Chapter One - Part One: Greenest In Flames

You’re all travelling east through the beautiful green hills of Greenfield towards the town of Greenest. Greenest is the sole town of any size on the whole Urdon Trail, which has made it popular among all kinds of travelers and caravans travelling between eastern Faerûn and the Sword Coast as a way post to get a warm bed, a nice meal and replenish your inventory. Your reasons for going there are different though.

You started on your journeys in solitude but as each of you met each other on the Urdon Trail, you decided to stick together until you reach Greenest. Greenfield may be comparatively safe lands compared to the rest of Faerûn, but as budding adventurers you know that it’s always better to have someone to watch your back. As the sun starts to set you’re almost at your destination.

Kirsk smiled at the others as they came closer to his hometown. He had been happy to join with the others as they walked together. He knew that while nobody helpless would venture on their own, his strength might help protect them. He continuously scanned his surroundings as he walked, and absently flexed his hand gripping the plain shield. He wasn't happy that he had to paint over the emblem, but he knew it was for the best. As they walked he listened to the companions and added his own stories and banter to help pass the time.

He had sensed no evil or ill intent of his companions, and trusted the abilities bestowed by his god to be able to ferret out the evil intentions of those around him. He observed the others, making mental notes of each of them. Over the walk he gradually opened up more of his story, not lying, but not telling all. "I used to live in Greenest, it'll be nice to go back."

As they walked, he pointed out the areas that he had been before, focusing on the happy times. "See that stream over there, when I was around 7 I spent so much time camped on the bank trying to catch ancient large trout. He kept playing with the line, stealing the bait and looking at me while he ate it, but never taking the hook. It used to make me so mad as a child, I broke my rod and threw it in the stream. It was the last time I went fishing. " kirsk laughed with the memory but then grew quiet as he remembered why it was the last time he had gone fishing, as a child he only went fishing with his mother.

Spurred forward by the good companionship and Kirsk’s stories about the area, you make great pace and soon as the sun is setting behind, you get to a hill that Kirsk explains you will be able to see Greenest from.

Despite heading west away from the sun, strangely enough the sky in front of you is also ever so slightly tinted orange. As you walk to the top of the hill you realise why. Greenest lies a few miles down the road in the valley below, but you immediately know that something is terribly wrong. Smoke is billowing upwards from a few burning buildings scattered throughout the town, you can see small black dots of people in the distance running in any direction in the streets below and even from this distance you can hear screaming and yelling. But a bone chilling roar immediately draws your attention upwards at a huge blue dragon circling the town and intermittently swooping down over a keep that towers over the other buildings. Greenest appear to be under attack.

Wow, that scalated quickly. Let the fun beggin

You hurry down the road towards Greenest as fast as you can, fighting to keep the fear from gripping you too hard. Even for legendary heroes fighting a dragon would be a gargantuan task. So far it seems content to hover over the town though, the more immediate threat seems to come from inside the town itself.

As you get to the edge of town the sun is fully down, but the bright half moon and the burning buildings illuminate the town enough for you to see robed strangers rummaging through houses and trying to set them on fire. You notice that they’ve actually struggled with doing that, erroneously thinking that thatched roofs burn up easily. Instead most of the fires emanate from barns or haystacks rather than the homes and shops. That’s still enough for the townspeople to panic though, you see a few darting from out between buildings some of them being chased by the robed people, some of them by...other things. You can hear hoarse draconic voices jeering and hollering amongst all the screams from the townspeople and yells from the robed assailants.

You wait up against the wall of the first building at the town limits for an opening, and as the majority of the skirmish moves further into the town, you decide to go in. You’ve only walked about 50 feet however when a man hobbles out from an alleyway, clutching the hands of two small children. He’s clearly hurt, a deep gash on his right leg is making him limp but he’s visibly fighting through the pain as he tries to get his charges to safety. A woman comes backing out of the same alley a second later, she carries a small, round shield in one hand and what appears to be a broken spear in the other. She looks frantically at something in the alley as she slowly backs further and further into your path and suddenly seven kobolds creeps out after her, daggers in their hands, grins on their lizard faces. You see that the man is shielding the two kids as much as he can while the woman looks set to be taking a final stand. "Cuth, you need to get them out of here! I’ll hold them off as long as I can, please! Just run!", she shouts to what you can gather must be her husband. Cuth, tears streaming down his face, looks pleadingly at the back of her head. "Linan...", is all he gets to say before she cuts him off with a scream, "GO!".

The kobolds just laugh at the couple as they start to fan out around the woman. A couple of them seem to notice you, but they make no motion to attack you. Their intentions fully on finishing off Linan.