Erui, Episode 1: Edgewood

It has been a long time since we last visited Erui. This time I am taking a looser, more "sandboxy" approach as opposed to planning lots of stuff about. I spent a lot of time just drawing vague maps, creating factions with goals, and generally just giving myself and my players a lot of legroom to basically do whatever they want. I am not really going to break things up into adventures and take a more episodic approach, as well as make up magic items, creatures, effects, and just level them up whenever I feel that they have hit a point where they have "earned" it.

I used Neverwinter Campaign Setting to give myself a good idea of how to approach this--mostly the amount and depth of content--and was pretty happy with tonight's results; there was one combat encounter, and the rest of the night was filled with the players interacting with the scenery and NPCs, and being pulled in various directions by hooks that they chose to bite. I also had fun telling the players to describe NPCs to me. I envisioned Mirri as fairly young, but when I left it to Beth to describe her, she came out as somewhere in her mid 40's. I dunno...giving creative licence to the players is pretty nice, and probably makes them feel more invested in the story.

Heroes

• Moon Piercing Fist (male halfling monk)
• [Randy] (male goliath runepriest); he had a name, but I totally forgot it.
• Treetoots (male pixie swordmage)

Non-Player Characters 

• Ynvgarr (male human): Captain of the Scraghammer.
• Kasaki (female human): Captain of the Sword Guard.
• Einar (male human): An old man that they found in the Arcane Circle. He was able to open a hidden stair that lead to a forge by speaking, and he seems to be stronger than Randy despite his age.
• Chisel (male personality warforged): A squat, broad warforged that speaks with a dwarven accent. His hands turn into a hammer and chisel, and he knows a lot about runes.
• Enorian (male noble eladrin): An eladrin baron that serves as the voice of the Summer Court in Edgewood.
• Sabd (male deer spirit): A servant in the Summer Court enclave.
• Seliana (female swan): A servant in the Summer Court enclave.

Earthday, Ghael 6th 

As the Scraghammer makes port in Edgewood it is attacked by a hydra. A hydra with black scales, horns, and acidic breath. While trying to evacuate the ship, an assassin tries to kill Mirri using cold-iron bolts. Treetoots notices that the hydra is charmed and sends her Sidhe servant after the assassin while she tries to protect Mirri. The assassin kills the servant using a cold-iron bolt, and both Moon and Randy manage to corner the assassin before a White Owl traps him in an icy prison and teleports away.

Treetoots is debriefed by Kasaki before escorting Mirri to the Summer Court enclave, where Enorian is saddened to learn of the jarl's words. He charges Treetoots with learning about the charmed hydra and assassin. Treetoots then leaves to find Moon and Randy, who after trying to trick the owner of a rundown inn out of his business decide to investigate the Arcane Circle for information about runes. There Randy speaks to Einor and Chisel, who helps him refine his fire runes.

After investigating Edgewood for signs about Randy's missing mentor a crow warns Moon that "they are watching," before flying away. The characters then head to the Summer Court enclave to rest. In the middle of the night they are awoken by screams. As they take up arms and head to the street, Moon looks up to see that several of the stars look like monstrous eyes. When he blinks, they look normal again.

Next Time...

The characters want to followup on the White Owls and figure out why the assassin tried to kill Mirri. Of course that might change once they figure out what is going on in Edgewood...

Notes 

• The hydra seemed to be combined with a black dragon (and ended up with seven heads before the charm wore off and it just fled).
• The White Owls are a secretive organization that deals with fey matters. They employ lots of cold-themed magic to restrain targets.
• In the Arcane Circle they saw a large, spherical object covered in runes. Einar said that it was similar to something they found in Mithrendain, though they modified it a bit (with a beholder's eye).
• Chisel was able to help Randy refine his fire-based runes (giving him a +1 bonus to damage), and told him that he should seek out Cindervault if he wanted to learn more. He also said that if Randy found anything, to let him know and he would teach him more of what he knows.