Jack Falco - Ptolus - Entry #8 |
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12/01/06 (Real world) 8th and 9th day of Bloom (Ptolus) Perspective: Jack Falco (Mark Cronan) Dramatis Personae: Jack Falco – A Private Informer with a knack for falling through the floor, and your diligent author. (Mark Cronan) Glüg and I sat watching that stupid house all the next day. It wasn’t supposed to go that way, but things never work out as planned. We wanted to find Yerrick. That, everyone agreed on. So two people left to find him, and we waited. When nobody returned, two more left to find them. And we waited. Pretty soon, there were Glüg and I, picking our teeth and discussing ham, while watching a seemingly empty house all day. It took until late evening for anyone to return and actually tell us what in the name of Mirresh had happened. It seemed on return to the Ghostly Minstrel, our lads had met up with two new roguish acquaintances, Shinken and Balls. The newcomers explained they were on their way to respond to an ad requesting an exorcism in a local basement. Hoping to make a quick buck, and needing a cleric the likes of Yarl, the two convinced the rest of our group that a quick stint would be worth the while. And besides, Kran wasn’t likely to leave his house, was he? Well, for the most part, they were right. Our observation of the house revealed a half-orc and two humans coming and going a bit. From their dress, I assumed two of them were warriors of some sort, and the third was a wizardly fellow. But indeed, they did always seem to return to the house, and were in no hurry to take off on a vacation. But back to our story about the missing party. The group, sans myself and Glüg, left to perform this “quick” exorcism. As it turned out based on their report, what they had actually discovered was a nest of blood-sucking Stiriges, and a pack of angry goblins! Fortunately there was loot to be collected, and the group found a cloak (worth 50 gp), a silver mirror (worth 35 gp), and a sack with 240 cp, 89 sp, and 10 gp. They also turned in some goblin captives to the Brotherhood of Redemption, earning an extra 50 gp each for the trouble. And finally, they collected a 75 gp reward for the “exorcism”. Great, except we lost the entire day. Agreeing that it was best to prepare more before a full scale assault on the house, we retired again to the Ghostly Minstrel to plan again for the next day. (100 xp each player who was present for the session, no mvp recorded). The prior day Glüg and I had done a bit of scouting in our boredom, and had discovered that the house had a front door, a side door, and four windows with drapes. Otherwise it was a one story small one bedroom joint, maybe 110 feet square in total. We agreed to split up but remain within shouting distance. I went with Shinken, Yarl and Riven to the side door, while Yerrick, Glüg and Luford took the front door. We all moved all with great stealth, and I was proud of us for executing a sneaky plan. That is, until Yarl’s gun went off by accident! There went our element of surprise. Glüg proceeded to kick at the front door while blowing on its whistle loudly. Meanwhile Shinken picked open our side door (with some impressive skill I might add), and we immediately faced a human warrior-type on the other side in the house. Around the back, I heard the sound of glass breaking, as Luford starting to break his way in a window. I could hear lots of thumping at the front door, but did not see anyone enter from that direction. Of course, I was a bit distracted at the time, as a flaming pillar suddenly appeared in front of us, next to the human! It lashed out with licks of flame at Riven, fortunately missing. Riven responded with a cool head, stepping back out of the way and shattering the longsword from the hands of the human with his deadly magical words. Somewhere vaguely in the background I could hear lots of thumping and the sound of shots being fired. I learned later this was Balls and Yerrick desperately trying to break down the front door, and failing. We couldn’t help them out however, as our hands were full. Yarl fired off his own gun at the fiery elemental, as Shinken struck out at the thing with both weapons at once. The second attack struck home, and the elemental dissipated in smoke. An arrow went wizzing through the house, likely from the direction of Luford and his broken window. Riven went in to assist, stepping directly past the apparently dazed human whose weapon he had so recently shattered, and assessed the scene. Balls, apparently taking a que from Luford, decided to break in his own window rather than wait for a door to be bashed open. Unfortunately he discovered that the curtain behind that window just happened to hide the half-orc Glüg and I had seen enter and exit so often the day before! The half-orc responded with a large axe to the head of