Meet the Party/Session 1

As stated above, the campaign launched today, April 21, 2007. Let's meet the party.

Kaloei Tialaen d'Phiarlan

The rare zaftig elf (5'1", 128lbs- that's random height&weight generation for you. If I may digress, those kinds of dimensions on an elf with an 18 charisma? What kind of measurements might we be looking at here? Purely an intellectual exercise, you understand. Discuss) and a proud scion of House Phiarlan. A student of the Demesnes of Song and Memory, the latter in her lifelong home of Fairhaven, the capital of Aundair, Kaloei has recently declared her adolescent "independence" by landing a gig at a local veteran's bar, The Cask and Flagon. It pays in room, board, and the occasional tip earned by her stirring renditions of The Fall of Thaliost, a poignant Aundairian ballad paying tribute to the city and lands lost to Thrane in the Last War. It doesn't pay well (total haul to date: 7 silver, 8 copper) but it is a gig. And what more can any musician ask for than a regular gig?

Soledyn "Sol" Lumaenars

Aereni Elf, Deathguard Ranger, proud son of a family full of "Seekers of the Light," which is to say, Aereni Paladins. Wields a mean handaxe, one pair at a time, and if he needs to whup on some Karnathi Skeletons, he just flips them over and wields their heavily weighted ends as clubs (sure, it's not in the rules, but it was such a cool idea I said why the hell not?). And whup up on some Karnathi Skeletons he has, as Sol spent his time in the Last War on the Cyre/Karnathi border sending some undead minions back to the rest they'd been denied. He managed to be just over the border in the Nightwood, patrolling, when the Mourning came. His squad...including his sister Leida...weren't so lucky. After a fruitless eighteen months roaming in and out of the borders of the Mournland, Sol has taken to wandering, hoping to catch any word of his former squadmates. If, beneath the crude leather armor vest he wears, there are the blackened, angry edges of what appears to be a scar on his shoulder...one that doesn't change, or heal...well, he's not talking about it.

Nacho McChumpie

This will remain the name of the third character...rumored to be a druid, possibly of House Lyrandar...until such time as said druid is actually named and able to attend a gaming session.


So, here's roughly how the first session went down, in one drastically run-on sentence:

The intrepid party (consisting only of Sol and Kal) are killing time at the bar in between Kal's sets, when a new guy at the bar offers her five gold to sing a patriotic song (the aforementioned Fall of Thaliost), which she does so well that there are tears, and so the guy asks that if she's really as patriotic as her singing would suggest, she should come see him outside in twenty minutes, which they do, after wisely armoring up because even a D&D version of Mr. Magoo could see this plot hook coming, and when they get out there he gestures them into an alley, where two thugs are waiting with saps to try and knock Kal out, begging the question, who the heck'd want to capture some lowly bard chick, only they don't have so much time to ponder the question because they knocked one sucka out but the other one ran away, thankfully trailing blood to give Sol a clear path to follow, but only after they did the legwork to find out the changeling who was trying to bushwachk 'em was a member of Fairhaven's biggest criminal gang, the Dark Daggers (criminals never have a great imagination) and guess where they operate...the docks, which is exactly where the trail of blood heads, and the information they extracted (via a slightly confused but ultimately effective good cop/bad cop routine, which is hard to achieve when you're looking at less than 200 combined pounds worth of elf) from the one they captured only confirms this, so off our interpid heroes go to the docks, and after some bribing of the dockmaster (first attempt, with silver, earned only a snort) they find out where the boat they're looking for is, and off they go, settling into a determined and effective skulk in full view of the boat, where they see a distinctly feminine shape heading in for a discussion with whoever's already on board this particular river barge, which, they determine via good listen checks, happens to be Garth, the same fella who beckoned Kal outside in the first place, and Sol remembers he saw a similar looking woman watching the fracas in the alley where all this started, so they attempted an ambush but that got detected due to feet on creaky old dock boards, and so each group ambushed the other, which ended with thug#2 from the alley-ambush dead in the water (literally), Garth unconscious, and the woman, so far still unnamed, subdued, but the really interesting part is that she has the Least Dragonmark of Shadow in roughly the same spot Kal does, and among her papers include fraudulent (but Sivis-marked) ID papers naming her as Kaleoi Tialaen d'Phiarlan.

Cliffhanger ending!