sleepless in Faerun

[Wiccanwitch]

I need help continuing this game. I have an extensive plotline involving my characters and their roles in the death of a kingdom and ill post it here in part and part in a reply as it doesnt fit in one post. ANY ideas are helpful please help.

A Red Wizard, Xanatos, the apprentice under the Zulkir of Necromancy of Thay, guised in the visage of the War Mage Balthazaar will come to the characters and offer them a quest. This quest is to destroy an ancient dragon. He will tell them to gain experience by getting jobs at the Colluseum in Suzail and when they are ready, he will come to them and teleport them to where he thinks the dragon's cave is.

He will tell them "The reason that I can't move against the dragon itself is that the dragon has the king's ear, and is acting as his council since the royal prince dissapeared. Since the King is being controlled by the dragon in such a manner, the War Wizards and I have decided that an outside force is needed to get rid of the beast and what better force than a party of adventurers. When the time comes, I and what War Wizards I can get to help will assault the dragon, weakening it so that you adventurers can kill it. Then you are to cut the heart out of the beast and bring it to me in Suzail. Any treasure or other parts of the dragon you want you can keep."

He will produce a scroll with a wax seal, bearing the king's ring imprint. This document is a clever forgery, nearly impossible to detect. The scroll will say, "In the absence of the prince, I will be keeping council with Thangu Laarn, a visiting noble from Sembia. He will help me with important decisions and day to day rule. He has only the best interests in mind for our fair kingdom. We will be gearing up for war soon, to finally take Cormanthor , the unruly Dalelands and evil Sembia under our righteous rule."

"This Thangu Laarn in a dragon who has taken the opportinity to steal the King's ear and set us at war with our neighbors Sembia and Cormanthor. Neither of these wars would be beneficial to our kingdom and war with both at once would stretch our armies so tightly that an invasion from outside would certainly destroy us. I believe that this dragon is acting in the stay of a Red Wizard Enclave, possibly quite a large one, that seems to want to allow someone, probably Thay itself, to invade Cormyr."
All of this is of course crap. the dragon he is sending them after is the last of the Purple Dragons. Killing this dragon will kill the kingdom of Cormyr.

Once the characters have gotten through four of the five points storyline, "Balthazaar" will emerge again and tell them that they are ready to begin the quest to destroy the dragon. He will present the characters will weapons that have an enchantment that allows them to bypass the dragon's natural armor and/or damage reduction. The rings, already given to the characters to contact them, will mostly protect them from the dragon's breath weapon. He will tell the characters to meet him at the Boars Head Tavern in the northwest area of Suzail to retrieve the heart. Balthazaar will give the characters an enchanted bag to put the dragon's heart into. It will keep the heart of the beast fresh and acts as a bag of holding does in that the enoumous heart of the great creature will fit into a single, small bag. The bag's mouth will stretch over the surface of the heart and grow to encompass the whole organ, then when it is entirely in the bag, the bag will again shrink back to it's original size. Anything else put into the bag will cause the bag to act just as a normal small bag would. It is not an actual bag of holding.

The cave of the dragon is nestled in the mountains overlooking Suzail. Before they attempt to enter the cave, Balthazaar will appear to the characters and tell them not to enter until he tells them to as he and the War Wizards are going to do battle with the Great Wyrm. As they wait outside, they will hear the sounds of a great magical battle from within. The battle will culminate in an anguished scream that will trail off into uncomprehensible gibberish. Balthazaar will return injured and tell the characters to enter and finish it off. He will tell them that he has enfeebled its mind so that it cannot cast spells on them and he has made it weak enough so that they will be able to destroy it. Any attempt to heal him will be dismissed and he will tell the characters that he must rest the wounds off as they are magical in nature. He will tell the characters that he cannot continue the fight because of the wounds he has suffered but they must finish the creature for him. They will find this dragon battered and hurt but still dangerous. Most of its more powerful spells are spent and most of its breath weapon uses are used up for the day. Also, it will have been affected by both a polymorph spell and a feeblemind spell the combination of these spells will leave it on par with the characters for ability to hit and damage. It will be quite weak but a formidable challenge for the party. Once they enter the cavern, the badly shaken beast will mumble,"Die, worms" and try to use its breath weapon on them, but it will be unable to bring forth its natural weapon because it is unused to it's new form. Once they kill the beast, it will revert back to its original form (that of a Purple Dragon) and say in Common, "As I die, so does Cormyr." Half an hour after the dragon dies, they will hear a distant explosion, followed by many more and the sounds of distant battle.

The characters can skin the hide of the dragon easily after it is dead to make masterwork armor from the scales. The armor will have an armor bonus equal to whatever type of armor is made plus one and the check penalty will be halved. Also, the armor will be considered as to be one type lower than it normally would be considered to be (plate = Medium armor, Scale = Light, Light = clothing or Unarmored). Some of the scales can make shields even of themselves. The smallest scales can make small shields while some slightly larger scales will be able to be made into tower shields. These shields work as traditional shields do but with a +2 AC bonus and they are half as heavy as normal.The teeth, horns and claws can be used to create masterwork weapons that do plus one damage (+2 total - plus one for being masterwork and plus an additional for dragon teeth , hornd and claws) and weigh half as much as normal. The scales will keep fresh enough to be usable in armormaking for one week before they begin to rot and crumble. Most of the scales on the dragon (50% or so) especially the ones along the back ridge of the dragon and along the center of it's breast are too large to make anything useful of and are far too hard to cut. The corpse of the dragon will be able to make fifteen sets of heavy armor, twenty-two sets of medium armor and thirteen sets of light armor (if it is all prepared and made to be ready in time).

