A Look Back
Gallery
Each season (June to November), Tempest Grove comes to life as players experience season-long stories pulled from the depths of our Shaper Team’s minds. These adventures introduce recurring characters and take the players into situations that create some memorable moments and vivid imagery, not just in the players’ minds.
Over the years we have been lucky enough to capture some of these moments to share with you.
Season 1
Countess Xandrielle, of the Prospero Port Council, is tasked with establishing a new hamlet at the ruins of Tempest Grove. The purpose of the new encampment is to rid the mountain passes of whatever evil lay there in order to facilitate safe travel, which will hopefully mean the reestablishing of trade routes.
After driving away an infestation of beasts, an Ajaunti woman, named Yvania, is able to sense some kind of magic nearby. What they find is a fading seal of protection on the ruins.
After breaking the decrepit seal in order to form a new one, an ever-growing portal begins to form. Creatures great and small begin to appear, leading to months of fighting and loss.
With the last shackles of the seal fading, the White Prince emerges from his prison seeking the Orb of Power which he has been searching for for years.
Components are gathered to complete a ritual to once again reestablish the seal. Discovering it would be her final passing, Yvania offers herself as the necessary sacrifice. As the final step commences in the ritual, Yvania’s form changes and reveals her to be Omen, the Orb of Knowledge itself, and the key to the location of the Orb of Power. Stripping the Prince’s soul from the body it possesses, Omen casts him into the void, tearing away the corruption of the dryads in the process and sealing it in a new prison.
Season 2
A powerful demon entity takes hold of a close friend (Quillian) and uses that leverage to cast the Grove into a series of deadly tales told through the pages of a magical storybook.
Each tale brings the valiant fighters knowingly closer to death but also closer to solving the mystery of the books; a small price to pay to rid their friend of the demon which possesses him.
Season 3
Faerie chaos! As the Grove attempts to heal their forest with a rare and precious Mother Seed, Tamed Lands Incorporated, a powerful trading company, take over administration of the Grove. Tamed Lands means to secure the Grove’s future in prosperity, but in so doing come into conflict with an uncontacted nation of wild elves known as the Ruscelli Tribe, placing the Grove in an uncomfortable middle ground, and with sides to choose.
Meanwhile, the presence of the Mother Seed invokes faerie chaos, as numerous eerie shimmering doors to the realm of the Fae open around the town and unleash scores of trooping faeries into the Grove. Verdant and deranged Spring, warlike Summer, fearful Autumn and sorrowful Winter all play out their turns upon the Grove, who must survive these strange “seasons”.
In the end, the seasonal turns are shattered by the arrival of the powerful and capricious Master, a faerie king so cruel that it provokes an uneasy alliance with the Fae and a desperate battle. In the end, the Grove and their faerie allies overcome and destroy the Master, and earn an uneasy truce, and an open border with the Fae Realm, in recompense.
Season 4
A series of mysterious ley-lines, known as dragon lines, begin opening around the Grove, bringing with them a barrage of unwanted guests trying to harness the dragon line’s magical strength. Each opening brings with it a glimpse of the past, a past nobody was aware of.
This past told of a group of Aja who once lived in the Grove’s location (then called Harmonei) and fell in love with the mountain and a fallen angel who claimed the mountain. This fallen angel kept them safe in return for gifts of small offerings, which he started demanding, and later taking.
Unknown to the Aja, the fallen angel was actually breeding greed into them, greed that would eventually be their demise in a bloody civil war.
Seeing the same greed and turmoil arising, the Grove realized the fallen angel was once more present in the Grove. Looking deeper into the visions of the past, the group discovers a ritual and a way to gain power over the fallen angel… HIS NAME.
Using this newfound knowledge the residents perform the ritual and banish the fallen angel while closing the dragon lines.
Season 5
Due to COVID, our adventures are taken online where we are woven a tale of a fog from the Far Realm known as the Breath of Nisgeah.
Rolling in over Prospero Port, the fog carries with it unimaginable amounts of monsters – it seems that it travels back and forth between the Far Realm and other planes of existence, inadvertently kidnapping beings who gradually mutate under its sway.
Using an elaborate and most likely accidental plan, the residents of the Grove form a three-point attack on the fog, eliminating it for good. The fog was gone but many of the monsters it carried were left behind to run rampant on the Port.
Due to the dangers, the Port’s residents are pushed outside the walls to live in a refugee camp while small bands of brave souls enter the Port to rid it of its monstrous squatters.
SORRY, NO PHOTOS.
Season 6
While exploring the nearby forest, a small group discover an ancient Temple behind a waterfall. While there, they unknowingly partake in a Rite to unlock a powerful artifact (The Root Weaver) which had been locked away for centuries.
Alerted to the artifact’s awakening, an Astral Elf (Aldo Pietraporta) returns to Arthos. Now aware of the Artifact’s general whereabouts, Aldo comes to usher in the Root Weaver in hopes that it may be the secret to rejoining the planes into one. an offering he hopes to be a gesture worthy of notice by Doranth.
Facing near fate at the hands of the now appearing Root Plains, the Grove defends their home from Elemental Lords, Sea creatures, and the undead hordes only to find themselves driven out by the appearance of a memory, long buried in the near woods, the Cypress Book.
Planning, hard work, and much luck allow them to retake their home and find the whereabouts of the Artifact which has been feeding off the invading energies and unknowingly birthed into a construct with great strength and abilities. In the end, the Grove pull through and defeat the Root Weaver.
Photos courtesy Anita Morrison.