We moved to Toril, new Forgotten realms campaign

So, tonight the second session of the new campaign will take place.
We already met twice for this new adventure taking place in Toril, the first time was just to roll characters, the second was the first bite of  this new world to see what it tastes like.

I had a few experiences in the past with the forgotten realms, mostly as a player and once, a couple of years ago as I was telling a few posts back as a DM.
 So I started familiarizing with the setting, I red a few novels in the past, always useful to get the feeling of the place and I have been reading a sourcebook that came out in 1990 to update the setting to the 2nd edition of AD&D, its title is Forgotten Realms adventures and it contains a mountain of information about religions, spells, cities, magical items and all the rest that can give the game a more "forgotten realms" flavour.

With the informations of this book, especially those about speciality priests, we rolled the characters and the party is composed by the following characters:
- Paddy Byrne O'Shay, a half elf bard played by Doyle
- Floggin, a human fighter with a hint of barbarian, played by Will
- Rootin, Floggin partner, a huge female fighter, occasionally played by Taryn, otherwise a NPC
- Aref Sayyad, a speciality priest of Gond from the southern lands played by Cyrus
- Aurelius, a specialist wizard, a conjuror, played by Max

The party should gain a new member tonight, so I will introduce a new character in the next post.
I will also try to get figures painted for everyone and take a group picutre soon.

The adventure I decided to start with is "Doom of Daggerdale", I already played this adventure in my previous Realms campaign and I very rarely have the occasion to play an adventure twice, it is very interesting to see how differently it plays with a different party.

The adventure started with the group on the road to Dagger Falls, most of the would be heroes already knew each other after a little bit of adventuring together (everyone starts the campaign with 1.000 XPs), except fot Aurelius, a dalesman from Shadowdale, met on the road who was going to Dagger Falls to help his cousin who got  strange sickness called the "dream fever" and can't seem to wake up.

The group, almost at destination, met some freedom fighters on the run, but managed to briefly talk to them and learn that their leader is Rendall Morn, the rightful leader of Daggerdale, who is fighting agains the usurping constable Tren, a servant of Zenthil Keep who took his place in town.

After an uneventful night in the inn the party was summoned, the next morning, by an emissary of the constable and led to his tower where everyone was enlisted to solve the problem affecting the town by investigating the ruined local temple of Lathander.

The group decide to tale care of some personal business before starting the investigation and Floggin, Rootin and Paddy went to by some suplies and to fish in the river, while Aurelius decided to go visit his sick cousin, accompanied by Aref.

When the night came, all the heroes met back at the inn and all but Aref decided to have a fish barbecue in the woods in order to save a bit of cash.
Unfortunately they were attacked by a strange couple of creatures with the aspect of dwarfs with brown skin, dry leaves and twigs in their hair and beards and wearing kilts and vests made of vines.
Not without a few problems the adventurers defeated these creatures and managed to get back to the inn.

It is at this point that the session ended, so until next time for the next episode of the story.

Chapter 2: Disaster and end

Here I am again, with more stories for you.
Unfortunately, before I could get up to date with the posts, my players screwed up and the campaign came to an abrupt end.

Last session was disastrous, some very very bad decisions were taken and followed past the point where me, as DM, could try to save the whole thing and the party ended up being FUBARed.

I will briefly report where the campaign had gone until now and then, next time, will start with the chronicling of the new campaign that will start tonight with the generation of characters and a brief introduction of the new setting we will be using.

Continuing from where we left the story last time:
the party went to Nolivari, a small town east of Darokin city, to find the city had just fought off a Norker's invasion.
The characters also found out that the invasion had been lead by Grakhirt, the true identity of Peddywinkle, a wizard that disguisde himself as the merchant that hired the party to find the tower.

The town Prince asked the party to find the wizard and capture or dispatch of him with the help of Ainz, a pries of Halav that helped in the defence of the city (Doyle's new character).
After exploring the norker's lair the group found the wizard and confronted him in a fight to the death and then returned to the village.

Here the heroes were appointed as "wardens", given a house and a new mission.
They were supposed to reclaim an abandoned temple of Chardastes near che village, but they failed miserably, Bill died and they were stripped of their title and sent away from the town.

On the way back to Darokin city in search of a job and some more fortune, the party ended up saving a "girl in distress" who asked to be brought to Orb lake.
On the way of the lake the group met Stephen, a halfling thief (played by Will) who joined the heroes on their way through the forest to the mointain lake.

Once at the lake, the lady disappeared in its waters before flying out and fading into another plane as a white spirit stag without saying a word.

Close to the lake the characters found an ld abandoned dwarf mine that they tried to explore with little success and losing the newofund halfling who was dvoured by some giant beetles.
Just after this a tio of dwarves, a priest of Kagyar named Yarvin Tombhammer (Will's third character) and his assistants "the brewer" and "the butcher" appeared at the lake and joined in the exporation of the cave where they found a magical blacksmith hammer that they had to bring back to rockhome.

