# They came in search of Paradise (A Story of Erth) - Updated 23rd April



## robberbaron (Aug 21, 2004)

Welcome to my first Story Hour.

This 3.5 game evolved out of an AD&D1 game I had run for about 15 years and which drew to a close a couple of months ago.

Hope you like it.

Rob


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## robberbaron (Aug 21, 2004)

*The World As It Was*

Tens of thousands of years ago the world was blighted during “The Tragic Millennium”.
A tide of evil swept across the planet destroying, devouring and altering as it went. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, it vanished leaving a world denuded of population and technology and home to many new and strange creatures.

Over the next few centuries countries fragmented and reformed, the people banding together and building new towns and cities, many named for those that were destroyed by the nameless evil, fighting to protect their fledgling realms from the ravages of the beasts left behind.

It was at this point that the first Elves and Dwarves appeared, fierce in their conflicts with the emerging Greenskin threat. Where they came from no one knew, but the Humans were glad to have such powerful allies against the Orc Hordes.

The wheel turned and the realms of Men grew to be powerful in their own rights and the Elves and Dwarves returned to their forests and mountains, where they stayed. Other civilised races flourished alongside their Human friends: Halflings and Elf-kin became a familiar sight throughout Europa and even Uruks, brutish but more tolerable than their degenerate Orc cousins, were seen with increasing frequency.

Four centuries ago, as if the threat posed by the Orcs and their ilk was not enough, out of the wastelands to the east came hordes of Beastmen, and worse. Misshapen and savage, they surged across the eastern lands in the service of dark and terrible Chaos Gods until almost nothing was left east of the Dneipr River save for the City-State of Moskva. Moskva, where the Overlords ruled their people fairly, but with an iron will, determined to stand fast against the wave of destruction. 
And so they stood until a besieging army of Chaos threatened Moskva, only to be driven away with the help of a party of powerful adventurers, who stayed to aid the expansion of the Overlord’s rule into the Wastes.

The wheel turned and a mountain-sized ball of rock fell from the sky, destroying the lands at the east of the Teraine Sea and throwing vast clouds of dust into the atmosphere. The year-long winter it caused was hard and only the efforts of the most powerful clergy and mages managed to slow the tide of disease and famine that swept the globe. 
If the adventurers had not discovered technology that enabled them to clear the skies, the world would have returned to its post-Tragic Millennium state. Their fee was reasonable, compared to the alternative, and they were able to build a new island from the debris – the Thracian Principality of Tsarfaran, ruled by the newly invested Prince Steel – and salvaged a sizeable amount of meteorite metal from the crater.

For the Germanian Fuhrer this catastrophe was too good an opportunity to waste. His armies swiftly conquered Polanski and Latvia, moving into Salia and Mozyrstan soon afterwards. These lands were emptied of nearly all healthy inhabitants, many conscripted into the Army, more to the work camps set up to exploit the newly available mineral deposits, some to secret research establishments.
For a while, during the attacks into Salia, fearsome Man-Beasts known as Joinings were seen. These strange hybrid creatures acted as shock troops and were instrumental in the swift pacification of the country. Since peace came to the lands they have not been seen again.
Fennoscandia and The Danemark agreed to give aid to the Germanian forces, in return for not being conquered.

For many years the great cathedral at the heart of Parye, intimidating despite its advanced deterioration, had been known as a site of dark power. This was found to be true when the adventurers first came there and decided they were not powerful enough to investigate further. 
In fact, the cathedral enclosed a portal to the demi-plane of Shadow, from which the Arch-Elemental Nocturnus planned to assault the world of men and make it his.
Fifteen years later, after escaping from the dark future to which they had been sent by a Daemon Prince, the adventurers decided to return to Parye, pass through the portal and face the minions of Shadow. After risking, and in some cases experiencing, death they were successful in thwarting Nocturnus’ plans and slaying his consort, Obscura. They closed the portal and the great city of Parye became a more pleasant place to live.
The Ranger Sparrow, who had become a High Priest of Ukko, persuaded the Duke de Parye to sell him the cathedral, which was remodelled by the Bard Homer Jones and his Lyre of Building into a magnificent edifice of white marble, dedicated to the chief of the Fennoscandian pantheon.

At last, the adventurers decided it was time to face their greatest enemy, the Daemon Prince Rha’a’zagul. This Daemon had conspired to have the party transported 500 years into the future, to the dark and troubled world that resulted from their absence. They escaped, thanks to an ancient Elf mage who specialised in temporal magic, but lost 13 years to the Daemon.
They prepared well. The Monk-Mage Prince Steel researched a spell to alleviate some of the magic nullifying properties of Rha’a’zagul’s realm and they journeyed into the heart of the Chaos Wastes to face their nemesis.
They finally confronted Rha’a’zagul in his null-magic chamber, before the swirling silvery-grey portal to the Eye of Terror.
Before entering the chamber, Steel bent reality through a potent spell (Wish) and forced a bubble of magic potentiality through into the chamber. From within this bubble, the party was able to slay Rha’a’zagul, prompting his Lord to step through the portal in person. “YOU HAVE BESTED MY CHAMPION, MORTALS. THIS WORLD IS YOURS FOR THE TIMEBEING.” With that, he and the other daemons left through the portal. The Chaos Wastes became quiet soon afterward.


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## robberbaron (Aug 21, 2004)

*The World As It Is*

It is 30 years since the Daemon Prince Rha’a’zagul was defeated, and things have stabilised across Europa.

The renowned Half-Elf Bard Homer Jones is still putting himself about, being generally lewd and unsavoury, though fantastically generous in his entertaining.  His network of inns containing magical message boxes has proved invaluable to those seeking adventure. Also, he never tires of showing off his personal artefact to unsuspecting females.

Sparrow, famed Ranger and High Priest of Ukko is enjoying his retirement with his wife Menifir. His apartments in the imposing marble palace that is the Temple of Ukko in Parye are thus far proving comfortable enough for him and his family.

The Demigod Steel watches over his family, friends and the thriving Principality of Tsarfaran from his position in the lower circles of the Celestial Court of Shang-Ti.

The Holy Blade of Osiris, Kirin el-Tangia, can still be found vanquishing the forces of evil with her faithful companion Achmed by her side, but is now well into her sixties and feeling her age.

Helminthes, Troll Mage* and one of the three most powerful Magic Users on the planet, works as he has for the past 40 years on a variety of arcane projects, many testing the limits of his functionally immortal body. He quickly enlisted the aid of the Troll Wizard Karyn*, and the two have made great strides in arcane research. The fantastic flying ship he built for Steel rests in its hangar beneath their villa outside Byzantium waiting to be needed again. 

The Germanian Protectorate, as the conquered lands are known, prospers with many conscripts being released from the Army and allowed home to till the fields. The relationship between Germania, Fennoscandia and The Danemark has moved from one of Tyrant/Vassals to one of peaceful, if not harmonious, coexistence since the death of the Fuhrer and the rise to power of Lord Protector Albrecht. The rumours that spread for a while of Man-Beasts under Germanian ‘control’ ranging across the land eating anyone who crossed their path have become just stories. No one really believes them, but they are still useful to stop children running off into the woods.

The Aragon Pact, drawn up between the southern Europan states to counter the threat from Germania has become a vehicle for trade and diplomacy, with Ambassadors sent from all member countries to the Congress Chambers in Reme.

The City-State of Moskva had been expanding steadily for 28 years, after the Chaos incursions ceased abruptly. In the last year, however, there have been sporadic reports of Beastmen harrying outlying farms and waylaying messengers and wagon trains.

Two years ago, the Granbretanian God-Emperor Huon decreed that a Grand Expeditionary Fleet be constructed and sent across the Atlantean Ocean in an attempt to reach and explore the “New World” as well as to discover what happened to the first fleet sent three decades before. It is expected to be ready to sail in another three years. Granbretanian scholars have done much research and have determined that the unknown continent across the water is named “Amarehk” and was the seat of a great and powerful evil far in the past, possibly the cause of the Tragic Millennium that blighted the world. 

The Eternal Empire of Xingua took advantage of the absence of Chaos and pushed its frontier far into the wasteland. The Emperor, from his Peacock Throne in the Holy City of Beiji, has sent thousands of workers into the Wastes to build a great wall as a defence against the Chaos hordes, should they return.

The Greenskins are no longer a real threat to civilisation. The Orcs move in nomadic family/clan groups, and spend much of their time fighting other clans. They are much like stereotypical “Travellers” (ask a Brit if you don’t understand the reference) – they set up camp wherever they want then disappear, leaving extensive dung/spoil heaps behind, when they are “asked” to move on sufficiently strongly.


* Steel, prior to his ascension, cast Reincarnate a total of 3 times. Each time, the recipient came back as Troll.


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## robberbaron (Aug 21, 2004)

*Rule amendments and other stuff*

If you don't want to know the things I have changed, look away now.
I will attempt to attach some files to this post.

Map of Western Europa:
http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=15736&stc=1

Map of Eastern Europa:
http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=15742&stc=1

Non-Human Races:
http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=15744&stc=1

Character Class Changes:
http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=15745&stc=1

General Rule Changes + Extended Feat List:
http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=15740&stc=1

My perhaps way overly complicated language rules to follow.


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## robberbaron (Aug 21, 2004)

*Languages*

Here is an Excel sheet showing who speaks which language.

http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=15746&stc=1

The blank spaces are for languages as yet undiscovered.

Language Relationships:
http://www.enworld.org/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=15747&stc=1


And now, let the Story begin.....


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## robberbaron (Aug 21, 2004)

*And so it begins...*

Dramatis Personae:
Gaelle (Female Human Ranger from the forests on the Thrace/Slavia border)
Seigfried Schtauffen (Male Paladin of Forseti from Germania)
Audac Kron (Male Uruk Barbarian from Atlas)
Cord Seration (Male Human Fighter from Thrace)
Gracientus (Male Human Cleric of Set from Byzantium - NPC)

======


“*Aaahhhhhhhh!*”
Seigfried jerked awake, banging his head on the low ceiling of the only room he could afford to rent in Byzantium.
Dripping with sweat and with aching arms, as if he had been wrestling all night, this is how he has felt every morning since taking the vows at the temple of Forseti in Behrlin. His mouth is filled with the sickly metallic taste of blood – his own. He has bitten his tongue again. Sometimes the dreams are worse than others and last night’s was the worst so far. 
His dreams, when he can remember them are filled with blood. Images of his father looking disappointed and blood. Lots of blood.

He had grown up listening to his father’s stories from the war. Nothing was any good nowadays. Not like when the magnificent armies of the Reich were grinding lesser peoples under their collective heel. How his father’s eyes had glowed when he regaled Seigfried with his tales of heroism and conquest. How bitter he had sounded when he talked about the Peace. He made the word sound like a curse.
Seigfried decided he would prove himself and then return to Germania, to show his father that there is glory and honour to be had in peacetime. That was why he had taken Holy Orders from the Temple of Justice.

Head throbbing he gathered his meagre belongings, little more than armour and a Fullblade, and left the boarding house near the docks, heading for the Hunter’s Guild and the prospect of a job bringing lawbreakers to trial. He smiled. Seigfried liked the law. He lived for it.

======

Stepping out of the forest for the first time is many weeks, Gaelle looked around her with distaste. The forest was safe. She could move unseen and “tax” the travellers who ventured into her domain. People are always travelling, and few take even the most rudimentary precautions.
Gaelle’s domain stretches from here, just inside Thrace, all the way to central Bohemia. Close to a thousand miles of beautiful forest that she has been exploring since she was old enough to escape from her parents.
The trouble as Gaelle sees it is that, despite the forest’s size, there simply isn’t enough bounty to be had to satisfy her. She won’t become known as the greatest bow-woman in Europa by skulking around the forest, waylaying unsuspecting passers-by. Taking from the rich and giving to, well, actually not giving to anyone. The poor deserve what they get – nothing.
With a heavy sigh, Gaelle set off for the “great city” of Byzantium, teeming with scum who wouldn’t last a day in “her” world, but where her quest for glory would begin.

======

The way of the Uruks of Atlas was to leave their young children on a remote hillside with only a loincloth and a knife to see if they were tough enough to survive a day and a night. 
When it was Kron’s turn, however, a passing human goatherdess found him and, being wholly ignorant of Uruk custom, thought him abandoned and took him home with her. Though she was still in her teens, she brought Kron up as her own son. Not easy as the inhuman mountain that was Kron as he grew up did not fit well into human society. Pretty soon all the other children stayed well away from Kron, knowing that he could break their limbs if there was a fight.
When his foster mother “abandoned” him (as Kron saw it) by marrying another human and having his child, 10-year old Kron didn’t feel he had any option but to show his displeasure.
Wiping their blood off his knife he left the cottage and struck out on his own.
In the distance he spotted an Orc tribe travelling across the scrubland. Thanks to his obvious bestial nature and after he had broken a couple of noses, the tribe reservedly welcomed Kron as one of their own. 
His time with the Bloody Hand tribe was wonderful. Kron immersed himself in Orcish society and took their ways as his.
He even took an Orc name – now he can’t remember what he was called before finding the Orcs. Probably some poncy human name. Pah!
After five years living as an Orc, Kron decided that they could not teach him anything more so he set off on his own again. The small amount of contact with humans he had had gave him the desire to seek the ”riddle of steel” and the woodsy ways of the rangers.

======

Cord is something of an enigma.

======


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## robberbaron (Aug 21, 2004)

*A Motley Crew*

April 28th, 1699. Byzantium.

Gaelle and Seigfried met in the Hunter's Guild, perusing the same poster as it is pinned to the board by an old man with a gammy leg. 

Kron was following Gaelle who he recognised as someone skilled at “ranging” and wants to learn whatever she can teach him. "I want a battle axe and a great axe. I've got this (Kron brandishes his Orc Double Axe at them), but I want a battle axe and a great axe. If I see someone wiv an axe I'll have it off 'em." 

Gaelle just shook her head and turned her attention back to the poster.

"Wanted: Dead or Alive (preferably Dead), Criminal known as The Hark. Last known whereabouts in the vicinity of Starros. Believed to be consorting with lycanthropes (Wererats) and other individuals of dubious honour. 1000GP bounty. For more information see Herkin at the front desk."

"Woss dat say?" asked Kron, who could make no sense of the symbols. Gaelle read the poster to the Uruk, barely able to conceal her instant distrust of the "stupid barbarian". 

Without hesitation, Kron tore the poster off the board and followed Gaelle and Seigfried towards the desk where the limping man had just settled himself.

"I'm interested in this bounty".

Herkin looked up at the young woman, taking in the upright blonde warrior and the hulking Uruk behind them, and leaned back in his chair.

"What can I tell you? Starros is 10 days up the coast on foot, and the bounty is yours if you think you can handle it."


Gracientus appeared at their side and introduced himself as a potential companion. "I am a novice at the Temple of Set and Maxis says that I should get out into the world and prove myself worthy of further training. I think you'll find me useful."


Gaelle and Seigfried discussed their ability to deal with wererats, or lack thereof, and Kron discussed with himself finding a stable and getting some horses. He didn't intend to pay for them, though. 

Seigfried looks bemused as the Uruk mumbles to himself, not understanding a word he is saying. 
"Perhaps it was a mistake not learning any Graecae before travelling to Thrace.” Seigfried thought to himself. "Then again, had the war gone better, they would all be speaking Germanic now!”


Cord wandered over as they discussed the bounty. "Lycanthropes need special weapons", he announced, turning to Herkin.
 "What real jobs have you got?".
"Lycanfropes can't breave underwater so we'll just hold him in he river until he's dead", said Kron with conviction. "Dere's more than one way to skin a rat".

Herkin told them that roughly halfway to Starros, 4 days up the coast and a day and a half inland there is a mining town called Darak. They have a silver mine there but production has come to a halt after several miners went missing. Also they seem to be having a problem with kobolds and some sort of malady to boot. There is a bounty on kobold heads but they can get more information from the Mayor of Darak.

They agree to take the bounty on the Hark but they decide to travel to Darak first in order to get the money needed to purchase the silver weapons they will require.


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## robberbaron (Aug 21, 2004)

*On the Road*

It rained steadily for the journey north but they managed to find some shelter for the night, in the lee of a dry stone wall.

Luckily Gaelle was able to shoot a rabbit and there was a cabbage field nearby, so at least they had something to cook.
Kron's hunting was not so successful. He thought that he could hunt rabbits with a throwing axe but, when he tried it he not only missed the rabbit by 20' but it took him 20 minutes to find his axe, buried halfway up the shaft in the rain-softened earth.
This display of ranged prowess did nothing to assuage Gaelle's doubts about the Uruk - she doesn't see him lasting long. She was none too happy with Seigfried either. The paladin cannot talk to most of the group which leads her to wonder how these people succeed in the world.

Initially, they had seen many people, farmers mainly, travelling in both directions, but the traffic thinned out as the day progressed.

------

April 29th.

As dusk approached on the second night, they spied a farmhouse and decided to see about sleeping in a barn. Anything would be better than another night out in the open as it still had not stopped raining.

As they got close to the farm a couple of dogs began barking. Gaelle tried to calm them, unsuccessfully, and the alerted farmer came out to see what the fuss was about. Seeing they meant no harm (Sense Motive roll = 1) he allowed them to sleep in one of his barns, emptied of hay after the winter and now home to a cart with only one wheel. Gaelle, a skilled bow maker, offered to fix the cart for him in exchange for a meal.

The farmer agreed and returned with a wheel. Seigfried and Kron held up the cart while Gaelle deftly used her specialist (but designed for much more delicate pieces of wood) tools on the unfamiliar task.

Successfully repairing the cart, to their inexpert eyes at least, they ate their vegetable stew with genuine gratitude and settled down for a good night's sleep.

------

April 30th

On the third night, sick and tired of being cold and wet (unseasonably cold and wet for late spring at the eastern end of the Teraine Sea) they decided to stop at a derelict farmhouse near the cliff edge. There was no glass in the windows, the doors hung askew and half the roof was missing, but they thought it had promise.

Looking for somewhere out of the wind and rain they searched for a cellar, finding a door in the floor of the kitchen. It took several good tugs before the door opened with a crack of breaking wood. It seemed to have been barred from within the cellar.


Seigfried looked down the steps and concentrated, sensing the presence of Evil in the cellar, away to the right. 

Interest piqued, Kron moved down the steps and spotted a door in the far right corner.

After twice trying to open it, Kron went to go back upstairs to find something he could use as a battering ram. His first thought was to use the cellar door.

While he was gone, Cord shoulder-charged the door, easily breaking the bar inside, and came to a halt between two ready zombies (one of whom slapped him), with another two standing on the far side of the room.

A short fight ensued and the 4 zombies were easily dispatched. They party closed the cellar door and were rewarded with a quiet, warm and dry night.

------

May 1st

On the fourth day, they turned away from the coast and along an estuary, coming to a cart bridge just short of sunset. They asked the bridge guard if there was an inn nearby and were pointed west towards the Fisherman's Rest Inn. Here they spent their first night in a proper bed since leaving Byzantium.

------

May 2nd

Next night, having decided not to cross another bridge to an inn a mile away on the other side of the river, they camped in a copse of trees. Kron had a look round and noticed light webbing in the trees but judged them too small to be a threat.

During the night, Cord was awoken by things crawling into every orifice. Vomiting uncontrollably he found he was covered by a carpet of small spiders, all biting him. His noises of discomfort quickly awoke the rest of the party.

Gaelle jumped up and took nearly half a minute to get the fire going, while Cord rolled around losing his dinner and a raging Kron tried squashing spiders with his shield (with some small success). The swarm converged around the Uruk who was bitten several times and slightly weakened from their poison.

Finally, Gaelle managed to set light to her bedroll and used it to burn the spiders, Gracientus following suit. Seigfried cut down a branch and got it alight just as the last spiders were killed.


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## robberbaron (Aug 21, 2004)

May 3rd  1699

The next day they arrived in Darak to be greeted by Corvan, the Mayor. "You don't want to come here, oh no, you don't. If you take my advice you'll leave now". Not quite the greeting for which they had hoped.
They asked about what had been happening and were told of people going missing down the mine, kobolds causing a nuisance and many people going down with a strange sickness. Also, two other adventurers had already gone to the mine although they had not, as yet, returned.

The party seem most interested about the bounty of 5GP per kobold head and travelled to the mine entrance after one of the townsfolk drew them a basic diagram of the mine layout.

Gaelle found kobold tracks from a couple of days earlier and constructed a hide 40' away for them to use while watching the entrance. None of them knew anything about kobolds, but guessed that they are nocturnal.

During the night, Cord thought he saw movement but Kron (the only one who could actually see the entrance) didn’t notice anything.

------

May 4th

In the morning they searched around and found evidence that a pair of kobolds had come out of the entrance and gone to check some snares.

Cord was not impressed with Kron.

They scouted around and found the snares set by the kobolds and decided to spend the day digging a hole and camouflaging it so they could observe the snares and catch the kobolds when they returned. They liberated some spades from a small tool store near the mine entrance for this purpose.

The party watched from the hide until about 10pm when Gaelle, Seigfried and Gracientus headed over to the hidey-hole.

Early in the morning, Cord again thought he saw something but Kron was unable to see anything untoward.

In the light of day it was found that a kobold had come to the edge of the entrance, paused, then went back inside.

Cord was even less impressed with Kron.

The party decided to continue their vigil the next night.

------

May 5th

Sure enough, early the next morning two kobolds emerged from the entrance and headed over to check their snares. Kron and Cord sneaked inside the entrance and hid, waiting for the kobolds to return, not considering that there might be more kobolds in the cave.

Meanwhile, at the hidey-hole, the others shot from cover at the kobolds, one of whom managed to escape with an arrow in his side.

He made it back to the mine entrance where he spotted Cord and Kron and reversed direction, running straight onto Seigfried's oncoming Fullblade.

The decision was made to immediately venture into the mine.

------

They came across a small chamber with two overturned mine carts, spotting a body underneath one of them and chunks of silver ore all over the floor. Looking around from the doorway they could not see any traps so, unable to see more of the corpse than his legs, they ignored it and headed towards what was marked on their map as a Mess room.

Kron rattled the door ineffectually a couple of times before Cord took a run up and nearly broke the door off its hinges.

There were nine kobolds relaxing inside who jumped to the attack. Being stupid they charged in with their halfspears instead of using the tables for cover and firing their crossbows so, a minute later the kobolds were all dead and the party moved to investigate the larder.

------ 

They opened the door and looked in, seeing shelves with the remains of foodstuffs, a stack of barrels and a number of sacks, some showing evidence of vermin feeding. Kron stepped inside, tripping a low wire and taking a crossbow bolt in the side. He, Cord and Gaelle made a cursory search of the room, finding nothing more, and Kron decided to tear one of the shelves off the wall. 

In his haste he not only disturbed the eight rats living in here, and the Dire Weasel hiding in the pile of barrels, but tripped another trap showering everything in the room with flour. All the fine powder in the air made it difficult to see and many attacks swung or nibbled wide of the mark before the rats were successfully dealt with.
The Dire Weasel managed to attach itself to Kron but was beaten off before it could begin to suck his blood.

------


After having a quick look round the larder, Gaelle has some thoughts:
Roll the barrel of rotten food at the overturned mine carts setting off the trap they suspect is there.
Empty the beer or wine barrel down the corridor which should show up any pits or traps.

Kron thinks they ought to rest up and ambush any kobolds that turn up. Gaelle wanted to get on with it while they have the element of surprise.

They are all covered in blood and flour - Cord reckoned Kron could make some black pudding out of it.

After a perfunctory clean-up, they moved the food barrel up the passage towards the entrance so it will get up some speed before hitting to the mine carts.
They moved back around a kink in the passage after sending the barrel bouncing and rolling down the incline, preparing to pounce on anything that comes to investigate the noise.

The barrel skips into the chamber, hits the cart with the legs sticking out and sets off the Thunderstone trap.

After the dust settled they waited for someone to come and investigate the explosion.
Kron went down to look for any axes that had been left behind - he didn't find anything.
The cart had moved a little, dragging the body across the chamber, leaving a dirty brown smear on the ground.
In the five minutes Kron took looking around nothing made its presence felt.

They then rolled the ale barrel down the passage heading further into the mine. It rolled well until it disappeared over a lip in the floor and, a few seconds later, they heard a "crunch".

They walked down the passage, Kron in front.
 "I don't wanna go in front!" he said.
"You're the only one who can see in the dark!" Cord reminded him.
"Oh yeah. OK.".
Kron crept 60' ahead of the party, using the shadows caused by the party's hooded lantern to his advantage.
Straight down a 20' pit trap and into unconsciousness.

The rest of the party moved more carefully down the passage to discover what had happened to Kron.

As Cord was about to step into the hole Seigfried saw it and stopped him. Cord shone the light down the pit, illuminating the limp form of Kron at the bottom. It was the quietest he had been since they met.
After a brief discussion about who was poorer at climbing, Cord held a rope for Gaelle to rappel down.

Gaelle tied the rope around Kron, checking to see how unconscious he was (he was), and Cord and Seigfried pulled him up.
After untying Kron, the rope was let down for Gaelle to climb up.
Gracientus put some salve on the nasty looking bump on Kron's ample forehead (caused by nutting a skull at the bottom of the pit), but could not bring the Uruk round.

Gealle ran back to the larder and got a piece of shelf. Returning to the pit, she marked the edge of the hole with it.
Dragging Kron, and taking the wine barrel they returned to the entrance and the early morning light. Cord counted paces from the pit, just in case the kobolds moved their markers.

EDIT: Next bit of text removed 'cos I wasn't completely happy with it.
I'll re-post it later


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## sumi (Aug 23, 2004)

As Robberbaron said previously, we had played for 15 year an AD&D1 campaign, whereby we saved the world and had more money and power than sense in the end.

Therefore, it was great to start at 1st level with a new different direction. This time the party was not to be good with Paladins and rangers of the old school. The new rules allowed us to take a different slant with our alignments - which can provide a lot more fun, and problems as will be seen in the future :\ 

My character is Gaelle.

Gaelle, is a Ranger that wants to become an Assassin. She wants to be highly paid and highly feared for killing people with a bow. She is geared to tracking people down and killing them from a distance. At high level with all the right feats from Many Shot to Weapon Specialisations, coupled with Favoured enemy - Humans, she aims to be a killing machine. This is a difficult course to take as many of you probably have experienced. With a bow as a primary weapon, those 5' step backs are a lifeline. It is proving a right bugger in tight spaces though.

To gain the necessary experience to become the best, she sought a group that could provide her with support. She left the forest and headed to town to seek such people. As you can see the group turned out to be wholey fighters - Barbarian, fighter, ranger and paladin with a monk. The NPC was a cleric. Perfect for a Ranger, who wants to be in the second rank. What firepower, in a way you felt sorry for the DM as the lowest Str was 17, highest 20 and every one using 2 handed weapons for 1.5 times damage. 

Bring on the Goblins etc

Character in Rogues gallery - currently 3rd level Ranger 

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=98697


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## Plane Sailing (Aug 26, 2004)

I didn't play in the 1e campaign (except on a couple of random visits) and I missed the first adventure so you will be meeting Li Kung, Xiang Shu monk shortly. 

Li Kung clearly had bad karma from a previous life. Odds are that 20 will turn up as often as a 1 when rolling to attack, but Li Kung has managed at least one fumble in ever combat so far without a single critical threat (let alone a critical hit).

He is on the run from his oriental masters and sees himself as a calm centre of power amidst the tumult of this smelly western oafs. Unfortunately they see him like the ineffectual policeman in "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" who has no measurable impact on any combat he gets involved in  

Hopefully (for my sake!) that will change soon.

Li Kung is a 2nd level monk and his stats can be found in the rogues gallery here.  http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=88465

I think he is quite an unusual monk build and he has plenty of potential once the bad karma has been properly worked off...

Cheers,


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## robberbaron (Aug 29, 2004)

*The story continues...*

Outside the party discussed how long they wanted to rest. Gracientus would not be able to pray for any spells until sunset, so the Uruk would remain asleep for the rest of the day.
Gaelle broke out some trail rations for breakfast while Kron was secreted in the hide outside the entrance.
Then the party returned to the pit trap, which was still marked as they left it.

Pondering the way across, they considered using the mess hall tables and larder shelves to construct a "bridge", but decided to jump it instead. Once over the pit, they stopped at the entrance to a cavern, filled with stalagmites.

As Gaelle panned the lantern around, Seigfried noticed a pair of eyes glinting from an opening 30' up the wall to their left.
Shuffling along the wall towards the opening, with Seigfried at the back holding the lantern, Gaelle was watching for eyes.

As they approached the opening Gaelle and Seigfried came under fire from small crossbows, fired from the opening. 
Cord, not wanting to hang about, ran across and jumped partway up the cliff.
More bolts came out of the darkness and a searing blue ray of cold lanced out at Seigfried.

Gaelle, picking a shape out of the shadows in the opening, shot one of the ambushing Kobolds then flattened herself against the cavern wall.
Seigfried moved behind a stalagmite, keeping the lantern trained on the opening.
Gracientus took a shot at the Kobolds but missed, while Cord climbed closer to the edge.

4 kobolds shot at Seigfried, trying to get him to drop the hurtful light, 2 shot at Gracientus and 1 at Gaelle. All missed. They were getting very put off by the bright light being shone into their eyes.

M’dok, the Kobold sorcerer cast a spell, hoping to bring useful reinforcements.

Cord climbed over the lip of the opening, to squeaks of worry from the kobold crossbowmen.
Afraid now for their lives, the Kobolds shot at Cord and Seigfried, missing again.

A small scorpion shimmered into existence beside Seigfried, stinging him.

Gaelle put up her bow and moved to the bottom of the cliff, telling Gracientus to continue shining his lantern up at the kobolds.

Meanwhile, Seigfried attacked the scorpion - cutting it in half. So much for reinforcements!

Cord stood up onto the cliff top and swung his Fullblade, killing 2 kobolds.
The remaining Kobolds shot at him, one bolt sinking deep into Cord's thigh.
M'dok cast a spray of fire from his fingertips, half incinerating one of his kobolds but singeing Cord.

Gaelle tried to scramble up the cliff quickly, making it up 3 feet before sliding back down.

Seigfried picked up his lantern and moved over to the bottom of the cliff, continuing to shine the beam into the Kobolds’ eyes.

Cord stepped forward, dispatched the overcooked kobold then cleaved clean through his neighbour.

M'dok cast another spell at Cord, trying to Daze him, unsuccessfully, then dropped to his knees in surrender.

Gaelle managed to scramble 15' up the cliff, followed by Seigfried (at least he started to climb, but slithered back down again).

Cord stepped over to threaten the remaining kobold crossbowman, who dropped his bow and fell to his knees.
M'dok chittered something in his sibilant tongue, completely unintelligible to the humans.

Gaelle arrived on the scene just as Cord coup de graced M'dok and another kobold.
Gaelle finished off the other, and removed their heads, adding them to the bulging sack while Cord let a rope down so Seigfried and Gracientus could climb up.

They search around, finding a secret door at the back of the ledge, and rifled through the kobolds' belongings (M'dok had a potion, 24 gp and a violet garnet).
Meanwhile, Gracientus attempted to tend their wounds, without managing to help much. They just wouldn’t stand still long enough for him to properly apply the poultices.

Cord said to Seigfried "Well, that was my fight, the next one's yours and I'll stand and watch.”

They opened the secret door, Seigfried taking the lead, shining the light down a short passage that opened up into a small chamber (an old storeroom, used as the kobold's nest).

Gaelle, peering over Cord's shoulder, spotted a blanket draped around something shaking, next to a pile of sacks.
After a brief discussion, Gaelle opened up the lantern fully. Cord shot the "blanket", which squeaked, and a dead young kobold fell over.
Another young kobold squatted, quaking with fear until Gaelle stepped over and cut it in half, despite Seigfried's objections.

"It's 5 gold pieces!"
"But, they're only kids!"
"They're still 5 gold pieces each!"

Gaelle searched around noticing that the "blanket" was actually a cloak. A cloak with a hole in, admittedly, but still a cloak.
They also found several sacks of silver ore.

They chose to rest up in the storeroom, leaving one of the lanterns on low-light.

Six hours later, deciding that they have rested enough and should continue, Gaelle and Cord hopped back over the pit and went outside to retrieve the still unconscious Uruk.

When they returned, they tied Kron's body to the middle of a rope. Cord skipped over the pit and he and Gaelle passed the Uruk across. Gaelle then (a little too) casually hopped across the pit herself, setting it off with her heel as she landed, but managing not to fall in.

They waited in the main cavern for another hour until sunset, so Gracientus could pray. He cast curing spells on Kron, bringing him round, saving some minor healings for stabilisation purposes later on.

Fully rested (Cord was still a little hurt, but feeling OK to continue), they skirted round the cavern, towards the far passage.
Seigfried thought Kron should scout ahead, but Gaelle reckoned he was too injured to risk falling down another pit, so she and Seigfried led with lantern on beam, not moving particularly quietly.
Realising that they couldn't see more than 15' ahead before the passage kinked, Gaelle opened up the lantern to full.

Every 15' feet, Gaelle lets some wine out of the barrel and watched the rivulets of deep red liquid for a few moments, to see if it flowed into another pit trap. She didn’t find any (nice idea though).

After 60' the air became increasingly warm and tainted with the sweet smell of rotting flesh. It was sweltering by the time the passage opened out into a small cavern, full of bodies.
Seigfried wondered aloud if this was normal. Kron didn't understand and Cord translated for the Uruk, 
 "He thinks you should be leading as you're only here to die".

Seigfried covered his nose and mouth with a cloth, while Cord and Gaelle thought they could see some corpses still moving.

Drawing her sword, Gaelle and Gracientus moved toward one of the corpses, which got up and attacked.

3 more zombie miners and 4 zombie kobolds then also got up to have a go.

"Don't forget, they're worth 5 gp each", shouted Cord.

The fight went well until a human zombie bitch-slapped Kron around the head, knocking him out cold (again).

Having re-killed all the zombies, the party carried Kron's body back through the charnel pit into the passage they just came from, where Gracientus attempted to heal them. He was mostly unsuccessful but did manage to stop Kron from dying.

Skirting the corpse-filled chamber, the party moved into the far passage, where they could hear noises (chink, chink, rattle, chink, rattle) and see a faint blue glow from farther down the passage.


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## robberbaron (Aug 29, 2004)

*A new friend?*

Li Kung was just one more orphaned child taken in by a monastery in Xingua - the dreaded Scarlet Brotherhood, a sect of Lawful Evil monks who contemplate the mysteries of the mind and body, while grooming spies and assassins for political gain in the Eternal Empire.

Like most of his contemporaries, Li Kung absorbed the rigid self-discipline of the monastery and gained a self-seeking determination to do whatever was necessary to further his own ambitions for advancement. When it became clear to him that he wasn't in favour with the current heads of the monastery (and was beaten nearly to a pulp by one of the masters) he decided that the time had come to seek his own way in foreign lands - to perfect himself and eventually make himself ready to come back and usurp control of the Scarlet Brotherhood for his own ends.

He joined a wagon train on the Silk Road leading to the West as a guard and scout, learning some basic sleight of hand from Chiku, a roguish friend he made on the way. His coin running low Li Kung decided that he needed to earn some money. To this end he and Chiku visited the Hunters’ Hall and later found himself entering a silver mine just outside the town of Darak.

