Where did it all begin for your Stap characters, where they all met for the first time.
My group met at the Shark with two heads tavern in Shadowshore, our barbarian Tehtar the Wanderer beat the hell out of a couple of scumbags which turned out to be Lotus Dragons thieves. After we fled the scene and regrouped at The Boar the Talks inn,it is here they meet Kora...
Where did it all begin for your Stap characters, where they all met for the first time.
My group met at the Shark with two heads tavern in Shadowshore, our barbarian Tehtar the Wanderer beat the hell out of a couple of scumbags which turned out to be Lotus Dragons thieves. After we fled the scene and regrouped at The Boar the Talks inn,it is here they meet Kora...
I made my players all Sasserine natives, and each had been the direct beneficiary of some boon from Lavinia's parents. I also had them all be childhood friends of each other, and Lavinia and Vanthus.
They gave no objections to this idea, and it's made the storyline much more personal.
The campaign started with everyone's reunion at the Vanderboren manor, at Lavinia's personal request. We got off to a nice, quick start.
I decided to start all my PC's out on a ship bound for Sasserine. The ship was owned by the Vanderboren family. Play began with a game of three dragon ante (for coppers instead of gold as everyone was broke). Halfway through the card game a yell of "All hands on deck! Prepare to repel boarders!" came from the captain. The PC's naturally came to the aid of the ship helping to repel the Crimson Fleet pirate ship. I gave my players the option of either being from Sasserine and returning to the city from a time abroad or to choose wherever they liked in the Greyhawk setting as their origin. The two players that choose to be from Sasserine got packets of info about the city that they could use to help guide their new found friends around with. Having helped save one of the Vanderboren's ships Lavinia naturally chose to seek the PC's out when she needed some more help in solving her problems.
Waldengast was out wandering the Amedio when he stumbled upon a group of Zelkarune's Horns trying to capture a strange little man covered in tattoo. That little man turned out to be Queequeg, a pygmy halfling druid on his way to the city on a mission sent by his clan. Wally rescued him from the poachers and the pair hightailed it to Sasserine. They met up with a group of Wally's friends, halfling brewers of Whistlegap Stout, who needed his help with something. The head of the family, Lily, had gone missing and the family was at a loss as to what to do. They didn't want to trust outsiders and the usual group of halflings who dealt with this kind of thing left town a week before the incident. Wally and Queequeg agreed and began to investigate.
Through the course of the investigation, they met the elven bard Milo Xiloscient of the Nobles District, and Johan, an hired elven sword, who were looking for a friend of the family as well. The trio began to work togethor and eventually freed Lily Whistlgap, Amellia Lidue (I think that's her named, I can't quite remember....) and Bleu le Fontaine, all of whom had powerful families and allies. It was through this that they met Lavinia Vanderboren and the other two of their party.
This was all before I decided to run STAP, so I'm glad I could fit it in. I wound up changing some names and things to make the plot more cohesive but all in all it worked out well.
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Two met when one rescued another from flotsam on the way to the city by small craft. One of these characters was a part Olman ranger (think sailor/fisherwoman), the other was full-blood Olman druid/monk. Those two drew the attention of Lavinia's factor in a barfight soon after entering town and earned an invitation to Lavinia's dinner.
(I mean come on, you can't start a new campaign without a barfight! Right?)
The third was a loose acquaintance of Lavinia's who was down on her luck and had already agreed to help Lavinia with the Blue Nixie. She was there at the dinner party when the first two were essentially 'interviewed' for the job.
They were soon forged into a team through their shared hatred of Vanthus Vanderboren.
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Some of our characters were from the city (Escalant in FR), others were from nearby regions. One was from another plane. We were all thrust together when a crazy half-ogre sewer worker burst into the tavern we were all at (seperately) and started killing people. He was going on about spiders in his brain, so we had to put him down. Ogres aren't usually full of spiders, are they?
When the watch showed up (district was run by temple of Bane), we were pressed into service to investigate. Our investigation and involvent in stopping the rampaging half-ogre gained us enough noteriety to warrant an invitation from Lavina. Obviously, our DM has diverged a bit from the standard setting and adventure ;)
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Our characters began the campaign as sailors aboard the pinnace "Ravaged Pride", under the command of a dwarf named Captain Argus. (Yes, I shamelessly stole the name from the wooden ship model here on Paizo, which I use in the game, but the players don't need to know that.) :)
At any rate, the night we started the campaign was fated to be the last voyage of the Ravaged Pride. She was attacked two days out of Sasserine by a squad of Sahuagin. They convinced a giant shark to bite a big hole in the bottom of the boat that they entered through, as well as assaulting the deck simultaneously.
The attack was fended off, and the boat was able to stay afloat long enough to limp into Sasserine, but thereafter, Captain Argus sold the boat to "It Still Floats" and retired in Sasserine.
