[At the beginning of the game I asked that the players please form themselves into a group, as they're all experienced role players and know how it should go. I did my part by getting them all in the same place at the same time with nothing to do.]
Nihilus and L'oric are staying at The Full Basket Inn. Well. L'oric is actually staying there and Nihilus doesn't really like the idea of "other people" so he's camping out in the inn's attic without bothering to tell the innkeeper.
Izzy and Finy are staying at The Smiling Pig. [I didn't have Finy's backstory but he's got a 10 strength so I gave him a lesser Backpack of Holding as his freebie. I offered the choice of taking that or having me make something from his backstory but he was more than pleased to take the backpack so he could carry a reasonable amount of stuff.]
[I used the 'high or low' method of determining who was staying at what inn. I asked the player to choose high or low, then rolled percentage. If they chose the matching dice roll, it was a Yes. If not it was a No. Luck had them evenly split.]
Finy is 'working' at The Full Basket Inn that evening, pickup up change left at the bar and snagging one belt pouch in the process. He gets a bit of coin, a praying mantis in a cube of black glass, and a bracelet (7 steel hearts connected on a platinum curb chain, with a tiny hidden closable cavity) (Appraisal check at 520gp].
Nihilus sees a full blooded elf in the tavern and decides to have a chat with him, even though wood elves and sun elves aren't best buds. He's on a quest to find his homeland so he's looking for information. L'oric is more than a bit of a dilettante (his own description) and has ordered elven wine like it was something special, forgetting that he's in a merchant city that sees pretty much everything pass through. So it isn't a big deal to anyone but him.
The two of them are talking when Izzy walks in and sees L'oric. She immediately yells out "Dad!" and rushes over over to hug him. Nihilus reacts as a paranoid wood elf would react and pulls out one of his pair of falchions. He goes for her throat. Izzy stops cold when she sees that L'oric is not actually her father and that she is about to die.
Finy sees the action and wanders over to watch from a nearby table. He also picks up L'oric's wine and starts drinking it. Shamelessly.
Nihilus realizes this wasn't an attack and sits back down. Izzy goes into a stammering explanation that has double entendre written all over, completely by accident. All three of the men misinterpret her and she has to talk very fast to make them understand that she wasn't propositioning them. A patron behind her didn't pick up on that and tries to pick her up. Literally. She pulls out her mace as a warning and that little confrontation is over.
After she removes her foot from her mouth she joins them and their conversation about what to do next. [I had given each of them cards with at least two bits of information from nearby areas. By sheer luck the setting I'd put Izzy in is the same one she chose. I did not know this prior to the game.] L'oric and Finy are having a disagreement over the filched wine and finally give it up. Finy keeps the wine.
As Finy is ostentatiously displaying the mug and explaining that it belongs to the inn, not the elf, he finds a note stuck to the bottom (Midnight. Doorway in Malak's alley. Bring Relen and Donog). He has no idea about any of this but keeps the note. [It's a throwaway bit of mystery on my part.]
L'oric does a little prestidigitation to make the wine less savory - more of a vinegar taste. To him it would be undrinkable, as an elf and a connoisseur of fine things. Finy doesn't notice. Izzy does notice L'oric doing something with his hands but keeps it to herself at the moment.
Izzy proposes they go to the Farsea Marshes in Cormyr and collect orc ears since there's a bounty on them. The group agrees that it would be an interesting way to get some money and possibly explore the ruins she said were nearby. Except that Nihilus had left without them noticing so they feel he's not going to accompany them.
Nihilus went out the window to the inn roof to the rafters [This sort of thing is going to grow old if he doesn't settle down but he's trying to establish his character so I'm letting it play out for now.] He decides to send them a note that he is going with them. His method of choice is to write it on a piece of paper, tie it to an arrow, and shoot it into the table. He misses terribly. The arrow goes out the window and hits someone passing by. He tries again and it just goes out the window. He gives up on that method of telling them and goes back to his attic. [Ranged weapons are not his forte.]
The group decides to leave since someone is shooting arrows over their heads. The rest of the crowd doesn't even seem to notice. Except for the person who got hit but they don't come in looking for who did it.
Izzy leaves to go back to her inn. Nihilius decides to follow her to make sure she's safe. She picks up on someone following her and decides to duck into an alley to lose whoever it is or at least draw them out. She instead walks directly into a bricked up entryway. Nihilius decides to hide behind a barrel while she sorts herself out and falls into it instead.
Finy had been following both of them and saw the whole thing. Izzy once again picked up on someone following her but didn't see anyone. Nihilus never even checked to see if he was followed. Finy now has some wonderful material to tease them both.
