Where there's smoke, there's adventure...

[David Roomes]

Back in college, during our third year, we were starting a brand new campaign and I was going to be DM. For several weeks prior to this, I had been busy building my own new world called "Khoras". Yes, this was going to be the first time that I had ever run characters in a campaign in Khoras (previous campaigns had been in Greyhawke). So this campaign was special. The first session was going to be special. Because of this I wanted to do something a little different.

Normally whenever we played, everyone would bring their own food and we would play in one of the dorm halls, in a private study lounge area that had sofas and coffee tables. But for this session, I wanted to do something better. First of all, I planned to cater it myself. I prepared the food and used food coloring on some items. The foods were creative and had labels that indicated they were from Khoras - meat from specific Khoras animals and so forth.

Also, I wanted to play in a new location. Some place where we could get away from campus and game all night. There just happened to be a lodge/cabin kind of thing near by which was owned by the university. It was at the edge of campus. I still, to this day, don't really know what this place was or how it was associated with the university. But it was a nice place. It was a big lumber and stone cabin with about 4 bedrooms, as I recall, and a large central room. It sat at the edge of a wooded area. It has a huge fireplace. It had a neat atmosphere. It was perfect! And it could be reserved for private parties!

However, it could only be reserved by officially sanctioned university groups. Luckily, one of our players was a member of the local university-sponsored computer club. Somehow, he convinced the club president to let us make the reservation in the club's name. Yeah, it was pretty blatantly breaking the rules, but I didn't ask too many questions. I really wanted to use this place. So, we ended up getting permission and we had the entire cabin to ourselves for 24 hours. It was great. This place had the perfect ambiance for gaming - it was all stone and wood and fire and hearth. The whole place felt old.

So late afternoon, we all arrived at the cabin. For most of the players, it was their first time there. They oohed and aahed at this place. The game was a hit. The custom "Khoras food" was a hit. Everything was going well. Half way through the game, one of the players decided to light a fire in the fireplace. It was nice. We had the crackle of the flames, the clatter of dice, the laughter of players. I loved it. But about a half an hour after the fire was lit, we noticed that it was getting a bit smoky in the room. We opened up a window, thinking it was just a wet log, but it got smokier and smokier. A visible grey mist of smoke hung in the cabin. It was about this time that we checked the flue on the chimney and realized that it was rusted shut. It wouldn't budge. After 10 minutes of struggling with the flue and debating solutions, we ended up having to douse the fire completely and open up all the doors and windows. It was INCREDIBLY smoky in there. It was like a thick grey fog in doors. We all stepped outside for a 30 minute break under the stars while we aired the whole cabin out.

So my grand first session in Khoras was not entirely successful. We were, literally, smoked out of the cabin and forced out into the night. Thank goodness we had stars overhead and not rain clouds. We eventually were able to get back in there and resume playing, but the stench of the smoke clung to everything. We gamed til about 2 am and then went to bed in the various bedrooms of this cabin. The next morning, the whole cabin stunk of smoke. Our clothes as well. It was pretty bad. Still, a memorable gaming experience.