DeepBlue's Vagabond - Act 1

[Deepblue706]

((I just need to check Saterus' status before continuing. Feel free to continue chatting, just no NPC stuff will happen until I'm sure where he's standing. As for XP, I suppose I could grant the party...128 points! Gyahaha! Don't worry, the number isn't random. That's just how I roll. Yes, indeed, if you are 1 point behind leveling, that means you have yet to level up. I am that cruel.))

[EvilRoeSlade]

Flare steps over to stand beside Harold's side. "This isn't his fight. There's no need to force it on him. Right now we need to think about ourselves." He leans over and whispers into Fargrim's ear. "Are you ready to make a break for it?"

[ByeLindgren]

He stares down Harold as he talks. He's not even budging... Then he turns to Flare, defeated. "Psh, are you? Harold's right about one thing - we've been drugged. Besides, we don't even know where the hell we are, or how many guards are right outside... Might as well lay down and accept our fates."

Fargrim clumsily plops down on his bed, staring at the ceiling. He's my only way out of this. "It's not lies I want you to tell, Harold. It's a matter of perspective. To me, those abusive, corrupt guards looked more than happy to kill everyone just right after they killed the ones who were fighting back. And how do you suppose they interrogated me while I was out cold?" Oh, Faraham, if they did...

[The Great Skenardo]

Harold Betruger
Harold looks up at the ceiling.
"Well, like you say; matter of perspective" The youth shakes his hand free of a smudged white sleeve and picks his teeth with his fingernail.
"From another perspective, it'll be said that an officer subdued the unruly innkeeper when he resisted the raid, and then someone chucked a knife at his head. In the ensuing chaos, a bunch of people stood up and resisted arrest with lethal force." Harold strokes his chin. "All in all...not a very promising picture, for those who hope to walk free the next day. Any of your gang have a prior criminal record? You can't tell me the lass with the halberd hasn't been in for grevious bodily harm at some point."

[ByeLindgren]

Still lying down, Fargrim turns his head towards Harold. "I can't tell you that, Harold, because I don't know her. I don't know any of you. I doubt anyone who was 'resisting arrest' back at the inn knows each other, though Flare here might know the lass. The fact is, there were at least four people, all from different places in life, all viewing the situation far differently from Captain Lutesmasher and company. If you're going to make the Captain look like a saint, fine. Condemn us. Flare's right - I can't force you to do anything. Just know that, at this point, the only thing that's going to change is whether or not the 'gang' spends the rest of our days drugged and confined like animals."

Well, that hope is lost. Maybe Flare had the right idea. Let's see if I can even get an orison out...

Fargrim looks around the room and finds a wood chip under his bed. He mumbles a few words of holy power and attempts to cast Light on that object.

[The Great Skenardo]

Harold Betruger
Harold raises his eyebrows in surprise,
"What, really? You didn't even know each other? Huh." He scratches the back of his head. "Wasn't expecting that. I thought for sure you'd be the folks they were looking for in the first place, or a bunch of hot-head adventurers. Well, anyways." Harold steeples his fingers.
"You're misunderstanding me, here. There's going to be a trial, and at that trial, you're probably going to be hearing a story not unlike the one I just laid out for you. You've got to figure out how you're going to defend yourself in there. And you've also got to know that you've probably already truthfully answered a lot of their questions already, and that you're not gonna know which ones until you walk into that courtroom."
Harold turns his head and meets Fargrim's gaze.
"Now, I can't tell you what I'm going to say when I give my testimony, if they even ask for it, but I can give you some advice. Of course..." he says, reaching for his vest pocket and extracting a small card "There's a price."

The card reads

Spoiler

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Harold Betruger
Musician, Problem-solver, Outrageous Liar
Reasonable rates, friendly service, great renown.

No love potion problems, please

"Here's the deal I'm proposing. Either the two of you agree to listen to my advice or you don't, but you decide that right now. If I advise you and you walk free after a period of no more than, say, two months, then you'll pay me the sum of one hundred gold coins, payment plan negotiable. If you don't go free in that time, you owe me nothing. If you decide not to seek my advice, you owe me nothing."

[ByeLindgren]

Fargrim grabs the card but does not yet look at it. "Wait, wait, wait. You've said this twice. How could I have already answered questions? What sort of drugs make you do that?" It can't be. I couldn't have betrayed my brethren in my sleep.

[The Great Skenardo]

Harold Betruger
Harold shrugs. "Can't really say. I've never been brought in like this, but there's a kind alchemical magic, I think, that lets them put you in a trance, where you answer questions honestly. I met a bloke once who told me about it. He talked about some memory loss and the sensation of being drunk."

[ByeLindgren]

That guard should have cracked my head open, not my nose. I deserve to rot for my failure... Though, I guess they could have kept their questions pertaining to the inn fiasco. I wouldn't have given them any more than I needed to. Better yet, I would have truthfully told them what I thought - those guards were going to kill us.

