Chapter 1 - The Beginning

You awake to find yourself laying on a dingy wood floor, the morning sunlight illuminating the room around you. The tavern. Yes, you remember staying in a tavern. This must be the tavern. As you move to stand up the world shifts a little bit. Too much ale? You don't remember having any ale. A picture flashes in your mind of a small glass vial with something in it, a liquid darker than obsidian.

You feel something on your hand, something wet. You look to your hand and see it coated in blood. You follow the puddle on the ground and see it leads to one of the townsfolk, now nearly decapitated. The world is aglow in a haze as you stagger up to your feet. You see the room is just littered with bodies. All of them dead. Gruesomely. The walls, tables, and floor are covered in blood. The haze is relentless, but your heart is also racing.

As you look around you see three other figures rising out of the sea of corpses. What happened here last night? You remember the strange summons that brought you to this town, the rooms reserved for you in this tavern, after that, just the haze.

[ GM: Feel free to use this to describe not only how your character reacts to the situation and the others, but also if you want to intro what your character would look like. I'll try and keep these GM suggestions to a minimum. ]

[ GM: If you wanted to roll performance vs. the other character's passive perception we could see if you are playing dead well enough to avoid indirect notice. I'm fine to retcon small things for the sake of interesting story. Since you were first to respond I'll consider you first to have started moving. ]

Crolwel:
You pretend to play dead in the chair. You are almost certain that you are the epitome of death incarnate. The others, without even much effort can tell you are another living character. Maybe it was your breathing they noticed, or that time you scratched an itch on your leg. Who knows.

Aelar:
You noticed the other three individuals, and that they seem to be in the same state of stupor as you. The room is filled with dead patrons, most look as though they were trying to flee or hide when they were killed. As you shuffle around investigating you kick a small piece of black cloth, maybe torn from a robe, with a small metal dagger pin on it.

The rest of you only see each other and a room full of dead people. No other clues seem to stand out. No other living souls are in this tavern.

Crolwell and Aelar:
Looking the pin over doesn't seem very familiar at all. It obviously is attached to some sort of black fabric, you guess maybe torn from a robe would be the likely culprit. The dagger symbol doesn't seem to look like anything you've heard of before.

Crolwell:
You feel as though you sounded like you were pretending pretty well at being smart. You think these adventurers definitely know you can tell a pin from something that is not a pin. Quite impressive.

Aelar:
As you walk around the tavern you see tables with tankards of ale, you see some that have card games half-played, coin still sits on a few of the tables. Whatever happened here, these people were not expecting this at all. Some of the victims still have daggers in hand, but none of them look like they were ready for any sort of battle or fight. On the floor near the bar you do find a small empty glass vial. That image flashes in your mind again. It is empty now, but this had to have been one of the vials of that stuff.

Looking around you see the main floor of the tavern littered with bodies, a small set of stairs that go up to a second level that overlooks this floor, room doors up there line one of the walls. You remember that you were staying in rooms up on that level. There are some corpses overhanging the railing up there, and some on the stairs.

[ GM: That is a combination of all your rolls. ]

Aelar:
You find 3 basic daggers around the room, and about 8 gold worth of various coin at a few different tables.

Looking over the wounds of the victims it seems to be sword cuts, a few look as though they have been nearly decapitated. Some look as though they were hit with magical force, possibly acid or shock damage.

Your weapons themselves seem to have blood on them. It would seem these were wounds inflicted from your own weapons.