Dramatis personae(pulled from the PDF of the beta copy of the Campaign, some facts don't match and some data missing due to time differences):
Megani Ogrecrusher:
Youngest daughter of five, all other daughters followed in your mother's footsteps and became clerics and healers, following her in to the Sisterhood of Rose's Roses. You chose differently. Always your father's favorite, you often helped him clean his armor and weapons as a small child and followed along with his devotions as a Paladin. When you became large enough to swing a sword, you begged him to allow you to take up the training of a Paladin.
He brought in his most trusted friend and you began your path to the hammer.
As the years passed, you became greater and greater in the skills as well as more prideful. Seeing that this might cause you to fail, your teacher sent you out to face a dark creature harassing a nearby settlement.
When you returned, you were near death and had learned some humility. You also returned with ten marilith heads and the armored corpse of a dark paladin on your pack horse.
When you were fully healed your father informed you that you were now a recognized sister of his order and had been elected to take his place as the Mayoress of their village, Meg's Woods when he retires in a decade.
You have great feelings for the warlock in the party but believe she despises you do to all the strife and your classes treatment of her kind. Nonetheless, you plan to tell her your feelings. Someday.
Named your war pony Curbstomp. Not available during this module.
Sanra Tealeaf:
An orphan, you were found as a toddler near a hamlet of humans. You were raised by a pair of Halfling clerics and grew up playing with PALADIN.
You two are very close friends though in the past had a falling out when she tried to stop you walking out with a local villager.
You believed she wanted him for herself and didn't believe the warning she tried to give you without saying anything.
In the end you found out he was only interested in you due to your small size and were forced to kill him to protect yourself from being sexually assaulted.
When you asked PALADIN why she didn't just tell you why, she informed you that she was under a compulsion not to tell about the many conflicts her father has mediated as the Mayor of Meg's Woods.
When PALADIN decided to go out to prove her worth, you instantly offered to come along and she picked you up, swinging you around as she accepted it. You gave her a hot foot instantly for the affront to your dignity then hugged her as you healed the injury.
You find yourself quite attracted to BARD but are leery due to your last attempt to walk out with someone larger than you.
Like your closest friend and the majority of those in your village, you align yourself with Corellon.
Anrier:
You're the life of the party in every sense of the word. When you're not creating music to build up your allies' attacks, you're creating constructs from your mind to go into battle for you.
For most of your life you were trained to all the instruments but recently, you were seduced in to a new love, artificing. Creating your own musicians became a passion and you took up adventuring so you could afford to build what you see as the next wave, musical artifices that can play as soulfully as a sophont.
As you travel, you seek out new songs and new instruments while trying to learn all you can from other artificers.
You joined this party only recently, mostly because of all the females but also because the GNOME gifted you with a ring after hearing you play and you found it to be the perfect host device for spells due to the intricate design. GNOME has promised to introduce you to the goldsmith and had written you a letter of introduction but decided joining them could help you gain a little extra gold before continuing on.
Niela:
You are the youngest child of Quiarel, a much respected bralani but you're a bastard child, birthed on an Eladrin woman of such low repute due to her fiend-touched blood your father will not acknowledge you or your mother save for tossing her the odd coin after a visit.
Embittered by this, you refused to become a cleric like your many half-siblings and left the city of your birth to see what the world of shorter-lived creatures had for you.
Taken in by a group of Warlocks that sensed your potential, they trained and introduced you to many fey beings.
You mostly kept to the chaotic good creatures of power and made many deals over the years as you learned more and more until you felt you were truly ready to face what may come. Inducted in to the Sisterhood of the Wolves, you joined a small group of female warlocks that aim to create a new plane of existence for warlocks only.
While at the beginning you made most of your pacts with Correlon aligned fey beings, you've found yourself working with a star pact more often.
You find yourself attracted to the female paladin you travel with, a class of adventurers you've long hated for their treatment of warlocks, as well as not understanding how you could find another female so attractive. This causes great strife in minor matters of the group, especially when you've found yourself staring at her in those moments of quiet, admiring the whiteness of her skin and the curve of her frame when she wears something other than her well fitting but figure disguising armor.
M'karo:
You were born to the purple. The only daughter of the only child of the human grandmaster of the Black Guards, you were trained to steal from the moment you could walk. The hopes of your whole family rests on you being the new grandmaster and your skills in thievery give them all great hope.
