Tales from the Plunderbund Consortium – Tomb of Annihilation

Hi folks, this is Kent.  I have bronchitis and nothing to really add to this poignant conversation this week.  So I’ll leave you with this song that reflects my feelings towards the Dark Sun Saga story.

Interlude: Good By Desert, Hello Jungle

 

Good afternoon lady and gentleman, to the millions of Plunderbund fan, it is with a heavy heart that I must inform you that last week’s chapter of Tales from the Plunderbund Consortium was the final in the Dark Sun saga.  The sad fact concerning Dungeons and Dragons campaigns is that the final boss is rarely a dragon, a lich, or a demon, but rather is time itself.  The vast majority of campaigns die soon after they begin for a variety of real world reasons.  Here, despite my best effort to keep the group together, various school and work obligations caused weekly turnout to tumble and I eventually had to pull the plug on that campaign.

While I will miss the Dark Sun campaign, as it was one of the best I’ve ever run, thanks to the efforts of one of our players we were able to form a new group and start a new campaign within a few weeks of the official Dark Sun group break-up.  Next week will be the official launch of our playthrough of the campaign module, Tomb of Annihilation, and I urge you all to tune in.  If you enjoyed the previous campaign, despite its abrupt end, I guarantee you will enjoy what we have in store for you.

 With that said, bellow you will find the character write-ups for the upcoming campaign.  You will notice they are not entirely uniform as they were written and submitted by the players themselves.  Thank you for your continued patronage of the Plunderbund, please refer us to your friends, family, neighbors, and complete strangers.  Also, don’t forget to check out the rest of 9deuce.com for a number of blogs and podcasts covering professional wrestling, horror movies and television shows, and various other aspects of pop culture and entertainment.    

 

Tomb of Annihilation – Characters

 

 

Hertz Cunningham – True Neutral Variant Human

 

Background – Entertainer

 

Tempest Cleric of Talos

 

Faction – Zhentarim

 

The first 10 years of Hertz Cunningham’s life were rather uneventful.  Spent with his family in a small fishing village on the Sword Coast, he lived a humble but happy life.  That is, until, his small village was raided by slavers.

When all was said and done Hertz found himself on a slave ship, separated from his family and the other villagers.  To this day he doesn’t even know if his family survived the attack, as when he returned to the village many years later it had been razed and claimed by the sea.

Chained in the ship’s hold, Hertz had no idea how many days had passed when he heard the rumble of a storm off in the distance and the sounds of panicked sailors.  Within the next three hours, the ship was at the bottom of the sea, all the slavers had drowned (DM Note: or did they?), and Hertz was adrift on a plank of wood.  The next morning Hertz was picked up by a merchant vessel and brought to land.

With nowhere to go, Hertz took up with a minstrel troop and spent the next couple years learning to play the lute while studying the art of entertaining a crowd.  It was during this time that Hertz learned of Talos, the “evil” god of storms.  Despite the terrible things people would say about Talos, Hertz knew the truth, that Talos was simply misunderstood.  After all, it clearly was Talos that saved Hertz from being sold into slavery, it was Talos who punished the slavers by drowning them in the ocean, and it was Talos who provided the plank and sent the merchant vessel the next morning.

As Hertz continued to travel with the troupe, he also took up the study and worship of Talos.  When his studies were complete and his first spells granted, Hertz then made it his mission to spread the actual truth of Talos, namely, that he uses the power of the storms to enforce natural justice.  Talos is not evil, simply misunderstood.  Hertz would travel the land and revive the proper worship of the great god of storms.

Unfortunately, Hertz quickly found out that not only were people not open to his message, but Talos worship was actually hated and outlawed in many places.  This forced Hertz to adopt a new tactic.  Instead of worship in the classic sense, he put his entertainment background to good use and began putting on “revivals,” specifically, entertaining generic religious performances that referred to the gods in general but were seeded with Hertz’s beliefs.

