Session summaries and the ongoing story of our campaign. Updated after each session from transcripts.
The party assembles in Kyparissos, a small fishing village on the western coast of the Peloponnese. A Phoenician trading vessel has brought strangers to the island — strangers who will soon find that this quiet village holds secrets older than the palaces of Mycenae.
The party arrived on Kyparissos by Phoenician ship alongside the poet-philosopher Kairos, who had come to visit one of the last remaining oracles in Apollo's sacred cypress grove — notable because King Nestor felled the island's other trees to build ships for the Trojan War.
After introducing themselves to the village, the party took on two investigations in quick succession. A report of a monster sighting at an olive grove led them to discover a sick satyr, whom they brought to the village healer Hypatia. They then helped investigate a missing fishing boat — rescuing injured villagers in the process — and during the recovery stumbled onto a strange, magically-influenced rock formation jutting from the sea. Lysandra collected a sample for later analysis.
The party headed north to gather healing herbs for the ailing satyr Selenus, finding a clifftop meadow with what they needed — and a sea cave below drawing a suspicious number of circling vultures. Descending on ropes, Lysandra and Lore explored the cave while the others held the clifftop.
Inside, a giant vulture was guarding something, and smaller vultures began swarming in from outside. Heka put the giant to sleep with a well-placed cast; Calliope dropped one swooping vulture with a javelin throw from the clifftop; Taurocles finished another off with a brutal longsword strike; and Lysandra cleaned up the rest. The cave held a makeshift altar dedicated to Set — the Egyptian god of chaos — with badly spelled hieroglyphics on the wall and the remains of a sacrificed sheep. Heka consecrated the defiled space. Tracks near the cave were roughly a day old, left by a normal-sized human.
Back in the village, the party tied together several threads: Selenus had been cursed by poisoned wine from an amphora traced to the Cycladic islands, and a nervous teenager named Melas — son of the potter Kleomenes — appeared connected to the sloppy Set sacrifice. Phaedra, the harbor dockmaster, rewarded the party with 100 silver pieces for rescuing her crew.
The party returned the herbs to Hypatia. Selenus is recovering and, grateful for the help, wants to make amends with Doros, the olive farmer whose youngest daughter was terrified when the satyr appeared as a shadow with horns in the night. Hypatia sent the party off with a jar of Keoghos Ointment — three doses, each healing 2d8+2 HP and curing the poisoned condition.
The Phoenician traders departed that morning, Kairos among them. He told Lysandra briefly that the Sacred Grove was in good shape and that he felt heard. Downtime followed: Lysandra worked the forge at Alexios's smithy smelting bronze, and began designing an air pump for underwater exploration of the rock formation. Meanwhile, Heka and Kir Avun visited Kleomenes the potter, with Heka quietly probing Melas for signs of unusual activity. The party later gathered at the agora, where Theron and a shepherd shared island history and word of Raiders on the coast.
Then smoke rose from the direction of the Pylos ruins — long abandoned. The party investigated and found cultists of Set conducting a ritual: a bull bound and restrained while priests quenched hot iron weapons in its blood, chanting "iron and blood." Calliope, Lysandra, and Taurocles cut through the cultists and the party pulled back. Everyone leveled up.
Open threads: the Set cult is active and working iron through blood ritual; Melas remains suspicious; the chthonic rock Zosimos identified as coming from deep within the earth is still unexplained; Selenus seeks reconciliation with Doros. Lysandra will be absent for the next two sessions.
The party started the day with a swim and a mysterious errand: Evan heard the voice of Zosimos in their head, requesting "clean clay" from beneath the sign of the bee at the northern cliffs. Following old Minoan-era trails, they found a clay pit near a beehive, dug out the purest clay they could manage, and delivered it to Zosimos — who inspected it, asked if they'd sifted it, and closed the door without another word.
