Editing Campaign: 1971

This is the first D&D game I ever ran. The manuscript below has been largely preserved of its original grammar and content, with only minor edits to spelling (such as changing Göl to Gôl, the character's new spelling) and formatting. 

'''Key Players.''' Cooper, Caleb, Jax, Ryan, Eric

'''Main Antagonist.''' Illeth

== 1. High Time for a Hijacking ==
The date is November 24<sup>th</sup>, 1971. Our heroes first meet in a hideout in the outskirts of Portland. A mysterious bounty hunter who identifies himself as Samuel greets them and notifies the players that he has hired them today to help him hijack an airplane headed for Seattle from the Portland International Airport.

Hijinks ensue. Before boarding the plane, one of the players overhears Samuel identify himself to the airport personnel as Dan Cooper.

After negotiating with federal agents when Cooper threatens the plane, the players secure $200,000 in $20 bills as well as several parachutes, many pizzas, and a large bottle of grain alcohol. During the flight to Nevada, Samuel tells the players that they are the only ones strong enough to stop a great evil that is imminently going to overcome the world—a Nephilim lich named Illeth arrived in the midplanes about a month ago and is consolidating power and influence in order to wipe out humanity. He explains that Nephilim are stronger, physically larger, more intelligent, and are embodied demons:

“There’s gonna be a guy you’ll see a lot about. Y’know the Plumbers? Nixon’s weird fall guys? Well, let’s just say they don’t exist for nothing. I’m sure you kids know the magic powers some of you possess are the subject of their coverups. But the source of magic in this world is from the Nephilim. And it’s for real. All of it.

He takes a long sip from his bourbon and coke.

“Their existence is the other thing that the Plumbers want to make sure doesn’t ‘leak’ to the public if you catch my drift. They are stronger, physically larger, and more intelligent than we are. The book of Enoch gave them the name Nephilim; some called them Hyperboreans, some, simply ''giants''. But either way, wherever they went, one thing was common—enslavement and eventually the totally wiping out of humanity. Wherever they went. And now, as you may have felt, there is another. Born in the year 892. His name is Illeth. He’s a lich. And he’s trying to take over the world.

He hands them a map of Las Vegas, Nevada. Interestingly, the writing on it is in classical Greek. It contains no topography notes and a broad blood stain splattering the back.

“Illeth is sending several of his henchmen to stick up the ''Carousel'' Motel this Saturday morning. You do the math. You got three days. What do supremely evil liches want to do with a few million bucks, anyway?

The pilot comes on over the intercom. “Cooper, would you like any help opening the aft stair?”

“No.” He says abruptly, raising his voice, then turning back to the players. “It’s about time we get going, my friends.”

Cooper leads them into the cargo hold of the plane before opening its’ aft air stair and handing them each parachutes as well as the two envelopes of cash, each containing $100,000 in $20 bills. In the blink of an eye, an extremely bright flash of light coalesces and Samuel is gone, leaving behind only a mysterious gold ring and a mother-of-pearl tie clip.

The players land in the wilderness of northern Nevada and must find a way down to Las Vegas. A successful arcana check reveals information about both items left behind by Samuel: The ring contains seven charges of the ''Detect Thoughts'' spell, which recharges every day at dawn, and the tie clip, when pinned to a tie worn by the wearer, allows toggleable invisibility, both of which require attunement. The ring can be attuned by simply wearing it for a week without taking it off, and the tie clip by finding a tie that matches its’ design.

The battle royale that ensues at the ''Carousel'' gets complicated when the players meet several of the lich’s evil henchmen and two Plumbers, men in black, wielding energy weapons. The Plumbers were sent there on a lead that the lich’s henchmen would be committing a heist of the place.

== 2. Gôl and the Boys do Las Vegas ==
Two Plumbers wielding ray guns ambush Jax and Ryan in the parking garage while Eric returns to his car to wait for their escape from the hotel. Meanwhile, another Plumber finds Malal and Cooper and attacks them. 

== 3. Illuminati Confirmed ==
The players are visited in Colorado by a member of the Illuminati. He identifies himself as ‘Jason’ and offers them unconditional membership in the organization on the caveat that they carry out assassinations for them of high-profile Nephilim and Nephilim-sympathizers, which will include politicians, bankers, celebrities, seemingly-nobodies, and other bricks in the wall. He tells them that the Illuminati will give them as much legal protection, funding, weaponry, press coverups, and the like, as long as they carry out the wishes of the Grandmaster, who is frantic about stopping Illeth.