After this the characters decided to split and meet again in a few months, so that everyone could get some rest and deal with personal business in their respective places of origin.

When they met again, the heroes were unwillingly transported by some weird mists into a swampy unknown land and they spent few days in a village cursed by the walking dead and a zombie lord.

This adventure was actually played on boxing day as a one session affair, it took about 10 hours, but worked out quite well.

Returning to Mystara from the demilane of dread, the party followed Magnus in his search for the lost valley of Hutaaka in order to stop his recurring nightmares, but found the way blocked at the town of Threshold by an army of orcs trying to overcome the city and its defences.

In an effort to help, the group agreed to be polymorphed into orcs and infiltrate the orc citadel of Kirimba-Hai to recover a captured general and a mysterious megilac object called the Silver Key.

Unfortunately this is when disaster struck, the party managed to get the the city and enter it, but the sheer chaos of an orc citadel revealed to be too much for them to handle and some poor decisions spelled doom and death on half of the party, with no chance for the remaining members to get back to civilization without their mind succumbing to orciness and despair.

And so ends the second attempt of a long term campaign with this goup of players.
Tonight we will start a new one, from roughly level 1 and set in the Forgotten Realms, let's see where this one go.

Wish the players all the luck you can, they definitely need it.
Until next time

Chapter 1, The acursed tower

And so the new campaign begins, in the most classic possible way, in a tavern.
Since all the palyers are new to the game, I didn't need to come up with new ways to start the story, the classic call for a job with a meeting in a tavern worked very well.

The different characters were introduced to each other at the moment of discussing the job.
They all started in Darokin city, every one of them for a different reason.
I'm not a big fan of backstories, I believe that the story is made as the game proceeds, so all I needed from the players was a reason to be there.

The characters and their motives are the following:
- Billston Bearcharger, a half elf ranger with his dog Ralph was raised by a druid on the border of Elfeim, land of those who would never fully accept him.
When the Elfeim was overrun by the shadow elves, Bill had to flee and ended up looking for adventure and wealth in Darokin city.

- Tayla Naleana, a very young rogue who grew up an orphan in Darokin city and learned to steal in order to survive.

- Magnus, a former warrior who saw his life destroyed when a man killed his dog with a strange looking weapon that could give death at a distance, emitting a lot of noise and smoke. After this terrible experience, on the brink of insanity, the man was visited in a dream by Pflarr, a divine creature with the head o a Jackal, who gave him magical powers and the mision to find the killer of his dog and spread his word and faith all over the world.

- Aemilianus, a young Glantrian wizard who managed to survivive the war with Alphatia and fled his land in search of magical knowledge and power.

The party, from left to right, Bill, Tayla, Magnus and Aemilianus.

The job that the party took, from a merchant named Paddywinkle, consisted in finding and exploring a lost tower in order to find the diary of e wizard rumored to be researching a salve to cure all diseases.

During the trip to find the tower, Magnus and Tayla started to be haunted by horrible nightmares involving a misty and scary land that none of them could recognize.

The actual "mission" was a real grind, it took longer than expected and it involved fighting many undead and overcoming sunk and mud filled rooms.

 

The last part of the adventure involved entering a collapsed tower half sunk in mud.

Aemilianus, not the strongest member of the party, didn't manage to get into the tower and had to leave his companions and stay behind.

Durig the exploration, Tayla suddenly had interest picked by a statue partially submerged in mud, but as soon as she touhed it, the stone figure started moving and turned out to be a gargoyle.

A terrible fight started, Tayla fought with a magical mace she had recently found, while Magnus and Bill realized their mundane weapons were useless against the monster. Ufortunately the thief's efforts to overcome the monster were shortly interrupted by claws, fangs and horns and she perished in a very un-heroic manner.

Using the magical weapon that she dropped Bill managed to kill the gargoyle and him and Magnus could finally reach the last room where they found a strange looking undead wizard sitting with a big tome on his lap.

The undead, wielding magical powers, teleported the disturbing adventurers back to the main part of the tower, where they reunited with Aemilianus and had to figure a new way to approach the evil creature and obtain the diary.

Once they managed to get to the wizard room again, the heroes fought bravely and, one by one, were put out of action until, with a last, might blow of his mace, Magnus overcame his foe and obtained the goal of their quest.

Magnus managed to drag the badly wounded bodies of Aemilanus and Bill to a more secure area of the tower, but in the meantime had to fight the re-animated body of Tayla that had turned into a disgusting zombie.

After yet another couple of days, the remaining members of the party were fit to travel back to Darokin city. Unfortunately, upon returning to the capital, the characters found out that Peddywinkle had left the city and left a message telling them to find him in the town of Nolivari.

This is it for this post, the story will continue in future ones, and as we get closer to the present it will be more detaild and complete.