After some hawkwardness, the party accepts Illijana and Dame Danielle into their folds. They are invited to a dinner party held at the Lord’s castle. The party is crashed by raiders of the hawk clan. A vicious melee ensued as the raiders flew in. In the ensuing chaos, the court mage, Kassandra, was taken hostage.

The party attempts a daring rescue, and succeed. Lord Robert rewards them with supplies and horses for their coming journey.

Highlights: A duel fought by Danielle and a Hawk Huscarl. Though at first it was a contest of skills at arms, it quickly degenerated into a brutal unarmed slugfest. Danielle defeated her foe by crushing all but one of his ribs with a one-two hook combo to the chest.

Sessions count: 2

Every Adventurer in Lunaria start their journey by taking the official Lunarian adventurer’s test in which different participants are grouped together, sent to a specific location to retrieve a ruin. Sounds simple, right ? No it isn’t. The party discovered that … the hard way.

Our party consist of 4 very unique and cool looking adventurers. The first is Rohanna, the barbarian from the north, ferocious, edgy, fit with a calm yet dark demeanor. The second is Viridianna, a Lunarian mage who’s beauty is only rivaled by her wittiness and the aura of mystery that she exudes. The third is Varys and his female companion, Selene. Gentleman looking and ambitiously smart, his thirst for knowledge was evident, along with the strange girl that seemed to follow him everywhere. The fourth and last member of the party is a stoic man that goes by the name of Ethra who mostly lets his pistol do the talking for him.

The party are taken into the location of the test which was a strange looking cylindrical building. Going inside, they discover that this building seemed suspiciously abandoned but that didn’t stop them from continuing with their search, which resulted in them finding a strange statue hidden behind a cluster of vines in the room. Advancing forward they were able to unlock a passage to the basement area of this building. They decide to explore the basement, which leads them to fights with vile undead creatures along with discoveries of necromantic activities as well as labs containing large capsules that had severed body parts. While investigating one of the major rooms, they are introduced to a strange acting blonde young lady that, for the lack of a better term, was psychotic in behavior. She “played” with the party for a little bit to test them as part of her “fun”. She takes a very special interest in Varys.

The party conclude their investigation and figure out the means to acquiring the rune. They had to move back on foot to the examiner’s building because their carriage was nowhere to be found. Upon reaching, the party finds a huge commotion with 2 people yelling at each other. They make their way to see one of the examiners yelling at a middle aged, smart looking man about how the exam was dangerous and people were missing from the tests. The party stood out like a sore thumb because they were the only group to acquire the rune. The middle aged man approaches them, introduces himself as Dysad, the adventurers exam coordinator. After a short conversation, Dysad announces the cancellation of the adventurer’s test and asks the party to meet with him in the Arcane society the very next day.

Illiana, the third and last member of the Rising Phoenix before the adventuring party joined them, had just come back from a job. She finds a letter left to her by Dimitri Dragunov, the guild leader, instructing her to leave for The Andals to catch up and aid the new members on their quest. Enclosed is a small marble bead that he promised can be used for communication.

Illiana took the Sailing Shoe, and meets Claudius and his band aboard. The chummy girl quickly befriends the group. Their friendship is promptly tested when pirates board the ship. The combined power of Claudius’ group and Illiana enabled them to drive the pirates away. The rest of the trip was uneventful, and Illiana finds herself at her destination.

The party travels to the Andalian Kingdoms by sea. They land in Portaum, and purchase a mule before renting a room for the night. At dinner, a man called Vaik approaches them. He asks them for help hunting down his former party members, who betrayed him and stole a relic of importance. The party accept and give chase. Eventually, they catch up to them and attempt to sneak on the camp sight, but they are discovered. In the ensuing battle, Vaik is slain, but so are his former party members. It was a tough fight.

The party recovers the chest containing the item, and open it. It only contained a single item, a perfectly spherical melon-sized ball with a perfectly smooth matte white texture.

The party spends the next couple of weeks enjoying their hard-earned money. Their got a reputation as demon-slayers in the city now. This caught the eye of the White Swords adventuring company, one of the largest and most prestigious guilds in Lunaria. Their representative offered them an invitation to the guild, promising an easy stable adventuring life with a big support network. Soon after his departure, Dimitri Dragunov, offers the party a counter offer to join his guild, the Rising Phoenix.

Dimitri promises high risk high reward jobs, and tries his best to impress with his colorful personality. However, the party was not convinced. The next day, they took a tour of the White Sword’s headquarters. The big compound was impressive, containing a small park, a training ground, armory, barracks, and administration building. The party also met Claudius and co., who seemed to have joined the White Sword.

As they head outside, the party found that Dimitri and Dana had been tailing them. The group take a walk through a park, where they were ambushed by the former gang mates of Rocky. Dimitri and Dana perform a ruse, helping the party get the upper hand in the battle, making short work of the thugs.

The group then head for a restaurant for dinner. Over the meal, Dimitri adds one more thing that may persuade the group: An offer of a 50k gold job. The objective? To liberate Nordcastle from its Dalarian occupiers… Alone.

The party accept, joining the Rising Phoenix.

