Chronicles of the...Heroes?

[Hawk52]

Welcome to the Chronicles of the ... Lets just say the Heroic one and the less heroic others.

I'm posting this to both amuse myself, and hopefully others. My friends and I gather together sometimes multiple times a week to play D&D, and I figured I would chronicle their exploits and share them. This ties into Maptools, due to the fact that we use it to play D&D 4th Edition. There are four of us altogether. One of us lives in St. Louis. Two of us live in California, and one of us (me~!) lives in Washington state. Getting together to play would be impossible, so we use Maptools as the "virtual table top" as they saying goes.

I'll be the first to admit, that we don't know much about D&D. We're learning as we go by ourselves in 4th edition. Thankfully, unlike 3.5 (Which we tried previously), 4th is more...lenient on newbies, so we're getting along fairly well.

I'm going to introduce the current cast of characters, and then chronologically go through the adventures detailing what has taken place. This will probably take multiple posts. I’m going to take a slightly humorous tone, but nothing I mention will be too far out of character for anyone. 99.9% of the things that are mentioned here, did in fact take place…

As of right now, the current cast is:

Khanryuu - PC: Khanryuu is a rogue who functions pretty much as the instigator for everything that happens. He loves to go stealthy, loves to backstab, and he loves everything and anything that is shiny. He is also in a constant battle between the two extremes of good and evil, which will see him do things on both sides to keep his status quo of unaligned. A good example: helping to rescue a mother and son from dragons, then stealing money from a beggar that another person just gave to the beggar. Par for the course. Threatens to kill people in their sleep.

Velmont - PC: Velmont is your typical fighter. Tough, strong, but surprisingly gun-shy about getting hit. Like some Mixed Martial Artists, Velmont is seemingly fine with hurting people; he just doesn't like to be hurt himself. Velmont is the good person of the team, always seeing the good in everyone...even a psychotic mercenary dwarf who he has befriended...maybe. He is also incredibly uncharismatic, which pretty much has made it so he has to stick with this party despite being the odd man out. Absolutely hates scorpions.

Galactus - PC: Galactus is a warlock, who seems to enjoy watching things burn to the ground. Originally unaligned, he's beginning to show more and more traits of being evil. For a warlock, he is incredibly durable, and isn't afraid to melee if he has to. Has invented a strategy using his fire robe where he intentionally kills himself by taking damage in an attempt to kill his opponent with the auto damage from his robe. First attempt at this resulted in failure. Has daddy issues. May or may not lead to cross-dressing later.

Baraim Whurest - NPC: Baraim is the first "serious" NPC the party recruited. A dwarven Warlord, who has a psychotic personality and only tries to keep the party alive so they can pay him, Baraim has none the less stayed with the party for now two adventures. If Baraim's character type sounds familiar, then you have played Baldur's Gate 1...or 2... At times, he can't keep up due to his short stubby legs, and can't hit anything. Yet for some strange reason, Velmont considers him his "little buddy". Baraim does not like that name. The party fears sleeping after Baraim tells stories about his history. Nightmares result.

Medash- NPC: Medash joined the party in the third adventure. If he's permanent is not known to them (No spoilz~!). He is a Dragonborn Paladin, who arrived at the settlement of Caris to protect it. He is the one who placed a holy barrier over the town to stop undead from attacking the town. He is a strong fighter, who the party seems to know will back them up even if he dislikes them due to ethic reasons. Gives out booklets over converting to Bahamut--Everyone nods and takes them politely so they don't anger a 6'6 dragonman with a huge +2 longsword.

Kelvin - NPC: Kelvin was the second NPC encountered in the third adventure. The party helped him try to rescue his wife from Ogres, but when they had vanquished the ogres, Kelvin found that his wife had been killed by them. Having nothing else to live for, he asked to join the party. If this sounds familiar, then you have played Baldur's Gate 1. Kelvin is probably the most consistent of all the NPC's, using his "Twin Strike" with a bow to magnificent success. Yet he never seems to overly care much if the party lives or dies. Ironically, when someone does fall down grievously injured it seems to give him a flashback to his wife, and he becomes animated with rage. His bow is "on loan" from Khanryuu.

Now to set the way-back machine to a whole month ago...

Adventure #1 - The Crisis of Windcrest

Khanryuu, Velmont, and Galactus were complete strangers. All three starting out their lives as adventurers and had heard rumors on the wind (aka plot device) that the port settlement of Windcrest was having issues. The three set off, and ironically, all arrived at the same time at the local inn. The three agreed to band together over ale, and the Red Wind Company was thusly born. The settlement of Windcrest was once peaceful and prosperous, but issues had developed and the town was in decay. Through significant investigative work (aka asking people), the party found out about two major issues: An apparent smuggling operation crippling the town, and an adventurer in town named Frederick had heard noises at the local lighthouse, and went to investigate but hadn't been seen in days. The party heroically agreed to help on these issues, of course after Khanryuu was granted compensation for their efforts...Leaving the town, the party came across a local guard named Garrus who further clarified the situation with the smuggling, and asked to come with them to help. The party agreed. They would regret this decision as Garrus proved to be the worst guard in the history of guarding.

The party’s first encounter happened a short time after leaving the town…They found a smaller path with an abandoned shack at the end, with a strange black mark on the ground. The party was most concerned about the mark (I did not know how to make a black line only visible to me in 1.2…). Khanryuu, being the heroic man he is, proceeded to go stealthy and try to sneak into the house. He found a trap near the door intended to trigger on anyone who entered the house that wasn’t wanted. Khanryuu attempted to disable it, but failed spectacularly which knocked the door open showing himself to the owners and setting off the trap…Which in an odd sense of luck, managed to damage everyone in the house…The party was able to easily dispose of the people, who turned out to be “Pirate Lookouts”. The plot thickens.

The second encounter took place further down the sandy path, where a man named Darrus Whitestorm stood in the middle of the path, demanding a toll to allow them to pass. The party bantered back and forth for a very long time, before agreeing to pay to get passage. As the party was going away…Khanryuu sprinted back, and attempted to steal all the gold back. Darrus looked at him, asked him “What the ---- are you doing?”, to which Khanryuu replied “…We’re going to fight now, huh?” Two bandits appeared out of the brush, Darrus’s minions and the fight was on. Despite his Great Axe, Darrus was no match for the party and fell, giving Velmont his first axe. Velmont fell in love immediately. He named it Valerie.

The party continued south, to where the path forked to the west and east. The party deduced that they had to go west by demanding Garrus tell them where to go. They also peered around, and found a Fen Hydra in the water nearby. First they panicked. Then they discussed fighting it. Eventually, they decided that would not be wise and moved west. As for why there was a swamp-type monster in the sea…He was special.

The party’s final encounter in the session took place on the west path, as two scorpions appeared out of the sand. Remember above that Velmont hates scorpions? He developed that here. The two scorpions proceed to sting Velmont into near death, before the others dispatched them. Velmont did not die, but he developed a hatred for all things with exoskeletons as a result…

Next entry will be about what they did on the next session…Hope you enjoyed reading part one, and part two may go up later today.