Month: June 2020

Out of character interlude – deities and (no) demigods

I’m feeling lazy today so it’s time for that segment everyone hates. 

As a crusty old D&D man I’ve created hundreds of campaign worlds over the years – a couple of which actually got used!  Most of them had no name, I’ve never been good at names.  Also most campaign world names are stupid – dishonorable mention to when a campaign world is called E’arth or Urth or something like that.  Shame on you.  The only two that come to mind as being pretty good names are Athas for Dark Sun and Golarion for Pathfinder.  Those are okay.  Anyway this should be titled “The Gods of CAMPAIGN NAME” but there is no name so it isn’t called that. 

The first god introduced was ripped off from Magic the Gathering.  I wanted a trickster god but not a D&D style trickster god which are usually thief gods.  I’ve never quite understood that, stealing isn’t really a “trick”.  And the organized crime nature of D&D thief’s guilds doesn’t make a lot of sense coupled a trickster god to me.  I think it would be neat to have a trickster god who hates organized crime because it’s you know, organized and therefore stuffing and boring.  Anyway, I chose Kozilek the Butcher of Truth – although the idea for this “campaign” is more of a D&D god and less of an Elder Being Cthulhu end of all life in the universe monster like in Magic (or is he?!) .  A trickster god like Loki – mythology Loki, not Marvel Loki who’s less of a trickster and more just a jerk.  If I remember correctly (questionable) one of mythology Loki’s classic tricks was tricking Baldur’s brother into killing him.  That’s the kind of trickster I was looking for.   I think in an early post I had Ela visit a temple of Kozilek which doesn’t make a lot of sense, why would a trickster god have temples? 

But Kozilek is a fringe god for weirdos, what about the main event?  I decided to have two “chief” gods.  I figured “the” main god should be a boring happy nice god like Pelor.  I called her Adariel, I don’t remember why exactly.  I think Madriel is something and I just borrowed from that.  She’s the standard good god – nothing much going on there.  The other big shot god is Odobenine, the Lord of Greed.  This is a partial rip off, again from Magic.  I always liked the Church of Deals from Ravnica.  In a world where magic is real and gods can give it to you I find the ideal of a transactional religion interesting.  Odobenine’s creed is basically worship me and I give you shit, the end.  The church sells their spellcasting and also acts as a bank/moneylending institution.  No idea where the name Odobenine came from.  After the fact I realized there was a fun class distinction there – Adariel is for the lower classes and Odobenine for the movers and shakers. 

I think Kralten may have come before those two.  I wanted there to be a god of hatred and revenge and spite so that Ela could not worship him to show that she’s not really down with religion.  As they say, show, don’t tell (which is why Ela talks about how she’s not religious all the time – I’m the best writer ever!).  Evil gods usually don’t make a ton of sense to me.  Why would anyone worship a plague god?  Or a god who just wants to torture people?  They wouldn’t, unless they’re crazy, which is no fun.  But a god who’s all about pettiness and holding grudges?  I could see people getting on board with that.  Kralten is a classic evil god who’s followers don’t think they’re evil (despite the human sacrifices) they see themselves as the aggrieved party getting justice.  Also I rolled a random encounter with cultists so I needed to come up with something.  I envision the typical Kraltenite as someone who’s suffered a trauma and is mad at the world.  I think somehow his name came from mangling Kristen Bell. 

Now that I think about it Strider may have even come in before Kralten in the story.  I wanted there to be a travel god to encounter priests of on the road.  Fharlanghn is the only travel god I remember being remotely interesting or fleshed out, but that’s a terrible name.  I thought the Striders of Fharlanghn from the Shackled City adventure path were cool though so I just went with Strider.  Which I think is what they called Aragon in the Fellowship of the Ring.  So double theft there. 

Korrok is a total rip-off from the John Dies at the End books.  I also wanted an utterly evil god that no sane person would ever worship and Korrok fit the bill.  I envision the worship of Korrok like a mental disorder that’s communicable.  Dwarfs refuse to say his name not just in a fun “He Who Shall Not Be Named” way but for practical reasons.  I guess that’s kind of a Cthulhu rip-off as well then, if you learn too much about Korrok you go coo-coo for cocoa puffs and you’re one of his worshippers before you can say Nyarlathotep.

The other only god that’s gotten more than a mention is Vultur – the Lawful Law god of Laws and Lawfulness.  I wanted a religious themed bounty hunter group to come after Ela.  There’s really nothing more fleshed out about him than that – he’s Judge Dredd shouting “I AM the law!” 

Besides those 11 other gods have been mentioned in passing – name them all you win a water pick!

The main takeaway is I suppose that most of these gods are lifted from other sources.  Which is fine.  Wholly unique campaign worlds are hard to do and usually they’re lame.  Plagiarism is the sincerest form of theft. 

Montagem 17 Year 888 (New Imperial Calendar)

Last night the taciturn old man (why is it that old men only come in two models – bigmouth and laconic?  Is there something about speaking a normal volume that isn’t conducive to longevity?) lead us deeper into the woods where his living cabin was – on account of we had blown up his distilling cabin (for which I reimbursed him handsomely so get off my back).  There were ten of us packed into a one room shanty that was, estimating generously, possibly sixty square feet.  After a couple hours I gave up trying to sleep in that dogpile and went outside to smoke the old man’s leaf and drink while simultaneously feeding a variety of blood sucking insects and reflecting on the bright vista of my life.  Being a hero sucks.  The pay is lousy and the people you have to deal with are a total snoozefest.  I’m not sure when or how I started feeling compelled to go out of my way to help everyone but it’s really inconvenient.  I need to do some seriously soul searching and remember how to be selfish.

About an hour before sunrise I saw a unicorn.  I’m sure you don’t believe that because I was there and I hardly believe it.  Had you asked me before I would have said that unicorns are no big deal – it’s just a horse with a horn on its head, which is kind of stupid when you think about it.  But once you’ve seen a unicorm for yourself you can’t think that anymore.  It’s not just a horse with a horn on its head, it’s something magical.  And I know what sounds weird because I see magical shit all the time, but I mean magical in the sense of like wonderful.  It had an aura of dignity and hope about it about it that was only slightly marred by the fact that it was splattered with blood and had one of those hideous goblin dogs impaled on its horn.  I had a fantasy about pulling the dead monster dog off its horn and petting it tenderly (the unicorn not the dead dog) as it bestowed it’s blessing of grace and courage upon me, but it dashed off before I could even move. 

There’s a lot of tales about unicorns, one is that they only appear to virgins – so obviously that one is not true am I right people?  Another is that unicorns are a manifestation of Adariel’s joy and compassion, which ordinarily I wouldn’t put much stock in BUT I just smashed up a heretical Adarielite cult and then I see a unicorn?  I mean maybe.  On the other hand it doesn’t make a ton of sense to send a manifestation of joy and compassion to appear commemorating a victorious slaughter of heretics but maybe Adariel doesn’t have any warlike manifestations, being a God of niceness and harmony and clean clothes and fresh baked bread.  Although she’s supposed to be a protector so shouldn’t she have some murder angels on staff?  Then again shepherds protect sheep and they’re all pansies.  Next time I meet a religious scholar I’ll have to ask.

Ronom (Tamarin’s mother) wasn’t excited about being stuck with the five other girls we rescued but since we saved her daughter from a grim fate it was the least she could do.  She told us that the founders of the Sacred Order of Hardra had stuck their beloved living saint in in Brorrstone Asylum which is north along the river.  I guess they like to be near the water so they can dunk the crazies when they get out of line – near drowning is a pretty widely accepted cure for all kinds of mental disorders I’m given to understand.  Before we left in the morning the girls all came to thank us and try and hug us and all tiresome stuff – I mean get over it, we rescued you from a crazy cult but that was yesterday.  One of them said she wanted to be just like me.  Good fucking luck with that. 

“Before we go Ronom what’s the big secret about Hardra?  You said she had some kind of problem that ultimately made them toss her in the nuthouse.”

“Her behavior was erratic after she came back from the dead.  She was highly . . . . sexual.”

A couple of the girls tittered at this remark “That’s it?  She was like that before.”

“I don’t know about that, but as I heard it didn’t seem like she could control her . . . urges .  There were some . . . incidents.”

“Well that’s nice and vague.  Good luck, safe travels, if you ever need anything don’t hesitate to try and find me.”

Martialla and I set out heading north through the woods we thought, but when we reached the river it became clear that we were heading more eastward – although his turned out to be a good thing since as we traveled along the river we saw some of the fake Adarielists lying in wait where we would have been had we went the way we meant to go.  I wonder how often that happens.  It’s got to be hard to ambush someone who gets lost all the time – I should probably claim that I do it on purpose.  There wasn’t much in the way of traffic on the river – probably because Renwick is mostly ruined (I think this river goes to Renwick).  We saw a couple boats heading south which does us no good and the single small craft we saw going north merely responded to our hails by waving  at us like idiots and continuing on their way. 

With nothing else to do we walked.  I estimate that since my exile from Paladore I’ve probably walked more than three thousand miles (I don’t claim it’s a good estimate mind you).  I don’t even really understand what that means.  How wide is the Kingdom?  How tall is it?  How big is the continent or the world?  It’s not a scale you think about.  How far away is the moon?  Have I walked to the moon?  And almost all of those three thousand miles have been in the same Gods forsaken rural county.  I should be the foremost expert in Cymrile County geography by now given the amount of miles that I’ve traveled but I don’t think I’ve seen even most of it.  All that walking and where has it gotten me? 

If there’s one good thing about walking (which there isn’t) it’s that it gives you time to think.  One thing that came to mind was the first time I really got hurt.  And I mean really got hurt.  It was in Heathgrove (or was it Malgareth?  Whichever one is a shithole, well, MORE of a shithole) when that Hurk woman beat the Hells out of me – you remember, while by BODYGUARDS stood there and did nothing.  Prior to that, in my old life I had fallen off a horse a couple times, which was as much as I had ever been injured.  And after my exile but before Heathgrove I had gotten knocked around a bit, been injured in combat, but it was all relatively minor.  That was the first time in my life that I had experienced true hope to die stick a needle in your eye pain.  My face felt like it was so swollen it was going to fall off my head.  My ribs ached like some demonic maid had cinched me into a spiked corset – each breath was an adventure in torture.  But my hip was the worst of all.  I still don’t think it’s healed properly even with all the magic “care” that’s been magicked into me.  I mean how does magic healing even work?  Does it move bones back into place?  No one knows.

There are things that by necessity change your perspective.  Waking up in a dirty alley as homeless woman with no job skills when the day before you were the kept woman of one of the ten most powerful men in the Kingdom is one of those experiences.  But even more profound for me was that experience in Heathgrove.  I remember lying in that crappy bed in that filthy house sweating through the mattress and internally screaming – how I didn’t get addicted to Heathensnuff or opium at that point I don’t know.  And I remember thinking to myself “I will never give up”.  I thought to myself if this is the worst the world can throw at me there’s nothing that’s going to stop me – aside from death of course.  I’m not saying that’s the best shot that could be thrown at me, I know it can be worse, but it was a good shot and I took it. 

Think about how many people want to be fighters and bad men and tough bastards and they train and do whatever and the first time they get fucked up, assuming they survive, they throw down their weapons and change their minds.  They didn’t want to be rough and tough warriors after all.  They just want to be the same as everyone else, living a boring stupid life that no one even cares about.  They want a job they hate and a wife they resent and some kids they neglect and they never want anyone to hurt them again.  And there’s no reason they shouldn’t want that, it’s a very reasonable reaction, some would say it’s the only logical reaction.

I just know that lying in that bed out of my mind with pain I never once thought about quitting – and I knew then that I never would.  In a way I almost felt sorry for the old Duke – because he was done for the moment he threw me out of his court.  At that moment I realized that his downfall was inevitable.  I am inevitable. 

We followed the river until it was starting to get dark, at which point Martialla looked at me expectedly.

“What?”

She gestured “What do you mean what?  Make with the magic pavilion.”

“What?!  That’s been gone for more than a week.  If I still had it why wouldn’t I have been using it?”

“I just thought you were being a bitch for some reason.”

“Why would I do that?”

She shrugged “Who knows what’s ever going to set you off?  You’re mercurial you are.  Touchy even.”

“That is a false accusation!”

“I mean you’re yelling at me right now.”

“That . . . . you . . .” I sighed “Are you telling me that we don’t have a tent?”

“I don’t have one, who knows what all you have hidden away in your secret holes.”

“Why do you always say it like that?  Why don’t you say pockets or storage or even sacks?”

“Because that doesn’t annoy you.”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Funds: 53,040 platinum, 8,000 gold

XP: 949,051

Inventory: Flask of Endless Sake, Hat of Effortless Style, Tankard of the Drunken Hero, Ela’s Dazzling Garment, Belt of Physical Might +4, Ring of Urban Grace, Black Marketers’ Bag (5), Tidy Trunk, Whiterock Family Ring (Ring of Binding), Ela’s Extraordinary Walking Stick, Ela’s Elegant Boots, Ela’s Extravagant Necklace

Noble’s outfit (5) collegium ring,  pocketed scarf, wrist sheath, signet ring (2) assortment of fake signet rings, silver chain set with moonstones, gold and emerald ring (2), garnets (700), gold necklace with jade pendant, ivory combs, tax collector’s badge, gold bracelet with ivory inlays, silver necklace set with rubies, gold earrings with jade inlays, silver and gold brooch, silver necklace with ruby pendant, disguise kit, covenant ring, tiny diamonds (26), Saryah Phidaner gown, masterwork thieves’ tools, onyx (55) personal signet ring, tiara, masterwork red and black long greatcoat, Turnbill blade of first forging (one of three), darkwood and platinum music box, silver bracelet set with bloodstones, platinum ring set with fire opal, silver and moonstone bracelet, holy symbol of Kozilek 

Revenge List: Duke Eaglevane, Piltis Swine, Rince Electrum, watchman Gridley, White-Muzzle the worg, Percy Ringle the butler, Alice Kinsey , “Patch”, Heroes of the Lost Sword, Claire Conrad, Erist priest of Strider, Riselda owner of the Sage Mirror, Eedraxis,  Skin-Taker tribe, Kartak, Królewna & Bonifacja Trading Company, Hurmont Family, Androni Titus, Greasy dreadlocks woman, Lodestone Security, Kellgale Nickoslander, Beltian Kruin the Splithog Pauper, The King of Spiders, Auraluna Domiel, mother Hurk, Mazzmus Parmalee,  Helgan van Tankerstrum, Lightdancer, Bonder Greysmith, Pegwhistle Proudfoot, Lumbfoot Sheepskin, Lumber Consortium of Three Rivers, Hellerhad the Wizard, Forsaken Kin, Law Offices of Office of Glilcus and Stolo, Jey Rora, Colonel Tarl Ciarán, Mayor Baras Haldmeer, Rindol the Sage, Essa, eyeless hag, Baron Saltwheel, Baron Harmenkar, Colonel Tarl Ciarán’s wizard soldier, Victor, Beharri, Cebuano, Mayor Eryn, Chimera Trading Company

Montagem 16 Year 888 (New Imperial Calendar) Part 2

Martialla and I took on the appearance of our friends in the black robes.  It’s harder to disguise yourself as someone who’s showing a lot of skin than you’d think.  Part of it might be because it’s not something either of us has done much, but there’s more to it than that.  The key to crafting a good illusion is the ability to conjure an image in your mind’s eye and then project that image.  Think about a wolf.  You know what a wolf looks like – fur, legs, some teeth, etc. but try to put a precise image in your mind.  And I mean precise.  How long is the tail?  How far apart at the eyes?  What color are the eyes?  Where are they placed on the face?  How shaggy is the fur around where the legs meet the body?  Are the front legs and the back legs the same length?  How does that weird little crook in the legs work?  How many teeth are there, where are they placed, what color are they, what color are the gums around it, how does the tongue look?  And so on.  You’d know a wolf when you saw it, you could tell someone what a wolf would look like and they’d know what you meant, but unless you’re an artist that spends time drawing wolves you can’t really imagine what it looks like – not really.

