The Rat Bastard Campaign Chronicle (Updated 3/28/05)

[RatPunk]

Chapter 8 - Temple and Tower, Part 1

There we stood, surrounded by a pile of dead orcs and an ogre corpse with a dented forehead and a missing kneecap. As usual, after the looting and pillaging of the bodies, the debate began as to what we should do next. I was all for heading back to town to recuperate, just in case the rumored vampire and/or lich actually were in residence here. Pyro was in agreement, even though he had just arrived on the scene.

Some of the others wanted to secure the remaining building and the tower the ogre had come out of first. Jeb had done a quick scout of the area during the battle, but the argument was that a more thorough search before heading back couldn’t hurt. They obviously hadn’t noticed the multiple bleeding wounds we all had.

It was at that moment that the decision was taken out of our hands by two events. First, a giant spear landed in the courtyard next to Peshal. That alerted us to the orc on the roof above the building. He was manning a scorpion. Jeb and I each took a shot at him as he tried to reload, but he had plenty of cover. Everyone else scattered to find their own cover in and around the building.

Then Rumblethorn, who had wandered over to the door of the building before the scorpion had fired, decided it would be a good idea to open it. That’s when we discovered the bad guys inside. Most of us had already gone that way to get away from the scorpion. We decided taking out the guys inside first was our best option. With Rumblethorn momentarily frozen in panic, Pyro was the first one through the door.

The inside was a mess. It had at one time been a temple to St. Cuthbert, but someone had defiled the entire building pretty thoroughly. My guess was that the culprit was the big half-orc priest in black armor we were now staring it. He stood at the far end of the room, behind the altar. In front of him sat the Crucible with a large, black candle burning in it. Between him and us stood four of the biggest, nastiest looking orcs I had ever seen. They almost made Jackie’s ogre friend look like a kobold.

Pyro wasted no time. He was barely inside the doorway when he started swinging at the nearest orc. The priest grabbed a wicked skull headed, spiked mace off of the altar and strode forward. Pyro accepted the unspoken challenge and stepped away from the orc he’d been fighting to meet the priest head on. The rest of us charged in before the orcs could turn all their attention on Pyro’s back. We outnumbered them, but their large, deadly greataxes more than made up the difference. It was all we could do not to lose a limb (or a head) in the melee.

From the moment we’d walked in, something just hadn’t felt right. My swings seemed sluggish and just a bit off, while the orcs seemed to be getting increasingly more accurate. I could tell by the looks on my friends’ faces that they felt it too. It was as if the evil permeating the room was a physical force that affected our every move.

When Jackie entered the temple, he took one look at the room and very nearly went berserk. He was an ardent follower of St. Cuthbert, after all. He launched himself at the nearest orc. It never had a chance and went down quickly. Our odds were improving.

Pyro’s odds were not. The priest had already hit him several times and Pyro was starting to show it. As the priest swung his mace for what would surely be the killing blow, Pyro ducked under it and sprinted for the altar. His large, muscular build belied his quickness and the priest’s back swing from behind missed as well. Jackie and I stepped up to the priest before he had a chance to follow.

As Jackie approached, he yelled a vow to St. Cuthbert about vengeance and sticking the priest’s mace somewhere or another. No sooner had the words left his lips than the sluggish, evil feeling lessened. I gave the priest my full attention and attempted to use Valkyria to its fullest potential. Sadly, it didn’t make him burst into flames on contact or anything. I would just have to hack him up the old fashioned way. Provided he didn’t brain me with his mace first, of course.

Meanwhile, the rest of the group was not faring well. Although nobody had died yet, the orcs were taking a toll. It wasn’t surprising since we hadn’t had an opportunity to heal after the battle outside. Even Laurial and her two guard friends would have been a welcome sight, but alas they were still waiting outside with the horses. You would have thought that the sound of our battle in the courtyard would have brought them running. We would definitely have to have a chat with Arlen about the quality of his employees when we returned to Fairhill.

By this time, Pyro had reached the altar. He was met there by yet another orc, who had stepped out of a room in the back of the temple. It turned out to be the same orc who had been manning the scorpion on the roof, although we didn’t know it at the time. He wasn’t as big or well armed as the orcs everyone else was fighting, but in Pyro’s weakened condition he was close enough. In much the same way as he had fought the ogre when we were looking for the blacksmith’s daughter, Pyro stood there and exchanged swings with the orc, neither of them landing a solid hit.

