Those Left Behind: Session 2

18 Hammer

The party emerged from the well just before dusk, loaded down with all the tools of their nefarious trade. Heavy snow was falling and the streets of the Slums were largely empty. They crept to the edge of the square around Kuto's Well, then İstediğimi summoned a dust devil to blow the snow back over their tracks, obscuring signs of their having exited the well. With that done, they hurried towards the walls of New Phlan.

They reached Ivanovich Poppof's house to find a half-dozen orcs standing about it, shivering in the snow, and talking rather loudly, presumably complaining about guard duty, but none of the party spoke 'orc' so it was hard to be sure.

Yury cast a sound bubble over the group and the silently slipped around to the rear of the house. Or rather, that was their plan, but one of the orcs looked in their direction just in time to see Grinkle and Tamn bringing up the rear and raised the alarm, which the party failed to hear due to their protective bubble of silence. Moments later six orcs were charging at their backs.

Grinkle did not fare well in the initial orc onslaught, taking a spiked club to the side, then getting hamstrung by an orc with a long, curved sword. Sending him sprawling to the ground, his screams of pain muffled by Yury's magic. Tamn took a grazing hit from a spear, but managed to deflect the remaining attacks directed at him.

Yury reacted first, spinning and unleashing a mass of thick, sticky webbing from his hands. One orc managed to leap forward, away from the spell, managing a half-hearted swing at Tamn as he did so, the rest were trapped in the webbing. Zander stepped up and downed the free orc with two swift blows of his flail.

Grinkle scrambed backwards from the webs and said a prayer to repair his injured leg and staunch the bleeding. Tamn suggested that Yury "encourage them to be quiet" and began lighting a torch. Yury threw another sound bubble over the web-entrapped orcs and Tamn tossed in the torch, burning them alive...quietly. Grinkle laid a cloud of gloom over the area to keep the flames from being seen by observers outside of the alleyway.

Once the webs and the orcs had burned away, Isti and Tamn put on their climbing harnesses and scrambled up onto the snow-covered roof. They tied a rope around the northern-most chimney, then threw the end down. Tamn climbed down first, followed by Isti, coming out into the house's kitchen. Tamn unlocked the deadbolt and removed the bar from the back door, as Isti examined the cabinets and drawers stuffed with dried foods, plates, bowls, and eating utensils. A trap door, presumably leading into a basement or cellar, was in the south-east corner, and a wooden door led south into the rest of the house.

As the others came in, there was some discussion as to whether they should get a wagon or wheelbarrow to haul all the food and furniture back to their hideout. Tabling the conversation, Yury suggested that they check the cellar first, then work their way upstairs. Everyone agreed and Zander cast a find traps spell and led the way.

The trap door opened to a set of rickety wooden steps, leading down into a plain, dark cellar. Five figures, crouched near a door on the far side of the cellar, immediately began barking as Zander started down into the hole, the sound oddly muffled by Yury's spell. "I hate dogs," Zander grumbled. The chorus from his infravision-equipped friends was unanimous, "Those are not dogs." Though as they lunged at Zander it was clear that the cold, skeletal creatures had been dogs at some point in the past.

Tamn reacted first, jumping down the stairs and clipping one of the skeletal hounds with his iron-studded club. The dog recovered quickly and clamped its jaws onto Tamn's arm. Isti dropped down beside Tamn and knocked the undead canine away with the flat of her sword.

Two more of the hounds lunged at Isti, but she managed to dodge aside. Grinkle, still at the top of the stairs, castigated the undead hounds, raining down a string of blistering invective about how they were "vile, unclean, putrescent," and the like. The skeletal hounds were literally blown away by the harshness of Grinkle's words, hurling them back against the far wall where they shattered.

The cellar had nothing of interest other than the door, which Yury quickly unlocked. Beyond the door was a passage into the old sewers and catacombs that ran under most of the old city. Isti pointed out that the sewers were all connected one way or another, so there was sure to be a way to get from here to their hideout. They all agreed that they should finish casing the house and taking anything that could be carried, but that maybe they could use this passage to secretly return and transport furniture and other harder to stash items back to the well.

They made their way back up into the kitchen and through the south door into what was clearly the living room of the house. Two large, stuffed chairs stood in front of the second fireplace. Next to them was a small bookcase packed with leather-bound volumes. A well-built, mahogany table surrounded by six hardwood chairs stood next to the far wall, near the stairs going up. On a small table by the front door was a 12-inch tall gold statuette of an illithid.

The party immediately began discussing how they would get the table, chairs, and bookshelf back to their lair, when something small darted out from under one of the table and slashed at Grinkle, tearing into his leg with tiny, razor-sharp talons. A hairsbreadth later, three more came bursting from cover, one from each of the stuffed chairs and another from the bookshelf.

"Fucking undead cats now?!" said someone, as the things hissed and tore into the party. Zander took a minor scratch. Isti cut one in half laterally with her sword. Yury telekinetically hurled the one on Grinkle against the ceiling, shattering it. Then Zander swept away the last two with his flail.

"Of course the only joker willing to build a nice house out here in the slums would have to be a necromancer!" groaned Tamn.

They grabbed and bagged the gold statue and headed up the stairs with Tamn in the lead, into a small, unfurnished hall. Six humanoid skeletons waited, one on either side of the two windows, and another in front of each of the two doors leading off the hall. There was an audible, collective sigh as the party prepared to confront them.

One of the skeletons lunged at Tamn, but he met it with a club to the midsection, toppling it over the railing of the stairs to clatter on the floor below, then rolled towards the far door to clear the landing. Yury came up behind Tamn, deftly dodging the claws of the next two skeletons and then cast a spell to blur his form, making him even harder to hit. Grinkle was a step behind, beating back the nearest skeleton with a sword to the head, with Zander right beside him crushing another skeleton with his flail. The skeletons closed on them, one getting its bony claws into Zander. Then, Isti dispelled the magic animating the remaining four.

Expecting more skeletons, the party crowded around the next door, weapons at the ready, as Zander, still magically scanning for traps, nudged it open. Within was a small bed with fine linens beside a fireplace in the opposite wall, with a plain wooden desk and chair closer to the door. They cautiously stepped inside, looking under the bed, desk, and in the fireplace, then relaxed when they found no undead guardians. On the desk was a candlestick, several letters written in a language none of them understood, a half dozen quill pens, two large bottles of ink, and several blank sheets of parchment.

Isti claimed dibs on the bed if they could get it out of the place, but they otherwise passed over the room and headed for the next. As they stepped back into the hall, Grinkle pointed out a trap door in the ceiling, presumably leading to the attic, which they agreed to check after the next room.

They were equally cautious opening the next door, which led into a room smelling of sulfur, rotting meat, and other unidentifiable stenches. A large table covered with glassware and other alchemical paraphernalia dominated the center of the room. A bookshelf leaned against the far wall, near the one round, unshuttered window that Tamn and Isti had noticed the night before, and a plush, high-backed chair stood next to the fireplace. In the corner opposite the chair was a small podium, completely covered by a book at least three feet wide.

Isti scanned the room with detect magic. When both Isti and Zander gave the all clear that there were neither mundane nor magical traps, other than the ones they both detected on the large book, Tamn pushed the door the rest of the way open and Yury led the way inside. As soon as Yury cleared the door, a creature looking very much like an oversized, skeletal bat leaped on his back.

