My first (hopefully) long-term campaign! After college and covid, my friends and I are finally together and we are getting started with STK. I've been utilizing the subreddit a fair amount and really enjoying the session reports from Mantis05, and I thought it'd be great to post some of my own. Fair warning, I'm not a very experienced DM, my group is small, and 2/3 of them have never played before so the first several sessions are a lot of improvising, looking up rules, and getting used to roleplay. It's been a lot of fun but please don't judge me too harshly when I mess up, because there is a quite a lot of it lol.(Also if you are in a D&D game with characters called Viensola, Æthelred and Nexhala, stop reading!!!)____________________________________________________________________________________________________________Our (small) cast of characters:Viensola - Tiefling bard, she is secretly an initiate of the Zhentarium, on an assignment to find a Harper spy last seen in Nightstone.Æthelred - Goliath fighter, retired soldier, and current sword-for-hire with the Flaming Fist in Baldur's Gate. He got hired out for a guard position in Nightstone and is on his way there.Nexhala - Gnome rogue and folk hero of the common folk, she is stopping in Nightstone to look for work.The three of them found themselves traveling together along the road to Nightstone after they were all dropped off by the same wagon. As they approached the city, however, they could see that not all was well. A bell was ringing incessantly, the bridge to the keep was damaged, and there was no sign of life. The drawbridge was down, so they went in.The first thing they noticed were two worgs in the square. They tried to avoid them by going into the temple where the bell sound was coming from. While in there they encountered a couple of goblins, and Viensola used her Thunderwave to decimate them, but the sound alerted the worgs in the square, and they stalked over to the temple. A short fight ensued, and they ultimately managed to kill the worgs, but it was clear the team was not used to being a team.Afterward, they split up a little to search the town. Walking around, they could see that something odd had clearly happened, there were massive boulders all around, some crushing houses, and the famed Nightstone in the center of town (after which it is named) was missing, plucked right from the earth.Nexhala went into the inn, where she encountered a goblin in the pantry stealing food, but let it escape. She went upstairs and found a large chest in one of the bedrooms, but could not open it. Æthelred and Viensola went into the trading post, where they grabbed some supplies and killed a goblin, and the stables, where they killed a few more goblins and acquired some horses.They then met up in the square, where they conveyed what they had all seen, and went back into the inn to try and open the chest. Viensola succeeded, and they grabbed some of the stuff from inside, including a decent amount of coin, and a potion of heroism.Viensola snooped around in the other rooms, and found a young woman hiding in one. She said her name was Kella and she was a traveling monk who was staying in the inn when the commotion happened, but she didn’t see anything. They didn’t trust her, and they offered to escort her out of town to safety, but she didn’t trust them either, and refused. They had a stressful back-and-forth until Viensola recognized Kella’s flying snake as a symbol of the Zhentarium, and asked to speak to her alone. Once they were alone, she revealed that she was also an agent of the black network. Kella revealed that she was here to scout out the town for her team, and they would be arriving soon, and they didn’t expect the town to be deserted; they had nothing to do with the destruction. They made a truce, and Viensola managed to convince Æthelred and Nexhala to leave Kella there, and they went to explore more of the town.They explored a few houses, didn’t find much, and then Viensola and Æthelred got into a fight with some more goblins while Nexhala explored more of the ruined houses. She found (among assorted loot), a journal written entirely in some sort of code, and a tressym, which she got to trust her and was very pleased about it.After this, with the danger seemingly past, they sat down for a little rest, bandaging some wounds and playing with the tressym. As they were sitting there, they heard galloping hooves, and 7 men rode into the town. The group quickly hid, and they saw Kella run out of the inn and go to greet the men. After a bit, Viensola said she was going to go talk to them and went over. She told them what was happening, and then called over Æthelred and Nexhala, and told them the men were from a neighboring town militia, who came to see if they could help. The leader of the “militia” introduced himself as Xolkin Alassandar. Nexhala and Æthelred didn’t trust them fully, but went along for now.The whole group made their way over to the other side of town, where the bridge to the town keep was crushed. Slowly they all made their way over by jumping, with only a few missteps. Inside, they found several town guards and the body of Lady Nandor, the steward/owner of Nightstone. The group explained what they had seen, and how the “militia” were here to help, and the guards explained that it was giants who had come through town, dropped boulders, and took the nightstone. They also said that the villagers were probably hiding in some caves north of town, which is an evacuation plan for the town. Urged by Xolkin, the party agreed to go with a few of the guards to bring the villagers back.After deciding this, everyone decided to rest in the keep for the night and set out the next morning. Viensola looted the bedrooms and failed to steal a ring off Lady Nandar’s corpse, Nexhala explored the library looking for information on the coded journal, and Æthelred flirted with Xolkin, to no success. And that ended session one, as we petered out due to getting increasingly tipsy.____________________________________________________________________________________________________________All in all, not a perfect session, but fun. They missed several of the goblins and I'm not going to bother having them come back later. The group was also having trouble connecting together, with Æthelred's player trying to take a backseat due to him having played before, and Nexhala and Viensola clashing due to their very opposite morals. Also, (my fault), the session was catered way too much to Viensola with the Zhent plot, mostly because she had a detailed backstory built weeks before the campaign and so I had time to work her in, and Nexhala's character was made literally right before the session started. A huge mistake on my part, but they all still had lots of fun and I'll be able to adjust as we progress and get used to everything.Next time: ogres and goblins and bats, oh my!
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