In the beginning, the group first consisted of five people:
Siax - a young elf ranger from the 'Guided Path' guild, out in the world to prove his worth to the guild as a protector, primarily of those in the wilder regions of the world.
Idris - a young noble paladin that turned out to be an assimar. His bond with a deva, and his charismatic friendliness to all things, shaped the dynamic of the group's interactions with others
Zenari - a young woman of sorcerous power who, unknown to the group at the time, carried the soul of an outer-planar being with her that was being hunted
Pine - Arctic Wind Through Pine was a tabaxi snow leopard cleric of no obvious god. He followed his self-made duty to lay the dead on mountains to rest.
Koraliki - a female elf whose skills as a ranger of stealth people knew little about other than her fear of enclosed spaces
When the group first came together, it was at a small town called Phandalin that was set between the city of Neverwinter and the Icespire Mountains. They swiftly found out that there was a great deal of trouble in the region, not only from orc attacks, but also by a white dragon that had taken residence in the nearby mountains.
During their attempts to help the people of Phandalin, they came across a larger plot by the Cult of Talos to take over the region, and whose efforts hampered their ability to go to the mountains and deal with the dragon. After a devastating attack by both a large group of orcs and the dragon, the people of Phandalin relocated to an old dwarven keep called Axeholm that the group had managed to help find and liberate. During this time Pine became obviously haunted by three very powerful spirits who seemed to periodically help, Koraliki left the party after becoming traumatised by too many enclosed spaces, Idris made the first of the many deals he would eventually make, and ended up with a small devil in a dagger, and Zenari became hunted by a very skilled assassin.
With the townsfolk at least temporarily safe in Axeholm, the group set about preparing for the trip to the mountains. During this time Siax managed to liberate a sentient bow made from a twig from the gulthias tree from the Talos cult and bond with it, Pine found out that the three spirits haunting him were actually the remnants of The Dead Three – death gods previously thought to have perished in the time of troubles – and made a deal with them. The group took out most of the cultists in the area, and then turned their attention towards the mountains after Falcon, Siax's mentor in the area, was taken by the dragon.
It was during this time that they were tricked into thinking that Axeholm was in dire need of food, and Pine split off from the group to race back to the town to aid them, since his clerical powers could conjure food, while the rest of the group headed to the mountains, that he was ambushed by the assassin looking for Zenari. He died on that road, but after finding himself having a chat with Jergal, the God who had originally granted the Three their domains, his deal with the Three was allowed to enact, and he was sent back, but changed. Pine was now an undead cleric and once more with the group.
Kitted out for the cold, they made their way up the mountain, and after a near miss with Siax falling down a huge expanse of it, but somehow surviving and finding Falcon in a nearby cave minus one arm, the group set about going after the dragon. It had made its lair in an old keep at the top of the mountain, one that had once been part of the ancient elven empire that once spanned the region, of which the Guided Path guild had once been one of four kingdoms that made it up. Siax found a legendary elven sword in the keep; a moonblade, and the group battled the dragon.
The battle was not easy, and the dragon twisted magic from its accumulated hoard to bring itself back from the brink of death. It was Siax's arrows that finally took it down, but Pine was on the creature's back at the time and both plummeted down the side of the mountain. "Do what was promised" a whisper from Myrkul said to Pine as his true death hurtled towards him, and he tore his way into the dragon's body and ate its heart.
The group found the body of the dragon at the bottom of the mountain with Pine's nearby too, little more than a smear of blood and bone in places from the vast force of impact. The group were highly distraught, and Idris called out to the Three to bring Pine back. The Three made a deal with them where they had to promise to aid Pine in his tasks for them, that they would help bring him back. Idris and Siax readily agreed, but Zenari was more cautious. Still she let them direct her strange powers, and Pine was brought back to his unlife with the group to carry on.
Zenari left the group soon after, too worried about bringing the wrath of the assassin down upon them once more because of her presence, and Pine, Siax, and Idris made their way back to Axeholm to help the people there return to their homes in Phandalin.
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While the group were helping rebuild Phandalin, Lord Neverember from Neverwinter came by, and through Idris noble lineage, pressured the group to agree to check out a nearby fishing town called Leilon where the Talos cult were meant to be troublesome. He gave them details of a contact of his who would aid them. At this location they found the inn beset by waves of zombies attacking, and at the end of it, the three heroes of Phandalin were joined by:
Effie - Lord Neverember's contact in the region. A skilled rogue/bard whose cheerful disposition was liked by those around her, but whose skills showed a history in the more underhanded parts of city life.
Arya - a green skinned and green haired fae (human proportions), whose curiosity had her follow along with the group. She swiftly showed herself skilled in magic and perception.
The group liberated Leilon from the Talos cult then became embroiled in the mystery of an ancient tower at the centre of the town. The tower was an ancient elven structure from the four elven kingdoms that made up Merdelain, and seemed to have been used to guard against and trap planar beings from other planes, especially fae. Idris fell into a different sort of trap, and only by making another deal with a demon this time, was he able to not have his mind utterly wiped out. As it was, he was left changed by it, his wisdom having fallen dangerously low permanently, but in return the knowledge that the ancient tower contained had been transplanted into his brain.