The bat thing clawed and bit at Yury, tearing into his flesh. Then the large-armed tiefling went rigid, his muscles seizing and freezing him in place. Tamn stepped up and swatted the thing with his club, knocking it off of his paralyzed friend, and Isti hacked at it with "her sword":https://ruins-of-adventure.obsidianportal.com/items/townsend.

The bonebat hurled itself at Isti, biting her and stinging with its tail, digging a great, bleeding gash in her stomach, and paralyzing her as well. Grinkle dealt the thing a glancing blow with his sword, then Zander sent it flying halfway across the room with his flail.

The bat, apparently more intelligent than the other skeletons, picked itself off the ground and flew up and out of the nearby chimney. Zander wanted to give pursuit, but only Tamn would fit up the chimney, and he was on his knees trying to revive Isti.

Zander and Grinkle used their magic to patch up the worst of Isti and Yury's injuries. Five minutes later the two of them started moving again.

Once everyone was mobile, they gathered up the laboratory gear, figuring it was probably the easiest thing to fence of anything they had found in the house so far, packing it as carefully as they could in the sacks they'd brought. These they left on the landing, and then climbed up into the attic.

The attic was a single, large room, with a low, sloped ceiling, and completely empty, save for one small, colorful wooden box, nailed shut and tucked into a corner. A faint scratching sound could be heard coming from within the box. They approached cautiously, scanning for magic, traps, and curses, before Tamn laid to with his crowbar and pried the thing open.

Within they found a cheerfully painted wooden puppet, a marionette, which immediately sat up and gestured to its mouth, which had apparently been glued shut. Zander took one look at the thing, groaned, and destroyed it with a warp wood spell.

They worked their way back through the house, using detect metals and minerals and treasure scent spells to look for any more loose valuables. They found nothing else, so they grabbed the bags of alchemical equipment, gathered up the books, and made ready to leave. Before stepping out, Isti went back down to the cellar, cut off a lock of her hair, and hid it in a corner with the intent of a spell to track the path through the sewers from their lair later.

After everyone else slipped out the back door. Tamn bolted and barred the door again, then climbed up and out the chimney to join them. There was no sign of the bonebat outside. Grinkle cast a mass pass without trace over the party and they made their way back to their hideout through the snow, unmolested.

Those Left Behind: Session 1

Another guest adventure log from Alan Knightly...

My name is Tamn, and, apparently I am once again an outlaw, on the lamb, and hunted by everyone. I started as a slave. Escaped slavery to become an adventurer. Had my party killed by creepy shadow things. Became a bandit. Ratted out the bandtis to get 'captured' and 'reformed' by a local baron. And now that baron has been outlawed himself and his former subjects are out to kill those of us that worked for him. So…yeah…need to find a new line of work soon…

Let me back up.

12 Hammer

We stood on the battlements of Kryptgarten keep, watching the angry villagers massing. The previous day had brought quite a shock. Squire Grimnir and his companions had left early in the morning, trekking north through the snows to find the source of the Barren River's pollution before the the spring floods could ruin our fields. Shortly after they left, a group of lovely ladies had shown up asking strange questions about the squire. Shortly after the ladies left, a crier from Phlan arrived to deliver a writ of outlawry against the Squire and his pals for crimes against the state, and claimed all of Kryptgarten as forfeit. Then one of the farmers found the hacked, burned, and very dead body of Pooky, the Squire's giant, six-legged, albino crocodile-demon pet (yeah, he's a weird guy), near the edge of the keep's lands. That, of course, was sufficient sign for those of us at least somewhat loyal to the Squire to hole up in the keep, shut the doors, and try to figure out what to do since he was gone.

Now, I use the term 'loyal' loosely here. With the exception of Grinkle, who worships the squire as a god, and a few tattooed kooks from Hillsfar who did likewise, most of us served him out of debt, fear, or both. Not that we feared him, which we did, but that doesn't matter, but rather fear of the settlers in and around Kryptgarten, all of whom were from Hillsfar and had similar views on non-humans to that infamous city. The squire, scary as he was, had served as a buffer between the few of us who were not human and the potentially murderous xenophobia of the locals. Which leads us to the battlements.

As I said, by the end of the previous day, Grinkle had ordered all 'cleanly and faithful servants of our lord Grimnir' to withdraw into Kryptgarten Keep and shut the doors. This morning we had been awakened by the crashing, banging, gonging sounds of a giant black-iron bell falling from a great height. We rushed up to the battlements to see that the church which Grimnir had erected, dedicated to himself and run by Grinkle, was on fire. The sound must have been the bell falling from the tower, which had already collapsed. All of the settlers, some two hundred of them, were gathered around the gates. Everyone was armed with a torch, and most also had bows, spears, polearms, swords, shields, and armor (sometimes its not such a good idea to require 100% of your population to train with the militia).

With the peasantry up in arms, the church destroyed, our lord outlawed, and our monstrous defender killed, our position seemed untenable. There was only one thing to do: sneak out the back door.

Grinkle gave a little speech to the gathered 'priests', most of whom were heavily pierced and tattooed former chaos-bubo-cultists from Hillsfar and not particularly reliable. He told them we (Isti, Yury, Grinkle, and I) were leaving, and that as high-priest he was basically disbanding the church. Any of them who wanted to go with us could, the rest should divest themselves of their holy soap (yeah it was a weird church anyways), go dirty up their faces, and then let the villagers in once we were gone. Unsurprisingly we only had one taker on the going with us part, a real wacko (but a very talented wacko and a tough SOB) named Zander Payne.

We ran down from the walls and into the subterranean living quarters of the keep, grabbed all the gear and provisions we could carry, and were out the secret, back, entrance tunnel in under an hour. Isti dropped some kind of invisible wyvern trap spell in the passage in case we were followed. We watched from the woods as the 'faithless wretches' (as Zander called them) opened the gates and let the Kryptgardians charge into the keep. Then we booked it into the woods.

Now, the Quivering Forest is not a fun place to hang out, in any season, but in mid-winter its downright miserable. Grinkle, the tallest of us, was up to his knees in snow, which meant Isti and I were up to our chests. We were cold, wet, and homeless. Then, of course, there were the navigational issues in the forest, the fact that trees and landmarks tended to move around. We decided to head due-south and get out of the forest ASAP, as best we could determine on a cold, overcast winter day in a forest that wouldn't stand still.

Then, of course, there are the creatures that live in the forest that were just as cold as we were, and considerably more hungry. It should come as no surprise that, just when we saw the edge of the woods, two big (and I mean BIG) cats with tentacles sprouting from their backs appeared, one blocking out path ahead, and one creeping up behind. Grinkle, who's former tribe used to live in the forest, called them 'bèt deplase' or 'displacer beasts', and said they were almost impossible to hit. Of course, they also looked faster than any of us (especially me and my short legs) so it seemed like we had no choice but to try to hit them.

Just as I made the decision to charge the one in front of us, they pounced. It was at this point that I noticed that they had 6 legs, each with very sharp claws, but it was not the claws they attacked with, it was the flailing tentacles, each ending in a spiked pad. The one ahead leaped at me. I managed to dodge one tentacle, but took a rough hit from the second. The second took Zander, one tentacle hitting his left hand with enough force to splinter his shield and tear most of the flesh down to the bone.

