The Chronicles of Eleonora

pt. 1: the time before the squad

Not enough time to go through all of this right now, pal (maybe later). All you need to know is that I was a butcher in Badwall at the time when the devils invaded Greyhawk and thus had to flee.

pt. 2: the underworld

Many flew to the underworld, so I figured the chances to survive couldn’t be too bad down there. I had wandered the underworld for quite some time when i stumbled across a group of survivors unlike all the others. They were led by a dwarf and there was a luminous fellow, a „lightbringer“, among them. Called themselves the Thunder-T’choc-Squad and wanted to cleanse the World from the Devils. I joined them mostly because my lantern was running out of fuel but also because i had seen quite some people being killed by monsters and had no intention to share their fate.

We traveled through the lower world quite some time because we just couldn’t find a good way to Tiefendorn (one could think, a dwarf from the underworld should would know how to find the biggest city in the area). It wasn’t too bad though, fighting monsters is a lot more enjoyable when there are others who have your back. Berzog really knows how to fight in a formation, i understand why they’ve made him the leader. Only the luminous one considers himself above the others, he claims to be the „spiritual leader“ (Strange guy anyways, a necromancer who fights for the sake of good? Sounds crazy if you ask me. And also that deity of his, Athros, I've never heard of it before. All things considered that Aetherdas might as well be a fraud.). The others are alright though. I mean, Ed is crazy as hell and that Orc seems to have fallen in love with me but other than that… Oh and there is a Drow who never talks and Ashrabi who can’t stand still for a minute. Well, we all have our flaws.

One day we fought a big-ass spider demon, it killed the drow but it had some nice loot. In its back stuck an axe called „Icetooth“. It’s a mighty weapon and quite superior to my fathers old Cleavers. When we finally arrived in Tiefendorn, there were a lot of those Athros guys also a dwarves prophet who seemed to be one of them. They sent us to some place called Sundi, the only place at the surface without devils, to investigate further. So we tried to find a portal to get there.

On our journey through the underworld we sometimes recruited new members, some of them didn’t make it very long like the goblin and the elf. Others managed to stay alive a bit longer like Ben, Miron, Bob, Khanzok and Friedrich.

We encountered many challenges, some of which are worth noting. On one occasion we fought some medusas and three of us got petrified. We had a scroll to rescue one of them but we decided to go to some lady of the lake instead. I don’t know why the hell anyone thought it would be a good idea to send Ed to negotiate but that’s what we did and as a result he only managed to get Ashrabi back (later we came to the conclusion, that he must’ve sold the others for that fancy ring he had since then). Another time we found an imprisoned guy who claimed to guard some big evil. We killed him and did not find any evil but good loot instead. Aetherdas revived his body as a skeleton and his axe „Shocktooth“ synergizes well with my other axe. It also is intelligent and i can talk to it telepathically. We also fought against creatures who inflicted madness once and while under the influence of their spell I discovered a source of power within me. Shocktooth told me it was called „Incarnium“ - some sort of soul energy - and he taught me how to use it without being insane.

We finally managed to find a dragon who was willing to bring us to Sundi but wanted us to steal black scrolls from the drow. So we got transformed into drow and infiltrated one of their cities. While we tried to locate the scrolls, that new Athros-follower Miron almost blew our cover because he was too proud to play his role (Sometimes i think the matriarchy of the drow isn’t the worst idea since a lot of men do have a tendency to screw things up). After that those Athros-guys hated me and claimed I was evil and corrupted by my axe. This only got worse when we met a Phoenix who backed their claims. Damn, I can still hear him rambling on about how „only evil comes from evil“. When we finally got the scrolls, which wasn't easy and Ashrabi got sucked onto another plane in the process, the Athros-guys were so convinced of that dumb phoenix’ phrases that they would rather destroy the black scrolls and our best chance to get to Sundi with it than to give it to the dragon. The rest of the squad also believed all the crap that bird was telling them, so I decided that they needed a lesson in pragmatism and delivered the scrolls to the dragon. Instead of thanking me they had Ed shoot me and when i recovered we killed the dragon. Now we didn’t have a way to Sundi anymore, but a lot of loot and I was able to create some delicious steaks from the dragons heart. The Athros-guys however, were now totally convinced that I was corrupted by evil forces, so we went back to the phoenix and they had him destroy the scrolls. The squad also left me with the phoenix so he could purify me. When I got back they didn’t believe me that the phoenix had gone on a sudden and very long vacation (I mean, phoenixes are migratory birds, right?). At that point their distrust had gone way too far so I decided to leave the Squad to rescue Ashrabi. When I left they tried to kill me but I narrowly escaped and found an Astral Caravan to Sigil.

pt. 3: the planes

The others who traveled with me on the caravan were Groggy, Azuul and Polvo. Since they didn’t have anything better to, they decided to help me with my mission. While traveling through the astral plane, we were almost killed by an Astral Dreadnought but managed to escape and witnessed how two dreadnoughts collided. In Sigil my new companions told the fraternity of order (they are members of said faction) about the event and it seemed to be a pretty big deal. The Guvners got all excited and even sent an expedition to the spot where it happened. Interesting people those Guvners, told me how knowledge was power and that one has to understand the laws of the universe. At that point I really needed to do some research to locate Ashrabi, so I decided to join the fraternity. The membership had good conditions and when I gave them the black scrolls I had saved from the phoenix’ fire, they were more than happy to help me. With their help and the information I had from Bob, we concluded that Ashrabi had to be on the 73rd layer of the Abyss - The Darkwells.