What you have in your mind is kind of a blob that’s more or less (mostly less) what a wolf looks like.  Try to cover yourself with that image and no one’s going to buy it.  And that’s why it’s easier to create an image of someone wearing a lot of cloths.  A black robe?  That’s pretty uniform, there may be a rip here or a darker spot here or a ragged hem there, but even if you don’t put those things in looks fine.  The human body?  It’s a mess.  It can be a wonderful mess, but it’s a mess.  We’re not nearly as symmetrical as we think.  There’s little bumps and blemishes and moles and marks and all sorts of thing.  One elbow is rougher looking than the other.  One breast is a little larger.  One finger is missing a little piece of skin.  One earlobe is a little stretched out.  If you don’t take that into account it’s a lot more noticeable than you’d think.  It looks fake.  It’s like how the face of a bat seems more hideous than the face of a snake – the snake is so different it doesn’t really bother you so much, but the face of the bat is somewhat proportional to the human face; and thus we obtain a scale of hideousness.  A bat-face doesn’t look like a person but its close enough to what a human looks like generally that it become awful.

Trust me on this, I have a bit of experience, if you don’t think about what a person really looks like you end up with some weird bland statue-person that people don’t like.  AT ALL.  The point is that it took us a little bit longer than usual to disguise ourselves – Martialla with her magic me with pure awesomeness – but we got the job done.  It’s actually really helpful to have someone else there to look at while you’re doing it – it’s like a mirror that gives you feedback and helpful tips.  I have to say, I was never really on board with this “friendship” thing – seemed like a hassle coupled with a burden – but I’m starting to come around on it.  Maybe it’s not so bad after all.

Martialla looked over at me as we walked towards the temple “Do you ever think that this is why we’re here?”

“What?”

“Has it ever occurred to you that all we went through before, the tough times, the pain, the suffering – that was all to mold us into the people that we are now so we could do things like this?  They say the best metal requires the hottest fire.  We’re going to save a young woman from the clutches of a wicked cult.  For like the fifth or sixth time.  Maybe this is like our purpose in life, maybe this is why the Gods put us here.  Has that thought ever crossed your mind?  All joking aside we are kind of heroes aren’t we?”

“Martialla you’re my closest and dearest friend so I don’t want you to take this the wrong way – sometimes you are dumber than a box of dicks.”

“Where would one get a box of dicks?”

“Most port towns you could get a box of dicks.  They import the dicks of exotic creatures to make into soup for old men in the hopes that it will make their dicks work again.  It’s a lucrative trade.  You could do worse than investing in the dick importing business.”

“I suppose that makes a little more sense than eating powdered antlers.”

“I just hope we have the best minds of our generation working on it – nothing makes me sadder than the thought that doddering old gasbag can’t get his dick hard.”

“Not even drowning foals?”

“Maybe, but there would have to be a lot of them.”

We went to the temple that used to be a dance hall first – which from the outside wasn’t much changed other than the addition of two statues of Adariel.  Although now that I was looking for it I saw that these statues definitely made the holy mother look more bashful and compliant than usual – it’s a subtle distinction for a god dedicated to humility and peace but it was there.  I think.  Maybe it was just my imagination.  The main room had been turned into some manner of training facility – lifting rocks and moving rocks and other stuff with rocks.  Classic cult move – exhaust people and they’re easier to brainwash, plus it makes them stronger for when the enemies of your faith come to get you, plus you can use the threat of more training as part of the brainwashing.  It’s great stuff.

There were some crappy tapestries along one wall and through that doorway was an office of sorts with a nice darkwood desk – seems like even running a cult you can’t escape from paperwork.  I suppose you need to keep track of all the possessions people give up to you.  A couple of blue and white robe types came to confront us but once they saw our black robes and rippling physiques they scurried away like frightened groundpigs.  The next room we looked in had a couple weapon racks filled with brand new and kind of crappy looking swords and a large steel shield with Adariel’s symbol on it hanging prominently on the wall.  While we were poking around in there another black robe with a wild mane of dark hair came in.

“What happened?  Where’s Gannick?”

“Some big fella with curly hair kicked the shit out of him.”

His eyes went wide “What?  I thought it was two women!”

I shrugged “They had a friend.”

“What are you doing in here?”

“Looking for a punch dagger.  I thought I saw one in here the other day, I was going to get it and stab that big guy in the liver.” I made a jabbing motion “Like this!  Not so big are you now!”

His face wrinkled with disdain “Bullshit you are!  You two cowards left Gannick to get his ass kicked by some outsider and ran away to hide!  You spineless idiots, why didn’t you raise the alarm?”

I sniveled annoyingly “We were going to take care of it ourselves.”

He shook his head disgustedly “You two are going to wish you got beatdown by this ‘big guy’ of yours when I’m done with you.  Stay the fuck here, I’m going to deal with this!  If you are not here when I get back you are dead you hear me?”

I nodded quickly with just the right mixture of chickenshit defiance and cowardly cowardice.  He sneered and started stomping through the complex gathering up a posse.  A few minutes later a dozen armed men rampaged out into the streets.

I looked over at Martialla “That was easy.”

Looking around we found a barracks with a dozen bunk beds that were empty and a couple other rooms of indeterminate origin until we came to a locked door.  Martialla worked on it for a while with her picks but the lock was too much for her.  I touched the door with my Walking Stick and it cracked and collapsed into broken planks.

I smiled at her “Where’s your magic now?”

“That’s an odd thing to be smug about when using a magic staff.”

“You wish it was magic, I have just mastered the art of internal energy.  You don’t have to break the object’s physical form, you merely need to disrupt its energy with the lightest of taps – like when the wizened old monk touches someone on the chest and then two years later their heart explodes.  The forbidden technique.”

“Where do you come up with this stuff?”

I chuckled and we passed through into a narrow area with three cells on each side – each contained a simple straw mat and nothing much else.  Nothing much besides the women I mean.  It’s another cult classic – lock ‘em up, starve ‘em for a while and they tend to get with the program.  I couldn’t help but wonder, once they have all six cells occupied and they see another woman that want to kidnap what do they do?  Do they wait or does one of the six get turned loose?

“Which one of you is Tamarin?  We’re going to let you all out, just asking.”

Martialla was able to defeat all these locks and it gave me time to run through the annoying conversation with the rescuees that we weren’t really the people we looked like – I feel like using my normal voice should have been a giveaway – and this wasn’t a trick.  One of the women was drugged out of her gourd so I instructed the others to carry her.  As we were heading back out into the main room a couple of the blue and white robes where standing around holding weapons uncertainly.  One of them screwed up the courage to ask us what we were doing.

I growled “There’s adventurers in town causing trouble, I looks like they’re on their way here so we’re moving the women to the other temple.  Be ready to sell your lives as dearly as possible.  They have a dwarf with them I saw cut three men in half with his dwarf ax in six seconds.  These are bad men but remember that Adariel’s glory awaits you in the afterlife.”

They were appropriately scared witless, so much so that when I asked for someone to help carry the drugged woman they all jumped at the choice.  I wonder if the irony of that occurred to the one I picked later when he realized that we weren’t heading for the other temple and Martialla slit his throat.  There’s a fun lesson there, if you run away from your problems make sure you’re running the right way.  Once we got to the taphouse where Tamarin’s mother first organized this raid we took stock.

“Alright Tamarin, we can’t stay here long, your mother hired us to rescue you but when the black robes came for us she disappeared – where would she be hiding out?”

“There’s a place out in the woods, I can show you.”

“Great, let’s go.”

One of the other women stepped forward timidly “What about us?”

“What about you, go back to your families.”

“They’re the ones who handed us over to the priests.”

“Really?” I looked around at four nodding heads “Well shit.  Okay, here’s what we’ll do, whichever way you’re going to get out of town I’ll go the other way and stir up some commotion.  You all go with Martialla and find Tamarin’s mother.  I’ll sneak out of town and join you later.”

Martialla frowned “How?  You get lost all the time.”

“I’ll figure it out.”

I took on the appearance of a hard-bitten tough as nails older fella with curly blonde hair and went outside to wallop the first robe-type I saw walking around – making my walking stick look like a morning star.  Or a mace.  Whichever one has spikes.  I shouted in the general direction of anyone nearby.

“I’m right here you cowardly sons of bitches!  I’ll crush every man in this village for what you did to my daughter you miserable weaklings!

Not very subtle, but there are times when being subtle doesn’t do you any good.  The black robes and their mob of lackeys showed up quickly and I ran for it, it makes things a lot easier when you can take on the form of a frightened villager as soon as you’re around the corner, pointing and weeping “He went that way!”

I repeated this performance a couple times and then headed south out of town towards the only wooded area that I saw.  I wandered around for a while as the sun was setting, until Tamarin found me and led me to a small tumbledown cabin where an old man was sitting on the porch wearing a uniform I didn’t recognize, smoking some leaf and holding a crossbow.  He nodded at Tamarin as she led me into what was not so much a cabin as a distillery, although there was a bed and a shelf with some food on it.   Martialla was checking on the drugged one in the bed with the other four sat on the floor looking scarcely less terrified than they did in their temple-cells.

I found a glass helped myself to the contents of one of the receiving flasks “Cheer up girls, you’ve just been rescued.” I raised the glass “Here’s to heroism.” I took a drink and sputtered immediately “Good gods that’s strong.”

Martialla came over and took the glass from me and sniffed it “That’s probably because it’s orange flower water.”

“Gross.  How long do you think before they find us?”

“A couple hours.”

“Good, I have time for a nap then.”

“Why have you been sleeping so much lately?  Are you pregnant?”

“I will come at you like a sugar addicted coyote.”

A properly designed and maintained still is pretty unlikely to ever explode, and the old timer that set this rig up (to make floral waters rather than booze for some reason) clearly knew what he was doing.  But if you use magic fire to heat up the still far beyond it’s normal point, after capping the mechanism so the gas can’t release, and then you puncture the drum from a safe distance with an old man’s crossbow you can completely annihilate a shack and the half dozen religious fanatics that went into it.  Half of the guys outside will survive and just be horribly injured, so you have to kill them yourself but it’s easy on account of how horribly injured they are.  I handed the crossbow back to the old man as Martialla went about the grim business of slaughtering the wounded.

“What kind of uniform is that?”

“King’s Own, 7th regiment, the Sainted Sinners they called us.”

“How long ago was that?

“A good seventy years has to be now.”

“Man alive, how old are you?”

“Oh, I suppose I have to be over a hundred by now.”

“Wow, don’t get me wrong you look like crap overall but for how old you are you look great.  What’s your secret?”

“Hate.  The world disgusts me. People are treacherous, crude, and cruel.  And the natural world is no better. I’ve traveled all around the world and when you’ve seen it all there’s really nothing left to feel but loathing.  Hate keeps me young.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Funds: 53,040 platinum, 8,000 gold

XP: 949,051

Inventory: Flask of Endless Sake, Hat of Effortless Style, Tankard of the Drunken Hero, Ela’s Dazzling Garment, Belt of Physical Might +4, Ring of Urban Grace, Black Marketers’ Bag (5), Tidy Trunk, Whiterock Family Ring (Ring of Binding), Ela’s Extraordinary Walking Stick, Ela’s Elegant Boots, Ela’s Extravagant Necklace

Noble’s outfit (5) collegium ring,  pocketed scarf, wrist sheath, signet ring (2) assortment of fake signet rings, silver chain set with moonstones, gold and emerald ring (2), garnets (700), gold necklace with jade pendant, ivory combs, tax collector’s badge, gold bracelet with ivory inlays, silver necklace set with rubies, gold earrings with jade inlays, silver and gold brooch, silver necklace with ruby pendant, disguise kit, covenant ring, tiny diamonds (26), Saryah Phidaner gown, masterwork thieves’ tools, onyx (55) personal signet ring, tiara, masterwork red and black long greatcoat, Turnbill blade of first forging (one of three), darkwood and platinum music box, silver bracelet set with bloodstones, platinum ring set with fire opal, silver and moonstone bracelet, holy symbol of Kozilek 

Revenge List: Duke Eaglevane, Piltis Swine, Rince Electrum, watchman Gridley, White-Muzzle the worg, Percy Ringle the butler, Alice Kinsey , “Patch”, Heroes of the Lost Sword, Claire Conrad, Erist priest of Strider, Riselda owner of the Sage Mirror, Eedraxis,  Skin-Taker tribe, Kartak, Królewna & Bonifacja Trading Company, Hurmont Family, Androni Titus, Greasy dreadlocks woman, Lodestone Security, Kellgale Nickoslander, Beltian Kruin the Splithog Pauper, The King of Spiders, Auraluna Domiel, mother Hurk, Mazzmus Parmalee,  Helgan van Tankerstrum, Lightdancer, Bonder Greysmith, Pegwhistle Proudfoot, Lumbfoot Sheepskin, Lumber Consortium of Three Rivers, Hellerhad the Wizard, Forsaken Kin, Law Offices of Office of Glilcus and Stolo, Jey Rora, Colonel Tarl Ciarán, Mayor Baras Haldmeer, Rindol the Sage, Essa, eyeless hag, Baron Saltwheel, Baron Harmenkar, Colonel Tarl Ciarán’s wizard soldier, Victor, Beharri, Cebuano, Mayor Eryn, Chimera Trading Company

Montagem 16 Year 888 (New Imperial Calendar) Part 1

The deal I struck with Mord was that after finishing up with the dumb touranment he’ll take his crew to Alleene and not cause any problems, waiting for Martialla and I to show up to start the rescue mission.  I made it very clear to him that this plan depended on him keeping his nose down and his people out of trouble, so I’m sure by the time we get there everyone will be in prison.  I know what you’re thinking “Ela, won’t you guys get there ahead of them if you’re leaving right now?”  I like how you’re able to remain optimistic like that.  It’s not overly intelligence but it’s endearing.  It’s axiomatic at this point that any traveling I do will take ten times as long as normal due to kidnappings or falling through dimensional rifts or civil unrest or what have you.  I was tempted to buy (or steal) Mord’s carriage off him since he’s ruining it with his commoness, but in the end I decided that it was too much baggage.  I do hate to see such a fine thing in his fat grubby hands though. 

