If I didn't know better, I'd say we were missed.
I'm going to take a moment to talk about a few things here, to prep you for That which is to come, (coming soon to a theater near you).
As many of you know, Small Beginnings was an exercise D'Shai and I undertook that took on a life of its own. And it was fun, no doubt about that. But, by and large, Small Beginnings was built on someone else's work (the module, silly!). Yes, the milieu was original (and one that D'Shai's been carrying around in his head in one form or another for about 25 years, 20 of which that made it a campaign world), as were the characters (though when I look at it, I can't help but see the stamp that our group's collected bank of PCs, pop culture, and our love of sci-fi , fantasy, and comics has wrought). But plot wise, the events of that story were predetermined by the site based module.
That isn't to say that D'Shai didn't put his own twist on the thing - while I've seen plenty of instances of Meepo as sidekick, almost nobody has Balsag as anything other than a lietenant of the BBEG. And, as you will see in the future, things in Icemist really do fit into the big picture.
But, things are about to change...
I've always felt particularly blessed that I don't really have more than a handful of gaming horror stories - over the years, we've weeded out gamers that don't add something to our game - and I think that shows in what you've seen so far. Our group, by and large, really likes to create and play three dimensional PCs (even our resident 'kick in the door' has a bit of the actor and narrativist in him), and the intra PC play you've seen in dialogue and action is, in many cases, only very slightly embellished from the actual table talk. In short, we've got a table full of pretty dang good players. But non of that would be possible without our long term DM. And what you're going to see over the next few months is a filtered glimpse of what our gaming experience is really like; more importantly, you're going to get a chance to see D'Shai shine.
So consider this fair warning, the plot is going to get thick: conflicts will rage, herrings will be red, betrayals we be made, allies will be numerous, enemies legion, and the b*stards that we can't figure out will be, uh, whatever comes after legion. So be sure to buy a program, you'll never keep track of who's doing what to whom and why if you don't have a program.
And as always, enjoy.
Oh! And look for another pre-update this week!