Session One and Document Introduction

It has been quite a while since I've written here or been able to run a session, so I'm going to try to catch up a little bit until the group can find a good time to reassemble. Our first session was a bit turbulent, as is to be expected when trying to get four independent (and strong-willed, for that matter) characters in the same place at the same time and agreeing on enough things to work together.

When the individual intro sessions left off, all four of our adventurers had arrived in the city of Feirmor, all chasing different goals. Dez, a native of the city, was chasing down leads on the plague found throughout Feirmor. Ell had come from Woodhearth and was set to meet a contact to perform an assassination contract. Gerald had been brought from the small town of Splitaxe by his employer and ward, Tenk, on unnamed business. Carric had made the trip from Blackleaf Falls to investigate the plague, as a citizen of Blackleaf Falls had shown signs of infection. At the same time, a traveling circus had come to town and was drawing Feirmor's citizenry to enjoy its spectacles.

The session began with Gerald, who accompanied Tenk to a tavern called the Bleeding Crown, a simple bar near the center of town. While Tenk spoke with an associate privately, Gerald knocked back ale after ale. A young girl approached Gerald and politely asked about his appearance, wondering why he was so large and why his skin looked so strange. Gerald grew uncomfortable with the attention of many of the tavern's customers, loudly demanding that they confront him directly if they had something to say. The bar remained quiet in response. Tenk rejoined Gerald and explained that Gerald would need to "rough up" a man named Maxwell while the circus acts performed.

Meanwhile, Dez visited the temple of Pelor where her gnomish cleric contact on the plague, Gilly, worked. She checked on the young patient on whom she had cast "Protection against Evil," a boy named William. He seemed to be doing better, and regained consciousness for long enough to answer a few of Dez's questions. Gilly informed Dez that a clerk of the royal court, a woman named Violet, had fallen ill, apparently of the plague, and recommended investigating. Dez left the temple and returned to the house where she had met the Silver Flame. After some goading, the Silver Flame appeared. Dez argued with the Silver Flame a bit more about divine powers and what she could expect from her deity. Afterward, she headed to the royal library to research curses and other malignant spells to try to better address the plague. She gathered a wide selection of books about curses.

Carric went with his traveling companion Vincent (the falconer) to an inn called the Royal Gates. After checking in, they made a beeline to the palace, where they intended to search the royal library for information about the plague and about Feirmor. They were stopped at the gates by a palace guard who was unwilling to allow a drow inside the palace. Carric argued with the guard, but found no way inside the palace grounds. Vincent offered to search the library himself while Carric relaxed elsewhere (away from racist guards), so Carric made his way to a tavern: the Bleeding Crown. At the bar, Tenk introduced himself and Gerald to Carric; Tenk deduced from Carric's appearance that he was a noteworthy paladin of the Order of the Path of Light. After a brief exchange, Tenk left the tavern, asking Gerald to remain and enjoy a few more drinks. Gerald and Carric ordered meals and made awkward conversation.

At the entrance to the city, Ell made her way with traveling companion Fiskar to a seedy motel called the Golden Coin. After checking in, Fiskar recommended a tavern for drinks and food: the Bleeding Crown. [Obviously at this point, every character was being somewhat railroaded to meeting at this tavern. As I've made it clear repeatedly that restricting character and player choice is the opposite of my gaming philosophy, I'll explain why I took this route. It is incredibly difficult to guarantee that all of the characters end up in the same place at the same time. It is even harder to give them all a reason to work together. This is even more challenging when I've committed to improvising everything - I am unable to craft some sort of big bad evil guy who will threaten each member of the party and get them to unite. As a result, the workaround was to acknowledge to the player group that we would need to work as a team for a very short time to get everyone to that uniting moment. My players were willing to accept this one intrusion to open choice, and we ended up laughing harder each time the tavern's name came up. This is all to say that this will be the only exception to the rules and philosophy I keep as a Dungeon Master.] When Ell and Fiskar arrived at the Bleeding Crown, they took a seat at the bar. Carric recognized Fiskar from his intro session, and the two struck up a conversation about why they were in Feirmor. Once Ell, Carric, Gerald, and Fiskar had their food and drinks, they intermittently spoke and drank.

Back at the royal library, Dez pored through the available books on curses. She was approached by Vincent, who had several questions about the city and about what Dez was researching. Dez remained fairly tight-lipped, but did share her interest in the plague and a map of Feirmor with Vincent, who created a magical copy of it using a spell. Vincent asked Dez to accompany him to meet a friend who was also looking into the plague. The two traveled the short distance to the Bleeding Crown [cue laughter].

