Whispers of the Forgotten: Journey Log
Session 1: Into Hollowmere
he town of Hollowmere should be alive with the sounds of daily life—merchants haggling, hooves clattering, children laughing—but as you cross its empty streets, a terrible stillness settles around you. Doors hang ajar, meals sit abandoned mid-bite, and a strange hum lingers at the edge of hearing, like a whisper you can’t quite catch. No signs of struggle, no blood—only footprints, hundreds of them, all leading toward the massive, ancient temple on the horizon. You came here seeking gold, knowledge, duty, or something you couldn’t even name, but that question now feels distant, hollow. What happened to Hollowmere? And why does it feel like the silence itself is waiting for you?
Session 2: No One Left to Serve... except you 3... or 4, or 5?
You arrived at Hollowmere expecting life—laughter, tour guides, staged battles—but found only silence: no sky, no stars, no moon, only the hum gnawing at the edge of your minds. Exploring the abandoned town, you uncovered signs of looting and desecration, strange footprints splitting at crossroads, places of worship defaced beyond recognition, and a mausoleum where coffins had been disturbed—some shattered, some blown apart from within. Tamarrind retrieved four unsettlingly well-preserved teeth, while Wayfarer pocketed a cold, unnatural vertebrae. In the church, you found a brutalized altar where candles still burned, and beyond it, a chilling abyss where solid walls should have been, alongside a crumpled note pleading for silence against the whispers. At the tavern, the hum thickened and unseen malice twisted the air; black ooze poured from the taps, marking the infestation’s spread. The tavern sealed itself, only to unseal under attack, as eldritch aberrations ambushed the party. With divine might and desperation, you fought them off, but the battle left behind a strange, sentient orb—and when it was destroyed, it released a towering, broken figure: Bartender Bob, smiling warmly, and missing his legs.
Session 3: The Forge Remembers, But Do You?
You arrived in Hollowmere expecting life, but found only a silent town under a starless sky, the ever-present hum gnawing at your minds. Defaced altars, shattered coffins, and footprints led you to the tavern, where Bartender Bob—too clean, too practiced—served drinks that warped memory and time. Wayfarer drank and was altered, Tamarrind tasted only black sludge, and Slag uncovered that memories could be traded, lost, rewritten. Hours passed without notice, and when Wayfarer tried to leave, he simply fell into the void. In desperation, you returned to Bob, who, shaken from his loop, warned you: "Safe? No. Not safe." Slag offering him a drink cracked open a memory—of a once-lively tavern torn apart by a miasmic catastrophe, leaving only Bob behind to glitch endlessly through centuries of decay. Pressing onward, you reached the forge, fought spectral workers, and uncovered vaults holding the relics of your forgotten pasts: Tamarrind’s stolen childhood, Wayfarer’s broken gods, Slag’s abandoned name. Even Bob's own legs were found, polished and waiting. In the forge, purpose whispered through every artifact, culminating when Wayfarer donned the blacksmith’s helm and, for a heartbeat, became something ancient watching from beyond, whispering: "Pilgrim, your path is not yet set. Shall we finish the work your hands have started?" The hum deepens. The whispers grow louder. And there is no going back.
Session 4: Below the Silent Village
Last time, on Whispers of the Forgotten… Lyra Brightsong fell through the void and crash-landed in Hollowmere, joining the party just as Wayfarer faced the Blacksmith’s trial in the mindscape. Floating above the town, Wayfarer answered the sacred rites of the Laughing Depths—singing "The Best Day Ever" and placing his childhood relics on the anvil—forcing back the tendrils of the Still Abyss as Hollowmere crumbled below. But the victory was brief; screams tore through the silence as nightmares made flesh rose to fight, wearing the faces of your past. Lyra’s illusion was absorbed, Tamarrind’s blasts roused something undead, and amid the chaos, Wayfarer completed the Final Benediction, forcing the earth to split and the creature to grovel before the anvil. When it ended, Wayfarer reclaimed a memory of his broken hometown—a potential key to filling the void. Tamarrind summoned Mulch in the form of a tiny dragon-child, and Slag felt the wrongness deepening. Returning to Bartending Bob’s Emporium, you reattached Bob’s legs with a natural twenty, restoring him to something more real, more present. As the inn shifted, your personal rooms appeared: Tamarrind’s cave, Slag’s wall of notes, Wayfarer's cold metal door, and Lyra’s newly created room, paid for with a memory she can no longer recall. Now, the paths through Hollowmere are open once again. But if you fill the void with memories… what happens to the things that were meant to be forgotten?