poor Balls, who crumpled beneath the blow, bleeding to death. Yarl immediately responded to the new threat, running over and firing through the now broken window at the half-orc. Alas, he missed. Glüg, finally having enough of all this silliness with the front door, took a running leap at the thing and brought it crashing down into the house. Shinken meanwhile entered from the side door and ran into the house to front the third human, standing on a bed and looking quite like a wizard. Luford again shot at the half-orc through his window, hitting the thing with a solid shot to the shoulder. In response, the wizard let lose a sheet of flame at Shinken, who staggered back nearly overcome with the fumes and fire. It was a bad scene I tell you, with people dropping left and right. As Riven blasted at the half-orc and missed, only to see the half-orc lay down a mighty blow with his axe to Glüg’s chest, it looked like this quite well be a doomed mission. Not daunted, I kept on plugging away, thrusting my military-grade spear at the unarmed human near the side door. Luck turned to our side for once, as the human decided to charge at me, ignoring my wicked jabs in a headless rage. It was a bad move on his part, as I was able to bring the point around and the weight of his own charge drove the spear deep into him as he collapse against me, unconscious and possibly dead. Yarl moved to heal Balls from near-death, as Shinken backed up and Glüg struck back at the half-orc warrior with it’s own axe, giving back as well as it was given earlier. The battle of the half-orcs with axes raged on, as the two exchanged mightly blows. Unfortunately for Glüg, our foe won that skirmish, and Glüg fell at last to a glancing blow to the head. I moved in immediately, fearing another flame attack from the wizard would finish the unconscious Glüg. With a single powerful blow, I struck the wizard down before he could get off another spell. With only the half-orc remaining, and sorely wounded from his battle with Glüg, it looked like the tide had finally turned. Yerrick shot at our remaining foe and missed, but the poor soul had taken more blows than he could handle, and collapsed under the weight of his own failed final attack. I went to the side of the first human I had stabbed by the side door, and managed to stabilize him before death. Yarl did the same with a spell to the fallen wizard, while the half-orc moaned on the ground, apparently still barely conscious and clearly not dead. We tied up our captives and counted our loot. The total included: 1 banded mail, a masterwork great axe, two daggers, a cloak that radiated magic [sigma], 28 gold pieces, some chainmail, a heavy steel shield, a climbers kit, 50’ of silken rope, a silver ring worth around 25 gold pieces, 15 more gold pieces, 22 pieces of silver, another dagger, a magical potion, a scroll of magic missle, and a pair of spectacles. I then proceeded to search the entire house, taking my time with each floor board, each portion of wall, and each piece of furniture. I figured we had the time, and I was going to squeeze every last piece of gold out of this shack after a day of watching it with Glüg as company. My search paid off, as I discovered under a floor board an iron box. Under a lamp I found the key, and within the box I found 2 potions of cure light wounds, 2 doses of Green Blood Poison, 1 flask of anti-toxin, 1 flask of alchemist fire, and one leather baf with 150 pieces of silver and 84 pieces of gold. On some shelves and here and there I also found three books (a ledger, a spellbook, and a book on the subject of magic worth around 35 gp). All in all, a pretty darn good take! We woke the half-orc up, and started the questioning. After following the chain of villains this far, we had the pattern down. The half-orc thought we were members of some gang called the Red Whips or Briar Woods. On discovering that we were not his normal foes, he became more amicable. It seemed he was hired by someone named Methal Watcher, and had been paid 200gp for the murder job (which he had quickly hired out). He didn’t know much about Methal, other than that he was a human and mysterious. Well, we had a name. That was something at least. We discussed the matter of the survivors for a while, but as a group we eventually decided that letting them go was probably the best route. If we ever needed more information, at least they wouldn’t be too hard to find in this condition. Balls was none to pleased about our decision however, and tried to take out the half-orc on his own. Fortunately for all of us, Balls was in no condition to do so, and collapsed himself with the effort. Good thing too, as I figured that half-orc could still do plenty of damage even with both hands tied behind his back! <290 XP for the goblin adventure> Total XP so Far:
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