Last night, the beginning of a D&D campaign

[nadriel]

Last night mapp ran the first session of his D&D campaign that I was playing in, along with my friends Martin and dainul.

I'll keep the details behind LJ-cut for those of you who aren't into that sort of thing.


Okay, this is set in a campaign world of mapp's devising, with a single empire dominating most of the world, with its monotheistic religion (The Church of the Sun), being aggressively imported into each new place as it is conquered. The original empire is oriental in origin, but by now, the empire as a whole is very multicultural. I am playing a native of the original empire, a Lawful Evil Rogue (going Assassin as soon as I can). For various background reasons (like my lack of morals, and inclination towards acts of violent death upon people where appropriate), my character has left his family, and at some point in the prehistory, met up with dainul's character, a Lawful Evil Fighter, from a Norse-style culture. So we have a small but strong, smart and very dextrous oriental with brown eyes and long black hair, hanging around with a 6ft blond, blue-eyed, stupid thug. Which works really well, as in a fight, he keeps them busy while I get in position for a sneak attack. At the start of the game, we are called upon by a mid-level bureaucrat from the Ministry of Local Culture (otherwise known as the "hiring mercenary types to do dodgy stuff" Ministry by those in the know- ie, my character). Where we are met by the third party member, a Lawful Good Aasimar Paladin (an Aasimar, for those who don't know, is someone who has one parent who is a Celestial (angel type entity). So now the party consists of a short black-haired oriental, a 6ft blond barbarian, and a 7ft blond paladin of the Sun. After a little discussion, handled by me as the only native their (yep, racial prejudice is alive and well in this world...), during which, in that lovely beating about the bush oriental style of discussion, it becomes clear that we are to go and sort out problems with a local cult in newly-conquered territory (It's amazing how easy it is to say, "go there and sort it out by any means necessary, including killing people if you have to", without actually saying it or letting the Paladin know). We're told how much our pay will be (not much), and that we can get travel with a caravan arranged for us. So, we agree to travel with a caravan, and discover we've been signed on as guards.

After a little more investigation, and a good night's sleep, we head towards the area where we're meeting the caravan (suffice to say, during the course of my investigations, I work out that the caravan is quite clearly dodgy). After meeting with the paladin, we are met by someone who starts asking us if we're guards for the caravan. Spotting a fellow dodgy type, I get my Nordic friend to lead the Paladin away, whilst I engage in discussions. As it turns out, he represents the real owner of the goods we're escorting, and is willing to pay me for details of the route. Since I'd been very specific in the terms of the contract I agreed to, I had no problem with this, and so made some extra money (which I later split with my friend). I also arranged to be doing outrider work at a certain point just outside the city...

Suffice to say, the caravan left, with myself and dainul off a ay ahead, where we encounter a couple of dodgy types. After letting them know about the paladin, suggesting they try and get him to help by negotiation (the Church frowns on theft), and enquiring how long we should leave before coming to the rescue, we let them go, and proceed to give each other bruises around the back of the neck, drag each other off the road, and generally make it look like we were ambushed. We then sit down in the woods and play some cards while we wait.

Hearing the ambush on the caravan, we realise they haven't taken our advice. Then we shrug and get back to our cards, as we've already been paid.
When we hear the last ambusher running away in our direction, we realise that the ambush has failed, and further, he's the only one who could easily prove we were in on the attack, so I conceal myself, and dainul unlsings his heavy crossbow. As the guy appears, he gets hit by a glancing blow from a crossbow bolt, then, as he runs past me, he gets two short swords stuck precisely in vital organs, and dies. A lot. We then head back to the caravan, and apologise for being ambushed.

Later on, we encounter a petty road tax collector, who increases the tax because of the ambush and because he's an officious little oik. I'm watching this from the woods to the side, as I decided to continue outriding (this time properly). As the caravan travels on to a wagon stop for the night, I wait behind until the tax collector makes camp, then, with some amazing rolls, sneak into the camp, and steal the reciept for the increased tax. I then head back to where the caravan has stopped for the night, and quietly hand over the reciept to the caravan owner, who promptly "loses" both it and his copy.

After a minor altercation with other caravan guards, where we discover that our caravan owner isn't much liked (I file this away for future reference, should it be necessary to stitch him up later), we settle down for the night, and end the session.

I don't play evil characters much, but sometimes, it's really fun...