About 90 ft. from you a massive creature gets ready to charge. With two mighty horns on its nose and its body covered in natural armour plates the view is quite frightening for you.

Craven sighs and leaves his cover.

“Wei-Ling, take the two others and search for any sources of magic where the fight happened. I will return to the Portal and ask for reinforcements.”

Swiftly Craven moves through the rocks towards the Portal, always keeping cover as good as possible.

As you step through the portal and arrive on the other side you suddenly gasp in exhaustion as your lungs fill with air that is barely breathable for you. After a few moments you acclimate to the air a bit and take a look around.

You are standing in the middle of a vast stone circle, or better said in the ruins of it. The sky glows in a red/purple light but there are neither stars nor a sun on the sky.

Craven starts to examine the ground around the portal and then says

“There was someone here recently. The tracks lead to the east.”

You follow Craven leaving the stone circle. The terrain is very rocky and there’s plenty of cover behind the huge rocks everywhere. Most of them are definitely not natural. What ever building was standing here, it was huge and it was destroyed quite thoroughly. The ground is a mixture of stones and sand. There is no obvious vegetation near you.

Following the tracks further Craven suddenly raises his hand

“Wait”

At the same moment as Craven gives the signal you notice yourself why. Combat noise. Somewhere close to you position you hear the sound of weapons.

“Chik-Cha, try to sneak up to the fighting and see what’s going on. You two stay with me and take cover at the rocks over there.”  

As the conversation is getting a bit slow I will jump right to the start of the actual adventure if no one has anything against that.

Also I will motivate Varn to post a bit more often I think *packs out his maul of player motivation +3*.

Well I will continue tomorrow. If there's anything else you want to do before you depart please say so.

The girl scribbles something on a piece of paper

“Well we do have all kinds of meat, chicken, lamb, pork…whatever you desire. If you prefer something without meat I recommend our cheese plate with oven fresh bread.”

Breathing heavily you walk down the streets of Luskan towards the Host Tower of the Arcane. A cold wind cuts deep through your clothes and you wish that you had never left the tavern, but good adventuring opportunities rarely care to wait until the weather got better.

All of you are here because you found an “advertisement” on one of the public places in Luskan.

Adventurers of Luskan!

Gold and glory await you. Join an expedition to reveal ancient secrets in the name of the Arcane Tower. See exciting places, meet interesting people and travel the planes. Only the best will get a chance, so hurry to sign up for the expedition!

We do not take any responsibilities for major injuries or death.

Well, gold and glory doesn’t sound too bad or? The small print on the other hand does…..

As you reach the tower the guards let you pass without too many questions, no wonder considering the amount of adventurers rallying at the tower. After several hours and endless questions from some wizards, obviously the leaders of the expedition, all of you got signed up.

After several more ore less meaningless speeches the organisation of the expedition was made up. The only thing that realy mattered for you was

"Scouting team one!

Chik-Cha Crookbeak, Wei-Ling, Varn"

After your names were called you gather near the scout leader to receive initial instructions

“Well then, name’s Craven. Ye three will be one of our scout teams as soon as we reach our destination. No questions just do what you are supposed to do when we arrive there. And please don’t ask me where ‘there’ is. That damn wizards make a damn big secret outa that. Who cares, they pay good enough to not ask anyways.

Ye got a few days to prepare yourself though. The expedition will start in about a week. We got some rooms here so ye don’t need to pay for an inn. Better get to know each other, wherever we go, I’m quite sure our asses won’t be safe there and ye need to know the people round you.”

Uhm, your HD roll is d4 and not d3.

As some of the people that wanted to join simply don't respond anymore to my messages I put another request for some more players in the player search forum. Sorry for the delay guys, but I had quite some aplications for the game and all of a sudden the people are gone.