I have provided some links below to help players prepare with knowledge their characters should possess without seeing a bunch of spoilers. Don't google this stuff, because there's a 100% chance you'll be unable to avoid spoilers. This is a sandbox adventure, and you can waltz right into situations that are trivially easy to resolve or "run now, run fast, keep running" deadly. The action takes place in the Dessarin Valley , which is large enough to feature a variety of localities and geographical features. The starting point is the crossroads town of Red Larch. Red Larch is a stop on the Long Road (from Waterdeep to Mirabar, both of which will be at least passingly familiar to your characters), with quarries and roads to various important campaign locations. It's a small town but reasonably prosperous for the above reasons. You can probably obtain most of what you need there. Please give some thought to why your character would be in Red Larch and
why they would want to join the other characters to fight evil and get
involved in local matters. The main Forgotten Realms factions are active in the campaign area and will take an interest in the PCs, who may join, ignore, or find themselves at odds with the factions. Players who don't at least familiarize themselves with the factions on a basic level will likely just not understand some of what's going on. The main story line involves some major dungeon crawls. I will not railroad the party into pursuing the main story line, but the threats involved will become increasingly difficult to ignore if we don't scrap the main story and do something else (which is on the table if people want a different experience or a shorter campaign).
