By Jared Rascher
Late Spring 1373DR - Early Summer 1375DR
Late Spring 1373 DR to Early Summer 1375 DR (Stilgar, Mourn, Emen, and Grim)
The adventurers travel with Killideagra and Swanart into the expanse that the two gnomes refer to as "wildspace," and the group does their best to steer the strange vessel. Following the charts on the ship, they manage to head toward the moon, and then veer off toward the Tears of Selune to a space station known as Dragon Rock.
Upon arriving on Dragon Rock, the adventurers talk to several space farers to learn about wildspace and what is found there. After spending some time here, while the gnomes try to hire crewmen and learn more about their inherited ship, a man comes up the Emen, Mourn, Grim, and Stilgar and strikes up a conversation.
Easal Gifford, a paladin and member of a group called Code Helm, wants to know if they would be interested in aiding with raids on illithid bases on a world of Glyth. He explains the nature of illithids in space as well as generally the layout of Realmspace, the planets nearest to the world of Toril.
Mourn is excited to go, Emen feels somewhat compelled since Code Helm was founded by Helmites, Grim is guarded and thinks that Mourn is insane, and Stilgar is influenced by Lhoeriath to check in on this situation. They take the job, and tell the gnomes that they will be in touch.
Lhoeriath and the child set up shop on Code Helm's base in the Rings of Glyth, and the adventurers prepare for their assault on Glyth. The adventurers will fly past a patrol ship and check in as a slaver ship, and once the ship checks out, they will falsify a wreck, and the adventurers will head off toward one of the illithid "ranches" to investigate Code Helm's concerns.
The adventurers travel to the surface in the manner described. The party manages to evacuate the ship properly, and then travel toward the "ranch" as planned. Stilgar and Emen proceed to then entrance while Mourn and Grim use their shapechanging abilities to scout out the edges of the ranch.
At the entrance of the place Emen and Stilgar see only one guard, a strangle armored illithid that also has spiked chains affixed to its tentacles. While all members of the party have rings protecting their minds from illithid assault, the illithid seems to know where they are, though it may have just been especially perceptive. As it moves towards them, Stilgar charges the creature and Emen prepares for her attack. The illithid launches into a whirling attack with its chain flail tentacles, striking both adventurers and knocking them off guard.
The strange fighting illithid manages to pull Stilgar's axe away from him, and another tentacle reaches out and strikes Emen at a distance. Stilgar dives for his axe while Emen closes on the illithid and catches the creature in a grapple. Stilgar strikes the creature hard, sending jolts of electricity through it, but despite Emen's hold on the creature, its tentacle manages to reach out and trip Stilgar. Emen knocks the creature to the ground, and Stilgar strikes while the creature is prone. If fights with its reaching tentacles for a few more moments, but eventually Emen rips off its tentacles as Stilgar buries his axe in its chest. Using a potion of comprehend languages, Grim decides to gather some information, and approaches on of the humans on the ranch. They mention that the masters will be coming to take the most enlightened ones soon, but that they have recently changed their procedures. In the past, the enlightened ones took the most promising of the humans away to live in a city filled with the enlightened ones to give them advanced training, but now they have been returning some of the "trained" humans back to the ranch, so that they might take parters and produce children.
The returned ones say very little, except that they have been given a great gift by the enlightened ones. The female tells Grim that she didn't know when he arrived, and asks if he is one of the enlightened ones from the illithid cities. He tells her that he is just a new inhabitant of the "school" recently moved there, and she says that she hopes to mate with him soon, as she will soon be in season.Skulking around the edge of the camp, Mourn is taken unaware by a group of savage looking humans. He uses his potion of comprehend languages, and speaks with them. They tell him that they can sense he is a magical creature, but that the "tentacled devils" rarely alter animals without causing them to change their appearance, so they wanted to be sure of what Mourn was. They tell him that they are rebels that travel this region of Glyth, and that they have hired mercenaries from beyond to aid them in their attacks. They paid them with stolen magic items from the last ranch they raided.
