The Second Age - Session 1

Mansday 13th Zeptambor, Year 599
The heroes-to-be started out at the Alehouse in Fallcrest, having gotten together to form an adventuring band. They were also celebrating Kavaki the Goliath's birthday, so he was getting quite drunk. They are approached by Amara Azaer, the tiefling who runs the local Azaer Trading House. Incidentally, Tokiel had brokered a trade deal for his tribe to the south, so he had already had several meetings with Amara and there had been a bit of flirting. So when an Azaer caravan had been attacked and the goods ´stolen, with all the guards being tied up by goblin and kobold attacks, she approached Tokiel and his new group of friends. After some haggling, they agreed to some terms (100 gp per person if they could recover all the wares, 50 gp if they couldn't), but convinced her it was okay to put things off until the morning, as Kavaki was already borderline roaring drunk.

As she left, some Red Riders came in the door. Kavaki, who has a history with the Red Riders tried to hide under the table, but managed instead to turn over the table and make a lot of noise (natural 1 on stealth check). They started looking around, claiming they were searching for a young human man, who had been poaching the land of their Lord. But since he wasn't there, they quickly left again and Kavaki could once again return to his drinking.

Tirsday 14th Zeptambor, Year 599
The next morning, they went and had a talk with the driver who had survived the bandit attack (by playing dead). He said they had been heading east, that they had mentioned something about a castle, and that they had expressed happiness about their job, since they both got
pay and got to keep the loot. Immediately, theories of competing merchants trying to hurt House Azaer were conjured, but based on the little knowledge they had, nothing concrete came out of that. They decided to head south via the trail to find the spot where the caravan had been ambushed and go from there.

Once at the spot, marked by 3 shallow graves, they quickly found the trail and headed west, into the Silent Forest.

It didn't take long for our heroes to find and encounter some monsters. After just a few hours of running around in the woods, they ran into two Phase Spiders. Ouch. It was a rough combat.
Lots of people going down due to the poison, and a lot of healing was needed. It wasn't extremely close, but close enough for the new adventurers to gain a good deal of respect of the Silent Forest.

Anyway, once the spiders dead, the party continued following the tracks. Or rather, they got a bit off track, and ran into a couple of dire stirges. Eventually the party managed, But it was still
touch and go for a couple of those in the party, but luckily it was the Warden they were "attached" to (after the monk was dead), which made things somewhat easier.

After fighting the stirges, they were like:"Okay, we better get out of this forest" or "We should have stayed at home. When that is said, they did continue. From here on, following the trail went mostly well, and they walked most of the day through the forest. As it was getting late, they ran into 4 bandits (or rather, were ambushed by them) but those were much easier and died quickly.

Onsday 15th Zeptambor, Year 599
After a good night's sleep with no interruptions, they followed the trail and made it to Castle Flame. Up there, next to the castle, they found a bandit camp. They tried to ambush it, but failed at being stealthy. Instead they were showered with arrows, but in the end, the 7 bandits and their illusionist leader all died the same. They found some gold and a magic staff, that none of them could identify.