Dane's Birthday Jubilee Homepage

The Scorched Forest

The story begins with Bigtoe, Furn, and Dane (henceforth referred to as “the party”) walking through the woods. They encounter a violent tree that is screeching in an unknown language. In the nearby town of Pine Grove, the party meets Dawn, a tabaxi who is looking for help distracting a priest and fighting a beast. She describes Bishop Ress as an overall bad dude who works for the Radiant Parish, an overall bad institution. She doesn’t say much about the beast.

They find Ress in the forest and capture him. He tries to get the party to free him while Dawn makes preparations to fight a colossal, deer-like celestial being. Ress teleports to the beast and prostrates himself before it. As a reward, it blasts him with heavenly fire and he runs away.

The celestial attacks the party, and they weaken it so that Dawn is able to capture it in a gemstone using a spell that Cai, her so-called associate, taught her. She convinces the party to come back to the Cloud Guild with her, where there may be more work for them.

Swadlin Interlude I

The party enters Swadlin, the bustling capital of Aeyela, late at night in Dawn's carriage. They get a room at the guild and meet Guildmaster Cai, the following morning. He is a blind tiefling with a clear disdain for the Radiant Parish, and he is confident that the creature they fought was a manifestation of Aubade's power. Aubade is a diety of the sun that is worshiped by the Radiant Parish. He pays the party and promises more if they decide to join the Cloud Guild in earnest to help them with any future angel beasts.

The party does some shopping in town and visits the First Church of the Radiance, where they see Bishop Ress. Furn tries to talk to Ress and blows their cover by telling him about the potential celestial in the nearby town of Moondew. Bigtoe inquires about Archbishop Wick to little avail, and Dane breaks into Ress's office and steals a golden engraved pocket knife.

They return to the guild to explain what happened to Cai, who is a little pissed that they did pretty much exactly what he instructed them not to do. It’s honestly a wonder he didn’t just fire them then. He teaches Furn how to cast gem containment and muses on how he has been in disguise most of his life. As a fugitive that cannot return to her former kingdom, Furn can empathize.

The Bottomless Lake

The party goes to Moondew and speaks with a researcher named Consider Waite. They learn about the Bottomless Lake, an extremely deep body of water that Moondew neighbors, and its recent algae bloom problem. On Consider’s boat they are attacked by Dewey, a normally docile and rarely seen lake monster, who has been injured by golden algae. Dane speaks with Dewey and learns that the algae is coming from below. Furn's secret gets out and there is some party infighting, as the other two feel not so great about being with someone who could be politically assassinated at any moment. After walking into a zone of truth, Consider admits the truth about his wife, Lucinda, who disappeared and built a staircase in order to get to the bottom of the lake.

At the Kingfisher Inn, the party overhears a heated conversation between Bishop Torian (whom they have not yet met) and Bishop Concordia, a large anthropomorphic barn owl. Bigtoe flirts with innkeeper Sylvester. The party tries and fails to get into the magically locked mausoleum that leads to the staircase. They walk by Concordia, Ress, and Torian on their way to the local Parish. Torian’s appearance is somewhat imposing — large, with several pairs of wings, and floating eyes surrounding his head. A pair of wings is folded over his face, framed by long blond hair. It is difficult to discern his gender.

In Moondew’s Parish, they learn about the Gloria Wick, the Archbishop of the Radiant Parish, met Aubade and transformed in 464. After this transformation into an “angel”, she hid away for several years and then wrote the Book of Aubade, kickstarting an entire religion. In the church, the party meets Cardinal Dirge, who speaks regretfully of a falling out she had with Lucinda concerning the details of Wick's transformation. The party suspect that the winged person they met earlier is Gloria Wick.

Consider tells Furn that people from the Parish had come to ask the same questions the party asked. Back at the inn, they overhear Concordia and Torian talking about going to the mausoleum at midnight. After sabotaging the Parish group, the party climbs down the staircase and fights two water weirds that came out of a side porthole. They realize they are being followed and pick up the pace until they are blocked by a rockslide. The Parish squad tries to talk to them while they dig through the rocks. Furn pretends to be a dragon and speaks to the parish group in draconian while Torian mistranslates everything, and Ress confirms that this is definitely the people from Pine Grove.

At this point, Torian finally introduces himself. After a tense confrontation in the stairwell that results in Torian ordering Ress to fight the party, Ress decides that he's had enough and leaves. The party makes it to the bottom of the lake and fights the beast, which Torian calls a “flare”. It is a giant winged snapping turtle. Torian was unable to use his magic in the presence of the flare and clearly was not expecting it.

