Bedlam in the Badlands/The Story So Far

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This page is the campaign synopsis as told by the DMs. To read more intimate retellings of the PCs' adventures told in their own words (and those of their players), see Bedlam in the Badlands/Player Recaps

Book 1

Session 1: Kickoff Megagame, part 1 (9/6/25)

Trading Route Troubles

DM: Amanda

PCs: Pryderi (she/they), Chanterelle (she/her), Koro (he/him), Silgr (he/him), Rhogar (he/him), Davin (he/him), Rimsa (he/him)

NPCs: Lord Pavan, Swordmaster Krispin, Tradesman Kareek (and his monitor lizard Stanley)

Seven brave souls took the Duke’s job to escort a trade caravan across the Badlands. They traveled with the caravan, meeting the traders and the leader of this specific caravan, the Lord Pavan and his bodyguard Krispin. They also met a peculiar lizardfolk trader named Kareek, and his semi-tamed monitor lizard Stanley, who were pulling a covered wagon filled with mysterious cargo.

Roughly halfway to their destination, the party spotted a group of shadowy figures on the horizon. Together, they used the wagons and trade goods to form a barrier surrounding the people and animals. They were beset by several flesh hounds and an abyssal hound. However, despite the hard battle, the demons were killed and the caravan protected. Most of the pack animals ran away in the midst of the battle, but minimal life was lost and only a few trade goods were destroyed.

After they'd successfully defended the caravan, a flare shot high into the air from the Arboretum. Lord Pavan urged everyone into one of the remaining wagons and rushed to their aid.

Out of the Pot

DM: Chris

PCs: Syl (they/them), Gobbo (they/them), Sixsplitter (he/him)

NPCs: Ter, Garret, Brandran

The crew received orders from Ter to go investigate a nearby Shend camp. They met up with a caravan on its way to HQ. They made it a point on the trade route where they split and went into the uncharted Badlands. They easily found Vinaash Oasis. They looked around the oasis and found an unguarded cave. They noticed strange black ichor splattered about and Shend and prisoners massacred. The only prisoner alive could only convey to watch out for the bugs and bats. The party's curiosity got the best of them and they delved in too deep and discovered a hidden storage room where they were ambushed. As they escaped with their newfound friend Brandran, they looked back towards the Arboretum as they noticed the signal for help.

Grind Sparkburn, Smash, & Cleave

DM: Mercedes

PCs: Stix (they/them), Raazdrog (he/him), Himo (he/him), Delaia (she/her), Demir (he/him), Caesana (she/her), Jynx (she/her)

NPCs: Raegina, Baftzmyr, Kicyr, Cilvdywutc

Raegina called for victims volunteers to come and try out her cohorts newest set of scrap golems. The seven volunteers prepared themselves and handily destroyed the bots in record time, earning Raegina’s three goons looks of derision. Raegina offered to teach those adventurers who beat up the golems how to scrap and then rebuild the bots, each player adding an infusion of their own power. With bigger and better golems and a betting pool in place, the two teams of adventurers and the team of Raegina’s henchgals battled their golems until only the noble Sparkburn remained, earning their team a prize of 66 gold. The call for aid then came from the Arboretum and Raegina loaded up the adventurers (and Sparkburn) into her war rig to answer the call.

The Sheriff and the Storm

DM: Cat

PCs: Ozmir (he/him), Grymos (he/him), Pearl (she/her), Voscaera (she/her), Dallas (she/her), Lyrina (she/her)

NPCs: Gnash, Gooey

The Arboretum -- a remote trading hub sheltered within a petrified, stadium-sized tree that towered above the Pteris wastes -- was missing its sheriff. The plasmoid public servant, named Inguza ("Gooey", they/them), had gone out to investigate the latest and closest in a string of peculiar sandstorms.

"Inguza's in trouble," the no-nonsense, half-orc warrior Gnash said to no one in particular, "Follow me." She was heading for the northeast exit, a quarter-mile passage that had been dug through one of the tree's great, petrified roots. A rescue party mustered in her wake and hurried to catch up.

The group soon reached the unnaturally sharp edge of the half-mile-wide tempest, where Gnash located a crooked staff protruding from the sand and announced, "They entered here." She touched a large ring of bone to the staff and plunged into the storm, leaving the party to hustle after her again.