Once the characters leave the cavern network, they will be in for a shock. The capitol city will be in the middle of a great battle. Half of the city will already be burning and the other half will be beseiged. A great, Black line of warships will be outside the harbor, firing flaming projectiles into the city, and there will be transport ships bearing hundreds and hundreds of troops into the city. Balthazaar will send an illusion of himself to the characters and tell them to make haste into the city and meet him at the Boar's Head Tavern as the heart of the beast is needed to thwart the invasion. He will also tell the characters that he cannot bring himself to them again as his injuries are too great.
Upon arriving at the Boar's Head tavern, Balthazaar will find them, apparently breathless and injured. He will ask for the heart and when he gets it, he will begin to laugh. He will look at the characters and thank them for their part in aiding him at destroying Cormyr. He will dissapear before the characters can react, and seconds later, the invading forces will break into the tavern and subdue the party, knocking them unconscious.

The characters will awaken in a dank dungeon some time later, shackled to a wall, with Balthazaar leering over them. He will watch them regain consciousness and his form will begin to blur and melt away. What will be left will be a painfully thin, old man. He will be wearing black clothes and his right arm will be exposed at the shoulder to be fully skeletal. In this arm, he holds a pike with a head attached to it.
"What I could not do on my own, you have done for me. By slaying the last Purple Dragon in Cormyr, you have destroyed Cormyr more perfectly than I could have dreamed. Purple Dragon Knights keel over as we speak from a strange disease of the heart that no Clerics can cure and King Willum himself was the first to die.I thank you all for fulfilling my plans so beautifully, and as your reward, you will die at dawn. I, Xanatos, Zulkir of Necromancy, loyal subject of Thay and Red Wizard, thank you in bringing the last ingredient i need to finally become a Lich. The fresh heart on a great wyrm dragon. Tonight, I die to be reborn more powerful than before. Until then, i leave you with this reminder of your work."
He will leave King Willum's severed head on a pike on the ground in front of them. He will then leave, locking the door behind him.

[Wiccanwitch]

About an hour later, Balthazaar, the REAL Balthazaar will return, looking most ROYALLY pissed.
"YOU CANNOT BELIEVE how irate I am at what you fools have done! HOW COULD YOU be so stupid to have been fooled by a charlatan posing as me?! And you, Prince Willum, I would have expected more from you! ONLY because I know you were played for fools and ONLY because you are the Prince's cohorts, will I save your miserable, worthless lives. And IF you are stupid enough to doubt my word now, have your Palladin sense me of Evil."
With that he will wave hias hand and the shackles will unlock. Another wave of his hand will wink them all from the area entirely, bringing them to Arabel, the retreat's staging area. He will then mumble some words and with another wave of the hand, he will return the group's belongings, along with a group of surprised men from the invading army. The men will be subdued quickly and removed for questioning.
"This plague of darkness is racing across our lands and is destroying everything in it's path. I saw what happened to a degree after you imbiciles slew the dragon and sealed Cormyr's fate. We are now staging a full retreat to Sembia, trying to save as many civillians as we can before the darkness gets here. They're not taking many prisoners and those that fall in battle rise again as undead in their ranks. The goblins of the area, pushed back before, are returning, and in greater number than we've ever seen. Orcs too are taking advantage of this invasion to claim their stakes of Cormyr. Their army only grows after the defensive skirmishes the remaining Purple Dragon soldiers are fighting. They kill us, and we kill them but their numbers grow while ours dwindle. We need some kind of help in this fight, otherwise Cormyr's fate will be shared by Sembia and Cormanthor, and possibly more after that."
Upon hearing about the Warforged, he will say, "Ive heard of the Warforged deal. They are to help us with the coming darkness that I assume is this attack, and in return, they find a place for themselves. It's too late for Cormyr, that bastard saw to that all too well. He pulled you away from releasing the Warforged just before you finished and brought their aid in this fight. I can only assume that if you are able to find and open the last portal and bring the Warforged here, we will be able to stem the flood of darkness that this attack has started. You must redeem yourselves and go find the portal. Find it and send the Warforged to Ordulin in Sembia, where we will be staging our defenses from this army. Cormyr is lost. We must ensure that we do not lose Sembia and Cormanthor too. I will send messages to the War Wizards that are left to go to Cormanthor and tell them what is occurring in their sister land. If this is only one Zulkir's army we should have a chance on our own, but if this is as I suspect and is just the front of a offensive from an united Thay, we will indeed need all the help we can get."