Then Pyro had an idea.

He leaned over and blew the black candle out. The sluggish feeling suddenly went away. Almost immediately another one of the orc henchmen went down. The rest of the group started crowding around the remaining orcs. Someone ran back to help Pyro. The priest did not look pleased. He looked even less pleased when the rest of the orcs fell a moment later. He didn’t have long to worry about it, though. As he tried to fend off another blow from Jackie, Valkyria slipped through his chainmail. He went down like an evil rag doll.

And his body vanished.

Peshal and Rumblethorn ran over to exam the spot where he fell. After several minutes of conferring and examining they concluded that it had probably been a Word of Recall. That implied that he probably wouldn’t remain dead for long, but hopefully we wouldn’t have to worry about him any time soon. We set about checking things out.

Pyro grabbed the Crucible and shoved it down his pants "for safe keeping". Heaven knows nobody would ever be looking there for anything, much less the Crucible of Freya. Nothing much of value was found, but we did throw the candle in a bag to take back to Fairhill. We’d let Shandril take care of it as she saw fit. While we were rummaging around, Jackie did his best to clean off both the altar and the statue of St. Cuthbert.

 

[RatPunk]

Chapter 8 - Temple and Tower, Part 2

Wow, I guess it's been a lot longer than I thought since my last update. If there's anyone out there who was actually following this story, I apologize. I'll try not to let it happen again...

- - - - - - - - - -

Once we were done, we decided to press our already overtaxed luck and move on to the tower the ogre had emerged from. It was a mess as well, but this was a different kind of mess. This was orc and ogre nest mess. And boy did it smell.

The first floor had apparently been occupied by several of the orcs and the floor was littered with numerous rugs that may, at one time, have been worth some gold. Now they were little more than soiled, disgusting blankets, which was obviously what the orcs had used them as. Jeb, however, insisted that with a little cleaning, they might still bring in some cash. We left him to paw over them.

The upstairs had been the home of Jackie’s ogre friend. How it managed to get up and down the narrow staircase on a daily basis, I’ll never know. A quick look around revealed the ogre’s only apparent possession: a leather thong with twelve human skulls on it. I didn’t even want to think about the ogre trying it on. That mental image brought a pause and a shudder to everyone. We went back downstairs.

During his inspection, Jeb had sorted the rugs into piles. When he had removed the last few from the center of the floor, he discovered a large board lying across the floor. Ever the suspicious type, Jeb had moved the board aside just as we came down the stairs. Beneath it was a trap door. We pondered the possibilities for a moment. Our thoughts turned to the rumors we’d heard in Fairhill of a lich and/or vampire living in the keep.

The vote was quick and unanimous. Now it was time to head back to Fairhill.
We returned to the courtyard and gathered what treasure we had accumulated, including the smelly rugs from the orc room. Suddenly Jeb spoke up.

"You know, we should take that scorpion on top of the temple, too. I’ll bet we could get some good money for that. Maybe Arlen would want it for the town."

Peshal was dead set against the idea. He wanted to go back to Fairhill and he wanted to go now, the scorpion would only slow us down. As adamant as he was about leaving it behind, Jeb was more so about taking it with us. The two of them started debating the idea. Loudly. The rest of us could see the merit in both sides, but at the time we were mostly leaning towards just heading back to town.

Then Pyro mentioned the war wagon.

It was such a simple statement: "Maybe we could mount it on the wagon.", but it had all kinds of possibilities, many of which instantly started running through my mind. Armored sides, the scorpion on the back, maybe some kind of dwarf launcher… The possibilities were endless! I could tell that the others were intrigued by the idea as well. Except for Peshal, who just wanted to leave, and Jackie, whom we suddenly noticed was missing.

Nervously expecting some new and hidden threat, we began looking around the courtyard. There was no sign of him. We nearly jumped out of our skins when his voice yelled down from above us.

"Hey, can somebody give me a hand with this?"

He was on top of the temple and had disassembled the entire scorpion while we’d been debating the issue. All that remained was to bring the pieces down to the courtyard. Pyro went to give him a hand. Using some interesting load distribution, we managed to pack everything on the horses, including Laurial’s (which displeased her to no end, I can assure you), and we rode back to town.

