Session 0 — The Crossing and the Wreck

The story so far, for the table’s memory. Told as the Dungeon Master gave it.

The road to Sunton

Talk in the bars runs to war: soldiers and mercenaries are being recruited and trained, and Heerth and its kingdom look hungry, looking to expand. Each of the seven travelers is bound for Sunton — each for their own reasons — and the only way there is the road from Heerth through the towns to Arryston, and then the ferry across the great Lor’sha’une River, which runs more than a mile wide.

It is dark and windy, and the waves are choppy. Ten souls are aboard: the ferryman, the seven, and two strangers in heavy cloaks — deep cowls have been popular for weeks among the hardy, weary folk of this country — one tall, one small. The small one, a boy by his whisper, fidgets and clutches a heavy, box-shaped package under one arm.

Hundreds of feet overhead hangs the ancient bridge that leads from the shore to the island of Tyre, the cursed city: every mortal who has set foot there, the stories say, has disappeared. The bridge is pristine, broad enough for an army, and no one in their right mind crosses it.

The dragon and the griffin

A screech tears out of the sky. The taller cloaked figure draws a sword and shouts for everyone to get down. A rider on a griffin bursts from the clouds — and the water erupts like cannon fire almost beneath the boat as a large blue dragon rises and charges up to meet them.

The swordsman’s cowl falls back: a scarred face, long dark hair blowing in the wind. He whispers words, and a fireball streaks into the dragon and griffin as they clash; they seem unfazed, though the heat of it washes over the ferry. The fight rages — claws, feathers, scales, fireballs, blasts of water hurled up by the scarred man — and then dragon, griffin, and rider, locked together, plummet straight down onto the ferry.

The wreck

The ferryman screams; the scarred man casts some final, unknown spell; the ferry breaks entirely apart. Everyone is in the water. Whatever heavy thing a traveler carried would drag them under — keep it and drown, or let it go. At the surface is chaos: fire, lightning, wind, huge waves. A small voice calls “this way, this way” — the boy, somehow afloat on a piece of the ferry, still clinging to his package.

The shore is more than a mile off. In that wind and those waves there is no swimming to it. They fight, and fight, and do not make it, and slowly lose consciousness.

The waking

Time passes. They wake to the warmth of sun — the first in weeks. The ferry is gone, the ferryman gone, the scarred man gone, dragon and griffin and rider gone. Eight washed ashore: the seven travelers, and the boy, still unconscious, still clinging to the heavy package.

They have washed up on the island of Tyre. There the session ended.