Land of Song A D&D Campaign

Session 4 — Three Doors in Sunton

The story so far, for the table’s memory. Told as the Dungeon Master gave it. It follows session 3.

Leif, Ace, and Nyra were away this night.

A day, and three places to spend it

Morning in Sunton, with the road back to Tyre waiting. There was time before dark for three calls and no more: the arcane forger, the mystic shaper, the silver-eyed man at the Sunburst — and the Ranger Fort, which in the end went unvisited. The party asked to split up and cover more ground; the answer was no. In this campaign the choosing is the point.

Govannon’s forge

The smithy stands in the middling part of town, its ground floor open between heavy pillars so the breeze can run through, the whole of it stone, with a clever arrangement of chimneys drawing the smoke clear of the apartments above. The street sign is a smith’s hammer wreathed in blue fire.

Govannon is a human and an enormous one: six foot six, shoulders like a door, a hand the size of a shovel. Black hair tied back, black eyes, heavy brows, and a beard an inch wide and a foot and a half long, twisted like rope with a bead at its end. His handshake dragged Thorne bodily into the shop and lifted Zureth off the floor.

At the second forge — blue fire, and a black anvil cut with runes and silvery writing — he showed them the work: a plain dagger, a fistful of hide and teeth, some hammering, and a blade that came back with a green tint along its edge. Twice a day it is more than a dagger: an extra 2d6 poison damage once, and advantage on one attack once. He gave it away. Think of it as a down payment.

His son Haearn was at the other forge with his back to them, and means to join the rangers with Tyrus and Warrick rather than inherit any of this. His father has opinions about that.

Govannon took Asher, Thorne, and Zureth as apprentices, and handed each a bag of harvesting tools — scissors, knife, pliers, glass vials nested in leather. What he wants back from Tyre is magical ingredients, and more than that: recipes, books, any scrap of the craft-knowledge of the city that once held dozens of master forgers and mystic weavers.

How the crafting works

A crafter does not make an item. They take one that exists — a sword, a cloak — and make it magical. Full rules on the Relic Forge page; in brief, as Govannon gave it:

Six ingredients, two-thirds of them a catalyst all of one type and one-third an enhancer all of one type, and they must match the rarity of the item being made. Weapons and armour cost more — half the weapon’s maximum damage again, or half the armour’s AC.

Then the roll, on a die set by the crafter’s rank. Lower is better, and a 1 is a critical success on any die. Four outcomes: it works; it fails and the crafter keeps their ingredients; it fails and they lose them; it fails and something bad happens.

What the item does is bought from a budget set by rarity. A common item gets three points, with no single effect costing more than two.

And a crafter is one thing or the other. Arcane forger or mystic shaper, never both.

Tyleth

The tall man with the silver eyes has a name: Tyleth. They found him at the Sunburst reading a book, and he had been waiting for them.

He is a historian, in Sunton some three and a half months. White hair, skin that has not aged with it, and three swords slung across his back with black grips and pommels set with sapphire, diamond, and turquoise, in a silvery metal that is not silver and that nobody recognised.

What he told them is the largest thing the party has learned:

The rainbow bridges were roads first. Long before the war, both Aesir and Vaenir knew that great magical beings could walk between worlds, and they went visiting — worlds beautiful and dangerous and strange enough that only song describes them.

Then the Aesir made them weapons. They learned to anchor themselves; the Vaenir never did. So the Aesir opened bridges the Vaenir could not resist, and the Vaenir were drawn in and exiled across them. That is how the Great War ended. And at the end of it, most or all of the Great Aesir vanished at once. Nobody knows why — that they spent themselves to shield the rest, or that they simply tired of this world and went to find another.

Tyre’s curse is a bridge that never shut. Anyone who sets foot on that island unanchored is drawn to the pillar and taken across, and cannot come back. That is what happened to Rowen, and to everyone else the town counts among the Lost.