We went immediately to Shandril’s and presented the Crucible to her. She was extremely grateful, although not in the way I was hoping for. Instead, she healed everyone, which was almost as good. We also gave her the black candle, which she agreed to dispose of. Then we told her about the temple to St. Cuthbert and she recommended we talk to Brother Ogmund, the local Cuthbert priest. That sounded like a reasonable idea, so off we went.

We located Ogmund nearby, clearing out the smoldering ruins of what had recently been the village’s shrine to St. Cuthbert. We told him the tale of the temple and that we were planning to make a return trip in the morning. When we suggested that he might want to come along, he readily agreed. The chance to reestablish St. Cuthbert’s following in the area was too good for him to pass up. With a promise to pick him up in the morning, we headed to the Cockatrice to get some much needed rest.

I think most of us found that the morning came much too quickly. Still, we managed to drag ourselves out of bed, eat a quick breakfast and meet at Ogmund’s at a pretty reasonable time. He was packed and ready to go when we arrived, so we were quickly on our way.

I’ll say this for him, Brother Ogmund was a much better traveling companion than Laurial had been. He was jovial, friendly and very helpful. He and Jackie hit it off quite well, but then they both followed the same deity. We told him our adventuring stories, with Jackie quickly glossing over the details of his fight with the ogre, and Ogmund regaled us with tales of his own. It definitely made the time pass quickly and before we knew it we had arrived back at the keep.

We entered through the slime room and stepped into the courtyard. The stench from the corpses we’d piled up was just beginning to take hold, but it wasn’t overpowering. I think Ogmund was a little impressed to see that we hadn’t been exaggerating about the battle. We pointed him in the direction of the temple and he went off to set about the business of cleaning and reconsecrating. We gave the rest of the keep a quick once over, just to make sure it was still secure, then returned to the trap door.

The door opened with a loud creak. The waft of air that hit our nostrils reeked of orc and ogre. Just our luck, we’d found their toilet. Those of us who could see well in the dark crowded around the opening to get a better look. When that didn’t reveal much, we threw down a torch. It was a circular room, empty of anything except piles of trash along the wall. Much to our relief, it appeared to be crap free. In the middle of the floor was yet another trapdoor. It had a silvery gleam around the edges and was conspicuously uncovered by trash. But there was no way down.

Then Jackie pulled a hundred and fifty feet of rope out of his haversack. Yeah, that should just about do it. We found something in the room to secure the rope to and threw it down the hole. Within minutes, we were standing in the room examining the door.

 

[Mahtave]

Thought I would delurk for a minute - RatPunk this is a really good SH. I like the perspective coming from the "cocky" ranger. I look forward to the continuing saga

Is Peshal an NPC? Or is he a new player? Nothing like having two clerics from different ideologies in a group. If that doesn't hint at in-party tension I don't know what could be worse...

 

[RatPunk]

I'm glad you like it. I will try to make sure it doesn't go quite so long without an update from now on...

Writing it from Knuptar's POV only made sense to me, since that's how I'm seeing the game unfold, although actually writing it out allows me to put a little more of a Knuptar twist on things. I have to give a big shout out to Wulf for turning me on to this particular narrative style with his excellent Story Hour. And, of course, Wulf epitomizes the "cocky PC" archtype as far as I'm concerned.

As for Peshal, he was a new player to the group at this point. We all had a lot of fun giving him a hard time about worshipping Wee Jas, I can tell you. Actually, we have a lot of fun just harrassing him in general...

 

[RatPunk]

Chapter 8 - Temple and Tower, Part 3

The door was covered in runes and had silver nails driven into it to hold it down. As an added precaution, someone had also wedged silver pieces into the gaps all the way around the edge. Somebody didn’t want something to get out of there. The use of silver, a common ward against the undead, quickly brought all of our minds back to the vampire rumors. Then we noticed that the most predominant rune on the door looked familiar. Jeb brought out the amulet that he had taken from Corian when we’d first met him.

It matched.

We meekly assured each other that we were ready for whatever lurked below and Jeb passed the amulet over the door. There was a slight click and the door sprang open. With what seemed like a deafening clatter, all the silver pieces fell to the floor below. So much for the element of surprise.

Once again the rush of air from below brought nasty surprises to our noses. This time, however, it was the unmistakable smell of death. Against our better judgement, we peered over the edge to take a look.

It appeared to have been some sort of lab. It was circular like the room we were in, but there was a door on one side. The floor was strewn with candles, tubes and glassware, six statues lined the walls, and there was another trapdoor. As before, there was no way down. Fortunately, we had Jackie’s never ending coil of rope. It looked like we were going to put a lot of it to use.

