The Pilot

== Episode 1: The Pilot ==
=== Summary: ===
A group of people from disparate backgrounds found themselves in the employ of a haggard-looking drunk named Gahl.  He recruited the party in a dingy tavern in a grubby tavern generally home to those just passing through the city or those who've just arrived and need to learn their way around.  A young elf rogue contacted the various members.  One is an early model Warforged, a bitter veteran of the last great war, named Malachi.  There was the young and impressionable orphan Shifter with an improbably long name, though is usually known as Bein, who was raised in a martial monastery and is just now seeing the world for the first time.  The cunning manipulator and aspiring master of deception, a young Changeling known simply as "Cam" was recruited shortly after fleecing a young scholar who chose the wrong tavern to visit.  Finally, at least for the time, was a Dwarf cleric who aided the group only for a short time before being recalled to her order.
Initially, the group was hired to investigate a convoy that had been raided recently.  After a trip on the lightning rail to Fairhaven and a ride on horseback past Alvirad, they found the ruined remains of the convoy, and a sharp eye realized that the party involved were in the forests nearby.  A group of hobgoblins had set up camp in the woods in order to recuperate from the fight.  Cooler heads prevailed and the group discovered that the hobgoblins were actually the convoy's guards and operators, hired by a private individual to transport the goods when they were set upon by the knights of the Silver Flame.  With help from the healing talents of their Dwarven cleric, the party were able to recover the goods and return to Gahl.  Gahl paid well for their skill and offered to hire them on for a longer term project.
According to Gahl, there is an individual who is attempting to put together a machine he heard about when he was employed as a cleaner at an academy of planar studies.  He couldn't get anyone to believe him, so he decided to attempt to do something about it himself.  He gave the party a few items to help them find the components, and started working on a book that was contained in a locked box in the shipment that contained notes and locations of the parts, encrypted and in need of translation though they were.
=== Key elements: ===
Introduced Gahl and the party, and the notebook that Gahl is translating to get the information on the parts. In the box the party recovered: A Warforged Docent that seems to be made purely for the intent of translating other languages, a silver wand with a blue gem in the tip that produces an ear-peircing sonic noise, and a set of 4 6" slender orichalicum rods that are etched and grooved like clockwork and that can extend to 8ft long.