BACK TO DIRECTORY.

The Faction Campaign

Overview

The Faction Campaign is the third campaign of the MCU. It is a homebrewed urban intrigue campaign taking place entirely in the city of Kalashport. It follows a group of misfits as they meet various city factions and unearth the hidden history of the city. The campaign is broken into four chapters, each corresponding to a region of the city. The players go through the chapters and solve various local subplots which tie together with the overall story.

Two years ago, FerrCO, the dominant political and economic force of Kalashport, collapsed, plunging the city into chaos. As government institutions fell, several factions rose to claim power in various parts of town. The players find themselves in the middle of faction conflict and have to decide who to support. The campaign opens in Midtown, where people have been going missing while the Police Department has enacted the Stability Provision, banning all magic and adventuring.

Characters

Player Characters

Notable NPCs

Faction Campagin NPCs without their own article listed here

Factions

Synopsis

This campaign is very long, taking place over 30+ sessions and two years. As such, this is a hyper-condensed "TLDR" version of the story. A more nuanced tale can be found here.

CHAPTER 1: Midtown

One day, Fet, Mascarpone, SCHNI, Tae-hyun, and Yancy come upon Alto Street in Midtown Kalashport. They save a Dragonborn tavern owner named Bardlox from being mugged. Bardlox appreciates the favor and lets them all stay at his tavern for a few days.

Soon afterward, they find a flyer protesting the Stability Provision, a new law in Midtown that outlaws adventurers and magic users. They decode the hidden runes on the flyer and find a secret club of wizard students called the Prestige who organized to protest the law.

SCHNI, who is a detective for the police, discovers the Prestige breaking the law and forces them to help him with a case of mysterious kidnappings by an organization called "The Cloud" in exchange for him not turning them in. The Prestige helps SCHNI find some of the missing people, but the police chief, Lt. Bighammer isn’t impressed. Instead, she offers to make SCHNI a “Preventative Ongoing Governance” (POG) officer to further crack down on magic users. SCHNI refuses and begins to doubt Bighammer’s leadership.

Fet decides to combat the Stability Provision by buying a tavern outside of the Police’s reach where they can train wizards in secret. They buy a building in Downtown, which is Curds territory. The same day, Bardlox invites the party to a concert in Downtown. That night, POG officers cross into Curds territory and raid the concert searching for magic users. The party fights back and forces the POGs back into Midtown.

The party reconvenes with the Prestige and decides to infiltrate the Police headquarters and stop any further invasions into Downtown. They take out Bighammer and SCHNI assumes control of the Police and abolishes the Stability Provision.

CHAPTER 2: The Canal District

The next day, Fet and Mascarpone’s boss, Manchego, orders them to go into the Canal District to carry out a hit on Tess Mystique, a treasure hunter who was snooping around Curds operations. The party (minus SCHNI, who stays in Midtown) crosses the river to the Canal District and meets the local factions and new party member Rycan the wizard. They learn that the Church of the Dragon, which worships a disappeared deity called the Elemental Guardian. Yancy and Yin’s warlock patron, the Maple Tree Network, is also important to the Church. The Church is in danger of being kicked out of the city for abusing Canal District resources. Fet also discovers that local spa owner, Bubba Bufo, secretly runs a thieves guild called The Stack.

The party travels around and discovers that the Guardian Tree, the hub of the Maple Tree Network, is neglected and dying. They decide to improve the Church’s image by healing the tree. The group runs some experiments and finds out the network is corrupted from the Feywild side. They pass into the Feywild and encounter its main settlement, Evening City.

In Evening City they meet Humphrey the Archdruid, who is very interested in their stories of the material plane. They snoop around and find that the Evening City Druids are sapping the energy from the Guardian Tree to make immortality potions. The party convinces Humphrey to turn against his Druids, and they do so and stop the potion-making operation. Humphrey reveals to the party that the Fey all migrated through the network 250 years ago to escape a war in the Canal District. In absence of the potions, Humphrey, who was 250 years old, dies of old age.

Yancy and Yin have a personal conversation with the Network. In reward for the restoring the Guardian Tree, the Network grants them increased power over the portals and tasks them with finding the four elemental dragon scales, because somebody might be planning to abuse them.

Meanwhile, Fet and Mascarpone are making progress tracking Tess down. They discover she went to the dangerous Dark Canal, which is an undeveloped swampland infested with elementals and monsters. They go there and find The Witch of the Bog, who lives there constantly hunting down monsters. They befriend the witch, give her the honorary Curds name Bleu, and learn from her that Tess stopped by on her way to Deep Trench, a secret saltwater lake which contains a legendary casino and a device that can answer any question. They pursue further and find Tess at the end of the swamps. Before they can say anything, they are surrounded by lizardfolk pointing spears at them. Tess, who knows perfect Draconic, eases the situation. Fet and Mascarpone learn that the lizardfolk are a a peaceful tribe called “Lagoonshiners” who make a spirit called Lagoonshine at a beach called Legume Lagoon. With this information, they return to the Canal District in search of the others.

