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<blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 636" data-attributes="member: 63"><p><span style="font-size: 12px"><strong>Chapter Six: Misleading Trails</strong></span></p><p></p><p>At the sound of Roth’s cry for help, Bhurisrava and Tauster rush into the entry room, and Bhur gasps as Allar leads an attack of a half dozen warriors into the small space. Tauster tries to cast a spell, but the warriors smash him into the wall and disrupt his casting, nearly knocking the old man out in the process. Bhur grabs a dough-kneading rolling pin and tries to fend off the attackers, calling for help, but in mere seconds he is bludgeoned into near unconsciousness. He feigns being knocked out and watches as the men pillage through the room.</p><p></p><p>Outside, Harley and James hear the commotion and run for Tauster’s home, Harley shouting for help. James goes in swinging, going for the red-haired balding spellcaster who’s standing near the door. The man ducks James’ attack, then sidesteps and kicks James in the back of his knee, sprawling him to the ground. Harley throws a dagger at him, and the blade grazes his arm, but the spellcaster is barely fazed. He shouts to the others to hurry up, then jumps over James and lashes out at Harley with his hands. </p><p></p><p>Harley manages to dodge his blows, but since she’s already thrown her dagger, and Ricochet isn’t meant for close combat, she begins to scramble away. Desperately she throws Ricochet into the house, and it narrowly misses James as the man stands back up. The whirling disk cracks into the back of the head of one of the warriors, stunning him. </p><p></p><p>[meta: Jessie was amazed to finally hit something with Ricochet!]</p><p></p><p>James slashes into the unarmed spellcaster’s back, but the man stumbles forward fast enough that he’s only grazed. Caught between the two foes, he calls for help from the warriors, then begins to cast a spell. Harley tries to kick him in the face to stop him, and James cuts the man across his arm, but he finishes his spell undaunted, and four small flaming bolts fly from his hands, two to strike Harley, two to strike James. James curses and tries to attack the wizard again, but one of the warriors in the house slashes open the flesh on the back of James’s head, and the warrior falls to the ground. </p><p></p><p>Harley, unarmed, calls for help again, and is relieved to see that a few people are running forward with spear and pitchforks. A call comes from inside the house shouting, “I got it!” and then the red-haired man orders for them to retreat. Harley stays back, knowing she can’t stop all of them on her own. Then she staggers back in shock as Allar leaves the house, carrying the Book of Darlakanand in his arms. The half-Elf ranger seems to ignore her, and the group runs off into the night, heading south toward the swamp.</p><p></p><p>Harley rushes to James’s aid, trying to staunch the flow of blood out the back of his skull. Bhurisrava scrambles forward and heals the wound enough to save James’s life, and then runs back into the house to check on Tauster and Roth. The villagers who come around offer to help however they can, and Harley has a spark of inspiration enough to tell them not to follow the attackers yet. They don’t need to spoil whatever tracks they left in the mud.</p><p></p><p>Tauster is safe, but bruised. Roth is unharmed, since he was held the entire time and not a threat. James is stable enough to mutter about how he hates wizards (quietly enough so Tauster can’t hear), and Bhurisrava is wounded but holding together. He managed to trip one of the warriors as the man ran out of the house, and then rendered him unconscious with a wound-inflicting spell. They stabilize their prisoner, then ask around to find out if anyone knows where the book thieves might have gone, who any of them were, etc. People say that it’s odd to see either a blonde-haired or a red-haired individual in the area, and the local innkeeper says that he thinks he recalls seeing some of the brown-haired warriors buying drinks a few days earlier. He doesn’t think they were locals. </p><p></p><p>Since none of the villagers mention seeing Allar, Harley, Roth, and Bhurisrava only tell Tauster and James. Tauster doesn’t think Allar had anything to do with it, that it must’ve been a trick, but James is pissed enough to blame whoever he can. </p><p></p><p>They hit the sack, Roth agreeing to stand watch since he was spared being beaten up. He seems to want a chance at revenge, as though he hopes the thieves return. Harley and Bhur are fairly certain they won’t come back, though, since they got the book they came for.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>The next morning, Harley awakens to Tauster calling her Jenny again. He says that he finished the cure in the middle of the night, which is good because Harley’s hand is on fire. She forgot to have a spare wet cloth handy, and now she can barely stand the burning. The sound of Tauster getting the antidote ready awakens the others, including Roth, who is quick to pretend that he wasn’t asleep on watch. His first words of the day are to ask for something to drink.