5 Aug 2025
Kingdom Divided C2 - Game 1
Banished from the Belllands by imperial decree, our unlikely ensemble of noble outcasts sets off aboard a repurposed Mikado river barge, headed downriver toward the uncertain refuge of the southern coasts.
We meet our core party as they split across carriages: Diogenes, the learned Esten scholar; Mei Ling Maj, the calculating diplomat of the Worm God court; Thorn, the deadly shadowblade of the Emperor; Nikos, the blessed badger priest of change; and Reina Toab, noble of House Thao, torn between two worlds.
The group navigates tense carriage conversations, cultural rifts, and theological debates, arriving at a crowded dock where the social collapse of Oldwyn plays out in real time — Mikado house staff and refugees being denied passage, exiled alongside their noble masters.
Onboard the riverboat, we're introduced to Captain Mikhail Varel, a saltblood loyal to the Imperial Seal, and meet Lady Eloise Kulak, a hidden Covenguard knight revealed only after a violent ambush by fedor raiders attempting to assassinate the exiles. The ensuing battle becomes our first real taste of chaos — Reina and Eloise cut down attackers, Nikos unleashes his inner beast, and Thorn dramatically shadow-jumps through a man mid-air, solidifying his terrifying mystique.
The players navigate post-battle revelations and political tensions. Mei Ling and Nikos debrief the throne room events and voice concern over the Belllander’s manipulative agendas. Diogenes is mistaken for an auspicious omen as the crew begins to mythologize the party. Eloise’s warning to Thorn — to kill himself before being compromised by the Worms — sets a chilling tone for what lies ahead.
The group transfers to a Mikado warship captained by the jellyfish woman Hanye Korzu, and chooses to head south, toward the Esten region of Lulumia, rather than the volatile Helior heartland of Dast.
The sea journey proves grueling. The ship endures storms, broken masts, and a haunting encounter with a leviathan bearing a weapon in its flesh. At one island stop — in Rogue Mark, the fabled Prison of Giants — the group experiences an earthquake-like tremor and wisely decides not to explore the jungle. They later spot Kadalian griffins circling ominously, and Reina uncovers a crew member’s traumatic past as a slave of Kadal.
Nikos climbs to the crow’s nest to commune with the spirit inside him and hears a terrifying omen: “The crack of the world is visible to all.” He learns other spirits investigating the spiritual disturbance never returned.
After a final storm nearly sinks the ship, Nikos uses divine Worm magic to reshape the ship’s hull and seal it. They finally make landfall at Korbegalis in southern Lulumia — battered, weary, and deeply changed — with hard choices about their next steps and uncertain alliances awaiting them on land.
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