With that settled, the party visited Hypatia and found Selenus recovering well. They escorted the satyr to Doros's olive grove, where he confessed to raiding the trees while cursed and drunk. Doros, pragmatic as ever, told Selenus he could make amends by helping with farmwork once he was well enough — starting with a broken wall. Thalia, Doros's 15-year-old daughter and self-appointed farm manager, gave the party a jug of fresh olive oil and a small box of coins as thanks. The party tried to refuse the money, eventually proposing to invest it back into the farm.
Concerned about raiders targeting isolated families like Doros's, the party sought out Theron and found him conferring with Philippos, the old shepherd. They shared what they'd witnessed at Pylos — the bull sacrifice, the priests of Set and Ares, the iron-quenching ritual. Theron revealed he was already quietly building defenses but asked the party to investigate a new problem: the priest Kleitos had reported strange signs near the Sacred Grove of Apollo.
At the grove, Kleitos showed them dead sparrows scattered outside the boundary — Apollo's sacred birds, dead without a mark, as if killed by fright alone. Branches reaching beyond the grove's edge were covered in dead leaves, the decay creeping closer each night. Kleitos asked the party to stand watch with him after dark.
That night, half an hour after moonset, the darkness outside the grove coalesced into humanoid shapes whispering in Old Greek: "light fades" and "darkness is rising." Kleitos stepped out to confront them, and the fight was on. Heka's fairy fire illuminated one creature, Taurocles laid into it with divine smite, and Lore's radiant arrow dissipated another. Kleitos took necrotic damage that left him gaunt and weakened, but the party cleared the remaining shadows. As the last one dissolved, it whispered: "More will come. The iron god rises. Apollo's light dims."
Open threads: the shadows attacking the grove are a new escalation; Kleitos is badly weakened; the "iron god" warning echoes the cult activity at Pylos; Melas and the Set altar remain unresolved; Zosimos has his clay but his intentions are unknown.
Dawn found Kleitos still drained from the shadow fight, but determined. He led the party in a cleansing ritual for the grove: three circuits of the boundary laying sacred oil, blessed water, and cleansing salt, followed by personal offerings to Apollo. Leland offered a braid of hair, Heka pledged an oath through Anubis, and the others gave drops of blood. When Kleitos lit the offering shell, the flame burned impossibly bright — and the party shared a vision: the grove surrounded by enemies carrying iron weapons, flames and violence pressing in, while inside the shrine a bronze hand mirror blazed with divine light and an old woman's hands reached for it.
The vision faded and they found themselves in the presence of Melantha, the blind prophetess, who thanked them for their service and granted them shelter within the grove. Apollo's blessing settled over the party — each choosing a boon for the coming week. By morning, the night sounds had returned to the grove. Whatever darkness had been pressing in was held at bay, for now.
Back in the village, Theron asked the party to escort Kleomenes the potter on his regular trade run to the coastal village of Koroni. They loaded the boat with pottery, packed olives, and wool cloth, and sailed out with the evening tide — running dark, no lights, oars muffled with sailcloth after spotting a brightly lit vessel they chose to avoid.
Two hours after dawn, they reached Koroni. Smoke still hung in the air. The village had been sacked days earlier by fifty or sixty attackers carrying iron weapons and wearing Egyptian-style armor. The dead were mostly elders; the young had been taken captive. Houses were ransacked, boats burned or scuttled, and the shrine to Demeter desecrated — her effigy toppled, the altar stained with blood, and the symbol of Set painted in the doorway. A formal curse by a priest of Set was inscribed around the well: "Set conquers all."
The party found four survivors in a root cellar beneath a burned house: Nikos, Lissa, their daughter Arasmia, and an orphaned infant in poor condition. Lissa told them the attackers had been searching for the "hero shield" — the lion pelt of a hero named Deoticos, blessed by Athena to turn aside any blow. A priest in black robes had said they needed to "blind the war maiden." Lissa's mother died protecting the secret of its location.
