First Time Eberron DM - Session Journal - Happy for any hooks/ideas

[kraftcheese]

Sorry, this is gonna be long, but there is a TL;DR at the end.

Okay, so I had my first 5e session as a DM last night (also probably my 6th RPG session in my life!) and I think it went quite well, but I'd like a bit of feedback from where to go from here! I set it in Eberron as it's a setting I like, that tends to lend itself to adventure and that I know a bit about, which will hopefully make it a little easier

I'd say I was a bit under-prepared, but my players, knowing nothing about Eberron and their first-time ever playing an RPG, really made up for it; just from me saying "magic WW1 between 5 countries ended two years ago and there's a lot of small-scale, low level magic in people's everyday life" and giving them this https://imgur.com/966bkaM I got an incredible amount of hooks in our session 0 and 1.

My players wanted to be a stern but good human Cleric (Acolyte) from a noble family and an emotional and somewhat selfish fire genasi Rogue (Urchin) trying to do better as a person, and once I gave them this one page of info in our session 0 they were throwing out really good, spot-on-for-the-setting ideas and hooks; they decided they were going to start in Thrane, so I showed them this map: https://imgur.com/ByY4SEB

After seeing the map our Cleric's player decided he was sent to Flamekeep as part of his family's brown-nosing to the Thranes after the takeover of their home, Thaliost; the Cleric was...not likely to produce an heir and so was their first choice, which he resents them for as he wanted to study magic, an Aundairian tradition. Bit of tension we'll be able to exploit later!

The Rogue decided she was on the streets as an urchin in Thrane, and she picked up and ran with a throwaway line I wrote about her urchin "Token from Parents" item: "a burnt daguerreotype of someone in armor - it still smokes gently at the burnt edges". Both players looked at the map and decided that the armor had a crest from Karnath on it, and that maybe it was her mortal parent; she had been on the streets of Flamekeep as long as she could remember doing thieving jobs for local criminal groups, and was taken in as a charity case by the Church in the last year or so after stealing from the wrong person. The Cleric PC was assigned to watch over her, possibly to train her as an acolyte of the Church.

And this is with these two knowing nothing about Eberron beforehand! :smallbiggrin:
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SESSION 1

(PCs are both Level 1)

We started the session with the Cleric's superior, Father Estwyn, calling the PCs in to warn them to get out of town; some higher ups in the Church are unhappy with a "monstrous" being like a genasi living under their roof, and Estwyn says that some clergy have even been saying having the Rogue there is "an affront to the flame". He says he can’t help organize anything, but promises them 5 gold each out of the coffers. The Rogue tries to convince him to give them a bit more; she suggests that she'll make it seem like she stole the gold from him (which considering her rep. is believable!), rolling a nat. 20 on Charisma in the first roll of the game! He acquiesces, giving them each 9 gp.

Together the PCs decide that they will need some horses, and we do a little roleplay with a stableboy they know, Brad. After a bit of convincing that they're just going on a few-day, proselytizing jaunt around the villages, Brad puts the horses "on the Church's tab", as the players described it. :smallcool: The players decide that their best course of action is to try and leave Thrane as they think that maybe there's a deeper conspiracy out to get them in the Church; the Rogue wants to go to Karnath to see whether she might be able to find clues about her parentage, the Cleric, being her friend/guardian decides to go with her. Only problem is, the fire genasi Rogue is mortally afraid of water (good roleplaying from my player!) so they can't just take a barge across the wide and deep Scion's Sound...the Rogue decides the least scary way to get to Karnath is the partially rebuilt crossing at Thaliost, the place where the Cleric's family is!

So, the PCs get up before dawn and make their way to the stables; Brad gives them the horses (which the players have named Grant and Gassy) and they start walking to the North gate, as they’re heading North. Passive perception from the Cleric lets them know that the North Gate looks suspiciously quiet. No guards on the parapets, no-one on their way to work, no sellers setting carts up, etc. and the players are nervous; they decide to double back towards the West gate through some side streets before they get too close.

Dawn comes, people fill the streets and a rough looking warforged gestures “We need to talk.” to the Rogue in Thieves Cant; her name’s Dagger and she’s been on a few jobs with the Rogue, they’ve helped each other out before, and she’s paying back the favour by warning them the Rogue’s old boss is after her and has stationed thugs at the city gates and the docks. She offers to help the PCs escape the city for a modest fee (a couple of gold to cover expenses) and says that the easiest places to push through the thugs are gonna be the North gate and the docks. The players choose the docks on the idea that surely there must be some barges heading out that they can commandeer.

