Politics Again, Summation US

The problem with US politics today is that it is just plainly worse than any time before.  Truthfully, I can’t remember a time where it was good.  Even when Obama was president there were a lot of horrible things that the US did to the World.  Like the start of drone strikes, the law that allowed migrants to be detained, mass deportation of a million people.  Before him there was George “W” Bush, who relaxed security and allowed 9-11 to occur, and after that he attacked Afghanistan, and while that was understandable, he then attacked Iraq for no good reason and that was the legacy of his time in office.  Bill Clinton was the least bad president we have had in decades, and he was impeached.  He lied to congress about having an affair in the oval office.  That was an impeachable offence back then.  He also went to war as a peace-making mission in Europe and well he solved the recession at the time.  George Bush before him was bad, he was involved in two wars in 4 years, the first was the Gulf War when Saddam Hussein attacked Kuwait and the world stepped in and completely destroyed Iraq’s infrastructure with air raids which caused him to retreat from Kuwait and then the Allied nations bombed the hell out of the retreating army, killing 100,000 soldiers.  And then they went away, when what they should have done was remove Saddam and invest money in Iraq until all the damage was fixed.  Instead they put embargos on the nation so that it could not rebuild anything that was destroyed.  And then there was Reagan, famous for Cowboy movies and now Cowboy Diplomacy.  He nearly started Nuclear War, did instigate the Iran Iraq war,  saw the end of the Cold War, when the Berlin Wall fell, and Soviet Russia fell.  He also paved the way for the Religious Right to form political in roads in the Republican party and he tried to destroy the Left.  Basically, when it comes down to it, there is very little that has come out of the US that is good since the Marshal Plan and the Space Race.

All the poor and horrible stuff that I just tallied compares not a drop to what is happening in US politics these days.  Partisan Politics has come to its natural conclusion from the days of Reagan to today.  Both sides are delusional.  They believe that the other side is treasonous and is selling out the country.  Neither side is correct absolutely, one side has a leg to stand on, but it is still not a good leg.  The Republicans have elected a president that lost the popular vote, but won the Electoral College, a system that is broken because one vote in a rural part of the country has the same weight as a thousand votes in a urban part of the country.  Fine, the Republican won.  But it turns out that is all that matters for most of the Republican Party.  What is also a little scary, more than a little scary, is that because of the infiltration of the Republican Party by the Religious Right, many have declared him divinely ordained by God, and therefore to argue against him is blasphemous.  Luckily it has only been a small vocal fringe that has been saying this.  It goes further, though.

Apparently, the average Republican voter does not watch Mainstream media.  They listen to Alternative News Media.  They do like Fox News, but they also get most of their news from alternative sources that don’t use real facts.  They use conspiracy theories and they say things that are not true.  One Alternative news source suggested that there was a child sex ring organized by the Democrats and Hillary Clinton that was run out of the basement of a New York Pizzeria.  No facts backed up this claim, but they repeated it constantly, until one listener, who believed that he was going to do something about this crime, that the police were just letting it continue, he stormed the building shot and killed someone and demanded to get into the basement to free the children.  Only there was no basement.  Never had been a basement.  Another claim was that there was a mass shooting in a elementary school, and it was all faked.  The parents were all actors and the dead children did not exist.  The listeners sent threatening letters and death threats to the parents whose children had been murdered.  The mass public that voted for the Republicans do not believe the Mass Media, because they were told that they are lying to them, but that the Alternative Media is telling the truth.  So, when they voted in the current President, a president that does not watch Mainstream Media, he called them all Fake and their news reports all fake.  He accused them of lying to the public.  And that was the situation when President Trump was elected.  Alternative news outlets spreading false information were deemed as true, and Mainstream Media viewed as biased and fake.  Fake, by the way, is news that the Right does not like, it is not necessarily false, just not what they want to hear. 

