Session 1, Part 5

By Shamus Posted Saturday Sep 17, 2005

Filed under: D&D Campaign 5 comments

Beck points out that these soldiers were without supplies, so therefore they must have had a base or camp nearby. Eomer changes into the guard’s uniform he scavenged from the least damaged soldier, disguising himself as one of the guards, telling his party to stay about 200 hundred yards from him. He follows the way the soldiers had come and finds a clearing with the remains of a fire and camp. While searching the area Eomer finds a cut length of rope, the cloth wrappings from iron rations, a dead soldier, obviously the captain of the band they saw, who was wearing a scale mail and has a horn. His neck has been snapped.

Eomer calls the rest of the party and they join him. Thordek searches and finds four backpacks with bed rolls and three iron rations. He also finds Endo’s staff.

Eomer is concerned at this. He knows Endo would not have left this behind on purpose. He searches as well, and using his knowledge of the wild he determines that a horse had been tied here, then was ridden east, towards Breakshore. Other horses were here and have gone west. Skeeve, Thu’fir, and Beck each take a backpack. The party stays to rest. Thu’fir starts a fire and the rest go to sleep. Thu’fir heads about 100 yards toward the conquered town (west) to watch for any more activity.

1st of Last Summer, 1501dy

At 1 am the party sets out on the road. They follow it to Breakshore.


The village of Breakshore

The city is a medium-sized village along the coast. There are no ships in the port, which means they will not be escaping the isand soon.

Enoch and Skeeve go into town and head for the church. The church is overflowing with books. They speak to the head priest who explains the situation to them.

The Alidians (the southern forces) took the town without much resistance about a fortnight ago. They took the mayor away, but left everyone else alone. They commandeered a few farmhouses, took a goodly supply of food, all of the horses, and slew a few men who resisted, but they departed after a week and headed in the direction of Fort Bolland. The lands here in the north are still under martial law, and nobody is permitted to travel in the north without official papers. Anyone found in the wilderness will be assumed to be part of the resistance (of which there was very, very little) and arrested. The priest suggests they might be able to travel to Crossway and appeal to the local governor for papers if they explain their situation. They might also be able to buy forged papers.

He also tells them he has seen Endo and that he had quickly left town with a friend.

The rest of the party goes to the inn while Eomer goes to the priest and tries get an explanation of whom Endo was traveling with.

The rest of the party goes to the tavern / inn. The bartender welcomes them and says that meals were free for Alidian soldiers. Thu’fir claims to be a soldier for a free meal.

This really messed me up. I was trying to set them up with their next adventure and Thu’fir runs into a conquered town, claiming to belong to the enemy army. Aside from the fact that this was a pretty obvious lie (his accent was all wrong) and the price of a meal was trivial for him, this screwed things up since the claim spooked the bartender. He wasn’t about to invite them to help if they claimed to be part of the forces that robbed and slaughtered their way through the town a couple of weeks ago.

I got confused at how to play this, though. Next door at the church, Eomer was telling the priest he’d been a member of a ship bringing them supplies for war. At the same time, Thu’fir was claiming to be one of the Alidians. Everyone in town would have seen the party march into town together just a few minutes ago.

We eventually got this sorted out out-of-character and sort of glossed over it.

I didn’t want to side-track the entire session and waste a ton of time roleplaying this stupid argument when the innkeeper realized this outlander was trying to swindle him out of a free meal. It didn’t seem worth delaying the game for the price of a few coppers.

Looking back, I should have just played it through. If Thu’fir was going to lie to a complete stranger over such a tiny amount of money, then he should have to deal with the idiocy that ensued. (And we ARE talking about a very tiny amount of cash here. Less than one-thousandth of his cash on hand) Either way, the innkeeper should dislike him now, either because he’s an enemy or because he tried to take advantage of him.

-Shamus

He is quickly found out when the bartender checks with the priest.

The bartender offers to help. He explains that there were supplies hidden in the smith’s house but that the house had been taken over by the soldiers.

And so ends our first session. An awful lot of this session was “cutscene”, where predetermined events unfolded and the players could only watch. I HATE having a lot of predetermined events, but I think everyone understood that the first session naturally must start with some setup to get them where they need to be and establish the plot. Next session they will be free to act as they see fit.

-Shamus

End of Session 1
 


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5 thoughts on “Session 1, Part 5

  1. Ryan Moore says:

    Thanks for publishing this , Im enjoying the story .

  2. Kameron says:

    Love the maps. What software did you use?

  3. Shamus says:

    I drew them by hand, scanned them, and added the lettering in Paint Shop Pro.

  4. Jordan says:

    you drew them? Wow, you’re really good at drawing.

  5. Michael says:

    That was just your first session? My group plays 3.5, too, and I honestly don’t think we would even have gotten onto the ship in the 3-3.5 hour session we usually play. What’s your secret for keeping things moving?

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