"All right. I'll take your advice. You'll understand if I don't have the money right after I'm hypothetically freed. I'd work something out, though." Yeah, sure. He looks at the card. "So... you're an outrageous liar, or so your card says."

[The Great Skenardo]

Harold
Harold Betruger waves a hand "Nah, that's just a typo. I told you before; honesty is practically my middle name." Harold takes a deep breath and looks once more up at the ceiling.
"You're in a tricky situation. By now, they have your own testimony that you struck a guard with lethal force. So, no outright denials for you." Harold laughs a little at that, but then sobers up a little "Now, unless you've got some outstanding warrant on your head, or any particularly nasty secrets that they might have asked you about, your best bet is probably to cast yourself as a somewhat reckless adventurer that had a little too much to drink that night. That parcels up your fighting ability and your willingness to get involved."
Harold scratches his head and looks expectantly from face to face "Good so far?"

[ByeLindgren]

"Sure, sure... I don't see how that testimony frees me, though."

[EvilRoeSlade]

Flare doesn't seem to be keeping track of the conversation, instead he's very interested in seeing what effect Fargrim's spell produced. If this other man can cast spells, he doesn't see any reason why he can't.

[The Great Skenardo]

Harold Betruger
Harold crosses his arms.
"Well, first off, drunk and violent is better than a man who hauls off and takes a swing at watchmen using a deadly weapon, when it comes to sentencing, if that's the best we can do. Now, if you don't care about throwing the lass to the wolves, you can point in that you got yourself knocked cold early into the fight. You can say that you were just looking for a friendly brawl, because you had too much to drink. You'll still probably get sentenced, but I think you can cut down your sentence by a lot by pointing out that you weren't one of the people they were looking for in the raid, and that the captain in question was the one you attacked. You start to see where I'm going with this?"

[Deepblue706]

((AH! An explosion of posting!))

Fargrim finds concentrating on any kind of spell is a bit more difficult than normal - it seems he is distracted by something. Indeed, he feels so, as if a fog was clouding his thoughts. He successfully imbues the small wood chip with light - albeit, quite dimmer than one would expect. It slowly fades in and out.

((I need a concentration check, please))

[ByeLindgren]

Spoiler

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Well, now that we're able to talk to each other (and I'm able to talk), boom! Concentration Check: (1d20+4)[24] Of course, I waste the good roll on Light.

"But what if they already know I wasn't drunk? Or that I used a lethal weapon to kill a guard in a supposed brawl... And these drugs... are you sure they're what you think they are? If so, they do a lot of different things..."

[Deepblue706]

The spell works. Through the fogginess of his mind, Fargrim pushes, and finds the wood chip begins to glow like a torch, strong and consistent.

[ByeLindgren]

Fargrim will dismiss the light upon any sign of guards (though he realizes they probably know what he can do at this point). "That was much more difficult than it should have been."

[The Great Skenardo]

Harold
Harold nods.
"I'm banking that they got to the guard in time to save his life. If that weren't the case, I should think you wouldn't be sitting here in the same room as us. As for the drunkenness...since you were unconscious when they first got to you, it shouldn't be hard to make that fly. Possibly you can get by with some polished truths. You know the sort of thing;" Harold's voice drops and he adopts the serious, bull-headed expression of a testifying witness " 'I was just about to order the biggest mug of whiskey they had, when...' " with a cough, Harold returns his voice to normal. "You're going to want to lean pretty heavily on the fact that the captain struck first, so you assumed a brawl was breaking out, and, in your state, you didn't realize that the guards weren't attacking to kill. How's that?"

[ByeLindgren]

"What it seems," says Fargrim, getting up again, "is that we're relying on the idea that they don't actually have all the facts - that these drugs were made to hinder our escape and nothing more. They would have asked me if I was drinking... I think." I feel better now.

"Anyway, sure, I'll do that testimony. They might wonder why I looked different when they hauled me in, though. I guess I can say I was embarassed to be in that establishment, so I disguised myself."

[The Great Skenardo]

Harold Betruger
Harold's brow furrows for a moment. "Ah, right; the disguise. That's a touch trickier. Er, why were you disguised?"

[EvilRoeSlade]

Flare seems to have tuned out of the conversation. Eventually, he just shakes his head. "I hope you don't mind, but I feel that I was wrongfully imprisoned and I don't intend to stay here any longer than is necessary. Both of you are welcome to come with me when I escape." He glances at Harold. "If you help, I mean."

He rises up and steps over to a chamberpot and sticks his hand down his throat, trying to force himself to vomit.

[The Great Skenardo]

Harold
Harold gets halfway through his reply;
"Point of view, remember? It-" but he stops as the strange man with the orange eyes tries to make himself vomit. Harold wrinkles his nose, but elects to keep talking as if nothing had happened.
"It depends on what point of view the court ends up taking up. If nothing else, they'll get you for inciting violent acts and resisting arrest. Not really sure how stiff a sentence that'll be...I think it depends on how much you distance yourself from the woman with the halberd. Who was she, by the way?"