Martialla and I got moving early and traveled without incident (!) arriving in Obsis late in the day.  In the four or five months since we had passed through before Obsis has undergone quite a transformation.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a nothing town, but it had swelled to a nothing town of twice the size that it was before.  There are plenty of new buildings – the inn where I had been refused a room (that guy’s lucky he’s not on the list) had been expanded and turned into a church.  And the dance hall where I had actually ended up staying had also been converted into a church.  I guess so they can have services at one while they clean the other one?  Hard to say.  I’m not an expert in religion.  Adariel’s symbol was everywhere, as was what I assume is the symbol of the order itself – kind of a stylized image of Adariel’s symbol with angel wings added.  There were also a lot of paintings and murals that I think are supposed to be Hardra – although I can tell you that the real Hardra never looked so serene and wholesome – she was more waspish and mean looking.  I was examining one of these murals that seemed to be showing the styory of Hardra’s resurrection when one of the many people wearing blue and white robes came up to me.

“This isn’t right.”

The woman was startled that I beat her to the punch conversationally “Pardon me?”

I gestured “I don’t see me on here.  Adariel seems to be getting a lot of the credit but I’m the one that actually brought Hardra back to life.  I made a deal with a demon, I killed someone and that brought Hardra back – it was pretty simple in the end.”

The woman gasped “Blasphemy!”

“Hmm, I don’t think so.  I’m not sure what they call it when you violate the tenants of a religion.  Heresy?  Or is that just when you have another religion you like?  Does it matter if I’m not part of the sect in question?”

The woman hurried away frightfully as a man in a green and white robe came up almost as hurriedly.  He had a little chin-beard and one of those high on the back of the head ponytails – neither of which did his scarred and ugly face any favors.

“Holy day to you pilgrims, I see that you’re admiring some of our iconography.”

“Yeah, I was just telling that lady it’s missing some parts.  I’m not sure you people know the full story of what happened there.”

He smiled “It’s impossible for anyone to know the full story.”

“Sure.  Who’s in charge here?”

He smiled beatifically “Adariel.”

I couldn’t help but roll my eyes “Right, but who’s the person in charge?  I heard something about some kind of Heralds.”

This launched him into a lesson on the different levels of being a Hardraian Adarielist and the grand and glorious history of his three month old religious order.  At no point did he say anything about who was in charge though.  Not everyone in town was berobed (is that a word?) but the people that were dressed in normal clothing weren’t interested in talking – even to someone as amiable as me.  That was until I was approached by a tall (even taller than me) mannish woman with short blond hair and a jaw most men would kill to have.  Her voice was oddly high given her appearance.

“Why do you want to know who’s in charge?”

“I was friends with Hardra . . .”

Martialla snorted “What?”

“. . . I mean I knew Hardra.  I haven’t been able to find out much about what happened to her after I brought her back to life, other than that his order that seems to be mostly men in a traditionally female leaning religion was founded based on the miracle of me facilitating her demonic resurrection.  I was hoping that someone in charge could tell me where she is.”

The woman looked at my eyes searchingly for a moment before speaking “You better come with me.”

The last time we were here there was no taproom or tavern – now there was.  A low windless shack with a couple mismatched tables.  When we walked in there was no one inside.  Our guide went behind the rickety bar and helped herself to something that looked more like porridge than alcohol. 

She grimaced as she drank it down “You want to know the details or just the deal I’m offering?”

“What’s the deal?

“You get my daughter back and I’ll tell you where Hardra is.”

“Where’s your daughter?”

“They took her once they had the town firmly under their thumb.  The Heralds have an eye for the pretty ones.  And yes, she actually is pretty, she takes after her father.  I know what I look like.”

“Why did they take her?”

She gave me an incredulous look “Why do you think?”

“That doesn’t seem like something even a fringe group of Adariel people would do.”

She shook her head “I don’t know these assholes even believe the bullshit they spout or if it’s all just a con but this group would have to walk a lot of miles to get into spitting distance of any kind of Adariel orthodoxy.  It’s a wealth doctrine.”

“Seed faith?  Are you kidding me?  Why would anyone even bother?  We already have a god of wealth.  Probably a couple.”

She snorted bitterly “Yeah, but Odobenine is a greedy and corrupt god for the aristocracy and their bought and paid for lackeys.  This is Adariel, the lady of goodness and family – and all you have to do to be rewarded with riches and treasure is join up and give away all your possessions and pledge your life to them forever.”

“Hardra did this?”

She gave me another apprising look before answering “You’re going to get me my daughter back right?”

I glanced at Martialla who nodded “We’ll give it a go.”

“I’m trusting you here, I’m giving away some of the details up front.  Hardra didn’t do anything – when she was raised from the dead people lost their minds.  Most of them anyway, some people who know more about magic know that it does happen from time to time and it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with miracles.  These assholes just seized on that.  They seized her too, literally.  At first I think they probably planned on just controlling her the normal way, but after she came back she had . . . . problems.  So they locked her away.  Saints are much easier to capitalize on when they’re not around anyway.”

Martialla asked “How do you know so much about them?”

She looked Martialla square in the eye “They took my daughter.”

“Fair enough.  Where are they keeping her?  And what kind of opposition are we likely to face?”

She shook her head “I don’t know, they move her around a lot – between the two temples mostly but sometimes she’s not in either of them and I don’t know where they take her.  About half the town has brought into this fuckery or at least is pretending to, but they ran off everyone who could actually fight from before.  Their figurehead is a woman, but I don’t know what her deal is – she seems loyal enough.  She’s a magus.”

Martialla made a face “A real magus?”

Our host nodded “I think so.”

“What’s a magus?”

Martialla blew out a long breath “Trouble.  A magus is someone who’s a trained warrior and learned magic too, and knows how to channel spells into their attacks.”

“Isn’t that what you are?”

She shook her head slowly as our host continued “Aside from her there’s four heralds, they’re dangerous folks as well, along with half a dozen priests and maybe twice that many acolytes.  They’re not all that dangerous but they’re fight if they have to.”

“And they’re all divine spellcasters?!  That sounds incredibly dangerous!”

“No, none of them are.”

“Wait, why does anyone think they’re legitimate Adariel people if she doesn’t answer their prayers with spells?”

“Their lack of divine magic is explained at length in their articles of faith, it’s actually the priests that can do magic that you need to be wary of, do you really want to know the particulars?”

“I suppose not.” I looked at Martialla “So what do you think, to find this girl do we need to infiltrate this group or just sneak in and grab her?”

Before Martialla could answer the door flew off its hinges and red smoke started rolling into the small building.  Coming up through the smoke were three men in black robes – that make sense, black robes for your heavies – but what makes no sense is they their robes were hanging open and all they were wearing otherwise was breechclouts.  I mean sure, they were all in pretty good shape, but they weren’t chiseled like statues to the point where you’d want to walk around as naked as decency allows.  What I’m saying is that for your enforcer squad it’s not all that intimidating to be nearly nude.  Or maybe it is, you know, because of the implication.  I was about to tell them that but I started coughing in the smoke almost– it stung the eyes like a bastard as well. It’s a good thing I had my Necklace to protect me because I could tell that Martialla got woozy and weak almost immediately.

The lead goon, you could tell he was the leader because he was in the middle and had is hood back, raised his adulterated symbol of Adariel and I could feel some tugging at my mind as he cast some kind of enchantment but it was weak and pathetic – I’d be surprised if you could control the thoughts of a toad with that bullshit.  Martialla tried to cast a spell of her own, but either because of the smoke or the effects of the smoke (or something else) I’m pretty sure it misfired (spells can do that you know) because the place was suddenly filled with bees.  Which is not something I’ve seen her do before or since – as a tip off was they started stinging the shit out of her just like everyone else.  I tell you this much, our black robed friends regretted dressing like Pentarri dancing girls once the place was swarming with bees.

I don’t know if it’s true or not, but I’ve been told that there’s a sect of people that worship a pain goddess (or demon, what’s the difference honestly?) because they see the experience of pain as a pathway to transcendence of the mortal experience.  The idea being (allegedly) if you can mutilate yourself and control your feelings – turn agony into joy – that’s the first step on a spiritual journey to becoming a luminous being of the universe instead of a lump of flesh.  They call this Uncaging or something like that, assuming any of its true.  Here’s a fun little song about her –

Torture-daughter of Tunori,

Sitting on the mount of anguish,

At the junction of three rivers,

Turning rocks of pain and torture,

Turn away these fell diseases

Through the virtues of the blue-stone;

Lead them to the water-channels,

Sink them in the deeps of ocean,

Where the winds can never find them,

Where the sunlight never enters.

My point is there’s some religions that are about sacrifice and endurance and suffering as a pathway to salvation.  Clearly these Hardraians are not one of them given the way the black robes squealed like maidens as the bees got at them.  I suppose in their defense it does hurt pretty bad to get bee-stung on the nipples.  What I learned is that it’s pretty easy to clobber someone with a Walking Stick when they’re frantically waving at bees like frightened little girls.  After they fled I grabbed Martialla (she had passed out at this point) by the legs and dragged her out of the poisonous smoke cloud.  I looked around but I didn’t see our new friend anywhere – she must have lit out as soon as the black robes showed up.  Which you have to admire.  I stomped on Martialla’s stomach the way you’re supposed to and she came to with a wrenching coughing fit – one of those deep hacking deals where it sounds like someone’s chewing up their own insides.  Hideous.

Martialla looked at me with red watery eyes “Why didn’t you pass out?”

“Because I’m not a baby.”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Funds: 53,040 platinum, 9,005 gold

XP: 923,451

Inventory: Flask of Endless Sake, Hat of Effortless Style, Tankard of the Drunken Hero, Ela’s Dazzling Garment, Belt of Physical Might +4, Ring of Urban Grace, Black Marketers’ Bag (5), Tidy Trunk, Whiterock Family Ring (Ring of Binding), Ela’s Extraordinary Walking Stick, Ela’s Elegant Boots, Ela’s Extravagant Necklace

Noble’s outfit (5) collegium ring,  pocketed scarf, wrist sheath, signet ring (2) assortment of fake signet rings, silver chain set with moonstones, gold and emerald ring (2), garnets (700), gold necklace with jade pendant, ivory combs, tax collector’s badge, gold bracelet with ivory inlays, silver necklace set with rubies, gold earrings with jade inlays, silver and gold brooch, silver necklace with ruby pendant, disguise kit, covenant ring, tiny diamonds (26), Saryah Phidaner gown, masterwork thieves’ tools, onyx (55) personal signet ring, tiara, masterwork red and black long greatcoat, Turnbill blade of first forging (one of three), darkwood and platinum music box, silver bracelet set with bloodstones, platinum ring set with fire opal, silver and moonstone bracelet, holy symbol of Kozilek 

Revenge List: Duke Eaglevane, Piltis Swine, Rince Electrum, watchman Gridley, White-Muzzle the worg, Percy Ringle the butler, Alice Kinsey , “Patch”, Heroes of the Lost Sword, Claire Conrad, Erist priest of Strider, Riselda owner of the Sage Mirror, Eedraxis,  Skin-Taker tribe, Kartak, Królewna & Bonifacja Trading Company, Hurmont Family, Androni Titus, Greasy dreadlocks woman, Lodestone Security, Kellgale Nickoslander, Beltian Kruin the Splithog Pauper, The King of Spiders, Auraluna Domiel, mother Hurk, Mazzmus Parmalee,  Helgan van Tankerstrum, Lightdancer, Bonder Greysmith, Pegwhistle Proudfoot, Lumbfoot Sheepskin, Lumber Consortium of Three Rivers, Hellerhad the Wizard, Forsaken Kin, Law Offices of Office of Glilcus and Stolo, Jey Rora, Colonel Tarl Ciarán, Mayor Baras Haldmeer, Rindol the Sage, Essa, eyeless hag, Baron Saltwheel, Baron Harmenkar, Colonel Tarl Ciarán’s wizard soldier, Victor, Beharri, Cebuano, Mayor Eryn, Chimera Trading Company

Montagem 15 Year 888 (New Imperial Calendar)

I won’t lie to you folks, I would never lie to you, when I got up early this morning (nothing’s wrong I just slept something like fifteen hours yesterday off and on) I was thinking about going out to the woods with the belt buckle people and using my wiles to find out Victor, Beharri, and Cebuano’s sad stories.  Why?  So that I could figure out whom they had run away from so that I could potentially engineer their falling back into the bondage of their former masters.  I know that right now you’re gasping and covering your mouth like a virgin being presented with a naked man (but are also a little curious) and saying “But Ela, your hatred of enforced bondage is your one redeeming quality.  You’ve done many foul things but you would never get involved in taking away someone’s freedom – it’s the thing that keeps you from being a complete monster.”

First of all I have many redeeming qualities.  I am full-on, balls to the walls pretty.  I have so much charisma that you could take my left over charisma and make a second lady who was still pretty Gods damned charismatic from it – a smooth talking charmer she’d be.  But that’s obvious, let’s take a look at some of my less salient fantastic qualities.  I’m ambitious.  You may argue that ambition is not a good quality and that I lacked ambition until disaster forced me to change, but you cannot deny that I am the one out here struggling to make things better.  To quote the poetess Aprita “While you’re safe in your home I’m out here risking my gnome”.  You know what she meant by gnome.  She was an odd one was Aprita, even for a poetess. 

I’m brave.  I know that I’m probably going to lose.  The odds are in the Duke’s favor, but have I ever for a moment thought about giving up?  Well sure, maybe a moment here or there but I didn’t give up is the point.  What you folks need to remember is that I’m pretty much going up against the entire Kingdom, and yet I fight on like the hero that I am because my next virtue is determination. I keep on on trying despite being stomped into the ground a million times.  I still get up and keep going after my goals regardless of the constant beatings and that’s something everyone admires. 

