Tonight we played the first game of my Byzantine Age campaign setting. R and D sat down to formal character design with their character concepts from earlier and the week and settled on a pair of rangers.
Arturo is the son of a family with significant mercantile interests, supervising shipments east and west around the island province. He's a quick hand with paired spatha, a style considered barbaric due to its unsuitability for fighting in proper Imperial military formations. It's a pity considering he's the best Latrunculi player in the province - a skill usually found in those gifted in military tactics. However, his disreputable combat style complements both his attitude problem with authority and his predilection for risk-taking. Such traits are those that Res Monetae are happy to utilize. He's been making a solid margin off the book by combining his shipping activities with basic courier work.
Vinto has a different story for every day of the week for anything, including his own life. Arturo's heard most of them by now, but still could only vouch for things since they day they met when they were 7 years old. Vinto wandered into town, a strange, slightly feral orphan from the backwoods - interesting and amusing. Arturo's father took the boy in as a free servant after Arturo's drastic tantrum when he discovered some unscrupulous men had tried to pass his new friend off as a barbarian slave. In addition to his gift for story-telling Vinto is a dead-eye shot with a bow and good with animals. Both boys spent countless hours in the wilderness around the family villa, sometimes disappearing for days at a time hunting or exploring.
R and D had come up with the premise that they were sent on a dangerous adventure to avoid a severe legal punishment. Vinto had been jailed due to a small riot breaking out over a matter of gambling. Arturo had impulsively engineered a jail-break that didn't end cleanly. Miraculously, no one died in the struggle and there wasn't any significant property damage, but the damnum (fines) levied against both were potentially damaging to the Familia Maretia. That also assumed that Arturo's family bothered to bail him out in the first place. Being sold into servitude was the other option on the table, but the officer in charge of the jail happened to be a member of the Res Monetae himself and proposed an alternate arrangement. So Arturo and Vinto were shipped around to the other side of the island to the port of Parnormus, where they were to take positions working for the Rockbreaker brothers in their expedition to restore an ancient dwarven mine. Their fates will be tied to ensuring the success of the venture and giving the Concern enough information and leverage to gain a controlling interest in the business.
Between Arturo's fluency in Dwarven and their skillfulness in the local environs the "brothers" had no problem convincing Gundren Rockseeker to acquire their services delivering his supplies to Pandelvarus, two days ride into the highland back-woods of Sicilia. They took a fraction of their own pay and hired a wagon-driver and then used their talents to simply ghost his route along the road from alongside. In the middle of the second day they came across the dead horses of Gundren and his human companion Silvaro blocking the road. They noticed a poorly concealed Goblin ambush (Gobs rolled a natural "1") and made the first initiative roll of the world. Vinto rolled the first miss as his arrow hit a tree. Two goblins rushed out of the thicket and attacked Arturo, rolling the first critical hit and the first normal hit, and left him a nick away from dropping. Arturo's blades failed to find their mark and then the third goblin sniper in the other thicket tried to shoot the wagon driver, panicking the horses.
Naturally the PC's continued flailing hopelessly with 8's, 4's, and 1's - but thankfully the goblins' dice go cold as well. Arturo wisely disengaged when he saw the panicked horses charging down the track. The horses cleared the corpses but the wagon damaged a wheel coming over the bodies, threw off the driver, and crashed into the two goblins on the track. One failed his save and died horribly. The other ducked into the thicket only to emerge and clamber over the damaged wagon to try and get sight of his prey. Arturo obliged by bursting from the foliage and making his first successful attack rolls. The goblin archer took one more parting shot before ducking over the high ridge alongside the road. Vinto calmly let an arrow fly in an arc over the hillside, largely out of spite, but his Disadvantaged attack rolls came up with a pair of crits. A pained scream came from the other side of the ridge and Arturo shook his head in disbelief as he tended to the wagon driver. Given the unlikely critical hit I ruled the goblin pinned to the ground by his shoulder, helpless and compliant to interrogation. Once they had everything they could use from the goblin, they put him out of his misery and headed to the Cragmaw hideout. The primitive traps along the trail were no match for seasoned hunters in their natural environs and they arrive at their destination without further complications.
We finished the session by leveling Arturo and Vinto to level 2. With their fighting styles, spells, and second hit die they aren't made of glass anymore so the encounters going forward should involve less rocket tag. While 5E is very well suited, in general, for smaller parties in general, a short-handed party at 1st level is very challenging due to the high variance (few actions) and low tolerance (HP) in combat.
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