[ByeLindgren]

"I wasn't planning on being knocked out by some chump with a club. Had I escaped while disguised, any credible witnesses - namely, you - would have pinned the 'crime' on someone else." Fargrim suddenly gains interest in Flare's actions. "Vomiting it out won't stop what's already coursing through your veins. This stuff's probably magical, which means it could've taken effect instantaneously, hours ago. They got us pretty good. Any escape attempt just makes us look guilty."

[EvilRoeSlade]

Flare ceases his activities for the moment, breathing heavily. "If you mean that I have no respect for barbarians and dictators, then I don't look guilty, I am. Are you sure about the poison? Can't we do anything to counteract it?"

He steps away from the chamberpot for the moment, thinking about these questions himself.

Spoiler

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Is the poison magical?[roll=Knowledge (Arcana)]1d20+6

[The Great Skenardo]

Harold
Harold steeples his fingers again and waggles his booted feet idly.
"Which is a fancy way of saying it's none of my business why you were disguised, am I right? Well, if it was for something they could nail you on, I don't think my advice is going to help you much. You might have even been why they did the raid in the first place, yeah?"

[ByeLindgren]

"I doubt it. You believe what you want, but I'm not lying. Looking back, I guess I made some mistakes, the disguise included, but the town guard wasn't looking for me." But what of my contact? We would have met somewhere more discreet...

Back to Flare: "And hey, buddy, I never said anyone here was guilty. I completely agree with you. These unholy tyrants deserve every bad thing that happens to 'em. But the facts are the facts - we're caught. You can't expect to just up and leave. If we play their game, we might win, but that means not pissing their magistrates off. And I'm not sure about the poison, but I doubt they'd drug us with something we could vomit away."

[The Great Skenardo]

Harold Betriger
Harold looks up at the ceiling.
"Then again, magic is expensive. Herbs aren't. What I was trying to get across here, is that unless you've got some sort of acceptable reason for having a disguise, you're virtually assured of being clamped with being a part of whatever they were investigating, especially if they thought to question you earlier about it." Harold sighs. "Sorry mate but you, at least, might be done up good and brown. I'm going to go ahead and advise you to tone down the rhetoric about 'Unholy tyrants,' when this comes to trial. No magistrate is going to appreciate that kind of talk.
"Now," the minstrel says, shifting a bit in his seat, "It may be that this is all academic. They might have gotten enough testimony from you while you were out, and might just have you be in the room while they hand down your sentence. Or, they might agree to some kind of suspended sentence; for example you serve a jail time, and then you get to do some adventuring on the behalf of the city. If you've got skills enough, that is. All sorts of possibilities."

[ByeLindgren]

No. They didn't do that. It's not true. "I don't get why you're so deadset on this 'unconscious interrogation' thing. The fact that I'm in the same room as you says enough. I disguised myself so I could get away with dispatching the guards, and that's it." He suspects me more than the guard... "If you're saying the courts might pin me on whatever was happening merely because I was using a disguise at the time, you may be right, but we can talk our way out of that."

[EvilRoeSlade]

"Well, of course we won't just walk out. I need to find that woman first, it's really my fault she's involved in this. Anyway, I'm making my move at the next guard shift, with luck we'll have a skeleton crew and I'll have figured out a way to feel better."

Flare moves back to the chamberpot and proceeds with his dire business.

[Deepblue706]

The door creeks open, and a guard pokes his head in. He gives each of you a look, sniffing the air, a bit displeased."Is...somebody sick in here?"

Suddenly, from further down the hall, you hear an outburst. "What?! What do you mean?! Royal Inquisitors have no right meddling in our affairs! This is ridiculous!" From where you stand, it's hard to know what's happening. But, you do hear a struggle, and another man speaks in a voice that both Harold and Flare recognize. "Restrain him. We cannot have the Captain interfering."

The guard halfway in the room is looking down the hall all this time, as footsteps can be heard, growing louder.

Eventually, the guards outside greet someone, who is then allowed into the room. As he steps inside, Harold and Flare recall him to be the robed figure who was at the inn last night. Indifferently, he looks to each of you, with weary eyes.

"I'll try to be brief. By decree of High Magistrate Joshua Bailey, you were originally to be put on trial for the consortment with the murderer of Lieutenant Gaius Reddas, and the assault of 6 other watchmen of Porto Giedion, as well as consortment with thieves, and conspirators against the throne, as well as the people of Medici."

He pauses.

"Due to difficulties regarding complications of the investigation, conflicts of evidence, and the inspection of the legality of the investigation practices and process..." He studies your reactions, and continues, "...the trial will be delayed, indefinitely. All charges are withdrawn until further notice. This way, please."

He beckons you to follow him into the hallway, with a slight hand gesture.