campaign
The Campaign, The Warlord's Road
The Campaign: The Warlord’s Road
This is an original campaign frame built to fit the region and its history [Neri-LandRush] [Alm-Alpha] [Phindar-Aftermath]. The regional facts it rests on are cited; the structure and set-pieces are design, meant to be cut and reshaped.
The premise
Norwold in AC 1016 is a country with a hole in the middle of it. Alphatia, the empire that owned the north, drowned seven years ago [WotI]. King Ericall holds his capital and little else; his lords are half-loyal, his coffers thin, his brothers hostage or dead [Alm-Alpha] [Phindar-Aftermath]. Into that vacuum press three powers:
- Thyatis, which never forgave the annexations and now, with Alphatia gone, gathers its fleets on the Isle of Dawn, while its deep-cover agents (lords like Longtooth and Alak Dool) rot the kingdom from inside [Phindar-Aftermath] [Neri-RBP].
- The Heldannic Knights, entrenched on the southern coast at Landfall and Kamminer Bay, who held Oceansend until AC 1015 and mean to have it again [Alm-Kamminer] [Alm-Oceansend].
- The old powers of the land, the frost giants of Frosthaven, the cold legacy of the Ice Witches, the waking dragon S’hastarl, the efreet of the Arch of Fire, stirring now that the empire’s order is gone [Neri-TG] [Alm-Ironwood] [Alm-ArchFire].
The Great Land Rush is still open: Ericall will still grant a charter to anyone who can take and hold land [Neri-LandRush] [CM1]. The campaign is the story of the party doing exactly that, rising from nobodies to lords over twelve levels, and discovering, as they rise, that someone is working to bring the whole fragile kingdom down before they can inherit a piece of it.
The spine
A single through-line ties the tiers together. Keep it, or swap the prime mover for another of the three powers:
The Unmaking of the North. A hidden alliance, Thyatian gold behind a native evil, is engineering Norwold’s collapse: stirring frost giants and humanoids against the frontier, turning lord against lord, and reaching for an old ice-power that could freeze the Great Bay for good and open the whole coast to raiders. The party pulls one thread of it at level 1 and is holding the other end at level 12.
The prime mover works through the spy-lords [Neri-RBP]; the native evil is the legacy of Akra and the Ice Witches [Neri-TG] [LoZ-R2R]. A DM who prefers a cleaner war can make the Heldannic Knights the engine and the ice-power a distraction; the tier structure holds either way.
The four tiers
| Tier | Levels | Scope | The party is… | Ends with |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I | 1-3 | The home base and its hinterland | reliable local problem-solvers | the first thread: local trouble has an outside hand → |
| II | 4-6 | The region and its roads | sworn blades of a lord, ranging wide | proof the conspiracy is real and regional → |
| III | 7-9 | All of Norwold | agents the crown and great lords rely on | a charter offered; name level reached → |
| IV | 10-12 | Their own dominion and the enemy’s seat | landed lords at war | the prime mover broken; CM1 play begins → |
Getting started
Pick a home base for Tier I, Alpha, Oceansend, Leeha, or Two Lakes Vale, each with its own opening situation and a different flavor of start. The Home Bases page lays out all four. The Hooks and Threads page holds the faction clocks, the recurring villains, and rumor tables to seed the spine from the first session.
How it hands off
By level 12 the party holds a dominion and has broken the conspiracy’s field agents, but not the war itself: Thyatis still gathers, the Knights still hold the south, the dragons still watch. That is precisely the table CM1 Test of the Warlords is set at, Companion tier, a lord defending and expanding a Norwold dominion, so the campaign’s end is CM1’s beginning [CM1]. The sequels CM2 Death’s Ride, CM3 Sabre River, and the M-series carry it from there [CM2] [CM3] [M2].