Adventure Path: Rise of the Runelords

The small town of Sandpoint, located near the southwestern coast of Varisia, had seen its fair share of the mayhem that typically plagued these lands. It had been attacked by giants, ogres, some said also half-ogres, maybe even some three-quarter ogres (or so they say), serial killers, evil wizards that cast spells to screw things up, you name it, it was here. Sometimes it was peaceful, but you could never really enjoy the peace, because you knew pretty soon that Varisia would throw something nasty your way. Fortunately there always seemed to be a ready supply of freelance adventurers there to get rid of whatever evil was attacking the town this week. One would think that by now, the forces of evil would have given up, because they realize they aren’t accomplishing anything except giving adventurers more experience points. Or maybe evil does win sometimes, you just never hear about it because, as everyone knows, the winners write the history books. Of course you would also think that these towns would realize that the evil threat is here to stay, so it might be a good idea to form a well-functioning, professional, trained military force to repel evil, rather than just outsourcing everything to whatever random adventurers happen to be in the area when trouble breaks out. But on the other hand, the outsource-everything-to-random-adventurers plan seemed to have been working so far, so maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea.

So, anyway, in the local tavern four up-and-coming adventurers had gotten back from their latest adventure and were relaxing and healing up in the Rusty Dragon tavern. They had heard rumors that this was one of those taverns where just one night resting in the tavern could restore all your wounds. There was Harsk, the dwarf ranger, Ezren, the human wizard, Valeros, the human fighter, and Lem, a Halfling bard. They were checking what they had in their possessions – Valeros with his usual assortment of weapons (he never wanted to be without a weapon, so he always carried at least five weapons into battle, just in case something happened), Ezren with some tomes of arcane knowledge, Lem with his musical instruments – he was so good with them he could even cast spells though them – and of course, all of them had their blessings. Thought they couldn’t be seen or felt, they were no less important – timely aid from the gods could mean the difference between avoiding a trap or getting blown up by it, defeating a monster or being defeated by it, acquiring an item of power and letting it slip from your grasp, even between finding the villain just in time and letting him escape to continue his mischief. Remember when they told you to count your blessings? Well, here, they mean that literally. Five for Lem, five for Harsk, three for Valeros – and Ezren, well, he didn’t have any blessings from the gods at all. I guess the gods just don’t like wizards for some reason. Maybe the theory is that the gods are the ones that control the natural laws of the universe, and arcane magic – by breaking those laws – is going against the will of the gods. But whatever it was, there wasn’t much time right now to think about it, because just outside the tavern, they heard the alarm bells ringing. Goblin attack!