New Friends, Familiar Weapons, and S'm Dwarf

[Mawaris]

Thought I'd try to get this down while it's still fresh, so Ehren will know what happened in our extra session here. This is actually in the past from current events, occuring in the month between the Tournament and our first encounters with Cinder. The assumption is that Mes must have been busy with either training or alchemy or physicianizing or something (or maybe he had to do some public relations stuff after winning the tournament) to come along. I'm going to attempt to do this in character, as if explaining what happened to Mes, in three parts.

Since Spencer's character as yet still has no name (or gender), I'm going to refer to him/her as GUMW (for Gender Unknown Mystery Windling, pronounced "Goo-moo").

[Mawaris]

Part 1: The Bar

"So Mal and I were hanging out last night at the Cave Bear's bar, playing dice, having some drinks, and so on. And suddenly, a couple of incoherently screaming dwarves burst through the entrance, and killed an ork patron by the door, just like that before anyone could even react!"

"Of course, Mal and I couldn't tolerate this kind of behavior, and we immediately got up to try to subdue them. No sooner than we reached them, then two more dwarves came in! And after that, a couple of orks, in the same crazed bloodthristy state. They weren't reacting to anything."

"The rest of the patrons were all running out the back, but do you know the windling waiter there, GUMW? Turns out he/she/it is an Adept, an Archer/Cavalryman! He/she/it helped us out with some very nice fire support (sometimes literally, you know how those archers love to set their arrows on fire...) from back by the bar. Cave Bear just took all this in stride, crazy ork acts like he has fights break out every day between bloodthirsty dwarves and famous elf adepts, and he just goes about his business. Wacky."

"Anyway, I quickly knocked one of them out with Ephemeral Bolts; even in their crazed state they still fell for the illusionary damage. Mal and GUMW took out another one just as fast, with Mal using those conveniently placed Braziers in the corner for Flame Strike!"

"I fought a dwarf and an ork near and then on one of the tables. The dwarf managed to pull himself up there but I knocked him right back off. Then the ork hopped up, and he wasn't so easy to knock off, so I fought him up there until he decided to try to flip over the table. I saw his plan coming and hopped right off. They didn't last much longer after his clever plan (surprisingly clever, considering his state of mind)."

"Meanwhile, Mal fought two of them in the corner by the brazier. His ork was a clever one too, and tried to knock the brazier onto Mal, but fortunately that didn't work. Good thing Cave Bear's place isn't very flammable. With help from our friend GUMW, he took down the two on that side of the room."

"Oh, this big hole in my shoulder? Nasty looking cut, isn't it? I got that right as the fight started. Lucky thing Mal was on hand to stab me in the back to share the damage, but that scar is going to take a while to heal."

"They all seemed to be completely out of control, so we were careful to try not to kill any of them, and it looks like they've all survived. The guards have them now, I hope they come to their senses. They were wearing an insignia, which we didn't recognize but some of the other patrons did. Seems they were working for that dwarf noble, S'm Dwarf." [OOC note: he never got real a name either]

"Looked like the dwarves were guards or servants of some sort, and the orks might have been day laborers or something. The orks, disturbingly, all had spiked clubs just like that one that troll had, which were just as corrupted. I guess there's more to that than just that troll, and this may be connected to other nefarious activities."

"While we recover here today, our friend GUMW is out finding out where this S'm Dwarf lives. We're going to go check it out tomorrow. Shame you're too busy to join us, this should be a lot of fun!"

"Oh, and do you think the clinic will mind if I borrow this table over here? I need to do a karma ritual, and I can't demonstrate my latest exploits without one..."

[Mawaris]

Part 2: The Ambush

"Well, GUMW found out where the manor of S'm Dwarf is. Guess his family made a lot of money in mining back before the scourge, and he's inherited it. A bit of a recluse I gather. There's guards at the gate, and they don't let anyone in or even talk to anyone. Hmmph, dwarves."

"So we were going to go there and sneak inside. But on the way there, some human swordmaster comes up and challenges me to a duel. I guess they want a piece of the top swordmaster from the tournament! I told him I'd be happy to duel him, but that I was busy today and it wasn't a good time, but I would be happy to schedule one for a later date. He refused this and insisted it must be now, so I complied."

"Mal and GUMW found spots to watch from. Like so many would-be swordmasters in this town, his taunts were awful. Very disappointing. And he clearly trained at the same school as our friend Mr. Hightower. Swordmasters with shields? It makes no sense. We aren't soldiers."

"Perhaps unsurprisingly, the duel was a setup. A bowman appeared on one of the rooftops and tried to shoot me, and a dwarf with poisoned swords tried to sneak up on me. Good thing GUMW and Mal noticed them."