The First news story of this Presidency was how many people attended his inauguration.  He claimed that more people attended his inauguration than Obama.  The photographic evidence shows that more people came to see Obama, but Trump attacked these people and called them fake news.  Later things got worse.  It became clear that President Trump was using the Presidency to enrich his pockets, he would stay for free in his hotels but charge the government for lodgings of his secret service entourage.  His wife did not join him in Washington, so there were secret service people in the Trump hotel 24/7 for six months.  And then there were the frequent trips to his golf course in Florida where the Secret Service had to get accommodations too.  Frequent trips.  It was estimated that he took more trips to golf in his first year than Obama did in 8 years.  His cabinet was not ready to be sworn in the day he took control of the office.  Sure, it takes time to vet out appointments, but he has never had enough people to fill the appointments and there have been vacancies all through his term to date, and then there was the scandals.  Almost from the beginning there were election irregularities and when the cause came to the surface, Russian Meddling, it was ignored by the President.  There were many scandals.  People quitting his cabinet and other appointments, constant claims that when someone quit it was because they were really Democrats.  On and on the scandals continued, the resignations too.  Beyond the scandals were the redefinition of basic terms and words.  Double speak from the Dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, became common.  Fake News for News, Illegal Immigration for Refugees or asylum seekers and many more.  There was a period where the president tried to deny entry into the US by countries where “terrorists” were from but most of them were from nations that did not participated in 9-11.  These attempts were constantly struck down by the courts as unconstitutional.

And then there was trade.  The first thing he did was scrap as many trade plans that he could.  He tore up the Trans-Pacific Pact, he tore up the North American Free Trade Agreement.  He then started imposing tariffs and embargos on every country who imported anything into the US that the US used to make itself.  Apparently, anyone who thought he was bad at trade, was clearly Fake news.  Anything he has touched foreign or otherwise has suffered from his reverse Midas Touch, it crumbles into dust, and yet the Alternative news treats him like the second coming, except some of the Alternative News Sources have ACTUALLY claimed he is the second coming. 

He does not believe Climate Change is real.  He removed the US from the Paris Accord.  He has been advocating for a rollback on environmental regulations.  He has been telling people that it is important to be wasteful, install high water capacity toilets, not to use LEDs and to burn as much coal as they can.

The only good thing that can be said for this government is that it is mostly incompetent.  They were only able to pass one piece of legislation in two years, back when they controlled both the House and the senate, and that was to reduce taxes for the rich.  Literally the only thing that was passed.  Since the House became Democrat controlled, many laws have been passed, but they were all voted down by the Republicans in the Senate.  Incompetent but mean.  Apparently guess who also watches alternative news?  Racists and White Supremacists, Nazis and others.  In the first year, a Neo-Nazi attacked and killed a protester and the best that the president could say was that there were people wrong on both sides.  And that was okay with the KKK, they liked not being called the only wrong party. 

When Trump won the election, he was surprised, he thought he was going to lose.  He had a speech ready to tell his supporters that the vote was rigged.  If he had lost there would have been maybe a riot, but nothing else.  If Trump loses this election and he claims that there was voter fraud, there might just be a bit more than a riot.

I forgot to mention that the United States has concentration camps where they put Latin American refugees that turn up seeking asylum; they even separate the children and if the kids are sick, they let them die.  They have forgotten which child belonged to which parent and so they can’t reunite these children.  The thing is, they are still doing it.  They are building a wall but a wall can’t stop refugees and so they still imprison these migrants, they still may even be separating the children.  Today it is 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz; something most people don’t know is that most Germans did not know that they were killing Jews there and in other concentration camps.  They knew that they moved the Jews around a lot, but they did not know the trains were full or empty.  No-one knows what they are doing in these concentration camps, because media is not allowed in them.  We don’t know, we are concentrating on yet another Scandal where Trump has been impeached and his Republican Party will not believe he has done anything wrong.  We are focusing on that and not on other stuff.  The rhetoric has been kind of dark lately.  Rebellion and deathcamp dark.  What happens when politicians and religious zealots become the same.

