It began back in the late 80s, when I was invited to play in a AD&D campaign run by a fellow, Bruce, from a school I’d left and my brother still attended. Thinking back all these years now, I have no idea how it happened that we all lobbed together, but there we were – Bruce as DM, myself, my brother and one other playing through some of the classic D&D adventures.
The system we were using was a meld of AD&D 1st edition and 2nd edition, with a few other bits and pieces thrown in. However, the campaign world that it spawned is still sort of alive today, some twenty years later. Of course, the world isn’t exactly the same as the one that Bruce used, for it’s now very much my world, but it dates from those early seeds.
The First Campaign – Meliander and Brunak (198?)
In the beginning, there were four adventurers: Meliander (my magic-user), Brunak (my brother’s fighter/barbarian type), Scarlett (Bruce’s NPC) and Bardal (an elven rogue played by L. the fourth member of the group). We began by playing through a couple of minor adventures before we entered the first major classic adventure of the old times: The Temple of Elemental Evil.
By the end of the adventure, we’d rescued Prince Thrommel, and we were about 8th level or thereabouts. I’d picked up a wand of fire in the Temple, and watched Bruce’s face fall as I used it with glee, creating walls of fire to protect us from the gargoyles and trolls as Brunak and Scarlett laid around them.
At this time, L left the group, and the game became primarily Bruce, my brother and me. Occasionally, another person would briefly join us, and then L. would pop up from time to time.
In any case, Brunak, Meliander and Scarlett soon found themselves helping save Furyondy and Veluna from a poisoned river (Sabre River) and then, when Scarlett’s unusual sister turned up, going to the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth to recover Daoud’s Wondrous Lanthorn.
Our original ideas for our characters had Brunak a Frost Barbarian from the far north-east. I was playing the son of a cavalry officer from the County of Ulek – in the far south-west of the world. How did we meet up? Brunak had severe wanderlust, and we ended up both chasing a thief through the streets of Mitrik and befriending each other.
By this stage, after a couple of years, the campaign was faltering. In the longish gap between a couple of adventures, I used the old book “Cities” (published by Chaosium, but originally Midkemia Press) to work out what was happening to Meliander in the meantime, as he was wintering in the City of Greyhawk. By sheer luck, he made a fortune investing in business, and met the love of his life, Caitlin Raelthayer. Bruce was more than a little surprised when, at our next session, I informed him that Meliander was married.
We managed to play through one more major adventure series before the campaign dissolved: the Slave Lords. At this point, Bruce and I were playing a lot of excellent games together in other systems, along with the new friends we were meeting at University: Amber, Marvel Super Heroes, and especially the West End Games Star Wars RPG.
Transitions (1991)
Meliander returned to the County of Ulek with his wife, and the campaign rested – almost. I was beginning to do more DMing in those days, and with a few friends from Uni and my brother, ran the introduction to the Greyhawk Wars adventures: Five Shall Be One and Howl from the North. This was 1991. They fit my brother perfectly: he was a Frost Barbarian, and they were designed for a group of Frost Barbarians. So, using a bunch of pregenerated characters for the other players, we launched into the adventure.
By the end of it, the Frost Barbarians had released their god, Brunak was king of all the barbarians, and the Greyhawk Wars had started. Unbeknownst to the barbarians, their “god” was actually Iuz, pretending to be Vatun. All of this didn’t make much sense in the real Greyhawk campaign world that TSR was putting out, but it all made a lot more sense in our world… because Bruce and I had been running some adventures on our own.
One of those was Vecna Lives!. In fact, I wasn’t much involved in that; as I recall, L. may have ran it for Bruce. In any case, the adventure’s end didn’t go as TSR had designed: Vecna had overpowered Iuz and dispossessed him of his kingdom. So, where there had once been the land of Iuz and the Horned Society, Vecna united them both and started a reign of terror. Bruce’s original plan for the campaign was to go through the four major AD&D campaigns: Temple of Elemental Evil, Slavelords, Queen of the Demonweb Spiders, and end it up with the Bloodstone series. So, the new land that Vecna ruled was called “Vaasa”. Furyondy and Veluna had been united (with the heir to Veluna marrying the rescued Thrommel) and would take the place of Damara.
A little side adventure I ran after that saw Iuz seeking the Codex of the Infinite Planes, and Scarlett and Meliander teaming up to stop him. The resulting disastrous confrontation saw the Codex “destroyed”, and Meliander (and possibly Scarlett) thrown into the planes and away from Greyhawk.
And then the campaign really dissolved, and we didn’t do much more for a long time. My brother and I moved to Ballarat (where I remain today), and basically fell out of touch with our old RPG friends in Melbourne.
A brief interlude (1995)
My brother and I did have one short one-on-one D&D game together, where Brunak realized he was being manipulated by Iuz and escaped, taking two henchmen through an maze of icy tunnels – and somehow falling into EX1: Dungeonland. I don’t remember much about it; but eventually he escaped to Greyhawk, and the campaign rested again.
A new campaign (1997?)
In the intervening time, I’d been playing a lot of Magic. Some of the friends I’d been making in Ballarat through that pastime also proved to have an interest in D&D, so I started up a new AD&D (2nd edition) campaign – using the Player’s Option books to create the characters. We had four main players: Dave, his wife Julia, Shane, my brother – and I was the DM for most of the campaign.
The original campaign had spanned the years of 576-582 CY in the Greyhawk calendar. For this campaign, I set the clock back to 576 and assumed we were in the same world; so events of our original campaign would take place in the background.
The plot of this campaign I’d eventually call “The Feast of Xan-Yae”. The idea was this: the adventurers were called together by the Church of Xan-Yae to retrieve a stolen relic from the dungeons of Castle Greyhawk, where the thief had taken it. (In fact, a very similar plot to the first adventure that my brother and I had gone on in the first campaign).
As these things do, the campaign grew: the relic proved to be one of many, and a group of shrines in the dungeons would eventually prove to be the prophesied downfall of Vecna. Things got interesting: characters were captured and needed to be rescued. Shane’s character, Starlin – an archer of some ability – proved to be of questionable morality, so that he would work as an assassin and occasionally directly opposing the other PCs (though secretly).
As more of the relics got uncovered, the forces of Iuz were discovered to be main opponents of the PCs. To make things worse, the high priestess of Xan Yae was killed. My brother was playing a lesser priest of Xan-Yae (Yahlos), and was not impressed. He was even less impressed when more priests began turning up dead – including high priests of other lands who were travelling to Greyhawk to see who’d be the new high priest! (Unbeknownst to him, some of them had been killed by Starlin!)
Things rose to a head when my brother’s girlfriend (now wife) joined the group: an elf from the Vesve forest – and I made it seem like she was the assassin who had killed the latest priestess! It was an incredible session of roleplaying, with my brother taking centre stage, and it saw the group eventually depart Greyhawk with their reputation in ruins, travelling to Vesve to help against the plans of Iuz there.
The Vesve section of the adventure was fairly straightforward in comparison, with the group fighting against various military forces and finally stopping the forces of Iuz from capturing the forest (and, more importantly, the village of Skytree, from which both Julia’s and my brother’s PCs hailed).
And then everything fell apart again, as Dave and Julia moved away to the far west of Victoria, and once again there wasn’t an active D&D campaign. However, it had been a real highlight for the short time I’d run it. It would also be the last time that my brother and I played D&D together. (Nowadays, we live in different cities, and we’ll only play a boardgame together now and then, alas!)
However, Shane and his character Starlin were still around. We still saw a lot of each other as we were playing a lot of Magic and the Star Wars CCG… and soon enough 3E would be released and the next chapter would begin.
(to be continued…)