Caislen Campaign Notes

This is a place where ramblings, details about plots and whatever odds and ends in the table top style Dungeons & Dragons game that I run locally in what we're calling the “Caislen Campaign” end up. This is a Wiki format, there are some hidden DM notes that don't appear to mere mortals, there are some comments that you'll only see when editing a page as a player, etc. Players get to take a crack at leaving notes about their own characters and the trimmings if they wish too. If it amuses anyone else, great. Ultimately everyone who ever ran a game writes too much lore, players ignore it or forget it, and the likes of this website become more suited for writing a novel or something. But that never stops a DM from working on their notes obsessively anyway! Start below by browsing stuff.

• Havenspass – Current relevant game setting.
  • Mythburg
  • Oakenshire
  • The Mistwood – Sort of the figurative container/map of the game region for now.

• Player Characters
  • Eyrun, Jules, Urist, Alimir
    • Backstories

• Relevant
  • World Building
  • Goldvale – Where it all started.
  • Magic Items index.
  • Non Player Characters

To describe the series of events that unfolded at the game session¹⁾ for the Alternate Animal Party, we shall simply say that you can read up on Wine Bear, Patrick, Jack, & Harthi1776 for most technical explanation of the convoluted nonsense that seems to adhere itself to the alternate player characters.

• Lesser notes from the session include:
  • The Rubber Brick was received by Milo as a trinket. It does 1d4 bludgeoning damage and has some bouncy properties. Non magical.
  • AAP snuck onto a merchant cart near Hylund Forest being driven by the not totally aware of what was happening Bruce-inda.
    • Milo stole a book about how horrible the Undead are from a crate inside of Bruce-inda's cart.
  • In Goldvale:
    • Tried Hamburgers for the first time ever with mixed reactions.
    • Got into a fight with the ghost of Ginger.
    • Pulled a shovel out of a pond.
  • In the Havenspass region:
    • Unaware of where they were, underground, they leave the area where they exited a portal, defeating an undead skeleton on the way out.²⁾³⁾
    • Brief encounter with Zyr, who still had an axe stuck in his head and merely wandered past their camp.
    • Brief encounter with Rine who pointed them at a dungeon which we shall call Shork Lefar's Lair, located almost where they were camping. They promptly explored in hopes of finding shiny things for Patrick. Shadow Puppets & Murder ensued.
  • They Meet Phoebe Nephele:
    • Marion, Anderson & Milo went happily on their way north for a few days, guided by the stars⁴⁾, to arrive in the city of Havenspass, going directly to the house of Phoebe Nephele before sunrise because the stars then formed the face of Patrick over it, leading them to knock on the door.
    • Phoebe was distressed as she answered the door. Her sister Eyrun was supposed to be there to go on the quest for Goliath adulthood together up into the Cloudfire Mountains.
    • Eyrun is the reason Phoebe didn't buy a tent for this outing. But it happens the AAP have the Magical Instant 6 Person Tent given to them by Patrick! It must be destiny that they arrived there. And they thought going with her might lead to finding the perfect shiny things for Patrick! So they set out together…

