A Look Beyond the Veil, part 2 of 3

This is the middle of a trilogy, where Veil realizes who her enemy is and goes on a mission to kill a god.


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Veil’s story continues around three years after her departure from Renoux. She has been tracking down a legendary dagger. She takes it from a temple and becomes the subject of a manhunt by a new party of adventurers. She eludes authorities and reveals herself to the group, explaining that the weapon is too dangerous to be kept in the hands of people who don’t know what it does. It was the unholy weapon that can slay anything, even gods. However it has run out of whatever unholy energy it once possessed and is now just a mundane dagger.

She then demonstrates that she has developed the power to store items in her mind, like a psychic bag of holding. The dagger vanishes into nothing in her hand then reappears to prove it. She stores it inside her mind.

She offers to travel with the party and help random NPCs. She has become reckless, feeling invincible with her new power and knowledge. She walks into bandit camps, ambushes, and caves without looking back to see if the party is behind her. A half-orc party member called Edmond saves her, and they have a conversation where she tells him her story so far, and he is grateful he wasn’t in Renoux when she was, to her confusion.

They are joined by Cecil, gunslinger traitor of Avanheim; Bob, the former wizard of Renoux; Raven, secretly an elf princess; and their staff. They head to the canyon elven city of Lothlorien. They find the city carved from both sides of a wide canyon oddly empty and quiet, and set up camp inside to investigate what happened. They find an abyssal black flame and manage to contain it, in hopes that it could power up the Jathiman dagger, almost killing Veil in the process as she faces red wyrmlings. She is incapacitated for a short while.

The Traveler shows himself to Edmond during the investigation to try and turn him against Veil, but since he’s starting to develop feelings for her he refuses and has his hand burned off as a consequences. He is healed later, and warns Veil that the Traveler knows she’s coming. He also admits to her that he’s a former member of the Bloodfang, having left after the chaos she left in her wake. They warm up to each other and develop a trusting relationship.

They are then betrayed by the elf princess Raven with the help of a recurring Warforged villain called Unit Thirteen, an explosion causes the city to collapse into the Underdark below. The party carries their knocked out companions, including Veil, out of the canyon with impressively high rolls. No casualties except for the Warforged.

A couple more adventures happen before Veil finds herself meeting Emdond’s old Bloodfang friend Tyre Blackmoon. Tensions are high until a Mindflayer called Zalt takes control of several companions and NPCs, forcing them to work together to take him down. In the chaos, the party is split up and a gnome NPC called Nixi is taken to the Underdark, where the party follows, as do Veil and Tyre who are uneasy around one another. They are forced to run when a purple worm appears and chases them.

Veil blacks out and returns to her senses a few months later to find that they’ve been ambushed and mind controlled by a colony of Mindflayers. Her old ally from the siege of Renoux, Kieran, had come to release her from her mind control. She slaughters the one Mindflayer that was controlling her brutally and out of sight. The party fights their way to the Elder Brain, who reveals a Mindflayer tarrasque. They make a lot of noise to attract a purple worm, and as the Mindflayer-controlled Tarrasque chases them, four giant purple worms jump up to attack it, distracting it in an epic Kaiju battle.

As they put distance between them and the battle, a terrifying old orc called Thanatos shows up and slays the weakened tarrasque. They head back to the surface and Veil begrudgingly admits that Tyre isn’t the monster she thought he was, then the party parts ways, with Veil and Edmond choosing to travel together.

Edmond proposes to Veil and she accepts, then they both come to realize that Thanatos is Edmond’s grandfather. As a wedding gift, Thanatos pulls some divine strings to have Veil and Shade’s mother brought back from Celestia to the mortal realm, where she is reunited with her daughters. Veil and Shade meet their adopted sister Sol, a young Way of the Sun Soul Aasimar Monk who’s intimidated by them and leaves the realm to find her biological parents. Remember Sol for later.

Veil’s mother then leaves, saying she needs to have a word with Veil’s father, and doesn’t want to be disturbed for at least two months. The Traveler tries to disrupt it but Thanatos stops him and cuts a finger off. In retaliation, the Traveler contacts his secret cult of changeling worshippers called the Cabinet of Faces, ordering them to crush Thanatos, Veil, and everyone they had loved. Veil also receives a Phoenix egg.

Veil hears that Gregory Renoux, older brother of her old friend Valerie and ex-husband of Shade, is up to no good. She heads back to Renoux with Edmond and is ambushed by the Cabinet of Faces and Unit Thirteen, who are interrupted when Gregory descends on an ancient red dragon, hell bent on taking the city for himself. The Traveler appears but is captured and trapped in a scepter in Gregory’s hand. He calls Veil an impostor and pretender, and prepares to kill her with fire when a changeling pulls her and Edmond through a portal. Renoux burns as Rowan Renoux, the ancient founder of the bloodline returns with his armies, ready to wage war against Gregory. The city is engulfed by an unnatural mist.