The wind inside whined unsettlingly; flying sand restricted everyone's vision and lashed their skin. But they all searched systematically until an angry bellow audible above the wind guided them to a two-headed tentacle demon, which they battled and slew. Behind it they spotted the barely conscious Gooey, who had absorbed a devastating amount of sand into their amorphous body. The companions tended to them briefly before carrying their semi-solid form back to the Arboretum's infirmary.

Some of the party had sustained minor lacerations from the storm's slashing sand, and while the injuries themselves appeared insignificant, the curious gold flecks that had appeared in their eyes afterward brought a nagging sliver of apprehension.

Session 2: Kickoff Megagame, part 2 (9/6/25)

Aggression from Above

DM: Amanda

PCs*: Pryderi, Chanterelle, Koro, Silgr, Rhogar, Davin, Demir (he/him); *Reinforcements: Toots (he/him), Pearl, Larry (he/him)

NPCs: Lord Pavan, Swordmaster Krispin

Rushing towards the Arboretum, everyone was greeted by a desperate scene. Demons everywhere, being fought off by people from every faction. Lord Pavan lead the seven brave souls through one of the root entrances and up to the top of the Arboretum. The open roof was being swarmed by hordes of flying demons bent on taking out the ballistas on the top of the battlements. A fight began.

They fought back the demons, saving all but one of the ballistas. The battle was harsh, knocking out several fighters before it was won.

And into the Fire

DM: Chris

PCs: Syl, Sixsplitter, Caesanna, Jynx, Lyrina, Dallas, Gobbo

NPCs: Ter, Brandran

As the party returned safely to the Arboretum, they were met by the others and Ter. He tasked them with an operation for espionage. He turned tail with Gobbo and Brandran (the prisoner from the Shend camp). The party spotted a moving caravan of creatures with two ballistas. They easily wiped the creatures out and dismantled the ballista.

Addressing the Oliphaunt in the Rig

DM: Mercedes

PCs: Stix, Raazdrog, Himo, Delaia, Leonard

NPCs: Raegina, Baftzmyr, Kicyr, Cilvdywutc

As they sped forward, approaching one of the entrance roots, a large undead oliphaunt t-boned the war rig, completely turning it over and destroying both vehicles in the process. An infuriated Raegina beheaded the oliphaunt and commanded the adventurers to stand and destroy the demons in their path to clear the way into the arboretum.

Facing Pustuloids, Capra demons, Incultis and Lesser Rage demons, the party worked diligently to keep each other safe and get the demons out of the way. They pushed the oliphaunt off the entranceway and watched in awe as Raegina flipped the war rig off of Baftzmyr who had been pinned underneath. After harvesting from the demons, the adventurers heard the loud boom of the Conservatory’s destruction and after facing a wave of wild magic, faced a final wave of fleeing demons as well, but claimed another victory!

Wait.. Kobolds?

DM: Cat

PCs: Ozmir, Grymos, Pearl, Voscaera, Toots, Larry

NPCs: Sir Anthony

Just west of the Arboretum, the party hurried into position to wait uneasily for the inevitable demon incursion. What eventually came was kobolds. Dozens of light-blue clad kobolds scampered forward, several yards in advance of a single goat-like fiend, which they seemed very leery of. They made non-lethal attacks and spoke in Common, some invoking the name of the deity Kurtulmak, some issuing orders, and some asking for permission to use lethal force once they saw the party felling their allies left and right. The last one alive tossed down her dagger and cried "Sanctuary!" before being unceremoniously dispatched.

The goat demon's very presence rotted the flesh. Its sting immediately raised boils and took off patches of skin. It gave Ozmir a coughing fit that somehow produced a swarm of flies, for which he repaid the fiend with a blade through the throat.

While Grymos looted corpses, Pearl, Toots, and Larry rushed up to the tree's battlements to help defend against airborne threats. The enemy withdrew in the end, but not before staining the sand on all sides of the Arboretum with the blood of the allied forces of the Badlands.

Session 3: The Tower That Wasn't (9/21/25)

DM: Cat

PCs: Mezzi (they/them), Diana (she/her), Davin (he/him), Dallas (she/her), Himo (he/him), Polvo (she/her)

NPCs: Sir Anthony, Jerbo, Dapple, The Osteomancer

In the partially rebuilt Omnichapel, Sir Anthony, the bugbear paladin of Pelor who was now the formal leader the Arboretum, memorialized the recently fallen. Afterward, Jerbo, the gnome arcanist who once managed the magical Conservatory, told the adventures he hoped a loxodon known as the Osteomancer could explain why kobolds had joined the demons, so the group rented horses from the satyr stable keeper, Dapple, and rode to her hidden bunker.

