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Ceramic DM autumn '03(final judegment: new ceramic dm champ!)
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<blockquote data-quote="cool hand luke" data-source="post: 1168886" data-attributes="member: 10926"><p>round one: cool hand luke vs. macbeth</p><p></p><p></p><p>Keeping up Morale, part 1</p><p></p><p>OOC: The setting is a large metropolitan port city, with a definite shady side too it. (like waterdeep?? Perhaps? The main character is an underboss for the Paisans, the ruling mafia like group in the city, and not necessarily in a dnd setting)</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>When a man that works for you dies, it’s always bad for business. When that person is killed specifically to send a message that someone very powerful has taken offense at something you did, let’s just say it causes problems on many levels. First, is purely financial. When a guy is taken out of action permanently, you give 5000 imperials to the widow, 10k if the guy had kids. Ouch. Second, you have to find a someone to replace him. Jergan wasn’t just your typical copper-piece a dozen street thug, so finding a replacement is no easy thing to do. Good second story men are impossible to find. Most of them don’t have long careers, thanks to the profusion of magical traps, and such that are now all the vogue with the upperclass. Jergan was old school, the consummate professional. He often claimed he could slip into your house, and steal your daughters virtue without waking her up. (of course some of the guys said this wasn’t because he was sneaky, but because of his…. Well… stature) </p><p> (insert sneak picture). Finally, and probably most crucially, is making sure your remaining employees don’t take the death to hard.</p><p></p><p>Understandably, seeing a co-worker go down is hard on guys. First, because it tells everyone several bad things. 1. Someone dislikes you enough to spend money on an assassin to take you out. 2. There are enough holes in your defense that someone can get to you, and 3. The person was able to find and hire an assassin good enough to exploit these weaknesses.</p><p></p><p>The way we learned of his death was especially troubling. It was Monday morning, so, of course, I was waiting for everyone to show up for the weekend review meeting. (the weekend being a time when most of our vice oriented businesses are booming.) All of my guys were in the room, (except Tunden, who was taking care of his sick mother) Except Jergal. That’s when my personal assistant/ front office girl/ bodyguard Jillian entered, with a large wooden box. I could tell from the look on her face that something was up. She plopped the box down on my desk, and handed me a small crowbar (she has a remarkable ability to always have whatever tool is needed handy. I have to look into how she does that.) Nervously picking up the crowbar, I quickly pried the top of the wooden crate. I was so taken aback by what I saw there that I jumped, spilling the crate onto the ground.(consider what it takes to startle a guy who has made his living as an assassin) The severed left arm in it rolled out, and came to rest near the feet of one of my guys. There was no mistaking who’s it was, the intwined snakes going up the forearm told all that it was my missing sneak thief. Nedwin made a small retching noise, and appeared quite green. He blurted out, “By the Gods, what happened, why would someone do that?” He was a good kid, showed great promise as a forger/info man, but was still a little squeamish. </p><p></p><p>Jillian, who always had the best eyes in the group, (one of the reasons she’s the highest paid office clerk in the city, well, that, and her ruthless proficiency with poisoned darts….) Spoke up. “Boss, there something in the hand.” I tried to open the hand up, but death stiffness had set in, making it impossible. Frustrated, I tossed the grisly remains at one of my more seasoned men. “Go in the other room, get whatever it is out. Try not to massacre the poor thing.” </p><p></p><p>With a wordless shrug, the brute walked into the other room. A few minutes, and several loud smacks later, he came back out. Thankfully, he had left the arm in the other room. He comes out, holding a small white object. “Tooth boss.” He said, as he put it on my desk. We all studied the object silently for a minute, before Nedwin broke the silence. “what the hell does that mean?” As I said earlier, good kid, needs to keep his mouth shut though. I caught a raised eyebrow from Jillian, and nodded to her to fill the boy in. “It’s a Sharks tooth, tells you how they killed him. Most likely hacked the arm off, tossed him into the bay, and let there finned friends do the dirty work. It makes resurrection a real pain, and makes it hard to find the skull so you can speak with him from beyond the grave.”</p><p></p><p>All sat silently for a long time, Finally, I dismissed many of them to go check on our daily operations. I kept my inner circle, Jillian, and my four lietenants. Four now that Jergan was gone. Eventually, we hammered out a plan. Obviously someone was sending us a message, the severed arm confirmed that. If they just wanted to kill him, there are far easier ways to do it. The problem is we had no idea WHAT they were trying to tell us, only that they were quite serious about the cryptic message. We broke the meeting 2 hours later, no closer to a solution, but quite a bit more depressed. Not a good way to start the week. We were all going to think about the situation, and play everything really close to the vest, work in pairs, constant check ints, etc, just to play it safe. </p><p></p><p>As of Wednesday, we had had no big events, operations seemed to be running smoothly, which caused me great