SESSION 1 - BALDUR'S GATE
SUMMARY OF GAME PLAY - READ AT YOUR OWN TEDIOUS RISK
A SUMMARY OF GAME PLAY - READ AT YOUR OWN TEDIOUS RISK
An Analysis of this Session will follow, in which I will critique and complain about how I opened this game this way called "Session I - Better to Skip It."
I have preserved it here for our group's own posterity and as a mild cautionary tale.
Session 1 - Baldur's Gate In Which We Learn of the Basic Crisis, Are Introduced to the Starting Characters, And Cover Pages 8 & 9 of the Module Over a Period of 5 Hours of Play
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Atticus Blunderguff – Steve, sister’s boyfriend
Birdie – Chaleen, wife
Katari Fangspirit – Atlas, nephling
Reign Beau Farrick – Robin, sister
Rizza ZaZeZoZu – Josh, bestie
Succledairy Chin – Wolf, son
Torgga – April, sister
EPILOGUE
Daylight gleams the streets of Baldur’s Gate—the shining metropolis of Faerun’s Sword Coast—making it sparkle. Atypically. Infuriatingly.
That’s how I started them off. Seemed to sound like European fantasy genre writing, at least to me.
Atticus Blunderguff—stage magician by day/footpad by night—is moving through the eastern neighborhoods with his kingpin. Steve is pretty new to D&D and has never played a thief at all. During Sesson 0, he said his desire for the campaign was to become a more effective player.
This sequence will serve as a tutorial level.
The mighty port can usually be counted on for its fog and drizzle, which usually aids Atticus Blunderguff in his work for The Guild, but not today.
Cerick the Saint, navigates the Outer City with him, the morning sunlight toasting their backs and painting long shadows ahead of them. He is the gnomish kingpin of the gang, the neighborhood sect that took Atticus in five years ago. They’re called Ganthal’s Gallants.
For anyone overhearing them, they’re making small talk about fashion and shopping, but to anyone in The Guild, who knows their secret language of code-words and hand-signs called Thieves’ Cant, it’s clear the conversation is both momentus and urgent.
“No footpad has ever risen through the ranks so quickly as you, Atticus. Your talent for burgling is unparalleled, but your nascent skills in decoding the Deep Speech in that moldering pile of books makes tapping you for this mission the obvious choice.”
He steers Atticus through the tiny people of their gnomish neighborhood, Whitkeep. Then into Norchapel.
“First, though, I need to see if you remember your first lessons. Your task demands a catburglar who remembers how to be a cutpurse.”
He makes a sign that means “that one” in Thieves’ Cant, gesturing at a hungover tavern wench who seems an easy mark. She stands in line at a breakfast stand.
Steve rolls an intelligence check: The code of conduct for which Ganthal’s Gallants was named is so ingrained, even if he’d rolled a 2, he’d remember: “Don’t steal from women.” (If he had rolled a 1, Cerick would have scolded him for his lack of street-sense).
“Let’s move on to an appropriate target,” signs the gnome.
Cerick the Saint leads Atticus through the morning throngs of workers—mostly sailors and mongers, but adventurers too—as they head westward into Stonyeyes.
They spot an orcish member of the Bloody Hands, but Cerick waves that away: “No, not that one. No need to risk the ire of Zhentarim allies with this curse going on. We may need to pull favors from them before this is done. No, I think...THAT one will do!” and he signals toward a ranger, tying gear to his horse’s tack. He keeps himself distant from his nearby party members.
“Remember your training: stealth is our first advantage.” says Cerick, giving a Helping Action to Atticus.
Atticus tries to sneak up on the ranger to steal his purse, rolling a Stealth Check with Advantage: DC 10—and succeeds.
Next he rolls a Sleight of Hand in order to pick the ranger’s pocket (also with advantage, because he’s not been observed): DC 10.
He fails so Cerick bluffs their way out of a fight, patting the ranger on his back and assuring him the magician is just drunk from the night before.
The two thieves make their way westward to the eastern entrance of the Lower City: the Basilisk Gate.
Cerick pays the five-copper gate-fee to the Flaming Fist guards and they move on into Eastway.
Shopping crowds and the roaming adventurers looking for work. The streets of Heapside, with its bustle of merchants, vendors, and trademen. Then, into The Steeps—the wharf district that fringes Gray Harbor.
It is unusually thronged with sailors.
“They will not sail with this curse on the land; nearly all of their captains are bedridden by it,” signals Cerick. “Come, we will use an entrance I know of. Duck low.”
