Rocks Fell, Everybody Died

So, I started off my 4E game with the intro adventure of the Scales of War Adventure Path, because I was initially unsure if I'd be able to dedicate the time to properly make 4E adventures. I had some side plots I was going to work with, but they would have been minor bits. But with some experience under my belt and a few weeks of pondering, I kicked off the "real" campaign arc last night.

One of the bits I'd added to SoW was a funky red meteor, associated with the Red Hand of Doom. It blowed up over Elsir Vale and Our Heroes found some mutated wasps near a meteor impact zone. Our Heroes were on the way back from the dungeon with treasure and rescued hostages in tow. Then another meteor shower hit (this one on the Michael Bey asteroid movie scale) and Our Heroes (and the NPCs) got transported to a Hollow World. Locally, there are dinosaurs and a race of tree dwelling monkey people (1) who had been waiting for a long time for Our Heroes (and the NPCs) to arrive because their god (the Walker in Mists) had uplifted them from monkeys and told them to make a nice place for them and wait for them to show up to save the world. The Walker in Mists was unhelpful as to what exactly they are to do, but they do have a cool treehouse and a tribe of monkey people that think they're pretty impressive. (Well except for drelmo's dragonborn paladin whose theories contradict what the Walker in Mists told them to do. They think he's kinda kooky, and if they did not conveniently have the Key to their treehouse - a piece of treasure they picked up in Rivenroar, they might have tossed them out of the treehouse.)

Since they were there to save the world, Our Heroes asked the logical question: "from what?" The Walker in Mists was unclear on the subject, but the E'Kree had some theories. There's the Shroudlands to the North, which is full of nasty undead, and there's the really mean lizard people to the West (2). They picked the North, and got to border markers (big monolights I don't want to call Pylons) and went into the Shroudlands, which is a sunless grey land full o' zombies (and other undead). We'll pick up next week.

It's my first attempt at Sandbox Gaming, giving the players choices about the adventures they're going to do. While it does mean I have to do a lot more extemporaneous DMing, it's also turning out to be really fun.

(1) I was going to use the Ape-Lords from One Bad Egg, but realizes that a bunch of enormous gorilla people don't really say "you must save the world" the way a bunch of little monkey people do. But the Ape Lords are out there, somewhere.

(2) North, South, East and West are defined by the position and rotation of the sky shells.