The adventure began with Aldaren, Gerrem, Christoph, Zukashi, and Ahrosh captured and brought to Fort Pestilence for various crimes. After being forced to battle another team in a gladiator-style combat, the fort was suddenly overtaken by a group comprised mainly of clerics and paladins- seemingly an alliance of forces from the Union of Forlene and [Zucotl?].

Various atrocities were witnessed at the fort, implying that the troops garrisoned there (claiming to be paladins of St. Lor, which was almost certainly a lie) were conducting experiments that involved magical weapons, the disease Rose of the Flesh, and extraplanar entities. Christoph witnessed the death of a minotaur as caused by the plague, and Aldaren came across other frost elves, inflicted with some sort of madness that caused incredible paranoia and a single-minded devotion to scratching abyssal symbols into their skin.

With the help of the attacking forces, the adventurers escaped the fort and met up with Seymor, a cleric of St. Lor. He brought them to a base camp of sorts, where Christoph unwittingly introduced the force's commander to one of the potential magical weapons being developed at the fort in the form of the horn of the recently-deceased minotaur. The commander lost an arm, and was taken away to have his injuries treated.

Seymor led the adventurers to a nearby village named Sun Pointe (the group encountering only a group of giant forest spiders on the way). Seymor met with an acquaintance at a local tavern, who gave him the handle of a legendary sword. Taking the handle to the town's (hard-of-hearing) blacksmith, Alarn, they were able to discover that the handle was somehow involved in a battle with a mighty Lich many centuries ago. The blade had been shattered, but Seymor believed that the sword held some significance in current events.

Suddenly, the town was attacked by a horde of orcs. The adventurers did what they could, but the village was destroyed and most of the inhabitants killed. All the bodies of invading orcs that were looted were found to be carrying the severed fingers of killed townsfolk. Seymore and Alarn accompanied the adventurers out of the village, and Seymore led the adventurers towards where he believed the enemy camp to be located.

The group travelled through the forest and followed Seymor to a cave opening. Facing their first dungeon, the group quickly learned to be extremely wary of narrow entrances as a trap nearly took out Aldaren in one blow. The inside of the cave was found to be filled with orcs, piles of dead bodies, and more traps. The reason for the severed fingers became clear as the group happened upon a severed head, ritualistically mounted on the top of a pole with fingernails embedded in a circle in its flesh.

Coming upon an altar with an old helmet resting on it, they discovered/met the fallen angel [Forgothisname]. He explained that he'd been sent by Tisdene to battle an ancient evil. He helped lead the adventurers through the rest of the cave (by telepathic instruction via helmet) through a fight with a ghoul and to a final confrontation with a Succubus who had enthralled a massive number of orcs. The succubus nearly led all the adventurers to their doom, but the NPC Seymor managed to hold off her advances and begin the fight. All the others, save Ahrosh the necromancer, turned against her. In one last act, the succubus ceremoniously slit her own throat and whisked Ahrosh away to some other plane. The adventurers exited the cave and parted ways with Seymore and the angel, who had business elsewhere. The angel gave the group a stone to allow communication whenever the groups were on the same plane.

With no clear direction, the group decided that the best course of action would be to locate the library of Kavanutresh to obtain more information on the Handle of Kesh, since Seymor seemed utterly convinced that it was in some way related to all of the recent misadventures. Avoiding all the DRS patrols, they managed to cross the border into the Union of Forlene after a tense moment with a leonine military leader. [I think the lion dude was the group inside the DRS, and the guy at the border was someone else? Can't remember] Once in Forlene, the decision was made to find a nearby port village and obtain ship's passage to the island of Kavanutrish. Rather than head north out of their way to the capitol city of Farlahn, it was easier to take a shorter and more direct route to the fishing/trading village of Storm-[something].

A small village on the way provided them with some supplies, directions, and their first encounter with a mysterious, magical halfling selling magic items at "Cheap, cheap!" prices. A "robe of stone" ended up being nothing more than a robe of confetti, though the halfling returned all but one gold to the adventurers. After exiting the village (and another encounter with a suspiciously similar halfing in a trading caravan, resulting in a Sling of Seeking this time), the group experienced their first death, as an encounter with a bridge troll proved especially fatal to the arcane monk Gerrem. Already at low health from a previous hit on the troll, it managed to land two hits with claw attacks, grabbing Gerrem up in a double-handed grip and taking a bite out of his midsection, immediately killing him. The rest of the group visited swift vengeance upon the troll, and then after encountering and slaying a wyvern in the wilderness, they finally reached the port village of Storm-[something].

