Cormyr #1

Well this week Brian was able to make it, though next week he’s out again from some Latin thing, as are Dale and Joy who have some Celtic band they want to see. So sadly there is no game next week.

But we had a decent time this first session of Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave.

Note: This is all from memory as I haven’t had an opportunity to listen to the recording of the session, so most names and minor happenings have been forgotten.

In case you haven’t read anything about the “shadow weave” in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, it is basically an alternate source of magic created by the evil goddess Shar in order to hurt Mystra, the goddess of magic. And from what I guess this module, or set of modules, is based around that, though our PC’s aren’t supposed to know about it.

Our group is an already formed band of adventurers that have just entered a Cormyrian city on the Sembia border to sell some tomes we had found on our last adventure.

Our current cast (not including Justin because he had to cancel):

Farisilian or Faris (me): A moon elf rogue from Evermeet, chaotic good with chaotic greedy tendencies. His main deity is Tymora, the goddess of luck, but when he’s about to do something greedy he says a little prayer to Mask. He dual-wields (though not well) a couple of masterwork silver daggers.

Domitius or Dom (Aaron): A neutrally-aligned moon elf beguiler. He and Faris usually teamwork doors prior to barging into a room. Having never really seen a beguiler in action before, he currently appears to be a cross between a rogue and an illusionist.

Saeri or Sorry (Joy): Saeri (pronounced sare’-ee) earned her nickname by being critted or near-critted multiple times in the same battle. Other than that she is a wood elf bow-ranger, and potentially our only healer (but never in combat, unless it’s for herself). Her alignment is chaotic good.

Mousious or Mouse (Dale): A star elf warlock, who is also chaotic good. He lives in constant fear that we’ll meet up with someone who can bounce him off this plane as star elves aren’t from the prime material plane.

When Justin plays, he is either going to play a monk or a druid. Either class may not be all that enjoyable with our group. If he plays a monk, then he’ll be the group’s only melee tank, and without a healer. If he plays a druid, he’ll either be summoning creatures as temporary targets, or he’ll be healing until he can shape change. I doubt either will be all that interesting to him.

When it comes to combat, our preferred method is surprise and shadow. None of us can handle damage long term, so we have to make the best we can of the first round of combat. Faris needs to win imitative or flank to get his needed sneak attack damage. Dom throws up cover, charm targets, or otherwise incapacitates our enemies. And Saeri and Mouse use their ranged attacks to take out other ranged attackers, leaders, or spell casters. So far it has worked pretty well, but I believe we’re fragile enough that a small series of bad rolls can put us in TPK territory. If all of us rolled low on initiative, then we are pretty exposed.

The first half of the night was exclusively role-playing, as most first sessions tend to be that way.

We did some scouting around town, looking for plot hooks, er…I mean someone to sell our books to.

In no particular order we found:

- A priest of Mystra who said that there was something “off” about the new temple to Mystra in the northern area of town. First off, no one ever told him it was being built, and he lives in a neighboring city. We he visited the temple and requested to see the inner area, they denied him. Then a sixth-sense told him to run from the place. When he did, they gave chase rather than just let him leave.
- The leading priest at the city’s church of Silvanus was convinced something wrong was going on inside the new temple of Mystra. He had no proof other than the poor treatment they gave him when he visited the church.
- We found a bookseller, but he was not around. He distraught wife said he had gone missing. She thought she heard some unusual noises early one morning and ever since then her husband hasn’t been around. We searched the area and found signs of a scuffle and a note about some kind of ritual of mysteries. We asked if she had reported this to the local purple dragons (police equivalent); she had but they were too busy to investigate.

Obviously since everything was pointing to the new temple of Mystra, we knew we had to check it out. When we heard that there were more people entering than leaving, but only enough food for about 15 people going in, we knew it was an evil temple in disguise, possibly of Bane, Cyric, Mask, or …Shar.

We casually entered the temple under the guise of buying magic items and getting information about the temple itself.

It didn’t take long for things to go downhill of course.

We mentioned the priest of Mystra who ran from the temple and he gave his version of the story, which we didn’t believe was true.

He had no good answer for how people were disappearing.

And he kept saying that the only way to get information about the ritual of mysteries was to actually go through with the ritual, and pay 25gp.

I forget whether Dom attempted to cast Charm Person on the priest, or if Faris just stabbed the guy, but nonetheless, combat began.

The priest lived long enough to shout for help.
Dom threw up an Obscuring Mist, which helped protect from the two archers on the walls of the outer courtyard.
But not before Saeri got critted from a bowshot from one, so her first round action was to drink a healing potion. Through the rest of the night she was critted once more, and nearly critted twice more.
Between the Faris’s backstabs and Mouse’s eldritch blast, the priest didn’t last the round.

The following round Dom searched the priest while combat was still going. That set the precedent for the rest of the night it appears as all of us took opportunities during combat to steal from the group loot by searching downed bodies or swiping money from collection altars.

The combat lasted a few rounds, but other than the priest we dropped on round one, none of our other targets had more than 8 hit points.

We searched and cleaned out all of the adjacent rooms, leaving a large pair of barred doors leading to the inner courtyard of the temple.

Several rounds of eldritch blasting the center of the two doors gave us access to the area, and allowed those on the inside to prepare.

But our high initiative helped us.

There were a half dozen more guards and a lead priest as targets.

Dom incapacitated two of the guards with a Color Spray spell.
Saeri shot at the lead priest with her bow and Mouse put him on the defensive for the rest of the combat by always having a spider swarm summoned on top of him.
Faris spent his time playing mop up with the guards while everyone else mainly focused on taking down the lead priest.

Afterwards we looted and searched the nearby rooms, including saving a few dimwitted commoners preparing to go through the rite of mysteries (or whatever it’s called).

We had one more barred door to go through, and we did, only to be led to a shadowy room that lead deeper into the mountain the temple was built out from. We were attacked by a couple of shadowy-skinned human, but that combat didn’t last a full round.

We stopped there as it was late and we had hit a good point to stop the session.