They arrive at the docks, and Scotty (named by the players after I do an awful Scottish accent), a dwarf harbourmaster who is part of the Church tells them he’s happy for them to take a ride on the barge leaving in a couple of minutes; but the players see that three toughs have stepped out to get in their way. Two are just your regular bandit-types, but their leader is none other than the former boss of the Rogue; me and the player roleplayed that she had been caught stealing from him and then got asylum at the Church when his thugs came after her…and he has a badly burnt hand from their encounter. The Blackhand and his goons attack, and the PCs and Dagger fight back; the Cleric goes after Blackhand, Dagger fistfights a goon in melee and the Rogue takes potshots at the baddies from way back.

One mugger shoots unsuccessfully at the PCs with a crossbow, Dagger misses a bunch of punches in her fight and gets stabbed, but ends up punching the thug out with some help from the Rogue’s bowshots and the Cleric and Blackhand have a mace-to-sword battle on the docks. The Cleric does a nonfatal (but nose-breaking) blow with his mace on Blackhand as he blows a Horn of Silent Alarm; my Cleric wants to know what the horn is and does an Arcana check, so I tell the players that a Horn is often bound to a Magebred animal (magic animal). The players are like “good god it’s gonna be a griffon or something!” but a Blood Hawk swoops in, scarily screeching and diving at them with razor sharp claws…which the Rogue incinerates in one hit with her Produce Flame genasi cantrip; the players decide that they’re gonna try and convince the last thug to stand down and/or give them his money considering they’ve just roasted, but we have a few 2’s and 3’s rolled in both players’ diplomatic skills and he’s a big orc whose mama told him “never back down”.

Not wanting to disappoint mama, he tries to take them on in a fistfight, only backing down once there’s the sound of hobnail guard boots on the streets, coming towards the docks!

Mama’s Boy makes a run for it when the Cleric uses thaumaturgy to shout “GO!” really loud at him, and the PCs and Dagger board the waiting Church barge; it sails out into Scion’s Sound. The Cleric heals himself and Dagger, and the nervous Rogue notices that they’re headed south, with a shipman telling the PCs that they’re headed to the town of Shardukar, just south of the Flamekeep.

Here’s the map again to refer to btw: https://imgur.com/ByY4SEB

I haven’t actually told the players what Shardukar is, but according to Eberron sourcebooks it’s a city and its surrounding forest that was burned to the ground by a Cyre/Karnath alliance; people say it’s haunted, which it probably is considering the awful death and bloodshed.

The players really seemed to enjoy our first session, and I know I did! I’m just not sure exactly what I’m gonna do in the next session; I’m thinking of maybe having reps from the Church rebuilding a village for the people that survived Shardukar’s burning, but being plagued by either undead/ghosts or elemental fire beings.

I was thinking maybe I could have the barrier between Eberron and Fernia (the plane of fire) being worn thin because of the burning of the city and woods, and maybe one of the elementals (maybe a fire mephit or a magmin?) that has leaked through calls the Rogue a “daughter of the Lady”, "child of fire", etc. but being really riddley and mysterious about it or something (I’m thinking maybe the fire genasi Rogue is a child of a minor Efreeti and a mortal?)

I also think that Dagger wants to west to Sigilstar or south to Aruldusk to catch the Lightning Rail to Breland (south of here), character motivations-wise.
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TL:DR

Cleric and Rogue in Eberron, on the run, just left a big city; a crime syndicate and a conspiracy within the Church of the Silver Flame are after them. They’re about to land at a town being rebuilt with the help of the Church in the shadow of a maybe haunted ruined city and forest burned down in the war. The PCs want to head north along the river and cross over to another country to find info about the fire genasi Rogue’s parentage.

The ruins/forest being burned with magical fire, I'm thinking maybe I can link something about the Rogue's parentage in with elementals recognizing her.

Any ideas for how I could structure/what I could do in the next session?

[Regitnui]

The nice thing about genasi in Eberron is that they're a lot more flexible in ancestry; the genasi could have been born from the burning of Shadukar: the influence of Fernia could have made her a genasi even if both parents were human.

