Under the Bus Campaign Finale
Under the Bus Campaign Finale
The Under the Bus Campaign Finale encompasses the final period of the campaign, from the party's recovery of The Aegisstaff and the prolonged conflict later described as the Dark Times through the canonical resolution of the campaign: the recovery of Thorn's hidden Gift, the defeat of Cain and Filtiarn, the destruction of the spiritual barrier afflicting the world, and the ascension of Thorn Runehammer and Orin-Kel.
This period marks the transition between the events actually played at the table and the ending that was planned but never played.
Source and Canon Status
The finale has three different levels of documentation.
Played and documented: Much of the early finale, including the struggle over the Aegisstaff, the conflict with Cain and Filtiarn, Filtiarn's Fist, the attempted alliance with Toreon, the retreat to the Durran Jungle, and the state of the major characters during the Dark Times, survives in contemporary campaign correspondence.
Played but incompletely documented: The party successfully recovered The Aegisstaff sometime after Journey Beyond the End of the World, but the surviving correspondence does not record how this was accomplished, and the details are no longer remembered. Contemporary correspondence simply resumes with the Aegisstaff already in the party's possession.
Canonical but unplayed: The campaign ceased regular play during the Dark Times. The ultimate destruction of the Aegisstaff, recovery of Thorn's Gift, final defeats of Cain and Filtiarn, destruction of the barrier, and ascensions of Thorn and Orin-Kel were planned but never played at the table. Their major outcomes are established campaign canon, but many details of how those events occurred were never determined.
Recovery of the Aegisstaff
After restoring Jack and fulfilling their bargain with Thorn Runehammer, the party eventually recovered The Aegisstaff.
The exact circumstances of its recovery are unknown.
This is a gap in the surviving campaign record rather than an indication that the recovery did not occur. Contemporary correspondence later resumes with the party already possessing the artifact and attempting to use it against The Werewolf Plague and Filtiarn.
The Aegisstaff immediately became one of the most contested objects in the world.
Cain and the Aegisstaff
Cain learned that the party possessed the Aegisstaff and intended to use it against Filtiarn.
Cain did not consider Filtiarn an ally. Although Cain wanted the staff for his own purposes, he was willing to allow the party an opportunity to weaken or defeat Filtiarn before taking it from them.
Cain captured the ancient elf Toreon and used him as leverage. The party was given until midnight the following day to use the Aegisstaff against Filtiarn, after which they were expected to surrender the staff in exchange for Toreon's life.
Cain also prepared a second means of ensuring the party's cooperation.
While Jack was keeping watch over the isolated party leader, Cain and his allies secretly placed Jack under magical control. Jack was compelled to spy upon the party and report their plans to Cain while otherwise behaving normally.
The party succeeded in interfering with Filtiarn's attempted rise to godhood but did not eliminate the threat. They also had no intention of willingly surrendering the Aegisstaff to Cain.
The resulting confrontation became one of the last major battles actually played during the campaign.
The Battle with Cain
Cain's forces eventually succeeded in pursuing and destroying Smah Tepants's Red Dragon Effigy, which had been carrying the Aegisstaff.
Cain gained possession of the artifact.
He then made the mistake of returning to the party to gloat.
The party took advantage of Cain's vanity and recovered the Aegisstaff from him. They succeeded in driving away the undead forces, but the victory did not end the conflict.
Instead, it marked the beginning of a prolonged struggle against both Cain and Filtiarn.
The battle was enormously destructive to the party's resources. Cain's followers increasingly employed tactics designed specifically to destroy their magical equipment, while other enemies concentrated on sundering weapons and armor.
The party eventually hid many of their most important possessions and distributed others among trusted allies simply to keep them from being destroyed.
Jack, deeply ashamed of what he had done while magically compelled by Cain, eventually left the party. He remained alive and could occasionally be contacted magically, but refused to explain where he had gone or what he was doing.
The Dark Times
The world increasingly divided into competing spheres of control.
Cain and his undead dominated the west from the necropolis of Menasta. Toreon and the Church of Demmazon controlled much of the north. Filtiarn's forces controlled much of the south and southeast. The party and its elven allies were increasingly driven toward the east and far east.
The party was attacked almost constantly.