First Job

Three months of training was a long time, the days of learning the rudiments of the new careers that you have chosen to embark on involved more of your attention than your career that you learned before, well this was true for some.  For others it was just an extension of your previous life, the life of a nomad and the life of a Ranger, for instance, varies little.  The training of a bard is not all songs and dance, there were many nights and days of practise learning the correct inflection to pitch your voice to mystically cast spells and worse, all while you fought off the most excruciating hangover! 

Going out and reconnecting with the fellows that you survived the night against the Kobolds was the only true respite that you had.  When you were told that you were ready to go out in the world and try your new skills out for real, you decided that it might be best to do so with those people.  Keylesh proved to be less a cat than her appearance suggested, she trudged through the rain as if it did not matter, granted she did have the hood of her cloak up and she later said that it had been oiled to prevent the water from penetrating.  She also said if her undercoat did not get wet, she would be fine.  The dwarf trudged alongside her, the rain plonking off his broad steel helmet and pauldrons.  He proclaimed that the rain does not bother him either, because he wears a thick wool coat under that keeps him warm in the wet.  Nerwen was not bothered by the rain, she said that she experienced about one hundred Springs filled with rain all outdoors, but still, she said she preferred the dry.  Tiarah, disliked the wet weather the most, but when she stepped inside, she whistled up a tune and waved over her body and the water all sloshed to the floor and was as dry as dry can be.  The Mercenary boards were the reason why you were here, jobs that required doing open to all mercenaries.  Keylesh stated that the jobs were more profitable than the jobs that the Builder’s Guild posted, with a little more risk and a lot less actual work.  So, here you were.  There were a lot of jobs but some of them were denoted with special marks.  Keylesh told you that these marks were earmarked for people that had advanced higher within the guild, they had paid their dues and so they were able to apply for the more profitable jobs.  She then said there was only one way to get higher up in the guild, and that was to work.  The jobs open for untried guildmembers was menial.  There were a lot of jobs as caravan guards, but they all had other duties attached to them, like kitchen duties and latrine digging; what got dug had to be filled in too.

The job that you settled on paid a little less but had no ancillary duties.  Straight up caravan guards, with side duties of night watch and ranging duties.  There were no bonuses attached to the job either.  Keylesh said that if the caravan encountered trouble there would be a bonus divided between all the guards and if the caravan arrived early at the main entrance of the Empire, there would be another bonus, but she said the caravan was often late in this weather and any bonus was divided with , upper guildsmen before the lower, but the lower guildsmen took the brunt of any penalty.  She seemed to be remarkably well informed, she shrugged and said that she had heard many complaints over the years.  So you all looked at the very short queue for the Archeological dig guards and headed over there, maybe if you did a good job here, you could get back here before the line advanced any and apply for the jobs as a full Guildsman.  It was a joke, but not much of a stretch; you had your orders and were out of the building before the first caravan had chosen its guards.  The weather had eased off some when you entered the streets, promising a dry day for your first real mercenary job.

Promises aside, the weather was inclement.  The first day the weather was just wet, light drizzle, but the second and the third day proved to be wetter.  The rain fell in sheets that made it hard to see five feet in front of you for five or ten minutes and then it intensified for a minute or so, before easing off a little.  There was too much to do that first couple of days to worry about the rain.  Three of you walked to either side of the caravan, every kilometer that it made through the land you figure you walked five.  The mercenary captain Haro Lightman, could not see any better than you, but he always seemed to know where you were and when you were not doing what you were supposed to be doing.  After the first day his directions became fewer and on the third day he stopped altogether.  There were four other guards hired on and he seemed to spend most of his time with them, keeping them in line.  Nerwen was luckier than you, she had a mount, a zebra from her Clan.  She had other duties, she had to range up and down the route that they were going to be taking and back where you had already passed.  Haro said that it was important to know what was ahead and to know if anything was following them, he also bade her not to get too far ahead, no more than half a kilometer.

