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The third in my series of NPCs for my still unnamed Forgotten Realms campaign. Where's the second one? The blog ate it. Your autosave function is both distracting and useless, but I appreciate the effort you put into giving us a blog function, WotC.

The Crownsilver family is one of the three royal houses along with Huntsilver and Truesilver. It is also one of the four most powerful noble houses in Suzail, with Crownsilver, Illance, and Rowanmantle making up the balance. The former status makes the house direct allies with Crownsilver while the latter makes them rivals. It is sometimes an uneasy alliance, and actions such as prince Irvil's marriage to a Goldfeather frustrate both partners. At the center of this oftimes challenging puzzle of alliances and rivals firmly sits Duke Catesby Crownsilver, the house's current patriarch.

Catesby rules over his family like a tyrant. He must be consulted on any decision, no matter how small. His brothers, Rews and Tillomon, are cowed by the threat of censure and being cut off from the family fortune. Crownsilver has no trade interests and relies exclusively on monies collected from tenant farmers.

In spite of this uncomfortable situation, neither brother makes any effort to establish himself in trade or industry, or even to gain his own holdings in Cormyr or beyond. Instead they play at being noble. Rews styles himself as an earl and attempt to voice his opinion on every issue he can in court. Fortunately he is far from stupid and seldom embarasses the family. Tillomon prefers to be addressed by his rank in the Purple Dragons. He is officially an onrion, though he has never held a field command. His service is still a great point of personal pride for him though.

Catesby's wife Ulla is a Greatgaunt by birth. As supporters of the crown, the marriage was good politically, but it is loveless. Dutiful and at the behest of her sister, Countess Hermia Greatgaunt, Ulla Crownsilver has managed to bear three children of her own. Her eldest son, Vergar, was married to Zoe Huntsilver by agreement between Catesby and Zoe's father, Sevrus. Ulla fears that her son and the young woman are doomed to the same loveless life that she and Catesby endure. Her younger children, Wallford and Xenia, are only in their teens. Catesby plans to offer his daughter's hand to Prince Baerovus, though he secretly considers the young lord to be a weakling. If he accepts, Crownsilver's political captial will increase dramatically. Wallford will likely be paired with a girl from strong noble lineage from the Dalelands. Though he is only 15, Catesby is already making inquiries.

I finally managed to get enough people to sit down for a session with the new rules. It went well enough that I'm willing to do it again.

The biggest shift, for me, from 4E is the pace. The 4E action enconomy requires that each player make a more involved set of decisions with each of his or her turns. In Next, we were literally through a round of combat in as little as a few seconds of real time. Exceptions to this were naturally when I was forced to look up a rule or when a player wanted to review the text of one of his or her abilities. I can see the possibility of a group mastering its characters abilities to the point that each actual round of combat takes less than a minute. And, while that's a possiblity with any group playing any game, I can see it happening pretty quickly with Next.

On the down side, I felt that the kobolds from area one were really not very threatening, even to the 1st level adventurers. That's something of a disappointment for me. I like combat to be a tense situation, with the legitimate threat of death looming over the players' heads. In our first scenario, at least, that simply wasn't the case. There literally wasn't a monster that couldn't be killed in a single hit, and the rats were even easier to clean out with burning hands. Hopefully it'll get a little tougher next time.