Session 1 - The Swirly Snail

Housekeeping

• Important to note that I’m not worried about food/water or components for spells this campaign. Consumables (including arrows) are assumed to be gathered after a conflict or throughout it, and it’s always assumed that you have the amount that you need to complete your actions. For components for spells, it’s assumed if you have the capability of casting it, then you have the components. I’m not worried about it, especially since campaigns are so short. For components, the usual rule is anything below 100 gp.
• The campaign is set up as adventuring stories written down and stored in a library, definitively. The library they’re stored in is called the Tiresian Archives.

Opening Monologue

In the rolling valleys of The Kingdom of Kauvet, magic permeates the very core of the kingdom, isolating all that live on the peninsula from the rest of the world, for better or for worse. The towering mountains and freezing tundra to the north hold secrets few, if any, have ever come to know; the waters that surround the kingdom threaten to topple all those who try to sail away from Kauvet; and here, in The Redwillow Forest, secrets and magic abound, threatening the fragile lives of those who live at its border. The common people of Kauvet live peaceful lives, accepting the isolation as fact and never attempting to venture into any of the various regions that block outward expansion; adventurers of all sorts have braved the treacherous terrain of Kauvet’s borders and few have ever returned to tell their tales. As it stands, all adventuring stories must begin somewhere, and we begin with the small village of Fletcher and a group of unlikely companions in Whispers of Redwillow.

Session 1 - The Swirly Snail

Introduction

We begin down south of Fletcher, where a 5’2” blonde human woman named Kharli (see: Jhertalli) is walking towards Fletcher on the southern road. Just 20-30 feet ahead of her, there’s a halfling woman making her way in the same direction. The halfling woman, known as Cadence Loch, is tall for a halfling at 3’6”, with tan skin, green eyes, and long black hair. They have a cordial acknowledgment of one another until Kharli catches up and they begin to chat idly. They make their way into town which seems to be very rowdy at the moment, with people passing through stalls and beginning to head into the very loud tavern known as The Swirly Snail. Notably, there are not a lot of houses or big farmland areas this far into the village. Kharli and Cadence make their way into the tavern where it seems to be almost completely full save for one table closer to the stage area.
Then we move north of Fletcher along the northern path into the village, where a blonde elvish man of about 5’7” in height is making his way down through the northern farmlands. Notably, the Redwillow Forest is encroaching a bit close to the path here, and as Azriel Presch (the high elf) takes notice of this, a bundle of a person jolts out of the forest. The person turns, notices Azriel, and begins to wave energetically at him. The person is 5’2” and wearing an odd, raggedy assortment of clothes that do not match. He is also wearing an odd mixture of a red dunce cap stuck through a straw hat.
Azriel approaches cautiously and begins to ask them what they were doing in the forest, and they chat for a moment about the potential of the forest being haunted. Azriel mentions that he’s heard rumors of a man out this way that may have been killed by something in the forest. The person, currently referred to as SKLE (see: Shalis Kerny Laurence Emanuel) by the DM, tells a white lie about the forest probably just being haunted. Azriel tells them that he’s going into Fletcher and asks SKLE to lead the way. Notably, SKLE does not know the way Azriel is going and so he makes to go back the way Azriel came. Azriel stops him, redirects, and SKLE begins to follow Azriel into the town of Fletcher.

Entering the Swirly Snail

They enter the town of Fletcher at a later time than the other two by about 20-30 minutes. It’s starting to get later now and the tavern is picking up in general raucous-ness. Upon entering, they notice there’s only a single table empty.
As this is happening, Cadence is trying to get a drink from the bar counter where a gastrosapien man is working (see: Gastrosapiens). He doesn’t seem very apt at talking, or perhaps he just doesn’t want to deal with you, but he will serve drinks without a word, just a grunt. He serves Cadence a drink and goes back to his job. Meanwhile, Azriel and SKLE have arrived and went to sit down at the only empty table, where they are promptly served by a rambling, 6’0” tall woman by the name of Harlowe James (see: Whispers of Redwillow NPCs). She takes their order, Azriel ordering fish and a salad and SKLE getting a greens smoothie. She goes to get their food. It’s worth noting that SKLE is not sitting in a seat but rather is squatting in a wallsit, chair-sitting position.
Cadence and Kharli ask if they could sit with Azriel and SKLE, and they oblige. At this moment, Cadence and Kharli both realize something odd about SKLE. Notably, they notice that he does not have two eyes, it’s mentioned he’s come out of the Redwillow Forest, and they know he is not a humanoid that they’ve ever had contact with before. As this is happening, SKLE gets knocked into and knocked over by another patron, and begins to kneel at the side of the table. Eventually, he gets up into one of the empty seats in a crouch (think L from Death Note). It’s worth noting that now is when Azriel realizes that SKLE is not a humanoid he’s ever had contact with. SKLE makes the realization at this point that the entire group knows that he’s, at the very least, not a common humanoid. His pant leg had ridden up and a sock was sticking out of it. Worth noting that when asked for his name, SKLE says their whole name and is given the nickname Eman (said simply as “man”).
As they’re making these realizations, Harlowe comes back with SKLE and Azriel’s food and proceeds to take Kharli and Cadence’s order. Cadence gets stew. She asks if there’s anything else that she can do for the group, and Cadence begins to ask her about the rumors about the dead man from the forest.