The rain had made the land sloppy.  The trail was unbroken, so that was good, but Haro claimed that also meant that there were more hazards like gopher holes.  He directed you, except for Nerwen, what to look for, he said that if any of the horses stepped in one it would lame it for sure and the horse would have to be put down unless it could be healed.  There were a lot of things to look out for besides gophers, there were several beasties out here that could spell the end of any caravan especially one as lightly armed as this one.  Ankheg, Bullete, Giant Spiders, poisonous snakes and more, and all that was before the Kobolds started to raid.  He looked around and said under his breath, dragons too.  There were lots of dragons everywhere, not just the ones that had killed Dhewtudum, small ones could kill a caravan.  The caravan travelled slowly, but steadily; in the rain, over the uncertain terrain it made only 20 km.  Haro chose to reward your ability to follow orders by exempting you from latrine digging duties, but he expected you to take your turn at watch duties.  With the rain there was no fire so everyone ate dry rations and went to bed where they could.  Haro learned of Tiarah’s gifts and put her to work using her cantrips to dry out the horses and the supplies every night. 

The third day, the weather cleared, the air was crisp and there was a light touch of frost on all the blades of tall grass.  Haro consulted with Kris Wains, the expedition master and they agreed to head inland a bit and keep about a kilometer from the Trandle River.  It had swollen from the rain and the melt waters in the mountains and was looking like a bigger hazard than a navigational aid.  He then looked to you and said that there was going to be a few changes today.  He pointed to you four and said you will be heading a little ahead of the caravan.  The way will be drier and the caravan will move faster, but there will be more dangers and so he told Nerwen to range a little further and the three others to fan out ahead and walk at an easy pace about a hundred meters apart, and remember a gopher hole can maim a horse.  True to his prediction, Nerwen spotted a possible hazard in the way the caravan was looking to go.  She thought that it was a trapdoor spider and she summoned the others to fight or drive it off and mark its lair as a hazard to avoid.  The others arrived and they quickly got the better of the beast.  When Haro got closer he praised you, but warned that this was just a small one, they can get much bigger. 

Once again, the four of you moved out and looked for hazards.  The mountains appeared not much closer to you even though you had travelled for three days and it this point sixty kilometers.  You turned back to look where you had come, the smudge on the horizon was Trandle’s Stand, the lines of smoke did not appear to differentiate between the hundreds of sources.  The view towards the Trandle River was clear, beyond it there was the plume of smoke in the horizon that marked the Dragon’s Home, Dhewtudum.  The Spine of the World, the Empire of the Dwarves, was still snow covered white and gray, with their tops cloaked in clouds, but also in that direction was Nerwen, waving to get your attention, she seems to have seen something further up that will need your attention.  When you got level with her, she had dismounted and was examining the ground.  There was a small decomposed corpse there; ribs white and exposed and bits of putrid flesh still attached to the mess, crawling with maggots and such.  The skull was broken on its side where something had impacted it, but its appearance was clear, it was a kobold, dead three months.  Together you looked for more or what had killed it, and you quickly found not far away, just off the path the caravan was to follow a small collection of Halfling holes.  Nerwen went back to inform Haro, who in turn suggested that they investigate it for survivors but seemed to think that since there was no smoke, there was no hope. 

