Something evil stirs beneath the island of Chillhame. Dark forces are gathering and the eyes of the children of the Host turn towards the surface, hungry for victory and vengeance. Soon, the drums of war will beat to the footsteps of the advancing soldiers and the ancient war between the Host and the Starborn will begin once again.   The Drow War is coming.   This is the first book in the Drow War trilogy, a set of three adventure arcs covering the epic tale of the conflict between the Host and the Starborn. The Gathering Storm will take Player Characters from 1st to 10th level as they struggle against the drow and their allies, taking the role of the Starborn - the incarnations of the stars themselves, pitted against the evil and darkness of the Host. They will need to seek the truth of their own natures, travel through ancient ruins and corrupt cities, deal with treachery and trickery and take part in immense battles with the foe.   And this is only the beginning.

 

The Campaign

This is the latest campaign for my Thursday evening gaming group. After the almost complete demise of the previous party, I decided that it would be more appropriate to start a new campaign than try to keep the old one going.

This campaign will be starting off with the characters having no knowledge of one another. In addition, I purposefully withheld information about the actual campaign itself (like what company produced it, what it is really called, etc.) before the first session because I did not want the players to have that information, instead learning about it once we began.

This campaign is also more of a standard, herioc style, fantasy campaign and in order to get the feel of it right, I am restricting the rule books being used to just the Core v3.5 D&D Books, namely the Player's Handbook, the Dungeon Masters Guide and the Monster Manual. The campaign will require a good, diverse set of skills and by including a wide range of base classes and prestige classes, I find that it will dilute the abilities that will be needed and take away from the epic feel I am trying for in this campaign.

Character generation was done during a 3 week period prior to the start of the campaign (9/7/2006 to 9/28/2006) and used a 28 point buy method. The actual adventures started on 9/28/2006. See the Adventures section below for campaign writeups along with the individual character pages.

The Characters

These are the characters involved in the adventures of this campaign. You will be able to find the character sheets and other information about the characters, supplied by the players and myself, on the linked pages (click where the characters picture is).

The Starborn - Information and Stuff

The following pages lead to a variety of information for the group of characters.

Items Found

Personage

Information Obtained

The World

A players map of the world of Ashfar.

Ashfar is the name of the world where the latest campaign is set. It is a background setting for the campaign adventure I am running and at this point in time, I am not putting a large amount of information here about it. The reason for this is the campaign is only about to start, I do not want the players to know much about the campaign itself (some of the information involved would give too much away) and the characters will start off without knowing each other and what it is they will be doing. As time progresses and the characters learn about what is going on, I will finally add additional information here about the world and the setting. In the mean time, you can follow the Ashfar link to find out some background information on the world itself as well as the gods of the campaign.

The Adventure Arcs

The Gathering Storm

The Gathering Storm is the first set of adventures in The Drow Wars.

The Dying Light

The Dying Light is the second set of adventures in The Drow Wars.

The Darkest Hour

The Darkest Hour is the third and final set of adventures in The Drow Wars.

Experience Awards By Session

There are 6 types of experiences awards that I hand out to the group:

• A: Adventure Awards - Theses awards are a fixed amount of XP
• L:  Level Loss - These awards are losses (or gains) of levels.
• C: CR  Award - These awards are for creatures, opponents or traps
• R:  Role-Playing Award - These are awards for role-playing at the table. They are equal to the number of hours I feel were spent in a total role-playing period / 3 * 100 * the average party level.
• V: Victory Point Award - These are behind the scenes award gains or losses that are used in the Mass Combat System
• S:  Story CR  Award - Theses are awards, based on a CR, that are given for completing part of the overall story arc.

The current list of all the XP Awards that have been given out, by session, can be found here.

Ongoing Discussion