Veil, Edmond and Unit Thirteen find themselves in a different world called Eberron, in a city known as Sharn. Their rescuer introduces himself as Chance, a casino owner and priest of the Traveler. He talks individually to Veil then Edmond, explaining that Veil is basically the avatar and prophet of the Traveler since he didn’t choose a new one since Shade supposedly died. Basically, she is bound by him and the agendas of Veil and Chance align. To prove his trustworthiness he calls the Cabinet of Faces off their pursuit. Edmond hires Unit Thirteen as a bodyguard, and both he and Veil realize what a snarky asshole he is. While in Sharn, the egg in Veil’s possession hatches and a baby phoenix imprints on her, calling her “mommy.” She calls the phoenix Wick, and an illusion is cast to hide its true nature and make it look like a mundane parakeet. It still manages to incinerate some bandits. They spend some downtime making arrangements and meeting the locals.

At this point, Veil’s personalities have diverged significantly thanks to the Mindflayer control, with each personality eagerly waiting for the chance to be in control. Jinx, the wildest, most sarcastic and flirtatious persona; and Luna, the cheerful, bubbly and childlike persona seem to be the most dominant. As Veil spends less and less time as herself, the three personas compete for control. Edmond gets to know each of them in turn.

Eventually they find their way back to their world with a mist covered Renoux on the horizon. Cecil arrives and explains that Renoux is now in Gregory’s grasp and that the army of Rowan Renoux had fallen, with Rowan’s fate unknown.

Veil gets cursed and searches for a way to lift it when a giant projection appears before her. It explains that it’s a slumbering god that’s taken an interest of her, and that they met in Sharn while he believed he was a mundane old Tortle, who was a senile walking disaster when they first encountered him. He informs her that she is pregnant with Edmond’s child, and that her child has a great destiny to fulfill. He lifts her curse then elevates her into a demigod. This creates a new divine persona which calls herself Victoria. This new persona has all the best traits of all the others, and is quickly acknowledged as their leader. She gains the power to bring her alternate personas into the physical world and proceeds to demonstrate it before the battle preparations begin. She tells Edmond about the baby and recruits Tyre and what’s left of the Bloodfang to her cause.

They arrive to Thane’s camp outside of Renoux where Bob tells Veil he’s her father, the long lost changeling Syn Valence. Veil catches up with previous party members and participates in a couple of reconnaissance missions into the now hobgoblin-infested city where they find the founder of the city, Lord Rowan Renoux, in a bad shape and take him to camp to treat him and get information on how his army failed. He accuses Veil of being a Renoux pretender seeking the throne to herself, and doesn’t believe her no matter how much she says “I dun want it”.

He sends a call for action, knowing the city is lost without a lot of help. What follows is an Avengers Endgame level of backup as former party members and villains answer the call. After a few roleplay-heavy sessions where several characters interact for the first time, they set off in three groups into the city.

The first group, which includes Veil, act as a distraction taking on the brunt of Renoux forces, fighting off soldiers and stone golems with everything they’ve got.

The second group, lead by Lord Rowan, go through a stealth mission to free his loyal soldiers.

The last group contains everyone that wasn’t stealthy or tanky in an epic fight against Gregory’s ancient red dragon.

While this all happens in parallel, Veil had given a mission to a halfling rogue. The halfling rogue was sneaking into the castle and stealing the scepter from Gregory. The halfling succeeds, and sees Gregory get stabbed by one of his guards, which was the changeling Chance. The two villains are on each other’s throats when Edmond sets off an explosion blows the entire royal palace sky high, the shockwave dissipating the mist over the city.

Edmond finds Gregory and Chance badly burned, and slays Gregory before healing Chance and taking her back to Veil.

Tensions were rising among party members at this point because of a squabble between two players.

In the final session, Chance managed to release the Traveler and kill Edmond, but not before Edmond poisoned Chance first so they’re both dying. Veil, watching this happen, grabs the scepter still holding most of the Traveler’s powers and goes all out on him as he gloats, lunging at him and breaking through the barrier between realms and into another realm, beating down on the weakened god along with three party members.

The party converges on the center where Rowan awaits in the new crater, in the middle of an uncovered shrine, for the final battle. Sadly that never happened because of toxic players with the mentality of “DM vs player” and the need to “win Dungeons and Dragons” broke the final session down. What follows is my best attempt to provide a satisfying ending. If you don’t care about things that didn’t happen in the campaign, you can stop here.

Rowan reveals that he’s not an immortal vampire, but a Lich who encouraged the lie to throw people off what he really was. He gloats that the whole city of Renoux is his phylactery. The final battle was supposed to end up destroying the city and killing Rowan, supposedly ending the bloodline before Valerie, Veil’s old friend, steps forward as the last Renoux and starts rebuilding the city, free of the curse of Rowan. He is too proud to fall, and dies upright holding his sword for support even as his knees fail him.

Valerie also says the Bloodfang is redeemed since Tyre sacrificed himself to protect her from Rowan's treacherous attempt to take her by surprise and stab her.

Veil was supposed to kill the Traveler and ascends to his place, then revive Edmond and Chance, giving the latter the opportunity to redeem herself. She also grants Shade a new chance at life and sends her alter egos across the realms to spread her words. She dwells in her realm, where she gives birth to twins. A boy and a girl.

Across the DnD multiverse, in one of the realms Veil crossed in her battle against the Traveler, a Warforged called Thirteen falls across the sky towards a realm that has never seen his kind before, where a new adventure is about to begin in a realm called Anvora. He is unaware that a young Aasimar monk called Sol is nearby, and that her path will cross his on her quest to find her parents.


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