In the village there were many doors ajar on their hinges and a great many bones scattered on the ground in places to suggest that the halflings had fought and died on that night that you had fought and lived.  There was one door that was burnt, but still in place, the door jammed shut.  Jammed shut meant two things, whoever was inside was likely dead and the house was unlooted.  Keylesh broke a window and slipped into the house even though the window was about as big as her head.  The dwarf put his boot to the door and pushed hard; the door popped open.  The air was musty and had the tang of decay.  The darkness was no hinderance for the party.  The saw quickly there were two doors still shut and one open right before them.  Just on this side of the doorway there was a pile of small bodies, mostly a quarter the size of any of you.  There was no sign of maggots or flies here, the corpses were preserved by the cleanliness of the owner.  Keylesh approached first and say that many of them had been gnawed on.  By what it was not certain, but the larger ones were still mostly clothed and had some items of interest, she went immediately to these things as did the Dwarf who was right behinds her.  Both failed to notice the sound of thirty small feet on the floor behind the open door.  Nerwen, Eagle-Eyes saw a baleful glow from the room before them and warned of something coming forth.  It was big and it nearly filled the doorway and it was creepy between its eyes it had a maw filled with sharp tiny teeth and a swirl of tiny appendages.  She held her ground and cast a cantrip that lit the creature up, allowing everyone to see the beast clearly.  Keylesh stepped to the side and stabbed out with her short sword and then clawed it the beast with her claws.  The beast lunged out and scored a hit on the elf and she realised her mortal peril.  The Bard sang a clear note, after stepping back and scattered sand at it while holding a gentle note, the beast struggled against the spell and collapsed.  The party breathed a brief breath of relief as the dwarf approached and leveled his blunderbuss at where he thought its head must surly be and activated his weapon.  The tremendous sound resounded through the room and a splash of ichor bathed the room, the beast was not as mortally wounded as it appeared and lunged at the elf in a sudden attack.  The beast scored a blow against the tall, tall elf and she was injured.  She fired her bow and wounded it; the Bard mocked it to distract.  The beast was no distracted and it lunged out again catching the elf in its maw.  The Elf fell unconscious.  Keylesh seeing the peril, tried to remove her ally from being the Carrion Crawler’s next meal, she attacked it with her claws and grabbed Nerwen and threw her back, the beast’s tentacles wrapped around her bare arm and she felt the burning sensation as the poison entered her and the numbness quickly spread.  The dwarf hefted his two-handed axe forth and brought its blade down on it.  The fair Bard Tiarah, fought the fear she felt as she saw two of her companions fall, and tried to think of what she would do, pursing her lips she whispered words of horror that only the beast heard and the terror it felt manifested in it turning tail and fleeing from her and her easy fresh meals.  The dwarf raised its axe and felled the creature with a last blow that cut the horror in twain.  All her spells gone she bound the wounds of the Elf and she revived.  The Tabaxi shook off the effects of the poison and soon stood, and the Elf stoppered a healing potion and drank it down.  The party was shaken with its close call with death once more.

That night watch was very eventful.  The three moons made an appearance and so it was easy to see for many kilometers.  There was a small fire that allowed a warm meal and some hot tea, but this was put out before the two suns set.  The night sky was filled with hundred, nay, millions of tiny flying insects that blinked and flashed in the night.  Haro was not pleased with the diversion, he muttered under his breath and Nerwen caught what he said and nodded sagely.  When asked she said it was a piece of Grass Elf Plain wisdom:

Skies wet with rain,

Followed by Flies of Flame.

A word to the sane,

Warns of the Fliers that Maim.

She said that as often as not, the rains shepherded these insects and often there would be a tiny dragon sighted soon, but not always and not every rain.  The next day it rained, and for the rest of the week, it was not a heavy rain, but it was enough to make the journey uncomfortable.

On the sixth day the caravan reached a place where there was a hill.  The Elf said it was a hill, the Tabaxi did too.  The plains grass was growing nearly a foot or two above the rest of the plain.  In places it was.  Kris came forward and stated that the hill looked like a wall, long buried in the turf.  She pointed further off and pointed out tussocks of grass above the rest and a lone monolith poking above it all, by at least thirty cm.  Haro called a halt and asked you four to search the perimeter for anything, anything at all, he had been more wary since the night with the Fire Flies.

