(Spoiler alert! The following post contains spoilers for Icewind Dale’s story and some quests. If that bothers you then this is a good point to stop reading it.)
Like most adventures in fantasy-land, this one begins in a tavern, more specifically it is the Winter’s Cradle Tavern in the small town of Easthaven. The group are just relaxing when someone approaches them:
Hrothgar gives the party a welcome, some advice to not start any trouble while in town as he consider himself a protector of the place, some directions to the most important places and finally for them to meet him at his place to discuss some business later. He then leaves to his own house.
Aladdin smelling the beginning of a main quest proposes that the party scour the town first for side quests so they could maximize all their XP and treasure gains. The party don’t understand half of what he says, assuming it all to be just mystical giberish, but they agree that helping people in need isn’t a bad idea plus some money would be nice too since they are in need of some real equipment.
At this point Hansel also declares himself as party leader since he is the most virtuous (and humblest) member of the party. They all agree with it since that means if something goes wrong they can just blame him. Well, except Snow White who disagreed about him being more virtuous (and humble) than her. She however agreed that he would make a better leader. Snow White just didn’t mention that was because if some enemy decided to target their “leader” it would be better if he was the target than her. I mean, it would give her some precious time to run away!
Hansel also imposed a rule that the party would never ask for any reward, accepting only whatever the person in need deemed a just reward for their actions. There was much grumbling about this, specially from Goldilocks, but they agreed to that too once Hansel promised to be fair in sharing all the rewards.
Their first stop in their quest to help the people of Easthaven, to claim their place as heroes and to make a world a better place is… by the bar. They are already in the tavern anyway, so they might as well ask if the bartender knows of anything. Failing that, some drinks to start the journey isn’t a bad idea!
Well, actually they just went to the drinks first. Priorities! But turns out that the tavern is completely out of drinks. Seems like the cellar has some bug infestation and the bartender is too scared to go down there to get more booze.
That may not be the most glamorous beginning but it is a start. The heroes accept the job and go down the cellar to squash some bugs.
Job completed the party went back up to receive their well earned reward.
At that point the party started to regret agreeing to not ask for a reward upfront. They even had to hold down Goldilocks so she wouldn’t start a fight with the bartender. This would certainly be a long journey!