• The session⁵⁾ began exactly as the last one ended, with The Party standing by the locked chest, body of Markoff, and with an open portal nearby that “The Chosen One” would allegedly be coming out of at some point. On Markoff's body they found a key to unlock the chest, and learned from a book inside of it that the ritual to release the “Chosen One” takes 7 days from the time of portal opening.
  • Unknown to The Party it had already been 5 days.
• Likewise the book declared that blood from the races that shouldn't be hunted by The Chosen One / Slayer should be used to seed the portal to grant them immunity from the purge that was to come.
  • Since Alimir had already broken one of the unlabeled blood samples during the last session and nobody know which blood was which of the remaining four samples, this caused a panic in the party. They'd figured out that the blood in the vials was of Human, Dwarf, Gnome, Halfling and Elf varieties, but one of those…destroyed.
    • They opted to toss in the remaining 4 vials, and without knowing what was missing seeded the portal further with their own blood. Eyrun as Goliath which wouldn't have been in the originals. Urist as dwarven blood. Alimir as elvish blood. But they'd later realize since Alimir is suffering from being a werewolf that perhaps he wasn't the best choice. A thought only in retrospect a day later.
  • The session proceeded to a chaotic romp between Oakenshire & Havenspass with all manner of stops to gather blood samples of any friendly race they could find.
  • Worthy Notes For This Session:
    • Alimir heard werewolf noises in the distance while in Oakenshire. He seems sensitive to that.
    • The Party found a wrecked merchant cart that had been plundered already yet contained one small package with an address label. Addressed to “ETHICA: c/o Justin The Druid.” Inside of the package were several pumpkin seeds.
    • While trying to talk a gnome at The Goat Tavern in Havenspass into giving a blood sample, he revealed he is being patiently stalked by a Nothic. He seemed all too pleased to find a bunch of high magic adventurers, as if his burden might stalk them instead.
    • The Party went to Nailati to talk to Dwarfario & Elvinara, on rumor that the later knows a Dragonborn, in the hopes of getting that blood sample. Elvinara gave them a magical bean and told them to leave the city and go plant it if they want to find the dragonborn she knows. Before they could ever plant the bean they got sidetracked in a dungeon.
      • Mustard Mike appeared in town on his own quite quickly thereafter and found The Party. He looked upgraded and more official for being “The Dragon Of Mustardia” with a mustard yellow shield even. Mentioned Pickles, his pet alligator, is in the care of the Land Pirates for now.
      • This confirms a link between Elvinara and Mustard Mike.
      • Also possibly implies that if The Party ever needed the attention of Mustardia, they'd be able to manage it.
    • The Party got some blood from Sniv The Seasoner, which implies they have a soft spot for goblins. Probably due to a history with Leithe.
    • The Party found a Kuo-Toa Idol much like their original one, laying in a pool of water in The Mistwood.
      • A bit of healing came from it.
      • Jules purposely left it behind in a dungeon not long after.
      • Jules found a suspicious deck of cards in Urist's possessions.
      • Animated Sentient Stump Zyr was saved by Jules, and swore a life debt to her.
      • Eyrun learned that her half sister Phoebe would be leaving in the morning to go on her pilgrimage to the Cloud Shrine to become an official adult. Eyrun said she'd be back in the morning to go with her. A plan or a mishap waiting to happen? We'll see.
      • A letter came to The Moms' house via Windward Mail for Jules and The Party. It was from Jhason, the undead that escaped the tunnels when The Party first found the Oakenveil Portal. He wanted to meet, so The Party trekked back to the Oakenshire area to ally with the undead to stop The Chosen One and see what could be done.
        • Given the 7 day time limit on The Chosen One coming through The Veil, 5 of which were already elapsed when The Oakenveil if you prefer to call it was found, and about another 5 days passing as they looked for blood samples, this rendered the entire point of running around collecting blood like creepy lunatics completely pointless. But that's how Dungeons & Dragons adventures go.
        • Jhason helped The Party blow up & collapse the tunnel that allowed for access to The Oakenveil, and everyone had to settle for the likely fact that The Chosen One was already on the loose somewhere in the area.
      • The session ended with the story of The Oakenveil Portal dominating all thoughts about what will happen next.

• Urist Saltbeard, Dwarven Barbarian, finally awoke at the home of Jules's Moms in the Havenspass Commune & rejoined The Party.
• Rine appeared at the home, invited by Nix Jesko. Nix's intent was to get someone to help tutor Jules in the way of being a ranger since she'd abandoned her earlier path as a student of magic in Mythburg.
  • Rine led The Party out into a known Hydra Swamp within The Mistwood where a 4 headed hydra was encountered and defeated by The Party.
  • Eyrun drank the potion of “toad tongues” and her tongue turned into 2 toad tongues, permanently.
  • Jim Bob The Bullfrog got into the fight, regurgitating recent magics involving fireball and teleporting to his advantage.
  • Eyrun swam into an underwater cave previously guarded by the hydra and retrieved 8 silver coins with markings no one was familiar with & Pydraxcalibur.
• Urist, Alimir, Jules & Eyrun then decided the thing to do would be to head southbound to Oakenshire to ask about the recent outbreak of undead and see if they could put a stop to it.
  • Some chats with Natalie & Veronica in Oakenshire yielded very little about undead, but as The Party camped inside town limits of Oakenshire a skeleton walked through late at night carrying a bucket of water. Following it discretely led them to a mysterious spiral staircase leading down into a recent and hastily built seeming tunnel system.
    • The initial part of this tunnel system, was made of a hastily dug out tunnel section that could easily collapse if someone used much force around it.
    • This tunnel system led to a chamber with an active portal, open already, a human male named Markoff who they promptly killed because he looked evil, some skeletal types he was controlling one of whom escaped, and some vials of blood in a crate, along with a locked chest. In a standoff with Markoff Alimir destroyed a vial of blood which his opponent clearly did not want to happen.
    • The crate had a scroll vaguely detailing that this was all to summon The Chosen One, with further commentary from the previously non dead Markoff and the escaped skeletal type to compliment that.
    • The Party was left, chest locked, portal open, to end the session.