</p><p></p><p>Tauster has concocted some type of oil that he rubs over Harley’s hand and arm. It’s cold and sticky like mud, and once it fully coats the affected area, Tauster casts a spell on it, then sets it on fire with an incense stick. The oil burns away quickly and painfully, but it reveals Harley’s normal arm, back to normal flesh, if mildly burnt red. Harley smiles in thanks and hugs the old man with one arm, then politely asks if Bhurisrava could heal her and James a little more. Bhurisrava nods and begins to pray for his spells, while Roth goes about cooking.</p><p></p><p>After finishing a surprisingly tasty, if alcohol tinged breakfast from Roth, they’re about to leave when a knock comes at the door, followed by Allar’s voice saying, “It’s me! I heard what happened last night! Are you alright?”</p><p></p><p>Tauster chides them for getting their weapons ready, and before they can sufficiently prepare their defense, Tauster shouts, “The door’s unlocked. It’s all fine.”</p><p></p><p>Allar opens the door, and James thrusts a sword at his face. Allar leaps back half a step, draws his black scimitar, and parries a second blow. He manages to fend off James’s frustrated advances long enough to get the story out of Tauster. The breaks off as Allar claims that it had to be a disguise or an illusion. Last night he was at the small keep of Lord Parlfray, not far from his own keep, and he says he has an alibi. They party is willing to listen, since Roth points out that the Allar he saw last night (and he had a lot of time to look since he was sprawled on the ground) had a plain old bland scimitar. Allar actually carries two, though he only seems to use the black one. </p><p></p><p>As soon as he’s convinced them that he didn’t try to take them the night before, he tells them all to come with him. They have to track down the thieves before they get the book to whoever hired them. Allar’s just about ready to run after them, but only Roth seems eager to go with him.</p><p></p><p>Allar complains that they’re losing valuable time, but James won’t budge to go after people who so far have just been trying to kill them. Allar, frustrated, offers to pay them a hundred gold pieces each to help him, since he needs them to identify who the thieves were. He also says that whoever wants the book probably doesn’t want anyone to know about it, so their lives are in danger. It’s in their best interest to help him.</p><p></p><p>Tauster offers to Allar that he could just <em>charm</em> the group and make them go along, but Allar sighs and shakes his head, saying, “No. We had enough of that when the Illithids were around.”</p><p></p><p>The offer of payment and Allar and Tauster’s agreement to help protect them is enough to convince them to go along for now, and they set off. Tauster stays behind, because he never was the adventuring type. (He’s a 9th level wizard, but he’s over 70 and has done very little adventuring. With a 3 Constitution and 9 hit points, he’s not quite well suited to go out fighting anymore).</p><p></p><p>Allar follows the fairly obvious tracks with the others keeping up as well as they can, since Allar practically runs as he watches the tracks. Something strikes the party that it must be Really Bad to have lost the book, considering that Allar is ready to leave at a moment’s notice to go sprinting through a marsh after a large group of armed men and a wizard. Bhurisrava grumbles that he thinks Allar might still be trying to trick them and throw them off his trail, but Roth trusts Allar.</p><p></p><p>The tracks lead to a bank of the river about two miles south of the town of Thurmaster. They find markings that a small boat had been left on the bank as a getaway vehicle, and so Allar leaps into the water and swims across, ready to assist anyone who needs help. The river is too deep to walk, but only about fifty feet across, so they make it across easily. On the other bank they find a wooden rowboat hidden in some brush a few feet into the treeline, and despite Bhurisrava and James grumbling about having to rush through the woods so quickly, Allar leads them on, into the Thornwood.</p><p></p><p>[The Thornwood is a large forest that stretches between Milbourne and Thurmaster, and goes fairly far to the south of both. It’s borders are effectively carved by the Churnette river and a few rough hills where farming and mining has cut back the original woodlands. All you really need to know is that they’re going into the woods, and that it’s a huge place filled with all manner of thorny plantlife.]