He reveals a hidden gate under shrubbery, which looks to lead into The Wide without needing to use a gate, nor enterthe Undercellar. Atticus peers into a dark, four-foot tunnel made of stone.
Cerick gestures, “You already failed once; show me that picking you wasn’t a mistake.”
Atticus rolls an Intelligence check. He passes and recognizes that he ill need to make two active perception checks.
He recites, “If you would place two traps, check for both.” He checks for traps in the entryway—then, he movesforward into the tunnel and check again. The second check reveals the pressure plate at the 10’ mark.
He crawls around it easily and makes his way through the rest of the tunnel.
The passageway opens into an opulent and bustling market-square. The area is massive and every thick-beamed villathat surrounds it reeks of wealth.
“As I told you, on this mission, maintain your alter ego as Alphonse Alakazam, embedded in the party to retrieve the dungeon map. No matter how your mission plays out, we’ll come out on top here. I have not told you, but all of the other gang kingpins are afflicted. Even Nine Fingers herself! In this line of work, only someone as clever—or ascautious—as me could live so long without needing to be resurrected. So, if you succeed, not only will we gain what’s in that map, but the lionization of the entire Guild. On the other hand—if you fail—they’ll all waste into death, leaving me, Cerick the Saint, as the new Guildmaster of Baldur’s Gate! Now go! Syndra Silvane awaits you, she knows you’re coming!”
He stuffs a Patriar permission letter into Atticus’s hand and points him to the front door of the mansion.
TOMB OF ANNIHILATION
The morning sun wakes Rizza, glinting off the mail vest near his dormitory window. This is a rarity, to get to sleep so late, until dawn, and he is grateful. He’s grateful for the sun, for Bahumut and Helm who have smiled upon him, and grateful—though, somewhat guiltily—for the Rise of Tiamat two years earlier. For though that war between the forces of good and the Dragon Queen’s minions came at terrible costs, it also meant that his kind, the Dragonborn—refugee slaves in this foreign land—finally have come to be accepted, somewhat.
Josh had asked to be challenged with obstacles that could be solved through ingenuity and role-play, so little of this sequence will touch on any stats.
Rizza’s assignment today, on a lone mission for the Order of the Gauntlet—who he has served thanklessly for so many years—proves that.
He’s been on Patrol of the Third Watch nearly since he enlisted, finishing his early-morning shift before the first meal of the day. Today, he gets to sleep-in and visit the mess first thing after his morning ablutions and prayers. Today is hisfirst day with a rank of responsibility after eight years of slogging as a Chevall.
Today he will be promoted to Mancheon ZaZeZoZuu.
After he chooses to have a hot breakfast because of having plenty of time, he heads to the offices to meet with Vindicator Maver Longspear. He arrives at the Vindicator’s closed door. Fifteen minutes early,: Early is on-time; on-time is late.
Vindicator Longspear is not there. A small note is pinned to his office door that reads:
Dear Chevall ZaZeZoZuu:
Meeting with party has been rescheduled to 1100 instead of First Dog Watch. Party launches at Fifth Watch. Forgive inconvenience; Please meet at home of Syndra Silvane, southern entrance to The Wide, for briefing, materials, and insignia of rank. Haste!
--Regards,
Vin. Longspear
For a moment anxiety washes over Rizza, but it’s only ten-til-10; he has at least an hour to cross some twelve blocks. He snatches the note from the door, folds it into his breast wallet, and begins his hike from Citadel Streets toward The Wide.
As he passes the office of Gorgak the Userer—a known member of the Zhentarim, he hears a scale-shivering shriek from the alley behind you. It’s the scream of a child.
Rizza makes a mental check of the area. Surely there are other authorities nearby? He analyzes and determines, no. The streets are empty. He makes an inventory of his official duties. Yes, he should answer the scream as a matter of duty. He backtracks to the previous crossing to investigate the cries.
A goblin girl is screaming hysterically ten feet into the alleyway. She is prone and flailing, her hand apparently trapped in a sewer grate.
She is Gorgak’s daughter, Mazoga.
“Goblin! Cease your wailing and pull your arm from that grating!” he calls from the intersection.
She continues to scream and cry. She will not do as he ordered. Frustrated, he heads down the street to where she is trapped. The arm is caught in an iron grate and seems injured. She will not stop screaming in pain.
The dragonborn investigates the grate, then tries to brute-strength it open. The grate is far too sturdy.
“Goblin, stillness for this or you’ll get yourself crushed!” he orders and draws his maul and swings it down on the grate’s hinge. He could have likely killed the girl, but his aim was accurate and the grate fell to pieces and into the drain.