• Urist remained unconcious for the game session⁶⁾ ignored/left behind at The Moms' residence. Simp The Imp instead stuck with The Party as they continued in the Tarot Trauma Dungeon. Quickly choosing a magical door that implied it would lead to a greater level of trauma, a battle was fought against a Ghost & Mimic.
  • Alimir gets to the point of making death savings throws. Eyrun does as well. As A.L.I.Z.A. predicted this triggered the Cloud Stone Ring, and it did act on Alimir, but just to heal him of all missing health, not remove the werewolf issue.
  • Simp The Imp then reaches the point of making death saving throws. This could have been avoided if the other conscious & capable party member at the time Jules had just given him some medical attention. She actively chose not to, and with some saving fails, Simp died. Jules…didn't give a fuck. This will absolutely be part of a conversation about alignment for the next level up.
  • The Party then exits the trauma dungeon by a built in escape door and the Alimir werewolf issue remains unsolved.
• Returning to The Moms' home, a new quest is given. Kess wants everyone to go into The Mistwood to a spot a lot of Elven Cordage materials are harvested, and deal with some undead that are running off her harvesting people.
• A little running around town led to discovering a small child who's mom had been dragged off by Fuggut, a troll. Local law enforcement Fishpunch didn't care because the troll went outside the city of Havenspass with the kid's mother. So The Party went after the missing mother, right to Fuggut's Cave, where they non-lethally incapacitated the troll with a special sleeping potion, freed his goblin minion Sniv, and got the missing mom back to Havenspass alive.
• Attempting to deal with the undead issue in the area where vine materials are harvested for elven cordage purposes, The Party found some stone stairs leading down into a tunnel and cavern system. As they were entering a letter fell out of the sky to the top of the stairs, and upon opening it they realized they couldn't read it because it was in gnomish.
  • Not long after they decided to go see Phoebe Nephele at the Nephele House assuming the criminal element would have capable translation capabilities. Which proved correct. But also a little disastrous when she kept the letter and booted The Party from her doorstep. All they ended up learning is that the letter involved an order of moonshine to be made by some gnomes, for Stonefist. Information that would probably prove valuable for Atlas.
  • A few unfortunate conversations, visits with locals, some emotional daddy/daughter damage for Eyrun, and other people talking about letters falling from the sky later it became clear that the local topless witch Succu was probably delivering letters while riding around on her broomstick over the whole Havenspass region. She made it clear that the mail WILL get delivered and anything or anyone who stands in the way of that might have a very unpleasant time.
  • Returning to the area haunted by undead near vine harvesting operations and the stairs where the letter was originally delivered, The Party quickly found that they had simply uncovered a ruse to scare locals away from an entry point into a Niflome community that makes moonshine.
    • A deal was struck by Jules to get her Moms' harvesting people to take a different path for their activities in turn for the Niflome ceasing their fake haunting of the nearby forest.
    • By the end of the session Atlas was aware of this Niflome moonshine community, which probably has future ramifications.
    • May Garko leave you alone.