discomfort. Nobody goes to that kind of effort to send a message and then just drops it. Late Wednesday afternoon, Jillian walked in, and pulled up a chair. She sat back, and threw her very long legs up on my desk, briefly revealing a glint of steel of something quite deadly nestled on her thigh. She often uses her looks to her advantage, but I had become (mostly) immune to the effect. It’s hard to see a lady as real attractive after you’ve seen them methodically torture someone for a few days. She started “Boss, seems to me, our real problem is we don’t have a CLUE why we received an arm special delivery. I’m pretty sure it’s someone outside the organization. I’ve been doing some research , and we need to get the head back, to take to a wizard to question. But there’s gotta be a few thousand sharks in the bay. Anyway, I’ve heard talk lately of a shaman man living in the lowlands outside of town. Supposedly, he can talk with animals, some rumors say even become them, if you believe that. Maybe he can use his affinity with nature to help us out.” </p><p></p><p>Honestly, I didn’t think much of her idea, yet three days later, after failing to come up with a better one, I found myself slogging through a swamp looking for this mythical Shaman. After several hours slogging through the swamp, and listening the whinings and grumblings of the “muscle” I’d brought along, (amazing how tough a guy can be in a street fight, but get a little mud, and a few bite bugs on him, and he whimpers) we finally reached a clearing. It would be hard to say that a human lived here. There was a small fire pit, and what could be called, if one was very generous, a lean to, but no other signs of human habitation. As we sat there, and swatted a myriad of bugs off of us, suddenly before us materialized a man from the bushes. I was very adept at stealth, and for the life of me could not figure out how he could walk quietly through the thick swamp growth. As he neared us, he stared at us with one good eye, the other one had a milky covering, that was obviously blind. He started to talk in an accent so thick it’s almost impossible to understand, “My friends told me you were coming. City people don’t like nature’s swamp. Usually my friends and I are left alone. City people do bad things, with this, he reaches into a bush, and pulls up an immature reptilian creature, missing one back leg and most of it’s tail. (insert crocodile pic)</p><p> </p><p></p><p>He continued, “city folk hurt him when he was a hatchling. Why you here?”</p><p></p><p>I stepped forward, and in a few minutes managed to stammer out a version of the story (no reason to give him all the details) I don’t know if it was his milky eye, the way the reptile “kissed” the man, or the surroundings that so unnerved me, but my usual silken tongue had turned to burlap.</p><p></p><p> It was quite apparent that he was very unhappy with our presence, and none to convinced by our story. After I finished, he sat silently for long enough to make us all very uncomfortable, and notice once again the myriad of bugs crawling on us, looking for a nice juicy spot to bite. He suddenly sprang into action, “you ask for help, yet offer nothing. I thought of something You can do, city folks (he says with obvious disdain) and heads through the bush. We were hard pressed to keep up. He moved with such amazing ease through the swamp, and we were left floundering, flopping, and cursing in the mud as he cruised on. After 20 of the longest minutes of my life, we came to another patch of solid ground. There was a crude altar there built of sturdy wood. The top of which was charred, as were the branches of the overhanging trees. “Here for years was the skull of the fire god’s great war beast. (insert firehead pic)</p><p>) </p><p></p><p></p><p> It was worshipped by many, feared by all. It had great magic in it. Magic man from city come and steal it. Has many powerful magics. My friends could not stop him, they were held still like stone. I went into the city, (where he spits on the ground in disgust) but could not find him for his magics. You find the remains.”</p><p></p><p>At that point, I figured, what the hell? If I didn’t figure out who offed one of my guys, I was going to have big issues anyway. After agreeing, the shaman took off back into the swamp, expecting us to follow him. After an hours hard march, during which time, any non-mudcoated part of us was bitten by something, we came to where the swamp gave way to the bay. Sitting there was a crude boat, made from a huge hollowed out log. He nodded at us to board it, and, with great trepidation, we loaded up. He handed out paddles, and we attempted to navigate the boat. Our inexperience was comical, as we only managed to soak ourselves, and propel ourselves in a large circle. We finally made it out past the breakwater, and rolled gently on the waves. I could see the man behind me turning a nice green color, as the motion got to him. Suddenly one of the men shouted, “What the….” As the boat was bumped by something in the water. The shaman, looking quite disgusted with us, “you ask for the sharks, and I call them, now you complain?” In the next few minutes, dozens of sharks could be seen skimming just below the surface. (insert shark pic) My crew was uneasy to say the least, and one screamed like a stuck pig when the Shaman suddenly stood off, and jumped overboard! Rocking the boat violently. “crazy old man, he’s dead for sure now.” We sat there, not quite sure what to do for a while, when suddenly the water broke next to us, and the white of the man’s one good eye gleamed eerily in the moonlight. “Is this your friend?” As he tossed a head into the boat. </p><p></p><p>Now identifying a head after it’s been in the stomach of a shark for a week is neither easy, nor pleasant. Luckily, the large intricate earring was still attached.