Mazoga is still wailing, even though she’s freed.
“Goblin, you must now go to your parents. Tell them that you were irresponsible and caused the destruction of this city property with your negligence.”
She only cries. ZaZeZoZu checks the time. He is running tardy, but also tracks that his duty is clear: he must get this child to an appropriate warden before he can leave. He’s also confident that there was no one in the Userer’s shop—the girl is out and about on her own.
“Where is your home, goblin?”
Only hysterics from Mazoga.
“Enough. Stand, goblin,” orders Rizza. He grips her good hand and raises her brusquely to her feet. He begins to march her up the street, headed on his way toward his original destination with her in tow, and looking for guards to take her off his hands.
Two blocks onward, he comes across two members of his order on patrol. He orders them to take the girl and deliver her to her parents—and that they must be made to reimburse the city for the destruction of the grate for which she is responsible. They do so.
With Mazoga dealt with, Rizza races through The Temples neighborhood and the market stalls of The Wide, coming in a jangling halt at Syndra Silvane’s front door.
Her footman greets him and leads him to the waiting room of her chambers, where the titanlike Vindicator Longspear awaits.
“Well met, Mancheon ZaZeZoZuu! Early is on-time; on-time is late, as we were taught in grunt-school, right?”
Rizza salutes and affirms, formally.
“We need you to deliver yourself plus this packet of dispatches to Commander Niles Breakbone at Camp Vengeance in Chult. No doubt you’ve never heard of the place, but it’s a primitive land far, far to the south of the Sea of Swords. Our brethren there have been fighting an ongoing campaign against shocking numbers of undead. Brave work. Syndra Silvane is a true hero, as you know, and a wonderful ally to our cause. She has commissioned us to provide security for a mission to Chult that will be departing soon. Once you arrive in Port Nyanzaru, you’ll be issued horses which your party can ride to Camp Vengeance. From there, her team will likely continue their own quest and your work with them will be done. I must go, but Godspeed, son. May...”
He notes that you wear the emblem of Bahumut now instead of Helm.
“...may Bahumut smile upon your journey, Brother!
The knights salute each other and Vindicator Longspear leaves.
MEANWHILE…
Reign Beau Farrick is at his wit’s end.
Two weeks ago, Syndra Silvane tapped the sorcerer to tutor and civilize her newly adopted ward.
He’s spent all his time since finding the kid and dragging him indoors for lessons. He’d taken this opportunity to gain Syndra’s favor and increase his status in the community—but since then, he hasn’t seen her once.
Robin had wanted to solve puzzles and Wolf wanted to be able to build his own city in this campaign, but I didn’t see a ready way to incorporate these desires into the first session, so a chase sequence through a city seemed expedient enough.
This morning Reign’s been tracking the boy into the Lower City, following the testimony of passersby who saw the urchin go “that-a-way.”
Looking out over the harbor, packed to absurdity with sailors, whores, and pirates, the first of whom have been on strike two weeks now since the mysterious plague fell over the land. Many are drunk already—an environment Succledairy Chin no doubt finds entertaining to abstraction. Beyond the piles of salty dogs and Gray Harbor, the Sea of Swords.
Then: that damned hat bobs up through the crowd for a moment! A broad-brimmed straw hat that has come to haunt Reign’s mystical dreams pops up in the crowd, some fifty feet further down the cedar ramps and docks. The boy!
He’s already moving through the crowd and will be long-lost by the time Reign can catch him by the collar.
Reign sweeps a fistful of sand from the lid of a shipping barrel and casts a sleep spell into the vicinity he last saw Succ dodging. It drops a half-dozen drunken sailors and prostitutes into full stupors, but the elven child is too alert and hardy. He sees the sorcerer atop the series of walkways, hunting him, and sprints away, out of the pile of sleeping bodies and down the docks.
Reign gives chase, stumbling through the mob, and upset. Succ just laughs and bobs through the lower docks with ease.
Frustrated, Reign tries an appeal to Succledairy’s goodness, shouting across the throng that his adopted mother is upset and needs to see him. Succledairy pauses, then admits to himself that it’s the right thing to do. He allows Reign to snatch him up by the collar and march him back home to the mansion of Syndra Silvane.
When they arrive in Sindra’s foyer, they’re surprised to find a bronze dragonborne knight and a fancily dressed high elf waiting there too.
Reign, still frustrated, and planning to submit his resignation to Sindra once inside, moves toward the door to knock, but before he can, the door opens.