Before you were a teenager, you had already cleaned out the temple of the most egregious priest thieves and returned the majority of the money to the people, keeping a small finder's fee for yourself and the guild. Within the year, you'd done three more jobs for the guild, cleaning out two homes and returning a stolen ceremonial dagger.
Your finest job to date came to you on your fifteenth birthday. A temple to Corellon in a small village of Meg's Woods had had its statue desecrated, the petrified peanut wood eyes and a golden bow stolen from it.
You returned the eyes and the bow—though it had been damaged by the thieves—and received recognition from the mayor. And then she asked you to join them in their travels. At first you refused then remembered just how much treasure there was to be found in old temples forgotten by time.
Though still considered a toddler by your mother's side of your family, your father's side consider you a full Black Guard and thus an adult.
Your beauty has caught the eye of a very powerful being.
A/N:
The dramatis personae is in second person but the story is in third.
Little Meg followed her father in to the chapel, marveling at how the space drank up the sound of her father's armor as he moved.
He touched the hammer sitting in the alcove behind the altar then turned and smiled at her as she sat down on one of the cushions in front of where he stood.
She gave a little wave then began to copy his call to prayers.
It was hour three of her father's devotions when she felt a hand upon her head, waking her up.
She sat up, looking around sheepishly. She wondered how he had gotten back to his position so fast after waking her.
Little Meg hesitated then left the chapel. She didn't want to accidentally fall asleep again.
Outside the chapel she saw her elder sisters sitting in a circle, rolling bandages and she dashed over to help, smiling as they moved aside so she could sit amongst them.
"Did you fall asleep again?" her eldest sister teased. "Father will be annoyed."
"I didn't mean to," she protested. "It's so warm and the incense makes me sleepy!"
As they began talking about something else, they finished rolling bandages and hoops with broadcloth on them and began practicing their needlepoint.
Little Meg took the one handed to her and smiled. It only needed a few more loops before it was finished. She happily set to then saw her father leave the chapel. Her needlepoint hoop went flying in to the center of the circle as she stood and dashed after their father.
The girls watched her go, shared a laugh, then went back to work.
"You fell asleep," he said to her when she caught up.
"I'm sorry father. I woke up when you touched me though."
"I didn't," he told her, stopping to turn and look at her. "You felt something?"
She nodded nervously, afraid she was going to be punished for falling asleep.
He regarded his daughter then picked her up and kissed her cheek. "Perhaps it was Lady Maya then."
Little Meg smiled at that. "Truly?"
"Mayhap little one, mayhap."
She hugged him then he set her down and took her hand once she finished straightening her dress.
As they walked, she listened to him tell her a story.
PARABLE ABOUT FAITH
He let her down and Little Meg pushed the door open then rushed in to their home, her father following at a more sedate pace, stripping off his armor as he moved. His squire was collecting the armor and filling him in on the news he may not have heard.
He was down to just his cuisses and codpiece when his daughters' voice filled the house.
Little Meg went to the servants' wing and smiled at the cook. "Hi Sushi, what's for dinner?" she asked as she pulled herself up on a box so she could see the counter the woman was working at.
When she saw the orange fleshed fish on the counter, she gasped. "I-is that threscher?"
"Yes it is," Sushi said.
Meg jumped down off the box and went running to find her father or mother. She dashed past her sisters who were sitting in front of the fireplace, mixing something, then ran right in to her father.
She fell backwards and looked up at her father sheepishly.
"Don't run in the house!"
"I'm sorry daddy but I was just talking to Sushi and she's making threscher stew for dinner and it's me and Sanra's favorite meal and I want to invite her over for dinner please please please father?!"
he took a moment to understand just what she said then smiled as he leaned down to help her stand. "Go ask your mother. You may tell her that I'm fine with it. She's in the garden."
Little Meg took off again then slowed to a fast walk when her father called out, "STOP RUNNING!"
Outside, she took to running again, following the stone path that led around the gardens, entrusted to the elder women of the village to maintain. Those working in it said hello to her and she greet them in reply as she looked for her mother and grandmother.
Halfway around it, she realized they would most likely be in the center of the garden where the medicinal herbs grew.
Little Meg came to a stop and looked back the way she had come then the way she was headed, trying to decide if she should finish the loop or go back. Which way is shorter, she asked herself then decided to finish the loop, her mother might be on it.