Both adept at moving without noise (all those lessons moving across the nightingale floors of the monastery seemed to be paying off), the two bypassed the trapped ore carts, sneaked across the cavern, unnoticed by the Kobolds on the ledge, and began moving down the passage.
Chiku spotted something shiny down a side passage and they went to investigate. They found 2 long-dead Kobolds at the end of the short passage and Chiku began prying at something set into the rock. Unfortunately, he was a little too hasty in picking the gemstone out of the wall, and set off a rock fall, sealing the corridor.

When he stopped coughing, Li Kung realised that he could not see. Feeling around he felt the pile of rock blocking the exit, then moved around the small space, without finding another opening.
Without room to swing his glaive, Li Kung used it to pry apart the rocks, trying to clear a hole before the air gave out.

He managed to push a small hole in the rock fall and, seeing the party's approaching lantern-light, called out "Chiku, is that you?"


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## robberbaron (Aug 29, 2004)

*Perhaps.*

Dramatis personae update:
Li Kung (Male Human Monk from Xingua)

------

"Who are you? Are you one of the two adventurers who came down here?”
“I am Li Kung, seeking bounty". 
"That's a long name", says Gaelle.

"Come.. over.. here.., closer." says Cord, slowly and loudly, as Li Kung is obviously foreign and a bit dim.

They took a few minutes to discuss their respective experiences down here. After a discussion about pulling Chiku's body from under the pile of rubble (a hand was sticking out into the main passage), they decided it was not worth the trouble. He was poor and probably flat.
Seigfried looked bemused as he understood none of what they were saying.
They told Li Kung where the exit was, meaning for him to leave, then moved off down the passage.
Li Kung had other ideas and, after a moment, followed them down toward the blue luminescence.

"You following us?" asked Gaelle. 
"Not understand" said Li Kung.
"If you are going to follow us, can you do anything useful?" asked Cord.
"Fight" came the answer.
"So, you going to fight then?" asked Gaelle.
"Yes. For now I guard the rear. You may be excellent fighters and not need me. Then again you might".
"If you fight, you get a cut of what we get from now", said Gaelle.
"OK"

The passage opened into a large cavern with a column of rock sticking up in the middle. The column seemed to contain a spring as water trickled down the side into a pool around it, a stream flowing across the cavern and out through a hole in the wall.
Some sort of fungus encrusted the column, the source of the blue glow.

Siegfried noticed writing on the pillar and recognised it as something religious and Orcish.
They also noticed that the water was foul, but Gaelle could not tell if it was because of the moss.

The party heard a mumbling and, suddenly, Gracientus screamed and ran out of the cavern, leaving a nasty smell behind.
Looking up, they saw a figure standing on the top of the column, obviously the cause of the cleric’s fear.

Li Kung readied a shuriken against the figure casting another spell, missing almost immediately.
Cord felt his limbs freeze briefly, then return to normal and he, Gaelle and Seigfried began running up path around the column, with lantern fully open.

Li Kung threw more shuriken at the figure on the top, missing again, one of his weapons bouncing off the column and disappearing into the dark, smelly pool.

A pool of darkness appeared at the top of the column, just as Cord arrived, shrouding the unknown adversary.
He ran up to the figure, swung and missed. He just couldn’t get a good view of his opponent due to the wispy shadows that filled the air.
Gaelle moved up and opened the keg of oil and Seigfried ran up to the figure, also missing.

They could still hear Gracientus screaming, though he was definitely getting fainter.

Running out of shuriken, Li Kung jumped across the water and ran up towards the combat.

The Orc cleric, Jakk, swung his mace at Seidfried, clipping him round the ear.
Cord stepped forward, swung and again missed due to the darkness.
Gaelle moved up and tried to splash the oil on Jakk, missing, but leaving a 5’ puddle of oil on the floor. Someone could come a cropper on that.

The fight 5-foot-stepped around the column-top for a few moments, with Li Kung taking a mace to the face.
The monk, staggered, decided to kick (miss) Jakk rather than tumble away, falling unconscious from the effort. Oops.

Carefully avoiding the oil slick, Cord stepped up and, as neatly as one can with a sword of unfeasible size, filleted the Orc.

Gaelle dropped the bow she had been preparing and chopped off Jakk's head, just to be  sure.

The party waited for 10 minutes and Gracientus had not returned. The screaming had stopped, though. Must be a good sign.
They relieved Jakk's body of all his goods (steel shield, mace, armour and a scroll) before burning him in the puddle of oil and waiting another 10 minutes, hoping for the darkness to dissipate. It didn’t.
A further 30 minutes later, the light level returned to normal darkness pierced by lantern light.

They noticed that the water was now flowing clean and the only smell they could detect was burnt Orc.

Figuring that he must have lived around here, they looked around for the Orc’s “lair". They found a few stinking blankets in a small alcove in the cavern, but nothing more.

Returning to the blocked corridor from whence came Li Kung, Gaelle beheaded the 2 long-dead kobolds (waste not want not).

Having recovered Li Kung's shuriken from the pool, Gaelle washed herself in the now-clean spring water.

While washing, Gaelle and Li Kung heard a faint and plaintive "Heeeelllppp!" from Gracientus who, while running away scared, had failed to clear the pit.

Gaelle considered throwing the unconscious Kron into the pit to open it up, but they decided it wasn’t the best course of action. They might have hurt Gracientus.
Hopping across, unsuccessfully, Gaelle opened the pit but managed to grab the edge before falling in.
Cord alighted on the far side easily. Too easily for Gaelle’s liking.

Releasing Gracientus, they made their way outside, picking up all the ore they could carry, which was pretty much all of it.
Seigfried suggested using the blankets from the kobold nest to carry a sack-worth of ore so Gaelle swapped her average cloak for the one with the hole (as it was better than hers, even punctured) and used the old one to carry the ore.

When they emerged from the mine, it was dark. Luna was a sliver of silver in the sky and Leos was not visible at all.*
Gracientus cast his remaining heal spells on Kron to bring him round and the party divided the spoils.


After a little rest, the party went back into the mine, to retrieve the heads of all the kobolds (32) and some of the poor quality kobold light crossbows, then headed back to Darak.

Gaelle distributed the kobold heads around the group, keeping hold of Kron's as the Uruk doesn't really understand money. He's not thick, just a bit uncomplicated. OK, he is a bit thick.

Kron appraised the gem from M'dok and reckoned it was worth at least an axe. Maybe even a very good axe.

Back in the town, Gaelle knocked up the mayor. It was 11pm, but she didn’t mind.
After a couple of minutes, the mayor opened the door, having hastily donned some clothes. He had looked out the window and recognised the group.

Gaelle gave him the sack of heads and asked for a free night in the inn, or at least the rest of the night. The mayor, half asleep and confronted with a smelly group of adventurers in the middle of the night, agreed and they all toddled off to bed.
Kron thought he could drink his fill for free as well, but the bar was closed at that hour and Gaelle convinced him that in his condition (0 HP) it would not do him much good. Muttering miserably, Kron subsided into a loud sleep.

After a restful night, the party were greeted with a bright sun beaming through scattered fluffy clouds. And a slap-up breakfast.
However, they were still plagued by the plague, picked up from all the filthy Kobolds and zombies, many of them feeling decidedly weakened despite the enormous fry-up at hand.

They discussed with the blacksmith about making silvered weapons for them - Gaelle wanted some arrowheads and Cord and Kron wanted silvered Fullblades.
It would take some time and he would have to get someone to smelt the silver ore, which would take another couple of days, so they didn’t bother taking it any further.

Resting in Darak for 4 days, they all got cured of the plague and Corvan gave them a bonus of 100GP for solving the mysteries of the mine. Most people in the town seemed to be getting better. Not that the party particularly cared.

They wanted to sell the ore, but the best person to do the deal couldn't speak the language so it fell to Li Kung who didn't fare very well and may not have got the best price.
Cord wanted to sell the crossbows, along with the Orc Cleric's steel shield, but they thought it would be better to go to a larger town.

Gracientus cast Comprehend Languages to find out how useful the scroll was (it was written in Nhagashk – the language of the Orcs), and decided to find someone to teach him the Orc tongue so he could use it.
Seigfried suggested asking the Uruk, at which Gracientus looked blank (Kron is, after all, an illiterate barbarian).


May 11th

The party took their leave of Darak and headed back down the estuary towards the bridge. 
"Remember the name of Gaelle", Gaelle told the mayor. He wasn’t sure what she meant, but promised to do as she asked, to be safe.

Reaching the copse of trees where they spent a restless night on the way up, they decided to give it a wide berth and camped in the open.
Despite not finding a particularly good campsite, the dry weather meant that they had a good night's sleep anyway.


May 12th

Reaching the bridge at midday, Gaelle engaged the guard in conversation, getting directions to the nearest town and information about whether they might be able to sell their spare weapons there.
Apparently, an arms trader went past a couple of days ago, and he may still be there.

Reaching the town, a market was in full swing. Looking around, Li Kung spotted the arms trader immedietely.
Going over to him, Cord asked "Do you have any silvered weapons and will you buy these?"
"Certainly", he said, exchanging a silvered longsword and 2 daggers for their kobold crossbows and Cord's hide armour (he’s wearing the Orc cleric’s chain shirt now).

Not wanting to stay in the town as they now wish to get to Starros and deal with the Hark, they moved off up the coast road.
That evening, not finding anywhere to stop, they pressed on through the night. It began to rain around midnight and got heavier towards dawn, soaking them thoroughly.
Disconsolately, they trudged on until lunchtime when they rested and ate "breakfast".

Arriving at another small town, Cord headed to a stable and bought 6 horses, managing to bargain the trader up to 10% over retail (nervous smile and take the money before the enormously muscled warrior with the SOUS (sword of unfeasible size) realises what he’s done), to speed their journey to Starros. The others arranged spaces in the inn’s common room, so they could sleep the sleep of the dead .

Straight after eating and sleeping/resting until the next dawn, they rode off towards their bounty.

After 3 days hard riding, they arrived in Starros, a fair-sized town with a large and busy harbour.


* Erth has 2 moons: a large one, Luna, has a period of 28 days and gives quite a lot of light when full. A much smaller one, Leos, has a period of only 8 days and is only a bit brighter than the brightest stars.


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## robberbaron (Aug 29, 2004)

*Things that go Bump, Ouch in the Night*

May 17th, 1699

Kron decided to search for someone who looked like the picture of the Hark on the poster, thinking to take the first person matching the poster as the Hark, to claim the reward. Always thinking out of the box, that Uruk.

Finding an inn with a stable, the party rested the night, allowing the horses to recover from the exertions of the journey before selling them.
They discussed what they knew about the Hark (basically nothing) and talked to the inn customers to find some information. Kron tried intimidating the locals, but they were not impressed with the mumbling Uruk, despite his size, muscles and general demeanor.

Seigfried might have found out quite a lot, but couldn't understand anything anyone said. They let him buy them plenty of beer though.

The party found out 2 things - a warehouse had been emptied, and another had foodstuffs damaged and eaten (by either a plague of rats or something bigger).

Cord went out looking for local youths, and found a beggar.
Giving him a couple of silvers Cord took him to the inn. The barman didn’t like this (his customers started leaving because of the beggar’s aggressive odour) so they took the beggar back outside.
For a couple more silvers the beggar told them that the thieves' guild has a "presence" in an old temple in the centre of the town.
"But I didn't tell you nothing, know what I mean?” Nudge, nudge, say no more.

Visiting the town centre, Li Kung spotted Cant symbols on several walls and noticed a man looking decidedly shifty.
Once he got the man's attention by staring at him for a minute or two, Li Kung told him (using Cant Sign) that they wanted to contact the guild.
Told to wait in the inn, they hung around for two hours before another shifty man and his guard came in to talk to them.
"I understand you want to purchase some merchandise?", Shifty said, his eyes roving all around the bar, independently.
"We want to ensure that any trades we make are on the up and up", Li Kung explained.

They bargained on the fee for ‘temporary membership’, ending at 50GP.

"Are you allied with 'other forces'?". Li Kung partially unsheathed a silvered dagger to make his point.
The thief’s eyes widened marginally and he explained they do not deal with "them".

Shifty told them that if they “dealt with” the Hark, it would be considered a favour to the guild.
The guild had sent scouts to find the Hark’s entrance to the waterfront, but they had not returned. It is somewhere to the north of the harbour, though.
Bringing Gaelle into the conversation, they found no more information about the "problem". Kron tried to ask questions but the thief ignored him.

Sliding 50GP across the table, they bought the ability to work unmolested by the guild.

As  the thief got up to leave Gaelle stopped him.
"The warehouses robbed. Were they to the north?
"Yes"
"One warehouse held food, what did the other hold? And could you give us directions to them?"
"Goods. The owner was not supposed to have them. That is all I can say." Shifty was able to give them directions to the warehouses though.

"Any problems with rats? Plagues of rats?"
"Possibly. There have been sightings."

"Is there a sewer system?"
"Yes, there are many outfalls into the harbour. That is where the rats live."

"How long has the Hark been in the area?
"First indications came 6 months ago. We assume he lives in or near the town as he seems to be close to everything that goes on."
He handed Gaelle a piece of paper with the names of the warehouses that were attacked.
"Should you need to do any more business, your monk knows how to contact us"

Gaelle wanted to know if there were any low-level magical practitioners in the town who sell their services.

"There is a small branch of the Society of Mages, Sages, Alchemists and Other Professional Thinking Persons, and they are always willing to do things for money."
Cord enquired about a market - there was one a couple of blocks away but it was closed at this time (late afternoon).

Gaelle borrowed the Orc cleric’s mace from Kron, to take it to the mages for evaluation.
It isn't an axe, so Kron didn't really care about it.

Gaelle decided to wander around the town before it got too dark, sketching out a plan of the town. She filled in the details when she returned to the inn. Not too good, but it was close enough for the time being.
Going up to a gate-guard, she enquired about outlying farms and other settlements, finding that there are plenty of farms between 5 and 10 miles out, but the nearest town is 30 miles or so away.

Gracientus prayed for Detect Magic and cast it over the kit they had liberated from the mines. The mace, 3 potions and the perforated cloak showed the tell-tale glow.
Gaelle and Cord decide to go to the Mages’ Society in the morning to find out what the items were.

------

During the night, Cord and Seigfried were woken by a scream, suddenly cut off, somewhere close by. Gaelle slept soundly on.

Cord rolled out of bed, grabbed his dagger and sword and ran to Gaelle’s room. Banging on the door, waking her, he asked if everything was OK. Moving on to Seigfried's room, he arrived just as the tall paladin emerged.
Cord - "I heard something". Seigfried - "So did I".

Gaelle went over to her window and looked/listened. Down the alley, she spotted a large figure running across the end of the alley, carrying a sack.
She wanted to go take a look - if something bad had happened there could be a bounty to claim.

Gaelle went to the front door, unbolted it and peered out. She couldn't see anyone.
Walking to the alleyway her room overlooked she couldn't see anything so returned to the inn, re-bolting the door.
After checking that no-one had broken in she went back to bed.


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## robberbaron (Aug 29, 2004)

Helga woke this morning, disturbed as she had been on many previous mornings. Last night the dreams of her father cutting into her flesh and inserting strange creatures and fleshy objects had been particularly intense. The dreams had almost seemed real. This morning it would take longer for her meditations to chase away these nightmares. 
As the visions fled and the imagined movements beneath her pale flesh subsided she filled herself with new confidence and hope for the day ahead. New friendships and opportunities were just outside her door. The inn had been comfortable enough for the last few days but lounging around in bed wouldn’t further her goals in these strange southern lands.
As she washed she considered her body. The scars between her fingers had all but vanished, so long ago in her infancy had the webbed flesh been removed. She had always marvelled at the diversity of the ‘human’ form; her brothers and sisters were all so very different. Her six fingers had set her aside but, when she applied to be apprenticed the village’s wizard had told her ‘with hands like those you will never be able to master the delicate art of spell casting’. Still, it didn’t hinder her in any other way and she was certain that she would develop her own arcane abilities one day.
Packing her few belongings she went down to breakfast. There were few people around, it was actually quite late in the morning, but the tall handsome Germanian and his group were still eating. She knew they had had a late night as she was woken by their Uruk assaulting someone outside her window. The relevance of him holding a piece of paper next to the unconscious man and saying ‘close enough’ was lost on her. Still, with him gone the group was a little less imposing and an alliance could be mutually beneficial. They had an air of urgency about them this morning so she collected her breakfast and walked over.


------

18th May.


In the morning, during breakfast, Kron is absent.
"Where's our thing gone?" said Seigfried.

“Guttenmorgan, do you mind if I join you?” Helga approached and asked the group’s obvious charismatic leader.
“I wonder if you could ask your Uruk to go about his business more quietly. His decapitating that man right under my window last night quite disturbed my rest.”

"Who gives a sh*t" said Gaelle.
"He killed an innocent bystander," said Seigfried," we must tell the authorities”.

None of them had thought that when Kron had said the picture on the wanted poster could have been anyone, it was his idea to execute some innocent and leg it back with his head in an attempt to claim the bounty first. 

Before they could discuss this event further the watch came in, beyond them outside a cart was visible with a blanket partially covering a headless corpse. 
Helga whispered “I take it I didn’t see anything?” The Blond Adonis nodded.

Four watchmen and a sergeant entered the inn, talked to the barman and were pointed over to the party's table.

Gaelle and Seigfried were having a heated conversation about how Seigfried should learn the local language "they should speak Germanian!” as the watchmen approached.

The Watch Sergeant had a few questions for the party, asking if they had any information about the "incident".
They admitted to being woken up, but didn’t see anything and Seigfried (always the upright citizen) pointed to Helga, as someone who apparently saw the attack.

She was ushered to a corner table where the sergeant questioned her. She didn't mention the Uruk, saying she only heard a scream.
The sergeant was a little suspicious that she knew more, but was not able to get her to change her story.

When the Watch had finished with Helga, Gaelle asked if there was a bounty available on the assailant. There wasn’t one at the moment, but as it was a murder there may be a reward for information later.

Helga went back to talking to Seigfried, who didn't get many words in edgeways. The Fennoscandian seemed to have taken quite a shine to the young Holy Warrior.

Gaelle went up to Kron's room, but he wasn't there, his kit had gone and his bed hadn't been slept in. As she came back down she passed the Watch on their way up to search it themselves.

Returning to the common-room, Gaelle asked Helga what she had seen. She told them her story (quietly, in case the returning watchmen overheard), having assumed that they were bounty hunters and that Kron had found their mark.

Gaelle - "Is he so stupid that he would kill an innocent bystander and run back to Byzantium to collect the bounty?"
There was a general assent around the table. Oh well, upon their return there would probably be a bounty on the Uruk for them to collect. Should be fairly simple as well, just like the Uruk

Helga managed to sell her services to the party as a rogue, something they could certainly use, but she had been making her living as a fortune-teller. Not much of a living, but enough to stay alive, waiting for a suitable group to tag along with.
Cord asked for 50GP joining fee, but Helga said she only had 1.
Cord, in that charming way of his, wondered if she was a spy of some sort, but Seigfried believed her story. He really is a soft-touch.


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## robberbaron (Aug 29, 2004)

*The investigation begins in earnest*

Dramatis personae update:
Helga (Female Human Rogue from Fennoscandia)

------

After finishing breakfast, they adjourned upstairs and discussed both Kron's escapades and their bounty on the Hark.
Helga knew no more than they did about the Hark, despite her local knowledge. She had only been here a couple of weeks longer than them.
They decided, after some deliberation, to let her in to the group. Her rogue skills might be useful.

That morning they went to the Mages’ Society to get their magic items identified - Cure Light Wounds, Invisibility and Bane potions, +1 Mace and a Cloak of Resistance in need of repair. They asked if the Mages would swap the mace for a sword and thy were offered a swap for a longsword if they paid for the Identify. They decided to keep the mace.
They then asked if magic negated a wererat's special defences. They were a bit disheartened to hear that it didn’t.

Could they repair the magical cloak with the hole? Yes, it would take a few days and cost 250 gp.
How much is the garnet from M'dok worth? The Mages were willing to take it as payment for the Identify and repair. They didn’t actually say how much the gem was worth, and the party didn’t ask.

Taking the gem, the Mages promised repair in 2 days.

The party then headed off to find a weaponsmith who might have silver weapons.
They found 2: One had no silver weapons and no time to make any; the other had 7 arrowheads and another dagger. 
Gaelle bought the arrowheads to add to her ever increasing stock.

Sorting out their stuff, Gaelle handed the silvered longsword to Seigfried to use and Cord took the mace.

It was now late morning and they headed to the Watch headquarters.
Asked their business, they said they were from Byzantium and wanted any information they had about the Hark. 
A Watch Sergeant was called, as the watchmen didn’t want to give any information out on their own initiative. He told them that the militia have made investigations but have had no success to date.
Helga tried to steer the conversation round to their investigations, so they wouldn't go over the same ground, with some small success.

Gaelle mentioned the warehouses, and asked if they could investigate them. 
"Highly irregular, as they are private property".
"Speaking along the line of helping the militia in the investigation?"
Gaelle, being very persuasive, got the sergeant to agree to let them help, as long as they agreed to be sworn in as militiamen.
He called over a corporal to take them to the "chapel" and get them sworn in.
They took the vows without hesitation, before asking if there was a minimum period of service. Luckily, there isn't for them.

They then asked about the lost scout. Apparently, he followed a trail from the warehouses, but reported that it petered out near Wharf 4. The warehouses are a couple of hundred yards to the south of Wharf 4, nearer Wharf 11.

They decided to head to the warehouses immediately, starting with the food warehouse.
Arriving at the warehouse, Gaelle told the guards that they were there on official watch business to investigate the attacks and were let in to snoop around.

They found that it had been pretty well tidied up and Gaelle could find no tracks. Helga failed to get any information about how the rats got into the warehouse. 
They conversed some more with the guards who said there was a lot of food eaten, much more than would be expected from rats.
Going outside, Gaelle cast around for tracks, finding a large set of rat tracks heading through the warehouse area to the north.
She thought at first that it was where goods had been dragged, but quickly realised what they were. That many rat tracks stopped looking like tracks at all.

Following the trail, it petered out after a couple of hundred yards, as it crossed a main thoroughfare.

Heading to the other warehouse, Helga looked around to see if they were being followed, but no-one seems to be paying them much attention.

This warehouse was locked up. Gaelle looked for tracks and found none that stood out.
Going round to the back entrance, Gaelle had a look around and, picking a time when no-one was watching, Helga unsuccessfully tried to pick the lock. After waiting for some people to move away, Helga tried again, this time successfully.

Checking for alarms, Helga stepped in to the dark warehouse.
Gaelle lit a lantern and everyone had a look around - Cord and Helga saw something shiny and metallic just outside the light, and some movement further away.
Helga backed behind Cord, who grabbed the lantern and ran over to where he had seen the movement.

Gaelle shouted "We're the watch. Show yourselves"!"

That was when they were attacked by the dire rats.

Immediately, Li Kung threw her glaive at Gaelle's feet trying to strike a rat through the doorway past Gracientus.

Cord was badly bitten, but they easily dispatched the smelly beasts.
Searching round, they found a dire rat-sized hole in one corner of the warehouse, and one of the crates broken open and the packing material scattered about. An urn was lying beside the case. 
Gaelle found dire rat tracks coming from the hole.

Cord kept watch while they spent the next 2 hours moving the packing crates around, looking for trapdoors, finding none.

Gaelle tried to enlarge the hole but, finding that the tunnel was only big enough for dire rats to pass through, decided not to bother any more.

Helga looked for chinks in the walls through which someone might "mentally control" the rats. Finding several possibilities, she took Gaelle outside to look for tracks. Gaelle found a set of prints which may have been made by someone looking into the warehouse, but couldn't pin the time down to the last few hours.
Following the tracks out on to the wooden boards of the wharf, she trailed the person northwards, most of the party noticing that they were drawing some attention from workers on the docks. A group of dockers are standing open mouthed, watching Gaelle moving slowly with her nose to the boards.

They headed from Wharf 11 to Wharf 7 before the trail petered out.

Li Kung cast around trying to see if any of the dockers were less or more smelly than the others. He has a real issue with personal hygiene.
He spotted a couple of workers on Wharf 5 watching them surreptitiously, who appeared to have been made to look like dockers.

Thinking to intimidate the “fake dockers”, they moved quickly toward Wharf 5, intending to turn and block them on the dock.
Gaelle looked at the nearby warehouses and noticed someone on the roof of the one nearest Wharf 5, who ducked down out of sight. Perhaps, Gaelle's notice had been noticed.

"Perhaps we should go and talk to them", said Seigfried.
The party chatted amongst themselves for a few minutes, trying to decide what to do. 
Apparently, Helga is the most intimidating individual, so she got the nod.

When they get to the dock, they moved on to it and Helga gestured to the dockers to come to them. They immediately dove overboard, much to the party’s surprise.
Helga and Cord ran up and on to the boat, while the others ran to the end of the dock.

Cord and Gaelle spotted the men swimming towards Dock 4. Gaelle ordered them to “stop or I’ll shoot” while Cord and Helga ran back along the dock, to head them off.
The swimmers failed to heed her warning so Gaelle stuck 2 arrows in one of them, sinking him beneath the water.

Cord and Helga arrived at Dock 4 a few seconds before the swimmer, who looked like he was going to swim straight under the dock.
Li Kung ran back onto the boarding looking around the warehouses, seeing the man on the roof again.

The swimmer swam under Dock 4, 2 arrows missing him. Cord ran across the dock to see where he would come out. Helga ran to the end of the dock and hung over the end. Losing her grip, she fell in, but saw the swimmer going towards an opening under the dock.

Cord ran to the dockside and climbed down to the opening. Helga dog-paddled under the dock, heading toward Cord, Li Kung following him down to the opening. Gaelle also spotted the man on the warehouse, who again ducked out of sight.

Cord lit a torch while Helga climbed up to the side of the hole, in case someone came out to attack them.

Li Kung and Helga listened at the hole, Helga hearing the sound of someone scrabbling along the pipe on all fours, some distance away.

Gaelle wandered back to Dock 6, to question some dockers.
"Who owns the warehouse on Dock 5, with the guard on?"
"Councillor Borral, he's a merchant dealing in a lot of different stuff".
"What about the one at Dock 4?"
"Dunno, we're just dock workers. Ask the Harbourmaster, he'll know".

Meanwhile, Cord, Li Kung and Helga moved in to the pipe, Cord leading.

At a crossing of pipes they were attacked by rats and the thief they’d followed.
A dagger flew past Cord's head, but he couldn't see where it came from.

The rats quickly dispatched, Li Kung and Cord managed to grapple the thief, subduing him.
They hog tied him and attached him to Helga's long spear (great white hunter-style) and took him out of the sewer, meeting the others outside, finding Gracientus wet from falling in.

They talked for a couple of minutes, deciding where to take the unconscious man for questioning.
They were aware of possible attack if they did it there, but didn’t want to take him anywhere too public.

They decided to take him back to the warehouse where they fought the dire rats, pretending he was a drunken compatriot. Helga and Seigfried succeeded in the subterfuge, the others looked a bit shifty.

They got a few dodgy looks on the way, but made it there without hitch.

At the warehouse, they blocked up the ‘potential spy holes’ in the walls and set defences, before questioning their prisoner.
They thought that the Hark was an aggressive sort and would attack rather then let them gain information from one of his minions.

They set several crates around the dire rat hole that they could turn over into it, as well as a fairly light packing crate suspended by a rope over the rafters, held by Gracientus.
While they set their defences, Gaelle fitted the silver arrowheads to some of her arrows and Helga questioned the prisoner.

When they brought him round, they told him they were all evil bastards who didn't mind killing him (actually true), so he'd better tell them what they wanted to know.
Helga did the questioning, aided by Cord and Li Kung. Sort of Bad Cop-Bad Cop-Bad Cop.

"What do you want to know, don’t kill me. I've only been a thief for a week"
Helga - "it was a bad time to join"

He'd seen loads of rats, lots of big ones, a dozen or so men, 3 or 4 hobgoblins and a couple of dozen goblins. 
“Apparently the big boss is a rat?”
“Dunno, never seen him. Only worked for him a week. “

"Any recognition signs?" 
“I know the guys I work with and the bloke wot gives us the jobs.”
"Is the Hark the big boss?" 
“Never heard that name.”
"What are the crimes you've done?”
“I watch the docks. One of the blokes says he did a merchant over, but he's a lying bastard.”
“Any Traps?”
“Tripwires with darts on every way into the chamber where we live.”
"Were they given anything? Any tokens?”
“They gave us this” (he nodded to a small pouch on his belt).
It contained a chunk of coriander root. The party took it and rubbed it all over themselves, especially their boots.

They untied his hands so he could draw a map of the bits of the drains he knew, Cord preparing his sword in case they were attacked at that moment.

They then knocked him out again and put him on top of a crate, out of the way.


Around 11 pm, they heard the warehouse door being opened not-quietly-enough, and saw the alleyway bathed in the light of the full moon.

Li Kung felt an affinity to someone he couldn’t see but, when asked from out of the darkness to leave, “This is not your fight. Go now, while you can!” he decided to remain with his "other" friends.


The invisible Hobgoblin thief crept across the warehouse and his invisible human wizard companion spiderclimbed up the wall into the rafters.
The thief suddenly appeared with his short sword stuck almost all the way through Gracientus, the wizard created an area of darkness between the party and himself, trying to hide his movements.

While the party attacked the hobgoblin and the dire rats that boiled up out of the hole (breaking through the crates piled on it), the wizard crept across the rafters and swept a fan of fire over those nearest his compatriot.

Li Kung was again “unlucky” with his glaive. It seemed to go everywhere except where he wanted it to.

The hobgoblin was neatly bisected by Cord and Gaelle bowed the wizard to death as he tried to spiderclimb his escape. The rats didn’t take much longer to deal with.

After taking items of interest from the wizard and thief, while Gracientus magically repaired the void in his abdomen, they decided to take the bodies and the prisoner to the watch barracks.
Gaelle sneaked outside and had a look around, spotting a figure on the roof of the adjacent warehouse. Even though only his head was showing, she shot him clean between the eyes.

Not seeing many people out in the middle of the night, they arrived at the barracks, being carefully challenged by the guards.
The party told them they'd captured people working for the Hark and they knew where his lair wais (Gaelle tried to explain, with Cord chipping in pertinent facts that were a bit closer to the truth than Gaelle’s).

They also wanted to stay the night at the barracks as they didn't feel safe.
Seigfried to Cord - "You don't feel safe? You chopped that guy clean in half!"

The desk sergeant called in the watch captain who de-briefed them.
They told the full story of their activities during the evening, without embellishment. The captain was impressed, and a little intimidated.

They slept that night in one of the barrack rooms, but left one person on guard with the desk sergeant. Glad for the company, the sergeant engaged whoever it was in conversation, except Seigfried, who he was told was an ignorant foreigner.


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## Plane Sailing (Aug 29, 2004)

robberbaron said:
			
		

> Immediately, Li Kung threw *her *glaive at Gaelle's feet trying to strike a rat through the doorway past Gracientus.




minor typo, Li Kung is male note female.

I'd like to point out that grappling the thief into submission was Li Kung's moment of glory (i.e. only combat in which he didn't (a) fumble or (b) fail a saving throw or (c) fumble AND fail a saving throw) and he wants to take all the credit for successfully completing the grapple... Cord gets to chop enough people in half by himself 

Also, it is worth noting that Siegfried is an anomaly, a Paladin amongst an evil party played by the chap who normally plays a secretly evil guy amongst our normal good/nuetral parties.

Cheers


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## sumi (Aug 30, 2004)

Plane Sailing said:
			
		

> Also, it is worth noting that Siegfried is an anomaly, a Paladin amongst an evil party played by the chap who normally plays a secretly evil guy amongst our normal good/neutral parties.




However, in this party he has leanings to the dark side. He is most probably Lawful Evil. He does not like people going against the laws of the land. However, if he does not stop annoying Cord he is most likely to be dead in the coming days. 

That's the problem with adventuring with those CE's - you have to keep looking behind you.


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## robberbaron (Aug 31, 2004)

*A bit of a scrap ...*

May 19th

Bright and early next morning the party asked the desk sergeant where they could get hold of coriander root. The sergeant told them that it wasn't really used in the town but there was a herb farm 10 miles to the north. They supplied much of the culinary herbs, including coriander, which the town’s restaurants and inns used.

Over breakfast, Gaelle wondered how she managed to get involved with this semi-incompetent crew. 
Helga was impressed by their charismatic "leader" - Seigfried. 
Gaelle was incredulous as she thought he was an idiot who can't even speak the local language.
Cord suggested that perhaps Seigfried should lead them today, so they could all see his leadership in action.

Seigfried actually thought they had been fairly successful since they joined up. Cord stood and showed Seigfried his back, "this is my sore back from carrying your sad arse around!"
Helga, however, didn't think Seigfried’s arse looked at all sad. 

Fast satisfactorily broken, they scuttled off to investigate the herb farm, Helga taking the absent (and now fugitive) Kron's horse.

When they got within sight of the farm they saw workers in the fields who ran away towards a barn when they spotted the party.
They appeared to be Goblins! Out in the daylight? How strange?

The party attempted to ride the goblins down, but only Helga reached them before they disappeared into the barn.
She did, however, manage to impale one of the goblins, pinning it to the barn wall, and stopped her horse before it ran through the barn door.

They all dismounted and handed Li Kung their reins to hold (absent player duty). He rode off a short distance into the nearby woods to wait for them.
The party noticed a hayloft door above the entrance, to which Helga failed to climb. Gaelle had no trouble, scrambling up the side of the barn like a rat up a rope, and Helga reached the door while Gaelle hung from the loading beam above.

The rest stepped through the doorway.

Straight into four heavy crossbow bolts, fired by a row of hobgoblins waiting for them. 
The goblins were disappearing down a hole at the other end of the barn.

Luckily, only one bolt hit, taking half Seigfried’s life with it. The hobgoblins swiftly exchanged their bows for shortspears and shields, while our heroes decided upon their next move.

Gaelle destroyed the bar on the hayloft roof door with remarkable show of strength and silently tumbled past any as yet unperceived guards. Observing the lack of guards Helga made her way quietly to the edge of the loft, which covered half the barn and looked down. Only the four Hobgoblins were in view and all were out of reach of even her longspear.
On the ground, Seigfried and Cord charged the hobgoblins whilst Gracientus blessed the party. Seigfried’s charge was unsuccessful but Cord cut his opponent down and cleaved through Seigfried’s for good measure.

Gaelle attempted to shoot the hobgoblins from the loft but missed and Helga dropped down behind one of them, failing to strike him and twisting her ankle from the height of the hurried drop. Still she could give one of the fighters a flank. The remaining hobgoblins, stunned by Cord’s ferocious efficiency and the aerial assault, failed to respond with any useful attacks. Seigfried moved into the attack again but his sword cut only air while Cord cut through his own, helped by Helga’s flank, and then cleaved through Siegfried’s hobgoblin (again). The upright German was beginning to feel embarrassed at Cord’s effectiveness and his lack.

With the immediate threat dealt with the party did not push on down the 10’ wide ramp into the hobgoblins’ subterranean lair, but instead gathered their energies in the barn. Gracientus attempted to heal Seigfried, ineffectively, while Gaelle stripped the studded armour off of a hobgoblin and began stuffing it with straw. Cord and Helga positioned themselves either side of the ramp where they might gain a height advantage, should any more enemies emerge. Cord picked up one of the hobgoblin corpse to use as a pavise and Helga inched back to lose herself in the shadows. They can hear more creatures approaching and signal this to the others. Gracientus responds by curing some of Seigfried’s wounds. Gaelle continued stuffing the armour with straw. What is she up to?