But one of my greatest virtues is humility. I’m just a down to earth, personable, modest country gal. I acknowledge my own fallibility. I am not be enraged by insults. I am not concerned with making a spectacle gloating.  I’m diligent, caring, gracious, honest, honorable, loyal, patient, resourceful, responsible, selfless, and above all humble.  It’s worth mentioning twice.  The point is that I have many redeeming qualities.  But the point is beside the point in this case, because the real point is that those three fellows are bad, ergo anything you do to them is good.  Think about whom the most respected person in a village is – the executioner.  Why?  Because they murder bad people – while they’re helpless and can’t fight back in any way.  Normally that’s not cool but if you do it to someone bad then it’s the best thing possible.  It’s like that.

Anyway, I was too lazy to actually do it anyway so get off my back.  A healer from the village came to look at my leg/hip but they were clearly just a backwoods idiot because all they did was smear some herbs on me – I’m pretty sure what that accomplished was make my hip savory.  A hit of healing drink from the Flask helped somewhat but our original plan to ride to Aleene was quickly abandoned – the jarring was too painful.  So we were walking once again.  Martialla suggested, reasonably some would argue, that it made more sense to wait until my leg was mended and then ride – this would be both easier and faster perhaps.  But I wanted to get out of this nothing town and get on the way to the next nothing town.  After a few hours of gritting my teeth and sweating through my clothing walking the road to Obsis I was starting to think that I made a mistake but what was I going to do?  Tell Martialla that I was wrong? 

Martialla was looking at me with concern/amusement “How are you doing over there?”

“Great, never better.”

“Since you’ve been starting down at the road a lot, I assume because of how good you feel, I’d like to direct your attention to that.” She pointed.

“What the fuck is that?  A fair?”

“Certainty looks like it.”

“Why is there a fair in the middle of the road?”

“Well it’s not in the middle of the road, it’s off the road a ways.”

“Yes, thank you, that’s the important point.”

“You want to check it out?”

“Of course I want to check it out, maybe there’s a healer who can rub more spices on my leg.”

As we got closer we saw that it wasn’t really a fair in the usual sense.  There were a few wagons and a bunch of tents but there wasn’t much in the way of “attractions”.  There were a few merchants trying to make the best of it, but the purpose of the gathering wasn’t clear.  At least not until I saw a very fine extra-large carriage with platinum and ivory filigree.   I smiled at the sight.

“Finally some good news, this isn’t a fair it’s a fighting . . . whatever, show?  Exhibition?  The point is there has to be some kind of actual healer around here – they infest these places like ticks.”

“How do you know this is a fighting deal?”

I chuckled as we walked up to the elaborate carriage and I knocked on the door “You’ll see, this is an old friend of mine.”

Martialla raised an eyebrow “You have friends?”

The door to the carriage flew up, nearly smashing me in the face.  As I jumped back a barrel-chested fellow in an ugly red and yellow tunic hung in the doorway – he was grasping to the doorjamb like a mountaineer but still seemed about to fall at any moment.  He had a sweaty soft face and one of those smiles that makes you want to punch someone right off the bat. 

“Who the Hells are you?”

He frowned, this eyebrows touching like kissing swans “You knocked on my door, who the Hells are you?!”

“I’m looking for Rilfus or Trixa.”

He shook his head and made to slam the door “Never heard of them.”

I grabbed the door “Wait, where did you get this carriage?”

He shoved at my fingers “Piss off lady!”

I stepped back “Martialla, do your thing.”

She sighed “Remember when you used to actually talk people into being well disposed towards you?”

“You’re the one that learned magic, don’t blame me.”

“I know you said that just to annoy me, I’m not taking the bait.”

Once Martialla had hit him with her friendship charm to remind me what good friends we were he was more than happy to invite us in.  It was the same carriage, being the size of a small house on the inside via MAGIC, but its new owner had made a right mess of the place.  The bedroom used to be a small but well-appointed but was now just a cot beside stacks of crates.  And I know what you’re thinking – wasn’t there a storage area anyway?  Yes, it was packed with shoddy merchandise mostly loose or held together with twine.  The office was a mountain of discarded food and empty wine bottles.

“I love what you’ve done with the place.”

He laughed like a lunatic “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to have the maid come around.”

He laughed so hard at that “joke” that he started foaming at the mouth a little and got out of breath.  Once he was done almost having a heart attack he introduced himself as Mord Eli Ciraanova – owner, operator, and “fight master” of the “Touranment” of Dreams as he called it.

“Tournament.”

“What?”

“Tournament.  You said touranment.”

“Huh?”

After that diversion we got back on track.  He restated that he had never heard of Rilfus or Trixa, that the carriage was given to him by someone called Psyhundt.

“Gold chains?  Hairy chest?  Doesn’t wear a shirt?  Has a couple hookers as bodyguards.”

He grinned “That’s the one.  But those aren’t hookers, those women are gladiators from some other country.  They fight giant eels in a big arena full of water.”

“I’m sure.  Why are you having your event out here?  I don’t mean to tell you your business but where are the customers supposed to come from?”

He literally growled like a mongrel dog “We’re supposed to run in Obsis, they have an event there every year for the King’s birthday, but they wouldn’t let us.  That place has been taken over by some religious nuts and they said that celebrating violence wasn’t in keeping with the faith.”

“Which faith?”

“THE faith, Adariel.  I don’t know what they’re so upset about, at the beginning of the show we have some broads come out and do a dedication fan dance to Adariel.  What more could they want?”

“Well you know how unreasonable religious types can be, who knows what sets them off.  Taking over a town doesn’t sound like Adarielites though.”

He took a drink of something green and unsavory looking “Uh, this is some new cult.  A schoolmarm or a maid or something up in Aleene came back from the dead so they’ve got their underclothing all in an uproar about it.”

“The Order of Saint Hardra the Returned?”

He snapped his fingers “That’s the one.  Their leader, called himself a Herald, you should have heard the way he talked to me.  Some people have no respect.  Since they kicked us out I figured I’d recoup what money I could and just hold the event here.” His face fell for a moment “I’m worried about what the boss is going to say.  I’m going to lose a lot of money anyway.”

“Why didn’t you just continue all the way down to Preen and do your thing there?”

“There’s like ten different gangs that fight over Preen, I’d be torn apart if I went there to do business – or get ripped off so badly I’d end up owing.  Since people were going to Obsis for the fights I figured the best thing to do was to stay close.”

“Huh, that’s actually pretty smart.  You’re not as stupid as you look.”

He beamed an ear-to-ear smile “Thank you.”

Martialla, being more interested in warlike endeavors went to watch the contestants hammer each other with broken glass or gouge into each other’s flesh with rusty hooks or whatever kind of bloodsport was going on while I went to see the healer.  In my experience healers are usually two types – stick up the butt religious freaks or real weirdos that collect jars of blood and shit like that.  Arvan was neither.  His red and blue tent was tidy, no bloody rags and hacked off limbs laying around, and he was utterly professional.  I explained my injury, he examined me (without looking at anything he didn’t need to) I paid him some money and he did some magic and fixed my hip.  That was it.  He was just a competent healer doing a job for money.  It’s a sad commentary that this is so unusual. 

Afterwards I strolled around the small area of merchant tents and wagons to peruse the wares.  There was actually a decent selection of items for a gathering of this size, but there was nothing that interested me.  Surprisingly it would have been a pretty lucrative score for a robbery.  After “window” shopping for a couple hours I joined Martialla and Mord at the fighting ring for the main event – some massive fellow from up north against some kind of tribal with feathers tattooed on his arms.  Seemed like the big guy was going to crush the birdman, but it was a Hells of a fight – if you’re into that sort of thing.  It’s some kind of bare-knuckle fighting deal, there didn’t seem to be a lot of rules, but I got the impression that most of the fights had been pretty tame – as soon as someone was in trouble they’d yield.

This fight wasn’t like that.  Both men seemed to be out for blood.  Not sure it it’s a personal thing or some kind of prejudice I’m not aware of, but they were tearing into each other like rabid wolverines.  I would have thought that the big guy would break the birdman in half, but he was tougher than he looked and vicious – I suppose I should know better by now not to judge how dangerous people are by how they appear.  Still in the end the big guy got the upper hand but the birdman refused to relent and in the end Mord’s goons rushed in to separate them before someone died.  The crowd, which had been in frenzy, was quickly turned into a booing mass of angry people.  Nobody likes a draw.  It seemed like things might turn ugly, but a few of the early competitors came out to reinforce the guards and the crowed decided they’d rather not have their eyeballs pulled out of their dicks stomped by professionals.

“I’ve been thinking about your predicament Mord, and I might be able to help you – as old friends do for each other.  Do all these fighters work for you or do they just come and go?”

“They’re all under contract for a number of fights, if they don’t die.”

“Perfect, how would you like to rent them out to me?”

“For what?”

“To rescue Baron Juost.  I think I can make it worth your while – enough that you won’t need to worry about the bossman breathing down your neck.”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Funds: 53,040 platinum, 9,005 gold

XP: 923,451

Inventory: Flask of Endless Sake, Hat of Effortless Style, Tankard of the Drunken Hero, Ela’s Dazzling Garment, Belt of Physical Might +4, Ring of Urban Grace, Black Marketers’ Bag (5), Tidy Trunk, Whiterock Family Ring (Ring of Binding), Ela’s Extraordinary Walking Stick, Ela’s Elegant Boots, Ela’s Extravagant Necklace

Noble’s outfit (5) collegium ring,  pocketed scarf, wrist sheath, signet ring (2) assortment of fake signet rings, silver chain set with moonstones, gold and emerald ring (2), garnets (700), gold necklace with jade pendant, ivory combs, tax collector’s badge, gold bracelet with ivory inlays, silver necklace set with rubies, gold earrings with jade inlays, silver and gold brooch, silver necklace with ruby pendant, disguise kit, covenant ring, tiny diamonds (26), Saryah Phidaner gown, masterwork thieves’ tools, onyx (55) personal signet ring, tiara, masterwork red and black long greatcoat, Turnbill blade of first forging (one of three), darkwood and platinum music box, silver bracelet set with bloodstones, platinum ring set with fire opal, silver and moonstone bracelet, holy symbol of Kozilek 

Revenge List: Duke Eaglevane, Piltis Swine, Rince Electrum, watchman Gridley, White-Muzzle the worg, Percy Ringle the butler, Alice Kinsey , “Patch”, Heroes of the Lost Sword, Claire Conrad, Erist priest of Strider, Riselda owner of the Sage Mirror, Eedraxis,  Skin-Taker tribe, Kartak, Królewna & Bonifacja Trading Company, Hurmont Family, Androni Titus, Greasy dreadlocks woman, Lodestone Security, Kellgale Nickoslander, Beltian Kruin the Splithog Pauper, The King of Spiders, Auraluna Domiel, mother Hurk, Mazzmus Parmalee,  Helgan van Tankerstrum, Lightdancer, Bonder Greysmith, Pegwhistle Proudfoot, Lumbfoot Sheepskin, Lumber Consortium of Three Rivers, Hellerhad the Wizard, Forsaken Kin, Law Offices of Office of Glilcus and Stolo, Jey Rora, Colonel Tarl Ciarán, Mayor Baras Haldmeer, Rindol the Sage, Essa, eyeless hag, Baron Saltwheel, Baron Harmenkar, Colonel Tarl Ciarán’s wizard soldier, Victor, Beharri, Cebuano, Mayor Eryn, Chimera Trading Company

Montagem 14 Year 888 (New Imperial Calendar) Part 4

Certain religious types spend a great deal of their time trying to catalog all the different demons.  Maybe because they think it will help people avoid those demons but probably because they’d rather sit and write in a book than actually help anyone – charity and compassion are a lot of work.  Trust me I know where from I speak on that.  Gastronok the demon that makes people sick.  Dozzeth the demon of people who sneeze without covering their mouth.  Arrrrlizz the demon that makes pine trees get sick and lose their needles.  Sarthronothronoth the confuser of migrating birds.  Drolgalos the demon that makes you grab a lady’s thigh under the table.  Stiffrenillious the demon who makes you want to put your hand into a fire.  Sharbinith the demon who wants you to cut yourself.  Urzorich the demon of suicide by hanging.  Jag’than the demon that encourages people to flick their boogers.  The defiler of graveyards, the urge to jump off bridges, the desire to fart in someone’s hat, etc. 

You have to assume that most of them are made up right?  The priest that writes these who’s who books of demons, maybe they start off with a possession in Briartown where Snaxiskics the lord of blue flies took over the body of a young girl but after the first few they’re probably just freestyling right?  How would a priest even know about Phimsham the demon of inaccurate cartography?  Doesn’t seem like the kind of demon that would be involved in the kind of world ending plots that attract people’s attention.  My point is this, there’s probably a book somewhere that names and gives vital statistics on a demon for poorly made beds, and a demon for being woken up early, and a demon for crusty morning eyes, and a demon for harsh sunlight when you first open your eyes in the morning but I bet it’s made up.  I bet there are no such demons.  OR IS THAT THEIR GREATEST TRICK ?!?!?

Although to be fair I woke up mostly because I was hungry.  Isn’t that weird how that can happen?  You can’t feel hungry while you’re asleep, you can’t feel anything, but somehow it wakes you up?  Explain that.  Demon? As I tried to failed (failed to try really if we’re being honest) to get up I realized Martialla was sitting in the corner.

“Were you watching me sleep?”

“No, I was gazing at you while you rested.”

“Oh, well that’s not weird then.  I assume you were standing by invisibility to help me this morning in case things went south?”

“Of course, that’s the great thing about invisibility, you can assume whatever you want and it can be true.”  She paused for a moment before continuing soberly “You know your luck is going to run out one of these days if you keep doing that.”

I snorted “What luck would that be?”

“I’m serious.  It doesn’t matter how sneaky you are, eventually you’re going to run into someone who can’t be snuck.”

“Good thing you’ll be lurking about invisibly to get me out of hot water.  I assume you’re the one that roasted one of the belt buckle brigade.”

She nodded “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“I’m sure it was.  You look around here?  Did Nilda leave anything good behind?”

“I found a folding bow that is actually really well made – normally those trick bows are garbage.  I think anyway, I don’t really know anything about bows.  That was it though, I think she was packed to leave at any time.”

“Smart girl.

“I did find a coded list that I think was people she was going to kill before you came along and solved her money problems.  If you ever want to finish that up.”

“In a way you have to admire a woman who resolves her money problems with contract killing rather than hooking, it seems commendable – but realistically shouldn’t be the opposite?  Making people feel good has to be morally superior to killing right?”

“Depends on the person.  Besides, no one pays you twenty five THOUSDAND gold for sex.”

“Depends on the person.”

She hooked her thumb towards the door of Nilda’s cottage “That guy who said you saved his life is out front, he’s been waiting to talk to you.”

“All this time?  Stalker.”

