In which the Rolling Stones and friend clean up after their fight and then see a man about a horse
Score: 608 | 6/30/19 |
9th Veltom 1517
Valteri Tomser acts quickly, slashing at the t'skrang Swordmaster, but the enemy ducks and rushes towards his human comrade, whose head is at an odd angle after his fall. The t'skrang takes a hand off the Nethermancer just long enough to grab a pouch and a small item from the human. Valteri tries to goad the Swordmaster into fighting, calling him a coward, but the taunts fall on deaf ears as the t'skrang leaps into a stand of bushes. Some clicking noises are audible, and Valteri cautiously approaches.
He then darts into the bushes and swings, hoping to land a blow, but he only manages to cut down a bush. The ground is odd and disturbed, but no sign remains of either t'skrang. Angry, Valteri flies back to rejoin the rest of the Rolling Stones.
Sean Shamshara investigates the tree, trying but failing to discover what the Swordmaster did to activate the stairs. With W'ranan, he also checks on the unconscious woman. Laying there, her head rests on the floor, her long, blonde ringlets spread about her. Dressed in simple traveling leathers of fairly good quality, far better than the headless thug, she has nothing ostentatious about her. Sean finds that she has been poisoned, but she appears to be doing well and should wake in an hour or so. Valteri returns through one of the windows, informing the group what happened on the forest floor. He then searches the decapitated corpse while Boris Hillmens begins to explore the room, digging around in the mats in the corner. Sean climbs the ladder and looks on the second floor, only finding a lone mat.
The Rolling Stones and W'ranan discuss what they should do, figuring they need to get out of the room soon in case more kidnappers return. Valteri recommends taking the woman, who they believe to be Annabelle, to the Crown Watch so she can be checked over more thoroughly, in case she had been abused, conjecturing they captured her for unseemly slavery ends. Soon Boris calls everyone over and shows them a small picture he found, a risque drawing of scantily clad women, a t'skrang and a dwarf. He also found 12 silver pieces!
Sean then searches the remainder of the room, focusing on the boxes and crates in the corner. He finds a mug on top and also a note written in Throalic and reads, "There's a lovely mare for sale at the treehouse. We trust you to take good care of her and bring her home to join our stables." They discuss it for a few moments before Boris rips open the crates and they search inside the grain. Inside is a jackpot of items and coin, 1,050 silver, a Booster potion, a pair of nice boots, two physician resupply kits, and a small piece of quartz with metal prongs.
Boris now picks up the woman, and the troupe heads off to the Crown Watch. Along the way, Sean and W'ranan begin to talk. W'ranan explains that he was in Axalalail to meet with his master who had unfortunately needed to depart for Urupa early. There was a letter left for him, telling him to meet with an Annabelle, but he had never met her before. Sean tells W'ranan of their time with the caravan and how they are escorting it to Urupa, offering that perhaps W'ranan and Annabelle could join the caravan south.
At this moment, Annabelle begins to stir, grumbling in her sleep, kicking and groggily saying, "Put me down, you lummox!" Boris quickly complies, and the group asks if she's Annabelle. "Yes, I'm Annabelle, Cavalrywoman of the Second Circle. And who are you?" She woozily stands apart from the group, leaning on the rails of the walkway.
They explain that they are the Rolling Stones, and that with W'ranan's help they rescued her from the villains who had kidnapped her. She thanks them and decries the cowardly actions of a group of criminals who would break into a lady's room at night. Then, realizing that the t'skrang's Name is W'ranan, she asks him to show her his pendant, as mentioned in the Letter to W'ranan. He fumbles around for a moment then admits that he does not have a pendant. At this, Annabelle smiles and declares, "You are W'ranan!"
But the smile is short-lived as her eyes go wide and she suddenly exclaims, "We must head to the stables!" She is worried about her horse, Longstrider, for if people came for her, she assumed that they may have gone after her horse. The stables are on the ground, under Axalalail, and she convinces the group that time is of the essence, imploring W'ranan to leap from the bridge and hurry to check on her horse. Valteri flies down to the ground while W'ranan calls up his Windcatcher talent to gently glide to the forest floor. Once down there, they make an educated guess and head in the general direction they think are the stables while the rest of the group hurry for a more conventional route down.
Valteri and W'ranan arrive to the stables, mostly following the smell of manure, which is a large complex of wooden structures with open air passages. Axalalail guards stand at the entrance. Just beyond them are large enclosures for thundra beasts and other giant mounts. Further in are the smaller, more typical stalls. The pair head in, directed by the guards to look for the stable master. They find a very short, old dwarf, short even for his race, covered with an inordinate amount of facial hair, again, even for a dwarf. At their approach, he squints at them and tilts his right ear up to listen to them ask about Longstrider. Introducing himself as Phan, he dissembles, then takes them back to the entrance and introduces them to a guard. The guard whispers something to Phan, who scurries off back into the warren of stalls.