After this, the group decided to seek out a group that were in the Mere of Dead Men, next to the town, 'The Dead Hand', who had been opposing the Talos cult. Pine had been told that the Three had plans in the area, and he was to go there. The Three were looking to become Gods once more, and Pine was Theirs to direct. They soon found that the Mere had a strange magic to it, as well as many ruins from the ancient elven kingdom.
They soon made contact with the leader of the Dead Hand, Ularan Mortus, and he sent them to retrieve an undead ship that the Talos cult had managed to lure and capture. He granted the group one boon each, and Effie's boon – a sword with three selfish wishes in it – managed to control the undead ship that they had liberated from the cult at great peril. It was now under her control, not Ularan's, but it was severely damaged.
Returning to the Mere, the group helped some lizardfolk return to their underground city in the south of the Mere in an ancient elven ruin there, and found out that they were likely the descendants of a magically enhanced group of lizards that the ancient elves of Merdelain had used as slaves. The city had a magical river running through it that seemed to embody the different possibilities inherent in people.
They found out that on the cusp of some sort of destruction, the ancient Medelainians had cast a very powerful magic spell in order to transport their entire kingdom out of Ferun, and into the Shadowfell.
Making their way to the Dead Hand's headquarters, Uthtower, they found out that it was currently in the middle of some sort of large-scale rebellion against Ularan, who had been locked in a magical battle of wills with a powerful spirit in Uthtower for months, and only able to communicate via magical means like Pine had done. They went in to try and get to Ularan to help him, but were given pause when Jergal, the original god of The End of All Things appeared to speak with them.
He told them that the Time of Troubles, and the deaths of the gods, had created a dangerous instability in the world, one that was hurtling it faster towards complete destruction. The Talos cult had been utilising the lack of death gods as a loophole to keep bringing back their leaders without detriment and it was speeding the process. But he told them that Ularan's plan to save the world from this situation was flawed. Ularan was trying to create a new God of Death to help the situation, true, but one that required the sacrifice of what was left of the Merdelain empire, who had absconded to the Shadowfell centuries ago, in order to make a more powerful god that could destroy Jergal himself and stop the threat he saw of Jergal eventually getting enough power from the deaths of death gods in order to destroy everything. Jergal was not threatened by this, but he did support a new death god being made, and told the group that one could be created by gathering all the death shards, of which Pine had one that held the essence of the Three and Ularan had 27 from previous death gods, and ask to ascend.
The group were very conflicted over this. They made their way to Ularan and found him battling the ancient spirit of a black dragon. They helped free him from that battle, but in the process Idris wanted to not destroy the spirit, or use it to power spells as Ularan had intended, but to befriend and free it, his low wisdom having catastrophic results. He became possessed by the black dragon spirit, willingly, and absconded from the group.
The group, with Arya's murmurs to each of them, made the decision to fight Ularan while he was still weakened, and take the shards so that Pine could help the Three ascend as he had promised them he would try to achieve. Then they would go after Idris. The fight was a difficult one, but they did manage, and when he gathered the shards Pine made the decision to ascend with the Three in order to ensure that the dead were actually going to be seen to properly, as had always been his duty. Jergal appeared and granted this wish, and Pine and the Three ascended to become the Dead Four. The world once more had Death Gods.
The group headed northeast to the Kryptgarden forest, where they'd been told Ebondeath – the ancient black dragon that had possessed Idris – might have gone in order to claim the body of another ancient dragon for its own use. While there, they came across an elf who Jergal had sent to aid them in their task and find out more about a further threat to the world originating from Merdelain.
Tiaumil - an older elf, originally from Merdelain in the shadowfell, he is a scribe from Candlekeep, and gains his magical powers from his deal with his Petron: Jergal, the God of the End of All Things.
They found the ancient green dragon, injured, and in return for agreeing to trap and destroy Ebondeath, she gave them use of a large emerald soul cage, and the means to get to the location she had sent Ebondeath during the fight.
Into the Shadowfell they went, but the spell went awry, as they were diverted into a prison much like the tower they had seen in Leilon. They managed to get out and follow the trail of destruction that Ebondeath had left in his wake, also having been diverted to the tower. Unfortunately they found that they had not been swift enough, for the spirit of Ebondeath had been captured by elves there in a soulcage of their, and Idris had been routinely killed in the aftermath.
The lands of the Shadowfell, and especially where they ended up, was a place that turned strong emotions into nightmarish creatures, and they ran from a huge creature of rage that had been summoned by Siax's emotions over being too late. They eventually found respite in a well-hidden ruin where a magical well of power resided, one that was linked to an artifact called the ruinstone that both Effie and Arya were interested in. Unfortunately they were attacked by the creature who had followed them, but were able to subdue it to their own purposes, at least temporarily, as it was controlled by a collar of the House of Caldrithen, the Merdelainian slavemakers.
We left our group riding into battle back at that tower that had captured them, intending on finding more about the collars that control these emotion-based monsters, on finding a map to guide them to more populated areas, and to destroy the anti-teleportation that would hinder them getting home after their task was done. The ruinstone was likely located at the heart of the city of Merdelain, the threat that Jergal warned of was still in the offing, and there was power and rare magic to be found in the heart of this corrupted empire.