"I guess the swordmaster wasn't in on the planned hit though. He was disgusted that he'd been used as a dupe to set up an assassination attempt, and he withdrew. I turned my attention to the dwarf, but just as I did, Mal incinerated him with a Flame Strike. Must have been putting some strange substance in his beard because he went up like a stack of dry tinder and burnt to a crisp. Very dead."

"And at the same time, GUMW had his/her/its cat-lizard thing mount in this crazy charge from one rooftop across the walls, and put his/her/its lance right through the bowman's head. You wouldn't think windlings could cause such an injury! Very dead, just like his friend."

"With both of them dead, there's no way to know who hired them, but the obvious suspect is that sore loser, Reginald Hightower, who already threatened revenge over his own inability to stand on two feet. Unfortunately he'll be free to try again, with no evidence this time to lead back to him. Even as incompetent as he is, his political connections make him very dangerous."

"Fortunately, the guards knew these two as known street mercs and obvious criminals who were up to no good, so we were able to proceed. Perhaps the swift death of these two at the hands of my 'bodyguards' will make future thugs think twice before working for Hightower."

[Mawaris]

Part 3: The Guards and the Ghouls

"There were guards outside of the Gate to S'm Dwarf's manor, and they weren't going to let anyone inside, visitors or otherwise. But I had a great plan to get past them!"

"First, from down the street, I cast Fun With Doors on the Gate, and made it appear to be a few yards down from where it really was. The Guards didn't notice this, which is just as well, so I walked past and taunted them: 'You're not very good guards, are you?' and pointed out that the gate they were supposed to be guarding was over yonder. They looked confused for a moment, then sure enough they moved on down to the fake gate!"

"Then we stopped by where the real gate was hidden. I cast an Innocent Activity spell on myself to obscure my actions, then I opened the unseen gate. But we weren't ready to go inside just yet, there was still one more facet to my plan. I cast a Displace Image spell on each of us before we went through the gate, making us appear to still be on the outside of the fence even after we went through. Then we walked off down the fence, and if the guards had happened to glance in our direction, they would have seen us just walking on down the street, on the outside of the fence."

"Now was that a great plan or was that a great plan? And it worked perfectly! I think this is perhaps my greatest moment yet as an Illusionist, using simple spells to cleverly accomplish goals. And it protected those guards from any further involvement in this; they obviously hadn't been corrupted yet so there was no need to hurt them."

"Then we went right in the front door of the manor. There were a bunch of empty rooms inside, and no one around except for a dwarf maid, who was ignoring us. We were wearing insignia of the manor that we had kept from the dwarves who had attacked the bar, and I assumed she just ignored the other staff and didn't care to interact with us... but when I decided to try to get her attention, she didn't react at all! Then I tried to touch her and discovered that she was an illusion the whole time!"

"There was no one at all alive in the upper part of the manor, and a ledger in an office we found hadn't been updated in at least a year. Something here was very suspicious."

"Finally, we found a trap door in a corner of the kitchen. It opened into a 30 foot drop! This was clearly no ordinary basement or wine cellar. We climbed down the footholds carved into the wall and went through a small door at the bottom."

"Through this door was a hallway, with a door at the end and doors on the side. I opened one of the side doors and found... ghouls! They immediately attacked us. I thought we could hold them off at the door, but then the door on the opposite wall opened and more ghouls came out of that room."

"Most of the ghouls were dwarves, so it looks like this may have been the fate of more of the staff here. Sadly, in the undead state, they couldn't understand and appreciate my witty banter. I was very disappointed."

"The danger of ghouls is not in the damage they can do themselves, but in their poison. Both Mal and I were hit and we're not in very good shape from that, as you can see. Strangely, a ghoul's poison ends when it dies, but that is lucky as we probably would not have made it otherwise."

"After we dispatched the ghouls, we hid them back in their rooms and fled back here to recouperate; we were in no shape to continue. We're hoping no one will notice that the ghouls are gone, and if they do that they'll think that they killed each other. We're going to go back tomorrow after we heal from the poison. Sure you can't come along with us this time?"

[Mawaris]

I'll write up the rest tomorrow, this is taking longer than I thought it would!

[ehren]

What a great adventure. It just shows me. Warden Vi'hen's lecture was abyssmally boring. I would have thought a Warden would have a better grasp on how different Disciplines use magic. I can see why most people look down at Wizard's understanding of other magic... some of us just don't get it. I suppose I have an advantage, being both dual disciplined myself and having you and 'Mal around has taught me SO much more about practical magic than any of Warden Vi'hen's studies and research have taught him. Please, don't tell him I said that... but, enough of my bemoaning boring lectures... let me look at those wounds.

