The Campaign Diary

This is the campaign told as a story rather than as a set of notes. Every scene in it happened at the table. Where the diary puts words in quotation marks, somebody said them.

The record is uneven, and it says so where it is. The two most recent nights are written up from the recordings, close to the table. The earlier stretch — the fog, the first march into the Thornwood, the fall of Harrow Keep — was played before the tapes, and is set down here from the notes: the shape of what happened and no more than the notes can honestly support.

One thing to hold onto while reading: the dates are the forest's calendar, not ours. The whole account below, from the first morning of fog to the Duke's secret, covers a few weeks in Westmarch. It has taken the table the better part of a year to play. When a character has been husbanding a healing potion or waiting on a message, that is table time; when a wall is described as breaking "the night before," that is the forest's.

The entries

The Gray Morning · Greenleaf 14th Fog out of the forest, a councillor dead in a cellar, a thing made of mist, and a great stone under the Warrens with tool marks on it.

Into the Thornwood · Greenleaf 15th–24th A week's march to the Singing Pools, a redcap's riddle, a fey lady who knew who Quill was, and a vision of the Duke on his knees before a stone.

Questions and Alliances · Greenleaf 25th–28th A lost elven city on an old map, a bargain struck with the Duke's daughter, and the day the mist came over the wall into the Greenmark.

The Road to Harrow Keep · Greenleaf 30th–31st An ogre in the dark, kobolds taken prisoner and turned into guides, a chief who let one word slip, and a letter hidden in a locked chest for three hundred years.

The Duke's Bargain · Greenleaf 31st–Budding 6th The stone mended, the fog gone, and a secret audience where the Duke dismissed his guards and told the party what Westmarch really is.

Still Water · Budding 6th–7th The first day as the Duke's agents: a trail of cloaked figures in the sewers, a boy led out of the fog by something shining, and bowls of water appearing on windowsills.

The Manifest · Budding 7th–9th A note sealed with an eight, a carter's yard that is not a carter's yard, a small dragon who came to town to watch, and Quill's answer.