A single hobgoblin ventured forth and failed to shoot Gaelle as she constructed her scarecrow. Helga, having a crossbow prepared, failed to shoot the scout, as did Gaelle, as she dropped the straw man and flipped her bow into her nimble hands. 
Suddenly, numerous hobgoblins charged up the slope and into combat with everyone although, in the limited space, only six could safely engage. Of these two attacked Gaelle, one successfully. The same is true of Cord with the hobgoblin’s spear driven much deeper into his flesh. Helga and Seigfried were both missed by their single opponents.

Cord struck back, neatly bisecting one hobgoblin and slaying the other with a single strike of his mighty Fullblade. Gaelle retreated a few steps firing her bow rapidly but the swift rain for once lacked accuracy and her aggressors remained unharmed. Helga and Seigfried both returned their hobgoblins’ ineffective attacks in kind, while Gracientus snatched up one of the fallen heavy crossbows and carefully loaded it, moving back from immediate danger.

Everyone’s eyes widened as more armed and armoured hobgoblins erupt from below ground and assaulted at speed. Seigfried was swiftly surrounded and Helga found herself fighting two of the smelly brutes. They had both remained untouched but knew their luck couldn’t hold. Observing the entrails hanging from Cord’s blade and the dark blood pulsing from the several bodies lying at his feet two hobgoblins shot at him but he was nicked by only one arrow. Again Gaelle was missed as her assailants ignored Gracientus.

Cord moved to aid Seigfried, decapitating one of his opponents but could not recover the awesome blow to cleave another. Still, the hobgoblin’s body pumped blood high into the air showering all nearby as his head exited the barn through the doorway thanks to the ferocity of the impressive blow. Gaelle managed to hit one of her aggressors but failed to drop him. Helga fought defensively and ineffectively while Seigfried and Gracientus finally managed to strike and shoot effectively, Seigfried downing another of his surrounding enemies and Gracientus shooting one out of combat, winging it.

What seemed an endless tide of hobgoblins continued to wash against the party, now seeking the obviously weaker members. Three of them surrounded Helga and battered her to a stagger while two moved in on Gracientus and combined to take most of his health (and blood) from him. Seigfried was struck by a charging new combatant, as his only remaining foe was filled with the terror of his neighbour’s headless body staggering about by the side of him and the grinning visage of the blood-soaked Cord close by. 
The hobgoblins were avoiding the bloody man of muscle but one made an attempt to shoot him, ineffectively. Cord laughed as his bloody blade tore through another of Seigfried’s opponents. Gaelle retreated further and rapid shot, killing his own and Seigfried’s terror-struck opponents. Helga, already staggered, attempted to tumble out of her predicament and was taken down by a hobgoblin’s reflexive strike. Gracientus ran from his attackers to hide behind Gaelle and Seigfried moved to attack Helga’s attackers, waving his sword ineffectively as he worried about Helga bleeding to death on the dirt floor.

Helga’s circle of admirers moved to surround Seigfried but only one spear scratched him. The hobgoblin that had been facing Gracientus was torn between attacking him, Gaelle or Cord, courageously chooses the latter. He was joined by a quivering hobgoblin crossbowman who was heartened by the thought of a flank, but still neither managed to strike the blood-drenched warrior. 
The tiring heroes noticed that no more hobgoblins were venturing from their lair and hoped they were running out of opponents. 
Cord attempted to cleave through his pair of foes but for once they evaded his massively telegraphed attack, one dodging straight into the path of one of Gaelle’s arrows. 
Helga lay bleeding on the floor, Gracientus struggled to reload the unfamiliar heavy crossbow and Seigfried waved his blade about a bit.

Despite their advantage in numbers and positions only one hobgoblin managed to hit anyone, Seigfried again. 
Cord made no mistake this time and his Fullblade sent hobgoblin limbs spinning in all directions as two corpses hit the ground, adding to the mountain of inhuman flesh that surrounded him. Gaelle shot and wounded one of Seigfried’s, Helga continued to bleed.
Seigfried, almost out of blood himself, managed to kill one of his three opponents and disengaged to gain support from Cord, also allowing Gracientus a free shot, which he failed to use to his advantage.

Only two hobgoblins remained and one of these had an arrow in his shoulder, but still they fought on in a desperate effort to save their mates and children from the predation of the humans. The uninjured one gathered up every last ounce of courage and threw himself at Cord with a murderous roar, impaling him and revealing that some of the visceral material was human after all as Cord fell to the many minor injuries he had accrued. The injured hobgoblin likewise hurled himself at Seigfried but slipped on a strange puddle of goo that had been slowly seeping from Helga along with her blood, stabbing himself. 

Gaelle shot the injured hobgoblin with two arrows, finally dispatching it. S attacked the uninjured hobgoblin, knowing that he himself was only a scratch from death, striking it but not putting it down. Now they were equals. 
Gracientus ran in and tried to aid Cord but there was so much blood he found it very difficult to find an actual wound.

The last hobgoblin thrust his spear past Seigfried and stepped away shouting something in his own tongue before Gaelle’s black fletched signature arrow took him down. Bravely Seigfried approached the ramp and peered down, but couldn’t see anything.
Helga and Cord bled some more but Gracientus uses the mystic power of Set find their wounds, seal them and restore them to consciousness.

Battered and bruised, with only Gaelle having any fight left in her, the party retreated to the nearby woods. They could hear Goblin voices from down the ramp but even with Gaelle and Gracientus combining their efforts they could not restore any fighting spirit to Helga although Gaelle’s healing potion did instil some life back into Cord. 

In the relative safety of the woods the party reflected on the hobgoblin encounter that was more challenging than they expected. 
After six hours of rest everyone is fighting fit and ready to continue. Nightfall came and went, renewing Gracientus’ mystical ability.
Returning under cover of darkness, not that this would bother goblins and hobgoblins much, they sneaked back into the barn. Helga and Gracientus lit torches and Gaelle unmasks her lantern. The dead hobgoblins had been removed, dragged down the ramp into the lair. While Gaelle confirmed this was accomplished by smaller creatures, muffled scuffling could be heard from the loft.
Gaelle threw her lantern aloft, starting a fire but not the immediate conflagration she had hoped for. There were immediate squeals of alarm from above and Helga moved to one of the ladders to take an opportunist poke at any goblins that might use it, but the goblins threw themselves down instead, some hurting themselves as others of their kind charged up the ramp frothing at the mouth, shrilly crying out in their guttural tongue.

Gaelle targeted one of the goblin jumpers and one who was partially aflame, putting them out of their misery.
Cord shoot at one with his crossbow, missing by yards, and threw the treacherous device aside, drawing his trusty sword. Gracientus blessed the group while Seigfried charged into combat, his obviously blunted Fullblade bouncing off the goblin’s padded armour. Helga struck at the same gobo but also missed.

The goblins, energised by the highly calorific hobgoblin flesh they had just enjoyed, frantically charged. Five threw themselves at Gaelle, three drawing the bow woman’s blood, two struck at Cord, one hitting. These goblins have no fear of the huge man with the enormous chopper; they did not witness his fine batch of double strikes in the previous battle and he has cleaned himself up a bit since then. Four attacked Seigfried, two hitting and one worked his way over to Hegla but missed her. Gaelle stepped back and made kebabs of two opponents, Cord cleaved through both his and steppe across to threaten Helga’s. Gracientus unloads a crossbow in the vague direction of a goblin, Seigfried and Helga waved their weapons around to no avail, though Helga slashed an unwary goblin as it ran within reach of her weapon.

The goblins went for it while they still could. Two missed Cord, three attacked Seigfried but only one managed to hit, three missed Gaelle and Helga’s only attacker realised he was poking her with the soft end and spent valuable combat time turning his spear around. In response Gaelle extracted a goblin’s eye through the back of its skull with a perfectly aimed arrow, Cord cleaved through his and moved to give Seigfried a flank, despite leaving himself flanked, but then Seigfried killed the flanked goblin while Gracientus missed a shot and Helga managed to wound hers. 

Only three goblins remained and two turned tail and ran; Gaelle shot one down, Gracientus missed the other but Seigfried outran it and slayed it easily while Cord finished the last persistent attacker who was still worrying Helga. 
By now the loft was well ablaze and the group decided to leave to investigate the other buildings. Cord looked for any smoke issuing from other exits but saw none.

The farmhouse was in poor repair but solid and Helga took a crossbow bolt to the chest having failed to spot the trap on the main door. The building itself and remaining goods were of human design and a thorough investigation discovered a male and a female human with their throats cut in their sleep and a younger male cut down in a fight. There was only one other outbuilding and this had been ruined sometime in the past so the party moved the corpses and bedded down until the barn burned itself out.

The next morning the party investigated the barn again; Gaelle revealed that the females and young led by a human left about eight hours ago, probably while they were engrossed in searching the farmhouse. 

Moving burnt beams from the ramp into the earth, they moved into the gobbos’ lair. After half an hour of sneaking around all they could find was a cartload of coriander and a lot of smelly goblin nests.
Suddenly, movement caught their eyes. 

Something was still down here.


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## robberbaron (Aug 31, 2004)

*Another new friend?*

Boldo Chanunga’s breath came in pained gasps; the wound to his skull from the gnarled knobkerrie of the hook nosed human slavers had almost killed him. Bound in manacles and thrown to the floor of a creaking wagon, he awoke from peaceful oblivion to the agony of a rough road and the tight-packed company of others of his people similarly tossed like so many sacks of goods into the stinking cage. The cloth-swathed raiders had descended on the peaceful Pygmi village just before dawn, scimitars cutting down those who resisted, whips and ropes rapidly binding any who could be subdued. Women, children, men, all were taken.

An agonising journey followed, many weeks across hard desert. The swathed ones excelled at keeping their charges at the edge of life, force-feeding them a weak and greasy gruel that lacked enough sustenance to give the energy necessary for escape. 

Sold to a trader from the centre sea and then on to an inland owner he was set to work as a miner, his small stature allowing him to work the smaller seams normally worked only by children. One day, breaking through to a new chamber, the miners stumbled into a nest of goblins. The one-sided fight left many of the child miners dead but the goblins were routed by a swift counterattack from the mine-owner’s brute squad. Seeing his chance, Boldo escaped during the melee. Lurking in the dark tunnels of the goblins’ former lair he struck off his manacles with rough goblin tools and wandered the labyrinth for many days. Following the upstream flow of an underground river he eventually emerged into the night sky many leagues distant, murdering a pair of goblin guards and stealing their equipment at the exit.

Feeling unable to fit easily into bronze skinned human society he hovered on the edge of civilisation, making occasional forays into villages only to steal better equipment or food. In one such place he discovered a tunnel hidden in the shadows of a seemingly normal farm building and ventured within, not thinking about what might live down there.

------

When he had crept down the ramp, Boldo Chanunga quickly realised his error, as goblins and larger creatures seemed to fill the chambers dug out of the earth beneath the farm. His escape back up the ramp cut off by a returning hobgoblin patrol, Boldo scrambled under the tarpaulin covering a large cart and pretended to be a sack of smelly herbs.

Managing to burrow further into the pile of sacks, Boldo slept for a short while only to be woken by the sound of battle. Able to get an eye below the cover he could see the shadows cast by many figures dancing in combat in the barn above and hear the squeaks of consternation from the goblin women and children all around him. He backed tightly into the sack pile and waited for the fighting to die down.

Some time later, he must have been dozing, he suddenly smelt smoke. The noises from the goblins were frantic, but a different voice, a man’s voice, seemed to be calming them down and organising them. Boldo thought it best to keep hidden for the time being. If they took the cart with them that would be best, but if they left he might be able to get out on his own.

The goblins moved out of their lair and, shortly after, Boldo heard the noise of the barn roof collapsing. Poking his head out of the cart he could see that the exit had been blocked by smouldering beams. Oh well, nothing to do but wait for it to cool down. Might as well have a look around.

Boldo moved through the chambers of the goblin lair, not finding anything of interest, until he heard what sounded like the beams being removed from the exit. Secreting himself around a corner, he watched as sunlight streamed down the ramp followed by several large figures. Humans!

Realising that his short, deep brown body might not be easy to distinguish from a goblin’s in the gloom of the chamber, Boldo decided to remain hidden until he could get more information about the new arrivals.
They moved through the chamber quite stealthily, though at least two of them were hulking brutes with swords twice as long as he was, and seemed to be searching the other chambers. 

When the humans returned from the goblin family chamber, Boldo got the distinct impression that they had seen him, but were pretending that they hadn’t. They moved into the human overseer’s chamber and Boldo took this opportunity to scuttle quietly across to the cart, reaching its shadows just as the humans emerged from the overseer’s chamber and moved towards where he had only just now been hiding!

Now he was close enough to hear their conversation, and realising that they were speaking Graecae (one of the languages he knew), he decided to trust to his abilities and stood on top of the cart, addressing the humans.
“Hello, there! Me Boldo Chanunga. Me want job, you need me”.


------


“There’s a goblin over there, hiding in that opening,” said Gaelle. “Act as if we haven’t seen it”.
The party moved into a small chamber across from the ramp, keeping half an eye on the little dark shape almost hidden in the shadows, finding it just as empty of anything interesting (worth money) as the other chambers.
Coming back out, they decided to head towards the goblin, still not making it appear that they knew it was there.
What they found was the chamber where the hobgoblins lived, dozens of large nests dotted the cavern floor. There was, however, no goblin to be seen.

Turning to leave, they could clearly hear a strangely accented voice calling to them. They emerged into the entrance chamber to see a short figure, shorter even than a goblin, dressed in leather armour with so many weapons that they probably weighed more than he did. 


------


Chatting to the strange little man, they realised that Boldo could well be a valuable inclusion into their group. Despite Helga’s best efforts, they were not blessed with a dedicated roguish type and little brown person seemed to fit the bill.


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## robberbaron (Aug 31, 2004)

Dramatis Personae update:

Boldo Chanunga (Male Halfling Rogue from Ethiope - complete with stereotypical bone through his nose)

------

Having welcomed Boldo into their merry band, they went back outside to find out what had happened to the rest of the goblins.

Gaelle cast about for tracks and was easily able to follow the trail of a large band of goblins, and one human, moving roughly south-east towards the woods. Picking up Li Kung and the horses they continue to follow the goblins through the woods until the part company with the human just inside the southern edge. The goblins turned westwards, staying within the woods, presumably going to meet up with another goblin band, while the human set off across country towards Starros.
They decided to ignore the goblins and follow the human, managing to keep to the trail even though he had made great efforts to hide his tracks. Despite the time he must have taken to do such a thorough job (though not thorough enough to fool Gaelle) they reckoned he would still arrive at Starros hours before them. They made best speed back to the town, though Gaelle kept an eye on the tracks, just in case he veered off unexpectedly.


Back in Starros, doing their duty as sworn-in members of the militia, they reported the goings on at the herb farm. As the Watch Captain organised a scouting party of militiamen to investigate the farmstead, the party discussed their options and realised that they didn’t have many. They decided to head back down into the sewers to hopefully capture someone with more information than the pathetic thieves they had previously captured.

They made their way to the harbour and re-entered the sewers underneath Wharf 4. Showing his usefulness, Boldo scouted ahead and heard movement ahead. Creeping up to a ‘crossroads’ of sewer pipes, he could hear a couple of thieves readying an ambush to either side of the entrance.
Tumbling through the opening, taking the ambushers by surprise, Boldo flic-flacced across the central pool, landed, turned and shot both before they could react. Unfortunately, they would be difficult to interrogate.

Moving on through the sewer, heading vaguely north-east, Boldo again discerned an ambush being set. This time he, Gaelle and Helga decided to attack. Boldo tumbled into the chamber, managing to avoid the reacting shortswords of the flanking thieves.
Gaelle also tumbled across the chamber while Helga waited on the threshold.
On this occasion, their tactics were not particularly effective. The three waiting thieves were giving as good as they got until Cord and Seigfried turned up. Then they got rather more than they gave. Again, not much use asking them questions.

The heroes spent the next eight hours wandering around in the sewers, until they got close to where they thought the Hark must have his lair. Stumbling onto a lone thief, they managed to subdue him sufficiently softly for him to be able to answer questions.

They interrogated him for some time, getting quite a lot of potentially useful information:
His boss, one Philp, has his headquarters in a warehouse just to the east and, every day just after sunset, a rope is let down from the drain in the road outside it so the thieves in the sewers could change shifts. The sewer chambers were roughly hemispherical with a shaft heading up to the grilles in the roads. This design made them almost impossible to climb without a rope, so the thieves were stuck in the sewers until they were allowed to leave via one of the wharf outflows.
Nothing about the Hark, though. This thief knew no more about him than the others they had asked.

When they thought they had everything out of him they could Cord dispatched him, against Seigfried’s protestations.
Thus began a discussion of moral and ethics during which Cord and Seigfried said a lot of things, but listened to none.

Gaelle paced the distance to the grille where the thieves had their exit and marked on her town map where she thought Philp’s warehouse would be.

Gaelle and Boldo left the rest of the party and the sewers and made their way round to the drain grille beneath which the party rested.
Unfortunately, the grille was in the middle of a fairly busy street.

Gaelle, brandishing her militia badge, stepped out into the road and shouted “Stop!” to a merchant on a wagon. By chance she has stepped out in front of someone who is already late and who whips his horses. “Bloody militia, get out of the way, idiot!”
Gaelle nimbly dodged out of the way as the horses galloped past, calmly drew her bow and sent one of her black-fletched arrows clean through the merchant’s head. Amid screams of “Murder!” and the sound of people leaving the scene in rather a hurry, the wagon stopped and Boldo tried to make himself even smaller as he squeezed out of sight, not wanting to be associated with this mad woman with the cold eyes.
He watched as she casually stepped up to the ex-merchant, attached a pouch of coriander root to his belt and removed her arrow (from his forehead, as it had passed most of the way through).
Whistles could be heard in the distance – it wouldn’t be long before the “real” militia turned up and started asking why Gaelle had executed a man in the street.

Best to be gone when they arrived.


Boldo, after being called by Gaelle, crept out of his shadows and moved across to the grille, attaching a rope to it so the rest of the party could climb out. Seigfried took the first turn on the rope. He made it almost all the way up before Boldo’s poor excuse for a knot gave way. Gaelle, her movements too fast to see, grabbed the end of the rope as it disappeared down the shaft but, unfortunately, Seigfried was unable to keep hold of the rope as it jerked to a halt and fell back into the sewer. Luckily, he fell on his head which is a non-critical location.

Gaelle’s plan is for the rest of the party to come up and go to Philp’s warehouse where they will ambush his men as they change sewer shifts. Gaelle would go back down into the sewer and attack the thieves from below.

Sounds like a classic pincer movement. Wonder if it will work.


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## sumi (Sep 1, 2004)

Of course it will. Eventually


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## Plane Sailing (Sep 2, 2004)

robberbaron said:
			
		

> They all dismounted and handed Li Kung their reins to hold (absent player duty)




Bastards!  

(trust the DM to fracture his elbow thus making him unable to get to work and pick up a copy of Li Kung's character sheet. Now I'm a level behind!)

Still, more fumble-a-riffic opportunities for Li coming up this Sunday...


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## Plane Sailing (Sep 8, 2004)

C'mon Robberbaron, don't let a fractured elbow stop you from typing up story! Can Lou take dictation


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## sumi (Sep 9, 2004)

Plane Sailing said:
			
		

> C'mon Robberbaron, don't let a fractured elbow stop you from typing up story! Can Lou take dictation




Says the man who is nearly 1 year behind the times.


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## Plane Sailing (Sep 10, 2004)

sumi said:
			
		

> Says the man who is nearly 1 year behind the times.


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## robberbaron (Oct 14, 2004)

*Good News and Bad News*

The Good News:
After recording the last three sessions, I have transcribed the first 6 hours and have started editing it for publication.

The Bad News:
I still have 11 hours of recording to transcribe and we have another session this Sunday.

The Really Bad News:
As well as the broken elbow, which is healing nicely, I have now been diagnosed with a fractured scaphoid and will have my left hand in plaster for 6 weeks (then there is the fair probability of surgery and further weeks in plaster. Just in time for Christmas). This means that the notes will take much longer to do.


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## Plane Sailing (Oct 14, 2004)

robberbaron said:
			
		

> I have now been diagnosed with a fractured scaphoid and will have my left hand in plaster for 6 weeks (then there is the fair probability of surgery and further weeks in plaster. Just in time for Christmas).




Blimey, that's bad news mate. I hope the delay in diagnosis of this scaphoid hasn't caused any additional problems.

See you Sunday


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## sumi (Oct 16, 2004)

I hope you are not cracking up mate.  

BOOM, BOOM  

Sorry, saw Basil Brush for the first time in twenty years yesterday.


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## robberbaron (Nov 13, 2004)

*And the fun continues....*

Helga wondered how many thieves there were likely to be in the sewers at the shift change. Gaelle reckoned two and was confident that she could handle them but Helga would have been happier with two of the party down beneath the manhole. The information they had implied that thieves would be moving both into and out of the sewer and that there might be more than two thieves around.
“Well, we’ll just kill them all”, said Gaelle.
“But if a big group, or some groups all turn up to go up the rope, you could find yourself at the bottom mixing it with twenty or thirty thieves, which is not a very sensible position for you to be in”, Helga put in, sincerely worried for Gaelle’s safety. “So there should be more than just you down below. Unfortunately, the little dark Halfling has gone missing as he would be the perfect choice”.

So it was decided that Helga would accompany Gaelle, leaving the two big, butch sword-swingers up top.
“Let’s face it, if twenty thieves turn up at the top and another twenty appear down below, we won’t be attacking them” Gaelle asserted.
“Yeah, you turn round and walk away” said Cord.
“Bit difficult in the sewer” put in a worried Helga.
“No, you just turn around and walk away. They are not expecting you to be there so they aren’t going to set traps for you” asserted Cord.
“We’ve already killed eight thieves in the sewers and I’m not expecting many more than that” Gaelle reassured Helga.

“Hey, if it’s just you and me” Cord grinned at Seigfried, “you won’t be able to hide at the back.”

Gaelle and Helga secreted themselves in the shadows around the intersection below Philp’s warehouse. The evening sun glancing off the glistening filth coating the sewer shaft gave considerable cover for anyone with the skill to use it. And Helga.

-----

Cord, Seigfried and Gracientus tucked themselves around a corner just up from the warehouse, hidden in the shadows with a good view of the street and the grating.

The few market stalls in this street had already closed, and there was significantly less traffic at this time of day. Seemed reasonable, if the shift-change was a regular occurrence.

An hour passed and the party were beginning to doubt their information when the warehouse door opened quietly, figures emerged and moved over to the grating. They counted six shifty-looking men scurrying across the road, looking alert. Gracientus prepared to Bless his companions when they decided to do something.
The thieves pulled the grille up and one tied a thick rope to it, dropping the rope down into the hole. Two thieves then held the grate away from the hole, two were looking around with readied crossbows and the other was looking down the hole, watching his mate climb down.

Gaelle and Helga, seeing the rope after an age of listening to the distant squeaking of rats, waited for someone to come down.
The first thief to scamper down the rope put his foot into the puddle at the bottom and was surprised as a by a black-fletched arrow whistling past his knee.
Gaelle’s next two arrows stuck out of his shoulders but he was still breathing.
Helga barely managed to shoot the ground between her feet, before dropping her bow and drawing her rapier.

The thief, not enjoying looking like a coat rack, moved to Gaelle and nicked her with his shortsword.

Gaelle stepped back and teased him with an arrow past his ears before hitting double-top between his eyes, dropping the thief into the dirty water like a dead thief.

In the street, Cord charged forward out of the gloom and only just managed to hit one of the thieves (slicing his arm and leg off) and then only just managed to cut his fellow thief clean in two as a bonus.

“Bloody hell” exclaimed the thieves, as their colleagues’ blood sprayed all over them, before charging into flanking positions against Cord, one planting his shortsword deep into the warrior’s thigh.

Seigfried followed up, running to help Gracientus who had just had a sword thrust into his belly. 
Gracientus swung his Morningstar around semi-proficiently and stepped away from the thief, leaking red.

Cord carved one of the remaining thieves and injured the other. At least they couldn’t flank him now.
“Boss, boss! Help!” screamed the badly injured thief before stabbing Cord with what was likely to be his last strength.

The other followed Gracientus, slipping on the bloody street, straight into the swinging Fullblade of Seigfried. The street became considerably bloodier over a large area.

Gracientus looked around for any more incoming trouble while Cord and the remaining thief traded swishes before the thief cut himself in twain by tumbling away through Cord’s blade.

-----

Helga used the dead thief as a step onto the rope and began to climb the rope, while Gaelle moved across the chamber to have a look around, seeing nothing untoward. Helga managed to avoid the blood dripping down the shaft and reached the top just as Cord went over to Gracientus for some healing.
“I seem to have been let down in the planning, again!” he grumbled, making his displeasure at Seigfried’s ‘backup’ plain despite the language barrier.

Gaelle, upon arrival at the top, also asked for bandaging. When that seemed to do little good Gracientus called upon Set to knit her wounds.

They pulled up and untied the rope, tipped the bodies down the shaft and replaced the grille.


----------



## robberbaron (Nov 13, 2004)

The party then moved over to the warehouse and listened at the door, despite the chance of a blade coming through it (brave lot, these. Actually, they didn’t think of it. Less brave more careless).
Helga could hear a weapon being not-quietly-enough drawn on the other side of the door.

Knowing that a foe awaited them, they paused to consider their options. Gaelle wondered how strong the door was while Cord stepped to the side of the door. The rest prepared missile weapons in a potential crossfire and Seigfried stepped back, sliding the door open. 
Gaelle thought she could make out someone in cover beside the door and sent an arrow into the door roughly where the thief’s groin would have been, following it up with one a bit further away.

Helga cart wheeled expertly across the doorway, unfortunately not being able to see much within the warehouse as her vision blurred from the movement.

Seigfried stepped bravely through the doorway, shrugging off the spell that came at him out of the darkness, and swung close to the thief hiding behind the door.
The thief and his mate both then mugged him.

Gaelle attempted to get a better shot past the bulk of Seigfried, still not managing to strike true.
Helga cast a spell to enable her to run faster as a spell from the darkness failed to affect Gaelle.

Cord then stepped up and, unable to get a good attack, thrust his enormous weapon clean through the closed door, just failing to injure the very surprised thief on the other side.

Seigfried, in a fit of competence, carved down both of his attackers and stepped away from the doorway, to allow his companions to get in while two bowmen shot from gloomy cover. One arrow buried itself into Seigfried while there was a muffled “Bugger!” and a clatter of a dropped bow.

Gracientus, finally being able to see thieves, shot a bolt through the doorway and off into the darkness.
Gaelle stepped back out through the doorway and plugged a thief in the thigh.

Helga, trying to avoid the thieves’ weapons (unsuccessfully, but not too painfully) tumbled into the room, swinging her weapon around. A shudder ran through her as she shrugged off a spell.
Cord moved in and carved one thief down while Seigfried made no progress with his opponent.

The thieves closed in to flanking positions on Seigfried, and two arrows came whistling out of the gloom, one clipping Cord’s arm. A bolt from Gracientus finally found its mark, injuring Cord’s opponent further.
One of Gaelle’s arrows also found its mark, dropping a thief.

Helga tried to spot the bowmen and moved further into the room, up behind a packing crate, giving her some cover. Not enough cover, however, as an arrow came out of the darkness, skipped off the top of the crate and took her earlobe off. 

Impetuously, Cord ran forward into the gloom along the wall, spotting the bowmen reloading behind some crates, one of which loosed an arrow in his general direction. The other took careful aim and plugged one into Helga, cowering behind her crate. This spurred her into action, charging forward toward the bowmen and leaping onto the crate in front of them, waggling her rapier menacingly at them.

Cord meanwhile felt his limbs shudder into stiffness. He had been held!

The bowmen, cowed by the large blonde on the crate in front of them both send their arrows up into the air, clattering off rafters before landing somewhere in the far corner of the building. 

The inside of the warehouse, rather gloomy to begin with, was rapidly descending into complete darkness, prompting both Gracientus and Gaelle to light lanterns.

Helga stepped lithely along the line of crates and would have plunged her rapier into one of the bowmen had he not been dodging frantically. She spun round and pierced air as a previously unseen figure moved behind her and slashed across her belly, dropping her to the floor in a pool of her own blood, strangely mixed with a clear viscous jelly that oozed out of the wounds.

Both bowmen thanked their boss for his help and shot Cord, held rigid against the wall. Well, one of them did; the other was unsettled by the glistening pool surrounding Helga.
The situation became clearer as Gracientus shone his lantern across the warehouse and Gaelle worried the bowmen by shooting arrows into the crates.

Philp, brandishing two swortswords, stepped out of the light and out of sight.
Seigfried finally managed to kill his opponent, using the little-known “Death of a Thousand Cuts” Fullblade technique, while Gracientus and Gaelle pincushioned one of the bowmen. Helga came round but could not bring herself to do anything, not even look around.

Seigfried, buoyed by his success decided to charge across the warehouse and push one of the crates back into the remaining bowmen, startling him so much that he cracked his bow on the crate before dropping it at his feet.
Gaelle’s next shot clipped Seigfried’s shoulder before burying itself in the crate as an arrow came out of the darkness, heading in her general direction.
Seigfried unsuccessfully pushed against the crate then hopped up on to it, just in time to get out of the way of Gaelle’s arrows, one of which nicked the thief’s neck.
He then, after taking a shortsword thrust in the thigh, cut the thief’s head of with a flourish. 

All the visible enemies eliminated, Gaelle opened up her lantern and ran across into the darkness, trying to spot Philp, while Helga crawled into deeper cover and Cord began to feel his limbs unfreezing. 
Gracientus went across to the held warrior to tend to his injuries.

Unable to spot the badly injured Helga, Seigfried called upon the grace of Forseti, “Justice be served!”, closing several of his minor wounds.

Gaelle took a second, more careful, look around and managed to spot Philp behind a couple of crates, just as he swigged a potion and disappeared. She could hear Cord groaning as his limbs unfroze, before Gracientus’ healing took effect.

Li Kung, having been delayed with monky affairs, took this opportunity to arrive through the door of the warehouse.

By the light of Gaelle’s lantern, a closed door was visible in the far corner of the warehouse, to which Li Kung ran in order to waylay anyone attempting to exit. Cord, his wounds partly healed, staggered to the main door. Gracientus attempted to apply a bandage to Helga’s wounds, but was unable to see them due to the plasm which was glistening all over her skin. He was also hampered by Helga peering into the rafters trying to see any other route of egress for the bad guy.

Gaelle and Li Kung stood very still, trying to locate the invisible Philp. Gaelle spotted a distortion on the air, but couldn’t quite make out the shape. 

Philp, realising he had been rumbled, quaffed another potion in preparation for the inevitable fight, then moved quietly across the warehouse. Not quite quietly enough though, as Li Kung could hear his footsteps and charged across to where he thought Philp was and swished his glaive around.
Assuming that Li Kung was on to something, Gaelle launched two arrows into his area of attention, one of them hitting an invisible foe (grazing him across his brow) before Philp took a step forward and thrust his secondary shortsword into Li Kung’s side. 

Now with a visible foe, Cord charged across the warehouse and swingng his enormous weapon at Philp, glancing a blow off his armour. Seigfried did likewise, opening up a large rent in Philp’s chest.
Li Kung, briefly considering grappling before realising what would happen if he got in the way of the two fullblades swinging around, decided to step back and cut Philp down with his glaive.

The fight over, Gracientus stabilised Philp after which they tied him to a chair and waited for sunset, when Gracientus could implore Almighty Set for some healing spells, to bring Philp round so they could pump him for information.


----------



## robberbaron (Nov 13, 2004)

Philp, while unconscious, had his magic items detected. His armour, one of his shortswords, a potion and a wand were liberated and distributed. They surmised, after a lengthy discussion, that the wand might well be one of paralysation, considering Cord’s statue-like appearance during the fight so only Gracientus could use it.
Li Kung, bemoaning the fact that he had not gained any booty as yet, claimed the unknown (though identified as conjuration magic) potion.

When Gracientus had completed his supplications, Gaelle searched the warehouse and kept an eye out. She didn’t want anything to do with Philp’s interrogation and there were more than enough evil bastards to get any information he might have.

Li Kung, feeling the need to do a bit of dominating, decided to kick off the questioning.
“What does the wand do?”
Philp was not in the least impressed with his manner and kept his lips firmly shut.
Li Kung then brandished his glaive and, with no warning, struck off Philp’s left hand.
Unsurprisingly, Philp re-lost consciousness.

Gracientus deftly bandaged the stump and slapped a medpatch, sorry wrong game, cast another healing spell on Philp to bring him round again.

“Bloody hell!” exclaimed a groggy Philp, not expecting to still be alive.

“OK, Stumpy” sneered Li Kung, “let’s try this again. What does the wand do?”
“It’s a Wand of Hold Person” Philp answered, doing a fantastic impression of a broken man.
“The potion?”
“Cure. Didn’t get a chance to use it”
“That was tough for you”. Li Kung was really beginning to empathise with Philp.
“Yeah, apparently. My bloody hand!”
“Do you have any good reasons why we should keep you alive?” (That’s about as nasty a question as “Why do you want the job?”)
“Have you got any information that would make it worth our while to keep you alive?” chipped in Cord.
“That’s what I meant to ask.” sighed Li Kung.

After a short pause, a psychologically recovering Philp asked “What are you after?”

“Does the Hark mean anything to you?” Li Kung asked, with Helga looking mad and mean beside him (helping with the intimidation) and Cord leering over his shoulder (not). Strangely, Seigfried’s pious presence is more effective than the both of them put together.
“What happened to his hand?” asked Seigfried, who hadn’t actually been paying attention up to this point.
“Er, it just fell off” joked Cord.
Seigfried didn’t believe this, even he isn’t that gullible, and determined to pay closer attention to the questioning to ensure that no more bits of Philp ‘fell off’.
“When did that happen?”
“While you were looking the other way” answered Cord.

“I’ll tell you everything I know if you’ll let me go” offered Philp, warily eyeing up Li Kung and his blood-stained glaive. His blood!
Li Kung decided to go with honesty. “We’ve got no honour, so we could easily say yes”
“Hmm.” thought Philp, “I’m a pretty shrewd judge of character. You don’t get to my position (ha ha) by not knowing when some untrustworthy bastard actually WILL stab you in the back.
If you swear that you’ll let me go after I’ve told you everything, and I believe you, you’ll never see me again. I’ll be out of this town tonight”
“But then you’d run straight to the Hark to warn him” chimed in Helga, her brow furrowed with concentration. 
“Why in all the Hells would I do that? I’ve dobbed him in to you, why would I run to him? I’m more scared of him than I am of you. You’re all just complete bastards”
“That’s not true!” interjected an outraged Seigfried.
“But the Hark would kill me and eat me, only not in that order” continued Philp.
“You’re also not much use to the Hark now, anyway” said Cord, rubbing verbal salt into the bloody stump.
The more perceptive members of the group could tell that Philp was being completely honest with them. Even Seigfried knew that, whatever Philp had said, it was the complete truth and though Seigfried wanted to turn this high-ranking thief into the authorities, he was willing to entertain the idea of a “plea bargain”.
The greater justice of ridding Starros of the Hark would be served.

The truth was something they weren’t used to among themselves so it came as even more of a surprise coming from the maimed thief.
Li Kung had another nasty idea, “How about if you don’t tell us everything we’ll cut off your other hand, and your feet and attach a notice on what is left saying that you sold the Hark out to us?”
“Hang on. We don’t have an issue with letting him go, as long as he keeps going.” interceded Cord. “Saying we’ll kill him one way isn’t much more of a threat that just chopping his head off”.