Syndra Sivlane’s majordomo welcomes the group, “Greetings, you are all expected. Madame Silvane awaits in the sitting room beyond the round antechamber.”
SYNDRA’S DILEMMA
The group enters a wood-paneled room with a fireplace, comfortable chairs—upon which sit three women, and a heavy table bearing goblets and bottles of wine. The darkly paneled walls are hung with maps and sea charts. Racks, shelves, and cabinets hold hundreds more rolled-up maps and charts.
Another person is seated in an overstuffed chair near the fire. The person's head emerges from under a heavy blanket draped over the chair, and an embroidered hood and silver mask conceal the wearer's face, but it’s obvious who this must be.
They’re shocked.
Syndra’s vitality has long been famous, and even her middle-aging visage adorns nearly every beer hall—and beer stein—in Baldur’s Gate. To see her like this, it stills their hearts. Then she speaks.
With a drawl like Dolly Parton with terminal cancer, she whispers:
“Help yourselves to wine and seat yourselves, friends. I hope I can call ya that. For those of you who don’t know me, I was an adventurer years ago. I died once—only once, though, I think...though, young love has a whirlwind effect on us, don’t it?—and the priests, they all laid out a bit of their blessed hearts to get me alive again. You can’t help but not blame a priest no more, once he’s turned hell away for you."
She moves to a seat, "You’ve all heard about the death curse, I suppose. It’s stuck on me. I don't know how much longer I'll last before I—alas—perish. Clerics don’t offer NO help this time, con-sarnum. They're stymied themselves, I think, by what’s happening. Some of em give me six months, some three, some four. Seems like most are right around that bottom range, though—no matter how much I donate to their temples.”
The majordomo interjects: “We are confident in our estimation of 79 days before the curse takes our mistress.”
He steps back.
"Well, maybe. I’m in league with the Harpers, you know? We’ve learned that the cause of the death curse is a necromantic artifact called the Soulmonger. According to them, the Soulmonger is somewhere in Chult. Which is interesting, because that’s where my friends here come in. Ladies, come over here and let these people know who ya are.”
She gestures at the women.
“This is Torgga. I only just met her, but she’s about as sweet and innocent as they come—and I know! Heck, she’s the whole reason I put you adventurers together. Tell em what ya saw, Torgga!”
A dwarven woman—a Sonnlinor, one of the Clerics of the Dwarven god Moradin—eyes wild with visions, stumps into the fore. Her hair doesn’t have twigs in it, but it’s obvious that in most situations, it would.
Torgga the Hermit tells her vision.
TORGGA’S VISION
April had said she wanted to focus on role-play in the campaign, so Torgga’s introduction emphasized her backstory and character motivations.
Unlike most priests in her sect, Torgga was not born to a family of Sonnlinors.
Her parents were smiths. As an infant, she grew up in a foundry and as a toddler, she was hypnotized by Moradin’s glow as her mother smelt iron. She found ephiphany in the clank and spray of Dwarfather’s beard, drawn by her father’s hammer.
Torgga was three when she was first burned—reaching out barehanded to touch the beautiful glowing white metal. Usually children learn from these minor injuries, but she never did. They built a cage for her in the smithy to keep her from touching the molten ores. She would go on to severely burn herself fourteen more times during her childhood anyway. Torgga’s hands have long been clouded with a latticework of scars.
However, she never took to the hammer and anvil. The spirit of creation was only something she could appreciate as an observer, not to practice. No, basking in the light of creation was her calling. The way the metal would flake as it was hammered, revealing brilliant crackle-patterns that were at once always unique while being typical, captivated her.
Torgga was sent to apprentice as a Sonnlinor under High Artificer Boldrem Emberborn at age twelve. His teachings—though encyclopedic and illuminating, were by her adulthood, insufficient. She became an escetic and tasked herself with the ritual maintenance of the mines beneath the Church of Moradin. Down there, amongst the neglected altars devoted to where Moradin built the world, she had long toiled. Alone.
The High Artificer is dying, she’d learned—afflicted with the death curse, the pandemic that is sucking the life from anyone who was ever resurrected. Every day, he grows weaker and there is no answer.
She’s in the east tunnel, before the Font of Iron, conducting her lonely maintenance in the cave’s total darkness as Moradin would have done.
She wipes the surfaces of the altar with her sanctified Cloth of Polishing and recites prayers of thanksgiving particular to that relic that she’d memorized.