I enjoy having players between the monsters and the mortals, with neither side specifically being in the wrong.

[SirGraystone]

I see a distraught Efreeti father who want vengeance on the humans who corrupted his child (one of the player's parent who found love with a mortal and left the plane of fire). He destroyed the village to punish those mortals, maybe when he knows the the players is his grandchild, he'll stop his rampage and be glad to have found her... or maybe he'll get angrier and try to kill that half human abomination...

The father is the one sending creature from the plane of fire to Eberron.

[kraftcheese]

So I've decided to use this thread to keep track of our sessions, and also share it with all of you!

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SESSION 2


SLOW BOAT TO NEW SHADUKAR


So, we began this session with the PCs and Dagger, the warforged NPC arriving in the village of New Shadukar by the barge they left Flamekeep on. They go past the burnt and still smoking ruins of the original town of Shadukar, and notice with passive perception that there is a light smoke haze coming from the middle of the Burned Wood, even though Shadukar and its surrounding woodland was burnt during the war, years ago; only the outer areas of the wood seem to have green regrowth; the middle of the Wood and areas close to the ruins are still charred and ashen.

The barge pulls in to the small, newly built village of New Shadukar just before sundown; the players pick up that there is no-one there to greet them at the docks and I show them this map I made:
https://imgur.com/ku9gb9n

The players notice that the framework of two houses in the process of being built near the treeline of the town are burned messes, charred wood and everything, and are still warm to the touch; in fact, the ground in the town seems unseasonably warm for the time of year.

(I sort of forgot about Dagger this whole session and we as a group decided she just hung around the tavern, tightening bolts and oiling her hinges or whatever all night)

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TAKE IT UP WITH HR


The PCs can hear sounds of an argument coming from the tavern in the middle of town, and it's the only building with a light on, so they decide to check it out. Inside, there’s an argument between a drunk woman who turns out to be a House Sivis signaller (Signaller Hadril, half-elf (in my Eberron, I’m not focussing on Dragonmarks or Heirs so I decided to make the Houses more like just monopoly megacorps with semi-hereditary leadership, not necessarily race-related bloodlines)) and a deacon of the Church (Deacon Ayah, human), the de-facto leader of the town; they’re having a heated argument about whether Hadril has been sending out messages behind the deacon’s back.

The Rogue keeps her hood on to make it hard for anyone to recognize she’s a Genasi, “just in case there’s any anti-monstrous sentiment” *words to that effect from the player, it’ll come up later*.

After Hadril mopes back into the pub in a drunken huff, the deacon meets up with the PCs and apologises that she wasn’t there to meet them at the docks; when pressed about why the PCs are visiting a podunk town like New Shadukar, the Cleric mentions to Ayah that he’s taking his “ward” (our 17-19ish y.o. Fire Genasi Rogue) on a trip around the villages doing Church work, healings, warding off the dead, cleric stuff, and lies and says that his ward is wanting to become a lay member of the Church. Ayah pulls them aside and mentions that she’s been having problems not just with the single worker Sivis sent along (which the PCs notice is odd; why does a tiny village have a Speaking Stone station?), but with a group of Cannith engineers who have graciously offered to help build houses for some of the refugees from the original Shadukar, free of charge; the Cannith team only arrived here about a week ago.

Ayah says that a few of the Cannith workers, including the team leader, a human woman named Patience Greves have been sneaking off into the Burned Wood at night; the players surmise that the buildings that have been burned down might be the ones that Cannith has built recently (and as DM *I* decide that that’s a great idea and go along with it). Ayah asks that if they’re here, and they’re doing some “good work” in the villages, could they possibly try and work out what’s happening in the woods with the Cannith workers in exchange for food and lodging at the abbey? (and goodwill of course; the players reckon having allies in the village would be good in case any of their pursuers come calling)

The PCs agree, deciding the first thing they want to do before going into the Burned Wood at night is to have a chat with the tavern owner; he tells them that there’s been a LOT of Cannith stamped boxes (here's the set out House symbols I made to show the players https://imgur.com/49DHMxo being delivered to the town by barge, and that he’s heard rumors from other townsfolk that they don’t seem to all be going to the construction site. He tells the PCs that he reckons he’s seen boxes being delivered to the mill in town for storage.

