This was our first session introducing everyone's new characters. Jordan is playing a human cavalier named Thomnall; Andrew is playing a human executioner named Pieter; Sal is playing an elf hunter named Nirreh; Traver is playing a drow warpriest named Ilivarra; and I'm playing a drow hunter named Malthus. The session was a bit shorter than usual due to some technical problems - I had issues getting into the character builder to give Ilivarra her character sheet, and we had a couple of very long load times with the new maps for this session. Let's get to the recap.
The party were introduced to one another as members of the Black Wolves, a mercenary group so named because of their affiliation with blacksmiths - indeed they met their master, Lucas Black, in a blacksmith's shop in Falconia. Malthus, Pieter & Ilivarra, already members of the group, were introduced to Thomnall & Nirreh, new recruits. Nirreh & Malthus, to say the least, got off on the wrong foot, and the elf/drow prejudices look to be an early theme between the two. They were matched up in a duel for the initiation of the new recruits; Thomnall was matched against Pieter. Malthus & Thomnall emerged the victors of their respective battles.
After this introduction, the party were told that they'd been asked to head to Cairnmoor to assist with defending against a possible invasion from the warlocks of Beleth, who lived to the north. With winter having come, the party trudged through the snow along the road, stopping in Kinderwood for the night - Malthus & Nirreh caught filth fever from a sick man in the room they all used.
Heading up toward Cairnmoor the party was intercepted by a scouting party of elves who refused to let the party move any further, citing a plague in the northern regions as their justification. They were in no mood to talk, and things quickly turned hostile - the party proved more than up to the task, however, and the elves were quickly routed. Making note of this plague, the party continued to the north and into Cairnmoor. What they found was a ghost town, seemingly abandoned quickly enough that the citizens did not even bother to lock up their homes.
Proceeding cautiously into town, the party soon discovered a zombie by Black's Armory, the shop of a brother their master had asked them to check in on - Pieter garroted the zombie, but this proved only to worsen the situation, as it drew the attention of more zombies, which drew still more attention as the fighting began. Before long, the party found themselves battling a horde of zombies, and they were saved only by some quick thinking on the part of several party members (Nirreh & Ilivarra in particular) and the intervention of a dwarven survivor with a few of the remaining town guards. This was a very scary encounter for those involved, as Pieter & Malthus had more than few brushes with death, and everyone save for Nirreh was quite bloodied by the time they managed to escape. In this DM's opinion, it was also a very effective encounter - it seemed to toe the line just about perfectly between hard enough to put fear into the party, but not so difficult that they were guaranteed to die.
They fled down the western road from the zombies, and before long arrived at the Misty Morning Inn, where they found survivors taking shelter. We stopped there for the night. It didn't feel like we got a whole lot done, but that's to be expected - technical difficulties cut our actual playing time down to something under 3 hours at best estimate, and with everyone still learning how their characters work, combat will be slowed down a bit until we are all comfortable again. Hopefully everyone had fun with this session, though, and is looking forward to finding out what happened to the town their previous characters left in comparably great condition...
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