[Mawaris]

"Well, as an Illusionist, I should tell you that the truth is that there is no such thing as practical magic, and that is the whole point of magic. For example, I can make a door appear to be a few yards away from it's actual location. If you were living an ordinary life, as a farmer or bartender or blacksmith or a doctor, when would you EVER have a practical use for such a thing? Never. Magic is inherently impractical. That's what makes it so much fun."

[ehren]

"That is exactly what a lot of these high brow "book wizards" are missing. The whimsy of Magic."

[Mawaris]

Part 4: The Chasm, the Statues, and the Laboratory

"We went back in just like before. We caught a different pair of guards on duty and used the exact same trick to get in. I can't imagine this will work again though, especially if the guards ever talk to each other and discover that they had the same weird experience of suddenly discovering they were guarding not the gate, but an empty section of fence..."

"We went straight to the trap door and the hallway where we had been before, and the dead ghouls were right where we had left them. Either no one came through and noticed, or they just didn't care. The smell was awful, so I suppose cleaning up was not an appealing task."

"We went down to the door at the end of the hall that we hadn't gone through the first time, and found a deep chasm with another door on the other side. It's a good thing we brought along a windling who knew how to pick locks. GUMW flew across, picked the lock on the switch, and activated it, which moved the bridge into place."

"I guess dwarves never expect windlings when they design their dungeon defenses. Seems very strange; windling Thieves are a cliche for a reason, after all. Or maybe S'm Dwarf thought no windling would ever get through the trap door down here in the first place. It was pretty heavy."

"Past that door was another hallway, with eight full suits of dwarven plate armor spaced evenly along it. Next to each set of armor was a glowing ball of electric energy, and the energy current traced back to the door at the far end of the hall. Looking in the helmets of the armor suits, each contained a dead dwarf! They weren't moving or responding to us in any way, but this seemed such an obvious trap that it was obvious that they would in some way come to life if we tried to open the far door, and then we'd be stuck at the far end from the exit with eight undead armor suits between us and the exit. Not an enticing scenario."

"We analyzed the room for alternative approaches. Eventually we decided to try to move one of the armor suits ourselves and see what would happen. As soon as Mal and I tipped one of the suits near the entrance off of the floor, it screamed and attacked us, and electric energy filled the room and shocked us. The others did not activate, so we quickly defeated the lone armor suit."

"Being in the room when the armor suits activated did not seem desirable, between the damage from the electricity and wanting to keep our escape route as secure as possible. I suddenly thought of my Rope Guide spell; it would enable us to tie a rope around the neck of each armor suit in turn, and pull it over while we stood at the doorway. I quickly reattuned one of my spell matrices to this spell, and we used it to pull over three more of the statues and dispatch them one at a time. As we defeated the third, however, the remaining four all screamed and activated at the same time, and charged at us! Whether this was a safe limit of the trap to thwart clever ways of avoiding fighting all of them at once, or whether they or their control had discovered what we were doing and decided to activate all at once, I can't say."

"The armor suits were clumsy and had difficulty hitting us, but two of them delivered large, painful gashes to my arm and side before they were defeated. I was taking quite a beating, but we decided to press on."

"The next room contained a sinister laboratory. There was a dissected obsidiman on a lab table in the center, who had strange armored plates sticking out of him. Astral Sight suggested the dead obsidiman had been corrupted by a horror. Unlike the other dead bodies we had encountered, this one it seems was actually dead dead, rather than undead. Perhaps whoever had performed the dissection either didn't know how to raise obsidimen or just hadn't gotten around to it yet."

"The other lab supplies were mostly useless, but an alchemy table in the room contained several healing and booster potions. Mal and I consumed some to heal our wounds and damage, however I still had the lingering unhealed injury from the bar fight, days earlier. We were in much better shape to proceed."

"A dwarf sized tunnel on the far side of the lab was our next step."

[Mawaris]

Part 5: The Caves

"The tunnel was quite long, and eventually we reached a fork. We took the left path."

"This route turned into more natural looking, cavelike tunnels. Eventually it ended into a chamber containing a large pool of muddy water."

"As we approached the pool to investigate, suddenly three Bog Gobs emerged! ...What? Oh, you know, Bog Gobs. They're exactly what they sound like: gobs of bog, in humanoid shape."

"Just like the undead we'd been facing, Bog Gobs couldn't understand my words either. The first one to attack me hit me hard on the head - yes, that's the wound you're patching up now, that's why there's so much mud in it - and worse than that, it stuck on to me! I couldn't get free, and it made it harder to hit them."

