A handful of teens in the idyllic town of Shepherd’s End, in the magical utopian kingdom of Lux, are left to be the adults when all the people of fighting age are called away to serve in the battle against the forces of the White Tower. When magic fails and the world starts coming apart, they must rally to save what they can of their hometown and try to figure out what’s going on.
Unfortunately, they kind of just end up precipitating the end of the world. Oops.
Takes place in Spring to Winter 1019 AC.
The Breakfast Club
Cards deck
Deck row
Aureya
Tiefling acolyte of the Maiden Thrice, designated whipping girl of the Temple.
Ava Porter
Local physicker’s assistant-cum-physicker. A rare human.
Esmund Clockwright
Somewhat reserved air genasi, adoptive son of the Clockwright goblin couple.
Orthoclase "Kaisi" Feldspar
Brash fire genasi, best friends with Esmund.
Kibeth Proudhammer
Local mail runner, fast and hungry.
Deck row
Peach Pine
Daughter of a retired adventurer who now runs the Wanderlust Tavern.
Salinger Morel
Lorj boy, keen on stories and fashion.
Seyfried
Quick but lazy bun.
Xalati Vekhir
Tall, dark and muscular. Big mad/big sad.
Ixtalan Vekhir
Tall, dark and whipcord. Should be dead, ain’t. somehow even madder than her sister.
The Story
See Season 13 Chronology for all the episode and fiction summaries.
1019 AC, Spring and Summer
We open on a sleepy coastal town in the eastern region of the Kingdom of Lux, a generally healthy, diverse, and peaceful kingdom under the rule of the immortal elf queen Lil’lith. Most of the hale adults have left to answer the call of the kingdom to muster their armies in the north, preparing to march on the mysterious White Tower that has fallen.
A small group of teenagers, the oldest left in town, prepare for spring festivities and stumble upon cursed jewelry in a mine, tons of dynamite, and ancient ruins when a sinkhole opens heretofore-unknown tunnels. This ends poorly, as gelatinous puddings that incubate inside the bodies of living creatures invade the town, destroying it and killing hundreds overnight. All this while some forms of magic—namely, long-range communication and travel, as well as the conjuration and creation magic the kingdom depended upon to supply its citizens—warped and failed under the influence of a strange sky.
The survivors, seeing no other options and cut off from the world, fortify, train, and regroup over the summer.
Autumn
For his 18th Naming Day present to himself, Salinger acquires himself a juvenile auronachus. The rest tentatively scout the route to the Temple of the Maiden Thrice, hoping to find aid and supplies there. They find supplies, but no people, only a tear in one of the healing pool rooms. On the way back, they fight a giant auronachus and steal the egg it was guarding. Misadventures bring Ava and Seyfried into a strange, purple-toned plane and their first encounter with the Angel of Doors. While there, they encounter the spirit of Xalati’s sister Ixtalan, who had died as a child.
In the hunt for more supplies for the town, they encounter and surrender to an enormous Deeplurker, and Esmund builds the Door Jamb to send it back to its home plane, a vast, icy ocean. Muna the Pretty Egg Girl hatches from the great auronachus egg. Investigating the chasm beneath the earth once again leads to trouble, as iron kobolds and dragonborn of the World Forge boil out. They’re stemmed only by a treaty with the King of Up.
As part of their agreement with Vathedrian, they travel to the city of Myrwood and find it under siege from enormous beasts and an undead Fabricator. More signs of the breakdown of reality abound, including people vanishing occasionally, memories altering, and the sky cracking, the cracks running toward the White Tower. They find some evidence of the rumored necromancer passing through, but no trail. They do, however, free the city from the curse it is under, as Aureya cleanses the darkened waters and they kill the undead Fabricator enacting most of it, and rescue more survivors, including a traveler from the other side of the world, one Digsman Samsel.
As they’re preparing to leave, something slips sideways and they enter an entirely different version of the city of Myrwood, one alive and bustling. Warned that it is unstable, Esmund rejiggers the Door Jamb to permit them to go home; along the way, they lose Xalati, meet Sylas and steal Ixtalan from the Place Between, who somehow ends up a full-grown adult back in the real world.
Sending the survivors back toward Shepherd’s End, the group acts on clues they found and travel toward the Stone Tower that Esmund’s mother Gwin told him they’d rescued him from as a baby. Ambushed by a group of auronachus-folk along the way that includes Muna, Salinger challenges the leader of the pack to a duel in order to avoid a pitched battle. He wins, but after asking for a dance from Peach, vanishes from existence—and unlike previous disappearances, from all memory save for hers.
