DavesGaming

I’d been taught adventurer’s have to “look for” a certain amount of trouble. Not that fighting is ever a good thing, and it comes with a certain degree of risk. But to be effective, you need to learn. To improve your own fighting skills and the team-work within your crew. We were all on the same page about not causing any undue harm, no bullying anyone, no stealing or robbing. Some of this is what I was taught just as a paladin, we’re there to provide aid. To step into the breach where others fear to go. Amyntor and I had talked all through this, we need to take on some risk to do good and right.
Still, setting out on the road to the south felt like another big step for us. This sure wasn’t the way we ever expected to set out into the World. But we trained for this, and now the time had been chosen for us.
We had heard a couple of things as we set out towards Nashkel. First, there was ogre just south of the Inn, east of the road. He had been robbing people and stealing their belts. Odd. I felt butterflies in my stomach as we came to the crossroad, west back to Candlekeep… or south. We turned south. Then started exploring a little east of the road.

Of course I wasn’t really alone.

As soon as she ran past us she twisted around and fired an arrow towards the ogre. Dang! Immy is quick!
The rest of us formed a line of sorts to give the ogre an impossible choice on who to attack. Amyntor and Khalid went straight at him, while Jaheira and I closed from opposite flanks. I gave a shout and made my hardest slash at the monster. Has my sword always been so short?
By now we had all closed to striking range. Of course I kept an eye on the ogre’s huge spiked club, pretty sure he would crunch any of us who got struck.

All things considered he actually went down pretty quickly. We laughed a little. I think all of us were just happy to be alive at the moment. We’ve seen a few clashes now. Starting with the wolf. Then a couple hobgoblins near the Inn. And of course that nasty mage. This was plainly our biggest fight yet. It felt like a big win. We had taken down a bully and a robber who’d been preying on travelers heading south.

Not too much further we saw a small ruined caravan. A couple of overturned wagons, one burning still. Dead horses. And dead travelers.
We spread out to approach, Imoen holding back with an arrow nocked, looking for movement where there shouldn’t be any.

She moved to attack us while shouting to a couple of men in hiding to shoot us. Amyntor and Khalid rushed the hidden archers while Imoen shot at what she could see. Jaheira and I fought the bandit leader.
The presence of a couple archers made me a little nervous, but this proved to be an easier fight than the ogre.

This was an eventful first day of travel! We had arrived at Beregost, a small city almost halfway to our destination. It was not quite dusk yet, but we were all a little wired from the day’s excitement and all knew we should stop here for the night.

Well of course! She didn’t mention it was a group led by red wizards! It was actually a hunting group specifically after her.

Funny, we needed a mage anyway. I heard Jaheira groan. Yeah, I remember Gorion talking about the risks of wild magic. He considered it lazy and sloppy. Apparently some, few individuals can learn the tricks of the magic business without really understanding what they’re doing. They can accomplish amazing things. We had just seen Neera cause the leader of that hunting party vanish into thin air. But they can also make the wrong thing explode, or unexpectedly turn themselves into a squirrel.
But for now, Neera is a frightened young woman who we can protect.

We had gathered a few better quality weapons we had picked up during our travel. And Imoen had a bag of gems she’d… huh, wow she had really found a lot of gems?
Combining what we had with what we just sold, we had a couple thousand gold pieces. The most obvious thing we were still lacking was any sort of magic weapons, so we bought a few low powered things. Some arrows and sling bullets with minor enchantment. And a sling and short sword. It made me blush when everyone decided to buy the sword, that’s my weapon of choice. Of course, it was also much cheaper than the long swords Amyntor and Khalid favor. And there wasn’t magic club for Jaheira. So I guess it was logical.

Now we’re feeling a little broke again.

Stupid, I should have done a Detect Evil on her! Bards, it didn’t occur to me a bard could be evil. She pretty much just wanted us to kill her trading partners and go home with all the loot. We told her she was crazy, we didn’t kill on command! Yeah, so we wound up having to fight an evil bard.

Not too long after this we met a frantic woman, Alanna, saying her neighbor had just turned into slime! The neighbor, Eltoth, was supposed to giving her a botany lesson. But when she stopped by his home he was just slime.

But as near as we could tell, Eltoth had taken some sort of um, “enhancement” serum. And now he was slime. We had to track down the vender and fetch an antidote. In the end, Eltoth was restored. I’m pretty sure when we left there he wouldn’t playing around with anymore such things.

At the south edge of town was a run down looking house. A lodger back at the Friendly Arm Inn (Unshy by name) had asked us to stop by her house and clean out a spider infestation she had fled from.

So even after arriving in Beregost our day was interesting. We got a restful night at an inn, and continued south on the road to Nashkel in the morning.

They are bigger but not very skilled. Still, it was a long fight.

We also found remains of their victims, and some stashed loot.

We fought another small group of bandits after. No doubt, this route has been hazardous. That is not considered normal for this area! We’ve learned a lot about our teamwork, and have learned a lot about trusting and depending on each other.

As we entered Nashkel I saw a bundle of something wrapped and partly under a rock. There was a suit of Ankheg Plate Armor!

The guys all agreed since I was the smallest, and on point, I should wear it. I agreed only under the condition if we found a claim on this armor in town I would surrender it promptly. It is beautiful.

We were talking about how best to proceed, when we came across a confused looking warrior.

When he saw us he quickly asked for help. A group of gnolls had taken his witch! (witch?) After affirming she was not a hamster we agreed this sounded dire. Gnolls are not the sort of carnivores that would be expected to keep a captive long.

But now we had some conflicting objectives. Jaheira wanted to get to the mine, Amyntor and I thought the captured woman sounded more pressing. We stopped by an outfitter as we talked.

As we talked, it seemed Neera found all this talk of “who needed the most help” to be tiresome. Apparently she wasn’t so scared anymore, and she decided to head off on her own. I was hoping we had found a mage, but no such luck.
We also decided Khalid would stay here in town poking around about the Iron Mines, while the rest of us headed out west to track down Minsc’s “witch” Dynaheir. The trail took us almost to the Sword Coast!

Well, not so much anymore.

We returned to Nashkel at a more comfortable pace. Dynaheir was in rough shape. We learned she and Minsc were foreigners, well actually, any conversation revealed that. But she was a Wychlaran, which (!) she and Minsc had decided best translated as “witch”. But she was a mage, and he was her bodyguard. She was exploring and learning Faerun.

We asked them to accompany us, and they agreed! We had a mage.

*****

So here is the team now.

I think Khalid is essentially administrative personel. He’ll be following the crew along maintaining base camp for us. Neera, well she’s a friend. But a flake. We know we’ll cross paths again!

This will be the final form of the team through BG. I will miss having a real cleric, we’ll fix that by SoD.