“Exactly, that’s why I was guarding you.”

“Sure.” I gestured imperiously “Send him in.”

Martialla nodded like the dutiful servant she isn’t and went to the door to escort in the tall fellow with the hammer belt.  He had acquired a hat somewhere, I think for the sole purpose of taking it off as he came in as a sign of respect.  I bet there’s a book that claims there’s a demon that makes people not take their hats off indoors.

“Sorry to keep you waiting my good man, what can I do for you?”

He wanted to thank me, which you know, whatever, and he wanted to tell me his tale – which wasn’t terribly interesting but I thought that it would have been rude to say so.  He had been indentured to one of the Duke’s military pals for seven years to do “lawful and reasonable works and labors” which covers quite a bit of ground.  One problem was that after the seven years was up they told him he had to work for them for another three years because of a clause in the contract about the condition of his boots.  When he complained to the authorities they gave him six months of hard labor for lying under oath.  Another problem was that the good Captain’s wife was something of an amateur loanshark and liked to send him out on collection jobs – and by collect I mean to rough people up.  Once she realized he was pretty good at that she started organizing “events” where he would fight other indentures or servants.  Also she started demanding sexual favors from him.  And when her husband found out she said she was raped.  There’s another five years on the tab there.  This is all in addition to the beatings and general humiliation.  Rich people do love their humiliations. 

“That must have been Sicar Gaudkroger, I remember hearing something about her little fight nights.  What a stone cold bitch.  I should probably kill her.”

Even though he was a strong man who’s clearly been in many battles and she’s hundreds of miles away he actually looked frightened at the mention of her name “I’m not sure she can be killed.” He trailed off, lost in thought for a moment “I was pretty shocked when I saw you last night, or this morning, whichever it was.  I feel like I have to do something to repay you.  You gave me my life back.”

“Well, and no offense, I’m not sure that skulking around in the woods ripping people off is that great of a life.”

“It’s a paradise compared to what I had before.  Now I’m free.”

“I understand that, sort of.  You saved me from your friends so I think we’re even.  Can you cook?’

He was clearly puzzled “Uh . . . what?”

I threw back the covers of the bed and stood up stiffly on my bad hip “I’m fucking famished, pardon my language.” I gestured to the kitchen “If saving me isn’t good how about this – if you can whip me up an egg dish all debts are paid.  I can’t cook for shit, pardon my language, and this one” I pointed at Martialla “is even worse.”

Martialla scowled “That’s not true at all, I can make food . . . of a sort.”

“Yes, well I admit that some of the things you’ve made have had some of the same qualities as food.”

Irori (as I learned his name was) glanced at the kitchen and then back to me “Uh . . . . what?”

I clapped him on the back “Don’t worry about it buddy, glad to do it, all part of the job, just passing through, think nothing of it, don’t mention it, etcetera and so forth.  I don’t mean to diminish the importance of your rescue or anything like that but let’s not make a big thing of it okay?  There’s no rewards for being a decent human being.”

Martialla grinned “She’s a humble heroine she is.”

“Shut up you.  I really am hungry if you can cook at all and there’s any food in here.  But there is something you can help me out with.  Because of certain events I put you and your friends on my list, and I don’t take people off my list – not ever, it sets a bad precedent.  But I don’t want to take you all out now that I know more of the story, so I think I need to amend the list a little.  Who was the guy doing the whipping?”

Irori pursed his lips “He’s the one what was barbecued last night.  Never cared for him myself.”

“Hmm, what about the guys that were doing the holding down for the whipping?  Keep in mind this isn’t a death list exactly, but something needs to happen to them.”

“Victor, Beharri, and Cebuano – they’re not the best, but they’re not the worst either.  I mean we are criminals, there’s no angels amongst our ranks.”

“Everyone’s a criminal in some way I’m sure.  Well, they’re going to have to go on the list, but the rest of you are off the hook.  And there’s nothing that says I have to cross them off the list right away.  I can save them for last.”

Martialla was rummaging around in the kitchen area “After a long draught you’ve really bulked up the list lately, you may not ever get to them the way things are going.”

“Time is the enemy of us all.  Seriously like a fried ham and cheese sandwich would be great, or a kabob, anything really.”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Funds: 53,040 platinum, 9,605 gold

XP: 923,451

Inventory: Flask of Endless Sake, Hat of Effortless Style, Tankard of the Drunken Hero, Ela’s Dazzling Garment, Belt of Physical Might +4, Ring of Urban Grace, Black Marketers’ Bag (5), Tidy Trunk, Whiterock Family Ring (Ring of Binding), Ela’s Extraordinary Walking Stick, Ela’s Elegant Boots, Ela’s Extravagant Necklace

Noble’s outfit (5) collegium ring,  pocketed scarf, wrist sheath, signet ring (2) assortment of fake signet rings, silver chain set with moonstones, gold and emerald ring (2), garnets (700), gold necklace with jade pendant, ivory combs, tax collector’s badge, gold bracelet with ivory inlays, silver necklace set with rubies, gold earrings with jade inlays, silver and gold brooch, silver necklace with ruby pendant, disguise kit, covenant ring, tiny diamonds (26), Saryah Phidaner gown, masterwork thieves’ tools, onyx (55) personal signet ring, tiara, masterwork red and black long greatcoat, Turnbill blade of first forging (one of three), darkwood and platinum music box, silver bracelet set with bloodstones, platinum ring set with fire opal, silver and moonstone bracelet, holy symbol of Kozilek 

Revenge List: Duke Eaglevane, Piltis Swine, Rince Electrum, watchman Gridley, White-Muzzle the worg, Percy Ringle the butler, Alice Kinsey , “Patch”, Heroes of the Lost Sword, Claire Conrad, Erist priest of Strider, Riselda owner of the Sage Mirror, Eedraxis,  Skin-Taker tribe, Kartak, Królewna & Bonifacja Trading Company, Hurmont Family, Androni Titus, Greasy dreadlocks woman, Lodestone Security, Kellgale Nickoslander, Beltian Kruin the Splithog Pauper, The King of Spiders, Auraluna Domiel, mother Hurk, Mazzmus Parmalee,  Helgan van Tankerstrum, Lightdancer, Bonder Greysmith, Pegwhistle Proudfoot, Lumbfoot Sheepskin, Lumber Consortium of Three Rivers, Hellerhad the Wizard, Forsaken Kin, Law Offices of Office of Glilcus and Stolo, Jey Rora, Colonel Tarl Ciarán, Mayor Baras Haldmeer, Rindol the Sage, Essa, eyeless hag, Baron Saltwheel, Baron Harmenkar, Colonel Tarl Ciarán’s wizard soldier, Victor, Beharri, Cebuano, Mayor Eryn, Chimera Trading Company

Montagem 14 Year 888 (New Imperial Calendar) Part 3

I’m sure there’s all sorts of military wisdom on what to do when faced with a superior force.  Helpful notions like “take advantage of your opponent’s weaknesses”, “wait for them to make a mistake and then do something good”, and “use tactics that are advantageous when it is advantageous to do so”.  Most advice never really tells you how to do anything – it’s more like encouragement than anything.  Good thing this isn’t a military outfit.  Here’s my theory, if you can’t run away try harder to run away.  But if you really can’t run away go on the attack.  People don’t like being attacked (well some of them do but you can’t account for freaks) and it puts them off their feed.  If there’s one military truism that I would like to add to the pile, one that’s actually true, it would be “fuck it”.  There are no reinforcements, no one is coming to bail you out, your enemy isn’t going to get bored and leave, you’re basically screwed – so what’s the harm in trying something really?

Of course that’s not the situation that I’m in.  I could, and should, very easily leave this half-ass village behind to suffer whatever fate comes it’s way.  And yet here I am, about to embark on a daring commando mission that’s as dangerous as it suicidal.  And why?  Honestly I don’t know.  Do I feel sorry for these people?  Sure, but their lives are pretty stupid anyway – being tortured to death by backwoods marauders would honestly be a step-up for them.  What I’m worried about is that I’m doing it because Martialla wants me to – which is a far more insidious threat than pity.  Martialla’s a good sort, but she’s dangerously unpredictable on account of her sentimentality.  And if I’m developing an affinity for her opinion of me that means that I’m letting her emotional nonsense effect (affect?) my decision making, which is bad. 

Now I know what you’re thinking “Ela, Martialla is a loyal and trustworthy friend to you, of course you should care about her opinion of you”.  Well, I should and I shouldn’t you know?  Have you ever heard the expression keep your eye on the prize?  That’s chumbait designed to get you robbed while you’re staring at a stupid prize, but the intention is to remind you not to get distracted.  I can’t let feelings like “friendship” and “love” (the way women can love each other and still have sex with men) get in the way of my quest for revenge.   That would be wrong.  Some things are just more important that personal relationships not matter how satisfying they may feel – things like revenge. 

“But Ela, you get distracted all the time.  Some would say the past eleven months have been naught but one distraction after the other.”

Counterpoint – shut up. 

Anyway, the idea was that we’d find out where Ukra and his pals hang out and get them before they came to get us.  This idea fell apart pretty quickly once no one knew where that was other than “in the woods”.  Even the filthy blue-haired spitter didn’t know, claiming that she only met with him to deliver her ill-gotten (ill-delivered?  They may have been gotten legitimately) goods in town.  She claimed he was very secretive about where he and his buddies hid out, presumably polishing their ridiculous belt buckles.  I insisted that there had to be some shady characters in town that have some idea where their honeycomb hideout is and there was – Nilda and her two friends.  Who had left earlier.  And probably also the mayor, who was missing.  And maybe the dwarf merchant.  Who I killed.  Then I posited that there must be someone in town who could track the Belters (do you like Belters or Bucklers better?) that had fled only moments ago and lead us to their hideaway.  There was a tracker or two but they claimed that trying to track at night doesn’t really work.  Probably they just didn’t want to get killed.  Dirty cowards. 

So the new plan is to wait until they murderous gangsters show up and then wing it.  You know, the usual – survive and don’t get caught.  Its genius is its simplicity.  The more you plan the more things can go wrong right?  That makes sense?  You can’t control the world or what’s going to happen – all you can do is influence it by leaning and making waving gestures and saying “go go go” like when you throw a rock at a crow sitting on a branch and you miss and it’s going to break and window and you’re trying to make it go the right way by sheer force of will.  Or, you know, some other better metaphor.  I explained my cunning plan to the assembled townfolks.

“Alright, I’m going to lie down for a while, wake me up when the guys get here to kill everyone.”

I hate when people use the idiom (expression?) that they felt like they were woken up as a soon as their head hit the pillow – but I have to admit that’s how it felt.  I went into Nilda’s cottage with the intent of maybe searching the place a little first, she left in a hurry so who knows what interesting items an assassin may have left behind, but as soon as I saw the bed it was all over.  It wasn’t even a nice bed – it was rickety as Hells and lumpy as well.  She must not have had any gentlemen (or lady) callers because you couldn’t do anything in that bed.  Nothing good anyway.  The point is I felt like I had lain (laid?) down and fell asleep hard and then four seconds later I was awakened (woken?) by a copious amount of flamboyant argle bargle outside.  Coming to my feet and staggering outside I saw that it was sunrise – a horrible beautiful sunrise.  I think that’s a military thing too – attack at dawn so your enemy has the sun in their eyes.  If they’re facing the right way.  Or maybe the idea is to make them fight when they have to piss. 

Swaggering about and being “gangy” was a good score (that’s twenty right?) of hard-fighting, hard-farting, ugly-ugly sons a bitches.  Last night I was pretty focused on the crazy wide belts they were wearing (is it some kind of kidney armor?) with the elaborate (and stupid) belt buckles but in the daylight I saw that many of them also had a hard calloused ring of skin around their neck and several others were wearing awkwardly high collars like a fancy lady does sometimes.  I tell you I hate anything with a high neck – I’ll decide when I want to feel like I’m being strangled thank you (it’s never FYI).  The lead asshole in charge was a lanky fellow with more than bit of a beer gut that didn’t match his breathtaking hazel eyes at all, nor his exceedingly long very ruby red hair.  Honestly that has to be a dye job – that color of hair doesn’t exist in nature.  But what kind of shit-kicking redneck would dye their hair like that (or at all)?  The world is a strange place for certain. His particular belt buckle was a giant tiger’s head about the size of a fist.  It was plated with something that was supposed to look like gold.  It was not gold. 

I shrugged off the blanket I had around my shoulders because I was too lazy to start a fire last night “I told you guys to wake me up when they showed up.”

Ukra gave me a good once over, you know in that gross way men do “You must be this mystery woman I’ve heard so much about.”

“Nothing mysterious about little old me, I’m just a simple village girl really, trying my level best to make it in a world that can seem cruel at times.”

He snorted “You’re going to say that with that bloody emerald on your neck?”

“Emeralds are green, this is actually a colorless sapphire – known as a fancy sapphire because people are bad at naming things – that’s tinted black by hematite.  It’s really quite a piece of jewelrycraft.”

“The point is that it’s expensive.”

I chuckled “Shit man, you don’t know the half of it, it’s magic as fuck – that makes things way more expensive.  I had to kill a hag to get it, and cure another hag of her hagness.” I held up my hand “You see this ring?  It’s got a demon in it and if I don’t have this necklace to protect me it infiltrates my dreams and slowly devours me with madness.  Probably eventually it would kill me.”

“I don’t know what to say to that.”

I waved away my blabbering “You don’t care about any of that, sorry I haven’t had my morning vodka yet so my thoughts are a little scattered.  Are you here for the money or for revenge?”

“Two of my men were killed last night.”

“Yes, killed by men in the employ of the Chimera Trading Company.  Although I believe they were operating under their own . . . uh . . . . recognizance at the time.  Is that the world I mean?  You know what I mean right?  They were acting on their own.”

“And why was that?”

“I stabbed their boss in the stomach a bunch of times and then he fell down and then he died.  They probably assumed at that point their contract was nullified.  I’m not sure about the particulars of that.  What kind of opt-out clause there may have been as so forth.  Contract law isn’t really my thing.”

“And why did you do that?”

“He was being very rude to me.”

“And where are these scoundrels that killed my men now?”

“Gone, rolled right out of town on the luxury coach that I rode in on – actually no I was on a horse at that point – but I was in it . . . before.  I brought it here is what I mean.”

“How convenient.”

“Not really, they took all the money.”

He chuckled and looked back at his cronies, prompting them to chuckle as well in sycophantic support “Now that’s very convenient.  The people I want and the money aren’t in town anymore.  I should just leave then huh?  How about I start conducting little interviews with everyone like the investigators in the mystery novels do?  Are they going to tell me the same story?”