The next morning they start talking about how far it is to the marshes and it turns out it's at least 2 tendays each way. L'oric is far less enthusiastic. Most of them are NOT enthusiastic about having to make part of the trip by ship. Nihilus instead proposes going to the Giant's Run Mountains off the Trader's Road where he's heard about ruins and tunnels. That trip is less than a tenday each way and completely overland. He'd just traveled that road with the caravan too.
The group does mundane shopping to get supplies. Izzy repeats several times that she can create water. She's very proud of this. [I need to remind the players to take the purchase costs off their money if they haven't already.]
They buy horses. Finy is not happy with the concept of riding even a pony. Izzy buys a nice dapple grey, Nihilus asks for and gets a bay quarterhorse, L'oric doesn't seem to care. Finy asks if he can buy an eighth horse (playing off the quarterhorse and his own discomfort with horses) to which the seller replies he could at the butcher. Finy buys a small dark brown pony. Everyone except Nihilius gets full tack - he doesn't buy a saddle or saddlebags.
Their first day out L'oric remembers that they had hired on to caravans in the past to guard them and they agree that it would be a good way to pick up some coin while going to the mountains. His manner is off-putting enough that the caravan leader thinks he's a spy or going to rob them and passes that along to every caravan going in that direction. [Diplomacy doesn't seem to be their strong suit.]
Nihilus has skill in cooking along with a spice jar that makes any spice he wants. [That's the item I gave him based on his back story and the player loves that I picked that for him. It's the Spice Jar from the Magic of Faerun book and I reduced the attributes since it was a bit more major than I wanted to have in the game. The spice gives some extra hit points and resistance to disease and poison for a short time.]
That night they're attacked by thorn bushes. Moving thorn bushes that can shoot their thorns. The people who get hit by them feel itching but nothing else [That spice jar from dinner. I didn't have them roll Fortitude checks since I didn't want them to be even weaker than they are now.]. L'oric cast a Light spell into the middle of the area Nihilus pointed out while they were trying to figure out what the heck they were fighting. He also casts a Sleep spell to seemingly no effect. Izzy cast both Detect Evil and Protection from Chaos. Nihilus finally figured out that it was bushes and not animals or people. Eventually they pound and burn the bushes down to kindling with Nihilus taking the most damage. Izzy heals everyone who needs it. L'oric is very proud that his Sleep spell took down one of the bushes. They find 2 gold and 16 silver coins, a pair of brass octahedron earrings covered in infinity symbols, [and one other item that may have been the bracelet but I've moved that to the pouch Finy lifted since the player had the card anyway].
Nihilus picks up six thorns to use in his alchemy.
Nihilus picks up six thorns to use in his alchemy.
The next day they see that they weren't the only one attacked. There's wounded people in the caravans and some thorns stuck in the wagons.
Four days of traveling got them to the trail to the mountains. Nihilus does hunt a small deer so they have fresh meat for a couple of days and he's tanning the hide. [One encounter on the road was plenty imo.] We left it there since we had reached the end of the session.
GM Notes
I have a lot of trinket and jewelry cards pre-made. Typically I hand them out and unless it's got some kind of magic effect or I want to use it as a plot device I don't write them down. The players tend to sell them anyway. But since I'm going to try to write this up I'll need to be more attentive. They're nifty things.
There were several critical failures during the game. They're not noted in the story as written but they're kind of obvious. Finy stealing the belt pouch (critical fail on the mark). The arrow that hit a passerby. The attempt to move silently into an alley. The attempt to hide behind the barrel. The attempt to hire onto the caravan. I don't want to put mechanics into the story itself and those are the actual events that transpired in the game when they rolled critical fails. If you want it noted put in the comments so I can add something like [Critical fail] after the event.
I also asked the players to make backup characters and only one has completed theirs so far. I'm going to use those to make a nemesis party (I got that idea from one of the people I follow on Twitter) so there hasn't been mention of them yet. As I get those I'll update the page with the cast of characters and start working them into the story.
I'm meeting with another person this week who's friends with L'oric's player and wants to join the game. Five is the most I'll have at the table and I can have more interesting encounters with more players. It's a challenge to keep them all involved and make sure everyone gets a chance in the spotlight but I've done it before. It also makes for more complicated interactions within the party which is always good.
We meet again in two weeks, just before Christmas. It doesn't matter in game since I started us in late spring (the equivalent of May) so that I didn't have to add weather problems in while they're still very low level. I may make my grandmother's recipe for the real version of Chex Mix and bring it along as a treat. It's a very good treat. Any recipe that starts with "1 pound butter" is going to be good.
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