What you need to know.

My upcoming campaign will build upon the earlier campaign documented in this blog. As I've said before your party has access to a journal written by a wizard named Gaius. From this journal, you can learn everything posted here previously. Therefore, it is fair game for you to read it.

In addition, I'll provide this summary of what you need to know about the prior game sessions.

The party consisted of a bunch of young adventures, connected by their association to the wizard Sihirbaz. Two party members worked in his shop, and the rest had done work for him from time to time.

The party went on a treasure hunting expedition, in the haunted swamps south-west of Fort Aralan.

In the swamp, they discovered the ruins of an old fortress. They explored the fortress, and learned things about its past.

In ancient times, the swamp was on the border between a human kingdom, and a kingdom of Dragoborn.

This dragonborn kingdom as known as "Bahumati". The priest and wizard classes of this civilization were kobolds. Dragonborn were the warriors. They made war upon the demi-human races, and enslaved the other reptiloid races.

The inhabitants of the fortress fell victim to the plague. They cursed the land, so that it would not fall into the hands of the humans. This curse is the reason why the swamp is haunted by undead.

Within the fortress, the party found a set of magical sigils. These sigils can be used with a teleport ritual to go to specific places.

The party used one of the sigils to teleport to an island at the southern tip of Fort Aralan's peninsula.

The island contained an ancient step pyramid. At this pyramid, they found a small group of kobolds. Among the kobolds was a dragonborn paladin.

The kobolds had been performing a ritual at the pyramid to summon a dragon. Sihirbaz now believes this was an attempt to fulfill some ancient prophecy, and help to restore the Bahumati kingdom.

The party fought and killed the kobold group. Later a young dragon arrived in response to the summoning. The dragon was quite young, so the adventures were able to defeat it.

(From here on, I diverge from things that actually happened in game play)

Within the pyramid, the party found a huge cache of ancient writings and art work. These artifacts detailed the Bahumati religious stories (The first age), the history of their kingdom (The second age), a prophecy of an age in which the kingdom would be ruined by disease (The Third Age), and a prophecy of the kingdom re-born to its former glory (The Forth Age).

Gaius was able to get word of the discovery to Sihirbaz. Sihirbaz visited the site many times over a period of months. They began to capture images of the writings and artwork in a magical device called a "Capturing Orb".

Sihirbaz returned to Fort Aralan. Gaius and his party were to stay at the pyramid, and continue collecting information as long as possible. They knew eventually the kobolds would return in greater numbers and force them to leave.

Recently, Sihirbaz received word from Gaius that he had left the pyramid, and had sent a package - including the capturing orb, aboard a ship headed to Fort Aralan.

This package as stolen by pirates, and recovered by your party in the "Session #11" game that we played in June.