Before they can capture it, Torian deals the killing blow on the flare with a sword. The algae disappeared and all of the magic that Lucinda had cast — including the magic keeping the spiral staircase together — falls away. The party escapes with their lives to due to Dewey's help, but are unable to find Lucinda. Dane returns Ress's engraved pocket knife, and Ress fully deserts the parish.

Torian asked the Party what they did to the first one, and they said they wanted to keep it from hurting anyone else, so he now has an idea that they are capturing them.

The party wraps up loose ends in Moondew. They have a heated moment with Torian as he tries to escape the staircase and discover more about Lucinda's situation with the help of her husband Consider and Cardinal Dirge. Torian is thoroughly intimidated by Furn. They escape and leave Torian and Concordia behind. The party reports to Cai over the phone, flippantly telling him that Torian drowned in the staircase. Cai barely reacts and ends the call.

Until now, this has been in the pov (kinda) of the party, because this was a story we wrote together and they only knew what i had revealed to them. However, other things were happening behind the scenes, which will be marked in Blue Text.

After Cai learned that Torian drowned, he became a recluse for several days, playing music alone in his room. [link story here ]

after torian killed the turtle, he felt immense guilt and felt like he had betrayed aubade, who had seemingly taken away his magic during the fight. he begins to grow disillusioned with his mother and her faith, as she was the one who ordered him to complete this task. unfortunately, he is scared of aubade, but equally scared of his mother. gloria praises him when he returns with his story of success.

Swadlin Interlude II

Furn goes on an insane date with Brooks, an elf they met in Moondew. He knows about her identity as the former queen of the elf kingdom Genovia, and she threatens him. As a result, Brooks is scared of Furn, and promises to never reveal her secret. Bigtoe fails to get laid by the innkeeper (SAD). Dane does….. something? Probably? The party returns to the Guild and catches up with Cai. Cai suggests that Ress might know more about the beast in Pine Grove.

The gang does some shopping, gets their tarot cards read by an elderly tiefling in town, and talks to Ress about what happened in Pine Grove for a long time. They become fast friends with him, as he no longer is a part of the Parish and cares not for rivalries. He admits to fearing retribution from the Archbishop, since he had been a priest for over thirty years. The party says they will protect him.

In order to learn more about the “flares”, Cai asks the party to accompany him and Dawn into the pocket dimension where the deer from Pine Grove resides. They witness Aubade possess the deer to scold Cai in that unknown screechy language (celestial, language of gods and angels), causing him to have a mental breakdown. They question him after and find out he has met Aubade before. He tells them that he broke into a parish when he was a kid and got blinded by Aubade.

The members of the party spend some quality time together alongside Dawn and Cai as they journey into the Purity Fields to search for DJ Barrius McFinger. Lots of conversation about feelings and backstories goes down around the campfire. The gang finds Barrius McFinger and hangs out with him for a while. When they return to Swadlin, the town is in a state of celebration... or at least the parish is. Cai requests that they go see what’s happening at the Parish as subtly as possible, and they witness a ceremony devoted to a longstanding member of the Parish who has "ascended" (Firekeeper Morris, a dwarf who has now grown wings). The Archbishop Gloria Wick leads the ceremony and looks like Torian, but with even more wings and eyes. They find out that Torian is the archbishop’s son, and the only other angel besides her and now Morris. The party debriefs at the guild and then checks in on Ress to see if he’s still alive. He is.

The Verdant Desert

About a week after the ascendance ceremony, Cai gets a call from a guild scout named Yarrow who reports a sudden influx of rain in the Lapis Desert to the west. While traveling through the Backbone Mountains to Maverick, the largest city within the Lapis Desert and the place where they will be meeting Yarrow, the gang is tricked into entering the den of a blue dragon named Verla. Verla has a young dragon that Furn is incredibly fond of. Verla corners the party and demands they surrender their weapons to her in return for safe passage to Maverick. 

Furn immediately surrenders her weapons and then decides to intimidate Verla to create an opportunity for escape. As a sorcerer with draconic ancestry, she has an edge on the dragon and the party is able to run away.

After dealing with Verla, the party gets to the desert town of Maverick, where the sudden onslaught of rain has been readily welcomed by many of the townspeople. They find a gray kitten in a box and check in at the Evening Star, Maverick’s inn. Furn wishes they could have saved Zav, the baby blue dragon, from his overbearing mother. Dane decides to keep the kitten and names it Leaflet Gideon.  