Nerwen noticed a bird flutter down in the middle of the ruin but thought that the Haro meant something else when he said anything.  Tiarah, wanted to see the bird up close and decided to get closer.  She thought that she saw a flash of blue when it landed.  What kind of vulture has bright blue plumage?  She approached without making a noise.  The critter was not a bird, it was reptilian like, large bat wings, nearly two meters tip to tip, and a long tail with a dangerous looking barb.  The wet weather was hissing on its back, causing little static arcs to cross between drops.  So fascinated, she waved for attention and bade the others to approach silently.  They all complied or tried to comply.  The Dwarf was not capable of stealth dressed in chainmail.  The thing took flight at his approach, like a cat startled from its prey.  The prey in question was a kobold, not a few days dead.  The method of death was unclear, because the little dragon kin, the small blue wyvern, had stripped most of the thick flesh and made a mess of the rest.  Nerwen was sticking a little further from the rest, and it was perhaps due to this that she warned the rest back as the little creatine was returning to fight for its repast.  You all scattered to get some room, but you were not fast enough, its claws racked the bard and its tail stinger narrowly missed.  The Elf slashed at it with her scimitar and the Cat with its claws, being careful to just scratch at its wings—hoping to take it alive.  The dwarf two handed it with his axe.  The beast scratched and wounded circled back for another pass.  The bard, smarting from nearly dying whispered words of anger that only it heard, and the beast wracked in pain and quickly rose high into the sky as far as it could go.  There it hovered and stalled and started a dive.  Nerwen drew her bow to her cheek and let loose a feathered missile which struck true.  The bard was peeved, no way was she going to be eaten today, she sang soothing words and cast sand at its direction as, the dwarf fired his crossbow nearly straight up, before thinking better of it.  The bird dodged the quarrel but fell into a relaxed tumble as the bard made it sleep.  The creature crashed into the earth, dead with a broken neck, and the quarrel fell harmlessly to the side. 

That evening as the suns were setting, the Yellow filling the sky with red colour that was reflected on the mountain peaks, the red sun followed soon after.  The light reflected from the snow-covered mountains lasted another few minutes, softening from orange to pink and then deep purple.  Haro approached.  He said that they had done well, and their service was beyond question.  He had a letter that he told them contained his recommendation that they become full members of the guild.  They are to proceed with haste back to town with the letter and one from Kris.  He explains that there is a lot of unharvested field stone in this ruin and suspects that a sizeable portion of the new town wall is now waiting to be excavated under our feet.  She needs more tools and several wains to load the stone on.  She also requires the stonecunning of the dwarf for a moment.  The dwarf looks over the monolith at the center of the ruin.  Kris tells him that she found it excavated like this and she also says she found a rune that looks dwarvish in origin.  He looks at it and agrees with her, it is dwarvish, and the stone is good granite, a stone not common in the mountains close to here.  He looks at it and says by the wear it appears to be over 2000 years old.  Kris, clucks under her breath.  It is older than that assuredly, there is no mention of a town or city in this location a thousand years before the founding of Awsland and Gutral Mastekeena, and they were founded two thousand years ago or more.  It appears we have a mystery here.  The dwarf thinks more than one, why would there be a dwarf city out of the mountain at all?

The journey to Trandle’s Stand is brief, it takes but four days to travel the distance that took 6 with the caravan, about 120 km.  The return journey will take longer, but the path will be better known.  In town you see there is a long line looking to be the next Guild Guardsman.  There is someone there who takes your letter and after an hour someone returns and tells you that since they have been to the ruin and have been recommended for this service by Captain Lightman, they would be pleased if you would return with the new caravan in a few days, once a few caravan carts can be freed from the merchants and if you would accept double pay of full guildsmen to take this journey.  He gives each of you a purse that contains your pay, half of what a guildsman would have made, but with a signing bonus for this next job, fifty gold piece chits, with a ten full ten-gold piece bars, unbroken.  You are earning Guild Wages now.

Keylesh gets home to here domicile.  There are two letters there for her.  One is from her master who has billed her a penalty for lost wages of a 2 gold chits per day, a total of 18 chits.  Not something to sneeze at a month ago, but now she feels that she can see the end of here servitude.  The second letter is something else . . ..

Interlude after Session 0

The aftermath of the battle is more than a little surreal; the bodies lie strewn over the field where they fell, covered by a light frost, a last touch from a long winter.  Your new companions are as weary as you are.  Sleep was found in short one-hour shifts, but you are now all awake to see the light of the new day.  It is Darkday, the day of the week when the red sun overtakes the yellow sun and covers it in the sky.  The buildings have a pall of death on them, the colour has been bled from them leaving reds, blues and blackness.  The feeling is mutual.

