Session Recap:
The Mystery of
Dowager Isle
Player Characters:
Fhyre Biche:
A Shrike Librarian, tinkerer and wunderkind with a strange mutation that leaves her body covered in vestigial scales. An expert in explosives and firepower, this famed Overseer of the guild United Commodities hails from The Choke (a dense megacity).
Esmeralda Herbarius:
A Human Herbalist and naturalist, skilled in nature, healing, and poisons. A member of the fabled “Witches of the Wilds”, she and her coven hail from the Allwilds in the deepest recesses of unexplored forests. Little truth is known of this cloister of powerful women by the outside world.
Geoffrey Han Solo:
A Goff Laborer, specializing in strength and two-handed combat. Hailing from the Midlands (Industrial City), he often puts his massive frame to work as hired muscle for Blue Crest Logistics. His handler “Uncle” is as cunning as he is cruel, often using Geoffrey’s sensitivities against him.
NPCs:
Captain McNair:
Captain of the Lady Shrike, chartered to facilitate trade of arms from United Commodities to the Hegemony of Oldmorrow across the sea. Later discovered to be an alias for Lord Dowager himself.
Lord Dowager:
Fabled Lord of Dowager Isle, long believed dead. Discovered to be very much alive, driven mad over the centuries by the loss of his wife and “The Orb”. The party thwarted his attempts to resurrect Lady Dowager using their stones.
Lady Dowager:
Lord Dowager's wife with a tragic backstory. Took her own life and the life of her newborn to escape the Lord’s cruel madness.
Prince Dowager:
Infant son of Lord and Lady Dowager, lost at infancy. Horribly deformed, perhaps by the presence of the Orb. Discovered by the party to be alive and horribly mutated.
Plot Setup:
The players journey to Oldmorrow aboard The Lady Shrike by way of Thicket Sump, each with their own motives:
Fhyre: Emissary for an arms deal involving her newly-developed explosives.
Geoffrey: Hired muscle on a mission to guard an apple given by “Uncle.”
Esmeralda: Ship stowaway fleeing her family's killers and protecting a precious artifact.
Shortly after setting sail, an otherworldly event occurs involving Esmeralda's now-glowing family heirloom and a lighthouse on Dowager Isle, which burns the ship and her crew in a divine, blue light. The beam dissolves board and bone alike in holy fire, sparing only the members of the party as they are knocked unconscious.
The Shipwreck:
The party awakes on Dowager Isle's southern beach, missing their possessions. They find the Lady Shrike and her crew vanished, stranded on the hot sands. There, they discover ships, goods and equipment of various eras, some hundreds of years old, littered across the dunes. Stranger still - a translucent shroud enrobes the island while the midday sun sits, unmoving in the sky above.
The Dockyard:
Seeking any hint of civilization, the party ventures northward to the Docks. There, they discover strange, mutated dock workers that seem to be an amalgam of man and aquatic life. Perhaps mercifully, they dispatch these creatures only to find a hooded figure who beckons them to Widow's Peak. This, they decide, is a patently bad idea as they seek their answers elsewhere on the Island.
The Lighthouse:
Journeying to the lighthouse, they discover Esmeralda's blue stone now embedded in the lens along with notes from Lady Dowager eluding to her husband’s madness. Upon retrieving the stone, the lighthouse begins to age rapidly, crumbling into the sea below. Imbued with a strange power from the stone, Esmeralda suddenly compels the vegetation around her, replacing the fallen structure with vines and flowers of all varieties. It seems to the others that she may know more than she is letting on.
With the stone back in her possession, Ezzy and her teammates continue their search of the island.
The Ancient Ruins:
Traveling northward through a maze of impossibly tall dunes, the party finally finds refuge at a temple oasis. A large statue of the Oldgoff deity Mork sits proud among the shifting sands. With cunning and a bit of luck, the party gains entry to an underground temple via a mechanism at the statue’s base. Traveling underground, they enter a sunken temple at the center of a massive cistern. Chained to an altar at the center of this space is the missing Captain McNair - on the brink of death, and impossibly aged from the Islands temporal effects.
Geoffrey is overcome with an instinctual, ancestral connection to this place. Acting on impulse and guided by his ancestors, he completes a blood sacrifice and discovers a green gem within his missing apple. This ritual triggers a shift in the sands above as the temple begins to recede deeper into the earth. In the chaos, Captain McNair is abducted by a mysterious, flying being. Dry cackles echo around the ruined chamber as the party escapes the crumbling temple.
Mt. Palehorse:
Shaken from these increasingly strange ordeals, the party seeks egress from the firey sands. Continuing their travels around the perimeter of the island, they make their way southward to Mt. Palehorse. With each step, Fhyre is drawn more intensely to the roiling volcano as an unsettling, guttural wail now follows their path.
Summiting the mountain peak, Fhyre finds notes of several attempted extractions of some material from the fiery maw. Using her wits and some surrounding materials, she crafts a glider to access a vestibule in the center of the lava lake. With courage, she reaches into the flame and retrieves a red stone shard, granting her swift biological changes that see her able to spit a gout of flame.