Unworried by someone they don’t remember, the group travels onward, narrowly escaping a TIME SPIDER in a web that spans centuries, miles and hundreds of dimensions before ending up in the oddly-well-prepared town of Alinge’s Pass, a short distance away from the tower they’re aiming toward. There they find statues and legends that eerily mimic their appearances and deeds, and make their way through a temple that is clearly designed for them, with a room that matches up to each one (or one pair) of them, and a catacomb at the end dedicated to Shepherd’s End.
As they emerge, a letter to Peach from Salinger, held for 900 years, arrives and explains that when he fell out of the world, he actually fell back in time, before the founding of Lux. There he performed great deeds and fought battles and eventually founded the town of Alinge’s Pass, warning them of the times to come and how they might best prepare.
They travel on to Silental Tower and make many a discovery about Esmund—or as he was known before, multiple times, Desmun. Esmund plumbs the secrets of chronomancy, has multiple breakdowns, and finishes a call with Sav, which proves to be mostly unenlightening except for the note that the White Tower is terraforming the world and something near them is fighting back against it—something which he later realizes is the Memento, that which has kept their Queen alive all these years. Esmund also attempts to return Ixtalan to sender, but Xalati refuses. A reflection of Salinger is also captured from a device there, a version mirrored right after his final disappearance from the world. They begin to have their first noticeable brushes against Paradox.
Winter
Armed with more information, they travel back toward Shepherd’s End, planning to close the various Door in the area before traveling to the capital city of Lux to try and find the Memento. Unfortunately, they get sidetracked along the way by the Feywild, as happens. Losing Muna there and gaining Albrecht, they end up emerging near the Temple of the Maiden Thrice, but immediately lose Peach and Salinger to unstable teleportation spells and the Place Between. The group on the Prime Material races toward the Temple of the Maiden Thrice, where they intend to alter the Door there to lead to the Between and rescue their lost friends. They encounter some difficulties in the horde of insects from the desert world on the other side of the portal that have decided to suborn the priestesses and invade Lux, however.
In the Place Between, Salinger and Peach find Xalati again, but the reunion is short-lived as the Angel of Doors crashes the party. As they attempt to fight it off, Xalati orders them to run, using Salinger’s full name for the first time in her life; armless and nearly dead, Sal and Peach obey, carried away by Poppy. They run into Sylas, who finds Sal suspicious by reason of triggering the same instinct he bears toward the aberrations they’re charged to hunt, but eventually agree to help the two get to the portal in the Between version of the Temple.
In the temple, the group there discovers Aureya’s origin as a piece of the soul of the Prince of Secrets and Lies. All sides come crashing together at the tear over the pool of healing: giant bugs, aberrant shadows, Shepherd’s End and Myrwood townsfolk, the group on the Prime and the group in the Between. As Esmund attempts to force the Door Jamb to close the enormous Door in the Temple, it instead cracks even wider, until it splits across the world and whiteness sweeps over everything.
It should have worked. The calculations were correct. Nevertheless, there they weren’t.
250 years later, some would reawaken to find…
Notable NPCs
Gwin Clockwright
Elderly goblin artificer, Esmund’s adoptive mom.
Samsel
A former member of Harvey’s Digsmen, rescued from the bag of an undead necromancer in Myrwood. Traveled with Vanja and Lumotu for a time until they got separated somewhere. Went to Alinge’s Pass and Shepherd’s End.
Vathedrian
A Verdict who was heavily injured on the train derailment but survived by a miracle. Died of heartstrain from extreme stress from the prosthetic arm Esmund and Ava made him.
Yevhetsek Imet
Goliath, Xalati and Ixtalan’s younger brother. 14-15.
Zephyrus
Esmund’s familiar, a cute hummingbird. Got bodied at one point in an encounter with the Angel of Doors and was unavailable to Esmund for a time.
Cameos
Sylas
Showed up on the other side in the Place Between, usually speaking dire warnings and sass.
Sav
Contacted Esmund over Desmun’s chronomancer and could only give the info that there was something interfering with what the White Tower was trying to do.
Vanja
Heard about but never encountered. Suspected of causing all the necromantic issues.
Lumotu
Suspected to be accompanying Vanja.
Places
The Kingdom of Lux
Shepherd’s End
Temple of the Maiden Thrice
Myrwood
Alinge’s Pass
The Stone Tower
The Pale Lands
The Place Between
Playlist
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpEBXRRKdckU6_reFA-haWwU1gjTskmMk&si=yo_aO2xFz39GeYGN