During this, they are accosted by several demons, the souls of the Nephilim they killed at the ''Carousel''. After this is cleared up, Jason informs them that the nearest chapter they can visit to be initiated is in Denver. He tells them that they will want to make it over there as soon as possible, as there are many plans that Illeth and the other Nephilim have that will soon be unfolding.

When they make it to the chapter, the Illuminati go over their intel on the Nephilim and the Plumbers. They reveal to the players that Illeth, using funds secured by many money-laundering schemes in the form of banks and museums, will be negotiating an arms deal with the Soviets tomorrow morning to secure Cuban nuclear weapons from Fidel Castro. The players are then tasked with hoofing it over to Cuba to sabotage this meeting. They are ordered not to kill anyone if they can avoid it, especially Castro, and the grandmaster recommends against fighting Illeth for the simple reason that he is extremely powerful. His demonic magic grants him things like telekinesis, freezing bullets in a state of suspended animation, time rendering, and so on.

When they make it to Cuba, their intel tells them the meeting will occur in the governmental offices of the Cuban regime. Illeth will be arriving at about 9:00 AM and the meeting will commence about fifteen minutes later. He will be presenting them with the money, approximately $10 million, as well as an alleged sex tape of a former U.S. president.

== 4. Ballin’ in Cuba ==
The gang removes the cores from all 13 nukes, turning over all but one to the Illuminati back in America. Illeth and his men fall onto their backup plan, which the Illuminati does not currently have intel on. The players are then informed by the Grandmaster that the lich and his men will be summoning a Beholder in rural Missouri outside of Kansas City that they will need to prevent or kill. Illeth himself will not be there but several of his powerful underlings will be on-site for the ritual. Additionally, before they leave, the players deduce the Grandmaster to be Salamalin, who tells them to make sure nothing remains of the portal with which the Beholder will be summoned.

When they arrive in the wilderness, they find an ''army'' of goblins and kobolds surrounding a massive obelisk with a portal in the center, easily five to six hundred of them, maybe more. A particularly large Nephilim dressed in ceremonial war-clad gear prepares the ritual as other high priests assist him. The plan of action with the Beholder is not to fight it or let it wreak havoc, but to use its help in doing two things:

1.       resurrecting an Ancient Red Dragon in the wilderness of southern Canada, and

2.      to help oversee the construction of an underground, Death Star-esque battlestation residing in the hollow earth, the purpose for which is not yet clear,

the technology and guidance the Beholders are to help uncover and outline as part of a deal. In charge of the armies at the portal is Nevan, a very powerful Nephilim wizard. The Beholder arrives, joining the players for the battle.

In Nevan’s back pocket is a Deck of Many Things. (The kind with 13 cards.)

== 5. Behold! The Beholder ==
After the battle with the Beholder, the players are able to learn more intel about the Nephilim’s plans to construct their battlestation in the Hollow Earth, and the subterranean geopolitics therein: The Nephilim, allied with the Beholders and the Drow, begin devising a strategy against the goblins, Illithids, and other proles in uniting them under one banner to reclaim the Midplanes, the Realm of the Sun, from humans. Illeth, who plans to play the long game, is revealed to be the master of subterranean demigod Kyuss, who will reawaken the Tarrasque to assist them in wiping out mankind.

== 6. Worms and Caves ==
The players walk into a conduit tower in the Underdark. They are able to deduce that the entire place is a honeypot; all of the people, clerks, and workers inside are Simulacra created by Kyuss, who appears to them in a hologram offering his back-handed condolences and greetings. He reveals to the players that the Beholder attack was a red herring, including the “intel” about the Drow and Beholders. The real plan was to trap the players in the Underdark to give Illeth enough time to secure a ''functional'' nuke, which will be brought to a football stadium in Kansas City on Christmas Day to carry out a massive, Bane-style terror attack.

After escaping from the conduit point and going rogue, the players have to find a way out of the Underdark. They catch wind of an evil, mind-flayer wizard named Mokura that can offer them safe passage back to the Midplanes. The players decide to travel to his tower, and after hijacking a car from a goblin mother, Malal gives a small metal pencil to her son, igniting a backstory.

