Introduction

After a flash of pain, you open your eyes and find yourself in a strange room surrounded by strange people. You don’t know where you are and after you think about it for a minute, you don’t know who you are. A friendly face stands before you. He is a tall human with short brown hair wearing standard traveling cloths. On his forehead is a black tattoo of a fist holding a lightening bolt. You instantly recognize this as the mark of Heironeous. Behind him stands another man. He wears long robes and has his back to you. He seems to be closing a cabinet. You can’t see its contents. 

He main in front of you smiles and says, “Ah, you’re awake. My name is Wesley.” As he hands you a small mirror, he explains that you have just joined the army of Heironeous. In the mirror you notice that you have the same tattoo on your forehead. Wesley leads you from the room as he explains that today is your orientation into the army and you have lots to do.

 He leads you past rows of dorm rooms. Each room contains several people. You see Male and Female Humans, Elves, Drow, Halflings and the occasional monster. Wesley leads you into a huge warehouse and over to the Property Master. The Property Master looks you up and down, says to himself, “I know exactly what you need.” And heads off into the depths of the warehouse. After a few minutes he returns with an armload of equipment and sets it down on the counter in front of you.

 Wesley helps you to gather up your equipment as he hurries you into a small dressing room. He explains that your first task is to show your stuff so that it can be determined where your roll will be in the army. You are to fight in an arena and you are to fight to win. Before you have a chance to ask any questions, Wesley says you have time to dress and mediate and he will return for you when it’s time. And with that, he leaves you.

 After some time passes, he returns and leads you to the arena. He explains that your opponent will be directly across from you and that when the wall drops the contest will being.

 You stand there sweating and nervous. You have no idea what’s going on or what will be waiting for you when the wall drops. But you steady yourself, the wall drops and the battle begins.

 In the first round, Jeff faced off against Chuck. While Jeff was sneaky and careful, Chuck was mostly looking for an opening to cast. When the time came, Chuck dropped Jeff with a couple of Magic Missiles.

 In the second round, James faced off against Roy. James cast Expeditious Retreat and since Roy had no range weapon, spent most of the time running away and casting more buffeting spells. Eventually, Roy took a Total Defense while James empty his quiver of arrows on him. After James ran out of arrows, Roy charged and was cut down by and enlarged James.

 In the third round, Liz faced off against Neal. While Neal only needed to connect once to cleave Liz in half, an Expeditious Retreat and a Sleep spell make short work of him.

 In the fourth and final round, a three-way battle between James, Chuck and Liz ensued. Chuck walked around a bit between his battles and overheard a rumor that defeated enemies are sometimes forced to join Heironeous’ army. Convinced that he was forced to join and that Heironeous would not ask his soldiers to fight each other, Chuck dropped all his equipment, shouted to the skies that he would not fight and sat down in the middle of the ring.  Using the Sleep spell again, Liz dropped James early in the fight. Since Chuck would not fight, they stood around waiting for the doors to open thus signaling and end to the contest. Since the doors did not open, Liz decided to remove James’ weapons before she dealt with Chuck. But before she could decide what to do, James was on his feet and attacking Chuck. Since Chuck was not fighting back, he dropped very quickly (one hit I believe). James closed on Liz and dropped her just as easily.

 James was lead off by Wesley into another room. Sometime later all those defeated awoke in their group quarters. All of their injuries had disappeared and any equipment they used during the battle had been replaced. James entered the bunks accompanied by the teams Sergeant. Sergeant Scourge explained the purpose of the exercise was to pick a leader among the teammates. James has been selected as the Team Leader and is in charge of the squad. At this point, the team is lead off for a week of specialized training. In that time the group learns how to communicate using simple gestures. The team members also learn the code of the core “All things with honor and no one gets left behind”. They are also told that it is their duty to challenge the current leader if he (or she) violates the code.

 The group learns of their first mission as emissaries of Heronious at the annual Shackling celebration in Muffin’s Honor.

 And here we stopped.