Welcome back!
This week, we’re finally going to get into the meat of the story and the first letter. This week’s letter concerns what is called a session zero. It’s a term used for the first session of a new campaign where party members and the DM can get a feel for each other, go over any specific rules that might be different from the book, and test out characters before it’s too late to change them. Our session zero was also partially because we were short one player who had conflicting plans.
Context
Some new context for you this week, I am going to introduce the characters to you. In many of these first few letters, Nash uses pseudonyms to protect the identities of everyone involved just in case his letter is intercepted. At this point, he’s fairly paranoid after spending a couple years hunting blood mages. Anyhow, here’s a list of the party and the pseudonyms given to them. I’ll try and have this posted before every letter for reference.
Heron – Tai Lin, Monk and Nash’s betrothed.
Phoenix – Nash Yosoku, Wizard
Sparrowhawk – Seiichi Aimoto, Kensai
Falcon – Toshiro Kibun, Fighter
Owl – Hayami Riyu, Ranger
Osprey – Jhin Toshiro, Rogue
~~~
Heron,
I’ve found myself tonight in Seodong, a small village just east of Jade City. I thought it would be a good place to rest for the night before continuing on my journey. It seems that even here, this close to the capital, blood mages dare raise their foul magic against others. Thankfully, I met some people here, both old and new. For everyone’s protection, I’ll omit names.
One of them, I’ll call him Osprey, I’ve met before. I hunted him in a city a few months back, thinking him to be a maho, a blood mage. He ended up turning the tables on me and cornered me. When I saw his shifty behavior and his guarded self, I thought I was looking at a maho, but he was just a rogue.
The other, Sparrowhawk, hails from Chickadee territory where our monastery is located. I met him early on after leaving you two years ago, in one of the nearby towns. It’s possible you’ve met him too and you just don’t know it. He’s quiet, but he seems nice enough. Fi certainly likes him.
We were all eating together, an uneasy dinner party in part due to my natural suspicions, when the owner of the inn we stayed at approached us. He told us how the town had been getting nightly visits by a rogue group of shinobi. So far, the town had been mostly powerless to stop them, but they’d taken something this time that couldn’t be ignored.
His daughter.
He asked us to find her and return her safely to town. We agreed and when we pressed for more information, he directed us to the mayor of the town. Speaking with her after dinner, she knew a general direction that the shinobi took off in every night. We also learned that her husband was quite sick and that they were leaving to go to the Jade City to search for a healer.
I asked if I could take a look at him. I am a wizard and healing isn’t really my specialty, but Genbu has granted me some small measure of healing capability. I managed to discover within her husband a magical sickness and using what Genbu gifted me, I managed to purge him of it. His wife, by way of thanks, gave me a hat with magical properties.
We left before night came, hoping to catch them before they left whatever hole they were hiding in. Sparrowhawk was particularly useful in this regard, having extensive knowledge of the land after traveling so much of it. It took us about an hour, but we found the cave that they called home.
Our initial push through the cave put us into combat with several bakemono, a kind of evil dwarf. We found a locked door at the end of the cave and managed to get through, only to be confronted by the shinobi who kidnapped the inn owner’s daughter and a couple maho. After a short, but fierce battle we took down the lead maho and I swiped a Staff of Blood Magic from him.
The shinobi switched sides during the fight and helped us fight off the remaining maho. It turned out that one of the shinobi and the daughter were in love and they were going to run off together, but we convinced her to at least say goodbye to her father so he wasn’t worried about her. We searched the rest of the cave and took what was useful to us and returned to the village what was not.
Tomorrow, we’ll travel together to get to the Jade City and join the tournament. Wish me luck.
Phoenix
~~~
Fun fact, we missed out on a lot of gold in this session, because we didn’t check the well that was in the maho hideout we found. Hope you enjoyed the first official letter and as always, if you have any questions, let me know. I’ll be happy to answer them.
Josh Hoffman 