Kyrn Manon - City in the Mists

[Wrexham3]

Kyrn Manon - City in the Mist

This is a concept I came up with for my campaign world of Tellamunda, which I've been running for about a year now.  Its a high fantasy campaign that I have'nt written up on any of the boards.  Recently my party stopped a major ritual which would have released an ancient elven tyrant.  One of the ringleaders - Thomas Kern - managed to escape.  Kern was the leader of a werewolf cult called the Sons of Ulthort.  The PCs managed to track him to a wall of mist high up in an unexplored part of the Kalken Mountains.

After entering the mist and battling an emotionally-overwrought ettin, the PCs decided to camp out for the night.  When they woke up half of them seemed to have lost most of their memories.  They were convinced that the old kingdom of Akamar still existed, and that civil war was tearing it apart.  The sea lords of Rondar and Thald were invading the lands to the south.  Those PCs who still retained their wits realized that these events had taken place three hundred years ago.  They companions were absolute convinced that they were still living in the past.  

Later the PCs stumbled upon a half-ruined city.  Its walls had fallen down in places, and been replaced by a wooden stockade.  They were met at the city gates by men dressed in archaic armour.  Eventually the PCs managed to persuade the guard to let them into the city.  By talking to the locals (especially a completely mad sage) the PCs deduced that this was the city of Kyrn Manon, a trading post of the old kingdom.  Everyone believed that the kingdom was tearing itself apart and the sea lords were about to ransack the city.  A few weeks before, the high mage had cast a great spell to cloak the city from the invaders.  He had disappeared since disappeared, and everyone was holding their breath, waiting to see if the spell had worked.  

The players eventually worked out that the great cloaking spell had been cast centuries ago, and the city had been lost ever since.  The spell affected everyone's memory, so generations of people had hid in the city, fearing that the sea lords were coming.  In that time the city had fallen apart and its population had becoming ever more inbred.  Furthermore the spell messed everyone's long term memory up.  The only one unaffected was the dwarf jester and he turned out to be completely mad!

Thomas Kern, on the other hand, proved to be the younger son of the local lord.  He had been dragged off years ago while hunting wolves.  At first the PCs were'nt sure that he could remember anything.  However, then members of the ruling house started turning up dead, and the PCs got blamed for it.  It eventually transpired that animals were unaffected by the cloaking spell, and therefore so was Kern (being a half-bestial werewolf).  Once the PCs worked out that Kern knew exactly what he was doing, they were able to kill him with a clear conscience.

The PCs also worked out that the court chamberlain was the high mage.  He turned out to be a spectre, and the PCs were forced to kill him along with Kern.  Eventually they left the city.  Without the undead wizard, the city will eventually disappear, leaving only the mad dwarf remaining.

One part of the game that was really enjoyable was the fact that the PCs had to make a Willpower roll every time they fell asleep within the mist.  If they failed they would completely lose their memories.  This happened a number of times, to the mounting frustration of those who were unaffected.  It also allowed those affected to role-play total memory loss.  The only remedy was to drag them kicking and screaming out of the mist and the effect.