There was a mumbled general agreement on this point and the group of evil bastards untied Philp’s hand as a show of good faith.

As they conceded that they would actually let him go in return for information, Philp relaxed visibly – he believed them and felt able to consider his new life away from Starros.

Philp sang like a one-winged bird.

He drew them a rough sketch of the parts of the burrow he had seen, and noted the defences about which he knew. Luckily, he was right-handed.
The Hark had a “burrow” beyond the north end of the harbour, beneath the boardwalk just above the high-water line, with its entrance hidden inside a warehouse marked with a particular Cant sign (a series of scratches that were designed to mimic wear and tear damage).
The Hark had lots of little rats that could be passed safely and quietly using the coriander root, plenty of dire rats, at least a dozen hobgoblins (which lived in the upper level) and a number of goblins. The Hark was a hobgoblin himself and lived in the upper level of the burrow, though Philp had never been up there).
He had some sort of fungus-thing and a rat swarm that made Philp want to puke just looking at them, as well as a very deep pit down which his companion fell, “I lost count of the seconds he was screaming”.

The interrogation continued after the party had a chance to peruse the map.

“How big is the Hark’s organisation?”
“Not much left now. Only what he’s got with him and a few lads who you didn’t catch.”

“Is there anyone left as good as you?”
“Only the Hark”
“What about as good as them?” Li Kung pointed at the other bodies.
“Well, I assume you WERE the ones who took out the other warehouse.” The characters nod.
“There are a few left in the sewers, but they are only about as good as my lads were. I reckon they’ll be running by now. Or crapping themselves in a corner somewhere. The Hobgobbos are quite tough.”

“Has he got any wizards or clerics with him?”
“Not that I know of. I heard a rumour that he could use magic, but I don’t know for sure”

“Hang on a minute,” said Helga, putting together the threads of doubt that had been nagging in her blonde head for the last few minutes, “the Hark is a hobgoblin wererat? The picture we had was of a human.”
“Typical lazy attitude to the law.” piped up Gracientus. ”They simply assumed that the Hark was human.”
“So, when that Uruk arrives back in Byzantium with the head of a human, they might just hand over the money?” Helga was a little worried about this, despite it not being her bounty to worry about.
“With a bounty of that size, 1000GP, they are likely to check before they pay out,” reasoned Cord, “then they’ll arrest him for murder and fraud”

It was now approaching midnight and they were beginning to feel the effects of a long day filled with sporadic violence, so decided to rest for a few hours before going on to tackle the Hark. Philp was nodding off as well, though his weariness was compounded by multiple blood loss.
They left Philp tied up while they rested, but promised to let him go when they left in the morning.
Helga decided to do a little more looting before settling down and discovered that all of Philp’s men had masterwork studded leather armour. They might be a little tight on the girls (Helga is blonde and has a “lot of Charisma”), but she and Gaelle were willing to put up with a little discomfort. And Helga liked the studs.

Li Kung, who was poring over Philp’s map of the burrow had a furrowed brow. “Why would anyone want to go over the pit trap and past the fungus when you can get to the upper level this way (pointing to a clear route to the ladder up)?”
No-one had a good answer, so they rested and considered their next moves.


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## robberbaron (Nov 13, 2004)

The sun rose and Seigfried knelt to pray to Forseti, being pleasantly surprised when he was granted a spell.
Li Kung was surprised. “He looks like he is praying. Does he have a god?”
“Dunno,” said Helga, “I like him but I’m not THAT interested.”

They discussed what magic Gracientus should pray for, forgetting that he prayed at sunset, not sunrise, so he had only the spells left from the previous day. They also considered what they knew of lycanthropes – only that it is a disease which is passed on through the creature’s bite. They thought they could remember something about belladonna helping, but that it was also highly poisonous.
Li Kung looked jealously at Seigfried and Cord’s fullblades and wondered if he could find a larger glaive, a fullglaive, perhaps. It would seem that all his ascetic training had not remove the potential for weapon envy.
He also thought about taking belladonna as a preventive measure against the Hark’s bite, but decided that it would be pretty good to be a wererat monk – they are fast and resistant to normal weapons. Hmm.

In the early morning, they untied Philp and set off to get the correct head for their bounty, after Li Kung asked him when he was next expected to report to the Hark.
“Later today, by which time I will be long gone and he will, hopefully, be dead”

On their way to the north of the harbour, they dropped a note into the watchhouse, explaining where they were going, how to get in and asking for backup around midday.
Finding the warehouse easily, they saw that the dock was pretty quiet here where few ships berthed, especially compared to the bustle of the more southerly wharves, and did not think anyone was paying particular attention to them. In fact the workers around were making quite sure that they weren’t paying attention to them. 

Helga quickly picked the lock on the warehouse door, then looked for, but didn’t find, any traps.
She then opened the door, revealing a small store, completely empty.
Gaelle had a nose around for tracks, finding a very faint human trail going to the right of the door then disappearing. Li Kung looked around for spyholes in the warehouse walls, finding none, while Helga easily discovered the well-hidden trapdoor and its disguised catch.
Opening the trapdoor, they could see a ladder leading down through a wooden shaft which opened out on to the rock of the harbour wall. When they moved down it they realised that the decrepit looking ladder was actually very well cared for.
Li Kung scrambled down the rock face, looking for the Cant sign which would mark the Hark’s lair.
Finding it, he secured himself to the wall and prepared to kick anyone or anything coming out of the entrance. The entrance looked like a crack in the rock face but closer examination showed that there was a thin spur of rock set some 4’ out from the face.

Gaelle crept and Li Kung clumped into the passage, Gaelle pausing at the threshold to listen but only hearing Li Kung’s breathing. The rest of the party followed up, forming a single file in the hidden passage, and then shuffled around each other until their order was satisfactory.

Gaelle padded down the passage towards the deep blackness of the lair, hearing faint squeaking of small rats before moving back and gesturing for Seigfried and the others to follow. Moving back to the front, Gaelle uncovered her lantern, scattering several small rats, and waved Seigfried forward with Li Kung also moving past her in to the first chamber. They were making quite a lot of noise, but the lantern light would probably have given away their presence before their footsteps did.
Realising this, they charged into the next room, where they expected some goblins. When the rest had passed, Helga began laying combustible material in the passage behind them and setting it alight.

The goblins, having seen their light, but only having heard Seigfried’s clumsy approach, lobbed javelins at him as he came out of the passage. Two small sharp sticks nicked his flesh, the rest rattling harmlessly against his armour and the wall.

The goblins then grabbed their little maces and charged in, four of them being chopped up by Li Kung before they even finished their battle-cry, “Aaargh…!”

Six seconds later the goblins were dead, Cord was running up the ladder to the upper level and Helga was wondering where they had all gone.

Cord’s lantern illuminated part of a large cavern and he stepped purposefully towards it. Suddenly, a fusillade of darts whistled out of the darkness, sticking in his side. After his next step a second whistling cloud of darts were also sticking in him. Li Kung tumbled nimbly over the two traps but Gaelle, trying to emulate the monk, hit one of the pressure pads and received her own clump of darts in the cheek.
Seigfried, without room for a run up, attempted to standing jump the 10’ of trapped passage, just clearing the second pad thanks to his newly liberated masterwork armour.
Gracientus was not so lucky. He landed square in the middle of the trap, straddling both pads, getting badly punctured before staggering out into the cavern.
Helga, just arriving at the top of the ladder, would have run straight into the trap, had she not heard their shouted warning. Her tumble was at least as impressive as Li Kung’s.

Three passages led off the cavern and Gaelle moved to the furthest one to look for tracks, finding hobgoblin spoor less than thirty minutes old. They could all hear movement in the passages so they prepared to run in, thinking to surprise the hobgoblins with their bravery. The hobgoblins, however, charged out to meet them.

Seigfried moved into the central passage and cut the first hobgoblin in two. Li Kung moved to the furthest passage and engaged the hobgoblins there. Cord followed the monk and carved his first opponent with contemptuous ease.
Gracientus took the opportunity to Bless his companions as Gaelle stuck an arrow in one of their foes.

Then the hobgoblins charged in, taking wounds from Helga’s longspear and getting chopped up by Li Kung’s glaive and Cord’s fullblade. 

Seigfried caught a spurt of hot, caustic hobgoblin blood in his eyes, obscuring his vision and causing him to swing more wildly than normal. Li Kung, in his haste to kill more enemies but miss Cord, dragged his glaive across the wall putting a nasty looking notch in the blade and cracking the shaft.
Cord cut only air then stepped back to allow more of the hobgoblins out.

The hobgoblins advanced, one more falling to Li Kung’s battered glaive before getting into sword range and taking a piece out of Cord. Gaelle continued to take step back and kill hobgoblins with her arrows. Seigfried stepped back and wiped his eyes while he had no opponents.

As the last of the hobgoblins in the cavern fell, a blazing ball of flame blossomed among the party, singeing Gracientus into unconsciousness and lightly toasting everyone else except a smug Li Kung.

Seigfried stepped up to the remaining hobgoblins in the passage in front of him and Li Kung ran into the passage where he thought the Hark must be. Guessing correctly, he rushed up and carved a thin score in the hide of the beast before him.
Seven feet tall, heavily muscled, covered in wiry hair and with a large snout full of pointy teeth, the Hark was as horrible as he had been described.
Cord moved past Li Kung, putting himself in front of the Hark, receiving a claw across the chest and a bite to the shoulder for his bravery. 

Gaelle, not being able to get a bead on the Hark, shot past Seigfried, taking out his foe and freeing the Germanian warrior to run around behind the Hark.
Helga, meanwhile, managed to bandage enough of Gracientus’ suppurating wounds to keep him from dying.

Li Kung dropped his glaive and attempted to tumble past Cord and around the Hark, bouncing off Cord’s back and falling flat on his backside with a claw slash across his cheek. He then sprang nimbly to his feet hoping no-one had seen him.

The Hark stepped away from Cord and unleashed a fan of flame from his fingertips, lightly singeing Cord who was wondering whether or not to fall over. Gaelle ran clear past Seigfried, but could not get a shot at the Hark. Helga also moved in as Seigfried stepped behind the Hark and stuffed his silvered longsword deep into the wererat’s side. Li Kung moved past Cord and tried to grapple the Hark, unable to get a good grip on his blood-slicked hide. Cord, unable now to get to the Hark, walked back out of the passage, picked up Gracientus and moved him out of the cavern, just in case there were anymore painful surprises.

The Hark, unhappy with the burning wound from the silver sword turned his attention on Seigfried but was unable to make contact. Gaelle again attempted to shoot past Seigfried, but her arrow was deflected away by the floor. Helga, however, scored a hit by firing a magic missile into the beast.
Seigfried, calling upon the holy power of Forseti, again stuck his silver sword into the Hark, just managing to remove it before Li Kung’s next unsuccessful grapple.

A spark of inspiration: Li Kung shouted “Helga, use the bloody wand!”
“I haven’t got the wand!”
“He doesn’t know that!”

The Hark continued to flail at Seigfried, managing to slash him across the thigh and bite his arm, as Gaelle’s next arrow missed him by less than the last and another magic missile hit his back.

The paladin, nearly out of blood, called upon his god for healing lest he fall over and dishonour himself. Just in time, as both the Hark’s claws slashed Seigfried’s body and those nasty jaws took a chunk out of his neck.
Li Kung failed to grab the Hark, again, and stepped away, hoping that Cord would move back in front of him. Gaelle’s next arrow careened along the passage, missing everyone in it, before nearly taking the returning Cord’s eye out.

The now goth-pale Seigfried swung wildly and Li Kung picked up his glaive and waved it at the Hark.
Seeing his opening, and wanting to get where Gaelle’s arrows couldn’t possibly hit him (in front of her), Cord moved past Li Kung and stuffed his sword through the Hark’s heart.

Seigfried offered thanks to Forseti for their victory while Li Kung applied his potion of healing to Gracientus, bringing him wide awake and nearly fully restored. 
Cord was healed and Gaelle struck the Hark’s head off as Seigfried went to reclaim his unfeasibly large weapon.


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## robberbaron (Nov 13, 2004)

Frisking the Hark’s body they discovered a potion and a pair of large, ornate bracers which Li Kung tried on for size after washing them thoroughly. He struck a few martial poses and did some defensive moves but couldn’t decide if they made any difference to his combat ability.
“Do you want us to try hitting you” asked Gaelle helpfully.

Searching the chamber beyond they found a large bag containing several hundred gold coins – not much treasure for a supposedly successful crime lord – but Helga managed to discover a very well hidden door.

They discussed going back to deal with the dire rats and the unidentified fungus, but didn’t think it was worth the trouble at that time.

Opening the secret door, they saw a dank-smelling tunnel, leading down into the earth.
Helga led the way, with a lantern held up in front of her.

After descending for some distance, the tunnel turned until they reckoned it was heading out under the sea.
Cord wondered if there was an island out there where the Hark had his real base.
Gaelle found the Hark’s tracks, returning from further down the tunnel, and continued on into the darkness.

After half an hour of walking they entered a “man”-made cavern with a small shrine to some rat god. The rest of the group searched the cavern while Seigfried defaced the shrine and smashed a statue of a “man-rat”.

Further on, the tunnel began to descend more steeply and twisted and turned until they thought they were several hundred feet below ground level, heading back toward land.

Helga, being alert, noticed that two of the steps in front of them were greased; an obvious trap which was easily avoided.

After they had been in the tunnel for an hour and a half, the atmosphere began to change from dank and musty to unpleasantly metallic and the tunnel began to turn in a wide spiral, which they followed for another hour. The tunnel surface suddenly changed from rough and possibly natural to wider and very well worked and somewhat shallower angled. Every fifty yards on either side of the corridor was an alcove, large enough for someone to stand in, perhaps meant for a statue or guard.

It was now approaching midday and they had travelled several miles through this tunnel, going ever deep under the ground, with no idea where they were going except that this must be where the Hark kept his treasure. It was decided that, as they seemed unlikely to be attacked at this point, they could rest for a spot of lunch.
A few hours later, feeling refreshed, they again began to amble off down the corridor.

When he thought it must be past sunset, they halted for Gracientus to pray to Set for his magic power and the rest of the group refilled their lanterns. They reckoned that one lantern-full of oil would get them back to the Hark’s cavern, as they wouldn’t be looking for tracks or traps, so they decided to economise and only have one lantern lit.

Two hours later, they entered a natural cavern which had been obviously enlarged and which had two corridors leading off. Gaelle found the Hark’s trail leading from the right-hand corridor and booted humanoid tracks leading off into the other. They ignored the other and followed the Hark’s trail.

The corridor became a long stair, which went on for a quarter of a mile before opening out into an enormous chamber. The light of the lantern illuminated a patch of wall behind them but could not find any surface in front except the stairs themselves, which led out into clear air.

Stopping quietly on the stair, they could hear the sound of water in the far distance, echoing around the space so it could have come from anywhere.
Being careful on the wide, slightly slippery steps, they moved on, out into the void.

Half a mile out and half a mile down, the sound of water dripping into water getting louder, Helga could hear the flapping of wings. Small, leathery wings. 

Many small wings.


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## Plane Sailing (Nov 15, 2004)

robberbaron said:
			
		

> The goblins then grabbed their little maces and charged in, four of them being chopped up by Li Kung before they even finished their battle-cry, “Aaargh…!”




Li Kung's first real success with the glaive - I'd rolled something ridiculously low for initiative and wasn't going to go until "3", but the goblins ran into attack through his threatened area - AoO, kill, cleave onto mate and kill him. AoO, kill. AoO, kill... It was a classic martial art "acting without thinking move, and Li Kung was starting to feel that he'd got the secrets down pat.



> before Li Kung’s next unsuccessful grapple.




Unfortunately in the big fight with the Hark I just couldn't roll a decent grapple check. I roll a 3, a 4, something else so low... I wasn't going to be the one to finish off the hark, that was for sure!


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## sumi (Nov 18, 2004)

However, you helped in nuisance value. Hail to the mud wrestler who can't get a grip.


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## robberbaron (Jan 14, 2005)

Finally got some more transcribed.
Enjoy.


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## robberbaron (Jan 14, 2005)

*Flocking Around*

As Helga opened her mouth to scream a warning, into the beam of her lantern flew several Stirges.
Then the rest of the flock arrived.

Li Kung swung his glaive around in a frantic defensive pattern, hoping to cut the creatures down before they reached him, with singular lack of success. The little suckers quickly covered the party like a swarm of dire mosquitos, pushing their probosci (sic) deep into their flesh, preparing to fill themselves with hot, sweet blood. (Mwah, ha, ha!)

Helga tried shooting the few unattached stirges, Gaelle’s arrow sent a stirge off into the darkness as a kebab and Li Kung attempted to pull one of his out of his chest while the rest hacked at the creatures with whatever small weapons they had. With some success as well, thanks to immense strength and cleaving ability. 
They weren’t quite successful enough, however, as all of them suffered significant blood loss.

This is where they could have done with a Sleep spell. Unfortunately, the arcanist only knew magic missile. Oh dear.

They could only both desperately stab at and feed the stirges.

Twelve seconds later, covered in each other’s blood from burst stirges, the party teetered on the edge of both an effectively bottomless cavern and death. So, darkness beckoned either way. 
They could hear several of the vile beasts flapping heavily into the dark to digest their breakfast.

Seriously shagged, but far too treasure-hungry to give in to near-terminal desangification, the brave party decided to continue down the stair into the waiting darkness.
This decisiveness lasted less than a minute before reason prevailed (Gracientus REALLY didn’t want to go on with 4 hit points and 1 CON) so they retreated back to the top of the stairs.

After some hours of trudging with frequent fag breaks they arrived back at the Hark’s lair, Gaelle and Cord huffing and puffing with fatigue and Seigfried buoyed up only by his enormous charisma.

As they climbed gingerly down the ladder they could hear the squeaking of dire rats and sneaked through the ashes of Helga’s fire and crept out into the daylight, heading back to their inn and a couple of days rest  and several good long sleeps.

Helga was very worried that whatever treasure the Hark had (and that they hadn’t found) would be taken by the watchmen who should have cleared out the lair while they were further underground.
“We’ll just have to nick some stuff then.” suggested Cord. “Knock over a merchant outside the town.”

Helga took care of the others and Gracientus supplemented her medical attention with spells, partially restoring the party, but they required 2 further days of complete rest to bring them to enough health to return to the Hark’s lair to hunt for his treasure. 
Cord called a meeting on the second day to discuss the pitiful booty they had gained.
“409GP between six isn’t much for all that work” agreed Li Kung.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m in this for personal power and money and I don’t give a toss how I get it.” explained Cord. There was general agreement to his sentiments.
“I don’t mind doing these big jobs but I could probably earn more by knocking off a merchant. With less risk. So, I suggest that we head back to Byzantium and do just that, if one happens to fall across our path.”
Li Kung agreed with the idea but was a little worried about gaining an unfavourable reputation.
Helga also wanted lots of money, but also wanted a base so she could establish a laboratory to research the strange stuff that was happening to her.
Seigfried was happy to make a name for himself bringing lawbreakers to justice. And he didn’t understand much of what was being said around him anyway.

Gaelle, now she had some money, wanted to take a month or so off from bounty hunting to make herself a new bow.

“We have horses,” explained Cord sagely, “so we could have a base somewhere we don’t break the law and travel somewhere else to get what we need.”

Asked his view, Gracientus told them that he had been sent out into the world by his superiors in the Temple of Set to gain experience and prove himself worthy of further training, as well as providing interesting items of treasure for Maxis, the High Priest. Bounty hunting seems to be quite an exciting life, at least so far, and he was very interested in continuing his association with them. 

Cord, feeling healthy, went to the watchhouse to report success, much to the amazement and chagrin of the desk sergeant. He had ‘All Killed’ in the watch sweep and would now have to give his winnings back.
Just to be sure, he asked for proof of their success and was shown the head.
The watch captain, alerted to the facts offered his congratulations and 30 silvers pay for the week they had been militiamen. There was also a reward for the Hark’s demise, posted by the Mayor. A not unwelcome 500 gold.
After the captain had gone back to his office to continue his hard day’s feet up on desk, Cord asked the sergeant how his lad’s had got on down the Hark’s Lair, only to be told that they had a look around without finding anything. Apparently, the Hark’s lads decided not to stick around.

Back at the inn the rest of the party were still discussing their next move.
“Why was the Hark such a big problem around here? He can’t have been any good with that pitiful excuse for a hoard.” Li Kung wondered.
Looking at the map of his lair Helga had an idea. “What if there was something hidden in the lower level? It would explain the pit and the fungus-thing. There must be something there worth guarding.”

“Obviously, the watch didn’t explore the caverns as they didn’t kill the dire rats and didn’t find any more treasure” added Cord upon his return. In fact, the watch hadn’t actually sent anyone out there. They had lost far too many men to the Hark’s thieves to storm his lair on the say of a bunch of gung ho strangers.

Gaelle suggested that, as they had done the local Thieves’ Guild a favour in taking out the Hark, they might be able to get a refund on their temporary membership fee. Li Kung went out to scratch cant signs around the town, asking for a meeting.
Soon afterwards he was contacted and went to the meeting, which went quite well. Li Kung explained that they had done the Guild a big favour and boldly asked what favours were worth. 
“What do you want? Membership?”
“Money. We’re not staying around here.”
The Guild representative had a little think and offered 400 gold as a reward and leaving gift.
Li Kung was feeling particularly lucky and explained that 420 gold would make it a lot easier for them to share out the reward.
Not fully believing his ears, but rather looking forward to seeing the back of these adventurers, the Guild rep agreed, “I’m cutting me own throat, but OK. Anytime you want to come back, you can have membership. I know the others aren’t actually thieves but we won’t hold that against them after they’ve sworn the oaths.”

On the way back to the inn, Li Kung wondered what the Guild in this poxy town could possibly offer that would draw them back. Unless they took it over, of course. Hmm.
Later, with Helga’s aid, Li Kung managed to find someone to repair his nearly knackered glaive.

Helga continued to push for a return to the Hark’s lair to search for the treasure that he must have had.
Eventually the others relented and the next day, restored to full health and stocked with lamp oil, headed back to the caves.


May 25th 1699

Bright and early, well, sometime after a leisurely breakfast, our heroes found themselves outside the Hark’s former lair, pondering upon the weather. It had been sunny and warm for some time. Ever since they arrived in Starros, in fact. They didn’t think it too odd, just that the rain would doubtless return as soon as they were back on the road. Cord was actually considering getting (though probably not actually paying for) a carriage for when they finally left the town.
The smell of burning hay had dissipated over the last few days and there was no sound of rats inside.
Helga headed for where they knew a pit trap to be situated. Unable to find it by feeling around, she decided to gingerly trip the trap and, therefore, discover where it was, hopefully without discovering what was at the bottom.
She managed to set the trap off without overbalancing into the deep hole revealed. She shone the lantern down the hole, unable to see either an opening in the side walls or the bottom. It smelled a bit funny as well.

Not wanting to push their luck at this time, the party decided to return to the entrance and go round the other side to where Philp’s map had “Fungus” marked on it.
They crept round the corner and lo, a strange fungus-thing was indeed present.
Gaelle identified it as Violet Fungus, but didn’t know how best to deal with it.
Figuring that fire normally worked with growing things, Helga used her magical powers to upend a couple of oil flasks over the “creature” while Li Kung retired to a place of relative safety, in case of an explosion.
Gaelle prepared a fire arrow, which she lit from the lantern and shot into the fungus, setting it alight.
The fungus’ tendrils thrashed around, as if in extreme pain, for nearly a minute before it subsided into a stinking, smoking mound. Gaelle put two more arrows into it – just to be sure – and the fungus collapsed into a heap.

After waiting for the fire to die out and the acrid smoke to clear they entered the cavern and had a poke around. Li Kung and Gracientus stayed on guard while Helga hunted about, noticing a small secret door a couple of feet square on one wall.
Concerned that it might contain another fungus with tendrils that could whip out at her, Helga took great care in opening the compartment, having not found any traps (after Gaelle prompted her to actually look for them), with the others alert and awaiting attack.

A roughly square area of wall detached itself and swung out, revealing a semi-circular hole, through which Helga spotted a brief glint – though she couldn’t tell if it was a gem or an eye in the darkness.
Lying down on the floor and shining the lantern inside, she could see a great deal of shiny dots within the chamber, possibly crystals in the rock wall.

The rest of the party became somewhat uneasy as Helga exuded a thin film of odourless slime all over her body – she looked like she had been smeared in Vaseline – then crawled silently through the hole. She was worried about another fungus-creature grappling her.

“What the hell are you?” asked Gaelle as the Nordic half-slug disappeared into the tunnel.

Pausing in the end of the tunnel, Helga could not hear anything so stood up in the glittery cave, shining her lantern around. Li Kung followed her, glad that the slime trail seemed to have quickly disappeared, with the others behind.

Helga had a good look around while she was waiting for the others to arrive. She could see quite a few pits in the walls, like small chunks had been removed - perhaps, this was where the Hark got his wealth?

All inside, the party gazed around in wonder at the beautifully sparkly chamber. It was like standing inside a huge geode. After a few moments, they formed up into a line and moved, not particularly quietly, across the chamber to a rough passage and through it into an even more twinkly chamber.

Though making a fair amount of noise, they could hear many legs clicking around them, echoing round the chamber. Gaelle opened up her lantern and stepped in, looking up to see a shape in the darkness above them. Dropping the lantern she grabbed an arrow and shot whatever it was.

Cord stepped past the Ranger and was slashed across the shoulder by the something. Looking up, he could see two monstrous centipedes above them, one of them with his blood on its mandibles.

Li Kung, having seen an enormous mouth appear out of nowhere and take a chunk out of Cord, stepped in and swung his glaive into the darkness above the entrance.

Then the centipedes attacked. A set of massive fangs entered Helga’s chest and exuded some horrible muck into the wound while another nearly bit Li Kung in half. He could feel the vile poison coursing through his veins, partially paralysing him. Helga pulled out of the combat, though not carefully enough to avoid the jaws of the centipede and managed to get out of reach before slumping against the wall.

Seigfried, figuring that they couldn’t react to everything that came close, moved in against the bug that had almost eaten Helga. 
Gracientus decided that combat would be bad for his health and Blessed the party.
Gaelle took a small chunk out of a centipede’s chitin, while Cord stepped in and carved a somewhat larger gash in its head.
Li Kung, also trying to preserve his health, banged his glaive on his foe’s head before tumbling out of reach and attracting Gracientus’ attention to his gaping wounds, oozing with dark venom.

Gaelle could only watch in horror as the gargantuan maw closed around her shoulder and her legs felt decidedly leaden as the poison did its work. Cord was also bitten again, though his body was better able to defeat the foul venom. 

Seigfried  and an almost bloodless Helga drew centipede ichor while Gracientus healed Li Kung.
Gaelle took a step backwards and shot two arrows into the wall.
Cord, imposingly erect in the face of a 35 foot centipede, stuck his enormous weapon deep into the beast’s brain pan, amazingly hitting its brain, and managed to pull his sword free as the centipede collapsed on the floor.

Li Kung tumbled back into the fray and spanged his glaive off the remaining bug’s body.
He did manage, however, to attract its attention. After the centipede had withdrawn its frightening mouthparts Li Kung’s leg was only held on by the tendons and he had little blood left in his venom stream.

Helga struck the monster with a magic missile and Seigfried lobbed a dagger in its rough direction.
Gracientus took Gaelle’s spear and threw it towards Seigfried and Cord, who ran forward, picked up Li Kung’s glaive and startled the centipede into headbutting the wall.

Gaelle shot again, chipping the bug’s armour before it snapped its mouth towards Cord.
Another magic missile from Helga and Seigfried picked up Gaelle’s spear, preparing it for his next attack.

Gracientus, one eye on the bug, reached out and called upon the holy power of Set to knit Li Kung’s horrific wound.

Gaelle, feeling out of position, tumbled away and ricocheted another arrow off the centipede, which leaned forward and swished its mandibles past Cord’s head.

A third magic missile from Helga and Seigfried poked the bug with the spear.

Gracientus, trying to increase Seigfried’s strength, was not careful enough and received a set of teeth in his arm for his troubles.

Gaelle hit the wall twice more, before Cord put a crease in the bug’s head. It turned its attention to Seigfried, its teeth scraping across his armour, before he stuck the spear into the creature’s body.
An arrow from Gaelle and Cord carved the centipede’s face in two, venom and ichor spraying across the cavern.
Luckily Cord was able to roll Li Kung out of the way before the centipede’s body hit the floor.

“That’s a coat ruined. Bastard!” moaned Li Kung, gritting his teeth against the pain and moving in a straight line like Mr. Blobby.
“Where’s my glaive?”
“Under that” answered Cord.
“Start digging” suggested Seigfried, helpfully.

After Gracientus had dispensed his quota of Set’s healing power, Helga looked up at the two holes some twenty feet above them and wondered if they were full of centipede babies. At least it would be an easy climb, even easier for a Wererat.

Gaelle, thinking that they couldn’t both be treasure troves, hunted around for signs of the Hark visiting one of the dark, quiet holes. She eventually saw past all the gargantuan centipede trails to find faint wereratty prints, leading to one of the entrances. 
“You going to go first, then,” asked Helga, “only I’m down to a pint of blood here.”
The ranger, feeling surprisingly fit and with a new twinge of magical potentiality (she went up a level), led the way up the twinkly rock face to the obviously natural opening, followed by the others. It wasn’t a difficult climb but, thanks to all the crystals embedded in the rock, it was a bit painful. Not that Helga minded.
The short tube opened into a chamber without gemstones in the wall. Strangely dull after the technicolour sparkle of the geode, and containing two lumpy sacks and a chest.
Kneeling quietly for a few moments (and for a change), Helga concentrated on discerning any magical emanations within the chamber, noticing the pulse of dweomer within the chest.
Turning her normal sight to the sacks, she attempted to find evidence of traps and actually found one, in the cord that secured the top of a sack. 
Using her magic she untied both cords, lifted them away from the sacks and deposited them on the other side of the chamber, all without touching them. She then opened the sacks in the same manner and peered inside. 
One sack contained several small pouches, found to contain gems when Helga used her Mage Hand to open one. Her spell effect brought one of the gems to her so she could appraise its worth – an amethyst worth a couple of gold pieces.
The other, rather lumpier, sack also contained pouches along with assorted gem encrusted gold tableware.

Woo hoo. They KNEW the Hark must have had a stash.

Turning her attention to the chest Helga ineptly checked it over for traps, barely avoided bending her favourite lockpick AND took a fusillade of darts in the face. Luckily, her body was able to shrug off the poison that coated them.
At this moment, the centipedes’ poison took further effect. Li Kung turned an interesting shade of green as, with Gracientus’ help, he barely avoided being paralysed (0 DEX).
Helga fought through a wave of weakness and realised that there was no chance that she could pick the lock in her condition. 
Considering carrying it out, Gaelle decided to chuck it out of the tunnel into the geode, thereby forcefully opening it.
Li Kung suggested that anything breakable inside might be rendered useless, which stopped that idea in its tracks.
“Bring a thief along and she turns out to be bloody useless,” whinged the thwarted ranger.
“Good for some things, but not this,” defended Helga.
“Your Healing is much appreciated,” admitted (grudgingly) Gaelle before tying a rope around the chest and lowering it over the edge, down to the glittering floor.
Cord suggested battering the hinges off the back, while Helga reckoned it was worth much more whole than in pieces and tried to “disable” the hinges with her light tools. Gaelle reckoned that the casket was worth good money so was reluctant to see it damaged unnecessarily and suggested getting Helga some better quality lockpicks when they got back to town.
“I need heavier tools for this. Maybe later” decided Helga.

Having decided that they had now liberated the Hark’s treasure, Helga disappeared back into the “treasure room” to look for further secret doors.
She hunted for twenty minutes before standing on tiptoe and examining a tiny ledge, all but invisible from below, on which she found a key. Just about the right size for the casket.

Returning to the geode, Helga slipped the key gingerly into the lock of the casket and turned it.
Clickedy-click (the lock unlocking) click click (the trap disarming).
Opening the casket, Helga saw a rather nice velvet lining with a glass flask and a book.
“Idiot’s Guide to Were-Creatures,” suggested Seigfried.
“More likely his spellbook,” reasoned Li Kung, “though he might have trapped it as well.”
Helga couldn’t find any traps from a cursory examination.

Not willing to leave just yet, Helga climbed up to the second opening, finding a small chamber devoid of interest. Oh well.

“We climbed up, we climbed down,” moaned Gaelle. “We climbed up, we climbed down. We climbed up, we climbed down.”
“Well, you had put a few pounds on,” noted Cord, helpfully.

The party decided it would be a good idea to return to the inn for another night, to rest and heal, then leave town in the morning. 
As they entered the inn the innkeeper approached them, asking when they would be paying something towards their bill. They had originally said they would be staying for a couple of days and now, more than a week later, he hadn’t seen any of their gold.
Cord assured him they’d pay in the morning.
“Uppity lout,” almost-sub-vocalised Li Kung, to the innkeepers receding figure.

“Why don’t we hire a doctor, to treat our injuries,” asked Cord.
It sounded like a good idea so Helga spoke to the innkeeper about it. She was pointed towards an old woman who lived down the street, who might be available to treat their poison injuries.

“We’d like to hire you to treat some of our companions who have been poisoned”
“Poisoned!” exclaimed the old woman. “Where are you staying?”
“It’s OK, they were bitten by giant centipedes. We’d like to hire you to look after us today”
Reassured that her dinner wouldn’t kill her, the healer-woman said she was busy today, but Cord had a plan.
“We’ll pay you double what the other people are paying you.”
“Lead on,” said the old woman, grabbing her bag.

After the crone’s tender ministrations, and some more of the Holy Power of Set, the heroes felt a lot better the next morning. All except Seigfried, who had a rather unquiet night.

He woke, covered in sweat, with blood dribbling down his chin from a bitten tongue (his own), out of a dream filled with blood.
He was seeing through the eyes of a crazed murderer. Himself.
People were being dismembered before his eyes, by his own hands. Arms and legs everywhere. Entrails formed a fountain around his head.
The worst thing, however, was the laughter. Mad cackling of a deranged man.
His own voice.

When the others saw the blood caking Seigfried’s chin, Gaelle thought he’d eaten someone during the night.
“What was the moon’s phase last night?” Helga asked no-one in particular.
Between them they remembered that Luna had been waxing and was still a few days from full, so Seigfried wasn’t a Wererat. Probably.

After breakfast, Helga sat down to check the casket and its contents for magic.
The book was bathed in magical energy (abjuration), as were both the flask and the casket itself (conjuration).
They still assumed that the book was the Hark’s spellbook.

After parting with gold to pay the innkeeper (following a protracted discussion about what could be considered reasonable cost) they mounted their horses and headed south. 

Still feeling a little poor, they agreed that if they came across “an opportunity for remuneration” they would take it. Seigfried didn’t really understand what they were suggesting, and no-one took the time to explain it more fully.

Extraordinarily, they were on the road and it wasn’t raining.

That night, they found a dell for their camp, but were having second thoughts about one of them being a Wererat. Seigfried, specifically.
“Better to be tied up all night than hairy and dead before morning”, suggested Cord.
“Why do I have to be tied up?” asked a worried Seigfried.
“If you are a lycanthrope and you turn, you will become a murderous slavering beast,” explained Li Kung, helpfully, “and we will probably have to kill you”. 
“Probably?” interjected Gaelle.
“But I will be tied up out in the open. At night!”
“You’re with your friends and companions,” said Cord, hoping the irony escaped the sometimes dense Germanian. “And, if we are attacked during the night, Gracientus could untie you.”
Helga even offered to tie him up. That failed to put Seigfried any more at ease – there was a worrying glint in her eye as she suggested it.

