Session Zero - 30/06/2023 The first session of the DnD Campaign for the Noodlebowl!

We are introduced to the wonderful picturesque village of Sliphafau, it’s not an incredibly large village, with a population of only 130 people normally, It’s main feature though is the island in the middle of the lake that the village surrounds, upon this island is a pavillion and a area for festivities to take place.

The village holds the usual supplies of buildings, Stables, Inns, Blacksmiths and Marketplaces. In the north west of the village is a large keep where the rich decided to set up shop but don’t interact with the villagers in any way.

Currently what’s going on is the Festival of the Moon, starting on the 25th day of the 12th month of the year 102 (and before you say it, sadly it’s not christmas ~ that’s on the 12th day of the 17th month) and goes on for a week, this is the first day of the festival.

It’s during the day, everyone is out and about. Enjoying the festivities where there is a vast range of events taking place, and this is where we meet out first character. Ko, the Dragonborn trying to fling axes at the target. As each attempt passes the axes fly far from target. with Ko clearly getting frustrated, the attendant to the game steps and up promptly tells Ko to calm down, put down their axe, and to give one the smaller axes another go. Telling Ko to breath, take their time and then release.

Not quite hitting the Bullseye, Ko manages to hit the Target and wins a bag of apples, where they promptly throws one up in the air and gobbles.

Elsewhere in the festival, we have Fentrix, a halfling, wondering around looking around for any sweet sweet bargins, and manages to find one. and then promptly get put off from making the purchase by the over pushy sales person.

Fentrix carries on looking around, but nothing else catches their eye.

Not too far away, another sales person is shouting out to the audiances, asking if anyone wants to try their luck at Pick an Accessory, with a chance to winning a special magical accessory, or maybe a junky accessory.

Rae, walks up with the word magic being mentioned and asks to have a go of the lucky dip. with the rummaging and ruffling Rae pulls out a poorly wrapped package that fills an avarage human hand. Rae unwraps to reveal a very sparkly butterfly broach. Upon asking the salesperson about it, he promptly says that he has no recollection of the item, it’s not one of his and thus does not know of the properties of the item (No knowledge of if it contains magic or not). Curious Rae then decides to keep it. The Salesperson then mentions about the Inn, as well as the up coming feature of the festival with the Band of Bards playing.

The day is starting to get a little late now, the sun is on it’s approach to sunset, the wiffs of the food vendors scattered around the island start becoming stronger, as everyone around starts to get peckish. The wiff of a nice meaty stews draws the attention of a very shy, to them selves Tabaxi (Half) where Free Stripe asks for a bowl of stew to fight off the hunger. The food vendor says that this is on the house, and asks if you could share his name out there either good or bad, he does not matter. and then suggests to Free Stripe to sit down, enjoy the show and the food.

The sun is now setting, the festival is in full swing (since it is the festival of the moon, gotta have a moon!) the lead singer of the Band of Bards (The Moon Barders) makes his voice bellow and shouts out to the crowd, that they are performing their last tour here at the festival, that everyone here is lucky to hear them sing here tonight and that they hope you enjoy the show…

Midway through the show, where they played their more relaxing mellow tunes the lead singer then comes up to say there is now going to be a sudden change of pace, hold tight for whats about to come along.

They start playing music with much more pace, more energy, more dynamics, and then suddenly fireworks start going off.

after a couple of fireworks go off, something else goes off, this turns out to be a massive ball of very white light, causing everyone to go blind and panic.

the light fades, people start to regain their senses, and screaming start to occur. a couple of the band members are no longer there, and Rae and the rest of the team (though still scattered at this point) notice that some of the other band members are clasping various body parts or kneeling on the floor.

Shortly there afrer though, a shadowy figure then runs through the crowd, bumping into each of the members on way or another as they try to escape.

Turning around instinctively Rae tries to spot where this figure went, but wasn’t quick enough to lock eyes upon them and loses them.

Free Stripe, on the other hand manages to see the escapee and makes chase, though this chase didn’t land very far as Stripes ended up running head first into a tree and falls at the feet of Rae.

When Rae offers a hand to help up, Stripes was very relucant and manages to help themselves back to the feet. They discuss about the shadowy figure, before Stripes suddenly get a feeling that someone is watching / following them.

Rae shouts out a number of times and then finally asks Friend or Foe: which then a reply of “Friend I guess” appears as Fentrix walks out of the shadows and into sight. The trio discuss what has happend, what was they’re planning on doing with the concenses of thought it to try and find this figure and work out what is going on.

First protocol, Rae decides to try and grab a guard to give a heads up on whats going on, manages to find one and then instantly regrets the decision as this guard that appears is next to useless. to the point of constant stuttering, not knowing whats going on (pretty sure his trousers weren’t that shade of brown) and is very, very young.

Rae tells the guard, and the guard just says go do the thing, do what you want, I should tell my boss, but I don’t know, I’m young and first day. so yeah go do you….

Between Fentrix and Stripes they manage to start tracking the shadowy figure to a small hedge line where they encounter an aggressive Ko trying to cut down the poor shrubs trying to find this figure.

(Paraphrasing) They join forces and continue to follow the scent of the figure, they then found a pile of dumped cloak and with nothing further to go on. Though in the distance someone spots that a tree has recently been damaged and upon further inspection it was determined that the damage was caused by chainmail armour. and someone fleeing in that various direction. Points deeper into the forest

as they start making their way, suddenly the silence of the forest was broken with a collection of swearing and curses, and screams and then suddenly silence again… The group all decide to make a dash in the direction of the noise, and thankfully were all able to perceive enough to see the cliff face leading down into a small chasm and stopping before meeting the same fate.

