Never Split the Party

So, after my first session, my second session had to be cancelled, leaving us with some dead momentum.  When it became clear that session 3 was going to be missing another PC (Oargev!) I knew I needed to do something to keep momentum going.  I decided to go ahead and run a game on our normal night and then turn around and run another game on Saturday.

Night one, I had Marten and Istav's players.  I decided it might be fun to take advantage of the fact that Marten is built to be a ninja (heck, at this point he was an Essential's Assassin), so I made a pre-gen PC for Istav's player to play for a 1-shot partner to Marten.  The gist of the story was that a local Cult of Mabar found out the Prince was in the area and was doing a ritual to empower themselves to capture the prince, sacrifice him, and usher in eternal night on Cyre, according to some prophecy they had found.

In Session two, I had Oargev and Istav continuing the story while Marten was off-camera, finishing up taking out the evil cult.  They were accompanied by the lord they were staying with, and fought against the Not-Karrnathi for the first time.

The game with Marten vs. the Cult was tough.  The PC I provided was another striker (Eladrin Fey-Pact Warlock), and my idea was for quick-strike kills and lots of stealth.  Unfortunately, the E-Assassin, which looked awesome, with cool sneak-up-and-kill powers, sucked.  I had to bend the rules in lots of the fights in order to help out the PCs and keep them from dying outright.  I think they enjoyed the session, and the prophecy they got will certainly be interesting to their characters later, even if it's already interesting to their players.

THE PROPHECY
The blood of one removed from royal, shed
Shall bring unto the world a realm of night
And fill the heart of every man with dread
Of spreading pestilence and growing blight.
For when this sorrow of a nation falls
And sorrow soon becomes that nation's name,
The dead will only walk the castle's halls
And sit the thrones of those who are to blame.
But all is never lost in [text illegible and stained]:
The life of one removed from royal spent
Can save the guilty parties from their doom,
Though all the land they darkened still be rent.
This I say is how [test illegible and stained]
Shall rise again.  Take heart and heed my warning!

[signature of author impossible to make out]

Let's see, that last bit is clearly a couplet.  What rhymes with warning...maybe...Mourning?

And yes, I know my Iambic Pentameter is off--but the general rhythm of 5 stressed syllables is maintained.