Once we had descended, we went about the business of sifting through the stuff on the floor. Ever the curious sort, Jeb had gone to check out the door. He had just opened it when the "statues" attacked. You would think that they would have been the first things we’d check out, but for whatever reason, we hadn’t, so we missed the fact that they were actually zombies in chainmail.

With the zombies down off their pedestals and mixing it up with us, there wasn’t a lot of room left for maneuvering and weapon swinging, but we did our best. There was a momentary scare as what appeared to be rot grubs started dropping out of the zombies’ eye sockets, but we quickly determined that they were merely ordinary worms.

Then Peshal remembered that he was a priest. Holding his holy symbol before him, he demanded that the zombies flee. They tried, but with nowhere to go, they settled for cowering against the walls. We quickly turned them into the ex-undead.

We took a second to catch our breath and finished looking through the stuff on the floor. Jeb discovered a couple of books in the side room and threw them into his pack. We’d have them checked out more thoroughly when we got back to town. Then it was back to the trapdoor.

We opened it and had a look. As before, there was no way down. Eralion had obviously never heard of stairs or ladders. This time, the room below was very obviously a tomb. Not just any tomb, but Eralion’s tomb. Directly below us was a large stone sarcophagus sitting atop a raised, black dais. Both of them were covered in intricately carved ruins and hieroglyphs. There were papers and glass shards on the floor next to the dais. Lying across the lid was a skeleton clothed in what had once been fine robes. It clutched a staff in one hand.

Six coffins lined the wall.

We looked at each other nervously. All of us knew we were doomed if there was even one vampire below, much less six. Still, we were here for a purpose, so we took a collective deep breath and threw the rest of Jackie’s rope down.

We hit the floor one at a time and spread out quickly. Nobody wanted to touch the coffins, so we gave them as wide a berth as possible in the small room. Rumblethorn was interested in the staff, but before he could grab it, Jeb and Jackie both motioned for silence. Jeb cocked his head to the side as if listening to something. Slowly he nodded and spoke:

"Yes, it’s Fariblan. Is that you, Eralion?"

Uh-oh, I didn’t like the sound of this. Jeb nodded again and slowly a patch of darkness formed in front of him. It took on a more or less human form. Eralion hadn’t made it to lichhood, he’d become a shadow. He motioned slowly to Jeb, who continued to listen. We were all beginning to make out the faint voice of the dead wizard.

"Fariblan", it whispered.

"I’m here. How can we help?" replied Jeb.

"Redemption."

"Um, ok. How?"

"Chapel."

Jeb looked at us. We were too dumbfounded to offer much more than a shrug as advice.

"Uh… sure. We can take you to the chapel." He said, none too convincingly.

Fortunately, the undead apparently can’t hear nervousness. No sooner had the words left Jeb’s lips than Eralion was floating towards the trapdoor. We scrambled up the rope after him. Apparently, he didn’t want to be redeemed by himself, because he waited for us all to climb the rope to the top. Once we’d pulled ourselves out, he started drifting across the courtyard towards the chapel.

We were moving faster than Eralion was, since we thought it a good idea to prepare Ogmund for what we’d found. Jackie hit the door first.

"Um… Brother Ogmund? We have a small problem we could use your help with…"

He didn’t have time to say anything else. Eralion drifted into the chapel. Ogmund’s eyes grew wide and he dropped the bucket of cleaning water he’d been holding. "Blasphemer!" Ogmund yelled and started unleashing spells at the shadow. We dove quickly out of the way.

Eralion turned to Jeb and, in a much louder voice now, screeched something about him being a traitor and a liar. That was enough for me. I drew Valkyria and leapt to the attack. Jeb muttered something under his breath about Ogmund’s hasty attack and Jackie quickly positioned himself between the gnome and the priest, just in case.

Ogmund picked up his cudgel and stepped forward. The rest of us did what we could to help, but the battle was mostly Ogmund’s and it was over quickly. Eralion was dispatched once and for all. Ogmund gave us a quick, almost accusatory glance, then picked up his bucket and returned to his cleaning.

We stood there for a moment. Should we try to explain to Ogmund or just go and finish searching the tomb? We went back to the tomb to grab whatever we could find. Aside from the staff, we recovered a ceremonial dagger and a pair of bracers from Eralion’s corpse. We tried for what seemed like hours before we finally managed to pry the lid off of the sarcophagus. Inside was an assortment of coins, gems and jewelry. We threw everything into a bag and went back up to the courtyard.

