Brykas Mavdos Mars is the eldest son of Dacria and Mavdos Mars and from birth was destined to become the next godfather of The Syndicate. He was mostly raised by his mother while his father was distant mostly because of his work. He has a younger sister named Belamaya Mars who is four years younger than him. He was born and raised in Endenpool, Kunias where his father’s work was based.
When Brykas was fourteen, he finally decided he’d had enough of his father when his friend in The Syndicate had died and his father never told him about it. That night when he found out, he packed up the necessities and left Endenpool. He spent the next year and a half wandering the continent in search of a place to call his home. He was starting to give up hope when he stumbled upon the city-state of Winlon and the Mystralas family.
Bruce had snuck into the garden of the Mystralas manor when Ingálvur Mystralas spotted him. Instead of kicking the tiefling out, he let the tiefling explore the garden and offered him a job to upkeep the garden for him in return for a good sum of money to help him find a place to sleep, buy new clothes, etc. After this exchange, the elder’s grandson, Zephaniah Mystralas spotted him in the garden. He went to investigate the stranger in the garden, and immediately they got along well. When Zephaniah learned Bruce didn’t have a place to stay, he went to his grandfather to ask him if Bruce could stay in the manor. The elder was apprehensive on letting a stranger stay in his manor, but eventually he accepted with a lot of convincing on Zephaniah's part.
One night turned into one week, a week to a month, a month into a year, and in that time Zephaniah and Bruce became inseparable. In this time, Zephaniah took up adventuring part time around the continent, and through adventuring he began to make a name for himself.
About three years into their friendship, the idea of an anti-aging potion that would slow down the aging process to be as slow as an elf's aging process had been discussed for some time to give to Bruce. Even though Zephaniah’s a half-elf, he was given a similar potion when he was just an infant so that he would live as long as the rest of the city. On Christmas of that year, Bruce was given the potion and drank it.
It was a little after this moment that Zephaniah was first hired at the Winlon Police Station. Shortly after, Zephaniah was able to convince Bruce to apply to be a detective for Winlon. And although Winlon was very against hiring a tiefling to the police department, they eventually caved in and hired him. Years passed, and Zephaniah was promoted to Chief of Police at the age of 100 elf-years old. Bruce, 27 years old (103 in elf-years), was promoted to the head detective of Winlon.
Shortly after both of their promotions, Zephaniah gave Bruce a journal with his old adventures in them, including his first adventure out of the continent when he was a teenager. Zephaniah claimed it was for Bruce to keep track of notes in the different cases he was working on now that he was the head detective. And so Bruce began using the journal, although there was little crime to report in Winlon. The first couple of pages in the journal after Zephaniah's adventures are old pictures of Zephaniah and Bruce, one of when they were young, one of when they were first hired, and one of when they were promoted. The only cases in the journal, in order, are cases WI-M-05, WI-T-36 through WI-T-43, and WI-M-06, but the last case is unfinished.
On Christmas Eve of 1489, Zephaniah Mystralas was murdered (or so Brykas believed). In reality, the body was an illusion and Zephaniah was kidnapped, but it was passed off as a murder so no one would go looking for Zephaniah. Bruce was so struck by grief that he was dedicated to finding Zephaniah's murderer and bringing them to justice.
This campaign followed the pre-made campaign module The Lost Mines of Phandelver along with some homebrew sessions for certain backstory elements. This campaign started out following a party of four adventurers: Bruce Mars, Rowyn Russell, Leeaigh Aigh, and Seraphina Bowie-Rumpelstiltskin. All of them had their own goals and aspirations, but what connected them to Winlon was the two original party members, Bruce and Leeaigh. Bruce was the chief detective of the Winlon Police Department, and Leeaigh was a farmer in Winlon with her family.
The campaign started out somewhat uneventful for our party as they were traveling around the Phandelver area and taking up random jobs like a normal adventuring party.
