Reboot. Restart. Resume.
Here we go again!
Starring, in order they sit around the table:
Nyvan, (played by Jason) a holy elven knight who loves a speech. sitting on his arse, and his best chum:
Venmir, (played by Brett) an elven holy man who loves his longbow, is known as Kindelf and enjoys taking watch for:
Sigurd, (played by Iain) a travelling swordsman who can speak horse, and knows a few tunes, but even they can't liven up:
Rodin, (played by Lorne) the battered and sullen dwarven axeman, who has an axe bigger than you, and is a source of much amusement for:
The DM, (played by Alex), who loves to comment in blue. And writes this blog.
The Hoard of the Dragon Queen and entirely new characters. Yummy.
The first thing I did was come up with my own intro sequence and put the characters through a little character building before I even opened up the module...
One last point - each character has their own reason for being on their journey - and their stories are their own. Until they choose to share them with the others, they will not appear here.
Battered, bruised, depressed. Three words to describe Rodin Hoarfrost as he sat on the front seat of a wagon, trundling along the southern road towards Candlekeep. His thoughts were bleak and angry - he had a destination in mind and black thoughts to match. That said, his new "boss" Sonny Shilevar, the mysterious merchant, was a talkative friendly fellow with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of good quality wine - which he was happy to share. This trip might be alright after all...
Venmir and Nyvan strode along the South road. Their destination was their own, their task a secret - their loyalties, not so much. Both were richly clothed, in fine shining armour and bright blue cloaks with silver sunbursts - their allegiance to Corellon Larethian no surprise to any who knew the Seldarine, the elven pantheon of gods. With a spring in their step, the marched jauntily and at some pace. Before long, they approached a wagon trundling slowly along the path, and overtook along one side.
As Nyvan and Venmir greeted the travelling dwarf and his human companion brightly, the dwarf looked on sullenly and greeted them cordially, if with little enthusiasm. Sonny, however, was far more enthusiastic - especially after he realised there was actually two elves there, not just one being affected by too much wine early in the day. After politely declining the invitation to join them on the wagon, the elves were soon swayed by the promise of a golden payout, should they help protect his wagon and its goods until he reached his destination of Greenest. He was obviously concerned by the current guard, who had allowed to brightly coloured elves to sneak up on his wagon unnoticed.
Before long, they chanced across a young swordsman, relaxing under a tree, a lute strapped to his back and a casual, relaxed appearance somewhat unexpected in the wilds of the Greenlands. He too was travelling towards Greenest, and warned the wagon of dire dreams he'd experienced which showed the city being destroyed and often ended with a five sets of evil reptilian eyes staring at him from the darkness. Unimpressed, almost to a man, the only person who seemed concerned was Sonny, who admitted that his wagon was full of toys and gifts for the orphans of Greenest, as he'd been brought up parent-less himself and returned every year with a load of supplies for the orphanage. The wandering swordsman's name was Sigurd, and he joined the others in their journey.
A few days later, the peaceful night was pierced by
Several uneventful days followed and they were most of the way to Greenest, before the still of the day was disturbed by pounding hooves. Sigurd and Venmir prepared for a fight, whlie the others watched on. a riderless horse, saddlebags and all came galloping between two hills which sat on either side of the road.
As Rodin prepared to Indiana Jones onto the back of the running horse, with a fluid movement, Sigurd pulled out his lute and strummed a quick tune - and to the amazement of all, produced a remarkably horse-like sound which halted the horse in its tracks. After an amazing horse-sound based discussion, Sigurd announced the horse's master had been knocked from the horse by someone else only a short distance away. A quick check through the saddlebags confirmed found a number of bags of coins, as well as logbook full of names and figures - surely the horse belonged to a tax collector!
As they considered their options, their discussion were interrupted by a colourful character who had leapt up to the back of a nearby boulder.
"Hello, gentlemen" he announced loudly, with a flourish. "Do hand over the contents of those saddlebags, as well as your own belongings, and be on your way. For I am Steffan De Cockernay, the most famous bandit on the Sword Coast and among these hills. You'd do well to do as I say!"
