This is the second entry in the Dawngale RP Series.

Foreword:

Okay, cool, first time doing a foreword. So, this one will be a bit of a mess, but it’ll also be pretty awesome, and all the major loose ends get tied up too. So, for background, my first Dungeons and Dragons campaign was Edition 3.5, and I ran out of a module (a pre-built campaign.) I had three players, called themselves the tres hombres back then. They fought some goblins, explored a cave, and then attacked a dragon. One of them got smart and started pushing it over. I didn’t know all the rules at the time, so I let it go through. What a fight. Poor dragon.

So after that, I figured I knew the ropes. I started my own campaign. I had 3.0 books (weird, I know) and I came up with a campaign hook for the first session. I’ll talk more on later submissions, but let’s just say it was a mess, but also a whole lot of fun. Also, it was fairly cohesive, so no worries.

Also, this campaign was crafted nearly three years ago, in 2014. I can’t remember it perfectly, and I’ll be taking huge sweeping liberties with the story. Let it begin!

“Oh Tendrils, what is that?” Janna sneered. This was why she didn’t like running errands for her younger sister.

She wasn’t a skittish young woman, so instead of recoiling or leaving the archives, she poked it. The grey ooze made her finger tingle, but not much else. She sighed and stood, then investigated further, brushing her blonde hair from her face. She always wondered why she kept it so long if all it did was get in the way.

Janna followed the ooze. It went clean through a hole in the stone basement. She wondered if that hole had been there already, or if the grey gel had made it. It didn’t matter right now. She went through the door and circled around to the other side of the wall. Looks like it ignored the tomes and texts and just went straight for the walls. Janna was convinced now that the gel had made the hole in the wall. In fact, she was fairly certain that it was actively trying to eat the stone in the archive.

She sighed. It didn’t seem to be moving at the moment, but it had come out of the floor, and eaten through a wall. Janna knelt down and looked through the light grey gel coming out of the ground. It looked pretty deep. She wondered where it lead, where the goo creature had come from. Too small to really check though.

Janna decided to leave the archive. She assumed Chloe would know what was going on and have a solution. She was the genius after all.

The trip into town wasn’t very long, but it was kind of a pain. She followed the castle wall that surrounded the city until she reached the front gate, which was on the other side.

“Man, dad sure likes walls.” Janna commented.

She was right, the castle town Murdock was walled off, the kingdom was walled off, the giant city of Hannibal was walled off… Even a couple of the kingdom entrances had extra walls. It’s like he was paranoid about something.

She passed the main gate then went to the castle doors and let herself in. She went upstairs and then to the room next to her sisters. The castle had two libraries now, one in the basement, and one here. Next to Chloe’s room. It was Chloe’s library.

“Oh, hello.” Chloe said as Janna entered.

Chloe looked a lot like her sister, but she had a slightly larger face, and her teeth were more prominent. She also had more peaceful eyes and much much longer hair. Excessively long, wavy hair. She was also taller.

“Hey, uh…” Janna trailed off.

“Did you get the book?” Chloe asked.

“No, there was a goo thing in the archive.”

“…” Chloe looked around, “What?”

“A grey ooze or something.”

“Huh?”

“It ate it’s way in through the ground, and then through one of the walls.” Janna continued.

“Ah!”

Janna was beginning to notice that Chloe said “ah!” a lot. It was becoming a sort of odd catchphrase.

“Did it eat any of the books?” She asked.

“No. I was wondering if you knew anything about it.”

“Well… I heard the King, I mean, I heard our father talking about something like that.” Chloe replied.

“Oh.” Janna said, waiting for her to continue.

“Yeah… to the east.” Chloe trailed off.

Janna waited, mostly to see what she would do.

“Ah… I don’t know anything else really. It’s too bad you didn’t get the book.”

“Yeah, well, more important matters right now than studying. What book did you want again?”

“Father said I should read about the Strossmadoss of the Underside.” Chloe said.

“I don’t understand, but really, a lot of what you say goes above my head when you get technical.” Janna replied.

She left then, and went to the throne room. Obviously the King wasn’t there all the time, but he was there more frequently than one would expect. The Solune King replied to a lot of requests, and had thorough and frequent communication with his people. That’s probably why people liked him so much.

He was there, and so was a lot of Janna’s other family. All immediate relatives that lived within the kingdom save Chloe were there, in fact. The king was standing in front of his throne, at the bottom of the steps that lead up to it. He was talking to Janna’s older sister Natasha. Their mother Gwenhime was on the adjacent throne, leaning on her arm, bored.

“Yes, I believe that we should send aid, but I am unsure as to whom we should send. I think that we will send the young new recruits from the Solune Agents.” the King said.

“The Agents are more equipped and capable of extra-kingdom missions than the guard anyway, so I have no objections” Natasha said.

Watching those two talk was like watching the King talk to himself. Janna always had trouble keeping up. It seemed that they were going to send some of the Agents out of the kingdom for something. Natasha was the leader of the city guard, that was why she brought them up.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Janna asked them.

“Well,” Natasha said, “The East Metch Kingdom is having some issues with some sort of grey goo. It’s appearing in their catacombs and they want help with it before it gets to the surface.”

“Oh wow, we got those things too in the underground archives!” Janna said.

“What?” The King’s reply was swift and stern.

“Yeah, it ate through the floor, and a wall, but not any of the books. Weird. I poked it too and nothing happened.”

“Why would you…” The King trailed off, he knew his daughter well enough by now.

He gave a deep sigh. The King was very tall, five and a half cubits. [For those who don’t know cubits, that’s eight feet flat.] He had shaggy, poorly cut hair, and his face seemed to be stuck in a scowl despite his good nature. Worse, his irises and pupils had drained down his face, staining it permanently. He was nearly blind, seeing only colours, shapes, and things very close to his face.

“I’ve come up with a solution. Make a call for adventurers of virtue. Have them challenge the new Agents, Marcus and his little group. The group that can stand a chance against Marcus will be sent out of town with an Agent to keep them in line. Marcus and his company will stay here and help us with our own issues.”

The King sat in his throne and sighed. “Natasha, I trust you with this mission. And Janna, can you please tell those outside who have been waiting so patiently that I’m now accepting visitors?”

The three women left the room on their various tasks.

Janna wondered which Agent would be sent with the new group. She and Natasha were Solune Agents, and so Janna wondered if she was going to be sent with them. Likely not. Thinking about it now, Janna had an idea of who her father would send. A young Riley by the name of Astore.

Janna let the citizens into the throne room and then left the castle to go find her boyfriend. She didn’t have much left to do at this point, and he was always fussing over something.

That was pretty fun to be honest. All that was prelude to the first session. I know not a lot happened, but Janna is a fun character to write. She’s an edgy teen, like me. Except I’m not really a teen anymore.

The next part of the Goo Campaign will be from Astore’s perspective. This is the first time I’ll be writing from a player character’s perspective, and I really wanted to avoid doing that. But, I don’t know that many other Dawngale characters were with the party at the beginning, so for now it’s him, until they meet up with the East Metch Prince anyway.

Daniel Triumph.

P.S. I think I’ll do these when I can’t really think of something. Luckily in making this story, I ended up coming up with a good piece for later.