Bruce’s entire goal during his adventure was to avenge the murder of the Chief of Police of Winlon, Zephaniah Mystralas. Throughout the campaign, he’d been getting leads as to who murdered him. These leads, almost seemingly taunts from the half-elf’s murderer, eventually led him and another one of his party members, Leeaigh, to a bar where they found a light-skinned drow named Gruaigh. Gruiagh tried to seduce Bruce into sleeping with her, but that didn’t work because Bruce was not interested in the slightest. Bruce eventually convinced Gruaigh to talk with him and Leeaigh out back behind the bar. But, as soon as the back door closed, Gruaigh got the jump on Bruce and knocked him out.
When Bruce regained consciousness, Gruaigh and Leeaigh were standing over him and he immediately shot up and took a defensive stance. Leeaigh revealed she was actually working for The Syndicate and was working under Gruaigh as she was the leader of the Phandelver Area Branch. When Bruce got a better look at the room they were in, he realized it was the room that Zephaniah’s body was found, which angered him enough into fighting the two mafia members. But before the fight started, Gruaigh summoned another person to help fight with them, making the fight three against one.
This third member of the fight was none other than Zephaniah Mystralas, though he didn’t look as if he was mentally there or completely in control of himself. Bruce faltered momentarily as he hurried over to Zephaniah, but Zephaniah immediately attacked Bruce, giving the detective the idea that Zephaniah wasn’t in control of his actions.
For almost the entire fight, all Bruce was trying to do was fend off Gruaigh and Leeaigh while trying to break whatever spell Zephaniah was under. It seemed like if Bruce was making some kind of physical contact with Zephaniah, it was easier for him to resist whatever brainwashing he was under. It was more than halfway through the fight when the spell affecting Zephaniah finally broke and Zephaniah joined Bruce’s side of the fight.
The fight brought Bruce and Zephaniah to their last limbs, but the fight ended in a victory for them, leaving Gruaigh and Leeaigh dead. Initially, Zephaniah snapped at Bruce, saying that Bruce “walked past his cell everyday for the past year and didn’t do anything until now.” After a quick argument, they realized what Zephaniah saw in his imprisonment was an illusion of Bruce. The two made up and finally revealed they both had feelings for the other.
Immediately the day following, the party (now consisting of Bruce, Zephaniah, Rowyn, and Seraphina) was approached by a teenage human boy named John Bowie. He needed help rescuing his brother from a tower guarded by a dragon, explaining that their father disappeared and Eric had somehow ran away out of John’s sight and he hasn’t seen his brother since. This quest took almost everything out of the party, but the party rescued John’s brother, Eric Bowie. Eric was a young blue tiefling and half-brother to John.
The party decided to spend the night at the tower before setting off the next day to Winlon so Zephaniah and Bruce could go home.
Bruce never told anyone he was poisoned from the acid dragon, so he went to sleep not knowing if he’d wake up. During the night, Bruce’s heart stopped and he died. But, Zephaniah was jolted from his sleep soon after and was able to revive him.
In the morning, Bruce was very groggy as the poison still was in effect, but Bruce refused to accept any healing spells. So, Rowyn reheated some stew from the previous night’s dinner and channeled some of her Lay on Hands hitpoints into it. When Bruce refused to eat it, Zephaniah reluctantly casted Charm Person on him and told him to eat the stew. Bruce took a bite of the stew and immediately felt dizzy and disoriented. It was then Bruce and Zephaniah both realized that the potion Bruce took to slow down his aging had been “cured” by the stew, as well.
So, their next mission was to recreate the potion, as Bruce had grown so used to its effects that it rendered him pretty much totally disoriented as if he was sick, and so that he could still age at the same rate as Zephaniah. The party gathered all of the ingredients and brewed an amateur version of the potion for Bruce. Bruce drank the potion and didn’t have any more trouble with it (for a bit).
The party finally set off for Winlon for the supposed final time. When Zephaniah returned to his hometown, the people of the city were overjoyed to find that he was alive. The whole city ended up throwing an impromptu party to celebrate Zephaniah’s return. It wasn’t until into the evening that Zephaniah realized that Bruce and Eric had disappeared. Zephaniah, Rowyn, and John all helped break Bruce and Eric out of jail before the party ran away.
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