Okay, so I'll be straight with you guys, I'm pretty much a 5th Edition kind of guy, as its the one i have a good number of books for… So when my friend, Aaron, took the reins and actually introduced me to Pathfinder, I was a bit skeptical and worried i would royally screw up… When I voiced my concerns he said that before I could play with his friends, he and I would do a solo campaign to get me used to the mechanics. To behonest, Character creation was a real pain, as he wanted me to stick to the core races and classes and not use Tieflings, which are my main, mostly due to how i like to create characters with rough upbringings who make the most of what they have and are happy go-lucky.
In any case, he helped me build up a Half-Elf Sorcerer with an Undead Bloodline, in which his backstory was that his ancestor was a well known Cleric of Ragathiel named Alaric the Undying, due to how he always came back from near death situations badly beaten but always barely surviving, and in his final battle, he took on a powerful Lich. As per usual, he was successful but badly beaten, but in the Lich's final breaths, he called upon Orcus to curse Alaric and his entire bloodline with the power of the Undead, first turning Alaric himself into a powerful Vampire, whilst any who followed in his direct bloodline would be cursed with the Undead Bloodline of Sorcery. Afterwards, before the curse took complete hold, he willingly allowed himself to be sealed away, and prophesized that only one of his own blood would be able to put him to rest. Afterwards, he was sealed away for over a thousand years….
Due to having lost his character sheet, I'm going to give my character the name Alexandrus Alaricus. He was actually a happy-go-lucky half-elf descendant of Alaric, and in his very first adventure, he got contracted to deal with a group of bandits who were stealing from a wealthy merchant who was at his wit's end. Feeling suspect, I rolled to check the wagons for sabotage, getting pretty decent rolls each time, even though I was using my Cursed Dice. A bit of context, these Cursed Dice I mention are a set of green dice that I have that, no matter how I rolled, always came up on the low end in combat, but high end during social interactions.
In anycase, Alexandrus, or Alex for short, was accompanied by a group of local guards and mercenaries who had been brought on to join, in which they were all heading for a large encampment, half-way between their starting point and their destination. While the driver was helping the carriage along, I had alex take the time to place Arcane Marks on some of the stuff we were carrying, incase they got stolen, so that way i could place the rightful blame on any bandits in disguise. My gut instinct turned out to be right as we were approached by a group of guards on horseback, coming to meet us part way, but I saw this look in Aaron's eye that mad me become very wary. When the guards decided to hand over the cart, I made a perception check and rolled a 15, pretty good for my cursed dice, and thankfully, my DM rolled low and I managed to pull off a Ray of Frost that knocked the dagger out of the hand of the man who was going to attack our leader, starting combat.
This is where the dice began to screw me over, and as I said, i was using my cursed dice, so I kept rolling low numbers, but i managed to land a few good hits and aided in tying up the bandits, aiding in interrogation, though, once again, the dice screwed me over. However, we managed to get out of the bandits that their group had infiltrated the base camp ahead and they had disguised as guards to steal the cargo from passing merchant caravans, replacing the contents with worthless junk. With that information, we gave the bandits a choice, to leave and not get punished by their leaders, or allow us to put them to sleep permanently and peacefully. They chose the latter and ran away, as they knew they would likely get killed for squealing.
Afterwards, we set up camp that night and while I was on watch, Alex had started to notice that the skin in the middle of his right palm was starting to flake away. For context, Alex knows nothing about his heritage, as he's from the "Lesser" branch of the family amongst the common folk, whilst the "Main Branch" is in the country's capital, living large and having fun all the time. As such, he knows nothing about his heritage, not truly, or even where his magic comes from, so as such, I played it that he doesn't know why he has these "malicious mood swings" or why his magic is causing such affects to his body. Back on topic, sometime into the night, my character had spotted movement and we had an encounter with some goblins, pretty standard for the first adventure.
Unfortunately, our group was caught off guard by the sheer number of these Goblins, where there were 5 of us, there were, if I remember correctly, 10 goblins, and 3 of them were spell casters. Alex, and I, knew that our group had no ranged attackers, and the best we could do was use Ray of Frost to at least keep the Spell Caster's focus on us, but fortunately, we also had a Punch Dagger from character creation so I knew we at least had a chance. In any case, we began the battle before us, and whilst the NPCs that Aaron controlled dealth with the majority of Goblins, I focused on the spellcasters, getting a lot of low rolls, as per the usual with my Cursed Dice. However, my plan worked, I kept all of the spellcasters focused on me, and dealt with any goblins that got too close to me, even managing to roll a Crit on one of the Goblin Shamans to kill it.
Once the fight was over, I was cursing the fact that I had such bad rolls and wished that there was a way I could help out more, and so in order to avoid getting snuck up on again, I made some pretty good rolls to create some clacker alarm so that we wouldn't get snuck up on again. After a night of rest, and after group huddle, we had decided to check out where the Goblins came from… And Boy, did we find something interesting…!
End of Part 1
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