Outside settled areas, they faced undead and werewolves. Within cities, they faced Church bounty hunters seeking the Aegisstaff as well as hostility toward their elven allies and followers of gods other than Demmazon.
The recurring phenomenon known as Filtiarn's Fist made the situation even worse. During each full moon, the world was plunged into unnatural darkness beneath the image of the gauntleted fist, giving the forces of Filtiarn and Cain additional freedom to operate.
The conflict had become a war of attrition.
The Failed Alliance with Toreon
The party attempted to create an alliance between its elven allies and Samos's Toreon against the common threats of Cain and Filtiarn.
The effort failed.
The Edict of Unification Under One God had become too deeply entrenched within Toreon. Nonhumans and followers of other gods were met with suspicion and sometimes outright violence.
The Church also refused to compromise over the Aegisstaff.
Samos demanded that the artifact be surrendered to the Church.
Before relations completely collapsed, the party used the Aegisstaff to cure most of the plague within Toreon. They were eventually forced to flee the city while some of Samos's most capable bounty hunters pursued them in an effort to recover the staff.
Retreat to the Durran Jungle
Unable to remain safely within the settled lands, the party led its elven allies far to the east into the dangerous Durran Jungle.
The jungle became their principal base of operations.
From there, the party and its allies conducted guerrilla attacks against the forces of both Cain and Filtiarn.
The Aegisstaff was kept constantly moving. Its own protections made magical divination against the artifact difficult, and the party further protected it by repeatedly changing both its location and the person carrying it.
Other factions continued fighting as well.
The Dark Elves who had occupied the lands abandoned by the elves around Seratollia fiercely defended their newly won territory against Filtiarn's forces, inadvertently creating a buffer between the party and the werewolf armies.
The Knights of Demmazon finally broke openly from Toreon and the Church. Although they did not formally join the party, they began conducting their own guerrilla campaign against Cain and Filtiarn.
The Sunchaser eventually returned from its extended voyage and reunited with the surviving Chosen at the Tower of Plinth. The Tower was fortified, although both it and the Sunchaser were used cautiously because neither could afford to become the target of a concentrated enemy assault.
The War Against Cain
Cain established his power in the west, with Menasta transformed into a necropolis.
His expansion eventually slowed.
The Church began sanctifying territory threatened by the undead and blessing corpses to prevent their reanimation. Cain was also spending enormous resources attempting to destroy the party and recover the Aegisstaff.
The continual fighting depleted even the resources necessary for maintaining his undead armies.
Cain remained extraordinarily dangerous, but his attempt to expand indefinitely across the world had stalled.
The War Against Filtiarn
The Aegisstaff proved extremely effective against The Werewolf Plague.
Although isolated outbreaks continued, the combination of the staff, local clerics, and healers nearly eliminated the disease as a means of mass-producing werewolves.
This created a serious problem for Filtiarn.
Most of the werewolves created through the plague could not themselves transmit lycanthropy. With the disease suppressed, the rapid expansion of Filtiarn's armies slowed dramatically.
His followers changed tactics.
Rather than simply transforming entire populations, they occupied settlements and attempted to force the inhabitants to worship Filtiarn. Those who resisted could be killed, fed to the wolves, or deliberately transformed by followers capable of transmitting the curse directly.
This gave Filtiarn control over additional territory, but that control was considerably less stable.
The party exploited that weakness through guerrilla raids: eliminating local leaders, encouraging resistance, and attempting to inspire occupied communities to rebel.
Filtiarn sometimes retaliated by destroying entire settlements.
The Allies During the Dark Times
The prolonged war changed the roles of many of the party's allies.
Marcus assumed an increasingly important leadership role within The Chosen. With Quentin too old to lead actively in the field, Marcus trained recruits and increasingly carried the organization's military responsibilities.
Brance became an important liaison between the party and its elven allies, eventually becoming closely integrated into their leadership.
Malachi left the party to join the Knights of Demmazon, believing that he could help rebuild the fractured order into an effective force for good.
Orinder became an increasingly important target. His unique ability to restore the dead had become widely known, and both Cain and Filtiarn began concentrating more of their efforts upon him.
The attention damaged Orinder's already fragile confidence. He increasingly tried to minimize his own importance and distance himself from those who regarded him as a prophet or messianic figure.