</p><p></p><p>The trail is harder to follow once out of the marshy ground and into grassy forest. The tracks lead to a game trail, which, after about an hour, opens into a wide grassy clearing. Allar and Roth both try to follow the tracks, but the trail simply disappears. Suspecting that the thief wizard had something to do with it, Allar mutters and takes his bearings. The trail is lost, so they sit and rest for a while, Allar asking them about everything that has happened so far.</p><p></p><p>They tell him about ‘Death’ attacking them, what Death looked like when they finally beat it, and then their trip back to Tausters. Allar asks for a closer description of the Illithid, and is disturbed by the mention of it having hair and discolored blotches of normal flesh and ‘mind flayer’-ish flesh. Normal Illithids don’t have hair, and are a fairly uniform color. He assumes that it must have been related to the Illithids in some way, but how he is unsure. He tells them plainly that a single Illithid should have been able to, if not kill all of them, at least escape easily if endangered. This frustrates Bhurisrava even more. He already doesn’t like or trust Allar, and saying that he doesn’t believe what they accomplished is insulting.</p><p></p><p>Harley continues to tell what happened, going into the squishiness of her hand, the arrival of Inzeldrin, and the subsequent argument she had with the men in his keep. Allar is disturbed by the problem with Inzeldrin, but it’s more of the “oh, what else could go wrong today” type of worry, rather than the “we’re screwed” emotions he’s displaying whenever the topic of the book theft comes up.</p><p></p><p>Harley asks to be reminded just how bad the Book of Darlakanand is, and Allar tells her that if someone had all the books, they might be able to recreate what the Illithids tried to do a few years ago, namely to create a magical effect that would weaken the minds of every creature on the planet so that the Mind Flayers could control almost anyone. Allar’s not sure exactly what the process is that would do this, though a few of his companions were more experienced in the magical aspects of the Illithids. </p><p></p><p>Since it’s still early morning, Allar decides to set off and scout out nearby locations that might be valid hiding spots for people in these woods. His list is:</p><p></p><p>* An abandoned church with a broken spire and a small village of abandoned buildings, a few hours to the northwest. It was built hundreds of years ago when the area was more prosperous due to mining, but people left when the mines stopped being rich. The small town was swallowed up by the woods, but occasionally Goblin tribes or bandits hide out in the place.</p><p>* A small network of caves chewed into the side of a huge cliff called Featherfall (because the layers of rocks on it look like feathers). Goblins usually live in the caves there, but it is a plausible hiding spot.</p><p>* A house that’s a few years old whose previous owner built it in the woods for privacy, then left out of loneliness. The cruel bastard who lived there left his dog behind and hasn’t returned for years. Roth chimes in and says that they know that the house is clear.</p><p>* The grove of a local shaman named Oleane, once a young girl who played in the woods too often and grew to prefer the trees to people. She’s now grown up but still anti-social. She’s closely bonded with the local forest, and has occasionally provided information to Allar before. </p><p></p><p>[At the mention of Oleane’s name, Nic, James’s player, begins to laugh. He finds her name incredibly funny. If you recall, about two years ago there were complaints that the ‘fake-fat’ oil O-lean caused diarrhea and anal leakage. Since Nic couldn’t take her seriously, he’d call her ‘anal leakage girl’ whenever she was mentioned. I’d had a druid named Oleane in the woods for years before the fatless oil came out, and I hadn’t expected my players’ abilities to mock and deride simple names. So far we have Nikal as “Nikhail the Commie,” Tauster as “Toaster,” and Oleane as “anal leakage girl.” I love Nic oh so much.]</p><p></p><p>They decide to head for the abandoned church first, since it’s closest and because bandits have worked out of there before. They start walking again, travel for several hours, then spot a neglected low stone wall that marks where the small town used to stand. Beyond the wall are three buildings—a church and two houses—plus the collapsed rubble of several others. They take a few minutes to prepare themselves, and then Allar gives orders to scout the small town. Keeping hidden in the brush and trees, they sneak as quietly as possible around the perimeter. There’s definite signs of people being here, since a fresh foot trail has been torn through the grass to lead to the main door of the church. Allar quickly sneaks into and out of the two other houses, but shakes his head that no one is in there. They back away to a safe range to talk, and Allar says that the two houses look occupied, but no one’s in there now. By the looks of it, the place is only home to Goblins, but they might have information. </p><p></p><p>Allar and James work out a battle plan of how to deal with the Goblins in case negotiations go sour, and then they take their places as Allar and Harley walk to the front entrance to parley.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="RangerWickett, post: 636, member: 63"] [size=3][b]Chapter Six: Misleading Trails[/b][/size] At the sound of Roth’s cry for help, Bhurisrava and Tauster rush into the entry room, and Bhur gasps as Allar leads an attack of a half dozen warriors into the small space. Tauster tries to cast a spell, but the warriors smash him into the wall and disrupt his casting, nearly knocking the old man out in the process. Bhur grabs a dough-kneading rolling pin and tries to fend off the attackers, calling for help, but in mere seconds he is bludgeoned into near unconsciousness. He feigns being knocked out and watches as the men pillage through the room. Outside, Harley and James hear the commotion and run for Tauster’s home, Harley shouting for help. James goes in swinging, going for the red-haired balding spellcaster who’s standing near the door. The man ducks James’ attack, then sidesteps and kicks James in the back of his knee, sprawling him to the ground. Harley throws a dagger at him, and the blade grazes his arm, but the spellcaster is barely fazed. He shouts to the others to hurry up, then jumps over James and lashes out at Harley with his hands. Harley manages to dodge his blows, but since she’s already thrown her dagger, and Ricochet isn’t meant for close combat, she begins to scramble away. Desperately she throws Ricochet into the house, and it narrowly misses James as the man stands back up. The whirling disk cracks into the back of the head of one of the warriors, stunning him. [meta: Jessie was amazed to finally hit something with Ricochet!] James slashes into the unarmed spellcaster’s back, but the man stumbles forward fast enough that he’s only grazed. Caught between the two foes, he calls for help from the warriors, then begins to cast a spell. Harley tries to kick him in the face to stop him, and James cuts the man across his arm, but he finishes his spell undaunted, and four small flaming bolts fly from his hands, two to strike Harley, two to strike James. James curses and tries to attack the wizard again, but one of the warriors in the house slashes open the flesh on the back of James’s head, and the warrior falls to the ground. Harley, unarmed, calls for help again, and is relieved to see that a few people are running forward with spear and pitchforks. A call comes from inside the house shouting, “I got it!” and then the red-haired man orders for them to retreat. Harley stays back, knowing she can’t stop all of them on her own. Then she staggers back in shock as Allar leaves the house, carrying the Book of Darlakanand in his arms. The half-Elf ranger seems to ignore her, and the group runs off into the night, heading south toward the swamp. Harley rushes to James’s aid, trying to staunch the flow of blood out the back of his skull. Bhurisrava scrambles forward and heals the wound enough to save James’s life, and then runs back into the house to check on Tauster and Roth. The villagers who come around offer to help however they can, and Harley has a spark of inspiration enough to tell them not to follow the attackers yet. They don’t need to spoil whatever tracks they left in the mud. Tauster is safe, but bruised. Roth is unharmed, since he was held the entire time and not a threat. James is stable enough to mutter about how he hates wizards (quietly enough so Tauster can’t hear), and Bhurisrava is wounded but holding together. He managed to trip one of the warriors as the man ran out of the house, and then rendered him unconscious with a wound-inflicting spell. They stabilize their prisoner, then ask around to find out if anyone knows where the book thieves might have gone, who any of them were, etc. People say that it’s odd to see either a blonde-haired or a red-haired individual in the area, and the local innkeeper says that he thinks he recalls seeing some of the brown-haired warriors buying drinks a few days earlier. He doesn’t think they were locals. Since none of the villagers mention seeing Allar, Harley, Roth, and Bhurisrava only tell Tauster and James. Tauster doesn’t think Allar had anything to do with it, that it must’ve been a trick, but James is pissed enough to blame whoever he can. They hit the sack, Roth agreeing to stand watch since he was spared being beaten up. He seems to want a chance at revenge, as though he hopes the thieves return. Harley and Bhur are fairly certain they won’t come back, though, since they got the book they came for. *** The next morning, Harley awakens to Tauster calling her Jenny again. He says that he finished the cure in the middle of the night, which is good because Harley’s hand is on fire. She forgot to have a spare wet cloth handy, and now she can barely stand the burning. The sound of Tauster getting the antidote ready awakens the others, including Roth, who is quick to pretend that he wasn’t asleep on watch. His first words of the day are to ask for something to drink. Tauster has concocted some type of oil that he rubs over Harley’s hand and arm. It’s cold and sticky like mud, and once it fully coats the affected area, Tauster casts a spell on it, then sets it on fire with an incense stick. The oil burns away quickly and painfully, but it reveals Harley’s normal arm, back to normal flesh, if mildly burnt red. Harley smiles in thanks and hugs the old man with one arm, then politely asks if Bhurisrava could heal her and James a little more. Bhurisrava nods and begins to pray for his spells, while Roth goes about cooking. After finishing a surprisingly tasty, if alcohol tinged breakfast from Roth, they’re about to leave when a knock comes at the door, followed by Allar’s voice saying, “It’s me! I heard what happened last night! Are you alright?” Tauster chides them for getting their weapons ready, and before they can sufficiently prepare their defense, Tauster shouts, “The door’s unlocked. It’s all fine.” Allar opens the door, and James thrusts a sword at his face. Allar leaps back half a step, draws his black scimitar, and parries a second blow. He manages to fend off James’s frustrated advances long enough to get the story out of Tauster. The breaks off as Allar claims that it had to be a disguise or an illusion. Last night he was at the small keep of Lord Parlfray, not far from his own keep, and he says he has an alibi. They party is willing to listen, since Roth points out that the Allar he saw last night (and he had a lot of time to look since he was sprawled on the ground) had a plain old bland scimitar. Allar actually carries two, though he only seems to use the black one. As soon as he’s convinced them that he didn’t try to take them the night before, he tells them all to come with him. They have to track down the thieves before they get the book to whoever hired them. Allar’s just about ready to run after them, but only Roth seems eager to go with him. Allar complains that they’re losing valuable time, but James won’t budge to go after people who so far have just been trying to kill them. Allar, frustrated, offers to pay them a hundred gold pieces each to help him, since he needs them to identify who the thieves were. He also says that whoever wants the book probably doesn’t want anyone to know about it, so their lives are in danger. It’s in their best interest to help him. Tauster offers to Allar that he could just [i]charm[/i] the group and make them go along, but Allar sighs and shakes his head, saying, “No. We had enough of that when the Illithids were around.” The offer of payment and Allar and Tauster’s agreement to help protect them is enough to convince them to go along for now, and they set off. Tauster stays behind, because he never was the adventuring type. (He’s a 9th level wizard, but he’s over 70 and has done very little adventuring. With a 3 Constitution and 9 hit points, he’s not quite well suited to go out fighting anymore). Allar follows the fairly obvious tracks with the others keeping up as well as they can, since Allar practically runs as he watches the tracks. Something strikes the party that it must be Really Bad to have lost the book, considering that Allar is ready to leave at a moment’s notice to go sprinting through a marsh after a large group of armed men and a wizard. Bhurisrava grumbles that he thinks Allar might still be trying to trick them and throw them off his trail, but Roth trusts Allar. The tracks lead to a bank of the river about two miles south of the town of Thurmaster. They find markings that a small boat had been left on the bank as a getaway vehicle, and so Allar leaps into the water and swims across, ready to assist anyone who needs help. The river is too deep to walk, but only about fifty feet across, so they make it across easily. On the other bank they find a wooden rowboat hidden in some brush a few feet into the treeline, and despite Bhurisrava and James grumbling about having to rush through the woods so quickly, Allar leads them on, into the Thornwood. [The Thornwood is a large forest that stretches between Milbourne and Thurmaster, and goes fairly far to the south of both. It’s borders are effectively carved by the Churnette river and a few rough hills where farming and mining has cut back the original woodlands. All you really need to know is that they’re going into the woods, and that it’s a huge place filled with all manner of thorny plantlife.] The trail is harder to follow once out of the marshy ground and into grassy forest. The tracks lead to a game trail, which, after about an hour, opens into a wide grassy clearing. Allar and Roth both try to follow the tracks, but the trail simply disappears. Suspecting that the thief wizard had something to do with it, Allar mutters and takes his bearings. The trail is lost, so they sit and rest for a while, Allar asking them about everything that has happened so far. They tell him about ‘Death’ attacking them, what Death looked like when they finally beat it, and then their trip back to Tausters. Allar asks for a closer description of the Illithid, and is disturbed by the mention of it having hair and discolored blotches of normal flesh and ‘mind flayer’-ish flesh. Normal Illithids don’t have hair, and are a fairly uniform color. He assumes that it must have been related to the Illithids in some way, but how he is unsure. He tells them plainly that a single Illithid should have been able to, if not kill all of them, at least escape easily if endangered. This frustrates Bhurisrava even more. He already doesn’t like or trust Allar, and saying that he doesn’t believe what they accomplished is insulting. Harley continues to tell what happened, going into the squishiness of her hand, the arrival of Inzeldrin, and the subsequent argument she had with the men in his keep. Allar is disturbed by the problem with Inzeldrin, but it’s more of the “oh, what else could go wrong today” type of worry, rather than the “we’re screwed” emotions he’s displaying whenever the topic of the book theft comes up. Harley asks to be reminded just how bad the Book of Darlakanand is, and Allar tells her that if someone had all the books, they might be able to recreate what the Illithids tried to do a few years ago, namely to create a magical effect that would weaken the minds of every creature on the planet so that the Mind Flayers could control almost anyone. Allar’s not sure exactly what the process is that would do this, though a few of his companions were more experienced in the magical aspects of the Illithids. Since it’s still early morning, Allar decides to set off and scout out nearby locations that might be valid hiding spots for people in these woods. His list is: * An abandoned church with a broken spire and a small village of abandoned buildings, a few hours to the northwest. It was built hundreds of years ago when the area was more prosperous due to mining, but people left when the mines stopped being rich. The small town was swallowed up by the woods, but occasionally Goblin tribes or bandits hide out in the place. * A small network of caves chewed into the side of a huge cliff called Featherfall (because the layers of rocks on it look like feathers). Goblins usually live in the caves there, but it is a plausible hiding spot. * A house that’s a few years old whose previous owner built it in the woods for privacy, then left out of loneliness. The cruel bastard who lived there left his dog behind and hasn’t returned for years. Roth chimes in and says that they know that the house is clear. * The grove of a local shaman named Oleane, once a young girl who played in the woods too often and grew to prefer the trees to people. She’s now grown up but still anti-social. She’s closely bonded with the local forest, and has occasionally provided information to Allar before. [At the mention of Oleane’s name, Nic, James’s player, begins to laugh. He finds her name incredibly funny. If you recall, about two years ago there were complaints that the ‘fake-fat’ oil O-lean caused diarrhea and anal leakage. Since Nic couldn’t take her seriously, he’d call her ‘anal leakage girl’ whenever she was mentioned. I’d had a druid named Oleane in the woods for years before the fatless oil came out, and I hadn’t expected my players’ abilities to mock and deride simple names. So far we have Nikal as “Nikhail the Commie,” Tauster as “Toaster,” and Oleane as “anal leakage girl.” I love Nic oh so much.] They decide to head for the abandoned church first, since it’s closest and because bandits have worked out of there before. They start walking again, travel for several hours, then spot a neglected low stone wall that marks where the small town used to stand. Beyond the wall are three buildings—a church and two houses—plus the collapsed rubble of several others. They take a few minutes to prepare themselves, and then Allar gives orders to scout the small town. Keeping hidden in the brush and trees, they sneak as quietly as possible around the perimeter. There’s definite signs of people being here, since a fresh foot trail has been torn through the grass to lead to the main door of the church. Allar quickly sneaks into and out of the two other houses, but shakes his head that no one is in there. They back away to a safe range to talk, and Allar says that the two houses look occupied, but no one’s in there now. By the looks of it, the place is only home to Goblins, but they might have information. Allar and James work out a battle plan of how to deal with the Goblins in case negotiations go sour, and then they take their places as Allar and Harley walk to the front entrance to parley. [/QUOTE]
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