Main Quest

There have been a few bad harvest seasons all across Eondyn and the price of food is higher than it has been in generations. Poorer areas especially suffer hunger due to not being able to afford food. In the meanwhile farmers suffer as land lords claim grain and goods to keep themselves fed and capitals issue higher quotas for grain in order to stock their reserves. As food is getting scarcer and more expensive, hunger grows and with it the desperation of the common people, driving the most unfortunate to acts they would normally condemn.

Everywhere across the continent, here and there leaves are starting to turn yellow and wither. Some areas grain doesn't grow stalk past foots length and fruit shrivel before ripening, some areas the harvest is adequate but less than what is considered normal. Some blame the gods while others blame neighbouring kingdoms and sinister plots. The main story is divided between the human kingdoms of Enessia, Ilarora, Taem'an and Ossharis. All plot threads can be picked up in Aldrose as rumours or adventurer's guild postings. Story parts of the main questline achieved by completing an area:

Aldrose: functions as a starting point to venture towards any of the other kingdoms. All the plotlines concerning the main story can be picked up from here. There however are no answers or shortcuts provided here to further the main quest.

Illarora

There is no hunger in all of Ilaroran sub-contintent, people are well fed, food is local and affordable. People seem healthy happy and content. This is due to a ritual upheld by local magical authority working under the Ilaroran king. This ritual imbues the people and nature of the subcontinent with health, effect similar to the spell False Life, but on a much larger scale and effect. Excluded from this effect are any and all elves. The material cost of the ritual is the magical blood of the elven kind. As a result, oppression and genocide of the elven people is widespread, going as far as to paying slavers hefty sums of money to kidnap elves even outside the Ilaroran sub-continent. Money that comes from selling food to other kingdoms with premium prices. Ending this ritual, ends the spell effect and the withering takes fast effect on all of Ilarora. The people revert back to their normal states. People with underlying sicknesses return to being sick and so on. Crops starts to wither and here and there trees meet the unnatural fall, yellowing their leaves. As a result, hunger overtakes Ilarora and the kingdom can no longer export food to neighboring kingdoms, worsening the hunger everywhere. Knowledge of the ritual was gained from the master of Dawnhall.

Osharis

Osharis is ravaged by the withering. Their winters long, summers short and the ground hard, the withering has killed most all crops they would cultivate. They have been left to hunt and fish for whatever they can, but the withering is also affecting animals and game is getting scarcer. As a result, the hard men of the north have mobilized their manpower and are actively pushing south while vying for the Dwarves to ally themselves with the Osharian effort to break through in to Enessian lands.

Players can enlist to to aid the war effort as mercenaries from Aldrose where there are always more troops mobilizing to head north. The goal is to dismantle the Osharisian war-effort by any means necessary. Following a military train will take them to the battlefield in the Totoknor Valley where Enessian troops are holding the Osharisian troops at bay. The front is harsh, with thousands of troops amassed on both sides with daily bloodshed and reinforcements being called in.

Alternative to breaking the siege in the valley, is to go under the mountains through Stone Way and get behind enemy lines that way.

Key weakpoints that will disassemble the ossharisian war effort are foiling the negotiations for alliance between the northern dwarves and Ossharis, killing key individuals of the ossharisian military or taking Girholdt, the capital of Ossharis.

