The Torchbearers Campaign took place from two years to a year and a half ago, both in game and in real life. We experimented with both Old School Essentials and Basic Fantasy.
Major characters:
Viraessse (Vira) Swallowtail is a high elf who left her arranged groom at the altar to answer the call of the paladin. Gunter Gurstleg is a former highwayman turned to the path of virtue by a paladin’s patience. Ormar Tiller is a halfling guerilla who fought against the Hellstalkers when they laid siege to Varn Lodihr. Moran de Ulliac is a elf wizard school dropout who is, shall we say, safer in the company of three adults than on his own.
In terms of relevant continuity, we begin with a group of adventurers flattering and amusing a powerful white dragon, Thyzaarix. He would watch the party from afar for the rest of the campaign, and after the party member with whom he was in love died, occasionally acted as a secret protector.
The party wizard, Wallace, died beneath the Hollow Oak. Gunter experimented with using water from a life-giving fountain on the remains, but the fountain, having been used once already, laid a curse of anti-life instead. Unbeknownst to the party, the body would animate and stalk them for a time.
The remaining party, which about this time solidified into its current membership, found evidence that the rukkator orcs (the demon-blooded version that lives underground) of the north were preparing for an Earthwetting. This is a sort of agricultural holy war in which the rukkator, who believe only the death of the living returns life force to the soil, descend on the lands of others and kill every living thing they find there.
The party found an ancient shrine where an elf oracle named Valea had foreseen that a rukkator named Drukesh Ironhand would call an Earthwetting to suppress internal conflict for his own purposes. She recorded what she could divine of his support network, leaving the party a hit list. They took the name of the Torchbearers of Valea.
The undead Wallace was eventually possessed by and fused with the the restless spirit of Tethyk of the Thousand Hands, a necromancer-king from the time before the Empire. He became the most exigent threat to both the Torchbearers and, as it would turn out, Ironhand also.
The Torchbearers hunted him to an abandoned manor house with a defiled temple beneath it. They resanctified the temple, but their strike on the manor was foiled at the last moment. For Tethyk had made cause with the White Lady, a powerful undead from distant times who slowly struck dead (that is, level drained) all who looked beneath her veil.
And so it was that the entire party was struck down, but not slain. For Thyzaarix, who from afar had had some benefit of Vira’s redemptive outlook, put out his own eyes that he might tear the manor asunder and save their lives. So he bore them away to the secret fortress of Kothar the Teacher, with whom he made common cause. And so the party awoke, back at level one, except for Vira. She had been transformed into a magical painting before the White Lady started draining levels.
The rest of the party convalesced for a year, while Vira, who was still at the height of her powers, returned to the front. Now the rest of the Torchbearers are on the last leg of their long journey back to rejoin her…