Fet and Mascarpone find the others and they all head toward Legume Lagoon. Fet and Mascarpone decide not to kill Tess, and they convince her to stay out of Downtown if they help her find information about the secret tunnels under Kalashport. The lizardfolk give the party and Tess directions toward the casino at the bottom of the trench, advising them to avoid the triton tribe of “Saltsiders”. They accidentally encounter the Saltsiders anyway but discover that the two tribes hate each other on superstition alone, thinking that each other want to steal the Lagoonshine or Saltcider recipes. Fet later hires some Lagoonshiners and Saltsiders to work at the bar.

They get to the casino and find out that to access the device that answers questions, they have to register for a series of fights against monsters called the Clamiseum Gauntlet. If they survive four fights, they can ask a magical orb called Pearl any one question. The party and Tess register separately and they each win their first three fights. For the final fight, the Clamiseum ran out of monsters, so it makes the party and Tess fight each other. Tess transforms into a silver dragon, which the party manages to defeat. They each ask their question and then head back to the Canal District. In the meantime, Tess gets revived and stays behind with Bleu to explore the swamps.

They attend a meeting where the Church passes a vote to not get kicked out. The celebration is brief however, as they discover that the Church head cleric, Mother Scalehearth has disappeared, and that the two elemental dragon scales in possession of Rycan and the Church were stolen. Bubba Bufo and all the Stack members are also missing. Nevertheless, the Canal District holds its annual Lights Festival the next day.

At the festival, Weston the private investigator returns looking for Yancy. Yancy had hired him to investigate the neighborhood of Highland Heights, which encased itself in a magical dome shortly after the campaign started. Weston snuck into the Heights and found Yancy’s father Norm Riesling on the streets without any memories. Norm had been missing after Yancy accidentally portaled him into the Feywild. Norm handed Weston a letter addressed to Yancy and the rest of the party inviting everyone to a dinner party at famous investor Abigail Halibut’s estate.

Chapter 3: Highland Heights

The party sneaks into Highland Heights using old FerrCO mines and stumbles upon the abandoned FerrCO factory. SCHNI encounters them in the tunnels looking for the artificer who created the POG officer weapons. They find the artificer in the factory and SCHNI arrests him and forces him to stop making weapons, though he crafts Yancy an eldritch gun before he leaves. In the factory they discover some rogue POG officers hiding out. SCHNI defeats them all and takes them back to the police office. In the offices upstairs, they discover that FerrCO used to be a royal family called the Elven Dynasty that was at war with the Canal District 250 years ago. Tae-hyun also finds some evidence that he might be related to the family somehow.

They head toward the center of Highland Heights and meet a young aristocrat named Tiffany Spotless. Tiffany shows them around and helps them buy fancy clothes for the dinner party at her family’s department store. At the store they encounter Norm. Yancy speaks to Norm telepathically, and Norm says to keep an eye out for funny business at the dinner. He leaves the party a pair of enchanted eavesdropping glasses.

The party goes smoothly but some attendees including Norm take interest in buying Abigail’s white elemental dragon scale, similar to the ones the party encountered in the Canal District. All of the sudden a cloud of poison gas appears and gunshots go off. Everyone evacuates and Abigail announces that Norm disappeared again and that her dragon scale was stolen.

The next day the party goes looking for Norm and the dragon scale. They find Norm fairly easily, as he was camping out in the Feywild near one of the maple tree portals. Norm insists that Abigail is framing him, and he offers the party some information about the Cloud if they clear his name. To this point all the party knows about the Cloud is that they are the group that carried out the kidnappings in Midtown and stole Rycan’s research and the elemental dragon scales in the Canal District.

While they were investigating, Rycan explains to everyone that he has a personal interest in finding the dragon scales because he thinks they can be used to cure his terminal illness. The rest of the party doesn’t like Rycan, but because of their mutual interest in the dragon scales, they continue to work together.

Yancy and Tae-hyun sneak into Norm's private study and find his notebook which describes what happened when he was lost in the Feywild. Supposedly, Mother Scalehearth found Norm and explained to him her plan to find all four elemental dragon scales. She then tried to wipe his memory but it failed because Norm was carrying a protective amulet. The party deduces that Norm invited everyone to the dinner party in order for them to intervene in the dragon scale theft.

The party investigates some more and discovers some clues that point to Eleanor the elemental-descendent jazz club owner being responsible for the theft. They pursue Eleanor only to find Abigail. Abigail reveals that the dinner party was a setup to hand off the scale to the Cloud in exchange for the Cloud killing her husband a month prior. Norm was intended to take the fall for both the murder and the theft. Eleanor is part of the Cloud, but she doesn’t know what she is doing. The party promises to Abigail that they won’t harm Eleanor.