Steps: Ilarora plotline


 * 1) In Aldrose, the capital of Enessia, a notice is issued where by the decree of the King volunteers might seek to apply as envoys to Enessia. The road is no longer as safe as it used to be and the Grey Mountain dwarves have blocked passage to all but few as unrest spreads. As envoys, the party is expected to brave the roads to the gates in the Grey Mountains and pass beneath. Then beyond they need to voyage by sea skirting the Eye of Themaran to Ilarora where they would then head to the capital, Drossia, to negotiate more favourable trade agreements for wheat, fruit and wine. The true purpose, however, is to investigate and determine why there are no reports of hunger from Ilarora and whether the withering is caused by the Ilarorans.
 * 2) In Ilarora the players will find no hunger, no drought, no withering and even weirder, barely any sickness. People seem happy, content, well fed and in very good physical fitness. There however, are barely any elves, anywhere, which is strange as Ilaroran sub-continent is home to the last elven kingdom. Asking around, the people seem reluctant to discuss the lack of elves. Especially the guards and officials will decline everything. The party needs to find and get someone to divulge that elves have been disappearing from the streets. There are plentiful rumors and few answers. The only ones know for sure would be the elves themselves and the only place to find them is in the Folimeril Forest.
 * 3) The party will find the Folimeril Forest surrounded by manned Ilaroran watchtowers and guards . There are regular patrols between the towers. The guards are however more concerned with the treeline than anyone approaching the forest. The party will have to talk, fight or sneak their way in, as the guards are under orders to not let anyone go in the forest. If the party is able to divulge information from the guards, the orders come directly from the Ilaroran high-council and that every now and then a party of rangers go in and out of the forest under orders but they don't know more than that.
 * 4) In the forest the party is ambushed by elves. The elves are aggressive but do not engage combat immiediately. There is room for dialogue. The party can attempt to talk their way to gain access further in to the forest. If this happens, the players are escorted to Folimar, the ruined kingdom of the elves. If the players escape, the elves will use their superior knowledge of the terrain as well as their tracking skills to find the party again, allowing again for dialogue or combat. If the players engage combat and lose, the players will wake up in Folimar. If the players engage and win, they will eventually find Folimar themselves, but the elves will be hostile towards them.
 * 5) If the players managed to defeat the elven party, then most all of the leves of Folimar are hostile and will seek to raise an alarm or arrest or kill the party. It's up to the party to survive and find information with any means necessary. This is realistically the most difficult option for the party.
 * 6) If the players lost the combat, the party will awaken in Folimar jail. If escorted, the party will be put to jail to await for judgement. In the hearing the players are accused of being kidnappers in the employ of the Ilaroran high council and responsible for the kidnappings of several dozen elves and unaccountable number beyond the boundaries of Folimeril Forest. If the players have elves in the party, the panel will be more easily persuaded that the party is in fact innocent of the crimes and on the contrary investigating what is happening.
 * 7) The elves will be persuaded to believe the party and will in return demand their assistance in the matter. The elves will explain that their society has been oppressed and discriminated against for the past century by the ever greedier Ilarorians to the brink of fall of their entire way of life. They are only shades of their former selves, their culture trampled and withered and their existence has become that of meek survival. For the past few years elves have been gone missing around the whole subcontinent and men of ill intentions every so often roam through the woods kidnapping what elves they find. The elves argue that the best lead they have would be to find and follow the kidnappers, but they are unable to do so because of the careful watch outside the forest borders by Ilaroran guards.
 * 8) The players should then setup a way to find the kidnappers, perhaps use elven party members as bait or seek the aid of the elves of Folimar. Perhaps disguise themselves as elves and allow themselves to be captured or simply follow the kidnappers from the shadows.
 * 9) The kidnappers take the elves to a large farmhouse a morning's ride away from the forest. The farm house has several outbuildings and and large main building and lots of guards. Held in the buildings under guard are dozens of elves in squalid conditions. The guards themselves wear no Ilaroran banners or sigils or otherwise and seem like cut-throats and mercenaries. Party can free the prisoners and the freed prisoners will then tell the party some of their bretheren were gathered together and escorted out of the camp towards north. The guards were talking about the prisoners finally doing something worthwhile with their lives.
 * 10) North coast of the Ilaroran sub-continent the players will find a ring of weathered standing stones with an elf chained to each stone, guards here and there. In the middle there is a hooded figure chanting and as the ritual goes on, blood will begin to pour from the eyes, ears, nose and mouth of the chained elves and flying in streams towards the middle, pooling in to a growing sphere of blood above the epicenter of the stone ring. The ritual is complete when all the elves are drained of blood, at which point the sphere rises in to the sky and explodes in to a burst of red energy sweeping towards the horizon in all directions. The spell can be stopped if the elves are freed before they are drained or the sphere of blood is disturbed with violence. Killing the caster will also prevent the ritual from progressing. Breaking the sphere of blood breaks an enchantment that keeps the Ilaroran people healthy and the nature fertile. As the enchantment fades, all the people and the nature around returns to their struggling, famished state. Keep in mind, none of the Ilaroran people actually know they have been under the influence of an enchantment.
 * 11) The elves of Folimar are now grateful and will consider the party to be great friends to Folimar and it's people. They are willing to aid the party in their endeavours to the best of their abilities. If asked about the withering inflicting the world, they will tell the party, that their great druid is wise and would most likely be able to provide answers but he has chosen to withdraw in to meditation to the Greyshore Isle just off the north coast.
 * 12) On Greyshore Isle the players will find Baranus, druid of sap and bark and a magical druidic circle of ritual among dead trees and decayed surroundings. He isn't immediately hostile, willing to spare some dialogue. He will however attack the party shortly to protect his secret and the druidic ritual circle that fuels the leyline towards the west. Killing him will stop the ritual and the circle will fall inactive.

Taem'an plotline:


 * 1) In Aldrose, the capital of Enessia the players can pick up rumours of a widespread sickness in the south, kingdom of Taem'an, brought by caravans coming that way. Asking around there is a caravan heading south towards Taem'an, should the party want to tag along or work as bodyguards as they travel southwards and perhaps earn some money during their several month travel.
 * 2) Skirting the Rakh'khaem there are small towns, where caravans supply themselves for the long cross over the dunes. In the town there is evidence of the sickness, people with dark hued lips and blackened tongues. Some of the poorest people puking black mucus, their eyes wild and mostly incoherent. If asked around the players can ask around and find out it's most likely due to a local beverage that some of the local caravans bring over the Rakh'khaem. They however, there haven't been any caravans in some while and they've run out weeks ago.
 * 3) When the party reaches Amunsun, the sickness is evident everywhere they look. A good quarter of the people show signs of blackened tongues, dark rings around their mouths, seeping black mucus in the corners of their eyes and blackened fingers. Every bar and watering hole in the city offers various alcoholic drinks with a thick black gooey texture. The taste is bittersweet, the texture thick and slimy but the buzz it gives is euphoric.
 * 4) Asking around they find out the drink is made from wheat grown outside the city along the fertile banks of the Shek'an river. The fields are patrolled and the granaries where the wheat is stored are all under guard. Everywhere along the fields there a large lumps of white cotton shroud rolled around something something, pegged up by wooden shafts and the white of the cotton stained black randomly around the lump, dripping to the ground.

Ossharis plotline: