The Party
Six characters have appeared in the campaign. Five are still turning up.
| Who | Lineage | Class | Level | HP / AC | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brother Lucian Veyra | Human, Anointed | Cleric — Light Domain | 4 | 31 / 15 | Active |
| Stone Mistrail | Human, Anointed | Paladin — Oath of Justice | 4 | 30 / 20 | Active |
| Thalanadil | Elf, Cloud | Wizard — Cantrip Adept | 4 | 22 / 15 | Active |
| Grace | Human, Slayer | Fighter — Weapon Master | 4 | 36 / 18 | Active |
| Flightless | Kenku | Rogue — Thief | 3 | 30 / 12 | Active, a level behind |
| Roland | — | Ranger, scout | — | — | Player left for work; now an NPC |
Half of us are from here
This is worth saying out loud, because it changes what the Battle of Sandpoint was.
Grace is Sheriff Belor Hemlock's daughter. She commanded the defence of her father's town, in her father's job, while he was fifty miles away raising the column that arrived after it was over.
Flightless was smuggled into Sandpoint as a refugee child and raised here. She grew up alongside Grace, who spent a good part of that time trying to keep her in line and mostly finding her ridiculous. And Ameiko Kaijitsu is her adopted sister.
Lucian is from Sandpoint too — it is the whole reason he gave the speech that raised the militia. "I'm from here. People will recognise me."
Which means the siege was not a job. It was Grace defending her father's town while he was away, with her childhood friend on the roofs, and the pair of them arguing Flightless's sister off the wall.
Thalanadil is the outsider, and knows it.
Brother Lucian Veyra
Human. Cleric of Sarenrae, Light Domain. The party's healer, its public face, and the man who took command of a town for an afternoon.
WIS 18 — the highest single score in the party. Background: Adherent. Talents: Field Medic, Combat Casting. Proficient in history, insight, investigation, perception, persuasion and religion. Carries a mace, breastplate, shield, light crossbow, holy symbol, prayer book, incense and vestments.
How he fights. Moonbeam is his signature and he uses it as terrain rather than as
damage — the beam that came down in the doorway at Thistletop, and then slid around the
fight for an hour. He runs dancing lights as the party's light source, because Light
domain means no concentration and a longer duration. Sacred flame and fire bolt do the
routine work; fire bolt counts as a divine cantrip for him, so it carries his proficiency
bonus in damage.
Channel Divinity: Searing Radiance is the plan he ran on Nualia in the market square — cast light on the ground as a marked killing ground, re-cast it every round, and wait for her to stop spending dispel magic on a cantrip.
What he actually does. Rings bells. Splits up people who are shouting at each other and gives them both a job. Notices when Grace has wandered off alone again. Solved the Ameiko problem by fixing the real objection instead of arguing with the stated one — and he still owes her a legal succession he promised to arrange with the mayor.
Stone Mistrail
Human. Paladin, Oath of Justice. Twenty-two years old, six foot one, black hair, grey eyes. Speaks common and dwarvish, which fools people constantly, including the DM.
AC 20 — the best in the party. CON 16, STR 15, INT 8. Background: Soldier. Talents: Combat Conditioning, Combat Casting, Furious Charge. Proficient in athletics, history, intimidation, medicine, religion and survival. Carries a glaive, longsword, mace, shield, chain mail, holy symbol, a symbol of rank, and a horn.
Two of those have already mattered. The horn is what he lent to a militiaman in a boat to watch the glassworks tunnel mouth; it came back dented. The symbol of rank goes with the Soldier background, and nobody has ever asked him whose army.
How he fights. Doors. His entire game at Thistletop was standing at a choke point with
a held attack and a divine smite ready — "waiting for a puppy dog to put his nose through
that door." Divine Smite twice on the bugbear, and a critical for forty-four on
Nualia, which he had been deliberately saving since the bridge fight three months earlier.
Divine Sense, which he burned scouting the road at the North Gate. Plus Lay on Hands,
Divine Quarry, Guard and thaumaturgy — the last of which he used to make Grace's
forest fire look twice as terrifying as it was.
What he actually does. Gets compliance by being unpleasant about it, then follows up with the reasonable version. He hired Orik by putting a gold piece in his palm and a threat in the same sentence. He talked the holdout shopkeepers out of their shops, and the town has not finished reckoning with how.
Thalanadil
Elf, Cloud heritage. Wizard — Cantrip Adept. A hundred years old, five foot eleven, dirty-blond hair, grey-green eyes.
INT 18. The squishiest of the party by a distance at 22 hit points. Background: Scholar. Talent: Ritualist. Carries a spellbook, a Book of Lore, a reference book, a quarterstaff, a light crossbow and a wand of magic missiles.
Why he is here. He is from a reclusive mountaintop elf clan in the far east — the Sky
Temple Clan — and he is on pilgrimage, sent out by his elders, who want him to
experience the real world for a few decades before he goes back to his astrological and
arcane studies. Adventuring is a means to an end and the end is the privilege of rejoining
his clan. Sandpoint is not his home. Under allies, his sheet still says "None yet."
How he fights. Badly positioned on purpose, when it counts. He ended the Thistletop session at one hit point, cast mirror image, and walked into melee anyway. Sleep upcast for forty-seven hit points' worth. Flaming sphere rammed repeatedly into zombies. Magic missile deliberately cast at first circle against Nualia, because more castings means more darts. And he talks to the enemy — he gave Lyrie Akenja terms on the bridge and she took them.
