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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Doc Donuts" data-source="post: 7639513" data-attributes="member: 6999815">This game came out a conversation at a cookout at my dad's house over ayear ago. Two of his old college friends had recently moved back tothe area and the three of them were laughing about their old games,which were mostly 1st edition D&D and Rolemaster. On the way home my wife commented that it was the first time she had seen my dad laugh since my parent's divorce a couple of years earlier, and it was nice to see. We talked a bit about it and a few weeks later I ended up offering to run a Pathfinder game for my dad and his friends. I hadn't had the time to doing any gaming since college and missed it. Between a new job, getting married and having a kid there just hadn't been much time.They didn't know the system at all, but were interested and came up to speed quickly. We meet about once every three weeks, usually at my house and are still playing now, over a year later. My wife wasn’t a gamer, but she was home for some of the sessions, and gradually she got interested, and after about six months decided she wanted to play too. I helped her create a character and wrote her into the game. I chose to start this story hour with her entrance.. The characters are 6[SUP]th[/SUP]level at this point. Cast:Amyrllis Meadowlark (Ryll): Very calm and laid back halfling and scout, deadly with the crossbow she carries. She is far quicker, stealthier and more athletic than she has any right to be given how short and round she is. She wears her light brown hair in a short pony tail and her face is deeply tanned and covered with freckles. Figorna: A young human ranger with blue eyes, pale skin and red curly hair.She is extremely fair and gets sunburned easily. She carries a composite longbow and a longsword and wears a light chain shirt under her traveling clothes in brown and green. She has a hawk animal companion she calls Rutger that is very shy. Melankurian (Mel) : A quiet middle aged human, tall and wiry with very short gray hair and almost colorless eyes. He says little, preferring to let the others handle the social side of things, which is good because he is awful at it. He is the main spellcaster of the group and is fond of magics that are somewhat elemental in nature. He has a ginger colored cat familiar named Cilla that disappears for long periods of time. Vanal: At first glance he looks like your typical heavily armed dwarven warrior, though he wears a bit less armor than many of his people. A second and third glance just confirms that first impression, but also that he is extremely young to have gotten all of those scars. He has dark brown skin, curly black hair and beard and a friendly smile, and is a good bit less formal (Ryll would say less crabby) than your average dwarf.Halfling weddings are a time where the entire community cuts loose. The wedding of Twyler Meadowlark to Raldis Book was looked upon with great expectation by the locals in the halfling village of Longmont. Twyler's mother Ryll was a well traveled woman, wealthy by local standards, and the gossip at the local inn was that she was planning something special. There is some truth to the rumors. As a single parent Ryll is determined to go out for her one and only child. She calls in a few favors from two old friends to help her make the day special.Melankurian and Vanal arrive one morning about three days before the festivities are scheduled to begin, escorting a teamster hired to bring in supplies that can’t be sourced locally, along with two casks of Vanal's famous corn whiskey, 6 cases of wine from Mel's wife's family vineyard and two halfling chefs imported at great expense from Wilburs in Scottdale, 75 miles away. The event itself goes off without a hitch. The five traditional pre-wedding meals each have their own theme, and the few non halfling guests are smart enough to pace themselves. By the time the ceremony begins the crowd is no longer hungry and is more than a little drunk. They have time to sober up. The local cleric that married them is getting on in years, and is a bit senile. He rambles on for far longer than most of the audience deems appropriate, but with a little prompting from Ryll he wraps it up eventually. After the happy couple is officially married everyone is ready for the real party to begin, and it goes on until almost dawn, with a lot more eating, drinking and dancing. By the end the band is just as drunk as the guests, but no one seems to mind.The next day starts out a bit more low-key with a quiet breakfast in the Meadowlark family home along with the only other non-halfling who attended the wedding, a pretty young human ranger named Figorna.  No one feels up to doing much, but Vanal talks the others into taking a hike further into the mountains, claiming that the best hangover cure is vigorous exercise, enough to either clear the head or induce vomiting. He explains earnestly that this cure can be followed by more whiskey if necessary. The hike takes them about two hours over a seldom used path over some pretty rough terrain. They end up over 1500 feet higher in elevation. The three friends spend the time getting to know Figorna a bit better. She knows the Book family through Raldis's late father, who hid a bit of adventuring with her mother 20 years earlier and the two families have kept in touch. She is on leave from work leading caravans through the mountains in the human Kingdom of Avenal to the east. After a couple hours of rough terrain Ryll leads them to a level clearing that overlooks the valley below. Off in the distance they can see the village far below, and two other small farming communities further out towards Avenal.Vanal is as interested in the clearing as the view. The mountain continues to rise behind them another 6000 feet higher, with the peaks capped in snow even now in late summer. The clearing shows no signs that any sort of structure has ever been built there, but to his trained eye it definitely looks like someone shaped the land here. He expresses this opinion, but Ryll shrugs and tells him that when she was a kid her great grandfather told her that it has always been this way as far as he knew. Halflings have been picnicking here for centuries. They pause for a bit to rest and enjoy the afternoon and partake of some of Vanal’s hangover cure. Mel's familiar Cilla stalks mice in the grass while Figorna’s hawk flies overhead looking for prey of his own. Figorna has to remind her companion more than once that Mel’s familiar is not food. Their enjoyment is short lived though.