The party buried the dead in a communal grave, placing coins for the ferryman. They cleaned Demeter's shrine and mended her broken effigy. They gave the survivors what money and goods they could spare, loaded the family onto the boat — dumping Kleomenes's trade cargo overboard to make room and avoid leading the raiders back — and sailed for home.
Open threads: the conspiracy is raiding villages for divine artifacts; the "hero shield" blessed by Athena is still hidden somewhere near Koroni; the attackers took captives inland — where?; the curse on Koroni's well needs to be lifted; the vision of enemies surrounding the grove with iron weapons feels increasingly prophetic.
The party returned to Karasos in the small hours, finding the village already changed. Stakes angled toward the harbor, barriers across the approaches — Theron had been busy. Kleomenes offered the survivors from Koroni a place in his home rather than the drafty old warehouse, and the party collapsed into a long-overdue rest.
Morning revealed a village preparing for war. Able-bodied folk carried long sticks toward the pastures, and the old shepherd Philippos had conscripted everyone who could hold a spear. He was drilling them in shield wall formation — each person's shield defending the person beside them — using a wool-stuffed sheep dummy for practice. When the party arrived, Philippos put them straight to work as the opposing force. One villager couldn't grasp the fighting at all but turned out to be fast on their feet; Lore gave them two small pouches — ball bearings and caltrops — and sent them to help Hypatia instead.
Theron interrupted the training with an urgent task. A stranger had washed up on the south shore and was now at Hypatia's, raving. The party found Damisos — a sailor, barely conscious, clothes shredded, with a thousand-yard stare and matted hair crusted with salt and blood. His story came out in fragments: his cargo ship had been rammed and broken apart by vessels with strangely shaped bows. The attackers pulled survivors from the water, bound them, and forced them to row in darkness.
But it was the figure leading them that chilled the room. Enormous — impossibly tall — wearing a bronze bearded mask, with hands that glowed like metal fresh from the forge. When this figure touched weapons, they seemed to drink in the light. Damisos recalled the figure declaring that "the old gods were broken tools" and that he was "making new ones." Behind the mask, there appeared to be only one eye. The attackers' priests were terrified of him.
A closer examination of Damisos revealed more than malnourishment and rope burns. Concealed beneath his torn trousers was a deep, infected wound in his leg — and buried inside it, the head of an iron nail. The party extracted it while Damisos screamed. Heka's healing closed the flesh but couldn't touch the sickness spreading from the wound.
The nail bore markings — sacred glyphs of Hephaestus, god of the forge, engraved through precise hand forging. The party identified it as doubly cursed: transmutation and necromancy woven together, designed to poison and kill a living host within about a week. But that wasn't the worst of it. The nail was also a magical attractor — a loadstone that would draw something, or someone, toward the person carrying it. The group realized with cold certainty that Damisos had been released on purpose. He was bait.
They brought the nail to Zosimos, who dissolved substances from its surface using powders and wine, weighed it on delicate scales, and breathed on it until glowing shapes floated free. He confirmed the Hephaestus connection and demonstrated the nail's magnetic pull on iron fragments, but confessed that the magic binding it was beyond what he could fully understand or destroy. The party also showed him the iron sickles recovered from the Pylos cultists — Zosimos identified them as barely magical, tainted with the same necromantic corruption: wounds from them would fester, and crops harvested with them would rot.
Hipatia added one more detail. When Damisos was first brought in, delirious, he had rambled about "dead men rowing," "the iron singing," and figures in black and red robes bearing a symbol of two snakes devouring each other.
The party debated using the nail as bait for an ambush — luring scouts to the sea cave where Selenus had sheltered — but Theron and Zosimos counseled against it. If the enemy sent an army instead of scouts, the village wasn't ready. In the end, the party decided on disposal: sail south with Fedra, well away from the fishing grounds and the ruins of Pylos, and drop the nail into deep water. Fedra agreed, on the condition they stay clear of the northeast. She offered to show them a rock formation Lore had been wanting to investigate along the way. The expedition would take about half a day.
