Starting Out

Ah, that new campaign smell!

This time, I'm on the other side of the screen. Now I'm not having to keep track of 50 things at once. So I can take better session notes and pay more attention to my fellow players. In this case it meant helping Hillary with spells. More on that later.

First, let's meet some new party members.

Ladies first:

Hillary actually decided to play a spellcaster this go around: a chaotic good wood elf druid she named Pusheen. I'm guessing she was planning on taking Circle of the Moon and turning into totes adorbs cats for killing. One of these days we'll see if we can get Hillary to play something other than a wood elf, though.

Kyla rolled up Temerity Corvidae, a chaotic neutral tiefling bard that grew up on the streets of Waterdeep. She stole (or is wanted for steeling) a valuable Lute and using the proceeds to buy her way into New Olamn, a bardic college in Waterdeep. This is the first time Kyla's playing an actually greedy character.

We have a new player: Lazaro, and he rolled up, a neutral good human fighter with the soldier background and who took two-weapon fighting for his initial attack style. He named his character Grom (he's already been warned no to give him the last name Hellscream).

Blake rolled up Ghesh, another chaotic neutral character. Ghesh is a dragonborn of black ancestry and a sorcerer with the (surprise!) draconic ancestry sorcerous origin.

Alec created Jethro Gobblenuts, a ghostwise halfling pet ranger using the new build wizards released. He apparently only has 15 teeth (all the left side), is missing a finger, and plays the banjo. And he contributed a wonderful gem of a quote: "Make the Chondalwood great again, we say!" Yeah...

Joseph actually decided NOT to play a caster. His character, Grim Buckman. He's a lawful evil human rogue with the urban bounty hunter background that's he's planning on advancing down the assassin archetype. He really liked to climb up things and survey.

Last but not least, I created Artor Garland, a lawful neutral half-elf paladin of Helm with the city watch background. I'm imagining him as a sort of cross between Nicholas Angel and Inspector Zenigata. He is, of course, obsessed with solving the crime Temerity is wanted for.

It started with the group departing Waterdeep for the town of Nightstone. As we approached, we heard the church bell ringing. And just ringing and not stopping.

Nightstone, it turns out, is built on a pair of islands in the middle of a river, one island occupied by a motte and bailey castle, the other occupied by the town itself. From the approach we saw that the bridge linking the town and the motte had been broken.

However, the bridge into the town itself was down and just fine. Temerity and Grim stealthily approached the guard towers and found them abandoned. Jehtro even used one of his features: Silent Speech, to communicate telepathically with our scouts. Grim climbed to the top of the tower and found the town, as far as he could see, deserted, and filled with boulders, apparently hurled by some kind of siege weapon.

We advaced further into the town and found a temple dedicated to Lathander and Mielikki. Hillary had a little squee moment when she found out that Mielikki's holy symbol is a unicorn. We found the source of the ringing bell: a pair of goblins apparently having the time of their lives swinging from the bell ropes. Grim and Temerity found them, and settled on a sometimes sound plan: lie to them. She tried to convince them that she was a threat and to hand over their treasure. For some reason Will decided that in his world, goblins have Jamaican accents.

This didn't work, unfortunately. The two goblins left the bell ropes and drew their scimitars to attack.

So, the opening encounters in Tyranny of Dragons involve six or more kobolds against a party of five to eight players. This opening encounter was two goblins against a party of seven. We won. And now I'm wondering if we're starting to see balance issues but in the opposite direction.

Granted, our rewards were a trickle of treasure and mundane items. At this point we became very aware of a pair of large, dog-like bests in the town square, apparently eating the remains of a cow. Ghesh used a minor illusion of a cow mooing to lure them away from their meal, allowing us to get a better look at them, and we discovered they were worgs, large wolf-like beasts often used as steeds by goblins. Temerity tried to lure them out of a square for an ambush, also with minor illusion of a cow, but that trick didn't work twice and only made the highly intelligence beasts suspicious, but they went back to eating.

However, it seems we had distracted them enough to earn a surprise round of ranged attacks. The opening volley, featuring everyone but poor Hillary, dropped the first worg. The second let out a warning howl and accused us murder before attacking. It did manage to summon three goblins, but it and those goblins didn't last long and did minimal damage to us.

We did examine one object of interest: a large, five-foot deep hole in the ground, where something had apparently been sitting.