Here, they met up with sage and sorceror Vesto, who was also headed to the library of Kavanutresh. Intrigued by their quest, he decided to join them on their voyage. Taking a brief moment to resupply (and encounter yet another familiar-faced halfling selling cheap magical items), they headed to the docks to book passage on a ship headed to Kavanutresh.

They encountered a ship willing to take passengers, and the next morning set sail. As the ship was leaving port, a last-minute addition to its passengers appeared- a halfling bard named Mazelkik, who claimed to be the financer of the voyage, also headed to the library for research. The ship's voyage proved to be far more eventful than any of the crew were expecting, as an early attack by a large group of Yuan-ti raiders resulted in many casualties, including the captain. Only days later, a large portion of the crew was revealed to have been doppelgangers, and with Vesto and Alarn captured and replaced, it was up to Seleucos, Christoph, Aldaren, and Mazelkik to fight them off. After a lengthy battle, all of the group was left alive and exhausted, though the crew was down to five deckhands and the navigator. Hoping for a calm end to the voyage, they resumed their course to Kavanutresh, only to be forced to change course after accidentally entering the territory of a local Dragon Turtle.

The ship finally made port several days' travel west of Kavanutresh, in a small fishing village called [something]. Aldaren and Seleucos decided to part ways from the group temporarily, and Vesto, Christoph, Alarn, and Mazelkik set out to reach the city of Kavanutresh. After only a short travel, they came upon a village beset upon by goblins and undead. Deciding to help as they could, they followed some clues into the forest only to discover an unholy altar and a group of goblins. Defeating the goblins, a close inspection of the altar (and a little bit of greed on Vesto's part) led to the group being transported to an alternate plane. They were immediately attacked by a flesh golem and some skeletons. After the battle, they followed an evil aura back to its source- another altar, guarded by an Ogre Mage and some goblins. The ogre mage was smashed to a pulp almost immediately by an impressive critical hit by Alarn, and the rest of the battle took very little time. The group eventually puzzled out the workings of the altar, and managed to teleport themselves back to their home plane, where they discovered that several weeks had passed in their absence.

Finally arriving at the city of Kavanutresh, the group discovered that all traffic into the city was closed, pending an investigation that nobody seemed willing to talk about. Tents were set up outside the gates, and the entire group was reunited. While discussing their plans to get in to the city (as the reason for closing appeared to have something to do with the library) they were overheard by a rogue named Verity, who offered a way in to the city if he could be allowed to join the group. Something didn't sit right with him, and the halfling downright distrusted him, but in the end the adventurers decided that they could use all the help they could get. Sneaking in through the sewers, they managed to make it to the site of the library without too much trouble.

The library was missing; in its place was a glowing portal. The group rushed through, avoiding the city guards, and appeared in the library which seemed to have been teleported into a separate plane of existence. Their very first encounter was with an angry minotaur, and Aldaren was critically injured almost immediately. A critical fail by Verity led to an arrow to the head, and an already bleeding-to-death Aldaran was slain. Throughout the library, the group encountered more creatures (drow, troglodytes, and more Yuan-ti), but no answers. Finally, entering the final chamber, they found a lich and small group of Yuan-ti. Alarn hurriedly pointed out that the Handle of Kesh was no longer in his bag, and the lich asked everyone to lay down their souls without a fight, as they'd be losing their lives one way or another. Seleucos responded as he typically would, by attacking one of the Yuan-ti guards, which turned out to be some sort of illusion. The group converged on the lich, and the battle began. By the end of the fight, Alarn's soul had been drained, and the others of the group were on their last legs, but the lich was dead. After looting the body and gaining various magical items, including what could potentially be the Sword of Kesh (with its blade restored), a thorough search of the room was made. The lich's throne turned out to be housing a booby trap, which would cause a massive amount of unholy power to be unleashed, but also generate some sort of portal which would (hopefully) return the adventurers to their home plane. After a successful investigation, Mazelkik discovered that the booby trap was timed and would take place within the next 20 minutes, or could be unleashed right now by throwing a switch. More searching turned up the fact that, if someone happened to be wearing the lich's robes, they would take the full force of the unholy blast, sacrificing themselves to ensure the others' lives.

