So, had our first session today. Lots of frivolous time wasters, half the party didn't have their backstories done, and two thirds of our time doing shit was spent on actually having the party get together.
In the midst of all of this, I have become Gilderoy Lockhart.
Basically for my character's backstory, he's royal blood- but a thief seduced him and stole his coronation treasure, a planar touchstone used in a ritual to fully awaken the royal bloodline. Faced with disgrace, he set off on an expedition to recover the stolen item, and has been away from his ancestral lands for four or five years. In that time he made little headway- but recently located the Thief who stole the item, and seduced the information out of the guy- that he was hired by a noble of the kingdom to steal the item and that guy still has it.
Not enough details to know which noble, or whether it was the elven kingdom or the nearby human one, but enough to know that it's probably still in his homeland area.
This is relevant to game play because it means several things.
First, he's incognito. He caused all sorts of problems when he 'temporarily abdicated', including a regent assuming charge for the next heir in line, a cousin too young to inherit- and unable to fulfill the ritual because no planar touchstone. Three guesses who hired the thief and the first two don't count.
So he's on the hook for booking it, and the masses don't know that his shit was stolen- they think he was a laze hooligan who ran off rather than assume the kingship.
Next, if he gets identified, whichever party behind the theft will probably try to have him killed, and as a level one elf with more points in charisma than wisdom, he's pretty shit at sense motive checks, so that's very likely to end badly.
Unfortunately, one of the other party members is an elf and got a high enough roll to know that he's familiar looking, but not exactly who he is.
Mechanically, I've taken a number of steps to disguise my character. He bleaches his hair so it's that white/gold blonde that elves are famous for. He uses a special soap and wears heavy cloaks so his skin is a lot paler than normal for his subtype. He talks with a different accent than his normal one.
And the part that came up recently- when making a bluff check to conceal his secrets from the party, went off on a tangent about being a moderately renowned adventurer who is the star of his own book series, including such classics as "Rel Faren tackles the Balrog in Five Easy Steps." and "Rel Faren Versus the Gnolls of Hook-Knee Swamp".
Next level I take my first level of Bard, which probably means skill points in diplomacy (currently not a class skill), and since I'm the rogue, probably sleight of hand. I have the feat for cha use for ranged attacks, and ultimately took Able Learner with my flaw so I can continue advancing cross class stuff like open lock and search.
Anyways we had our first combat encounter, us versus seven goblins.
The pig killed three of them just straight up. Every Goblin that attacked the pig missed. I killed two, and knocked another down to half health. Didn't get any sneak attacks cause the DM wouldn't let me hide behind the trees, gonna have to talk about sight lines and lighting next time- but did respectably. The party wizard did fuck all, wanted to conserve spells for the 'next encounter'. The favored soul hit a goblin for one damage with a quarterstaff, but saved the Swordsage after he took ten damage and dropped to 0- goblins throwing javelins in his face.
The swordsage ultimately killed two goblins, one of the ones I injured, and another who died to a bullrush maneuver.
The wizard still got full XP for the encounter 'because he rolled initiative' but I think it was just the DM taking pity on him. We got 150 xp each, and 20 gold from the quest giver. It'll be another couple sessions before we hit level 2.
Should be interesting.