The Party
Five characters carry the campaign, with two more travelling alongside and one who was here at the start.
| Who | Heritage | Class | Level | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Quill | Fey (Sprite) | Wizard | 4 | Archivist of the Archive of Ioun. Forgets everything every two years |
| Kaelen Vale | Half-Elf | Ranger of the Green | 4 | Sworn to city and forest both. Carries the Sorrow of the Forest |
| Lyrique | Elf | Bard | 4 | The face. Resident performer at the Sleepy Dragon in Northbank |
| Thalia | Halfling | Rogue | 4 | Former City Watch investigator, Warrens-born |
| Drakov | Dragonborn | Cleric of Bahamut | 4 | Came as Lady Sera's bodyguard and never left |
| Wynn Copper | — | Delver's Guild fighter | — | Hired muscle for the front line. Travels with the party |
| Lady Sera | Human | Arcanist | — | The Duke's daughter and heir. Now barred from the forest |
| Sammael | Human | Rogue | — | Warrens investigator. Here for the Gray Morning; his player has moved on |
Two of us are from the edge
Kaelen grew up half in the city and half in the trees — a Westmarch carpenter for a father, a wandering druid of the Thornwood for a mother — and his father still lives out on the forest's edge. When the fog took the Warrens, it came for people he knew. Thalia walked a Watch beat in the Warrens before they let her go, and knows its smiths, its sweepers and its two worst taverns by name. Between them they are the reason the party has a door into the poor district at all.
Quill has lived in Westmarch for three hundred years and cannot remember most of it.
Quill
Fey, Sprite heritage. Wizard. Four to six inches tall, emerald-eyed, with one last streak of silver in hair that has been going crimson for over a century.
The curse. Every two years Quill's memory is wiped clean. He wakes knowing nothing, with
only a letter from his former self — instructions, notes on the people around him, and the
name of the one person he can trust: Chief Archivist Elara Moonwhisper, who took him in
and gave him work and a place to sleep. Each cycle takes a little more of the silver out of
his hair. He has perhaps six months before the next erasure. Where the curse comes from,
and why it answers to the ward stones, he does not know — the Duke has offered to research a
cure in exchange for the party's service.
There is a second edge to it: when Quill fails at deception or persuasion, the curse shows — black thorns tear out of his skin, or his shadow stretches into a towering vine-wrapped shape — and people recoil from him whether he meant them to or not.
How he fights. From the air, badly positioned, and decisively. He controls the field with Freeze, Sleep and Shattering Barrage, kills priests outright with Guiding Bolt, and keeps an emergency spell that "murders everything in an area" for when he has already been knocked down — which is often. He has been dropped more times than the rest of the party combined.
Kaelen Vale
Half-Elf. Ranger of the Green. The scout, and the one the forest keeps choosing to talk to.
Kaelen took the Rangers' dual oath — to serve the city and the forest alike — and he
means it, which is going to cost him. At the Singing Pools he took on the Sorrow of the
Forest, an old grief that makes those who serve Westmarch's order distrust his word: he
argues at a disadvantage with the Watch, the Citadel and the clergy. He drank from the Pools
and was shown the Duke on his knees before a great stone. He carries Edran Holloway's
medallion, given him by High Ranger Mira, and Mira has quietly set him to watch Lord
Brennan. And of everyone in the party, he is the one the mirrors chose to answer — he was
shown Holloway alive, asleep in a forest clearing, and has told almost no one.
How he fights. Out front, at range and in melee both. A critical Hunter's Mark strike took a drake's head off at Harrow Keep. He hunts, he tracks, and he reads the woods the way Thalia reads a street.
Lyrique
Elf. Bard. The party's voice, and its way into rooms the others could never enter.
Lyrique was raised in the noble wards, largely by tutors, and grew up an observer — sneaking,
watching, listening at doors. She is the resident performer at the Sleepy Dragon, an
exclusive social house in Northbank where old money and new money mix, and she is genuinely
good: the house asks for her every night she is away. She moves in Lord Brennan Westmarch's
circle, admires his talk of a better Westmarch, and brings him what she hears. The party knows
this about her, and not all of them are comfortable with it — Sera does not trust Brennan
at all.
How she fights. With words first, and Hold Person second — she froze the kobolds' spellcaster mid-incantation at Harrow Keep. She has, on the record, charmed her own allies quiet when she judged it faster than arguing.
Thalia
Halfling. Rogue. Former City Watch investigator, let go for asking too many questions, now doing the same work off the books.
Thalia is Warrens-born and Warrens-connected: a smith here, a sweeper there, people who will
talk to her over an ale because she is not the Watch any more. She spotted the kobold ambush
on the forest road before it sprang, and she is the one who turned a smith's gossip into the
first real trail of the saboteurs. She has a thief's instincts about a deal — she is the one
who refused to sign the Eighth District's Manifest when Kaelen signed.
Drakov
Dragonborn, red-scaled. Cleric of Bahamut. Sent by the Platinum Basilica to keep Lady Sera alive, and stayed on when the job got bigger.
Drakov is the reason several of the party are not dead — a critical mace-strike killed Chief
Scris outright at Harrow Keep, and a second Healing Word pulled Quill back with no margin to
spare. He works the Basilica's medic stations and guard shifts, and he is the one the divine
strangeness keeps landing on: it was Drakov the Watch brought to the boy who came back from the
fog, and Drakov to whom the High Priest confided his dreams of the forest.
The others
Wynn Copper — a Delver's Guild fighter, hired for the front line and worth it. He stepped between Kaelen and the Greenmark tree-creature, took the hit, and killed it; he has been at the sharp end ever since.
Lady Sera Westmarch — the Duke's daughter and only heir. She talked her way into the party by trading an audience with her father for a place on the road, proved she could fight, and was present when the Duke gave up his secret. Her father has now forbidden her the forest — the heir cannot risk herself — so she works the city and the Archive instead, and she is one of the few people the party fully trusts.
Sammael — a private investigator from the Warrens, hired into the Gray Morning to guide Lyrique into the fog. He was there for the beginning of all of it. His player has since moved on, and Sammael has stepped out of the story.