Every evening you all have the same dream. There’s a tower. Or maybe there are two towers? Is one red and ruined? The other is definitely gray and intact. But sometimes that one is underground in a collapsing cavern, and other times it’s above ground beside a river. When the tower is beside the river, you can feel a dark, ominous forest at your back, and the sound of huge, beating wings fills the air. If you try to look at the sky in your dream, you wake up with a start.
But if you ignore the wings and remain in the dream, something else startles you awake. It’s the thing under the tower. You don’t want to look at it. You don’t want to think about it. Whatever it is, it terrifies you awake night after night, but you can never remember why.
Whenever you wake, you each have a lingering feeling that something is pulling you to this tower — a sort of internal compass. Unable to resist, you all made your way to Zobeck and booked passage south on a paddlewheel ship powered by Clockwork Magic. The ship was crewed by:
- Alfonse, an elfmarked male deckhand with shoulder-length brown hair.
- “Nobody,” a white-haired nonbinary Shadow Fey deckhand that’s clearly on the run.
- Gerard, a balding human male deckhand with a long, gray beard.
- Hornswaggle, a white-and-gray male minotaur helmsman.
- Captain Cristof, a tall and muscular male human with a dark black ponytail.
- Lorenzo, an apprentice human male Clockwork Mage in charge of powering the engine.
- Theonius, a wizened human male Clockwork Archmage responsible for Lorenzo’s training.
Each of the crew had something to contribute when asked:
- Alfonse told Mortimer that there are a few Griffon Knight towers in the general area, but nothing he knew of matching the dream tower’s description. He also imparted some information about the old Margreve Forest — a shadowy and ancient place filled with dark, Primordial magic.
- “Nobody” did a psychic reading for Daegon in exchange for 1gp that scared the deckhand half to death. “Get away from me, Digbee!” he cried. “My name is Daegon….” “I know who you are!”
- Gerard told Yannick about the Griffon Knight towers, but also mentioned a rumor about an odd tower that popped up overnight between the river and the Old Margreve.
- Hornswaggle and the captain told Ivor more about the Griffon Knight towers and the rumor about the mysterious new tower. It seems the Griffon Knights were already investigating it.
- Below decks, Lorenzo channeled mystic energy into the ship’s engine while Theonius slept. When the ship made port in Moonbright, Theonius woke and performed an unusual form of “cosmic gear augury” on the party, revealing that all of them were out of sync with the world in some fashion. Theonius nudged their gears into slightly better alignment with the universe, hoping this might reveal more of the party’s dream memories to them when they slept.
When the party left the ship, their first stop in Moonbright was the Dragon’s Thirst tavern (map area three), an establishment recently sold to an adventurer named Potro by the Perelbachers — a couple with a single daughter named Ebrill. Ebrill is a lively young woman with red pigtails, a green jumper, and a white blouse. She still works as a barmaid at the tavern, but deeply resents her parents’ decision to sell without consulting her. Daegon got on her bad side by suggesting Potro may have killed her parents, as the young woman believes they’ve retired to the south.
The party’s next stop was the mayor’s office across the street (area six). Mayor Yara Ranit welcomed the party and chatted them up about harvest festival. However, everyone saw through her blithe demeanor: she didn’t really care about the festival. She did care about officiating an upcoming wedding, and she cared even more about the kobolds swarming the woods around the town. She offered 25gp to each party member if they could resolve the situation… one way or another.
Mayor Ranit also offered to patch things up between Ebrill and Daegon — assuming he showed more tact in his future interactions with her.
After meeting with the mayor, the party stocked up on supplies and spoke with Theonius one more time. He suggested that Daegon should meditate and the party should rest to see how their dreams have evolved. The group heeded that advice at the Dragon’s Thirst, where the mayor offered to pay for three nights’ lodging as part of their fee.