Grim meets up with Mourn and is surprised to find the rebels. All of them meet up with Emen and Stilgar, and they tell their companions how lightly guarded the front gate to the place was. Before any of them can react, a Spelljamming ship streaks over the horizon and starts launching exploding balista bolts at the ranch, scattering the humans. The rebels say that these are their mercenaries, but that they aren't suppose to attack yet. A cloak of shadows goes up over the whole ranch, and the rebels say that its a standard feature of the ranch that the illithids can throw up the "Shadow Cloak" when they have to arrive in large numbers. The mercenaries disembark their ship, and they appear to be wiry, yellow skinned creatures, with tight skin drawn tight over their bodies. They seem to be rounding up the humans, while waiting for something to come out and meet them. From one of the buildings on the ranch, a creature bursts out at the mercenaries. It looks like a dragon with small purple scales, and large kite like wings of flesh, but the head of the dragon has small white eyes, and where the mouth should be are long, slimy tentacles. In addition, three illithids fly out of the same building, and being to attack the mercenaries, who attack them with wild abandon.
The humans are being trampled and attacked left and right by the dragon thing, while the illithids are hurling bolts of psionic energy into the ranks of the mercenaries. The rebels charge the creature, and the adventurers follow suit. Mourn begins to fire at it with scorching rays, and Stilgar and Emen charge the beast, while Grim moves some humans out of the way of the creature. Emen tries to grapple the things head, Stilgar hacks at its body, and Mourn keeps firing spells, many of which fail to penetrate its resistance to magic. Grim jumps onto its back and absorbs his daggers into the claws that he grows as a bear. After a few more blows, the dragon thing incapacitates Stilgar and Mourn with its mental powers, but Emen and Grim manage to finish the dragon off.
The pirates are nearly routed, and more illithids show up. The rebels ask the adventurers to help round up the wounded and get them into the forests beyond the ranch. They do so, and get away from the mounting number of illithids.
The party reaches the rebel camp, and they rest for the night, the rebels stunned to have their mercenaries turn on them, apologize for what happened, and ask for some help in healing their newly freed humans, who are confused, since they believe that the illithids are enlightened teachers. The rebels say that they will have to go deeper into the forest before the illithids decide to follow them, but first they will likely pick through the mercenaries.
It takes a few tenday to reach another camp, and in the meantime, Grim finds out that rebels worship a goddess they call the Earthmother (which he knows is another name for Chauntea, and assumes is the same goddess). Some of the rebels speak common, as they have been in contact with the warriors from Code Helm. Grim has some harsh words for Code Helm in his message to them, and soon a ship arrives with another group of adventurers. These call themselves the Sisterhood of Lost Murdane, and they are working with Code Helm at the moment. They wish to go back to the ruins to find out what was going on at the ranch, as it was not being run like a standard illithid ranch.
Emen knows that Murdane was a goddess that died centuries ago, and was purported to be Helm's lover. The sisterhood informs them that she was the goddess of Reason, and that she had some followers that purportedly took to wildspace, and as such, their order has been searching wildspace for years looking into if the goddess is truly dead and gone, or if "reason" is just sleeping and may be awakened.
The combined group returns to the ranch, and the Sisterhood, with many psionic members, does its best to cloak them as they enter the ranch. They encounter a few more of the armored illithids, which the Sisterhood refers to as "bodytamers," and says that they are a form or martial artist native to illithids, who harness their psionic abilities to make them more deadly and coordinated with their physical attacks.
Several more illithids are encountered, and Emen nearly dies when she defends one of the Sisterhood from an illithid that nearly devours her brain. The Sisterhood are impressed with her, and after all are healed, they lead into the ruined buildings on the ranch, specifically the one that that dragon came from. They are attacked by somewhat feline, tentacled creatures that appear to be a cross between some kind of hunting cat and an illithid. Inside the building, the group is ambushed by a pair of huge, quivering sack like creatures segmented legs. After the ambush, many of the Sisterhood of Lost Murdane die, but the creatures are destroyed. The place is filled with broken jars and magical equipment all over the place. Eventually, the group notices tiny little purple worm like creatures, very small and slithering around. They start to slither around some of the members of the group, and swarm into them. Those who are swarmed turn on the rest of the group, and chaos ensues.