The party goes to scope out the Temple of Jora where they meet Leaf on the Water, the advisor to the high priestess. The party somehow gets in Leaf's good graces and he confesses his anxiety about the flooding. They feel a small earthquake.

They go to the abandoned parish and meet Cree, a mothkin who lives there. Dane loudly prays to Aubade and asks her if she is involved in what's happening to Maverick. The candles flare up dramatically, and they feel a tremendous, dark presence that simply responds: “Yes.”

The party meets up with Yarrow, an overzealous white dragonborn, at the Evening Star. The party tells them about what happened with Aubade. The next morning, they head to the temple, and Bigtoe manages to contact Jora herself, who tells him she's being "choked out" and is not responsible for the rain. They report this to Cai and then find Yarrow, Leaf, and the High Priestess Nahla in the basement by a quicksand pit. Nahla has a breakdown, refusing to accept that Jora wasn’t responsible for the rain.

The party learns about the ruins a bit from a random archaeology student named Wisteria, and enters the catacombs. They fight some stone lions and then meet up with Yarrow, who falls through the sand pit opening. The party then discovers a 10x10ft tunnel running parallel to the catacombs’ corridor. The party wanders around the catacombs, fights some shit and finds some treasure. They find a feather that looks to be of the Wick variety, and Yarrow observes that it looks like it came from a mourning dove.

The party finds a staff with a lions head that hurts Dane to touch. They finally locate the flare, which is a giant centipede in an underground cavern, wrapped around a huge piece of meteorite. They fight the centipede and capture it successfully.

Still in catacombs, the party confronts Torian, who first appears as a rainbowy specter in the distance. He is carrying the lion staff from before. He asks them to hand over the gem and they refuse. He seems unwilling to fight and instead gives them information, namely that the flares are transformed people and he, by the archbishop’s orders, is killing them off to avoid bad press. In an unlikely moment of vulnerability, he reveals his face. He has eyes that look remarkably similar to Cai’s and makes reference to Aubade not being a huge fan of his. He asks them to tell their boss that the flares are too dangerous to keep contained and that killing them is the only way to ensure safety. The party leaves him in the catacombs. The party also meets with Nahla and confusingly decide to tell her that it was definitely Jora causing the rain. She does not believe them but lets the issue rest. They return to Swadlin.

Swadlin Interlude III

The party returns to Swadlin and reports back to Cai and Dawn. They do not mention their contact with Aubade. During their discussion, Cai says that he agrees with Torian that the flares are transformed people who defied Aubade in some way. He believes that the deer flare was Deacon Rosenthal, a member of the Parish that went rogue while establishing a church in Pine Grove. Everyone questions Aubade’s motives, as the flares only seem to cause destruction and reflect negatively on the Parish.

When Cai takes out a chest to store the centipede’s gemstone, the party spots a book of Aubade tucked in it. Furn tries and fails to swipe it, and Cai scoldingly tells them that they could have just asked. They’ve already skimmed the Book of Aubade before, but find that this copy has “Rosemary” written on the first page. Cai tells them that he didn’t know about that, as his spell that basically performs text-to-speech doesn’t always recognize handwriting, and had simply picked it up from the First Parish to use as a reference.

[It is at this point that Dawn begins to suspect that Cai is keeping something from her. She has done extensive research about the Parish and is familiar with the name Rosemary. It is somewhat of a taboo in the Parish — anyone affiliated with the Parish would shut down or act confused when the name was brought up. There are many rumors: Rosemary was Gloria’s name before her transformation, Rosemary was Gloria’s child that died young, Rosemary was a high ranking member of the clergy that betrayed the Parish. She doesn’t believe it to be a coincidence that Cai has a book with Rosemary’s name in it. She is also surprised that Cai wasn’t intrigued to hear of his book’s possible owner, as he and Dawn had discussed the rumors before. Dawn puts off confronting him about this and waits for more information.]

The party goes to visit Ress, who is doing okay. They get him to agree to help with researching the celestials with Cai, promising he will be safe.

They go to the deer’s pocket dimension with ress in toe. Furn causes problems and Ress almost gets killed, but agrees to help Cai research anyway because "Rosenthal was a bastard but he doesn’t deserve this.” Ress fans, take note that he gets along well with Bigtoe and especially Dane, but hates Furn for endangering him.