They find Eleanor in Tae’s cleric temple threatening the clerics if they don’t help her hide from the party. The party shows up just in time to defeat Eleanor and save the clerics. They take the white dragon scale, revive Eleanor, and make her hide out from the Cloud in the bar.

The party has found out by now from Eleanor and Norm's notebook that Mother Scalehearth runs the Cloud, and she intends to use the elemental dragon scales to resurrect the Elemental Guardian, the deity that died in the war 250 years ago to create the Maple Tree Network. Such a feat is incredibly dangerous, so the party all resolves to find the scales and stop the resurrection before it’s too late.

Chapter 4: Downtown

On the way back to Downtown, they see bombs go off and smoke rising above the high-rises. They rush to investigate and find that the Stack staged an attack to distract the Curds and allow them to steal Manchego’s map of the tunnels. Weston was killed in the attack and Bardlox was injured.

Manchego explains to everyone that the reason he is interested in the tunnels is because he is the last descendant of the Elven Dynasty, and he found out the family stored a mechanical dragon called the Empire Drake underground 250 years ago during the war. The Empire Drake is set to emerge any day now and protect the empire, but as the empire doesn’t exist anymore, Manchego worries that it might target Kalashport in retaliation. Manchego wants to destroy the machine before it has a chance to emerge, which is why he killed his father, took down FerrCO, and created the Curds to amass manpower to find it.

At this time Tae-hyun informs Manchego that they are likely half-brothers, both sons of the late FerrCO CEO, Sylvester Machado. Manchego doesn’t take the news particularly well, but they decide to help each other find the Empire Drake.

Weston had died during the attack trying to follow one of the Stack thieves. He managed to place a tracker on the thief that communicates with SCHNI’s recon robot, except that the robot got stolen. The party tracks down the robot to the Skyline Market, a black market in the former Kalashport financial district secretly run by Bardlox’s employee, Forik. Forik lets them know that the robot was sold to a Curd who works at the Monterey Jack Casino. Havarti, Manchego’s personal assassin, assists the party finding the robot, which was being used to cheat at blackjack. Tae resurrects Weston, who warns them that the Stack is working with the Cloud.

With the robot in hand, the party and Manchego travel down the tunnels after the Stack thieves. They encounter Bubba Bufo and the thieves in a chamber and defeat them. Bubba Bufo is after the green elemental dragon scale on behalf of the Cloud and he thinks it’s with the Empire Drake. Fet convinces Bufo to abandon the effort and the party spares the thieves guild. The party finally finds the Empire Drake’s chamber and destroys it moments before it could escape to the surface. Yancy pockets the green scale. They then return to Downtown.

Chapter 5: Kalashport

With some time off for once, the party decides to explore the city a little. Fet brings his plans to expand his personal business to Abigail and Forik, who agree to invest. Yancy talks to Norm again and learns that he bought the powerful Kalashport Security Company and took down the Highland Heights dome. Tae-hyun visists Manchego and the two learn some more about each other. The party encounters the Prestige again and follows them back to the wizard academy to see one of their contraptions they made for a school project. Their device breaks the floor in the library, revealing a secret chamber full of books from before FerrCO.

The party receives a letter from Scalehearth threatening that if the party doesn’t give her the white and green scales, she will try to resurrect the god with just the two scales she has. Eleanor helps Fet and Mascarpone retrieve from her jazz club instructions on how to get to the Cloud hideout.

A few days later Bardlox comes to the Tavern to tell the party about something happening outside. They go outside and see the material realm and the feywild colliding into each other and glitching each other back and forth. The party realize that The Cloud must have attempted their ritual, so they travel to the Canal District to act. They use Eleanor's instructions to get inside the hideout under the Guardian Tree and find that the KSC and Norm had attacked the Cloud, causing them to start the ritual in panic. It backfired and created an explosion, taking out all the Cloud members and KSC soldiers and creating a rift portal. The party goes through the portal to a corrupted Dream Realm, where Scalehearth and Norm lay unconscious. The ritual summoned an incomplete and corrupted Elemental Guardian in the Dream Realm. It attacks the party, starting a fight. Through a long and difficult fight, the part finally defeats the Corrupted Guarian, while Norm eventually wakes up and kills Scalehearth.

With the corruption removed, the Dream Plane quickly reverts back to normal. Rycan recollects all his fragmented silhouettes and dies, turning into an orb of light that grows into a spirit dragon and disappears after a moving speech. Yin explains to the party that Rycan made a deal with them and the Network to become a Dream Realm protector spirit rather than letting the chronal illness consume him. The party celebrates their victory, and they all head home.