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It’s a new day and did I have an interesting morning before the party got up. Some “friends” came to visit me during the night: minor Fey powers called Brilliant Archers. “Have you come for the fun?”
“No, I haven’t, actually. Mind telling me what you’re up to, then?”
“What we always do… Glory in their suffering.”
Well. That’s not good. For one, the Brilliant Archers are disease inflicting spirits. For two, they’re Unseelie. (I’m not.) For three, it’s getting to be summer. Why are Winter’s servants in power?
First thing in the morning, I let the party know of my discovery. Yhennon seems the most stunned… “Suddenly, you make a LOT more sense. I’m now VERY glad I made that ice wall!” (About a week before the comet, he’d saved me from a crowd of people who were rather vexed with me. That was also the day I learned other peoples’ pockets are ‘protected’ by something called ‘personal space’. Human customs are so odd sometimes…)
Partway through the following discussion Gav, who has been rather restless, inattentive and unusually quiet, seethes the words ”Find me some @#$% materials. I’ll be back later,” and storms from the room. Curious… the oncoming plague doesn’t seem like something he’d get that upset about.
In any case, we advise Jan to pack up and leave the city as quickly as possible, an idea that doesn’t seem particularly thrilling to her. We generally agree that we need to be rid of this town as quickly as possible, and split up to our various activities.
I’d formulated a plan last (out of game) week to try to spread our plague story and make a little money on the side. I drop my mask into a sewer (it was only going to be a liability at this point, what with the Nobleman wearing it during our attack on the Rats) and buy a cheap white robe, as well as picking up a stick to suffice as a quarterstaff. I ask Jan to borrow her backroom and transform myself into an old, bearded Varaz man, take off my leather coat, and put on the robe. (The Varaz are a now-extinct subrace of human who once controlled a large part of a continent with a magical empire). I walk to the merchant’s district, where I hold a loud street sermon as a prophet of doom. I chose Lo-Tenger, god of sea, earthquakes, and horses as my deity of the destruction of the wicked, using the recent activity as examples and calling the Comet his “Chariot.” I told them that a village between here and Nuntatii’s Fingers (a series of previously-dormant volcanoes) had been struck down by plague for not believing me. I told them to leave their blood money behind with their sins and be washed clean in the sea. I rolled a nat 20. I last 3 minutes before a few guards frog march me to the pier and throw me into the water. I transform into a Merrow (male mermaid) resurface and cry out “YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!”
Unfortunately, this doesn’t have quite the awing effect I was hoping for; rather than be terrified by my watery visage they simply club it over the head with my own quarterstaff for 8 points of lethal damage, sneering, “Go back to Lo-Tenger, fish man!”
:smallfrown:
I sink down beneath the waves and swim away a distance before re-attempting my ominous roleplaying. “YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!”
And the guard attempts to hurl the staff at my head. :smallfrown: Thankfully it goes wide. It might have killed me otherwise, (I don’t actually gain gills in this form yet --I probably would’ve drowned if I’d have lost consciousness) so I’m rather thankful for their horrible aim. I wait for them to turn and leave before I shift myself into a human with a higher Con score and make my way back to land and Jan’s shop, where I ask for something soft to collapse on. Yhennon and the Pink Ninja patch me up via heal checks and Ki-Healing while Gav, who seems in better spirits, makes fun of me. Ah, the wonderful Ki-healing. Ah, friends who kick me when I’m down.
Incidentally, since none of us actually remember to get some forging material, Gav takes some of our ‘recovered’ money and retrieves enough metal to make a couple masterwork shortswords and a profit of around 300 luna, all said and done. I hear from Yhennon that he was still rather uptight when he returned from his mysterious errand, but banging away at some scrap metal (and then on some actual metal) seem to have helped his mood. At some point much earlier, Yhennon did also overhear Bug’s voice asking something like, “Was it made for her?” before Gav angrily cut the archon off.
Speaking of my mage friend, Urgrim went hunting rats with Bloodhawk while I was making a fool of myself (and theology), down by the foundries. They were fairly successful, though they couldn’t make any money off of it. To that particular end they attempted to provide entertainment for the commons. Bloodhawk is rather unlucky and uncoordinated, so on the spot they turn it from a demonstration of prowess into a show of comedy by feeding the bird some of the booze we looted from the bar the previous night. This was mildly more successful.
By now the pair had returned to the shop, where Urgrim hatches another moneymaking scheme: Selling the booze that we … acquired … from the bar last night to the workers leaving the foundries, passing it off as genuine Hill Dwarf brew. (Hill Dwarves are the traditional name for half-human, half dwarf hybrids, and they typically brew some pretty potent beverages.) I roll language and deception to put some “authentic” runes on the side (Urgrim is illiterate or he would do it himself)… Yhennon ALSO rolls a language check and nearly falls off of his chair laughing at what I DID write… I don’t think it was very polite. Regardless, he corrects it and Urgrim and I go off to sell. (I am, of course, looking the part of a Hill Dwarf… Skindancer is such a fun feat!)