Questions, questions, questions...

Harlowe acts a little bit like she doesn’t want to answer but at the same time like she does, and she rambles a little bit about how her husband (Uuowouu) doesn’t like for her to spread rumors about the forest. She’s notably looking over her shoulder back at Uuowouu. When it’s clear that unless they press her further, she’s not going to discuss details about the situation, Kharli casts “Detect Thoughts” for the surface-level thoughts in Harlowe’s brain. Most of what she gets from detect thoughts is a lot of how Harlowe doesn’t want Uuowouu to get mad at her, she’s not supposed to spread rumors like that because Uuowouu is from the forest and nothing bad’s ever happened to him there, and when Kharli presses further, she catches glimpses of the dead man in Harlowe’s memories at the bartop. Harlowe reveals verbally, after glancing over her shoulder back at Uuowouu, a few important things. She leans closer and begins to whisper: she doesn’t think the forest is haunted, she believes that something out there is harming other people, the man was an adventurer that wanted to go out into the forest alone, and he left early the next morning before they’d opened the tavern up for breakfast. After she says all of these things in a long-winded way, she checks to see if Uuowouu saw and she gets swept back up in the business again.
There are three other things of note including a bulletin board at the tavern, two guards sitting at the bar where Uuowouu is serving them, and a loud Tabaxi woman sitting at the table behind the group. There’s a brief moment where something falls into everyone’s food and Kharli and Cadence recognize it as being chocolate from the candles up above them on the chandeliers. Azriel doesn’t notice, but he does notice that something made his food taste odd. He pushes his food away and the others move their food out of the area where it dripped into it.
SKLE takes the initiative to go up to the bulletin board, where it looks like it hasn’t been cleaned off in some time. SKLE doesn’t know the date though, so he grabs a few of the things off the bulletin board. The ones that he grabbed include a notice from the butcher that says he’ll pay for meat, some junk mail trying to sell random trinkets and whatnot, and a picture of a cat that can be assumed to be a missing poster.
Meanwhile, Kharli, Cadence, and Azriel are eating. Kharli and Cadence can hear the tabaxi woman complaining to Harlowe about how her food smells bad. Harlowe takes the food back and brings her another plate of food, but the Tabaxi sniffs the air and leaves without eating, still claiming the food doesn’t smell right. After that, Eman has returned to the table.
Cadence takes the moment to head to the bar and speak with the guards. There she meets a human man named Finn and an earth genasi woman named Geo. Geo leaves the conversation to Finn when Cadence asks about the rumors about the dead man. Finn doesn’t want to talk about it, especially not with someone outside of the guard that he doesn’t know. Azriel stops Geo as she’s about to leave, presumably to go start her watch, and she’s inhospitable to him as well. Cadence attempts to cast charm person on both Geo and Finn. They both save, and Geo gets noticeably irritable with the whole group who have obviously been trying to get information out of them. Geo makes to leave again, leaving Finn to deal with the group alone.
Finn is also irritable, and Eman comes up behind him and yells “Investigation?” They have a brief exchange where Finn asks Eman his name and is generally distrustful. Notably, Geo, Finn, and Harlowe do not know that SKLE is not a common humanoid. After that, he kind of gives up and sits back down, telling the party what he knows. He just wants to get it done and over with so they’ll leave him alone. He tells them that he believes a ghost or something drug the man out into the forest out by the butcher shop, and that he saw it happen. He also expresses discomfort with the forest, saying something about an official of town named Amie who, presumably, is bringing back more guards to town and is likely going to force them to go into the forest to investigate. After that, he decides he wants to leave and the party lets him, finally having some sort of information about the forest.

Nightfall

It’s getting late, the tavern is emptying out and people are going downstairs to the rooms in the basement to sleep. Harlowe gets a room for each of the party members so that they can rest for the rest of the night. Eman gets bored not long after everyone else has gone to sleep, so he decides to go find his friends to entertain him and breaks into Kharli’s room. Kharli had pushed the bed up against the door and was sleeping on it, when Eman uses shape water to unlock the door and, with a successful strength check (thanks to a 19 portent roll), pushes the door open and the bed away so that there’s enough room for him to slip in. Kharli wakes up, goes to shoot the intruder with her crossbow, and Eman uses a portent roll of a nat 1 to make sure it misses. Kharli then uses the spell “hold person” to paralyze Eman successfully, stabs him with a dagger, and subsequently realizes that the person they’re stabbing is only bones (i.e. a skeleton). She then backs up and throws the dagger, hitting Eman as well. Eman is then released from hold person and leaves the room to go back to his room (because he was bloodied/dustied at that point). After that, Kharli pushes the bed back up against the door and sits across from it with a crossbow in her lap to fall asleep. That is where we ended the session.
See Whispers of Redwillow NPCs for information about the NPCs introduced.
See Session 2 - The Skeleton Assassin for the next session notes.