PotA Session 1

As expected, we spent most of the session working on characters.  I got people thinking about their new characters a couple of months ago, and they had two weeks since our last game to put something together.  Some people did more DM consulting than others.

I was really looking forward to this process as a way to see what people want to get out of the game.  As a DM, I'm finding that I really like narrative, so I want this to be a story.  I didn't want to just plunk people down in a tavern and have them all team up.  I spent time going over the map, picking out likely places for people to be from.  But of course, some people had their own ideas. 

• (Thoril) Will had his character ready a month ago.  He has an elven barbarian based on a Germanic tribe that herded aurochs.  I'm curious to see how the DEX-based barbarian plays out.  As a coming-of-age rite, he is seeking an adventure that will inspire an epic poem.
• (Su'uvarax) Martin decided on a dragonborn warlock, Great Old One patron.  He was separated from his clan and adopted by barbarians.  Also, he went with black scales, with the idea that they're really rare and there's some significance to being a black dragonborn.  When exploring an old site, he discovered a book which had an incantation to invoke Ouroboros. 
• (Freyja) Diane wanted a barbarian to keep it simple and smash things.  Since she wanted to be human, I suggested the variant human build.  I offered her the Uthgardt tribes so she didn't have to come up with a barbarian culture.  I also had the idea of a mission:  the weather has been off, the shaman thinks the city people are causing it with magic, they need someone to investigate.  She wanted the mission to be her idea, as a way of proving herself to her tribe and resolving some personal conflicts.
• (Silaqui) Ellen wanted a fighter/mage combo.  I suggested the Bladesinger arcane tradition, which she liked.  I was thinking she would be from Silverymoon, but she had picked the Far Traveler background and was from Evermeet instead.
• (Maendir) Todd went with a pre-generated ranger, wood elf, Beast Master, owl companion, archery.  I had come up with a story for him:  He was a ranger in the Neverwinter Forest who knew Reidoth and was recruited to help the folk hero defeat the dragon in Thundertree.  (We skipped that part and didn't bother going back.)  Seeing a dragon sparked an interest in exploring the world.  To start off with, he's doing a favor for the noble, playing bodyguard to the noble's second cousin, who is looking for markets for the Phandelver mine in the interior.
• (Zook) Randy settled on a gnome sorcerer with wild magic.  It was awakened when he was exploring some old ruins and now he's trying to find an explanation of what happened to him.  Since gnomes were from hilly areas, I was thinking he could be from either the Dessarin Hills or the hills by Conyberry.  When I heard about the ruins, I decided that he was poking around in the area of the old watchtower from the fallen Netherese empire, near the necromancer from Lost Mines of Phandelver.
• Richard couldn't make the session but when we discussed character ideas when finishing up LMoP, he wanted to do a magic/cleric combination.  I offered to let him use Favored Soul, so he's going with that.  Probably a tiefling.  I'm looking forward to a winged tiefling.

Since the party was light on healing and didn't have anyone with proficiency in thieves' tools, I put together a half-elven bard with the Urchin background.  Liliandra will be useful for feeding information to the party.  The noble's second cousin who's doing business development for the mine isn't leveled.  Rosemary's there to provide a reason for traveling around, and possibly get into useful trouble.

Now that we knew more or less who everyone was, I needed to get them together, along with seeding some adventure hooks.  Silaqui had been traveling all over, so I decided she had gone up along the coast to Neverwinter, and was turning inland for a change.  So she was in a caravan that came across the Triboar Trail, which Maendir and Rosemary joined.  Zook spent some time observing caravan traffic around Conyberry before hopping onto a caravan to Triboar.

I put the dragonborn in the High Forest near the Dessarin River.  When he was grown, he went to Silverymoon to see if he could learn about his missing clan.  They had info on dragonborn history, culture, anatomy -- a lot of academic material, but nothing about specific dragonborn.  He decided to go to Waterdeep to find more dragonborn.  Freyja was trying to find people who knew magic, but Silverymoon was too big a city for her.  She met Su'uvarax on the road out of the city.  She's from the Golden Eagle clan and decided his golden eyes were like the eagles, plus he seemed knowledgeable about magic and it was sad that he was missing his clan.  So they travelled west together.  Su'uvarax had a message from his patron: "Power gathers in the Sumber Hills.  Investigate."  That pointed him to the Long Road, and Triboar.

Thoril was working as a caravan guard along the Long Road, so that got him to Triboar.  I had planned to put his barbarians in the High Forest with Su'uvarax, but Will had picked a different location.  Still, elven barbarians in the region probably keep in touch periodically, so Thoril had heard of Su'uvarax.

I'm using Liliandra and Rosemary to get various people acquainted before they head south on the caravan.  Nice development:  Su'uvarax is looking for libraries, or booksellers, so that will tie in with the sage's books.

Plans:

• The party's caravan will be attacked by something weird.  I'm going to do a little more research, but the current plan is fire snakes.
• Liliandra will tell them about the Haunted Keeps, as something that might interest Silaqui.  Also, she arrived in Triboar with the delegation from Mirabar.  Possibly some of their guards were dragonborn.
• The caravan from Conyberry that Silaqui, Maendir and Rosemary came across with turned south, while the characters lingered in Triboar.  That caravan was attacked by the air cult.  So when the party investigates Feathergale Spire, a halfling spice merchant from that caravan will be working in the kitchens.