Speaking of booze, by the way, the Nobleman has been doing nothing but relax in the shop and enjoy some of our ‘borrowed’ bootleg.
Yhennon goes wandering around the neighborhood looking for information, and ends up finding more than we were expecting. Seven Rat clan thugs are going through the shops here and are headed to Jan’s next. He doesn’t manage to make it back to warn us beforehand…
“So ‘ere’s the deal, Missy: One o’ you @#$% merchants sent someone to nick the last round of collections, and as we don’t know who did it, we’ve come for the monthly fee from all of you again!”
Jan is… visibly frustrated, but she goes into her back room without question.
Yhennon, in an attempt to help with the situation, shifts into Bloodhawk and runs back and forth past the open door yelling, “The Rat Clan can burn in Hell!” :smallamused: Four of the Rat Clan give chase, with only two of them being devoted enough to continue more than 30 feet. Those two, however, are lead ‘on a merry wild goose chase across town’. (This is how Yhennon/Bloodhawk’s player put it before he realized the pun and nearly broke down laughing. :smalltongue:)
Yhennon’s aim was to draw the Rats away and thus avoid conflict, but that ambition evaporated when the Nobleman decided he’d had enough of these thugs. (We’re fairly sure he’s also had a bit too much to drink, but that’s quickly beside the point.) He draws his scythe and hacks at the first thug. Melee now unavoidable, the Pink Ninja vaults over a table and punches the same Rat in the face, killing him instantly. The Rats attempt to retaliate against the Nobleman and fail spectacularly against his armor. On his next turn, he strikes out at another and learns that his d20 is a bit of a pacifist: Great in all non-combat situations; conscientious objector at all the wrong times. He has a little trouble hitting, but eventually shifts into Accurate Attack mode (-3 Damage, +3 attack) so everything is fine. Jan is horrified.
To more effectively combat the Rats, the Pink Ninja leaps, runs across the ceiling and falls into a flanking position, hitting the Rat hard in the ribs, breaking a fair number of them on the way past. (She has the Winddancer feat, which, by and large, turns gravity into a guideline.) The Nobleman turns to the man and nearly bisects him.
During this whole time, Gav has been steadily working away at his forge behind the shop. It takes him a while to notice the commotion through two closed doors, but he eventually does, and investigates. In the doorway to the shop proper he gauges the battle a moment, before neatly stepping out from behind Jan and tossing his cruciform longsword at the nearest Rat, cleanly impaling him. Without skipping a beat the Pink Ninja trips the man and executes him with a quick stomp. The remaining two Rats flee, and the Nobleman gives chase into the street, drawing a dagger and hurling it for a trip attempt. He succeeds by a wide margin, causing not-insignificant damage and is able to calmly stride over and silence the hapless thug. The Pink Ninja takes off after the other man, but unfortunately fails to catch him.
Meanwhile, Bloodhawk has been having quite a time leading his two men through the streets (he has a 15ft higher movement speed than they do) and eventually, he makes it to a (slightly) secluded treeline where he makes his stand. A short scuffle later and he rips one of the two Rats apart, though the other manages to flee. He takes a lot of damage himself, but he’s still alive. He’s also still a little hungry, and since there’s a fresh new carcass available, well… Yhennon is unable to override primal instincts at this time. Unfortunately, he’s also taken enough damage that, if he were to switch back to his lower-con human form, he would immediately have to save against unconsciousness. Since failing that save could leave him to bleeding to death… Fortunately, Urgrim and I have been peddling our alcohol nearby.
Bloodhawk seeks out Urgrim and me. We have been having quite some success in our venture, and don’t feel bad about having to break off early… especially as Bloodhawk informs us that we have to heal him or Yhennon would die. I’m the only one of us trained in heal, and patch him up. …Fey medicine isn’t exactly spectacular. I nat 1 the roll and cause 4 damage to Bloodhawk. My other 2 heal checks (the max he can receive today) manage to fix it so I didn’t actually deal any damage, but nothing else. We have to find some way to get him back to the Pink Ninja for some Ki-healing --until then he’ll be trapped in bird form. Thinking fast, we capitalize on Urgrim’s previous showboating and feed Bloodhawk a little more of the liquor and make a show of heading back.
We stop in the doorway, stunned at what we see. Gav and the Nobleman quickly explain what happened and what they did, including their decision to hide the bodies in the cart for the time being. Urgrim is LIVID. “Why did you put them in the cart?! It KILLS the resale value!” Instead, we leave the bodies (minus some ears as proof) behind some tenements somewhere… With a note I wrote in the local Thieves’ Cant saying simply “Love Tozi” pinned to their corpses. We tell Jan that she has to pack up the shop, NOW, and come with us… it isn’t safe for her here anymore. I offer to help her haul things, and ask her not to freak out when I shapeshift into a human with more strength to make the job a little easier. She asks me to hold still for a bit while she runs and grabs some silver figurine and presses it to my skin. (With HER bare hand, interestingly. Previously, I was half-convinced she was a werewolf.) Convinced that I’m not something nasty, she begins to lead me where I can help her carry books for her. The rest of the party halts me before I can go much farther, as they need me to go lie outrageously for the Nobleman. Urgrim takes my place in the packing process.
