Earthdawn – The Legend Begins

Session 1 – March 30th, 2008

GM: Dave
Players: Luke, Chad, Dan, Josh, Pat

The scene opened on the town or Rex, a battered and broken village in the hinterlands of Barsaive. The townspeople had fought a daily struggle to eek a meager living out of the dried and broken land, and just as their efforts began to pay off they became the target of a band of ork scorchers. Frequent raids kept the town on the brink of collapse but the orks were smart enough to always leave the town in good enough shape that it could recover… and be raided all over again.

Rex’s headwoman, an elf by the name of Emberica, was finally fed up with the cycle of destruction and called in some old favors which led Askari, a dwarven weaponsmith, to bring his small band of adepts to aid the town. The orks were not expecting any resistance, let alone a band of adepts, and a cunning trap sealed their doom. However they were not go quietly. Many good townsfolk lost their lives in the orks’ death rage, as did Askari himself.

The adepts, lost without their leader, spent some time helping repair the village and recover lost livestock. After a period of mourning they discussed their next destination. T’killa suggested that they seek the Words of Undoing, a set of rituals his master told him would rid Barsaive of Horrors. It was likely that at least a portion of the Words were among the treasures lost in Parlainth. With a new goal at hand, the group took the name The Hounds of Askari to honor their fallen leader.

It wasn’t long into their journey that they encountered trouble. While on watch one night, Silaa heard rustling in the nearby woods. Bardolf, Yurg’s dire wolf companion, also sensed something amiss. As Silaa investigated the entire party was ambushed by short, gray humanoids with large black eyes. The group rose quickly to find themselves outnumbered. The creatures fiercely attacked Katto and managed to steal his peg-leg. As they tried to flee into the night they came under the assault of swords, arrows, claws, and fangs as the Hounds charged into battle.

The creatures may have escaped too, had Silaa not grabbed and thrown one of them into the peg-bearer. As the dying monsters dissolved into pools of foam, more continued to poor out of the woods. It did not take long for the group to find that one of the creatures was splitting copies of himself from his own body – a trick that told Yurg that the Hounds were dealing with a triplicant. With the source creature dispatched peace returned to the night.

Caelas had been injured during the battle, as was Bardolf, but both were quickly attended to by the group’s Nethermancers. As the party settled back down, there was one question on everyone’s mind: Why steal the peg leg? Was someone after a pattern item of Katto’s?

The next morning, the group rose and continued on their journey to Parlainth.

* * * * *

Big thanks to Luke for writing up the first session. He’s apparently making good progress on the second as well – looks like he’s more efficient at this than I am. 🙂 But I will be following Luke’s AP posts up with my own commentary on the campaign meta in the next couple weeks.