SATURDAY, MARCH 28TH - MASTER AND APPRENTICE CAMPAIGN 1 : SESSION 9 RECAP
Aldor’s Journal - Entry 9
Short trip to the Dale. Maybe one day I’ll be back…when kobolds fly.
We felt it then — camp tense, smoke already blooming from the bomb I’d rolled at my feet as frost‑shrouded shapes pressed forward through obscurity. Giants. Frost giants, pushing into our space with the confidence of creatures that have never needed permission.
I was already setting angles — escape routes, blind spots — when Cullen stepped forward.
I still don’t know what he said. The words sounded like dwarven, maybe something older, heavier in the chest. Whatever it was, it worked. The giants slowed. One spoke his name aloud.
The Lightbringer.
That alone changed everything.
They weren’t here to claim blood, just borders. Cullen made it clear we meant no insult to their hunting grounds. Odwin and Freda rode past them stiffly, hands tight on reins. We followed. No violence. No challenge.
Just the unmistakable feeling that Cullen had turned what should have been our grave into a scar to our ego we’d carry instead.
A dodged blade still counts as living.
As we made ground, stories came easier — maybe because the threat had passed, maybe because some truths don’t feel dangerous when spoken softly.
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Cullen, Freda, Odwin, and their other friend not with us - Amund, grew up together in Goodmead. Same age. Same fires, same songs. Odwin finally said out loud what Cullen and Freda never would — they’ve been circling each other for years, bound by more than friendship. Odwin, fisherman’s son and heir to the largest fleet in Goodmead (a whole 3 ships!). Amund, son of the owner of the meadery in town, who was renown even south of the spine, wealthy and grounded. Cullen’s parents — a scrimshaw artist of the sea and a priestess of Lathander, healer and moral spine of the town.
When Auril’s shadow fell, other towns sacrificed their own to survive. Goodmead refused.
Cullen’s deeds helped keep the people of the Dale who had not yet fallen hopeful, and in his absence, his mother’s faith helped keep Goodmead healthy and in good spirits. When the destruction came anyway, Cullen helped get the people to caves and far from Goodmead, which saved lives. The town burned, but the people lived to rebuild.
Later, when dwarves from Kelvin’s Cairn never came to fight Auril — gates sealed, village abandoned — Cullen went to learn why. He found silence instead.
Four years he’s wandered since then, helping the Ten‑Towns stitch themselves back together. He spoke too of a fallen Netherese tower on a glacier — checked once, marked for later. And of the lake serpent called “Mother”, clever and kind to him, who holds a necklace dear to his past. Also, he oddly mentioned “Icingdeath”…which I think he hinted at being one in the same as the somewhat legendary white dragon that patrols the west coast of the Dale. How quickly he covered it, as if it wasn’t a dragon, makes me fear Cullen more than the dragon frankly…
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Finally, back south of the Spine, fire crackling low, Cade took second watch.
He heard it first.
Javelins screamed out of the dark before Odwin ever noticed. One glanced wide. One hit hard.
Ogres.
Odwin answered with an arrow that buried into thick hide. Cade moved like a hammer falling — two hands around his warhammer of the aesir, flame erupting as it struck. Freda tangled their advance with living vines. Cullen called down radiant fire, marking one beast in holy light.
I put steel into that glow — both daggers sinking deep — but the thing kept coming.
They tore free of the vines. Odwin missed his next shot. Cade crushed the first ogre’s skull flat.
Sleep still clung to me — I missed my next strike entirely. One ogre closed on Freda, smashed her hard enough to have her reeling. Cullen roared with anger and ended the beast with a mighty blow from his hammer that seemed to shake the very ground.
Another rushed Cade. I vanished into shadow and opened its back. Ukalis’ magic tore into it. Freda struck with her staff. It answered by nearly breaking Cade in half.
Cullen finished it with a perfect blow — bone snapping, leg folding wrong. Cade’s hammer burned the rest away in the light, which seemed to glimmer the shimmering snow under its light. Cades hear dimmed back to normal, and Cullen laid his hands on Cade to heal his wounds enough to get some rest.
The ogres’ lair offered little — bones, dried meat, the husk of old adventurers’ hope. Some coin. A wand Ukalis later identified — detection magic, that’ll come in handy.
Mirabar came and went quickly. Axebeaks returned per Cullen’s word. Horses rented after. Roads taken. Blackford’s Crossing, then south again, nice to be back where the inns have food you can recognize...
Cade hunted when he could. I was able to brew some salves. Healing and Poison resistance. Small comforts.
When Neverwinter’s walls finally showed themselves on the horizon, Melania answered my call via our speaking stones, and met us in some ruins outside of the city.
We didn’t enter openly.
She made us ghosts.
Night sight flowed into my eyes as she tied us together with rope — single file, silent. We slipped past a Neverember patrol talking about some quarry north of the city (surely not us…). Found the culvert beneath the gatehouse. The lock wasn’t even set — telling.
Sewers welcomed us like an old enemy.
Gelatinous cube — small, thankfully — passed without incident. Steel rungs led us up into an abandoned warehouse. A safehouse.
Doors locked and then subsequently mage‑locked. Trapdoor down into a crawlspace, then into sleeping quarters no one would find unless they already knew.
Torches flared to life at Melania’s gesture.
Here, at last, we rested.
We left Cullen with Melania’s sending stone — a line into the dark city. A quiet promise that when the Lightbringer steps back into the open, it will be on our terms.
Until then, I sharpen blades and watch shadows from the adjoining warehouse, keeping guard over what could be this cities last hope. Melania offered a temporal connection so we could communicate without the stones. For the first time in a while, we were back “home”, if home was a city that thought you were dead, and run by a king, and a secretive bunch of mages trying to kill you and your friends. But all of that is normal for the crew of the shoppe formerly known as Odds and Ends - Mystic bits and baubles.
Until next time, keep your sword arm free, and eyes on the dark corners of…The Maze.
