The Greylands House Campaign - Session 1

 

Summary 

I am starting a house campaign for my partners, playing in my OSE Greylands campaign. In this first session the party members mostly met each other and found some more about the current state of the land.  

Party Members

• Verasha - Level 2 Druid 
• Pipam - Level 2 Illusionist
• von Plarf - Level 1 Elf
• Zoltan - Level 2 Dwarf

Followers

Jaro (Verasha's war boar); Jan "the Hard Up" (Torchbearer); Ludwig (Porter); Adam (Man-at-Arms); Walter of Potsdam (Man-at-Arms) and 3 War Hounds 

Session Recap

After a strange dream/side-adventure/mental breakdown in the Slumbering Ursine Dunes, Verasha returned home to the Greylands. She had apparently been away for close to a year and a half, as it was now autumn and also a year later. 

The druid, immediately upon reaching Greytown, went to the town kennels and bought a trio of trained war hounds. She then met up with the rest of the party:

Pipam, a golden child of a lesser aristocratic family who had been coddled and sheltered from the world his entire life and so had now gone out on adventure to experience (and touch) everything that he had missed.

Von Plarf (no first name given), a daughter of a lesser noble family of heretics from the Empire. She is out in the Greylands to seek her fortunes, just like every estranged daughter, 8th son and other people with no prospect of ever inheriting anything of value from their family. 

She is companied by her nanny valet butler servant and bodyguard Zoltan the dwarf. He's here mostly to try and keep miss von Plarf from getting herself killed.

After hiring some help from the Guild of Mercenaries, Hirelings and Porters and inquiring about what's new around the place, the party realized that the forest south of town had now managed to grow almost twice in size, essentially merging with another forest further north. As Verasha was someone born and raised in the forest, she decided to head back home to her village and investigate. 

As the group travelled they stopped at an outpost near the edge of the forest, a tower renovated and manned by soldiers under the service of a woman named Frina. They then went into the forest proper, stopping by to pay respects to the wooden idol of Medved. The camping site in the forest clearing appeared strangely empty, and they had learned that the Lord of the Bears had not been seen around recently. 

This, except without the honor guard and pile of treasure.

From there as they were heading towards the lake the group had several encounters, one with a pack of talking wolves who were weirdly cordial and polite and the two groups crossed paths without any incident, the other encounter was with a troll who was approaching the group, but hadn't seen them yet. They blinded it using a Light spell and then ran off, leaving the troll sitting on the ground and shouting profanities at whoever had done this to him. 

With those incidents out of the way the party made it to the hidden pagan village on the shore of the lake, Verasha's home. The village was, luckily, still there and everyone seemed happy to see Verasha again. 

Between asking in town and speaking go the hippies in the hidden village the party learned that the strange space elves seen previously in the area had built several pylons and, once those were activated, a chunk of the forest as well as a strange and ominous tower that had appeared a while back simply...vanished with a pop. Then in the span of less than a month out of the area that the strange elves had rapidly started to grow a new forest in there, sprawling out into the surrounding area, covering a huge amount of territory before finally stopping. Leshy, the guardian spirit of the forest had also been crankier and weirder than his usual self. 

GM Observations

So, this was not much of a session, but it was important to help the players get situated and acquainted with the setting and the adventure locations. Both encounters in the forest ended up with really high reaction rolls, plus the quick thinking on the part of the players also meant that any potential fight with the Troll was immediately avoided too. 

Beyond that - I decided to run a house game for my family and since I am planning on exploring more of the Greylands and what that setting can be, beyond a rip-off of the (much better) Hill Cantons, I figured this would be a good thing to run while I prepare for my next open table campaign. 

While most of the events of the previous campaign are still canon in what happened in the area, I do plan on simply reusing or resetting if you will the dungeons, so I can run them fresh for the new players. 

I also plan on using this campaign to test out various house rule changes and tweaks I have been wanting to make now that I also have another campaign under my belt.