The quest will begin with a short conversation with your family. Your task is to run away from the horde of Darkspawn that's attacking your home town Lothering . Take note that you can now take control of 3 characters. Your sister Bethany (mage) and your brother Carver (warrior). Your mother will be there but you can't control her. If you have the Black Emporium DLC then your family dog will also be tagging along.. 

Venture ahead and you will find corpses of a dead refugees. It is advised that you check every corpses, trash can or crate that you find along the way because they may contain valuable items or loots. Not far from your starting point you will be attacked by a small group of Hurlocks. As this is not the exaggerated version of the dwarf 1st story, you are that strong and you only have a somewhat weak ability or skills. But dont worry you can easily defeat them. I suggest that you control you entire party by pressing Ctrl + A and concentrate in attacking just one enemy at a time.

After killing the group of Hurlocks your hero will level-up. You will see an arrow indicator besides the avatar of the character on the lower left corner of the screen every time someones levels up. You can either hit Esc or press C (hotlink for character). From here you can distribute Stat Points to whatever  attribute  of your character you want to build or level up. And you can unlock your characters abilities or skills by using Ability Points.