She moves onward toward the Crucible Altar and is stopped by a strangeness, a shifting pattern on the surface of cave wall next to her. She tries to shake it away by shaking her head, but her eyes insist on seeing: flecks of mica seems to eddy and swirl into a leering green face with horns.
Its mouth opens wide, black—but then, she gets a sense that just behind that black, there should be some light…
She moves on, through the dark shrine, but when she arrives at that cold cauldron shape in the rock that is the Crucible Altar, she senses a tension in the stone around her. It’s as if she can hear the tectonic activity that is eminent.
Blinding light bursts from a crack above the stone bowl before her. Golden lava begins to fill the fissure. It’s brighter than any molten metal she’d ever seen. It cracks and rumbles—she starts to become entranced by it.
She hears a deep voice; it rumbles from the stones: TORGGA! DO NOT DEFY MEEEE!
She is in the presence of Moradin himself!
She moves towards the molten stone wall, slowly pouring itself into the crucible in which her god forged the world. She is mesmerized by the fractal patterns of cooling stone on the glowing subsurface. The lines and shapes stack and you have a vision: layers of patterns, mazes upon mazes.
Then, the heat begins to create phantasms before her eyes—the shimmering heat forms images—she reaches out, towards the molten fissure…
The thunder of stone tearing against stone throbs in her ears. The heat of the brilliant flow seems unbearable.
Torgga places her palm upon the lava flow and feel the heat of God’s wisdom channeled into her body.
The lava causes a profound amount of injury to her body. The voice in the stone fills her mind:
“DESTROY THE SOULMONGER TO END THE DEATH CURSE!” She sees visions of chanting skulls and some massive, dread machine.
The God’s charm is broken, but she senses that there is more information through the pain, that he is testing her faith.
She does not remove her hand—she will see more.
“FIND SYNDRA SILVANE!” The phantasm of a beautiful middle-aged woman, withers into decrepitude before her eyes.
The pain in amazing. She is overwhelmed, she fears she is already nearly killed. Yet, she continues the trial.
“EMBRACE THE NINE GODS!”
With that, she feels herself fall dead.
MEANWHILE...
Katari Fangspirit, as has been the case for months now, is spending the morning amused at the strange dungeon-crawler Sindra Sylvane hired hired to haul around the goblin fields south of the Icewind Dale.
For the first few months, she’d spend this time lounging on the skiff while the druid did her research. More often than not, Katari found herself yanked out of her nap by the explorer’s screams as she fled to the two-sailer, chased by some gang of natives she’d offended with her trespassing.
Eventually, it made more sense for the half-orc to double as bodyguard in the tomb-raids. She figured Sylvane would kick her some extra wages for the effort. Atlas had said they wanted more role-play opportunities, so pairing them up with Chaleen seemed a fine choice—they usually sit next to each other at the table.
Birdie, finds herself, after some interviewing of the local goblinfolk, at the entrance to yet another temple of Maglubiyet. Like all such lairs, it’s no more than a cave the goblins had rigged out with traps and a sacrificial altar. Thick ivy cascades over the lumpy stones that make its mouth. Birdie pauses before the entrance, arm outstretched behind her to halt the forward mosey of the half-orc. Chaleen wanted her character to become immortal in the game (what the hell??), so pointing her archaeologist character toward a variety of metaphysically strange bits of lore seemed the best course of action.
Katari stops, and crosses her arms with a grin—the goblin teen who agreed to guide them up here, Aaga, distractedly watching her feet throughout the hike, runs her forehead into the archeaologist’s outstretched palm, stopping short.
Birdie smiles and pets the goblin’s coarse, short mane.
Turning back to the cave, she looks around. With ease, she detects that there is a primitive pressure-plate in the grass beneath the stone overhang. The matted underbrush clearly parts ways around it, where generations of these folk had walked around the primitive trap.
Birdie begins her descent into the cave, moving wide around the trap in the entry and gesturing for her entourage to do the same. As usual for such places, though it is filthy—strewn with humanoid and animal bones and scat—there are few cobwebs. No, this temple is still attended by the whole village once per week, no doubt, for their ritual to Fiery Eyes.
Aaga suddenly breaks from Katari’s side. She sprints off, around a bush and over the hill that makes the right-hand side of the temple. The adventurers watch her run off—disappointed, but unsurprised by her treachery.
The cave is small. They crouch as they make their ways in. They’re used to this.
Twenty feet and the cave comes to a T, a short stretch of hallway that leads around and drops into a large chamber: the altar room. It’s ovoid. Forty feet away, they see the altar at the far end. To their relief, the Approach Trap is the most simple kind to be expected: a massive 15”-wide pit with three huge logs stretched across it for bridges. This I presented with a tactical map.
