, a silver mask adhered to an animated wooden frame.
Far more terrifying was the massive hole that had opened in the floor. It didn't seem to open into a real space but instead looked down into an infinite chasm of smoky shadow and depths. In their stunned silence, for just a moment, the party could hear the sound of crashing waves.

The Goddess

The silence was broken by a growing ringing sound. The room suddenly filled with a vibrant glowing light, simultaneously a warm clear white light and a coruscating rainbow of colors. The light resolved into a vaguely feminine form. The light introduced itself as Aether, the highest Deity of the Karnian Major Pantheon.
She told the party that what they had discovered was one of the 12 seals of Soma, ancient safeguards imprisoning a horrible extra-dimensional deity known as Tiamat. For some reason the The Theia Commerce Group was seeking the seals all across the world and shattering them, bringing them ever closer to releasing Tiamat. Aldrin, CFO's success meant that 5 of the 12 seals were now destroyed, leaving the world incredibly vulnerable.
Aether implored the party to turn their efforts to preventing the The Theia Commerce Group's efforts and saving not just their world but all worlds from Tiamat's wrath and hunger.

Parent Plot

The Advent of the World-Dragon (Campaign)