Chapter 1

Our story begins on the world of Olam and the continent of Eritz, the largest of all known land masses. It’s said that Olam and Eritz were lovers, but little more of the story has survived the ages since their affair eons ago.

It’s morning and the party is preparing for their day’s journey. They’re gathered around their camp, alongside the main road in The Quiet Valley, an area of the Unmarked Territories renowned for its lush forests and quaint villages. Ha-derech is the main road because it’s the only road that runs between Mirganor, in the East, and Elsemar, on the West coast of Eritz, where the party is headed, each member for their own reasons.

When viewed together, the tiefling rogue, gnome artificer, halfling druid farmer, and half-orc barbarian make up quite a motley crew.

Grindlefoot, the halfling, is lamenting the broken state of his flute with loud harrumphs every few seconds while turning it over and around in his hands. Ever curious, Xantic, the gnome, offers to take a look and try to fix it. While offering to fix the delicate instrument, he simultaneously describes his habit of magically pummeling trees, exploding them into bits. Gven, the barbarian, sidles over to Dolor, the tiefling, and suggests a bet: 1 gold piece that Xantic blows up the flute as his way of fixing it. With a laugh, Dolor readily accepts the bet.

After examining the flute for several turns, rummaging around in his knapsack and clothing for bits and pieces of this and that, then many…many words no one else could understand, Xantic hands it back to Grindlefoot and hesitantly asks him to give it a try. To everyone’s surprise, and Dolor’s excitement at winning the bet with Gven, the flute actually sounds okay.

They pack up their limited belongings, clean up camp, and head westward on the Ha-derech toward Elsemar, their destination. As they travel throughout the day, there isn’t much traffic heading eastward and they only pass a few other slower parties, also walking, while getting passed by one or two folks riding horses. When the daylight begins to wane, they start looking for a place to rest, eat, and camp for the night.

They soon come across a group who appears to be in the process of setting up camp, where a halfling is unsuccessfully trying to start a campfire with six humans lounging around him watching with disinterest. Dolor asks if the four can join the larger group, but one of the men exclaims that they’re feeling sick and don’t want to inflict anything on the four.

In his curious excitement, Xantic begins to query the group’s self-proclaimed spokesman about this sickness, the symptoms, and what might have caused it. The man is elusive with his answers, but blames it on wild mushrooms the halfling fed them. A lengthy discussion of their excrement ensues, with Xantic excitedly wanting to know more about shapes, colors, and sizes. After a few minutes, Grindlefoot has had enough of the poop talk and turns to leave, with Dolor and Gven firmly encouraging Xantic to come along with them.

With a gesture of his hand, Grindlefoot lights the campfire for the group, allowing them to have some warmth for the evening. The halfling, who was still busily trying to get a fire going, jumps back in surprise and screams out “they’re robbing me!” The four adventurers turn back around to face the halfling and his captors, obviously deciding as a group that this is unacceptable.

Fight choreography

Four of the bandits draw their swords while the remaining two arm their crossbows and begin to move backwards, opening up space to fire their bolts. The bandit closest to Xantic gets a sneer on his face and says “you’re really weird” as he stabs the surprised gnome, who falls over in pain. The halfling runs over to his wagon full of merchandise and hides underneath it, whimpering at the sight of the blood sure to be spilled soon.

Having caught the adventurers by surprise, the other bandits attack. Dolor gets the worst of this first wave, taking a sword to the belly, Grindlefoot takes a wound, and Gven misses one of the bandits with a swing of her greatsword. In response, Xantic hits his attacker with a disadvantage spell while Dolor and Grindlefoot miss on their attempts to enter the fray from afar. With a thoughtful look, Gven decides that enough is enough and goes into barbarian rage, almost completely severing the body of the bandit closest to her.

In a brief moment, Xantic casts Enhanced Weapon on Gven’s greatsword, giving it +1 bonus to attack and damage rolls. Fortunately, this spell remains intact until Xantic specifically removes it.

Having lost one of their cohorts and seeing that this isn’t going to be an easy win, two of the bandits start to slowly move away from the battle. One of the bandit crossbowmen fires off a round that just misses Gven’s head, to which she responds “that wasn’t very nice” and proceeds to cleave another bandit into two pieces. The rest of the bandits still alive decide they’ve had enough and turn to run away. Just then, the halfling jumps out from underneath his wagon, yells “not this time!” and points his hand at them. Bolts of energy shoot from his fingertips, striking the fleeing bandits and sending them to violent deaths.

Xantic becomes frantically excited at this unexpected development and begins an inquisition of the halfling, desperately curious to understand what he just did. During Xantic’s questioning, the halfling is able to communicate that his name is Ben, he lives in the town of Wayside, further West along the Ha-derech, towards Elsemar, and runs a small general store.

Ben gives each of the adventurers 7 silver and 6 copper pieces for helping him defeat the bandits.

The adventurers and Ben, the halfling, decide to spend the night at the camp, despite the earlier battle. They remove the dead bandits’ bodies and turn their heads when Xantic goes to collect a few interesting body parts for his experiments. Grindlefoot, Dolor, and Gven agree to take shifts on watch while the others sleep. Meanwhile, Xantic creates a small golem dog from bones and bits of the dead bandits to watch for them, but it doesn’t do much besides shuffle around loudly and fetch sticks thrown for it. The night was uneventful and, mercifully, Xantic dismantles the golem in the morning before they break camp and head towards Wayside.

After a half-day’s walk westward on the Ha-derech, the party reaches Wayside, a slightly larger town than most of the villages along the road that is built alongside a river. Upon entering the main square, they see a rather large building with a big sign out front, The Bargain Ben. The adventurers look at Ben with incredulity, not expecting anything nearly this big in scope. He sheepishly grins and says “it’s just a small store, nothing fancy like they have in Elsemar.”

Leaning against the front door of The Bargain Ben, is a slender female elf wearing red and blue armor that appears to be scorched. As she notices Ben and the group, a deep scowl takes over her face and she stomps over to confront the halfling entrepreneur. Ben introduces her as Cindel.

Apparently, while guarding the field of Ben’s “special crop,” Cindel was attacked by a chimera and barely escaped alive. A lengthy discussion ensues where Xantic, once again with his curiosity, and Grindlefoot, with his farming experience, ask all about this “special crop.” Eventually, Ben brings up the possibility of the group killing the chimera which prompts Cindel into a lengthy description of chimeras and all the ways they can kill you. A fire-breathing dragon head is apparently the one that she narrowly escaped.

After some haggling, and hearing more of Cindel’s very detailed descriptions of how horrible chimeras can be, Ben and the adventurers reach an agreement: they’ll accept the task for payment of 450 gold pieces. With some reluctance, and respect, Cindel sees the benefit to the agreement. If the group kills the chimera, she’ll be able to safely guard Ben’s special crop. With that in mind, she provides Xantic with the formula and instructions for an old elven weapon, Chimera’s Bane.

With their immediate future plans decided, the group watches Cindel skip—yes, skip, not walk, saunter, or sashay—across the courtyard to a large yellow building with a sign out front that reads, Buzzin Bee Inn. Ben recommends they spend the night there before heading to the apothecary the next day for all of the Chimera’s Bane ingredients.

The adventurers advance to level 2.