Zander wailed in pain and lashed out with his flail, hammering the spiked weapon into the beast's side. Grinkle, surprisingly quick for his size, stepped into the thing's blind-spot as it attacked Zander and hacked at its backside, cutting it's tail clean off and causing it to let out a roar of pain. Isti rushed up, keeping Zander between herself and the beast, and, taking a handful of snow, channeled the power of the elements into Zander to heal some of the damage inflicting by the beast's strike.

Yury tossed a trio of knives in rapid succession into the one that had struck me, and I followed up by plunging my swords into either side of its neck, severing its main artery. It turns out they were not so hard to hit as Grinkle believed, especially if you can gang up on them and know some basic anatomy.

Of course, the other one was still standing and quite angry. It roared, spun, and tore into Grinkle with everything it had: two tentacles, four fore-claws, and a powerful set of jaws. The creature tore him apart, shredding his robes and sending blood flying everywhere. His body went limp. It's a miracle he survived.

Zander swung at the thing's exposed backside, but missed, striking air where he thought the thing's rump should be, but Yury came through with his knives again, two shots sinking up to the hilt into the thing's flank and dropping the beast like a stone. Zander knelt and rubbed a pumice stone over Grinkle's wounds (I shudder just thinking about how much that must have hurt) and they miraculously closed. Grinkle got to his feet and we hurried the hell out of there.

We needed a place to live, luckily Isti new just the place.

We left the forest and headed south as fast as we could travel through the snow, reaching the outskirts of Phlan just before dusk. We slipped through the slums unnoticed (because really, hobgoblins, kobolds, mohawked madmen, and half-demons were perfectly commonplace in that shit-hole) and reached Kuto's well by nightfall.

The place was cleaned out. It had clearly been looted and picked over, murder-hobo style, but no one new had moved in in the nearly two months since we left (not even the other thieves' guilds). So we made ourselves as comfortable as we could, treated everyone's remaining wounds, and got some sleep.

13 Hammer

There was some discussion the next morning. While all of us had criminal backgrounds, none of us were currently known or wanted in Phlan, no one outside of Kryptgarten knew that we were associated with the Squire, and we even had the old letters of marque from my previous adventuring group. Kuto's Well was plenty suitable as a hideout, but we still needed to live. We discussed the possibility of taking up thievery or adventuring for the Council (despite Grinkle and Zander's dislike of their treatment of Squire Grimnir), or both. Both won out.

We considered making contact with some of the other more established criminal gangs in town--Swipe's gang in the sewers near Podol Plaza, which Tvoja used to be a member of, the pirates out on Stormy Bay, or even the gang operating out of Koval Mansion over on the orc-infested north side of town--but decided that if criminal enterprises were our goal, we'd be better off setting up a new gang with ourselves in charge, rather than letting someone else push us around.

We decided that we'd work, in the immediate future, on getting the well catacombs set up as a proper hideout again. We needed furniture and supplies if we were going to stay there for any length of time. We also decided that, if we could get into the city proper, we should get the Bitter Blades' charter updated--since I was the last surviving member I could do that--in case we happened upon any bounties that we could take advantage of (because really, no matter how much some of us disliked the Council, there was no reason we shouldn't deprive them of some gems).

So, with a plan, we snuck out of the well around noon, when most of the local monsters who used the well for water would be sleeping, and headed through the slums towards 'Civilized Phlan'.

Only a couple blocks from the gates, we heard a high-pitched scream coming from a side alley. Now, I'm not exactly soft-hearted fellow, and my friends are not the nicest folk in the world, but I'm not one to leave a lady in distress, especially with so many orcs about. You know how orcs are. So I ran towards the sound and the others followed, after some brief hesitation.

We rounded a corner to see a young human girl, of an age with little Martha who I used to run with, or perhaps a little younger, dressed in a ragged brown dress with her back to a wall. She was screaming frantically and beating a stick at a pack of dog-sized rats swarming around her. Two mangy rat-sized dogs (you got that right, big rats, small dogs) stood by her feet, yapping and snapping at the rats trying to keep them off the girl. I gave out a sigh of relief on seeing that, at least it was not orcs raping someone again (you of course would not be surprised by how often that happens out here).

I drew my club and rushed the rats, sure that my friends would have my back (or not so sure, but not caring at least). The rats, apparently much braver even than is typical for giant rats, turned en masse and came at me head on. Even given the fights I've been in, seeing all of those teeth, I could understand why the girl was screaming. And those teeth were quick too. Ten of them were on me before I could get a swing in. I took several bites and one of them latched onto my right calf, biting so deep that I could feel its teeth grinding on the bone. I caved in the grinder's head with my club, but by then even more were on me. Again there were lots of bites, and another one actually got its teeth into the same leg, which was bleeding very badly by this point, and knocked me to the ground.

Luckily Yury was there with his knives--three throws impaled three rats, knocking them off of me. I took one more bite before the other three laggards caught up. Isti drew her sword and swung at one of the big ones, but overbalanced and nearly impaled herself when she fell. Grinkle and Zander, clean-freaks that they are, actually had spells granted from their "god" expressly for the purpose of exterminating vermin. One spell from Grinkle snuffed out six of the big rodents, and Zander took out four more, leaving only the three biggest standing.

Things were looking pretty good, until I looked up and realized that the girl was gone, and saw another dozen or so rats crawling out of various nooks and crannies around the alley. My first thought was that maybe it was a setup, but rats aren't that smart. Maybe the girl was a were-rat!

I didn't have time to think much more as the rats swarmed over me and Isti where we lay on the ground. I felt a lot of bites, and then felt very cold, then passed out completely, having lost a lot of blood in a very short time.

Luckily I'm tough and a fast healer, so the others were able to fill me in later. For started, one rat nearly disemboweled Isti, and a second broke her leg with a bite. Grinkle and Zander were able to do their extermination spell thing again, and Yury's knives took down one of the big ones. Of course, their sensibly keeping their distance just meant that the remaining rats had more time to gnaw on Isti and me.

Zander finally decided we'd been sufficiently and stepped in, crushing one of the big rats with his flail, and then impaling one of the smaller rats with the handle-spike on the backswing. Grinkle grabbed me and Yuri and dragged us back away from the gnashing teeth of the giant rats, casting a spell of regeneration on me to slow the bleeding. Yury then showed that he was apparently able to speak with animals, threatening the last two remaining rats with Grinkle's extermination if they did not withdraw. Wise little blighters that they are, they complied.

It's a miracle that Isti and I didn't both bleed to death, as severe as our injuries were. None of our friends were trained healers, though they did have some magic to help. Once the rats were gone, Zander and Grinkle applied all the healing magic they had available just to stop the bleeding, and were quite unable to wake us back up.

Yury, who, like me, is not such a bad guy, ran down the alley to try to find the girl and see if she was alright (I having not had the chance to explain that I suspected she was a were-rat). He reported seeing the two little dogs running out into another street yapping, but no sign of the girl.

With nothing else for it, they dragged our asses back to the hideout to recover.

15 Hammer

I faded in and out of consciousness several times, then finally woke up two days later. My leg hurt like a bitch, but I otherwise felt functional. Our priest friends had expended A LOT of magical healing on me and Isti to get us back in functional shape. Between watching us and healing us, they had been out getting the basics. They had managed to buy, beg, borrow, or steal (mostly steal) bedrolls and blankets for the five of us, a good supply of wood for fires, stores of food, mess gear, and even a stuffed sofa for the 'lair'.