The Old Chapel:
Following the events of Palehorse, the party rests to contemplate their experiences. On contact, the stones in their possession begin to illuminate and fuse into a single, clear crystal. Perhaps a deeper connection to each other, the island and its mysteries is yet to be discovered.
The magic of this moment is short lived, as the party refocuses on escape from the island. Traveling further south, they find a ruined hamlet and farmland that has gone fallow. Among the sunken buildings, and ancient fetid corpses, they find an old chapel still standing. Suddenly, the corpses spring to life, revealing themselves to be more constructs of the Island’s twisted design. After a pitched combat, the party is victorious, gaining access to the chapel sanctum.
Inside, they find notes on Lady Dowager's secret terminated pregnancy along with crushed pews, piles of human waste, and a single untouched crib in the center of the room. They decide this place and the darkness within should be purified with cleansing fire. As they journey onward, they are followed by the sickening bellows of whatever being stalks them.
The Abandoned Mine:
Coming full circle around the Island, the party discovers a huge track carved into the land toward the castle by a large heavy object. Following to it’s genesis, they discover an abandoned mine with information about a large stone extracted from the site. This, in combination with notes found at the site, further implied the Lord’s increasing madness in proximity to this object. Suddenly, they are set upon by a giant, aquatic isopod several times larger than is natural. Escaping the beast and its brood, they find themselves back at the Shipwreck that started their journey.
With their combined powers, and island charted, there is but one destination left: Widow’s Peak and the Aqueducts below.
The Aqueducts & Widow’s Peak:
Traveling back to the docks and up the switchback steps that lead to the keep, they find the castle long abandoned and covered in a thick layer of ash. Exploring these eerie stone halls, they find further notes on Lord Dowager's obsession with the orb and his descent into madness. Impossibly, Lord Dowager seems to be very much alive.
Following a dark pathway below the keep, they come to a massive subterranean chamber, filled with cascading water and illuminated by a pale blue glow. At its source, the Orb - a magnificent hovering artifact pulsing with a supernatural aura. It begins to call to Esmeralda in her mother’s voice. Below this impossible object, they once again find Captain McNair chained to another stone altar. Atop the altar, the bones of a woman - the late Lady Dowager herself.
Upon trying to free the poor soul, Captain McNair turns and attacks the party, revealing himself as none other than Lord Dowager. With supernatural speed, he attempts to steal the now-fused crystal from the party. Unsuccessful, he calls on the power of the Orb, summoning all manner of mutated creature to fight on his behalf. From the far end of the chamber, the source of the guttural cries that plagued them on this island finally reveals itself - the Lord’s only son, the infant Prince Dowager.
The Prince is heavily mutated, his bones twisted and deformed from rapid and unnatural growth near the orb. He seems to be fused somehow with another creature - a giant isopod similar to the one they encountered in the Abandoned Mines. Obeying his father’s command, the pitiful creature attacks the party, attempting to gain the stone for themselves. The battle for the stone reaches a fever-pitch as the structure overhead begins to crack, flooding the chamber with water from above.
In the final moments before they are drowned in the inky waves, Esmeralda receives divine guidance through the voice of her mother. The party each touch the stone, and in a moment of intense trust and focus, are transported in a flash of otherworldly light. Lord Dowager’s screams and the wailing of the twisted child prince ring in their ears as the structure implodes around them.
Epilogue:
The party awakes to a tranquil evening sky. Lying on the deck of the Lady Shrike, they have seemingly been transported back to where their journey began. A cool night breeze greets them as the Islands lone lighthouse signals in the distance.
Main Takeaways:
Lord and Lady Dowager's History
Lord Dowager was driven mad by the Orb’s power, seeking immortality for himself and the late Lady Dowager, resulting in the island's strange events. Using the visage of Captain McNair, he sought to “make her whole” again, attempting to use the fragments found by the party somehow.
The Orb, Mutations and Immortality
The Orb granted great power, but also caused severe mutations and extended Lord Dowager’s life to unnatural lengths, leading to his obsession and eventual corruption. The temporal effects of its aura seem to interact with life on a genetic level, fusing animal and plant life in unnatural ways. Though initially found in the Abandoned Mine, the true origins of this object are unknown.
Player Character’s Roles
Each PC seems to have had unique access to their respective stones. Now fused, the united stone seemed to be key to the Lord’s plans. Whether this was coincidence, or something more sinister is to be determined. One thing is for sure, the events of the island and interaction with the stones have left the party imbued with strange abilities, even stranger questions and wildly unsettling possibilities.
The Fate of the Island
Though the events of the campaign ended in a violent and explosive affair, it is uncertain if Lord Dowager himself was vanquished or still alive in some way. Upon being returned to the Lady Shrike, the Island seemingly reverted to it’s current state, taking with it the strange aura that surrounded it.
Future Plans:
With strange new powers, a formidable ship and a mass of questions, the party heads back to the mainland. They journey to the United Commodities facility in The Choke as esteemed guests of Overseer Byche. There, with support from UC, they seek answers to the mystery surrounding the island and contemplate their eventual return.