His relationship with Kelestaria also suffered. Their reunion after months apart was initially joyful, but Orinder increasingly believed that he was not worthy of her and began distancing himself from her.
Demetrius, meanwhile, became quiet and melancholy after his own death and restoration by Orinder. He continued to appear as though he was experiencing visions, but increasingly refused to discuss them.
The End of the Played Campaign
Regular play never resumed after the Dark Times.
The campaign had already become increasingly difficult to maintain as players moved away and people's lives changed. The final Dark Times recap became the last substantial record of the campaign as it was actually played.
The remaining events were intended to bring the campaign's major storylines to their conclusion.
Those events are canon, but the following sections represent the planned ending rather than played sessions.
The Canonical Ending
Destruction of the Aegisstaff
Eventually, the competing factions seeking The Aegisstaff converged.
The party was simultaneously confronted by forces associated with the Gauntlet of the Moon, Cain's armies, agents of the Church of Demmazon, and others seeking possession of the artifact.
A tremendous battle followed.
During the conflict, the Aegisstaff was broken into pieces.
The destruction of the staff apparently eliminated the party's best weapon against the spreading plagues and left the heroes without an obvious means of ending the crisis.
The Aegisstaff was not completely erased, however. Fragments of the artifact survived, retaining small portions of its original power. At least one such fragment survived into the modern era and eventually came into the possession of Marstalbin, where it remained in his treasure vault until recovered by adventurers millennia later.
The exact abilities retained by the surviving fragments have not yet been established.
Thorn's Secret
With the Aegisstaff destroyed, Thorn Runehammer finally revealed the secret he had kept since the Korvak War.
Thorn had never truly returned his Gift to Demmazon.
After the war, he had hidden it beneath the Temple to Demmazon in ancient Aegea and allowed the world to believe that it had been returned to their god.
The Gift had remained there through the Age of Wonders, the Fall, the destruction of Aegea, and the flooding of its ruins.
Now it represented the heroes' remaining hope.
Kelestaria's Sacrifice
Recovering Thorn's Gift required returning to the submerged ruins of Aegea and penetrating the magical protections surrounding it.
The precise details of the expedition were never established.
What is known is that Kelestaria was required to sacrifice herself in order to overcome the final protections and allow the Gift to be recovered.
She died through a death effect.
Orinder attempted to use his unique ability to restore her, but it failed. His power functioned as Raise Dead, and therefore could not return someone killed in that manner.
Orinder was devastated by her death and entered a state approaching catatonia.
Kelestaria's sacrifice nevertheless allowed Thorn to reclaim the Gift he had hidden thousands of years earlier.
Cain and Filtiarn
With the recovered Gift, Thorn and the heroes were finally able to overcome the principal forces that had brought about the Dark Times, including Cain, Filtiarn, and the corrupt leadership of the Church of Demmazon.
The precise battles and sequence of these confrontations were never played and are not fully documented.
Cain
Cain was defeated, but he was not destroyed.
His evil essence was sealed within a sarcophagus.
That distinction became important in later history. Cain's tomb survived into the era of the Steve campaign, where it was guarded by Magdala.
Magdala had volunteered for the task following the events of Under the Bus. Millennia spent in proximity to Cain's imprisoned evil eventually distorted her, with consequences that would not become apparent until that later campaign.
Stegner and Filtiarn
The conspiracy surrounding Filtiarn was ultimately traced back to Stegner.
Stegner had survived his apparent death and had been responsible for the effort to bring Filtiarn back. His actions were rooted in his interpretation of Pythia's Prophecies, particularly the prophecy concerning a new god arising from among The Chosen.
Stegner believed that prophecy referred to himself.
By the final confrontation, Stegner had become Filtiarn and had progressed far enough toward ascension that even Thorn, wielding the recovered Gift, could not simply kill him.
Instead, Thorn imprisoned him.
The method echoed the ancient solution used against the seemingly indestructible Korvak Leader: an enemy who could not safely be destroyed was instead removed and contained.
Filtiarn's imprisonment ended his immediate threat but did not necessarily eliminate the possibility of his eventual return.
The Greater Problem
Defeating Cain and Filtiarn did not solve everything.
