10/06/06 (Real world)

2nd day of Bloom (Ptolus)

Perspective: Jack Falco (Mark Cronan)

Dramatis Personae:
Jack Falco – A Private Informer with a knack for trouble, and your diligent author. (Mark Cronan)
Luford – A Sorcerer with a penchant for women, wine, and song, in that order. (Steve Smith)
Lucius the Luscious – A Swashbuckling charmer who loves anyone that loves him. (Rachel Smith)
Glüg – A half-orc barbarian with an appreciation for food, battle, and more food. (Julia Blakeslee)
Yarl – A dwarven cleric with an admiration for all things technological, including guns. (Matt Blakeslee)
Yerrick – Yarl’s brother, a dwarven warrior with a fondness for his six-shooter, and shooting it (Jason Naylor)
Rainbow – A fairy who’s partial to disappearing at the most inopportune times (Kestral Bruce)

“I gotta go take a leak” called Yerrick from downstairs.  It would be a while before we would see him again.

“I’m bleeding.” I said, examining my wounds from falling through the floor, or ceiling, depending on your perspective.

“Indeed, you are.” Responded Yarl, walking past me with an inscrutable glance. Maybe he deemed his deity didn’t want me healed at that moment.  Perhaps he felt drained of spells.  Maybe he just didn’t think of it.  Maybe he though I should just suck it up and press on. But whatever the case, it looked like our kindly healer did not deem my injuries worth healing at that time. I’d have to be careful.  Yeah, right!

Speaking of being careful, Glüg was next on the scene upstairs, marching quickly towards the only apparent door.  Barely pausing to open it, Glüg trotted right on in.  I caught up, and found a room with a blue rug, and five doors.  Two doors towards the front of the house, two to the right, and one to the left.  The to the left was oddly covered in rags. I started to search the room, though the blood from my open wounds was leaking all over the place, messing up the search.  This time, Yarl noticed, and with a kindly gesture and word a small amount of healing energy seeped into my wounds.  Not much, but enough to staunch the bleeding a bit.

Glüg didn’t pause, as usual.  A creature on a mission, though it was unclear if the mission was justice, victory, curiosity, instinct, or the unending quest for food.  If I were a betting man (and I am) I’d put my money on the last of those choices.

Glüg unfortunately popped open the door to the left, past the rags.  This revealed a black room, that seemed to slowly undulate and move, as if a strong breeze were rippling across black grass.
I got a creepy feeling, and started to voice my concern when I finally realized what the black moving walls really were – spiders!

Immediately a swarm of spiders started to pour fourth from the room.   Thousands and thousands of them, reaching out towards us. Glüg backed up, apparently nonplused by the rapid arachnid approach.
Rainbow wasn’t so disinterested, and she let loose an arrow that struck at the heart of the mass of the swarm.  I tried to follow her display with a poke of my spear past the hulking body of Glüg, but without the same effect. 

The spiders started to bite at Glüg, and Glüg decided that ignoring the threat was the best tactic.  Walking away, Glüg entered through one of the doors to the north. Yarl stepped up to the challenge, letting loose a sheet of flames from his outspread hands. Finally, my spear to the largest mass of them did the trick, and the remainder scattered away from my stabs, mostly clearing the room.

Meanwhile Glüg had discovered a small room with a table and some decent, clean furniture.  It also found two ledgers, and a map of the north market.  Not interested in paper goods, Glüg left them for Yarl to pick up later.

Well, at least Glüg had found something useful.  All I found in the spider room were cobwebs and bones.  I didn’t look too carefully at the bones, not wanting to know what the spiders had been eating to survive and thrive that well.

Rather than take the time to inspect the documents Glüg found, we decided to make sure no enemies were laying in wait on the other side of our front flank.  I picked the lock to the second door, and found a room with two bunkbeds against the far wall, a wooden wardrobe beside the door, and a small table between the beds.

A quick search of the wardrobe turned up some treasure at last.  Three fine looking emeralds worth around one-hundred gold pieces each, and numerous sets of disguise clothing.  I noted a peasant’s outfit right next to a nobles outfit, and thought to come back at a later time to see if they would fit me.  Disguises can be useful in my line of work.

Yarl joined me, and we decided it seemed that the coast was clear for now, and it was safe to take a glance at the documents.  He was holding the map and two ledgers from the other room.  It seemed one of the ledgers was locked.  That is, until I got to it.

Inside, I found a detailed activities list of the gang.  A flip through the book led me to the last entry, which seemed to be a list indicating names of people who were listed as “infected” or “dead”. 
So, now we knew more about the type of people we were up against.  Either the gang had accidentally all become diseased, or it was intentional.  And from my brief look at the ledger, it seemed to lean towards the later interpretation.  The gang may well be experimenting with a dark plague. 
“Intentionally infecting people with disease, magical or mundane, is against the law in Ptolus. We have to stop them.”  Yarl deduced.

Well, that was one way to look at it.  But from where I stood, illegal or not, we had to stop it for our own safety and the safety of the city.  At least we agreed on the conclusion.
While we were chatting about the finer differences between law and ethics, a very loud banging got our attention.  Stashing the ledgers and map for later perusal, Yarl and I stepped back into the main hallway to check out what was making such a racket.