Collectively, between everyone’s dreams, the “big picture” came into focus. Everyone in the party is the reincarnation of a hero from a previous epic adventure. Daegon (Digbee), Yannick (Kane), and Ivor (Vorkhul/Seesdin) were part of a group that had founded a vast underground city. The tower at the city’s heart was their home, and it was also where Mortimer (B.E.A.R.) and Logishi (Khan) fled with their group when an epic quest went wrong — a quest that ended the world.
B.E.A.R., Khan, and their fellows were part of a challenge set down by the gods Baldur and Loki. If they could purge the ley line corruption from the Scarlet Citadel’s vicinity Baldur would grant them a boon and Loki would agree to a humiliating punishment. If the party failed, Loki won and Fenrir would be loosed from his chains, signaling the start of Ragnarok. Unfortunately, their fractious party failed the challenge.
“Thank you for living down to my expectations!” Loki sneered as the ground shook. The group at the Scarlet Citadel was spirited away due to the intervention of Baldur and his elfmarked bastard son, Artur (Björn’s cousin). The god and demigod of light placed the defeated team in a chariot drawn by Thor’s goats, and all were carried away to the Sunless Citadel — the reconsecrated area at the core of the cavern city. Baldur held some small hope that the people there could halt Ragnarok.
Sadly, the end of the world brought on a different crisis. Digbee, Kane, Vorkhul, and the rest of their group had been holding a void dragon egg in a secure vault until they could figure out what to do with it. Ragnarok caused the nearby ley lines to surge with chaotic energy that awoke and empowered the unborn hatchling in her egg. When the second party arrived, the fearsome beast psychically dominated everyone except Digbee, Kane, Vorkhul, Seesdin, B.E.A.R., and Khan.
The dominated victims rushed to the tower’s cellar and placed the egg upon the altar there. Together, under the direction of the hatchling, they performed a soul-destroying ritual that accelerated the dragon’s development and opened a door into The Labyrinth. But when the egg hatched, what emerged wasn’t a void dragon; instead, it was some sort of void dragonkin. Since dragonkin have a humanoid form, it had no problem both opening the door and passing through it into the expanses of the multiverse.
The void dragonkin’s victims collapsed into bones and ash on the floor. Since their souls were consumed in the ritual, they could never again be reincarnated. Anything that remained of them had been absorbed into their puppeteer.
But as the cavern collapsed and the world ended, all was not lost. Digbee, Kane, and Vorkhul’s group had rescued and befriended a kobold named Meepo. Meepo, through hard work and devotion to the draconic god Veles, had ascended into Cave Dragonkin form and become archdruid of the town’s underground grove… which included a sapling grown from a cutting of Yggdrassil. Using his own power, the sapling, and the power invested in him by Veles, Meepo projected the tower into the distant future and bound the players’ souls to it.
“Maybe you’ll find this helpful in another life,” he smiled.
All of Midgard exploded into fiery chunks, only to be heated, shaped, and reformed by an awakened World Serpent, the god known both as Jörmungand and Veles. The world settled, cooled, and repopulated over the course of eons. All of the players were reborn into new lives as their current characters, but their connection to the tower has left them out of sync with this new world and its physical laws. Only by reconnecting with the tower can they fully reintegrate with the universe.
When the party woke, they felt a renewed sense of purpose and headed straight for the forest. What they discovered startled them. The woods were indeed teeming with kobolds, and every single one was dreadfully sick. Daegon used a ritual to diagnose their ailment: Scalemolder. This horrible affliction only affects humanoids of draconian descent like kobolds and dragonkin. It inflicts painfully itchy scales on its victims. The scales assume a ghastly green color as the infected literally claw and scratch themselves to death.
“Help us,” one of the kobolds pleaded. “We’re so sick.”
After speaking with the kobold at length, the party learned of a tree called the Oaken Sentinel. It had been planted by a treant Labyrinth-walker named Mossbeard in ages past. This particular kobold had learned that the tree’s sap was the only thing capable of curing Scalemolder. The dream, he said, had come from Veles himself.
“I’m one of his clerics,” the sickly draconid explained weakly.
The party exchanged glances before asking “what’s your name?”
“Meepo,” he replied. “My name is Meepo.”