The PCs also find the Sivis signaller, Hadril, still drunk at the tavern. The Rogue loosens her tongue with some charisma skills and paying for a round, and Hadril glumly tells them that the Cannith team leader, Greves, has been bullying her into sending messages in “another language” by Speaking Stone; what kind of job satisfaction can SHE get from sending and receiving messages she can’t even read, I studied 4 years at Morgrave University for THIS, I hate being out in the sticks etc. After a few more drinks they coax her into showing them the Cannith messages, which the Rogue recognizes as being in cipher/code; not one she recognizes from her thieving days, though.

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A NIGHT IN THE WOODS

The players, after building some rapport with Hadril and deciding she’s probably alright and just hard done by, have a quick check of the building the Cannith workers are staying in; finding it empty and locked, so they assume the Cannith team must be out in the woods.

They then make their way into the woods, promptly getting a bit lost. They come across a group of magma and smoke mephits who speak Primordial to both PCs (Rogue knows it cuz she’s a Genasi and the Cleric knows it cuz he studied it when the church took in the Rogue as a kid); the mephits have a bit of difficulty expressing themselves (as mostly they just want to talk about burning things), but the PCs coax out of them the location of the “ones who stop our burning”, and find out that the mephits have been targeting the Cannith construction site because they think the Cannith team will leave if they give them enough trouble.

A magma mephit leads the PCs to the Cannith experiment in the middle of the burned wood, which the PCs find out by eavesdropping, is a Manifest Zone to the Plane of Elemental Fire. The ground is hot and Greves and two Cannith workers are operating a big brass machine with a glass dome over the top; it seems to be doing something magical to the ground below it, and they can see flames and smoke collecting inside the dome whenever it is operated; the mephits are angry about this and the PCs deduce that maybe the mephits are being bound inside the machine. The ground gets hotter and hotter as they move towards the machine, and the PCs see puffs of smoke and hot ash issuing from the ground.

The PCs decide on a plan to sabotage the machine; the Rogue rolls a nat. 20 stealth and sneaks up through the various crates and boxes to the machine which the Cannith team are gathered around, while the Cleric stays on the treeline of the small grove behind a charred stump. The Rogue decides she’s gonna sabotage the machine by levering a cog out; I ask for Sleight of Hand as the Cannith team are right there, and she rolls quite low, prompting the team to turn around and see her.

With quick thinking, the Cleric casts Thaumaturgy on the Rogue, using:
• You cause flames to flicker, brighten, dim, or change color for 1 minute.
• You create an instantaneous sound that originates from a point of your choice within range, such as a rumble of thunder, the cry of a raven, or ominous whispers.
• Your voice booms up to three times as loud as normal for 1 minute. (I let her use this on the Rogue as I reckon it was harmless fun and was a good, goofy lil plan)
And the Rogue uses a good Performance roll to impersonate an emissary from the Plane of Fire! The Cleric makes her Genasi flames flicker and brighten to obscure her face as she throws her hood off, the sound of crackling flames around the area and a booming voice, which she uses to speak in Primordial (she just says gibberish as she assumes the Cannith team won’t know it “like in that dumb Scarlet Johansen movie where they didn’t research the Chinese characters they put on the wall and it said things like “soup” and “fish” and they thought no-one would notice” my player says, prompting laughs from us).

The two Cannith lackeys are quite taken aback but Greves has a relatively high insight and isn’t too impressed; she still thinks that the Rogue is an envoy, but gives her some curveball questions about which group sent her, why they sent her, etc. The Rogue ends up convincing Greves that her superiors want more gold (the player is playing to her PC's "I love money" background thing she decided on) and will return tomorrow night and the PCs decide to leave to investigate at the town tomorrow in a flashy blast of flame; the Rogue Genasi uses her Produce Flame cantrip to make a blast of flame between her and the Cannith team as a sort of smoke-bomb type distraction while she slips away, with the PCs heading back to town to rest at the abbey.


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Overall a very fun session with the players doing some creative ideas and some fun roleplaying from the PCs; my table of 2 seems to enjoy roleplaying and non-combat stuff a lot more than combat tbh; D&D probably isn't the very best fit for us, but it's what we're playing now and it's what we all know best and that I have the resources for tbh.

Session 2 actually happened last week, and Session 3 (which was loads of fun!) happened last night so I'm doing a write up of that as we speak!