The party recovers the body of the assassin, and discover that she is not yet dead. They conclude that there is no way she could act alone, since demon summoning is a very difficult and mana-consuming spell that only the strongest mages can even hope to cast it alone (and without someone else to cast the binding spell at the same time. The party opt to heal the woman and interrogate her.

The assassin was acting addled, more like a mindless automaton than a human. She was under a mind-control spell. Varian schedules a meeting with his contact in the Mage’s guild, Dysad, who dispels the domination spell on the woman, and identifies her as Renee Demoir, a junior mage and teaching assistant at the Mage University. She had withdrawn from the university and public life for a little longer than 6 months.

Dysad offers the party a hefty bonus if they would investigate her manse in White City. The party accept and head there after they rest. When they reach the mansion, they find that it has been in disused for months. While investigating the courtyard, the demon ambushes them. This time, though, they were more organized, and were able to fell it thanks to a well-placed crossbow bolt through its neck, courtesy of Varian.

Inside the mansion, the party are greeted by a mysterious mage and an associate of his. The party charge forward, but the mage teleports away before they are able to attack him. His associate, only a swordsman, challenges the entire party on his own, but not before setting the curtains and tapestries on fire. Thinking they have the upper hand, the party attempts to fight him.

However, much to their surprise, the swordsman completely outclassed the party, making a mockery of Garrek and Jay in melee. Varian and Maia, parrying (WHAT?) the former’s bullet, and simply being immune to Maia’s magic. Instead of killing the party, the swordsman escapes.

The party also evacuate the mansion. Outside, Maia discloses that she had fought people like these before, and identifies them as Spectres. Meeting Dysad later, he denied any possibility of a rogue Spectre. He suggests that the party let the matter drop, and offers them commendations for solving the case and slaying the demon.

Part 1

Having acquired their adventuring licenses and a monetary gift from Claudius, the party decide to use the rest of the day to celebrate. They headed for one of the busiest inns in the North-western harbor, [[The Moored Galley Inn & Tavern | The Moored Galley]].

There, the party was approached by Varian, a veteran adventurer. Varian had been contracted by the Arcane Society to investigate a series of murders targeting Mage University freshmen. He had a plan to take down the killer, but he couldn’t do it on his own. He offered a generous sum of gold in exchange for the party to help him. The party accept.

Varian then shares the details. Four mage university freshmen have been murdered on separate days within two weeks within the hour before dawn. All victims were killed by one to two back wounds, likely caused by a dagger. The victims’ hearts were then cut out of their chest. All bodies were found in a residential district close to the north-western harbor in Black City.

The party opt to wait till the next day. However, a new body was discovered the next day. When the party goes to investigate, they question some of the people living nearby. Some reported seeing a great winged beast around the time of the murders.

Varian then suggests to lure the murderer out by using Maia, a mage, as a decoy. The party reluctantly accept the plan.

As Maia and Jay, disguised as a mage, wander through the district during the hours before dawn, they are charged from behind by the assassin, who has used magic to mask her approach (and neutralize Jay). Luckily, Varian was lying in ambush, and was able to critically wound the assassin before she is able to kill Maia. Realizing that she was at a disadvantage, the assassin attempts to escape.

The party chase her down an alleyway, but just as they were going to corner her, a 9ft winged beast intercepts the party. The beast had inhuman strength, and well, I’ll let the picture down below speak for itself! Garrek bravely faces the beast!

The beast proved a formidable foe, it’s thick skin impenetrable to all but the most determined attacks, and its wings swatting away bullet or spell like they were nothing. However, a clever Rocky takes a potshot at the Assassin who was attempting to escape behind the Beast, knocking her into the sewer tunnel she was going to escape into.

Seeing that his charge has been killed (?), the beast surges forward, and flies away.

End Heart-Breaker Part 1

Aboard the cruise airship, The Lady, the passengers were busy enjoying their time. However, a group of thugs up to no good hijacked the ship. Commanded by Lord Bigglesworth, the thugs executed Senator Russel Richards before turning their guns on the passengers. Three brave passengers take up arms and kill the gunmen. They were the noble Jay, the grizzly Nigel McStache, and the cat burglar/femme fatale, Catherine Blade. Using their combination of skills, they defeated the hijackers and killed Lord Bigglesworth.

However, unbeknownst to the passengers of the Lady, this was but one part of a series of coordinated attacks striking at the heart of the United Isles. The counter-revolution of the ousted noblemen has begun!

The PCs are assigned to the same group to undertake the Adventuring License test in Lunaria. They took on most challenges head-first. Halfway through the test, they encounter a party that doesn’t seem to be part of the program, a couple of necromancers with several hired swords. When a lone gunslinger, Rocky, who was captured by the baddies escapes and distracts a few of them, the party ambushes them. Unfortunately, the necromancers escape.

Eventually, the party gets to the end, but having wasted so much time, a rival party was there before them. Their attempt to sneak failed. However, the other party, led by Claudius, seemed open for negotiations. Jay, with the help of Maya, were able to persuade the other party to accept the PC’s help. This probably would not have been possible if Jay’s charms not smitten Grianne. With Maya’s help, the party easily unlocks the pedestal containing the required medal to complete the test. The two parties head outside, and later part amiably.