And so, Hertz continues to travel and spread his knowledge about the True Talos.  Most recently, Hertz was approached by a mysterious stranger after one of the revivals.  The stranger said that he absolutely understood Hertz’s message, and that he too ascribed to such belief.  In fact, he was part of an organization that would be very interested in seeing Talos worship return, a group known as, the Zhentarim . . .

 

 

Ethelwynn “Ethyl” Devir of Mantol-Derith
Drow Wild Magic Sorcerer
170 lbs 5′ tall
156 years old

Concept: Anti-Drizzt
Alignment: Lawful Evil
Faction: Zhentarim
Background: Noble (Loyal Retainers)

INTERESTS:
domination of the surface world
apple pie
puppies (not to eat, but to cuddle)

“you can never aim too high when you’re reaching for your dreams”

“I have an insatiable desire for carnal pleasures (cake)”

“The common folk love me for my kindness and generosity”

Ethelwynn grew up in dark and treacherous Mantol-Derith, where she was a feared and respected member of one of the city’s foremost families.  As with many wealthy and successful families, however, Ethelwynn’s parents wanted her to have a decent drow upbringing and, recognizing her potential, turned her out of the city and told her never to return until she was at the head of an army: an army that House Devir would use to take control of Mantol-Derith once and for all.  While Ethelwynn knew that any drow worth her zhurkwood could bend an army of kuo-toa or perhaps derro to her will, she decided that you can never aim too high when you’re reaching for your dreams.  Therefore, at the ripe old age of 146, Lynn began planning her takeover of the entire surface world.

As happens with many imperialist invaders, Lynn has gone a bit native.  She’s also gotten a bit fat.  Always large for an elf, Lynn has gained so much weight feasting on the cakes and pies of the surface world that she has become morbidly obese (for an elf).  She now looks built more like a human merchant of Calimshan than one of the fair folk.  It was being mistaken for a Calimshanite that got Lynn her first real job: protecting caravans on the Black Road through Anauroch desert.  The troglodytic fools actually thought she was a desert dweller, and would be an ideal guide.  In truth, the desert sun was so harsh it nearly killed her, but the ease with which she dispatched the goblinoids that attacked the caravan left few doubts in the caravan master’s mind that Lynn was a capable sorcerer.  Soon, one successful mission led to another, which led to another, and bigger and richer cakes.

Lynn commands the services of three male drow servants of House Devir, who cook, clean, and attend to their Lady’s hygiene.  They are well supplied for the surface, and wear masks and loose fitting robes that cover their features (“As is the custom in Calimshan…”).  Nobody questions Lynn’s story that she is a disgraced Calimshite noble, mostly because nobody cares about Calimshan.

But this was the life of a servant!  Lynn soon met with the caravan master to complain, and he introduced her to the man that owned the Black Road.  He explained he was part of a network, a kind of family dedicated to amassing wealth, power and influence.  To Lynn, it sounded just like home: the Zhentarim were a drow House, except on the surface!  Finally, some surface dwellers that actually made sense when they talked!  The first step to taking over the surface world, Lynn would later write in her diary, is to subjugate the Zhentarim and take them over from the inside.

The Zhentarim, for their part, know that everyone had a price (DM’s Note: The Zhentarim were founded by “Million Dollar Man” Ted Dibiase), and they soon discovered Lynn’s weakness for baked goods.  Thus, they keep her in a state of smug satisfaction: her gluttony supersedes her megalomania.  Discovering the party has snapped Lynn out of her complacency, however.  Maybe there is hope for her house yet?  If she can turn these surface world bumpkins to her side, then perhaps she can win back Lloth’s favor.  Well, maybe after one more helping…

Young Tempest – Chaotic Good Water Genasi

 

Background – Pirate

Monk (Way of the Open Hand)

Faction – Harpers

 

Young Tempest was a pirate.  We’ll get to the “was” part in a bit.  The “pirate” part of her life started, well, as far back as she can remember.  Was she born on a boat?  Was she a water elemental summoned by some desperate pirate during a fierce storm?  Or, more likely, was she just some urchin from Calimsham who put her natural skills to use boarding merchant vessels, knocking around hired thugs, and looting some booty?  At some point, Young Tempest has spun every possible tale about her origins, but honestly couldn’t tell you which one was closest to the truth.