Upon looking down at the chasm that stands before them the party then discovers what originally made that noise, albeit just about. down at the bottom of the chasm, not looking in the best of states (he rolled a good ole natural 1) was the shadowy figure. The instant they spotted him, Rae traversed down the cliff and provided some healing support to the man, who was very reluctant to say anything useful whats so ever in regards to what he was doing, where he was, or anything like that. Claiming he was a “Very Bad Person” and that “he knew of no reason why he was here” or either where here was. The rest of the party slowly made their way down, first Ko, then a suggestion that someone[I can’t remember who suggested it originally] try to catch the others who want to come down, Stripes refused this offer (being Tabaxi helps in situations like this) and slipped on down gracefully, then Rae, Stripes and Ko decided to all attempt to catch Fentrix… With their arms drawn ready to catch, Ko just barges in between Rae and Stripes, arms out, and catches Fentrix like someone who threw a toddler up in the air and then catches them.

This is the point where the characters finally learn of each others names! (Go party go) and eventually Rae then askes the chap on the ground his name and where he was from…

“Gregory Fairfax, I’m a Tax Collector in the town of Billabarth and as I have told you before, and I’ll tell you again, I don’t know what i’m doing here… The last I remember was drinking with my friend in the pub, having a good time, and enjoying the company…. I call my self a bad man, because that’s what everyone else calls me… it’s because I’m a Tax Collector you see, and no one likes Tax collectors….” He also states after hearing the date that the last date he remembers was it being the 23rd of the 12th, which means he has somewhat lost 2 days of memory.

At this point frustrations are building Ko then searches the pockets of Gregory, and finds a piece of paper, whome then hands it over to Fentrix.

Fentrix then reads the paper, initially in their head… and then out loud to the party

“The Hollow Forlorn Moon Astral Allathar” (forgotten the first word, so if anyone has that in their notes please and thankful)

Upon hearing these words, Gregory suddenly takes on a somewhat different attitude, gruffer, angrier. Brings up in speech that he was in the inn down the road from here last night, having a drink with a short person, who was wearing a feline mask, they didn’t say much other than that, but I was instructed to go ahead and cause a large explosion during the festival tonight, and if I were to do it I would be paid a handsome sum of 100GP.

If I remember rightly, I was meant to go meet them back at the inn, when the end of todays festivities come to a close……

[New Quest Marker Gained - Go to the Inn]

Now with this information uncovered through some intimidation efforts, the group decide to drag him back to the guards for his just desserts… the problem, both his arms are broken / not functional, and there is a giant cliff in the way, no way to properly carry him back up a very enthusiastic dragonborn births the idea of dragging him up using the 10ft of chain that they have…

Ko asks Stripes to clamber up with the chain in tow, though reluctantly strips agrees to do this, Rae offers to go topside also to assist with the pulling up and guiding of the chain, making sure Gregory doesn’t run away when he is rescued… while Rae clambers up, Ko and Fentrix then tie the remaining slack of chain around poor Gregory’s ankles as this was deemed the safest place to tie up without causing any additional pain.

Once ready with the preparations, Rae and Stripes then get ready to heave up…. expecting a heavy weight they somehow (Probably through all the adrenaline causing through them) in one big heave send Gregory flying and then stopping him just before bonking his head on the branch that they were using for a pulley system.

Once Gregory is re-secured moving the chains from his ankles to his torso and arms, and Ko and Fentrix then clamber up the cliff face, decide to take this scallywag to the ‘very useful’ guards.

Upon reaching the end of the small forest on the island in the middle of the lake in the village of Sliphafor, a very unfortunate incident took place, out of the blue an arrow or crossbow bolt found its way through Gregory’s throat near decapitating him and causing his deadweight to drop down in front of Rae, upon seeing this, Fentrix and their ‘mastery’ (I say ‘mastery’ because you’re only level 1 so far) of archery allowed them to pinpoint roughly where it was coming from, told the rest of the group and before they went off to chase yet another shadowy figure, Rae looks deeply at the chainmail of Gregory and asks themselves if it was better than they have currently (In this instance no, very well worn and starting to fall apart)

Over the bridge and through the streets, they manage to corner this shadowy figure ( go figure he really doesn’t want to talk much either) Saying things like their lords and leaders will take the village and world for them selves, and that they won’t stop him.. While the team debates on what to do at this moment, the trapped person attempts to fire off a mini crossbow bolt towards the party, but due to the haphazard nature of the situation he missed the group entirely. This is where Fentrix then releases an arrow from the bow disabling the enemy at the time.

Further discussions ensure, and then Rae spots the enemy fiddling around with his belt, saying that he will escape and you can’t capture him at all…. which then prompted Rae to rush towards him and pin him up against a wall. Ko also rushes in and pins the persons arm up against the wall, decided to rummage around his pocket, to discover a bunch of torn pieces of paper, and a small grenade type object, a quick look saw that it was already active and Ko goes about throwing it away…

…Due to the amount of time finding it to throwing it, there wasn’t much time left on the fuse, in which time Kaboom the whole area is now covered in think, heavy smoke, which for the first few minutes meant coughing and spluttering, before it started to fade, both Rae and Ko do a check to make sure they’re still holding onto the cloaked figure… and as it fades it turns out that they were a slippery fool and managed to slip out of their chestpiece armour and left a log in Ko’s hand.

Upon trying to wonder what was going on, they decided to head over to the inn, get a rest, have a look at this torn piece of paper and try to plan out their next steps.

[Finished quest - Head to the Inn] [New Quest - Gather Information from Inn Keeper and form plan of action]

(Final wall of text will cover the conversation with the Innkeep)