Still there are signs of life returning; the people that survived the night, thanks to your efforts, are starting to stir, awakened from the ministrations of the Great Wyrms’ Curator.  The spring rain that fell the day before has swollen the river so that is covers the three bridges, two broken wooden ones and the stone bridge too.  The village feels surrounded by the flood waters, but you know that this is the start of a New Year and planting will be soon to come.  Maybe.

From the gentle rise of the village you survey the land around, only two pillars of smoke can be seen, the chimney of the Great Wyrm and the chimney that is the remains of Dhewtudum.  Nothing else.  The countless villages that you past two days ago to get here, appear snuffed out, like so many candles on a celebratory cake.  It is time to go.  After you thank the curator and return his artifacts and a very brief search for things that were in your rooms from the other inns.  But where?

For Keylesh, the choice is temptation, all are dead around her, she too could have been killed in the destruction.  If she could only remove the coffle around her neck and scar the tattoo on her left cheek, she would then be free, free forever.  For Tiarah the choice is less clear, home to Causnaught and the recrimination of one parent’s one night of ‘slumming it’ with a human and the other who is now considered old for humans, somewhere different would be good.  For Nerwen her thoughts stray to her clan, briefly, but only briefly.  The Zebra Clan is to the North where it is warmer, where the sweet spring grasses are just coming on, they will be here soon in a single turning of Hestuim, three months about, in Mortal Time.  You will send word, the grasses here abouts, may no-longer be safe.  The Dwarf, his eyes have little strayed from the ruin of Dhewtudum and the great mountains beyond.  The mountains, whose summits are always cloaked in snows and be clearly seen, there is not a cloud in the sky in that direction, which is a rare enough sign that it can be taken as an omen; a sign that he should go back to where he will be safe.  If it is a sign it is one that he ignores and he takes a single step for the only road out of here, the North Road to Trandle’s Stand.  Keylesh’s shoulders slump and takes a step too.

Years you have all felt directionless, an average member of your society, but for last night.  Last night; you all feel as if you have taken a new first breath and are ready now to go out into the world as you never have before.  You are going to make some changes in your life, and then you are going to make the world sit up and take note.  Yes that’s it, it will take note of you, and maybe one day you will come back to the Great Wyrm, stay in its rooms and donate a weapon or a piece of armour, to decorate the wall and inspire someone else to do great things . . ..

Three months has past since that night, you have all learned new things and gained a certain amount of area knowledge in this new town, barely a city, Trandle’s Stand.  The city has aspirations; it will one day be a as big as Dhewtudum was, or so the mystics have said.  Technically it IS bigger than it now, now that there is only a single resident of Dhewtudum and there are over 15 thousand in the Stand.  It is a city of commerce; every day a caravan heads out from the city gates and heads up to the Empire, that is one heads out when there isn’t three or five.  Each caravan is filled with all manner of products, a long line of twenty wains, drivers, mounted guards and a wide wagon to hold provisions; over a hundred people in each one.  When they return it is often with only five cart loads of finished dwarven made items and a trunk full of gold and a long line of horses and walking men.  The dwarves so lazy with their wealth would rather purchase the cart included with the wares than unload it.  But the people don’t mind, the wainwrights build more and more every day and the wealth flows. 

Three new immigrants, battle hardened with skills abound.  The guilds accessed each of you for membership, offered you a little wealth to tempt you to their membership.  The Dwarf was offered prize starting positions in the Guild of Arms and the Guild of Alchemy, both have given him a place at their benches and their forges.  Tiarah was offered a place among the Guild of Luxury.  Nerwen was approached from two of the most important guilds, the Culinary Guild and the Guild of Navigators and Astrologers, it seems that her experience herding is valuable, but as a navigator more so as she could lead one more caravan per week.  But you all, including Keylesh, are offered training in the Guild of Mercenaries.  Keylesh you learned is a slave, owned by the leader of the Builder Guild, a slave of, what counts as, Royalty in these parts, but a slave none-the-less.  The cost of her training is being added to her Freedom Price.