“OK, as long as you don’t do anything weird,” Seigfried told Helga, a little concerned that she might try something after she had him at her mercy.
“Bar tying you up, you mean,” added Cord, helpfully.

Minutes later, Seigfried was trussed like a turkey and leant against a tree (with his back to it as there might be an Uruk in the area and it was apparently common knowledge that Uruks would shag anything).

Cord chose to be on watch when Luna was at its zenith, as he would have the best chance of taking Seigfried out if he both turned into a Wererat and escaped his bonds.

Next morning, Helga untied Seigfried, who had actually managed to get a decent night’s kip.
She then checked the horses, discerning that they had the correct number of legs between them, so they hadn’t missed anything during the night.
And it had started to rain.

By the next evening they arrived back at the bridge over the estuary, where Gracientus asked to stop for an hour so he could perform his devotions to Set. While he was praying, Helga tied Seigfried up again.
Cord explained to Seigfried that they would need to tie him up for another month of nights, just to be sure.
“So, 26 to go”.
“You might get to like it,” suggested Li Kung, prompting much jollity among those of his companions who could understand Graecae. Unfortunately, Seigfried didn’t understand what they were saying, only that the joke was at his expense.


May 28th 1699

Next morning, after untying Seigfried, they rode across the bridge, passing a merchant train going the other way. 
“Lucky they met us here,” murmured Li Kung as they passed, heading back toward Byzantium.

Staying the next night in an inn, Seigfried was glad to be tied to a bed rather than to a tree.
He again had an unquiet slumber, wracked with nightmares. First, he was bound and helpless, then the now familiar scenes of carnage surrounded him.
Upon waking, he saw that he was covered in blood and cried out before really waking up, tied to the bed.
Helga, who had been watching Seigfried during the night, asked about his dreams and, after Seigfried described them in detail pronounced, “They are probably psychosomatic. Let’s eat”

May 29th 1699

Pressing on, they arrive back at Byzantium after dark, both Luna and Leos full in the sky.

They found themselves at the Griffin’s Paw Inn, a Watch hang-out, and chose to take rooms for the night.
The Watchmen in the inn sized up the new arrivals, noted their significantly better kit and larger weapons and decided to keep their heads down and eyes averted until the newcomers started anything.

Gracientus thought he’d stay with Seigfried that night to see if he could find out anything about his dreams, though the troubled Germanian had a quiet night.

May 30th 1699

After breakfast, they went to the Hunter’s Guild.
“Ah, you’re back, are you?” said a slightly surprised Herkin, standing up from behind his desk. “Were you successful?”
“This bag is worth 1000 gold pieces to us,” Gaelle told him, holding up a smelly, blood-stained sack.
Looking inside the bag, Herkin agreed that it was the Hark – they had had word that the party were bringing the head back, and it did look like a Hobgoblin.
It would take a couple of hours to get the cash released so they decided to wait around, checking the bounties posted.
They noticed one for the Uruk, Kron, though he was only worth 200 gold. Cord thought that a little high for an unknown, but he was wanted for attempting to defraud the Hunter’s Guild and involuntary slaying of three Watchmen (resisting arrest, including biting one’s arm off).

After they had stood around getting bored for two hours, Herkin returned and handed them a bag of platinum coins. The denomination didn’t worry the party, only the quantity.

They enquired about a reasonably honest person to whom they could offload all the gems and gold tableware they had collected. Gaelle asked Helga to watch Herkin, to make sure he wasn’t sending them to some shady dealer from whom he’d get a commission.
Herkin sent them to Massos, who was capable of handling large quantities of low-grade gems. 

Li Kung spent his time scrutinising the bounties posted to find the highest paying one. What he found wasn’t so much a bounty as a “hunting reward” for a number of beasts that had been plaguing farmland to the east, ripping cows up in the fields. From the description, “cats, twice as big as a man, big claws and wings”, they assumed them to be manticores.
The reward was 2500 gold for removal of the problem.

The bounty on Kron was the best actual bounty.

“If you like,” Herkin said, “you’ve proved yourselves to be accomplished hunters. You could apply for membership of the Guild. You’d get preferential treatment, you can leave kit and stay here. You’d get discounts from certain weapon dealers in Byzantium. All for 500 gold each.”

“We could probably just about scrape that up between us, but I don’t think we’ll take up you kind offer at this time,” replied Gaelle, in an unusual moment of charm and politeness.

Finding Massos’ shop, one of the largest in the Jewellers’ Quarters, they showed him their wares.
Gaelle prompted Helga to suggest that if he gave them a good deal they would bring all their ill-gotten gains to him.
After careful consideration he offered them 1250 gold for the lot. “Please come again.”

Next stop, the Byzantium branch of the Society of Mages, Sages, Alchemists and Other Professional Thinking Persons (generally called “The Mages’ Guild”).

“To discern all dweomers on the contents of the casket will require a deposit of 100 gold, the total charge to be calculated based on the magics necessary to complete the task,” intoned a bored-looking clerk at the Guild. 
“Fair enough,” replied Gaelle,” we’ll come back in a couple of days”.

Seigfried wanted them to find out how powerful his armour was, Helga handed over the unknown shortsword and Gaelle fished out two unknown potions, for immediate Identification. A few minutes, and 210 gold pieces of work later, they got their answers. 

Gracientus decided to return to the Temple of Set, to get tuition in reading Nhaghashk (the tongue of the more “civilised” Orcs - so he could use the scrolls they had picked up in the mines of Darak) and some conversational Germanic (so someone in the party other than Helga could speak to Seigfried).

“What’s the plan then, guys,” asked Cord.
“Wait a couple of days, collect our stuff then go kill manticores?,” suggested Helga, cheerfully.
“The reward would pay for our accommodation for the next month or so,” added Gaelle.

“The thing is,” considered Li Kung, “when we went up against the Hark, we gained much more from the thieves, in terms of their kit, than we got in money. If we went after the manticores we would get money, but probably no more than that. They’re unlikely to have any treasure. 
I wonder; would it be better to find a Wizard’s Tower or Temple to knock over.”

“Well, whatever we do, I want to take time out to make my bow,” explained Gaelle, who had wanted to construct her own bow ever since she got her first one.

“Spending a month resting would be much easier if we had 2500 gold,” said Helga.
“Yeah,” countered Cord, “but that is only 500 each.”

Cord and Li Kung couldn’t see any good reason to laze around not getting any richer while Gaelle worked on her bow, and Gaelle didn’t want to miss out on a month of adventures.
Despite the arguments that they could use whatever money they gained from selling the potions and spellbook to buy a bow for Gaelle, it became clear that constructing her own bow was something she just had to do.

After discussing the issue deep into the evening it was decided that the others would “get jobs” for the intervening time – spending time bodyguarding, doing the odd bounty, teaching merchants’ sons to swing swords, etc.

That evening, Gaelle sat down and seriously considered how long it would take her to make the bow and figured that it would actually take four months. The others weren’t too perturbed with spending this length of time in Byzantium, though Cord was a little concerned that it didn’t further his goal of gaining personal wealth and power.

Two days later, they were called to the Mages’ Guild to collect their items.
The casket had a magical fire trap on it, which was deactivated by using the key, in addition to the poison dart trap on the lock. The book was indeed a spellbook, which was also fire-trapped.
The potion was one of Restoration. A rare and expensive item: much more powerful than the normally accepted maximum for a potion. They would very much like to do some more investigation on it. 

------

The summer passed in gainful employ and the shadows had begun to lengthen toward autumn when the party were again ready to hit the road in search of other peoples’ riches.

During the summer, Gaelle had spent a day out in the country calling an animal companion.
After 8 hours of concentration and meditation, a large dog padded out of a field and sat down beside her, waiting patiently for her to come out of her trance and notice him.

------


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## robberbaron (Jan 18, 2005)

With this Story Hour I am trying to make the events "cinematic" but realise I run the risk of making it too detailed.

Trouble is, I want to include all the action without making it tedious to read. Not easy.

Please let me know how it comes across.


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## Plane Sailing (Jan 18, 2005)

I like it, even though Cord does get all the best lines! Going to have to raise my game a little there I think


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## robberbaron (Jan 26, 2005)

*Summer in the City*

Part way through a summer spent in often tedious pursuits, the party reassembled to discuss their continuing journey to glory (and money).

“Just in time for the rainy season then,” commented Cord, examining the bow he had “inherited” from Gaelle. “How about hunting pirates? They are known for having booty and ships are worth good money.
And Byzantium being a port…”
“I have been honing my swimming skills over the summer” added Li Kung.
“But I can’t swim,” whined Helga, not too happy with the idea.

Li Kung was happy to show off his shiny new masterwork glaive, while Seigfried was swishing his equally shiny fullblade. Cord was getting used to his new suit of plate armour, but was feeling a trifle uncomfortable – the sweat kept pooling in his boots.
“Now I can return this sword (indicating the somewhat use-worn weapon with which he arrived in Byzantium) to my father,” said the Paladin, gravely. “It is a debt I must repay”
“But that’s in Germania!” protested Gaelle, not particularly wanting to go out of her way for this troublesome warrior. Her outburst startled her Germanian Shepherd companion, who was not quite used to being around Gaelle’s “friends”.
“Can’t you post it?” asked Li Kung.
“Imagine the postage on a huge blade,” exclaimed Seigfried.

Li Kung went out to investigate any anti-pirate activity.
He found that, while Thrace didn’t have much of a navy, or a pirate problem, some of the major merchant enterprises performed their own patrols out into the Terraine Sea. 

The most likely opportunity for them would be to hire out as “Marines” – specialised Marines, capable of bringing their own magical support.

The only fly in the ointment was that there could be no guarantee of action. Their sojourn as Marines could be as dull as the summer had been.
Also, the Imperial Granbretanian Navy had quite a presence in the Terraine Sea, and took it upon themselves to chase and destroy pirates. Their triremes, quadriremes and quinqueremes have been a common sight in Byzantium’s harbour for the last forty years.
Rumour has it, however, that the Granbretanians actually cause much of the piracy, in order to maintain a larger fleet than would be acceptable without a significant pirate threat. These rumours, of course, are strenuously denied by the Emperor’s representatives.
It was common knowledge that the Imperial warships often Stopped and Searched foreign ships, especially those from the North African countries. Sometimes these actions became Stop, Search and Sink.

Feeling that ship-life was not to be for them, Li Kung and Helga further investigated rumours of vast treasures yet to be found (which normally turned out to be merely rumours), adventuring parties that have mysteriously disappeared (the ones going after anything special didn’t make their destinations common knowledge).

“The alternative to anti-piracy, of course,” mused Cord, “is piracy.”
“Just need to find some pirates,” said Seigfried.
“Nah. Just need a boat. Any boat,” said Cord, sounding like he knew what he was talking about.
“We could start with a rowing boat and work up,” suggested Li Kung.

In order to big themselves up and get the kind of reputation they would need to secure the more lucrative commissions, they spread rumours of their own prowess (Spread Information), with little success. They would have to do something noticeable.

“We could take over the Thieves’ Guild,” suggested Li Kung, to a stunned silence. “It would get us noticed.”
“It would certainly send out waves,” commented Seigfried.
Gracientus spoke against the idea, not realising that the Xing monk had been at least partly joking, as his temple had strong links with the Guild. Also, the Guild was effectively “sanctioned” by the Government – they kept crime to an acceptable level, the rich knew that if they were robbed by a non-Guild thief they would likely get much of their goods back, along with the hands of the robber, and the poor had a career to which they could aspire.

The other alternative the party considered was heading north, toward less civilised lands.
“Perhaps, we could do some undoubtedly Evil deeds,” Li Kung thought out loud. “Then, the Bounty Hunters that are sent after us will be worth killing. The worse our reputation, the better the class of hunter we will attract and the better the kit we can recover from their bodies.”

“How about finding a town on, say, the Thracian border, and running it?” Gaelle suggested.
“A bit boring,” commented Cord.
“I like the idea of having a population to oppress,” added Li Kung, “it would be just like home, only without a hundred other monks trying to beat me up every day. Bastards!”
The general consensus was that they would rather kill people for a living than rule people, so they put their heads together and decided to do some research on the other adventuring groups in the city. Take out the other groups, their competitors, and they would gain everything they wanted – fame (actually, infamy), booty, experience and booty (booty was that important to them).

Helga decided that she could further her own goals by “getting in” with some of the societies in Byzantium, with mixed results.
The Guild of Physicians didn’t want to know her as she was little more than a First Aider and beneath their notice.
The Society of Mages, Sages, Alchemists and Other Professional Thinking Persons were interested in her as a customer but, she would have to wait until she was capable of casting spells of the 3rd order before she could apply for membership. It would cost an initial 500GP per year which would give her discounted rates for components, etc., as well as free use of their libraries and laboratories, though they are normally fully booked well in advance.
The Temple of Set, with the help of Gracientus, was a different matter. They deemed her acceptable as a lay member – she is rather more selfish than they would normally like, but a member is a member – and she had made quite an impression on the lower echelons of the clergy.
Thus she was made privy to information on things that were causing the temple trouble.
The temple often sends clerics out with guards to get items of interest and some of their teams have gone missing:

One of their caravans, carrying artworks for Maxis’ personal collection, was crossing the plains of Turkistan when it was attacked and destroyed by what they think were Dire Lions.
The temple was willing to pay 750GP extra for return of the artworks.
“We don’t have to bring back ALL the artworks, do we?” suggested Gaelle when Helga explained the job.

A lone cleric had gone to investigate a known lair in the hills to the southwest and they are pretty sure he was eaten by a small red dragon. They want his holy symbol back, as a token to show that the dragon has met its end.
The reward for dealing with the dragon was to be 1500GP. The cleric was stupid to enter the lair of a dragon having dismissed his fighter escort back at the temple but they couldn’t let his death go unavenged.

One of their teams had been sent out to deal with a group of brigands that had attacked a couple of Set-sponsored caravans. The Set team had died to a man but the brigands had been mostly killed as well – the leader, a few men and his pet wizard were all that was left. They were quite a tough group and the thought was that the party weren’t good enough to take them on but, they would be considered at a later date.


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## robberbaron (Jan 26, 2005)

*Seigfried Reaches a Bit of an Epiphany*

20th September 1699, Night

Seigfried’s nightmares took a turn.
For several nights in a row, his dreams had become less frenetic and less bloody, though more disturbing.
And his screaming less intense.

--- 

He was walking through a forest and into a clearing with a large cottage in the centre. His father looked up from the pile of logs he was turning into firewood, saw Seigfried and leant on his axe, calling for his wife.
She appeared in the doorway, just as Seigfried approached.

Seigfried could not quite hear the words – they were a buzzing, like flies in a jar – but his father was angry and his mother concerned.

[Otto Schtauffen had been an officer in the Army of the Thousand Year Reich that had subjugated all of northern Europa thirty years earlier, and hated how his countrymen had been treated since the Fuhrer had ascended (according to the Priests) and Peace had broken out. Peace! He spat the word as a curse. He hated his life. Grubbing a living out of the earth when he had been striding across the continent at the head of a victorious army. 
Otto tended to see himself as a general, rather than the Lieutenant he had actually been.

Seigfried, brought up on the teachings of the Fuhrer and the litanies of the Priests, had rebelled. Unable to stomach the stupidity of his father’s beliefs he had gone off to discover his own path. He had found it on the border of Slavia.
He had discovered a temple to Morana, the Slav Goddess of Death and Winter and taken her teachings to heart. How he loved his Goddess! She became everything to him and, one day, his prayers were answered.
Morana herself appeared to him and granted him power in return for his service.
Without hesitation, Seigfried pledged himself to her and took his first step on the path of the Paladin.]

Seigfried knew that his father’s anger came not only from his abandoning of the Germanic “faith” but, more importantly, that Seigfried had entered the service of a god of what should have been a slave race. The Slavs were to have been the Germanian army’s next conquest.

No matter what he said, however he tried to explain himself, Seigfried only made his father angrier, until Otto grabbed his axe and threatened Seigfried. Backing away, toward the house and the disapproving stare of his mother, Seigfried kept himself outside the swing of his father’s weapon, then ducked past his mother and into the house.
He ran through the house, hearing his father’s footsteps behind him, until he was cornered in the living room. With his father coming at him swinging his axe, Seigfried looked around in growing fear. He spotted his father’s giant sword, hanging over the fireplace, and grabbed it just in time to deflect an axe blow.
They traded blows for a minute or more – Seigfried was inexperienced, but Otto was old – until Otto overextended himself and Seigfried cut deeply into his shoulder.

Now it was Seigfried’s turn to be angry. He was angry at how his father had ruled his life, how he had been brought up by a bullying, ignorant soldier who thought he was a great hero of the Empire.
He was angry at his mother for letting his father dominate him so completely.
He was angry at both of them for not understanding him.
He was angry at them for not accepting his choice.
He was just angry.

---

Seigfried’s vision cleared and the only sound he could hear was the steady drip, drip, drip of blood from the point of his sword. Everything in sight was red. The hearth rug was red. The fireplace was splashed with red. 
His clothes were red.
The arm on the sideboard was red. 

The arm on the sideboard?

Looking around the room he could see pieces of body all around him.
He recognised his father’s face, lying on the window sill, and his stomach lurched.
He saw a head, still attached to a shoulder, under the table. His mother’s.
His stomach lurched again, more urgently.

He managed to get out of the door before his stomach emptied.

---

He awoke in the forest, leaves coating his body, stuck to the dried blood on his clothes.

What the hell had happened? Whose blood was this? 
After a hasty examination, he concluded that it wasn’t his.

Where was he?

--- 

He tramped through the woods for hours before coming across a temple, seemingly deserted.
Entering the gates he was met by an old priest who looked at his blood-soaked clothes and took him in hand.

Seigfried spent several days at the temple, dedicated to Forseti, the Norse God of Justice, and learned as much as the priest could teach. 
At the end of his stay, Seigfried took the oaths and swore his service to Forseti.
He felt that his destiny was to be a Holy Warrior for Justice and determined to seek out iniquity in the name of his God.

So, to Byzantium, one of the greatest cities of the age. And where there was greatness, you would find baseness, either in control or in the gutter.

--- 

Waking in his bed, covered with sweat and bruises from his extremely unquiet night, Seigfried could remember everything.

He had murdered his parents and left their bodies for the animals’ feast.
He had sworn himself into service with a God.

“Yes, you did. But you are back now and I suppose I can forgive my favourite servant.”
Seigfried’s head whipped around as he jerked upright. There was a woman in his room. An achingly beautiful woman dressed in crisp white robes. His mistress! How could he have forgotten her?

Leaping out of bed, Seigfried threw himself to his knees in front of the beauty, pressing his forehead to the rough boards. 
“I am unworthy of your forgiveness, great Morana,” he breathed.
“Yes you are, I suppose,” Morana replied, gently, “but you acted properly, so I am willing to be kind. You punished those who mocked your faith. Who mocked ME!” this last word screamed at him.
“They deserved death and you dispensed it accordingly. Now, pledging service to a God other than me, that is different.” Morana stepped around Seigfried, still with his face pressed to the floor.
“You must have been out of your mind.”
Seigfried whimpered faintly, expecting at least excruciating pain from his jilted Goddess.
“Yes, that was it. You were not yourself. I can accept that and I am sure I can persuade Forseti to agree.”
Seigfried stopped moving. It seemed that his Lady was trying to help him. Then he found that he couldn’t actually move, and that the room was getting rather chilly.
He tried to rise from the floor, but his hands and forehead were stuck and the floor was icy cold. And getting colder.

“You seriously thought I wasn’t going to punish you?” asked Morana, as the temperature in the room passed freezing point and continued dropping.

--- 

The burns on his face and hands took but an hour to heal, and Seigfried was ecstatic that his Goddess had accepted his offering of pain and heartfelt apologies and taken him back into her service.

He would not let her down again.


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## Plane Sailing (Jan 26, 2005)

robberbaron said:
			
		

> “We could start with a rowing boat and work up,” suggested Li Kung.




Did I *really* say that? I guess since you taped it, there it was. I must be in some deep immersive role-playing with Li Kung.

Yes, that must be it


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## Plane Sailing (Jan 26, 2005)

robberbaron said:
			
		

> “I like the idea of having a population to oppress,” added Li Kung, “it would be just like home, only without a hundred other monks trying to beat me up every day. Bastards!”




Li Kung, poster child for Lawful Evil. Maybe not super-intelligent Lawful Evil, but his heart is in the right place.


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## Plane Sailing (Jan 26, 2005)

We're playing again this Sunday (Huzzah!) - so I hope Robberbaron is going to have the time to get us properly up to date by then. I can't remember what we'd got up to 

(well, I remember the dragon and the dire lions, I remember the bushwacking, I remember zombies and, er, discussions about Helga...)


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## robberbaron (Jan 27, 2005)

I've not got to zombies yet, but I'm on to the last minidisc.
Unfortunately, the battery was a bit low so I only got about 3 hours of recording from the 6 hour session. I am pretty sure the snippets were spread through th e session, but the detail might be a bit sketchier than normal.

I will post what I've done to date tonight, and am confident of completing the rest by Saturday.

Oh, and PS seems to be Method-Role-Playing Li Kung. Nice.


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## robberbaron (Jan 28, 2005)

*A Changed Man, Some Big Cats and a Dragon*

21st September 1699

The party were having a leisurely breakfast when Seigfried appeared, only it was a different Seigfried from the sometimes nauseatingly nice Paladin who had gone to bed slightly worse for wear after a night on the shandy.

He still had his aura of superiority (he couldn’t completely shake the effects of his Germanic heritage) but, previously he had been quite obviously “Good” and now they reckoned he wasn’t.

“Whose idea was it to use this bloody great sword?” Seigfried could be heard moaning as he came down the stairs. Without pause, he marched straight to the armourer and traded his shiny new Fullblade in for a silvered longsword and a dirty great axe. 
“That’s better,” he said as he re-entered the inn, swinging his new chopper around, grinning.

The rest of the party looked at each other.
“Doppelganger?” suggested Gaelle.
“A pretty crap one,” added Li Kung, sarcastically. “He’s REALLY different!”
“Still can’t speak Graecae, though. Pillock!” agreed Gaelle.

They examined Seigfried closely.
He was definitely the same person but there was an icy edge to his demeanour.
“There’s definitely something different about you,” said Cord, thoughtfully. “Certainly for the better, but I can’t put my finger on it”
“I don’t see it’s any of your business, actually,” said Seigfried, already tired of the scrutiny.
“He’s got a point,” Cord admitted, “but I don’t have to like him. We’ll carry on but, if he irritates me at all, I’ll kill him. If he irritates US, I should say” he added quickly.

“Anyway,” said Gaelle, in an effort to bring the conversation round to something more profitable, “I reckon we go for the caravan and the lions”
“I fancy taking on the dragon,” added Li Kung.
“Trouble with dragons,” said Cord, thoughtfully, “is that they can fly. Makes them a bit harder to take on.”
“But Dire Lions in the open would be just as tough,” thought Li Kung.
“Gaah,” dismissed Gaelle.
“Well, they pounce, don’t they?” protested the monk.
Gracientus added that the temple would be willing to stock them up with potions.
“If we can get some fire protection I say definitely go for the dragon.” Li Kung continued to push for his choice. “The dragon may have killed others and have, amongst its treasure, items of magical power”
“But the caravan is still going to be where the Dire Lions left it. We can get the goods off it,” argued Gaelle.
“Yes, but not Items of Magical Power!” Li Kung was starting to get a bit heated. “And, there may be locals who would pay for the removal of the dragon. And think of the hoard it might have!”
“What are a bunch of peasants going to have that remotely interest us?” Gaelle was getting tired of the discussion.
“Daughters?” suggested Seigfried, who very much wanted to go and kill the dragon. Morana would approve. One less fire user to warm the winter.
“Alright,” Gaelle gave in, “where is this bloody dragon, then?”

Later that day, Helga went to the Mages to find out if there were any bits of dragons that they would find useful.
“All parts are useful for research” was the reply.
“So, a whole dragon, then? Any choice parts if we can’t get the whole thing back?”
“We’ll prepare a list. Teeth and skin would be good. Heart. Whatever glands it has for its breath weapon. Head and neck in one piece would be nice.” They were pushing for the whole carcass, nit didn’t want to ask straight out.


23rd September 1699

Two days riding through the well tilled fields of Thrace brought them to the Ionian border where the land turned rocky and wild. They soon found their way to a village near the dragon’s lair – a conurbation of some fifteen ramshackle huts beside a small stream.

“Go on then,” Gaelle waved Li Kung towards the village, “do your stuff. You wanted to come here.”
“Helga,” asked Li Kung, “go and ask them if they would pay us to slay the dragon”
Helga looked, saw a pair of scrawny youths scraping fat off a goatskin and didn’t appear confident.
“We’re here to extort, I mean extract, some money out of them, so off you go.” Gaelle waved Helga toward the youths, who were now looking up warily.
“Maybe after we’ve killed the dragon we can come back and see what they’ve got,” Helga said, not really believing herself.
Looking at the hillsides around them and seeing the many skinny goats, Gaelle said “Go on, negotiate us a goat each.”
“They must be out of range of the dragon,” reasoned Li Kung, “they probably wouldn’t think they needed our services”
“Alright, I’ll enquire” sighed a heavy hearted Helga.

As Helga approached, the women ushered their children inside and an old woman came out to meet her, looking apprehensive at the armoured figures that had followed Helga into the village, like hangers-on behind a bully.
“You the village elder, or our welcoming committee?” asked Gaelle, taking the initiative herself.
“I am the old woman of this village”
“Where are the men?” continued Gaelle, brusquely.
“The men are at work. They will return soon”
“We’re looking for dragons,” Helga finally chimed in, “and we believe you’ve got one nearby”
“You come to kill dragon?”
“No, we’ve come to shake its hand” Gaelle’s patience, always short, had now run out.

Looking a little confused, the old woman turned to Helga. “Dragon three valleys that way,” she said, pointing west. “Comes not this far. Seen it flying in distance. Never close”
“Where did she say the pub was?” Seigfried asked, not quite interpreting correctly.

The party looked at each other and decided to move on.

Li Kung turned back to the old woman and asked the best route to get to the dragon, and then they moved on, with Helga peering at the sky for sign of a large winged creature.

After two hours of walking their horses around sharp mountains over badly broken ground, they crested a slight rise and saw the third valley west, complete with its very own village. Only this one had been burnt to the ground. All that could be seen were the rings of charred stones delineating the huts.
After spotting no movement or smoke, they moved down into the village. The burning was not recent, so they felt fairly safe at that moment.

Gaelle hunted around, but could find no tracks. She found no bodies either, until she came to what had been a larger hut in the centre if the village, within which she could see a charred skeleton, crumpled in a heap. 
Gaelle had another look round the hut and found human tracks, probably peasants, from several weeks before. She reckoned around a half a dozen people had run west. She also found tracks of a large lizard from about a week later, along with marks of people falling over and being dragged away before their trail disappeared.
Several patches of long-dried blood could also be made out.
Several times in the last few weeks, large felines had padded through the village remains.
Pretty good roll, that.

Helga decided it would be worthwhile searching through the hut remains for anything that might have survived the burning – chests, etc. She was pushing her luck, as always.
“Why are you spending time looking through peasants’ belongings?” asked Seigfried.

After a couple of hours’ searching, Helga found an area of ground behind one of the huts where something had been buried and camouflaged. She dug down and discovered a small cloth bag, containing a set of small bones.
“Children’s bones?” wondered Gaelle.
“Perhaps a Witch-Doctor’s Augury kit,” suggested Li Kung.
“Not human,” Helga pronounced after a cursory examination.

Considering the human tracks they had found, Li Kung mused that it might indicate that the dragon attacked from the east. 
“Right, then,” Li Kung declared “let’s get on and investigate caves. Maybe Gaelle can find more tracks.”
“If you think I’m riding up into the mountains at this time in the afternoon…” the ranger replied, noticing that the sun was already dropping below the ridge, casting deep shadows across the valley.

“Gracientus” asked Helga, pointing at the scorched skeleton “would you be able to speak to this body tomorrow? Might save us an awful lot of time if we can talk to it and say, ‘this dragon that attacked you, where did it come from?’” reasoned Helga.
“Sounds like a good idea,” agreed Li Kung.
“I could do it tonight, after I have performed my supplications to Set” the priest confirmed.

With a couple of hours to wait until sunset, Helga cast Detect Magic and took a turn around the village, looking for anything that might show itself, specifically items that could act as scrying foci. She thought that the dragon might be a powerful magic user and wanted to be sure.
Cord and Li Kung quickly reminded her that it was quite a young dragon they were hunting and probably didn’t need a focus to scry them if it had the capability.
She carried on, regardless, finding nothing magical that they didn’t bring with themselves.

Meanwhile, Gaelle searched around for a suitable campsite; somewhere they couldn’t be seen from the air.
She found a shallow cave a little away from the edge of the village, just large enough to hold them and their horses. Li Kung suggested setting a dummy camp fire across the other side of the village, but no-one else thought it worth the bother.
As they weren’t likely to be riding anywhere else today, Seigfried dismissed his mount, a whiter-than-white stallion he had bound into his service.

As they were setting up camp, Cord appeared with a goat. There had been a child watching over it, but he had taken one look at Cord and decided to blame the loss on mountain lions.

Still feeling paranoid, Helga spent some time scrutinising the valley for signs of smoke or glow of fire from a cave, without success.

“Anybody got a horse they don’t particularly like?” asked Li Kung.
“What for?”
“To use as bait, what else?”
“I paid good money for this thing,” argued Gaelle, “and I’m not about to give it to a bloody dragon for its dinner!” 

As the darkness began to deepen, Gracientus knelt before the blackened corpse and prayed to Set for the power of communication.
“Where does the dragon live?”
The skeleton shook and stood up, its jaw moving and its teeth clacking together.

“Hmm,” said Gracientus. “I suspect that the subject requires a working mouth to speak. Hadn’t thought of that.”
The skeleton was obviously trying to say something but the party couldn’t figure out what it was.
 “What a useless dead thing” said Helga.

“In which direction does the dragon live?” persevered Gracientus.
The skeleton pointed eastwards.
“I understood that,” said Gaelle.

Helga, not happy with the way the day’s investigations had gone, re-examined the bag of bones.
She still didn’t know exactly what it had been but it was definitely the remains of an animal of some type.
Feeling a little depressed, she then put her head down for a night’s rest.

Around 3 in the morning, with Gaelle and Seigfried on watch, a rattle of small stones could be clearly heard outside the cave.
Gaelle had cast an Alarm spell at the entrance of the cave and was wondering why it hadn’t gone off.

The two guards moved to the edge of the cave and peered out into the night. Gaelle’s alarm screeched in warning, she span round to see three large dark shapes hurtling out of the darkness and just had enough time to put two arrows in the lead beast before the mountain lions pounced on their breakfast.
The wounded cat leaped on Gaelle, placed its forepaws on her shoulders, licked her face then ripped her back claws down the ranger’s legs.
Seigfried was merely slapped by his cat as it landed from a premature pounce and enraged it by slashing it with his axe.

Gaelle stepped back and sent two more arrows thudding into her cat, keeping an eye on the third lion, prowling round beyond, unable to enter the fray.

Gracientus, ears ringing from the Alarm, called upon Set to Bless them all, just as the third lion spotted Helga pretending to be asleep and sniffed at her. Luckily for the strange sorcerer, it didn’t like the smell of her – just too weird for its taste – so it snapped at Gaelle instead.

Li Kung stood up and grabbed his glaive, ready to enter the combat. 
Seigfried again slashed his opponent, causing it to yelp with pain.
Helga rolled quietly away from the fight and sent a Magic Missile at the wounded lion, knocking it unconscious.

Gaelle again stepped back and sent two arrows into the lion in front of her.
Gracientus crawled a little further back into the cave, as Gaelle was scratched and Seigfried mauled by their lions.

Li Kung took his chance to step in and wound a lion, before Seigfried also wounded it slightly.
Helga moved in to the combat, after her attempt at casting another Magic Missile failed because of her restrictive armour, to give a flank to Seigfried, getting bitten and thrown to the floor by the quick-reacting lion and badly raked across her stomach.

Cord, who had not rushed to get up, now chose to step in and cut the head of Helga’s lion in twain.

Gaelle, stepping back again, plugged arrows through both of her lion’s eyes.

Gracientus moved quickly over to the stricken Helga to assess the damage.
“Ooh, look, sausages,” moaned the Norsewoman as Gracientus poked her entrails back where they belonged and sealed the wound with some help from Set. (Holy Superglue)

“Typical,” said Cord, “on my watch it’s lovely and quiet. I get a couple of hours kip and get woken up to find that you two can’t even keep a couple of mangy moggies off us!” He then stalked back to bed.
“I took two of them out!” exclaimed an aggrieved Gaelle toward the receding Cord’s back.

Gaelle spent half an hour dragging the lion carcasses away from the cave and kicking plenty of dust over the blood trail leading from their camp, before continuing her watch.


24th September 1699

The day dawned brightly and promised to be very warm, much to the chagrin of Seigfried. Praying to the Goddess of Winter with the warmth of the rising sun in your face just didn’t feel right. The Goddess of Death bit cheered him up, though.

The party packed up camp and walked the horses eastwards until they thought they were in the right area for finding a dragon. They waited in some cover and studied the many holes in the mountainside trying to decide which to investigate further.
Li Kung pointed out two that looked large enough for their quarry to use as a lair.

“Helga. When we get inside, are you going to be ready to flank for us?” smiled Li Kung.
The rest of the party chuckled as an abashed Helga mumbled something about tumbling.
“She’d have been better off lying on the floor”, commented Gaelle.
“She was lyin’ on the floor. She was grabbed by a lyin’ on the floor!” smirked Gracientus.
“You wouldn’t be so smug if you’d been deep in the sh*t at the time,” cautioned Cord. “It’s all very funny to take the piss, but…”

Picking the most likely cave, the party scrambled up a scree-slope toward it.
Gaelle spotted around but could only find fairly recent lion tracks. Three of them a few hours ago.
“This ain’t it then,” stated the ranger.

Climbing around to the other potential dragon home, they had to climb 80’ up a difficult face.
Gracientus decided to wait below until someone got to the top and dropped a rope down.
“Good idea,” thought Cord, settling in to wait for the rope.
Set, through Gracientus, made Li Kung stronger and the monk scampered up the rock face, carrying a rope tied together with a rather large knot. Just to be sure, Cord and Seigfried had had a brief tug of war with the spliced rope to prove its strength.

At the top, Li Kung realised that the cave was somewhat larger than it had appeared from below.
Holding the rope, he kept an eye over his shoulder for a dragon, while waiting for the others.
Gaelle found a large number of deep scratches in the ledge which could have been the result of a dragon taking off and landing, so the party assumed they had found the right cave. Li Kung suggested that Gaelle listen at the cave for sounds of a large creature. Gaelle could only hear the whistling of the wind as it blew across the cave-mouth. Unless, that was what dragon breath sounded like?

Grasping their potions of fire protection, the party motioned Gaelle forward, after she had cast a spell of fire protection on herself. Slipping silently into the cave, ducking between patches of deep shadow, Gaelle disappeared into the darkness.
Unfortunately for the brave ranger, the occupier of the cave heard her creeping down the corridor and could just make her out, silhouetted against the faint light coming down the passage. 
Gaelle felt a rush of air past her face, an instant before the rush of flames removed her eyebrows.