She started skipping instead of running and finally completed the loop then headed deeper in to the garden. Little Meg moved in to the spiral that led to the shrines in the middle of the garden and stopped to pick a mintflower. She tucked it into her hair then continued on.
She found her mother and grandmother sitting on a bench, plaiting herbs into loops.
"Mama!" Little Meg said, stopping barely in time and knocking over a sack of herbs.
She bent down to put them back in the bag as her mother and grandmother smiled at her.
"What do you want little one?" her grandmother asked.
"Sushi is making threscher stew for dinner and father said it was okay to invite Sanra over for dinner and maybe she could spend the night too so we can go together to the festival as soon as we're ready?"
"If her parents say it's fine, yes," her mother said as her grandmother gestured her forward.
"Open your mouth."
Little Meg did as told and her grandmother popped something wrapped with a leaf in her mouth.
"Chew it quickly."
The sourness of the leaf made the young girl make a face but she bit in to it as told and her eyes went wide as the sweetness of whatever had been wrapped in the leaf overwhelmed the sour flavor then slowly melded together into a very pleasing medley of flavors on her tongue.
"Well?" her grandmother asked.
"It's so good!"
She handed the girl three more. "One more for you and two for Sanra."
"Ask one of your sisters to walk you over to Sanra's," her mother called out after she thanked them both then sprinted off.
Sanra opened the door and smiled at her friend. "Hi Meg. Hello Miya."
"If it's okay with your parents, we're having threscher stew tonight and here," she said, holding out the two candies for her. "They're really sour until you bite in to them. And if you can spend the night we can get a start on for the festival right away!"
Sanra nodded excitedly and turned around to find her adoptive mother—a halfling cleric—standing behind her. "Mama, can I have dinner with Meg's family and spend the night?"
"I heard. It's been okayed by your parents?" Miya nodded and Sanra's mother nodded.
Meg and Sanra rushed to the girl's partitioned off section of the small house and stuff some items in to a bag. Meg carried the bag and Sanra's wooden doll while Sanra carried her festival dress carefully.
At the house Little Meg led Sanra to the wing that the girls had their rooms in—the home of the mayor of the village was a gift to the major, not a permanent home—and Meg said, "Father helped me clean up this small storage room and now I have my own room!"
They set her clothes on top of the chest with Meg's clothing then Sanra noticed the wooden sword and picked it up. "You're weapon training now?"
"Not yet. Every morning I measure myself compared to that. When the blade can't touch my head at all with the pommel resting on the ground father says I'll be tall enough to train."
"Oooh. I cast a cure wound on a ghoul today."
"Did it die?" Meg asked excitedly.
Sanra nodded and excitedly explained how the ghoul had been subsumed by radiant flames and how the smell had made her so nauseous it had been an hour before she had been able to eat her midday meal.
Miya told them dinner was on and they joined the rest of the family and the servants at the dining table.
The girls watched as their father gave a blessing over the meal then asked Lady Maya to look over the villagers.
Sanra and Meg's plates were filled with stew first and they received the ends of the loaf of bread then their mother asked the girls how they had done with their duties for the day.
"Even without Little Meg's help, we got all the bandages rolled and finished the needlepoints for the quilts."
Meg felt a little guilty until their father said, "She's been touched by Lady Mala. Meg will be trained as a paladin beginning next week."
Sanra hugged her friend then they both dug in to the stew, sopping up the last of it with the bread. They each had a second plate then were excused and left the house, Meg's older sister Miya in tow again to make sure nothing happened to them.
She tried to get them to go somewhere else but they led her unerringly towards the deconsecrated grounds where ghouls kept rising. A corral had been built and the paladins and the clerics at the nearby monastery and abbey would come to practice offensive casting of spells on them. They had tried for over two decades to reconsecrate the ground then had given up and made the best of it after putting up ten foot high corrals to keep the mindless beasts within.
When they caught the attention of one of the ghouls, Sanra waited until it was at the fence then caste consecrated ground. It didn't work and Miya said, "Silly gnome, a consecration spell won't work. Try to cast healing light."
She showed the novice the correct hand movements and whispered the spell's component words.
Sanra tried it and the ghoul's head exploded off before it was consumed in flames, it's arms flung out as if it had been nailed to a wall in a T-shape.
Both of the young girls looked to Miya. "I didn't help out at all, I swear!"
Sanra and Meg began jumping up and down, yelling in their excitement at Sanra's successful cast.