The Osteomancer required them first to visit a "'negative tower' made not of stone but of Absence, a sealed wound in reality visible only in reflections," to re-seal the tear before its influence eroded meaning in the nearby area. "The longer something is exposed to it, the more it forgets what it is," she told them. When Davin asked about protection, she showed them a seven-foot, rune-inlaid, humanoid skull that allowed them to share memories to anchor one another in reality.

Near the "tower" all was still. The inside was a photonegative of itself. Himo began using the loxodon's magic to reseal the wound. White shadows drained the party members' senses of identity, bringing them closer to catatonia with each touch, while a faceless Custodian tried to erase them from reality entirely. They battled until the spell took hold, and they escaped the shadowy structure before it faded away.

In payment, the Osteomancer explained that in dragon-worshipping Swikedom, "the divine Blood Law relegates kobolds to the Thrall caste, below all save Warmbloods like us," but that kobolds who revere Kurtulmak above Tiamat may try to escape their thralldom, denying that the Blood Law is divinely ordained. "One such group," she revealed, "led by Snizz the Fortunate, used the demons as a way out of bondage, but their freedom -- such as it was -- ended when your comrades cut them down."

And she issued a warning, purportedly from a vision of a fire-scarred mesa: "The Beast of Cinderspire will roam free."

Session 5: Bombs (and how not to make them) 101 (9/27/25)

PCs: Syl, Ollie, Gloria, Koro, Mizuka & Avel

NPCs: Cilvdyzwutca, Baftzmyr, Kicyr, & Raegina

Keywords: Demons, Junkyard, Crafting, Scrapping

Invited by flyers hung in the Arboretum, our adventurers headed the three hour trek across the desert to the Junkyard to help clear it out of the left over demons that had been hiding in their after the siege. Cilvdyzwutca (Cilvdy) was put in charge of these recruits to have them help her build bombs to draw the demons out and then exterminate. Half of the party arrived already exhausted, but prepared to do their best on Cilvdy's patent-pending origami bomb assembly line.

Syl and Koro folded the paper frogs, Ollie and Avel filled those frogs with black powder, then they were fitted with the fuse and dipped in wax by Gloria and Mizuka. This went about as well as you would think it would, several of the bombs blowing up during the wax dipping process from exposure to the heat, causing panic and quite a bit of damage to Gloria and Mizuka.

Eventually Syl and Koro switched around their roles on the assembly line to ensure Gloria didn't die. Of the 12 bombs assigned, 7 were successfully made. Cilvdy tried to keep up her best encouragement while the other two of Raegina's minions just teased. From a distance, Koro noticed Raegina herself watching over them from her watchtower.

They then headed deeper into the Junkyard where they both found and were found by a horde of abyssal chickens and leeches. The adventurers had plenty of leech wounds by the time they managed to slaughter everything, but they all survived and none of them had any eggs laid inside their wounds! They then scrapped the demonic creatures for biological parts and were paid for their service!

Session 6: Find those Animals! (9/30/25)

PCs: Leonard, Rhogar, Avel, Mezzi, Demir, and Razzadrog

NPCs: Dapple, Kareek, and Stanley

Upon seeing a new job hung in the central marketplace, the adventurers gathered together around one liaison to hear the details of the job. They were tasked to bring back the missing pack animals (or whatever animals they could find and bring back) that were lost during the demon attack on the arboretum. They were directed to one Dapple, keeper of the stables. together, they rented out one horse and cart from the stables and headed into the desert to search for the runaway animals.

It took a total of 3 days, but the party managed to find some animals. They managed to find and capture one wild dustrunner, rescue one camel beset by dust mephits, and one horse caught in the bottom of a giant ant lion pit. They fought off a demon possessed horse and managed to find one of the traders lost from the demon attack. Kareek and his monitor lizard Stanley were found on the side of a cliff, trapped beneath a broken cart and unable to move. However, as the adventurers descended to rescue them, a monstrosity made of half giant snake, half giant spider appeared from the gorge and attacked!

They defeated the spidersnake, saved Kareek and Stanley, and safely transported them and all the animals found back to the Arboretum. They were paid by the man who had offered the job and received a bonus for each animal returned.