Campaign Diary #1: The Beginning

Artistic rendering generously provided by one of my players

Just the Essentials

In the first session, they have gotten together, they’ve seen how humans currently feel about dwarves (bad), they are heading out to the swamps around the village of Hommlet to see if there are any cultists out there, and the Dwarf Fury Scarn Gravelock has gotten himself a retainer: the 72 year old bartender Michael Thornberry. They also narrowly avoided a violent encounter with Ajax’s War Dogs on the road out of Hommlet.

The Long Story

The heroes begin their story as strangers who have all come to the same tavern in the village of Hommlet. In the tavern are about 6 young men playing a drinking game involving throwing an axe indoors(!) where if someone misses they have to drink, and if they hit the target all their buddies have to drink (and if they break anything with the axe, they have to pay for it). They’ve been playing this for a while so they’re quite drunk. There’s a serving boy going around getting food and drink for the other patrons, which in this case is just the heroes. There’s a bit of confusion because the serving boy is a little nervous given that all of the heroes are nonhuman and ask for drinks that aren’t really things you see in Hommlet (one hero asked for cranberry juice and I’m not sure the serving boy even knows what a cranberry is).

Eventually everyone has gotten everything they’ve asked for, but at the same time, one of the other patrons has gotten enough liquid courage in him that he’s going to confront Scarn Gravelock, the Dwarf Fury. Dwarves are often thought of by humans these days as slavers, so this villager comes up to him, tells him what he thinks of that, tells him he should leave, and spits at his feet. Despite being a Fury, Scarn really doesn’t react to this much besides saying that he’s certainly not a slaver and that he’s just having a strong drink with good company. He is evidently a happy drunk, and he is indeed very drunk. 

The villagers are getting to the end of their drinking and since they’re not getting the reaction from Scarn that they hoped for, they leave the tavern, though not without also spitting at Scarn’s feet on the way out. The tavern owner and bartender, Michael Thornberry, apologizes to Scarn, tells him that the boys really aren’t bad fellows but they’re young enough that they really don’t remember much from before Ajax and his deal with the dwarves in the area. 

Now that the heroes are the only ones in the tavern, Scarn starts encouraging them to try out the axe game, and most of them do. Allora, the Wode Elf Shadow tries and misses, Paarthanoxx, the Dragon Knight Null tries and makes it, Scarn tries and misses, and Tulxan Alderberry, the Memonek Tactician tries and makes it, and Light of an Autumn Dawn Refracted by a Kaleidoscope, the High Elf Elementalist, doesn’t bother. None of them make it in the exact center of the target, and so none of them get the pot that everyone has been paying into while playing the game. The game has somewhat broken the awkwardness of the situation, and the heroes get to chatting. Through the magic of being roleplayed by people who know that they’ve come together to play a game together, the group decide that they’re going to go into the nearby swamp and look into some rumors of cultists doing troublesome things. There’s more to the decision than that but it would take a long time to write and be boring to read, I think.

Michael Thornberry tries to talk them out of it because he’s sure that there’s nothing in the swamp but muck and that the heroes are going to get lost and die out there and that would make him feel bad. Scarn Gravelock, on the other hand, is sure that there are villains out there and readily invites Michael to come with them to guide them. He says something about a valiant death against great evil being the best ending to a long life that Michael Thornberry doesn’t really understand, and Michael agrees to go with them, mostly so he can guide them back to Hommlet when they get lost. Allora expresses some concern that they’re going to get Michael killed, but Michael and Scarn think that’s nonsense, though for very different reasons. 

On the way out of Hommlet, the party passes by a band of War Dogs. If you’re not aware, War Dogs are the fanatically loyal shock troops of Ajax the Invincible, who is trying to conquer the world. The party puts Michael Thornberry up front alongside Light of an Autumn Dawn Refracted by a Kaleidoscope, and hide Paarthanoxx and Tulxan within the group. There’s some heckling from the War Dogs as they pass, but they’ve got important War Dog business to attend to and the party is looking to stay out of trouble. That almost changes when one of the War Dogs manages to spot Tulxan as they pass, but Light of an Autumn Dawn Refracted by a Kaleidoscope diffuses that by convincing them that he just has an affliction that they’re going into the swamp to cure, and he’s definitely not an alien from another world.

The party reaches the swamp, begin wading into the muck, and Michael Thornberry is in the middle of explaining how this is all a waste of time when they come face to face with an ogre. The session ends with Michael Thornberry exclaiming, “Black Gods!” as the ogre charges.