A Side Campaign

After finishing an adventure that had been going on for more than a year and got most of the party to level 8, we're taking a bit of a break from the campaign I'm running and starting one with one of the other people in our D&D group running one in his new setting.

It's very exciting, as I get to play a character and focus on him instead of carrying the whole world around in my head.

One of our players missed the session (we're going to have a 5-player group, as there are six people in the D&D group) but the four who made it got to introduce themselves.

Our DM made sure to have us not reveal our races or classes (or anything about our characters) unless our characters knew each other.

So first to be introduced was Nott, our Dwarf Sorcerer. I have yet to figure out what Sorcerous Origin she has (though I suspect Giant Soul thanks to a comment about having tall brothers and sisters.) She appears to be in the small town of Fleming's Crossing as a newcomer, working for the head of the local merchant's guild.

Then we were introduced to two other characters, Dolph, a Dwarf Barbarian, and Digby, a Human Ranger, who are fur-trappers who have a small business called "D&D Furs."

The three were both sent to an inn called the Gelded Unicorn for different reasons, but while they were there, the innkeeper sent them to check in on the last character, a human man who had been staying in the attic room for nearly a week and barely coming out. So they went up and met me, Conrad, a Warlock.

There's a lot about my backstory I have yet to reveal, but (presuming that none of these people read this blog,) the last few days have gone like this:

After wandering the forest outside the mental hospital in which he had been a patient, but which was now a smoldering run that Conrad is pretty sure he destroyed immediately after making contact with his Great Old One patron - a seemingly sentient tower in some kind of alien plane that is continuously shattering but never falling town - Conrad tried to make his way back to civilization only to black out as soon as he reached the nearest town.

Conrad awoke in a hired coach just about a minute before his driver cheerfully informed him that he had arrived at their destination. Conrad had a stack of books about folklore, which he took to the inn where the driver dropped him off and then found that he had a room already paid for. Conrad went into the room and decided to read through the books searching for anything he could find out about the Tower, which he knew to be named Oedom-Het.

After you put a lot of effort into a character's backstory, it can be a little scary to hand that over to your DM and only be able to really react to the world as it is presented.

So far I've leaned heavily into Conrad's Neutral Good alignment - I like the idea that he's a fundamentally good person who nevertheless wields disturbing and dark magic.

We've only had two combat encounters, and after a low initiative roll in the first one, Nott and I didn't get to act before our Barbarian killed a Black Bear with a single strike (given that he primarily trades in bear pelts, it was fairly appropriate.

Our next fight was against a Cockatrice who had holed up in a barn full of chickens (making it difficult terrain.) After doing a lot of flavor for my Hex and Eldritch Blast after getting first on the initiative roll, I wound up missing with a natural 1, obliterating several chickens and enraging a mule who, as the DM described it, loved the chickens (our Ranger was able to use Animal Handling to calm the mule down so we didn't have to kill it.) This fight did manage to get to a second round, and I hit with a natural 19, and then I rolled minimum damage, dealing 1 Force and 1 Necrotic, which didn't feel great.

I know the character will have the potential to do a nice amount of damage, especially once we hit level 2 and I can get the Agonizing Blast eldritch invocation. But I'm hoping that next session, should we get some combat, I can actually feel a little more useful.

Still, for now we're very much dealing with a lot of level 1 kinds of challenges. I suspect we're probably going to be fighting some bandits next time, and I'm probably going to be happy that I took Moderately Armored to put my AC up to 18 - which is kind of insane for a pure caster character.