The Dwarf trained as a warrior, he fights with a two-handed axe, but he also has a huge heavy crossbow and a odd device that he re-forged from parts he recovered from his room the night after the attack.  He calls it his Blunderbuss.  He claims that it will spew death to all it will reach, but you all have doubts, it looks like it might just blow up.  Nerwen trained as a different type of warrior, she has a bow, one of the legendary Grass Elf longbows, unstrung it stands nearly ten feet tell, but strung only nine, and when she pulls back, the stave tips are only 6 feet apart.  Her arrows will fly further than any at the range; it is a bow only she can draw.  Tiarah learned a little of this and a little of that, she learned to fight and she learned book stuff too, but mostly she learned to sing and to play her instruments; she learned to cast spells with her songs and her music.  She has become a Bard.  Keylesh, you assumed because of her training being added to her Freedom Price, was learning mostly to fight with her claws and to use her body as a weapon.  Clearly, she was planning to be a warrior too, of a sort.

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There are a few questions that remain unanswered where did these attackers come from and what was their purpose?  There are experts in every pub or inn that you have been to.  They all say the same sorts of things, the plain swallowed them up, or there were unexpected floods that wiped the villages out, also, the villages that died had blasphemed against the gods and they got what was coming to them.  The theories change as the night matures, those that know talk about the Dragon and how all the villages near Dhewtudum are gone and most of the rest too, but not all of them.  A few have heard about a bunch of heroes who stood their ground and fought.  The Race of the heroes varies with the teller, (“They were stalwart Dwarves, from the Empire,” “Nay, they were Halflings”) but the elements that stay the same: they were attacked by kobolds and an odd race called Dragonborn.  Lastly, they also state at the end of each story that they are coming again and next time it will be the Stand that will be in their sights.

New Session 0

I have started up another Role-Playing group with my new (new meaning 2 years new) workplace.  I have decided to model it on the story that I tried to write with my friend as a player before he died last year.  I started the adventure the same way, a night when the creatures come out and attack the village that they are staying at.  The village is wrecked, and the player’s characters awaken the morning of the attack.  They are outfitted with mystical equipment that based on their selection, grants them bonuses to their attributes.  After the selection process they are now ready to leave the inn and try to prepare for the next night of conflict.  They are given the town and a few shops worth of supplies and time, a day ten hours, they also are given 10 able bodied people to help them do things and they are told that the attack will most likely come from four directions at once. 

The defenders must fortify and trap the town so that the invaders, kobolds can only come at them from one direction, if they fail, then the kobolds will attack from all four directions at full strength and overwhelm the defenders.  They can use their knew attributes to ask questions and make skill checks.  They can use their new weapons to attack. 

The enemy will come as four groups of Kobolds, 20 in each group and there will be one Dragonborn leader with them, they will come from four directions, three bridges, one stone and the other two wooden, and they will come across the open fields from the last direction.  There is a ford in the village too, between two of the bridges and they are told that there are more fords not too far away, so blocking the three directions doesn’t mean that they will prevent the kobolds from getting to them. 

This group trapped the bridges made of wood so that they would fall a part as they were crossed and the dug a moat around one side of the bridge made of stone.  They also trapped the ford with boards with nails in them.  They used carts as bonfires to give their archers light to see the kobolds.  They got into the thick of things and some of the characters nearly died and they drove the first wave of kobolds off.  They were given an hour of respite before the other three groups joined up to make the final assault.  Of the three groups they had whittled them down to ten each from the traps, so the final assault was to be thirty  and one Dragonborn. 

Oh, I forgot to mention, the characters were not adventurers yet, they were zero level with max 6 hp + con bonus.  There were 10 more NPCs to act as archers and meat shields, but otherwise it was just them.  14 zero levels vs 80 kobolds and one Dragonborn fire breathing leader.  They did not get to roll their stats but got to select the type of character they wanted to play by picking from a list of equipment.  They all started with 10 in all their stats, plus racial advantages.  That was it.

Three of them had never played before.  I will be trying this out again, this same scenario to see how it should be tweaked and which adventures are better than others.  I will be running maybe three different groups with this set of adventures.