In August of last year I got the opportunity to take over a table at one of the local game shops in town to run a game for their Dungeons and Dragons nights. I got a chance to meet my players and talk with them a bit before we settled on the Eberron setting to tell this story. And over the last six months, I’ve slowly been building them towards the reveal that happened last session that I’ve been planning since the beginning. And if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to tell you the story of my campaign so far in the hopes of perhaps inspiring other game runners out there into taking a look at this fabulous setting that challenges a lot of otherwise standardized fantasy tropes. Now, there’s going to be a lot of setting specific information here – if you’re keen to find out more information on anything below, please check out the fabulous Eberron Wiki. And please bear with me as I attempt to sum up six months of weekly sessions into something that is (hopefully) easy to digest (and also not give away any secrets should my players stumble across this piece).
The first session saw the players winning a contest in order to become couriers for House Orien, a team that could be dispatched to make and pick up deliveries on behalf of the Dragonmarked House without actually being affiliated with it. They spent the next several months of real world (and game) running a series of what appeared to be completely unconnected jobs for the House – taking a delivery of scrap metal from the Cogs in Sharn to a magewright in the city of New Cyre, traveling overland to the city of Varna to pick up a container of alchemical reagents, and to the small village of Shankill in the south of the Shadow Marches to pick up a shipment of special clay and wood that was native to the area.
Of course, the game being what it was, each of these journeys had their own difficulties and complications ranging from constant harassment by The Order of the Emerald Claw to a pair of mind flayers that had taken mental control of a portion of Shankill’s population and were using them to capture blood sacrifices to empower a ritual to tear down a dimensional seal to the home plane of their masters located underneath the ruins of a nearby fortress (those were a fun couple weeks of adventure that put the PCs into some very morally compromising positions).
And through everything, they were sure that something wasn’t right – their employer, a man by the name of Halstor d’Orien was offering them astronomical amounts of money for these jobs (though the dangers encountered on each of them tended to make the payment worthwhile). Durant Vength, a gnome artificer working as a prop master in one of the local playhouses in Sharn was also taking a very keen interest in their work and was offering them even more money to feed him information on their jobs. And furthermore, the Emerald Claw agents that the party were encountering seemed to be an organized cell with nationwide distribution, something hinted at by the presence of a certain gnoll commanding the forces every time they were encountered.
Simply put, the players knew their characters were in a position where they weren’t sure who to trust, but they realized that they were caught between the teeth of several large gears that could chew them up at any juncture. This brings them to their most recent job. After breaking into Halstor’s office and finding some potentially incriminating notes, they decided to finally go in with Vength’s plan after he revealed himself to be an infochant working within Sharn, though no one seems entirely sure where he originally came from. But at this juncture, he seemed to be the “least dangerous” of their options. Vength encouraged them to continue on with their jobs as if nothing was different and to simply feed him back information until they could find more information.
This brings the party to their current job. Halstor mentions that the individual who was supposed to pick up the alchemical reagents from their second contract wasn’t able to do so and so the party was being sent to Gatherhold in order to finish the delivery. After making their way there by chartered airship, they crack open the container to find that they were transporting mimic’s blood, a substance known for regenerative and possibly even replicative properties. They delivered it to the House of Healing headquarters in the halfling city and ran afoul of the Emerald Claw again, this time defeating the gnoll who was running a diversionary operation while the rest of his team stole one of the vials of mimic’s blood. Asked to wait several days for a return delivery to Sharn, the party investigated the presence of the Emerald Claw in Gatherhold and managed to find the safehouse that the agents were operating out of and found cryptic references to “a machine” in the remnants of notes they found in a burn barrel as well as a device that allowed them to mimic a dragonmark to fool a House lock, a device that only allowed House heirs beyond certain points in order to carry out their heist.
They picked up their return delivery after several days and finally started the return to Sharn. On the first night, the party had a series of dark and disturbing dreams, including a shared one where they saw what appeared to be the ruins of Sharn broken down to its foundations before facing an unending horde of undead in a graveyard. Upon finding a way to escape the nightmarish vision they were left with the dire warning of “this is the fate of the world if she wins” before they woke up to find themselves traveling dangerously close to the border of the Mournland.
The next evening, they spied several objects following them from a distance – gliders, each of them carrying a number of warforged who eventually overtook the ship and despite some canny preparations from the PCs, managed to land a boarding party on the airship where they demanded the return of the property of the Lord of Blades. The party fought off the warforged, capturing one of them alive to interrogate them. It told them that the package they were carrying was the property of the Lord of Blades and that it was to be returned, but wouldn’t give them any additional information, appearing not to know anymore itself.
And so the party did what parties do best – they opened the container they were transporting back to Sharn.
And found what appeared to be a warforged child inside – something that by all accounts shouldn’t exist. Afterall, warforged aren’t born – they’re created. And since the Treaty of Thronehold, creation of new warforged has been expressly outlawed. The looks on my players faces when they realized the implications of what they were carrying… well, those are the moments that we run games for, and I’m very excited to continue this story and see what happens from here – who they choose to trust and what decisions they make going forward as they continue to uncover what exactly is going on.
What are some of your favorite twists that you’ve pulled on a party in your own games? Or have you been on the receiving end of a twist that stands out to you particularly? Sound off below.
Ben Erickson
