Campaign Recap — Cards From Beneath

One heavily condensed summary per session, max 5 lines each.

Numbering follows the DM's count: the one-shot is session 1. Most entries are placeholders — details pending.

Session 1

  • Played as a one-shot, not as a campaign opener. It took place in a mansion.
  • The party learned of cards that hold magic.

Session 2

  • Into Briar Hollow: a village at the edge of an old forest where outsiders are noticed, with a long-abandoned noble estate as the hook — lights in the upper windows, sealed doors standing open, livestock missing, voices where no one should be.
  • The party meets Mark and enters a house with a marking on the door.
  • Percival tests the card called the Maiden, asks to be shot for it, and the wound kills him.
  • Dying, he makes a deal with Valis the Feeding.

Session 3

  • The party meets Liora.
  • They enter a dead woman's house and contemplate killing her.
  • They find a new house.

Session 4

  • The old woman dies.
  • The party goes to the mansion.

Session 5

  • Percival is away from the table, in Lantern's Row on his own business, running the trade corridor from the city end. He left the party a note saying so.
  • An accomplice hands him an envelope; the letter inside says, in substance, meet us at the abandoned chapel.
  • He does not act on it this session. What the rest of the party did is not recorded.

Session 6

  • The start, with the full party, is not yet recalled — to be filled in. A book is found this session.
  • The session ends with an evening drink by the water: Liora, Nessa, Percival.
  • Liora swims out to catch a whale and fails.
  • Valis then tries to drown her; she almost drowns. Percival plays disinterested to take the fun out of it and make him stop.

Session 7

  • From the Beachhouse, a card draws the partyNessa, Liora, Percival — into the forest.
  • They find a man who cannot remember what he was doing there and escort him home to another village; he is its Sheriff.
  • In the village they meet Astor the Controlling, and 3 marks are given.
  • A whole scene follows that the players themselves do not remember: Astor took it.
  • In a tavern, he tells them about the deities and about a greater evil, a sickness they already knew of.

Session 8

  • Mostly in the woods. The party finds a ritual site with three magical threads running out of it in different directions; nobody knows where any of them lead.
  • They do something to the ritual, and a large tree warden crawls up out of the ground.
  • It slams Percival against a tree — he had said out loud that he set a small fire in the forest before. How the encounter ended is not recorded.

Session 9

  • Percival is away from the table again, and leaves the party a second note.
  • He goes to the abandoned chapel in the Low Lanterns and is met by a lady speaking for the Congregation of the Hollow Star.
  • She offers to help him be freed and will not say from what — his deity, this life, and the responsibility for his city all stand in the space where the answer would be.
  • She hands him a vial that collects card dust. Nothing about it is explained.

Session 10

  • A night's rest at the Beachhouse. Percival opens a door with the Veil, the card he carries; everything in the room behind it lies, and the window onto the beach carries no sound. He tries to jump through it, hits it, and takes 3 damage.
  • They wake Gia, and Percival destroys her sandcastle for not being focused enough on solving anything. The party sets out to find a lighthouse.
  • On the way they are caught in a loop that only lets them out for secrets, spoken into a stone. Percival whispers that he actually likes Gia in a friendly sense. Liora spoils hers before Gia's turn and Percival helps keep it secret, seemingly already knowing it.
  • His unseen servant, left behind to watch the others, catches one thing: Onyx's hand covered in blue light that spreads over his body, and Onyx saying he shouldn't be able to do this.
  • At the lighthouse Astor the Controlling hands over a note in an unidentified script, which Percival reads with Comprehend Languages: the light was built so the Beneath would not be forgotten, and only those who surrender the gift may enter the place where the First Ones fell.