What he actually does. He reads the walls while everyone else scouts the corridor. He is the reason we know the word greed, the reason we know the Thistletop masonry matches the stone under the glassworks, and the reason there is a parchment copy of forty Thassilonian runes in a pack somewhere. He also recalled what hellhounds were before anyone wasted a spell on them, and shouted it to the room.
His raven familiar is worth more than any of the above. In the first stage of the siege it was the defenders' entire command and control.
Grace
Human, Slayer heritage. Fighter — Weapon Master. Commander of the defence of Sandpoint, and the sheriff's daughter.
36 hit points — the toughest in the party. DEX 16, STR 14, WIS 8. Background: Homesteader. Talents: Aware, Vanguard, Critical Training. Carries a longsword, shield, chain mail, light crossbow, a hunting trap, fishing tackle, a hammock, and a spell scroll of burning hands nobody has needed yet.
Manoeuvres: Tactical Retreat, Parry, Riposte, Redirect, Arcing Strike, Cheap Shot, Straight Through, Make It Count, plus Action Surge, Last Stand, Natural Predator and Tracker — the last of which she used at the North Gate to pick the goblin spellcaster out of the smoke.
How she fights. Forward, alone, and loudly, and it keeps working. She drew the
bugbear's javelin volleys at Thistletop and closed the fight with a +10 manoeuvre. She
kicks doors. She makes "really loud horse sounds" while charging goblins, on the grounds
that goblins are frightened of horses. Her own summary: "What do you get when you have a
full-health fighter? A little bit restless."
Commanding. She took the job when the town went to war and held it through all three stages while the sub-commander rotated around her. It was not comfortable. At the North Gate, with the line collapsing, she said "I can't do this. I'm lost. I don't know what to do," and the mayor and Lucian got her back on her feet inside a minute. She did not put it down after that.
Her father. Belor Hemlock. Her mother is dead. She has been asking, since the boat back from Thistletop, what happened to Nualia's child, and she has not stopped.
Flightless
Kenku. Avian beastkin, Supplicant heritage. Rogue — Thief. Twenty years old, five foot one, grey-skinned, deep indigo feathers, brown eyes. Named for what she cannot do — most kenku can fly; she never could, and Flightless is what common-speaking folk settled on.
CON 18, STR 6. Background: Adherent. Talent: Mental Fortitude. Carries a shortsword, shortbow, thieves' tools, a bullseye lantern, and a circlet of red-gold Thassilonian metal inscribed with Sihedron runes, which is warm to the touch and faintly hums, and which she has been wearing since before any of this started.
Where she comes from. Her family belonged to a cult that worshipped a dragon, and
she was to be sacrificed to it. Her parents arranged instead to have her smuggled to
Sandpoint. For that treachery they were, as far as she knows, executed years ago. She
still carries the cult's tattoo on her right leg, on purpose, as a reminder.
Sandpoint took her in and dropped her with a tengu family, and she grew up here getting into a fair amount of trouble. Ameiko Kaijitsu is her adopted sister. She is proficient with the flute, well enough that Sirdack at the theatre likes having her around.
How she fights. Rear-guard by preference, and correctly so. Cunning-action hide, shortbow, sneak attacks when the goblins are not paying attention. She got up on a roof in the bridge fight and stayed there. She has also, on the record, announced her position by shouting that she was hiding — "it helps when you don't shout that you're hiding, I imagine" — and opened an attack with the loudest bird shriek she could manage.
On the prisoner. She was stabbed by Orik with a scimitar and was the only voice against taking him along: "I don't think he's trustworthy, because he freaking stabbed me." She was overruled. It remains the best argument anyone has made against him.
Roland
Ranger. The party's scout. Carried the lantern, went round corners first, and used Aim and Mystic Mark to make ranged attacks count.
He is the one who looked at the stone doors carved with monsters clawing their way out of
pregnant women and said, quietly, "we probably shouldn't open these doors." They were
opened. He went down that night making death saves on the floor of the shrine.
Then he was sent riding down the Lost Coast Road with two wagons to find Sheriff Hemlock's column and force-march it home. He did the job. He rode in over the Market Street Bridge at the head of the relief, beside Grace's father — after Nualia was already dead in the square.
He could not do it faster than a goblin army. Nobody could have.
He is standing in Sandpoint right now, as an NPC. His player's shift moved. He is welcome back.
What the party is carrying
- A necklace of adaptation — breathe normally in any environment, advantage on saves against harmful gases and vapours. Recovered from Nualia's rooms; passed around depending on where the party is going
- The Blessing of Lamashtu — the ritual tome. See The Enemy
- Lyrie Akenja's spellbook, now Thalanadil's problem
- A parchment copy of forty Thassilonian runes, in Thalanadil's hand, from the walls under Thistletop
- Brodert Quink's field guide to Thassilonian runes — on loan, and Quink would like to hear how it went
- A +1 glaive, which nobody in the current party actually wants to use
- Flightless's circlet, which is Thassilonian, which is inscribed, which is warm, and which nobody has ever asked a single question about
- 257 gold each from Nualia's chest, before anyone starts buying armour