The active road party has left Turst Fields by wagon carriage, reached Westruun, and followed the bandit trouble back to a nearby camp.
Story So Far
Player-Facing Campaign Record
Story So Far
What the party has actually lived through at the table: strange discoveries, uneasy memories, and questions that do not yet have clean answers.
The campaign has been light on combat and heavy on strange discoveries, but the first true fight was not against a stranger.
John's parents are gone, his memories are not settled, and the party now knows his grief has teeth.
The blank journal still points ahead, but Westruun has already proved that local trouble can pull the party off the main road.
John's Farmhouse
The party's earliest major discovery centered on John Smith. John had been speaking to his parents as if they were present, but the people John addressed were not there. When Clerix forced the issue with magic, John's buried memory cracked open.
What the party learned was simple and terrible: John's parents are gone, and whatever happened at the farmhouse wounded him badly enough that his mind built conversations around the absence.
- The full truth of the farmhouse remains unclear.
- Clerix found a ring and took it.
- John's home is no longer just a home. It is a place where something broke.
Afterward, the party was confronted by Searchers. Two died, and the party recovered a blank journal marked with a Vox Machina logo from somewhere that does not fit this world. Other Searchers later warned the group that something large is coming, and that they need to become a real team.
The Monster Wearing John's Face
John changed. Before the party could understand what was happening, he transformed into something monstrous before their eyes. The group fought him because, in that moment, he was dangerous and terrifying and no one had the luxury of certainty.
But the longer the fight went on, the clearer one thing became: the thing they were fighting was still John Smith.
Clerix reached him. Somehow, in the middle of the violence, the goblin separated John from the monstrous other self and calmed them both down. The monstrous John disappeared back into the other world rather than remaining loose in this one, and John was left changed by the encounter.
- John can now channel some of that other self's power.
- The party knows John was involved in his parents' deaths.
- What they know may not be the same thing as the truth.
The Road Out of Turst Fields
After the farmhouse, the Searchers, and John's transformation, the party had room to breathe. They restocked, secured a wagon carriage with horses, and began the road from Turst Fields toward Westruun and Emon, with John at the reins.
One day of travel has already passed. At the roadside stop that night, the journey did not erase what happened. Around the camp, people turned inward. Sion held her holy symbol and sat with old grief. Clerix wandered from camp looking for water to fish and saw something unsettling in the reflection before praying with his coin, hearing a whisper, and going straight to bed.
- Westruun is the next major stop.
- Emon remains the larger destination after that.
- Nicodranas is still waiting because someone there is connected to the blank journal.
Mud, Ravens, and Bandits
The road turned from quiet reflection into pressure. Leaf noticed ominous birds that spooked the horses and sensed something bad might happen. The party moved cautiously, sang on the road, and then had to deal with the carriage stuck in mud under worsening weather.
By the fifth day of travel, Clerix studied the strange journal and shaded the end of the page. The shading revealed the incomplete word or fragment "NICO--" and another phrase: "not yet." After some time, the shading faded. After speaking to his god, Clerix saw a vision of a pier and a raven.
The party later found bandits threatening a family on the road. They fought, killed three bandits, captured two, and saw one flee. The rescued family traveled with them toward Westruun, cooked for them at camp, and the party eventually reached Westruun, where they could hand over the captured bandits, find an inn, and speak with the family about the town.
- The party is now in Westruun, around day 5 after leaving Turst Fields.
- Clerix has new journal clues: "NICO--" and "not yet."
- Westruun remembers Grog through the Burned Quarter, the Quiet Side, "the Tide," and a shame older than hatred.
The Bramblewood Bandit Camp
Westruun did not let the bandit problem stay clean. The captured bandits from the road were freed by their friends or allies, and the party was pulled back into the trouble before the road to Emon could simply continue.
In town, prices, tavern trouble, suspicion of adventurers, and old memories of Grog made it clear that Westruun has opinions about people who arrive armed and call themselves helpful. One customer made that hostility personal enough to ask about John and make an offer John refused. Clerix bargained hard enough to secure a pile of rations, and the group leaned into the joke that they were now his bodyguards.
The trail led to a Bramblewood bandit camp. The bandits used hostages, and one hostage died before the party could save them. Leaf scouted as a rat and escaped danger, the group took out guards quietly, then broke the camp in open combat.
- The party defeated the bandits and took three prisoners.
- Silk helped push the investigation forward through interrogation.
- Clerix's hunger for bounty money is now part of the question of what happens to prisoners.
What does John remember, what is he protecting himself from, and can he safely channel the other self's power now that the other self has vanished back into its own world?
Clerix took it from the farmhouse, and he was also the one who pulled John back from the monster.
Odd objects, fractured memories, and private pasts keep collecting around this group.
The blank journal points beyond Emon toward someone in Nicodranas, and now the incomplete word or fragment "NICO--" has appeared.
The party is returning from the bandit camp with prisoners, a dead hostage behind them, and a town already wary of adventurers.
For a cleaner list of unresolved leads, keep the running mystery board at Open Questions. For route tracking, use Travel Log.
Field Notes
Party Notes
| Character | Current table-facing thread |
|---|---|
| John Smith | His memories, his parents, and his monstrous other self are no longer simple facts. |
| Leaf | Her way of reading the world keeps turning ordinary moments into trials, and now her wild shape has become a real scouting tool with real risk. |
| Silk | His origin still raises questions about what was made, inherited, or chosen, and he has begun taking a sharper hand in interrogation and investigation. |
| Clerix Goblinstan | He has taken a ring from the farmhouse, pulled John back from the monster, heard a whisper after praying with his coin, revealed “NICO—” and “not yet” in the journal, seen a pier-and-raven vision, bargained for rations, and pushed the bounty question around prisoners. |
| Sion, Iron Scourge | Her Horned Ascent now includes a fight where the enemy was one of her own companions, quiet road-time reflection, protecting a family from bandits, and helping break a bandit camp. |
| Gloom | Currently on indefinite leave until further notice. Her past remains private. |