I can’t find the notes for our first adventures on the Rails, so here is the wrap of Riding the Rails, and the beginning of our Sharn adventures. This is part of an ongoing Eberron Campaign Walkthru (I’ll likely build a page with short summaries and links to these longer walkthrus eventually). The image for this post is from the map pack that is part of the PDF I sell (link at the bottom of this post) of the coach car on the lightning rail.
What Came Before
Before this part of the story, the group met each other on the lightning rail when a fortune teller told them their fortune. They then were attacked by members of a military group, dispatched them all, and realized that no one was alive that knew how to drive the train.
Driving the Lightning Rail and Wrap up of Riding the Rails
None of this is really in the original adventure, but it made sense that the party (or a random passenger) would need to drive the train to Sharn, since the conductor and all the other train employees were dead. We have an artificer who is very curious in the group (George) who was very interested in learning to drive the train. The other characters gathered up the dead bodies of the bad guys and put them in one of the storage cars. I think the bodies of the innocent were also stored there?
I’ve mentioned in another post (found here) that the other passengers should be fleshed out some. The PCs met Elroy Hubbard (sorry) from House Cannith who told them to look him up or ask for him if they needed anything. He didn’t, alas, know how to operate the train. George did some arcana and investigation checks, and was fairly sure he knew what button did what. He was wrong, as the first button he pushed sounded the horn.
While George continued to contemplate what control did way, Zan wanted to look at the column again. He can read runes, but that doesn’t mean he can understand them….but he did pick out the words Ziblob, giants, elf, war. No one knows what Ziblob means. When Yuri and Eko came back from moving the dead, they could not account for the fortune teller, and they decided to check on the 4th room in the rich person sleeping car, which the party did not open on their first pass through.
They found a man who seemed very apprehensive about letting them in the room, but Eko was surprisingly very insistent, and when they found the half naked woman hiding under the bed, they understood way. She seemed unhappy and Eko noticed that her clothes bore the sigil of the nation Karrnath, and they all wondered if they had a new enemy from the nation that uses undead in their armies.
Eko and Yuri decided to check the room where they had found a dead family. Yuri, being a cleric, immediately senses that something isn’t right, that undead may arise here at some point. They spot a dark cloud forming in the corner of the room, and channels their god’s might to turn undead, which seems to work. The cloud dissipates, and Yuri no longer has a bad feeling about the room. This does, however make the him and Eko wonder if the same could be happening with the dead bodies they gathered in the storage car. Before they leave the room, they perform generic burial rights on the family, and go to find the rest of the group.
Zan went to the engine room to check on George and found a passenger manifest. They can account for everyone buy one female passenger that they are sure is the fortune teller to no one has seen since the trouble started. While they are there, George decides to push more buttons and turns off the headlights (and back on), turns off the passenger car lights (and back on) and finally finds the brake (having previously found the accelerate button). He slows the train down, which makes one of the passengers (which the PCs call Karen) angry. Karen asks if they know who she is, and Eko is having none of it, so she tries to charm Karen, who knows immediately what Eko is doing.
Everyone but George goes to check on the bodies they stored, but there seems to be nothing amiss, so Zan checks their bodies for “notes and stuff” and finds a note and 43 silver. The note reads “the column mush reach the canyon” but there is no canyon on their route, so they aren’t sure what that means. They decide to take four of the uniforms (none would fit George, the small “warforged” or whatever he is) just in case they can use them later.
They go back to the passengers, and Eko can’t help herself and pokes at Karen. That may have been a mistake, as she’s from a house of assassins, and they are all pretty sure THIS ONE will be an enemy. Eventually, they successfully arrive in Sharn, where they are separated from the rest of the passengers and questioned about what happened.
House Cannith would prefer this story not get out, and they offer the party 2500 gold to keep the story to themselves. Zan gets promised access to the library he wants to visit, Branstorm will get a weapon of some kind, George will get information potentially. Eko is happy to just accompany Zan so asks for nothing else, and Yuri just wants some beer.
And that wraps up Riding the Rails in Eberron. I think adding all of that was fun, and I’ll be adding some of this to the PDF I sell on DMSGUILD.