Following several rounds of disbelief, abuse and some grandstanding, de Cockernay silenced them all with a grand wave. "Right then, you arseholes, meet my pals - have at them, lads!" and from around the rocks came half a dozen brigands, ready for battle.
One immediately stepped back, an arrow from Venmir stuck in his chest, while the others leapt into battle, even Sonny had to defend himself. A vicious fight ensued, with Rodin and all of the bandits taking a slash or two, before Venmir leapt to the defence of Sonny, who had been knocked to his knees by a bandit. de Cockernay whipped out his bow and sent a shaft plunging into Sonny's chest. "Seeing as you like that one so much!".
"Bugger off back to the secret hideout" he shouted, before leaping from his rock and legging it up the road. Rodin and Sigurd ran after. One bandit tried to stop them, but was laid low with one flash of Sigurd's blade. The path, and the fleeing bandit leader, took them to a short distance away to a large farmhouse on top of a small rise, next to a graveyard with a small family crypt stood in the middle of it. By this point, Venmir was following them. Nyvan waited by the stricken Sonny, having used his magical hands to heal the old merchant. He stayed behind in case there was need for some mouth-to-mouth.
Sigurd got to the door first and banged on it loudly. "Let us in, ruffian, and face justice!"
"There's nobody home, so bugger off!" came the voice from inside.
At which point Sigurd stood to one side and offered the door to Rodin who, without break stride slammed his shoulder into the middle of the door, knocking it from its hinges - and found himself face to face with a huge crossbow on a pedestal facing the door, a smiling de Cockernay behind it.
"Eat this, dwarf!" he announced, as he fired the weapon and then dashed through the door behind him. Luckily for Rodin, it was designed to shoot a human in the chest, so it flew over his head and Venmir was surprised to see a huge arrow shaft tumble to the ground in front of him as he ran to the house.
They ran after the fleeing cowardly bandit king, through the kitchen, down into the basement, where he stood, back to the wall, hurling abuse at his pursuers and readying himself to battle with a rapier in one hand and a swordbreaker in the other.
Furious battle ensued with the bandit both giving and taking some grievous wounds, including a loud thudding sound (which Rodin thought was a secrect door mechanism) and, just as Venmir entered the fray, the wall behind de Cockernay burst in, showering them all in rocks and dust, as a monstrous figure stepped into the room, followed by an horrendous stench. The creature, obviously undead, glared at the party with great malevolence, before glancing down at the strucken brigand and. much to the relief of Sigurd and Rodin, grabbed him by the ankle and started to drag him down the passage.
"Serves him right", said Sigurd, as he turned to walk off. He had not accounted for Venmir's distaste for all things undead and he looked on in disbelief as Venmir summoned a holy flame from the heavens and flung it into the creature's back.
The outraged ghoul leapt back into the room and failed to rip Venmir's face from his skull before Rodin smashed it's head into pieces.
"Thank you, kind elf" muttered de Cockernay, before Rodin knocked him unconscious with the haft of his axe.
They captured de Cockernay, to take him to the local constabulary, searched the house (and appropriated the loot for the orphanage in Greenest), summoned Nyvan from the battleground and checked the crypt under the house, where they were attacked by a magical suit of armour - after a fierce battle, they stood victorious and, after a moment spent stopping Nyvan from stripping down to his undies to try on the now lifeless armour, they headed back to the road.
They cleared the camp, prepared for travel, had a gentle argument about who would watch for the night and settled in to rest.
The rest of the trip was quiet, Rodin lead the wagon while Sonny recovered from his grievous wound in the back of the wagon, together with the tied-up de Cockernay - kept company by Venmir Kindelf.
As they topped a hill, they saw the town of Greenest before them - but instead of the peaceful town, they saw towers of black smoke from burning buildings, people running back and forth and a huge dragon flying low over the town and attacking the keep.
Venmir looked down onto the town and summed up the group's feelings, "Right, we made it. See you later!" and turned away...
And then the shit hit the fan.
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