</p><p></p><p>Now I just have to figure out what to do with a smelly head, a skull stealing magic user, and a powerful yet unknown enemy.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="cool hand luke, post: 1168886, member: 10926"] round one: cool hand luke vs. macbeth Keeping up Morale, part 1 OOC: The setting is a large metropolitan port city, with a definite shady side too it. (like waterdeep?? Perhaps? The main character is an underboss for the Paisans, the ruling mafia like group in the city, and not necessarily in a dnd setting) When a man that works for you dies, it’s always bad for business. When that person is killed specifically to send a message that someone very powerful has taken offense at something you did, let’s just say it causes problems on many levels. First, is purely financial. When a guy is taken out of action permanently, you give 5000 imperials to the widow, 10k if the guy had kids. Ouch. Second, you have to find a someone to replace him. Jergan wasn’t just your typical copper-piece a dozen street thug, so finding a replacement is no easy thing to do. Good second story men are impossible to find. Most of them don’t have long careers, thanks to the profusion of magical traps, and such that are now all the vogue with the upperclass. Jergan was old school, the consummate professional. He often claimed he could slip into your house, and steal your daughters virtue without waking her up. (of course some of the guys said this wasn’t because he was sneaky, but because of his…. Well… stature) (insert sneak picture). Finally, and probably most crucially, is making sure your remaining employees don’t take the death to hard. Understandably, seeing a co-worker go down is hard on guys. First, because it tells everyone several bad things. 1. Someone dislikes you enough to spend money on an assassin to take you out. 2. There are enough holes in your defense that someone can get to you, and 3. The person was able to find and hire an assassin good enough to exploit these weaknesses. The way we learned of his death was especially troubling. It was Monday morning, so, of course, I was waiting for everyone to show up for the weekend review meeting. (the weekend being a time when most of our vice oriented businesses are booming.) All of my guys were in the room, (except Tunden, who was taking care of his sick mother) Except Jergal. That’s when my personal assistant/ front office girl/ bodyguard Jillian entered, with a large wooden box. I could tell from the look on her face that something was up. She plopped the box down on my desk, and handed me a small crowbar (she has a remarkable ability to always have whatever tool is needed handy. I have to look into how she does that.) Nervously picking up the crowbar, I quickly pried the top of the wooden crate. I was so taken aback by what I saw there that I jumped, spilling the crate onto the ground.(consider what it takes to startle a guy who has made his living as an assassin) The severed left arm in it rolled out, and came to rest near the feet of one of my guys. There was no mistaking who’s it was, the intwined snakes going up the forearm told all that it was my missing sneak thief. Nedwin made a small retching noise, and appeared quite green. He blurted out, “By the Gods, what happened, why would someone do that?” He was a good kid, showed great promise as a forger/info man, but was still a little squeamish. Jillian, who always had the best eyes in the group, (one of the reasons she’s the highest paid office clerk in the city, well, that, and her ruthless proficiency with poisoned darts….) Spoke up. “Boss, there something in the hand.” I tried to open the hand up, but death stiffness had set in, making it impossible. Frustrated, I tossed the grisly remains at one of my more seasoned men. “Go in the other room, get whatever it is out. Try not to massacre the poor thing.” With a wordless shrug, the brute walked into the other room. A few minutes, and several loud smacks later, he came back out. Thankfully, he had left the arm in the other room. He comes out, holding a small white object. “Tooth boss.” He said, as he put it on my desk. We all studied the object silently for a minute, before Nedwin broke the silence. “what the hell does that mean?” As I said earlier, good kid, needs to keep his mouth shut though. I caught a raised eyebrow from Jillian, and nodded to her to fill the boy in. “It’s a Sharks tooth, tells you how they killed him. Most likely hacked the arm off, tossed him into the bay, and let there finned friends do the dirty work. It makes resurrection a real pain, and makes it hard to find the skull so you can speak with him from beyond the grave.” All sat silently for a long time, Finally, I dismissed many of them to go check on our daily operations. I kept my inner circle, Jillian, and my four lietenants. Four now that Jergan was gone. Eventually, we hammered out a plan. Obviously someone was sending us a message, the severed arm confirmed that. If they just wanted to kill him, there are far easier ways to do it. The problem is we had no idea WHAT they were trying to tell us, only that they were quite serious about the cryptic message. We broke the meeting 2 hours later, no closer to a solution, but quite a bit more depressed. Not a good way to start the week. We were all going to think about the situation, and play everything really close to the vest, work in pairs, constant check ints, etc, just to play it safe. As of Wednesday, we had had no big events, operations seemed to be running smoothly, which caused me great discomfort. Nobody goes to that kind of effort to send a message and then just drops it. Late Wednesday afternoon, Jillian walked in, and pulled