*something hunts in the woods, more than one* Cilla tells Mel as she jumps up under his cloak. He turns to look and motions the others to do the same.For a moment they see nothing, then Ryll fires three quick bolts back down the path they had arrived from earlier. Figorna notches an arrow to her bow and fires a half second later, just as a large ball of flames rolls over everyone but Vanal.The dwarven warrior sprints towards the others to intercept any melee threat that might be coming, wondering what the heck is going on. As he reaches the others a bolt of lightening leaps from Mel's fingertips, impacting  at the edge of the clearing, enveloping four charging Orcs. Figorna drops her bow and draws her longsword, managing to get it ready in time to parry an attack by the lead Orc. Vanal takes on the next one, hits it with his flail and dodges the Orc's counterattack. Another Orc tries to slip past him to get to Ryll and is surprised when Vanal' manages to attack him too, realizing too late that the dwarf really hated to pass up any opportunity to attack his people’s ancient enemies. It staggers and almost falls, and looks up to see the last thing it will ever see: Ryll calmly shooting it in the face. Too his chagrin Vanal can’t fully avoid the last charging Orc, and takes a nasty cut from it’s falchion.  He takes two more cuts before he is able to retaliate, his flail bouncing between one Orc’s right arm and the other’s left leg. Both fall and Vanal steps forward to flank Figorna's opponent, who looks a good bit tougher than the Orcs he faced.Meanwhile Ryll takes a step to get a better shot, but the Orc shaman  has fled back into the woods, along with an Orc with a bow who had fired a few times and managed to hit nothing. She races down the path after them, worried about the presence of Orcs so close to Longmont. The halflings of Longnont are blessed with a well protected location in a large valley almost completely surrounded by impassable mountains. The only navigable way into their lands passes through territory occupied by a formidable ally, the human kingdom of Avenal. There should be no way that a group of Orcs could get here, so their presence here is alarming. Figorna and Vanal try to get the last Orc to surrender but it refuses, and continues to fight defensively against both of them. Vanal respects its dedication. Occupying two of them to give its comrades time to escape is far more honorable behavior than he is used to from his people's eternal enemy. Mel leaves them there and follows Ryll, worried that she will run into something that she can’t handle alone. He hears a shout up ahead and finds  her lying on the path unconscious.   He cautiously moves forward, searching for whatever had took her out. As he got to her he crouches down, chanting a simple  healing song and is relieved when she groans and sits up.A few seconds later Vanal and Figorna catches up with them. Figorna calls to Rutger and the hawk circles above them while they take heal some of the considerable damage they have all taken. Mel is still  winded and hungover is really wishing he had stayed back at the village. “Hangover cure...yeah right….idiot”  he mumbles, looking at Vanal. Rutger suddenly flies overhead and screeches. Figorna nodes.  "Rutger sees  them, over that way" She takes the lead with her sword out and quickly finds their trail. The chase takes about half an hour, but they finally run them down far from the trail leading back to the halfling village in an area Ryll is not familiar with. Figorna catches a glimpse of the two Orcs stumbling ahead and puts on a burst of speed. Abruptly she stops and dives behind a tree for cover as they turn to face her. To her surprise the two Orcs are not alone. Three more Orcs nearby raise their bows and start firing. Vanal is right behind her and takes an arrow in in his shoulder. He trips, falls on his face and rolls behind a tree with a move so graceful he hopes that anyone looking thinks it was intentional. He takes a moment to pull out a healing potion and chug it before getting to his feet. Mel has enough time to move to cover, and starts to make his way a bit farther from the rest of the group, not wanting to get into fireball formation again. Ryll is a bit farther back, unable to keep up, and is swearing, not for the first time, about the injustice of short halfling legs. She sees Mel break left so she turns right and creeps forward, looking for a shot.Figorna and the Orcs are exchanging missile fire. With no good means to help,  Vanal contemplates his stance that missile weapons are for wusses. He pulls out his final healing potion and prepares to charge, figuring its hard to fire arrows with an angry dwarf in your face,   Mel keeps moving, and finds a good spot with decent cover and a nice view. He chants softly and lightening leaps out, enveloping the Shaman and two other Orcs. He hears someone else chanting nearby and sees Figorna get enveloped with sticking webbing. Feeling late to the party Ryll kneels down and starts firing, dropping the shaman with two quick arrows to the chest.As Figorna struggles in the webbing Vanal charges, screaming obscenities in Orcish on his way in. Somehow the Orcs miss him entirely and then he is among them, which is not where you want him to be if you are an Orc with a bow.Mel shifts to take on this new threat and catches a brief glimpse of a green cloaked figure with an extremely skinny pale face with violet eyes. As he begins to chant the enemy caster disappears, along with everything else. He manages not to panic when he looses his sight, but knows he is in trouble.   Vanal and Ryll finish off the remaining Orcs and rush to find whoever webbed Figorna. She manages to escape the webs ensnaring her and moves to see if Mel needs help. She finds him leaning up against a tree, listening intently. He gestures towards where he thinks the mage might be and she heads out that way.Ryll thinks she hears something and turns towards it, just in time to hear the word 'Arataetnael' nearby. She feels the spell take effect and struggles without success to fight it, but manages to fire her bow. She hears someone curse in an unknown language as she collapses to the ground, unable to move as per blood boils and she looses consciousness.This cat and mouse game between the party and the spellcaster continues. Their enemy is now invisible, and they feel like he or she is just playing with them. Vanal fights off the effects of two spells, but manages to make his way to Ryll, find a potion in her pack and heal her  to the point that she is awake, then has to intercept Figorna and prevent her from attacking Mel while under the control of yet another enemy spell. Finally though, Ryll notices a tree branch move and shoots, hitting the mage. She keeps firing and while most of the bolts miss, it allows Vanal and Figorna to move in. The mage has nowhere to run and collapses, becoming visible when he dies. Before Vanal can roll him over to see who had caused all of this the body disintegrated completely, leaving the clothing behind.</blockquote>

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