After about a month of research, I met Ed who had somehow followed us (I suspect that he hid in the dragon hide which I had managed to declare as luggage on the caravan) and who had done nothing but drinking heavily out of grief the entire time (Damn, he really must’ve liked Ashrabi - loved maybe? - even named his crossbow after her). We took him with us to the Abyss cause he’s a useful guy.

On our journey through the Abyss Ed showed his talent to get in trouble on several occasions. He got blue feet, drank Styx water (which resulted in amnesia), got a pet who abused his amnesia to get him to do all kinds of stuff (I had to torture it to death cause I couldn’t take it anymore) and he also assaulted a Marilith on a marketplace. Despite all the challenges, we finally found a way to and out of the Darkwells. In order to get out of the Darkwells, we had to make a shady deal with Lord Lordsen of Lordshill (some guy from Greyhawk). At first, everything went as planned, we got to the Darkwells, found Ashrabi and went through the dead marshes to a layer which was used for hunting by demon lords where we should be picked up by Lord Lordsen. Then we had to fight the Marilith Ed assaulted previously and her goons. After we killed her we were separated from Groggy, Azuul and Polvo, leaving only three of us to be picked up by Lord Lordsen. We soon discovered that Lordsen was working for a son of Grazzt and we were held captive in the demons castle. We had all the luxury we could wish for, they even had a surgeon who could finally implant me the new pair of eyes I had bought, but we couldn’t get out. Grazzt’ son offered to bring one of us to Greyhawk where that person had to kill unicorns and paladins to open a portal to let the other two follow. I accepted, got some useful items and was teleported to Greyhawk. Of course I had no intention to do the chores for the demon lord, since with all the devils in Greyhawk the last thing we needed was a bunch of demons coming through a portal. Ed and Ashrabi escaped by jumping out of a window and found a way back to Greyhawk as well.

pt. 4: return to the squad

Just after I reunited with them we stumbled into Aetherdas, who was now a Skeleton with a planetary system rotating around him and he had some new followers. They captured Ed, while we were trying to get away as fast as possible. They took poor Ed back to their Cathedral, robbed him and tried to convert him (yes, converting Ed - that’s how crazy they were). Ashram and I then sneaked into the Cathedral, freed Ed and together we found the Squad, who were nearby. They told us about the terrible deeds of the Athros-followers, which included killing two squad members. Berzog even apologized to me, saying that I had indeed been treated unfair.

Suddenly, some guys appeared, wielding a sword that called itself „King of all Weapons“ and demanded to take my weapons away from me. They talked about a „Shadow Cabinet“ or something, but we killed them. Then things went south, Ed took the sword and got immediately possessed by it. I tried to make him drop the sword with old trick that worked before, but the possession was too strong and Ed went completely insane and fled. We sent Friedrich to catch him but Ed ran into the Cathedral of Athros and while in there, Friedrich was captured by the Athros-followers. When Ed came out of the Cathedral, Berzog and Khanzok managed to charge him down and took the sword away from him. We decided that the sword was way too dangerous to keep (even Shocktooth was afraid of it) and Khanzok offered to stay and bury it.

After that was taken care of, Berzog and the squad’s new paladin - a centaur lawyer - (just when you think you’ve seen everything…) went to negotiate with Aetherdas to attain the release of Friedrich. I went in there as well but secretly and invisible. The negotiations didn’t go well and ended with Aetherdas killing Friedrich and animating his skeleton before our eyes. A fight was inevitable so I killed Aetherdas with a single bolt of lightning. Those of his followers who survived, were driven away and we left Bob to restore and manage the Cathedral of Insight.

As we were looting Aetherdas, Ashrabi made an interesting proposal. She wanted to take the mighty artifact of Athros and sell it somewhere in the planes. Also she was probably bored by the endless discussions in the squad. I agreed with her plan and we tried to convince Ed to come with us but he wanted to stay with the squad. So we said goodbye to Berzog and left without Ed.

pt. 5: the planes - again

Ashrabi and I traveled through the planes, searching for someone who would buy the artifact we had acquired. After some time we came to the city of Tu’Narath where its ruler - The Lich Queen - was interested in buying. We were welcomed as her guests and while waiting for an audience we had some time to explore the city. We saw the squad who had recruited some new people in the meantime, due to the recent losses. They had even found a new barbarian-monk. The squad wanted to get into the martial arts district for some reason and after they failed to get in there with diplomatic methods, they used brute force as usual. Once they got inside though, the district turned into a slaughterhouse. The extent of the massacre was legendary, even for the squad. I visited the district after they were gone. I had seen many things but this was something else. Bloody corpses scrambled in the whole district, butchered arbitrarily, you could still feel the violence lingering in the gory streets. We were lucky that the Lich Queen didn’t know about our connection to the squad or we probably would have died a slow and painful dead. When I got back to the palace at the time of our audience, the Lich Queen welcomed me with a smug grin on her face, telling me that my presence was no longer required since she already had everything she needed. I only received a quick glance at a portal through which Ashrabi just stepped with two new daggers in her collection. The portal closed and I was left with the the empty feeling of being betrayed by someone I trusted and the quiet chuckling of the Lich Queen, who inspected her newly acquired artifact.

After some contemplation about what would be my next step I decided to go back to Sigil. There I would work my way up the ranks of the Guvners and gather as much knowledge and thus power as I possibly could. This way I should eventually be able to unravel the mystery of Shocktooth, the King of Weapons and the shadow cabinet, since this seems to be sort of my „fate-given“ task.