Not satisfied with this solution, Vesto devised a plan, and after successfully summoning a minor devil, the adventurers forced the lich's robes onto it and threw the switch, blasting it into nothingness and sending the group reeling into unconsciousness. When they all awoke, they found themselves in a field, somewhere in the south-east of Oubliette. After travelling for some time, hoping to find a recognizable landmark, they came across a village beset by a swirling maelstrom of evil, and a single demon flapping around. Nobody felt up to the task of dealing with this, so they retreated and discussed their discovery. Mazelkik spoke up, convinced that the group had somehow been teleported back in time to the period during the reign of the evil lich and massive war spoken of in fable. The group all seemed lost, until Seleucos received a communication from his diety, silent for so long. It insisted that it had a task for the adventurers, and for better or for worse, everyone jumped through the portal of shining light the supposed diety opened up.

The group came out of the portal into a heavily wooded area, filled with fey creatures and plant life. After spotting a cathedral in the distance, they headed towards it, only briefly sidetracked by a group of blue pixies. The cathedral was locked and guarded by a sentient tree, who told the travelers they would only be allowed in after bringing it bark from some "broken tree-folk" residing near a lake to the west. On the way to the lake, the group encountered Akio, a kitsune samurai, apparently sent there for much the same purpose as the group. Despite the language barrier, he joined with the adventurers as they headed to the lake.

There, they were attacked by a treant and a dryad, both seemingly corrupted by the same evil magic from the adventurers' home timeline. Symbols carved into their flesh was eerily reminiscent of the frenzied elves and orcs, and after a brief attempt at communcation, the fight was joined. Some impressive critical hits by Akio brought down the dryad, and Seleucos made short work of the treant soon thereafter. A piece of treant bark was collected, and after some deliberation, the group set out to search for more "broken tree-folks." Vesto encountered a sapling that seemed to be suffering from the same illness as the other treant; after peeling off some bark (and some healing from Mazelkik to satisfy Vesto's conscience) the group returned to the tree at the cathedral.

...Only to be told that they had missed one of the tree-folk back at the lake. The group returned, severed the leg of the dryad, and brought it back to the tree. Apparently satisfied, it unlocked the doors to the cathedral, and the adventurers entered. Confronted by a massive glowing tree, Vesto walked up to it and attempted to communicate. The tree, an avatar of the god Mino, was apparently displeased with Vesto's impetuousness, preferring to speak to Akio. The group learned that they were, in fact, several millenia in the past, sent there to help bring balance to the conflict between the gods and the still-unknown dark forces. Mino granted the adventurers gifts to aid them in their travels, and then sent them back to their home plane with a message that they would find an unlikely alliance.

After arriving in the northern mountains in the middle of a snowstorm, the group was relieved to find that Mino had provided them with cold-weather furs. They set off in the direction of a light, having nowhere else to go, and soon discovered a caravan of dragonkin and orcs, all seemingly militarized and on a mission. Vesto, able to speak draconic, sought out their leader, and after bargaining away their right to bear weapons (to prevent them from being caged), the adventurers were allowed to accompany the caravan, led by dragonkin barbarian Soth. Soth was on his way to meet with another clan, and together they were to battle a nearby frost titan. Torn between getting caught up in someone else's fight, and trusting the god Mino to have told them the truth, the adventurers reluctantly accompanied the dragonkin all the way to the cave where the frost titan was expected to be found.

After some brief scouting by Mazelkik to confirm that the titan was, in fact, present, the dragonkin warriors charged in to the cave, and the adventurers followed. Arriving at the entrance to the cave, they were presented with the sight of an enormous icy giant tearing into the dragonkin/orc army.

The battle with the frost titan went easier than expected; while it mostly decimated Soth's army of dragonkin and orcs, the group managed to deal a pretty significant amount of damage to it in a very short time. It turned out that the creature wasn't actually a frost titan, but a magical construct in the shape of a frost titan. Vesto took it down from the outside with fireballs, while Mazelkik somehow managed to climb inside it and do damage from inside its head. After the battle, the fallen giant ended up crushing Soth and hurting him pretty badly. Seleucos found a bejewled box with a fancy stone artifact inside it, covered in giantish runes and radiating evil magic. After yet another tense standoff between Soth and Seleucos, the group began to traveled back to the dragonkin's camp, where plans were made to visit a shrine to Grumsh. Grumsh, it seems, had a plan that involved setting loose some sort of plague to wipe out all the "non-worthy" from the face of the planet.