A quick check with Ogmund confirmed that he wanted to stay and continue his cleaning, so we bade farewell and set off for town. We found Shandril and Arlen conferring together near the temples and we told them about Brother Ogmund and Eralion. They were both very appreciative of our efforts. Arlen reached into his pocket and handed us a key. He was giving us use of the noble guesthouse for as long as we remained in town. Sweet!

Before we left to round up the dwarves and move into our new digs, I unstrapped Valkyria and offered it back to Shandril. She touched it with one hand, closed her eyes for a second and said "You are not yet done with it". I knew what she really meant. She wanted to keep me around for a while! No problem, I could play that game.

Once we had packed up our things at the Drunken Cockatrice, Corian spoke up. Corian! He’d been so helpful lately that I’d almost forgotten he was with us! He asked Jeb if he could have the amulet back now that we were done with it. Jeb took it out, looked it over for a minute, then said "What the hell" and tossed it to him.

And just like that Corian said goodbye, grabbed his stuff and walked out the door. He didn’t even ask for a share of the treasure. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad guy after all...

 

[RatPunk]

Wizards, Ettins & Bards, Oh My!, Part 1

We had been lounging around our new house for about a week when it was suggested that we try again to locate the blacksmith’s daughter. I don’t remember who brought it up, or when, but after our successful forays at the keep we were looking for something else to do. If it happened to earn us more points with the Fairhillers, then so much the better. Plus, there was a full set of shiny new plate mail in it for one of us. So back to the blacksmith’s we went to refresh our memories on the details.

Missing about 3 weeks, great singer, wanted to adventure, went north. Got it. We packed up and headed into the wilderness once more. This time we went a slightly different north so as not to cover the same ground that had led to the owlbear on our previous attempt. Instead, we followed the river that came down from the hills to the north.

Only a couple of hours out of town, we heard a noise ahead on the path we had been following. Rounding a bend, we saw a young woman lying on the ground struggling against four orcs. She didn’t match the description of the blacksmith’s daughter, but she needed our help all the same. We charged forward.

By this time we had become seasoned orc fighters, or so we believed, and we made short work of them. The fact that we outnumbered them didn’t hurt any, either. We helped the woman to her feet. She dusted herself off and introduced herself as Pearl, a wizard. We invited her to tell us her story over lunch.

She had been adventuring with a group of friends in the area. They had stopped by Fairhill about three weeks ago and made the acquaintance of Arialle, the blacksmith’s daughter. When Arialle expressed a desire to adventure, they had agreed to let her accompany them. Shortly thereafter, the group had encountered some sort of problem, and one of their number had been transformed into an ettin, who then went on a rampage and killed almost the entire party.

Arialle had managed to calm the beast by singing to it, but it had then snatched her up and run off. Pearl managed to follow it to an abandoned tower that they had discovered some days earlier. The ettin had decided to make it his lair. Fairly confident that the creature wasn’t going anywhere, Pearl had returned to the city of Marner to buy a scroll in an attempt to transform the ettin back into her friend. The orcs had accosted her on the way back to the tower.

Since our goals now meshed nicely, Pearl agreed to join us. If her spell didn’t work, she would be forced to kill her friend, a task that would be much easier with the rest of us around. Not only that, but ettins were kind of like two headed ogres, so Jackie would be pleased...

After lunch, we packed up and continued on our way. It took several more hours, but soon we could hear music in the distance. We pressed on and arrived at the tower just before sunset. Everyone in town had been correct. Arialle had a beautiful voice.

As we approached, she sang song after song, accompanied only by the sounds of a lilting harp. When we arrived outside the tower, however, that changed. Suddenly she was accompanied by the most horrendous din of bellowing and harp banging that any of us had ever heard. The ettin obviously fancied himself a musician and had joined in. It was a wonder our ears weren’t bleeding.

We were now standing in front of the tower, getting ready to formulate a plan, when Jeb decided to take matters into his own hands. At the top of his little lungs, he yelled "My god that sucks!" That brought the music to a screeching halt. He followed it up a second later with "My grandmother plays a better harp than that and she’s dead!"

That did it.

