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Introductions & Arsons

In the beginning was the world, and the world was destroyed. Only one place survived: Praxis, a city sheltered by a massive and mysterious dome. Everyone was pretty sure that the world was destroyed by magic, so they decided to ban magic. This worked well enough for about nine hundred years, but it turns out that banning people from practicing magic doesn't actually ban dragons from existing. They discovered this when a pair of dragons flew into Praxis and nearly burned the whole place down. Fortunately, the city was saved by people who had been secretly practicing magic, and Praxis lived on. In the aftermath of this Great Harrowing, a lot of the old anti-magic bigots were dead, so the city decided magic was okay again as long as people promised really hard not to destroy the world.

Now, eighty years later, the city is in the middle of its annual Mystic Confluence festival - a celebration of creativity and the magical arts. The big event on this particular day was the grand opening ceremony for the Havens, a new district of low-income housing built by magic in the ruins of the farmland destroyed in the Great Harrowing. The Havens are the work of an elderly gnome couple, the Hedges, who have worked tirelessly to help the people of the city using their substantial wealth. This has naturally made a bunch of established interests in the city very grumpy, all for different reasons. Some landowners are mad about the cheap rent, some druids are mad about the continued expansion of civilization into nature, and the anti-magic faction is mad about the use of magic to build the Havens. Nonetheless, the ceremony goes well, and groups are sent out on tours of the Havens.

One group happened to have four people of particular interest: Ayala, a beautiful young druid visiting from her home outside of town; Camilla, a tiefling mage who works at an alchemy store in town; Chort, a ranger and ambiguously successful1 performer; and Mikolash, a bookish wizard with a passion for field research. As they were touring through the Havens, a building suddenly erupted into flames in front of them! Ayala immediately swept into action, creating magical water to limit the spread of the flames. The others hung back, unsure of how to help, until a terrible sound rang out from the burning building: the yelp of a trapped dog.

Chort and Camilla immediately rushed to the door. Upon discovering that it was locked, Chort smashed the door in with his shield, though the recoil made him fall heroically prone. A pair of small fire elementals fell from the roof, blocking their access into the house, but they managed to push past. Camilla found the dog and they instantly became biffles with the power of Creature Handling. Together, they escaped the house, and with Ayala's help they defeated the fire elementals in the street and prevented the house from burning down.

It didn't take long after that for the fire brigade to arrive and discover that their services were no longer needed. One of them was a guard captain named Tam who was very impressed with the party's control over the situation. She talked with the party and together they determined that the fire was almost certainly the result of arson. She recommended that they speak with the Hedges, who were on their way from the main festival area. The party agreed and had a nice talk with the very grateful gnomes. The Hedges revealed that they had previously received a threatening letter in the mail, and convinced the party to stay with them in the house that night to keep it safe in case the arsonists tried to finish the job.

That night, the house did indeed catch fire again unexpectedly. The party burst into action to put it out and ended up identifying the perpetrators hiding in a nearby house. They managed to escape, but Camilla wounded one of them, making them very easy to track down. They didn't think of that. They did, however, rescue the owner of the house from a cupboard, and with his help they identified the culprits as druids from the extremist Circle of True Balance.

The next morning, the party talked with the Hedges and Captain Tam again and decided to follow the arsonists back to their home, a small druidic village at the edge of Praxian civilization. Hopefully, they would be able to talk to some of the druidic elders and prevent the arsonists from causing trouble again by some means.They left the city and traveled along the road into the Southern Forest. After a brief digression at a river, where Ayala babbled at the water for a while for no adequately explained reason, the party left the safety of the highway and forged into the wilderness.

As they traveled through the woods, the party came across a beautiful and serene clearing. Chort, Ayala, and Mikolash entered the clearing with various degrees of concern and were immediately struck by a peaceful delight at the utter perfection of nature in the clearing, while Camilla remained outside and glowered. Her suspicions were confirmed when suspicious movements appeared in the grass, but her warnings - and soon, her cries of battle - went unheeded. The party was too entranced to notice a trip of mystic wolves2 that were trying to eat Camilla. After she delivered a particularly fierce hit to a wolf, they finally noticed the danger, and together they defeated the mystic wolves.

Join us this week as they press deeper into the forest and draw closer to the druidic stronghold...

  1. Depending on whether you ask him or basically anyone else.
  2. A type of wolf altered by magical exposure. They are resistant to magic and have a beautiful rainbow-hued hide.

Stupid Awards

Ayala: Camilla: Mikalash of Melvyn: Chort Bumblefoot:
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