Chapter 1 - The City

You pull into the parking lot across the street and see the rest of the group is already there. Each of you has gone through this routine dozens of times. It looks like you all arrived before Tim this time. Hoping that he didn't forget again you check your phone for the time every few minutes until you see his Dodge Neon pull up to the spot next to everyone else. He gets out, grabs his bag and walks over, "Hey guys, sorry I'm late. Looks like the traffic on the interstate was pretty bad. I think it's people going to the park for that meteor shower tonight." He leads the group across the street to the office.

"Everyone remember where we left off? I think Jacob, you were...", his voice trails, mostly because you stop listening. You are preoccupied with looking around to see if anyone is watching you. Tim always said he had legit access to the offices after hours, but somehow you never quite believed him. You don't complain much. You have a great place to game with vending machines and all of the amenities.

After getting in through the stairwell exit with a key Tim has you go up to the third floor and he opens up the big conference room. It's got the big long oak conference table. The hiring manager seemed overly proud of the fact that the table was pure oak. You understand why you instantly hated that hiring manager.

The full-length windows give you a good view over the other couple of squat buildings around. Laracaster isn't a terrible town, just fairly small and uninteresting. You can see the overpriced and under featured zoo about a mile south of you. It's almost entirely surrounded by chain outlet stores and big-box retailers. The view even affords you views of the police station and fire station to the south east. You can even see the hospital that is clear across town from up here. When you see the city at night like this, lit up, you almost think it's actually kind of nice.

As Tim comes back in to the conference room he starts setting up the campaign notes he has and getting out his DM screen. He even gets out that damn voice recorder. Still trying to get that live play podcast going, you've recorded like ten of these sessions and he hasn't released a single episode. Whatever. It's game time.

"Alright, lets do the quick introduction part first," Tim says as he flicks on the recorder, "Alright state your name, and your character name, give us a short few sentence intro and we can get started."

[ GM: Any time I need to point out a particular part of the story that I need to highlight in a GM note it will look like this. For now this is the start to the story and feel free to just be creative with this part. ]

After the introductions the awkwardness lessens a bit and you start on the campaign. About an hour in, just as your party is about to cut down a a tribe of Kobolds that have been raiding a small village, an alarm on Tim's phone sounds. He quickly turns it off, noting he, "...decided to set a timer for the meteor shower in case anyone was interested. It would be a good spot to see it up here."

As you all glance at the full-length windows lining the entire external wall of the conference room you do indeed see a few streaks in the sky. Nothing much out of the ordinary, but at least there is a great view from up here.

You notice a few brighter streaks among the many, and they are starting to fill the sky. The view of it is actually quite spectacular as soon the night sky is lit up with streaking tracers of light. You had heard this was going to be quite a shower, but haven't seen one this amazing before. You see a strong streak of light that crosses through the sky and suddenly you see it impact in the distance. Had to be at least 60-70 miles away but it made a bright flash as it hit the distant landscape.

"That's certainly going to make the news. Meteors hitting down like that is pretty rare", Tim says, smiling.

An instant later you see another streak, incredibly bright. It shoots towards the ground. Close. Too close. It impacts the ground just south of the Hospital across town. You see it hit down, fire, a large explosion, then you feel the shockwave rumble your building, even this far away.

As the event unfolds, almost in slow motion, another wave of force crashes into the side of the building with enough force to shatter the outer pane of some of the windows. The floor shakes a little harder. As you take this all in, another distant explosion rings out and you see a plume of dust and debris rising from across town.

The smile fades from Tim's face as what he is seeing registers on his face.

Tim stares out the window a moment longer, still not quite believing the scene he is seeing. After hearing Jacob shout basement Tim snaps out of it and starts packing his own bag as well. "Um, yeah, the stairs are just out of the office to the left," he says, his voice a bit shaken. He stops the recording and shoves the recorder into his bag as well and heads out with everyone else.

Kel:
You appear to be receiving a signal still and when you call your wife she picks up and starts quickly spouting off a lot at once. "Where are you? Are you safe? What was that? I see smoke and fire coming from the city. What happened? The power is out in the house. It looks like the whole neighborhood is out. The whole house shook. That vase your mother gave us fell off the shelf and broke...", after a few minutes you finally manage to get a word in.

Kel:
You hear her moving around the house and rousing the kids. "Okay, I'm going to get to the basement. I'll call you soon. Keep your phone on." you hear her telling the kids that they have to go downstairs as she hangs up.

Everyone:
As people are grabbing their stuff, moving out the door, and heading to the stairwell there is another earth shaking 'thud' noise, followed by more explosions in the distance. You can't see where it hit but it sounded louder than the last. A moment later another wave of force hits the building, it spiders the glass on all of the window and one on the far end of the conference room blows in completely.

[ GM: Andrew, as you are trying to go down the stairs fairly quickly I'm going to have you make a quick dexterity test. You get one positive dice, always, by default. The fear of outrunning real life meteors crashing into earth will grant you a negative dice. So roll one positive and one negative dice. (do them as two separate rolls on a single post) ]

[ GM: Howard do a positive and negative check as well, your test is against your willpower ]