It would be some time before Isti and I were fully recovered, but we could at least move around the hideout enough to help cook, clean up a bit, and care for ourselves, freeing the others to go about their business.

Actually, I was glad to have a couple of days to recover. Grinkle, Zander, and Yury were out a lot, trying to get a better lay of the land and plan for our new life here, which left me and Isti with a lot of alone time. It turns out we were healed enough to fuck like bunnies, and we did, a lot. Before I met Isti, I never would have thought that I'd be into kobolds, but we're all mammels, and she's pretty darn cute, and the fur feels kindof nice against my bare skin, especially since we went to Kryptgarten and had Grinkle making all of us bathe so...

17 Hammer

A couple days after we woke up, Zander came back late in the evening (after some heavy carousing in 'Civilized Phlan') to tell us about some rich muckity-muck who was had been dumb enough to build his house outside the walls of 'New Phlan'. A guy named Poppof, some king of merchant-wizard from up north, who had built a big two-story town house on the wrong side of the wall. Now this alone was not particularly newsworthy (space in New Phlan was getting really cramped and the Council had not approved expansion of the wall yet), until Zander told us that Poppof and most of his guards had been seen locking up the house, hauling out some goods, and hopping on a boat the day before. If they were going on a trade mission, they wouldn't be back for weeks, and a big house like that was sure to have plenty of nice furniture and things to dress out our hideout in style.

Isti and I, being small and inconspicuous, agreed to go stake the place out and case the joint for the rest of the day. If this Poppof fellow was a wizard, he was sure to have some magical traps and the like, but even that should not be too much of a problem for a pack of skilled thieves with plenty of magical training. Right?

The two of us found the house easy enough, a nice two-story townhouse, locked up tight. The second floor overhung the ground floor in the front by about five feet. Poppof had had the rubble, muck, and snow cleared away around the house and had installed a couple of cute planters with shrubberies along the front, under the overhang, and cleaned out most of the street so that people in the house would not be looking out at piles of shit like everywhere else in the slums. Hooray for gentrification.

All the windows were shuttered, save for a single round pane of glass over the front double doors. The front door was too obviously trapped, radiating all kinds of hostile magic and showing more mechanisms than was at all reasonable. Isti suggested that it was probably a leomund's trap (an illusion to make the door look more trapped than it was). The place had two chimneys, both on the Wall side of the house. There was also a back door, locked and barred from within.

The street was pretty busy, and there were no good hiding places near the house, so we just casually scoped it out, circled once, and then went to the far side of the street and perched on top of a ruined old hovel to watch. No one came in or out all day, but it was clear the place was being watched. We spotted a couple of orcish toughs standing on the street not far away and giving the stink-eye to anyone who seemed too curious about the place, us included. It seemed Poppof must be up-to-date on his protection money.

When it got dark, we made one more circuit of the house. The alley by the back door was narrow and dark. Making it less likely we'd be seen going in that way. Curious about the chimneys, I kept watch while Isti scrambled up to the steepled roof. She came back down quickly, reporting that the chimneys were open, but narrow, probably easy enough for the two of us to go in that way, but not the others, and not hauling anything out.

We went back to the hideout and reported our findings. The others agreed that we should hit the place tomorrow night, before any of the other, more established gangs got the same idea.

To be continued...

The Bitter Blades (Flashback): Martha vs. The World

A brief, unpublished play-by-post in which Martha joined the party...immediately prior to them all getting killed by shadows. Following the same format of other play-by-post logs.


Martha
Martha stood on the docks, staring at the small boat that had so recently arrived from Thorn Island. She recognized the misshapen form of Jack, but she did not know any of the other misfits who were unloading her father’s corpse from the boat. She was too much in shock to cry just then, instead she just stood there in silence, glaring at Jack and the others.

What do I do? she thought. Her father was dead. He had been paying for her apprenticeship at the grocers, not the other way around. Without his income, she had no job, no prospects. She had her little house in the slums. Perhaps she could hang out a red cloth like so many other girls and invite the men of the slums in with her, it would help her feed herself, but she had no wish to give herself to the likes of Jack, or the other slums dwellers. She scratched at her lice-ridden dress and tried to think of any way out of her predicament.

It was then that she noticed the well-dressed officials assembling on the docks to greet Jack and his companions, and the huge pile of weapons, armor, and other items brought back from the island. Somehow, only then did the tears start.

Wiping her eyes, she stalked up to the strange white-haired woman with the scar on her face and pointed at her father’s holy symbol sitting on the pile. “THAT’S MINE!” she said firmly.

Hazel
Hazel looks at the girl with unconcealed disdain. “Yours?! Who are you? I did not see you swinging a sword on Thorn Island.” She walks over and unceremoniously shoves the little girl away. “You’ve got spirit.” She says with a half-smile. “But I’ve never seen your face before and that bounty is ours.” She smiles more broadly, “Of course. If you really think you have a claim to that old cog, you could fight me for it.”

Martha
Martha rankles at the injustice of the scar-faced woman’s taunts. She wants to cry, but instead forces herself back to her feet. She stands there glaring and shaking her fist at the woman for a moment before pointing at the body being carried out of the boat. “That’s my father!” she says. “If you went out to that island, in that boat, then it was because he made you. Surely he deserves a share of what you brought back, and barring him, his kin!”

Tamn
“Hey!” Tamn steps up between Hazel and the girl, broken stick in hand. “First,” he says indignantly, staring up into Hazel’s good eye, “y’ve got no right t’ be shoving the girl. Second, the girl’s right, her da’ died fighting at yer side. At the least she deserves something t’ member him by. It’d be more proper for ye’ t’ take care of his kin. At least, make sure she’s got a place t’ sleep an’ some food…”

Ada
Ada walks over to stand behind the young girl, and nods vigorously.

Hazel
Hazel stands there looking at the girl for a moment longer, then walks over to the pile of loot and gathers up the things that Martha had indicated. “Tom was your dad, huh?” She hands over the wands, weapons, and jewelry. “These aren’t toys girl. If you’re going to be carrying around stuff like this, you better learn how to use them…”

She gathers up a few items herself, then looks around at the others and smiles. “That was fun. How bout we all go get some sleep, then meet at the Council offices in the morning to get paid and see what other trouble we can get in to.” She pauses for a moment, staring at Martha. “You too girl. Meet us in the morning and you can have your dad’s share…and come along to gut some monsters if you like.”


She turns to leave, then stops, “Hey, what’s your name girl?”

Martha
“Martha.” She says, finally breaking down and crying as the woman hands her the items.

She runs back to Mr. Cockburn’s grocery, tears running down her face. She had to take care of herself now, and she was determined to never be hungry again. Outside the grocer’s she put on her father’s holy symbol and the amulet, tucking the later inside her dress. Inside she stashed her new wands and weapons, and went to talk to Ian.

Her master soon learned how shrewd of a negotiator she really was.