The drop is about 50 foot onto stalagmites.
On the walls are prayers and pictograms depicting Maglubiyet—a giant black goblin with firey eyes. He is shown massacring the hordes of orcish Gruumsh devotees with his massive axe, siccing his baatezu, barghest, and yogoloth beasts against his enemies. Some of these are quite old—this is a respectable goblin temple.
Birdie notes an oddity in the cave art: a depiction of Kikanuti snatching her fertility portfolio. This is very rare for these regions. The cult of Kikanuti is the only place she’s found the name since her childhood: “The Lost City of Mezro.”
The archaeologist takes a moment to sketch the primitive depiction of the portfolio into her logbook. She turns to the altar—a stone block with centuries of blood covering it. She heads over the log bridges to inspect it.
Behind the altar is a niche, upon sits an obsidian idol. Birdie ignores that—respecting the cult taboo—and feels around for the side compartment of the altar, where they keep their texts. She finds in it, a scroll—a map.
As Birdie begins to re-cross the log bridge, Katari hears the scramble and growl of goblins headed their way. No doubt, Aaga confessed about her sacrilege.
Goblins start pouring in from secret tunnels scattered around the cave. The two fight their way out.
They burst out of the entry and find themselves surrounded by 30 goblins. They blast the leader during the stand-off and then run for the boat, the goblin horde in tow.
As they come around the bend to the valley leading to the skiff, they see a cluster of what appear to be dwarves, dressed in ceremonial gear, crowded on the bank. They carry a female dwarf on a litter.
NOW:
Sindra Sylvane leans in, “Wild, right? Now, Birdie and Katari Fangspirit? They work for me. And that’s why I picked THEM to come along, because I need all the extra dice I’m gonna get.
Birdie’s what they call an ark-ee-o-magic-somethin.
Ark-ee-o…
a little help, Birdie?
“Archeologist,” helps Birdie.
Right. She’s been digging into tombs and finding artifacts for me for years now. She’s got lore and knowledge like you can’t reckon with. Works for pennies, honestly.
The best for last, we have my darling Katari Fangspirit. She’s tough as nails, sturdy as a out-house-door and she’s loyal to beat the sheets. She’s worked for me for ages and, I figure, if you’re gonna get this job done—you’re gonna need someone with some nautical sense to get you around that island or peninsula or whatever it is fast. I am running out of time, children!”
Syndra begins to stroll through the group, gesturing at each as she arrives to them.
“You’ll have a pretty rounded out gang, I suspect: Mancheon ZaZeZoZuu’s a paladin to square ya with the law, Copperfield is a locks and traps man who knows how to haggle, Birdie is a druidic expert in artifacts and dungeons, Katari’s all muscle and can get you sailed where ya need to, and Torrga is your very own visionary with the holy power to heal. The only thing left would be a spell-caster—and someone to keep you out of trouble. I know you had your heart set on quitting my employment, Reign,” she says.
Reign stutters briefly in false protest, but she waves it away.
Syndra continues, “But I’d like you to reconsider. I need someone I can trust with Succledairy’s well-being. If he’s going to cut out to these territories to try to save me and the world, he’s gonna need you to watch him. Whattayasay, Reign?
He pauses. This wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted prestige, not a suicide mission.
“If ya save me, sugar—I’ll make you my Cup Bearer. How about that?”
The amount of access this trusted position offers is overwhelming. Reign agrees.
Syndra continues to the group, "Chult is a peninsula ringed with mountains and choked with rainforests. Enormous reptiles, savage goblins, and an army of undead prowl its jungles and ruins. Mapping the place has always been nigh impossible, and nothing is known about the region's current geography beyond a few miles from the coast.”
Syndra moves to the library in the eastern niche of the room. She reaches the desk and lifts a scroll.
"Working from dozens of seacharts, logbooks, and explorers' journals, I assembled everything known about the current state of Chult into one map. Here,” and with this, she hands it to Succledairy Chin. “Keep this safe as can be, dear. Bad folks will be after it. Don’t let on you have it to no one, child.”
She turns to the group at large again:
"When you're ready to depart, I will teleport us all to Port Nyanzaru, the only major settlement in Chult. I've been there several times before, so there's little chance of mishap. Once there, I'll stay with a friend named Wakanga O'tamu. He's one of seven merchant princes who rule the city."
[END SESSION]
This article to be followed with "Session I - Better to Skip It."