We had a choice of places to visit next: the local branch of Lionshield Coster or the Nightstone Inn. Deciding we all needed a drink, we visited the inn. While Artor had a mug of ale and Temerity pinched a bottle of wine, Jethro snuck into the kitchen a killed a looting goblin. In this case, as Will described it, ten pounds of stuff in a five pound bag. We added more minor treasure to our pile, including some food. Because one of them was a block of cheese, Artor called dibs. Of course, Temerity wanted some for her pet mouse, Squeaks, so Artor graciously shared half the block.

At this point, cunning and sharp-witted investigator that I am, I suggested (both OOC and IC) that we maybe NOT kill the next goblin we came across and try to interrogate it.

Then Grim, Temerity, and Jethro climbed to the second floor, finding a hallway linking four rooms. Only two contained anything of interest, and both were hit by the boulder volley. Jethro found the first one, containing a human woman named Kella Darkhope pinned under some debris. After pulling her out and getting her to more secure footing, we asked her what she knew.

It turns out, not much. She was staying at the inn, waiting for a "business contact" (she was blushing when she mentioned this) to arrive. Apparently some giants swooped in on a big flying cloud and started pelting the down with boulders from above, stopping to rip, the "Nightstone" from its place in the village square. The goblins apparently arrived after the giants to loot the ruined, now abandoned town.

The other ruined room contained a chest in a now precarious corner of the room. Designers that write "X amount of weight triggers the floor to collapse" don't always account for halflings or gnomes. Jethro hopped on over to the chest, tied a rope around it, and Artor pulled it over to a safe spot (not sure if he kissed his biceps or not afterwards). Inside we found some armor sized for a dwarf and a bunch of gems. Ghesh called dibs on one worth 50gp as a focus for chromatic orb.

Next we visited the Lionshield Coster building. The door was open, and we heard some noise inside. It turned out to be (surprise!) another goblin busy looting. Temerity decided on a different tactic: she cast charm person. No word yet on whether this goblin, Jilk, will end up like Bupu, but fingers crossed. None-the-less, he told his new best friend a similar story: the giants attacked the town, flew away, and the goblins took the inhabitants to a nearby cave system. He even offered to show it to us, provided we help him move a table. The coster's inventory was otherwise mostly mundane items, up 10gp in value on Adventuring Gear table in the PHB.

We next decided to visit the motte. But as we started in on that, someone decided to look up the duration of charm person: concentration, up to an hour. So instead of missing the opportunity to have the goblin show us the caves, we had him draw a crude map and give us directions. He just wanted to make sure we brought that table.

I rolled my first natural 20 of the campaign trying to jump the gap between the village and the motte. I should have shouted "Parkour, bitch!" After that we set up a rope bridge to allow everyone to cross.The windows were barred, but the gates were open. Grim climbed the walls of the gatehouse, while Artor just kind of walked in. We found some guard barracks, and our first casualties from the giants' bombardment: the guards. As we explored the keep, we got the sense that it had been hit extra hard by giants.

When we went into the keep, we found four surviving guards standing over the body of Lady Belrosa Nandar, High Steward of Nightstone. She had been hit by a falling boulder. The guards confirmed what we already knew: the giants attacked by dropping rocks and then made off in the Nightstone. However, they contradicted Jilk. They said the towns' inhabitants had fled to the caves, and that the goblins followed. They did confirm, however, that the giants were in a flying castle rather than on a magic cloud. They also said they saw the castle heading east.

At this point, we decided to gear up and prepare to search for the caves and the townsfolk. We suggested the guards stay with Kella. During the conversation, we learned that the merchant caravan Kella was waiting on was not on the guards' agenda. She suggested that the merchant was on "unofficial" business. At this point, several of us noted that Kella had a winged snake for a pet or a familiar, a symbol of the Zhentarim. We hadn't really decided on factions yet, but Joseph had decided that Grim was a member of the Zhentarim. He talked to Kella in Thieves' Cant and confirmed that yes, their visit was related to the Zhentarim.

We glossed over the remainder of the supplies we found in the dark: 5 riding horses and 5 draft horses. We opted to hitch the draft horses to a cart we found just outside the town. Will also told us we would find a goblin sleeping in a hayloft, and encounter he didn't bother to roll. He also mentioned that in the graveyard of the temple, the Nandar family kept a crypt.

We found that only one cottage hadn't been ransacked. It was locked and happened to be covered in Infernal runes. Temerity was kind enough to translate: Anyone entering without the permission of the cottage's owner would be sent to Hell. Charming.

We settled in for a long rest, and Will awarded us our first milestone.