The guard begins to question Valteri and W'ranan about their interest in the horse, asking them to follow him into a guard shack. Valteri is initially mistrustful, and soon six other guards show up. While the first guard continues to press for information, the remainder of the Rolling Stones arrive with Annabelle. Soon the confusion is cleared up, and Phan confirms that she is the horse's owner. Concern passes over everyone's faces, and the guards and Phan lead the group to the horse's stall. Longstrider is not there, but the stall has been cleaned out. However, blood stains still marked the floor and walls. Someone snuck into the stables the previous night and slaughtered the horse. Annabelle, shocked, stumbles over to the wall where her saddle still hung. She takes it and crumples into Boris, who supports her and holds her saddle. At this, Sean shows Annabelle the note they found in the tree house. Distraught, she says she does not know what it's about. The Rolling Stones fill the guards in on what happened regarding Annabelle and her rescue, and they send one off to inspect the tree house and another to inform the Watch Captain.
As they leave, Vyktor Wyvernjack realizes that he never looked at any of the items they found earlier. He casts Astral Sense and activates his Astral Sight. His vision shifts as he calls on his magic, and his brain begins to comprehend the magical energies flowing through everything. He sees the vibrant threads of the patterns that make up the trees and the people around him, and the brightest still are his comrades, their Patterns rich and powerful with the magics of being Adepts. The mundane items everyone holds or wears are a dull gray, almost washed out by the bright light of the astral. The small piece of quartz they found glows with a minor Pattern of its own, determining that it is an Absorb Blow blood charm. The boots are Dry Boots, and the mug is a Traveler's Mug, though he is unable to identify the command word to fill it.
Tired, Annabelle requests that they head back to the Trunk and Bough. Boris helps her up the ladder and most of the way back. When they arrive, Torel, happy to see Annabelle returned, provides the team a free lunch. Annabelle declines and returns to her room. Valteri, untrusting of someone who would let a young woman get kidnapped from his inn, chose to eat rations instead. He then settled in to perform Item History on the Traveler's Mug in hopes of learning the command word. After an hour of study, carefully weaving threads and looking through the magics of the the Item History talent, he looked at the rest of the group, said "Drink Up", and marveled as the mug rapidly filled to the brim with cool, refreshing water. He delighted as he drank draught after draught.
As the group decides what to do, Boris heads upstairs to guard Annabelle's room. The rest head to the Crown Watch to inform them of what happened at the tree house and also collect on their bandit receipt. While the guard is the same as that morning, the sculpture in the corner is now a flame resting atop a square piece of wood hovering above a small swirling cloud of dust. The guard disappears through the door behind him at their request to speak to someone and returns shortly to lead them down a plain hallway to an unadorned door on the right at the end.
The room is sparsely furnished. A few bookshelves line the walls of the small room. An equally small window sits in the center of the far wall, and in front of that, facing the door, is a large desk. Behind the desk sits a human male. He is uniformed in much the same way as the guard who led the group back here, though with finer embroidery about the Axalalail crest on his chest. A pendant fashioned in the tree rising from water hangs about his neck, and other adornment signify his higher rank. The guard follows the group in, "Watch Captain Anthrose, these are the Namegivers you wished to see."
"Yes, thank you, J'onhk. Gentlemen, it seems Axalalail owes you some gratitude and coin!"
The Rolling Stones bring Watch Captain Anthrose up to speed on what transpired at the tree house. When they show him the note, he studies it and places it inside his desk. He thanks them for their aid, pays them some coin, and tells them that whatever treasure they found in the tree house they may keep. Regarding the receipt for the bandit capture, he informs them that one of the bandits turned on the rest. Meldan has given up the location of Eran the Bald's hideout as well as Yfram's idiocy is all an act, that he is actually a mastermind and his death will be a blow to Eran's group. As well, in the middle of the night, another bandit showed up and turned himself in, Roth, who was attempting to convince the Watch Captain to free Yfram. Instead, they will both hang that evening, along with the rest, except for Meldan. Roth verified Meldan's information. Furthermore, Sean Shamshara looks on the map and identifies the location of the camp as the same place Yfram told him. Valteri's guess is that Meldan was the same bandit he slapped back into unconsciousness.
After being paid, and with nothing else to do at the moment, the group return to the Heartwood. Some stay behind at the inn while Valteri and Sean go shopping. They purchase two Kelix poultices at the Hollow, a general goods store run by Yzechran, a female t'skrang. Sean looks for an elven warbow with a light quartz or to have one added to his bow. Heading to the Mallet and Chisel, they meet Theormazor, male t'skrang Weaponsmith of the fourth circle. To the offer of new weapons for purchase, Valteri says, "I already have a fine weapon." At that, the t'skrang nods in approval and offers to train him when he needs advancement, at a fair price.
Legend Point Awards:
- General running around Axalalail: 500
- Total: 500