WARNING TO ANYONE IN MY D&D GROUP: This has spoilers about the upcoming campaign. You may not want to read any further and experience the twists and turns as they happen. Assuming that is you come across what I am discussing in this post. It’s always possible you may never come across it.

Session zero is this weekend. This will be my first session zero as a DM. So once again I’m a little apprehensive about it. Not as much as I was for the taster session. But still the nerves are there.

However my thoughts aren’t really with that session zero. They are more with the start of the campaign and the first encounter and “dungeon”.

The plan is starting to formulate in my head. So now I need to start capturing those thoughts. Which brings us to this post.

From the player campaign intro sheet that I wrote (you can get it here) we know that the first encounter for the campaign will be the players and the ship owner and his crew. So I have that handled. Happy with that.

I’m thinking of having the players end up on a secluded beach somewhere. There will be cliffs too difficult to climb, trapping them on the beach. But they will discover a cave entrance. I’m toying with the idea of having an encounter on the beach with possibly a giant crab.

Naturally it would be handy if the players explore the cave. Inside they find it empty but at the back will be carved steps going up.

This will be the secret entrance to a pirate den (is that the correct word to use here?) And so the party will explore the den and fight some pirates, eventually they will emerge into a tomb. This tomb will be the secret room from the taster session. Yep they will be exiting the pirate den through the tomb of the Delian Order. There won’t be any goblins in it, just their decayed remains.

From there the party will… I’m not sure. So I have a plan, kind of.

Let’s go back to the pirates.

I had been wondering about what creatures to use for the first dungeon. Then it hit me this is a nautical, island hoping campaign. There will be pirates.

So naturally I’ve been sourcing pirate miniatures.

But my pirates are not solely humans. They are a mixed bag of races. I have human pirates, a dwarf, half elf, orcs, and some vikings (which are human).

Why vikings as pirates? Well I thought there were bound to be some in this band of pirates considering that a large part of the Moonshae Islands has a Norse influence. Which says to me viking. Or they look like them at the least.

The pirates do have a leader, and I’m blatantly borrowing the leader from MtG. The leader is Angrath the Minotaur pirate.

I’ve found a cool Minotaur mini to use for him.

Angrath is going to be a major character in this campaign. So I like the idea of introducing him early on. I’m also toying with the idea of having the half elf be his lieutenant. And also a recurring character.

I’d love to have a Vraska pirate mini also, as I’d love to have her as a character. But as I type that I’m thinking I can still do that. I can have Vraska and Angrath as two competing pirates, with the players always getting caught in the middle.

Now to design a pirates den!