But it doesn’t matter, because as a boatswain and occasional sea artist (that’s “navigator” to you landlubbers) on the Faerun’s Revenge, she found a family and, more importantly, a boatload of good fights.  (Get it?)  A self-taught pugilist, she prided herself on her unconventional fighting technique, based off an old, illustrated scroll she stole from an old man but never learned to read.  There was probably some deeper meaning, sure, but the pictures were cool and she was bustin’ heads.  (DM’s Note:  I’m pretty sure this was the plot to Kung-Fu Hustle)

This lasted until one day when Young Tempest boarded a ship carrying well-off civilians from the Sword Coast to Chult and came across a portly, middle-aged passenger who refused to make his belongings hers.  Mr. Fat, as she came to call him, moved faster and punched harder than anyone she knew, and after thoroughly trouncing her, offered to teach her–on one condition.  He told her to abandon her life of piracy and come work for him, instead, and his mysterious organization.

This is how one brash, loudmouthed pirate gave up a life terrorizing the high seas and became an apprentice monk in the service of the Harpers…

 

 

Xilix Andethia – High Elf 101 y/o Neutral Good

Wizard

Faction – Emerald Enclave

Background – Sage

 

Xilix Andethia awoke in a crater on a hill outside of Evereska.  Around him, the ground was scorched, his robes had been all but burnt away, the hair on his head was gone in smoke (never to return), and his scalp, chest, and face were raw from burns.  His hands tingled.  He was 35.

His mentor, Thall, the elf who had instructed him in the ways of wizardry at his home, shown Xilix the intricacies of the science of magic, helped him to question, to understand, to conjure, who had all but raised him from a boy, laid next to him.  What was left of him, anyway.  His once strong body was torn asunder, his skin avulsed from the force of the blast; the talon he wore around his neck as a medallion, somehow unscathed, remains Xilix’s only tangible clue to his past.  In Thall’s honor, he keeps it with him at all times.

To this day, Xilix has no recollection of his accident, his parents, nor the level of power he truly wielded.  Only small fragments of memories which flash at him in his trances: Bright blue eyes with a comforting voice, studying stacks of books describing all manner of magic, healing the wounded after some accident (or was it a battle?), the smell of brimstone, of putridity, he remembered death.

For 25 years after the accident, Xilix tended the forests near his suspected home of Evereska, living as a recluse.  He found his way to the Emerald Enclave in this time; learning and honing survival skills, aiding those in need.  Until one night, a fever dream caused by some particularly rank mushrooms brought him a vision of Thall.

Xilix awoke with new purpose.  To regain his lost mastery of magic.  He began to study in earnest the science of the magic which permeates the world.  He studied healing to support himself, offensive techniques to defend himself, and has used magic to focus his curious and ever skeptical mind.  For over 40 years he has worked, he has not yet regained his lost power, but can taste the promise of renewed ability.  He leaves his home to discover what the world has to teach him and who he can help along the way.

 

Compassion – Tiefling Purple Dragon Knight

I’ve decided to do a fighter/purple dragon knight (at 3rd level anyway). Playing against type, he will be a lawful good tiefling Knight of Myth Danner hailing from a modest noble estate in the Cormyr farmlands. My character has adopted the “virtue” name of Compassion. While he holds his virtue name as his ideal, he occasionally struggles with temptation to utilize lawful evil approaches to helping the downtrodden when lawful good approaches fail due to his heritage. Still, he at ones and continues his attempts to live up to his virtue name.

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