Prolog: Welcome to Eastguard
Date: Feb 25th, 2026
Summary
The tale began in darkness and fire. Marteph Stoneharrow, the barkeeper and storyteller, recounted the final, desperate moments of the siege of Kalaman — a battle that had already cost so much. The citadel had broken apart and fallen, crushing draconians by the dozens and sending death dragons crashing from the sky like bones from a butcher’s table. For one breathless moment, it seemed as though the war might finally be over. But war never ends that cleanly.
A red streak cut across the smoke. It was Ignea, a fearsome dragon, and atop her rode Dragon Highlord Kinsaldi Fire-eyes, her fire eyes burning with cold judgment. She perched upon a shard of the fallen citadel and offered the survivors a choice: surrender or death. They chose neither. The field erupted into fire, stone rained from the sky, and the heroes emptied themselves of everything they had left — nothing held in reserve, only will. A warrior named Frosty climbed a jagged spire like it was a mountain he was born to conquer, and when the dragon staggered beneath him, he drove a Dragon Lance straight through Ignea’s eye. The great beast fell hard.
But Kinsaldi Fire-eyes was not finished. She leapt from the dying dragon’s back and came for Darrett with murderous intent, trading blow for blow until Darrett was running on fumes. When her strike finally landed, Darrett fell to his knees. She raised her pike for the killing blow — and that was when [Rowan Hearthwell|Rowan]] moved. Rowan Hearthwell, a farm boy from Eastguard, did not think. He simply threw himself between Kinsaldi Fire-eyes’s pike and Derek, and the weapon meant for Darrett went through [Rowan Hearthwell|Rowan]] instead. He made a sound, Marteph said, like someone surprised the world could hurt that much. In the same breath, Darrett drove his sword up under Kinsaldi Fire-eyes’s armor and through her heart. She was dead before she hit the dirt.
Ignatius ran to [Rowan Hearthwell|Rowan]]‘s side, but he had spent every last measure of his healing power and had nothing left to pull another soul back from the edge. [Rowan Hearthwell|Rowan]] was slipping. He looked up at Darrett and spoke the very words Darrett had once told him — that you don’t have to be brave every day, just be brave today. Then, with his last breath, he asked the question that would echo through the tavern long after Marteph raised his drink in a toast: “Was I brave today?” He was. The siege of Kalaman ended with a citadel broken, a dragon slain, a high master dead, and a farm boy from Eastguard who stood when he didn’t have to.
As the toast settled and the story faded into the warm noise of The Snoring Warrior Tavern, the patrons began to stir — and it was only then that a handful of strangers realized they had all ended up at the same table. Brynnan and Bimmi Brewfett Thunderhammer had arrived first, taking the only two available seats. Titus had walked in next and found one seat remaining at their table. Vonmese Tunmiar followed, and then Sir Jangle Merrigold, a bard with a pencil-thin mustache who had been playing his harmonica before the story began. Finally, a hooded figure who had been watching from the corner all evening stepped forward and asked if he might sit. His name was Jack Dagger, and he had been watching them all along. Jack bought the first round, and the six of them talked long into the night, with Jack eventually offering to show the newcomers around Eastguard come morning.
Morning arrived at The Inn of the Broken Blade, where Teti Stoneharrow — innkeeper and sister of Marteph — served the bleary-eyed group steaming mugs of dark coffee and breakfast on the house. Bimmi chewed his way through some restorative juicy fruit to shake off the previous night, and once the group had gathered their wits, Jack led them out into the streets of Eastguard. He walked them down Crafter’s Row with the easy confidence of someone who had made himself at home in every corner of the town. They visited the Twinforge Smithy, where the Iron Hand twins Brynya and Borin worked — Brynya crafting weapons and intricate decorative work, Borin handling armor. Sir Jangle asked for a cleaning cloth for his harmonica and was directed down the road to Stonehide Leatherworks, where the proprietor Garrett sold him a simple chamois for a single copper piece. Titus picked up a bundle of arrows, and Bimmi acquired a set of leatherworking tools, both at a generous discount thanks to Jack’s easy charm with the locals.
