Knights of the Platinum Dragon: A D&D Story

Chapter 1: The Young Griffin

It was a fine day to be an adventurer – the sky was a field of spotless turquoise with not a cloud in sight, and the warmth of the summer sun was tempered by a breeze that both cooled the sweat on the skin and turned the rolling fields of savannah grass into a rippling yellow ocean.

Logan Galehaut sat within a small wooden barge as it made its way steadily up a small winding river that ran from the Orsraun Mountains in the north, where the river went south towards the Vilhon Reach, and from there out into the Sea of Fallen Stars. Around him were barrels of beer and ale, sat upright and lined up in rows, crates filled with bottles of wine stacked on top of each other, and hempen sacks of fruits and vegetables. Thankfully, he still had enough personal space, even with the bargeman standing not too far away – a pudgy, stout halfling dressed in a drab beige tunic and brown breeches, a wide-brimmed and floppy straw hat keeping the sun off his round, cherubic face with a patchy brown beard.

Logan cut the image of the youthful knight-errant well – he was a muscular young man in his early twenties, broad-shouldered and straight as a lance. He wore no helm at the moment, his face visible and clear, revealing sun-bronzed skin and rough-hewn features including a clean-shaven, jutting jaw that was square and solid. His coal-black hair reached his collar, thick and slightly wavy, and while he looked healthy overall, his skin was somewhat stretched over his face, and his cheeks were hollow from undereating.

He was clad in a chainmail hauberk that reached down to his thighs along with a gorget, greaves and gauntlets of steel plate. Over the chain was draped a navy blue surcoat trimmed in white, and a hooded cloak of the same colour hung from his neck and shoulders down to the back of his knees. Both were branded with the same symbol – a griffin, rampant and resplendent in white. A richly ornamented longsword, its hilt studded with sapphires and the quillons of its crossguard shaped like the wings of an angel, hung from his left hip along with a rondel dagger in its own sheath at his right.

What stood out most about him, though, were his eyes. Instead of being any usual colour, his irises were a bright, gleaming shade of burnished gold, shimmering as they gazed out from his face.

At first, those eyes were simply taking in the sights that surrounded the barge – the rolling green hills, the frogs darting their tongues out to catch mayflies, the pale sky slowly beginning to darken as afternoon rolled towards evening. But then, they turned towards the bargeman.

"How much further until we reach this inn, Edwyn?" Logan asked the halfling, not impatiently nor unkindly.

Edwyn Butterbeer flicked his gaze towards Logan, but kept diligently pushing the boat along with his pole. Even on his raised position at the back of the barge, the halfling could only just see over the top of Logan's head.

"Not much further now, m'lord..." he replied. "An hour or maybe two, depending on if anyone else wants to be picked up."

Logan nodded. "No worries," he said before giving the bargeman a smile. "And as I said, it's just 'sir'. I'm not a lord, nor will ever be, if the gods are good."

Logan had run into Edwyn that morning, and the two of them had made an amicable arrangement – Edwyn worked for the nearby Cockatrice Inn, bringing supplies to them of ale and food up from the nearby town of Hlondeth to keep their stocks topped up. He also took passengers to make a little extra coin where he could, and had offered to take Logan to the inn at half his usual price.

Beasts were always prowling the wilderlands of Faerun, and it was plain to see that Logan was not a merchant or an artisan. Edwyn had openly said "I've had some hair-raising experiences with jackals and lions in these parts, m'lord. So I'd rather travel with armed company, if it please ye..."