After the last of the Five Points stories, and after the Warforged arrive in Sembia, they will be split up into two equal armies. One will go to reinforce Cormanthor, the other to reinforce Sembia. During much of this time, the time before the warforged are seen in combat, they will be seen as and utilized much like property even though they are sentient. This will lead to high tensions from both the Warforged and from their compatriots. Once they are seen in battle in the coming years, and after they are seen to grieve for fallen comrades, like other sentient beings, this attitude will change but very slowly, as any player character Warforged will notice.
Balthazaar will go to the characters' group and tell them, "We are creating a few small strike forces for deep strikes into Cormyr to exact some revenge. We figure that the enemy won't yet have consilidated their power yet so there will be gaps in their defenses that a few small groups could breach and do damage where larger forces could not get into. We will make a diversion that will allow you to cross the border into Cormyr unnoticed and to soften up the enemy's lines a bit So, we are sending these task forces to go into enemy territory and try to infiltrate the army of the Thayans so they can get close enough to get some better intel for future attacks. This will be highly dangerous and we are only taking volunteers for these missions. I figured that since you were the ones Xanatos decieved in the first place into doing his work for him that you would be willing to decieve him and undo some of his work. I will have to modify your looks magically for this to work though, so you have some time to think about if you are willing to take on this assignment. The modifications I will be making will be perminant."

The two kingdoms will draw battle lines around Cormyr at the most easily defendable places, Shadow Gap, Tilvers Gap, Thunder Gap, Thunderstone town, and the southern road known as the Way of the Manticore. This will keep the army in Cormyr for a while, until Xanatos is able to consolidate his new territory into the newest Thayarch, Xantas. Once this is completed, the Thayan army will again muster to move on and it will pick Sembia to invade next. The army will advance magically to where the Cormyran forces are and throw the brunt of its might there. Without time to prepare, they will quickly be overwelmed, and the army will begin its invasion through Daerlun. By the time forces have been amassed to defend, Urmlaspyr, Kulta, and Huddagh will have fallen to the Thayans and they will have a good foothold to continue their invasion. The forces in Thunderstone will be called back to Thunder Pass but most of the civillians, having heard tales of the slaughter seen in Cormyr will flee to Sembia's capitol, leaving the cities of Thunderstone, Hidden Vale and Highcastle empty. The Thayan army will continue up the coast, sacking Saerloon without opposition. Once they arrive in Selgaunt, they meet their first major battle. In Selgaunt the forces from Thunderstone town, Thunder Pass, and the first contingents from Cormanthor have gathered. The defenders are 5,000 strong, consisting mostly of humans but also several hundred Warforged and Elves as well. The rest of the armies have diverted to Ornulan to defend the capitol.
The attacking force, a massive army of 15,000 will attack the town, leaving nothing standing, the town will be completely leveled. Of the 15,000 attacking, 8,000 will be left after the attack on Selgaunt. The attackers will spend 3 days in the ruins of Selgaunt, raising dead soldiers and creating more undead slaves, and when they leave the ruined city, their numbers will have grown to 20,000. The army will march out of the ruins and camp 40 miles south of Ornulan and wait.
About four hundred defenders will flee Selgaunt, arriving in Ornulan to tell of the slaughter. The civillians will be sent out to Yhaunn, a port city, in case the attackers should win, but all the able bodied men are made to stay and make ready for the final fight. The defenders number 30,000 strong including the 15,000 warforged that made it through the portal in Arabel before Arabel was invaded..

Unknown to the defenders, another army, this one 10,000 strong will be marching north to attack Cormanthor. They will stay in the area of Castle Crag until word of wether or not the attack on Ornulan is successful. Regardless of the success, 2 days after hearing of the attack on Selgaunt, this army will march north and attack the border of Cormanthor. Like the attack to the south, they will be mass teleported into the border army's camps and the attack will be one of slaughter. After resting the army for 2 days and creating undead from the defenders corpses, it will march forth, 12,000 strong, to attack Cormanthor itself. The army will overrun Daggerdale and Shadowdale, growing to 15,000 before entering the Elves' woods and marching for Myth Drannor itself. They will aquire Drow to help them as they advance through Cormanthor, growing to a full 25,000 once they have exited the woods at Blackfeather Bridge. They will march south, capturing land as they go until they are just outside Ornulan. Like a Hammer and Anvil, the two armies will crash down upon Ornulan, forming a 45,000 strong army.

The battle for Ornulan will be long and bloody and will eventually be a victory for the defenders. Of the 30,000 defenders, only 1 in 10 will survive the battle but nearly all of the attackers will die. 3000 defenders survive to tell tales of their battle but only around 100 of the attackers are allowed to retreat. The heavy losses on both sides leave both the Thayans and the remaining Cormyrians, Dalesmen, and elves unable to continue the fight. The map is redrawn with Cormanthor part of Xanton and an uneasy peace settles over the land. Due to their bravery in battle, the Warforged are given full rights as citizens at this point and are no longer looked down upon as property.

The remaining defenders hammer out agreements, and the Kingdom of Cordalethor is born. It will mostly comprise of humans but a large (and growing) amount of Elves will have fled Cormanthor as well.