They begin driving off towards the tower, taking the pair of goblins hostage, before Kyuss appears and attacks them, completely destroying their car and crashing it near the Lake of Fire. The characters all emerge not seriously injured, where the players battle with Kyuss. A Wish spell is used to place Kyuss into it the Lake of Fire, and another is used to summon a massive Golf Cart of Death, inside of which were several fortune cookies. One of these cookies was rolled and granted Joe McKennedy five Wish spells.

With Kyuss subdued for an unknown amount of time, the players speed off in their new ride towards the tower, where they make it in record time. They walk in and consult with Mokura, who tells them he can take them anywhere they want, but only if they bring him the teeth of an Aboleth. Instead of fetching his wants, Gôl murders him by cutting his head off and Joe McKennedy uses a Wish to turn his wizard tower into a rocket, which blasts out of the Underdark at hypersonic speeds, non-lethally impaling Kyuss on its’ way out. They loot the following items from the tower:

·         (3×) Gallon of Sovereign Glue

·         (3×) Wand of Wonder

·         (2×) Potion of Electricity

·         (1×) Potion of Fireballs

·         (3×) Fortune Cookie

·         (1×) Apparatus of the Crab (if they can figure out how to make it work)

·         (1×) Fixed Dice

·         (1×) Martian Death Ray

== 7. Finale ==
In the present time, Illeth makes his way to Canada, alone, so as not to alert anyone to his whereabouts, where he intends to free Valethar, the ancient red dragon entombed in the wilderness by other players generations ago by an Avatar. The Illuminati advises the players to hurry to Kansas City, and they make it there just in time for the faux-construction workers in the city to de-facto barricade the place by blowing up all entrances and exits. Illeth flies in on Valethar, carrying the nuke, and begins the festivities. He stops anyone from leaving, using his men to trap the bystanders and law enforcement inside. The players, waiting for them under the stadium inside of a car that possesses the same powers as Night Rider summoned by a Wish spell, start moving.

The national guard, FEMA, FBI, and Plumbers surround the stadium and news of the attack is briefly quashed by the government to prevent international notoriety from spreading, masking the abrupt stop of the game as being technical difficulties. Illeth then forces the televisions back on the air, and gives a speech about humanity’s end and the rise of the giants before leaving the players, the dragon, and the primed nuke, which is set to go off in 20 minutes, right in the middle of the stadium. The dragon, not caring that it’s about to die, considers Illeth to be doing it a favor, since it is no longer really a red dragon and has been in near constant agony for almost 200 years. The players and the dragon fight. Ryan misuses his Tool Gun and accidentally loads a time machine program, which transports him thousands of years into the future and into Universe-13.

Using another Wish spell, Joe McKennedy attaches Illeth to the nuke, which he makes rapidly shoot up far enough away and into space so as to not harm any of the people trapped in the stadium, killing this iteration of Illeth in the process.

Afterwards, Thanatos appears to Malal and tells him that after the top two cards on the ''Deck of Many Things'' are drawn, the card immediately following them will be ''Void''—a premonition that only Malal knows—but will immediately become untrue if he tells anybody anything related to the Deck in this context. Thanatos presents it as a gift as a potential means of beating Kyuss when drawn by Malal himself and then pointed at the monster.

The players travel to Agartha to find Illeth’s phylactery, passing through the Underdark on the way there. After some deducing, they learn it is in a massive pyramid guarded by none other than Kyuss himself. Malal condemns Kyuss to to the ''Void'' card, effectively killing him, leaving them the opportunity to obliterate Illeth’s soul.

The players make it to the top room of the pyramid, where they are able to get into the antimagic safe containing the soul. In a tussle, Gôl ends up with the phylactery, who immediately opened it and drank it. The goose almost kept it down before vomiting everywhere, inadvertently letting the soul make its’ way into a backup body that hung grotesquely in the middle of a plexiglass tube, re-growing itself. A zombified Illeth attacks the players, only to get beheaded by Gôl, who then succeeds at consuming the lich’s soul.

In an epilogue sequence, Gôl is seen with President Richard Nixon being sworn in as the new Vice President of the United States following the resignation of Spiro Agnew. Joe McKennedy is appointed as head of the Plumbers. John Lee shape-shifts to avoid the glances of a police officer hanging posters inquiring about the whereabouts of D.B. Cooper. In the Underdark, a masked goblin warrior armed with a metal pencil apprehends several criminals in an alleyway. And finally, the Nephilim hold a funeral for Illeth, vowing an exponentiated and deep vengeance towards humanity for taking their leader.