Ancients Alive

"There's been a lot of fire -- a lot of fire -- and some odd (but fun) people, a lady I don't trust ('my god told me I'm so important,' blah blah blah), guys in robes who all look alike to me, friends who employ questionable tactics, and an unnerving lack of restraint. Also ghost pirates, delicious fortune cookies, some very catchy music, and a hippogriff! Oh, and a mad crown and something very, very bad that we may or may not be able to stop. I gotta tell you, I'm not really sure what's going on here." -- Red

About

The logo featured at the end of the title sequence(s) of Ancients Alive.

Ancients Alive (Full title Tales of Quelmar: Ancients Alive) was a 20+ Player Campaign that began as a "campaign with a lower-case c" that started in Summer 2019. Starting at level 3, the storyline took players up to level 8 over 15 months. In early 2020, the Campaign closed its doors to new players, and ultimately finished in early June 2020.

Format

Each session of Ancients Alive is intended to stand alone as its own adventure, with no immediate cliffhangers or other elements that require constant attendance by players. In this way, the player base can be in constant rotation.

Starting from the 25th session, Ancients Alive began long-form storytelling (as a traditional campaign) to finish the story that the many players had began, the story revolved around Quelmar's Arctic Autumn.

Plot

The Realm during Arctic Autumn, largely frozen over.

The sessions involve many small quests and missions, but ultimately revolved around a realm-wide hunt for four magical artifacts:

• Crown of Empyrosis
• Staff of the Marsh
• Orb of Gales
• Wand of the Spout

Themes

With several factions searching to obtain or destroy the magical artifacts, the campaign somewhat had an "Alliance of the Week" feel. The characters fought both against and alongside earth, water, and fire clerics. The Grumbaran NPC that sliced a character in half one session would be training characters two sessions later. This team lacking traditional heroes instead often found themselves pitted against typical heroes, such as the Escapals, Golkont the Hawk Mage, and a paladin.

Players and Characters

The players of the campaign went on a realm wide scavenger hunt to find the four Tools of the Primordial Ancients, they used a table they posted on the wall to track its progress:

Item	Where is it?	Who wants it?	How can it be desroyed?	What Can it Do
Crown	Galik	Adventurers Banites	Place it on Bruneld Redmane's head	Command fire, cause ruptures, explosions, summon fire monsters, powerful and highly offensive-driven weapon.
Wand	Isle Meregrund	Pirates Kossuth-ites Banites Thieves	?	Travel Driven
Staff	Howling Crag	Fiends	Use the Crown on it?	Defensive Driven
Orb	?	?	?	Enhancement Driven

Trivia

• The End Credits included a song called "Rather it Be September" which was a mash up of a song by Earth, Wind, and Fire and a song by Clean Bandit. Each band being representative of the two major player factions AFEW and Stealth Squad.
  • Additionally, the lyrics to the Clean Bandit song ("Rather Be") include references to the campaign such as "It's a shot in the dark" and "We're different and the same, gave you a different name" (in reference to Yro/Bruneld/Midnight) and "With every step we take, Kyoto to the Bay" (Kyoto being a major city like Galik, and Jewelspar being on Dragon Turtle Bay)