up a chair. She sat back, and threw her very long legs up on my desk, briefly revealing a glint of steel of something quite deadly nestled on her thigh. She often uses her looks to her advantage, but I had become (mostly) immune to the effect. It’s hard to see a lady as real attractive after you’ve seen them methodically torture someone for a few days. She started “Boss, seems to me, our real problem is we don’t have a CLUE why we received an arm special delivery. I’m pretty sure it’s someone outside the organization. I’ve been doing some research , and we need to get the head back, to take to a wizard to question. But there’s gotta be a few thousand sharks in the bay. Anyway, I’ve heard talk lately of a shaman man living in the lowlands outside of town. Supposedly, he can talk with animals, some rumors say even become them, if you believe that. Maybe he can use his affinity with nature to help us out.” Honestly, I didn’t think much of her idea, yet three days later, after failing to come up with a better one, I found myself slogging through a swamp looking for this mythical Shaman. After several hours slogging through the swamp, and listening the whinings and grumblings of the “muscle” I’d brought along, (amazing how tough a guy can be in a street fight, but get a little mud, and a few bite bugs on him, and he whimpers) we finally reached a clearing. It would be hard to say that a human lived here. There was a small fire pit, and what could be called, if one was very generous, a lean to, but no other signs of human habitation. As we sat there, and swatted a myriad of bugs off of us, suddenly before us materialized a man from the bushes. I was very adept at stealth, and for the life of me could not figure out how he could walk quietly through the thick swamp growth. As he neared us, he stared at us with one good eye, the other one had a milky covering, that was obviously blind. He started to talk in an accent so thick it’s almost impossible to understand, “My friends told me you were coming. City people don’t like nature’s swamp. Usually my friends and I are left alone. City people do bad things, with this, he reaches into a bush, and pulls up an immature reptilian creature, missing one back leg and most of it’s tail. (insert crocodile pic) He continued, “city folk hurt him when he was a hatchling. Why you here?” I stepped forward, and in a few minutes managed to stammer out a version of the story (no reason to give him all the details) I don’t know if it was his milky eye, the way the reptile “kissed” the man, or the surroundings that so unnerved me, but my usual silken tongue had turned to burlap. It was quite apparent that he was very unhappy with our presence, and none to convinced by our story. After I finished, he sat silently for long enough to make us all very uncomfortable, and notice once again the myriad of bugs crawling on us, looking for a nice juicy spot to bite. He suddenly sprang into action, “you ask for help, yet offer nothing. I thought of something You can do, city folks (he says with obvious disdain) and heads through the bush. We were hard pressed to keep up. He moved with such amazing ease through the swamp, and we were left floundering, flopping, and cursing in the mud as he cruised on. After 20 of the longest minutes of my life, we came to another patch of solid ground. There was a crude altar there built of sturdy wood. The top of which was charred, as were the branches of the overhanging trees. “Here for years was the skull of the fire god’s great war beast. (insert firehead pic) ) It was worshipped by many, feared by all. It had great magic in it. Magic man from city come and steal it. Has many powerful magics. My friends could not stop him, they were held still like stone. I went into the city, (where he spits on the ground in disgust) but could not find him for his magics. You find the remains.” At that point, I figured, what the hell? If I didn’t figure out who offed one of my guys, I was going to have big issues anyway. After agreeing, the shaman took off back into the swamp, expecting us to follow him. After an hours hard march, during which time, any non-mudcoated part of us was bitten by something, we came to where the swamp gave way to the bay. Sitting there was a crude boat, made from a huge hollowed out log. He nodded at us to board it, and, with great trepidation, we loaded up. He handed out paddles, and we attempted to navigate the boat. Our inexperience was comical, as we only managed to soak ourselves, and propel ourselves in a large circle. We finally made it out past the breakwater, and rolled gently on the waves. I could see the man behind me turning a nice green color, as the motion got to him. Suddenly one of the men shouted, “What the….” As the boat was bumped by something in the water. The shaman, looking quite disgusted with us, “you ask for the sharks, and I call them, now you complain?” In the next few minutes, dozens of sharks could be seen skimming just below the surface. (insert shark pic) My crew was uneasy to say the least, and one screamed like a stuck pig when the Shaman suddenly stood off, and jumped overboard! Rocking the boat violently. “crazy old man, he’s dead for sure now.” We sat there, not quite sure what to do for a while, when suddenly the water broke next to us, and the white of the man’s one good eye gleamed eerily in the moonlight. “Is this your friend?” As he tossed a head into the boat. Now identifying a head after it’s been in the stomach of a shark for a week is neither easy, nor pleasant. Luckily, the large intricate earring was still attached. Now I just have to figure out what to do with a smelly head, a skull stealing magic user, and a powerful yet unknown enemy. [/QUOTE]
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