Glüg was, of course.  Glüg, having found the remaining fifth door locked, had decided that a strong kick was better than a lock picker like myself. It worked this time, with the battered door collapsing in a heap after a couple of kicks. Behind it lay a small open-air walkway, with a double-door at the end.  I noted with some disappointment that the walkway wasn’t very visible from the ground outside, but it would have made a fine stealth entry point for us.  Ah well, the direct approach had its uses as well.
The double-door at the end of the walkway was also locked.  Glüg took several kicks at it as well, but this time it didn’t budge.

“Do you mind if maybe, just for once, we try finesse rather than blunt force?”

“Ughf” Glüg uttered, with a bit of spit for emphasis.

I stepped up the door, and examined the lock.  It was bent, and I could make out the slight imprint of Glüg’s boot on the metal.  Tough lock! After a minute or so of trying to pick it, I gave up.

“Okay, I take it back, blunt force away!” a shrugged.

Yarl whipped out his gun, and before I could cover my ears he fired a shot right at the lock.

That did it – to the lock that is.  Thoroughly melted and broken, the door stayed sealed shut.
That was more than enough for Glüg, who took too it with renewed verve, smashing the door to splinters after several more bone-crunching kicks and smashes with its shoulder.

“Dead door” grunted Glüg.  Yes, indeed, one dead door.

Around this time I lost track of Rainbow.  With Luscious having gone missing, Yerrick STILL in the bathroom, and now Rainbow gone, it looked like we were going in a few people down. 
Behind the dead door was a small room with wooden pillars rising to the ceiling.  Between the pillars was strung green cloth curtains on all sides except the side facing the door we had just entered.
“This doesn’t feel right” I muttered.

Glüg, apparently not liking the room either, walked right through the curtain to the north.
Yarl, Luford and I quickly followed.  Glüg was marching at a pretty good pace, and we found it hard to keep up.  Behind the curtain was another hallway, whose outlines were also made up of pillars and curtains.  The entire place seemed to be a maze of hallways made with green curtains for walls.
We traveled north, the west, through curtain after curtain, trying to keep up with Glüg.

[Side out of character note – it is at this time that Matt said to Julia “Hey, it’s my initiative right now”.  To which Julia responded “You’re not doing anything, so it’s clearly not your initiative!”]

“We need to figure out the outline to this place.  Let’s travel north, toward the back of the house, until we find something, rather than just wandering about like this” said Yarl, logical as always. Luford and I agreed, and north we went.

It took a little while, but eventually we found a wall.

Meanwhile Glüg was well ahead of us, to the west.  I didn’t see what happened, but I got a good look at the effects later.  We did hear it happen, however.  First, roar of defiance from Glüg.  Then a yelp of pain.  That was followed by a sickening sounding slice of metal on bone, and a groan and gurgle from Glüg.  Something very bad was happening to our west with our friend Glüg.

Yarl ran towards the sound, intent on healing Glüg and finding out what was attacking our comrade.
I tried to follow.  Unfortunately, I once again was not careful where I stepped, much to my downfall.
Literally.  One moment I was running towards the back of Yarl, the next I was falling through the floor once again.  This time I knew what was happening…before I hit the ground again on the floor below us!

My wounds from last time being fairly fresh and unhealed still, the fall nearly killed me this time.  I do not know how long I was out, but when I awoke I felt the drained and dehydrated feeling of the nearly dead. Yarl stood over me, a worried look on his face, looking a bit battered himself.

“Come on, we’re getting out of here.” He said, leaning over the unconscious form of Glüg who lay beside me on the crushed furniture of the downstairs room I had fallen into.  The dwarf didn’t have to tell me that twice!

Glüg didn’t come around, even after the healing.  As we decided what to do, Luford started to explain what had happened.

“Halflings.  Two very deadly, backstabbing, hidey, nasty little Halflings. I shot them with my magical energy missles, and that took some wind out of them.  But they are still up there.  Glüg even took a whack at them after Yarl roused him, but even that didn’t work.  Those little buggers just kept hiding behind the curtains and striking when we couldn’t see them.  We’d strike at one area and they would pop up in another.  We would chase them and they would suddenly be behind us.  Yarl started to rip down some curtains but by then it was too late, and all of us were bleeding from multiple pokes from those stabbing tiny brigands. So we decided that retreating was better than dying, and here we are.”
Yes, here we are.  Bleeding, sitting in a messy kitchen.  Half our party was missing, and the enemy was still upstairs.  Still alive.  And now, probably pretty pissed at us for putting two holes in their ceiling and killing half their gang.

What happened next was going to be pretty interesting, one way or the other.

[Yarl and Jack Falco split the MVP vote for showing up and being the only two voters]

<100 experience points each party member who was there >
<50 xp to Jack Falco for the log, when I get it >
<25 xp to Jack Falco for MVP>
<25 xp to Jack Falco for MVP>

Total XP so Far:
Yarl - 475
Glug - 500
Rainbow - 450
Jack Falco - 675
Yerrick - 350
Luford - 350
Lucius - 150