With a loud roar, the ettin stormed out of the tower. It quickly sized up its opposition and, with what seemed to me to be a chuckle, it charged towards us. Jackie and Peshal ran forward and met it half way while Jeb and I both took a couple of shots at it. Pearl had pulled out her scroll and was busy making preparations to try and turn the creature back into her friend.

Our main goal was to keep the creature occupied, without killing it, until Pearl could work her magic. What we succeeded in doing was pissing the thing off and it began smacking us around like rag dolls. I quickly gave up on trying to shoot it, so I drew my swords and waded in. This resulted in me being the first one to go down. One solid shot from the ettin’s club and I was out.

 

[RatPunk]

Wizards, Ettins & Bards, Oh My!, Part 2

I regained consciousness to find Rumblethorn standing over me. The battle had moved away a bit and he had taken the opportunity to throw some healing spells my way. Peshal was similarly administering to Jackie, who was lying on the ground not far away. Jeb and Brush were frantically trying to keep the ettin at bay until we could return to the fray. Behind me, Pearl was cursing loudly. Her attempt at returning her friend to normal had failed. We would have to kill him.

Jackie and I leapt to our feet just in time to watch the ettin knock Peshal out cold. We tried to draw the creature away as Rumblethorn ran over to heal the cleric. It worked just long enough, but Peshal immediately had to return the favor as a glancing blow from the ettin’s club knocked Rumblethorn out. This was not going to be easy.

With Jackie and I back in action for the time being, Jeb once again dropped back and started shooting. As he always insisted, he really was quite the missile warrior. Within seconds, the ettin started to look like an overgrown porcupine. Unfortunately, it wasn’t slowing it down. In a matter of moments, I was once again on the ground staring at Peshal as he sent more healing my way.

As I regained my feet, I surveyed the situation. Jackie was down again, with Rumblethorn seeing to him. Jeb had once again been forced to go hand to knee with the ettin, who was finding the wiry little gnome tough to hit. Brush wasn’t looking too good, but she was staying in there, and Pearl was casting what spells she could. The ettin, though wounded, didn’t appear to be any worse for the wear. Things were looking grim.

Suddenly, a beautiful, lilting voice came from inside the tower. The power of Arialle’s song reinvigorated us and refocused our minds on the task at hand. Inspired, we leapt to the attack once more. This time, the ettin could do little to fend off our concerted onslaught. A few moments later it was dead.

Pearl grieved for her former friend briefly, then joined us as we entered the tower. Ettins, even transformed ones, rarely live in lush environments, so it came as no surprise to find that the place was practically a ruin. The tower amounted to nothing more than two big, round rooms stacked on top of each other with a stairway connecting them. The first floor was empty, except for a pile of rubble and an exquisitely crafted harp.

Jackie practically pounced on the harp and gave it a thorough inspection. If I hadn’t known any better, I would not have guessed him to be a monk. Jeb, on the other hand, was far more interested in the pile of rubble. I guess his highly trained senses had told him where the rest of the ettin’s treasure would be. Sure enough, he uncovered a decent mound of gold, silver and gems. Jackie, in the meantime, had latched onto the harp and stuffed it in his haversack.

The rest of us proceeded cautiously up the stairs. The second floor was empty as well, except for a small stool and Arialle, who was chained to the wall. Needless to say, she was glad to see us. We yelled for Jeb. He ran up the stairs and we pointed to Arialle’s chains. He made quick work of unlocking them, then ran back downstairs to finish gathering up our booty.

Once freed, Arialle’s next concern was for her harp. Apparently it had been crafted by some famous musician or other and was very valuable. Grudgingly, Jackie pulled it out of his haversack and handed it to her. It was a good thing Jeb hadn’t gotten a hold of it or she would have never gotten it back.

Our task accomplished, we headed back to Fairhill with Arialle and Pearl in tow. Once back in town, our first stop was, of course, the blacksmith’s. The reunion of father and daughter was joyous and the blacksmith was extremely grateful. He agreed to let Jackie use the forge to craft some small monkish trinkets for himself and, once we’d tracked down Pyro, he took the measurements for the promised suit of plate mail.

With the news that the armor wouldn’t be done for a couple of weeks, we retired to our house to bask in the glory of yet another job well done. Since she’d lost her previous adventuring group, we offered to let Pearl hang out with us for awhile. We weren’t just being magnanimous, though. Since Corian the Mostly Useless had left, we were without an arcane spell-slinger of our own. She agreed that it would be a good idea, so we threw Shuglin’s stuff in Ostler’s room and Pearl moved in.