“It was pretty chaotic, I don’t know who saw what, but no one is going to gainsay me for sure because it’s what happened.  Somewhere around here there’s a broad with blue-blonde hair – total dye job, no offense – and a back that looks like someone ran a plow over it a couple dozen times.  That was one of your men that did that by the way.  Anyway, I think she saw most of the action, it was quite a melee I tell you that.  There were a lot of different factions involved.  I’m not sure I have it all straight myself.”

“Some of my men were there as well.”

“Great, they should be able to back me up then.”

“They told me that you’re a liar, and a magician.”

“Magician!  That is bullshit sir!”

“They told me that you came into town wearing the face of a military man, and that you climbed up the sides of buildings like a spider, and that you made a ladder fall apart with a gesture, and that you grew to giant size.”

“Well yeah, but I’m not a magician, I’m just really rich.”

Ukra was about to say something when one of his crew shouted from the mob “I saw her kill Fritzell!”

“You didn’t see shit.  After I jumped on the dwarf I think I gave myself hip bursitis, I could barely move last night.  All I did was strangle a soldier, knife the dwarf, and then murder the other soldier that surrendered.”

Ukra raised an eyebrow “You did all that?”

The shouter pushed his way to the fore, he was a short pinched-faced no-neck with a face like thunder “I saw you burn Fritzell to death with your magic!”

I stared him down “You are confused sir, because I don’t have any magic.  Look, I understand your mistake, that fight last night had an unusual number of women in the mix – which is not what you’re used to seeing in your normal business right?  So you got me confused with someone else.”

He puffed out his chest like a bulldog “I saw a woman with long dark hair kill Fritzell!”

I smiled “Well there you go, it wasn’t me then.  As you can see I wear my hair up so that during deadly fights to the death it’s not flying all over the place.  In addition to the visibility factor I don’t like the feeling of hair sticking to my neck or face you see, and I tend to get sweaty during knock-down drag-out fights to the finish.  I know men like to pretend that women don’t sweat, and maybe that’s true to women who just stand there and look pretty in their ruffled dresses but we working class gals get a little slick from time to time.”

Ukra held up a hand to forestall Shorty “This is all very interesting, but this isn’t a trial.  Maybe you killed Fritzell and maybe you didn’t.  Someone needs to pay for that.  And here you are.”

I pointed to the road out of town “You better get on their tail then.  They’ve got a good lead on you but those coaches don’t move faster than men on horses.”

He grinned and made a weird clicking noise with his mouth “You know what they say about a bird in the hand.”

“It’s a good way to get a handful of shit?”

He laughed, a real throw your head back laugh “I like you woman.  But unless someone vouches for you . . .”

Another voice came from the pack of goons “I vouch for her.”

All eyes turned to the speaker – a tall solid looking fellow who was entering his middle years but still hanging onto an aura of strength.  This belt looked like some kind of gladiator prize bauble and its buckle was a stylized hammer.  I think.  It was very stylized whatever it was.

Hazel was surprised, but not as much as you’d think “You vouch for her?”

He nodded “I do, she saved my life in Paladore.”

That’s when it clicked for me.  All those marks around their necks – that’s what happens when you wear a collar around your neck for a long time.  A slave collar.  I would find out later that the whole thing with the belt buckles is they were made out of slave chains.  They weren’t all literal slaves, some of them were “just” indentured servants that were practically slaves – but they were all escapees or runaways from some kind of “arrangement” like that.  With no one to rely on but each other they banded together and became criminal assholes.  When they can they attack slavers, but still, they’re mostly just criminal assholes – it’s important to keep that in mind when you want to feel sorry for someone. You can feel sorry for someone and still remember that they’re assholes. 

“Well there you have it.  Is that pretty much it then?”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Funds: 53,040 platinum, 9,605 gold

XP: 923,451

Inventory: Flask of Endless Sake, Hat of Effortless Style, Tankard of the Drunken Hero, Ela’s Dazzling Garment, Belt of Physical Might +4, Ring of Urban Grace, Black Marketers’ Bag (5), Tidy Trunk, Whiterock Family Ring (Ring of Binding), Ela’s Extraordinary Walking Stick, Ela’s Elegant Boots, Ela’s Extravagant Necklace

Noble’s outfit (5) collegium ring,  pocketed scarf, wrist sheath, signet ring (2) assortment of fake signet rings, silver chain set with moonstones, gold and emerald ring (2), garnets (700), gold necklace with jade pendant, ivory combs, tax collector’s badge, gold bracelet with ivory inlays, silver necklace set with rubies, gold earrings with jade inlays, silver and gold brooch, silver necklace with ruby pendant, disguise kit, covenant ring, tiny diamonds (26), Saryah Phidaner gown, masterwork thieves’ tools, onyx (55) personal signet ring, tiara, masterwork red and black long greatcoat, Turnbill blade of first forging (one of three), darkwood and platinum music box, silver bracelet set with bloodstones, platinum ring set with fire opal, silver and moonstone bracelet, holy symbol of Kozilek 

Revenge List: Duke Eaglevane, Piltis Swine, Rince Electrum, watchman Gridley, White-Muzzle the worg, Percy Ringle the butler, Alice Kinsey , “Patch”, Heroes of the Lost Sword, Claire Conrad, Erist priest of Strider, Riselda owner of the Sage Mirror, Eedraxis,  Skin-Taker tribe, Kartak, Królewna & Bonifacja Trading Company, Hurmont Family, Androni Titus, Greasy dreadlocks woman, Lodestone Security, Kellgale Nickoslander, Beltian Kruin the Splithog Pauper, The King of Spiders, Auraluna Domiel, mother Hurk, Mazzmus Parmalee,  Helgan van Tankerstrum, Lightdancer, Bonder Greysmith, Pegwhistle Proudfoot, Lumbfoot Sheepskin, Lumber Consortium of Three Rivers, Hellerhad the Wizard, Forsaken Kin, Law Offices of Office of Glilcus and Stolo, Jey Rora, Colonel Tarl Ciarán, Mayor Baras Haldmeer, Rindol the Sage, Essa, eyeless hag, Baron Saltwheel, Baron Harmenkar, Colonel Tarl Ciarán’s wizard soldier, those guys with the stupid belt buckles, Mayor Eryn, Chimera Trading Company

Montagem 14 Year 888 (New Imperial Calendar) Part 2

I saw Blue and her friend walking up to me – I saw it coming.  At some point in the confusion, that confusion being me fighting to save her worthless hide as you may remember, she had found and put on a shirt.  It didn’t fit very well but still it was good, not because she didn’t have a nice set, but because I find that a woman looks very odd topless.  Nude?  Sure, fine.  Topless is just a bad look if you ask me and I don’t care for it at all.  Plus the shirt should help soak up the blood from her savaged back, which is a bonus.  Although you have to be careful with that because you don’t want the blood to dry in such a way that you’re stuck to the cloth.  It’s sad that I know that.  Anyway, I saw it coming.  And yet I was still very surprised when Blue – unsteady on her feet and being supported by her friend – spit directly on me.  I think she was aiming for the face but spitting isn’t an exact science, especially if you don’t practice. 

People get pretty upset about being spat upon, which is entirely fair, but if you ask me as far as bodily fluids go it’s pretty much the best of the lot.  Maybe you could make an argument for sweat, but do you really want someone else sweating on you?  I don’t.  I mean don’t get me wrong, obviously the best case scenario is that no fluids from another person hit you at all, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last year it’s that there’s really not much reason to spend time thinking about the best case scenario.  I mean even it if happens, which it never will, it doesn’t require a lot of planning.  And of course I realize that spitting it meant as an insult no matter how you feel about it biologically.

“I’m going to assume that that’s your way of saying ‘thanks for saving my life’, it’s unconventional for sure.”

Blue seemed to want to say something but was panting too heavily to form words.  Martialla looked over at me and spoke instead. “Wow, someone just spit on you and you’re not going berserk?”

“I think I may have broken my pelvis jumping on a dwarf.”

“Ah, that explains it.”

Blue’s “friend” in the peasant dress did plenty of angry shrieking for both of them – mentioning several of those other fluids and how she’d like to hurl them in my face also, as well as the general generic insults that are hurled around about promiscuity and appearance whatnot.  It’s depressing that even when women are screaming invectives at each other they still follow the paradigms set forth by men.  I dream of a day when I’m berated and told to fuck myself in gender-neutral terms that are equally as belittling and provocative to everyone.

For one of the first times ever I leaned on my Walking Stick, using it for its intended purpose “What the Hells is your problem?  I did just save you, why are you pissed at me?”

Blue finally found her voice, choking back the pain “You’re the reason this all happened!”

“How do you fucking figure that?”

“You must have taken the money.”

“I mustn’t have done anything.  What I did was save this entire town from being burned down by a psychopath.  What I did was save you both from having the flesh whipped off your worthless ungrateful bones.  What I did was save that one armed deputy.  You two and your friends were the ones working with them to steal the money.  Don’t get angry at me because they turned on you.  No honor among thieves and so forth.”

“They only did that because of you!”

“How?  How did I do anything other than risk my life to save yours?” I sighed “Look, I think it’s safe to say that we’re all having a real lousy night, in the morning . . .”

“There’s no time!  They’re going to be coming.”

“Who?”

“Ukar’s men!”

“I am getting such a headache, how about someone tell me what’s going on here?”

Do you have your roster sheet ready to fill out?  Blue and her friends were smuggling poison for Nilda the assassin and shiver for Ukar and his band – the belt buckle gang – and some unknown commodity for the dwarf merchant.  This last thing was apparently somehow time sensitive so when the soldiers blocked Blue and her gang from getting into town they needed to cut a deal.  The soldiers let them into town so they could make their delivery on the condition that they help their wizard (who entered the town invisibly like a jerk) make contact with the merchant so they could come up with a plan to steal the money.  Thinking they were going to need some more muscle they got Ukar in on the action as well.  When the money wasn’t there Ukar’s men turned on Blue as fast as you like (probably because we framed her) and the rest of the conspirators got in on that action quickly as well because every knows that you can’t trust women – deception is the curse of our whimsical gender. 

I pointed a Nilda “So what’s your part in all this?  Why did you come to the rescue?”

“Blawen and I aren’t exactly friends, but we’ve worked together enough that I felt I owed her.  Plus I didn’t want those soldiers taking over the town.”

“But you weren’t in on the robbery?” She shook her head and I scowled at the blue-blonde whose name is apparently Blawen “So the only people you didn’t cut it in the scam were the only people that tried to help you.  That’s very interesting don’t you think?”

“We’re wasting time here!”

“So you think Ukar is going to gather his entire army of stupid belt people to come get the money?”

“You killed his men, they’ll be here for revenge.”

“What was this secret payload for the merchant?”

I looked around for one of the merchant guards to ask but they were gone – and I mean gone gone.  While the rest of us were talking like idiots they had gone to the coach-house and driven the coach away.  And more importantly the chest inside the coach.  And more importantly the money instead the chest.  I should have seen that coming.  They also killed Cloe, although if we’re being honest it’s hard to get too upset about that.  A search revealed that Mirran was dead as well, although it’s hard to say what happened there – there wasn’t a mark on him.  Maybe his heart just gave out.  Or maybe poison.  Or maybe some kind of magic.  Who knows?  The mayor was missing.  Or at least no one could find her.  I guess that’s the same thing really.  The one armed deputy (or whatever) turned up eventually with his other deputies (or whatever) as the only remaining authority figure in town.

“Well then, looks like we’ll be on our way then.”

One arm nodded and gruffly thanked us, but Blue was incredulous “What?  You’re just leaving?”

“Yes, the only reason we came back at all was to stop you from being beaten to death, I tell you this much – we should have just kept going.”

She shook her head “What kind of dirty bitch are you?”

“What the fuck do you want from me lady?!  You said the belt boys are coming to town looking for me so why would I stick around?  Probably they’re coming for you too, are you going to hang around and wait for them?”

“They’ll tear this place apart looking for us.”

“Why?  Everyone can say we left, which we will have done.” 

She shook her head again “You don’t know Ukar like I do.”

“What do you want me to do?  Hit them with my cane?”

“You seemed to manage getting quite a lot of other people around here killed just fine.”

“How many men does Ukar have?”

Nilda answered “At least a dozen.”

“Yeah, fuck that.”

Blue blocked my path as I started to leave “You caused all this and how you’re just going to let these people suffer for it?!”

I gave her a shove “Quit saying that!  You did this as much as anyone, you were the one who told those assholes about the money in the first place!”

Things went pretty much downhill from there.  Our bickering was as pointless as it was inevitable – Blue and I had had enough of each other before we even met it seems.   At one point I was starting to think about maybe possibly considering to potentially think about conceivably sticking around to “sort things out” but when Nilda said that she and her friend were going to be leaving within the hour.  That really holed that boat.

“You’re the only one who actually lives here!”

She didn’t seem happy about leaving but she did seem determined “Not by choice.  With the money you paid me I’m done with all of this.”

Blue was instantly suspicious “What money?!”

I glared at her “Shut up.” I turned back to Nilda “Done with what exactly?  Why is there an assassination team in a nothing town like this?”

One-arm piped up unhelpfully “There is a lot of traffic through here.  Cataola is a hub.”

Nilda looked grim/apologetic/resolute “I’m not an assassin, not really, I just needed money.  It’s a long story.”

I gestured “Well, we’ve got time, let’s hear it.”

“Actually we don’t.”

As she made to leave I threw out my final gambit “How much would it cost to hire you to take our Ukar?”

She didn’t turn around “I don’t do that anymore.”

I looked at Blue “Well there you go, unless you expect the six of us to take on this gang of yours there’s nothing to do but get gone.”

She had nothing to say, her look of disgust said it all.  Martialla looked more thoughtful “We are kind of leaving these people in the lurch.  And we’ve faced worse odds.”

I sighed “Not by choice.  I’m starting to wonder about you Martialla, you have a bad tendency to want to fight when we should run.”

“You always want to run.”