By the time the group reconvened in the morning, she had arranged to use her father’s share of the pre-pay her apprenticeship for the full seven years, with additional time allowed for her to go adventuring with her father’s friends, had arranged for an extended line of credit with Mr. Cockburn to make sure she was fed, had bought outright the house her father had been renting in the Slums, and had hired a contractor to start making repairs to the place…

__________________________________________________________________

Tamn
After the party visits the Council Clerk to get paid, Tamn eyes as wide as saucers, heads strait to the Cracked Crown and orders a huge breakfast. When he finishes breakfast he heads to the Laughing Goblin for elevenses. After that he heads to the Bitter Blade for lunch, then to Ian Cockburns to buy a couple bottles of wine, which he takes back to the Bitter Blade and drinks until time for tea. At tea time he heads back to the Cracked Crown, downs a couple of plates, then back to the Laughing Goblin where he buys supper for his new friends…

Having thus eaten more in one day than he probably has in the last two years combined, Tamn, bloated and barely awake, buys a room above the Laughing Goblin (probably for two or three times what it is worth), stumbles up the stairs with his riches, and passes out. After throwing up much of the previous day’s repast some time in the middle of the night, Tamn wakes up late, aching and groggy. He leaves his room late in the afternoon and begins wandering through the small town.


Somehow, after sleeping off the pains of overeating, the facts of what he has just done start to feel more real. He is walking around a town, without minders or fetters. He is armed, properly armed, with two good swords at his side, and no humans are leaping to grab him and wrestle the weapons away. He wanders in a blissful daze, fat, happy, and free, for several hours, until he finds himself outside of the gates in the Slums near dinner time. This feels more like home. Poor, hungry, downtrodden folk living on the fringes. Feeling his stomach growl, he looks for a place to eat and finds the soup kitchen where the priests of Tyr and Sune are giving away meals for free. Seeing the long lines of emaciated people, and feeling the weight of his purse (holy shit, he has his own purse), he realizes that he really doesn’t belong here. Instead of queuing up for a bowl as he would have done only a few days ago, he walks to the back, finds one of the priests, and presses a fistful of platinum into their hands without a word—but in view of everyone present.

__________________________________________________________________

Ada
Ada stood patiently and quietly, not that she had a choice, as the Battle Chaplain yelled at her for three consecutive hours about abandoning her post. She was used to it, it wasn’t the first time that she’d gone AWOL for more than 24 hours and it wouldn’t be the last. She just stood there, as still as she could, and listened to the man ramble on about “not hot-headedly rushing off to wage war recklessly” and “considering the consequences of the violence you do before hand”. At least this commander wasn’t inclined to smack her around like the last one, and didn’t bother to look inside the strange leather satchel which came back slung over her shoulder.

Regardless of what her commander said, she knew she had done good. A risk to the city had been eliminated. She had made some friends. And, best of all, she had come away with a giant pile of platinum. That really was the worst thing about being a member of the Silent Sisters was that they didn’t get paid. Of course, she didn’t really have anything to spend the money on—her food, shelter, arms, and armor were all provided by the church. Still, it was nice to have.

When her hours of being reprimanded were over, and another four hours of penance sharpening spears in the armory done, Ada wandered back to her room and opened the satchel, spilling hundreds of coins out on her bed. She smiled broadly at the wonderful sound of the coins clinking together, and would have laughed if she could as they ran through her fingers. This is what violence, war, and adventure were all about, good, solid, cold cash.


After her little celebration, she carefully counted the coins and returned them to the small satchel. She really liked this new toy, it was bigger on the inside than on the out, never spilled unless she wanted it to, and the contents made no clinking noises. She hugged the bag to her chest, and laid down on her bunk. In two hours she would have to wake up and resume her guard duties, but she was used to going on minimal sleep, and she knew, if her new friends found something interesting to do, she would probably be abandoning her post again anyways.

__________________________________________________________________

Hazel

Hazel, as the daughter of a queen (sort-of) and a raider of dragon’s lairs, is much less surprised by the sudden windfalls of wealth than her companions. After many months of travel and sleeping in common rooms, she was quite pleased to have the funds to live “properly”—renting the best rooms above the Laughing Goblin, opening a tab for their finest food and wines—and sharing quite a bit with Tamn during his first day binge.

After establishing her rooms, she spends a day seeking through the town for a proper tailor, and visiting the silver-smith and other shops to deck herself in the “finest and most impressive southern fashions”—which to her means bright colors, lots of metal, and lots of exposed skin. After several fittings and adjustments for her muscular build, she is soon seen strolling around town in a “classic” lacemail bikini and chemise.

Noriss's Boy's: Session 2

Another guest post submitted by: Alan Knightly (aka. Tamn Footstooler)


Dear Squire of Kryptgarten,

My name is Tamn, and, apparently I am now part of a massive conspiracy to raze and lay waste to the city of New Phlan, kill all its citizens, rape all its women (because, you know, orcs), and set up some mysterious, giant, flaming guy who scares the fuck out of Lord Noriss as the king of the northern Moonsea. So…yeah…need to find a new line of work soon…

Let me back up.

After collecting the loot from my friends—I use the term loosely here, they were just some guys I met after washing up on shore on Thorn Island, and I really only knew them for a few days, but they did cut me in on their reward for killing the undead on the island—Lord Noriss informed us that we had been hired to kidnap a local heiress. The next day though, as we were sneaking into New Phlan to do the job, we learned that said heiress had agreed to marry her would-be kidnapper and was no longer on the hit list. Fucking politics.

If I’m sounding a little cynical, its only because I find myself in completely ridiculous circumstances.

So, that job fell through, not that I really mind…kidnapping seldom turns out well, and capturing or imprisoning anyone doesn’t really sit well with me. We return to Lord Noriss and are informed that he got a new deal, from the local Thieves’ Guild, the very boringly named “Thieves of Phlan”. We don’t usually get along with the “Thieves’”, as they tend to operate pretty openly and also tend to be less racially inclusive. But, apparently they needed a huge distraction in a hurry, and knew Noriss was the only one who could provide.

So, late in the day, we lieutenants, and a handful of carefully picked orc grunts, snuck out with two goals…rouse some of the pro-Xvimlar orc gangs, make them think the hobgoblins from the old textile mill were out to kill them, then kill a hobgoblin and plant evidence to make it look like the orc gangs did it, to make the belief true.

Our first stop was a hobgoblin watch-post, near the old wizard’s tower, which they used for keeping tabs on the humans poking about the Slums—a bit of early warning in case the counctil tried to send troops to root them out of the old Textile factory where they lived. Hobos are pretty organized it seems, which was a good thing for making out plan work, no one would expect a small pack of hobos to act on their own without orders from the tribe.

We did that old-school, kicked in the door and killed the five of them. Lost a couple of orcs, but that’s how it goes. We left our dead (and a couple of spare Xvim symbols), then grabbed the hobos’ bodies, still armed and armored, and hauled them out with us. Had to make sure the bodies were in the right place, eh?

Our second stop was the small Xvimlar shrine in the Slums, where the orcs tended to do their sacrificing and what passes for planning on their part. One of our orc grunts went in and scouted, informing us that, as expected a pair of gang leaders were there finishing off some beggar-girl. Thing about orcs, they mean it when they threaten to fuck people to death, and don’t mind continuing well after the ‘to death’ part. There were quite a few guards in the atrium, he said—apparently the grunts don’t get to join in the “serious worship”.

We climbed up to the roof and dropped into the sanctuary through a hole right above the altar (for letting out the smoke when the burn sacrifices). We caught them by surprise, dropped on their heads and killed them, quietly, mid-necro-coitus. We snagged their swords, strange green-bladed things that marked them as Xvim-approved gang-leaders, then lowered in the hobgoblin corpses and Yuri artfully arranged them in a scene of carnage and temple desecration.