I become an old man, who could be some sort of guide or steward for a traveling Nobleman, and we approach the guard tower. I knock for a time with a cane (a stick I picked up) and when the door opens, I start yelling “This city isn’t safe! We were down in lowtown looking for antiques when these thugs ambushed us!”
“And?”
“Well… thanks to the master here, they came down with a rather severe case of the dead.”
“And…?”
“I… just thought you would want to know, is all.”
He slams the door in my face. I knock again and get directions for a rather secure place to stay for the night.
We meet up again and the Nobleman leads the way into Hightown, where we are stopped by the guard and I try to do the same guide/steward act before the party decides that it isn’t being very effective and they hand me a silence luna. The Nobleman says he is here from House Reizei, and they let him in with little to no questioning, and the rest of us with him.
We decide to stay in a slightly less prestigious inn, so as to not attract quite as much attention, and from there, we have 3 rooms: one for the Nobleman, one for the ladies, and one room in the servant’s quarters. We then begin to formulate our new plans; apparently Urgrim’s “subtle” information gathering has told him what he needed to know for his own personal mission, and that will take us to the twin cities of Ada and Nar. Lacking anything better to do, we decide to go along with the idea… especially because of what his quest IS: Urgrim seeks vengeance against the man who led a group of soldiers into his dwarfhold and slaughtered his entire family…
When Urgrim made his first try for revenge the first time they laughed at him, beat him, and lit him on fire. Having been a dwarf for the better part of the day, I can understand a little of what is driving him, and agree to assist. And now Urgrim knows the man’s name and station. He’s powerful, both martially and politically (though here those tend to go hand in hand…) and it’ll be a challenge to defeat him.
But first, we have to eliminate Tozi. Urgrim comes up with another plan and he needs my help for it… he’s going to make a bargain with the Brilliant Archers to strike Tozi down with a disease, and I know how to contact them and can speak their native language (Planar (Court) in case you’re interested) … and so I go off to find a person dying of disease. The most likely spot seems to be the refugee camps, (diseases come out of the mangroves often enough) and sure enough, I find a man in the final stages of Bonerot. I whisper my summons to a Brilliant Archer in his ear, tempting them with a bargain, and a short time later, the body of the man convulses with the sound of bones snapping as he sits up… and his neck apparently snapped, as his head is leaning with his ear against his chest.
Essentially, Urgrim gives away his Dwarven resistance to disease to have Tozi struck down with a plague. I identify our target as Grandmaster Tozi, administrator of the city and its environs so as to not hit the wrong target, and we try to up the ante with the fact that the plague would be starting in the soft nobility, where nobody expects it to come from… wouldn’t that be fun? We roll diplomacy and apparently succeed… he asks for Urgrim’s hand. As Urgrim is holding onto the head so that it’s at least facing us, we voice our confusion… “My mouth…” The spirit bites into Urgrim’s hand, shattering the man’s teeth, and Urgrim has lost his racial resistance to disease. We both have to roll fort saves vs disease (and Urgrim now without his bonus) but both get something VERY high. After we leave, I make a quick heal check to remove the tooth splinters from Urgrim’s fingers. The guard to hightown doesn’t want to let us back in because we don’t have the noble house’s seal I try to explain around it as “quite obviously the master doesn’t like me” and Urgrim does hand him the Rat Clan ear-bag, (they’ll make good chew-toys for the guard’s dog) so he decides to let it slide this one time. But we’d better have identification next time!
We get back to find Yhennon reading in the cart… I ask him what he’s learned, and apparently he’s been researching the origin of the celestial bodies, looking for some information about the Comet. What we can tell: The Moon was made as a prototype to the Sun by Femta, goddess of the forge (and dwarves), mostly for sizing. Then she forged the Sun. The Stars were made shortly before or in the early stages of the first Faerie War (depends on who you ask, one race of humans is still fighting it…) when the god Seseg was slain and his blood splattered against the heavens. (Seseg was a sun god)
As for the comet, the first time it appeared was at the beginning of year 0 of the current calendar, when the goddess of magic at the time, Igela, was slain by her daughter Tyntaragi and sister Tykanria… the current goddess of magic, Ibronka, didn’t come to power until 25 years later, at the beginning of year 1 of the calendar. Also? Each time the comet comes, its reign over magic lasts 25 years.
All very fascinating… I guess. At the moment, though, I have other concerns: Urgrim and I realized we forgot one crucial step when bargaining with the Brilliant Archer: That Tozi needs to be dead within a week. So it looks like we’ll have to try to hasten his death … quickly. Gav has been doing some information digging while we were out, and knows of a restaurant where Tozi has dinner frequently… which gives me a whole host of ideas as to how to deal with this situation. Yhennon does what he can to try to comfort and advise Jan on what to do now that we’ve basically uprooted her whole life...
We break to plan, plot, and scheme.