Session 1: Backstory, Backstabbing, Back From The Dead

We opened on our heroes as they fend off a midnight orc raid. As the battle raged, they flashed back to their meetings with each other, budding relationships, good times and strong bonds, interspersed with good old-fashioned backstabbery and comically inept orcish pyromancy. The orcs were soon handily defeated, and the party resumed their journey to the generically-named village of Greenhill, the hometown and final resting place of the heroic paladin Gedrick Averness, to investigate reports of disappearing villagers.

Meeting with Mayor Bayliss and Harcourt, the local priest of the Unconquered Sun, they gathered what scant details were available. Tiil'ka encountered an ancient silver mirror hanging in the church, and saw a strange small thing flickering in its distant depths. She asked Lancaster if the mirror itself was magical, and upon his confirmation that it was - and evil magic at that - she drew her bow and put one in the accursed thing. The mirror flexed outward and exploded with a cry like a soul in torment.

The party, somewhat shaken by both the mysterious mirror and Harcourt's inability to explain it, then headed off to examine the site of the battle where Gedrick gave his life to stall the Lich King's advance, and where his tomb was built; they noted that the tomb was still sealed and guarded by a vicious-looking spike trap. Next, they split up to investigate the local graveyard (where the graves had clearly been hollowed out from within, and the bodies inside have vanished) and the bars and saloons, where they found that small mounds of earth had been left in the areas of the disappearances, containing shreds of the victim's clothing.

As the moon rose, the party looked for Harcourt, only to find that her conveniently vanished. Instructing Mayor Bayliss to barricade as many townsfolk as possible in the Gibbous Moon tavern, they unsealed Averness' tomb, only to find the missing priest leading masses of tiny human-headed chanting spiders in some kind of ritual over the body of the fallen paladin. Worse, a glance behind them revealed a line of walking corpses, flecked with gravedirt and their eyes shining red in the moonlight, closing in on them...

Next game: May 7th, 2014