The flames lit up the cavern, petering out just short of the entrance.
“I think I’ll drink my potion now,” announced Cord.

Gaelle, now devoid of facial hair, decided to return outside.
“It’s in there,” she told her companions, who were busy knocking back their magical brews.
“We want to fight it in there,” suggested Li Kung.
“Damn right,” agreed Cord.
Gracientus, standing carefully behind the others, called upon Set to Bless the party, before turning her attention to Gaelle’s face.
“Sorry, I don’t have a bandage that big. And, if I did, you wouldn’t be able to see anything” the young priest apologised. “Got rid of your moustache, though”

“Coming, Seigfried?” asked Cord.
“After you,” replied the Paladin.
“Tosser”

“What are we going to do for light?” asked a worried Li Kung.
“I’ve got a lantern, but I don’t think I want to open it until I get in there” replied Cord.

Cord ran in to the darkness and rounded a vague shape he thought to be a corner and put his lantern down, but couldn’t see anything in the lantern‘s beam.
Seigfried followed closely behind but also could not see a dragon.
Helga moved in, picked up Cord’s lantern and waved it around, trying, unsuccessfully, to either see or hear the dragon.
Li Kung ran in, tumbling away from the illumination, and spotted the glint of large eyes some 20’ above the cavern floor. “It’s up there!” he hissed, faintly, and spanged a shuriken off the wall near the dragon.
Gaelle, looking to where Li Kung threw his shuriken, saw a glint of something and loosed an arrow, which kicked sparks off the wall.

Feeling a bit threatened, the dragon breathed into the cavern, its flame falling just short of Li Kung, but enveloping everyone else. Helga fell to the floor but, through force of will alone, managed to stay conscious, though in immense pain from the 100% burns. 
During the momentarily increased illumination, Cord spotted a ramp further back in the cave, which led up to the dragon’s ledge. He ran to it and halfway up, to distance himself from the others.
Seigfried followed him, hoping that the dragon wouldn’t breathe on them again.
Helga shuffled back down the passage with a magical hand holding the lantern and pointing it towards the dragon.

Gracientus stepped a bit further into the passage, very glad he stayed outside, and called upon Set to heal Helga’s worst suppurations.

Li Kung, not feeling brave enough to follow the two fighters up the ramp, ran across the cavern and lobbed a handful of shuriken vaguely towards the dragon.
Gaelle sent two arrows into the darkness, one of them hitting something hard and bouncing off to skitter across the cavern floor.

The dragon, concerned that his flame hadn’t killed anything but aware that his escape route was guarded, decided to lessen the threat from the warriors on the ramp. The target of the dragon’s fear spell, Cord felt significantly less brave than he had and decided to let Seigfried take point.

The Paladin stepped in to face the beast, taking a claw across the chest for his troubles, before finding a small chink in its scales where he could park his axe.
Buoyed by Seigfried’s successful attack, Cord moved in but was unable to pierce the dragon’s hide.

A bolt from Gracientus’ crossbow whistled just over Seigfried’s head and knocked a chunk out of the wall.
Li Kung, now feeling braver, charged up the ramp and stuffed his glaive into the dragon’s less well protected neck.
Gaelle finally managed to get an arrow into her target, enraging the beast into lashing out with every limb. Li Kung took a bite, Seigfried two claws and Cord a wing buffet and a tail slap.

Facing what appeared to be a pretty healthy dragon, Seigfried prayed to Morana and took a chunk out of the creature.
Helga, feeling happier after downing a pint or two of healing potion, moved back into the cavern, though about as far away from the dragon as she could get and still see it.

Cord swung his huge sword, slicing a couple of scales off the dragon’s neck and leaving a splash of reptile blood across the wall. Gracientus called a morning star composed wholly of faith into being with which he bashed the beast across the nose.
Li Kung’s glaive carved through one of its eyes and two arrows from Gaelle also found their mark.

The dragon, now getting very concerned for its health, put everything it had into what could be its last attacks.
Its huge teeth took a chunk out of the wall by Li Kung’s head, both claws turned Seigfried into a bloody mess on the floor and its tail whacked across Cord’s midriff.

Helga’s magical accomplice brought the lantern to her but, again, her armour interfered with her spellcasting and the magical energy dissipated harmlessly in front of her.

Cord, now covered in a mixture of Seigfried’s, dragon’s and his own blood swung ineffectually at the annoyed and increasingly desperate dragon.
Gracientus’ holy weapon bloodied its nose again, while Li Kung punched the wall before poking the dragon in its good eye.
Two arrows disappeared into the depths of the cavern and the dragon went postal.
Its bite mangled Li Kung’s arm, a claw and a buffet from its wing caused the monk to stagger back in agony.
Its other claw opened a rent in Cord’s chest and the other wing slapped him halfway down the ramp, across the pool of Seigfried’s blood.

By the light of the lantern, Helga could see plenty of blood spraying around, very little of it the dragon’s.
This, and her encumbering armour, caused her third spell in a row to fail, the air in front of her glowing faintly from all the magical energy lost into it.

Gracientus’ spiritual weapon whisked past its face as the flying Li Kung’s feet thudded almost effectually into the dragon’s throat. The strain of so much fury finally took its toll on the young monk and he fainted at the dragon’s feet. It was suddenly feeling a lot better about its chances of survival.

Unfortunately, the feeling didn’t last as Gaelle’s arrow pierced its good eye and it collapsed, its head hanging over the edge of the ledge.
Helga and Gracientus race up the ramp to their stricken companions, quickly casting healing spells and applying potions. Gaelle, not particularly interested in (or capable of) healing the others, began a search of the area behind the dragon, wanting to be first to whatever booty was to be had.

Helga didn’t think that dragons could recover from such damage but, taking no chances, she attempted to sever its neck with her surgical tools. Deciding that it might take a bit too long to delicately slice through its 2’ thick neck with a scalpel, she borrowed the unconscious Seigfried’s axe and simply lopped it off.

Gaelle found a potion, a bone scroll case, a small ebony box with a fine lock, a pile of gold coins (along with the charred remains of a few sacks and pouches) and a badly acid-etched (probably from passing through the dragon) holy symbol of Set. Hoorah!

“Shall we rest here for a bit?” asked Helga, hoping that with a little sit down she could recover her ability to use magic.
“I don’t think anyone’s going to bother us. Not after dealing with the lions AND the dragon” replied a conscious but very sore Cord. “The extra protection from my new armour really helped there” he added, wryly, surveying his seriously dented breastplate.

Seigfried, finally brought round by Gracientus’ ministrations, had a feeling of a “job well done” from his beloved mistress, Morana.
Li Kung, meanwhile, felt his mind expanding in strange and unusual ways as he succeeded in unlocking the psionic potential that his teachers at the temple had tried to bash into him. “At last!” he thought with satisfaction.

When they decided they had rested enough, around lunchtime, they were greeted by a hot wind, blowing down the valley. “Horrible,” thought Seigfried, who had got used to the cool dampness in the cavern.

The rest of the party climbed back down the rope, while Li Kung waited to untie it and climb down himself
Going down the rock face as fast as he could, to show off, the mental monk caught his sandal on a small outcrop and tumbled the last 50’, landing head first onto a big rock. Shaken, he had to have a bit of sit down, waiting for his vision to clear. The others decided to have a spot of lunch until the stars stopped circling his head. 
Helga took the opportunity to investigate the ebony box. Thinking that it wasn’t trapped, but with all the others moving at least 15’ away from her, she plied her trade on the lock, successfully.
The box contained a long-dead-looking hand on a chain, like a really weird medallion.
“I bet she tries to stick it somewhere,” said Gaelle, who was genuinely freaked out by some of Helga’s bizarre ideas. The strange Norsewoman seemed to think that she had a number of “things” inside her and wanted to experiment, putting things in other people. Most disturbing.
“Maybe it’s a back scratcher,“ suggested Gaelle.
“It’s one of those mummified hand thingys,” professed Helga, not really knowing what it was but not wanting to appear ignorant until she had figured out what it actually was.
“Doesn’t it allow you to have an extra ring?” asked Li Kung.
“Something else to stick things up,” mumbled Gracientus, also a bit dubious about some of Helga’s ideas.

Helga, bravely, removed the scroll from the bone case and cast Read Magic to find out what it contained.

Ready to move on, Seigfried called for Frost, his mount, who trotted round the corner and came up to nuzzle his shoulder.
The party quickly mounted up, strapping the dragon’s head on to one of the horses and headed back toward Byzantium.

Having disposed of the major predators in that area of mountains, they were not molested for some time.
Helga, busy playing with her new hand, was startled when Cord said, “There’s a winged thing coming!”
Gaelle leaped off her horse and strung her bow in one easy movement, looking to see what it was.
Gracientus was looking around when Cord suggested he look up instead. He still couldn’t see anything, though.
Helga got off her horse, thinking that if it was a big flying thing it might go for the larger animal instead of her.
“Bet it’s a white dragon,” said Li Kung.
“Oh good,” replied Seigfried, “I like white dragons.”

Suddenly, from out of the sun, a huge winged shape swooped over their heads and grabbed at Cord. 
All the others watched its shadow pass over them, except Li Kung, who slashed the wyvern across the belly as it came within reach of his glaive.
The wyvern, after losing a couple of pints of blood over Li Kung’s head, failed to get a grip on Cord’s armour and flew on. 

As it began to climb away from them, trailing blood, Gaelle stuck two arrows in its tender rear quarters, eliciting a piercing shriek. Gracientus moved a little further away, into some light cover and Helga, refreshed after her earlier exertions managed to hit it with a pair of magic missiles.
Seigfried, rueing his lack of decent missile weapons, charged Frost at the wyvern, his lance tip narrowly missing extending the gash in its belly. He did, however, manage to get in the way of its dangling stinger. Seigfried, filled with the grace of Morana, felt no ill effects from the pints of poison injected into his shoulder and watched as the wyvern banked up and around.

Li Kung brandished his glaive in defence of Helga, who he viewed as by far the weakest member of the party and Cord prepared a spear in case the wyvern came at him again. Gaelle loosed another brace of arrows at the beast, now some distance away, piercing it twice in the side.
Helga fired a crossbow bolt off in its general direction, ducking out from behind Li Kung.
Seigfried, still feeling heroic, charged his mount halfway toward the wyvern and hurled his dagger (his sole missile weapon) at it, glancing a blow off its left thigh.

The wyvern, streaming blood from several orifices that it hadn’t had that morning, kept flying, heading home for a sleep and a bit of a cry. Gaelle licked the fletching of her next arrow, nocked it and loosed, missing the rapidly retreating wyvern by a couple of feet. Helga had reloaded her crossbow before she realised that the wyvern was now well outside her effective range.

“Helga, lightning bolt it!” urged Li Kung.
Helga spared the monk a single glance before calling to Seigfried to return for her tender ministrations. And some healing.
Seigfried, on the other hand, was determined to find his dagger before going back, despite the throbbing fist-sized lump of venom in his shoulder.
“Come back now. You can do that later” shouted Helga before jumping on her horse and galloping after the driven Germanian. Finally catching up with him as he gave his dagger up as lost, she slit his skin and drew the poison out. 
“She’s probably trying to stick something in him” said Cord.
“He’ll end up with another head” Gaelle added.

Thinking that tracking the wyvern across the mountain would be a bit too difficult to bother, Gaelle unstrung her bow and they all remounted and carried on toward the sunset. 
Finding a deep cleft to shelter from the harsh, hot wind, they settled down for a happily unbroken night’s rest.


25th September 1699

By mid-morning they had arrived back at the goatherds’ village, which all bar Helga were happy to pass by.
“We should stop to reap their gratitude” she said grandly.
“They’re peasants! Why would we want their gratitude?” argued Gaelle.
“Maybe they’ll say ‘Have some more goats’?” suggested Cord. “And I’m not hungry at the moment”
“OK, let’s not bother then” agreed Helga after determining that the villagers would make pretty poor slaves and so were not worth stopping for.
As Helga rode forward, past the village, Gracientus wondered if life up in the icy northlands had frozen her brain. He couldn’t think of any other reason for her strange behaviour. Unless, that is, she really had got “things” stuck inside her. Maybe he would get the opportunity to dissect her when she died of stupidity.


27th September 1699

Following an uneventful ride back to civilisation the party arrived in Byzantium during what had to be the hottest day of the year. The wind-chill was bringing the temperature down to 30°C.

They decided that the Set temple would be the best destination, both to get their reward and to take advantage of the well known fact that temples built almost exclusively out of marble tended to be much cooler than the outside world.

Gracientus announced their return while the party basked in the cool shade. They all steamed and Cord’s armour plinked gently as it cooled. To reinforce the feeling of calm and civility, acolytes served them iced drinks as they waited for someone in authority to see to them.
“These people give evil a good name,” commented Li Kung, unused to such politeness in a supposedly nasty temple.
“We look after our flock,” explained Gracientus.
“I suppose it helps being a cult that actively supports theft as a lifestyle,” added Cord.

Some minutes later, a junior priest brought them a bag of gold, carefully took possession of the recovered holy symbol and praised them on a job well done, before padding back to whatever he had been doing before.

As they shared out the gold, borrowing a table in the temple’s foyer for the job, Cord had an idea.
“If we’re going to be staying around here, wouldn’t it make sense to buy a place to stay rather than spending all our gold renting rooms in inns? I have a lot of money that I can’t carry round, so I want to do something with it. And I want you lot to chip in as well.”

Given something to think about, they went to the Mages’ Society to see about the stuff they picked up, and to sell the dragon head. Gaelle wanted a magical quiver to hold the vast quantity of arrows she seemed to tote round. Quoted 1800GP, Li Kung exploded.
“How much? That is ridiculously cheap for such a powerful item! It contains a magic dimensional space!”
Still muttering, the scandalised monk wandered back outside as the Society’s representative looked calm and superior in the face of what he considered crass ignorance.

Having made it back into the scorching heat, they realised that they had forgotten all about the hand on the chain. Going back inside, doing nothing to change the clerk’s opinion, they asked for it to be identified.
Some minutes later they were advised that it allowed the wearer to utilise a Mage Hand at will.
“Can anyone use it?” asked Helga.
“Any reasonably adept practitioner of the magical arts may use it almost immediately” the clerk replied, a little stuffily. “Normals might be trained, but that could take weeks and would not necessarily prove successful. Someone of your,” the clerk paused for effect, watching at Helga over his pince-nez, “obvious talent, might manage on your own.”
“I think we’re done here,” announced Helga, turning to leave, not at all pleased with the frosty response. All because she couldn’t cast 3rd level spells. She’d show them. A few more “adventures” like the last one and she’d show them alright.
“What about this potion?” asked Gaelle, eliciting an even frostier stare from the clerk who felt he was being deliberately messed about. He took the flask and returned to the laboratory, coming back a few minutes later looking pleased with himself.
“It is an interesting one. An Elixir of Swimming – makes your ability to swim significantly better for some time.”

At this point, Cord chimed in with his own belated request. He wondered if there was an item that could make him more comfortable in his armour under adverse conditions?
“There is a “standard” ring we make that keeps you warm in cold weather. I had noticed you were perspiring more than should be normal, so I assume you’d want one to keep you cool in warm weather as well” said the clerk.
“Perhaps, a permanent version of Endure Elements?” chipped in Gaelle, doing nothing for the temper of the clerk, which was getting cooler by the sentence.
“I dare say we could make something of that order. A ring, most likely. 2000GP, 3 days.”

Coming back into the conversation, causing the clerk to wish he had been on the cauldron cleaning detail today, Helga enquired about prices for several more items in which she had just become interested.
The clerk, desperately wanting to get rid of these ruffians, dealt with her request perfunctorily.
“Are we done?” he asked, as the party looked around, seeming to dare each other to ask for something else. “Good, good day, then” he said with a little bow, and scuttled swiftly out of sight.

Emerging from the cool of the Mages’ Society into the searing heat (so hot that Li Kung wondered if there was anything magically strange about the weather) they quickly decided to follow Cord’s lead toward the Public Baths, for a lengthy soak in the cool waters and to remove the grime from their travels.
They were surprised to find there were actually people in the hot baths!
Seigfried sank gratefully into the cold water, though it was not really cold enough for him. Since his reacquaintance with his god he thought that he would only be truly comfortable in temperatures close to, and below, freezing. Still, the water was so much better than being outside.
Gaelle paid the attendants to provide cool water for her dog and the party spent the rest of the afternoon in civilised comfort.


28th September 1699

Agreeing that the plan was to base themselves in the Byzantium area they discussed options.
Cord favoured pooling their money and either buying a house or getting a long lease on one.

They gave their requirements to the Agent of Estates to whom they were recommended by Gracientus.
Gaelle wanted somewhere on the edge of town, furthest away from all the people and closest to the wilds.
Cord suggested somewhere in the more “scummy” areas where they could “lean on” the Thieves’ Guild.
After all, they were rougher than most thieves they had ever met.
Gaelle thought they might be able to do a deal with the Guild: protection in exchange for doing “the odd job” for them.
After some thought, even Cord came round to the idea of a large house with stabling for all their horses.
“Do you want to make a statement? Do you want to appear rich, powerful, affluent?” asked the Agent.
“I don’t really feel any of those so, no, thanks” answered Cord.

A suitable villa, to the south of the city near the South Road, was found, three months deposit paid and the Agent pointed them towards another Agency for housekeeping staff. After some haggling, a suitable husband and wife team were found and they set aside several months’ wages and a housekeeping fund for them.

“We’d better go out and adventure, so we can afford all this” suggested Cord, feeling in his nearly empty pockets as they surveyed their new abode. It was distinctly palatial compared to anywhere he had stayed before. Anywhere any of them had stayed before.

Li Kung returned to the Mages’ Society, having forgotten to ask for some boots to make him run faster. The clerk, luckily a different one than yesterday, was not surprised. After all, it was the first thing monks asked for. Unfortunately for him, Li Kung could not afford either option - boots that would make him go very much faster for a bit or ones to make him go a bit faster for a very long time – so he thanked the clerk and returned to the house.
Seigfried was thinking about money. He was scribbling sums on a piece of paper, working out that he could stay in an inn, eating average food, cheaper than the house was going to cost him.
“But that’s average food,” argued Helga, “here, you would get superior food. And stabling for your horse, ah.” She had remembered that he called Frost when he needed him. She would need a better argument.

The paladin seemed adamant. “It doesn’t really fit in with my needs,” he stated.
The others took it quite well, despite the individual cost going up. “It means we have a spare room, now,” Helga looked on the bright side.

Now, they turned their attention to finding a job - they went to the Hunters’ Guild to find out what was available.
They were told that untaken bounties were on the board, and that as soon as one was taken it was removed, to be replaced if the hunters failed to return within a month.
Gaelle asked “What about bounties that have only just gone? Couldn’t we have the information as well?”
The Hunter on duty looked scandalised and told her that was the rule. One Hunter per bounty. Wouldn’t be fair otherwise.

Looking over the board the bounty for the Uruk, Kron, had gone up.
The reward for the manticores was still up. Most Hunters didn’t like going for beasts – not really proper sport.
Helga tried to convince the Hunter to let her know details on big bounties that recently gone out.
He looked less scandalised and more annoyed with her, but she thought he was holding out for a gratuity.
Slipping him 20GP, he looked around before accepting and agreed to give her information about upcoming bounties before he put them up on the board.

Cord came up with the idea of visiting “adventurer taverns” and using their keen wits to discover who was about, doing what. And what adventuring parties, of about the same level of competence, were potential bushwhacking victims.
The Grinning Gryphon, known for its huge common-room, and the Dolphin, more known for entertaining sailors were the most likely taverns. Choosing the Gryphon they arrived near lunchtime, thankful for the heat being several degrees lower than yesterday.
Cord figured that in his armour anyone he talked to would think he was deranged, so purchased some leathers for when in town. Li Kung spent his time mentally undressing Helga, who had taken to wearing flimsy robes to combat the heat. He managed to mentally put aside all the things Helga had mentioned about the strange stuff her father had supposedly put inside her and enjoyed the morning immensely.
Monks, eh?

Entering the common-room of the Grinning Gryphon, passing under the sign with a rather anthropomorphic beast, laughing its head off clutching a dying cow in its talon, they found it fairly busy.
Gaelle thought she’d sit herself in a corner and look enigmatic while trying to eavesdrop on nearby conversations, as she had the charisma of a slug.
Helga moved about, trying to listen to any Bards, who could be relied upon to be unable to shut up for more than a minute at a time.
Seigfried, ever practical, went to order food. Unable to articulate his needs, he was overcharged and the rest of the party reckoned his meal would be liberally spiked with spit. Tasty, though.

There was a group of young lads, chests puffed out, talking bollocks, who had managed to convince the members of the militia in the pub that they were great adventurers, but they were not fooling anyone else.
The other “adventuring groups” were keeping to themselves, talking quietly and not drawing attention to themselves.
One was three fighter-types and another, much older, man with no armour. Judging by the family resemblance they seemed to be an aging spellslinger and his three less magically inclined (thicker) sons.
They all looked a bit handy, but they were quite obviously just back from their travels. Their wounds looked too recent for them to be seriously considering heading out soon.

The other group was more like what could be called a “typical” adventuring group. There were two older fighters, a fairly obvious thiefy-type (couldn’t look more shifty if he was a ferret) and a couple of young unarmoured men.
They were about to head up north, towards the borders of the Germanian Protectorate. Lots of bandits up there, mostly disgruntled soldiers with nothing to do since much the army had been demobilised, and plenty of monsters in the mountains.

Putting their heads together in the corner, the party decided to follow the group going north and bounce them just beyond Byzantine jurisdiction, at least 20 miles distant. Seigfried was especially happy to go towards home, though he didn’t really know why he had come south in the first place.

As the target group were staying in the Grinning Gryphon that night, and leaving in the morning, Seigfried decided to stay there as well, so he could follow them in the morning to ascertain which route they were going to take. The party thought to leave the city in the afternoon, with Helga changing her appearance to that of a local commoner and asking the gate guards if the group had left. Li Kung was impressed with her ideas of subterfuge. Perhaps there was more to her than a fine set of curves and some dodgy wiggly bits in her guts.


30th September 1699

The temperature beginning to lessen towards proper autumnal levels, Helga approached the gate guards and enquired after the group of adventurers.
“What you want them for? They didn’t, do, anything did they?” asked the older, more fatherly guard.
“Oh no, no,” replied a winsome Helga, managing to avoid arousing their suspicions, and learning that they had left on horseback an hour after dawn, heading roughly west along the main road.

After Gaelle had picked up her new quiver and they had discussed their plans around the map of the area they decided to follow the adventurers for a day and a half then attack them on the second night.
Not expecting anything of the sort, there would only be a third of them on guard.

Before leaving, they remembered Gracientus.
“We’re off on a harvest,” explained Cord. “You want to come?”
“Why not, sounds like a giggle”
Helga suddenly had a nasty thought. Had any of the adventurers been wearing holy symbols of Set?
Wouldn’t do their standing much good if they duffed up a temple group.
None of them could remember, but thought that if they were a Set group, they’d just have to make sure none of them survived, which was the plan anyway.

With Gaelle tracking them, at least after they had gone out of sight of the city walls, the party managed to follow their quarry, ensuring they kept a steady distance.
As they travelled, they discussed their tactics for the attack. Central was the need to neutralise the thief, and they were concerned that he might be concealed outside the camp.
Li Kung was also concerned that they might have effective arcane casters, which apparently some parties did have.
They’d have to leave their horses and creep to the camp. They had several archers to suppress the other group, and Cord had a question for Gracientus. Did he have a spell to cover their noise?
Cord could stomp silently into the camp and it might affect the enemy spellcasters.
The Set priest could have two, so they seemed likely to be able to get a serious amount of surprise.

There was not much moon showing through the cloud that night and, as they were only about three hours behind they considered travelling into the darkness to hit the other group, though that risked missing them.
Cord, however, pointed out that they would still be inside Byzantine lands and, as they planned to make the city their base it would be unwise to risk this sort of action this close.
So, they all got a good night’s sleep and continued to follow the adventurers the next day.


----------



## robberbaron (Jan 28, 2005)

*An Ambush and Some Dead Things*

1st October 1699

Gaelle’s tracking ability did not disappoint and, near midnight, they approached their targets’ camp, having trailed them successfully throughout the day. They decided to wait until an hour before dawn, as that seemed the best time to catch them unawares – they would be on last watch of an uneventful night and the arcane casters would still be asleep.

Li Kung thought it would be best if he was silenced, as he could move the fastest after everyone has crept close enough for them to attack, with Cord’s and Seigfried’s strengths enhanced. The mental monk also concentrated and manifested a field of psychic protection around himself.

The camp was set in a small dell some distance off the road and their fire could not be seen until the party crawled to the edge and looked down into it. There were only a few small bushes for cover and, in the weak light of a crescent Luna, they could make out several bundles of bedding as well as a figure on guard – covered in armour, alert with a prepared warhammer, making a circuit of the camp.

Gaelle motioned to Li Kung, getting across the message that she would shoot the nearest target.
Then the monk charged into the middle of the camp, mouth open in a silent battlecry startling the warrior on guard and put all his strength into a single glaive stroke on one of the sleeping forms. Not sufficient to kill him it did wake him up pretty quickly. The warrior’s cry of alarm, cut off as Li Kung’s aura of silence reached him, also managed to wake one of his companions.

The defenders’ thief, who had been hiding just outside the camp and observed the party’s approach, fired his shortbow at Li Kung, getting just close enough for the monk to notice him as he attempted to duck back behind a bush. Helga also saw the thief and fired off a couple of magic missiles at him.
Gaelle followed up with a pair of arrows, both passing through the bush into the thief.

The warrior charged Li Kung, taking the glaive across his chest for his trouble, before pounding the monk in the side. The wound felt a little strange – a bit more painful than perhaps it should have done – but Li Kung quickly forgot about it as the fight got going. 
Cord ran down the slope and added his enormous weapon to the warrior’s woes.
Seigfried charged in and flanked the warrior, who was wishing their thief wasn’t useless.

Li Kung tumbled away from the warrior and slashed the figure on the ground again, killing him before he had a chance to get up.
The other bundle of bedding (the druid) at Li Kung’s feet rolled away, gaining a glaive wound in the back for his troubles, then got up looking very worried.
Helga, seeing the thief take a potion then move away from the bush and into the darkness, turned her attention on the unarmoured figure that had just evaded Li Kung.
Gaelle, also, not being able to follow the thief, sent two arrows into the now nearly unconscious druid.

The Paladin of Osiris, facing two fighters, both with bloody great weapons, chose at random and smashed Seigfried across the head and chest before stepping away from the flank.
One of the remaining figures on the ground got up, drew a greatsword and moved in to join the fight.
Cord slashed his Fullblade across the Paladin’s belly, and Seigfried took him down with an axe to the shoulder, cleaving on to the newly-joined fighter.
The druid’s badger companion, his master having rolled away from him, took his anger out on Cord’s calves.
Gracientus unsuccessfully Doomed the fighter, and Li Kung stepped over to the druid and cut both his legs off with a single glaive stroke before cleaving onto the badger.

Unseen in the darkness, the thief healed himself as best he could, hoping that the battle went well for his group. 

Helga shot off more magic missiles and Gaelle shot at the fighter, wounding him once.
The fighter’s greatsword burst into flame and he carved a cauterised wound from Seigfried’s shoulder to his groin, dropping the Paladin to the ground.
Cord slashed the fighter, while Seigfried’s life oozed out of him on the ground. The badger nibbled at Li Kung, putting one tooth into his big toe. Li Kung shook the badger off and kicked it on the nose.

Helga’s magic missiles further injured the fighter as Gaelle’s arrows bounced off his armour.
The fighter, realising he wasn’t going to get out of this easily, took a chunk out of Cord, who was thrown off-balance enough to miss the return blow.

The badger tried to follow Li Kung and received a psionically enhanced kick to the chest. Its head flew off towards the other side of the camp and Li Kung’s foot was covered in blood.

Helga, worried, ran to Seigfried and confirmed her worst suspicions – the handsome Germanian was dead.
“There’s loads of useful bits here,” she muttered to herself, lost momentarily in her sick bio-arcane schemes.

Gaelle’s next arrow pierced the fighter’s throat, fountaining blood over Cord.

No more opponents in sight, Gaelle went over to the thief’s hiding place to search for a blood trail, while Cord made sure that all bodies were actually dead. The Paladin of Osiris wasn’t, but Cord’s method was to cut off their heads and he was quite efficient.

By the light of a lantern, Gaelle found a trail of blood which stopped suddenly, but she was able to pick up the thief’s trail. Helga realised that the thief would be moving faster than they were, so Gaelle surveyed what she could see of the land to discern if he was following an obvious trail.
“I don’t think we’ll catch him,” admitted Li Kung. “He can run as fast as he likes while we’ve got to hunt for a trail.”
“Yeah, but you can run faster,” replied Gaelle.
“Not fast enough to track at the same time”

The thief had a good minute’s lead over them, and was travelling quickly, but they followed for a couple of minutes before deciding to let him go. Perhaps, they would follow him in the morning.

As they returned to the camp they realised that it had got very cold. Li Kung was feeling particularly shivery and got as close to the fire as he could.

Noticing Seigfried’s corpse gave them pause.
“He had actually become slightly useful,” admitted Gaelle.
“Yeah, but that proves his god was useless,” replied Li Kung, his teeth chattering.
“Probably let him die for turning his back on her,” added Cord.
“If we get someone to take his place in our group, can we please get someone who can speak the lingo?” asked the monk, with the others nodding agreement.

The party spent until dawn stripping the dead and making a neat pile of interesting gear for Helga to look over for magic emanations.
Finding the paladin’s symbol of Osiris, Li Kung realised why his first injury had felt so strange – he had been on the receiving end of a Smite!

After breakfast and dispersal of the booty, they set the fire to burn the bodies, and left the site to spend a couple of days in the wilderness. They thought it would be too suspicious if they returned to Byzantium after such a short time.
After four hours’ travel, they could just see the plume of smoke they had left and, feeling very tired, chose to kick back for the rest of the day.
Li Kung encouraged Gracientus to ask Set for a clue as to whether it would be safe to rest here for the day.
“Hmm. The auguries are favourable”, announced the priest after a prayer and a short period in a trance.

Gaelle looked around and found a pleasant little dell with a small stream, where Helga spent most of the afternoon fishing and the rest of the party relaxed.

Over supper, Li Kung broached their next direction.
“Anybody know anything about this area? What can we bushwhack next, or rather where shall we adventure next?”
Helga knew quite a lot about Thrace, but little about what was going on in the countryside.
“We’ve got some spare weapons now. Maybe we should find a decent sized town and sell them?” suggested Li Kung.

During the night, two large shapes lumbered through the darkness, attracted by the scent of life around the party’s camp. Slow enough to make little noise and to not attract attention, the Minotaur Zombies entered the camp.
Gracientus and Helga were on guard and became the beasts’ unfortunate victims, both receiving wicked wounds before they were able to rouse the rest of the party. Gracientus slumped to the ground in a rapidly spreading pool of blood. Helga managed to scream an alarm.

Gaelle, springing up, used her special rapid shooting skill to plug three arrows through what was left of the creature’s hide.

Helga attempted to tumble away from her foe, but slipped on the priest’s entrails and fell straight into the minotaur’s claw, knocking herself unconscious. Her internal familiar began to coagulate blood in her wounds and rebuild her organs.

Li Kung hurled a shuriken at one of the minotaurs, barely missing Helga’s inert form on the floor at its feet.

The minotaurs shambled forward, one slashing Gaelle with its claw, the other scratching Cord across the chest as he stood up, unarmoured. Cord’s mighty Fullblade carved two furrows across the zombie’s hide.

Stepping back, Gaelle again let off a volley of arrows, only one passing through the zombie’s hide.
Li Kung stepped in to flank the minotaur fighting Cord, putting all his strength into the blow, but swung wildly. Cord also wound up a mighty blow and took a small chunk off the zombie’s body.

The zombies swung their arms around with abandon, succeeding in missing everyone.

Gaelle, Ignoring her own foe, fired three arrows, one whistling over Cord’s head into his zombie’s chest, the second catching it in the shoulder and the third ricocheting off Cord’s epaulette and heading off into the distance.
Li Kung stepped in and directed a flurry of kicks at the minotaur, knocking a small chunk off it.

Again, Gaelle’s zombie was ineffectual, while the other left four gashes in Li Kung’s chest.
Cord managed to take his foe’s head off with a mighty swing, leaving Li Kung to hurl a shuriken into the back of Gaelle’s minotaur’s head.

The minotaur, now surrounded by food, chose to go for Cord, the largest of them.
Cord, bleeding heavily from several wounds, sliced two large pieces off the minotaur, which was beginning to look very unsteady. Gaelle tried to take it out but only hit it with one arrow.
Li Kung threw another two shuriken into the long grass while the zombie clubbed Cord into unconsciousness. 

Gaelle, with a free shot now that Cord was out of the way, plugged the ninth and tenth arrows into the zombie, reducing it to a pile of stinking bone and leathery hide.

Li Kung ran across to Gracientus and found the priest’s body lying on a large patch of red grass. Helga was hanging on to life, barely. The monk could not fully understand how she was still alive, given the spread of the blood pool around her and the extend of her injuries. 
“I would recommend using a healing potion on her,” he told Gaelle and the now hobbling Cord.
“If I bandaged her a bit roughly it might kill her”.

“Actually, I’m tempted to let her die,” replied Gaelle.
“She is a bit weird. A bit of an aberration,” agreed Li Kung.
“She’s too strange and that worries me,” the ranger added. “She talked of changing shape and changing other people. And she says ‘we’ rather than ‘I’. And she’s sick.”
“I don’t like anyone,” Cord interjected, “so I don’t really give a toss either way. Heads we waste her, tails we don’t.” He tossed a coin, but his chaotic nature prevented him from sharing the result with the others.
“Then again,” Cord thought aloud, “if we start offing our companions because they are a bit odd, Ok, a lot odd, how can we trust each other?”
“But,” replied Gaelle “we will get associated with her and whatever sick stuff she gets up to.”
“I don’t have a problem with that,” conceded Cord.

The difficult conversation lapsed into silence and Gaelle decided she wanted to examine Helga’s body for anything unusual. She and Li Kung removed her armour and clothes carefully, the monk taking the opportunity for a good feel in the process of giving her a thorough examination. 
They couldn’t find anything out if the ordinary. She had plenty of scars, pointing to her having had many surgical procedures performed on her in the distant past, but no extra bits. Everything seemed to be in order.

“Ok, we let her live”, said Gaelle, a little grudgingly.
“There is certainly no compelling evidence that would force us to kill her,” agreed Li Kung.
“It’s just the stuff she comes out with,” Gaelle continued moaning about the strange sorcerer, “and I don’t mean the slime she exudes. Every time she opens her mouth she says something weird”
Li Kung administered a potion of healing to Helga, now her fate had been decided.

Returning to Gracientus’ body, they decided that the only thing they needed to return to the Set temple was his holy symbol, so they set about divvying up his equipment before setting a watch and going back to bed. They thought that the Set cult was a bit serious about people taking out their priests, so they thought they’d better do right by them.


2nd October 1699

Licking their wounds, they sat around until lunchtime when they all looked up and saw an unarmoured human striding towards their camp, obviously following tracks. They swiftly dived for cover.
He walked up to the minotaur corpses, then looked around, noticing the party.