Session 5: Where Memory Fails, the Body Rises
You began inside Bartending Bob’s drifting inn, waiting out earthquakes and burning through days without answers, until one by one you stepped outside—and fell into an endless ocean without water, breathing where you shouldn’t, walking a road of sand and stone at the bottom of the world. Tamarind found a strange coin marked by a smiling face that shifted when unseen, and when he flipped it, the world responded: a massive centipede-bus roared past, humming an old, half-forgotten lullaby. You climbed aboard and met impossible faces—Flint and Horc, calm and unchanged, while Slag spoke with Bob the Bus Driver and Mulch consumed a version of himself. The Elders of the Hallowed Fang appeared, claiming Tamarind had already ascended, only to vanish into nothingness as the bus pressed on. Along the way you uncovered strange relics: a jawbone flute of the Nameless King, vials, bracers, even a can of tar where a smiling creature peered back at you. But then the Tar Beast came, screaming with voices you knew, consuming echoes of memory, until you fed it fragments of your past and it spoke: “What is… my… identity…?” When it died, the world flattened into darkness, and then rewrote itself again—shifting into a colossal coliseum, where the Forgotten Sage awaited his final ascension.
Session 6: For Whom It Was Written
The party entered a coliseum-like dreamscape, confronting Bubble Buddy—an entity writhing in pain, begging to be made into something—who eventually shifted into Razul, one of Tamarind’s former elders, declaring, “We are ascending!” Slag’s attempt to heal him failed, as BB was no longer truly alive, and Tamarind, overwhelmed by the voices of Mulch, barely held on. Tamarind’s flute stilled the chaos momentarily, allowing the Laughing Depths to speak through the golden sky and acknowledge the forgotten Bubble Sage. But as BB seized the Spatula of the Sage, his form ruptured—elders screaming as they were pulled into him—and he became the Bubble Sage once more, only to be overtaken by black veins and transform into the towering Hallowed Warden of the Abyss. In the brutal battle that followed, Tamarind was pulled into spiritual trials, confronting the ruins of his faith and forging a new legacy as the First Fang. As the Warden prepared to crush them, Wayfarer summoned the bus using Slag’s coin, and the party fled—just as Sludge, with a natural twenty, landed the final blow. Back aboard the silent bus, Bartending Bob guided them to the tavern, where a mysterious robed figure now awaited behind the bar.
Session 7?
What was supposed to be here?
Session 8: Velgrin's Last Stand
Velgrin fought alongside us in the ruined tavern square, laughter sharp as bullets, cloak torn like the last page of a story no one wanted to end. The echoes of forgotten names howled through Hollowmere’s bones. As walls crumbled and shadow-things surged, we fought — not to win, but to make losing beautiful enough to remember. And far beyond, the ritual circle of Vareth-Khul began to burn.
Session 9: Anemoia
We awoke around a flickering campfire, surrounded by survivors who clung to their stories as shields against oblivion. Names. Stories. What changed. That was the liturgy now. A broken warforged — T.A.M.A.R.I.N.D. — delivered the final truth: Mulch had always been Vareth-Khul. At the throne of memory, Velgrin gave us relics of resistance. Wayfarer — now Unravel — accepted a legacy not of fate, but of choice, becoming a chimera of kenku and genasi blood. A sunkissed autumn leaf drifted into his hands. And as Hollowmere shifted around us, we seized our last stolen breath and ran — toward the ritual, toward Vareth, toward the end of remembering.