The tour continued to Aemon’s Curiosities and Pawn, a remarkable shop owned by a retired adventurer named Aemon Cobb. The interior was lined with glass display cases filled with neatly arranged oddities, a wall of every weapon imaginable stretched across the back, and a grand clockwork cash register sat at the counter with a satisfying mechanical ring. Bimmi, ever the tinkerer, offered to improve the register — and promptly made it completely silent, much to Aemon’s visible dismay. The group also spotted a mechanical rabbit that hopped across the counter, and Jack quietly acquired a set of lockpicking tools before they moved on.
Jack led the group past Dera’s Apothecary — run by a distrustful gnome woman named Dera Nightfall who eyed Bimmi’s gummy potions with deep suspicion — and past the woodworking shop of Cody Carpenter, the library, the rough dive bar known as the Mad Sphinx, and Walden’s Wands, where Brynnan examined the proprietor’s collection of magical wands with great interest. The tour wound back through the smithy for tools before Jack brought them to the last stop: a small, quaint bookshop called Binding and Whispers. The exterior was modest, but stepping through the door revealed an interior far larger than the outside walls should have allowed, and more than one member of the group swore they saw books shifting on the shelves of their own accord.
Part 1: [[Retrieve [Rowan Hearthwell|Rowan]]‘s Journal]]
Behind the counter stoodBrittany Marginsong, the shop’s keeper, who greeted Jack warmly and wasted little time in presenting the group with a task. She explained that the late hero Rowan Harthwell had kept a personal journal, and she believed it was still at his family’s farmhouse north of town. She wanted to study it — to understand what had driven a simple farm boy to march off to war and ultimately give his life. She could not leave the shop herself, and the task, she admitted, would require someone with a silver tongue. The group agreed to help.
Getting directions proved its own small adventure. Bimmi visited City Hall and charmed the clerk Kyle so thoroughly that the young man went above and beyond, digging through records to produce detailed directions to the Hearthwell farm near a creek north of town. Bimmi rewarded him with a few silver pieces, and the group set off — Bimmi, Brynnan, and Jack making the hour-long walk while the others remained in town. The farmhouse was a modest, single-story ranch with flower beds at the front door, a beehive in the yard, and a wheelbarrow resting against the side wall. It looked like a place where grief had settled in and made itself comfortable.
Brynnan sent his lizard familiar slipping under the gap of a bedroom door while Bimmi knocked at the front and spoke with Elira Hearthwell, offering heartfelt condolences and explaining that a keeper of books wished to borrow the journal to honor her son’s memory. Elira Hearthwell was overcome with grief and refused, even as Bimmi offered her calming gummies from Solace to ease her nerves — she took them, but still shut the door. Meanwhile, Brynnan had located the leather-bound journal on a desk inside the bedroom. Using a spectral hand conjured through the window, he silently lifted the book and brought it outside without the family ever noticing. The group walked away at a measured, unhurried pace — until Bimmi’s bird companion, BlackJack, squawked loudly and exposed Brynnan’s lie about not having seen the journal, nearly unraveling the whole affair as they tried to casually disappear down the road.
Once safely away, Brynnan read through the journal. Its entries were those of a young man finding his voice — notes about chores, visits to the tavern, names of people he’d met, and two mentions of Marteph’s stories about the great heroes of the age. On the last page, the writing simply trailed off mid-thought, as though [Rowan Hearthwell|Rowan]] had set the pen down to go plow the field and never came back to finish. Brynnan carefully copied the important passages onto his own parchment before the group returned to Brittany, who accepted the journal and later returned it to them cleaned, preserved, and wrapped in cloth, asking that it be returned to the Hearthwells. Jack went alone to the farmhouse, left the book on the doorstep with a note of explanation, and knocked by firing a blunt, tipless arrow against the door before retreating into the treeline. The journal found its way home, the group collected their gold, and the streets of Eastguard settled into the quiet of another evening — though something about the way these six strangers had fallen together suggested that their story was only just beginning.