“Hail, who are you?” asked Li Kung, unfolding from behind a small shrub, the nearest bit of cover he could find.

Keldor the Ranger introduced himself, thinking that the group who took on the minotaurs could easily deal with him.
He had been following the minotaurs since they had destroyed a merchant’s wagon a day ago, in the hope that he would find others to help him take them out (he didn’t feel strong enough to take them both on).

Gaelle, was going to have a bit of fun at Keldor’s expense.
“So, how long were you going to follow the minotaurs?” she sneered.
“What are you going to do now they’re dead?” asked Li Kung, interested, but not sharing Gaelle’s desire to humiliate the younger ranger.
“I hadn’t really thought about that. I was just following them until I got enough of an advantage to take them out.” Keldor replied. “I might track them back to their origin, find out who sent them out here in the first place.”
“Was the merchant’s wagon destroyed? Was here anything of interest?” asked Li Kung, sensing more booty.
“No, there was nothing left” Keldor admitted. He had searched around for tracks other than those of the minotaur but the zombies had tramped over any others.

“If you’re any good, we might give you a job,” offered Li Kung. “You look like you might be handy with those swords. Do you think you’d make a good addition to our group?”
“Well, I survived this lot attacking so I think so, yes.”
“That doesn’t mean much,” said Cord, “you could have been hiding. Or you could just be following the minotaurs, picking up whatever gear is left on their victims. In which case you are definitely the sort of bloke we want.”
“Sounds like one of us,” added Gaelle.

Li Kung was in favour of giving Keldor a half share of treasure until he proved himself worthy to join them on a full partner basis. Cord was in agreement and Gaelle didn’t seem to care so the young ranger was welcomed in to the group, not exactly with open arms but, what can you expect from a bunch of evil bastards.

“So, we go to the caravan and hunt back along the minotaurs’ trail,” suggested Gaelle.

They are still sitting talking with Keldor at midday when it starts raining heavily. 

Helga would be unconscious until the morning, so they took the afternoon interrogating Keldor about his background, just in case he was another weirdo like Helga.

He was a Transylvanian who had got fed up with the interference of the Temple of Thor in the south of the country and decided to leave. It didn’t help matters that whenever he tried to range in the mountains he kept meeting Stone Giants who told him firmly to leave their lands. Finally, he had had enough and decided to head south.


3rd October 1699

In the morning light, Helga woke up. Her body was thrumming with the energy poured into healing by her familiar, a large worm-like creature living in her abdominal cavity which was symbiotically linked to her. She got a sense of its pleasure at bringing her back from the brink of death which put her in a very good mood. She was also buoyed by finally figuring out how to turn herself invisible.

“We didn’t think you were going to pull round,” Li Kung told her, as they settled back to allow Helga to finish healing.
“What happened to Gracientus?” Helga asked.
“You did such a good job of guarding that he was damn near cut in half,” replied Gaelle, trying unsuccessfully to make her feel bad for the priest’s death.

After lunch, they made good time riding to where the wagon was attacked.
They found the wagon overturned and several bodies that had been feasted upon by local wildlife.
The wagon had contained cloth which had been ruined by the elements and Gaelle reckoned that they would likely destroy it by getting it back on its wheels.

“Whoever produced the zombies didn’t send them against this,” reasoned Li Kung, “there’s nothing worth taking.”
The party decided to follow the zombies’ tracks, heading roughly south, until sunset when they stopped and set camp.

They were a little worried about putting Keldor on watch with Helga and they took several minutes of discussion to set watches.

4th October 1699

They pressed on through the day, heading towards Ionia, but didn’t find the source of the zombies.
While travelling, Gaelle used her meagre magic to converse with her dog. She wanted to teach it to hold the handle of a lantern in its mouth.


5th October 1699

The day dawned bright and clear. And freezing cold.
The decided to wrap up warm against the cold and continue on but Li Kung and Keldor were feeling the cold quite badly and couldn’t stop themselves shivering.

Shortly after lunchtime, when the temperature had risen to a balmy 10°C, they spied a copse on the top of a large low hill, to which the tracks led.
“Shall we go round the copse and see if the tracks come out the other side?” Li Kung suggested.
“Bear in mind that if this is where they came from,” said Cord, “how many were left behind?”

They circumnavigated the hill and found no tracks on the other side.
“We ready to investigate the copse now?” asked Gaelle.
Helga thought it could be a burial site of some sort, making the link to undead creatures, and Keldor reckoned it was too regular to be natural.
“We could try to burn it,” suggested Li Kung.
“It’s a bit wet for that to work,” replied Cord.

Not able to think of anything else, they gingerly made their way up the hill towards the copse. Tracking was very difficult in the dense undergrowth but Gaelle managed to follow the enormous footprints into the wood, up to an obviously constructed rocky outcrop with an opening facing them.
Gaelle scouted around and found human tracks coming out then going back in, about the same age as the minotaur tracks.

While Helga went to check the entrance for traps, Gaelle lit a lantern and placed it in her dog’s mouth.
Helga cast a spell that would enable her to talk to the others and went carefully ahead into the cave.

Moving slowly along the roughly worked, downward angled passage, Helga used her magic hand to hold a torch ahead of her. She was a little put out as, though she was creeping along almost silently, Cord was clanking along a few feet behind her.

After some distance, the passage opened out into a chamber. Nothing attacked the floating torch, and she paused to turn herself invisible before moving forward to the entrance.
In the torchlight, she could see two human zombies shuffling towards her. Stepping back, she informed the rest of the party and Gaelle and Cord prepared their bows to shoot them before they got too close.

Li Kung prepared to strike at anything to come within range, Cord stuck a couple of arrows in one zombie, taking it out and Keldor charged in to contact with the other. As he closed on the zombie, an ettin skeleton wielding two morningstars appeared out of the gloom and headed towards the rest of the party.
Helga fired off a pair of magic missiles at Keldor’s zombie, freeing him to attack the large skelington.
Realising that arrows would have little effect on the ettin, Gaelle dropped her bow, drew her new pre-owned greatsword and moved closer to the ettin.
Li Kung tumbled to contact with the ettin and stuck her psionically empowered foot right up its nether regions.
Cord also dropped his bow, drew a weapon and prepared his shield, moving to the ettin.
Keldor stepped a little closer and cast a spell.

The ettin smacked Li Kung and swished its left Morningstar over Cord’s head.

Helga, worried that despite being invisible the ettin would smack her in passing, crept further into the chamber to examine where it had come from. Finding only an alcove helped to settle her nerves.
Then, from out of the gloom, another figure approached that caused the party to doubt their effectiveness and think about legging it. Only briefly, however, as the mummy’s horrible aura failed to scare the party.
It then moved in and smashed its rotting fist into Gaelle's face.

Gaelle chipped away at the ettin skeleton, which then thumped Keldor and Gaelle back. Fairs fair after all.
Helga sent a pair of magic missiles at the mummy, not slowing it.
The mummy missed Gaelle by a hair’s breadth as she carved through the ettin’s ribcage and pelvis, becoming little more than a lumpy pile of dust.

Li Kung stepped over the dust and smacked the mummy, as did Cord.
Keldor stepped in and whirled his swords around in the mummy’s face, not actually hitting it.
Helga changed position and again sent two magic missiles into the horrific dead thing.

After the mummy had waved its arms in their general direction, Gaelle slashed her greatsword across its chest.
Li Kung dropped his glaive, grabbed his quarterstaff and cracked the mummy on the forehead, knocking off a big chunk.
Cord stepped in to a flanking position, wound up mightily and carved through the mummy, spraying dusty fragments everywhere.


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## robberbaron (Jan 28, 2005)

*Dramatis Personae Update*

Cord Seration – Human Fighter 6
Helga – Human(moreorless) Rogue 2/Sorcerer 4
Gaelle – Human Ranger 5/Fighter 1
Li Kung – Human Monk 4/Psy Warrior 1
Keldor – Human Ranger 2/Wizard 2


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## Shockwave (Jan 29, 2005)

Damn it, Seigfried dead just as he was getting interesting. Why do the story driven die so young?


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## Plane Sailing (Feb 1, 2005)

No, Shockwave, you've got it wrong... the USEFUL die young 

BTW, I'm certain that Robberbaron is making up a certain lasciviousness for Li Kung... the monk certainly didn't cop a feel of Helga while checking out her body as suggested!

Cheers


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## robberbaron (Feb 2, 2005)

Heh, heh.
Actually, you did say that you wanted to "be thorough with the examination" and had previously 'admired' her form so I don't think literary liberties were taken. Not far anyway


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## Shockwave (Feb 7, 2005)

Plane Sailing said:
			
		

> No, Shockwave, you've got it wrong... the USEFUL die young




Noooo! The curse! The curse! Die usefullness DIE!


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## Plane Sailing (Feb 7, 2005)

Gamed last night. Great fun. Shockwaves wizard took out more bandits with his quarterstaff than the raging half-orc barbarian. Li Kung did a great job with his combat reflexes and then took out two foes during a flurry of blows a single amazing roundhouse kick killed a wounded guy, cleaved onto an critically hit a second and dropped him instantly and then a shuriken was hurled into a third opponent. A far cry from his early days!


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## robberbaron (Feb 8, 2005)

Unfortunately, due to a shocking absence of preparedness (I managed to forget both the power lead for my laptop AND the microphone for my minidisc recorder) the notes from Sunday's game will be a little less detailed than you have become accustomed to.

Normal service will be resumed.


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## robberbaron (Feb 16, 2005)

*Oh, Mummy!*

As Cord’s Fullblade passed through the mummy’s torso it slumped to the ground in a huge could of vile-smelling dust. Cord was so close that he could not help taking a great lungful of the mummy-dust and Helga couldn’t keep her nose out of trouble. They were both badly affected and had to have a sit down to catch their breath.

Meanwhile, with the dust still settling gently, Gaelle, Li Kung and Keldor continued down the stairs from whence the Mummy had come.

The found a room with a large stone slab, engraved all round with a frieze depicting a warrior, and with a dusty vaguely humanoid outline on the top - obviously where the mummy had lain.

Shining the lantern around, Gaelle noticed a crack of darkness at the near end of the slab – it was covering a hole!
As Gaelle kept watch, Li Kung went to examine the floor around the slab and had his head behind it when two wights appeared from the entrance behind him and attacked.
The fight was brief; barely enough to work up a sweat, but Keldor felt the undeads’ icy-cold touch before the creatures were slain.

Looking down the stair into darkness, Keldor could hear a faint banging – maybe just the blood in his temples, but maybe something else.

Leaving the slab for later, they continued further into the hill, coming to a large room with three heavy wooden doors. To one side was a huge mural, showing a lone warrior wielding an axe fighting off a horde of misshapen, demonic creatures. All around him were the bodies of his foes, as well as countless human dead. He looked similar to the man depicted on the slab.
To his left was a gleaming city and to his right a swirling vortex of darkness. Nice.

Keldor could still hear the faint banging, seeming to come from behind one of the doors, but so quiet that he could not decide which one.

The left door opened easily into a room the floor of which was covered in bones, all of them cracked and broken. They would appear to have found the lair of the wights.

The second door led down a corridor, empty except for the remains of a small wooden plinth in the wreckage of which Keldor found a 3” diameter glass ball, internally streaked with red. The door at the end opened easily into an empty room. Empty except for an alcove with a small metal figurine. It looked like a man wearing a deeply hooded cloak and leaning on a greatsword, only with no body – just cloak and sword. It was also surprisingly heavy and un-tarnished. Keldor added it to the large marble in his bag.

Through the third door and they could now hear the banging more clearly, though it stopped as they approached the door at the end of the short corridor.
This was the only door that hadn’t opened with the lightest touch, though the others had also closed by themselves, prompting Li Kung to stand in the doorways holding them open.

Both Gaelle and Keldor pushed at the door for a minute or more until Li Kung stepped up and unleashed a mighty kick, breaking the lock and swinging the door wide, revealing a small room with a Zombie Minotaur about to charge them.
Li Kung, followed by the others, stepped in and struck at the creature, doing no more than scratching it before its axe took a chunk out of Li Kung. Slowly backing out of the room, they did a little more damage to the zombie but, as it squeezed itself through the doorway, Li Kung took a large slice out of its right shoulder with his glaive. Unfortunately for them it came through the door and, placing its enormous hand on the monk’s face, pushed him back 15’ and into open space. It didn’t help its cause much, however, as they quickly finished it off.
Inside the room was the body of a second  (or was that fourth?) Zombie Minotaur, obviously killed by its “brother” before it tried to batter the inward-opening door out – the banging they had been hearing.

Returning to the mural room, Gaelle checked it for secret doors, thinking that if she pressed the warrior’s eyes it would open. No matter how hard she pressed, no door opened.
Getting annoyed, Gaelle went back to the minotaurs and, dragging one of their axes with her, went on to attack the mural, hackling great chunks of plaster off what appeared to be a solid wall.
She must have made a mistake. Not like her.

They decided to return to the slab room to rest for a few hours to recuperate from the fight with the Minotaur, after which they again investigated the slab.
They exerted their strength for some time to no avail, only succeeding in moving the slab an inch to the sound of creaking and squealing mechanical devices. Admitting temporary defeat, they stood back only to hear a faint voice from under the slab.
“Good day to you, brave adventurers,” the voice said in quavering, accented Graecae. “If you wish to speak to the Master, you are welcome to come down.”
“Fair enough,” answered Li Kung.
“Then please stand away from the slab”
They took a step back as the slab quivered and, with a painful sound of tortured gears, slowly moved back away from the dark hole in the floor.
They could see nothing down the stairway revealed but, as Gaelle put her foot on the top step, tiny flames appeared all the way down the passage with a soft “whoomph”. She flinched minutely, remembering the last time flame had “whoomphed “in front of her. Her eyebrows had not yet started to grow back.

They entered a small chamber with a large marble sarcophagus, carved in the shape of an armoured warrior, and could see a small wizened figure to one side.

“If you wish to worship my Master, it is customary to do so on your knees”, the little man advised.
Standing, almost insolently, Gaelle replied “Did your master create all the undead around here?”
“Yes, my Master is most adept at creating unlife. Most adept. You may worship him now.”
“We were thinking of bringing more people down here, to meet your master. Maybe he could use them for his experiments?” suggested Gaelle, still firmly upright.
As the small man was about to restate the offer to drop to their knees, a pocket of shadow around the sarcophagus became somewhat deeper and a dark, shimmering shape rose from the stone effigy.
Whispering to his minion in some eerie language the darkness gave his instructions. “My Master says you may now worship him, if that is your choice.”
“I don’t think so,” stated Li Kung.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to..” the minion began as the darkness, whispering menacingly, swept forward and thrust a portion of itself deep into Li Kung’s chest. The monk, open mouthed and shocked to feel half of his strength sucked out of his body, staggered back a pace as the Great Shadow removed its appendage.
Gaelle attacked, receiving a lesser draining for her trouble while Keldor circled around it, firing a ray of fire harmlessly through it. Li Kung swept his staff through its insubstantial form and Keldor again sent a bar of fire through the dark being. Gaelle was having little luck until, after taking another minor draining of strength (if any draining could be called “minor”) managed to contact it with her greatsword. If she had only known the command word she could have scorched the undead thing as well.
Li Kung again hit nothing with his staff and Keldor fired a splash of acid at the wall the other side of the shadow, again passing harmlessly through it.
At last, they succeeded in dissipating the Great Shadow into the lesser darkness, much to the chagrin of its minion. The little man cowered behind the sarcophagus until they assured him they meant him no real harm. And he believed them!
He explained that he had been captured by the Shadow’s undead some time ago and had been employed writing its memoirs all this time. He asked what year it was and was horrified by the answer. He had been down here, only seeing the daylight a dozen times, for thirty years! 
He had been initiated in the “religion” of the Shadow and had some very minor spells he could cast. Nothing that would be particularly useful in adventuring, though more useful than him – he was 5’5” tall and weighed approximately 100 pounds. The shadow didn’t seem to understand about food and he had had to eat whatever he could lay his hands on. Keldor suppressed a shudder as he realise that probably meant cannibalism, at the very least.

“Did your master have any treasure?” asked Gaelle, getting back to the point.
The scribe admitted that he did and went over to a blank wall, pressed a very well concealed catch and revealed a small room containing 4 chests, “they are full of coins”, a potion, a scroll and a small pouch of gems, along with a greataxe that had not suffered the ravages of time.

Taking all the items, they made the scribe open the chests (just in case) and carry everything out of the room. He couldn’t actually carry the chests and only just managed to drag one out before collapsing in a panting heap. Deciding to do it themselves, they quickly discovered 1000 coins each of platinum, gold, silver and copper, which they split between themselves.
Keldor cast a magical detection and confirmed that the scroll, potion and axe were magical, though the axe held a strange additional feature that he could make out. It was as if the axe’s power was avoiding his arcane gaze. Weird.

After a further rest, they moved their booty up into the outer chamber, where Cord and Helga were still sitting propped against a wall, wheezing. There they were met by Boldo Chanunga and his new friend, Fragh the Uruk Barbarian. Fragh had been in a mixed Uruk/Orc group that had been taken over by Kron, the murderous fugitive Uruk. Kron had killed the chief and his bodyguard and declared himself chief, turning the generally roughly law-abiding tribe into a marauding band. Fragh didn’t mind that but hated the idea of an outsider just taking over like that, but knew that he was not powerful enough to take on Kron and his new cronies. He decided to leave and get help, training and experience before returning to claim what would become his birthright. 
Boldo had come upon the Uruk as he rested and, after removing all Fragh’s wealth from his pockets realised that he was very unlikely to get away with them so put them back before sneaking away and approaching the dangerous-looking Uruk from the front. Fragh took a liking to the tiny rogue, little more than quarter his height, and they had been together for some months. Neither particularly liked Byzantium: Boldo was never taken seriously and Fragh was run out of town for being a “bad sort” whenever he was seen by the Watch, so they kept to themselves in the wilds. A day ago they had come across the ruined wagon and chose to follow the trail back to the hill and the tomb, arriving after dark and in time to join the others for further adventures.


6th October 1699

Thinking that enough time must have passed that they would not look so suspicious returning to Byzantium, they helped Cord and Helga to their horses and headed back.
After a quiet four days in the saddle, taking it easy for the sake of their unwell members, the finally arrived back at their villa. Leaving the wounded there, the others first made their way to the Temple of Set to return Gracientus’ holy symbol.
Gaelle explained to Boldo that the Set Temple took rather unkindly to anyone who harmed one of theirs so they were going to go out of their way to ensure they were seen the best light possible.

They were warmly greeted and thanked for their consideration to their dead companion and were assured of Maxis’ (the High Priest’s) gratitude.
From there they travelled to Massos the jeweller to unload the sparkly stuff, then to the Mages’ Society, etc., to identify and exchange the items they had found. Deals were done and items ordered, before retiring to their villa for a few days’ rest and recuperation. After all, Li Kung was still a bit weak.

Boldo was charged with finding out whatever he could about possible jobs for them. Li Kung specified legendary treasures, hidden tombs and lone wizards in towers and the pygmy rogue went off to do his best. Meanwhile, the others disposed of their ill-gotten gains and ordered more personal items from the Mages’ Society – always happy to relieve an adventurer of his gold. After discovering that the Shadow’s axe was psionically-powered (a Collision weapon, altering its balance toward the head during a swing to do more damage) Li Kung decided to offer it to the Set temple in exchange for a belt that would enhance his monky abilities. Always on the lookout for items that might give them an edge, the temple agreed gladly.

Boldo found that there were many hundreds of tombs in the rocky hills of Ionia, with the possibility of many more still yet to be found. He also heard rumours of bandits, monsters and perhaps fouler things in the hills to the north of Turkistan, and it was to there that the party decided to go.


13th October 1699

Crossing the great Hellespont Bridge, a magnificent structure made of a strange metal which gracefully arced over the strait a hundred or more feet below (though it was mere string and driftwood compared to the fabulous 30 mile long Silver Bridge linking Granbretan with Normandia), they stopped at the Turkistani Border Post to enquire after notorious threats.
“For a moderate consideration…” the guards pointed them towards the far hills, some 2 days’ travel north of the capital, Ankara, where not only bandits might be found, but hordes of dragons, of every hue and size.
Gaelle handed over a gold coin, which the guards looked at with surprise and displeasure. The ranger added another but the guards were not happy until Keldor added a few more coins. Smiling and bowing to the most generous adventurers the guards watched as they rode off towards the hills and glory.
“Five silvers only half of them come back,” offered one guard.
“Ten says we never see them again,” countered the other.
“Heh, heh. You could be right at that.”


15th October 1699

Two days travelling across the plains of Turkistan brought them into the lower foothills of the range they had spied from the border. Gaelle, Keldor and Boldo were riding ahead to scout for anything interesting when Gaelle spotted a column of men in a dry river valley – they looked like bandits, twelve of them.
When she returned to the party, it was decided to move forward quickly to ambush the bandits before the bandit scouts (who hadn’t been seen but whose presence was assumed) found them.

This they did, apparently catching the bandits by surprise. 
The archers popping out of cover told them that they had been incorrect and Boldo was pinned down by two of them after he popped out of his own cover to shoot.

Arrows rained down into the valley prompting the bandits to charge the party – not their best move, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. The obvious leader moved closer to a very slim bandit who began firing magic missiles into whoever seemed the biggest nuisance at the time – Li Kung mainly.
Half a minute later, all the bandits who had charged in had fallen down, two of the scouts had scarpered, as had the bandit-mage (moving as fast as Li Kung could run) and the bandit leader (moving about as fast).
After making sure the bandits were really dead (some weren’t, but the party fixed that) the party, led by Gaelle, set about following the bandit leader’s tracks.
He had been accompanied by skilful scouts who, at several points, managed to obfuscate the trail sufficiently to force Gaelle to spend extra hours hunting for signs of passage.

Eventually, some 5 hours later, well after the sun had gone down, Gaelle lost the tracks again. She had been using her lantern to illuminate the trail but it had disappeared as the bandits crossed a rocky outcrop. Spending yet another fruitless hour searching in the fading light for the continuation of the tracks, the party were surprised by a pair of hidden bandit archers. These bandits must have been the least useful of the band, left behind to keep them out of the leader’s way as they were particularly useless, only scoring 1 hit out of 6 and that little more than a graze.

Swiftly dealing with them, Gaelle lost all chance of finding the trail again before daybreak and they settled down for what remained of the night.

Meanwhile, Cord and Helga had recovered from their nasty bout of corpse cough and followed the rest into Turkistan. Bribing the same border guards (“Good gig, this” “Yeah, soon be able to retire”) they headed towards the mountains. By the second evening, as they were about to set camp, they heard the sound of a brief fracas, not too far away in the darkness. Carefully, they picked their way through the rocks until they could see Gaelle wandering around with her lantern.
The gang was back together.


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## Shockwave (Mar 3, 2005)

Woo yeah fear my effective spellcasting, damned insubstantial sassenfrackin Shadow!


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## Plane Sailing (Mar 7, 2005)

However, since effective == will die soon, don't you think you're being a bit carried away


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## robberbaron (Mar 20, 2005)

*Crime Just Doesn't Pay - Part 1*

16th October 1699

During the night, Fragh the Uruk barbarian had leapt up and decided to go off in a different direction. He didn’t see any fun in killing a few measly bandits and it didn’t get him any closer to retaking his tribe.
Boldo, feeling that his new friend would not last long on his own, went along to persuade him to the contrary.

Over breakfast, the rest of the party interrogated the bandit they had captured during the night (Li Kung had grappled him unconscious). They wanted to know how big the bandit group was and how many scouty-rogue types there were. Li Kung was asking a lot of questions without waiting to hear the answers.
The captive, worried by the quick fire questioning but thinking that they might let him live if he cooperated (rolled 2 for Sense Motive) told them that there were four raiding parties, each with about fifteen men. Theirs was the only one to contain a magician.
“Any clerics?” pressed the monk.
“Not that I’ve seen”.
“So, nobody to take care of their spiritual welfare,” mumbled Helga in the background.
“Do they take prisoners?” interjected Gaelle.
“Rarely. Did once, a long time ago”
“Not keeping anyone for ransom at the minute?” asked Helga, hoping, perhaps, to take over the ransom process herself.
“No. We’ve been out for a couple of weeks so things might have changed. Doubt it”
“Where were you heading when we caught up with you?”
“Heading back by a ‘circuitous route’ to avoid meeting anyone. That worked well.”
“Not a successful mission then” sneered Li Kung, enjoying the bandit’s discomfort.
“Not exactly, no. Cold”
“Draw us a map to your hideout” ordered Li Kung, untying one of the bandits hands, luckily the one he used to write.
“So, that makes at least 50 bandits,” reasoned Gaelle. “10 to 1. Nice”
“If we know where they come from, we could bushwhack the other groups as they return” the monk added, not liking the thought of taking on 50 bandits.
“If I was a bandit leader“ Cord explained, adding a silent ‘maybe later’, “I wouldn’t have all the groups out at once. Maybe half at a time, more than likely the tougher ones, including the leader”
“So, 6 to 1. Getting better. 4 to 1 would be preferable, though.”
“Come on, most of those are going to be the same sort of plebs that you killed yesterday” said Cord, trying to make Gaelle feel better.

By this time the map was complete, showing the hills around the bandits’ lair, a small village and the rough layout of a palisade containing several buildings. The main building was dug into the hillside behind it.

“So, how many men can we expect to find there?” Gaelle asked the now more relaxed bandit.
He explained that there would probably be at least 2 groups, maybe 3. Even in significantly sub-zero temperatures like they were experiencing they still had to send out patrols to bring supplies.

“Any dragons?” asked Gaelle.
“Yeah, up in the mountains”
“Where?”
“Dunno exactly. We don’t go hunting them. Last group went out looking never came back”
”We do” added Li Kung sternly.

“We could probably sneak up closer and have a look at that palisade” suggested Cord.
“Bound to be a lookout up there” added Gaelle.
“Our two rangers could do some rangering then,” said Li Kung, “and have a look around.”
“OK”, agreed Gaelle, “except that this ranger (pointing to Keldor) is barely conscious”
“I’m hurt, but nothing a bit of rest wouldn’t cure” retorted the other ranger.

Deciding to continue on to the bandits’ lair and sneak up for a better look they packed up camp and Li Kung casually snapped their captive’s neck before they all marched off. Gaelle tutted and cut off his head, stuffing it into the sack with the others.

Taking most of the daylight, they rode close to the nearest hill, then waited halfway up while Gaelle and Keldor crawled through the grass toward the hill’s crest. Keldor was quiet as the wind, Gaelle was making enough noise for two. Over to their right was an obvious place to hide, giving an excellent view of the rest of their party.
Keldor, peering over the other side of the hill, spotted a man moving quickly, in cover, heading toward the village. Gaelle stood up and fired three arrows in his vague direction, rustling a bush near him.

The startled bandit began moving a little more slowly, into deeper cover.
Gaelle could still see him and sent another three arrows into the scenery around him.

“Well, they know we’re here” said Keldor, sagely, looking at Gaelle, who was using indistinct but obviously foul language to mark her lack of success.

“I wonder how our rangers are doing?” wondered Li Kung.

Upon looking back down the hill, however, neither ranger could spot the bandit, though Gaelle peered for some minutes at the cover. Then, Keldor saw him break from cover and sprint, dodging wildly, towards the gate of the palisade.
Gaelle loosed two more arrows at him, hitting with one and forcing him to break stride, but not injuring him badly enough to stop him running towards the now opening gate. The wind carried his shouts of alarm to them, though they couldn’t quite make out the words.

“Were you unlucky today or lucky last time?” asked Keldor, not understanding his companion’s poor shooting.
Not deigning to answer, Gaelle led the way back down the hill to the others, waiting patiently below.
“There was one, he ran” she explained succinctly.
“But you got him?” asked Cord.
“I shot him, but he got away. He just stood and watched” Gaelle offloaded some of the blame on Keldor who, in her eyes, should have at least carried a missile weapon, like a proper ranger.
“Do you want to borrow a crossbow?” Helga asked Keldor, who ignored her.

“So,” intoned Li Kung, “there was a scout who watched us approach and who got back to the fort and raised the alarm”
“Pretty much, yeah” agreed Keldor.
“Perhaps we should go back up there and watch. Chance are they will come out to deal with us” suggested a very calm Cord.
They tied the horses up and slunk to the top of the hill, to see what the bandits would do. Even the super-sneaky Gaelle and Helga lost sight of uber-sneaky Keldor as the ranger hugged the dirt like a worm.

From the top, they could see plenty of movement between the buildings and counted 10 bandits manning the palisades. They were convinced that the bandits had to come out to deal with them, sooner rather than later. 
“We could send Helga to lure them out with her feminine wiles” suggested Li Kung, perhaps hoping for another glimpse of pale flesh.
“She could exude pus at them,” sneered Gaelle.
“I secrete slime. I don’t exude pus,” Helga countered in her defence.
“Slime?” exclaimed Keldor. “What the hell are you?”
“Could go down there, but I don’t see any advantage at this point” answered Helga, ignoring the young ranger’s incredulity.
“Blonde Bimbo Airhead” muttered Gaelle.
“Blood Guts Slime” added Li Kung, sotto voce.

Staying in place for several minutes watching the bandits mount guard on the palisade, they counted at least a couple of dozen bandits in total. Cord was adamant that they would have to come out and deal with them. In his warrior’s mind, the bandit leader couldn’t let his losses go unavenged.
“Perhaps we should be on THAT hill,” suggested Keldor to Gaelle, pointing toward the hill behind the fort. “We would be much closer and you might have more luck hitting them with your arrows.”
Gaelle chose not to reply and continued to observe the comings and goings in the fort and on the palisade.

“I could jump that,” offered Li Kung, having judged the palisade as 20 feet high.
“Running jump?” inquired Gaelle. The monk nodded.
“Maybe we could come back when Helga has wings” offered Gaelle.
“That’s some way in the future,” answered the strange sorceress, “if I even go down that route. Difficult to hide wings. Prehensile tail, maybe.”
Gaelle shook her head and avoided the strange sorceress’ gaze.

“Maybe Helga could make us invisible and you bowpeople could cover us from here?” suggested the monk.
“Only lasts a few minutes, though,” advised Helga.
“That’s useless!” exclaimed Li Kung. “I was thinking of some of us hiding ourselves by the gate to go in invisible when the bandits sallied out. Maybe not.”
“You could get to the gate, though,” commented Gaelle.

 After an hour of observation they noticed that there were more bandits going into the fort than coming out. They weren’t sure what that meant, but it must have meant something.
“While you were studying your books this morning, “Li Kung turned to the general area where a perfectly hidden Keldor lay, “did you load up with significant magical power?”
“As much as I could,” the ranger defended himself.

Realising that the sun was beginning to dip towards the western hill, Cord suggested it might be a good idea to prepare some defences, just in case.
Helga wanted to move away from the area, get a good night’s sleep while the bandits would be on alert all night, and come back the next day when they would be a lot fresher than their foe.
“We’d still have to lose sleep defending ourselves,” Cord pointed out.

Li Kung thought it might be a good idea to use the bandits’ hide on the other side of their hill as it was a well-hidden, prepared site. Gaelle pointed out that there was another, similar, hide on the north side of their hill, though with a more restricted field of view while remaining in cover.

“If I was sending out a flanking force, I’d know where those hides were and take routes to avoid their fields of view,” Li Kung voiced his concern a second before Cord echoed the thought.
Cord determined that they could remove most of the spiky bushes from the crest of the hill and surround the hide with them. That might stop the bandit scouts from sneaking in on them.
It was agreed by the others and they spent the last 90 minutes of failing light cutting bushes and setting them in a defensive position.

Helga placed herself in the bandits’ hiding place, gaining a good view down the hill away from the fort, with a handful of caltrops laid to one side for extra protection, while the others arrayed themselves to protect the gaps in their screen of bushes. She asked if anyone had healing potions she could feed them in the event they went down, but no-one admitted to having any. Disappointed she prepared a spell which would allow silent communication between them, to cast in the event of an attack.

As Luna rose full in the star-filled sky, they spotted a pair of bandits running out of the fort gate and disappearing round the side of the hill.

Another cold half-hour later Gaelle’s dog, Rover, growled and the alerted party spotted several bandits moving down the hillside towards them, with two bowbandits a little further up the slope.
Gaelle loosed a volley of arrows, one heading towards Luna, one into a bush and the third into one of the bandits. Li Kung concentrated and sank several inches into the ground as his mass suddenly increased.

The bandits went to ground, particularly the one with the arrow in his guts, while Keldor cast an armour spell on himself. Cord prepared his sword, eyes searching all around him for further foes and Helga activated her message spell.

Two more bandits broke cover to the side of the hide and shot at Gaelle, who was shocked that she hadn’t seen them. She made up for it by putting her first arrow through a bandit’s eye, her next two killing his neighbour.
Li Kung went into action – in a flash of fists he knocked his closest foe unconscious.
The last two bowbandits both shot at Gaelle, not liking her ability to kill their friends with ease.
Keldor decided to do something stupid. He couldn’t see any other bandits so he stepped forward and flashed his sword around, making a target of himself, but no more.
Cord carved a bandit into a bloody heap and Helga maintained her vigil, listening to the sounds of bandit death around her and unable to hear much more than Rover’s growling.

Li Kung, not afraid of the bandits’ shortswords, was untouched. Keldor, a little more afraid, also remained unscathed. Gaelle shot another bandit to death.

Li Kung, still not afraid, flailed his limbs around in front of him, succeeding only in stuffing his foot deep into the thorn bush he was using for cover. Leaving much of his “Dude Field” behind (not my term – ask Plain Sailing to explain), mostly in the form of blood on the thorns, he concentrated and regained most of his appearance of cool superiority.

Keldor finally managed to draw blood, sorely hurting his opponent with two blows. He then had the rest of the bandit’s blood showered over him as Cord’s Fullblade passed clean through his body.
“I lose so many potential components that way!” bemoaned Helga from within her cover, noticing another bandit to the other side of the hide and firing her crossbow in his general direction.

Gaelle took an arrow in the thigh before an invisible bandit appeared beside her and stuck his shortsword and dagger into her abdomen, a little concerned that the ranger was not taken out. Gaelle’s luck reasserted itself as the bandit’s sword failed to connect with her when she shot him. Twice.

Li Kung, limping slightly from his bloody foot, stepped back, cut one bandit down and hurt another with his glaive. Keldor, choosing not to leave the hide, sent a ray of fire at the flanking bowbandit, scorching him badly, softening him up for Cord to eviscerate him on a charge. 
Helga fired another bolt off into the sky and Li Kung’s bandit sliced the monk across the forearm as Gaelle’s arrow pierced his ear and Li Kung’s foot ruptured his scrotum.

Mostly covered in bandit blood, the party dragged all the bodies into a pile so Helga could check them for magic stuff (the leather jerkin and sword of the invisible bandit) while letting the last bandit disappear into the moonlit brush.
Li Kung tried to remove the jerkin, thinking that he could wear it without spoiling his abilities but decided he was wasting his time when, after a few minutes of effort, he found that it felt like armour. Damn!

Helga performed first aid on her more wounded companions, while Gaelle managed to find the bandits’ incoming tracks in the moonlight. Gathering everyone together, they followed the trail around the hillside and down towards the back of the fort hill, right to a well-hidden dark entrance. They had found the back door!

