The air is stiff with smoke in the Green Dragon. A travelling bard sings an epos on the siege of Nor-Telan, the elven town which resisted the orcish assaults for over 30 years, nearly continually besieged, but always timely relieved by hosts from King Amma or Queen Emeldir. You join a group at the bar and order an ale as a uniformed man enters the tavern. His uniform has a red flying dragon with a wizards wand at the back ground on his sleeves. Someone whispers:
"A sergeant of the baron's army"

With the barkeepers assent the sergeant climbs on one of the table and cries:
"Who ever dreamed about becoming a hero? Today is your chance to be one of a thousand heroes who will do what no one has dared for centuries!
Who among you has never dreamed about revenge on the wild mountain orcs who killed your sister, father or uncle? Today Baron Brnzwck offers you a sweet, satisfying revenge!
Who among you does not long to recover those ancient family jewels, long lost in the mourning mountains? Today is your chance to recover them!
Who of you never dreamed to be rich? Today is your chance to enter the Mourning Mountains as a soldier of Baron Brnzwck, and to return with more loot than you can carry!
Who of you never dreamed about being admired by all the pretty girls? Did you ever want to be strong? Today is your lucky day!
The Baron offers you a smart uniform, and good food!" The sergeant stops a moment to put a slice of strong smelling cheese into his mouth, and continues: "On top of it, allthough I feel you would have to pay to be so lucky, you receive a silver piece a week and danger a plenty!
Sign on today, and be back home in two months, loaded with money!"

Several men sign up. You will have to decide what you want to do.

You can leave the tavern, sign up or have another drink at the bar.

[HOUSE RULES

All text between square brackets is meant as rules clarification, and is not part of the adventure.

This adventure is a beta version, so don't bring in your 7th level hero from 12 live sessions. Preferably, start with a low level character group.

This is not a small adventure, and you will have to do a lot of preparation before you get to the real action. I am still looking for ways to cut down on this preparation time. Also, be aware that most of a soldiers time is not spent in fighting great battles, but in boring camp duties and other preparations.

Preferably keep your character sheets in a file, so that you can copy and paste parts of the equipment, which is the same for all soldiers.

Combat magic is allowed, and is left up to your feeling of fair play. All spells as Vorpal Blade, TTYF, Whammy, Glue you and Little feets work with no problem. Use them as you see fit in combat.

You may bring in magical weapons from other solo and live adventures as long as they fit into regular t&t combat.

There are several occasions where you may wish to split up your group, such as when wizards take another course as warriors. In such a case, bookmark the page where you split the group up, and return there when you reach the page where the parties join.

Finally, a word of warning. You enter this scenario with 10 soldiers. Equipping, training and preparing 10 soldiers requires a considerable amount of time. Be prepared, and don't expect a quickie, you will need several evenings. In this final release I have added some tips to speed up the training, and I strongly encourage you to follow these tips.

[IMPORTANT:

The images in this document have been courteously provided by:

www.armsofvalor.com sells some of the most beautifully handcrafted swords I have seen. Their site is worth a visit!

aleksi stenberg shows some of his work at elfwood.

They retain full copyright to these illustrations which are here reproduced by permission. You are not entitled to reproduce their work in any way without their written permission.]