Eventually everyone except for Mourn has been covered with the parasites, and a huge creature walks out from further into the complex. The creature is a nine foot tall illithid with very long tentacles. He tells Mourn to come out and face him, and accept his fate. He tells Mourn that his fate, as all of theirs is sealed, and that he knows right where Mourn is. The large illithid then orders his companions to attack him. Mourn calls up reserves within him and manges to cast a spell to paralyze his companions, and the one remaining member of the Sisterhood of Lost Murdane that is still alive. He then casts another one that starts to wither and kill the swarms of purple creatures, and as the die, they wriggle to the next group of them and spread the "disease" to the next group. The creature picks up Mourn in its long tentacles and moves toward his brain, but Mourn turns to wolf form and begins to furiously bite and tear at the creature. It begins to take over his mind, but before Mourn is lost to the creatures mental control, he speaks the most powerful spell that has ever entered his mind, and an blast of arcane fire destroys Mourn and the powerful illithid in one massive blast.
The group gathers what is left of the lab and teleports back to the Code Helm base. The members of Code Helm explains that the last illithid they faced was an Ulitharid, a very advanced form of illithid that is held in awe by other illithids. After looking at the creatures and the notes and equipment that was salvaged, they find out that the little creatures are called nerve swimmers, and they can infest a host and make them vulnerable to control by outside forces, but these ones are modified. The nerve swimmers that the illithids were developing were undetectable when dormant, and could be activated at a certain time or at great distance, and unlike other nerve swimmers, they were working on making these ones able to mutate into an illithid tadpole, meaning that eventually they could, by remote, turn a host into an illithid over time.
Code Helm is sorry for the loss of the adventurer's companions. The members of Code Helm that have appropriate rank elevate Emen to Trusty Lady Knight Emen, and they provide her with papers to present to Toril side churches to confirm her promotion. Nearimma, the last of the Sisterhood, upon hearing that Emen has gone up in rank and that they have ties to the Church of Helm, presents Emen with the Mindsword of Murdane, an artifact of the lost goddess that she wishes to be kept safe with the Church of Helm, barring any followers of Murdane being able to keep it safe. She asks them if they will deliver the sword to Toril for her.
The adventurers stay at Code Helm's base for a while, and eventually fly back to Dragon Rock to reprovision. After a while, the gnomes end up arriving on Dragon Rock, and the adventurers set back out to Toril.
Late Spring 1374 DR to Early Summer 1375 DR
During the summer of 1374 DR, Meriden is busy with the invasion of the Daemonfey, part demon gold elves that bring with them hordes of demons and daemons, and try to take over Myth Drannor. Once in Myth Drannor, the Daemonfey enslave the devils native to the ruined city. An army of elves comprised of units from Evermeet and Evereska arrives in the Dales, and meets with Haresk Malorn, as well as Mourngrym, Randal Morn, and Lord Ilmeth of Battledale. While Meriden knows about the meeting with the Dalelands leaders and the arrival of the elves, he doesn't know about the armies of fiends until just before a combined force sweeps through Mistledale.
Meriden and his fellow clerics manage to get most of the population of Pelden's Helm into the temple and fortify them against the demon attacks. Overblade Lyrkaen from Tsurlagol manages to lock the temple down from extraplanar intrusion, and the temple's spectator dies defending the last of the retreating clerics. Meriden's sword manages to kill quite of few of the soldier demons, but he has to retreat when he the devils and daemons enter the stage. His guardian justicator buys him some time, and when they manage to fall back into the temple, Lyrkaen contacts his superiors in Tsurlagol, and they manage to send several inevitables to defend the temple.
Eventually the demons and devils fall back to Myth Drannor and aid arrives from the elven armies as well. While the demons and devils lessen after the daemonfey have been driven away, many monsters are still roaming Myth Drannor and Cormanthor in general, so Meriden aids the elves in hunting demons in the forest, and is named as a human welcome in Myth Drannor. He also sees several adventurers arrive in the ruined city to aid the elves, and meets Florin Falconhand and Dove from the Knights of Myth Drannor, as well as Fflar Starbrow, commander of Coronal Miritar's forces and Consort to the Coronal herself.
After spending a few months aiding the elven army in clearing out demons and devils, and after receiving a gift, a crossbow enspelled to harm evil creatures from other planes of existance.
Meriden heads out for Tsurlagol to obtain more funding to repair demon damaged temple and to request more priests and funds to fortify the place. He is in Tsurlagol until the spring of 1375 DR, and receives a promise for the potential for new funds, temporary staffing, and the rank of Guardian.
The content of the Mistledale Camapign is the property and copyright of Jared Rascher, and is not to be published or redistributed without permission.