Point of light in the dark of night

The party has ventured forth in a 4e adventure for the first time. Our players are:

• Uhlk - Human Great Weapon Fighter that likes to smash.
  
• Extel - Human Blade Ranger who's haunted memories of his past lives fill his waking days
• Elladen Paeris Halladan - Eladrin Swordmage who's family fought the Bloodspear Orcs to the end of their line.
• Valgar Talean - Dragonborn Swordmage on a quest far from his homelands to better learn the skills of his trade
• Zoltan the Reformed - Human Wizard that is a bitter and corse man, often thinking of his own gain over those in the party, that is until the chips are on the table.
• Eldacar - Halfling Rouge who is light on his feet and quick with a blade, walking the path of his own choice and not afraid of those that he may cross.
  
• Sliver Elmwalker - Elf Bowmaster Ranger that is looking for revenge against the enemy that destroyed his family and clan. His only clue a dropped medallion.
  

The party meet in Fallcrest and quickly found work supporting Lord Warden Markelhay in ridding a particularly nasty clan of Kolbolds that had taken residence near by.

After traveling for 1/2 a day the party hound the Kobold Hall under the remains of an old manor house. The first encounter proved to be a easy, by and large, for seven adventures as they quickly dispatched several Skirmishers and Slingers. However the second room, the crypt seemed to be tougher. The Slinger's glue pots seemed to be more effective and the hidden traps added to the damage, causing the players to slow down. We began to see the 'healing' nature of Elladen come into play as he used his healing skill since the Cleric took a drastic direction to fighterdom.

After finding a bit of gold, the players moved into the second crypt and found slingers and minions tossing a giant sticky ball on a rope that would push the players back. The device made it hard to move forward, given the glue pots as well. The players seemed to have things mostly in hand when two guard drakes appeared, and they were tougher then any Kobolds. Uhlk went down and need several turns of repair.

The next room provided a greater challenge. The boulder trap chased the players around the room, that with the glue pots left Extel to be crushed, if not for his timely save and use of an action point to move out of the way. Eldcar and Uhlk both went down as Elladen and company continued their armature hospital routines. :) Finally finishing off the baddies, the party found a Magic Staff and some coin as well as the secret door to the...

Dragon's Room! A young white dragon was being taken care of by the Kobolds and he attacks. I bothced his surprise move and flame. So the party spread out making it hard for him to hit. He did drop Elladen and put the hurt on several others. Five encounters on no rest the party took the loot and headed back to town.

Some rewards and gold are exchanged, the party meets some interesting characters, and gets a charter by Lord Warden to carry word to the Lord of Winterhaven. On the road, they are waylaid by another band of Kobolds. A bit more aggressive, these guys had some fire pots as well. Zoltan and Eldacar get a bit too ahead of the party and are ambushed by the Dragonshields. Valgar gets stuck in combat with a Dragonshield and two slingers that use the mob tactics to ensure powerful hits. In the end the party dispatches the evil Kobolds and makes it to Winterhaven, where most of the party levels up.

Good session. Got to spend a lot of time playing, even if I had to raise my voice from time to time to get hold of the table. Might be a two week gap as we have a WARMACHINE tournament and a Flames of War tournament back to back.

jp
Keeper of the Bad Guys

Illumination
Chapter One – I’m part of what?

We had all six players present for our first go. The characters are listed below in the previous post.

The party started by gaining introductions while traveling in ‘The Brazen Sky’ following Inquisitor Varrak's hasty introductions. The briefing reveled the players new they were to meet Artimous (Arty) at Port Suffering on the planet of Iocanthos. Arrival on the planet was meet by imperial officials then followed up by a cherub that escorted them through town to meet Artimous. While trying to keep up with the flying dead mechanical baby angle (yes it is a disturbed game), the party encountered a crazy man in an alley (where else) that kept chanting about the ‘crow father’ is coming. When the party tried to grab the old geezer to calm him down, his clan members came out of the wood work to support the old guy. A knife fight followed a gun fight followed by the local constables coming to finish things up.

The team, not wanting to reveal who they were, opted to go to jail. Artimous quickly came to bail them out and scolded them for disrespecting the high inquisition by engaging in common thug like activity. Artimous briefed the party on the upcoming consecration of the cathedral out in the boonies… And how it is being haunted… The abbot in charge Abbot Skae sent word to the inquisition for help, hence the parties involvement. Artimous is visibly a Imperial Psyker and is playing with a deck of Tarot cards that he said were recently gifted to him. Oh, and another kicker, his great, great, great, great, great, great, grand dad is the saint that the cathedral is being commissioned too. Key ominous music!

The party moves out to Stern Hope via ground transport… What’s that, nobody took ground transport… The sole IG took swimming despite the desert environment? Hmmm… Go slow boys, go slow!

Two minor happenings in route to the cathedral. A ‘walking dead’ crumbles by the fire scaring Feral IG guy and the witness a disappearing act with a strange symbol that could be either interpreted as an eagle holding a skull (Artimus) or a crow picking at a skull (everybody else). The party arrives and meets the gang at Stern Hope, well almost. They meet Brother Severous, mean guy with axe, and Brother Lemark, nice guy with lasgun and uplifting primer. The party does some digging around before calling a night and hears a few wild tales. Next morning they meet the abbot and don’t gleam much out except he is very excited about the ceremony on the next day. Party decides to take a trek up the mountain facing with Brother Lemark to see if they can find the mystery lights everyone has been talking about, but instead find a large mutated chaos frog. At least that is what we think it was. It was called a Hexalid, but it didn’t have a description except for a ‘barbed tongue’ so the ‘Mutant Chaos Frog’ stuck. Well, said frog has Fear 1. So, being the good new DH GM yell out, “Fear checks please” followed by groans across the table. Every member sans the Tech Priest fails the test… And not by a point or two, but by 4 or 5 degrees… So I have ½ party heading towards the cliff running away, one guy throwing up all over himself for five turns and one that faints out dead away. Tech priest did his best to hold it together until the runners got their senses back.

So that is about it for the first session. I’ll follow up with the second half soon.

jp
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Inquisitor Varrak's representative in Omaha