We then started making a racket, two of our orcs shouting in their language, and the rest of us yelling some choice epithets and insults in Hobgoblin that Isti taught us. Coffex and an orc upended the altar to block the door and slow the arrival of reinforcements, while we pantomimed the killing, clanking blades together and yelling. Isti then blew a hole in the back wall using some toy she had concocted and we booked it out of there, just ahead of the door and altar lurching aside to let the angered orc guards in.

We ran through the twisting alleys for close to a half-hour, set a few small hovels on fire for good measure, then snuck over to the old textile mill, the ruckus of anti-hobgoblin hysteria rising in the slums behind us. We dismissed all but two of our orc entourage, handed them the green Xvim-blades, and Isti used her magic to instill them with a recklessly-insane level of courage. We then bet them five-hundred crowns (he had seen the cash we got off my dead ‘friends’) that they could not kill the hobgoblin sentries by the gates and get away with it. Man are orcs stupid…

Coffex gave the orcs each one of his special ravager potions. The two orcs snuck, quite expertly for orcs, up to the gates, scaled the walls, and were quickly in a pitched and not at all quiet battle with the sentries. Yuri set off an alarm spell, made to sound like the hobgoblin warning gongs, and then we high-tailed it down the nearest well and back to the hideout.

The next morning agents from the Thieves’ Guild delivered a bag with one-hundred pounds of solid gold plates, cups, and similar objects to Lord Noriss. Huzzah!

We took a couple of weeks to relax and enjoy the spoils of that last job, Noriss even sent a couple of the boys up to the market to order two tuns of wine to celebrate. I was starting to get used to this bandit thing.

After a few days of R&R, Lord Noriss again called us into his private chambers. We learned that he had received a letter from the would-be kidnapper inviting him to a meeting organized by the would-be kidnappee. Yeah, that’s right, apparently the newly married couple were holding some kind of open-forum for criminals and violent gangs in the city who want more say in politics. In a week, Noriss said. Nice of him to invite us lieutenants.

We showed up in Podol Plaza, just north of the well where we had out hide-out (between the Textile Mill and the old noble’s district), to find a horde of nasties—ogres, gnolls, kobolds, bugbears, hobgoblins, even a few giants—plus representatives from the Kovel Mansion Thieves’ Guild (not the one that paid us to stage the orc-hobo fight—they were conspicuously missing), representatives from the temple of Xvim, and our benefactor and his didn’t-need-to-be-kidnapped wife.

There was much airing of grievances: Xvimlar accusing hobgoblins, hobgoblins accusing Xvimlar, hobgoblins complaining about some adventurers taking over one of their keeps, the kobold king complaining about tribute shipments from the east being cut-off…all that sort of thing. They all wanted to know why ‘The Boss’ hadn’t ordered an attack on the city in so long. I was curious about this ‘boss’, since it was clear that everyone was talking to and not about the two, surprisingly young, humans who were leading the meeting.

Yuri quietly asked Noriss if he knew anything about ‘the boss’, and the tough half-orc informed us that he had only seen the boss once, at a similar meeting just after the humans took over the docks a couple years ago and started their campaign to ‘civilize’ Phlan. He described ‘the boss’ as some kind of flame-shrouded giant or demon who was trying to build an army to once-and-for-all put the humans in their place.

The boy informed everyone that “Lord Maram”, who I can only assume is this boss, was disappointed by the infighting between the various tribes and gangs in Phlan, and was unlikely to order any significant action until the tribes could show a significant success in working together to put a stop to the encroachment of the human adventurers and settlers.

The girl then informed them that the council had raised some racist Hillsfarran jokers as “Squires of Kryptgarten”, naming them the first nobles of New Phlan and giving them the recently liberated hobgoblin keep north of town. The keep was, she said, poorly garrisoned and isolated, and, because of the nature of the trust the council had placed in these outsider, would make an excellent example.

The boy called out the kobold king, Greshlyrr, and the newly raised hobgoblin Chieftainess-cum-High-Priestess, Grishnak, and informed them that ‘The Boss’ wanted them, as the most organized tribes, to coordinate a full-scale assault on the keep. He then called our Lord Noriss, praising his success in evading the council’s agents, and gave him, and therefor us, command of the joint kobold-hobgoblin operation. He was even nice enough to point out a convenient secret entrance to the keep by means of a nearby crypt.

There was some arguing on the part of the kobold king and hobgoblin priestess, and some guy named Mace, who was apparently the high-priest of Xvim and angry that they were left out, but they eventually all agreed to follow Lord Noriss’s commands…just this once.

So…

My name if Tamn. Until recently I was a slave. Then a hero. Then a bandit. Now lieutenant to an evil warlord, working for some even bigger-and-badder warlord, preparing to lead a legion of kobolds and hobogoblins to assault some gods-forsaken-keep in the wilderness as a precursor to the extermination of all humans north of the Moonsea.

I hope this letter finds you soon, so that you may prepare for our inevitable arrival.

~Tamn Footstooler, The Thrice-Betrayor

Noriss's Boys: Session 1

Another guest post submitted by: Alan Knightly (aka. Tamn Footstooler)

My name is Tamn. Until recently I was a slave. Very briefly I was a wealthy adventurer. Now I am a bandit.

It all started when I fell down a well, the bandit part at least. I landed in the middle of a small army of kobolds, orcs, lizard-men, and…other things, all with weapons pointed at me. I thought I was going to die, albeit, a better death than my friends got. I was just waiting for one of the kobolds to skewer me while I was down, then the biggest half-orc I’d ever seen pushed his way through the throng and offered me a hand.

I let the big bastard, genetically speaking of course, help me to my feet, and he introduced himself as “Noriss the Grey, Bandit Lord of Old Phlan.” He gave me a rather square deal—join his group or die. Obviously the former seemed preferable, so I found myself facing off, unarmed, against an oddly cute-looking lady-kobold. Don’t ask me why I thought she was cute, or how I knew she was a she.

I usually prefer to have at least a stick for a fight. She was a lot stronger than she looked and, damn was she quick, but after a few tosses I got her measure, got her in a choke-hold, and had her under in a couple of minutes.

Noriss was pretty sweet on the whole thing, let me keep my weapons and armor and gear, took all my cash—nearly a thousand crowns worth—naturally. He named me a ‘lieutenant’—apparently most of the gang were scraped up from the rank-and-file of local humanoid tribes or skum from the slums, so “adventurers” that join get special treatment.

After the little ‘test’, Noriss dispatched a couple of lizards to cling up in the top of the well and report on what was going on with the shadows. A couple of the kobos helped their sister back up and she introduced herself as Isti. Lord Noriss told her to show me to a place to bunk out while they waited for things topside to calm down. She then introduced me to the other two lieutenants: Gorilla-Arm Yuri, who did, in fact, have a HUGE arm, and Coffex, a lizard fellow.

I dumped my cash in the treasure room—and boy was it a treasure room—then was lead to a surprisingly dry hole, given that we were at the bottom of a well, where I could sleep.

