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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DayTripper" data-source="post: 5108209" data-attributes="member: 23440">Post Session ThoughtsThe first session went OK I think. Lots of roleplaying as I struggled to bring all the PCs together and they sought to establish some character. The first problem resolved was the 5th PC, she eventually went for a human rogue, which works well as I gave her a background of working for the Torenescu family in Specularum dispatched to Saltmarsh to "look after" the wizard (her background is the richkid daughter of some Torenescu merchants that we recently shipwrecked, parents missing presumed dead).  Most of the players provided their own background which is why is provided slightly tricky to bring them all together. To draw the PCs together and channel them towards the house on the clifftop in Saltmarsh, I used a device based around the empty house. The dwarf - Thanor Wargale - recieved a missive from a firm of lawyers (the esteemed Smythe and Fairfax of Saltmarsh) inviting him to a reading of a will. Co-incidently, the tiefling - Diemos - stole some papers off his now dead slave masters which included a similar summons from Smythe and Fairfax, so headed to Saltmarsh to see what "he" had inherited. At the time the two inheritors arrived at the offices of S&F, the wizard - Brelynn Spellopal - had come under the guardianship of the lawyers whilst they resolved issues of her parent's estate (some bad trades had been made recently...). In fact, once all told the only thing of value left in the estate was a recently purchased statue that stood on the harbour of Saltmarsh. A strangely lifelike statue of an ancient warforged that once saved the town from Shaugin invaders. In the meantime, our wizard's "minder", the rogue Ester, had arrived from Specularum to look after Miss Spellopel and try and find out what happened to her parents. This just left the tricky situation of the warforged - Eric Graven. This PC's background is complex (I'll post it sometime): he led a cadre of warforged in the Last Great War (some 600 years ago) who did actually save Saltmarsh from an invasion of Shaugin. But this was more due to bloodlust than heroism (a fact lost to local folklore) as these warforged had been made using infernal magics. The cadre was all but destroyed in saving the town, only Eric was intact but deactivated. So the villagers raised him up on a plinth as a hero and saviour. Local tales say he will rise again when Saltmarsh faces great evil. So how to bring him in and link him to the others..? Fortunately, Diemos the tiefling gave me a link into Eric's infernal background. When (eventually) Diemos went to see the statue and touched it, his infernal ancestry stirred something in the dormant warforged and woke him from his slumber. Needless to say this greatly worried Diemos and the townsfolk but for different reasons.Diemos and Thanor had, of course, inherited the deserted house on the cliff top from an old alchemist.  The estate had been subject to a long dispute and Thanor and Diemos's slaver were the only beneficiaries (bizarrely) that could be traced.  So with little else to do a ragged band of people, thrown together by fortune went to investigate a deserted house...From all the PCs there are 2 strong storylines emerging that could link in well with my original plan for the campaign.  Firstly, Brelynn the wizard is linked to the Torenescu familiy of Specularum and thereby the Veiled Society adventure. This also draws in Ester the rogue.  I'll park this for now and use it later on when I'm getting closer to running that adventure.More interestingly is Diemos's background.  Our tiefling friend is an ex-slave.  His girlfriend however is still a slave.  What's more, he's mad about this and is very keen to track down the slavers and his girl again.  This came out unpromted by me in Diemos's background notes the player provided.  So I sowed some seeds about the Radu family from Specularum (and the Veiled Society) being linked to slaving.  I've suggested in the game world that slaving is a grey area in the Empire, it goes on but not overtly.  I'll develop a few more clues in the next few adventures that should lead to some character development and another strong link into the Veiled Society adventure.It did give me a further idea for the long term and that is to ditch my idea of running Ravenloft after the Veiled Society and digging out my old copy of Scourge of the Slavelords instead!  What's more I reckon I could tweak SoSL so that Strahd is behind the slaving rather than the drow... More work but much more fun and would probably work better in the game world and in terms of level progression given that Strahd is about 15th level if I recall from his 4e incarnation.Some more plotting to do I think and some more thoughts once we've played again in a couple of weeks.</blockquote>

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