"Fortunately, just three bog gobs are easily defeated, even with their sticky grasps, and we defeated them quickly and easily. In large numbers they would be much more dangerous. I hope more of them can't get into the kaer from there."

"With nowhere else to go from that dead end, we returned to the fork and took the other path. This path was obvious a dwarf cut path rather than a natural one. We passed by several rooms that turned out to be storage rooms, containing supplies as well as some mysterious wine that seemed to be corrupted in some unknown way. This must have been related to what happened to the servants here."

"Finally, we reached a room at the end. A dwarf, presumably the mysterious S'm Dwarf, was talking to a human who looked like a spellcaster. The human was saying something about having been promised that the dwarf could protect him. They were connected, but not necessarily working together. Then they noticed us, and bickered about who it was who had let us in and led us to this room. I interrupted to tell them that no one had led us there and we were there to call them to account for the attack on the bar! They didn't like this and attacked us."

"Mal and I moved to engage the dwarf, while GUMW literally charged the human caster on his lizard-cat. The caster cast a spell to stick the lizard-cat to the floor, but too late to save himself from the charge. He was hit but not hard. GUMW had to dismount and fly around attacking the caster (who turned out to be an Elementalist) as he attempted to cast spells at us."

"Meanwhile, I finally had a foe susceptible to my taunts! My first attempts were ineffective, but then I noticed that he was wielding one of those nasty spiked clubs, and had several more of them on tables. Was he creating them? I made fun of his pathetic weapon, and that finally got a reaction! 'It was a gift!' he roared back. I observed that it wasn't much of a gift, and continued to follow this line to continue taunting him. He was enraged by this! However he never managed to recover, as even in my wounded state I was able to avoid or parry his clumsy attacks, using my karma to ensure his defeat."

"Eventually he went down, unconscious. The Elementalist managed to knock out GUMW by using a strong gust of air to bounce him off of a wall, but he went unconscious as well while doing this."

"While GUMW recovered consciousness, we observed the room, and with a large fireplace on one side we thought it best to destroy the spiked clubs so no one else could get their hands on it. My Rope Guide spell would enable us to do this without even touching them. But as we were gathering them up, suddenly the dwarf and human starting smouldering, and they suddenly came back to consciousness as smouldering.... things, and they attacked us again!"

"They were unresponsive in this state, no way to negotiate with them. They managed to knock out GUMW, but we defeated them. Unfortunately, they were now dead, and we would not be able to interrogate them and find out who they were working with, who the human was working for, and what had really happened."

"The dwarf had a bunch of those spiked clubs, and it seems those and the wine is what must have been used on the dwarves and orks who attacked the bar, to make them become berserk. They've been destroyed but we don't know where they got them from or who is making them."

"We also found a nifty magical item in the dwarf's possessions: a Potion of Life, a thread item that can be used as a healing potion and refilled with just a silver coin. It will be very handy when we rise to a high enough circle to use it."

[GM / Malinous]

[Mawaris]

Jan 3, 2012 0:02:21 GMT -5 GM / Malinous said:

(I should clarify, the wizard's flesh started burning/melting. Not the dwarf's.)

Didn't something happen to the dwarf's body too, though?

[GM / Malinous]

It came back from the dead! But the black plates were already there.

[ehren]

[OOC] So, is the Potion of Life like a Healing Vial that can produce new potions for the cost of 1 silver?

Also, we should have someone more experienced than us examine it (before we use it) to verify its not corrupted.

[GM / Malinous]

[We can't use it until 4th Circle anyways. But we can get it verified from an experienced guard or father that it's not tainted. It can produce 1, then 2 healing potions (I think?) per day, and at higher levels 1 cure disease potion and one cure poison potion. I'll post the details later, Joel looked it over. ]

[ehren]

[looks cool. why do we need to wait till 4th circle? - besides having a lot of other stuff to spend LP on?]

"Do you think that S'm Dwarf was working with the Hightowers? Should we investigate their obvious connection to Cinder & the Verdants?"
[on the off chance that all the people who hate us are involved in a conspiracy to currupt the Kear/working with Horrors]

[Mawaris]

"I doubt it. I don't think he even recognized any of us. For that matter I doubt he had any direction on the berserk dwarves and orks he unleashed, they just happened to end up at our bar after they were corrupted and wound up."

"Although, his symbol was a tower, ironically enough. Should have called him Short-tower, wish I'd thought of that earlier..."

[ehren]

"I was thinking more along the lines of they are using/producing the same type of corrupted clubs. That is a lot of coincidence for the Cinder plot to not be related to the S'm Dwarf plot."

[Mawaris]

"Oh yes, there is definitely some sort of connection with Cinder and The Dagger and friends, but none apparent with Hightower."