Tonight we had our first session of the new campaign! Sal was unable to attend, so his character Iados wasn't present for this first adventure. The party, which consisted of Andrew's human fighter Erik, Bibart's human mage Mika, and Traver's elf warpriest Adrie, were all referred to a dwarf by the name of Rangrim in a tavern called the Red Mare Tavern. They all spoke with him about starting an adventuring company, for various reasons - Erik & Adrie wish to help people, whereas Mika (who started the session flat broke) is looking to make some money so she can start tracking down Marlannan. Rangrim referred them to a herald (basically an organizer/promoter for adventuring companies) named Smolkin Stanbeard. He also asked them for a tip, and Erik and Adrie were happy to oblige. Mika, being completely broke, was unable to provide anything, though Rangrim begrudgingly permitted her to "follow the others".
Arriving at Smolkin's office, they were sent in by the office clerk, who seemed rather annoyed at the mention of Smolkin's name. Smolkin turned out to be a very unusual character for a dwarf - whereas most dwarves speak in archaic language, using words like "aye", "nay", "lad" and "lass", Smolkin made no such use of these words, speaking much more like your average human. He offered to set the party up as an adventuring company and work on drawing notice to them from the city's noble patrons in exchange for a 10% cut of their rewards from the jobs they finish, a deal they took. Smolkin then set about asking them what their adventuring company would be called - after no real suggestions were put forth, Smolkin offered to merge them in with another company that had been registered with him and needed adventurers anyhow - the Blacksword Band, a company registered by a tiefling (Iados). Smolkin also put 15 gold pieces into an envelope marked "Rangrim" - apparently a payoff for their referral. Intersting that Rangrim told them he had no money and asked them for a tip in exchange for information he seems to be getting paid well for giving out, wouldn't you say? Smolkin sent them on their first quest - a man named Ulrick, one of Smolkin's friends in the northern town of Cairnmoor, needed help finding a "missing family member", and Smolkin decided to send their group out to help.
Afterward, the party set out for Cairnmoor. They had two real options - take the road and spend the night in Kinderwood, or cut across the countryside and get there in a day's time. Since they weren't looking forward to spending their money for an inn room in Kinderwood, the party opted to cut across the countryside. In doing so, they encountered a pack of wolves which got the drop on them. The wolves landed some good initial hits on Erik, but in the end they were beaten and ran off (albeit with one of them now glowing from Mika's Light cantrip). Interestingly, the party discovered that these wolves (who normally would steer clear of humanoids, the only real challenge in the region to their apex predator status) seemed to be starving and attacking out of desperation. There was an attempt to distract the wolves with a conjured steak - but Mika's unfortunate Bluff roll botch prevented that from succeeding.
The party continued on to Cairnmoor, passing a hooded stranger carrying a large burlap sack along the way. They made their way to Ulrick's place - after talking to his landlady (who seemed annoyed by the prospect of Ulrick having a "missing family member") they were introduced to Ulrick - a weepy, hysterical mess in the absence of this family member. Talking to Ulrick, the party quickly realized they hadn't been sent here to find a person - they'd been sent to find a dog. Ulrick's pet dog, Rover, had been missing for several days - something Ulrick found unusual, because Rover typically returned home daily. They gathered what information they could, then went to talk to the leader of the town guard, Constable Halpern. Halpern seemed to have a lot of problems on his hands, and was quite irritated with the issue of a missing dog being brought to him when he had missing livestock to worry about. The party told him of the hooded stranger they'd seen leaving the town. Halpern realized the party was a group of adventurers, and offered to keep an eye out for the dog in exchange for their help figuring out what happened to the livestock. The party intended to check out the farms livestock had been taken from, but night was to fall soon, so they purchased a room in the local Misty Morning Inn and went to sleep for the night.
They were awoken in the middle of the night by a single ring of the town guard's warning bell - rushing outside, they saw a pair of guards killed by horrific undead hounds. The party engaged the hounds, and triumphed quite handily through Mika's use of burst powers to clear out the minion hounds. Halpern and his guards, only informed of the situation when a town resident came to them, arrived to take care of cleanup.
In the morning, the party decided to try and find any tracks left by the dogs. Adrie nailed two successive Perception checks to follow the tracks, and the party was led to a farmhouse west of town. All signs pointed to it being deserted - objects had been left out in the rain, the plants in the small crop garden were dead, the inside of the farmhouse was quite dark and musty, and the stables reeked of death. Erik entered the house, and as he did, Mika caught sight of another of the hooded strangers coming out of the back door. Inside, Erik found a dried bloodstain on the floor of the small farmhouse's bedroom, and a journal mentioning a number of "hooded men". Erik then went out the back door - only to immediately be attacked by a zombie guard dog stationed there, chained in place. This began the last encounter of the night.
The zombie guard dog landed some good initial hits, enough to bloody Erik, but it was quickly dispatched. The emaciated man in the robe attacked Adrie, and the party came to see that these men (another emerged from the stables when the fight started) appeared to have no muscle mass or tone of any kind, as if the were quite literally skin and bones. The party discovered this to be the truth when they tore open the skin of one of the men, discovering that underneath was nothing but a skeleton. They killed one of these "skinwalker skeletons"; however the other escaped back into the stables and disappeared. Examining the fallen skeleton, they discovered that the skin it wore was magically grafted onto its bones - there were no seams or marks where the skin would've been sewed on via more mundane means. At this point the party began to throw around lights and cause all manner of unusual things to happen - Mika made a well glow, caused a vuvuzela noise to emanate loudly from Adrie (as well as making Adrie glow also), and made Erik smell like flowers after he faceplanted in bloodsoaked hay as a result of a botched Strength check to break down a severely weakened door. Adrie returned the favor by making Mika glow right back. When they finally made it inside the stables, the party found the skinwalker skeleton nowhere in sight - however, after some searching they located a trap door hidden under some hay. After this revelation, we stopped for the night.
There's our recap of the first session. I will try and post one of these after every session so that people can read them to recall what happened last week if they forgot, or see what happened last week if they were unable to attend at all. Hope to see everyone for our next session on May 25th!
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