The Great Pendragon Campaign: Epic Play-through Year 488

Summary: Our group is attempting a complete run of the Great Pendragon Campaign  using 5^th edition rules. Players are Matt, Mark, and Lilith. I am the GM.

Year 488

The fourth year in the Uther Period, with Uther Pendragon as king of Britain.

Our current roster of characters:

•        Sir Eleanor of Dinton, played by Lilith.
•        Sir Conmorl of Winterbourne Gunnet, played by Matt.
•    Sir Aeron of Pitton, played by Mark.

The Saxon kings Octa and Eosa are pillaging Northumberland, but the Duke of Lindsey has so far kept them out of the south. The Franks take over the remaining Roman territories on the continent, but the player knights are not involved in any of this at all.

Instead, they embark into the forest to see if they can find the missing Sir Galmwr (the player knight who ran off mad in our first session). This was a completely unscripted adventure, I didn’t use anything from the campaign at all. The knights find Sir Galmwr, completely lacking his own memories, armed all in blue and defending a castle from all travelers. The knights defeat him and go inside to see if they can get to the bottom of this. They find the Merry Hall, presided over by the Lady of Flowers, a fairy lady. All of the court here is women, apart from Sir Galmwr, and the Lady of Flowers puts the player knights to a test to see if they are worthy of leaving her hall and taking her knight protector with them. The player knights comport themselves well, and the Lady gives Sir Galmwr his memories back and escorts them to the edge of the woods, flanked by a leopard and a lion.

King Uther has decided to go to war against Duke Gorlois of Cornwall next year and tells everyone to get ready. Matt decides he’ll continue to play Sir Conmorl as his primary character. Sir Galmwr is still enchanted by the Lady of the Flowers and is trying to return to the Merry Hall (he will eventually succeed in a couple of years).

Thoughts: This was my first time straying from the main narrative of the Campaign, and it was a lot of fun. My players definitely enjoyed it. I drew on my own readings of knightly adventures and made up most of it on the spot. There are a number of years in the campaign that are a little sparse on events and doing this sort of unscripted adventure is definitely something I did more as the campaign went on.

The players are also taking a longer view, and Matt is interested in having Sir Galmwr’s son come back into play, a young man raised entirely in fairy, coming to Camelot from the Merry Hall. He wants to bring the character in during the Romance period, which we haven’t quite hit yet, but I am down with players bringing characters in and out as needed. I was expecting to bring Sir Galmwr back sooner, but Matt wanted to take him out of play completely.