So then-after much planning, persuading and supply gathering, I sat down with my players for my first ever proper campaign. Characters were already made before-hand. The people playing were:
-Mike(Me), evil dungeon master of the world Enthor
-Nathan, playing Deladmin Leetdorf, an hermaphrodite chaotic good eladrin cleric
-Ryan, playing Xirahorb Firetracker, a female neutral drow wizard
-Luke, playing Torinn, a male neutral dragonborn paladin
-Callum, playing Lance, a male lawful good druid
Chapter 1: Thrown into action
Straight off the bat, I threw the characters into their world. They found themselves running through a dungeon, being chased by goblins. They started off split into pairs, but ran into each other in a large room. The party was surrounded by an goblin snipers and 2 cut-throats who were leading them. They demanded the players give the treasure they have stolen back to the Goblin king before they took it from them. Players being players, they said no, and proceeded to kick goblin ass. They fought pretty well for new players, slicing up the minions and teaming up to take down the cut-throats. Also, Torinn’s aura killed a goblin minion, and caused many a laugh when I said that he “blew up”. A few cuts and headless goblins later, they had successfully won against the goblins, and proceeded to split the loot, equally 4 ways. Then Deladmin Leetdorf led the way and managed to find the way out into the outside world. They also decided to harvest some strawberries, deciding that they would spend the afternoon picking them rather then doing anything “fruitful”. Then, with no real aim, they decided just to head in any direction-after travelling a few miles, they found themselves on the verge of a small farm. However, it was not the greeting they were expecting.
Chapter 2: A sniff of trouble
The found themselves instead watching the farmer being brutalised by two hill bandits and their pet wolf. Lance decided to talk to them, but to no avail, so the party took a similar approach to last time-beating the hell out of them. One frenzied fight later (where luke threw a shield at one bandit, knocking him royally on his ass and where the wolf attacked a prone Deladmin Leetdorf 3 times but didn’t hit once) and the farmer is saved. He thanked the party by giving them a hot meal and a bed for the night. They talk to him, asking him questions. They discover 3 things:
1. The town of Grimdark is but a few miles away
2. There is great trouble in the town, which involves undead
3.His soup lacks flavour
After a vaguely comfortably night, they thank the farmer by giving him some strawberries and leaving for Grimdark, hoping to help the town with their problems.
Chapter 3: Night of the living dead
The players arrive in town, greeted by a guard and a barn full of dead bodies. They find out from the dwindling guard force that a few weeks ago, the dead started to rise again and attack the town en-masse. As such, they believe that the former cleric of the town is to blame, and want the party to find him. However, the party decide to help fight off the undead that attack the town tonight. After a long battle against zombies, skeletons and a undead bugbear (where the guards and townsfolk just died and were totally useless),the party then visit the old run-down chapel-and find information in there which tells them where the cleric is. They then burn it down. Then the party finally catch up to the cleric on the outskirts of town. He introduces himself as Brandon Gadleburg, and explains his sad tale, where he was kicked out of the town for killing his own undead son. He tells the players that an evil necromancer holed up in the mountains of mourn is to blame, and they should destroy him so that the town can be re-built again. The players agree, and quickly set off to kill this evil necromancer.
Chapter 4: Up the mountain
However, only a few days travel away from the clerics house, the mountain in sight, and the party find themselves ambushed by the Goblin king’s soldiers. After Lance managed to tame a drake, and Firetracker took out a lot of minions, the fight quickly swung in the parties favour and they won. The drake sadly ran off into the wilderness, but Lance wiped away his tears and continued onwards with the party. Finally, the made it to the foot of the mountain. There were two large holes in the part they were facing, and they decided to try get up the lower one. Although Lance hilariously failed many times to fire arrows to secure the way up, he finally did, and the party made their way up. The found out that it was the mouth of a dark cavern, and the party encountered a dire wolf-which they wisely decided to piss off by throwing strawberries at. The dire wolf bull rushed both Leetdorf and Firetracker off the mountain-Firetracker managed to hold on, but Leetdorf…well, didn’t. He hit the ground and became bloodied-being fortunate not too die from a 50ft fall. In revenge, Torinn jumped on the wolf’s back, clawed out its eyes and threw it off the mountain-only for it to land on Nathan. Fortunately, I rolled low on damage again, so Leetdorf was still barely holding onto life. The party went down and healed him, and continued into the cave. Then, in a moment which shocked Lance, they found wolf cubs-babies of the dire wolf they just killed. Lance was, quite understandably, horrified. However, the party also found some stairs leading upwards, so Lance left his spirit wolf to guard the cubs, planning to bring them back to town and give them to them to use as guard dogs. Going up the stairs, they found the second hole actually lead to them, and a large door. The party decides to go through.
Chapter 5: Dalrath Graygon !
Upon opening the door, the party find themselves face to face with a room full of the undead. Quickly, the party set about fighting them-only to find the room filled with pitfall traps. Treading carefully, the smashed the skeleton warriors into a pulp, and then proceeded to disable all the traps in a normal adventurer fashion- by pushing the bulky Torinn into them. After disabling a few, the party realised their insanity, and decided to continue onwards through another set of doors. The came into a large room, filled with 2 zombies and a skeleton warrior, and sitting in a throne high above, a tiefling necromancer, calling him Dalrath Graygon, sitting in a bone chair- you know, in the usual evil, main villiany way. The players then proceeded to kill him, but it was a tough fight-the players all almost died. However, after through killing all the undead and punching Dalrath a few times, a new character appeared, very clear which side he was on. As Toriin delivered a impressive punch to Dalrath’s face, a huge black dragon smashes through the room, roaring the players back against the wall and giving Dalrath an escape route. He flies away on the back of the dragon, cursing the players names. The players, realising the necromancer is gone, loot through his treasure and his books, and head back downstairs to return to the cleric.
And thats it for the first episode of the Enthor campaign ! I think you will agree it was very interesting. The second episode will be played out around the Christmas holidays, so expect an update around january time. Thanks for reading, I really hoped you enjoyed it, and I like forward to writing more of these.
-Mike, DM