Helga turned Gaelle invisible and she and Rover crept to the entrance for a bit of a scout. Rover could smell something in the opening, but nothing distinct or close. Cord jogged up to the entrance, not trying to move quietly across the pebble-strewn ground (not that he could anyway) in order to draw any bandit’s attention, while Li Kung sneaked up the other side.
The entrance was as quiet as it was dark. That is to say, very.
Keldor picked up a pebble, cast a light spell on it and tossed it into the yawning darkness. At least, he tried to. The pebble clipped the side of the entrance and ricocheted out, narrowly missing an unimpressed Cord. 
“You want to try throwing it again, then?” he asked the younger ranger.
Keldor, trying very hard not to embarrass himself further, picked it up and succeeded in tossing it some 60’ down the roughly dug passage, illuminating a couple of dark patches (side entrances?) as it bounced along.

Taking a minute to sort themselves out in to a line they entered the passage.
“If those are side passages, don’t go into them” warned Cord, taking up position behind the more sneaky members of the party. Actually, he was standing behind Helga who, in his estimation, needed all the help she could get. And some therapy.

Helga magically changed her appearance to one of the roguey bandits they had killed, complete with most of the injuries, and pretended to be a captive coerced into showing the party the way in.
She was relying on her reflexes to save her from any traps she might “find”, as she didn’t want to screw up her act by searching for them.

As they approached the shining pebble, it became obvious that there were, indeed, openings on both sides.
Cord and Li Kung coordinated their movements and both stepped into the side passages simultaneously.
And the waiting bandits’ swords swung harmlessly across their faces. The best laid plans of mice, eh?

A rapidly reacting Li Kung grabbed his bandit, but failed to get a good grip, Cord took a chunk out of his opponent, who continued to flail about with his sword before stepping back into the darkness. Li Kung, however, took a knife in the ribs from his bandit.
Helga moved toward the light, pretending to trip and fall, surreptitiously checking for traps.

Li Kung nutted his bandit, failing to put his lights out and Cord stepped into the deeper dark and unerringly slid his sword into the bandit’s chest. Then he wiggled it about a bit after the body hit the floor, just to be sure.

Out of the passage beyond the light, a bandit appeared and stuck his sword into Helga’s back – he hadn’t been taken in by her acting – and another bandit stepped into Cord’s reach. Gaelle, at the back, called to Keldor to duck and prepared to shoot when he did.

Li Kung’s bandit grazed his knife across the monk’s ribs, without breaking the skin, getting a knee in the cods for his trouble. Li Kung’s shoulder gained an even covering of bandit puke before the monk twisted the bandit’s head rather further than it normally went. The already limp bandit went a bit limper and twitched a bit.
Helga, bravely, chose to get up, apparently not hearing Gaelle’s call and receiving a flesh wound from the bandit next to her, before moving back down the passage past the two rangers.

Cord and his bandit swapped swishes while Helga’s attacker and Keldor swapped blood before the young ranger ducked. Gaelle’s arrow parted Keldor’s hair to take the bandit in the throat. Keldor got some more blood showered over him.
Li Kung tried to hurl his unconscious bandit down the passage but only managed to drop him at his feet, before bravely tumbling forward into the darkness. 

Cord’s bandit was feeling lucky – the Fullblade hadn’t come within a foot of him for a whole 12 seconds – and made the most of it by stepping away, into the black passage.

Li Kung heard another bandit move towards him and felt the shortsword whistle past his arm, but couldn’t really see anything. Keldor attempted to kick the light stone further down the passage, but only managed to scuff his boot. Gaelle, feeling that she needed more light, opened up her lantern and called Rover to move in front of her, as Helga moved back to the front of the queue.
Li Kung thought about how effective his head had been and unleashed a flurry of head butts on his unsuspecting foe, breaking the bandit’s nose and fracturing his skull, his wounds exacerbated by his face hitting the floor shortly afterward.
Across the passage, Cord deftly revealed his bandit’s intestines, neatly sidestepping the spilled offal.

The fight over, Cord and Li Kung investigated the side passages, finding two small guard rooms devoid of anything interesting. 

“Right,” said Gaelle, purposefully, “let’s go!” and threw the light-stone further down the passage, striding off after it.

After some 200 yards further into the hillside, approximately half-way through, Keldor plainly heard a ‘ching-a-ching-a-ching-clang’ noise from ahead. 
“Either they’ve closed a portcullis or they’ve released the Cave Monster” surmised Cord.
Li Kung listened intently for the sound of an imaginary enormous stone ball on its way towards them.
”I think the tunnel slopes away from us” Cord reassured the monk.
Li Kung turned and tried to focus his hearing behind them, up the slope, still unable to hear anything untoward.

Shaking his head Cord led on into the hillside, right to a metal grille blocking the passage.
Exerting himself mightily, he only managed to lift it about a half inch before having to let go.
Helga squeezed past (everyone shrunk back slightly to avoid any slime) and tried to find a locking mechanism. She couldn’t see anything but thought that the grille had definitely been locked in the down position.
“Can you poke your snake through the hole?” Li Kung asked Keldor, to raised eyebrows.
“It’s a bit cold, but I suppose so”.
Shelving that idea, Li Kung and Cord decided to team up on the task, one kneeling and one standing.
With a few minutes of preparation and an almighty heave they heard a metallic ‘snap’ and the grille came free.

Returning to the previous fight’s debris, Cord liberated a couple of shortswords, with which Helga disabled the grille in the up position.
“Maybe we should leave it down to stop you lot running away” mused Cord.

Getting herself back in character as a wounded captive bandit, Helga led the way, on into the hillside.

Stumbling through the passage, doing a fair impersonation of a bandit who had been thoroughly duffed up, Helga only just noticed that she was putting her foot onto something sharp as the point pierced her sole. Jerking her foot back she could make out a patch of passage with a large number of spikes stuck in the floor. Carefully avoiding the spikes, they continued on, lobbing the light-stone before them.

A hundred feet further on, as the light-stone bounced to illuminate a small chamber, Cord could just make out a pair of bandit archers as they loosed. The fighter’s quick-thinking could have saved Helga as he lifted and swung her behind his shield, but the arrows struck her before he had completed the move.
At least they struck her in her rump instead of her belly.
Taking the opportunity to get out of the imminent fracas, Helga slumped, as if dead, while Cord dropped her and stomped forward to meet these latest foes. Straight through another patch of spikes, some getting through his boots. “Spikes!” he yelled, as he charged up to one of the bowmen and bloodied his sword.
The room they were in was faintly lit by several small candles set in niches in the walls. Not enough light to read by, but the only thing Cord wanted to read was the auguries from bandit entrails.

From her position on the floor, Helga couldn’t see much beyond the light-stone, not even enough to target a magic missile when the bandit swordsmen, who had been hiding in the chamber’s corners, stepped in to combat.
Gaelle, gagging for combat, moved closer but couldn’t see any spikes.
Having noticed where Cord had stepped on spikes, Li Kung moved up behind Cord and thought, briefly, about poking his glaive past the warrior. A job made more difficult by Cord flailing his Fullblade around wildly. The bandits were kept at bay, however.
The monk, also gagging for combat, prepared to move past Cord as soon as he cut the lead bandit down.
The moment the bandit’s bleeding corpse hit the ground, Li Kung sprung forward, bounced off Cord’s broad back to land exactly where he started, on his backside. Leaping back to his feet, the proud monk’s demeanour suggested that this was the result he had planned all along. No-one laughed.
“There you go, Cord” he said, “I’ve distracted him for you!”

Gaelle shouted “Duck!” hoping vainly for a clear shot while Cord chopped away at the front, not ducking.
Li Kung again tried to tumble past Cord and through the bandit’s legs, again landing on his arse, though at least not with a bandit sword in him.
Cord was interested in why Li Kung kept jumping on him, but was too busy killing bandits to give it too much thought. As his opponent fell, the two bowmen across the room fired, one arrow grazing Cord’s thigh.

Li Kung, who had obviously taken a clumsy pill that morning, leaped past the remaining bandit swordsman, who waved his sword roughly where Li Kung would have been had he was crawling, and presented his foot for an archer to sniff.

Gaelle, finally getting a clear shot, ricocheted her first arrow past Cord’s left ear and embedded her second in the wall by his right ear. Cord was again impressed by her prowess with the bow.

Keldor, thinking that being in front of Gaelle might not be the safest place to be, moved to the side and killed the last swordsbandit.
As the two archers fired at Li Kung, who was standing right in front of them, the doughty monk twirled around, grazing the wall with his foot just managing to not fall over, before kicking one of them in the belly. He did, however, take two painful arrows in the chest. A little bit more painful than he was expecting. And was that a fizzing he could hear?

Now pained and annoyed (and a little embarrassed), Li Kung broke one archer’s jaw before stamping on his mate’s face.

After a few moments’ pause Helga got to her feet and went to minister to her companions, who were already rifling through the bandits’ possessions.

Li Kung examined the arrows as Helga pulled them out but couldn’t see anything funny about them. When he looked in the bandits’ quivers, however, he found that each had a separate section, specially lined, containing 3 arrows. Arrows that appeared to have been dipped in clear grease-like substance. Acid! Nasty. He considered scraping some of the goop onto some shuriken, but realised that he wouldn’t be able to do anything with them that wouldn’t wipe the acid off. 

Gaelle took one of the quivers and attached it to Rover’s harness. It nicely balanced the quiver on the dog’s other side. Not having noticed this trick before, Helga and Keldor were suitably impressed.

Taking a few moments to get their breath back, the party prepared to move on.


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## Plane Sailing (Apr 4, 2005)

Looking forward to the next update...


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## robberbaron (Apr 12, 2005)

Heh, me too.
I've been a bit slack for a few weeks (playing KotOR2, YoHoHo Puzzle Pirates and sundry other diversions) but I have nearly completed the next update - hopefully get it on the SH this week.


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## robberbaron (Apr 23, 2005)

*And the fun continues....*

GM's note: In an effort to get the story posted, I have not been able to prrof-read this post as thoroughly as normal. Sorry for any errors.


16th October 1699

The party moved further down the passage, lit by the light-stone kicked ahead of them.
Suddenly, Keldor feels something click beneath his boot but, before he can shout a warning, the floor below Helga and Cord opened up and they disappeared. As the rest looked down the hole, they could hear Helga’s screams and Cord’s curses for quite some time, though getting fainter. They had obviously gone quite some distance. The shute below the trap was only gently angled but well greased, allowing Cord and Helga to accelerate swiftly into the darkness.

Deciding not to dive down themselves, the rest of the party (hereafter to be known as “the party”) called down that they would come for them, then continued down the passage, looking a bit more carefully for traps.

A hundred feet further on the passage was blocked by a heavily iron-bound door with a small grille at head height. As they stepped nearer, a panel behind the grille was slid aside and a voice called out in Turkesh “Stand! Let us talk!”
“OK, we talk” answered Li Kung.
“I have no desire to lose any more of my men. Therefore, I am willing to give you a gift of treasure to make you go away and leave us alone”
“We’re reasonable men” said Li Kung.
“And women” added Gaelle”
“Good. In five minutes this door will open. In this room there is a door to your right. Behind this is some treasure. Please, take, leave.”
“You know, as well as I, treachery would not be a good idea” warned the monk.
“Treachery is only a good idea if you win” replied the bandit. “On this occasion, it is too close to call”
“Agreed. Do you have any annoyances we could deal with for you?” offered Li Kung in a spirit of helpfulness.
“At the moment, only you. Until you came, we were large enough to deal will the local annoyances”
“Any other bandit groups about?” asked Gaelle, Li Kung interpreting for her.
“To the east, yes. There are no groups of ‘free spirited’ individuals like us towards the north as it is too close to the mountains and there are many monsters. Not that monsters are necessarily a bad thing but they do not taste good and have little treasure. Except for the dragons, but we do not bother them.
So, five minutes, this door will open then help yourselves. Then we will watch you leave.”

Five minutes later there was an audible click and the door creaked open.
“Any precautions we want to take?” asked Li Kung in whispered Graecae.
“Anything that moves, I shoot” said Gaelle.

In the room revealed there were three heavily iron-bound doors; two ahead were locked, the one to the right was not.
Keldor pushed the door open revealing a small room containing a chest, a couple of sacks and a small wooden crate. 

Keldor perused the containers for magical emanations, perceiving that there were several points of magic inside the crate, chest and the larger of the sacks, as well as on the chest itself, which had two separate portions of magic on it.
“Great. Just when our rogue has gone down a hole” he complained, unable to see anything untoward with the floor. Li Kung wandered up for a look and thought that the smaller sack might contain a pair of boots.
He also couldn’t see any traps, though.
“Righto, then” said Keldor as he stepped into the room. He stepped over to the smaller sack and tossed it back to Li Kung, watching from the just outside the door.
Keldor then stepped across to the chest, hearing a click as the floor fell away from him. He reeled back from the pit straight underneath the enormous stone block as it fell from the ceiling. Luckily, the blow sent him into the wall where he sat, badly bruised, waiting for the spray of acid which never came.
Li Kung, seeing Keldor as the dust cleared over the 3-foot high block of stone, asked if he was OK.
“Oh, the pain,” the ranger moaned as he shakily got to his feet and crawled on top of the block. Assured that there wasn’t a second block waiting to squash him he leant over the side and examined the small crate for “pointy, jabby things”, finding none. Using his shortsword he managed to lever the top off, seeing three smaller, nicely-made wooden boxes and a glass bottle containing some colourless liquid.
Reaching out, he removed the boxes and bottle from the crate and passed them back to Li Kung.

Gaelle and Li Kung, meanwhile, were listening at the closed doors, not able to hear any bandit activity.
“Do you want to come back out here so we can take a look at your wounds?” offered Li Kung.
Upon investigation, Keldor had a series of nasty scratches all the way down his chest which Li Kung was unable to repair. “Good job you’re not Helga,” he noted.

Still in a lot of pain and feeling a little faint, Keldor climbed back over the block to get the chest. Just able to reach the handles from the block he was about to pull it toward him when Li Kung suggested tying a rope around his waist, in case he collapsed and had to be dragged out. 
“Wouldn’t want all your goods, I mean you, falling down a hole, would we?”

A few minutes later, the chest was on top of the block and being passed out the door. Keldor was being very careful as he didn’t know what the magics on it were and was worried that, if dropped, the lid might spring open and a nasty trap activate. The chest safely on the ground, he returned with a grapple into the room to fish for the large sack. 

Finally, with all available booty back outside the door, they had a look in the sacks. Li Kung tipped a pair of boots out of the smaller sack, to make sure there weren’t any scorpions lurking inside them. Nothing appeared, so he put them back and the party picked up all their new kit and retraced their steps outside.
As he picked it up, Li Kung felt the large sack and thought it might contain a set of leather armour.
“But it’s not magical!” exclaimed Gaelle. “What’s the point of keeping non-magical leather armour?”
“Could be masterwork,” replied Li Kung, swinging the sacks onto his shoulder and moving off back down the passage.

Being careful to avoid the traps, they discussed their next moves.

“Firstly, they’re bastards who tried to kill us” said Li Kung, getting to the nub of the matter. “So, we should have no compunction against coming back, when we’re fit and well, and wiping them out.”
“Uh huh” replied Gaelle, thoughtfully.
“And they’re worth money” the monk continued. That seemed to settle that.

Coming to the exit, Gaelle sneaked ahead to scope out the area outside the passage, unable to see anyone by the light of the full Luna.
Feeling the intense cold, from a biting wind under a clear sky, they decided to hurry back to one of the hides so they could get warm and recover. Unfortunately, Gaelle was unable to light a fire in the wind until she stuffed her sword deep into the tinder and commanded it to flame. 

Leaving Rover on watch, they slept until well after dawn.


17th October 1699

While breakfast was being prepared, Li Kung took the boots out of the sack and put them on, spending the next few minutes running and jumping about to see if they made him faster or bouncier. If they did, the benefit was negligible and he wondered if he needed a command word to activate them. He asked Keldor (the closest thing they had to an expert on magic) to suggest likely words, presumably in Sorcére, the language of magic.
Keldor came up with several likely words, though none seemed to work and could have been anything.
Li Kung, as a last attempt to get some sign from the boots, clicked his heels together and said “khan-zas”, apparently an ancient Xing word of some supposed power, vaguely concerned with rainbows. 
“Home is a place like no other!” he intoned, to no avail.
Not willing to let it go until he was certain he would not blunder on to the command word, the monk wandered about shouting words in Turkesh, thinking that the mage who made the boots might have been a local man and hence set a local word as the command.
“$£%* it!” he cursed in Turkesh, briefly looking worried in case that triggered some mishap.

By the time his breakfast was nice and cold he had grudgingly admitted defeat and put the boots back in the sack.

The party (less the two members down a deep hole inside the hill) decided to investigate the other magic items they had recovered, rather than rush to their companions’ rescue.

They first turned to the chest, locked with two discernable enchantments on it. Keldor didn’t think it had rattled during their return from the hillside so it was either empty or well-packed.
“We don’t have any way of picking the lock, do we?” Li Kung asked, rhetorically. “We could break it open and risk damaging whatever is in it. Or we could go back and kick those bastards in, get the key, and anything else they have.”
Keldor wasn’t sure. He thought they ought to find out what else they had before going back in.
“Perhaps there is someone nearer than Byzantium who could tell us what they all do?” the ranger suggested.
“There’s someone a lot closer who knows what it all does” said Li Kung.
“We’ve still got to get Helga and Cord out” Gaelle reminded them.
“Oh yes,” said Li Kung, as if he had forgotten all about them, “we must get them back.”
“Cord’s going to be pissed” noted Keldor.

Deciding to put their booty investigation on hold, they went down to the village outside the fort, to see if the peasants could be of any help.
Gaelle knocked on the first door they came to.
“Yeeees,” answered an obviously very old woman. At least she sounded very old.
“Open the door” Li Kung said in his most menacing tone.
“Coming,” said the voice and sure enough, a half minute or so later, an old woman nervously opened the door.
“What do you want me to say to her?” Li Kung asked Gaelle, as the old woman shuffled across her hovel toward the door.
“Give her some money and send her off to get one of the bandits” she replied.
“But what do we want her to say to the bandits?” Li Kung continued.
“That we want our friends back. Or we’ll raze the place to the ground ‘cos we ain’t pleased about the traps. And we want information.”

Li Kung passed this message and a silver piece to the woman, who hobbled off to the fort gates under their watchful gaze and that of several guards on the palisade.
She had a conversation with one of the guards and entered as one of the gates was opened. Some ten minutes later, the gate opened and she returned.

“They said your companions are free to go. They were not harmed, just got a bit slimy. What information did you want?” she said when she had got her breath back from all the unusual exercise she was getting.
“We want words to get into the chest. We want words to make the boots work.” Li Kung told her, still being as menacing as he could.
The old woman got halfway to the palisade, seemed to think of something and turned around, coming back to the party.
“Erm. When you said ‘raze to the ground’ did you mean our village or them?” she said, pointing toward the fort.
“Everything” Li Kung was enjoying this.

“Oh, OK. You sure?” mumbled the old woman disconsolately.
“Yes, we are sure. We are complete bastards” Li Kung was definitely enjoying this.

She turned and again trudged up to and through the gateway, after a slightly more protracted discussion with one of the guards. 

Some minutes later she returned, looking worried.
“Erm, he says alright. He’ll send them out the back door with your friends. At the back entrance”
“Pray to your gods that they do not deal falsely with us” Li Kung continued to intimidate the old woman, who was already on the edge of emptying her bowels on the ground.
“Yes, I will. Thank you” she whined as she went into her house and closed the door. The party of complete bastards could hear something being scraped across the floor and banged into the door, probably a chair.
“’ere, Achmed. Achmed, wake up. <slap> You’ll never guess what they wanted,” they could hear the old woman talking, presumably to her husband.

The party made their way round the hill to where they could observe the back entrance.
At the appointed time, Cord and Helga (only slightly mode slimy than normal – the shute had been very well greased) emerged, blinking at the sunlight, from the passage.
They had been deposited in a heap far below the passage through the hill and were unable to climb out before they were released. As suspected, Cord was not in the best of moods. He wasn’t overly keen on Helga anyway and being cooped up with her for 12 hours had done nothing to sweeten their relationship.

“She’s been making eyes at you since Seigfried died,” Li Kung reassured Cord.
“If we’d been down there longer I might have broken, but, my will was resolute” Cord replied. “So,” he added. ”We going to kill those bastards or what?”
Li Kung was more immediately interested in the information Cord carried and eagerly accepted a folded piece of paper. 
He opened it and remembered that he couldn’t actually read any language except Xing.
“Do you want me to have a look?” offered Keldor. After a few moments study, he thought he understood what was written.
The note read, “The chest is magically and mechanically locked. There is no word to open it. There is no point in subterfuge on the point of the boots as you would find out that no word would work. They are not magical; it was a ruse.”
“Ah,” said Li Kung, sagely, presumably contemplating bloody murder.

“Right then,” said Keldor. “We stand well away from the chest and I open it magically”
It was agreed so he cast his spell and the chest opened. Li Kung accompanied Keldor as he tentatively moved up to the chest to peer inside, hoping that the trap wasn’t proximity-based, rather than merely upon opening the chest. 
“So, you don’t trust me to look on my own,” he said to Li Kung.
“I could look on my own, if you like” suggested the monk. “I can sometimes dodge things”
“No, we’ll go together. You might not be able to identify what is in there, anyway”

The chest was nicely padded, with fair quality material, and lying on the padding was what looked like a burnt twig.
“So, we’ve crapped out again, then” moaned Gaelle.
“Could be a wand” Li Kung looked on the bright side.
Keldor had a good look at it and said that its appearance was consistent with wands of some sort of fire power.
Just in case, Li Kung removed all the padding material from the chest, but didn’t find any hidden goodies.

“So, we’ve got boots that are useless” noted Gaelle.
“And a nice chest” added Li Kung, still shooting for the half-full glass.
“And a wand” said Gaelle, not buying into the monks positive-thinking.
“There’s some boxes we haven’t looked in yet, and the bottle” Li Kung continued brightly.

Upon opening the boxes they found two gold rings and a gold medallion on a chain. Bling!
Keldor cast another detecting spell, confirming that the wand, bottle and gold items were all magical. Concentrating on their emanations, he concluded that they were all enchanted with illusion magic.
His heart sank.

“That sounds like they’ve been enchanted to appear like treasure” said Li Kung, the bright side beginning to fade.
“So, we kill them all, then” declared Keldor.
“Front or back?” asked Li Kung, the bright side now eclipsed by the need to spill blood. “I suspect they will have taken extra precautions at the back entrance now”
“We could always wait until tomorrow, pretend that we’re happy with what we’ve got, then go through the front door” Keldor suggested.
“Bastards!” Gaelle’s anger finally broke. ”I really hate people jerking my chain”

“We could do with blocking the back entrance, so they can’t escape that way” said Li Kung, before they realised that they just didn’t have that sort of magic to hand.
“Cord and Helga could guard it” Li Kung continued.
“While we go for the suicidal frontal attack” added Keldor, not able to see the monk’s bright side.

“Your opening spell was useful. Can you cast any other useful spells?” Li Kung asked Keldor.
“Tomorrow, he can cast his opening spell again, to get through the gates” Gaelle noted.

After some discussion, they decided to use their bows, from the top of the hill behind the fort, to pick guards off the palisade. If they could coax the bandits out, then so much the better. Otherwise, they could at least lessen the odds a little.

Looking over the crest at the palisade, they could clearly make out four targets and began raining arrows down on the bandits.
Gaelle’s first arrow went clean through a bandit’s head, just missing the one behind him, and killing another with 2 arrows to the chest. Keldor fired a magical acid arrow at a bandit on the far side of the palisade, causing him to scream in pain and run for cover, fizzing.
Swapping pain with the one remaining bandit on the palisade, Gaelle swiftly finished him off. 
The bandit hit by Keldor’s spell managed to make it to the fort before collapsing in pain, his back laid open by the acid.

Picking up a spare shortbow, Keldor added his skill to the others’ as they shot at the bandits moving towards their side of the palisade. 

The bandits moved into position behind the palisade, losing two more to Gaelle’s arrows, and managed to give some pain back to the party – Gaelle was winged by a pair of arrows. They swapped arrows for a while before Li Kung came up with a cunning plan. He would jump over the palisade, surprising the bandits and attacking them from the rear. His first idea was to run over the top of the hill and jump across the gap to the palisade. Hitting the top of the palisade with his belly, he fell back and landed in a tidy heap on the grass. Before impact, Li Kung could see the bandits’ wide eyes. After, he could hear their chuckling, though that ceased as soon as Gaelle began shooting again.

Considering the difficulty of hitting Gaelle and Keldor, the bandits decided to shoot at Li Kung, winging him before an arrow sliced through his earlobe into his shoulder.

Spurred by the pain, the monk decided to have another go. He couldn’t make it back to the top of the hill and jump, so he ran 20’ up the hill, turned, sprinted back to the base of the palisade and jumped up.
His fingers failed to reach the top by several feet.
Gaelle was so taken aback by this that she overdrew, slipped and fell on her bum.

After a brief flurry of arrows that hit no-one, Li Kung had another go, this time managing to get a grip on the top of the palisade. Unfortunately, due to a game mechanic, he was left dangling by his fingertips as the archery battle raged on around him.
Finally, Li Kung swung himself over the top and chucked a shuriken at the last bandit, who already had two arrows in him.
That got his attention, just in time for Gaelle to stick another two arrows in the now dead bandit.

Li Kung tied off and dropped a rope over the palisade for the others to climb up, being unable to see any more bandits. Gaelle was concerned about getting Rover inside and wasn’t impressed when Keldor suggested tying him to the end of the rope and pulling him up, so she walked around to the gate so the others could open it for them. 
Li Kung edged around the palisade, carefully eyeing the buildings, before hopping down to let one ranger and her dog in.

Deciding that they had some time, Gaelle went around collecting all the shortbow arrows she could find, while Keldor and Li Kung set about burning the out-buildings.

Sporadic arrow fire came from the main building, injuring Gaelle as she darted between buildings. Li Kung, thinking quickly, removed the door off a soon-to-be-burning building to use as a mantlet, protecting them from the hidden archers.

“So, waiting until tomorrow morning is off, then?” asked Keldor, who was wondering about the sudden change in plans.
“No, we can still do that”, replied Li Kung, as he pointed Keldor towards the gates so he could remove them and add them to the fires.

After picking up all the arrows, Gaelle turned her attention to filling her sack with bandit heads. Lucky it was so cold, or the heads would have smelt much worse than they were.

Annoyed that no-one was coming out to deal with them, Gaelle took several bits of burning barrack building and set fire to the palisade, while Li Kung shielded her with his mantlet. Arrows still came at them from the main building, though none got past the monk’s door.

“Why don’t you shoot back?” he asked Gaelle, thinking that she was probably capable of getting an arrow through an arrow-slit the wrong way. As she only had nine longbow arrows left, she was reluctant to attempt it and advocated retiring to a warm location to rest up before pressing their attack.

As they moved through the village, it was obvious that all the people had gone. Where they had gone to was not an important enough question for Gaelle to cast about for tracks.

During the rest of the day, they discussed attacking that day, but after finding that Keldor’s spell capability was so depleted that he could get them into the bandits’ building, they decided to wait the night and hit them early the next day.

Later that evening, Gaelle set a magical alarm spell and they took turns on watch, except Keldor, who needed a full night’s sleep in order to prepare more spells.


18th October 1699

It was the early hours of the morning and Luna was just setting. 
Li Kung lay on his stomach watching the hillside from his well-prepared hide, certain that he was as well hidden as he could be. And he was right. His enemies could not see him, but they could see the camp and the monk’s position slightly compromised his field of vision.

The bandit leader and his mage had sneaked up the hill without Li Kung seeing (they were invisible) or hearing them. When they were 60’ away from the camp the leader plucked a bead off his necklace and tossed it into the camp as his mage cast a spell of his own. 

Unannounced, the peace and quiet was broken by a pair of whumphs as fireballs detonated among the party.

Li Kung was fortunate in that he was completely sheltered from the mage’s blast, but was singed by the other. Gaelle, Keldor and Rover were less fortunate as they were asleep and only survived by being partially shielded by the hide’s defences. Keldor was unconscious, Rover barely alive.

The night was further illuminated by a streak of electricity that crackled past Li Kung, who managed to roll out of the way at the last moment, straight into a couple of arrows from the bandit archers who he had also not spotted or heard approaching.

Gaelle leapt to her feet and went to string her bow, only to find that the string snapped having been burnt by the magical fire. Bugger!

Li Kung popped his head out of cover so he could see the bandits.
“Are we attacking them?” he asked Gaelle.
“Up to you” she replied, not really listening but looking at the skinless mass that was Rover.
“Retreat and regroup” the monk said, running across the camp, over the hide and down the hill, away from the bandits.

As he ran, he could hear the bandit leader laughing.

The mage cast another spell, with no obvious result, and the bowbandits showered Gaelle with arrows.
She dropped to her knees bedside Rover and carefully poured a healing potion down his throat.
Rover whimpered in agony, as some of his wound dried up and regrew skin.

Li Kung, not running away any further, circled round the hill and moved into the edge of the village to give himself a good view of the gate. There he waited.

The bandit leader, pleased with himself for pulling off the attack turned and walked casually away from the camp, back to his fort, his mage in tow. Chuckling.

Gaelle, not looking over the defences, cast a spell on himself and Rover to allow them to run faster should the bandits press the attack.
Li Kung stayed in cover and observed the bandits’ return.

Now that Rover was no longer in imminent danger of suppurating to death, Gaelle turned her attention to the faintly alive Keldor, but was unable to locate a wound with which she could deal. He was a single wound, leaking plasma.

---

Looking up from the small badly cooked rodent he was eating, Fragh saw two flashes of orange light on the distant hilltop. Nudging Boldo awake, they moved carefully out of their shelter and down into the deserted village. Boldo could see Li Kung sprint across the open ground between hill and village and dive for cover behind one of the buildings. 
Intrigued, they wandered through the village until they were standing behind Li Kung, wondering what he was hiding from.

---

Finally, the monk heard the sound of breathing behind him and spun around, managing to stop his fist from impacting with the Uruk’s chest.

“I’m glad to see you guys” he whispered, recovering his fist.

---

Unable to do anything to help Keldor, though he had stopped leaking profusely and was merely oozing gently, Gaelle took it upon herself to rifle through his belongings, in the hope of finding another healing potion, only to feel the fangs of Keldor’s snake familiar in her hand.
Not willing to risk another bite, she tipped the backpack up, emptying everything onto the ground. 
The tiny viper slithered onto his spellbook, while Gaelle picked through his belongings, finding nothing to help. 
Realising that it was very cold, the snake moved over to Keldor who, though leaking, was at least warm.

A few moments later, Li Kung, Boldo and Fragh strolled up the hill, having watched the bandits re-enter the fort.
“They must have hit us with their biggest weapons” reasoned the monk, “which means at the moment they haven’t got them, but by tomorrow they might. Downside is that we’re weakened. How’s Keldor?”
“Alive. Barely. I think” replied Gaelle.

Fragh poked Keldor’s body and pronounced him alive, though not much use except as food, and he was a bit overdone.

“If we’re going to attack them we should do it tomorrow. I mean today” advised Gaelle.
“I could sneak in invisible, if that would help” added Boldo.
“We could rest up during the day and hit them tonight. They wouldn’t have the chance to get their spells back and we would feel a bit healthier” considered Li Kung.

Agreeing, they picked up Keldor and moved down the hill and away into the nearby woods, to spend the day and to rejoin with Cord and Helga, who had been moved away from the camp to recover from their ordeal in the bandit fort.

The sun began to rise as they approached the woods.

Boldo offered to stay and observe the bandits, but Gaelle didn’t think he’d see anything.
“We know where they are and we know the ways in and out” explained Li Kung, “though actually getting in would be difficult”.

They sat in quiet contemplation for a while before discussing what to do about attacking the bandits.
Helga managed to heal some of Keldor’s wound, though still leaving him very weak.

Later in the day, Boldo sneaked round the hill, through the village and into the bandits’ compound and secreted himself in a burnt building, close to the fort, to watch.
About an hour later, Gaelle, Li Kung and Fragh followed and set themselves behind the burnt remains of the palisade to observe the arrow slits. The unconscious Keldor was left hidden in the woods, covered to keep him warm.

They waited for something telling to occur. It didn’t.
The sun set and a full Luna rose as the temperature dropped.

As lights were lit in the fort, Gaelle was just able to make out figures moving beyond the arrow slits and decided to have a go at them with her remaining arrows.
Stepping out of cover she fired three arrows; the first hit the fort, the second went wild when her bow creaked alarmingly during the release and the third went clean through the arrow slit and into a bandit.

Now that they could see her, the bandits peppered Gaelle’s immediate area but failed to hit her.

Waiting ten minutes, Gaelle poked her head round the side of the palisade, spotted a single lookout behind the arrow slits and shot him with one the bandits’ own acid arrows. A phenomenal shot!

The light in the fort suddenly went out, and Gaelle could no longer make out any figures inside, though she was happy with herself for making two incredible shots.

As Luna rose and the temperature plummeted, Boldo was feeling the cold. Coming from the savannah of Ethiope he was completely unprepared for this sort of weather and hunkered into an even tighter ball of pygmy to conserve what heat he had. 

An hour later, Gaelle moved forward, inside one of the burnt buildings, Rover padding along beside her.
Li Kung and Fragh joined her a short while later.

As the night went on, the party were suffering the effects of the intense cold and Boldo decided to bug out and call it even. He made it back to the building where Gaelle had set a small smokeless fire, fell over next to the fire and began to thaw himself out.

Two hours later, Boldo felt much better and returned to his advance position, though he quickly felt the cold seeping back into his bones.

Faced with the decision between freezing to death, leaving and coming back the next day or attacking now, they decided to throw caution to the wind and go for it.

Boldo sneaked forward, to check for traps laid in front of the door, finding none. Fragh then charged up to the door and had at it with his greataxe, Gaelle covering with her bow. A single arrow hit Fragh but failed to stop him. 

Under cover of the Uruk chopping away at the door, Li Kung moved forward by a circuitous route and was just coming round the corner when a pea was lobbed out of one of the arrow slits and blossomed into a fireball in front of the door. Luckily, the only result of the fireball was to warm Boldo and Fragh.
A few seconds later Fragh had chopped a hole through the door and another pea was dropped from the next slit along, this time scorching Boldo unconscious. This was the last missile from the bandit leader’s necklace.
Gaelle finally managed to get an arrow through the arrow slit but she could clearly hear it spang off some metal armour.

Looking through the door into the foyer of the fort, Li Kung could clearly make out several murder holes in the ceiling. After having them pointed out to him, Fragh stepped carefully between them, so as not to be hit by any missiles from above. And he wasn’t, though a bottle of acid was dropped which splashed him when it shattered on the floor.

Moving to a door to the side, Fragh kicked it open without hesitation, revealing a smaller room, as Li Kung carried Boldo’s body inside. Seeing them move, Gaelle and Rover sprinted across the open space and inside.
Moving through, Fragh kicked the next door through into a large room with a set of steps leading up to the next floor, the one with the arrow slits.

As Fragh and Li Kung moved to the bottom of the stairs they sighted the bandit mage standing at the top completing a spell. Before they could react, they were enveloped in the web that filled the room.

Dun, dun, dun………

Edit: This is where the transcription dried up. Basically, I was running the game most Sundays for 6 hours a time and got overwhelmed by the amount of work needed to get the action down in words. Sorry.

Suffice to say, the game is still going, though with none of the original characters, and I only run it once a month on average (so, I could keep up with the transcription now. Ironic, huh?). The characters are up to 12th/13th and continually make nuisances of themselves.

Should I run another game, on a 1 session per month basis, I will endeavour to document it for a longer period than I did with this one.


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