With the party united at the bar, everyone made quick introductions. The circus was in full swing outside, and remembering his job of "roughing up" Maxwell, Gerald ran off to the royal grounds. The rest of the party (plus Fiskar and Vincent) followed suit. As they arrived, a beast tamer began his performance with a displacer beast. The displacer beast was in no mood to be tamed, and grabbed a woman from the audience. The tamer panicked and hid, but the party stepped up to attempt to free the woman and subdue the beast. After a tense fight, the beast was rendered unconscious and the woman was saved. Gerald had entered a rage, and in this state of mind (or lack thereof, perhaps), prepared to finish the displacer beast off. Unwilling to see the creature killed if not necessary, Dez cast a spell to freeze Gerald in place. When Gerald's rage ended, Dez freed him; Gerald slunk off to the side, haunted by the experience of being imprisoned once again as he had been for most of his life. An elf (the same one who had met eyes with Ell in her intro session) stepped to the center of the stage and calmed the crowd, pointing out that everyone was safe and offering a song as the circus' final act. As the crowd began to disperse, Tenk spoke with Gerald, explaining that Maxwell was to be forgotten, and coming clean about his business: he was a contract dealer, connecting assassins and thugs to those willing to pay. Gerald refused to be a part of the violence industry and ran off, trailing colorful flowers in his path (the result of a Wild Surge effect during the combat with the displacer beast).

The party then split up for the night. Gerald returned to the Bleeding Crown, seeking more drinks. Dez and Carric went to speak with Gilly once more, working together on the plague. Ell, Fiskar, and Ren (the elf musician who had ended the night's entertainment) went to a wine and dessert bar called the Purple Stocking. Vincent went to the inn, calling it a night.

- - - - -

With the first group session concluded, it looked unlikely that the party was joined in a meaningful way. In fact, Gerald was uncomfortable with the prospect of working with Dez at all after the magical binding she had performed on him. Gerald had also taken a stance against performing violence for money, which put him in a position counter to Ell's profession, as well as Dez's. But despite the tensions, the characters had all met and accomplished a task together. Carric and Dez had significant reason to work together, at least temporarily. It wasn't much, but it was a start.

One of the important things that the first group session established was a need for several documents. As a DM, I always create a visual representation of any written or illustrated records found or used in the game. For this session, there were several documents needed. First, a map of Feirmor was required by Carric. [My next post will look at this map in detail, examining the needs of a city map.] Dez needed information from several books on curses. I decided that this research would be represented by a list of notes taken by Dez on the important sections of several books and by an entire chapter from a particularly useful book. These would be added to the list of documents for the campaign so far, which also included a letter to Carric from the diviner who had inspected the scarecrow's skull and a pamphlet which Ell found which analyzed the fall of a huge city to the north (this was largely an account of the end of a previous campaign I ran). Each of these documents offer information to the characters and players about the world around them and potentially helpful clues in accomplishing their goals.

As an example of this sort of document, I will provide here the notes which Dez took in the library:

Dez's notes on curses from a range of books at the Feirmor Royal Library.

To create this document, I first created the titles and authors of the books which would be slightly helpful to Dez's interests. These are fairly simple to create; it simply takes a little imagination to come up with what sorts of aims a writer may have when they decide to write about dark magic. From there, I started creating short lists of information to include for each book. I tried to keep the information true to what the author would include, given their focus in each book. I knew that there would be a lot of information included in these notes, so I tried to keep the notes in one of two categories: suggestions of new routes to consider, and negative statements to provide a kind of "process of elimination" in considering other possibilities. Some of the notes are also tangential information which could serve as a red herring if given too much consideration.

I have always enjoyed as a DM the opportunity to create puzzles and mysteries for my players to solve. The plague is a new challenge for me. Where before, I have created small scale mysteries and been able to carefully guard the reveals of each of them, I now cannot prepare that sort of experience in advance. Instead, I will be piecing the mystery of the plague and its source together as the players investigate it. [I admittedly have a few ideas about what might be in store, but it is both very unformed and more of a consideration of the theme the plague mystery will follow than a blueprint.] This inability to plan ahead is reflected in these notes: they are scattered, vague, and generally just confirms a few suspicions that Dez already had. Nevertheless, the many stray details that the notes include allows the players to tug at almost any thread, and I plan to improvise ways for each of these threads to be helpful in some way to figuring out just what the hell is going on. 

A few of the notes are starred, which I thought illustrated that Dez could see which of these ideas was especially relevant to the plague in Feirmor. I had Dez's player choose a font for her handwriting and created the document. The whole thing was placed over a parchment texture. Writing the information took more time than photoshopping it together did. The book circled at the bottom was another of the documents I made after this session. Here is the beginning of the relevant chapter: 

A History of Major Curses: Chapter Fourteen. 

The graphic design process here took about as much time as the writing did. It was still simple, though. I just found a template for an open book, added formatting features like page numbers and the title and author's name in the header, and then pasted in the text I had already written. Part of the fun when it comes to creating documents in a campaign is the ability to write as different characters. The author of this book, Loquim Garin, is a bit of a scholar, but is primarily interested in folk tales of dark magic. [I liken this author to Jan Brunvand, a real-life scholar of urban legends, whose work is a little drier than Garin's.] Garin as an author allowed me to present a "real-life ghost story" rife with drama and fear, but the story was close enough to Feirmor's plague that it could shed some light on what was happening with the King's Curse (as Gilly has come to call the plague). 

From this point, it's clear that the adventure is still very much just beginning. The characters still see themselves more as individuals than part of a group. The goals they pursue are still somewhat formless and vague. But it's from these simple and murky threads that we will fashion something large, detailed, and distinct. Next time, look for city map advice and the notes from the second session. Happy gaming!

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