Introduction |
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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. |