Come Hell or High Water – the fall of Ys

So, session one of my new game. How did that go?

Well, we ended up with a pretty mixed party. I thought having the only PHB races available as Human, Gnome and Tiefling would give us a pretty mixed bag – but instead I have a party of five and one of each!
A Human Ranger, a Gnome Fighter, a Tiefling Life Domain Cleric, and then a Tabaxi Fighter and Triton Rogue make up the party. The Gnome is going close combat and the Tabaxi is going ranged, so we have a nice enough mix. I might be able to fit one more player – maybe we’ll get some kind of caster in.

So what happened? Well, everyone woke up in the middle of an earthquake – and with a strange red glow coming from the centre of town and a brighter than average blue glow coming from the surrounding seas.
Ys was not having a good night of it. Between earthquakes and small fires and smoke, the city wasn’t doing well. The human fighter was out in the fields sleeping under the stars, but ran towards the city to see what was going on. He passed a few people fleeing out towards the mountains but he kept going.
Back in the city, the tiefling was woken up in the temple and told to go and help people. The earthquake was going for a long time too, so the temple was being emptied just in case. Best to be out in the streets helping people anyway.
The gnome and the tabaxi both woke up in the gaol – the gnome watchman having a doze guarding the cells, and the tabaxi sleeping off a night of drinking in a cell. The kenku in another cell was making a racket to rouse them, and the same red glow was coming in from the high windows. It looked a bit like dawnlight, except it was in the West.
The gnome hurried out to see what was going on, the kenku and the tabaxi managed to break out and flee out of the window, also to wander the streets.
The triton woke up down by the docks, in time to see a larger boat leaving behind half the crew and they ran along the dockside to board. Managing to find a small bimaran fishing boat, he headed over to the smaller port to load up with stolen goods as supplies. A skeletal body of one of the sailors unable to catch his boat floated by – somehow it was overgrown with limpets and seaweed in just a few minutes.

With heat and light and smoke coming from the market square, at least one store holder got hit my the initial blast of heat, steam and probably worse. The tielfing couldn’t do much for him.
When the gnome caught up, they both ventured into the smoke in the square to look for survivors.
The tabaxi broke into a store to see if he could make a bit of coin in the confusion – sadly only pots and pans to sell didn’t help much, but he made off with a handful of coin.
The triton and the human met up near the small docks and kept filling the boat. The tabaxi eventually showed up too and joined in.
The gnome and the tiefling hand to clamber around a sinkhole and into the pan shop – a crying woman was pinned to her bed upstairs with her baby in her arms. Helping her out, they barely escaped before another large tremor dropped most of the building into the sinkhole and yet more fires started across the city.

As a slight wind cleared the smoke in the market, great jets of lava could be seen – suddenly a lot of people wanted to get away from the island, braving the bright glowing seas.
Joining the rest of the small group, they managed to head out just as the central mountain peak of the island blew it’s top, when all at once in a great flash the blue glowing seas went back to their normal gentle glow, the island had disappeared, and all that was left was the small fleet of ships out at sea.

And that was about it. I gave the players a list of names of places to head to next – they chose Buyan. Which I immediately confused with Ryushu… So, going to be an interesting session as I come up with an adventure in the next couple of days.