At some point, Dawn meets with the party and asks if they know the name “Rosemary”. She says it’s been bothering her ever since they saw it in Cai’s book of Aubade because it is a name associated with many rumors around the Parish, but isn’t included in any of their records that she’s been able to get her hands on. She admits that she has been finding it harder and harder to trust him lately.

They talk to Cai about his research on the flares, which he is optimistic about now that he has Ress’s help, though they clearly don’t get along. The party asked him questions about himself, such as his last name (Stevens), his mothers name (Joanne), and whether or not he had a sister (no).

The party, with Dawn in tow, hang out with Ress find that he was unwilling to talk about Rosemary. Luckily, Furn is scary and intimidates him into revealing that Rosemary was Torian’s twin sister who died of illness at 12 years old. She was another angel, but rarely participated in church activities, the polar opposite of her brother. The party suspects a cover up, which Ress more or less confirms.

They learn that due to her lack of participation in services, Rosemary’s existence wasn’t known by many members of the Parish. The Archbishop put Torian on a pedestal and kept Rosemary in the shadows. When Rosemary died, Torian began to hide his face, presumably out of grief. There was a small funeral that Ress attended. The Archbishop seemingly coped by pretending Rosemary hadn’t even existed, and the rest of the Parish members who were familiar with the deceased child followed suit until it became a secret protected by various rumors. He asks them not to tell anyone that he gave all of this information away.

Dawn insists on going back and talking to Cai immediately about what they learned from Ress. They agree and head back to the guild.

Dawn and the Party confront Cai about what they learned from Ress. After some arguing, he gives in and tells them that Ress only knew the partial truth, because Gloria Wick keeps things even from her most faithful acolytes.

And Cai begins to tell a story. It went something like this.

The Story of Rosemary, told by Cai

"Torian and Rosemary were twins born in 505. Torian came out first, and I imagine Gloria Wick was elated to see a creature that looked like her, wings and all. Rosemary came second, and she did not look like she was supposed to.

From that day onward, Gloria disguised Rosemary every day to look like her and Torian. Her connection to Aubade gave her powerful capabilities in the field of trickery and disguise, so this was easy. It was a step up from your everyday disguise self spell, able to hold up against most scrutiny. Rosemary herself believed she was an angel when she was very young, but eventually the disguise magic wore off at a convenient moment in the bathroom and she thought she had turned into a monster. The conversation she had that night with her mother was… well.. hard.

Gloria told Rosemary that she would never be able to fly because she wasn’t really an angel. She told Rosemary that her own twin brother would outlive her because she wasn’t really an angel.

Torian and Rosemary, despite their differences, got along quite well. they were always getting into shenanigans around the church. Torian was much more interested in church activities, while Rosemary shied away because she knew she was a fake.

A little over 10 years ago, when they were about 12, Rosemary had convinced Torian to skip a dawn service. They were hanging out in their mothers private observatory.

They accidentally summoned Aubade, who made her presence felt but did not appear yet. Torian, who was always the more clever of the pair, tried to dismiss her immediately… but… Rosemary… well… I… made the biggest mistake of my life then.

I knew of Aubade’s capricious nature, the rules about never requesting anything from her, but I had to try. I had to try and see if she could turn me into a real angel, like she had done to my mother so many years ago. I barely even remember her response. I think she just laughed at me and told me my mother had already made such a request. She said it was more fulfilling to see me live a false life. Then she revealed herself to us and took the light out of our eyes. And then everything went dark. And it never got light again, even after I woke up.

Torian got us out of there. He told me we would face mother’s punishment together. We tried to hide it, of course, but it turned out that my disguise magic didn’t work on what Aubade had done.

My mother told me to leave and never come back. She said it was a mercy that she wasn't just killing me outright. I wasn’t able to cry.

No one spoke in my defense. Not Ress, not even Morris…

And Torian… my own brother! My only ally. He was completely silent. He left me alone to die. Selfish fucking bastard."

the end of Danes Birthday Jubilee

Cai finishes telling his tale and waits for the backlash. He apologizes for lying to them, and emphasizes that he is terrified of Gloria Wick finding out he is alive. The party is sympathetic, but Dawn is extremely hurt by his deception and storms out without saying very much. The party encourages him to talk to her and he reluctantly agrees.

This is where Dane’s Birthday Jubilee officially ends. The party actually went on another adventure, but it wasn’t completed and isn’t very relevant to the overall plot, so I cut it out. Plus, maybe we’ll get back to it someday!