“Exactly.”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Funds: 53,040 platinum, 9,605 gold

XP: 923,451

Inventory: Flask of Endless Sake, Hat of Effortless Style, Tankard of the Drunken Hero, Ela’s Dazzling Garment, Belt of Physical Might +4, Ring of Urban Grace, Black Marketers’ Bag (5), Tidy Trunk, Whiterock Family Ring (Ring of Binding), Ela’s Extraordinary Walking Stick, Ela’s Elegant Boots, Ela’s Extravagant Necklace

Noble’s outfit (5) collegium ring,  pocketed scarf, wrist sheath, signet ring (2) assortment of fake signet rings, silver chain set with moonstones, gold and emerald ring (2), garnets (700), gold necklace with jade pendant, ivory combs, tax collector’s badge, gold bracelet with ivory inlays, silver necklace set with rubies, gold earrings with jade inlays, silver and gold brooch, silver necklace with ruby pendant, disguise kit, covenant ring, tiny diamonds (26), Saryah Phidaner gown, masterwork thieves’ tools, onyx (55) personal signet ring, tiara, masterwork red and black long greatcoat, Turnbill blade of first forging (one of three), darkwood and platinum music box, silver bracelet set with bloodstones, platinum ring set with fire opal, silver and moonstone bracelet, holy symbol of Kozilek 

Revenge List: Duke Eaglevane, Piltis Swine, Rince Electrum, watchman Gridley, White-Muzzle the worg, Percy Ringle the butler, Alice Kinsey , “Patch”, Heroes of the Lost Sword, Claire Conrad, Erist priest of Strider, Riselda owner of the Sage Mirror, Eedraxis,  Skin-Taker tribe, Kartak, Królewna & Bonifacja Trading Company, Hurmont Family, Androni Titus, Greasy dreadlocks woman, Lodestone Security, Kellgale Nickoslander, Beltian Kruin the Splithog Pauper, The King of Spiders, Auraluna Domiel, mother Hurk, Mazzmus Parmalee,  Helgan van Tankerstrum, Lightdancer, Bonder Greysmith, Pegwhistle Proudfoot, Lumbfoot Sheepskin, Lumber Consortium of Three Rivers, Hellerhad the Wizard, Forsaken Kin, Law Offices of Office of Glilcus and Stolo, Jey Rora, Colonel Tarl Ciarán, Mayor Baras Haldmeer, Rindol the Sage, Essa, eyeless hag, Baron Saltwheel, Baron Harmenkar, Colonel Tarl Ciarán’s wizard soldier, those guys with the stupid belt buckles, Mayor Eryn, Chimera Trading Company

Montagem 14 Year 888 (New Imperial Calendar) Part 1

There’s something about a scream that really grabs your attention.  I mean a real scream scream you know?  A girl might scream when the boy that likes her puts a spider down her dress.  A woman might scream because her beau proposed to her.  An older woman might scream at her husband after she goes town to the pub to drag him home before he can waste any more of his wages and catches him getting a handjob from a barmaid in a dirty alley.  That same woman might scream when her drunk husband drags her down the street by her hair.  An even older woman might scream because she sees someone of a different ethnicity or national background.  But a real scream scream is unmistakable – it’s the kind of thing that people look towards from all around.  It’s the kind of thing you put on pants for and go out the door to see what’s going on.  It’s a noise that demands attention – even after killing four men in cold blood with malice aforethought. 

Martialla and I slunk back towards town to see what the screaming was about.  It was easy to ascertain because someone had thoughtfully lit several torches – can’t have their handiwork go unappreciated right?  In the middle of town there was a barrel.  And bent over that barrel was the woman with the blue-blonde hair who was smuggling something into town and was conspiring with several other parties to steal the money we brought in (which is now safely in my possession).  Based on the fact that her shirt had been torn off and one of the fellows with the crazy belt-buckles was beating her across the back with a horsewhip I made the mental leap that they had some manner of falling out.  You know, because the money wasn’t there.  Because I took it.  The merchant and his goons and the four remaining soldiers (who didn’t yet know that their commander and the rest of their squad was dead) were standing by watching the proceedings, as were a goodly number of horrified townsfolk.  Notable by their absence were any of the militiamen.  

Her friend in the peasant dress was being held there as well while the beating went on and she looked pretty terrified, although unless I miss my mark it was more about the possibility of her being the next one over the barrel rather than over the torture of her friend.  So maybe friend isn’t the right word so much as work acquaintance.  Blue wasn’t screaming every time she was struck, most of the time she was gritting her teeth and taking it, but eventually the pain would build up blow by blow and become too much for her and then she’d cry out.  Normally I’d say that it’s pointless to hold back, all that buys you is more pain, but in this case it clearly didn’t matter – the same amount of pain was coming no matter what.  That’s probably a metaphor for something. 

I looked over at Martialla “You want to do something stupid?”

“Always.”

“Head to the coach and see if the other smugglers are there – if they don’t know what’s going on let them know.  I’m going in as the sergeant or squad leader or whatever the Hells he is – don’t kill me when you come charging in t save the day like a big damn hero.”

Martialla started flanking around to the other side of town while I ran back and grabbed the reins of horse of the last soldier we had killed.  Mounting up, I thundered into town as Blue’s screaming had given way to helpless sobbing – I thought about trampling the whip-wielder but reined up at the last moment, which still scared the shit out of him.

“What the blazes is going on here?!  What are you doing to that woman?!”

One of the soldiers stepped forward “Sir, the money wasn’t there, well it was but it wasn’t.”

“What the holy fuck does that mean soldier?!  Either the money was there or it wasn’t!!!”

The other three soldiers started edging back as the volunteer gulped “Sir, what I mean is that when we went to look in the box all the platinum was gone and it was full of gold instead.” He pointed at one of the Buckle-boys “He said that these two had come to watch the money and . . .”

“And you believed them?!  Are you stupid son?!  What did YOU see?!”

“I didn’t see anything, by the time we got there the money was already gone.”

“Get the fucking woman off of there you fucking morons!”

One of the Buckle-boys stepped forward pugnaciously “She’s not going anywhere, these two stole our money.”

“And replaced it with gold?  How does that make any sense?”

“Well something happened!”

“And you think beating the shit out this woman is going to tell you anything?  Use your head boy!”

He and his friends were getting ugly looks “You’re not in command here old man.”

“You want to try me you little pissant?  I am a soldier in the King’s army!  I kill people for a living!  What the fuck are you?  Some duded up piece of country-trash who makes their living stealing chickens from little old ladies.  I’d kill you where you stand you garter-wearing goat molester!”

In pretty short order I realized that really only two of the soldiers had backed off, not three.  One of them, who I also realized wasn’t wearing armor, had taken maybe a half step back but was more watching with a sharp expression than reeling from the anger of his commanding officer.  I realized all of this when he cast a spell and my illusion was stripped away just as I finished what was a pretty good bawling out I thought.

“Oh shit.”

I spurred my house (figuratively since I wasn’t wearing spurs) into action, but people were grabbing at me like crazy.  Seems like everyone and their brother was grabbing at me.  Once it became clear that I was going to get dragged off the horse I did something very stupid – I stood up in the saddle and jumped for it like a circus performer.  It wasn’t pretty, it was anything but pretty, but effective nevertheless (well some the less)  I managed to hit the hit the side of a building and with my boots I clung there like a spider and started scurrying up onto the roof.  The soldier wizard (who ever heard of such a thing?!) summoned up some more magic and shot a mass of sticky webbing at me, but it didn’t even slow me down – maybe because of the Boots, maybe because he’s a crappy wizard.  Who knows?  Once I was up on the roof, seeing no bows or the like I peeped over the edge ready to duck back if any magic bullshit came my way.

“Okay guys, honesty time, here’s what happened.  My friend and I enchanted that gold to make it look like platinum for a scam we were running . . .”

Wizard soldier shouted up “We had the money before you idiot, we know that’s not true!”

“Oh right, there’s a lot of moving parts here, I kind of lost track of . . .

“Someone get a ladder!”

“No, no, no one needs to get any ladders, you see what’s happened here is . . .”

Some of the Buckle-boys dragged Blue, shirtless and bloodied, off the barrel and one of them held a hooked knife to her face “Come down or I’m going to cut her nose off.  For starters.”

“Look, I don’t even know her, and I know that’s what people always say when they’re in a situation like this but it happens to be true this time.  I just have this funny thing about wanting to help women being tortured in the town square for no reason.”

“How do you know it’s for no reason?!”

“Look, I can explain everything if you just give me a minute.” I saw a couple of the townspeople carrying a ladder over “There’s definitely no need for that, you just stay down there and I’ll stay up here and we can just talk and everything . .  .”

The Buckle-boy with the knife was practically frothing at the mouth “Get down here now or I’m going to slice this bitch in half!”

“Eh, go ahead, show everyone what a tough piece of business you are by murdering a helpless woman – that’s some real dangerous stuff, you’re clearly not a man to be trifled with.  I tell you what champ, if I had a crossbow right now I’d shoot you right through your nose.  I’m a great shot, I could totally do it with a nose like that.  You wouldn’t die right away, that’s the fun part – it would take days.  You’d want to die long before you actually did – it’s pretty gruesome usually but with you it would be hilarious.”

They brought the ladder up against the building and I waited until I saw a face appear over the side of the roof before I touched the ladder with my Walking Stick and caused it to crumble and shatter like it was made of toothpicks – dumping the men climbing it to the ground.  I made a show of chuckling.

“Oh, that’s some classic comedy right there.  What’s your next routine?”

I think it was the dwarf that had the bright idea to set the building on fire.  It was certainly his men that did the torch work.  Calling on my Boots for a burst of speed I ran and jumped as far I could – not far enough to reach other roof, but far enough to spider climb up the side and make it to the roof that way.  The mob followed and the merchant guards seemed like they were going to repeat the process.

“Alright people of Cataola, doing nothing while a woman is stripped and beaten like an unruly dog in the middle the night – I get that, that’s just some good old fashion woman beating, nothing wrong with that.  But now these fuckers are burning your town down.  And you’re just going to stand there?  I can jump from roof to roof all night until there’s no buildings left.  Is that what you want?  Look around, who’s not here?  The constable and his men.  Because these people killed them.  I don’t see the mayor either, so either she’s dead too or she’s letter this happen.  There’s no one to defer responsibility to here, it’s just you right now – are you going to let these out of town assholes destroy your town?”

A few people in the crowd did seemed concerned about this casual arson but after they were smacked around a little by the buckle brigade they piped down.  I guess they are willing to see their entire town burned.  I mean what’s the alternative?  Standing up for yourself?  As the merchant guards came forward with their torches again I ran to the edge with my hands out wide.

“Wait, wait, I’ll come down, I’ll come down.  But I need certain assurances about my safety.”

That puke of a sissified looking dwarf laughed “You’re not going to be safe.”

One of the Buckle bandits chimed in “If you give us the money we won’t start ripping pieces off of you, that’s the only thing that can save you.  Either you give us the money or we fuck you up, nothing you say or do matters other than that.”

“Fair, fair, that’s totally fair, I get that.  The problem is that the money isn’t there anymore, we used magic to send it away.”

The solider wizard scoffed “Bullshit.  If you could do that you would have done it in the first place.”

“We couldn’t, not until we got here.  We didn’t know the spell, we used a scroll.”

“Who’d you get the scroll from?”

“Nobody, we just had it stashed here.”

“Your lies are pathetic.  Do you even know what the truth is anymore?”

“Look, what do you want me to say?  You’re going to accuse me of lying no matter what.”

“I don’t want to hear you say anything, either you give us the money or you die screaming – those are the two options.”

The dwarf nodded “Now come on down from there before we have to burn another building down in this nice town that you’re so worried about.”

“Alright, I’m coming down.”

Lucky for me it was after midnight, I took a drink from my Flask and grew to ogre size.  I don’t know why magic cares what day it is but it does.  Magic is stupid like that.  With my increased size I leapt off the roof and landed on that bearded turd.  My plan was to come up swinging with my Walking Stick and try to fight my way free as best I could but jumping on a roof and landing on a dwarf really knocks you for a loop – who would have guessed it.  I think I might have really screwed up my hip.  And my knee.  And my foot.  Pretty much everything on the left side behind the waist.  And the worse part is I don’t think the dwarf was even hurt that badly.  I was seized and my Walking Stick wrestled away from me before I could turn the head into a real live snake. 

I got punched and kicked a couple times as they dragged me towards the barrel but the whip-wieldier cautioned them about knocking me out before he could go to work on me.  Considerate fellow.  They tried to rip my clothing as well to reveal my back but they found that my clothing is pretty rip-resistant – it would have been comical to anyone watching them try.  Who could find comedy in such a grim moment.

I laughed “It’s magic you fucking morons, it’s not going to rip.”  The whipper responded by smashing me in the mouth with the handle of the whip “Good compromise.  Way to be adaptable.”  I spit out a gob of blood and saw something white in it “Oh, fucking Hells, if you knocked one of my teeth out you are going to be in real trouble.  My mouth is very important to me.” With a growl he bashed me between the shoulder blades with the whip-handle. It took me a moment to catch my breath.  “It’s okay, it’s okay everybody, I can kind of feel them with my tongue, I think all the teeth are there.”

They were still struggling to rip my clothing off (in their defense they were excited) when the commander of the soldiers came riding up in a suspiciously poor manner to anyone who would have been playing close attention other than myself.

“What the blue blazes is going on here?!  Report soldier!”

One of the soldiers moved to start blabbing in a sycophantic manner but the wizard-soldier jumped the line “What’s my name?”

His face became a thundercloud “What?!  What the Hells do you think you’re doing son?!  I asked for a status report not an inquisition!  I’ll ask the questions here Gods damn it!!!”

The wizard soldier backed up, his hands moving in arcane shenanigan “It’s another imposter, kill him.”

What would have been nice is if Martialla and smoothly rolled off the back of her mount and landing nimbly on her feet with her rapier in hand.  What actually happened is she mostly fell out of the saddle, landed badly on her hands and knees and lost her sword in the process.  On the plus side she did scramble to her feet emitting three beams of magic fire at anyone who looked dangerous.  That really got the crowd scattering.  I was forgotten in the chaos and took a swig from my Tankard, hoping that it would buoy me enough to help Martialla.  Filled with magical heroic vigor (and rum) I managed to limp forward and strangle one of the soldiers with my Necklace – good thing it’s, well not indestructible, but less destructible enough to be used as a garrote rather than breaking.  Although that’s going to be bad news if I’m running or falling and it ever gets caught on something.

As if the odds weren’t bad enough suddenly there seemed to be those belt buckle people everywhere.  Where the Hells did they all come from?  I had a split second to realize how screwed we were before the big guy and the lady Shireling from the coach showed up – followed in a moment by our friendly neighborhood assassin and her pals.  What really turned the tide was when I got a hold of the dwarf though, and by got a hold of I mean grabbed the bejeweled knife off his belt and stabbed him in the gut six or ten times.  Once his guards had nothing to fight for and two of the soldiers were dead (the wizard disappeared as they always do) the Brotherhood of the Belt Buckle ran for it and the last soldier threw down his weapons and begged for mercy.  I found my Walking Stick and clubbed him in the head until it was gone.  His head I mean. Not my Walking Stick. 