This, conveniently enough, left our heroes unemployed with severance pay in Sasserine just as Kora Whistlegap was approaching them to offer them a job for Lavinia Vanderboren.
I'm running Savage Tide in Eberron. My players have only just begun the first adventure, but:
- Alth, the gnome druid, was captured by slavers as a very young child and sold to a wealthy family of Sasserine during the reign of the Sea Princes. He doesn't know it yet, but his parents came from Lorghalen, and he looks remarkably like his late father - a one-time companion of the gnomish scholar Urol Foril Forol.
- "Mike", the changeling artificer masquerading as Michaela Cannith of Cyre, was trained by House Cannith in the city of Metrol before Cyre's destruction at the end of the Last War. She came to Sasserine expressly because it was a place where the dragonmarked houses don't have an established presence, because she finds it convenient to pretend to membership in the absence of anyone who can gainsay her. She doesn't pretend to have a dragonmark, however.
- "Diegur", a human fighter once known as Amadeus Orien, came to Sasserine with his mercenary company in its travels. Originally from the city of Sharn in Breland, he entered into the life of a sellsword to get away from his family, especially:
- Lutagnan d'Orien, dragonmarked sorcerer of House Orien, the younger brother of Amadeus and the favoured son of their parents, unmarked members of the house who offered spellcasting services to their cousins and expected their sons to take up the business. Amadeus' lack of magical talent was a disappointment, but the combination of Lutagnan's sorcerous abilities and his manifestation of a dragonmark made him their favourite. Unfortunately, their special treatment of him prevented Lutagnan from ever learning the responsibility needed to fulfill their expectations, so he ended up chasing after his brother's glamourous adventuring lifestyle - never realising that Amadeus left because he feared he would come to resent his younger brother if he stayed.
- Silk, a warforged rogue, valet and bodyguard to Lutagnan d'Orien. He was found damaged and amnesiac by the brothers' parents and trained to serve and protect the boys, so he travels with Lutagnan to keep him safe until he decides to give up this adventuring foolishness and come home to take up the family business. Lutagnan and Silk's arrival in Sasserine was unknown to Amadeus until they met at the dinner Lavinia Vanderboren held to offer the PCs employment in her service - "Diegur" having been invited (as Amadeus Orien) at Lutagnan's suggestion.
- "The Marcher", a human anagakok (variant specialist wizard) from the Shadow Marches, nameless for ritual reasons. The Marcher is following visions which compel him to travel west to Sasserine, and ended up travelling on a ship which picked up Lutagnan d'Orien and Silk at Sharn. His visions sometimes manifest as an impression of people he meets who are important to his destiny, and both of them qualified. He tends to refer to people according to the impression he received of them - the once-amnesiac Silk, for instance, is "the Voided One".
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 32
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Tin-a-Tin, the halfling spellthief, was helping out in her dad's pet store when some thugs came in to hit it for protection money. Her dad told them where to go, then sent her to hire a few adventurer types to watch the place that night, just in case.
Hope and Templeton, barbarians, had just finished some caravan duty for Zelkarune's Horns and were chatting on a terrace cafe, sipping iced beer when Tin-a-Tin came looking for muscular figures to recruit.
Bohairic, the Mulhorandi mage, was fresh from his ship and looking for work when he overheard the exchange and offered his superior intellectual powers to the endeavour.
Half an hour later, the thugs tried to torch the shop and chaos, smoke, burning parakeets and terrified monkeys cemented their alliance.
When I get a chance to run it, I'll have them all come from a secluded village in the Hellfurnaces. They'll be childhood friends that learned their trades from the village and a mysterious hermit. They'll start out on their first adventure when goblins finally find their village.
They'll all be sent to Cauldrin so that they can build up their levels and return home so that they can help defend their village.
Little do they know that the hermit is a shape changed evil dragon that is a little crazy, bored and looking for a challenge. This will give me a chance to pull out my Collosal Red Dragon. : )
There's more too it of course, but that's the general outline.
Grogith worked on the docks under Pier boss Solar Vark. Uno trained with a number of other "worthy" Sasserine natives at the Scarlet Brotherhood Embassy. Edmonde Dante is the grand son of the psychic Seer of Cudgel. Mizushin is a hippie who spent her time wondering the jungles outside of Sasserine. They were all hired by a crazy gnome to deal with his rat problem in his Cellar. A dire Fiendish rat problem.
The rest met Zaelana, elf cleric of Obad Hai at the Vanderboren Manor before securing the blue nixie.
Adonis Pramus, bard and fitness guru to the Sasserine noble met the rest under Parrot Island. He had arrived late with Mizushiin, both tricked by Vanthus himself into the depths below.
We're about to start the campaign, but I'm planning to have the PCs meet when they happen to be in the area to rescue some kids from being run down by two nobles (one of the nobles being Avner Maravanchi) who are racing their expensive horses down the middle of a city street.