The First Session - Part 1: Seeking Knowledge in the Blood of Innocents

So as you many have discerned from the previous post, the party isn't your average group of do-gooders and heroes but rather a ragtag bunch of troublemakers at best. If only they showed their best more than their worst...

The worst part about this is recognizing the truth in "Evil Feels Good."

To get things started I decided to hand-wave out a big, involved meeting up of the characters and instead let the players work out their own reasons for traveling together. After looking at their resources they decided that they were a traveling performance group since between the three of them, two had instruments and they decided that since Haruka was both agile and pretty, he could just dance while the others played. Considering some reasons I've been handed by parties with evil characters in them, this was more than acceptable for me.

I feel I should touch on something quickly here. As a DM I tend not to allow the Evil alignment in my games if only because when I'm designing a campaign the intent of the adventures I string together are all in the vein of "Do good, prosper, maybe save the world before you retire." Understandably this doesn't always mesh well with evil characters. (I'm not saying it can't, simply that in my experience, it doesn't.) Now this first session was intended as a standalone one-shot so I opened to the door to anything since it was going to be a one time thing. Let this serve as a warning for aspiring DMs: Never underestimate anything about what your players may do. Not even before the game starts.

If you think this is bad then you must be new to tabletop gaming. Welcome to the show.

So our "heroes" find themselves following a dwindling lead into a rather unsavory city. They've been on the trail of an evil priest who was involved with the murder of Haruka's family but any sign of a man by the name he was using has come to a stop near the city. Thinking that he may have another local identity, they forge on ahead.
Not knowing more than his name and that he was an evil priest, they try to find some of the temples to the evil gods in the city's slums which results in me breaking out the random city encounter charts. We get to start off the game with a bang as they literally bump into a drunken barbarian who is offended enough by this to draw his sword and start attacking, and thus the party learns its first lesson about combat in the narrow passageways that are alleyways: Bring reach weapons. The battle was rather comical as the party desperately tried, and ultimately failed, to maneuver themselves into a position where they could face off with the barbarian more than one at a time. Despite this they manage to emerge victorious and have committed their first act of murd....uhm...self-defense.
Having looted the corpse of anything of value (and using more random charts for treasure distribution) they collect a small magic crystal that can be used to enhance a weapon. Unfortunately this is all they can discern of the crystal. Haruka, being the most combat capable claims the crystal as his own but is rather desperate to know what it does. Logical idea: Take it to someone that can identify its unique properties. Sounds good, right? Or maybe I should say that it sounds Good. We have no goody two-shoes in our party though and this idea never even comes up. No, the first and of course best idea is to apply it to a weapon and then test the weapon for a new effect! So I call for some rolls to see just how lucky Haruka is at finding, as I think he put it, "someone weak nearby that nobody would miss." Unfortunately for him the dice are not on his side. I let him know the only person that seems to have hung around despite the sounds of battle is a man some distance off just watching the party. I tried to give the impression that this guy was a bit of a "bad-ass" and "should not be fucked with" without outright saying so. Let's just say that the players failed their Sense Motive checks on what I was hinting at.

It is also the Path to Enlightenment, which we'll be sure to get to later.

So while Dorian and Mayu continue to paw over the dead body of the barbarian, Haruka slips out of sight and attempts to stealthily circle around behind the watcher. I find some data for an even higher level solo encounter and roll up the necessary numbers for another battle. When I roll for the watcher's Spot and Listen checks against Haruka though, he fails dismally and Haruka gets the jump on him. While this surprise strike did allow Haruka to attempt her Assassination skill, that failed. However, as a bit of a bonus, he still deals his Sneak Attack damage on the attack and nearly cripples the watcher. So I have everyone roll initiative and by the grace of Lady Luck, Haruka is at the top of the order. This merits another Sneak Attack. After the first very damaging strike this one deals more than enough damage to completely kill the watcher with no resistance. We've been playing for less than a half an hour and the party has already committed their first blatant murder, in a major city no less. We're off to a rousing start, folks. In the excitement of ending an encounter ere it began I nearly forgot to let him know what effect the crystal had. (For those curious, it heals Haruka when he kills things.)

Let's break for a short intermission while I try to remember the details about this game I ran so many months ago.