In The Beginning, a handful of random adventurers met at The Melodious Hymn, an inn in Bartertown.  We were hired to investigate foreboding events around a town called Mallowroast, and set off.  Along the way we came across some burned out wagons.  Tracking those who had done it, we attacked a group of what seemed to be common raiders, but turned out to be Therans.  (This is important because we are early in Earthdawn's timeline.  Thera is not known to be active at this time; as far as most of Barsaive knows, they are still hiding in their bubble.)

This is also when a dark Obsidiman appeared.  He stole one of our companions, Vergil, a Dwarven wizard.  He introduced himself as Omandras The Night King, and made some vague threats, but also demonstrated unnatural powers even for a world like Earthdawn.

In Mallowroast, we met a Horror Stalker named Arkan, who was protecting a shrouded woman named Narlinda.  She was an elf, her body covered in thorns.  (Also virtually unknown at this point in the timeline.  The Blood Wood is still just a big blot on the map, much like the depths of the Servos.  No one who goes in comes out.  It's known that the Elven Court is still in there, but they've made it clear they like their privacy.)  And Mallowroast itself was a debacle; the morning after we arrived, the whole town was swallowed up as if it had never been, leaving only churned up earth in its wake.  This, too, was done by Omandras.

Returning to Bartertown, we of course promised the men who had hired us that we would avenge their home town if we could, but there was little we could do at the time.  Instead, we were now hired by a Dwarven merchant named Hrothgar, who had the kind of fashion sense that only a T'skrang (or Calypte) would love, to escort him to the destination on a map he owned showing a lost kaer, Tar'Daeno.

We stopped the first night in the small town of Brightsprings - a pair of inns and some homes between them, a town founded on little more than being about a day's travel from Bartertown.  From there we moved on to the larger town of Haradis, where we paused for a bit, did a little training, and moved on.

There was a pretty exciting encounter where we saved a Unicorn foal from a Wyvern, and some kind of wolf-creature attacked our Thief.  And then we found out that there was a group of Therans looking for us in particular nearby.  This was largely because two members of our own group at the time, Talia and Liara, were Theran expatriates.  The Theran Airship is commanded by Leruthu, an Inquisitor, and Falan, an Elven Swordmaster.

In the morning we were come across by an Ork Cavalryman, Varev Raginis, captain of the Ghosts regiment of the Throalic army.  They were out to deal with some Scorchers that had been hitting caravans bound for Throal.  We travelled with them to the even-smaller-than-Brightsprings Shadowhamlet, where we spent the night.  In the morning, Hrothgar and a few others decided to go back to Throal with some of the Ghosts, while the rest of us continued on to Tar'Deno.  The Ghosts determined to go straight back to Throal, rather than dealing with the Scorchers, because we gave them our report about a Theran vedette.

We tried to set up an ambush for the Therans hunting us, but on the way Omandras dropped in and demonstrated both physical and magical powers - controlling skeletons, and killing one character with a word, and then just just vanished.  The Therans came upon us while we were still recovering, and it was a pretty intense scene, really.  Fortunately(ish), Falan and Talia had history - when he saw her, he sent his soldiers away and told us to flee, warning that Leruthu had unleashed something called Anubith-Re to hunt us.

And from there we went on to Tar'Deno.  Inside we met Lily, or Lillhiana, the ghost of a young elven girl with a jaggedly slashed throat.  **And just for trivia's sake, this is where Mountainshadow left and I took over as GM**

Lily helped us explore Tar'Deno, where we fought a tricksy Illusionist-type Horror and its minions.  Korentin found a charred journal, which is posted in Loose Threads, and we found out that Falan had released some prisoners from the Theran vedette and tasked them to find Talia and keep her safe in exchange for their freedom.  Sadly, we had just lost Talia. Anyway, we defeated the Horror; the group sent to find Talia stayed to look for her, freeing the rest of us to go back to Bartertown to give Hrothgar a report, or something.

On our way back, though, we encountered a sort of will-o-wispy kind of thing that we declined to actually follow, but then trailed to meet Jazciel, who introduced herself as a Lightbringer, and introduced us also to another handful of Adepts who had been touched by the Night Kings.  This, we learned, was a title that applied to more than just Omandras, but rather, a Group.  The Night Kings, so far as she knows, are not themselves Horrors, but seem to support Horrors in the same way that the Lighbringers fight them.  According to her, we face Omandras, of course, as well as Thalos, a Human Thief, V'kestes, a T'skrang pirate, Eventide, a Windling slave trader, and Kethra, an Orc Nethermancer currently organizing multiple bands of Ork Scorchers.

We grouped up and went on from there, continuing on to Bartertown.  Back in Shadowhamlet, we met a highly discomfiting woman; she never gave us her Name.  She told us to go to the Great Library and ask for Loval, once a member of an adventuring group called Bryntha's Band, and to ask him for Scroll #246.  She said she'd talk to us again after that.

Stopped briefly again in Haradis, finding them more on-alert than they had been before.  When we went on from there, we came back to Brightsprings, to find that it had been completely razed and burned, leaving only one survivor - another Blood Elf, Taia Talshara.  We also met another group of the Ghosts Cavalry unit, this one headed by a Dwarf named Merkel, and learned that they had clashed several times with the Scorchers since we had seen them last, and were, frankly, losing.

We were reunited with Talia, and finally made our way back to Bartertown...
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:46, Wed 13 Mar 2019.