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Funds: 53,040 platinum, 9,605 gold

XP: 923,451

Inventory: Flask of Endless Sake, Hat of Effortless Style, Tankard of the Drunken Hero, Ela’s Dazzling Garment, Belt of Physical Might +4, Ring of Urban Grace, Black Marketers’ Bag (5), Tidy Trunk, Whiterock Family Ring (Ring of Binding), Ela’s Extraordinary Walking Stick, Ela’s Elegant Boots, Ela’s Extravagant Necklace

Noble’s outfit (5) collegium ring,  pocketed scarf, wrist sheath, signet ring (2) assortment of fake signet rings, silver chain set with moonstones, gold and emerald ring (2), garnets (700), gold necklace with jade pendant, ivory combs, tax collector’s badge, gold bracelet with ivory inlays, silver necklace set with rubies, gold earrings with jade inlays, silver and gold brooch, silver necklace with ruby pendant, disguise kit, covenant ring, tiny diamonds (26), Saryah Phidaner gown, masterwork thieves’ tools, onyx (55) personal signet ring, tiara, masterwork red and black long greatcoat, Turnbill blade of first forging (one of three), darkwood and platinum music box, silver bracelet set with bloodstones, platinum ring set with fire opal, silver and moonstone bracelet, holy symbol of Kozilek 

Revenge List: Duke Eaglevane, Piltis Swine, Rince Electrum, watchman Gridley, White-Muzzle the worg, Percy Ringle the butler, Alice Kinsey , “Patch”, Heroes of the Lost Sword, Claire Conrad, Erist priest of Strider, Riselda owner of the Sage Mirror, Eedraxis,  Skin-Taker tribe, Kartak, Królewna & Bonifacja Trading Company, Hurmont Family, Androni Titus, Greasy dreadlocks woman, Lodestone Security, Kellgale Nickoslander, Beltian Kruin the Splithog Pauper, The King of Spiders, Auraluna Domiel, mother Hurk, Mazzmus Parmalee,  Helgan van Tankerstrum, Lightdancer, Bonder Greysmith, Pegwhistle Proudfoot, Lumbfoot Sheepskin, Lumber Consortium of Three Rivers, Hellerhad the Wizard, Forsaken Kin, Law Offices of Office of Glilcus and Stolo, Jey Rora, Colonel Tarl Ciarán, Mayor Baras Haldmeer, Rindol the Sage, Essa, eyeless hag, Baron Saltwheel, Baron Harmenkar, Colonel Tarl Ciarán wizard soldier, those guys with the stupid belt buckles, Mayor Eryn, Chimera Trading Company

Montagem 13 Year 888 (New Imperial Calendar) Part 3

Since we’ve been running on short on sleep Martialla and I tried to catch some shuteye before it was time to sneak out of town and away from all this drama (which we caused).  It’s surprisingly easy to sneak past a an incomplete military cordon under the cover of night when you can turn invisible and can disguise yourself as anyone you want.  Get your act together military!  I tried to convince Martialla to sleep on the floor with her face pointed towards the door so if anyone came in it would smack her in the head and wake her up but she wouldn’t go for it.  She’s my oldest (a couple months) and dearest (only) friend but she never listens to my great ideas.  Even though she was lying on the bed in the coach-house right next to me and breathing like a jerk I fell asleep almost instantly and when I woke up it was dark out.  I know that it was after sundown because the shutters on the window were open.  I also know that they were secured when we went to sleep. After my eyes adjusted to the dark I saw standing in the corner a slender figure cloaked and sticking to the shadows.

“What?”

I wasn’t speaking overly loudly, but I wasn’t speaking especially quietly either – regardless Martialla didn’t even stir.  I swear that woman could sleep through . . . you know . . . something . . . loud.  I want to say thunderstorm but it’s actually pretty easy to sleep through thunder for some reason.  I wonder why that is.  I was assuming the figure in the corner was a woman based on her silhouette and I was proven right when she spoke.

“I came to warn you.”

“Go ahead, warn me then.”

“Coppercoat, the dwarf merchant, tried to hire me to kill you and your friend tonight.  He’s working with one of the soldiers and a smuggler that have come into town to take the money and frame you.”

“Well thank you for not killing me.  Why aren’t you killing me?”

“Local politics, it would bore you I’m sure.”

“Fair enough, you kill people for money then?  How much would it cost for you to kill the commander of those soldiers out there?”

Even in the dark I could tell by her body language that this caught her off guard “That would be very difficult.”

“I’ve give you twenty-five thousand gold.” This really took her my surprise “I am not joking in the slightest.  I have the money.  I don’t want to tell you your business but this seems like a pretty good opportunity despite the obvious difficulties.  I’m going to assume that you left things open-ended with the dwarf rather than just saying no, I’m no assassin but that seems like the smart move, tell him that the deed is done.  The various conspirators must have some plan to meet up and divide up the money.”

“He probably won’t be there.”

“But some of his men will, enough to ensure there’s no funny business.  Probably four I would bet.  He doesn’t have that many men left and some of them will probably still be trying to watch for anyone trying to sneak out of town.  Wherever he is he’ll be alone or maybe with just one man.”

“Even so it won’t be easy.  I can tell he’s a fighter, not a commander who’s never seen action, just taking him by surprise won’t guarantee anything”

“People rarely get paid twenty five thousand gold for anything easy.” I slipped out of the bed and started counting out coins on the bench at the foot “I’ll give you five thousand right now if you agree and the rest when it’s done.  What do you say?”

Martialla finally stirred and blearily asked what was going on before I shushed her.

The mysterious visitor held up a hand “Stop stacking up that money here.  Can you follow me out the window?  Quietly?”

I scooped the money back into my pocket without so much as a clatter (it’s a talent I have) “We can be quiet as a church mouse.”

She waved for us to follow and then threw her leg over the windowsill and was gone into the night.  I punched Martialla in the calf.

“Ow!”

“Just making sure you were fully awake.  It’s time to go, there’s been an interesting development.”

Martialla turned us both invisible and we scampered down the side of the building to follow our mysterious benefactor/potential murderer to a small cottage – she was pretty startled when I whispered invisibly in her ear that we were right behind her.  She stashed us in the dark cottage and then told us to wait.

“Before you go how much did the dwarf offer you for my death?”

“Five hundred gold.”

“How insulting.”

“I’m not sure you understand how much money that is here.”

Once she had skulked off into the night I explained to Martialla what was going on.  She wasn’t too keen on just waiting there, suggesting more than once that we just skedaddle while the skedaddling was to be skedaddled.  I was getting a little antsy myself when our early night visitor returned – with two friends that stayed outside while she crept in.

“I’ll take the five thousand now.”

“What’s the situation?”

“Shortly the soldiers are going to be in the coach-house to take the money, we’re going to head out and take a shot at their commander like you said.  The five thousand is ours either way.  If we can’t get him we keep the five.”

“Fine.  Who’s going to be at the coach-house?”

“One of the soldiers is already in town coordinating, three more men are coming into town with the smugglers – I would imagine Coppercoat is going to have all this guards with him.  There can’t be a lot of trust there.”

“Where’s the constable during all of this?  The one with the limp?”

“I don’t know, I was told he wouldn’t be problem.”

“What about the two men he had watching the money?”

“I don’t know.”

Once she and her friends were gone into the night on their mission of murder Martialla and I crept back coach-house where several lanterns were blazing away merrily in the holding area where the coach was.  The one armed militiaman was there, slumped on the ground with a bloody face and his one arm tied awkwardly to his side.  Standing by the couch were two roughnecks with massively wide belts that had crazy buckles on them – I’ve never see the like.  They were talking the way men do about – about taking the money and disappearing into the night with the understanding that it was just talk and they’d never do it.  At my nod I took on the form of the blue-blonde from the coach and Martialla took on the form of her friend in the servant dress and we walked in.

Buckleman #1 was taken aback “You made good time, where’s the coach?”

“Busted wheel, they’re working on it.”

Buckleman #2 laughed “And as usual you made yourself scarce when there was work to do.”

“You know me.  I thought there were two guards, what happened to the other guy?”

Buckleman #1 joined in the laughter “He pissed himself and ran as soon as we walked in.”

“And you let him go?”

His laughter died “Our concern was the money.”

“And what do you think he’s doing?”

“Hiding around the corner and shitting his pants probably.”

“Or he’s getting reinforcement.  Go find out, we don’t need any surprises tonight.”

Buckleman #2 frowned “How are we supposed to find him in the dark?”

“Since you’re the one’s that lost him you can figure that out how to find him yourselves.”

Buckleman #1 came forward to menace me with his bulk and stale sweat stink “We don’t take orders from you.”

I stood up on my tip-toes to kiss him on the forehead – I’m not sure anything else could have surprised him as much as this.  He took a step back like he had been kicked by a mule and put his hand to his head.

I dropped him a sassy wink “Just go would you?  We’ve got the money covered.”

The two men looked at each other for a moment, utterly at a loss, and then walked out of the coach-house.  After a moment we resumed our normal appearances and I went to the coach to start switching out the money while Martialla untied the militiaman. 

He sat up , trying to squeeze some life back into his one arm “I could have wriggled out, I was just waiting for a chance to make my move.”

“I believe you.  I think this is your chance.”

“What are you doing?”

“Safeguarding the Queen’s tax revenue.  I think you should check on your boss – I don’t know if they were going to kill him or what but they seemed to think he wasn’t going to be a problem for them tonight.”

Martialla helped him to his feet “Regardless you should get out of here, I think a lot of armed people are going to be here shortly.”

He seemed torn as he watched me switching out the money in the chest but ultimately he left the coach-house as well.  It takes a while to pack and unpack hundreds of pounds of precious metal but not as much as you might think – it does a number on the shoulders though.  Once Martialla and I had all the platinum and filled the chest with the gold that I couldn’t hide away we made our way back to the cottage.  As we sat back down in the dark I took a drink from my Flask and passed it to Martialla. 

Martialla took a long drink and handing it back to me “Why are we still here?  Shouldn’t we be sneaking away like thieves in the night?”

“And run out on my bill?  Bite your tongue.  I want to see how the assassination turned out.  We may have some more work to do.”

“You want to take out those soldiers?”

“Maybe.  I feel like killing them would make the world a better place.

“As long as it’s not too dangerous.”

“As long as it’s not too dangerous.”

It was probably a good hour later when our host and another woman with short copper hair plastered to her face with sweat banged through the door supporting a red-haired fox-faced fellow between them who was white as a sheet and bleeding buckets.  Both women were injured as well but not nearly as badly as the fellow they were dragging in.  The assassin called for us to light a lantern but Martialla simply conjure some magic light instead – giving me a look at her.  Our friend had lank looking brown hair but startling bright blue eye and an incongruously young-looking face for a contract killer.  They laid their friend down with a grown and started fussing with bandages. 

I moved closer with my Flask “Here, let me try this.”  I gave him a Healing draught which abetted the blood loss and brought him around a little at which point I backed off and let the two ladies move in with their first aid nonsense. “Did you get him?”

Blue Eye’s voice was grim “Yeah, we got him.”

“Just him?”

“One of his men too.”

I looked over at Martialla “Two down, four of them at the coach-house.”

She put her hand on her rapier “Let’s go.”

“I put your money under the bed, take a look before we leave.” Blue-Eyes slide over to the bed and looked at the glittering gold underneath. “You want to count it?”

She looked over at her sweating and bleeding friend and shook her head “Where are you going?”

I reached over and took Martialla’s hand “Just a moonlit stroll with my gal.”

She yanked her hand away “You know I don’t like it when people think that!”

“Prude.”

Is there anything honorable about sneaking up on someone in the dark and stabbing them in the back?  Of course not, but it’s hard to see what honor has to do with much of anything – and especially when it comes to murdering assholes.  I suppose honor is just another tool created to help control people.  Maybe someday when I’m rich and retired I’ll bring all the great philosophers in the land to explain to me why people are so happy to participate in their own exploitation.  Honor demands that I give my stuff to the King?  Okay, sounds good.  I guess it’s just because they want to belong to something.  Well, I figured it out on my own, cancel the philosophers.  Using stealth and guile and other synonyms Martialla and I killed the four men out doing their best to keep anyone from sneaking out of town one by one.  While Martialla was honorably digging through the last dead man’s pockets I looked back towards town.

“I wonder what’s going on in the coach-house.”

“I would imagine once they saw the fortune had been reduced ninety percent there was a blow-up of some kind.  Whoever those people with the giant belt-buckles were probably got the blame.”

“Probably, but why would they still be standing there like idiots if they took the money?”

“When people think they’ve been ripped off they usually don’t show that kind of rational thinking in the moment.”

“True enough.”

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Funds: 53,040 platinum, 9,605 gold

XP: 914,921

Inventory: Flask of Endless Sake, Hat of Effortless Style, Tankard of the Drunken Hero, Ela’s Dazzling Garment, Belt of Physical Might +4, Ring of Urban Grace, Black Marketers’ Bag (5), Tidy Trunk, Whiterock Family Ring (Ring of Binding), Ela’s Extraordinary Walking Stick, Ela’s Elegant Boots, Ela’s Extravagant Necklace

Noble’s outfit (5) collegium ring,  pocketed scarf, wrist sheath, signet ring (2) assortment of fake signet rings, silver chain set with moonstones, gold and emerald ring (2), garnets (700), gold necklace with jade pendant, ivory combs, tax collector’s badge, gold bracelet with ivory inlays, silver necklace set with rubies, gold earrings with jade inlays, silver and gold brooch, silver necklace with ruby pendant, disguise kit, covenant ring, tiny diamonds (26), Saryah Phidaner gown, masterwork thieves’ tools, onyx (55) personal signet ring, tiara, masterwork red and black long greatcoat, Turnbill blade of first forging (one of three), darkwood and platinum music box, silver bracelet set with bloodstones, platinum ring set with fire opal, silver and moonstone bracelet, holy symbol of Kozilek 

Revenge List: Duke Eaglevane, Piltis Swine, Rince Electrum, watchman Gridley, White-Muzzle the worg, Percy Ringle the butler, Alice Kinsey , “Patch”, Heroes of the Lost Sword, Claire Conrad, Erist priest of Strider, Riselda owner of the Sage Mirror, Eedraxis,  Skin-Taker tribe, Kartak, Królewna & Bonifacja Trading Company, Hurmont Family, Androni Titus, Greasy dreadlocks woman, Lodestone Security, Kellgale Nickoslander, Beltian Kruin the Splithog Pauper, The King of Spiders, Auraluna Domiel, mother Hurk, Mazzmus Parmalee,  Helgan van Tankerstrum, Lightdancer, Bonder Greysmith, Pegwhistle Proudfoot, Lumbfoot Sheepskin, Lumber Consortium of Three Rivers, Hellerhad the Wizard, Forsaken Kin, Law Offices of Office of Glilcus and Stolo, Jey Rora, Colonel Tarl Ciarán, Mayor Baras Haldmeer, Rindol the Sage, Essa, eyeless hag, Baron Saltwheel, Baron Harmenkar