I was woken up I don’t know how long later, by a grumpy-looking orc. I have NO IDEA what it was saying, probably something about fucking my mother, but I got the idea that I was wanted back at the well. When I arrived, Noriss informed me that the shadows things had yet to bother the well, but that the big black ball they came from was still covering the exit. He also, of course, asked about what kind of loot my companions had been carrying…

After getting the run-down on the sick loot my friends had, Noriss decided we should retrieve the bodies. He was even nice enough to suggest that his gang would give them a proper burial—though Isti pointed out that this was more a matter of self-preservation, given that ghouls were fairly common in this section of the ruins and corpses tended to attract them.

The lieutenants, myself included, were to go up first to secure the area—apparently being a ‘lieutenant’ was less about leadership than it was about getting special assignments that were too dangerous or difficult for the normal gang members. A squad of orcs and lizards would be coming behind us to grab the bodies and haul them down the well.

Coffex gave us each a weird, foul-smelling potion to quaff. I shrugged and drank it, and felt much stronger for it. He then pointed to a brown-and-white striped, woolly caterpillar climbing down the side of the well, saying it was an omen of ‘Great Luck’, foretelling a harsh winter to come. I couldn’t really follow how a harsh winter was ‘Great Luck’ but figured if it made my cold-blooded new companion happy it had to be good for now…

We came up topside cautiously, Yuri and Isti sporting bright bullseye lanterns and me and Coffex armed and ready. It was quiet, and dark, even with the lanterns, and—I could see—even with the sun bright overhead. Again I could see strange shapes moving in the darkness. I scanned the area, looking for where my friends had fallen and spotted the metal cube that that punk Damien had given us, sitting on the ground right by the well-head.

Cursing, I reached down, picked it up, and poked at the silver side. There was a click, and the darkness vanished. We blinked, dazedly, in the light, but were not nearly as surprised as the many shadows that suddenly found themselves standing fully visible in the bright sun, naked as the day they were birthed onto this plane. I rushed at them furiously, but they scattered into the surrounding ruins.

I pocketed the cube and Yuri yelled the all-clear down the well. Within two minutes my friends’ bodies were taken down the well and stripped of their weapons, magic items, and valuables. Noriss had them ‘buried’ (more like dumped) in a deep pit. They were covered with lye and i was allowed to say a few words, then a heavy stone slab was placed over the pit (apparently the bandits’ standard method of disposing of bodies).

We then adjourned to Noriss’s private chambers to divvy up the magical treasures (apparently such rare finds were reserved for the Lieutenants and Noriss himself) and discuss our next mission—the kidnapping of a wealthy heiress in New Phlan.

The Bitter Blades: Session 7

Guest post submitted by: Alan Knightly (aka. Tamn Footstooler)

The end, for real. In which Tamn finds a new gang to hang with, and the Bitter Blades disband (er...die)

To anyone listening to this, let me cut to the chase. My name is Tamn. My friends are dead. I am at the bottom of a well, and I am surrounded by bandits. Hell, scratch that.

My name is Tamn. My friends are dead. I am now a bandit…Yeah, that sounds better. All hail Lord Noriss the Grey and all that…

Now, that that is out of the way, let me back up.

After a few days spent enjoying the fruits of their previous victory, Tamn, Hazel, Martha, and Ada the Simple decided to take a foray into the Slums as a first step to see if Martha could actually hold her own, pull her weight, and all that…

Hazel had posted a notice at the Training Hall, trying to pawn some of the magic items we collected from Sokol Keep. Given how pricey the Training Hall is, we were actually pretty surprised when someone showed up at the Bitter Blade asking about the notice. Turns out the berk wasn’t looking to buy. No, he told us he was impressed by the tally of arcane relics we were willing to part with. Said any cutter who could find so much and then give it up was exactly the kind he was looking for.

The berk’s name was Damien Nuren. Neat fellow—human, maybe 40 years, long black hair, claimed he was a gentleman, alchemist, and doctor of philosophy—the kindof berk who would have owned a good many of my fellows back in Hillsfar. Said he was looking for a very particular book called the Path of Peace and that the last known copy was supposed to have been owned by a sage who lived in Phlan in the old days. So, he wasn’t buying, he was hiring.

The berk gave us a magic cube which he said was good for helping find things and told us we should start looking roundabout the plaza near Kuto’s Well, which is the far side of the slums before the real ruins start these days. Seemed strait-forward enough, and he offered us a thousand gill each. Seemed like I was right about him being the kindof berk who could buy a whole clan worth of my kin.

Martha, bright lass, asked why, if he knew where to look and had his magic box, he didn’t just go fetch the book himself. Bright, but maybe insufficiently mercenary, since there was a THOUSAND GOLD in the deal for her. Anyways, Nuren said flat-out that he was a coward and that monsters and beggars and thieves and old ruins wasn’t his thing, so he was willing to pay well to get what he wanted without sticking his own neck out. Very sensible like.

Martha, again the bright lass, pointed out that all the slums-folk avoided Kuto’s Well out of course. Said that the bandit Noriss the Grey and his gang of toughs tended to lurk about the area, and that people who went to the well looking for a drink more often as not never came back.

We took the job anyways, because, seriously, a thousand gold a head is nothing to sneeze at.

Let me say, again, that Martha was a bright lass, and that she was right, Lord Noriss and his gang were definitely down the well way. Now, I don’t know if that berk Damien was a lying sack of shit or just misinformed, but we didn’t find any book, and that box of his did not work as advertised.

Now, I’ve lived in squalor, been beaten, been kicked, been thrown in the Arena, spent a few nights on the Isle of Lepers, and generally lived under the most wretched and unjust regime in the world, but Hillsfar’s worst was nothing compared to Phlan’s slums. I’d been there a few times over the past couple days, even dropped a pile of coins at the soup kitchen near the market, but the northeast side was basically three solid blocks of wading through shit—literal shit and figurative shit. Most of the beggars were the kind with missing limbs, the streets were wall-to-wall trash heaps cobbled with a carpet of barely concealed bones, the the buildings, if they could even be called that any more, were crumbling wrecks overgrown with plants just as dead as those on Thorn Island.

We tangled with a couple of orcs and a gnoll early on—the cutters said they wanted ‘tribute’ for walking through their turf—but Hazel and Ada’s blades made short work of them. Man, that Ada chick was kindof creepy, with the not talking and the beating things to a bloody pulp with her spikey elbows. I think I’ll miss her.

And rats, my god the rats. Big as ponies. We killed them too, without much trouble, mostly thanks to Martha’s sharp eyes. She saw them coming a mile away.

After that filth, the plaza around the well was actually pretty nice. I guess the threat of real danger was enough to keep most berks, and their trash, away from the place. Now, don’t get me wrong, the square, like the rest of the city, is littered with scattered stonework, blown leaves, and detritus, but none of the rotting food scraps, dead bodies, and excrement you see in the deep slums.

We got to the well plaza and Hazel tapped the shiny side of the cube, like the berk told us. She immediately dropped the thing and let out an uncharacteristic yelp, like she’d been shocked or something. The cube flew from her hand and rolled to a stop right beside the well. All of a sudden a big, black globe grew up around us—cold and dark as a winter night. We could still see, but not much.

Can I get a what the fuck? Like I said, either that Damien berk set us up, or he was an idiot, or whoever sold him the cube set him up.