After some bargaining with Mazelkik, the party came into possession of several scrolls of Identify Magic. Using one on Seleucos' giantish artifact, they discovered it was essentially an instant-kill item, and into Mazelkik's bag of tricks it went. The party then went to Verity and used three more scrolls on the two rings and sword that he recovered from the lich. One ring proved to be a ring of Force Shield, which was given to Akio, and the other a ring of Wizardry 3, given to Vesto. The sword showed to be a massively evil weapon, mostly useless against evil characters but quite fatal to good ones. The gem on the hilt held a good soul, and the party suddenly realized that their might still exist some hope of bringing Alarn back from the dead.

Vesto didn't trust Verity's overprotectiveness of his amulet, and after Seleucos' mask of Quick Healing spontaneously disintegrated into ashes, Vesto began to suspect that the amulet was to blame. That night, he hatched a plan with Mazelkik to magically keep Verity asleep, pull the amulet out from under his shirt, cast Identify on it, and then put everything back the way it was so he wouldn't be any the wiser come morning. Everything went perfectly according to plan, and the group discovered that the amulet is cursed, causing Verity to become magically obsessed with keeping and protecting it. In addition, it is slowly draining his life force, and issuing commands that he must obey. Since it doesn't seem to be affecting him too severely at the moment, the group decided that it would be best not to confront him about it, instead waiting for the chance to use a Remove Curse spell on him.

The next morning, the group, along with the rest of the dragonkin regiment, began to travel. The trip was mostly uneventful, marked by failed hunting attempts, and a single encounter with a wolverine and two wyrmling white dragons. After about 8 days, they arrived at the dragonkin's main base, which was a decrepit old fort very nearly on the same location as the town Sun Pointe. Full of potentially antagonistic dragonkin and orcs, the group decided to keep their distance, and instead follow Soth and his 5 shamans to their shrine when they set out later that day. Making some trades for more rations (as the group had not had much luck hunting over the previous week or so of travel), they later set out to the location of the shrine, a few hours travel south from the fort. The group was not allowed near the shrine (including Soth, who was merely acting as escort for the shamans), and so after convincing Mazelkik to stay behind and covertly watch (and potentially disrupt, if he got the chance) the shamanistic ritual, the rest of the group travelled back up to the fort, reaching it shortly after nightfall.

Arriving at the fort, the group encountered a scene of total chaos. The fort was on fire and being attacked by groups of large skeletons. After finishing off four of them, the group noticed a large, floating, cloaked figure with what appeared to be skeletal protrusions coming from its back slinging fireballs left and right, utterly decimating the fort. Soth ran up to it to do battle, but was instantly hurled back by a fireball. The group grabbed the unconscious Soth and ran. They decided to head back south towards the shrine, and hopefully meet up with Mazelkik before deciding on a new destination. Remembering that the shaman ritual involved some sort of "blood hunt," they tried to be quiet and careful in the forest around the shrine, not wanting to have to kill any of Soth's compatriots if they could avoid it. It didn't take long, however, before one of the dragonkin found them, and very quickly it became quite clear that the dragonkin was more than it seemed. In the dim light of Akio's foxfire, they could make out a pale complexion, yellow eyes, and fangs. After transforming to a mist and draining the energy from Verity and Seleucos, the dragonkin was confirmed as a vampire.

The vampire was dispatched, and the group paused their search for Mazelkik until morning, taking the chance to rest and not trusting their abilities against vampires in the darkness. In the morning, Soth woke up, and guided them back to the shrine in the forest. In the ritual bowl lay an eyeball and four halfling-sized fingers, and the group immediately began a desperate search for Mazelkik (or his body, at least). It took most of the day, but the group finally found a disfigured, nearly-dead Mazelkik lying facedown in the forest. Quickly pulling some sort of healing potion out of his bag of tricks, he was stabilized and strapped to Seleucos' back. The group of adventurers decided to pick a direction (east-south-east) and just head out, hoping to find some signs of civilization and some clues as to what their next move should be.