The heroes eventually discovered that the plague outbreaks and the growing inability to restore the dead were symptoms of a deeper supernatural problem.
When Demmazon separated his realm from the mortal world during the Fall of the Age of Wonders, a barrier had formed that interfered with the normal passage of spiritual energy.
Souls were becoming trapped.
They could neither properly pass into the afterlife nor return to their bodies through resurrection magic.
The trapped spiritual energy was also empowering the supernatural plagues afflicting the world.
At the time, the heroes could speculate about who might have created such a barrier. The true cause was Marstalbin.
When the ancient heroes destroyed the prison that held Demmazon, Marstalbin's final countermeasure was triggered. Spiritual energy infused into the prison became a trap, and when Demmazon separated his realm from the world, that trap manifested as the barrier.
The crisis facing the heroes therefore reached all the way back to the final moments of the Age of Wonders.
The Need for Ascension
Even possession of the Gift was insufficient to destroy the barrier.
Thorn would have to do what Correries and the other mortals at the end of the Age of Wonders had done:
He would have to absorb its power and ascend.
Even that might not be enough.
Orinder represented the crucial exception to the barrier. Despite the worldwide failure of resurrection magic, his unique Chosen ability had continued to allow him to restore the dead.
The heroes realized that Orinder's power could create the opening Thorn needed to break the barrier.
But Orinder remained devastated by Kelestaria's death and was in no condition to willingly shoulder such a responsibility.
A solution was devised.
Thorn would divide the Gift's power. He would absorb part himself while channeling the remainder through Orinder. Orinder would act as a conduit, allowing Thorn to combine the Gift's power with Orinder's unique ability and break the barrier.
Orin-Kel
The plan did not unfold exactly as expected.
Once the Gift's power began flowing through him, Orinder recognized another possibility.
Rather than merely serving as Thorn's conduit, he redirected part of that power toward Kelestaria's trapped spirit.
Orinder and Kelestaria were fused into a single divine being:
The prophecy that had driven so much of the conflict was fulfilled—but not in the way Stegner had believed.
The new god arising from the Chosen was Orinder.
And Orinder did not ascend alone.
Thorn's Ascension
At the same time, Thorn absorbed his portion of the Gift and completed his own ascension.
As a god, Thorn Runehammer finally possessed the power necessary to destroy the spiritual barrier.
The barrier collapsed.
Souls could once again pass normally into the afterlife.
Resurrection magic could once again return souls to their bodies.
The supernatural conditions that had empowered the plagues were broken.
The underlying crisis that had driven the final years of the campaign was finally ended.
The End of the Dark Times
With Cain sealed away, Filtiarn imprisoned, the corrupt leadership of the Church defeated, the spiritual barrier destroyed, and the plague crisis broken, the period later remembered as the Dark Times came to an end.
Thorn and Orin-Kel ascended beyond the restored boundary to join the existing gods.
Their ascensions increased the pantheon from seven gods created or present at the end of the Age of Wonders to the nine gods of the later world:
The world that emerged from the Under the Bus era was therefore permanently changed.
The campaign began roughly a century after the catastrophe that ended the Age of Wonders.
It ended with the consequences of that catastrophe finally being confronted—and with two new gods rising from among those who had inherited its broken world.
Legacy
The finale established several pieces of history that continued into later campaigns:
- The Aegisstaff was broken, but fragments retaining portions of its power survived into later eras.
- Cain remained in existence, imprisoned within a sarcophagus rather than destroyed.
- Magdala became the guardian of Cain's prison, with consequences that would emerge millennia later.
- Filtiarn was imprisoned rather than permanently destroyed, leaving open the possibility of his return.
- The Werewolf Plague was suppressed but would reappear in later history.
- Thorn became the god of the dwarves.
- Orinder and Kelestaria became the single divine entity Orin-Kel.
- The spiritual barrier created as the final consequence of Marstalbin's ancient plot was destroyed.
- Normal passage of souls and resurrection were restored.
- The pantheon of the later world reached its current complement of nine gods.
The Under the Bus campaign thus ended not simply with the defeat of its immediate enemies, but with the resolution of consequences stretching back through the Fall of the Age of Wonders and ultimately to the ancient conflict surrounding Demmazon, Marstalbin, and The Five Gifts.