Dim shapes moved within the cloud, which swirled and roiled with murk. We tried to move away from the well and the shadowy shapes followed us, circled us, flanked us. They weren’t quite substantial, just all darkness and fluff. Like shadows. I wailed at one with my swords and hit nothing but air, but when it swung at me I felt only a brush, but it was like all the strength was just sucked out of me. My arms felt weak and shaky, and cold, so cold.

Hazel rushed over and tore it a new one with her sword Blackflame, which, come to think of it, looks an awful lot like those creatures when it wakes up.

But then there were more of them. Hazel’s swords worked, and Ada’s elbow spikes, but my weapons were no good at all. And the things were fast. Freaky fast.

Hazel whirled and hacked and whirled some more, hitting the things a buch, but they kept landing hits too, and every one made her look weaker and weaker. Even when she flipped the fuck out, like she does, they kept swinging too.

I kept dodging and moving away, looking for an opening to run, but found my back to the well wall.

The shadowy things kept wacking at Hazel and Ada, and they kept fighting back. It was hard to tell how many there were, or who was winning, or whether we had really killed any at all. It was all too dark and they were too flimsy to really see.

Martha, also in the thick of it, had a few spells up her sleeve, and the magic mace, but was the first to fall. There just really wasn’t anything I could do, or so I keep telling myself.

Worse though, than seeing her slump to the ground with those wispy black claws digging at her, was seeing her get back up. Or something like her. It was like one of those black things tore itself out of her chest, but without any actual tearing. Or maybe the one that killed her split in two. Whatever the case, there was one more of the cutters.

That was it for me. We were surrounded, I couldn’t hurt the buggers, and my back was to a wall. I took the wall.

I dove into the well, which, it turns out, didn’t have much water in it. It was a long way down and it hurt.

I heard another scream from above and Hazel’s mad howls and angry curses stopped. Dead. Just like that. I can only assume that they got Ada not long after that, for things got mighty quiet and I didn’t hear any footsteps getting away.

I, on the other hand, had my own problems to deal with.

You see, I was lying at the bottom of a well with some twenty swords pointed my way, one of which was in the hand of Lord Noriss. But at least the shadow things seemed disinclined to come down the well.


Like I said. My friends are dead. I am now a bandit…All hail Lord Noriss the Grey and all that…

The Bitter Blades: The Liberation of Thorn Island Part 6

"So, what do you think killed the girl?" Hazel asked Tom, looking around warily as Jack and Ada proceeded to collect the spoils from the fallen adventurers. It was, of course, the wrong question to ask.

Jack carefully lifted a necklace from the, recently, undead corpse of Nat, the dwarf, then froze in his tracks, half-bent over, completely unmoving. Hazel tapped him on the shoulder to see what was wrong, and simply knocked the ugly man over, still in the same pose. It was then that she felt something slithering up her leg. Hazel jumped back. Clearly to the surprise of the near-transparent slimy thing that was totally expecting to have paralyzed her as well.

Even with Hazel's warning, the thing was incredibly difficult to see, and surprisingly hardy. Tom, Ada, and Hazel scrambled up on the pile of rubble, hoping to avoid contact with the thing and Tom waved his hammer around carefully, trying to direct the light in such a way as to make the thing at least partially visible. Hazel struck a few blows against the thing, but it kept slithering away, under and around the rubble, quick as a snake and as elusive as water.

Finally Ada leaped down off the pile of rubble and ran outside the ruined temple to Enzebal's body. She scraped some of the luminous liquid off of his front with her hands and ran back. She mouthed that the others should stay where they were, then stood very still next to where Jack's body lay paralyzed on the ground, her gaze fixed on the others to tell them to keep waiting. A minute passed, then she heard something moving near her mailed boots. She reached down quickly and plunged her glowing hands into the thing. She froze immediately, but the paste worked well to identify the otherwise transparent creature.

Hazel and Tom leaped to action and smashed and slashed at the slithering beast, scattering its oozy form to the far corners of the room.

Kade's zombie continued to stand impassively to one side.

Tom and Hazel searched carefully for more of the slithering oozes, but found nothing else. They waited for nearly half an hour, but Ada and Jack remained paralyzed. They appeared to be breathing though, so the two companions lifted them up on top of the rubble pile and left them as comfortably as they could. Just as they were getting ready to head deeper into the old temple, they heard a quiet, "Hello?" from out in the courtyard.

They stepped out to see a lone, wet, rag-clad halfling carrying a lantern and what looked like the broken handle of an oar. The halfling introduced himself as Tamn, explained that he had washed up on shore, and asked where he was and what was going on. After some explanation, the halfling surprisingly cheerily agreed to help them explore the keep, claiming "it beat running into some undead beasts by his lonesome."

The three of them pushed their way through the back door of the lighthouse, into a small chapel, old and dusty, with a large altar occupying the back wall. Tom approached the altar cautiously, using the hammer to illuminate the room. As he approached the translucent gray form of a balding old man in the robes of a Tyrran monk appeared before him. With much cursing, Hazel drew her blades and readied to attack, but was stopped by Tom.

Tom held up the cherub amulet and spoke the word "Shestnik". The old ghost nodded then, in a long, moaning voice he explained that he was the spirit of Ferran Martinez, the abbot of the keep and that he had bound himself there to protect the keep even in death from 'unblessed creatures imbued by the might of a magical pool' that overwhelmed Phlan. The spirit asked if their presence meant that the city had been freed. Tamn simply looked confused, but Hazel stepped forward and suggested that "Yes, this old keep is the last to be civilized. We're here to make sure the harbor is opened..."

Apparently the spirit did not like her answer, for it immediately struck out at Hazel and the others, decrying their "unjust lies".

Tom, closest to the altar, was the first to feel the soul-chilling touch of the spirit. His eyes widened in fear as the ex-priest clawed at him, and he swung the glowing hammer wildly trying to beat the incorporeal thing away. While his blows were ineffective, he did buy time for the screaming, wild-eyed Hazel to leap in behind the thing. Tamn turned and bolted from the room, unwilling to face a ghost with not but a stick.

With two forceless blows, the spectre slew Tom, each touch causing his flesh to wither and muscles to weaken. The big mason fell unbreathing at the spirit's feet, looking as if he had aged a century in moments.

Hazel's swords tore through the creature. The black flames of her broadsword, cool to the touch for the living, licked at the thing and scorched at its incorporeal flesh. Enraged the spectre spun and tore at her chest with one ghostly claw, taking her breath away with the cold and nearly stopping her heart. Her rage drove her onward, though, striking savagely.

With one last cross-wise strike of her two blades, she rent the ghostly form of Ferran Martinez in twain, scattering his spirit and with a final, moaning cry of "Noooooooooooo." Still enraged, Hazel spun and drove her sword into the old, wooden altar, cleaving it in two as well.

Tamn hesitantly stepped back into the room. "Welcome to Phlan little man. I think we're done here," Hazel said.

Tamn helped Hazel gather up the bodies of her slain or paralyzed companions, as well as whatever weapons and treasures they could scavenge from the many fallen within the courtyard, and drag them back to the little boat waiting on the shore of the island.

With the arrival of dawn, their success was clear. The thick, black clouds which had hung like a veil over Thorn Island for nearly a century broke apart and drifted away and the old, white walls of Sokol Keep were visible from the docks for the first time since the founding of New Phlan.

Jack and Ada did not move until several hours after the boat had docked back in New Phlan, but when they did, the four who returned from the island were hailed as heroes and showered with the gifts and praise of the Council.