• For this game session⁷⁾ Urist was sidelined because his player was absent. So it began with the excuse that in the prior game session some of the sap on the floor in the Lethal Leaf Hole, which came from the roots of a Mistwood Tree, had the effect of putting him to sleep, and therefor it became cannon that the sap from Mistwood Trees can do this, and knock humanoids out for random amounts of time including up to several days. A little world lore built by necessity.
• The Goliath that appeared at the entrance to the Lethal Leaf Hole at the end of last session turned out to be Rine, a Monster Hunter in The Mistwood. Think “Witcher”. As Eyrun, Simp The Imp & Urist dragged unconcious Werewolf Alimir out of the hole and see him, it also is the moment Jules (absent and proclaimed to be with Lugo last session) arrives riding Duchess, Alimir's horse. A conversation ensued introducing or explaining everyone and their state of being and it becomes obvious that Alimir is quickly reverting to normal form. He wakes, The Party rests, and Rine tells them that if they're heading north they must worry about a Shambling Plant that is harassing travelers on the road through The Thick part of The Mistwood. Instead he offers to give them information about a tunnel to bypass the Shambling Plant.
• The Party takes Rine up on his information and instead, with an unconscious Urist tied to Duchess the horse, travels to the tunnel to find it passable, with a slight dramatic hobgoblin issue to contend with. See also Hobgoblin Tunnel.
• Eventually arriving at the much anticipated city of Havenspass, The Party crash at Jules Moms Nix & Kess's house in the quarters over the elven cordage workshop. Jules is already in the know thanks to Lugo tipping her off that not one, but TWO local crime bosses are extorting The Moms for protection money.
  • One is none other than Atlas Nephele, Eyrun's father.
  • The other is called Stonefist, a goliath running the Rockworks Guild.
• The Party sets out to confront Atlas the next morning and many revelations start happening for Eyrun, including that she has a half sister, her father is now a successful crime boss who's taken up business mostly from Nailati, and Eyrun is such an emotional wimp dealing with her dad that she negotiates a reduction down to 25% protection fees for The Moms and manages to start working for her dad in the process, taking The Party off to check on one of his alcohol related carts on the main road to the north. It is basically learned that she has a hard time saying NO. Worse, she gets paid 10 gold for her work with what he is calling the “Cloud Family.” But at least some money was reduced for The Moms.
• The Party then tries to deal with the other crime boss Stonefist. Jules takes the lead and accomplishes nothing, turning her visit to him into more of a conversation about a local named Lapata. She is also to some degree, chickenshit against crime bosses.
• Back to other issues The Party sets off to visit the oracle known as A.L.I.Z.A. near Havenspass. ALIZA, a weird experience, intentionally teleports the party into a magical Tarot themed dungeon designed to create trauma in order to trigger Eyrun's Cloud Stone Ring, in the hopes that it will cure Alimir of the werewolf disease. And this is where the game ends, without enough trauma, and not being able to get out of that dungeon until enough trauma is had to test the premise. It is also how the next game session will start.
  • This Tarot Trauma Dungeon that ALIZA sent the party ended up being where Alimir's Efreeti Bottle was used for the first time.
  • Very short lived NPC “Brad” of the Assassins' Guild in Mythburg was murdered by The Party while inside the Tarot Trauma Dungeon as it somehow routed them through his living room as part of the dungeon itself.

• Due to classic D&D scheduling conflicts, this game session⁸⁾ only officially had Urist & Jules as valid PCs. Luckily having recently entered The Mistwood with the whole Party and having encountered Wyrd Uncle Lugo at the end of the last session, this was explained in game by:
  • Lugo insists on talking to Jules privately about “family issues.” Since he'd technically just delivered the letter from Jules to her mothers in Havenspass we assume they find a quiet spot to chat with a promise to catch back up to the party, and we know Lugo is good at being wherever he wants and finding whomever he wants.
  • Alimir's last session was spent itching and scratching after becoming infested with fleas. As was going to happen anyway, the fleas were revealed as werefleas and he turned into a werewolf, running off into the forest at the start of this session, officially making him out of control / out of his mind and not technically with The Party for the game session.
• Lugo reappeared briefly after Alimir ran off and deposited Simp The Imp with the remaining PCs to supplement them and be their werewolf tracker for the evening.
• Urist & Eyrun, along with Simp, took off into the forest to capture werewolf Alimir, which led to an entire side quest like game session of tracking and trying to subdue him. The Lethal Leaf Dungeon became the “thrilling” adventure for the night with the ultimate capture of Alimir.
• Relevant for the next session:
  • Alimir was forced to drink a magical sleep potion. He'll wake back up, still as a werewolf probably, in an hour and a half. Immediate issue at start of that session!
  • Players have not had a rest because of the above.
  • A pinky swear was made about a high power magical item found near some vodka.
  • The werefleas infesting Alimir have been vanquished, but the fine print of how and what exactly went on is best left for the players to tell each other.
  • A ranger looking Goliath encountered them as they crawled out of the Lethal Leaf Dungeon, and that's exactly where and how the session ended.