But one anchor holds a hundred. Whatever is on the far side may cross back freely; the danger runs one way only. And an anchored person anchors anyone touching them — a chain of hands, unbroken, is enough for a hundred people. Rowen can be carried home.

The pillar is in the wrong place. It stands over the market well, and water keeps it chaotic. Move it until its edge rests on land and it steadies. Then it can be repaired, or closed. Something strong on the far side may have moved it, trying to get out.

His caution: the bridge was built for a reason, the other side is not safe, and they should be careful what follows them home.

He guessed the blink dogs and the walking shadows are natives of the far side — likely the Fae world — which would explain the sheep, blink dogs being fond of mutton.

Minstrel magic

Zureth said he had felt something near the pillar in Tyre — a dark certainty that he should come no closer. Tyleth told him it was not magic and not the bridge.

The world is called the Land of Song because song runs through everything in it. Those who know how to listen are guided by it and warned by it; those who can sing or play along may bend the shape of what is real. This is minstrel magic, and a minstrel is less a bard than a prophet. There have been no new ones since the Great War ended.

My friend, you are blessed. Perhaps you have the making of a minstrel.

The Al’Tyr, and a map

The heraldry the party looted from the Moon and Phoenix is the symbol of the Al’Tyr — the great Aesir family that owned Tyre, the island Sunton stands on, and the whole of this valley. No one has seen them in a thousand years, and every soul in Sunton knows the city squats on Al’Tyr land.

Tyleth asked who the father of that family was, in the manner of a professor certain someone will know. Nobody did. Niðrerir reached back through twenty-six centuries and came up empty.

He borrowed paper and drew them a map of Tyre: the market and the well where the pillar stands, the shop they sheltered in, the roads — and far to the west of the island, a palace he labelled the Phoenix Roost.

He also told them of the Great Library of Tyre, which he would call the greatest that ever was, a copy of most of the knowledge in the world, and magical enough that he would not be surprised to find it still standing with every page in place. It has guardians. He does not know what condition they are in, or whether they would help or kill.

What he intends

Tyleth means to open a school of magic in Tyre, free to anyone. He holds Aberdeen’s nine clans in contempt — possessive, extortionate, and credibly rumoured to make magic users disappear over unpaid dues. Asher took note of the address.

One aside worth keeping: the richly dressed halfling holding forth across the room in royal blue and preposterous sleeves is Merry. Asher measured his purse and was talked out of it. He’s a good one. He gives most of it away.

Simon’s shop

No windows on the first four floors. Beeswax candles, thumb-sized skulls, jars of wings that might be dragonfly or might be pixie, bottles of liquid ranging from juice to worse, and racks of cloaks, robes, and enormous hats.

Simon is spindly, with a long nose that puts one in mind of a mosquito, thinning hair, and a wheezing cough he has carried for twenty years since something he was making went wrong. He sells nothing under two thousand gold. He is out of love potions, and blames Tanwen and her daughter for it. He is bitter that everyone takes their trade to Govannon, and certain he could make Grandmaster himself if he could only get legendary ingredients.

He took Niðrerir on anyway — apprentice, on the promise of ingredients out of Tyre, and with an actuary’s view of the odds. Survive that place once and it’s a miracle. Twice, I don’t think can happen. If you don’t come back, all it cost me was an hour.

Then he put him to work on a cloak: a non-damaging cantrip three times a day outside combat, and a +1 to one saving throw. The die came up nine, and lower is better. The cloak failed. The ingredients survived — one point higher and they would not have.

The boy

He does not want to go back to Tyre, and he is frightened of more than that. The preteens who had been leaning across his table at the Sunburst — Timmy, the eldest son of Yorhi and Ashley of that house, and two friends — had been working on him to go back across the bridge, or at least to tell them how he had done it the first time.

He held the party to their bargain: he paid, they promised, he has nowhere else. So they walked him to Tanwen’s, which was where the night ended — with four quests standing open, and the bridge waiting.