Open threads: the bronze-masked figure with one eye and glowing hands — a cleric of Hephaestus? an automaton? something worse?; the nail's "second part" implies someone holds the other end of the tracker; "dead men rowing" and the symbol of two snakes eating each other are new pieces of the conspiracy; the iron sickles share the same necromantic signature as the nail; Lysandra's mysterious rock formation may finally get a closer look; the village is arming up but time is running short.
The party set sail southwest with Phaedra to dispose of the cursed nail in deep water. The sea went unnervingly calm — smooth as glass — and Phaedra climbed the mast, scanning nervously. A dark shape passed beneath the hull. Moments later, a tentacle lashed out at Heka. On its second pass, the creature grabbed Heka and dragged them under.
What followed was a frantic fight half above, half below the waterline. Calliope hurled javelins from the deck. Taurocles dove in with his longsword and struck the creature at close range. Lysandra jumped in after Heka and used Shape Water to wedge the tentacle open, while Heka — unable to cast with verbal components underwater — struggled to break free. Kir Avun ended it with a well-placed Sleep spell, dropping the creature mid-grapple. Taurocles wrenched Heka loose and shoved them toward the surface.
But Calliope's follow-up javelin — an automatic critical on the unconscious creature — woke it. It erupted in a cloud of ink and vanished. Phaedra identified it as a thalosaur, a deep-water predator known for pulling sailors off boats, and told the party they were lucky to be alive. They reached the disposal site without further incident and dropped the cursed nail into the abyss.
Back in Kyparissos, the village continued its transformation. Young villagers were training in the agora — hurling sand-filled balls, swinging heavy wooden clubs, carrying sheep across their shoulders for strength. Ekka joined the exercises. Over dinner, the Archon laid out the next mission: scout the nearby coastal towns to learn which still stood, which had been hit, and who might rally to Kyparissos. He gave the party a clay tablet stamped with his seal — a ram's head, a boat, and a cypress tree — to serve as introduction and authority.
They departed at dawn with the fishing boats and sailed north, passing the ruins of Pylos at a cautious distance. Half a day brought them to Asini — and the same story as Koroni. Buildings hacked apart and still smoldering, overwhelming force, the elderly slaughtered and the young taken. The temple of Demeter had been torn to pieces: the altar cracked, the statue pulled down and smashed, and curse markings scratched into the ground around the rubble. But this time, the raiders had been searching for something specific — an ancient sickle said to be blessed by Demeter.
Three survivors hid in the hills above town: Marin, an old fisherman; Irene, a young woman; and Actis, a teenage boy nursing a badly infected leg wound. Marin confirmed the attackers were led by a priest in black robes. He knew Kyparissos and agreed to come. Ekka healed Actis's leg with Cure Wounds, and the boy — wide-eyed at the magic — swore he wanted to fight the people who killed his family.
With the next village, Cardamyle, a full day's sail away, the party beached on an isolated stretch of coast and made camp — no fire, watches posted. The precautions weren't enough. During the second watch, a giant hyena and her two cubs hit the camp in a surprise attack, mauling Kir Avun before anyone could react. Kir Avun's Thunderwave killed one cub and rattled the mother; Ekka put the giant hyena to sleep. It woke when Lore landed a critical hit, and the beast savaged the still-sleeping Calliope before the party brought it down — Lore's final shot dropping it for good. The old fisherman Marin butchered the hyenas by firelight, and the group ate gamy hyena meat for breakfast before pushing off toward Cardamyle.
Open threads: the conspiracy is systematically raiding villages for divine artifacts — Athena's hero shield at Koroni, Demeter's blessed sickle at Asini; the priest in black robes appears at every attack; captives are being taken inland for unknown purposes; Cardamyle and the third village remain to be scouted; the thalosaur encounter raises questions about what else stirs in the deep water near the nail's resting place.