• The Party started their game session⁹⁾ by visiting The Card House where they encountered the land pirates, Skip, Nystor, one random NPC looking for the Shovel of Alden, a wizard who was on their way to the Tower Of Six, and a bunch of mostly human adventurers who had a map and key to Krymec's Vault. After a bar brawl, the party had that map and key.
• The visit to the Card House and brawl head a few noteworthy moments.
  • Nystor licked blood off of his fingers a little to happily after the brawl.
  • Some of the brawlers were doing a certain amount of itching and scratching. This led to Alimir doing some itching and scratching later…
    • Jules became aware of this scratching behavior.
  • Sir Fee & Mustard Mike finally met since the Land Pirates were here. They went off for a private chat. What became of that we don't know…
  • Alimir acquired a male horse named “Duchess”, which is noteworthy because a paladin getting a horse hasn't been done in this campaign yet.
• While engaging in dungeon crawling at Krymec's Vault the party went through a door/portal for a combat against a wereboar, which took them to the location of the wereboar. Eyrun was able to free the wereboar (Natalie) from the curse and she mentioned she lives near Havenspass. This resulted in a game shattering decision to not return through the portal and instead stay where the portal took them, which was all the way to another continent, near the little town of Oakenshire at first. This functionally ended the pre-existing campaign scenarios by placing The Party in a far away land which the DM had just vague notes about via Eyrun & Jules' backstories. Much must be figured out on the DM side before next game session!
  • This also means if the players return to pick up their own shot Animalfolk characters again from the one-shot night that these two very different parties will exist nowhere near each other, but could mean the Animalfolk types get to wander into Goldvale with the normal party removed.
• By the end of a very improved second part of the game session The Party had fought some undead in The Mistwood and then were found by none other than Wyrd Uncle Lugo who was over in this part of the world to deliver a letter to Jules' mother per her request after the Crompse Causal Loop.

• St. Patrick's Day One Shot game session.¹⁰⁾
  • The one shot party formed of all Animalfolk characters living in a forest community.
    • Milo the Raccoonfolk rogue.
    • Marion the Gerbilfolk bard.
    • Anderson the Foxfolk wizard.
    • Capelin the Crowfolk druid.
• This alternate party started as level 3 characters and tried to deal with orcs building a dungeon/fortification which was starting to intrude on the edge of their forest area.
  • Forest community local Aldo (foxfolk) turned out to work as an assistant for the orcs for pay in one shiny gold piece per day and was happy to babble to the alt party about it.
  • Patrick, the only human local in the forest community, tried to keep the alt party busy by having them save cats in trees and eventually go “look” and see what the orcs were doing. Naturally the alt party did more than look.
  • The alt party recruited Aldo to get them jobs with the orcs, taking things further than Patrick had asked them to by a lot. Aldo led them right into a trap, the whole alt party was captured, their stuff taken, and then they barely escaped, naked, with their lives by the end of the session.
• DM NOTES
  • The forest has a name “Hylund Forest” but it wasn't important to drop that on players, the orc dungeon plan got derailed, and while all sorts of little story telling and plot bits were hinted at, nothing was definitively pushed in this session that the players could verify as being associated with the normal game sessions. BUT this forest and the location is actually relevantly near the area the normal party runs amuck so crossover elements are quite possible.
  • There's a chance that these one shot characters could be used again, so we'll continue to develop some of the Animalfolk racial traits and rules. Associating certain animals being colorblind to various degrees put a nice improvised twist on things during this session.
  • Patrick is getting added to the Gods list, “against his will”, do to the nature of the character and how he's treated by the forest community.

• Crompse Causal Loop - Entire Party, along with Skip & Wyrd Uncle Lugo visit Ancient Crompse. Thousands of years of intertwined events conclude or begin.

• Archive March 2026
  • Game session notes from roughly the start of the campaign with just Eyrun & Jules in late 2025 through March 2026 wherein Urist & Alimir had also joined the party. Largely covers intro to Goldvale, the Toc Clan Coal Mine Event & eventually brings about the Crompse Causal Loop.